Truth, Lies & Work

Episode 308 · 9 June 2026 · 57:14

Dark Showering, Google A.I. Interviews and the M&S Cyber Attack. PLUS! Is Experience the Best Predictor of Job Performance?

Dark Showering, Google A.I. Interviews and the M&S Cyber Attack. PLUS! Is Experience the Best Predictor of Job Performance?

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  1. Word of the Week: Dark Showering

    news roundup#dark-showering#workplace-culture#wellbeing

  2. Google embraces AI in job interviews

    news roundup#ai#job-interviews#google#recruitment

  3. The M&S cyberattack: who pays for corporate failures?

    news roundup#cyberattack#corporate-responsibility#bonuses#m&s

  4. Truth or Lie: Is experience the best predictor of job performance?

    truth or lie#experience#job-performance#hiring#truth-or-lie

  5. Workplace Surgery: Applying psychology in everyday life

    workplace surgery#psychology#workplace#hr#coaching

  6. Workplace Surgery: The hardest workplace problem Leanne has solved

    workplace surgery#workplace-problems#hr#problem-solving

  7. Workplace Surgery: Is work-life balance realistic in competitive industries?

    workplace surgery#work-life-balance#competitive-industries#burnout

Show notes

Dark Showering, Google A.I. Interviews and the M&S Cyber Attack. PLUS! Is Experience the Best Predictor of Job Performance?

This Week in Work — Al Elliott and Leanne Elliott (Chartered Occupational Psychologist) unpack the sleep science taking over TikTok, Google's decision to let software engineering candidates use its Gemini AI assistant in interviews, and the workplace culture fallout after M&S wiped out bonuses for 63,000 employees following a £131.3m cyberattack. Plus, in Truth or Lie: does "years of experience" actually predict job performance? And a special edition of the Workplace Surgery answering questions from The Business Psycho community.

🔥 Stories Covered

1. Word of the Week: Dark Showering Imagine a simple way to wind down your body and brain after a hard day at work using something you already do every day. Leanne introduces "dark showering" — the practice of showering in a completely dim or pitch-black bathroom as part of a bedtime routine. Far from just a social media trend, sleep researchers explain that the rapid cooling of your body post-shower mimics natural circadian signals, while the darkness stimulates melatonin production and lowers cortisol. Source →

2. Google Embraces AI in Job Interviews While most companies are actively trying to ban candidates from using AI during interviews, Google is leaning all the way in. Starting later this year, software engineering candidates will be allowed to use Google's Gemini AI assistant during code comprehension interview assessments. Instead of testing rote memory, interviewers will explicitly evaluate "AI fluency," including prompt engineering, output validation, and debugging skills. Source →

3. The M&S Cyberattack: Who Pays for Corporate Failures? Following a massive cyberattack that wiped £131.3 million off annual profits and dropped market value by 12%, UK retailer Marks & Spencer made a sweeping decision: no employee bonuses will be paid this year. This affects 63,000 workers, from the shop floor straight up to the CEO. While leadership "sharing the pain" equally sounds noble, it raises major workplace culture questions. Source →

🧠 Truth or Lie: Is Experience the Best Predictor of Job Performance?

We have all seen job postings demanding "5 to 10 years of experience." It feels like the safest metric for hiring managers. But does a century of organisational psychology actually back this up?

Leanne walks Al through the data — including the meta-analysis by Guzzo and colleagues showing team-level experience matters, and the Van Iddekinge research revealing that pre-hire experience explains less than 1% of the variation in job performance. They compare it against far stronger predictors: general mental ability (26%), structured interviews (42%), work sample tests (29%), and integrity tests (21%). Age? 0%. The verdict: experience is a lie — or at best, a very weak signal.

💬 Workplace Surgery — Special Edition with The Business Psycho

This week, Al and Leanne take a trip into the online community forum The Business Psycho — a hub founded by Mary Luu for business psychologists, HR leaders, and curious professionals. Leanne tackles three brilliant questions submitted straight from the community members:

  1. Applying psychology outside work: Can business and occupational psychology skills be applied outside work and in everyday life?
  2. The hardest problem: What is the single hardest workplace problem Leanne has ever had to solve as a Chartered Occupational Psychologist?
  3. Work-life balance: Is work-life balance actually realistic in highly competitive industries?

More from The Business Psycho:

Connect With Us

Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect

Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14

Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.

Full transcript

Expand full transcript
Al ElliottComing up this week in work.
Leanne ElliottImagine if there was a simple way to wind down your body and brain after a hard day at work. Something really simple that you're probably doing every day anyway. Well, there just might be, and I'll tell you all about it in my Word of the Week.
Al ElliottAlso this week, a story I saw. Well, we all know that most companies are trying to ban AI from job interviews, and Google has come up with a solution. But it's not what you think.
Leanne ElliottAnd in Truth or Lie, is experience the best predictor of job performance? Surely it is. Every job advert in the world asks for X number of years' experience. Well, I've gathered the data and I've got a verdict, and it's not, it depends.
Al ElliottNice. And in a special edition of The Workplace Surgery, we're answering questions submitted by The Business Psycho, an online forum and community for people interested in business and occupational psychology. We're going to cover work-life balance, using psychology in everyday life, and finding out the hardest work problem Leanne has ever had to solve.
Leanne ElliottThis is Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottMy name is Al, I'm a business owner, and I'm here to ask the questions you might be afraid to.
Leanne ElliottAnd my name is Leanne, I'm a Chartered Occupational Psychologist, and I'm here to answer them. And together we'll help you simplify the science of work and build amazing workplace cultures.
Al ElliottWe'll We'll be right back after a quick word from our sponsors. The dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all. Every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation. into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Hello. Hello. Welcome back. Welcome back, Leigh. We've had literally no emails about this, but a few weeks ago you were telling us about a crow that attacked you in, in the park. Have we got any updates on this, on this When?
Leanne ElliottLike the next day.
Al ElliottSame crow?
Leanne ElliottWell, I assume so. It's had the same level of beef with me and Bobby, that's for sure. The mistake I didn't make this time though is I kept Peanut Big Dog on the lead, so he was able to fight off the crow. But it took him a couple of runs at it for it to go away.
Al ElliottReally? Yeah. I don't know what you've done to upset them. But anyway, what else? What else been happening this week, my love?
Leanne ElliottUh, well, this week specifically has been a big one for the old Elliott Fam, hasn't it?
Al ElliottYes, yes, my brother. And we'll probably— maybe he doesn't want people to know, so I'll just say that, uh, there's a reasonably large family gathering this week. Yeah, which is lovely. And my little sister's come back from New Zealand. That's a long journey.
Leanne ElliottNice Elliott reunion.
Al ElliottYeah, we haven't had one of those for a while.
Leanne ElliottSo no, it's been a while. But what else is new in your world, Al? Any crows been after you? Anything you've seen that's made you lol?
Al ElliottNo crows. Lots of things that have made me lol, including the story I'm going to talk about shortly. Um, and also I just want to, just want to say there is a woman in our lives called Ellie Glasson, um, who continually just every— it seems like every message she sends us, she's just, um, it's just like helpful or useful or a great guest, or she wants us to comment on something or whatever. She's just genuinely a lovely person. And I have convinced her to do an interview to tell us more about how to get— how to avoid— or basically, what would I call it? How to avoid— how to make your ideas unignorable.
Leanne ElliottYeah. Ooh.
Al ElliottThat is coming out in July. So if you are— it's not all about PR, it's lessons from PR. So you can take that into internal comms, you can take that into leadership, you can— and then also we talk about thought leadership and all that kind of stuff. So I think it's— well, I know it's going to be a great interview, and I think that a lot of people are going to learn a lot of things from it. So that'll be out on, I think, the 2nd of July.
Leanne ElliottOh, lovely. That's part of our summer content, which we're sliding— we're sliding towards summer really quick now, aren't we?
Al ElliottYeah, yeah. In Bosnian Herzegovina, We always joke that around about like my birthday, 25th of May, someone just pulls a big massive lever and summer just comes on.
Leanne ElliottIt jumps from like 23 degrees to like 30 plus. And that's it until September.
Al ElliottYeah. And our poor dogs, they're all a little bit like, what the hell is this, guys? It's like, it happened last summer. It's like, I know, I didn't think it was happening again this year. Anyway, Lee, if there's no other business, then I believe it is time for your favourite time of the week.
Leanne ElliottLet's do it.
Al ElliottOkay.
Leanne ElliottCue the news roundup.
Al ElliottCue the jingle. Lee, what have you seen this week?
Leanne ElliottI've got a new word.
Al ElliottOkay. Talk to me.
Leanne ElliottI think you're gonna like this one.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne ElliottDark showering.
Al ElliottHaving a bath when the, when the, when you get a power cut.
Leanne ElliottPretty much. Yeah.
Al ElliottOh, really?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottOh, I thought it was gonna be some clever thing like, oh, will you shower yourself with darkness, which allows you then to—
Leanne ElliottHello, darkness, my old friend.
Al ElliottOh, man. Some of the memes that use that music is Oh, it's just brilliant. It's absolutely brilliant. And also, I'm, do you know what I'm really also enjoying? The memes where it uses the, um, the credit, the, the end credits from Curb Your Enthusiasm, where something goes wrong and then it just starts playing the, uh, the end credits. Have you, do you know what I'm talking about?
Leanne ElliottI don't think I've seen that. No.
Al ElliottCurb Your Enthusiasm. I always wanna get into it and then I watch a bit and then I get a bit bored, but it's really funny. It's basically something terrible happens, then it's, then it plays the, uh, the end credits. Anyway, sorry, Leanne, that wasn't what we were talking about. Dark showering. Is that right?
Leanne ElliottYeah, I was, I was hoping for some more creative guesses, but you're absolutely right.
Al ElliottOh.
Leanne ElliottUm, so this is a, this is a wellbeing hack. Apparently. So I saw this, this has been covered in a few newsletters actually, but it was Healthline that I quite liked their coverage on. So yeah, dark showering is taking a shower with the lights dimmed or switched off completely, usually as part of a bedtime routine. And it's not necessarily about the shower itself, it's about helping your brain and body switch gears at the end of the day. And yeah, it Does sound like something off the TikTok, but the article suggests there is actually a bit of science behind this.
Al ElliottSo get me, let me get this straight. So you go in, you brush your teeth, you turn the light off, and then you get into the shower.
Leanne ElliottYeah. Or maybe you dim it. So maybe you'll light some candles, or if you've got a fancy dim switch, you'll turn it down. Or maybe you'll turn off the big light and bring in a lamp to the bathroom, which is hard in the UK 'cause there's no plugs.
Al ElliottNo. Why is that? I just think—
Leanne ElliottElectricity and water. Not a good idea.
Al ElliottIt's everywhere else. You get plugs above sinks in other countries.
Leanne ElliottTake electricity safety very seriously in the UK, don't they? It's why we have the 3-prong plug.
Al ElliottYes. Leanne just did the Fleming's left-hand rule with a 3-prong.
Leanne ElliottRight-hand rule, actually.
Al ElliottDo you remember when you were a kid, those terrifying videos used to play for you just before half-term at school where there was like a kid who threw a frisbee into a power station and then climbed up and then got electrocuted and stuff?
Leanne ElliottYeah, my dad was an electrical engineer. I had those talks well before I made it to school.
Al ElliottAnyway, sorry, dark showering. So what's the science behind it? Is there any?
Leanne ElliottSo yes, the article spoke to several sleep experts, including a neuroscientist and sleep researcher, and I really should have looked up how to say this name. So here it goes. Her first name is Chelsea. Lovely. Roskjev. Roskjev. R-O-H-R-S-C-H-E-I-B.
Al ElliottDo you have to say it in that way? Roscheib.
Leanne ElliottRoscheib.
Al ElliottSay it more confidently.
Leanne ElliottChelsea Roscheib.
Al ElliottNice. Oh, Chelsea Roscheib. Oh yeah, yeah, I know about it. Didn't she do a lot of research into dark showering?
Leanne ElliottShe did. I'm sorry, Chelsea. So she explains that before we fall asleep, our body temperature naturally drops slightly. So a warm shower temporarily raises our body temperature, and then when we step out, it Falls again quite quickly, and that mimics one of the body's natural sleep signals and can make it easier to switch off.
Al ElliottHmm.
Leanne ElliottYeah, it's not just about the temperature though. The darkness may help too. So the article explains that light plays an important role in regulating melatonin. That's the hormone that helps control our sleep and wake cycle. So bright light suppresses melatonin production while lower light levels encourage it. So if we shower in a dimly lit room rather than under the big light in the bathroom, Then we're potentially giving our brain another cue that it's time to wind down. You with me? Keeping up?
Al ElliottYes. I'm with you. I'm with you. I like it. I like it. I like these bedtime routines. I like them, but I never seem to— I, I do them like 3 days and I forget about them.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottYeah. And also shower at night. I don't know. I just don't know. Maybe it's a bit of a horrible thing.
Leanne ElliottI don't know. I feel like we, in summer, I think we always forget. I think in summer, you and I do get into evening showering just because we're so sweaty by the end of the day.
Al ElliottLovely.
Leanne ElliottBut it's just It's just, it's not, you know how it is.
Al ElliottIt's not Truth, Lies and Work weather.
Leanne ElliottIt's 35 degrees. We're sat in the studio with lots of lights on.
Al ElliottThat's true.
Leanne ElliottIt's, it's warm.
Al ElliottThat's true.
Leanne ElliottUh, but anyway, there are some mental health benefits mentioned in the article as well. So, MTP is different. That's different. So Chelsea says that dark showering may help move the nervous system into what's known as a parasympathetic state, which is associated with relaxation and sleepiness, and also notes it can help reduce cortisol, which is our stress hormone. Then we have a sleep coach called Patricia Reid who takes it a step further. She suggests that when you remove visual distractions, you naturally pay more attention to other sensations like the warmth of the water, the smell of your shampoo, the sound of the shower itself, basically comparing it to some form of mindfulness meditation. Thoughts?
Al ElliottI'm for it. I like it. I think, yeah, I, what I do, I've started doing quite recently, not quite recently, in the last sort of 6, 8 months. I now do not listen to anything when I'm going to sleep on my phone. I don't put a podcast on. I don't put YouTube on. I used to every night. I don't know how— listen, if you do, if you do this, let us know. I'd love to know how many people actually do this. I used to go in and I put a headphone and like AirPod in and then I'd lie on my side and I'd watch something and I go to sleep. And then I just realized that It was sometimes the stuff I'd watch would be like, kind of like getting me excited. And then I'd be like, I either couldn't sleep or I'd have weird dreams. Mm-hmm. So about 6 months ago, I took a, took a, took a moment and went, no, I'm not gonna do that anymore. And so now I've trained myself. Took me a long while, but trained myself just to go to bed and go to sleep.
Leanne ElliottMm-hmm.
Al ElliottThat I think is really important because I do wake up maybe about half an hour before you. Mm-hmm. At most mornings. And I think you go to sleep half an hour after me.
Leanne ElliottMm-hmm.
Al ElliottBut I do feel better when I wake up. That sounded a bit like I was criticizing you for watching them and me not. Look, look, look at me.
Leanne ElliottNo. Well, I, I will sometimes watch things in bed, but if I'm ready to go to sleep, I've got one of those sleep masks that has the built-in Bluetooth things in it, so it's very comfortable. And I'll put on a Nodcast. So I'm putting on like a history podcast. It's interesting enough that stops the dark voices inside my head, but not interesting enough that it stops me from falling asleep.
Al ElliottInteresting. Well, I'm pleased that those dark voices are being overcome.
Leanne ElliottYeah, just about. Just about. I liked it. I thought, do you know what? I think it makes sense in terms of kind of the sleep the sleep science behind it, and I'm not an expert in it, but it makes sense to me. But in, in my kind of world that I know a bit more about, it's kind of a ritual, isn't it? And we know that rituals and habits help with kind of our emotional regulation and, and goal setting and all that kind of stuff. So I think if you can build it in as a ritual, as something you enjoy, then that's brilliant. And equally, I think if you just, if you just don't like it, it's okay. You know, it's not that you have to do this, otherwise you're gonna have a bad night's sleep. There's lots of different things we can do to just regulate ourselves a little bit, little nudges throughout the day. My main one at the minute that took me a while to not— to enjoy it is not listening to anything when I'm on the dog walk.
Al ElliottOh, really?
Leanne ElliottI don't listen to anything.
Al ElliottInteresting.
Leanne ElliottI won't check my phone between like leaving the car and getting back to it. Um, so yeah, it's all in the ritual, I think. But I like that. I will leave a link to the article And said experts mentioned in the show notes. Al, what you've been seeing this week?
Al ElliottWell, we've seen a lot, or I've seen a lot of stuff about companies who are still trying to work out how to stop candidates from using AI in job interviews. And it's becoming increasingly difficult because there's several new pieces of software out there where they will put a transparent, like a screen or a little window.
Leanne ElliottYeah, I've seen those on the TikTubes.
Al ElliottAnd it doesn't show up on, yeah, when you share your screen or whatever. Very clever. So basically, people are trying to work out how not to use AI in job interviews. Google has kind of decided to go in the opposite direction and not only let them, but encourage them. So starting later this year, this article was in— you know, I don't know where it's in. Sorry, check the show notes. Didn't write it down.
Leanne ElliottAnyway.
Al ElliottSo starting later this year, candidates are going to be allowed to use an AI assistant during Google's code comprehension interview. This is where they analyze real code bases or they try and find bugs. Or they improve the performance. And the interviewers will be explicitly evaluating AI fluency, i.e., prompt engineering or debugging skills, or whether you spawn up new agents or whatever. So the AI, of course, the AI they're gonna be using is Gemini, naturally. So Google's has Gemini. Google's now testing whether you can use Google's AI to get a job at Google. It's all getting a little bit Google-ish there. But to be fair, there is some logic because Google, amongst a lot of other companies, are saying 75% of its new code is already AI generated. So they think it's more important to test people on how they can work with AI rather than how they can just do their job without AI and pretend it's like 2019. Thoughts, Leanne?
Leanne ElliottYeah, it's like a little work sample test, that, isn't it?
Al ElliottRight. So just if someone's not heard of work sample, because you're big on these, you're bullish on work sample tests.
Leanne ElliottI do enjoy a work sample test.
Al ElliottWhat's a work sample test?
Leanne ElliottIt's basically where you'd give somebody a task that is, is the same as a task that will be done in the job you're recruiting for. So coding using an AI assistant, or writing a blog, or, you know, whatever it is. It's basically taking a small task from the actual job you're recruiting for and putting candidates to— getting candidates to execute that task and, and rating who does it best.
Al ElliottYeah, makes sense.
Leanne ElliottYeah, we'll talk a bit more about, about that actually in our Truth or Lie.
Al ElliottInteresting, interesting. Well, just to summarize this then, uh, one executive put it quite well. Uh, let me just read from the article. It says banning AI from interviews is like asking a kid to take a math test without a calculator. I'm going to push back on that because back when I was doing like some of my math stuff, we weren't allowed a calculator.
Leanne ElliottSame.
Al ElliottBut then we did, we did do, when we were doing like cosine and sine and trigonometry and stuff, we did have to.
Leanne ElliottYeah. But there was one GCSE paper, wasn't it, where you couldn't use calculators?
Al ElliottYeah, yeah. I suppose some people might argue and go, well, who's getting the job here? Is it AI or is it the person who's using AI? But I suppose the counterargument is that in the future we'll all be using AI, so why not let them do it in the interview?
Leanne ElliottYeah, and what they actually seem to be testing, the, the people at Google, is, is like you said, that prompt, prompt engineering, is that what it's called? And how you use it to Effectively to do the code. Because there could be somebody that, I don't know, goes through 3 or 4 prompts to get to the correct code, and somebody goes through 20. That's going to tell you a lot about how somebody thinks as well as how they use AI. So, I think something like that, it's not— I don't think— I think that's actually a really good idea. I think the tricky one, isn't it, is when people are using each other's screens to answer interview questions, and it's just AI-generated.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottUm, content being read back. That's, that's a different issue, I think.
Al ElliottYeah, maybe in the next couple of years we will be— we'll just assume that everyone's using AI, and then you have to prove in your interview that you're not using AI by not using AI.
Leanne ElliottOr something wild will happen and we'll go back to in-person interviews.
Al ElliottCan you imagine?
Leanne ElliottCan you imagine?
Al ElliottYeah. Anyway, what else have you seen, my love?
Leanne ElliottShould employees lose their bonuses because the company got Oh, go on, tell me more. So this is from The Times, and it's about the fallout from the very famous, infamous, not sure the difference, cyber attack.
Al ElliottDifferent spelling.
Leanne ElliottYes, the cyber attack that hit Marks Spencer's earlier this year. Do you remember?
Al ElliottYeah, there was no prawn sandwiches.
Leanne ElliottYeah, everyone was freaking out, freaking out. So M&S has confirmed that no employee will receive a bonus this year, and that's kind of all the way through the levels, um, in terms of shop floor staff, store managers, and the executive team and the board.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne ElliottSo it's 63,000 employees affected.
Al ElliottIs that how many people work for M&S?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottWow, it's a big outfit.
Leanne ElliottYeah. So M&S has basically said the decision is purely because of the financial impact of the cyber attack. So Chief Executive Stuart Machen Um, said that remuneration—
Al ElliottYou can't say that word, can you?
Leanne ElliottThe remuneration committee and executive team agreed not to operate the bonus scheme this year, adding no one in M&S will receive one, including me and the executive team. He also acknowledged that the effort that employees have put into everything during the crisis and saying that people had worked harder than ever during those, those challenging days, and the numbers basically is the only reason. So M&S reported an annual pre-tax profit that fell by 28.8% from £511 to £364 million. The cyber incident itself cost the company £131 million.
Al ElliottOh my God.
Leanne ElliottThat was through system recovery, risk management measures, specialist advisory fees, and just the general disruption. It wiped off more than billion of the company's market value.
Al ElliottOh man, I do feel so— that's, that is, that's horrible.
Leanne ElliottYeah, it's awful, isn't it? It's awful. So when you look at the numbers, it doesn't really come as much as a, a surprise. Um, but despite all that, analysts have said that business has returned to sales and profit growth in the second half of this year and expects growth, um, profit growth to resume, um, next year or within the current financial year. Um, so what do we think? On one hand, is there something admirable about leadership teams taking the same hit as everybody else? Nobody gets a bonus, not even the CEO. Is this good, or is it the employees who are working hard are getting punished? Thoughts?
Al ElliottI, I obviously think it's good. I'm like, you, you can see some companies going, no one's getting a bonus, and then the CEO gets like $3.8 million, like in, like in Boeing or something like that. You, you, you can see that is, I think it's good that they've gone right. Nobody's getting bonuses. I think it would've been better, in my opinion, if you're listening, Marks Spencer's, I'm happy to come in and be one of those special advisories who charge you millions of pounds to have done a deferred bonus and to say, okay, look, you've worked really hard. We can't pay it right now, but business is going back to normal. We're gonna defer this bonus for 12 months, and assuming we hit this num— these numbers, you will get the bonus for that year and this year. That would have felt more fair to me.
Leanne ElliottYeah, I mean, I guess their concern might be that they can't absolutely promise it if something else happens.
Al ElliottBut they could make a contingent on the, um, on profit, couldn't they?
Leanne ElliottTrue that. Yeah, yeah, true that. In terms of a performance metric hit is going to trigger this. Yeah, good idea. Good idea.
Al ElliottI shall— I'm typing an email to them right now.
Leanne ElliottYeah, I think on one hand it is good. You're showing that example what psychology would call organisational justice or procedural justice, where there's transparency over how decisions are made and it's equally impacting everybody. So that's really good. But I agree, that would have maybe been a better idea, or some other, I guess, form of reward or thank you might have been good. But I guess when you've got 63,000 employees, anything's quite expensive, isn't it?
Al ElliottMm.
Leanne ElliottTypical things are usually like the executive team would take a cut in salary to allow for bonuses, or people be given extra time off. But yeah, that's, that's a big impact when you've got that many, many staff and you've had that kind of start to the year, I guess.
Al ElliottYeah, well, I'm curious whether you could insure against that. So did that really come off their, off their top, off their bottom line?
Leanne ElliottAllegedly. Allegedly.
Al ElliottWow, tough gamble. And it won't be the last, wasn't, um, wasn't Yeah. I can't remember who it was now.
Leanne ElliottWas it Land Rover?
Al ElliottYeah, it was Land Rover. Yeah, it was Jaguar Land Rover. Yeah, yeah. And they got, they got screwed, didn't they?
Leanne ElliottYeah. And then isn't there something now with, um, with— is it— who's, who's— is it— who's the ChatGPT people?
Al ElliottOpenAI.
Leanne ElliottOpenAI. Have they now developed something that basically people— they haven't released it because it means that people could basically hack from with very simple equipment?
Al ElliottYeah, not my thoughts.
Leanne ElliottGlassdoor.
Al ElliottGlassdoor. I don't remember, but I know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's 2 new supermodels, not supermodels, supermodels. Like one's, I'm sure it's called Mythos or something like that. And then OpenAI has got their one. And they're apparently, they're just like the world's best thing, but they've got a project called Glasswing, Anthropic have got a project called Glasswing where only certain people can come in and join it because it's that powerful. Or it's just a really clever marketing tech— marketing thing before their IPO later on this year that they want people to think, wow, there's something really, really big coming down the line.
Leanne ElliottThis isn't just any model. This is a supermodel.
Al ElliottThis isn't just any cyberattack. That's brilliant. We should all— we missed a thing. Leanne, any other business before we go to a break?
Leanne ElliottNo, let's go.
Al ElliottFabulous. Okay, so you know, you know the score. After the break, truth or lie. This is the point where I ask Leanne, is this Did you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast—
Leanne Elliottthat's us, by the way— and the UK's number 1 marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioral science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking. And you're not gonna say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in threes—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless, seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. Uh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages It is.
Leanne ElliottIt's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Al ElliottIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back. I'll cut that out. Keep that in. Welcome back to Truth or Lie. It's the time of the week where we take a popular workplace idea and ask if the research actually backs it up. And the reason, if you've not heard this before, normally I say, I ask Leanne a question and she'll go, well, as a psychologist, I have to say it depends. She said she's not going to say that this week.
Leanne ElliottNot this week.
Al ElliottVery, very exciting. So this week we're talking about experience, specifically this idea that the more experience a candidate has, the better they'll perform at the job. So you often see this in job ads, don't you? Like 5 years minimum, 10 years preferred. And it does feel really intuitive because if you give a job to someone who's done it before, it feels like, well, it feels like a really safe choice. But does the research actually support this? So, Leanne, Is experience the best predictor of performance?
Leanne ElliottExcellent question, Al.
Al ElliottThank you.
Leanne ElliottA few definitions before we dive in. You know, I like to just put some, some, you know, context in terms of what we're talking about here. When researchers measure experience, they are usually counting years. Yeah, so how long someone has done a particular type of work. The formal name for this is actually called a training and experience rating, and most people will basically use it like a point system. So Years, certain qualifications, add it up, points, rank candidates. Job performance in most studies means supervisor ratings. So, a manager scoring how well somebody does their job. And in terms of predicting one another, it's basically looking at correlation. So, what's the correlation between job performance, or sorry, between experience and future job performance?
Al ElliottOkay.
Leanne ElliottIn terms of that, in hiring research, a correlation of 0.3 is considered useful. Remember that.
Al Elliott0.3. 0.3 is good.
Leanne Elliott0.3 is good.
Al ElliottAnd just to confirm, so 0.4 is even better and 0.2 is not as good?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottGot it.
Leanne ElliottAnd anything below 0.2 is pretty weak.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne ElliottOkay, great. Okay. So, what is the case for experience? Do you know what? There is actually some evidence behind this. So, a 2022 study, which was a meta-analysis. What's that, Al?
Al ElliottAnalysis of multiple studies?
Leanne ElliottYes, it is. It looked at experience, but it looked at experience at a team level. Rather than an individual level. So, this was from a psychologist called Guzzo and some of his friends. They found that—
Al ElliottCalled what, sorry?
Leanne ElliottGuzzo. G-U-Z-Z-O. It just sounds like— Maybe Italian, I don't know. Oh, right.
Al ElliottSee, I was thinking more like the Muppets, sort of a character off the Muppets.
Leanne ElliottI think it's just my northern twang, that, isn't it? Guzzo. Is that better?
Al ElliottYeah, much better. Talk like that from now on.
Leanne ElliottThey found that basically work teams or units where people had been in their roles longer consistently outperformed newer teams, and that was on like proper concrete stuff. So financial return, productivity, service quality. As a collective, experience does deliver something very, very valuable. There is also evidence that it holds up for individuals under the right conditions. So McDaniel and colleagues pulled 132 studies covering over 12,000 workers across a whole range of jobs and industries as well. And what they found is when the people being assessed didn't have much experience to begin with, If that experience was a meaningful differentiator. So basically entry-level roles, if somebody's got a bit of experience versus none, important. A correlation of 0.29, so almost 0.3.
Al ElliottNearly that magic 0.3.
Leanne ElliottYeah, meaning explained around 8% of the variation in terms of who performed better. So that is a genuine, genuine signal. Then we have a separate large-scale study by, again, Van Indenking. I'm gonna go with—
Al ElliottOkay, is it a Dutch person?
Leanne ElliottVan Idiging. Sure.
Al ElliottMight be Afrikaans.
Leanne ElliottAnd colleagues as well found that experience also gives people a head start in the early months of a new role, and that was a correlation of 0.22, so just above that 2.2. Um, say 2 again, Leanne. That accounts for around 5% of the variation in early performance. And when prior close prior experience closely mirrored the demands of the new job, it predicted training performance considerably more strongly. So yes, experience does predict performance, and the relationship is positive and it is real, but it is modest and it does fade quickly, as we're about to see in our against.
Al ElliottOkay, so what we're saying is People who've got experience, uh, people who've got experience are roughly between 0.22 and 0.29 in terms of correlation of, of, of— what am I saying, Leanne?
Leanne ElliottYes, yes, absolutely right. Assuming that you are looking at a collective, right, or entry-level roles.
Al ElliottGot it. Okay, thank you for saving me there. So what's the, what's the argument against?
Leanne ElliottSo the same study that found that experience gives people that head start in the first few months of a new role also looked at experience more generally. So, a little reminder, this was 81 independent studies covering more than 11,000 employees, and they asked, does the experience someone have before joining an organisation predict how well they'll perform once they're in their role? So, this wasn't entry-level roles, this was generally. That correlation was 0.06.
Al Elliott0.06? Oh, right. So, that's much, much smaller.
Leanne ElliottSo, pre-hire experience explained less than 1% of the variation in job performance, less than 1%.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne ElliottWhich is pretty bad for something that drives quite a lot of hiring decisions in the real world. The researchers really actually did try and find an effect here. They went to some effort. So, they also looked at experience in the same or very similar jobs. So, you know, the cases where you might expect that experience to matter the most, the correlation did nudge up, Al.
Al ElliottOh, good. Okay.
Leanne ElliottBut to 0.07%.
Al ElliottOh, so it's just like more like, yeah.
Leanne ElliottSo still less than 1%. They even looked at measures designed to assess the quality and relevance of experience, not just the quantity. It was still weak. And the small advantage that experienced hires showed in their first few months basically disappeared after a year because the people around them simply learned how to do their job.
Al ElliottThat makes sense.
Leanne ElliottYeah. Yeah. So the, the researchers basically said that experience in, in one organisation doesn't travel well another, and the same job title can mean quite different things. Systems, cultures, ways of working, they can all vary. So basically, having done something before tells you almost nothing about how well somebody did it. So basically, logging time doesn't necessarily mean you're developing a genuine skill.
Al ElliottOh, you see, now I'm starting to get it now, I think. So I immediately thought experience— I assumed experience like, oh well, obviously they good at it. All you're saying with experience is I've, I've done 5 years, I kept this job.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottAnd that's it. You might not have been any good at it, but you kept it.
Leanne ElliottExactly.
Al ElliottSo you're adequate at best.
Leanne ElliottExactly.
Al ElliottPotentially. Okay, got it. Sorry, carry on.
Leanne ElliottYeah. Which is like, no, it is because it's, you just take it for granted, don't you? That's what it means. And Adam Grant talks about this in, I talk about this book all the time. I really enjoyed it. It's one of my, I think it's my favorite Adam Grant book, Hidden Potential. And he basically said that most recruitment processes are built around the execution score, so what somebody has already achieved, but almost entirely ignore the degree of difficulty. So 2 candidates might arrive with similar experience on paper, but one of them might have had to go through significantly more or overcome more hurdles that the CV doesn't capture. So, I think the example he used in his book is, if you've got a degree from the same university, you might have somebody who is middle class, goes to good schools, 2 parents at home, very stable home life, compared to somebody who's from a low socioeconomic background, who had caring responsibilities whilst going to school, missed a significant amount, got the same grades from the same university. You'd think they're the same.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottBut actually, if you could dig deeper, you'd realise that one person was probably a lot more intelligent and Um, tenacious to get that. Yeah, another one, um, McDaniel and colleagues found the same thing as well in terms of how organisations formally score experience. So that common approach that I mentioned, awarding points for years on the job and qualifications, that produced a validity of 0.11.
Al ElliottOh, so a third of what we were talking about before.
Leanne ElliottYeah, so it's just hitting 1% of performance. So basically The system that most organisations use to filter candidates is barely better than picking at random.
Al ElliottWow.
Leanne ElliottYeah. Which raises the question, which I said we'd come back to when you asked me about work sample tests. If experience doesn't predict performance very well, what does? Well, luckily, we have over 100 years of research, Al, into this. It's the most science-y of science we have in psychology. It's our whole foundation. So Schmidt, Owen, and Schaefer— should be a band— pulled together a century worth of hiring research to find out what actually predicts performance. Now, looking at everything, they were, they were kind of generous. They said experience explained about 2.5% of the difference. So, it's not quite reaching the kind of 5 to 8% we saw in, in some studies, but we're not kind of below that, that 1%. So, 2.5% is where we land in terms of how predictive it is. But what's more interesting about the study is what they did find to be good Predictors. And some of these I'm not even sure business owners would have considered including in their recruitment process. So a general mental ability test, so how quickly someone can learn and solve problems, that explains over 42% of future job performance.
Al Elliott42%. See, I choked on my coffee. 42%.
Leanne Elliott42%. Wow. Yeah, this is even more simple. A structured interview, so not just sitting down with a candidate and asking them random questions that pop in your head. A structured interview where every candidate is asked the same questions and scored consistently, that explains around 34%.
Al ElliottWow.
Leanne ElliottIntegrity tests, so that's when we look at how, um, how if somebody is reliable or conscientious, that explains around 21%. Work sample tests, so giving the candidate an actual piece of work to do, is around 11%. Academic grades is about 11.6%. A candidate's life history and background, so what Adam Grant was talking about in terms of hidden potential, 12%. So, the background and life history explains more than academic grades.
Al ElliottInteresting. Can I ask you a quick question on that?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottSo, if you, like some of these numbers here, if I took 3 of them and did 3 things as 3 parts of an interview process, Am I more like, is that gonna be much better, like significantly better than just doing one of them?
Leanne ElliottYeah. Yes.
Al ElliottCan you add them to, I mean, you can't add them together 'cause it goes to more than 100, but—
Leanne ElliottYeah, it's, yeah, they're weighted and there is a way that psychologists do this. So yes, if you did a general mental ability test, a structured interview, and a work sample test, the highest of those is general mental ability at 42%. If you add them together, you're probably looking at the end, something like 60% plus.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottWhy aren't people doing this?
Leanne ElliottI don't know. Well, anyway, to quote Eliza Doolittle, I'm tired and upset and I'm trying to care a little less.
Al ElliottDidn't think we'd get Eliza Doolittle on the show.
Leanne ElliottAh, dear. Yeah. Other things that just in terms of someone's genuine interest match the demands of the role, that's 10%. So yeah. Do you like paying attention to excruciating detail in this compliance job that isn't required? Yeah, I do.
Al ElliottCool.
Leanne ElliottThat's about 10%. Reference checks, the bits that people just skip over at the end, 7%.
Al ElliottReally?
Leanne ElliottYeah. Um, and what's interesting, at the very, very bottom, 0%, which— and this wasn't the most ridiculous. So, um, analysing handwriting, for example, is about like 0.5% or something like that. There's one thing that's 0%. Any guesses what you think it is?
Al ElliottOh, um, appearance, or—
Leanne ElliottYeah, or age. Oh yeah, so age explains 0%. So, it doesn't really matter if you're judging somebody for not having any experience or having far too much, overqualified, you're wrong, absolutely wrong. Age has no impact in terms of job performance as being a reliable predictor of job performance.
Al ElliottSo, just to kind of just make sure I'm on the right page here, if you are using age to decide whether you should recruit someone, it's got 0% chance of helping you. If you use something like a job, uh, what was the job task thing? You, the thing you—
Leanne ElliottYeah, work sample test.
Al ElliottThat was about 11% or something.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottAnd then the general mental ability test was about 40%. Yeah. What was the, what was the experience again? Where would that fit?
Leanne Elliott2.5%.
Al ElliottWow, really?
Leanne Elliott2.5%.
Al ElliottThis is significant.
Leanne ElliottYeah. And the one I want you to take home, listener, if you're looking, thinking about your your recruitment process, a structured interview, 34%.
Al ElliottWow.
Leanne ElliottYou're already doing interviews. All you need to do is, is just a little bit of work to make sure the questions are actually measuring the, the skills and knowledge that's needed for the job, and you've got a standard way of scoring candidates' answers. That's going to get you to 34%. And as you said, Al, adding that together with something like a work sample test, and if you can, some, some form of cognitive test or integrity test, It's gonna, it's gonna tell you a lot. So yeah, in terms of a verdict, experience is the best predictor of performance, truth or lie? It is a lie. It's a big fat lie, Al. And it's not, you know, experience doesn't count for nothing. It does in the right conditions. It might tell you a little something, but as that kind of main filter in a hiring decision or CV sifting, The research doesn't back it up at all. At best, 2.5%. Most of the research suggests it's lower than 1% predictive of how somebody will perform in the role. And that does have a real cost to businesses, which is why I get frustrated with organisations who struggle with hiring and don't bring in a psychologist to help them with it, is because this is so fixable. It's the easiest thing to fix. So, Yeah, go and do it because you're missing out on great, great candidates just because you don't think they have enough years experience on, on their CV, not realizing it tells you nothing, almost nothing about their future job performance. And meanwhile, you've got other things that will, will predict performance much better— your structured interviews, measuring integrity— that you can put into your hiring process, and it'll actually improve the quality of hires. You'll make— these tools do exist. Just most organizations aren't using them.
Al ElliottI love this. I love this. So it's a definite lie, not it depends. I do have a question, and I don't expect you to have the answer to this, but just on the off chance you might know.
Leanne ElliottLet's see. Yeah.
Al ElliottIf someone— if I've got 2 people, and I'm not judging it based on their experience, but I've got 2 people, one person who's got 5 years— well, both got 5 years experience in a particular role. One's got 5-year experience at one company, one's got 5-year experience In total over 3 companies. Is there any kind of like, is there a benefit to going for someone who's jumped around, or is that still, we're still only talking 1%?
Leanne ElliottProbably only talking 1%, because don't forget these are meta-analyses, so it would have looked at all these variables as well and not found any kind of, the only one was that early entry-level roles had a little bit of an effect. So, I don't know for sure, but from what I know, I'm going to say no, that wouldn't matter because it comes down to the same thing unless you're actually digging into the actual experience that has developed certain skills, then it's fairly useless. One could argue that working in certain innovative organisations like Google might tell you a bit about it, but also it doesn't, because you could have somebody who's worked at Google and hasn't absorbed this creativity and way of thinking. So, that's why we need to test for that, which will come down to your work sample test, which will come down to general mental ability, structured interviews in terms of the skills they develop during said interviews. Yeah.
Al ElliottLeigh, brilliant. Links in the show notes, I'm guessing, if there is anything to link to.
Leanne ElliottI'll leave a link to the 100-year research meta-analysis because it's very interesting.
Al ElliottVery interesting. Okay. I think you, you HR nerds are going to love that. Okay. On to my favorite time of the week, the world-famous Weekly Workplace Surgery, where I put your questions to Leanne. Leah, I have 3 questions, but today we're doing something a tiny bit different. As I mentioned at the top, the questions come from the Business Psycho.
Leanne ElliottNow, isn't it just the best name in the world?
Al ElliottIt really is. I wasn't sure when Leanne told me, I was like, are we saying this right? No, no. So if you don't know, they're an online forum, a community for people interested in business and occupational psychology. We have featured them before. The community was created by Mary Lou, who wanted to build a space where people can ask questions, share ideas, learn from experienced practitioners, and have honest conversations about the science and practice of work. That's what it says here anyway. So the forum is currently live and is attracting everyone from psychology students to early career practitioners, experienced consultants, HR professionals, workplace leaders, anyone who just likes the name. Mary recently asked Leanne, didn't she?
Leanne ElliottShe did.
Al ElliottIf you'd answer a few questions from the members of the community. So we have got 3 of them today. Do you want to start with question number 1, Leanne?
Leanne ElliottGo for it.
Al ElliottSo question number 1, can business and occupational psychology skills be applied outside work and in everyday life?
Leanne ElliottYes.
Al ElliottIs that the end of the question?
Leanne ElliottIt's this— it's the short answer. Yes, they absolutely can. I'm sure anyone listening who has done a psychology degree or is doing a psychology degree will know that you become so introspective and start analysing yourself in ways that feel very uncomfortable. You start to question your parents, your family, everyone around you, every manager you've ever had, ever, how you've been treated at work. Realisations that, oh my gosh, it wasn't me. It's an interesting, interesting thing. So yes, are they actually useful in everyday life rather than just kind of building this anxiety of how traumatised you are? Yes. Yes, they do. Do you know what it is? It's things like you just collect information.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottIt's like we'd talked about, um, what was it, dark showering?
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottThat's something that will pop up in, in my world. So I'll read and go, oh, I might try that. Not listening to music when you're walking the, the dog is meant to be better for emotion regulation and recovery, so you'll try that. So you come across lots of different things that you'll just start to integrate into your life in a way that you didn't really realize. Things like listening skills, asking really good questions. The ethics are baked into your personal life as well in terms of confidentiality. You probably won't gossip as much, or, you know, you'll hold on to people's secrets. You'll constantly think about the broader impacts of, of change on the world. It's why I feel really uncomfortable about AI. It's not that I'm afraid of the technology advancing. I'm really concerned about the ethical impact. Um, or the detrimental impact on the individual. So yeah, the ethical concerns I have around AI are very, very real. So yeah, and I think the one thing that I, I think is going to have a massive impact on your everyday life is being very curious, being very open, and being very intentional around forming opinions. So where's the data? So things like politics, for example, it drives me nuts that people go, Oh, I'm a Democrat, I'm a Republican, I'm Labour, I'm Conservative. It's like, how do you know? Like, forever? Parties change and policies change. And I want to see the data before every election and go, well, that feels a bit more me, I'll go with that one. So, I think you will become that kind of naturally, it depends. You will hold very strong opinions, but on things that you have the data for. And I think in terms of organisational life, even if you don't pursue a career in organisational psychology after doing your master's or your degree, It's these skills that are so important. It's that critical thinking, it's looking for the data, looking for the evidence, holding space for people to have open conversations, ask really great questions, appreciate the input of other people and the impact you have on other people. You're just gonna be a really positive organisational citizen in the world.
Al ElliottRight, well, I've got another one for you, Leanne. Uh, question number 2, what's the hardest workplace problem you've ever had to solve, Leanne? Oh, it's a good one.
Leanne ElliottIt is. I really had to think about this one, and I'd start by saying there's no workplace problem that is easy to solve, but there are some that are more simple. Like recruitment, for example, is a bit more simple because we've got very tried and tested— it's very process-driven. It's, yeah, it's, it's easier. I think the hardest workplace problem I had to solve in that I felt completely out of my depth But, but had enthusiasm and a plan and went in, was a turnaround I had to do on a contract when I was working in Welfare to Work. So, I'd been promoted to national manager. I'd been managing this contract in the Northwest. I got promoted to national manager to also take on the contracts in the East of England and in the Southwest of England. And the Southwest was struggling some. They'd gone through a number of managers.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottThey'd gone through staff. They had turnover problem. They weren't engaging customers very well. Well, their performance was the lowest of any provider in the region, which was particularly embarrassing because our company itself was a prime contract holder.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne ElliottSo, optics was not great. And, you know, the Southwest is a very different place culturally as well. So, you have to be a little bit sensitive to going into that world. So, I went down to Cornwall and was just kind of like, Right, let's just have a full-on morning of moaning. Um, I called it, I called it at the time. I don't, I'm not sure if I said this to staff, but I definitely said this to my, my manager. We're gonna do some shitposting. I was like, we're basically just gonna get it all out. We're gonna get it all out in the morning, and we're gonna talk about things that, that are bugging us. And this is actually based on, um, uh, an Agile Scrum technique called 3 Buckets, where basically you, you just, yeah, get all the stuff out, um, in a way that feels constructive. So you basically have a whole brainstorm dump where you ask every team member to write down what their frustrations are, or say them out loud if they feel comfortable. In my scenario, they were very comfortable to say it out loud. They could not wait to say it out loud. So I'd write them down, and then we'd basically label— um, I did it on a whiteboard. You could actually do it with physical buckets if you wanted to. Uh, 3, Categories, and that was our afternoon activity. So, our morning was completely about ranting, raving, getting everything off your chest. Um, in the afternoon, we went to more kind of solutioning. So, one bucket was the control bucket, so things that the team or I had control over. The influence bucket, so things that, that I could impact as a manager, or as a team we could influence. So, it's not guaranteed, but we might be able to have conversations in the organisation.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottAnd the third was a no control bucket, like there is nothing we can do, like it's just written into the terms of the, of the contract and how we work and how we operate, and we can't change that. So, in the afternoon, we went through this exercise and, and made the decision that the no control, we were going to put in that big red balloon and let go. The influence bucket was my responsibility to try and get moving, and the team control bucket, we talked about who was going to take responsibility for that with support from me and my director.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottTo get things moving. We probably lost— I think we had a team of 12 and we lost 2 members of staff because they just couldn't get on board with the change.
Al ElliottHmm.
Leanne ElliottAnd it was a good outcome because those members of staff had, had been causing some issues for a while because of their understandable frustrations, but they just couldn't get past it and couldn't get over it. So, we did have some turnover, which of course we had to then recruit back in and, and just start to build this contract up again from the ground up as a, as a new person in an area culturally very different from the northwest of England. I'm sorry, how am I boring you?
Al ElliottI'm trying to hide my yawn. I'm so sorry. I'm out of water. I'm a bit thirsty and I get, and I get yawny. I'm trying so hard. Carry on, Leanne. I'm so sorry.
Leanne ElliottSo yeah, it took, it took months in terms of little cultural nudges, behavioral nudges, building morale, building belief, injecting some fun back into the work and what, what we did working with customers. is genuinely changing lives. What a privilege. So, it was getting those, those translating those values of the organization as well into what it looked like in the team and what should be driving us forward. It took a long time. We did lose some people, but ultimately the turnaround happened. Performance went up. We got some incredible people working in, in the business that had been there but just weren't clicking or were underappreciated or didn't have the space to shine. They went on to do incredible things, get promoted themselves onto other contracts, and just a general feeling that, that rippled to other providers in the contract as well, that this was fun. We'd share good news stories, we'd share things that we were trying, knowledge sharing with other people outside of our company on the same contract. Just this whole ethos. And basically what underpinned our culture was this belief that we're changing lives, and what a privilege. And we need to do our absolute best to make that happen. That's probably the hardest one I had to solve, um, for a variety of reasons. But I think what's always good is that any problem you're going to experience as an org psych, you're never going to have the initial answer to. You're not going to have the answer to. I could have gone in there going, I'm going to change this and I'm going to change that, and thank goodness I came along. But I didn't. I went to the team on my first day and went, What's occurring? Tell me everything that's just awful. And we built a plan together from there, and that's what made the difference.
Al ElliottI love that. I love that. I must have heard that story half a dozen times, and I love hearing it. Brilliant. Okay. And it was called shitposting. That's what— that's officially where you're coming down on. You're going to call it a shitposting technique.
Leanne ElliottI think it's actually called the 3 buckets technique, which is part of Scrum Agile.
Al ElliottI prefer shitbucket. Okay. Final question. Is work-life balance actually realistic in competitive industries. So, I'm guessing we're talking like finance and that sort of thing. Is that what we're saying?
Leanne ElliottYeah. I mean, there was no more to the, to the question than that, but that's kind of how I'd interpret it as well. So, things that would be like the Big 4, for example, finance roles, arguably tech now with the amount of layoffs we're seeing. Is work-life balance actually realistic? It all depends on what you want to achieve. And how important work-life balance is to you. I think work-life balance is a term that kind of bugs a lot of people now. I've heard some people talking more about work-life integration, which, because we've got this kind of always-on kind of connectivity, I think work-life integration is also a better, a better lens, but more from the point in terms of where is my energy coming from, how is my cup being filled, and is that coming from outside of my work as well as inside it. So something happens to my work.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne Elliottlife, I'm not going to be in this spin. I've lost all sense of meaning and purpose. It really comes down to what you want to achieve. I'll be honest, in times where I've been building my career, wanting to progress quickly, wanting to develop quickly, wanting to chase those salary bands, I didn't have the best work-life balance. But there were some things that were sacred to me. Weekends were always sacred. I might work late into the night during the week, but I would never work on a Saturday and Sunday. It's that boundary that you set. There's gonna be, you know, people out there screaming at their phone going, well, I couldn't take Saturday and Sunday off when I was hustling. It's like, yeah, well, I worked in small businesses. I worked at times in startups, but I didn't work for like your JP Morgans that have got this type of, of kind of hustle culture. I didn't work for organisations like Google who have, you know, a very clear idea of, of what it takes to survive in that organisation.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottSo, it all comes down to what you want and what competitive looks like. I was more competitive with myself and my peers, so rather than in terms of being in a competitive industry, I was very clear of certain boundaries I would set. And like the majority of professionals, I also burnt out and crashed and burned because I didn't have—
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne Elliottwork-life balance, and I wasn't aligned. My values weren't aligned with the organizations I was working for, and that ultimately derailed my career for a time, but also then took me on the path I was meant to be on and took me to where I am, you know, as a starting place for where I am today. I'm not saying that in terms of burnout being a badge of honor, more as a reassurance to anyone that's burning out. You will recover. It's okay. So, I guess that's a really long rambling answer to say that, yeah, it probably isn't very realistic in competitive industries. But what is realistic is asking yourself why you want to be in those competitive industries, what you're getting from it, either in the short or long term, in terms of pay, in terms of lifestyle, in terms of meaning, in terms of development, and is that worth the impact it is inevitably going to have on your mental health and really what the long-term goal is in terms of what work and life looks like for you. Do you want to have a family? Do you want to travel the world? Those goals need to be aligned, otherwise you won't have any kind of work-life balance or indeed any kind of work-life satisfaction. And that's probably a bit more important in your— probably in any point of your career, right? Having that balance of satisfaction, but particularly in your— Early career. What's the trade-off? Is it worth it?
Al ElliottIt's a lovely summary. And I think competitive industries, you tend to, you think about finance, law, um, sales, that kind of thing. Um, there's nothing wrong with going, no, there is no life-work balance, work-life balance in it. And I'm going to do it for 5 years. And then I've got a path to leave. The problem is when you're, when you're turning 45 and you're going, I want work-life balance, but I also want to progress quickly in this industry. It's like saying, I'm gonna be a professional footballer, but I'm not gonna retire at 29 or 30 like everyone else does. I'm gonna go on to my 60s. No, you're not. So yeah, short-term busy for long-term lazy is one of the things that I often say.
Leanne ElliottSo yeah, definitely. And the thing is as well, it's not to say that there aren't organizations out there in traditionally competitive industries that aren't doing things differently. Thrive Law springs to mind in terms of a law firm that's operating very differently. And I think this is where our Our Gen Z colleagues are particularly good at scrutinising culture and values and how that all plays out. So, there's absolutely things you can do to find a role in a competitive industry with an organisation that does nurture more of a work-life balance.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottSo, there's things that you can do, but I think you're right, and I've heard lots of people do that before, going in with a plan. I'm going to work in this job for 5 years to save this amount of money, which will enable me to go and do this and this and have that. contributes to actual life goals, work and life. So I think if you are going to do it, like you say, what's, what's the plan? What did you say? Short-term?
Al ElliottShort-term busy for long-term lazy.
Leanne ElliottNice.
Al ElliottUm, yeah, I mean, just watch Suits. You see what happens. They work 120 hours as associates, then they go, then they turn into Harold Specter. Where's that come from? Harold Shipman. No, into Harvey Specter, um, who just strolls in at 9 o'clock in the morning and Yeah. So yeah, okay, that's it for this workplace— this week's Workplace Surgery. Massive thank you to Mary Lou over at The Business Psycho for letting us have these questions. If you're interested in workplace psychology or leadership or culture or well-being, um, or how to spell Mary's surname, you are— maybe you should go over to thebusinesspsycho.framer.website/forum. And if you'd like to connect with Mary directly, we'll also put her LinkedIn profile in the show notes along that URL. Of course, as always, if you've got a workplace dilemma yourself and you'd like to tackle something, tackle it on the show, head on over to truthliesandwork.com and send it our way. Or yeah, just, just look at the show notes in this thing and you'll see a way to get to it, to get in touch. Okay, so this Thursday we are joined by Sean O'Shea. Sean, Sean, Sean, dude, you have been so patient. We recorded this interview way back in, I think, around about the end of February, beginning of March, um, and since then, uh, he's launched a brand new company. He's still got Craft Your Culture, but he's got Look On as well. Uh, really Interesting guy, also used to work for ex— he's ex-Microsoft, so gives a little bit of an impact on that. And I know you're gonna absolutely love this conversation, so do not go— well, go anywhere, but just come back on Thursday.
Leanne ElliottYes, you're allowed to go make a cup of tea. And while you're doing that, maybe get your phone and go on the old LinkedIn and find me and find Al and find the show page and join the conversation. Tell us what's been bothering you this week. What's your shit post of the week?
Al ElliottDon't go and find me. I'm just rubbish. My latest post today was a picture of a painting I did of our dog that was really bad.
Leanne ElliottI thought it was brilliant. Beautiful.
Al ElliottIt's because you're my wife and you have to. All right, guys, we'll speak to you soon. Bye-bye.
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