Truth, Lies & Work

Episode 57 · 21 September 2023 · 59:19

How Listening to 'The Unheard' Can Transform Your Workplace

How Listening to 'The Unheard' Can Transform Your Workplace

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  1. News Roundup: TikTok's badge monitoring app and the erosion of trust

    news roundup#tiktok#monitoring#trust

  2. News Roundup: Gen Z 'Zargon' quiz

    news roundup#gen z#zargon#quiz

  3. What exactly are employee insights?

    other#employee insights#definition#hr

  4. A 100-year history of listening to employees

    other#history#employee listening#evolution

  5. How can insights shape workplace strategy?

    other#workplace strategy#insights#decision-making

  6. How can employee insights support managers?

    other#managers#burnout#support

  7. What mental and physical health insights should we be looking at?

    other#mental health#physical health#wellness

  8. How can insights help in the changing workplace?

    other#change management#workplace change#insights

Show notes

How Listening to 'The Unheard' Can Transform Your Workplace

Truth, Lies & Work — Al Elliott and Leanne Elliott (Chartered Occupational Psychologist) dive deep into the world of employee insights: what they really are, how they can shape workplace strategy, and why they matter more than ever as the working environment undergoes rapid transformation.

Joined by three expert guests — Charlie Coode (Founder, Culture15), Alun Baker (CEO, GoodShape), and Ali Khan (CEO, SHAPE Global) — Al and Leanne explore how listening to the unheard voices in your organisation can be the beacon that guides you through change.

🎙️ About This Episode

The dirty little secret? Most businesses think they know their people. They have the data, the engagement scores, the exit interview notes. But knowing and listening are two very different things.

In this episode, Al and Leanne are joined by three experts who've built their careers on closing that gap:

  • Charlie Coode, Founder at Culture15 — championing the cause of embedding culture at the heart of performance.
  • Alun Baker, CEO at GoodShape — bringing the conviction that prioritising employee health and wellbeing directly boosts organisational productivity.
  • Ali Khan, CEO at SHAPE Global — bringing the expertise of measuring employee experience, with a keen focus on quantifying what makes an optimal work environment.

Together, they answer five big questions: What exactly are employee insights? How can they shape workplace strategy? How can they support managers? What mental and physical health insights should we be looking at? And how can insights help us navigate a rapidly changing workplace?

🔑 Key Themes

Employee insights are the physical manifestation of employee voice. They're how you hear the people who aren't in the room — and they've been around in some form for 100 years, from the Hawthorne studies to today's sophisticated engagement platforms.

Culture can be measured — if you measure the right things. The guests each measure slightly different things, but the through-line is the same: what gets measured gets managed, and what gets managed gets improved.

Managers are the make-or-break. One of the biggest things that happens around burnout is managers. Insights give them the data to support their teams before things go wrong — not just after.

Physical and mental health insights are powerful — and sensitive. The balance is finding data that helps leaders support their people without crossing into surveillance. Don't make up your own mental health survey; use validated, evidence-based tools.

Privacy is everything. The single keyword when running employee insight surveys is privacy. If you can protect and guarantee anonymity, you'll get honesty. If you can't, you'll get silence.

💬 Memorable Moments

"Employee insights are the physical manifestation of employee voice." — Leanne

"There's a phrase which I don't know whether I've just made up or I've read somewhere and think I've made up... Employee experience." — Al

"As long as people think that you're showing and demonstrating care and you're investing in them as people, [insights work]." — Al

"You're not getting me at my best... That's a red culture flag there, isn't it? If you as a leader are turning up and not getting your people at their best." — Leanne

📌 Top Takeaways

  1. Listen to the unheard. Employee insights are not just numbers or data points — they're the heartbeats of your organisation. The organisations that thrive are the ones that genuinely listen.
  2. Measure what you can control. Culture can be measured if you measure the things you can control — and we know those things drive performance.
  3. Protect privacy, get honesty. Anonymity isn't a nice-to-have; it's the foundation of any meaningful employee insight programme.

🔗 More From Our Guests

Connect with Charlie Coode

Connect with Alun Baker

Connect with Ali Khan

📚 Listen Back

🎪 Come See Us

The 6th Mad World Summit — October 12th, 2023. The UK's Premier Event for Mental Health & Wellbeing Leaders: madworldsummit.com

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. Engagement platforms which measure aggregations of sentiment in an organization don't measure culture. They measure just the average of how people are feeling. Um, if you look at culture as how work gets done, behaviors, it's different. And, and engagement platforms don't give you that.
Leanne ElliottHello 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 ElliottWe are here to help you Yeah, and we've got a special message if this is your first or second time listening.
Al ElliottWe've been looking at the analytics. We know that there's a very large percentage of you who are, say, the first time listening. We've suddenly— September seems to have been a hell of a month for us, Leanne.
Leanne ElliottI know. Yeah, I wonder if maybe it was somebody's, like, like, goal over summer to, like, kickstart autumn with some, with some podcasts. So welcome, new listeners. We're very, very excited to have you here.
Al ElliottWe are. So dip back through our back catalog and you'll see that, uh, we tend to like once a month we do a founder story, uh, so we'll speak to someone who's built an amazing culture or amazing workplace. Uh, we had Maneesh recently, then we had Stella. We've had all kinds of amazing people on there. There's, there's plenty in there for you. Just dive back and let us know. We're always on LinkedIn. You could— we, we haven't got a team of people on LinkedIn. It's just us. Well, actually, I say it's just us. It's not even me. It's Leanne. So if you really want to talk to us, then just jump on LinkedIn, search for Truth, Lies and Work, and you'll find some of our posts and just give us some feedback. We're really looking for any kind of feedback. And talking of feedback, give us a, give us a rating, give us a review, 5 stars. These guys are great. Just a suggestion.
Leanne ElliottYeah. Anyway, what are we talking about today, Al?
Al ElliottSo today is all about employee insights. We have 3 of—
Leanne ElliottHave we spoken about that much before?
Al ElliottNow, employee insights, yes, you might say, oh, not again. But the fact is that we've got 3 amazing guests with us. These are 3 of the people who are kind of at the forefront of employee engagement or, sorry, employee insights programmes. And they all have platform that measures them but in slightly different ways, which is why we wanted to put all 3 of them together. But before we get into that, it's our favorite time of the week. It's the News Roundup.
Leanne ElliottCue the jingle.
Al ElliottWhat do you got, Lee?
Leanne ElliottWell, I have a bit of a mixed bag of News Roundup this week. First of all, I did want to remind people, our regular listeners, and let our new listeners know if you are listening in real time, we are co-hosting a webinar in the MAP webinar series this Monday, 25th of September, 2023, at 10 AM GMT. With Craig Taylor from True Worth, which is a specialist tech recruitment firm. Um, so we'll be talking about how you can build awesome workplaces, great workplace cultures. It is specifically aimed at leaders in digital tech and creative, but there is lots of transferable lessons if you are not from one of those fields. And basically, 3 main things that we're going to do in that hour: help you better understand how to find the right people, keep the best people, and reignite the love for your business. We are also gonna be joined by a previous guest on the podcast, Sonia Shellard, who is co-founder of Ride the Wave Coaching. Awesome, awesome episode with her back in, oh, probably 6 months ago now, but I will leave a link in the show notes. She's gonna be also chatting about how you can train managers to be awesome, and we will be talking about the exclusive training programme that we, here at Oblong, Al and I's business, are partnering with Ride the Wave To deliver it. So come along, the link to register will be in the show notes.
Al ElliottAbsolutely. Sonia's such an incredible lady, you definitely want to tune into that. So make sure— so if you're in the US, you might get a bit— get up a bit early. But is it recorded, Lee? Do you know?
Leanne ElliottI am— I imagine it is recorded.
Al ElliottYeah. So you can watch it over your cornflakes on Monday morning. Okay, what else we got, Lee?
Leanne ElliottMy next little segment is all about the TikTok.
Al ElliottThe TikTok?
Leanne ElliottWhat's going down at TikTok? The organization, not the platform.
Al ElliottYeah, apparently I saw, um, I saw a little something and I thought, this is— this sounds like Leanne needs to investigate. So I sent her over an email saying, I've seen this, what the hell does it mean? So in a nutshell, what are we talking about, Lee?
Leanne ElliottYeah, so the New York Times has reported that TikTok is deploying a new employee badge monitoring app as part of a renewed effort to pressure its workers to spend more days in the office. Basically, employees at TikTok have received a notice about this new tool called MyRTO, and it's going to monitor badge swipes into an office and may ask employees to explain absences, absences on days when they were expected to be in the office. Staff have also been told that, and this is a quote, any deliberate and consistent disregard may result in disciplinary action. These deviations could also impact workers' performance reviews and impede a path to promotion. I mean, sigh. Apparently a representative from TikTok has basically said the ultimate goal of MyRTO is to provide greater clarity and context to both employees and leaders regarding their own RTO expectations, return to office, and in-office schedules, as well as help foster more transparent communications. TikTok isn't alone. Lots of other companies are doing this. Meta are talking about a similar thing, as are Apple. You know, I, I guess on one hand I'm like, I understand managers are starting to freak out because we're seeing this dip in productivity, and we've seen this dip in productivity over the last couple of years. Do you know what else causes drops in productivity, Al?
Al ElliottUh, would it be having to swipe a badge in or go into an office?
Leanne ElliottYeah, managers that don't trust you, not having autonomy over how you work, um, indeed high levels of stress caused by something, I don't know, like job insecurity that people may be feeling in the tech industry given the mass layoffs we've seen over the last 12 months. I'm bored. I don't— I just— I think all I want to know, I want to make sure, is any small business owner that is listening, please know, and you've heard this from me, you've heard it from Professor Sir Kerry Cooper, and you've heard it from Dr. Craig as well from our Clark and Well episode, the big Tech companies are no longer the best practice blueprints to follow when it comes to how you treat and engage your people. They are losing the plot.
Al ElliottAnd I think there's a couple of things that immediately sprung to mind when you were explaining that, was that first of all, if the big, the big data— I mean, Apple aside, although I think they have got some ideas about this— but the, but the big, the biggest companies, they've been known for tracking their users. for using their users' information, for leveraging the data they collect on their users. So it's no real great leap to say they're going to do the same with their employees, surely. I mean, if we're looking at Google, I like Google, we use Google products here, but I know they're tracking the shit out of me. I know they're trying to sell me something. And I just think, were they ever really the ones to put up on a pedestal and go, these are the companies you should be working for?
Leanne ElliottFair point. Maybe they started that way, but as they, as they grew up into these big monsters that they are, maybe not. Um, yeah, it's, it is worrying because I think we're then, we're very much kind of entering this us and them territory, this very much kind of, you know, you do as I say. And the thing that really bugs me about it, you know, if there's another pandemic or something else happens where we all need to work from home again, like, oh, come on guys, you can do this, we all need you to go remote and work from home, and it'll be like, screw you, mate. Do you know what I mean? It's like, I just think it's somewhat short-sighted here.
Al ElliottYeah, I think, I think in simple terms, and this is not psychological terms, this is the way that I understand that Leanne's explained things to me, is that you've kind of got like a bank of goodwill with your employees. You can either withdraw or you can deposit, and by doing shit like this, you're withdrawing. And you— and a withdrawal probably counts twice as much as a deposit. You have to put £10 in to withdraw £5 out. Doesn't seem to make any sense to me, particularly with the younger generation and Every single day we're getting more and more people who are from Gen Z and Millennial in the workforce, and then fewer and fewer people from Boomer and, um, and Gen X. So why are you doing it, guys?
Leanne ElliottAnd as always, you know, it's not about the decision that you're making. If you would prefer as a business leader to have an organization that is on-site, to build your culture on-site, that is your prerogative. That will come with, with plus sides and it will come with downsides. How you execute that decision I'm basically saying that, you know, these deviations, even the language is very aggressive. I don't think that's gonna help. It's, it's just gonna, it's just gonna push people, push people away. People who aren't trusted don't perform. If you treat me like a child, I'm gonna act like a child.
Al ElliottAbsolutely. Love it. So what else you got, Leanne?
Leanne ElliottSpeaking of the children, Gen Z, I am— I didn't have a word of the week this week, and I know you like them. And then I remembered our quizzes that you quite like, so I've come up with another quiz from this article that I found. So I have come up with another quiz For you based on this awesome, awesome article that I found. It's basically— do you remember when we did the Corp Talk?
Al ElliottYeah, yeah.
Leanne ElliottThis is basically like Gen Z jargon Corp Talk. So I'm gonna give you—
Al ElliottZargon, is that what we're gonna call it?
Leanne ElliottZargon. So I'm gonna give you the word.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottIf you want to take a guess, you can do. If you'd like me to use it in a sentence, I can.
Al ElliottThis is going to make me feel really old, isn't it?
Leanne ElliottIdeally, yeah.
Al ElliottOkay, let's go. What's, what's the first word?
Leanne ElliottSo, the first word is, it's probably an easy one to start off, extra.
Al ElliottExtra. I think I know this. As in, oh, Samantha's being a bit extra at the moment. Is it, would that be the correct usage?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottSo, I think the definition is that someone's being a little bit more flamboyant, a little bit more perhaps dramatic than they would normally be.
Leanne ElliottBang on. Absolutely. Yet another example, he wants us to present the slides and do a separate recording of them. So extra.
Al ElliottI see. Right. Okay. So it's not necessarily about being dramatic. It's just, just being a bit demanding.
Leanne ElliottIt could be dramatic, over the top. Yeah. Both are true. Okay. Second one, low-key.
Al ElliottOh, see now, see now. I think I know this because, because I've heard so many people use it. I had to Google it because I didn't know what it meant. If he's low-key excited about an event, then it means that he is excited about the event, but he's not making a big deal of it.
Leanne ElliottVery nice. Exactly. Yeah, being on the down low, um, being secretive or understating your, your interest in something. Another example might be, I low-key want to volunteer for the social committee, but I haven't spoken to anyone about it yet.
Al ElliottOkay, cool. 2 for 2.
Leanne Elliott2 for 2. The next one, I think you'll guess this one, if, if only for my love of, my love of Drag Race. Tea.
Al ElliottSorry?
Leanne ElliottT-E-A.
Al ElliottT-E-A. No, not really. Not a clue.
Leanne ElliottSpill the tea.
Al ElliottCan you use it in a, in a sentence?
Leanne ElliottDid you attend the strategic planning meeting on Monday? Spill the tea.
Al ElliottOh, well, in that context it sounds more like beans. Spill the beans. Tell me what happened.
Leanne ElliottYeah, exactly.
Al ElliottYeah. Spill the tea. Why have you come up with a— Gen Zed, why have you come up with another phrase when spill the beans It's absolutely fine.
Leanne ElliottIt's quite, it's quite UK-centric though, isn't it? Spill the beans.
Al ElliottSpill the tea.
Leanne ElliottThat's just that. It does come from very much from queer culture, drag queens, all the tea, hot tea, gossip, news, juicy information. Uh, yeah, spilling tea.
Al ElliottWell, I disagree with you, but, but still, I respect your decision. I respect your decision. Okay, that I really enjoyed that.
Leanne ElliottI've got one more. I've got one more. Yeah.
Al ElliottDead. As in the dead air we just had?
Leanne ElliottYes.
Al ElliottOh, uh, can you use it in a sentence?
Leanne ElliottDid you see they tried to promote the company with a TikTok trend from 2 years ago? I'm dead.
Al ElliottNot ashamed, but you're taking that— you're like, I can't believe they've done that.
Leanne ElliottLOL, I think would be the— would be the millennial equivalent. LOL. Yeah.
Al ElliottDo you know what the Gen X version would be?
Leanne ElliottWhat?
Al ElliottLMAO, laughed my ass off. And we do also have ROFL. Yeah, brilliant. Another great news roundup. Loved it, Leah. I really look forward to these. I think, I think I like them as much as we— as the guest part of it. I just, I just love it. So shall we get on and meet these amazing guests?
Leanne ElliottYes.
Al ElliottOkay, so we're gonna start off with Charlie Cood, who's got a company called Culture Hey, it's editing Al here. Just want to say sorry, Charlie. It's Charlie Code, not Charlie Coode. Sorry, mate. Charlie is so cool. He used to be a helicopter pilot. When I was interviewing him at the Water Cooler, um, I was just sat there and I'm trying to, I'm trying to act cool, but inside I'm going, you basically, I want to be you. It was so cool. Anyway, so Charlie's company has this proprietary platform, easy for me to say, that can help you actually put a number on Culture. So let's go meet Charlie Cood. I'm building a team at the moment and on a bit of a mission to convert the way people think about culture and the way organisations address culture.
Leanne ElliottOur next guest is Alan Baker from GoodShape, which specialises in employee absence and wellbeing insights. Alan was one of my most favourite people I met at the water cooler, a true gent, very passionate about what he does, and an incredible background and story as well. Let's go and meet Alan.
Al ElliottUm, GoodShape had its roots in absence management leaning into wellbeing. But what we've done now is built a platform on an app that integrates all of the wellbeing services companies have, but puts meaningful data behind it. And last but certainly not least, Ali Khan from another company called Shape. shapepowered.com is their website and nothing to do with Alan. But what Shape does, it is an acronym. I won't spoil it. Go to the website, you'll see what it stands for. Really cool. And what Ali's platform does is measures lots and lots of different data points. thousands and thousands of them to give you this holistic view of your culture. So, let's go meet Ali. So, Ali Khan, I'm the CEO of a company called Shape Global. We are coming out of stealth. For a couple of years, we've been figuring out how do companies measure employee experience, and can we put a number on it?
Leanne ElliottSo, today we are delving into the world of employee insights, something very close to my heart. Now, what exactly sets them apart from your everyday feedback? And how can insights shape the modern workplace, either from our office spaces to the very nature of our work-life balance? And of course, what impact does mental health have? And what did the pandemic change? How can we use these insights to build an amazing workplace?
Al ElliottSo we've got 5 questions that we're going to ask. First of all, what are employee insights?
Leanne ElliottExactly.
Al ElliottSecondly, how can employee insights shape the workplace strategy, particularly around culture? Thirdly, how can employee insights help managers be better managers? Fourthly, what about mental and physical health insights? How do they fit into things? And fifthly, how insights can help us with this whole changing workplace. So let's get cracking. Number 1, what are employee insights? So We need to get into this. Before delving deeper, let's just establish this clear understanding of what we mean by an employee insight. Because in my opinion, like, employee insights maybe 10 years ago would be like, you know, the anonymous suggestion box you used to have in the kitchen where someone would just put in like, you know, Carl smells or the biscuits are shit or something like that. And that was the extent of employee insights about 10, 15 years ago. Modern employee insights are very different. Leah. Over to you. Give us a synopsis of what modern employee insights look like.
Leanne ElliottEmployee insights are, I guess, the physical manifestation of employee voice, which we talk about a lot. Employee voice, giving people, um, a say over how their workplace looks, how people interact in the workplace, what their career trajectory looks like. This is all employee voice, and employee insights should represent— if done well, should represent employee voice. And with those insights, we can make strategic decisions, operational decisions about our people and culture. And more importantly, if they are robust employee insights, we should also be able to use that data to predict what the impact will be on our people and on our business performance.
Al ElliottThere's a phrase which I don't know whether I've just made up or I've read somewhere and think I've made up, And I'm calling it EX, which is employer— employee experience.
Leanne ElliottYou didn't make that up.
Al ElliottIs that— does that already exist?
Leanne ElliottQuite a big thing, actually. So there's this thing I like to call customer experience, right?
Al ElliottWell, I was going to say there's customer experience, there's user experience, UX, there's developer experience for coders, DX. So this brand new idea I've just made up is EX, employee experience. And the whole point of this is that you are trying to make the experience of the employee Just amazing. Now, Ali Khan's platform, remember SHAPE we talked about before, Ali Khan's platform measures lots and lots of different things exactly to get a measure of what this employee experience is. So what we've been looking at under the guise of what does employee experience mean and how do you measure that? Well, it turns out you need to understand things like job satisfaction, engagement with other people, Around you, coworkers and managers, relationship with the manager. Are you committed to the company? What about your work ethic? What about the factors outside of work? Because we know an imbalance in work life affects your ability to be your very best at work. Charlie from Culture15 believes that once you've measured these things, once you've got these insights, you can actually use them to build the culture and the experience that you actually want. So for instance, we measure trust. We do have an engagement module only to make sure that organizations, if they historically measured engagement, they don't have to stop doing it. So we import their data, but we look at how do you describe your culture? Most organizations have 3 or 4 themes. We can measure those behaviors against those themes. And so they get a platform. And so managers can then see, and I should say that the leadership of the organization is able to define their target. So they get a, essentially a framework. And the real value is not in the platform, it's in the conversations that it stimulates. I spent the last 10 years consulting to organizations on culture transformations and cultural alignments. And time and time again, we found that one of the limiting factors is that they didn't have a common framework to talk about culture in the way that was objective, in the way that was practical and not overly theoretical.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottAnd in a way that you could then practically apply to changing an organizational culture. They just didn't exist. Engagement platforms, which measure aggregations of sentiment in an organization, don't measure culture. They measure just the average of how people are feeling. If you look at culture as how work gets done, behaviors, it's different. And engagement platforms don't give you that. And Ali's platform actually looks at the environmental insights as well, because those have more of an impact than you might think. If you look at wellbeing and you look at, for example, as I've been learning more about facilities and facilities managers, real estate, they're looking beyond just the building. They're looking at the people in the buildings. And when you start to look at the people in the buildings, it comes down to experiences. So this centralization and this realization around what does an experience constitute and can we standardize that?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottThat's what we've been figuring out. So, Lee, just before we round this off, I want to find out, when did it actually start becoming a thing that we started measuring insights?
Leanne ElliottIn some way, it's been around for about 100 years now. The Hawthorne studies, quite famous workplace studies that were done. I think it's their 100th birthday coming up very soon. It's the 1920s they were done, and they were the first set of empirical studies that showed that our working environment can influence how we think, feel, and behave, and that in turn can influence things like our productivity and performance. Insights in some way have been around for about 100 years. I think they really gained momentum probably around the '90s when we started to look a lot more into predictors of work performance, predictors of work engagement, predictors of productivity, the impact that resources have on on our ability to do our work. And that's when lots of different famous models came out, like the Job Resources Demand Model, which is still very dominant today. And I think they really started to gain momentum in 2008 when the McLloyd Report came out. And this was a huge government commission, UK government commission study, longitudinal study, that looked at the state of employee engagement within the UK and found that it was a multi-billion pound problem. Across sectors, across industries, for everybody. Everybody was disengaging and it was costing businesses a lot of money. Um, so yeah, so at that point then insights became important, particularly predictive insights where we can see, you know, if people are feeling a certain way, then we should see that reflected in our performance in a certain way. Therefore, if we can, if we can increase some, decrease some, we should see the, the corresponding shift in our performance.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne Elliottperformance as well. So yeah, 100 years all in all. I'd say the last 30 years with a bit of gusto, the last 15 years with some, some real intention.
Al ElliottInteresting, interesting. And so what we're talking about here is nothing is absolutely brand new, but what we've got now is the wearables, which are controversial, but we've got that. We've got ways of measuring all kinds of different things much easier. We've got AI to help us to interpret results. So that now concludes our section 1, which tells us all about what are insights. We're now going into Why do we need them? What can we do once we get these insights? What do we do with them? So, Leigh, you've now got a big, nice big pile of insights. What the hell are you going to do next?
Leanne ElliottWell, the truth is we can't really develop a decent workplace strategy without insights. It's a bit like, you know, we need to put the light on if we're going to find something, or we need to, we need to know where we are to effectively measure Um, our return investment further down the line. So really, it is any organization that is thinking about people and culture as a strategy, um, you know, a key commercial aspect of their business, and they should do, you're going to need employee insights.
Al ElliottSo what's interesting about the insights though is each of our 3 guests, they measure very slightly different things, but the commonality is that they are all designed to produce tangible results that you will give you something you can actually act on. Now, going back to Alan, Alan's company GoodShape measures a lot of predictors that will help manage absenteeism. Easy for me to say. So what we saw is after COVID, everybody cared about the people in the workplace for the first time. We saw people obviously ill and therefore productivity drops through the floor. People started to resign if they didn't think they were being looked after. So organizations rush to spend money on wellbeing. But it was also a little bit like, you know, all the spot solutions you've ever seen in tech. I'll buy lots of things that are not joined up. I don't know the efficacy. I don't know, are they working? I don't know if I'm getting results and I don't know if I'm getting ROI. So our platform provides minute one intervention, pushes people through to a service, gets people returned to work safely and quicker. Drives productivity up and massively, massively reduces absence in the workplace and improves people's wellbeing. And I think that's the big problem. You see all the people here today, that lots of people are wellbeing officers in large organizations, and they can't prove and justify the investments they're making. And that's what we do that's different. And we also provide this service, by the way, to large hospitals and everything else. So believe it or not, our nurses— actually provide health and wellbeing support for nurses and doctors, 'cause they are really bad at looking after themselves.
Leanne ElliottAl is clearly doing some great work here. What's interesting about Ali Khan's Shape is that Ali isn't afraid to ask questions. I mean, the obvious thing for an insights app to measure is productivity, but Ali wanted to look deeper.
Al ElliottWe, we've spent quite some time figuring out, should we even measure productivity? And, and the truth is you, you can't put a direct number on productivity so easily Because we are talking about so many variable factors in the models. But what you can do is you can understand, of these areas we talked about earlier, job satisfaction, engagement, and so forth, how many of those factors affect productivity, affect performance? So do they help or hinder? And by measuring how much a person is being affected by job satisfaction, engagement, Commitment, work ethic, et cetera. You can then pinpoint not just putting a number on culture as a scored mechanism. You can go beyond that. You can make those questions actionable, and now you can provide really, really good performance support, if you like, to that person. And it can be really super hyper-personalized to their particular needs as well. Whatever part of the data they're specializing in, each of the guest believe that what gets measured gets managed. What's interesting is Charlie used to work for GE under Jack Welch. If you remember him, he was like kind of the poster child for management back in the '80s and '90s. But Jack was famous for this phrase, what gets measured gets managed. Charlie is a huge believer in that. But also he's finding that strangely, one of the most difficult things to get across to his clients and potential clients is that culture can actually be And one of our biggest challenges is actually convincing people that you can measure culture. Most people have this attitude of, oh, you can't measure it, can you? And anyway, we measure engagement. And there's the sort of underlying subconscious belief that culture is intangible, therefore can't be measured. My view is, and this is Jack Welch talking, I guess, is that if you want to, if you believe it's important, point one, great. Therefore, you must manage it closely. And therefore, in order to manage it, you must measure it. And in order to measure it, you have to make the intangible tangible. And that's what Culture 15 does. It makes the, what appears intangible, it makes it, breaks it down into collective behaviors, makes it measurable, and then does analytics based upon that. And fundamentally asks organizations, what do you need and what do you have? The culture gap. So, Leanne, I know you can't really talk about the specifics of the clients you work with, but can you think of an example where maybe insights have helped to address maybe a common workplace issue?
Leanne ElliottYeah, so I mean, culture can be measured if we measure things that we can control, and we know that those things have an impact on how our people think, feel, and behave at work. Because how people think, feel, and behave will impact how they perform, how they engage, how they experience well-being. So a common workplace challenge might be something like employee turnover. We've got people who are leaving the business. We can sit down as a leadership team and maybe come up with all the reasons why. We might blame the market, we might think it's, oh, that we had that manager in but they've left now, so that would be okay. We could, we could sit here and we could, we could chat about why we think our employee engagement is, is, is low and our turnover is high. The reality is that when it comes to the science of people, there are lots of different elements, different factors that influence employee engagement and therefore employee turnover. And it could be anything from the relationship that they have with their managers, the relationships they have with peers, their, um, the demands in terms of workload. It could be how they are experiencing, um, role clarity and role purpose, whether they feel that they know what they're doing, they feel confident to do it, and they know why they're doing it. There are many different reasons why people will disengage from a job or an organisation and leave. Insights will help us pinpoint the exact problem. It'll help us understand, or indeed the combination of challenges that we've got that are influencing employee turnover. It'll help us pinpoint where the issue is so we can create a strategy that is going to target that problem. It's treating the core problem, not the symptoms, and that's where insights can be phenomenal for any common workplace issues such as high turnover, low productivity, or burnout.
Al ElliottNice, nice. Okay, talking of burnout, one of the biggest things that happens around burnout is managers. So what are we going to be talking about next, Lee?
Leanne ElliottSo now we know how insights can be used to improve our cultures, onto my favorite subject matter after The glorious Gen Z managers.
Al ElliottYour favorite expression, Leanne, is it's the manager. In fact, I think you've even got a book which has got that title, and you believe that 90% of workplace issues come down to the manager. Is that— have I— is 90 too many?
Leanne ElliottI'm not— I mean, I wouldn't— I'm sure I'd put a number on it in terms of that, but a lot of them do. And I think actually what the data shows is about 60% of the variance in employee engagement comes down to the manager, which basically means 1 out of— what's, what, 6 out of, out of 10 times, the issue with employee engagement will probably be your manager. Um, so yeah, they do cause a lot of, a lot of, a lot of tricky situations for, for business owners. And here's why: when your people feel that their manager cares about them, then they are more happy.
Al ElliottAs long as people think that you're showing and demonstrating care and you're investing in them as people and not a number, then, then you're going to get better results. And I think you've got to be genuine in what you're trying to do. You've got to be genuine in what you're trying to strive for, and people have got to feel it. And if you get that, you get a brilliant organization that's more successful than the ones that don't feel like that. Do you know what's funny is on TikTok, on Reddit, like subreddits like antiwork, um, Instagram, there's loads of like posts about how the manager screwed you over and how the boss has made you come into work and how much of an asshole your boss is. And that's the problem. is I think that a lot of people see their manager as their blocker to success. They're the people, they're the someone who's standing in the way to what they actually want. It should be the other way around. It should be the manager who is supporting the employee. Here's Ali Khan to talk a little bit more about that. The other thing that we found from a workplace perspective was you wanted to ensure that managers were also supported. Now, managers, A lot of people look at them as hindrance, but they're not. They are the gateway to helping employees in their teams perform. So if we just change the way that we can support them in a better way, because they're not specialists. You might have somebody who's amazing at technology running a technology team, but they may be highly introverted and a number of other aspects that they don't feel so comfortable with.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottWell, we've got to support them with that. So by having these kind of assessments like Shape, for example, we're able to help them discover for themselves in a totally private, confidential, confident way on where would I go and get help if I, or what kind of help would I get? And then where would I get that from? Now, Al has this amazing story about when he worked in the Ukraine for a previous company that was involved in where he was a good manager and he actually got some tangible results from it. So if you focus on the right metrics and the right outcomes, you get better results. And in doing that, I look at every technology wave and say, what's next? What's happening? And where can my experience help? So when I was out in Ukraine, I had nearly 1,000 people, almost all under 35. They were amazing. They just not long got independence. They were all striving for a better life. And I had hundreds and hundreds of both anonymous and personalized notes saying I changed their life because they were proud to work at the organization and they had given them meaning.
Leanne ElliottWhat's amazing is when you start to involve your team in conversations around culture, when you start to empower employee voice, people get really passionate. And that passion translates to belonging, it translates to attachment to the organization, it translates to discretionary effort, it translates so many good things. You would have heard us talk before about— so many times about employee insights, but one that definitely sticks with me is Mel Murphy from Birdie, who talked about how they build and refine culture through various retreats. Do go back and listen to that. That's on our Human-Centered Workplaces episode just a couple of weeks ago. Charlie himself has also had the culture conversation recently with his own team and has felt liberated.
Al ElliottIt's fascinating. Even the conversation— we had it yesterday The conversation amongst the 8 of us in the team around, okay, what culture do we really need? How are we gonna describe it? And what does it look like? Is incredibly powerful, but also liberating because it exists in the invisible until you have that conversation. So the real value, yes, you pay for the platform and it's monthly subscription, not hugely expensive, but it enables that conversation at the initiation, but also on an ongoing basis so managers can track their progress over time.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottBut there is a practical aspect to this too, because if you know someone's going to be absent, you can plan for it. Al has this great example in the hospital or hospital, the medical industry, where he explains that how a company, if they can predict when someone's going to come back to work, then it makes things just run so much smoother. We had billions of datasets, so we're now able to predict long-term absence with an 82% accuracy. We're able to predict staff turnover within 78% accuracy. So we're bringing AI to this field as well. So if you're able to see trends, you're able to get ahead and be preventative. That's amazing, right? Now, if you think about how often, for example, if you go into hospital tomorrow and you're getting prepped to go into the theater, last minute somebody says to you, there's no bed. Your operation gets canceled. That's hiding some truths, right? So what often happens is they're expecting the anaesthetist to be there. He's not. Or the surgeon to be there. They're not. Because they knew that that person was off on Monday last week and he said he was coming back or she was coming back on this Monday. We're able to look at that and go, it's 82% probability they're not going to come back on Monday. They're going to come back 3 weeks from now. Therefore, have alternative plans. And actually reduce things like, you know, surgical waitlists, cancelled operations and stuff like that. Use of bank staff, which is hugely expensive for hospitals. So if we use these insights to help our managers, then I'm guessing we can just create the sort of the environment where everybody thrives.
Leanne ElliottYeah. And I think what's really cool about really great insights, really, like insights that are based around a predictive model of employee engagement and wellbeing, is we know exactly how well our managers are doing, exactly how our investment in them in terms of training is, is paying off, and exactly how our people are experiencing this change. You know, enhanced productivity, performance, well-being, engagement— they're all so closely linked. It's unlikely that you invest in your managers, you're just going to get a boost in productivity. You're more than likely, almost certainly, going to see a boost in employee engagement in wellbeing, in collaboration, innovation, ideation. There's so many different things that hinge on having a great manager. And why? Because great managers create psychological safety. And we know all about psychological safety, don't we, listeners?
Al ElliottIf you are interested more in empowering your managers, then definitely email Leanne. That's what she does on a day-to-day basis, also in conjunction with Sonia, um, who we talked about before, who's got an amazing Amazing program.
Leanne ElliottYeah. So come on Monday. If you're listening live, come on Monday.
Al ElliottCome on Monday. Come on Monday. Or watch the recording if you're not watching it, not listening live.
Leanne ElliottWe'll leave that link somewhere.
Al ElliottLet's look at a slightly more controversial thing to measure. We alluded to this at the beginning. Can we and should we be measuring mental and physical health as part of this whole process? This is what I'm thinking. It seems a little bit intrusive to start measuring physical and mental insights or looking into the physical and mental health of our employees. Am I just being a bit old-fashioned here?
Leanne ElliottIntrusive in what way? What, what would feel intrusive?
Al ElliottI'm thinking that if you wore a wearable that told you what your mood was and that form— that pushed that back to an app that your manager could see, that's intrusive. But also at the same time, like, if you're feeling down— we talked about financial issues about 3 episodes ago. My biggest question was, should the manager even get involved in that situation? Because is it any of their business? Same with this. You've got a physical ailment, you've got a mental health problem. At what point is it going to be that the manager is diving into your life in a way that you don't really want?
Leanne ElliottWell, I think, I think it's find the balance, isn't it? It is. As a leader, physical and mental health is your business, because if your employees don't experience positive physical and mental health, then that is going to impact their work, and it is going to impact their performance and potentially impact your business. Um, so I think it'd be naive of any leader to think that's not my problem, um, because it's going to— if anything that impacts your business is your problem, right? I mean, I think the other thing is how do we frame these things? How do we ask about mental and physical health in a way that is not intrusive, that is safe, and that is appropriate? And I think the thing is there are— if you're, if you're planning on launching your own survey using SurveyMonkey asking people about physical and mental health, maybe not. There are very many validated question banks out there to ask employees about physical and mental health that have been tried and tested.
Al ElliottI think what Leanne's saying there is, in short, don't make up your own mental and physical health survey. One person who is an expert at this is Alan Baker at GoodShape. Now, one of the things that they do is so interesting because he measures absenteeism, he can predict absenteeism, but it's not just about absenteeism, as you'll find out. And it's formalized. 72% of your workers will be absent at least once a year. So we're getting 70% engagement. And when you got that engagement, you're able to push them out to mental health support, occupational health support, and actually measure the efficacy and the effectiveness of those services. Because we know if you went into that service and then you returned to work quicker, you can see it actually had a material impact. So we're able to use absence as a measurement of improvements in wellbeing in the workplace. So that's why with a couple of billion data points, we're able to do things like Use absence as the measuring rod for presenteeism and for absence and wellbeing effectiveness. So absence is a great way of measuring it. Presenteeism is a way of measuring it. Productivity is a way of measuring it, right? So 35 days are lost to presenteeism. So that means a huge chunk of your workforce is either physically or mentally unfit to be in the workforce, or if they're in the workforce, and you're aware of it, you are not giving any allowance to that problem. So imagine if you've got a mental health issue and you're not focused well. Well, you can imagine what that's like if you're a surgeon or something like that. But what if you're operating heavy equipment? What if you're doing something physical in the workplace and you've gone back to work because you need the money, but nobody's made allowance for the fact that you can't lift or move heavy equipment around now. Or there's so much health and safety issues attached to this that says being present— because we're forced to be present because that's the economic pressure most of us are under, and it's also sometimes the duty many of us feel need to return to work.
Leanne ElliottI was talking to somebody at some point in the last 6 months. They said to me, you're not getting me at my best today, I've got a virus, I'm really struggling, but you know, the show must go on.
Al ElliottHmm.
Leanne ElliottAnd I thought, oh, that's a red flag. That's a red culture flag there, isn't it? If you as a leader are turning up, um, and I understand if you're the business owner, there is added pressure, but even, even that, you know, just seeing that, having that expectation of yourself, are you, are you passing that on to your people? And I know it's tricky. I know it's hard, but For me, that was like a red flag.
Al ElliottWell, talking to leaders, I think a lot of leaders want this ROI. They're very— and they're quite rightly too. They're like, yes, we want an ROI on this stuff. And Leanne's always been really open about this and saying that if we get the insights, then we've got the data, then I can prove an ROI for you really, really easily. What was interesting is each one of our guests talked about an ROI. In fact, they, they compared insights into mental, physical health, into engagement, into any kind of insights you're measuring. He said that's like doing some kind of financial analysis. Here's Ali to explain a bit more. So what we're trying to do is help businesses take an empirical, objective view. And by democratizing those data points, if you like, that means it's privacy-based. It's absolutely privacy-based. We are making sure that it's got to be GDPR compliant. People are in charge of their own information. They can choose when and if they want to provide it. But what we are giving back to individual employees is a really powerful set of guidance notes on here are what the best practices look like in order to improve personal activity, improve your mental cognition, and so forth. And then when they require further support, That's where we can pinpoint them, you know, in, in, into their intervention support that they might require as well. We've just taken the guesswork out. Now, Charlie from Culture15 says exactly the same thing. Before we hear from Charlie, I just want to talk about a couple of phrases which you may or may not have come across in the financial world. And I learned this from the amazing Paul Barnes at MAP, who taught me this. There are 2 types of—
Leanne ElliottWho we're co-hosting the webinar with on Monday. You should really come. Come, guys.
Al ElliottIsn't this— that wasn't even planned. How smooth was that? But Paul Barnes at MAP, who's an accounting firm, uh, not like the rest of the accounting firms, amazing. Go and check them out, wearemap.co.uk. But what he taught me was that there's kind of like a, a lag indicator, and that's things like your profit and loss sheet. That's the thing that tells you up until this year you've made X amount of money. And then there's a predictive indicator, and that's the bit you're going, Look, based on this, your budget says that you're gonna run outta cash in 3 months' time, so you need to do something about it. Charlie talks exactly the same way about the whole predictive versus lag indicator idea. There's the P&L, there's the balance sheet. If you and I looked at a balance sheet and P&L, I imagine we'd both be able to read it and we'd both go, okay, we know common language, common framework, common way of describing the health of the organization. There's no such thing for culture. Um, and yet the intangible assets tend to be much more valuable on a brand's value than the tangible assets. So therefore, why not? And so Culture 15 is specifically designed to address that. So essentially be a cultural balance sheet, but to do so through the lens of behaviors, not sentiment.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast, that's us, by the way, and the UK's number 1 marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use 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 going to say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s— the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Leanne ElliottThe 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 politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is. It'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.
Leanne ElliottIt might seem a bit dispassionate to talk about your people in terms of assets, and it is. And there are, there are lots of terms that now people are starting to question that have been well-used terms in the HR and people and culture world. But of course, you know, as we, as we live and learn, these terms get, get reimagined. People as assets, human capital— 2 examples of ways of looking at your people as a business owner. My only thought would be, you know, if you do think about them as an asset— people aren't humans, they're purely assets. If you had an asset in your business, let's say a machine, and it cost you $100K a year to run, you would ensure that maintenance was up to date. You would make sure that that wasn't being pushed. You would make sure that it wouldn't break. Are you pushing your people to breaking point? And if you are, then you're not even treating them as assets. Let alone humans. We should be thinking about people in the same way. In some cases, they are 10 times the cost of machinery.
Al ElliottAnd yet companies have been throwing this line around for ages going, people are my number one asset. Hey, how dare you call people an asset? Or HR's called human capital management, which says people are capital and assets. And I'm going, well, if you're going to use it almost that derogatory term for human beings, At least treat them as well as you do the equipment in your business as well. Look after them, do preventative maintenance, make sure that you understand their tolerance levels so they don't break. And so I think for me, it is all about people need to trust that what you're doing is in their best interests. And of course, there's got to be an economic factor behind it because we know one simple fact: happy people are more productive. You're happier if you're feeling healthy, whether physically or mentally. Now, I think we're proving that there's a direct correlation between happy and healthy. employees and present employees. But it's more than just being present. There's something called the flow state, which I think might have been Cal Newport who originally came up with this idea. And it's where you sit down, you do some work, you look up and go, oh my God, I've missed my lunch because you're in that flow state. Well, Ali Khan talks this up, talks about this, and he just describes it as flourishing. Flourishing is that, to me, is the ability for you to feel supported, For you to feel engaged, for you to have great satisfaction with what you're doing. And with AXA over the last 2 to 3 years, I've been focused largely on a great piece of work called the Mind Health Index. So that's measuring in many ways, and in keeping it short, the mental health of a nation, a population. So a representative sample of the people in that country.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottAnd so there's statistical methodologies behind this, and we've followed that through right down to the last letter of the science. And we've made sure that we understand in that population set, if we were going to look at the demographics, can we understand how young people feel? Can we understand how older people feel when it comes to their mental health? What about working populations? What about unemployed people? What about males and females? And you can cut the data any different way. And so this is where we get into a state of understanding. Some of those skills also overlap with a state of flourishing, EQ, self-awareness, self-confidence, and so forth. So you can have a look at these in more detail in the report. And if as an organization you are trying to help your staff get to a place of flourishing and in flow, these are the kind of attributes that you'd be looking for, and these are the kind of skills you'd want to develop in them.
Leanne ElliottSo on to our last question. How can insights help with changing the workplace?
Al ElliottChange is the only constant. It's cheesy, but it's what is kind of true, because whether we have to react to pandemics or remote working or hybrid working, um, or this new generation of employees— and let's be honest, in 20 years' time or 15 years' time, we're going to have Gen Alpha who are going to enter the, the workplace, and that's going to be a challenge for everyone. So one thing is for sure, that you, you just need to be adaptable.
Leanne ElliottFor a business owner, it might seem that this new way of thinking about culture came up very, very suddenly. And the truth is, it has been bubbling and evolving for a good 15, 20 years at least. If we think about the global financial crisis 2007, lots of people were made redundant from what they thought were secure jobs, jobs for life. That in itself, a job for life doesn't exist anymore. You know, people weren't left with the feeling that they had, they had the loyalty of their business if they provided loyalty in return. That idea went out the window. Then, you know, the last 15 years as well, we've seen so much. We've seen the pandemic, we've seen the MeToo movement, we've seen the Black Lives Matter movement. So many different things have influenced how people are viewing organizational culture at the moment. And so science progresses, as the research progresses, We know it's not just about being a responsible business, it's about being a successful business. Investing in your people, investing in the science of people is quite frankly good for business. Here's Charlie.
Al ElliottThere was an awakening of understanding of the importance of culture around 2008, 2009 as a result of that, which has been great. So, and that, and I think then you've got this sort of iterative process of MeToo and Black Lives Matter and all this sort of But it's a zeitgeist moving towards a more individualized realization of humanity. The really interesting question for me is, how does that then plug into how organizations work? Because if you extend that line, they become chaos, right? Everybody self-determines. And actually, organizations are all about the whole reason organizations exist is because it's more efficient to do complicated tasks together than it is individually. In order to do complicated tasks, particularly in different sites and different disciplines, You need to have a common way of working.
Leanne ElliottAl also talks about the changes we need to implement now, and a lot of that has to do with us working remotely or hybrid.
Al ElliottWe work remotely now. There's no division between our home life and our work life, right? It's now encroached in our home life. So now employers have responsibility for workers and their workplace that extends outside a building. It's now at home. It's therefore affecting relationships. It's affecting the way you're bringing up your kids. So There's a duty of care here to make sure they're at their best. You'll gain from it as an employer. But if you look after your people, we suddenly have this responsibility now, right? And when you see the stats that I've just been explaining to you, you realize in your workplace this is going to happen. And you've got to ask yourself as an employer, am I going to put my best foot forward to support people when these events happen? And if you know you're doing that well, I think you can look in the mirror and go, you know what, I take a profit, but I'm also looking after my people. And I think that's the important thing you've gotta drive.
Leanne ElliottNo conversation about the modern workforce would be complete without talking about my favorite generation, Gen Z. What's becoming very clear, even more so by the day, is that they are demanding a very different employee experience than previous generations. They want to experience positive wellbeing. They want to experience a sense of purpose and fulfillment and meaning in their work. They want career development opportunities. They want the opportunity to have side hustles and side gigs and diversify their experience and their income streams. They know, they've seen it from their parents, nothing is certain. So they want to have as much flexibility in their working patterns, as much control, as much autonomy as they can.
Al ElliottSo I mentioned before that I might have some kind of weird man crush on Charlie 'Cause he used to fly helicopters. But what's really interesting is he started talking a little bit about his experience in the armed forces, um, or the services. And he was explaining that because they tended to skew older in terms of leadership and that you could see huge generational differences. Here's Charlie talking about his work with the military around bullying and harassment. I used to be in the military and I'm still, I have worked in the past with the military on with the Army on— the actual project was bullying, harassment, and discrimination, but I think their intention was to reduce instances of bullying, harassment, and discrimination. It doesn't sound like it, but the point was they've got a real sort of macho— their role is warfighting. So how do you maintain the warfighting capability, but yet make sure people understand that certain behaviors and misogyny and violence and harassment and discrimination and bullying are not acceptable? That requires a real DNA shift. It's accelerating, and many organizations, particularly organizations with real longevity like militaries, associations, UK pharmacies, they're really struggling because they're just not able to respond at the same speed. And the people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s at the head of these organizations have no real experience about what this means for them.
Leanne ElliottSo there's a lot of search for answers going on at the top of organizations Al has seen a lot of change happen in the West Coast of America and Australia, and he thinks they're really spearheading the change required to build a tangible culture.
Al ElliottYou know, if you look at the culture of culture itself, where did it come from? I don't think in the UK I'm yet, you know, I'm really yet to come across an organization that fully knows how to define it. If you go to the real leading places in the world are Australia, for example, The US, especially on the West Coast. So you can physically feel a culture there. You can see a culture. Can you see it over here? Is it ingrained in the brand of an organization? Is it something that you can physically feel when you walk into a place? And if you can't see it there, you're gonna have a hard time figuring out beyond that, right? It's actually one of the most visceral things that you could— it's one of those things that I define as Um, a religion. It's what you do when nobody's looking. That's the power of culture. And if truly people believe in an organization that this is their culture, they'll practice it. One of the phrases that has come into our vocabulary recently is the great resignation. Al has a really good point of view on this, and he knows how to avoid losing great talent. So if you focus on the individual and providing great outcomes for them, the reward you get from that is somebody more motivated in the workplace, that somebody is more productive in the workplace because they're enjoying their work and they feel respected and they feel like people are considering them. And if you demonstrate that culture in your organization, you'll get more from your people. If you look at the great resignation, it's staggering now, right? So In the health service, in public, private companies as well. 35% of people were talking about leaving their jobs last year. And one of the big drivers behind it is they don't believe that the company they work for gives a damn about them.
Leanne ElliottOne of the biggest questions we get asked when we run employee insight surveys is how we're going to ensure confidentiality and privacy. And it's something we take hugely, hugely Seriously. And we're not alone. Ali from Shape is all over this as well.
Al ElliottAnd the single keyword you're looking for is privacy. So, if you can protect and guarantee that the person is not going to be able to be identified, and this is where, you know, for the listeners out there who really want to dig into the detail, where your randomized k-values start to come into play, differential privacy comes into play. So, these are constructs. We didn't create them. We're following them. Some of the biggest and best companies in the world, in the phones that we are using, they are protecting us using these algorithms. Right. So that's, that's it for today. We've gone through these 5 questions, which is what are employee insights? How can they shape workplace strategy and culture? How can employee insights support the managers? Remember what Leanne said? It's the manager. 60% of variance, I think what she said was down to the manager. What mental and physical insights or health insights you should be looking at and maybe what you shouldn't. And finally, how you can use your insights to help with this whole ever-evolving, changing workplace.
Leanne ElliottYes. And I think my final parting words would be taken from one of my favourite psychologists, John Amici, who said the most powerful thing you can know when you're lost is where you are. And that's what employee insights do as a business leader. They will start off by telling you exactly where you currently are in terms of your culture, in terms of your employee engagement, and in terms of your wellbeing. Thank you so much to all our incredible guests today, to Ali, to Charlie, to Alan. We've loved having you, we've loved hearing your insights, and we look forward to having you on the podcast again in the future.
Al ElliottI strongly recommend you check out all of the platforms. All the links are in the show notes. Fabulous, fabulous platforms that will genuinely make a difference in your organization.
Leanne ElliottWe will be back next week with yet another podcast episode. New listeners, we're pretty predictable in that way. Every week we'll be here. What are we talking about, Al?
Al ElliottYes, I don't know. Um, we've got 2 that I can't show. We're not sure whether which one's coming out. In short, I don't know, but it'd be one of these subjects.
Leanne ElliottIt's gonna be a surprise.
Al ElliottOkay, so we will see you next time. One quick message before we go. Jane, have you cleaned properly?
Leanne ElliottJane, you missed, you missed a bit. No, not, not there. Yeah, yeah, you got it.
Al ElliottThere it is.
Leanne ElliottYou got it.
Al ElliottOkay, so we'll see you next week. Bye-bye.
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