Truth, Lies & Work

Episode 37 · 3 May 2023 · 1:20:22

How to Build a Thriving Workplace: Key Insights from The Watercooler Conference:

How to Build a Thriving Workplace: Key Insights from The Watercooler Conference:

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  1. Back from The Watercooler: recap and thanks

    other#podcast#recap#watercooler

  2. Make a Difference Awards winners

    other#awards#recognition#hr

  3. Theme 1: Board-level buy-in

    other#board-level#buy-in#culture#leadership

  4. Theme 2: Outsourced CPOs

    other#outsourced#cpo#hr

  5. Theme 3: Individualisation in wellbeing

    other#wellbeing#individualisation#hr

  6. Theme 4: Employee insights

    other#employee-insights#analytics#data

  7. Theme 5: Mental health and suicide prevention

    other#mental-health#suicide-prevention#workplace

  8. Theme 6: Line managers are EVERYTHING

    other#line-managers#management#employee-experience

  9. Theme 7: Authenticity in leaders

    other#authenticity#leadership#leaders

  10. Theme 8: Post-COVID trauma

    other#post-covid#trauma#mental-health

  11. Theme 9: The outlook for people and culture

    other#culture#wellbeing#future-of-work

  12. Theme 10: Making people and culture more commercial

    other#commercial#people-culture#business

  13. The 10 themes, recapped

    other#recap#themes#summary

  14. What it feels like to be at The Watercooler

    other#watercooler#event#interview

Show notes

How to Build a Thriving Workplace: Key Insights from The Watercooler Conference

Truth, Lies & Work — Al Elliott and Leanne Elliott (Chartered Occupational Psychologist) take you behind the scenes of The Watercooler, the UK's premier conference on workplace culture and wellbeing. Over 48 hours, with 29 experts and exclusive access to some of the biggest names in the people and culture space, they distil the 10 key trends shaping workplace culture and wellbeing in 2023 and beyond.

From FTSE 100 corporate leaders to challenger banks and innovative start-ups, this is the most ambitious episode yet — featuring 10 guests, live interviews from the exhibition floor, and the insights that will help you build amazing workplace cultures where people and businesses thrive.

🎤 The 10 Key Themes

1. Board-level buy-in. Culture on the board agenda isn't a nice-to-have — it's essential. But it has to start small. You can't just say, "Marjorie, you're in charge of wellbeing" and call it done.

2. Outsourced CPOs. Chief People Officers are going to be a bigger thing. Many organisations don't have the budget or the clarity for a full-time CPO — so they're hiring experts on demand.

3. Individualisation in wellbeing. There is no silver bullet. People have different needs, different lives, different pressures. One-size-fits-all wellbeing simply doesn't work.

4. Employee insights. Marketers have used analytics for years. Now it's time for people teams to catch up — but the data only matters if you actually act on it.

5. Mental health and suicide prevention. This is becoming an increasingly open and honest conversation in the workplace. Al shares his own story, and we hear from Thomas Bell, the "bipolar businessman," and Amelia Wrighton of Suicide and Co.

6. Line managers are EVERYTHING. If there's one thing you take from this episode, it's this. Andrew Berrie from Mind shares data from 384 organisations — and the message is clear: your people leave managers, not companies.

7. Authenticity in leaders. Leadership isn't Mel Gibson splattered in blood. It's being honest, vulnerable, and real. The most engaged employees are the ones who feel their leaders genuinely care.

8. Post-COVID trauma. COVID was the most disruptive event the workplace has ever seen. Petra Velzeboer explains how our nervous systems are still affected — and how to check in with your own.

9. The outlook for people and culture. Culture and wellbeing is here to stay, regardless of changes in remote work. But with one caveat...

10. Making people and culture more commercial. It has to be evidence-backed. Professor Dame Carol Black and the Business in the Community "Prioritise People" report show the first-ever aggregated data on thriving workplaces — and the results are phenomenal.

🔥 Highlights

The Vet Analogy, Watercooler-style. HR and people professionals enter the field because they love people — only to be brought in when people are at their most backed-into-a-corner. Sound familiar?

Thomas Bell's story. Al opens up about his own experience with suicidal ideation, and Thomas — the "bipolar businessman" — explains why everyone deserves support, whether or not you have the "X factor."

Petra Velzeboer on trauma. Big T and little t trauma. Freeze responses, depression, nervous system check-ins. Her book is packed with practical tools — and we'll be hearing much more from her in an upcoming episode.

Professor Dame Carol Black. The chair of the British Safety Council on long-term ill health, the post-COVID exodus from work, and why "put the fruit away" might be the best wellbeing advice of all.

The Nudge crossover. We discover we have a lot in common with the UK's number one marketing podcast — including behavioural science and wrangling Rory Sutherland.

📚 Resources

Connect with the guests on LinkedIn & Twitter:

Find out more about:

Listen back to Truth, Lies & Work for more on:

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 ElliottThe 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.
Leanne ElliottI think the whole sentiment of the event kind of chimes with what we're all about, which is about making work a better experience.
Al ElliottWe came back to The Watercooler this year after a really successful event last year.
Leanne ElliottIt's a great meeting place. Everyone's networking. They want to talk about topics that we're passionate about as well. So it's a lot of synergy in terms of what we care about and what they care about as well. Hello and welcome to the Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture podcast, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne, I'm a business psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al, I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd we are here to help you simplify the science of people and create amazing workplace cultures.
Al ElliottWe certainly are, and we've got— we've come back from hell of a week, haven't we? Hell of a week.
Leanne ElliottHell of a week.
Al ElliottWe were down at The Watercooler last week. We had, if you came down, then hello, you probably saw us right in the middle, had a little glass pod, looked like a, looked like a, I don't know, it was, it was like a kind of a mini studio, wasn't it? We set it up with all our gear in it and we interviewed people and we did how many? Was it 32 people in 2 days? Something like that.
Leanne ElliottAnd they were just the people in the booths.
Al ElliottThat's true.
Leanne ElliottWe also talked to people outside the booths, recorded some interviews from our roving reporters. Yeah, it was awesome. So this, this episode, today's episode is all about What we got up to at The Watercooler as the official podcast.
Al ElliottYes. Now, just in case you think, oh, I don't care about this, you do. Okay. Because—
Leanne ElliottOkay, Al, if Al says I do.
Al ElliottMove your finger away from that, from that skip button. The whole point of The Watercooler is it's all about workplace culture. So everyone who's anyone is at The Watercooler. You would see huge companies like Headspace, Metro Bank, Microsoft, and then lots of smaller companies, some really big ones. Sorry, really quick-growing ones. Fast-growing is the word I'm looking for, like Culture 15. So anyone who's anybody was at The Watercooler, and you care about workplace culture.
Leanne ElliottAnd let's be honest, if you didn't care about workplace culture, you probably wouldn't be, wouldn't be listening to this. So yeah, this is, this definitely, if it's up our street, it's going to be up your street.
Al ElliottDefinitely.
Leanne ElliottYeah. But before we do dive into the episode, I would just like to say a few thank yous to the team at The Watercooler who made it possible for us to be the official podcast. We had such a great time. So a huge thank you to co-founders Simon Berger and Mark Pigou, event director Frances Barham, uh, of course the global head of content Claire Farrow, um, who was a fabulous panelist on our recent Gen panel episode. And I've also, you know, the rest of the event marketing and PR team as well, including Jasmine Brown, Georgia Spooner, Kate Jeffrey, um, and Miss Behrouz Popat. And finally, massive, massive thank you Gary Halm from Oboe. Uh, we partnered with Gary to bring, um, our very own pop-up studio to the exhibition hall.
Al ElliottUm, so yeah.
Leanne ElliottThank you so much. We literally could not have done it without you, Gary.
Al ElliottAbsolutely. So if you, if you are looking to buy some fancy, fancy office furniture and you like very well sculpted beards, then Gary is the number one person in the UK who fits those 2 criteria. So jealous of his beard.
Leanne ElliottGood beard.
Al ElliottIt's a great beard. Anyway, thank you very much, Gary. So we, are we gonna forego our normal, um, word of the week?
Leanne ElliottForgo.
Al ElliottForgo.
Leanne ElliottSomebody's been back in England too long. Oh, just tell me, good Sarah, are we going to forgo the usual structure of—
Al ElliottGood day to you, sir.
Leanne ElliottForgo. I like it. I just— it's unexpected.
Al ElliottI'm a little more erudite when I'm back in the UK.
Leanne ElliottWho— where did you get that word?
Al ElliottI saw it. I saw it this morning. I don't know whether it's right. It might be glue. It might mean intelligent. I don't know. Anyway, so the structure of the show is a little different in that we're just gonna forgo or Not use, if you're from— if, if, if you've got the language levels of Leanne. We're just not going to— we're not going to do the bit normally where we do sort of go into, um, the word of the week and the news roundup because there is so much. I think my— by my count, we've got 8 guests on this, on this episode.
Leanne ElliottMm-hmm.
Al ElliottUm, we've had to obviously just get the little bits out of them, but they— a lot of them are coming up later on.
Leanne ElliottSo if you like someone you hear, then there's a good chance that there's gonna be an episode solely with them coming Yes, so today we are going to talk to you about what is the Water Cooler, why we went, what happened, and who we met. We're then going to take you through the kind of the key themes relating to the future of people and culture and well-being, uh, with commentary from many different expert guests, um, including some of the speakers at the Water Cooler. Uh, we're also going to tell you kind of who's coming up on the podcast, who to expect that we've, we've spoken to from kind of Senior leaders in big corporates to founders of very exciting startups. And also why you should maybe think of coming next year.
Al ElliottAlmost all the audience had headphones. So, so you could have like 6 of these events, 6 of these talks going at the same time. Lots of really cool and nice people there. Just, just a really, really good buzz. So should we go, should we start off just by kicking off why The Watercooler exists and why Mad World exists?
Leanne ElliottYes.
Al ElliottSo we had Simon Berger, or Simon Berger, we should know how to say that. I think it's Berger. As in Bergerac. Um, we had, uh, we had Simon on as a guest maybe about 6 months ago, and, uh, he was talking about VC funding. And the story behind The Mad World was Simon's very, very successful. I think he's done it with Mark for a long time, uh, building up events and selling them, building events, selling them, building events, selling them. And then, um, there was something which happened with Mark's daughter and boyfriend, I think, Leanne.
Leanne ElliottYes. Yeah. I, I, as far as I can, I can remember from Simon telling his, um, it was Mark's daughter and boyfriend. Um, that sadly attempted suicide together. Uh, Mark's daughter didn't succeed, but her boyfriend did. So understandably, this, this changed their outlook. I think it's happened as well just after they'd sold their, their Main Events business. Um, so what should have been a very, um, a joyous time, um, became one of quite a lot of reflection, which is where The Watercooler and Mad World came from.
Al ElliottYep. So basically they decided they were going to double down on mental health Particularly in the workplace. And so they've set up 2 events. There's Mad World Media, which I think is in November, October, November time. We'll put a link in the show notes. And then there's this one, which is The Watercooler, which is perhaps more about workplace culture than mental health, although it does very much combine. So The Watercooler goes on on the 25th and 26th of April this year at Excel, a new home for it. Excel is massive. I don't think you've ever been, but Excel in London, it's like—
Leanne ElliottIt's like an airport.
Al ElliottIt is. It's huge. Frightening place. But so it's— but The Watercooler is for professionals who focus on workplace wellbeing, HR, mental health. And the idea is they come together, discover ideas, solutions, and they often come away with these practical takeaways that enable them to deliver a healthy workplace culture and wellbeing programmes just so their employees can thrive.
Leanne ElliottIt is really cool. There's more than 100 speakers. It's a completely free conference. So to attend as a visitor, it's completely free. Workshop sessions as well. And yeah, just a really cool exhibition as well. Lots of solution providers and, you know, covers all the main aspects of wellbeing, the key pillars. So mental wellbeing, physical wellbeing, social and inclusive wellbeing, financial wellbeing, and environmental wellbeing. So from the speakers to the exhibitors, all of those pillars are covered. And this year it was attended, I think, by more than 5,000 people over 2 days.
Al ElliottFelt like you, you walked in and there was, even before the visitors came in, because we were obviously exhibitors, so we could go in a bit earlier. It just felt like this buzz. And then when everyone was there, oh God, it was brilliant. Because you'll hear on the recordings, we were in almost a soundproof booth, but you'll hear on the recordings just how lively it was outside.
Leanne ElliottIt was, it was such a nice atmosphere. And I think what was so nice is that everyone seemed the same, seemed to feel the same energy and the same buzz. Um, everyone just seemed to be— there's such, such a joy of being in the same room with so many people and business leaders and business owners that are just committed to the same causes, to prioritise people, to prioritise culture, to prioritise wellbeing. Um, so yeah, it really was a pleasure and a privilege to be there. Um, as I mentioned, The Watercooler also hosted the Make a Difference Awards on the Tuesday this afternoon. So Make a Difference is the organisation behind The Watercooler and the Mad World events. The awards were delivered in association with the London Evening Standard, um, and really just to provide an opportunity for us to, to stop and think and thank colleagues and employees who have really made a difference over the past year. Um, so yeah, launched in 2021, and it is, as I said, a part of the Make a Difference media and events mission, um, to bring more employers to the employee mental health and wellbeing conversation, which We're here, we're all here for, we love it. So yeah, there is a full list of winners on the website if you're interested. We'll leave the link in the show notes. But some shoutouts, I think, Al, seems fair.
Al ElliottDefinitely, go ahead.
Leanne ElliottSo a few of the winners: the employer that made the most difference to workplace mental health and wellbeing over the past year, uh, the winner in the large business category was Village Hotels. There was also a few categories around colleagues that made the most difference to workplace mental health and wellbeing over the year. Um, in the True Leader category, the winner was Johnny Jacobs, who's Director of Commercial Finance from Starbucks.
Al ElliottThat's a hell of a name, Johnny Jacobs.
Leanne ElliottIt is. It's like an American TV or something.
Al ElliottJohnny Jacobs, Eurovision, Liverpool.
Leanne ElliottYes. Uh, in the Unsung Hero category, uh, we had Dee Janaya, uh, who's former chair of the Disabled and Neurodiverse Network. Um, and the Best Best integration of workplace wellbeing and DEI. The winner of that was Iris Software Group. Congratulations to you. And finally, the best culture of psychological safety went to Something Big. So yeah, congratulations to all the winners. We'll leave a link to the, the full list of nominees and winners in the show notes.
Al ElliottLovely. Okay, so we have 10 key themes that came out of the show. This is basically what Leanne's done is sat down and all of the content through the entire show, she sifted through all of our interviews, and she's boiled it down to 10 key themes. This is why she's a scientist. She's just brilliant. You've got a— you've got some water in your mouth. It looked like you're about to spit it out. Um, so shall we quickly go through these 10 themes and then we'll go a little bit into depth for each one? And we've got some soundbites from some of our amazing guests, who most of who will be coming up later on in the year.
Leanne ElliottYeah. So as Al said, I kind of went through the conversations, the transcripts we had, obviously the feel of, of just kind of being there and meeting the exhibitors and some of the, uh, the keynotes. 10 themes. So I'll run through the list. Uh, number 1, board-level buy-in. Number 2, outsourced CPOs. Number 3, individualization. 4, employee insights. 5, mental health and suicide. 6, line managers. 7, authenticity and leadership. 8, post-COVID trauma. 9, wellbeing culture is here to stay. And 10, it really is all about the data. We need to be proving the commercial and business case for culture and wellbeing.
Al ElliottSo in our most ambitious episode yet, we've got 10 guests on this, on this episode. Shall we introduce them?
Leanne ElliottI feel, I feel we need a jingle for this. Okay.
Al ElliottI'll go and find some music.
Leanne ElliottCue the jingle.
Al ElliottSo one of our favourites was our first guest, Professor Dame Carol Black. She's currently the chair of the British Library, the Centre for Ageing Better, Think Ahead, the government's Fast Stream training programme. She chairs the NHS Improvements Advisory Board. She's advisor to the NHSI on health and work, and she's a Deputy Vice Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge. What is so interesting is she said, I've got about 45 minutes before I have to go back to Parliament. Now that is a power move, isn't it, to say I've got to go back to Parliament?
Leanne ElliottYeah, she was— I'm, I'm, I'm sad that I didn't get to meet her. Al actually interviewed Professor Dame Carol Black. So, but yeah, incredible woman, incredible guest. Our second guest is Claire Dare. Claire is Head of Healthcare Risk and Technology at PIB Employee Benefits, who were the headline sponsor of The Watercooler.
Al ElliottOur third guest is Nick Viani. Nick is the co-founder of Co-Team, an organisation that helps teams and businesses incubate thinking and catalyse new ways of working for unprecedented times of change.
Leanne ElliottWe're also joined by Cass Briscoe, who is a culture consultant and formerly workplace experience lead at Clio.
Al ElliottThen we've got Thomas Bell. Thomas is known as the bipolar businessman. He's a global keynote speaker. He's a wellbeing expert and expedition leader who's on a mission to help individuals and companies be more human. And by the way, he is very human with everything he says, and he makes it very personal. It's very cool.
Leanne ElliottWe'd also like to welcome Lara Morgan. Lara built her international business pursuing Pacific Direct before selling her 99% majority share for £29 million in 2008. Today, her investment strategy in wellbeing products is primarily pinned to improving life's journey.
Al ElliottWe'll also bring you some snippets from conversations, so you'll be hearing from Kate Goodger, a chartered psychologist and head of human innovation and performance at Laing O'Rourke— I think the largest construction company in the UK, if I remember. We've also got Andrew Berry, who's the head workplace wellbeing at the charity Mind.
Leanne ElliottWe're also joined by Louise Ascot. She is Wellbeing Campaign Director at Business in the Community, and she shares some key findings from their landmark research conducted in partnership with McKinsey. And we also have Petra Velzeboer, who was an absolute hero. I was interviewing Petra as electricity went, so we had to switch-a-rooney and everything, but she was an Petra is a global keynote and TEDx speaker. She's the author of Begin With You that is just being released, I believe, this week, although there were some early copies at The Watercooler. She's also CEO of PVL Learning and Development. She's a psychotherapist, a mental health consultant, and executive coach.
Al ElliottAnd finally, you'll be hearing from some of the exhibitors there. We went round with our roving reporter, which was Dean and Luke. Thank you guys, you were fantastic. So we'll be hearing from, from the likes of Amelia right now. who's the co-founder and CEO of Suicide and Co., and others. So shall we kick off with theme number 1?
Leanne ElliottYes, theme number 1, board-level buy-in. Uh, so having culture on the board agenda. This first theme won't be a surprise for our regular listeners. Uh, culture and wellbeing has to be on the board agenda, and we've known that for some time. If you are listening and if you have a board and you don't have someone in charge of the human side of your business, you are quite simply lagging behind your competitors. And we're not talking about like an add-on, like, oh yeah, Jeff built a business back in 1988, he had people, so he can do people, right? No, we're talking about appointing somebody, an expert, or at the very least an advocate of people. To tell us more, here is Cass. They have a representative on the board who is there to represent on all quote-unquote people matters, um, but basically the human side of employees and work. And they said that's really important because they've got someone there who will bang the drum for those things. And when you think about it, it is the human side of work. So it shouldn't be an afterthought. We shouldn't only be just be getting into making it hard-baked now. It should be something that's been there since the very beginning. But particularly with tech startups, they start off with a founder who's got an idea, and then they build out an engineering team to build the product. And they don't really think about even HR and stuff until quite far So I'd like to hope that in the future that is something that is considered right from day one.
Al ElliottNow, one of the questions we get asked most frequently about culture change or wellbeing, especially from small businesses, is where to start. Now, Clare suggests it's here with buy-in and endorsement from the board. Here's Clare from PIB.
Leanne ElliottSo I think it has to start small, but what's coming across loud and clear from many of the employers we speak to is you have to have buy-in at a really senior level because it has to come from the top. Through like a stick of rock, you know, that whole culture piece from, from the top down. And so, you really need a board sponsor or someone at a senior level who's gonna get on board with what you're trying to do, because we've seen great success where there is this encouragement at a very senior level of, this is who we are, you know, this is what we're doing, this is how we are as a business. And people feel that authenticity every day when they come into work, because let's face it, we all know if something's being paid lip service to, you wanna You want it to be real. So—
Al ElliottNow, even if you are a relatively small company, 20, 30 employees, you've got— you can't just say, Marjorie, you've been here 20 years. You're in charge of culture. Thanks very much. Let us know next year how it's going. You need someone who, at management level, even if there's only 2 directors, you need someone who's gonna go, yep, we agree. This is what's important, and we are going to do this.
Leanne ElliottHear, hear.
Al ElliottTheme number 2 is outsourced CPOs. CPO's got nothing to do with Star Wars. It stands for chief People Officer. The idea of a Chief People Officer— easy for me to say— is that you've got someone at C-suite level who is in charge of the people. Because let's be honest, we've had Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operations Officer, Chief Marketing Officer for years and years and years. So this is something relatively new. Now, we asked Cass, who's a culture consultant, a little bit more about this whole idea of an outsourced CPO.
Leanne ElliottThe reason people hire me is because they perhaps don't have the budget, or they haven't yet fully fleshed out, like, an in-house role to do that kind of thing. Ideally, companies would do that. But with, you know, particularly in tech startups where companies are making layoffs, they perhaps don't have the budget to hire someone full-time to do that. So they will get me in to come in and perhaps advise on a specific survey that they've done. And they've got results from an engagement survey, and they want to advise how to move forward with it. Or they want me to run an engagement survey. And quite often with things like culture and wellbeing, you know, leadership teams, they don't wanna hear it. They, not that they don't wanna hear it, but they need somebody to be the bad guy. They need someone to take the data. People are unhappy, and they need somebody to come in and be the bad guy and process that data back. And they don't necessarily want to do it, 'cause they have to work with those people after they've done that. So, it's quite useful for them to get a freelancer to come in, be the bad guy, deliver the news, and then disappear, which is what I can do for them. from one bad guy to another cast. It's just what's needed. But I think, again, this isn't really a new concept, really, is it? I mean, how many businesses have essentially an outsourced CFO or finance director? It's a similar thing. You know, you need to bring this expertise into your business. If you can't do it full-time or in-house, you use a consultant, you engage an expert, or you hire a fractional CFO. Makes sense. Clare also agrees that engaging an adviser is a good place to start. And one of the things I would say is, Look at where you're spending money and ask someone to support you. You know, any advisor, we'd love it to be us, but, you know, we can be creative. Look at what you're spending and how can you get more value for what you're spending? You know, in every area of our life, we need someone else to say, actually, have you thought? And sometimes just being an independent onlooker, you've got no history with the situation. You can just say, look, have you thought about this? And sometimes it's that light bulb moment of, oh yeah, that's exactly what we should So, yeah, absolutely, there are amazing providers and support services here, and that's what's been so great. What I really liked about everyone that I spoke to who was a provider or a consultant said exactly what Clare said. You know, I hope, I hope it's me that people engage, but just engage someone, engage somebody to make culture and wellbeing better, make it work for, for employees. Um, and I think that really sums up for me the, the feel of The Watercooler. You know, it's going to take an army to drive this So, yeah, we're all in it together.
Al ElliottAnd if you're listening to this and you're, you're embracing what we're saying, just think you are at the very, very start of this revolution. In 20 years' time, people will be like, of course you've got a Chief People Officer, and of course you do X, Y, and Z. But you're listening to this and you're actually implementing it right now, which is really cool. Talking really cool this week, spoke to Thomas. This is the bipolar businessman. And he, he's engaged by organizations to support mental health and wellbeing programs. But he has very unique experiences with this. which shaped his approach to this whole idea of change and disruption. Generally, people pay me to come in and rile up their staff. It's the kind of stuff that in the Dark Ages you didn't want, you know, going into a group of people, rallying them up, getting them all crazy. It didn't work out for Oliver Cromwell in the end. But that's what I do. I get called into businesses to shake up, shift the balance. And I guess it's just about being more real, right? It's not just about breaking down stigma by talking about mental health, but it's really about helping people to understand how they as individuals can change even if they have an extremity of mental ill health like I do. So I'm on the bipolar spectrum. I have ADHD and PTSD coupled with dyslexia and dyspraxia. I've got like a folder of certificates for how mental are you. Like, I've got— the list goes on.
Leanne ElliottRight?
Al ElliottSo I'm qualified.
Leanne ElliottOkay?
Al ElliottI haven't got a qualification to shake a stick at.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottI'm qualified as mental. And so I've kind of turned that into a business, essentially, as a keynote speaker and facilitator of events and commentator and this kind of thing. And that came from a frustration, I think, of being in businesses, not being heard or being prejudiced maybe for the way I operate when I didn't know that I had an extremity of mental ill health, for example. And now I wanna help shift the balance for other people.
Leanne ElliottThomas was It was a real joy to meet and be around and get bumping into him somewhere in the exhibition hall or at the coffee stand. So, yeah, phenomenal, phenomenal guy with an incredible, incredible story and work that he does. Something that Thomas mentioned there as well, as you know, is understanding individuals. And that is the third theme that we saw come out, individualisation. You would have heard back from our Britain's Healthiest Workplaces episode. that individualisation was a new theme coming through in people and culture research, especially in relation to hybrid working. So, what the data is showing basically is there's no one-size-fits-all approach, there is no silver bullet. Culture and wellbeing interventions will require individualisation. So, just to very briefly recap on the research that I'm referring to that came from around Europe, what they basically found is that within an organisation, there are several types of employees that can be characterised by their workplace behaviours.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottAnd these workplace behaviours are associated with wellbeing. And on the whole, in periods where people are working atypically in comparison to their normal or usual behaviour, this is associated with worse wellbeing outcomes. It's basically saying that for, for work behaviour to change, to improve wellbeing outcomes of employees, we're going to have to provide individualised intervention in terms of people's work and life. And burnout risk. So Clare agrees and has seen this trend both through her work and at the Watercooler. It's been so interesting hearing other employers' experiences and sorting out, you know, hearing what people are doing and just giving me help for when I'm talking to my clients. It's— we have a variety of different clients that we're talking to around wellbeing, and it's really great to see that so many people are working really hard to try and meet their employees' needs. And I think what we're seeing is that it's much more about demographic. You know, what do individuals need? We're not all the same. You know, you and I are different stages of our life. What we need might be very different. So I'm really excited. I think it's a great opportunity for us to be here, and we're really thrilled to be headline sponsors. I think PIB are probably quite a well-kept secret, actually. We've been going for about 7 and a half years. We decided to try and create a business that was very much centered on supporting our clients in exactly what they need in terms of solutions. All of our people work really hard to support their clients to make sure that we're just giving them the right answers. You know, things are complex. We live in a complex world. So how do we support them? How do we make sure that they get the right answers to the questions they have around wellbeing and the wider benefits piece?
Al ElliottSo I also spoke to Lara Morgan from Centred, and she agrees that businesses and solutions need to become much more individualised. to best meet the needs of each individual employee. Same goes for technology. She shared the example of a wellness app that she's invested in, BetterSpace.
Leanne ElliottActually, I am invested in a wellbeing app called BetterSpace. That is an app that provides a bundle of opportunity to companies. So instead of dictating, frankly, I think quite an old-fashioned methodology of meditate, you know, learn to meditate, download this meditation app, Where BetterSpace and the new service providers for workplace solutions recognize that we're not numbers. We're all human. We all have— I mean, I like triathlon. Not everybody does. Not everybody's full bore. Not everybody wants to wear Lycra and go and raise money for the charity of, you know, HSBC cycling team. The good apps like BetterSpace do is they offer you, do you wanna go and learn to knit?
Al ElliottHmm.
Leanne ElliottDo you want to learn family finance? Do you need to know a bit about mental health? Are you in need of just a bit of therapy conversation that is a private conversation that says, I'm not coping at work?
Al ElliottOkay. So number 4 was all about employee insights. Now, us marketers have been using analytics for years to measure how well campaigns go with Google Analytics, you know, Fathom, lots of different things like that. We literally couldn't do our job without looking at these kinda metrics. But until recently, we've not really been measuring people's people using metrics. So Cass Briscoe, our culture consultant, explains a little bit more.
Leanne ElliottI mean, a lot of companies, they have one sort of embedded that they will use. Might be HiBob, might be Lattice, might be— there's like a whole bunch of different platforms that they can use. And if they're a very small company or a very small startup, they might not even use a platform. They might use like a Google Form.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottOr like a SurveyMonkey or something like that. And they just want to analyze the data. And that's obviously a little bit more manual.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottSo I can take that data and I can put it into very simple pie charts and spreadsheets and things like that, that they can present. I can present back to the leadership team, and then I can put that data into some sort of format that they can present back to staff. Because I think with engagement surveys, staff wanna know that the information that they've given, the feedback that they've given, is actually being taken on board. And quite often, I think companies, to help back to your first point, is they do this because they, they want to be seen to be doing the right thing, and they want to win an award, and they want to say, hey, we do surveys with our staff, but then they don't take it any further, and they don't do anything with that feedback. Um, so I think it's really important to be able to present that data back to the staff as well. I've said it before, I'll say it again, if you're going to gather employee insights data from your teams, you need to feed that back. You need to show them how you're going to use that feedback to make things better. And you know what, even if you want to take a complete commercial spin, as Clare explains, insights are essential, especially when deciding how to invest in wellbeing to ensure the biggest impact. This is about ROI. Well, I think for me it's around trying to understand what is it they're trying to achieve, because actually, if you're clever, you can have a look at what you're spending and maybe reassign some money that you've got from And so our job is to look at where they've got duplication, where there's things that are not being utilised, are there things that the business thought was important, but actually employees don't think is important? And our job is to drill down, you know, through engagement surveys, focus groups, you know, what is it people are wanting? Because otherwise, why do it?
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottYou know, you're spending a lot of money for something that might look good, but actually from an employee perspective is, is not hitting the mark.
Al ElliottA lot of people we talk to kind of describe some of this stuff as fluff. Now, I know that's a trigger word for Leanne, and she's gonna be really, really annoyed by that. But I think what it is, is comparing it to marketing, then Coca-Cola will spend lots of money on branding stuff that's got no real traceable direct return on investment. And I think that's what it is. Like, what, what Claire was just saying there is that if you just go off and you go, oh, I'll put a, you know, a pool table in the break room and go, well, that's not really done anything.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottIt's because that's the same as running an advert with your name on it and then going, well, that's not really done anything. The whole idea is you need to see ROI. You need to have this data. And just with this data, it proves that investing in people and culture is simply good for business. Here's Clare again.
Leanne ElliottIt really is. And I think particularly when you use the data, I think the key part— it can sound fluffy, but actually utilising the data you get, you know, what is happening with your people? And actually using that to be agile, you know, looking at what is the, you know, what's the return on investment here? If you're reducing your sickness absence, you're increasing productivity through encouraging people to be more physical in terms of walking meetings or doing more to be active, that will impact positively on how they are when they come to work. And we were talking yesterday, Ruth Potts was talking yesterday around how they're encouraging people to, you know, go out even just for half an hour because they know people are more productive when they've done exercise. And so it's looking at all of those aspects of wellbeing, the physical, emotional, psychological, social, financial. I mean, there's so much to think about, but actually it's about the whole person. You know, how can we help people be as whole as possible? And that is very fluffy, but actually the reality is you're spending money as an employer. What are you getting back for it? And that's hopefully where we can help. The 5th theme that came out of the Watercooler was a real focus on focus on mental health and suicide prevention. Al and I have been comfortable talking about suicide for more than, what, 15 years? And as regular listeners will know, we met volunteering for a suicide prevention charity called Samaritans. So we've kind of been at the forefront of change in this area for a while and trying to, to shift suicidal ideation from a taboo subject to a very common part of the human experience. But of course, change is slow, and especially in an area that, that can be underfunded. We, we used to fundraise for the Samaritans, and it's not a sexy sell compared to, to other charities. At the Watercooler, suicide was very much on the agenda, you know, whether it be from the, the unacceptable state of men's mental health that we've talked about before on the podcast, to under-recognized psychological impacts of menopause, um, and more generally, the huge pressure put on people today to perform. There was an incredible talk that people were just buzzing about when they— everyone mentioned it to us, from Clark and Carrie Carlisle. Clark is a former Premier League footballer, and his wife Carrie is a journalist and mental health advocate. You might know Clark from presenting a couple of documentaries for the BBC, Is Football Racist? and the critically acclaimed Football Suicide Secret, the latter being an area he has personal experience with. Yeah. Having attempted suicide twice. While we did have an interview booked in with Carrie and Clark, their busy schedule changed very last minute, so we have arranged to speak to them again very soon. Many of the speakers and exhibitors also shared their personal and professional experiences, and the opinion was unanimous: poor mental health is a significant problem in the UK, as is access to timely and impactful support. Here's Thomas.
Al ElliottLong story short, I was in a networking meeting, and I used to do a lot. I used to do about 8 a week. So I knew hundreds and hundreds of people. I was in the Surrey area. So it was all Surrey and London connected. And a mental health charity stood up. There was a charity worker there trying to raise some money, and she stood up and she said, you know, 19% of men talk about having a mental health issue, and only 2% of those 19 will put their name to it.
Leanne ElliottRight.
Al ElliottAnd I looked around the room, and there were 40 or 50 people in this room, and I thought, at the time, all I cared about was money and what people thought of me. Because I was born on a council estate in Milton Keynes, and we were tragically poor and all this kinda stuff, I always thought money meant happiness. And if people think that everything's okay with you, then you're gonna be fine, and you're gonna be happy. And it was at that point in that meeting, meeting where I looked around the room and I thought, would anybody here be there for me if I was stood on that train track again waiting to take my own life?
Leanne ElliottAgain?
Al ElliottYeah. So I— there was a point in my life where I was stood on a— about 15 years ago now, stood on a busy railway intersection in Guildford Station, juggling with traffic effectively, we might say. And I was just at the point where I just wanted to die.
Leanne ElliottRight.
Al ElliottI've suffered for many years with suicidal ideation after I left home. Ultimately, I just, you know, when I grew up, there wasn't all this stuff. We're at, you know, crazy events all the time and things for wellbeing, but there wasn't this stuff even as much as 8 years ago, let alone when I was growing up and going through it. So at 18, when I left home and there wasn't lots of noise, I was sat in an empty apartment on my own. It was only then that I started to feel extreme sadness and depression and anxiety. And I didn't fully understand who I was or what I was going through. The term depression wasn't even something that people talked about. I'd never heard of depression at that point. We didn't talk about it in school. We didn't learn those— that kind of language. Now we talk about it everywhere. Everyone's got depression at some level, on some level of anxiety. And so I'd kind of just not really known what to do about that. How do you explore something if you don't have some kind of symptom or, or focus of understanding? It wasn't until I was maybe 21, 22 that I was diagnosed as being on the bipolar spectrum. But that came off the back of attempted suicide, doctors, hours and hours of analysis in hospitals and things like that. And I think It's a miracle I made it to that point. It wasn't ever that I wanted to die. I just wanted everything to be quiet and calm, and I didn't want to feel sad anymore. I didn't wanna feel sad anymore. What a killer line. He was such a great guest. I'm sure we'll be listening, we'll be hearing more from him throughout the rest of the year. We also spoke with Kate Goodger at The Water Cooler. Now, Kate is a chartered psychologist and a head of human innovation Performance at Laing O'Rourke. I think I might have mentioned before, it's an international engineering construction company. Kate's also got background with them, I believe, the Team UK, I think she worked with in the Olympics. She highlighted suicide as a critical issue that needs addressing in the UK, especially given its prevalence in the construction industry. Here's Kate.
Leanne ElliottThe margins in construction are so narrow, so the killer things are always program and cost, and as a consequence People are working ridiculously long hours. And also some of the technology that we are seeing advancing elsewhere, it hasn't yet transferred to construction. So it's harder for that. And then very simply, culturally, there is a macho culture still. So it's difficult to talk about wellbeing. Mental health is just shocking in construction. On average, 2 people commit suicide each day in our country.
Al ElliottWow.
Leanne Elliottthat work in construction. But it's beginning to move, and people are starting to recognise that blokes need to talk about stuff too. But also alongside it is the challenge of diversity, not so many women. So, we're trying to readdress those balances. So, lots of puzzles to solve. I would encourage you to go back and listen to our men's mental health episode with Jim Young. It's called The Heartbreak of Male Leaders, where we talk a lot more about men's mental health. And yeah, it's not surprising to to hear from Kate that there's still a macho culture in, in construction that, that she's contending with. And, and I think also just around suicide in general, there's a lot of, of feelings that it, it's weakness or it's attention-seeking. Um, but you know, as, as Thomas really explained there, it's not always about wanting to die, it's about wanting something to change. We'll be bringing you more from Kate in the next few weeks as we'll explore a whole range of, of leading-edge strategies that are currently underway in the corporate space. We also spoke to Professor Dame Carol Black about mental health and how it's being talked about more openly, especially amongst younger generations. She feels that this generational shift is critical, and over time, business leaders need to recognise that mental health is as important as physical health. Here's Carol. First of all, we didn't talk about them, and if we did talk about them, I suspect I don't think you would talk to your manager at work. I don't think— well, you might go to your GP, but if you were a young person, I suspect not. And I think we put up with a lot. And we just thought that somehow if you had a mental health problem, you were a weak person. And we've had to change that. It is not true. Mental health is totally normal. just as important as physical health. And fortunately, I think there are a lot more things to help people now.
Al ElliottSpeaking of things that can help people, our production assistants Dean and Luke spoke to some of the incredible providers exhibiting at the event. One that we were really thrilled to see was a registered charity called Suicide and Co., which supported those bereaved by suicide. We had a quick chat with the organization's co-founder and CEO, Amelia Wrighton.
Leanne ElliottMy name's Amelia Wrighton, and I am the co-founder and CEO of Suicide and Co. We are a charity that supports people who've lost a loved one to suicide across England and Wales. I've been really surprised that sort of because our name is Suicide and Co, we're breaking down that stigma. We can get some like shock when we come out of our like day-to-day, but people's responses have been really positive. It's been really validating. We've had a lot of people talking to us about their lived experience and about how difficult it is navigating suicide bereavement in the workplace. So it's been really good and very positive.
Al ElliottSo the 6th theme was it's down to the line manager. I've learned this from Leanne. If there's one thing you have to get right, it's having leaders and line managers who know how to both lead and also support. So Leanne spoke to Andrew from Mind, the mental health charity in the UK, who've been measuring the impact of line management for 7 years. Our Workplace Wellbeing Index is our benchmark of best practice across the UK.
Leanne ElliottIt's been operating now for 7 years.
Al ElliottWe've had 384 Yeah. Or different organizations participate. We've got a ridiculous number of data points, something along the lines of 45 million data points through individual questions. And each year we have about 50,000 employees answer various questions about mental health in their workplace. So every year, following that kind of cycle of surveying and benchmarking best practice, we produce our Index Insights. And that really says, year on year, what are the trends that we're seeing in a workplace setting, and what are some of the recommendations that we might have for different organizations based on some of those. And some of the key things that have really come out this year are about culture and about line management. So the key statistic that I've been talking about today has been the fact that only 52% of employees who completed the Workplace Wellbeing Index would say that they feel supported by their organization. Now, that is a 6% decrease on last year. To some extent, we think that is related to a bit of wellbeing fatigue. And we also know that those employees have also said that they've seen a reduction in the amount of promotion from their organizations around employee mental health, around wellbeing, signposting to support services. So there's been an 11% reduction in the number of employees who have also said that they've seen that level of promotion. But that does mean that there's 48% of employees who do not currently feel supported in their business. So we know that's a Yeah. A significant number of employees. Obviously, there's a number of wide-ranging factors in the workplace and outside of the workplace that are impacting on people's mental health at the moment. But another kind of important statistic that's come out of this year specifically has been looking at the significant impact that line managers play in that level of support. So thinking about employees who say that they have supportive line managers, they're twice as likely to report good mental health outcomes. compared to those that say that they don't have supportive line managers. And similarly, when looking at employees who say that they have effective working relationships with their line manager, they're 3 times more likely to report that they are happy at work than those that don't. So we know that line managers have a really important part to play in satisfaction at work, how productive they are at work, and their mental health outcomes at work. So that's been a lot of the narrative that we've really been talking about today. about how do we take those findings and recognize the importance of line management and translate that into some practical action.
Leanne ElliottOh, that gives me shivers. That gives me shivers. As like, I'm thinking back to my time as a manager. If I'd have heard that statistic, I'd be going through the people on my team going, are they okay? Are they okay? Are they okay? Are they okay? It's just, unless you are all over this, unless you have, you know, dedicated training to your line managers, coaching for your line managers, then there is a really, really good chance 50% of your employees do not currently feel supported. And in terms of that practical action, we are actually currently putting together a line manager training with our friends at Ride the Wave Coaching. So, if you are interested in that, and it really is a cool course, if you are interested, get in touch and we'll have a chat with you about kind of giving you an early preview of what we're putting together.
Al ElliottWe're going to be hearing a lot more from Andrew from Mind in an upcoming episode, but in the meantime, we will leave a link to this Minds So we heard some really compelling data points there from, from Andrew.
Leanne ElliottBut as we've said before, you know, often data doesn't induce the empathy we need to, to step up and, and support our people. So let's hear from Thomas and his candid thoughts on the difference it would've made to him to have more support with his mental health and wellbeing.
Al ElliottIt's weird. Like, I, I, I, I classify myself as speaking for what I call the silent majority. And I think the silent majority of people really struggle with mental health and wellbeing. Really just want the tools to help themselves out of the wood. And that's what I'm trying to achieve for people. And that's what I'm trying to give them as simply and as easily as I can along the way. I don't think that you can inherently change how people operate if they're an enigma or a bit of a dynamo. Or I think you've got that in you or you haven't. Is that X factor, let's say, like, not that I'm a twat and I think I've got the X factor. Fucking hell, what a dickhead.
Leanne ElliottRight.
Al ElliottSo it's not about like, I don't think you can change it. If someone has that X factor or that energy, you see it all the time, right? On Britain's Got Talent, their gran might have died or their dog's had a bum leg and they still get a record deal, right? Oh, sad story.
Leanne ElliottBoo-hoo.
Al ElliottBut at the same time, I think that everyone deserves support. And I think that I would've certainly been more stable and been able to find my fit more readily had I been given the tools and support at that stage. And I'd probably be a professional actor at this point. kicking ass on stage or in a movie or something. So I think it— yeah, I wish I'd had that support. It's a shame that I had to deal with another layer of trauma on top of that childhood before I got to this stage where I am now and people start sitting up and taking notice.
Leanne ElliottCass also believes that the starting point to level up line managers is pretty clear: educate them. I've worked with some of those leaders when I was in sort of salaried roles, and they are, you know, leadership teams that have been there for many, many years, and they're still learning, right? So, I think the key is education and making sure that those people understand exactly why you're doing the things that you do. So, as well as doing all the public-facing stuff, and also asking staff for their feedback, I think there's a really important education piece. So, training staff on things like unconscious bias, training staff on things like wellbeing, diversity and inclusion, and making sure that everyone, including leadership, board members, senior level, are educated as well, and that they are also doing those training courses because then they can, you know, they're the one you need their buy-in to be able to action anything. So I think educating those people is, you know, the starting point.
Al ElliottSo Nick from Co-Team also agrees that great leadership in 2023 looks quite different. These so-called soft skills that we were talking about 5 years ago are now essentials. In fact, he started Co-Team exactly to help businesses upskill managers in these essentials of soft skills. Here's Nick. I've spent about the last 10 years or so working in the space of digital transformation. So working with lots of leaders, trying to understand the sort of pace of change that digital is enabling and how to respond to that, attitude towards risk, organizational agility. And Co-Team was born out of the pandemic. I noticed a lot of the sort of soft skills that we were talking to leaders about staring in the face of digital were actually super relevant to many different people working in different organizations. We also combined that with focus on wellbeing, staff wellbeing, understanding why people burn out, but also importantly what leadership or management should be spotting for that and doing about it. Why the notion of leadership or management has changed in 2023, the idea of empathy and vulnerability and these types of things. So that's very much what we do at Coating. We run training programs to help managers be better managers and look after their people. So one of clients is H&M Group. And not to generalize, but being a Swedish company, I feel like they seem to be a lot more forthcoming in the way that they will— their leaders do show a lot of vulnerability. They really do show up with their full selves. They're not afraid to have difficult conversations. So I've seen some fantastic work happening there. We've been working with them on several different project streams, But most notably, one of their leadership onboarding programs. So we run 7 components of that for them, where we get leaders into a room to firstly reflect and think about who they are and what's important to themselves and what they want from work, and then start getting them to think about the people that they manage and how they might manage them more effectively. It's interesting, actually, on that program, we always get comments, things like, you know, I thought this program was going to make me a better manager, but it actually improved my relationship with my wife. You know, so it's always a nice feeling when you, when you sort of feel like you're, you're contributing to someone's own sense of satisfaction. So certainly, certainly they have been maybe more progressive than some other clients that I won't name and shame.
Leanne ElliottWe did ask if he'd name and shame and he refused.
Al ElliottQuite right too. Quite right too.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast, that's Us, by the way, and the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network.
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural 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. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot The audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless. Seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. 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 people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of pop culture. 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. So what's number 7, Leanne?
Leanne ElliottSo number 7 is authenticity in leaders. So we've talked about line managers, this is about leaders. Increasingly, the, the line between effective leadership and management behaviours is blurring, and research continues to show us that traditionally more transformational leadership-type behaviours are effective at motivating teams and driving performance at all levels. But given the need for board buy-in, this theme was the one that seemed to dominate any conversation that we had about leadership— authenticity. Leaders can no longer pay lip service to culture and wellbeing to stay competitive, both in, in business and in, in the talent market. A new leader is needed in 2023, a leader that genuinely cares about people. Here's Nick.
Al ElliottI think the— there's this sort of notion sometimes that leadership is still Mel Gibson splattered in blood, you know, raising one's sword up and corralling the troops into battle. And there are times when that type of leadership is required. That's how I feel as leadership. But for the most part, you know, we want to create competitive, attractive workplaces where people want to come and work, want to come and give their best. And wants to work with us to be disruptive, rather than a disgruntled employee who's just going to disrupt in a negative way. So I think any leader who is questioning, is this soft and fluffy, I think needs to look at the state of the workforce at the moment. There's loads of great reports out there that really look at engagement of employees, and there's some pretty alarming But I think, yeah, it's one of those things that if you want to continue to ensure that your business remains relevant, you know, at Co-Team, we say happy people, productive teams, successful companies.
Leanne ElliottClare also believes that the most engaged employees are the ones that feel leaders genuinely care about them. One of the things we do is work alongside employers to look at how are they looking at wellbeing, how are they looking at reward and benefits, and what is it that we might need to do to support them in that. Support them, because all of the employees here are on a journey, and we're trying to help people get to the next stage of that journey. So whether that be through employee assistance programmes, proactive health screening, looking at the way they're offering private medical, maybe looking at the way long-term sickness is handled, or sickness absence, there's so many different ways that we can help employers. And actually, what the employee— we hope what they will feel is that they are cared for genuinely. And what we've heard a lot over the last day is about it being an authentic experience. It's gotta be real, 'cause otherwise people spot when it's not.
Al ElliottWhat we hear sometimes is one of the biggest reasons that leaders are reticent about running sort of engagement surveys or audits is the breadth of challenges and opportunities that do come up. Because, for example, if you're getting feedback on what to improve from 50 or 500 people, you could uncover scores of things that should be changed. So how do you auth— Authentically ask for feedback, but not get overwhelmed with responses. Leanne always says it's what is better to not ask at all than to ask and do nothing. Clare's got some really good advice on this, and she actually stresses you can't deliver everything at once, but even if you could, you probably shouldn't.
Leanne ElliottAnd I think part of the problem is that you ask people questions, so you might survey your employees, but the problem is you might not be able to deliver on everything they come back with because all of us will have different things that we think are really important to us, depending on our stage in life and circumstances. So I think there's a thin line for employers, which is we might want to say, what do you want? But actually, we've got to be realistic and say, we can't actually give you everything. But what we might be able to do is give you things in little chunks.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottAnd our job, you know, certainly for POB, is about to look long-term around what do you wanna do over the next 2 to 3 years? 'Cause it's not an immediacy. You can't do everything in one go. And actually, even And if you did, employees might change their mind, or you might lose a whole tranche of people. You know, how do you look after your later-life people as they're approaching retirement? One of our clients is doing some amazing work around training the younger people who are coming into the business and, you know, asking the older people with loads of experience to train the newbies while preparing for retirement. So it's really clever. You know, it's just, it's just about adjusting, isn't it, to circumstances?
Al ElliottAnd of course, Authenticity starts with leaders being open, vulnerable, and perhaps most importantly, honest about their motivations. Nick shares his own very personal story on his motivations behind Co-Team. I think I mentioned earlier growth mindset, and I think that's something that's really driven me. I suffered a very big loss about 8 years ago when my fiancée passed away very unexpectedly. And for me, that was very much a catalyst that life is incredibly short and to grab opportunities that excited me. I'm certainly not doing this. I'm not an entrepreneur that is necessarily chasing financial reward. My companies are all built around personal interests or things that are really relevant to me. I mean, Co-Team is about wellbeing. You've got a sunglass business, which is all about sustainability and circular economy and a festival which is about helping adults discover their inner child. You know, it's— these are things that are important to me. I'm not just gonna invest in things because I see a cash cow. I want to do things that make a difference. And yeah, build— leave the world a little bit of a better place than the way I found it.
Leanne ElliottFrom what we've seen so far, Nick, you certainly are leaving the world a better place. So a little while ago, we shared some early insights from our own leadership research, and that increasingly employees are looking to work for leaders that invest in their own wellbeing. Nick agrees that this is a key trend, especially in high-change environments.
Al ElliottIf you go through a change management programme that really makes you feel a little bit uncomfortable, which we try to do, I think a big part of change is pushing people into that stretch zone, getting them to understand how, what a growth mindset is and why it's important to be there. And then you, We're not talking about completely break them down here, just so— We don't make them cry. Yeah, we don't make them cry always, but getting them to hold a mirror up to themselves and think about their own wellbeing and why they get out of bed every day to come to work and what happens, what do they do when they're in stress mode, when they go into a fight or flight response? I think when you do that, you know, and of course, We do it in the lens of a professional context. I think there's inevitably gonna be some of that that you're gonna apply into a personal context as well. And maybe the next time you're having a fight with your partner, some of these tips and techniques, you know, breathing exercises or sort of reflection-type activities that we try to instill into our programs might actually come into effect. Okay, Leanne, rolling into number 7, I believe it's the C word. You can't say that.
Leanne ElliottNot these times.
Al ElliottNo.
Leanne ElliottYeah, our, our 7th theme was, is post-COVID trauma. You know, COVID was the most disruptive event the workplaces has seen since the Second World War, and we're still working our way through the aftermath of it. There's so many challenges caused by COVID, um, and so many trends accelerated, and this really was a topic of conversation across the conference. You may have heard mental health and people and culture leaders talk about how since the pandemic, We're all living with trauma, and over time, if not managed, that may lead to an epidemic of, of poor mental health, including burnout. As a business leader, you might be rolling your eyes at this one, you know, rolling your eyes at the word trauma, thinking, come on guys, it's not that bad. Or maybe, you know, it's just Gen Z overreacting again. So I asked Petra, our leadership expert, what her thoughts were and how she'd respond to leaders who may think the concept of post-COVID trauma is a stretch. Are we really all traumatized post-pandemic? I think many of us are.
Al ElliottAnd of course, they talk about trauma like big T, little t, right? So like, there's a whole continuum of, of course, more extreme things that could happen to somebody that could impact them. You know, I've got PTSD because of some pretty extreme things that have happened. And there's this whole scale, right?
Leanne ElliottSo to be To be emotionally abused, to be put down, to not feel safe, right?
Al ElliottAll of those things are little t trauma, right?
Leanne ElliottBut, but what I think it's important, rather than labeling it, it's like our nervous system has been affected, right? So being in isolation, coming back into the world, many people are still in survival mode. So if we think fight, flight, freeze, right?
Al ElliottSo if a freeze could be depression, you know, some of those like, I'm just switching off, I can't, My body says no, right? We see lots of the leaders in fight mode, right? Like, we gotta solve this. And it's like immediate decisions. And what we know is that when you're in survival, you make worse decisions.
Leanne ElliottLike, you're unable to focus or actually reflect. So the skill at the moment is take a step back and go, let me get into what we call social engagement, is the healthy kind of zone, before I make some decisions, right?
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottSo our nervous—
Al Elliottso the practice, I guess, and I give some tools in the book, is like, how do you check in with your own nervous system, right, about triggers? And everyone's slightly different.
Leanne ElliottFor me, I feel like my hands start to shake a little bit, or I start feeling shortness of breath, or, you know, and you'll feel different things. But it's learning to just stop the noise for a bloody second and listen to your own body, and then experiment.
Al ElliottWith what works for you.
Leanne ElliottIt's not a perfect formula. We will be hearing a lot more from Petra in an upcoming episode. Her story is so interesting. I mean, she brushed over it there that she's experienced some trauma. To give you an insight, Petra actually grew up in a cult in America before coming to the UK. So yeah, she's since— since she trained as a psychotherapist, she's an incredible consultant executive coach. I would definitely recommend Petra. Pre-ordering her book as I have. I tried Petra every time I had 5 minutes, like, I'm gonna go and get Petra's book and then I'm gonna go find Petra and ask her to sign it. And I didn't, but I have now pre-ordered it. I'll leave a link in the show notes. It is well worth checking out, and we look forward to, to speaking to Petra again very soon.
Al ElliottWe also spoke to Professor Dame Carol Black, um, about the pandemic, and she's saying the trauma that, that people are feeling, because let's be honest, Gen Zs, this is the large percentage of their working life has been during a pandemic or after a pandemic or just before a pandemic. But she said one of the biggest sort of groups are the people who are in their 50s or over 50s, saying there are huge numbers of people who are in their 50s who are just not going back to work. Here's Dame Carol.
Leanne ElliottWe have until recently been living longer, which is wonderful. So you could see decade on decade people are living longer. Unfortunately, we were also until recently So that would mean we could be in work longer. Sadly, that has now come to a halt. And what we call our health-free years, if you like, the years you've got in good health, have almost stagnated and are reducing. And that, of course, is a problem.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottSo recently— excuse me— with the COVID and after COVID, you'd have seen a lot in the paper of people leaving the workplace. They were mainly people who were 50-plus, our experienced workers who we need in the workplace. They were leaving.
Al ElliottWhy?
Leanne ElliottAnd probably the most important reason is long-term ill health. So chronic conditions, you know, their diabetes has got worse, their arthritis has got worse, they perhaps need a knee replacement, but it means they can't be in the workplace. And that has caused an enormous problem. Everywhere you look, there are vacancies. People are looking for skilled workers. And that's a problem. If you listen to our Gen Panel episode, you'll know that we kind of reached the conclusion that each generation is more the same than it is different. And while we may experience the world in slightly different ways, the ambiguity and pace of change causes anxiety for all of us. Nick shared 2 key disruptions we've seen recently and how shared understanding and empathy will be the key to maintaining well-being and keeping us and our teams engaged in the job in hand. Here's Nick, first of all, talking about Gen Z and then AI.
Al ElliottWell, I think COVID was a big wake-up call for many companies. I think that, I mean, pre-COVID, the competitive advantage probably looks very different to what it looks like now. And particularly when you look at new generations entering the workforce, I mean, most companies are just playing catch-up with what millennials want. You have Gen Z stepping into the workforce now. They have a very different set of values, very different set of aspirations, very different set of requirements of the type of businesses that they want to work for. And you're seeing it, things like wellbeing, things like sustainability, things like flexibility of work environment as well. These are all burgeoning trends that are only going to get further exemplified in a compounding way over time. If you've got kids, Anyone that sits in Gen Z or Alpha, Gen Alpha, which I learned about the other day, I mean, 10 years, we're gonna really be in trouble. Me, myself, personally, I'm really interested in the impact of AI.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottI think it's a burgeoning space. I think a lot of companies are trying to adopt it in small pockets, but it's from— I think it's a culture challenge. I think it's a people challenge. People have just discovered ChatGPT and think, oh my God, I'm not gonna have a job. Job in 6 months from now. And I think leaders need to consider the anxiety that that's probably creating in teams and really address, like, not banning the use of AI, but thinking about strategically where it's going to sit within their business and how they're going to lay down the appropriate protocols. So I think that's going to be a really interesting space, particularly when we look at sort of development of corporate strategies in the next few years, the impact of AI. And, and how that impacts people. Regular listeners know that I'm a huge fan of AI. I don't understand it, but I love it. It's like a dog looking at the television going—
Leanne ElliottIt's like me and psychology, love. Don't always understand it, love it.
Al ElliottSo I think AI is gonna have a massive impact.
Leanne ElliottSo number 9 is the fact that culture and wellbeing is here to stay, regardless of the changes in remote work, with hybrid work, with the economy, postcode recovery, the list goes on. There was one thing that everyone agreed on: a focus and investment in culture and wellbeing is here to stay. It is essential to a sustainable business. Let's hear more from Clare. I think the wellbeing journey is very interesting. We're seeing a lot of new people coming into the market, new opportunities, new solutions. But I think it's more, you know, for me it's interesting where wellbeing sits in an organisation. You know, is it HR or is it health and safety? And I think many employers are grappling with where that fits. For me, it's more around how we can support employees more. My worry is around mental health, but I also have a worry about a skills gap between, you know, as we— I learnt my craft from listening and looking at other people. And, you know, hybrid working is an interesting challenge because we don't necessarily have the opportunity to learn in the same way or look after our wellbeing in the same way. So, I think we've got to be quite agile in the way ahead, but I love the way this is going. I think it is all about the people that you employ, because that's what makes you productive and successful, isn't it? As well as caring for your employees. And I think, again, this is why it's so important to have one person in the senior leadership team that is, is leading all of this, to bring all these different things together and to encourage that type of collaboration. And as you know, we've talked about before, you know, how we see a really important important integration point between people and culture or business psychology and marketing and communications. Um, it really is becoming a whole of organizational effort. So Theme 9, culture and wellbeing, is here to stay, with a caveat, which is our Theme 10. Culture and wellbeing is fundamental to sustainable businesses moving forward, but only if people and culture and wellbeing interventions are evidence-led and supported by data, that they are evaluated. We have been banging on for more than 35 episodes now about the importance of evidence-led practice when it comes to people, culture, and well-being. And this was a huge theme at the Watercooler, you know, from the keynote speakers that we saw, people like Petra and Andrew Berry, uh, research reports that were launched, um, to even how providers should be evaluating the impact of culture and well-being interventions. So we're not seen this, this claims of wellwashing. It was all very clear. We're all on the same page. The fight against wellness washing starts now. Let's start by hearing from Professor Dame Carol Black. So let me say straight up front, Zumba classes, water bottles, and fresh fruit, and mindfulness training is nice, nice to have. But it is plastering over the cracks. So the fundamentals are really empowering leadership from the top who show they care and who talk about it. It's a board that is interested if you have a board in your organization or your top managers really talking about this. taking it seriously, being interested in the health of your workforce? And thirdly, and possibly most importantly, have you given your managers the support and training they need to be a people-centered manager? If you can't do those 3 things, do not get out the fresh fruit.
Al ElliottOh my God, I think we love Professor Dem Carroll-Black. She— I mean—
Leanne ElliottPut the fruit away.
Al ElliottPut the fruit away. That's— we're gonna get a load of t-shirts done for her just called Put the Fruit Away. So this, all of this is just emphasizing this point that the board support and trained line managers are fundamental to culture change and wellbeing. So thank you, Professor Dame Carol Black. We'll be hearing much more from her about mental and physical health in an upcoming episode.
Leanne ElliottAnd of course, any science behind culture and wellbeing requires research. So there were a number of research reports launched at the event. But perhaps the biggest one was from Business in the Community and their landmark report, Prioritise People: Unlock the Value of a Thriving Workforce. We sat down with Louise Ascott, Wellbeing Campaign Director at Business in the Community, at The Watercooler and learnt more about the incredible piece of research.
Al ElliottI'm really excited about this report.
Leanne ElliottIt's a real landmark report. It's the first time ever that all the aggregated data that supports thriving employees has been analyzed in one place. We've been fortunate enough to have the McKinsey Health Institute as our research partner.
Al ElliottSo basically, they have actually analyzed that data.
Leanne ElliottSo that's the first in terms of looking at the benefits of prioritizing thriving people. But also what's very special about this report is we convened an advisory board of chief financial officers. So this is— they've very much shaped the report along with Business in the Community's leadership team and obviously with the support of the McKinsey Health Institute. And what the report highlights, which is super exciting, is the size of the prize for getting this right in terms of truly enabling thriving employers. So the research shows that actually the UK economic value of improved employee wellbeing could be between £130 to £370 billion per year, or that's 6 to 17% of UK's gross domestic product. But that's the equivalent of 4— between £4,000 to £12,000 per UK employee. So think of that size of the prize. This could solve the cost of living crisis.
Al ElliottI mean, it's phenomenal.
Leanne ElliottSo this is really groundbreaking. And, you know, historically the focus has always been looking at the cost of poor mental health, and we've turned this on its head. It is a really interesting— I guess there's 2 interesting aspects to how this research has been conducted. One, it has an advisory board of CFOs, so the most commercial people in our businesses that need convincing, that hold the purse strings. And also the fact that it is flipping from a focus on poor mental health to what, what would happen if we're all thriving, if we're all living our healthiest, mentally healthiest lives? What would that mean for businesses? And it means a lot. It means billions of pounds, actually. And I think that's what makes this report different, you know, in demonstrating a compelling business case for putting people at the heart of organizational purpose and business strategy. It's specifically been developed by CFOs for CFOs in partnership with Business in the Community's Wellbeing Leadership Team and support and research from the McKenzie Health Institute. It really is a compelling piece of research. Let's hear more from Louise. The other thing I'd like to add, I suppose, why another reason why this agenda cannot be ignored is basically is there's growing anticipation that investors are going to be demanding that businesses report on the social of ESG, as they do on the environmental and governance dimensions. So businesses, whether they like it or not, are gonna have this imposed on them at some point down the line. So this is an opportunity a great opportunity to anticipate and respond to this trend in investor pressure by proactively investing in employee health and wellbeing and treat the kind of concepts of a thriving workforce as a critical capital asset on balance sheets, and in turn is to publicly disclose. So the primary audience for the report are CFOs. As I said, they've shaped the report. And why CFOs? Well, obviously they hold the purse strings, but also CFOs are really interested in creating value. And obviously to do with ESG and putting the S, the social, into ESG, that is all about creating value. value, and people are the most critical asset, but also human capital is a really important part of enterprise value. Louise went on to explain that the report has also been developed with SMEs in mind. Yeah, well, we were very mindful about the report and our actions being relevant to SMEs, and actually, as part of the the process of developing Prioritise People report, we actually involved a handful of SMEs to ensure that basically it was accessible and relevant. And in terms of the tools that we've got coming down the line that will be launched in September, again, they will be relevant and accessible for SMEs. So, you know, I would say, we would say that prioritising people unlocks the value of a thriving workforce is relevant to all organisations regardless of size or sector. I would be very interested to know how many business owners or leaders listening, if this change was made, if these, you know, data around people and the social aspects of ESG are you know, you are, you are forced or mandated to disclose these publicly. How comfortable are you going to be with that? Your retention rates, your absenteeism rates, how you invest in training development managers, how you invest in well-being and mental health support. Um, that's, that's a, that's a big ask. And I think particularly for SMEs, that's something that if you start thinking about now, anticipate that this change might be coming, um, then it also then becomes part— again, you flip it from this thing that you might be afraid of coming into, into play one day to actually being a fundamental part of your, your employer brand and winning the fight for talent.
Al ElliottExactly. I mean, let's be honest, employer brand is all about getting, building a place where people want to come and work. Retention is about making sure the people who have decided to come and work with you want to, want to do their best work. And then empowering people is just finding those people who are superstars who want to progress their career and giving them all the support they need to progress their career. It's not rocket science.
Leanne ElliottNo, it's really not. I said this so many times. I had so many other people say it to me during the Watercooler, like, it's not rocket science.
Al ElliottIt really isn't. Now, we're going to be diving into that report a little bit in an upcoming episode. There's loads and loads of stuff in that interview. It was only quite short, but it was packed full of really cool stuff. So we will leave a link to the full report in the show notes, and we will come back to that at some point over the next few weeks. Leah, that's it. Shall we quickly run through those 10 outcomes, themes?
Leanne ElliottYes, we should. So our first theme, board-level buy-in in culture and wellbeing is absolutely essential.
Al ElliottNumber 2 was outsourced CPOs. They are gonna be a thing. They are a thing now, but they're gonna be a bigger thing coming up.
Leanne ElliottAm I gonna be a thing?
Al ElliottYou're a thing. Leanne's an outsourced CPO. I'm a thing? Yeah, you are a, you're definitely a thing.
Leanne ElliottNumber 3, individualisation. Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet. We do need to take into account people's individual behaviours, demographics, and match interventions around them.
Al ElliottTalking of personalisation and individualisation, that's not an easy word to say. We need these employees. Number 5 was employee insights. We need these employee insights because we can't do, literally can't do without it.
Leanne ElliottNumber 5, mental health and suicide prevention is becoming increasingly part of the— of an open and honest conversation about people's experiences in life and in work. And we for 2 champion that that continues.
Al ElliottNumber 6, it's the line manager, stupid. To, uh, to, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, it's all about— do you like that one? It's all about the line managers.
Leanne ElliottAnd 7, if you, if you've got your line managers down, it's probably because you have authenticity in your leaders. If you are a leader, it's no longer about lip service. You have to genuinely care about your people.
Al ElliottNumber 8, we can't shy away from the C-word, COVID. Um, it's, it's, it's affected all of us, and we just need to accept that it really has.
Leanne ElliottOh, I just got your joke from before, the C-word. I didn't get it. I wasn't quick enough. Anyway, number 10.
Al ElliottI think you've missed number 9.
Leanne ElliottNumber 9.
Al ElliottThis is going well.
Leanne ElliottNumber 9, culture and wellbeing is here to stay, but with one caveat, Al.
Al ElliottThat is that it has— number 10, it has to be evidence-backed. We have to have some data to support this, which luckily there's plenty of it about now.
Leanne ElliottIndeed there is, indeed. So as you can see, there are so many awesome and interesting people at The Watercooler, and we have just scratched the surface of the amazing people that we met. We have planned out our episodes based on, on, um, some of the people that we've met, and we're, we're running through to the beginning of September now. Um, but I think some of the really cool episodes we're excited to bring you on, we're going to bring you an episode all about kind of corporate lessons. We'll be talking to senior leaders from L'Angot-Roch, from Jaguar Land Rover, and from Ocado. It is Mental Health Awareness Month here in the UK, so we'll be bringing you a very special episode on that towards the end of May, and loads more. Honestly, we've got people from Microsoft, we've got the SVP from Headspace, we've got the global wellbeing lead from Dentsu. Um, the list goes on.
Al ElliottMetro Bank.
Leanne ElliottMetro Bank. Honestly, it's just, it's phenomenal, the people that we have coming up for you. Um, so yeah, if you, if you haven't subscribed yet, now is the time, friends. You don't want to miss this.
Al ElliottDefinitely. It's kind of cool that if this had happened 10 years ago, there might have been like a quarter to a tenth as many people in the room, and there certainly wouldn't be all the big names that we've, we've managed to, managed to interview. So this is a thing, guys. If you listen this far, you know this is a thing. If you want some help with this, then there's lots of experts who will be in the show notes. There's also an expert who's sitting opposite me, who's my wife.
Leanne ElliottHi.
Al ElliottAnd my co-owner in the— and co-host. And She is a business psychologist. She is amazing. She probably wouldn't say this because she's very, very humble, but if you're looking for a Chief People Officer, she's definitely someone you need to speak to.
Leanne ElliottOr as, or as we've learned, if you're not going to engage me, just go engage somebody.
Al ElliottEngage somebody.
Leanne ElliottEngage somebody. So we wanted to leave you with a bit more of a taste of what it feels like to be at The Watercooler. Why come next year? We spoke to speakers, we spoke to exhibitors, sponsors, visitors, All about why they chose The Watercooler and why you should consider coming next year. We are going to put some of our favorites from now through to our theme music. So enjoy. We will see you next week where we are joined with a very, very exciting guest. Al, would you like to do the honor?
Al ElliottYes. So this was not Watercooler. This was an interview we did before, uh, a guy called Oliver Yonchev. Um, Such a nice guy. You've probably heard of him because he was one half of Social Chain along with Stephen Bartlett, who's got the Diary of a CEO podcast. You can't help but have heard of that, heard of that. And then both of them have gone off and started Flight Story, which is a really interesting company. But you know what, the guy is just genuine and lovely, and maybe that's because he's northern.
Leanne ElliottDo you know what he is?
Al ElliottWhat?
Leanne ElliottAuthentic.
Al ElliottHe's authentic. So look out for that next week. Oliver Yonchev. And, uh, it's just such the most genuine and authentic interview. Can you tell I'm fanboying a bit? I'm, I was really nervous when I interviewed him.
Leanne ElliottIt was, it was, it was such a great interview. You didn't, you didn't show any nerves. It was really well done. So yeah, a really interesting conversation that we will bring to you next week. Until then, everything we've mentioned is in the show notes. If it's not, drop me a message on LinkedIn because sometimes I forget to put something in. We will see you next week, but for now, we will leave you with some awesome people talking about The Watercooler and why you should consider coming next year. Thank you again to all the team at Make the Difference Media and The Watercooler event for helping us make such a success of being the official podcast. We loved it.
Al ElliottLoved it. See you next week.
Leanne ElliottHi there, my name's Kay. I'm one of the founders of The Zen Project. Oh, it's such a fab event. We, we were with The Watercooler last year as well. My name's Faye. I'm from The Community Massage Project. My name's Georgina. I'm Director of Kindness, B Corp, and Charities at O3E. Hi, I'm Helen from Brown Paper Packages, and it's great to just come and network with people that are, and businesses that are focused on wellbeing.
Al ElliottYes, I'm Louis Ellison. I work for Co-Team. We went to the sister conference last year as a visitor, not as an exhibitor. And as I say, we saw a lot of companies who were doing quite similar and good work.
Leanne ElliottMy name is Lucy Eden and I am the founder of Be in Your Element, which is a wellbeing events company. So I attended The Watercooler last year actually as an attendee, blown away by the content and the speakers. And I really thought it was amazing that under one roof you had all of these providers, solutions, and it's just a great community to everybody being on the same page to be obviously helping people with their wellbeing and their strategies in the workplace.
Al ElliottAnd I think it's really important So my name is Matt Johnston. I'm Business Development Director for Sirona Health. So I think it was a great opportunity to have the exposure to other like-minded individuals.
Leanne ElliottI'm Lucy Cheetham. I'm Head of Marketing for Hive360. I think the whole sentiment of the event kind of chimes with what we're all about, which is about making work a better experience.
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