Wed, 2/24 11:00PM • 1:05:03
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, dominic, employees, survey, hear, home, company, speaking, email, remote, check, work, questions, team, introverts, manager, program, virtual, feel, cory
00:04
Welcome to resourceful humans, everyone. I’m your host, Corey haber. And today I have Joan and Dominic with me. And we’re going to talk about new tips and suggestions. They have things that they’ve been doing as well, in this new work, remote environment to help with employees, mental health and happiness. And I know that you know, Dominic has come from a very remote background. So that’s, you know, not so much new for him. And then I’m glad we have Joan, who’s the complete opposite. So we’re gonna get to hear new things. they’ve implemented things they’ve been doing in the past already, and just their opinions on everything. So thanks for coming, you guys. Thanks for having us. Thank you for having us, Cory. Oh, you’re welcome. So I know when we spoke before, you mentioned that there were I noticed too, there are a lot of parallels, things that you’re doing similarly, more similar, and some differences. So let’s start off tell it tell everyone what what are the parallels between the two of you? So
01:10
I could jump in. And start, if you will, if you don’t mind. I think one of the biggest parallels between john john and i and that this was a new to work remote. We both have experience with virtual offices and working from home. So when the COVID crisis hit, it wasn’t so much of we have to close everything down and figure out how to work virtually we were predominantly set up that way to begin with, and was more on how can we expand and address to our employees going through a difficult time, more so than actually having to figure out how to create a work from home set up for an employee. if you will.
01:49
Write down the name Dominic, we had started flexible work, and approximately two years ago, giving people the option to have a few days a week in the office and a few days a week remote. Now, of course, we’re 100% remote, but we had structures in place. I would say that perhaps we listened very well to the organization. We’ve had multiple surveys, both from our parent company in form up and from Taylor and Francis group, giving out employee surveys questionnaires about what would make this transition a bit easier for you. We have a lot of courses that I built on the remote environment. How do you manage when you’re a manager now that it’s remote? As a colleague, how do you manage yourself, your time, your stress levels, balancing being in a remote environment that in most cases, it’s people’s homes, since they don’t have separate offices. So we did a lot of things that led to one conclusion that I had, which I found surprising. I found that in all the courses I was leading, most of the issues that people shared with me about the remote environment, same as face to face was a clear focus on the need for effective communication, consistent communication, staying in touch, and also getting to know your people and saying, you know what Mary seems a bit stressed today. She’s usually more talkative, let me you know, have a little sidebar with her to see how she’s doing in this environment. So we’re doing a lot of that a lot of Yammer groups, a lot of social events, virtual social events, social teas, that have been instituted by our wonderful UK colleagues 20 minutes just to connect with each other formally or informally, about projects, a lot of things for recognition, something called applause, where we can reach out and praise. We have something interesting to call the profile project, where we profile someone and we asked them to tell about their career path. And the struggles they may have overcome what they did before they entered publishing. And that’s been working really well also breaks down the silos and makes all I didn’t know that about Dominic, for example, or Cory. So it’s opening up a lot of dialogue.
04:13
That’s great. That’s great. medication is definitely key, we pride ourselves in being very transparent from the top level all the way down.
04:21
Similar to what you mentioned, about the recognition, we have a high five channel so anybody can kind of give a high five or raise to to a team member or to a project or just anything really on it to give some recognition. Also, when you mentioned the work from home, you know, it’s okay, if you’re interrupted by a child at a meeting, you know, we’ve come out and said, Listen, this is this is new for us. It’s not It’s okay, if a child runs on camera, you know, it’s it’s almost almost nice sometimes to break up the meeting or something like that. So it’s okay like it’s not frowned upon when that happens.
04:56
So that’s also you know, welcoming and letting people know
05:00
things are gonna happen. It’s not the same normal environment children are home now are aspects. So being that we were remote? It was not necessarily how do we work remote, but when you’re when you’re stuck inside you even if people work from home, they used to be able to go outside or even go to a coffee shop for something to work? And how do you address that aspect when you’re pretty much stuck indoors, and we have a lot of employees that you know, live by themselves or might be the only employee in a state or a country that they work in? So how do we make sure that they stay social and connected, we had created a social committee really to focus on different events that we can do that are non work related, whether it’s a trivia game, or virtual happy hour, or a fireside chat, just to sort of take your mind off of work 24 seven, and have like that outlet that you can join and socialize when you’re stuck indoors. I think, I guess is brilliant. I think right now every company that’s remote should have a social committee, and especially that includes the employees because employees know what’s gonna, you know, help them stay social and what they want. During this time, like myself, I’m the same way and I work from home alone. And I’ve never really realized working from home was great before, but then you’re stuck inside and you don’t have the option to go anywhere. It’s a lot different. Exactly. Exactly. So we put this calendar out for the whole month. It’s actually a committee it was set up by volunteers, we do have somebody that leaves the committee, but it was like volunteers that wanted to join and they look for it could be something that’s a preschedule event, there could be something silly, like you know, today is find a rainbow day go post a picture of a rainbow want to say someone goes outside and snaps a photo and puts it up just to just something some sort of outlet. Right.
06:52
Dominic, I like that combination of something planned. Plus spontaneous. Exactly. I think that’s great, because you have the option. Yes, all the social stuff we’ve done is definitely voluntary, nobody’s forced to do it. In fact, our most recent initiative, we created a buddy system, where we randomly pair you up with another individual in the company, somebody that’s not part of your team or somebody that you usually work with. And you’re paired up for a quarter, it’s completely voluntary. If you don’t want to be part of the program, you do not have to. And it’s up to those two individuals to check in with each other once a week, or bi weekly, whatever works best for the two of them, just to have sort of another outlet and somebody checking in and seeing how you’re doing and with that you get to learn about that person as well and learn a little bit about their background and stuff. I like that Dominic, you’re bringing up the point, we have a very big initiative, as I’m sure you do, as well. And Cory I’m sure you have it also, diversity, inclusion, belonging, we have very big, you know, push on that right now. And, to your point, Dominic, about reaching out to someone that you may not speak to every day, we are trying to expand our networks, so that we do get to know other cultures, other roles, other functions so that we’re more diverse and more culturally diverse. So that’s, that that’s a really good point that you may reach out to someone you may not ordinarily work with, which helps the diversity and inclusion factor that we’re trying to build. It’s great. Yeah, I am. I’m curious, what do you what are your opinions on making a program like that, you know, not voluntary, because to be honest, I think that if it wasn’t voluntary, it almost pushes those people that would just that are more introverts to participate and get to know other coworkers that they wouldn’t, on a normal basis get to know.
08:48
I think at the end, though, you want the individual to feel comfortable, it shouldn’t be forced upon. Some people are more introverted, some people who are extroverted, if they don’t get involved in this particular project or initiative, there’s plenty of others that they can. So I want people to kind of get involved with they feel comfortable enough to open up into and to want to do that not necessarily forced. That’s true. That’s true. I like that idea. Because you know, and I like bringing up the point about introversion and extraversion. People see social things very differently. They do and they’re extroverts or introverts. And it’s great Dominic, you have that variety of activities that you can do and so do we, for the introverts, the extroverts, like the channel you mentioned, I think you you were telling me something earlier about a gardening channel, a pets channel, something that wouldn’t necessarily mean speaking up, but joining in in your own way, if you’re an introvert, if you if there’s a common interest with others, we have those those different channels we even have like a help channel where perhaps you need help on on something could be anything really it could be work related or non where they can pipe Does anyone have experience with this specific topic and those that do will chime in and say
10:00
Check this resource out. Oh, I think I know this. And it’s a way again to kind of reach out without being forced to voluntarily if you need help you have it.
10:11
Yeah, I think you were mentioning slack with me when we spoke earlier, we have Yammer, which is similar. And to that, too, here’s an expertise. Here’s a question I have, can anyone jump in and help? Yes, that’s really good. I like your point about having the child pop in, or having a pet pop in, I think it’s human, it’s natural. And, quite frankly, I’m kind of enjoying it as a side effect of this environment. Because I’m getting to know people’s partners, I’ve gotten to meet a lot of their children and their pets. That’s not something I would have had the option to do with my friend is in India, right or in the play. So I was I was like, wow, let’s look on that, you know, as a positive. You know, so humanizes us we recall, at the end of the day, we are all human. And you know, when you’re in the office, and you’re in the daily grind, and you’re working nine to five, and hey, we all have stuff outside of work, we have loved ones, we have pets, we have whatever the case may be, and we get to share this actually now. We try to encourage when possible meetings to put camera on, we understand that not everybody is comfortable doing it. When we have our monthly company call those that are presenting, we do ask to make sure they turn the cameras on to give a chance for everyone to see some of our meetings, we do do one camera and some of them said if it’s a quick phone call, that’s really fast, you know, it’s not always necessary. But we do encourage the visual when possible. What we do, as well, as a trainer, of course, have to be on camera, I feel that that would be not great if I were not on camera, so you may have 3040 people in front of me. And a lot of them come ahead of time and say Joan, you know what, I’m kind of having an off day today. I may be a little dressed casually. Is it okay, if I participate off camera? And of course we say yes. We’d rather have you participate and be a part of it, rather than not attend the training because you didn’t want to be on camera. Because you know, as I always say, This is your home now. You know, it’s it’s not like you’re in an office meeting, but it’s your living room in most cases. So maybe that day, you don’t feel like you want to invite 40 people into your living room. So it’s okay. Oh, I’ve never thought about it like that. Well, it’s funny what you mentioned about you know, maybe you’re not dressed and want to be on camera. So most of us are never dressed in our line of work and tech and cybersecurity and stuff. I mean, this is this is the fashion, it’s t shirts, it’s hats, hoodies, and it’s okay, technically, I’m dressed for work today, you know, it’s
12:49
so we encouraged that it’s okay. I remember when I you know, when I first went on camera, even though I was used to working remotely, I was making sure my hair was called How to
12:59
message a meeting with my CEO and I’m going like this and she’s like, stop. You don’t need to do that. You know, and we encourage It’s okay, listen, especially now when everybody’s from home, you will see people not shave and you will see baseball caps, you will see hoodies, you will see t shirts. It’s okay. And you know what people are more comfortable being in their own clothes, being in that especially being at home that that I think it makes it more even more comfortable work setting.
13:23
I guess that’s another parallel we have because in publishing, especially academic publishing, we definitely are not fashion plates. We are not very much wardrobe focus. Like I always say, Good thing. We don’t work for Conde Nast, any of those other fancy publishers, where you’d have to dress so those fashion companies Yeah, we’re, we’re we’re kind of struggling Dominic, I meant to ask you offensive security. So you are an HR manager? Yes, I’m director of HR for us, Director for offensive security. And I think you do cybersecurity and Yes, sorry, I didn’t.
13:59
I’m Joan kapua. From Taylor and Francis group, where Academic Publishers, journals, ebooks, books of all types, all kinds of industries and finance, business, a lot of science. And we sell to a lot of consumers, and authors, publishers and researchers all over the world. Thank you. I was gonna say you guys were on a roll. So I didn’t want to stop. But go ahead. Yeah, I think it’s important for everyone to know your background, what you do and the industry you’re in.
14:31
JOHN mentioned, we’re in cybersecurity. I’m the Senior Director of HR. Those that are are in the cybersecurity world definitely would have heard of offensive security. We have the tryhard a motto. If you’re not in cybersecurity, you may not know who we are. But that’s that’s our background. We are located throughout the United States and throughout the world. We have a staff member in 28 different countries. Wow. That’s a lot. So quick question.
15:00
Well, yes. Do you include? employees? Are employees internationally all included in the same social events that you do virtually? Or do you have separate events for the US versus outside the US? So they are, they are included? We do try and space out some of them for different time zones? We do we do, we do have a lot of employees in the Philippines, and they do sometimes do host something separately, because that is 12 hour difference. But other than that, I mean, they are obviously, everybody’s always welcome and invited to any one of our happy hour social events, whatever the case may be. And, you know, we try and stagger it when possible, so we can give others a chance to attend. You know, it’s very difficult to get everybody at once. So we may have to do something, say early one day or late another day to allow that to happen. Yes, we’ve been doing the same thing trying to balance that out and some that originated in one office, perhaps it will go to that one office, but and then another office might tag on and say, hey, that’s a great idea. I think I’ll, I think I’ll do the same from my own area. But yeah, we have the timezone challenge, right, Dominic? Yes, definitely timezone chat. And with the timezone challenge also comes, you know, it’s not expected, if somebody pings you at their hour, and it’s middle of night for you. That doesn’t mean you need to respond. But that’s when that person needs to get that information out. So it doesn’t mean that you need to wake up in the middle of sleep to address it at that time we do you know, we we do let people know, in the team that this is gonna happen. This is this is normal, it’s okay.
16:38
That that’s interesting. I built a program called before you hit send. And as you may imagine, it’s all about effective communication via email. And that’s really our default right now. So I give tips on being really careful about tone, not being too abrupt, because sometimes being concise right now is considered abrupt. Appreciate that other people are under some stress. But Dominic to your point, we always make sure that we manage expectations and say to someone, you know what, you might get an email from me because I’m working at 3am. Don’t feel any pressure, that a response is required outside your normal work hours, exactly. That into the program to say, Hey, no, would just understand. That’s a great program. Maybe take your program. I’m guilty of sending an email on a Sunday, but I tell my team, I said, This is me catching up. Please don’t do not stop what you’re doing. This is a weekend do not I, they know that they do not need to respond to my team. Right? When I send something. It’s just sometimes it’s quieter, and I can get some more stuff done. Yeah, I am. Yeah, I think
17:43
you know what I think also the times are kind of blurring into each other. Sometimes people say to me, so john, what are you going to do this weekend? And I’m like, Um, let’s see. Well, I used to go to Pilates yoga, sit in my favorite cafe and have lunch. But that’s kind of reduced. So we we do end up working, I think a bit more on weekends. But right to your point, Dominic, you want to make sure no one thinks, Oh, I got an email on a Sunday. Does that mean I have to answer? Yeah, we don’t. Well, speaking of yoga, and Pilates, if you want to attend one of ours, we employ a wellness coordinator. And as the hosts yoga weekly and wellness challenges that you can sign up for whether it’s a monthly challenge, or whether it’s just attending one weekly session, we do host that for for our team as well. Obviously, as you mentioned, you can’t do some of those things externally anymore. So we’ve brought it right home. That’s great. Yeah, we have someone streaming, some yoga and pilates as well. Yeah. A lot of it on different time zones, but usually UK based. But yeah, I know, that’s a really popular
18:53
topic right now trying to have the yoga Pilates virtually for your employees. So can you go into a little bit more detail of How’s that? How is that planned? How do employees you know, become a part of it? It doesn’t cost anything. I think all those questions are very hot topic questions right now.
19:13
Dominic, did you want to go first you want me to I could go first. So for me, it’s, we have an actual wellness coordinator who works for us that she’s actually on my team. And we’ll send out the calendar invites. So you know exactly when they are I think it’s Tuesdays and Thursdays if if I’m correct. Obviously, I’m not a yoga person. So don’t hold it to me. But you can you know what it is it’s on your calendar and it goes out to the entire company. So you have a regular, very regular schedule. In addition to that there are different challenges as well as challenges that will go out. It could be something totally different this month that it is the next month those a volunteer, you’re signing up for them. You sign up for them, you you know you it’s expected that you’ll get through the whole challenge. It’s usually 30 days. We actually
20:00
Give a prize out to the winning team who completes it.
20:03
That’s definitely more that’s more rigorous and takes more of a commitment than just logging on for, you know, 30 minutes or something on a Tuesday. But it makes it fun. I like that. I like that. And it also makes a more of a commitment. And then you’re achieving something at the end. Yeah, we don’t charge for our sessions. They’re streaming yoga and pilates. But Dominic, I don’t think you charge for yours, right? No, this isn’t actually an actual employee of us, a wellness coordinator. Yeah, that runs them. In addition, we actually have one of our slack channels is a wellness channel. So people share different tips, health tips, whether it’s mental health, whether it’s physical health, whether it’s recipes, anything related, and it’s an open channel that anyone can join and take part in it as well. That’s great. And it’s good.
20:55
Um, tell us more about the channels. I know, you said you had a lot of channels, what are the different topics?
21:02
So besides the, you know, there’s ones that everyone’s in where it’s company announcements, or topics like that, but we do have different groups. There’s a gaming one, a pets, one gardening, one, help one,
21:16
a social responsibility one.
21:20
There’s
21:22
a few. Yeah, if I sit there trying to go through all of them off the top of my head, I’m not sure. But when you when you do join us, you do get a list of all those in front of your onboarding.
21:34
I don’t remember every single one. But there’s quite if you could think of a topic, we probably have it. Wow, that’s great. That’s great. Yeah, we do have a lot of similar channels, and our parent company is informa. So we also can avail ourselves of those resources as well. And they have a tremendous amount on wellness. We have a lot of diversity initiatives, a lot of activities, all kinds of things as well. And right, I would be hard pressed to give a whole list of them too dominant, because there’s a lot of them fortunately that I have a great my way through. I know some places some employers that are just getting started on these type of programs. So they need suggestions. What are some other I know, we’ve talked about channels, we’ve talked about? The I want to hear a little bit more about your program, john, that you put together for the Oh, the email, email? Yes, absolutely. It goes along with a lot of the remote management programs that I’m leading as the Learning and Development Manager.
22:39
What I what I’m doing is, I’ve answered a lot of when I first joined Taylor, and Francis,
22:46
according to surveys, everybody said, john, the first thing you’ve got to do, please help us with effective email, please, you know, cross culturally, response time, is it too abrupt? Is it concise? Is it too long? Is it not for email. So I built a course that talks about the basic best practices that directly addressed, the employee requests such as, please help these people not be so abrupt. There were also cultural differences. For example, I always say take your cue from the person that you’re receiving the email from, because you know, I think in the US, we tend to be a little more direct with our communication. If we need something, we’ll be like, Hi, Cory, could you provide me with this? Whereas sometimes in the UK, in Asia, that’s considered a bit more abrupt and all of a sudden, I would get this email from someone there. And they’d say, Hi, Joan, how was your weekend? And how is your family? Did you have this holiday recently, and I got my cue, wow, I need to adjust my email for that culture. I can’t be direct. I need to have more of that. icebreaking and warmth, and human touch. That’s why build a program saying let’s look at the culture, right? Is this if you want to test your email, read it out loud? How does it sound to you if it’s really important, have a second pair of eyes, look at it, rehearse it, Be really careful once it’s sent, it’s sent. And then of course, a lovely failsafe, put it in your delayed response.
24:25
So that it comes for five minutes that you can really have time before you release it. And then if a conversation is, say you’re having an email back and forth, and maybe things get a little heated, people start misunderstanding each other. I say, you know what, switch it up, get them on zoom or get them on to
24:45
change up the channel. Don’t keep the email going back and forth, because it’s escalating and it’s not working. It’s the tone. I remember I first when I started studying email.
24:59
I had
25:00
had a wonderful intern early on in my career. And I asked her to do a project that was due in three weeks. She got it back to me in three hours. Wow. So I being the wise guy that I am to give her a compliment, wrote back to her in an email. That’s great. What took you so long?
25:20
Guess what? She did not take that as a joke. Oh, wow. Okay, so you have to be careful with email with humor. You’re right. And I had to really repair that relationship. And I said, My God, you completed something in three hours that was due in three weeks, and she said, she was never the same. So that’s why I say let’s be real careful. So we go through best practices, what are the top 20 pitfalls, but it’s it is a fun program, I think, I hope, I think it’s a very important program too. And I, I feel like a lot of people’s initial thoughts when you think of mental health and happiness for the employee in this remote environment, the first thought are programs like glue, yoga, Pilates, the channels we discuss. I know some people do these virtual happy hours. And they don’t really connect it to the communication between their employees on a day to day basis, which I think directly affects the mental health, the mental, sorry, the happiness and the mental health side of things, whether it’s social work related, people need to, they need to understand the best way to communicate, especially with each individual person, everyone’s going to be a different personality, and you need to learn each personality to communicate the best way you can. So I think it directly ties in and honestly, I think is an event or program that businesses should really put into place right now.
26:49
Right? Yeah, I agree. Cory, I think it’s, it really goes a long way to connecting people, especially where we’re an under stress under stressful conditions right now. Right. So communication can sometimes get a little heated, when we don’t intended to. So thank you. With the, he’s talking about the stressful times that we’re in and being virtual being remote. So we recently in the second quarter, revamped our onboarding process, as we were continuing to scale as a company, what worked with X amount of people is not going to work with wire mountain people. So obviously, we did automate where we could but one of the things that we add to the big pieces that we added, one was we built a deck, it was really like an off sec, one on one deck that tells the story of us and who works on what teams and who, you know, who’s where. And we this is a living document that we constantly update. And I’ve shared it with our new hires. And they said that, you know, this is great, a lot of times we get these, these texts, and we don’t really look at them. But now that we’re truly virtual, we can actually refer to it and see who’s where, in addition, we put in these new hire checks where, you know, when we were smaller, you check in with the new hire, here they are, but like, we’ve actually really put in a robust program where we check in with them first day, first week, first month, like like a whole check in and are the HR representative, um, Sarah does that for us, she will then share that information with the manager, and we can see if there’s any shortcomings or any, somebody’s not feeling comfortable in the role. And what we’ve learned is, a lot of times, if you’re new, you might not feel so comfortable telling your manager right away. But you’ll feel more comfortable telling the HR person that you’ve built the relationship through the onboarding process through the hiring process. And it’s actually working wonderful because we’re finding out little things that we might not pick up or maybe the employee wouldn’t have shared if they didn’t have this opportunity. Wow, that’s great, Dominic. And that’s so important. Because now, you know, formerly we used to say, welcome, come on into the conference room, you know, have your muffins and coffee and meet everyone. But that’s great. You put the focus on Oh, my God, how will we welcome these people virtually, we’ve recently converted our whole onboarding to to a virtual platform. And what I always like to add in is the top 20 things you wish you knew your first week on the job. So I surveyed people and said, Hey, guys, when you first joined Taylor and Francis, what were the things you wish you knew your first week? And it sounds like you’re doing that as well, but the check ins are so important, Dominic because people always say that. Well, you know, the old expression well begun is half done. When someone’s on boarded really well. I think that’s the first step in retaining them, keeping them engaged and productive and happy.
29:45
But I like the way you have those chickens. We’re starting that as well. Yeah, it’s definitely useful that beneficial and, and listen, it’s areas we can improve in, like you said, just a minute ago of what you wish you would have known. We do. Take the feedback back
30:00
Look into Is this something that we were not doing or we are doing, you know, how can we continue to improve?
30:06
I want to ask a quick question about the chicken. So I know a lot of HR directors that are implementing that right now. And I’ve heard both sides, I know some that are doing it very flexible. It’s a casual conversation. And then the complete opposite with some companies are doing it’s more it’s a very structured check in structured as in specific questions that they’re supposed to ask each employee, the person who’s checking in. So how do you? How do you handle the check ins? Is it structured? Is it just a casual? Hello? How are you doing? So is structured in the aspect of when we do it, but it’s not structured as to what the conversation is? Okay. That’s good to know. Same here. Yeah. And Dominic, I like your point about, you’re leaving it open so that they could speak to other people in HR, maybe, as you said, they may not be as comfortable speaking directly to their manager about some things. But in the very beginning, sometimes it’s human nature, you don’t want to come off as if you don’t know something, or you don’t so so you may not ask him The last thing we want us to not ask. So it just gives you an opportunity to maybe ask something that maybe you’re not comfortable your first week or first 30 days asking, but you will eventually be. Yeah, speaking of asking, I think a very good point, Dominic, I think you kind of touched on this is making sure people know where to go for information. Yes. Like, okay, who in HR does this this or this? Because I think when you first join a company, sometimes it’s like, who do I ask? Yeah, so
31:45
yeah, that’s why we built that deck. So you literally could know who to ask what to do what what you should know, your first day, your first week, what you should expect that type of stuff. We’ve done that too, just to say, who’s who in HR? Who’s Who here, who’s who there, in addition to those old org charts. That now as you said, Dominic people are reading the org charts now, because they may not get to meet that person. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So the deck pretty much introduces each person and what they do and a little tidbit about themselves, is that how it starts with sort of the background of the company, it goes into the products, it goes into the different teams is located where that type of stuff, and it’s constantly updated as things change. Gotcha. You know, it’s funny, when I think of a deck to introduce people or kind of help employees get to know the people that work there. I keep thinking of the Brady Bunch introduction, where they, they bring in all the different squares of each person in the family and what their names are that something like that would be very funny, I think to introduce new employees. Well, we have when somebody brand new starts for us, the manager will announce that the one of the slack channels and a blurb about the individual with what team they’re on where they’re located. In addition, when we have our monthly town hall that everyone’s on, we open up with anybody that we’ve hired since the last hire, and let everybody know who’s joined and where they’re located and what they do.
33:13
Oh, that’s smart. We have that too. We have a little intro of Cory. That’s very funny. You mentioned the Brady Bunch with the squares. Yeah, it looks like with zoom and with teams, we’ve gone back to squares haven’t had
33:24
it.
33:26
Right, right away from it. Right. You know, one thing I’m very curious about, you both have so many great programs that you put together and that you’ve implemented. And I think the hardest thing to do is to get high participation in a lot of those. Do you have any specific strategies for getting a lot of participation? Because I know people they work from home, they might still want to socialize, but at the same time, they might not want to sit in front of their computer? To answer your question. So some stuff works. And some stuff doesn’t we don’t know to try it. But what we did was after the committee was was running for a bit, and we did a bunch of different events we actually sent a survey out with, we actually were shocked at how much stuff we done. So we put it in the survey, and then asked, you know, what did you like, Which ones did you not like so we can continue to build on the stuff that we liked and eliminate the things that we don’t. One of the other things that we just did very, very simple. And I forgot to mention throughout this, we just have twice a week. It started with basically a COVID check in where it’s literally at this time, there’s an open zoom, anyone that wants to join can join talking about anything they want. And we did it in the height of it. And then it seemed that people still wanted to have that outlet. So we keep doing it. You know, the attendance goes up and down depending on but it isn’t now. Everybody knows on Tuesdays and Thursdays there’ll be an open zoom. Somebody from HR is always on our CEO is always on it and gives people a chance to join. But to answer your question, they don’t always work. We did a survey and we built it on you know continuous
35:00
To do the things that people seem to like, I have to say the fact that you are you’re on it, you’re CEOs on it. One of my biggest pet peeves when I work with some businesses is you can expect, and this is just my opinion, you can’t expect high participation from employees if the management is not going to participate.
35:20
Because they you lead by example, for a lot of people. And if you seem like it’s not worth your time to be a part of why should they? And I, I see that that happens. Honestly, way too often. The management is not supportive of certain things, or they may not they lead by example, but it’s more like Do as I say, not as I do kind of thing. Right, you know, it’s it. That brings up a very good point, Cory, first of all, I love that Dominic, with the chickens. We have emojis about eight different expressions on our portal. Oh, every day, you can check in and give us an emoji. How do you feel? And on the really sad ones? It says, Would you like to talk to HR? You know, would you like to talk to someone or maybe our employee assistance program, whatever. So we keep that open. But to your point about this is my favorite topic. How do you get people to participate in training programs? So first of all, like Dominic, we survey, what do you need? What do you absolutely want in training instead of these nice, old training programs, where you just put them out and said, Oh, I hope someone comes. Right. I’m very busy. Of course, you’re busy, because there’s no benefit for you to be there. And then secondly, core your point, please don’t expect me to be at a training if it’s not endorsed and already attended by senior leaders. Right? And that totally believe in that as well. You got to walk the walk and talk the talk. And it’s funny. A lot of people say, Well, you know, john, you’re you’re fantastic basic management boot camp there. That’s basic, I can’t come to that, because I’ve been managing 20 years. And we say, guess what, you need to reinforce the basics. You’ve been managing 20 years, but it could be may be the first for you did all the basics, you know, the one to one structured meetings, effective feedback, you know, etc. But you may have to refresh. So come on, come back to the program. So we do have people come back that are very experienced, as well as aspiring managers, but everything is sponsored by our our leadership team. That’s great. Same here, our lt team is extremely involved. It’s extremely involved. We do we’re actually in the middle of our second year, our suite. So twice a year, we do a play engagement survey, which is a very robust survey that covers a lot of topics. And some of these questions we do ask again, because we want to measure how we’ve improved or not. And then there are some notes. It is anonymous, yes. And, and then we build on if there’s a lot of requests in a certain area, then we will look look into that. But then throughout the so these are two ones we do every six months that are pretty big about 75 questions, but we do smaller ones based on specific things. So to a minute ago, we were talking about how do you know if these events work or not to social events? That’ll be like a quick, maybe 10 page or 10? Question or five question about a specific thing we’ve done to find out if it worked. We don’t want to wait to any specific survey to find out if something we’re doing work. So we will have some one offs throughout the year as well.
38:34
We even just did a recent one on our company calls once a month, we have a company call. And we asked we did a survey about the structure of it. Does everybody like it? Is there anything that you’d like to see? We do allow employees to submit questions. What we found from the last one was they wanted to have a live q&a. So okay, so at the end of it, now we’re gonna have a live q&a at the end of the company calls based on the feedback that we received from the survey. So we do make it actionable, that you know, when we can obviously, we’ll make these these items actionable based on the responses.
39:08
Absolutely. I have to say, Dominic, we’re aligned on that point as well. Multiple surveys, both law large and small, and to the point. And yes, they’re anonymous. And then we have open q&a with our CEO with our management teams to answer open forum questions. Yes, that’s great. Yeah. The questions on those forums are open. The employee engagement surveys anonymous.
39:33
That’s great. No, I honestly, I think surveying or getting feedback from your employees is one of the most important things you can do for any part of the business. And I see it a lot in the benefits world. I mean, sometimes I will meet a business owner. So no, my employees don’t need benefits. They don’t they’re fine without them. They never have asked, never brought it and that just comes back to you should always
40:00
I think communicate with your employees and get their feedback. They are the ones that keep the business going. So Exactly. When everything. Yeah, and Cory it’s sometimes it’s make or break with accepting a position depending on the benefits package. Right? It is a lot of time. Right. I have even heard. I mean, I’ve even heard little, little things like someone will tell me I took the shop over another because they offer dental and then one of them didn’t. Now was it simply it, I mean, it, it is a maker break. But I think a lot of things are make or break. Now I think these type of mental health and programs to help you out and staying happy when you’re at home. that’s becoming something that’s more important to employees now, because they’re seeing how much they’re stuck at home by themselves. A lot of people are alone. They’re not at home with their families. But even if they are, you know that it’s hard to have conversations and
40:56
kind of have that outlet to talk about what you do day to day with someone who doesn’t do that. And, in fact, probably 1000 children and and people enjoy having that outlet to speak with other co workers that understand what they’re doing day to day and having that common.
41:14
That’s a very good point, like our world of HR learning and development benefits.
41:21
Sometimes people don’t readily understand. I know, I don’t know about you, Dominic, well, maybe you’re a little more clear in benefits, Cory. But when people ask, so what do you do, you know, HR learning and development, sometimes it’s hard to describe, like, you know, about training and surveys and engagement. But I think that’s really cool that we actually do care. All of our three companies care about people, and how they’re doing in this environment. And I have to say that I do hear of a lot of companies, where as you said, Dominic in the beginning, here’s your laptop, you’re now working from home, no Yammer, no slack, no activity channels, no wellness committees. And I find that really sad. People are just finding their own way to help with the stress. And then mental health and mental well being without corporate help. And I think that speaks volumes, about the types of companies we work for. And it’s kind of great. It is we do have companies that value that it is speaking volumes now, for people that are looking for positions, and then there are a lot of people moving positions, because they’re they’re not happy when their company’s not doing anything to make them happy. while they’re at home and alone. And, and I know in the past that the working remote, the working remote, especially in the past, I I found to be considered a benefit that was offered. But now it’s it’s really just it’s almost a requirement in a sense. So, Joe, now it’s our favorite word. The new normal normal. Dominic, we’re kidding around about that. Yes.
43:01
I thank you so much. I think that all of your suggestions and examples of programs you two have put together and implemented are going to be so helpful to people that have not yet started on that or trying to start on it. So I really appreciate it. And I know that you both are so open to answering any more questions someone might have if they reach out to you on LinkedIn. So if anyone does have more questions, feel free to connect with Jonah Dominic.
43:30
Hi, everyone. I am back with Dominic and Joan, it’s been about three, four months since we last spoke. And we’re doing a touch base to see kind of how things have changed since we last spoke as far as some employers are transitioning back to in person, some are having this blended work schedule where they do a couple days in the office and then the other three days virtually. So
43:55
Joan Domini Dominic, how are you? What are you seeing, as far as you know, what are the How can employers
44:02
help with that transition?
44:06
As far as health and happiness for the employees. So for mental health wise, something we’ve done since we last spoke, we’re a virtual company to begin with, so we only had to to shut down one or two offices for were predominantly remote to begin with. So there was really no change there. But we did take a big initiative on mental health throughout this pandemic and continuing it on and since we last spoke, we actually put a survey out specifically on the topic completely anonymous. Let people kind of gauge where they were feeling things that we think could help. And that type. Now we came back and reviewed all the information that was provided for us and we are actually launching March one for the entire company, a subscription for headspace to give everybody an outlet on that we had previously done
45:00
to things like like a company yoga, but we’re going to substitute that with like a meditation session completely voluntary. Anybody that wants to join Ken. But after looking at everything, we thought it was important to really show our company and our employees that we care. And we are launching, like I said, a company wide subscription for everybody. Of course, if you don’t want it, you don’t have to take it. But it will be available. We’re launching it on launch first for everybody. Wow.
45:26
That was one area.
45:29
That’s great. Yeah, we are doing similar things, we keep really, very closely in touch with our population to make sure that everyone is heard everyone is listened to. And we make sure that we check in we have this great system with emojis. And we ask everyone to check in each day if they want to totally optional. How am I feeling? And the emojis go from smiley face to stress to a little bit angry. And we gave the opportunity for our HR business partners to check in and say, hey, how can we help? How can we provide extra resources, we also have some mindfulness things. And Dominic, I think also along with you, we’ve done some yoga and pilates sessions. And it seems like we’re moving more towards the meditation aspect rather than physical fitness. So I end up from what I understand employees are doing a lot of that on their own streaming workout videos. So I think at work, it’s more, as you said, mindfulness and stress release, when you bring on check ins, something else that comes to mind. So we had revamped our onboarding process last year, and part of it was putting in these new hire check ins first day, first week, first month, first, no. First quarter for six months, that type of stuff. Since that we started look back at a lot of the feedback that we received to see if there’s anything we can use to continue to improve. And we saw a lot of common stuff around everything was great. We got in we knew, but then we sort of lost after we we arrived. So now we took all that feedback. And we’re about to undergo onboarding phase two, if you will, which is after you’ve been hired after you, you’ve kind of filled out your HR stuff after you’ve kind of been set up. What do you do at your team, your department, your manager, your first day, first week, first month, that was an area that we learned from our initial changes to onboarding, so we’re going to continue it. And we built like a one on one deck. Now we’re going to build it based on sort of like per team, so you can have your expectations per team.
47:40
And that was something that we you know, we learn from these these check ins, if you will.
47:46
What are you finding are some really good benefits to this? I mean, I know it’s taken some time for employers to see the benefits of the virtual, what are you finding that they’re seeing as maybe a pro versus what they had before.
48:03
So we’re scaling quickly. So when you have a lot of new hires all at once, and we have first time managers as well, that have kind of grown into their position that is a lot of unexpected. So I think it continues to set expectations. So allow people to listen, we’re virtual, right? So there is no
48:23
water cooler, you know, per se, where, hey, how’s your first day going? How’s your first day going? And, you know, it’s human nature to feel a little reserved to maybe reach out to someone via slack that you’ve never seen or spoke to, to? To ask a question. So with these, I think it’s more of setting continuing to set expectations giving people that that just that good experience overall.
48:45
So they don’t feel lost, and they feel even more welcome than they they had been feeling.
48:52
It’s really great. We have a focus on onboarding as well. Because if you find that how they start their experience with an organization sometimes can lead to retention, or what we’d want to avoid is attrition. You know, as you said, Dominic, sometimes they come on board, they get a great big welcome. As they move on, they’re like, I’m a bit lost. So we have done something called a buddy system, where when new starters join, they’re teamed up either with another new starter or another colleague in the organization, so that they always have someone to go to.
49:28
So we are starting that we just revamped our whole onboarding platform. And we’re in the process of putting all different components in it and check ins. And what really is most interesting for people to know.
49:42
Gotcha. We had put in a buddy system last year for not just new hires, it was really for everyone to just have a person you’re paired up with for a quarter get to know that it had to be somebody that wasn’t on your team, somebody that you did work with all the time, to get to know somebody and also to have someone just
50:00
Again, right to make sure that you’re okay and it’s it’s outside of your your your daily normal routine. And it’s completely voluntary, we didn’t force people to do it. Some people opted out other people took on more than one body, we recently received some feedback, that it would be nice to almost have more of a group type, like maybe different group buddies, instead of just the one on one, maybe having like five together or like setting up little common interest type of buddy stuff. And this just came back as a suggestion from our virtual hands. We couldn’t do all hands in person, obviously, because we’re restricted for travel. But we didn’t want to not have it. So we did. Over four days, we did a virtual all hands, which was a blend of company updates, team updates, lightning talks, where it was non work related fun stuff that people could present and do. We had external speakers, we had a couple training sessions, even did a topic on sleep, the importance of sleep, because stuff that was interested so and what we learned from the feedback, some suggestions there, now we’re looking to see what can we make actionable and continue to support the teams, we’re also going to launch twice a year, we do our employee engagement survey, and we’re gonna launch we do the first quarter in the third quarter. So March one, we’re going to launch that and then let out three weeks for people to fill it all out. And then we’ll take a look at everything. It’s completely anonymous. But then we look and see, okay, what other ways can we create actionable items from these that are doable? And that’s when some of these concepts come out of a buddy system or different suggestions. We look where we can continue to support.
51:40
That’s great. I like that group buddy system rather than one on one. You know, cuz I’m thinking that maybe that’s less pressure. I think so because some people are introverted by nature, some are extroverted, and maybe they’ll be more willing to join, if it’s just not one on one where you feel like it’s for style, like where you might just engage by hearing a topic that you know something about, or it’s a common interest. Yeah, you know, thinking of introvert, I mean, I know, during you were just mentioning how beneficial this virtual environment has been for, for those introverted employees. Yeah, you know, it’s, it’s really something we have to be careful with the term. Because, you know, sometimes when I mentioned introversion and extraversion, some people say Don’t, don’t put me in a category. And I say, actually, we’re not what we’re looking at is just observable behavior. Not that introverts don’t talk, or that extroverts talk too much. But it’s that maybe introverts would like more preparation before they speak, right? Maybe they’d like more detail before a meeting. It’s those little nuances that we have to be aware of. Because, you know, the bottom line is, we want to hear all the voices in the organization, not just the loudest ones.
52:56
And I think there’s some fantastic resources there, Susan Cain, ca n, who talks about the her organization, The Quiet Revolution.
53:05
We also published a lot of great books on introversion and extraversion. But I think the key point is, let’s take advantage of this remote environment to draw out some of those introversion. It’s interesting, there were two people on a call that were both new starters. We say new starters. That’s the UK term as opposed to new hires in the US. And they saw that each of them had guitars and a drum set
53:32
in their homes. Wow. And they were like, Is that yours? Like? Yeah. Are you a musician? Yes, I am. And they started bonding over that. So we had a natural buddy system between the two of them. So you know, that wouldn’t have happened. If you were in the office, you never would have seen that in the person’s home. So we’re kind of saying meeting dogs, meeting spouses, roommates, you know, and being human. Sometimes there are noises and distractions, it all was kind of making us a little closer.
54:04
That’s what our Director of HR just said at the boot camp this morning. She said, Let’s, let’s make sure we we emphasize this human factor that we’re in our homes.
54:15
Absolutely, we try and encourage where possible people to turn on the cameras.
54:20
Understand it doesn’t happen in every interaction, something could sometimes can be a really quick two minute chat and they don’t turn it on. But if we’re having something and you are speaking, especially if you’re presenting or speaking in front of a larger group, we we highly encourage people to turn the camera on.
54:39
Because it’s very awkward for the person speaking to be speaking to no faces and just it’s like walking into a terrarium and presenting to everyone with their backs turned to you. I feel like so it’s a good way to put it which would be very off putting. So good comparison Korea.
55:00
And to John’s point of how we communicate, I think when you talk about the introvert extrovert, you brought up a good point of being prepared beforehand. Some people make decisions on the fly and other people need to digest that take some time to to come up with, with how they’re going to answer that question. So communication and how you learn to communicate with each other, especially not being in the same office, not necessarily seeing the nonverbal cues at time
55:27
is definitely key.
55:31
What are some, you know, cut? What have you been seeing that makes it easier to tell how comfortable an employee is, when it’s virtual? I mean, because really, all you can see is the fact that they might turn on their camera, or they may not or if it’s on, they may not be excited and trying to talk to everyone I mean, what are some other things that an employer or HR director can look for, that will help them know if this employee is, you know, happy right now, and has, you know, has everything they need to,
56:03
you know, feel part of the team and, and be happy at the workplace, even though they’re not physically at the workplace. Some of it is as simple as that sound is asking.
56:15
That’s one of the reasons we put in these new hire check ins is to literally check in How are you feeling? What What is, you know? How’s it going? What is it? What do you expect it is there’s stuff you need? Are you getting the support you need? You know, so we do that? Were we actually proactive and go out and ask those questions and do those check ins, we’re not trying to we don’t want to be reactive anymore. Wait to find a problem. Let’s get ahead of it now.
56:42
And then it could be from from looking at this information that we that we obtained from these, are there any patterns that we can now predict that, Hey, everybody from this team feels this after the first week or? And we can get ahead of that? Right?
57:01
Yeah, that’s I think, Dominic, you said it very simply asking, people like to give their opinion or to give their feelings, I guess, from my perspective of being an HR manager, but also leading these programs. Sometimes I will get one of the boot camps or one of the feedback sessions or one of the optimizing remote management programs, and I’ll get a very quiet group. And that might be that no one wants to be the first to speak. So usually, when someone speaks up, first everyone follows. Or you may have a group of people that are absorbing, taking notes, you’ll see some of them writing to the side. And they would like to comfortably absorb the information before speaking out.
57:45
And what we do is we track evaluations, and all of a sudden, it’ll be a very quiet group. And then I read my feedback evaluations, I’m like, Oh, my God, this is great. You know, they’re outlining all the things they picked up that they’ll apply. And I’m like, that’s great. So everyone learns in their own way, you know, to allow that flexibility. That’s true. Are you seeing that there are a group of employees that may not be as happy just for the simple fact that they do not enjoy being at home? I mean, I know a lot of people are, they’re not at home with kids or family, a lot of people are at home alone right now. And being home alone all day, and then being there at night as well. And it’s a lot of being by yourself. I mean, do you find that that is contributing to some employees that might just be unhappy, in general, because their job used to be their reason to get out every day?
58:43
Yes. And on the flip side, so it’s interesting, because being a remote company, for them, pretty much almost all of our employees with the exception, like they said of two officers
58:54
were hired knowing that you’re working remotely from the beginning. So this is a new, this isn’t a surprise, the surprise is the fact that you can’t go out and maybe go to a coffee shop and work right. Like even if you’re used to working from home, you can actually get outside and work or, you know, the beauty of being a remote worker is in a perfect world, you can kind of work anywhere, right, depending on what you do. So yes, that definitely took a toll on a lot of our employees. We do have many that live alone. And without a doubt, and that’s why we took such an a big, you know, focus on mental health, wellness, people in general, where can we support? How can we support?
59:36
For sure.
59:38
I think you’re spot on Dominic, I think there’s a big difference in working remotely. Then working remotely and a pandemic. Right. You know, if you’re alone, Cory, as you said, maybe you could, you know, and I know it’s difficult being alone day and night. But if you were stepping out having a lunch with friends or stepping out to the gym, big difference
1:00:00
You know, we’ve all heard this cliche about the pandemic, we’re in the same storm, but in very different boats. Yes.
1:00:09
You know, we’ve heard this time and time again. But when you really think about it, everyone has a totally different situation. You know, I hear this all day in my programs, people like, Well, I have a tiny apartment, and a roommate. Well, my roommate also has a dog. And well, I have three children, and I’m homeschooling, or I am all alone. Yeah, and I’m really stressing about it, you hear so many different combinations of arrangements, everyone is having to adjust in all individual ways. Right. And there’s a lack of PTO being taken in a pandemic like that to our policies, that we have an unlimited PTO policy. And when we adhere to that, we actually, you know, talk to the managers and instill, please take the time off. But you know, I mean, I’m guilty of this, where’s there to go, so I’d rather work.
1:01:06
So the lack of of taking time to just recharge, definitely, it was tough for people to deal with during this. And I think you’re right, Dominic, in that for your company, when they’re hired, they they’re hired, knowing that they are not going into an office. But then I think that there are there’s, there’s also this group of people that I feel they, they enjoyed the working from home, in the beginning, it was new, and you know, more convenient. And having that mindset that it’s going to last very temporarily, I think made it more enjoyable. But then once people are employee started to see that it was actually going to last much longer, if not permanently for their specific employer, I think is when people’s you know, mental health really started to struggle, because it’s kind of like you’re in the situation that you were not planning to be in, or did you want to be in? And, you know, there are some people that I think
1:02:07
the one thing about their job they love the most is getting to go in and see people in person. And then there, there are people who enjoy working remote, but for the other reason, like you said, Dominic is that they get to go places when they’re working remote, they’re still around. So it’s, I do think there, there’s so many more categories of employees now the ones who love it and want to do it forever. They’re the ones who loved it, and now they’re tired of it. And then the ones that never liked being home at all. You know, it’s it’s just so very courageous, as you’re saying and what I think also is adding to the stress. I think we have uncertainty about what’s our endgame here. You hear one day that we have successful vaccines, and you get hopeful. Then you hear about well, there are variations and mutations. We’re not sure how this vaccine works. So that vaccine works. And then you’re homeschooling. No, we’re opening the school. No, we’re homeschooling. And there’s so much in a state of flux.
1:03:10
Yeah, that I think that’s adding to what you talked about Korea with the with the mental stress, we really thought also this was going to be a lot shorter term. Right? Right. So I mean, for me here, right? For me, I had a seven block commute to the office. So I loved going into work, getting all dressed, seeing everybody nice conference rooms.
1:03:33
For a lot of my colleagues, especially in the UK, they’re like, Joan to get to the Oxford office. It’s two and a half hours each way. Oh, my goodness. Oh, yeah. Many of them. Wow. Ah, so this was a godsend for them. But even then they’re saying, I would like maybe once a week, twice a week to see everyone. Right. And I think that also employers that are in the same situation as Dominic’s employer is that they are accumulating a lot of these employees that enjoy working from home that want to do it forever, and their employer may not be doing that. So I mean, I think it’s, it’s actually working out best in the long run, because I feel like now people are going to truly be able to find where they’re happiest as far as not just employer, but where they want to be every day.
1:04:29
Yeah, I mean, that a lot of people. I mean, don’t get me wrong. There are people that experience working remotely, but but not to the magnitude that we see today. I mean, I think this gave people a whole new perspective of
1:04:41
they almost self confidence that I can do this job without being in the actual office. And I do have support and I do have a manager and in a team and leadership team that’s there to support me. Virtually just as good as if I was sitting next to them.