Episode 88 · 9 April 2024 · 34:02
Resume red flags, Hilton's big win, and recruiting sales superstars - This Week in Work, 9th April 2024
Resume red flags, Hilton's big win, and recruiting sales superstars - This Week in Work, 9th April 2024
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Resume red flags: what recruiters are really looking for
news roundup#recruiting#resume#red-flags
Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For 2024
news roundup#fortune-100#best-companies#job-hopping
Dharmesh Shah on coding principles as company culture
news roundup#company-culture#coding#dharmesh-shah
60 Second Highlights: Dave Klein on bad managers
news roundup#bad-managers#leadership#highlights
Workplace Surgery: recruiting sales superstars
workplace surgery#sales#recruiting#workplace
Workplace Surgery: NPS scores for culture measurement
workplace surgery#nps#culture#measurement
Show notes
Resume Red Flags, Hilton's Big Win & Recruiting Sales Superstars — This Week in Work, 9th April 2024
This Week in Work — Al Elliott and Leanne Elliott (Chartered Occupational Psychologist) break down the resume red flags recruiters are really looking for (and why AI-generated applications might be selling you short), what makes a Fortune 100 Best Company genuinely great in 2024, and the Python coding principles shaping HubSpot's company culture. Plus, in the Workplace Clinic: how to recruit sales superstars and whether NPS scores belong in your culture toolkit.
🔥 Stories Covered
1. Resume red flags: what recruiters are really looking for CNBC spoke to Michelle Reisdorf from Robert Half about the signals that get applications binned. Key insight: AI-generated resumes might be doing candidates more harm than good — the lack of personal effort is showing up as a red flag. Leanne shares her own resume-writing expertise, breaking down why job hopping isn't automatically bad (it depends on what you achieved and how long you stayed), and why design matters less than readability.
2. Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For 2024 Hilton took the top spot, with Cisco and Nvidia close behind. The conversation among commentators has shifted to what makes a workplace genuinely appealing — especially to Gen Z. Hilton's Chief HR Officer talks about building a future-focused culture, and Leanne highlights the generational nuances in what "great place to work" actually means.
3. Dharmesh Shah on culture as a product From Lenny's Podcast: HubSpot's co-founder applies Python coding principles to company culture. His core idea — "culture is a product" — and that every company builds two products: one for customers and one for employees. Al and Leanne unpack what that framing means for how leaders should treat culture design.
🎧 60 Second Highlights
A quick revisit of last week's episode with Dave Kline from Management Accelerator. Al reflects on how early in the conversation, leaders were asked for the characteristics of great leadership — and Dave's insights on management excellence are worth another listen.
💬 Workplace Clinic
Two listener questions, tackled live:
- Recruiting sales superstars: "I have a sales role that's been open for months — how do I find someone coachable and high-performing without waiting forever?" Leanne breaks down the difference between performance and productivity, the psychometrics you can use, and why "sales ninja" job titles will get you hunted down.
- NPS for culture: "I'm a new manager thinking of using an NPS score to measure my small team's culture — are we ready?" Short answer: NPS measures satisfaction, not culture. Leanne walks through what to use instead, including the free option of just sitting down and talking to people.
(Got a question? Submit it via the connect link below.)
📅 Coming Up on Thursday
A masterclass in HR with Ben Branson-Gately, founder of CharlieHR. Al and Leanne preview a conversation about the real function of HR and how Ben grew his own culture at CharlieHR.
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
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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. Nice.
Al ElliottCheck out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to the Truth, Lies and Work 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 work.
Al ElliottQuick reminder, Truth, Lies and Work, not Truth, Lies Workplace Culture. A couple of weeks ago, we changed the name slightly just so we could broaden the conversation. And we've also brought a new Tuesday episode where we round up what's new in the world of work, which is what you're listening to right now. Good for you. Well done.
Leanne ElliottWell done.
Al ElliottWell done. Yes. Good for you. So coming up today, we have, first of all, the news roundup, which I just talked about, where we talk about resume red flags.
Leanne ElliottNotice we're saying resume.
Al ElliottI haven't just seen the word CV. Do we not use that anymore?
Leanne ElliottYou can say CV.
Al ElliottCurriculum vitae. Uh, not quite sure why I said it like that. Resume red flags. What then? What makes a great workplace? And finally, how a billionaire built an amazing culture by thinking of it, thinking of it in terms of Python code. If you don't know what Python code is, it's basically what nerds use to talk to, um, LLM, large language models. There we go. That's cleared that up, hasn't it? Lee, what else we got? You're looking at me as if to go, what the hell is wrong with you, Al?
Leanne ElliottSo many words I've never heard of put together in a sentence that still makes no sense to me. We will also be bringing you the 60-second highlights of one of our recent episodes with the amazing Dave Klein, the founder of Management Accelerator, or Management Accelerator. We're still not sure.
Al ElliottAnd after the break, we'll have our Workplace Clinic. Still got to think of a name for it. Maybe, I don't know, um, the Culture Clinic. That sounds a bit weird, where I put your questions to Leanne around workplace culture.
Leanne ElliottBut first, it's your favourite time of the week. It's the news roundup. Cue the jingle.
Al ElliottOkay, so I will kick things off. I saw an article on the CNBC website. I don't really normally read it. It popped up in my feed and it said there were 3 red flags that recruiters look for when deciding whether to progress with an applicant. Now, the first one was about AI-generated resumes. Now, there are lots of AI tools out there that say they can create your resume, but what you might forget is that recruiters look at resumes every single day, so they can probably instantly spot when something is generated by AI. I don't know about you, Lee, but if I see any comments now on LinkedIn or Twitter or whatever, I kind of almost assume they're AI until they prove otherwise and they use things like, you know, Delve and all those kind of weird words. Now, the journalists talked to Michelle Reisdorf— solid name— who is the district director at recruitment firm Robert Half. Huh. I'm not sure I would have gone with my surname if it was half. It sounds like that's just too many, too many jokes. But they basically said that if you use AI to write a resume for you in minutes, it tells me you didn't put a lot of time and thought into applying to my job. She goes on to say that AI is great for refining your resume, but not creating it end to end. Leanne, thoughts? I am.
Leanne ElliottI know quite a lot about resume writing, actually. It's been a big part of my life, well, part of my career, really. Um, I think the first thing is it depends at the level, right? If you're going for more of an entry-level role, you could probably get away a bit more with help from AI. If you're a senior executive, you're not creating a resume, you're creating a brand, and you need to engage an expert to help you with that. And if you do need any recommendations, we have plenty. Get in touch, we will refer you through. The thing is, I think resumes— headline rule about resumes— they're not about you. They're not about you. They're about what value you can bring to the organisation you're applying to. I don't care about how many GCSEs you got back in 1923. I'm not bothered about whether you won Employee of the Year 25 years ago. I want to know what you achieved in your last organisation, how you can help me achieve it in my organisation now. Yeah, I think that's a headline. It's less about you and more about what you can do for the company. But yeah, probably not a great move to get AI to, uh, write your resume. Um, and also as well, kids, can we just also make sure you always put your telephone number and your email address on it? The number of resumes I see from all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds who don't put their contact details is just unbelievable. And I also had a client once back in the day whose email address was twatbollocks@hotmail.com. Probably worth setting up another email address. If you are, if you are applying for a job.
Al ElliottThat makes perfect sense. Well, there you go. The little masterclass for you there in resume writing. The second red flag was a little more obvious, just making sure it's formatted well, easy to scan, because that's your first hurdle really, getting from the pile into the maybe pile. So if it's written on MS Word from 2004, it's much less likely to get it on. Well, I don't know. I can't say that because I'm sure that everyone should, that you should be looking at the contents, but I'd imagine that first impressions count in this situation.
Leanne ElliottYeah, it needs to be readable. I think that's the thing. I'm not sure design will necessarily strike you out on the first sift, but don't use columns. Applicant tracking systems can't always read the information in tables or columns, so just leave it out. Simple formatting is always best.
Al ElliottThe 3rd red flag is quite interesting, though. The author suggests that frequent job hopping is bad. Lee, what do you think about if someone's hopped a lot of jobs? I mean, you can't go back and change history, but at the same time, if you're thinking about taking another job, is job hopping going to It depends how many times you've hopped.
Leanne ElliottIt depends the time that you've stayed with the organisation. It depends what you achieved in said role. If you're more of a consultant-type person, you may well hop every 6 months because you've delivered that mandate. Doesn't really matter. You probably need a way of, of how you create that narrative so it flows and it doesn't look too busy. Again, engage an expert. But it really, it does depend on the nature of the hopping. I think the thing that's going to cause a recruiter or hiring manager anxiety is if there doesn't seem to be much justification for the hopping, and the hopping has been across roles, industries, organisations without any kind of key themes. Again, it's not the end of the world if you get an expert, you can probably overcome a lot of that. Um, but yeah, I think that that could potentially be a red flag for me.
Al ElliottWhat about you, Leanne? Anything caught your eye this week?
Leanne ElliottWell, the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2024 was released over the last week. I know Hilton hit the top spot. Cisco and Nvidia made up the top 3. Congratulations to all of those. But that is not the story that I wanted to share with you, Al.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottSo this list has sparked some conversation amongst commentators about what constitutes a great place to work in 2024, especially given the impacts of COVID the cost of living crisis, and of course, you know, the, the huge numbers of layoffs that we continue to see. Of course, there's only really one group to ask, isn't there? And that's the people whose entire career has been shaped by the shit show that's been the last few years are Gen Zers. So an article from Fortune was based on the research of Scott DeCarlo, who asked the question, is any workplace great for Gen Z? So basically how it worked is that Scott looked at the list of best places to work and the data behind it, and then compared it to industry averages to see if there are any trends. And the research found that Gen Z are probably not surprisingly to regular listeners, looking for meaningful work, trust in management, and job security. The numbers really do speak for themselves. It was, it was quoted that 72% of Gen Z find their work meaningful at top-rated companies, compared to an average of just 48%. But this is where it got interesting, Al, because as well as stability, Gen Z also values flexibility individuality, and unsurprisingly, absolutely despises micromanagement. So yes, they are seeking that balance between a stable income and a work environment that respects their autonomy. How dare they? Who do these kids think they are? Um, and of course, diversity and equity was up there as well. I think it's all summed up by the sentiment that Gen Z really do believe that we work to live, not live to work, and Hilton seems to get this. According to employees, it's not all about the money. It's about the treatment, work-life balance, and the opportunities that are given in Hilton. So there was a lovely quote there from Laura Fuentes.
Al ElliottNice pronunciation.
Leanne ElliottThank you. Hilton's Chief Human Resources Officer, um, who was featured in the article. She said building a fully human experience at work is what the company strives for, and it focuses on all types of wellness— mental, physical, and financial— offers a suite of innovative benefits, including continuing education, support for carers, and help with healthcare. What does it all mean? Well, I think Gen Z are having their doubts about finding a perfect job, but what they are committed to is prioritising workplace culture, stability, meaning, and life beyond work, and I applaud them.
Al ElliottYes, well done, well done Marriott, well done Gen Z, well done everyone, well done Leanne.
Leanne ElliottWell done everyone, good job, good job, good job, good job.
Al ElliottApart from Gen Xers who, who just ruined everything. Okay, so the last thing I wanted to talk about this week was just giving a shout out to the fellow podcaster Lenny Rachitsky. We've had some hell of a— we've had some names today, haven't we?
Leanne ElliottMhm.
Al ElliottAnd he's got a podcast called originally Lenny's Podcast. Um, now Lenny's an ex-product manager for Airbnb, and he now hosts amazing guests on his podcast who talk about growing a business, all aspects of growing a business. One of his latest episodes had the co-founder of HubSpot, Dharmesh Shah. Now, I'm not just talking about this because HubSpot is our sponsor. They don't know I'm mentioning this, and I wanted to talk about it as Dharmesh is a fellow nerd, and I kind of like the way that he approached culture. So this is the billionaire co-founder of HubSpot, a really cool guy, by the way. If you're interested, go and look at his Twitter. He does really cool things. But this is a snippet of Dharmesh talking about the culture at HubSpot. Culture actually already exists. We have a culture, right? It's like Whatever it is. So, and it's working pretty well. Company's doing well, people seem happy. And so I said, okay, well, what I'm really trying to do is kind of describe the culture that's there. So it's not creating culture, it's articulating the culture so we know what it is. And so then this is the geeky side of me showing up again. So the question I asked myself, if I could write a Python function that would measure the probability of success of a new person coming into HubSpot, What would the factors be? What are the things that if I could measure, if I knew I had a truth function that says, oh, on a scale of 0 to 10, here's how they rank on this and this and this and this and this and this, I could approximate how successful and how good they're gonna be for HubSpot. So once I took on this task, I sent an email to the company. It's like, hey everyone, I'm just gonna be like digging into culture. So I'm gonna send this kind of survey out. I just wanna get us an understanding so I can write And the negativity and the visceral response to that one email was literally up until that point, it still ranks in top 3, like worst things I've ever, like people felt so negatively and so strongly and I was not expecting it, right? Like, and I'll tell you the one line that really like just was gut-wrenching was like, here we're talking about culture, Next, we're gonna have like posters up on the wall about excellence. HubSpot is not the company that I thought I joined. And I, it's just like the geek part of me is like, I just not, I did not know how overloaded that idea of culture was, right? And so then when you dig into it, it's like, oh, because so many companies had done it so poorly and just didn't, you know, walk the walk or whatever. This is why there was a reason why there was this kind of negative response. So anyway, so I went back to my thing. It's like, I get it. So I'm gonna try to describe what we have and I'm gonna write this truth function. So I wrote the slide deck, which had exactly 16 slides, and that answered this one question, which is, if I could write a Python code, what are the factors? So what are the attributes that we would look for in humans that— and the reason I came up with that particular question is that I got this, when I did the survey, I did the NPS survey, which everyone knows that you would send to customers. It's like, oh, on a scale of 0 to 10, How likely are you to recommend HubSpot as a place to work? The other NPS question is like, why did you give that answer? As it turns out, here's the thing that I learned, which was troubling. Everyone was happy. And the reason they were happy is because of the other people at HubSpot. That was the number one reason, which is both good and bad. It's like, okay, well, that's awesome, but that doesn't tell me anything, right? It's like, okay, well, that's like a self-reinforcing kind of recursive loop. And so that's when I was like, okay, well, what makes the people at HubSpot the people that are at HubSpot? Let's come up with the attributes that define what it means to be one of these people that makes other people happy. And so we came up with the original kind of set of things that were embodied in that slide deck. And I called that slide deck the Culture Code deck. And the reason I called it the Culture Code deck is not because it was a code of conduct or a moral code, or this is how companies should be run. It was because if I could write code to kind of define the culture of HubSpot, this is what the code would look like. And since that point, it's like the question I keep asking myself is if we could have an operating system that ran the company, it's the geeky part of me. Not that you could do that, but what would that look like, right? And so, and the big kind of unlock, there are very few original ideas I've had that are any good.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottOne of them is this thing that culture is a product, period. And that every company builds 2 products. One is the product they build for their customers, and the other is a product they build for their team. That's what culture is, is the product you build for your team. And let's say we stipulate that that just happens to be true. Just humor me for a minute. If you assume that's true, Then a bunch of things kind of follow from that postulate, right? That hypothesis, which is, oh, well, just like we would never build a product without talking to customers, we would never build culture without talking to the customers of the product, which are the people. Just so we do a repeat of that original NPS survey we've been doing every quarter now forever to figure out what the NPS of that product is, our culture product. The other thing is like, okay, well, there's no product person in the history of humankind that would've said, oh, I built this product, it's awesome, I'm done. No one would ever say that. And this is the number one mistake I think founders make is that they say, oh, we have an awesome culture and my job is to preserve the culture. That is not the job. The needs of your customers change, the needs of the employees change, right? The culture exists to help the great people do great things for the company. That's why the culture is there. And the things they need later as the company scales are different. And so just like you would never freeze the lines of code of a product, you would never freeze the lines of code of a culture. Culture should be iterated on just like you iterate on, on product. So go and listen to the entire episode. It is really interesting. Yes, of course it's an hour and 20 minutes, but it is really interesting. It'll fly by. So go and do the washing up or the hoovering or something.
Leanne ElliottI have a question.
Al ElliottYes.
Leanne ElliottIf we are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals, why hasn't Dharmesh been on our show?
Al ElliottDharmesh, if you're listening, that's a very valid question.
Leanne ElliottMaybe because we haven't asked.
Al ElliottWell, I did try and ask on Twitter and then I, then I mistyped or it autocorrected HubSpot to HoobSpot.
Leanne ElliottUm, at least it wasn't BoobSpot. That would have been very embarrassing.
Al ElliottYes, exactly. So, uh, so maybe we're on his, uh, we're on his naughty list.
Leanne ElliottMarie, if you're listening, hook us up, would you? And of course, speaking of great guests, we had the amazing Dave Klein on the podcast last week, last Thursday's episode. Dave and his wife have created the Management Accelerator, which helps managers become great leaders. That's the Management Accelerator. I'm just being Silly. I asked him what signs he saw in bad managers. And it turns out, he'd already asked and answered that question within his program.
Al ElliottIt's funny, very early in our program, we ask all the leaders in there, you know, just give me the characteristics of the worst managers you've ever had. And it's always the same things. It's like, they're indecisive. They take credit for other people's work. They take credit and give blame, right? That's like, well, when it works, it's my fault. And when it doesn't, it's somebody else's. They're totally inaccessible, right? You can't ever get them when you need a question answered. You can't get the resources you need, et cetera. In the most extreme versions, like they are toxic, they're emotionally abusive, they're rude. They, you could also sort of look at where they stand in the organization. Like, are they progressing? Are they respected? Because the easiest way to sort of accelerate your career is to be behind a star, right? If they're rising, they're creating space and opportunity behind them. If they're stuck, you're stuck too. Just like one version of that where it was a reorg and the manager sat me down and said, hey, have you seen the Godfather trilogy? First question, like not even like, hey, nice to meet you. But I thought that's an odd question. But sure, I've, you know, I'm of the age where one would have seen the Godfather trilogy. And he sits back totally relieved and says, that's so good because 100% of my management philosophy is premised on that, on the Godfather. And it was very much power and loyalty and, you know, keeping things within the family. And I thought— I kept waiting for the punchline and it never came. Like, he was dead serious. And that's like at a Fortune 500 company. And I'm thinking to myself, wow, like, if that's what I'm experiencing, imagine how terrible management is in the world.
Leanne ElliottIf you've not listened to episode 87 last week, go back and listen. Dave is awesome.
Al ElliottHe really is. And also, he's— go and look at it on YouTube. We're uploading the video as we speak. I've totally messed up my framing, so it looks like I'm just sitting in the corner, but his— oh my God, his video and audio is just beautiful. As an, as an audio and video nerd, he's nailed it. Okay, after this short break, we'll be back with the Workplace Surgery, and Leanne will be answering questions about building a great workplace. See you in a moment.
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. Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in threes—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless, seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. Uh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and 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 ElliottWelcome back. Is it the clinic? Is it the surgery? Is it another name? Nobody knows, but Al has used all 3 in this episode. Al, do we need a jingle?
Al ElliottYeah, we're gonna have to come up with a jingle, a name. I'm gonna do an entire brand exercise. I'm gonna bring the team. I'm gonna take the team offsite, whiteboard it. We'll whiteboard it. We'll raise some Up the flagpole and circle back, circle back, and we'll do all those things and we'll come back and we'll probably still call it the Workplace Surgery.
Leanne ElliottCan we say COP Tuesday or EOD Thursday?
Al ElliottShush, I'm trying to do my bit.
Leanne ElliottAll right, sorry, carry on.
Al ElliottSo here's the first question, and this person has asked to be anonymous, so I will read it out to you. I have recently been promoted to sales manager and I wanted to hire a couple of new salespeople. However, should they be like me. I've always thought of myself as a driven, target-orientated person, and a lot of people describe me as a superstar or sales ninja. Whilst this is nice to hear, I also know that I was actually a tough person to manage. I often wanted to do things my own way, and at the time, my previous manager wasn't great, so I didn't really listen to him. Should I risk making my job as a manager difficult and hire great salespeople who might be tough to manage? Or should I stick to, and this person uses this quite weakly, medium salespeople, which is probably not, you don't want to be called mid, do you? Should I stick to mid salespeople, but might be easier to manage? Leigh, what are your thoughts?
Leanne ElliottMy first thought is, if you call this job sales ninja, I will find you. I have a very specific set of skills. I will find you. Please don't do that. Yeah, I mean, hiring superstars is, is a tricky thing. The main thing you want to look for in anyone who is high performing is if they are coachable. If they are coachable, then they will respond to you as a manager, your feedback, constructive and positive, um, and you'll probably get what you need to out of them if they're coachable.
Al ElliottCan I ask you quickly though, just use that coachable, cool word, but how would I know if someone was coachable and someone wasn't?
Leanne ElliottWell, you can use psychometrics. You could do it as part of your Um, an exercise in your recruitment process. Coach somebody through, provide feedback, and then ask them to, to redo an exercise. That would be an example of, of seeing if somebody is coachable. Ultimately, you want to, you want to, you want to attract the best people for the role and the most suitable for the role. That might be superstars, it might be people like you. But here's a crazy idea, anonymous writer. Rather than hire people like you, what if you hired people who had skills and strengths that you may need developing yourself. A good team will have— be a collective strength, although I understand sales as individual contributors. I mean, I think it's the same same, isn't it? You need to do a job analysis, you need to figure out exactly what, what is required for the role, and you need to create an evidence-based criteria to objectively recruit into that role, not only to make sure that the people you bring into the business will have strong work performance in the future, but to make sure that you are not being biased and hiring people just like you, which could land you in a lot trouble legally, um, as well as ethically. Um, you don't want any discrimination claims, Anonymous. Um, so yeah, any preconceptions you have on that is probably not a good idea. So overall, I'd say no.
Al ElliottWell, I, I might say no. I might disagree with you on a certain specific, because it doesn't actually say in this question whether this, this, this manager is bonused on overall targets. And if you are bonused on overall targets and you're bonused generously on overall targets, then I can see an argument for saying, okay, I'm gonna make my life more difficult by, by hiring people. And of course, doing it the right way, like Leanne said, but hiring people who might be more likely to be an amazing salesperson, but it's gonna make my job a little bit harder, but it's worth it because I'm actually gonna get more remuneration, um, because the entire team's bonused. I don't know.
Leanne ElliottThe thing to remember is that if you're recruiting superstars, A superstar can have a performance and productivity drain that is something like 3 times what a toxic employee would be. So, if you have one superstar in your team who— you'd think that the rest of your team is then going to try and punch to hit that level, but the research shows it's the opposite. It actually brings down the overall performance of the team. So, recruiting superstars is really difficult unless they're coachable, because they're going to be coachable that Um, you know, there are team dynamics. Yes, you do want people to be hitting their sales targets so you make your money, but if they're hitting their sales targets by sharking other people and stealing leads and deals, that isn't going to go down very well. And then just this, this toxic environment will, will spread. It's, it's good to be competitive, it's not good to become toxic. So I think that's worth bearing in mind. The other thing to bear in mind as well is that— and what, where I think my, my nervousness is for you anonymous, is you said, you know, should I hire people like me? No, because there's lots of different people out there who are phenomenal at sales. My first job was in sales, and I was really freaking good at it because I was quite nice and quite solution-driven, and people trusted me. Whereas I think my, you know, the, the guy who I was always kind of like, like vying for top spot in terms of, um, sales performance was proper manking, like, yeah, but you want to buy this, you want to do that, you want to do that. Like, he'd stand up and pitch, you know, on those people. Brilliant, different style. So again, I think it's more a case of actually the, the skills that you need, not necessarily how those skills are presented, would be my thought.
Al ElliottWell, there you go. Well, I think that's a really nice, well-rounded answer. You should do this for a living, Leanne.
Leanne ElliottYou sound surprised.
Al ElliottI know, you should do this for a living. Okay, well, are you ready for a second one then?
Leanne ElliottSure.
Al ElliottOkay, so I've got a second question here, and it's about NPS surveys. So I think this is quite a new manager, as in like someone who maybe has a business for 2 or 3 years. I'm trying to read between the lines here. I'm thinking of using an NPS score. And just before anyone's— if anyone's not heard of NPS, it's Net Promoter Score.
Leanne ElliottIs that what it stands for?
Al ElliottYeah. So I'm thinking of using an NPS score for my small team to measure my culture levels. I don't think we're ready for a full engagement survey yet, and we use NPS for our customers to find out if they're happy. So I thought that it would be a good measure of how my team feel about the organisation, kind of like a snapshot. Is this a good idea?
Leanne ElliottDepends on your motivation. In terms of measuring cultural engagement, no, because an NPS is measuring satisfaction. Employee satisfaction is correlated, is related to positive employee engagement, but it's not, it's not necessarily a kind of the only factor that predicts engagement. And also, it's so one-dimensional. Say you find out that your people aren't very satisfied. What are you going to do then? Because the key to insights is knowing why. And what a great employee engagement survey will do, a predictive model of engagement will do, will ask the questions, show you the sentiment, and then tell you why people are feeling like that so you know where to take action. You say you're not ready for an engagement survey. If you've got more than 10 people, you're ready. If you've, um, you know, it's, it's as simple as that. An NPS, I mean, you can But I don't think you'll learn much interesting from it or anything really that, that useful.
Al ElliottYeah, I think it's like, I mean, NPS from a marketing point of view or sales point of view or product point of view. Yeah, great. It's going to give you a little sort of gauge of how well you're doing in terms of how well, how satisfied your customers are. But it's not going to tell you what part of your app or software or product they don't like. It's not going to tell you whether someone's going to buy again. It's just saying they're satisfied. Yeah, yeah. Overall, they would probably recommend it. But you don't know the nuances behind it. I think this is where you're really going to going to get the value from a proper engagement survey. There's lots on the market. Most of them are algorithmically based or AI based. In other words, they people your your people fill them out and then an algorithm gives spits out the report. There are some which are like ours, which which actually are analyzed by psychologists. There's one psychologist sitting opposite me right now who does a lot of ours.
Leanne ElliottHello.
Al ElliottSo just choose which one. And of course, the cost, you know, you can go to Hibob. I think it's like £6 a month or something per employee. Obviously something else which is a bit more manual is a bit more expensive, but there's a range of solutions there.
Leanne ElliottIf you want to also just find out how people are thinking and feeling about your organisation, just sit down and ask them. Obviously it depends on the level of psychological safety you have in your business already, but it sounds like it's a fairly small small company, it sounds like you're quite hands-on with your staff. Either you or your manager sit down and say, you know, how are we doing? What's, what's working? What's not working? How can I make your job easier? And that is probably going to get you more— give you more insights into how people are currently thinking and feeling about your business. And that's what engagement is. It's how people think and feel and behave in your business. So I'd say rather than, rather than— if you're going to collect data, quantitative data, Then it's only as useful as the quality of the tool that is gathering that data. And I'm not sure an NPS is going to be that thing. If you just want to gain some insights into how people are doing, ask them.
Al ElliottSome brilliant advice there. And I would also say that I think, Leanne, you've— there is certainly in the UK, there's an HSC free version.
Leanne ElliottOh yeah, there is. Yeah, there is. Yeah. Which you should actually be doing anyway, depending where you are in the world. But if you are from the UK, you do actually have a legal obligation once you have 5 or more employees to basically stress test your organization every 12 months. Um, if you're not doing that, you should be. There is a tool called the HSE, um, Management Standards Survey, I think that's called. It's based on the HSE Management Standards, which is basically 5 standards that the Health and Safety Executive have deemed, with the help of psychologists and lots of research, have deemed important to be present to reduce stress. So for example, people having control over their work, not being subjected to too much change, having good relationships with their managers, etc. Those things support engagement and wellbeing and therefore reduce stress or mitigate the risk of stress. It's completely free. It's on the HSE website. It's got a whole manual. It's got a scoring sheet with it. Really good. I think it's 30 questions, so it's not too intense. Massive, worth checking out if, yeah, if you're not quite ready to invest in a, an external provider or, or expert yet. That's a really, really good place to start and will give you some really great, great insights. What that will do is it won't necessarily give you an overall view of engagement within the business, but it will tell you where your risk factors are. So, for example, if you're scoring low on relationships, Then you know that is an area to, to work on. Um, but yeah, well remembered, Al. That is a really good tool.
Al ElliottAnd one last thing I would say about this, that if you, you've said that we don't think we're ready for a full engagement survey, um, that could, I mean, there could be a cost implication if it's a very young business with very tight margins. That's fair enough. I would just warn you that if you don't think you're ready, then are you actually saying you don't want to know? We had a client, well, luckily didn't become a client, but we had a client who we won't name, uh, because, uh, she is pretty prolific on, um, on LinkedIn and you'd be able to work it out. Uh, but yeah, we had a client, a potential client who came in and was like, I just, oh, I don't want, I don't want to get bad news. So, and then she posted this awful picture of her, like, you know, looking really nervous, like comedy nervous, going, I'm asking everyone today, we're doing the survey. I hope it comes out all right. What a way to influence your, your team because all your team are going to see that.
Leanne ElliottMm-hmm.
Al ElliottAnd also, what a way to sort of set it up. You want to know what's wrong. If you're selling, if you are selling stuff and it's not going well, you don't want to be going, you don't want to go to talk to the customers who are happy. You want to go and talk to those people who are going, I'm not buying your crap. Um, and so you need to find out why.
Leanne ElliottSo there's so many different analogies there, isn't there? It's like if you're like physically you're having really bad headaches and you're feeling sick and, and achy, you're not going to wait until you feel better again to go to the doctor to get the reassurance that everything's okay. You want to find out What's wrong so it will be okay. And so many others continue, you know, it's, um, the best time to do insights is when you think people are really fricking unhappy because that's when you're going to get the most value out of them.
Al ElliottAnd you're also going to solve any potential problems because if your people aren't happy, then you can guarantee that people are going to be leaving or looking for other jobs or not doing their very best or perhaps sabotaging the organization. So it's definitely worthwhile. Anything else to add to that?
Leanne ElliottNo.
Al ElliottNo. Lovely stuff. Okay, so that's the end of another Tuesday episode. Join us—
Leanne ElliottI thought there was going to be a third one. There's just 2 today.
Al ElliottI'm going to make one up. So, John from Oxford writes, all right, join us on Thursday for a masterclass in HR with the founder of one of the UK's leading HR platforms, Ben Branson-Gately. Fancy name. We've got some I'm loving the names. I'm just wondering—
Leanne ElliottNow our name's rubbish. I blame you.
Al ElliottYeah, but to be fair, I blame my dad. Anyway, so we've got the— so joining us on Thursday, we have got Ben Branson-Gately, who is the co-founder of, um, the Charlie HR.
Leanne ElliottOh yeah. Oh yeah. Bet you've heard of that, listener, haven't you?
Al ElliottYeah, it's a good one. It's a good one.
Leanne ElliottYes. Ben, he opens up about HR, the real function of HR, how he grew his own culture at Charlie HR. I think that's always interesting how an HR services his company manages people and culture. Always interesting. Um, and yes, answers the question, at what size do I need HR? Well, maybe, maybe the person who's asked the question should also listen to that episode and might get some insights from Charlie as well, Charlie HR, to know if they're ready for, um, some kind of engagement survey. But yeah, so subscribe to that, Anonymous. And was that Anonymous, or was that somebody that we knew?
Al ElliottIt's potentially one of— potentially either. It's Schrödinger's original poster because I didn't write down the name. So they both have a name and don't have a name. So anyway.
Leanne ElliottYou know who you are. Subscribe, tell 1,000 of your closest friends, and we'll bring you that awesome interview with Ben Branson-Gately next Thursday.
Al ElliottSo we'll see you next time.
Leanne ElliottBye.
Al ElliottBye-bye. Quick note on that though, I think—
Leanne ElliottI'm so sorry, I was giving you my thoughts. I thought that was it. There's more.
Al ElliottThere's more.
Leanne ElliottI would have been much more shorter in my commentary.