Episode 89 · 11 April 2024 · 37:24
89: Is HR really the enemy? With Ben Branson-Gateley from CharlieHR.com
Featuring Ben Branson-Gateley
89: Is HR really the enemy? With Ben Branson-Gateley from CharlieHR.com
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Opening thoughts on compassion in the workplace
interview#compassion#workplace
Welcome to Truth, Lies & Work
Introducing Ben Branson-Gateley
The origin story of CharlieHR
interview#charliehr#hr#small-business
Addressing HR misconceptions
interview#hr#misconceptions#social-media
Decision-making and leadership insights
interview#decision-making#leadership
Cultivating a strong company culture
interview#company-culture#hr
The strategic role of culture in business success
interview#culture#business-success
Personal leadership philosophy and avoiding comparison
interview#leadership#comparison#philosophy
Engagement surveys and revenue focus
interview#engagement-surveys#revenue
Ben's personal journey and dyslexia as a superpower
Consistency over ambition: Ben's approach to success
interview#consistency#ambition#success
Celebrating podcast milestones and encouraging reviews
interview#podcast#milestones#reviews
Show notes
Is HR Really the Enemy? — with Ben Branson-Gateley
Guest: Ben Branson-Gateley — co-founder and CEO of CharlieHR, on a mission to make HR work for small businesses.
HR gets a bad rap. Scroll through TikTok or YouTube Shorts and you'd think HR was the villain of every workplace story. But Ben Branson-Gateley is here to set the record straight.
Ben joins Al and Leanne to unpack why HR is so often cast as the "bad cop," how small businesses can build people systems that actually help them thrive, and why the best decisions are usually the ones someone disagrees with. Along the way, he shares how his dyslexia became a superpower, why comparison is the thief of joy in company-building, and the leadership philosophy that keeps him grounded.
Top 3 Takeaways
HR isn't the enemy — it's the investment. When you hire someone, you've got HR. The question is whether you do it badly or well. Done right, HR is a commercial investment with a return, not a cost centre or a police force.
Disagreement is a feature, not a bug. If everyone is happy with a decision you've made, you've probably played it too safe. Good decisions create productive friction — and leaders should welcome it.
Culture is always in flux. There's no "set it and forget it" culture. It changes as the seasons evolve, and the job of leadership is to keep asking: is our culture enabling people to be successful, or is it getting in the way?
More From Ben Branson-Gateley
- Follow Ben on Twitter: twitter.com/Gateley (but as he says, he doesn't post often!)
- Follow CharlieHR on Twitter: twitter.com/JoinCharlie
- Connect with Ben on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bengateley
- FREE 7-day trial of CharlieHR: charliehr.com/join
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.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Ben Branson-GateleyYeah, honestly, I feel a lot of compassion and a lot of love for, you know, colleagues and friends out there who are having to do that hard work. And, and sometimes are being painted with a bad brush because what they're doing is that they're doing the things that need to be done, and that is sometimes a really difficult pill for people to swallow.
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 and psychology of work.
Al ElliottIf this is your first time listening to us for a couple of weeks, you might have noticed that we've changed our name to Truth, Lies and Work, not Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture. We're still talking about workplace culture, just thought it'd be a bit snappier, a little bit easier to remember, and potentially looks better on our thumbnail as well. We're also, to celebrate that, we've gone to 2 episodes a week. This is Thursday episode where we have the interviews. You're used to this one. There's another Cheeky Tuesday one just popping up where we have a workplace surgery where Leanne will put questions to Leanne, and also we have like a news roundup and all the other kind of fun things. Probably a quiz at some point, I would have thought, Leanne. So as I say, today Thursdays are still all about having amazing guests.
Leanne ElliottLet me tell you about today's amazing guest, Ben Branson-Gateley. Ben is the co-founder and CEO of CharlieHR, the HR software for small businesses. While dyslexia made his time at school, tough, he persevered and graduated from St. George's University of London with a BSc in biomedical science. It was around this time that he met his co-founder Rob O'Donovan, and together they built an incredibly successful social media agency called Born Social. But about 8 years ago, they saw a gap in the market for an HR solution that was built specifically for smaller businesses. So like every entrepreneur that's ever walked the earth, they decided to build it. Today, CharlieHR is now one of the leading HR platforms in the UK, with over 4,000 companies using it to manage their teams.
Al ElliottWhat I loved about interviewing Ben was that he genuinely took the time to think about the questions I asked and how he was going to respond. Um, I think I know someone else who's a bit like that— my co-host Leanne. Um, so if you're watching this on YouTube and you see a fair number of jump cuts and whatever, it's not me cutting him out, it's just me removing the moments where Ben genuinely was like, Hmm, let me think about that.
Leanne ElliottLet's go and meet Ben Branson-Gateley, co-founder of CharlieHR.
Ben Branson-GateleyI'm CEO and co-founder of CharlieHR, and we're all about supporting small businesses, um, with everything that relates to HR within their company. Been doing that for about 7, 8 years. We have a core software product that supports, you know, nearly 4,000 small businesses, micro businesses in the UK. I think I'm known for hiring great people and building great teams, um, and that's kind of really why I do what I do. It's because of the people that we get to work with.
Leanne ElliottBen and his co-founder spotted a gap in the market, and knowing entrepreneurs as I, as I do, I'm sure this wasn't the first idea they discussed over a coffee or a Friday night beer. But what made building an HR platform so compelling?
Ben Branson-GateleyWell, it came down to how passionate Ben is about You know, every business in the UK, every business in the world that is employing people needs some type of software to automate some of the processes that relate to these tasks. So, it is a massive industry. There are companies big and small that span it. Our take was this: often in these situations, it's the really small companies that get ignored.
Al ElliottRight.
Ben Branson-GateleyIt's the people that have got 6, 7, 8, 9 employees. And there's not a lot of great software out for them to use because a lot of these providers build software for, you know, companies that have got 500, 1,000, 2,000, 10,000 people because that's where the money is, right? But it's those It's those small companies, those really small companies that are often ignored. But that is where all the innovation, that is where all the new ideas, that is where every great invention or problem that we need solved for the coming 10, 20 years is gonna start. And so we're really passionate about small businesses. You know, their success rate is It's very low, right? If I had 100 small businesses today, in 10 years' time, only 30 of them would still be around. So, we just want to kind of make that survival process as easy as possible. And so, the bit that we take responsibility for is the people bit, is the HR component. And we focus on that market, yeah, because we believe in small businesses. We believe in the power of small businesses and the change that they can create in the world.
Leanne ElliottCool.
Ben Branson-GateleyThe core problem that we're solving for is that in a company that is, let's say, 30 people, you normally won't have anyone that is an HR professional. You wouldn't have really a head of people, you wouldn't have a head of HR, HR manager. It's unlikely, right? What you typically have is a leader, a business owner who is having to deal with HR as part of what they do on a daily basis, right?
Al ElliottYeah.
Ben Branson-GateleyIt's like, if you hire someone, you've got to do HR, right? If you've got one person on your team, you've got to have some eyes on what it means to do HR in a business. They've been lumped with it. It's not what they show up to work to necessarily do, but they've got to handle it. And so, we're your first hire. We're the first step that you take to improve your systems, your processes, the way you do things from an HR capacity within your business before you decide to hire a full-time person. And so you start with our software. We make sure that you collect all the information you need to collect about your employees. We make sure that you're starting to track people's time off and their sick leave and their compassionate leave. We make sure you've got all the right documentation and policies. If you need to speak to an expert, you can speak to one of our team. That's the problem that we're solving for, is that there's a gap between having to be responsible for HR within the company and actually hiring someone full-time to do that. And we fill that gap. But yeah, it's something that we sort of talk about where we see ourselves fitting in within the HR journey. We're your first system, we're your first hire, we're the first step that you take as a small business where you're like, I've got to do something about my HR. You come to us. As you progressively evolve, you know, As your company grows, we're probably then not going to be right for you. But that's the magic of what we do, which is just focusing on one very particular use case, one very particular customer. You know, most of our companies are less than 100 people, um, and we really thrive within that demographic.
Al ElliottNow, TikTok and YouTube Shorts is all full of posts about HR, and it seems that HR are the baddies in the workplace. Ben puts forward a pretty convincing argument that this is not the case. Yes, they have to make difficult decisions, but they're often necessary decisions to ensure the business can continue to grow.
Ben Branson-GateleyNot, we're not there to police work for sure. There is a relationship between you and the company. They're investing in you, and what they're expecting is that that investment in you is gonna create an outcome which is greater than what the investment is. We've always had incredibly strong cultures in our organisations. We've always prioritised our people in a huge way. And I actually don't think that these 2 ideas are completely separate. I think they can live harmoniously together. I think and believe that you can build a culture that supports the individuals in the building, that prioritizes mental health, that is open and transparent and supportive of all—
Leanne ElliottMm-hmm.
Ben Branson-GateleyDifferent types of people, but is also focused on being a commercial, highly commercial organization. That's what companies do. And I think through some of these good times, when money was cheap, free, and easy, and focusing on profitability maybe wasn't that important, we forgot a bit about that. And we, as company owners and leaders, we did a disservice to our teams, which is We let them, in some cases, believe that work was about the perks, and the benefits, and all this other stuff. And it's not. That is the dusting, it's the sugar on top of the pie, but it's not the filling. The filling is the relationship of, you've got some skills, Al, that I think I can use to the betterment of our organization.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Ben Branson-GateleyCommercially, and it's an investment. I'm expecting more out the other side than I'm going to put in. And I think the reason why that's starting to come to the fore, and I've had lots of conversations about this, but there was a recent blog by a very good friend of mine, Jessica, who I think captured this really, really nicely, which is that in these hard moments where we are now, where we're having to put a bigger focus on Profit, a bigger focus on performance, there's definitely a bit of a reckoning happening, right? And people are like, oh, this is really difficult and quite gnarly. And that's a really important conversation to have. It's a really important conversation. And I think sometimes, unfortunately, HR are the people having to have that conversation and say, yeah, we haven't got the money to spend on higher salaries or better benefits because times are tough.
Al ElliottYeah.
Ben Branson-GateleyAnd so I think that's why sometimes people see HR as the bad person or the bad cop in the scenario. It's because HR are doing the redundancies. Yeah, redundancies are a part of what happens when markets go up and then markets come down. There's a reckoning, there's a reevaluation.
Al ElliottYeah.
Ben Branson-GateleyThere is evolution that has to happen with resistance. And sometimes I think HR are the people that are having to do that. And so, yeah, honestly, I feel a lot of compassion and a lot of love for colleagues and friends out there who are having to do that hard work. And sometimes they're being painted with a bad brush, because what they're doing is that they're doing the things that need to be done, and that is sometimes a really difficult pill for people to swallow.
Leanne ElliottBuilding a business relies on making hundreds of decisions, probably each day. I was interested in how Ben approached these decisions, especially as the company and his team grew.
Ben Branson-GateleyIt's good if people disagree with your decisions. In fact, if everyone is happy with the decision that you've made, You've made a bad decision. In fact, you haven't made a decision at all. If your decision is without any compromise, it's not a decision. A good example might be, you come to me and you say, I really want to manage people. Oh, that's great, Al. Love that. You've really got aspirations to manage people in your career growth journey. So, I'm like, we should give Al a direct report. We should have someone on the team reporting to Al. That's great. Super good for you. Probably quite good for that other person as well, right? Because they've got somebody with loads of energy that wants to manage them. But we've just added an extra layer, an extra person in our leadership structure. We've complicated things, we've slowed things down, we've orientated our organizational model around an individual rather than around what's best for the company. It's a mistake I made a bunch of times in my career, which is Thinking individual first rather than thinking company first. If you're at the top and you're not making calls that are uncomfortable, you're not making calls, basically. I'm very fortunate that I've only ever worked for myself. You know, me and my business partner started working together when we were 16. 16, 17 years later, you know, we've built 2 super strong organizations, but it's taken also that time to really get to really get used to, you know, what does it mean to be a great leader? What does it mean to be a great executive, right? And you have to get some stuff wrong in terms of going through that process. So yeah, I love to be right, but I prefer to be wrong. I know that I'm, like, learning more from that experience than I am from the decisions that I get right.
Leanne ElliottLet's get to the good stuff— culture. HR is often left to execute, as Al said, the bad and the ugly of people and culture decisions— things like redundancies, grievance investigations, disciplinaries. But great HR leaders also operate as business partners, working hand in hand with leaders to shape and build a great culture in which people and performance thrives. But the biggest mistake I see is leadership defining a culture with no employee consultation. and then expecting everyone to fall into line with it. Culture is a collective process, and it evolves.
Ben Branson-GateleyIf someone says, oh, the culture at my company is great, often they are— often the way that that's been communicated is it's positive. It, it, I, I, you know, it's like, I get great benefits, I get great perks. A company's culture is the untouchable, uncontrollable combination of the interpersonal relationships of everyone in that team and/or organization, and it's constantly in flux. And as a business owner, what you can do is, like, try and push it in directions, but you can't control it. And, you know, if you're having a bad week, the culture changes. If you hire someone, the culture changes. If you fire someone, the culture changes. If you promote someone, the culture changes.
Al ElliottYeah.
Ben Branson-GateleyThe culture changes. The culture changes as the seasons evolve. So, it's constantly in flux. And yeah, what we want to try and do is, like, have a direction that we're trying to point it towards. You know, almost I see it as a boat with sails, trying to, like, trying to point it in a direction. But ultimately, like, a sailing boat is kind of at the beck and call of what the winds are doing.
Al ElliottYeah.
Ben Branson-GateleyThere is only so much control that we can have. I've gone on this huge journey, as it comes, with my views on culture. You know, you mentioned we started 2 businesses. Our first was an agency, we ran that for 5 years, and Charlie for 7 after that. I've always been very people-focused, but I've made a lot of mistakes when it comes to culture. And often those mistakes have been early on in my career, failing to Understand what culture the business needed. So, this is how I believe every single founder, every single business owner should think about culture is they should start with what the business is trying to do, where we're trying to get to, right? What's our, what are our aims for the next couple of years? What culture do we need? If you are Goldman Sachs, that gives you your answer. If you are Monzo, that gives you your answer. If you're Charlie HR, that gives you your answer.
Al ElliottYeah.
Ben Branson-GateleyWhat is the culture that we need? And then, how do we think about the group of people that are going to enable that culture, and the policies, and the processes, and the ways of working that are going to support that? Rather than, what culture do our people, you know, what culture do we want? Or, what would be a nice culture to have? What would be a good culture to have? What would be a culture that we can write loads of fun content and blogs about? Culture should be a strategic tool. to help us achieve things. And so, it should start with where we're trying to go, what are we trying to do. And so, yeah, our culture is very different this year than it was a couple of years ago, because where we are as a business has changed. We've matured, we're profitable, we're more focused on the core value of what we're trying to do. And so, because of that, we don't celebrate things as much as we used to, you know. We celebrate the things that are right, the things that are correct, the things that are strategically relevant. We have a higher bar, right? We probably don't dish out as many rewards and things like that as maybe we did 2 or 3 years ago. We're more considered, we're more focused. There's less stuff that happens that is extraneous or outside the core of what we're trying to solve for, the core of what we're trying to achieve. And as these things evolve, the people that want to be part of that and don't want to be part of that shifts and evolves, right? And, like, that's the beautiful thing about it. If you think about it top-down, people will select themselves in, and they'll select themselves out. Rather than, if you think, what's the right culture for this group of people? You'll often build the wrong culture for what the business is trying to do. But if you think about what's the business trying to do, what's the culture we need for that? And then you'll build a culture that will select in and select out the people that are right.
Al ElliottWhat are the signs that a great culture is actually evolving?
Ben Branson-GateleySo, yeah, I would say the first thing is stepping back. Is it enabling your people to be successful? Can you see evidence of that? Is the end output of your team or your organization, is it what you want it to be? If those things line up, then I think you're moving it in the right direction. But yeah, you should be very easily, you should very easily be able to see the type of organization you're building, and how that's helping your people to be better. You know, like, I firmly believe that your job as a leader is to make the people that you work with as good as you can make them. Do that, you're going to have a successful business. Yeah, it's your culture enabling that. That is what our job is as a CEO. It is to create an organization and enable all the facets of it, enhance every component that sits within it. And the way your company operates, the way people work, all of that stuff should be enabling those things.
Al ElliottYeah.
Ben Branson-GateleyIs it getting in the way? Is it frustrating? Is it causing angst? Is it causing anger? Is it— or is it making things smooth, allowing people to be really effective, allowing people to focus and do great work? I'm less interested in engagement and much more interested in sort of what's the quality of the stuff that's coming out the other end.
Leanne ElliottIt's always difficult to avoid the temptation to compare your culture to the culture of other organizations. But Ben recommends that you really shouldn't.
Ben Branson-GateleyI always think about that phrase, which is that comparison is the thief of joy. And, um, in the company-building world, in the technology world, it's, it's, it's rife. You know, there is so much comparison. There's so much— who's raised what money, you know, who's on what list, like, who's on what blog post. I don't think it makes you a better business to be focused on that stuff. So, there have been some great books that have inspired my thinking, but I also really believe that what is right for one business is not necessarily right for another. So, you've gotta go your own route, you've gotta do what's right for you. I fundamentally believe that every leader is only capable of being a version of a leader that is true to them, right? It's no use looking at Mark Zuckerberg and going, I'd love to be like Mark Zuckerberg. It's like, well, you ain't. You're not Mark Zuckerberg, so you're not gonna be like him. It's much better to connect with who you are and, you know, what is it that can make you successful? What is it that can make you great? And be that version. I got super distracted in my career. Um, tried to be different versions of different people at various points, you know, like before I was the CEO, I was the COO. And when I took over as CEO, the first mistake that I made was trying to be like the old CEO, because that's someone that I like, my business partner, someone that I massively look up to, someone that I hugely respect. And I thought, okay, I need to be like him. That's the only CEO I'll ever know. Well, I'm never going to be like him because I'm not him. I haven't got his skills, I haven't got the things that he can do, but I have all these other skills and things that I can do, so I should focus on those. For that reason, I have no social media, I'm not on social media. I have some accounts, none of those apps on my phone, I never log in. You'll occasionally find me rolling through the odd YouTube video. I look at LinkedIn occasionally, but I think a lot of those things honestly make people feel worse.
Al ElliottYeah.
Ben Branson-Gateleythan they make people feel better. Because we look at those things and we think, oh, I'm not that. I haven't got that award or that accolade or that many followers or that many this. And I know that's ironic coming from someone that previously founded a social media business, but yeah. So, I try and, as much as possible, stay in my own lane, focus on the people around me, focus on the team that we've got, and celebrate the wins that we've created within our context. Because yeah, I think, I think being happy every day is kind of a pretty important thing to me, you know. I think we talk about success— if I can enjoy my life, that's a lot of success. Because I know a lot of very quote-unquote successful people who are pretty fucking unhappy.
Leanne ElliottWhat part do things like engagement surveys play in developing a great culture? Do you drop a survey and then magically everything is fixed?
Ben Branson-GateleyYou know, we, we do an engagement survey. It's a data point, it's an indicator. I mean, I would— I wouldn't— it's a— you asked, is that a relevant tool? Yes, it's a relevant tool. Is it the top of your pyramid? No. You know, there's lots of metrics that you can track. Revenue is the top of the pyramid because ultimately that's what we're here to do. I don't want to sort of sugarcoat it, but we're a commercial business. We have shareholders, right? Our job is to grow revenue. I think people don't like talking about money because it's like icky, and it makes us feel like we're not good people. All these things are a spectrum, right? So, we're probably at one side, and Goldman Sachs are probably at the other side.
Al ElliottYeah.
Ben Branson-GateleyI know that we're building an impactful business if we're making more revenue, because it means we're supporting more companies, and they're choosing to spend more money on our solutions and products. That's how I measure impact. If we're not growing it, it means we're getting worse at trying to solve the problems that we're trying to solve for our customers. So, that's what I look at every day. That's what we track. That's what we think about. And everything cascades up into that. And so, it's very possible that we could be doing a really good job there and have everyone miserable and hating their life. And so, yeah, that's why these other indicators allow you to triangulate yourself. What's the engagement like? Okay, cool. You know, like, what's the vibe? Go sit in the office. How do people feel? As humans, we want simple answers, right? We want to know, there's one number, look at that one number, if you're doing that thing, you're doing a good job at X, Y, and Z. It's never that simple, right? It's never that simple. The answer is always not one thing. It's normally like at least 10 to 50 things. That's how I try and think about our version of success, is I'm sort of looking at a constellation of stars, and where do I feel that we are within that? Every one of those numbers and data points tells you something that you can use to change the way you're doing business. But yeah, I think it's really important to be very, very clear about what the top outcome the organization is moving for. And by the way, I'm not necessarily saying that I'm a proponent for every company needs to be money-making, because absolutely, you could be a charity, and our top number is donations received or donations deployed.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Ben Branson-GateleyLet's be really clear about what the game is. Let's not muddy the water. Let's not make things weird and opaque. Let's be crystal. Because I think the sooner that you do that, the better it is for everyone that is involved.
Al ElliottIn every story, there are obstacles, and most successful people face significant obstacles on their way to success. As we mentioned earlier, Ben has dyslexia, but he sees that as a superpower.
Ben Branson-GateleyI'm a pretty dyslexic person. So school wasn't massively easy for me, right? Because rote learning, the way our education system is currently set up, it's like just bad news for me, right? Not gonna do well. I'm grateful for it because it's made me be me and I love me. I love this little sort of journey that I've been on. And so, yeah, I'm definitely a product of all of that stuff, as you all are, right? That's the beauty of life is that you realize that There's very little that you can do because all these things happened to us when we were like kids and children and toddlers in some instances. Can't go back and change those things. All we can do is work out how do we live with them, how do we work with them, how do we accept them and move forward. What I was, what I could bring was effort. And so, you know, ultimately, like, that's what I've sort of built my career on is just Bringing that consistent effort, because I know that's where I can succeed. I'm not gonna be the smartest person in the room. In fact, most days, I'm not. I'm like one of the dumbest people in the room. I work with a lot of people that are a lot smarter than me. I'm very happy hiring people that are a lot smarter than me. But, you know, what I bring is that consistent effort, and I can bring those people together. I can get them to trust me. I can point them in the right direction. And so, yeah, I just kind of worked out where I was going to be successful because there's a lot of, there are a lot of professions in life that I wouldn't have been able to be successful at because the way they're set up and the way they're designed. I wanted to be a doctor, but I didn't get the grades, right? Because I couldn't consume that amount of information. But this I could do. Yeah. Because I can just show up every single day and just put in that high level of effort that's required and be consistent, be consistent for the people I work with, for our team, for our investors. for our customers. I've been going basically, yeah, we can call it 15 years since university without a break. I obviously have holidays. I had a sabbatical for a month in there, but like, I've not had any career breaks. I went from one company straight into the other. And like, I've definitely had low patches and high patches, but I'm just one foot in front of the other. That's it. Take a step.
Leanne ElliottComing up after the break, more from Ben. Did 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.
Ben Branson-GateleyAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking.
Al ElliottAnd you're not gonna say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in threes—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Ben Branson-GateleySeamless, seamless.
Al ElliottTell us about your latest episode, Phil.
Ben Branson-GateleyUh, 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?
Ben Branson-GateleyIt 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.
Ben Branson-GateleyDefinitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back.
Al ElliottI'll cut that out. Keep that in.
Leanne ElliottRegular listeners will know that Al is indeed a super nerd when it comes to IT, code, and software. And I'm, well, being honest, I'm probably not clever enough to get it. So building a platform like Charlie HR feels completely unattainable to me. Ben has some amazing advice if you feel the same as I do, and it's not what you might think.
Ben Branson-GateleyWe've always had technical people in the business. None of the co-founders were technical. So, yeah, we have a head of engineering today who's been with us a long time. We have a great engineering team that's about 10 to 12 people. Software is very easy to build these days, right? It's never been easier to teach yourself to code. There are lots of out-of-the-box tools that you can use now, like low-code tools to build products, websites. Yeah, the barriers to entry, the costs of building software have never been lower. I think one of my reflections is that building the product is not the hard part. There's lots of people that build great softwares, great products, but never build great businesses. And there's a gap there. And the gap is, can you match The problem that your product solves to a specific customer niche that needs that problem solving? And more importantly, do you know how to get those people to use your product? There are amazing products that I see on a weekly and monthly basis that have no customers. They're great products. And I would say most of the time, they are better products than ours. They're like Swisha, Their code's cleaner, they're faster, they're easier to use, maybe. There's more detail and finesse in some of the ways they've thought about the product design, but they haven't done the bit in the middle. And yeah, 8 years of building a software company, that's probably one of my biggest reflections, which is that people get so obsessed with the fun stuff, the stuff that's flashy and interesting and cool and trendy. Oh, we're using this great new language or this amazing framework. None of that matters if you can't find a customer base and get them to use it. And so, yeah, I think we're seeing a bit of resurgence, a bit of a change, a bit of a change in the winds in, like, product and software development across the world. We've been a bit highfalutin. We've been a bit sort of, like, in our own heads, in our minds, thinking that we're these great conquerors.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Ben Branson-Gateleyof technology that we can build all these amazing things, and if we build it, they will come. No. If you build it, you have to work out how to get people there. And that's the really, really difficult part. I don't think there's really anything complex in what we built. It's a glorified spreadsheet. But the part that's most important is, understanding how we can get customers to use the product.
Leanne ElliottPsychologists are fascinated with the minds and personalities of entrepreneurs, and I am no exception. We spoke to Ryan Sherman, Chief Science Officer at Hogan, a personality assessment provider, way back in episode 26. He explained that entrepreneurs and organized criminals share a huge amount of personality traits. One of those is determination, or being able to stick at something for a long time, even when the going gets tough.
Ben Branson-GateleyI don't think I'm driven in the sense that there are so many people around me. And yeah, my, my co-founder is a great example of this, who are way more ambitious than I am. What I am is consistent. I'm really, really, really good at just getting up every day and maintaining like a high level of energy. Not the highest, but a high level, being consistent and continuing to push forward. In, you know, in my, in my sporting life, I'm like really long runs, um, which is not about how fast you go or anything like that, or where do you place. It's just about completing it. And a lot of the time it's about the enjoyment of the journey. And philosophically, that's kind of how I think a lot about life, is, you know, make sure you take in the views on your way up, um, because it might be cloudy when you get to the top. And so kind of what I pride myself on and what I try and focus on is just Consistency, you know, and doing a good job every day, enjoying every day, taking in those moments, you know, making sure to reflect.
Al ElliottSo there is the story of Charlie HR and its founder Ben, and, and a whole bonus heap of advice around culture which is added absolutely free of charge.
Leanne ElliottBefore we go, let's get another little nugget of wisdom from Ben. We asked Ben at what point leaders need help with HR, his answer is gloriously simple.
Ben Branson-GateleyI think I would, I think I would start with just, like, disorganization, right? If, if you don't know where, if you don't know where you've stored your team's passport details, if you don't know where, um, you know, to go to find someone's start date, and if you have no idea how many holiday days someone's taken, Then you need Charlie.
Leanne ElliottIf this does sound like you, then here's what you need to do.
Ben Branson-GateleyThey should just head to charliehr.com. We've got an amazing blog up there, um, we've got an amazing newsletter you can sign up for that comes out weekly with great insights and content, um, loads of helpful guides, we've got loads of free stuff. You can also sign up to our product for a free 7-day trial. If you're less than 5 people, so a really small company, you can have the product, the whole product, for £5 a month. So You know, that's almost the price of a pint or less than the price of a pint in London these days. So we try and make it as easy as possible for people to get on the ladder.
Al ElliottIf you like this episode, go find us on LinkedIn, search for Truth, Lies and Work and tell us all about it. Perhaps even tag in Ben and say how much you enjoyed listening to him. And if you have a question that Leanne can answer on our Tuesday Workplace Surgery, then you'll find our email in the show notes. Look, let you into a bit of a secret. We've just hit and we've Quite— we don't really publish these things. We've just hit our half a million downloads since we started, which is obviously incredible. It means a lot of people are enjoying our stuff. Hopefully you will too. So if you do, then look, we'll continue to try and bring you the very best guests, the very best content around work and workplace culture. In return, click subscribe and please just give us a review. Give us like— if you, if you only got a second, give us rating. If you've actually got few seconds just to write a review. It makes such a difference, and we're not begging, we're just gently encouraging.
Leanne ElliottThank you to everyone that has listened and helped us hit that really cool milestone. We will be back next Tuesday with This Week in Work. We'll be talking about the news, things that have been going on, some highlights from maybe other shows. We shared another, another highlight from a different podcast last week, and of course we will Answer your questions, so do get in touch. Until then, bye bye.
Al ElliottBye.
Leanne ElliottThe temptation. Temptation.
Ben Branson-GateleyTemptation.
Leanne ElliottTemptation.
Al ElliottAll different types of wo— do all that again, Al. I have a feeling you're taking the piss out of me, but I can't work out how or why.
Leanne ElliottI think I'm gonna start limiting you to 3 so's and 2 amazings per episode. What part do— that's very high-pitched.