333: The Top Mistakes to Avoid when Managing Remote Teams with Fibre HR Foundr Lisa Spiden - The Entrepreneurial Way with A.I.

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Friday, November 20, 2020

333: The Top Mistakes to Avoid when Managing Remote Teams with Fibre HR Foundr Lisa Spiden

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Lisa Spiden, Fibre HR

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In this week’s Foundr podcast interview, Nathan Chan sits down with Lisa Spiden, CEO of Workforce Analytics and Foundr of Fibre HR to discuss everything a team leader needs to embody in order to help their team do their best work.

Spiden discusses key tactics and methods that team leaders can adopt to help lead their teams through any crisis. Not only does this mean offering support for them during the work-from-home culture shift, but also taking the time to understand and adapt for each individual’s needs and workflow.

With something for every team leader, this interview will help you to understand how to build a culture within your team, hiring strategies, and top-talent selection.


Key Takeaways

  • How Spiden found herself working in HR, and the origins of Fibre HR and Workforce Analytics
  • Spiden discusses tactics to keep team morale high during forced WFH
  • Why staff motivation is the key to staff retention
  • Team standups, retros, and other remote team bonding exercises
  • Addressing top-talent selection, and whether pro-culture or pro-skills is best for your business
  • Building a great culture inside and office, and how to build on it strategically
  • Understanding what your team wants, what drives them, what motivates them

Full Transcript of Podcast with Lisa Spiden

Nathan: Yeah. So just for context, the first question we ask everyone is how did you get your job?

Lisa: How did I get my job? Well, it’s funny you should say that. I’ve worked in HR for about 20 years now and I sort of did the corporate thing, worked at a few banks and a few large FMCG businesses and retail businesses here in Australia and also overseas in London. And I did a particular project in the last retail business I worked in and a number of other competitive retail businesses approached me and asked me to do the same project with them. So I actually started doing some of that work for those clients and consulting on my own. And I thought, I’ll do this consulting work until I get a real job until I finish that and get a real job. And 13 years later, I’m still looking for a real job.

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I’ve created two businesses, fibre HR and workforce analytics, as you’ve said, both in the people space, one in the purest generalist HR world, which is hiring, firing policies, all design, everything people that’s fibre HR and the other businesses around mathematically constructing rosters and using artificial intelligence machine learning and all that cool stuff as it relates to developing rosters and what have you. So in answer to how did I get my job? I don’t know what my job is. My job is doing some really cool stuff, working with some awesome businesses and doing all things people related. So that’s how I’ve come to where I am now and yeah always looking for new and exciting stuff, but there’s a lot out there and yeah, it’s how I started my businesses.

Nathan: Yeah. Awesome. So as I said, you’ve taught me so much about people and one thing that I never forget you said to me was when it comes to kind of retaining staff was like, you need to find out what they want and literally ask that, like what do they want? And one plan for somebody, whether it’s an ESOP plan, whether it’s performance-based bonus incentive scheme plan or whatever like, people have different motivations. So that’s what I’d like to start with because I think right now it’s a really crazy time with business and people watching this might be… Have a team or looking to hire or kind of unfortunately having to let people go. And what do people need to be thinking about when it comes to kind of retaining your team and making sure your team feel looked after, acknowledged and what can people be doing?

Lisa: Yeah, really good question. So I guess the thing and bringing back to the context of why sort of I’ll often say work out what the drivers are for each one of your own staff is, I’ve worked at so many companies over the last 20 years who have sort of developed a one-five, one size fits all model to retention. So I’ve worked in companies that have built basketball courts for their staff, I’ve had others that have had really amazing bonus programme and there’s always really cool stuff that are out there. But when you actually talk to the staff, some of those things aren’t what actually drives them and gets them up in the morning to go to work and I think that’s a really important thing. First off, really identifying who your top talent is in your business to make sure that you know the ones that you desperately need to keep, I’m not suggesting that you don’t want to keep all of them but at the end of the day, there are going to be some really critical players in your business that you want to make sure you can retain.

And then absolutely working out and having a really honest conversation with them about why do they love working with you? What does it get some up in the morning? What’s motivating for them? And then making sure that whatever retention strategy you put in place is linked to that. If someone gets up in the morning and says, what’s really important to me is the camaraderie working with a great group of people and delivering a goal. Well, in this weird iso COVID period, they’re going to be sitting by themselves at home, potentially with their family but feeling relatively isolated. With those people you want to make sure that they’re still feeling engaged. They’re still feeling that they’re a part of a team, it’s still delivering. They’re still feeling like they’re delivering value to the business. And how do you keep them feeling connected to the business at a time that otherwise people might feel quite isolated.

Other people are purely driven by the dollars and they might be ready to buy their new house and new car or send the kids to school, whatever it might be. And so our retention strategy around bonus programmes, financial bonus programmes might be more attracted to those people. So I guess what I would say that space is the one size fits all and what you might think is cool and what you might think works really well for you may not be what’s actually going to retain your staff. So I just really encourage you to have a really honest conversation with your staff around why they actually enjoy working with you and what would it be, what would it take for someone to take them away from your business and tying that into your retention strategy.

Nathan: Interesting. So when you talk about kind of might be people at home, what would you advise to businesses right now in terms of maintaining a really solid culture? Like with everyone working from home and remote, how does that spread like yeah. What do you say to clients or what do you recommend right now?

Lisa: So I think in terms of retaining people and keeping them motivated at home, one thing is people are going to respond really differently to working from home. Some people that I work with, even my own team, some absolutely love it. They can roll out of bed, jump onto the computer, do some really cool work, spend more time with kids and actually really love it. So from that point of view, as long as they feel that they’re adding value to the business and getting their own home time with the kids, they’re cool with that. Others are really struggling. You know, some people might live alone, others get a huge amount of energy by being around people and are really struggling to be motivated. So I guess in terms of what I would suggest for clients, one is to make sure that you’re empathetic to your staff.

You are touching base with them and even just asking how they’re going, if people aren’t coping so well, giving them some solutions to help them through that, whether that be an invitation to speak to yourself when they need to chat, whether it be putting an employee assistance programme in place, so access to a counsellor or things like that, some of those things are really useful. But the main thing I would say as a leader is you’ve got two different duties of care. One is a duty of care to your staff, to make sure that they’re looked after and doing the right thing by them. The second is your duty of care to the business. So one of the things that I think keeps people buoyant is actually following a leader. That’s really excited about what the future looks like. You’ve got to be really conscious around how you present in this particular environment.

If every time you’re jumping on your Skype or your Zoom calls and things like that and you’re really flat. You feeling like the world is collapsing around you. You don’t know what’s going to happen with your business. I can guarantee that it’s permeating throughout your team. Everyone there is sitting there with high anxiety. If you’re actually turning up to these meetings, being empathetic about the fact that it’s a tough time, that but being able to, I guess, really describe what the future looks like and be able to take your team on that journey. I can guarantee you will get them faster into a space of being really positive around wanting to move with you to the future rather than sitting in the doom and gloom, which can sometimes overcome us in this really crazy time.

Nathan: Hmm. Yeah. That’s really great advice. And as a leader, what have you done to kind of stay motivated and stay pumped up during these crazy times? Like you all like a superhero stuff going on.

Lisa: Not at all. I think what motivates me is I’ve got a really clear goal around what I want my next three years to look like. And so what motivates me is in my particular business or particularly in the workforce analytics business, we’re doing some stuff that no one else in the world is doing and that for me is exciting. I’m working with a really smart team, just a team around me that are doing some really cool stuff. So I get motivated by my team, I get energy off the team, as well as having a really clear plan and seeing that we’re getting closer and closer to delivering that. On the fibre side, what motivates me is we work in some really awesome companies. So we work with a lot of small and medium businesses that are doing some really cool stuff.

And that is really exciting to work with those businesses and see how they’re overcoming this really crazy time as well. So for me, my vote motivation is I just think that, but it’s my view on life. You can take a really dire, a glass half empty view of the world at the moment. There’s some really crap stuff going on to be quite honest. So no one’s shying away from that, but what’s happening is some of the businesses I’m talking to are absolutely flourishing in this time and it’s their ability to be able to pivot and to look at what they do really well, and to look at what their customers need and to be able to work out in this time.

How do they maybe change their direction slightly to be able to navigate this time? And what I’m finding is the businesses who are doing it really well, they’re doing some really cool stuff that motivates me. Talking to those types of people motivates me, so that’s what keeps me up. What gets me down is the opposite of talking to people that are just constantly, you know, this is really dire, it’s really depressing. What have you, I’m happy to start with the conversation, but what I really love doing is moving really quickly forward into how do we actually move forward with it rather than focusing on all the doom and gloom. Otherwise, I think everyone just gets depressed.

Nathan: Yeah, I know. I agree, that’s spot on. So what can people be doing kind of like, what are some things that you can do to kind of keep that team work, that camaraderie, that kind of feeling like even though not everyone is in the office together, what are some things that you got like you’re doing in your company or you guys recommending to clients?

Lisa: Yeah, so we do regular stand ups, like loads of businesses. So pretty much every morning we get up and stand up, which just allows us to connect in the morning. Most of it is obviously work related and what we’re delivering and whatnot. And I’m lucky that the businesses are actually relatively interdependent. In my businesses, people work really closely with each other for a shared goal. So that in itself creates teamwork and people speaking to other people and feeling like you’re adding value because you have to contribute something to the broader picture. So that in itself creates teamwork. Just having some fun with it as well. We’ve got… We joke around about what people are cooking, people are going out for walks and seeing how far they’re going for walks at lunch now in Melbourne Australia, where we’re allowed to go out for an hour or so.

So that’s part of been capped by that. What people are cooking, what deliveries are coming in. So there’s a joke, happening around. Who’s got the most deliveries coming in and what they’re ordering. And I just think it’s just being personal and having conversations with your team, just to, you can tell on these calls, who’s feeling flat and who’s not, not all the time, but generally you can see if someone’s not themselves and maybe I’m taking it offline, having a conversation around how potentially you can help them get through this tough time, but I’ve heard… We haven’t done it but I’ve heard of some really cool team building activities that are all virtual, that companies are going to, so virtual escape rooms, virtual-

Nathan: Really?

Lisa: Yeah, there’s some virtual escape rooms or some things like Google, sort of, what do you call it? Like in a hide and seek for having to find things in Google and there’s a whole lot of really cool team building activities that I’ve seen companies using. I haven’t used them myself, so I can’t attest to how good or bad and different, but there’s definitely some things like that you can do if that’s of interest to your business. But again, just being really careful that you kind of checking in with your team around what they want. Some people are trying to get on with work, as well as they’ve got little kids running around and they just want to be as efficient as they can. So throwing an extra hour of fun team activity in there everyday might actually be stressful for some of those people because they may actually not have the time or feel that that’s another load on them. So it really is talking to your team and saying, hey guys, this is really important.

We want to get through this together. What do people need? And letting them choose, letting them sort of suggest some of the ideas and getting on board with that as well. So it’s sort of a bit team-led as well. The other thing that we do is we do retros. So once every two weeks for those people who do or don’t know what a retro is, obviously we actually get together probably I think it’s two weeks or four weeks, two weeks, can’t remember where we go through what we’ve really enjoyed over the last, no, sorry. It must be monthly. What we’ve enjoyed over the last month, what we’ve got questions around and obviously what we’re not loving. And that also allows us to flush out any of the things that’s not working well in the business or challenges that we’ve got that people might want to lean in to and address so that we can just make it better and better going forward.

Nathan: Oh, that’s really good. That retro is one I’ve never heard you talk about that. I remember we used to do it at the end of every forum.

Lisa: That’s why we did it because I used to do work it. So it gives me a voice. It gives you a tape of voice. It makes sure that even as a leader, you’re picking up some of the things that people aren’t enjoying or some of the questions that are sitting there that you might actually know the answer to but not realise that you haven’t articulated at it particularly well to your teams. So it’s just a way to check in and just see how things are going and what we can improve on.

Nathan: Yeah, well, that’s really-

Lisa: Loads of stuff online so people can google, retro, agile sort of retros, and it’s got lots of different ways you could do it. And there are software and things that you can actually do it online too, to capture it and allow people to anonymously write things down and then talk about it once. This have all been put up.

Nathan: Interesting. Okay. So I’m curious as well, when you talk about… So that’s great to get that feedback and constantly iterating. I’m curious as well around stand-ups I don’t know, like can you give context around what stand-ups are and what your agenda looks like? Or what that could look like for someone?

Lisa: Yeah. There’ll be loads of people who will be cringing when I tell you how ours is run because it’s not a typical agile stand up. So how it came about is one of my businesses had a very heavy focus on software development. So we bought an external team in who bought the agile methodology and we used to do a daily stand-ups with that software team. And they were really short short on updates on what they got done the day before and what they’re working on that day and any blockers that they might need help with. So idea being sort of, 20, 30 seconds of person and quickly whipping around so that people know what they’re doing. It’s not intended to be how busy is everyone and who’s got the busiest workload or anything like that. It’s just to make sure people are really clear as their work is quite interrelated on who’s working on what to keep it moving forward. Because we’re not in the office together, our retro, sorry, our stand-ups go for probably about 15 minutes every morning, and it’s probably a little bit deeper.

So sometimes we actually go into a little bit of an issue, any resolutions that we need or help that people might need in the standup. So that’s not a typical format that most companies would attest to in terms of doing stand-up. But I guess what we’re trying to do is say, okay, it’s in the morning, what have do people worked on? What do we need to know? And does anyone need help? And let’s quickly try and unravel the ones that are short to let people go ahead and be able to work efficiently throughout the day. So it is really a bit of an update, but it’s also a great way to check in with everyone in the morning and just to sort of see how everyone’s going. So it’s a bit different to an online job stand-up.

Nathan: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And I’m curious as well as you, as like teams and companies and stuff grow, if you had like 30 people or 50 people on a call all going through on a stand-up, but you generally at some point breaks out, right?

Lisa: Yeah. I wouldn’t suggest ever trying to have 50 people on a stand up. If you’ve got 50 people on a zoom call, it’s more likely to be a kind of information sharing or company update or something like that. When you’ve got 50 people together, you’re more likely to break it down and sort of do it in smaller teams of seven or so people that are group. So it’s more likely to be department-led or people working on the same things getting together so definitely wouldn’t suggest. Even catching up on regular zooms and things with a team of 50, that’s probably less interactive. It’s more sort of one-dimensional of someone giving you information, but the stand-ups and things like that, and retros are usually smaller groups. So sort of seven or so people, I have heard some really cool stuff with stand-ups.

We haven’t done it just because there’s no way I’d be able to do it as you said I’ve just had a couple of babies and I’m super unfit, but I’ve heard people doing stand-ups where to make sure they stay short, sharp and shiny. Everyone’s going to do squats for the period of the stand-up, which forces them to talk really quickly so that they have to fall over, or people are doing the sort of, what are they called, planks and things like that. So that again, it forces everyone to talk quickly to get through it. So you’re not on the stand-up call or stand up meeting for sort of half an hour. So I’ve heard some pretty cool stuff like that, but not in my team, not with me.

Nathan: Yeah. That’s cool. And I’m curious as well with people working remotely. One thing that some, I guess CEOs or founders might be going through is just that trust because some people might not be used to working remotely and they haven’t empowered their team to kind of just work freely. What is your take there? What advice do you have?

Lisa: The first thing is right now you’ve got no choice. Everyone’s working from home …..so people in that scenario, they’re going to have to get over it to a degree. It’s more, I’m working out how, I mean, at the end of the day, there will be people who are really efficient working from home and others that aren’t so efficient working at home and the main thing is just having really clear deliverables. Being really clear with your team about what your expectation is of them and then having ways just to make sure that you’re really clear about what the deliverables and what the outcomes are. So, whether it be that you’re having regular catch-ups with them to talk through what they’re doing, it’s probably less around trust me, it’s more like clarity. If so, if you are giving someone clear goals around what they’re delivering and they’re sitting at home not doing the job, to be quite honest, you’ve got the same rights legally.

Well in most country well what I know of, not every country, I can’t talk on behalf of every country, but I know here. If someone’s not doing their job, you’ve got every right like you normally would with an employee in the office to manage them for under-performance or not doing what you’re asking them to do. So regardless of whether they’re working from home or working in the office, there’s still a requirement for them to actually get the job done that you’re asking them to do, assuming it’s a reasonable job.

So just because people are working from home, doesn’t mean everyone can go and do whatever the hell they want and just not do their job, but you need to make sure you’re really clear about your expectations. That you’re having honest conversations with them when they’re not doing what you want them to do, but then if they aren’t doing it, absolutely you’d be going down the normal performance management route and exiting from the business. If they’re not doing what you need them to do, hopefully that’s not what’s happening. But I guess what I’m saying is don’t just sit on your hands and assume that if people aren’t delivering that you can’t do anything about it. But the first thing is obviously to make sure they’re clear of what their expectations are.

Nathan: Yep. That makes sense. I’d love to also switch gears around kind of talent and finding great people. It’s not something that a lot of people talk about in the business world so much or in inside in terms of like content, I’ve noticed. But from my experience, personally once your company gets to a certain size or like any time you want to grow your company, it’s people, right? It’s people build that company and if you do want to grow, it is much easier if you have fantastic people that are trained and at what you want them to do. And they’re really savvy, they might not even need to be trained to have that experience. But yeah, that’s something you’ve spent a lot of time cutting your teeth, finding great talent, fostering great talent. Do you have kind of like an overall take on that? Or where would you like to start? Because I know it’s a big topic that, yeah.

Lisa: Yeah, absolutely. I think… So there’s so many different areas I can talk about in terms of talent. So feel free to direct me if I go off course here but a couple of things, one is, it’s really important if you want to take it to grow your business that you get the right people into your business. And sometimes you have different types of talents and different people in your business at different times of the evolution of your business. So at the beginning, you may not be able to afford the really expensive CFO or marketing director or whatever it might be and it may not be appropriate that you need them. But I think it’s really making sure that as your business grow, you’re really looking at the talent in your business and what you need and making sure that you’ve got the right people in the right seats to actually take your business forward.

So sometimes as I said, people are the exact right people for the journey and the path that you’re on at that time, but they may not necessarily be what you need going forward. And so you’re constantly assessing where you’re taking your business. Have you got the right people in the right seats of the car driving that particular part of your business and not being taking too long to address or to address an area that may be underperforming because maybe an area has outgrown the person. So if an area is outgrowing the person, the first thing you’re looking to do is, can I actually help that person evolve? You know, if they’ve been on moved the journey so far, is it around external coaching? Is there other things that I could do or do I need another team member in to supplement the things that they don’t do particularly well, or in the worst case scenario, do I need a completely different person in that seat to take the business forward?

And unfortunately that may be the end of the journey for that person within your business. So I think it’s really about making sure you’ve got the right people in the right seats at the right time to take your business where it needs to be. But then what you want to do is make sure that you are really clear of who is the top talent in your business. So if you had to take time off, if you need the business to run without you, or to even help you grow the business to where it needs to be, who are the people that are currently sitting in your business that are amazing and that you cannot afford to lose. And then what is your retention strategy? Like we spoke before Nath, what are you doing around those people to make sure that they don’t disappear?

Because if you need to replace someone who’s doing an amazing job in your business, it’s going to cost you a hell of a lot more than just the salary of the new person you put in. You’ve got a whole lot of IP and knowledge and the people that are sitting in your existing business, you’ve got often the dedication and the loyalty, the history, all of that stuff around the people. So bringing someone else in, if you’re losing good talent, isn’t ideal. But sometimes that’s just part of the journey where someone decides that they’ve had their time with the business so it’s time to move on. So really identifying your talent and making sure you’ve got a strategy around how to retain them. The other thing is not being shy or taking too long to identify when you’ve got poor talent in your business. So if you’ve got people in your business that aren’t doing what you need to do, that aren’t where they need to be.

Absolutely first off, you’re having a conversation with them to make sure that your expectations are clear and they know what’s needed of them. And then if that’s not working, you’re either, as I said, moving them into a role that’s complimentary to what they can do or moving them out of your business if there actually isn’t anything that they can do where it’s adding value. The businesses that perform really well have got a team of highly performing individuals and talent within their business. That they’re not sort of three or four people who are really smart and a whole lot of really average performers. So what I’d do is just make sure you’re having to look at your own team. And so there’s assessing what kind of talent and capability you’ve got with your own team. Again, ideally skilling up your team, but moving on and bringing the right talent in this, if you don’t have them. The good thing about this really crazy, horrible COVID period, the silver lining of the unemployment thing, which is a really horrible scenario, there is really good talent in the market right now.

So for those businesses who actually are looking to grow their business, know that they need talent going forward, has struggled to get really good people in their business before, people are been let go of businesses around the world at the moment who are amazing. So for no fault of their own, they’ve been made redundant because of business can’t afford to have so many people in the business. So unlike a normal scenario where you might have a particular person that you’ve identified that you want to bring into the business, now’s the time to go and recruit if you can, because you what you’ll find is that there is great people that normally you can’t pull away from the business that they’re sitting in.

And it’s a great time to actually fill those sort of more strategic and areas that are critical in your business with some really great talent. So one of the things we’re doing with our businesses in fibre is actually having that conversation with clients who are in a financial position that they can bring roles on slightly before maybe they need them, but actually saying right now is the best time to go out to the market. You’ll get your pick of some really great talent, which is fantastic for those employees, but also for your business.

Nathan: Yeah, that’s really interesting. When it comes to, I guess, talent, are you pro skills over culture or pro culture over skills, or what weights do you give it?

Lisa: I don’t think there is a weight, I think it’s about the role. There are some roles that I don’t care how passionate someone is. If they don’t have the skills, it’s a disaster. So if you’ve got a finance person who’s the most passionate, lovely person in the world, but they act crap with numbers and they don’t understand the accounting, they can get you into some really serious trouble. So there are some roles that you want to make sure you’ve got the right skills for. There are other roles that… And having the right person with the right attributes are really important that you can actually grow those skills. And culture is obviously really important. Getting people who are aligned with your energy, your vision, the type of culture that you want within your business is really important. So in a lot of cases, if you can get people in, who’ve got that passion, they will absolutely help your business move in the right direction in a really fun dynamic way that is what you want in your business.

But there are definitely some roles that you’ve got to be really careful going, sort of culture and passion over skills. A lawyer, you do not want to legal counsel in your business who does not understand law, that would be an absolute disaster. So I just be really careful around understanding which roles are technical and I’ve got risk to your business and making sure you get the best person in around that. But the other roles, as I said, you’re assessing like for like, if someone can do the job that might just need a bit more development and is way more passionate and a good culture fit, you definitely go down that path over someone that’s not a good cultural fit for your business.

There are then some strategies around how to manage that. So if you do have people in your business that are technically really strong, but culturally not quite aligned, one of the conversations you’re having with them is around trying to bring them into understand the culture that’s really important, but if they can’t do that and you just work out that they’re technically really strong, but a disaster culturally or not a disaster, sorry, probably just not reflective of your culture. There are ways to make sure that they take less of a role in influencing the rest of the team. So it’s just not making them the forefront of team meetings or group environments where they kind of influence what that culture looks like. So there’s some strategy that you can manage that.

I know one business I worked with who had someone who was culturally, just so far off the business, but technically just an absolute superstar. That person worked from home, so they worked from home, which meant that they didn’t really influence the culture, but their output was fantastic. That suited them. One of the reasons that they weren’t a great cultural fit, they knew it and they didn’t actually enjoy being around the culture, but they absolutely loved working from home and doing the work and that worked for that business. So it didn’t influence the culture and they still got some really great work. So again, it’s just actually working out what you need in your business and then working out at how to make sure that doesn’t permeate into your culture negatively.

Nathan: Yeah. Well, that’s really interesting. And what about kind of building upon a great culture? Like what does that look like as your company grows, what do you need to be doing? Like do you need like, because culture’s an interesting thing because it’s not just the lunches or the drinks or the beers in the fridge, it’s what people see as what others are doing. How do build on that strategically, while you trying to grow your company, you’ve got all these other crazy things going on, you probably can’t afford to hire people a culture manager or whatever. Right? But you want to have a great place to work. You want to have a great team. You want to encourage. Yeah.

Lisa: Yeah, So first off is, and I’ve said this in another podcast and ages go, if you’ve got more than sort of two people in your business, you’ve got a culture like it or not, there is some kind of underlying way that people operate within the business. So then it comes down to what is the culture that you want within your business? So making sure that you actually have clarity about what that culture looks like, and it’s not all the pool tables and drinks on a Friday and things like that. It is around respect. It’s often led by the leadership team. So what I find is there’s loads of leaders and managing directors and owners of businesses who come to me and say, here’s a whole lot of words on a piece of paper around the culture that I want.

And then you watch them walk around the business and they are the polar opposite to that. They’re short with their staff, they don’t say hi when they walk in, they’ve got their door shut but then they’ve got this, I want this really cool pool, a foosball table type of environment where they just do not leave by that. So first thing is to actually understand what culture it is that you want and what will drive good performance in your business, understanding what culture your team want. So, as I said before, there is no point putting all these things in place that you think are really cool when you’ve got a team of people who actually don’t want to hang around on a Friday night, they actually want to go off and hang out with their mates and things. But you’re kind of almost forcing them to do drinks on a Friday night because you think it’s cool.

So again, asking your team what they want to make sure that, especially the people who are really reflective of the business that you… The type of culture that you want. So you might have a group of people that are really reflective of this is actually how I want my business to feel, look, and how they operate, ask those people what drives them, what motivates them, what actually makes them life coming to your work and same as retention, make sure you build on that. So build on the things that they enjoy, the things that they work, some people it’s what kind of computers they work on? Are they on an Apple or are they on a different infrastructure linux or whatever it might be. Others might be around. I actually want to have drinks on a Friday night, or I want to have lunches with the team and others are, I want to come in and feel huge amount of pride in what I’m doing.

So the thing that’s most important for me is understanding how we’re going as a business and what I’m doing is contributing to that bigger business. So really again, understanding what your team wants, listening to the people who are reflective of the people that you want in your business. Not everyone, there’ll be some people that aren’t necessarily the right people for your business necessarily. So I’m not saying ignore what they’re saying, but you’re really trying to build on the kind of culture of the people that are the right fit for your business and then work out what they want and go from there.

Nathan: Hmm. I love it. Well, look, Lisa I could talk to you about this stuff all day, every day, you have to wrap, but this was really helpful for anybody that’s looking to grow, build, or like kind of maintain your great company culture and everything that’s going on. So thank you so much for your time. My final question is where’s the best place people can find out more about yourself and your work.

Lisa: About myself and my work. So jumping online to both of our websites. So workforce analytics website, workforceanalytics.com.au or fiberHR, which is fiberhr.com.au. So my details and contact details are on both of those. Otherwise, really do feel free to shout me or shoot your note for anything, any questions that you might have.

Nathan: Amazing. Well, look, thank you so much for your time. This is a fantastic interview. Extremely valuable.

Lisa: Awesome. Thank you so much, Nathan. I really appreciate it.


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via https://AiUpNow.com November 20, 2020 at 11:45PM by Kristin Martinez-Queyquep, Khareem Sudlow,