216. The intruder paradox, hiring extremes and return-to-office pressure. PLUS! Should you ever admit you’re planning to quit? With Becky Simms

28:18And he's gone on to do great things with that. And I could not be prouder of him. But actually, we managed to have a really wonderful exit where it was at the right time for both of us. We knew what was happening. We talked about it as adults. And it's been perfect. We've been able to get the right person in to fill his shoes. He'll never be another Sylvain, but we've got a new person doing their thing and putting their stamp on the business. and it's brilliant it also means that if you end things well that you never know what happens next people go and work other places where they might refer business back to you but we've also had some boomerangers people that have left gone and done something different uh grown learned some new skills and then come back to us because we've got that point had the right role for them again in a small business you don't always have the opportunities to have the opening that they might want.

29:07So they leave, they go do something else. And then when the time is right, they come back. I just think we need to get over the secrecy behind it and help each other from a business point of view and an employee point of view to have the best relationship while we're together and to help make sure that we can have the best relationship afterwards and that we're helping each other to grow. And also when you welcome the conversation so that it's never this surprise of I'm going, but you've got a chance to talk to each other and to look at, is there another route? So we've had people before that have said that I'm not sure this role is what I want anymore.

29:40And I'm thinking of this. And we've gone, well, you could do that here. Like we could build a pathway to get you into that role. Like we probably can't flick a switch overnight, but we can make it happen. Actually, one of our really long-term employees, she joined us as a summer intern and then a year placement student. She then was working in our SEO team for a very long time, but really enjoyed the client side of it. So we built a pathway that meant that she moved into the client servicing team. She's now one of our account directors and she's absolutely thriving. But if we'd not created a space where we could have that conversation, she probably would have left as an SEO manager to go and find that pathway elsewhere.

30:21When actually we didn't want her to leave. She's brilliant and she didn't really want to leave either. but it kind of forces those open conversations to go well we can help make this happen um and we try and make it just easy through the career development plan i think the secrecy behind it and those kind of uh you know what it's like when someone's starting to interview oh i've got dentist appointment oh you're suddenly going to the dentist a lot it's like just talk about it and let's help you because also we might be able to make that introduction that is just what you need to find that next role in that company that might be better suited for what you want to do next.

30:55Al Elliott:I think there's going to be a number of CFOs listening who are going to be angry about this idea because they're thinking, I'm investing all this money in recruiting, training, onboarding, developing all of these amazing talent. And we're actively having a conversation with them saying, well, if you want to go, go. What would you say to those people? Well, I suppose that you're also actively helping keep them in the business longer because if they openly are telling you and feel psychologically safe to tell you what they want and what maybe they're not getting, you can fix it. I think the problem with the mindset where it's not okay to talk about it is that the person just sits there thinking, well, I just have to do the job you've told me I need to do.

31:35And I can't, there's no wiggle room. And then it's, well, I don't really want to do this anymore. I want to do that. So I'll just go find that. And they'll hear when I've found that and I'm going and here's my notice. Whereas actually, if you've created the safe space to go, do you know what? I've really been thinking about this. I've been having conversations with other people. I really want to develop more into this role. Providing that's a role in your business, it's then in your power to help save that person and make sure that you can get them into that role when the time's right. And people are pretty reasonable.

32:05Even if you can't make it happen overnight, but you can start to say, well, why don't, what if we have one day a week where we were helping you to do that? And then suddenly, actually, from the CFO's point of view, this is brilliant. We're keeping people longer because we're stopping them having to leave the company because they want something that we didn't know about before. So yeah, we love feedback. And again, when someone new starts, we talk about that so openly to say, there is nothing you can't say to us about feedback. We want to hear it. And we don't let it be anonymous.

32:35Al Elliott:You don't let it be anonymous? No, you can't do anything with anonymous feedback. I don't know who said it. I don't understand the context. Because people will put a couple of sentences and you're like, well that's really annoying because i i don't know enough about that i can't do anything with that now so we don't let it be anonymous it has to be but then we've created a safe space where people can say things openly enough um with their name against it and they know we're not going to sack them tomorrow because they said something we didn't like or we didn't want to hear it's like of course we're not we we need to hear this and we need to hear it openly so yeah no anonymous feedback.

33:12Al Elliott:So I'm going to talk about Aspiration Digital, right? So from what I understand is taking younger people and getting them into industry. So this sounds cool for someone who's maybe under the age of 25, you bring them and they don't know where they're going. Do you do the same thing if someone's maybe in their 50s and they're coming to your business and you still say, yeah, you can leave if you want. Is it a generational thing? Talk me through it. Aspiration Digital is very focused on helping school age kind of as they're at that leaving age, so sixth formers, helping them to see what the roles in the digital space look like.

33:43Because absolutely, young people, they are more well-versed in digital and tech probably than you and I. They're quicker, they're better, they're faster, they know all about it. But they so often do not know the jobs that sit behind it and that there's these real jobs and careers and things they can get paid to do that are exciting and fun and brilliant. They don't know they exist. And And currently, the curriculum does not make space to tell them about these jobs. So they're leaving school unless they've had parents or friends of parents that are in these roles, or they have been super curious and found it.

34:19They don't know. So that's what we do with Aspiration Digital. On the kind of career changer side of things, I'm really pro that as well. So I add to my other things I do. there's a an organization called beamer the british interactive media association which is like the fa is to the to the football footballing world um for the digital world i help chair their attract part of the uh of the organization where we're helping attract people into the sector partly at the young age which really aligns with aspiration digital but also looking at career changes because digital is amazing especially for people that might want um more flexible working once they've had children, being able to go and work in a career where it's not so tied to a desk, having to be in an office all the time, but actually things like our work from anywhere policy we were chatting about earlier.

35:11And those kind of things that a lot of digital businesses offer and the flexibility to work different hours, et cetera, is really attractive to people that might be wanting to find the right career to suit their lifestyle once they've got kids and all the responsibility and things that come with that and actually there's a little form which you might want to put in the short show notes that people can can fill in so we are looking for speakers and people to get on stages to come and inspire students so we're at the moment our next events are in Newcastle and in Kent but we are currently in talks with lots of different venues across the country so that over the next year we kind of I want to get across the whole of the UK I don't see why students just in our back garden should benefit from this we want everybody to to have the chance.

35:54So there'll be opportunities to get on stages. We'll be looking for sponsors. So we run this as not-for-profit. We aim to find venues that give us the space for free. So any universities out there listening, you tend to be a good spot for us. We've also got the podcast Behind the Future. So we're looking for guests to join us on that. So there's lots of different ways, but on that form, we've kind of got a, you can tell us what you want to do and how you can help So anyone that's interested, and you don't have to be a pure digital business, you just need to have something about what you do that's digital that you could inspire young people to show them how digital works in the world of work and how they might be able to aspire to do something like that.

36:34Al Elliott:So that was Becky Sims. Don't forget, Aspiration Digital is a link in the show notes to find out more about that. But before we talk about that, Lee, counterintuitive. Is this, is she mad? Is she a genius? What's your psychological take on what she just said? She's a genius. Well, there we go. That was Becky Sims and Leanne. So there you go, Becky. People told her genius. Leanne doesn't never call me a genius. Go on. I have definitely called you a genius before. No, I like it. I like it. I like it. Look, if we've got organizations that have authentic psychological safety, which we go on about all the time and business owners go on about all the time, that will include people feeling comfortable with being open and honest about what they want for their career, what that path looks like.

37:18And the reality is, particularly if you're a smaller business, you might just simply not have the roles available within your organization to offer that career pathway. It might be that somebody wants to, you know, works for an agency and wants to go in house for a little while. It might be they want a complete career pivot. I don't think it's the worst thing to ask people and expect them to be honest, because if nothing else, it gives you an idea of succession planning. And we've worked with clients that the worst thing about people leaving is they're completely blindsided and have no backup plan.

37:53So I think actually this could be a really smart way of actually helping your person. And by doing that, they're going to give you 120 % whilst they are in the organisation and give you a really clear view of the succession plan that you're going to need to have in place.

38:06Al Elliott:Absolutely. So there may be seven ways to leave your lover, but actually there's only one proper way to leave your employer. Lee, she did say, now I don't know how you're going to react to this, but Becky did say that she doesn't allow anonymised feedback. If you do surveys, you have to put your name to it. If you give some feedback, you have to put your name to it. Now, I pushed her on that and I said, that's not the way normal people do it. And she said, first of all, I'm not normal. I'm exceptional. She didn't, but I've added that bit. But secondly, she said, look, there's no wrong. There's nobody's wrong.

38:36Al Elliott:It doesn't matter if you say this is all terrible because I want to hear it. I want to hear your name. I don't know which way this is going to go, Lee. What are your thoughts on that? I mean, I think because of what she's doing, and I follow some of Becky's other approaches in terms of how she leads her business as well but when you combine combine that with the fact that she's openly asking when people are going to leave and she's not punishing them for it i know she has a she has lots of trust employees are they've got i think i've got four weeks a year where they can work from anywhere in the world four day work week four day work week trust is so embedded in this organization its culture then i i i can't i can't say otherwise other than I'm sure it probably works without you know actually speaking to employees and getting their view on it um but yeah it's trust at that level isn't that radical honesty if people aren't being punished they're experiencing true authentic psychological safety then I'm sure people will be happy to provide feedback without it being anonymized um I would imagine that Becky's organization is one in a million for being able to do that um i wouldn't recommend it to other businesses but clearly becky does not need my recommendation she's smashing it i think that's probably an important thing saying it doesn't work for every business because as becky said in our conversation this like it's it's so important to understand that you can't just go out there and implement this go right we're doing feedback but it's non-anonymized unanonymized it's not anonymous you can't go and do that you can't go and do the stuff that Becky's doing right now because Becky started a four-week work week in 2017 I think it was so even before the pandemic so she's been doing all this so she's got everything in place so every time she adds something new it's just building on a foundation of amazing culture it's not going oh we'll stick some pizzas down in the in the in the break room and hopefully they'll stop complaining about overtime yeah and that trust is compounded isn't it it's not just in one example it's over and over again over time um so yeah I mean I think I think it's a wonderful wonderful thing and becky's created a culture that is is authentically experiencing psychological safety so if you want to learn more about becky then definitely go and follow her on linkedin and if you care about the future of work then and you should and you should and if you don't then what are you listening to us for you weirdos if you care about the future work then definitely go and check out the way she's doing aspiration digital um it is a phenomenal organization that i believe is not for profit don't quote me on that i know it's not a commercial thing and she's going around the country, she's going to Newcastle, she's hopefully going to Manchester, possibly talking to one of our friends in Manchester.

41:14Al Elliott:I think you know which one. I think you can guess which one we're talking about. And you always do this on air, don't you? Because you always drop something like that. I need to know immediately. My curiosity can't handle it. Back to Becky. So go and check out Aspiration Digital. And also, if you think you can help with that cause, then click the link in the show notes, which is a form. You can fill it out and say what you can do. And she's such a lovely woman. She'll be like, yeah, great. come and come and get involved so if you care about the kids once somebody still think of the children if you care about the kids then go and check out what she's doing now it's time to move on to al's favorite time of the week it's the world famous weekly workplace surgery um but we're doing it a bit different this week al just a little bit we've got friends previous guests and also lovely lovely people who are going to help us with our uh with our questions this week yeah we do we do because from time to time we do get some questions in from listeners which are much more HR based, employer, employee relations based.

42:08I'm an occupational psychologist. I'm not an expert in HR, employment law. That world is not mine. I'm adjacent. I'm not in it. So I would never try to give you advice on these things, but I will find someone who can. And that's what I've done. Regular listeners will remember this organization. We have some friends today joining us from the Curve Group. If you don't know of them, you haven't heard of them or haven't listened to the episode with Jeanette Ramson, who's the CEO, who talked wonderful things about reduced working week.

42:43Al Elliott:Yeah, yeah. Then the Curve Group is an outsourced HR and recruitment solution provider and they provide loads of different solutions across the entire employee lifecycle. So you're talking like right from recruitment right through to maybe how somebody might need to leave the organization and what to do once they have. So we have three questions this week with a more HR focused that we'll be answering alongside our friends from the Curve Group. So question number one, what do you do when two employees are in a complete deadlock after a serious complaint? We've had a situation where one employee reported another for inappropriate behaviour, including comments with racist undertones and unwanted physical contact.

43:23Al Elliott:The accused was shocked and wanted to apologise, but the person who made the complaint has said they never want to see or speak to this person again. They're not in the same team, but they are in the same department. So total separation isn't possible. How do you move forward when one person wants to make amends and the other one just wants them gone? This one definitely requires some HR and legal expertise, something which we wouldn't necessarily always say that we've got the answer. I would never say, but Leanne wouldn't say she got the answers. Here is Catherine Coggins, who is head of internal HR and legal at the Curve Group.

43:54Al Elliott:And here are her thoughts. This is a difficult situation and unfortunately, there's probably no quick fix solution. if you're happy that you've dealt with the grievance in the correct manner so whether it's formal or informal you followed the right process I would then have a conversation with the employee who raised the grievance to explain to them what's being done and also that you're unable to separate them completely due to the department they work in. I wonder if you've offered mediation as an option so this can be run internally if you've got trained individuals within your workplace or you can use external support such as ACAS.

44:28And it's an opportunity for both sides to explain how they're feeling about the incident and agree to solutions moving forward. And it's supported by an impartial party to help facilitate that conversation. Unfortunately, you can't force an employee into taking part. So if the employee who raised the grievance doesn't wish to take part, then all you need to be seen to be doing is ensuring you've taken reasonable steps to separate the employee and resolve any issues.

44:50Al Elliott:So that was Catherine Coggins. lee leanne elliott what are your thoughts yeah solid advice there from katherine and i think mediation is really a really smart idea and it might feel overly formal to go through something like this particularly in a small organization it can feel a bit serious can't it but actually i think it it's it's often the only way that you're going to really kind of get some kind of solution on how to move forward if you've got a third party mediating this conversation between these two people as Catherine said you can't force people to enter mediation so if this member of staff doesn't want to there's not much you can you can do about that um yeah it's a really it's a really tricky one I think the only thing that I would also recommend that you do is maybe have a little think about how you're currently dealing with behaviors like this in the workplace in real time rather than once a complaint is made classic definition of culture worst behaviors tolerated are there other behaviours like this, like say these undertones that are happening more regularly than you might see or you might want to be happening.

45:59I'm sure you don't want them to happen. That is to find your culture because when people feel safe in these types of behaviours, that's when they actually start to action towards other people. So I would have a think about that and go back to our episode we did with Annie Doyle, Dr. Annie Doyle, the harassment doctor, some fantastic advice in there. I'll leave a link to that in the show notes.

46:16Al Elliott:Okay, great. So question number two, is there actually a good recruitment tool for small businesses or are we stuck with job boards? Interesting, interesting. I run a small business team of seven. We're trying to hire a couple of roles. So far, job boards haven't brought in much, mostly underqualified or irrelevant applications. Not from ons.com, that's gone bust. I'm wondering if it's better just to reach out to candidates directly. Are there any tools that actually help small businesses find good people, not just wait for them to apply? I, of course, have my opinions on this. as somebody who also manages recruitment but in terms of the actual tools not my area of expertise I wasn't sure so I passed on your question to an expert please welcome Liam Reid who is head of recruitment operations at the Curve Group.

47:00Al Elliott:So yeah I think before jumping into the tools or head hunting the first question what I tend to ask yourself is are you using the right platform to attract the right kind of talent so taking a step back is always a good start job boards can be hit or miss especially for small businesses so if you are seeing a lot of underqualified or with relevant applications, it might not be about volume. It might be about targeting the right profile. Headhunting is a great option, but let's be honest, it is really time consuming. Finding a decent profile on LinkedIn is one thing, but then comes the hard part, actually engaging them, getting them interested, and then selling the opportunity.

47:34Al Elliott:As mentioned, there are tools out there that can help, but it really does depend on the type of role. For example, if it's a senior or specialized hire, LinkedIn tends to be the go-to. But if you're looking for more an ops role or a junior role, platforms like Indeed and Total Job, CV Library might give you better traction. And I think this tends to get overlocks, but have you really tapped into that referral market? Your own network, your team, even friends or family of the business, sometimes candidates that are close by understand your culture and are right for the business. Really, just to recap, before you start looking at platforms or tools, get really clear on the role, who you're targeting, what good looks like once that's dialed in you you've got a much more effective approach and going to market referrals well if you listen to nick hoober sweaty startup interview about 20 episodes ago he was talking about he says that's how he gets most of his great people is through referrals although i have read a couple books that sometimes you have to be careful with how you get referrals but um obviously lean knows what he's talking about yeah i've had huge success with referrals um yeah particularly once you've kind of nailed down um the roles that you need in your organization and how they will fit in together and your cultures culturing and you know your behaviors are vibing and it can be really effective I got to the point I think in the last 18 months of of my job before I went um self-employed I think referrals was like 90 % of our our field vacancies came from referrals there is a slight danger of course because if you're asking people to refer friends or family typically it's going to be people like them you could then have some imbalance in terms of depending on what your current organization look like of course um in terms of demographics or indeed experience group think can start to creep in stifles innovation all that um but in my experience referrals have also worked out really really well so i really like that that advice from liam and i think the only other thing i'd find i'd kind of add um is having something a bit more proactive in place in terms of um ongoing recruitment um so I think do they call it quiet hiring or something now in other words we just used to call it ongoing recruitment we'd have talent pools of people who we thought were really cool and when we had a vacancy we'd pick up with them and see where they were at so you can actually be proactive in your recruitment whilst you're um you're not necessarily actively looking for vacancies can work out pretty well for a small business yeah it needs to be managed but also it could be worth looking at but i think liam's right there referrals could be a really good starting place absolutely thank you liam liam reed from curve okay so question number three how does bank holiday leave work if you do compressed hours oh this is a great question and what i like about this is that i think if i'd asked you that you would have gone oh so my wife's returning from maternity leave and working compressed hours basically five days over for.

50:28Al Elliott:We understand how that affects her regularly, but what about bank holidays? Now, what we're talking about in bank holidays, just in case you've never heard of it, bank holidays are a UK thing. It's usually a Monday and you get like six. Public holiday. Public holiday is what we're talking about. You might have Memorial Day across the pond. She's entitled to the usual eight days of bank holiday, but now she won't be working Mondays and a lot of bank holidays fall on Mondays. Does she just lose them? I am so pleased we're not answering this. I don't think I even understand the question. Okay, so once again, we're going to go over to Catherine Coggins, who's the head of internal HR and legal at the Curve Group, because let's be honest, we've got no idea.

51:04This very much depends on what is contained in the contract of employment. So specifically around bank holidays, public holidays. So I'd recommend speaking to your HR department. A fair way to calculate holiday is to convert the full time entitlement, including bank holidays into hours. And then any time needed to cover bank holidays is deducted from this. This would then leave you with a proportion of bank holiday entitlement left to use as and when, but one definitely to speak to your HR department about.

51:29Al Elliott:I understand what Catherine said. I still wouldn't have a clue how to do it. It sounds to me like you need a spreadsheet and a bit of chat GPT thrown in there or possibly just Catherine from the Curb Group. I don't know. I think Catherine from the Curb Group is the best option here, aren't you? Actually, that's a good point. Go to Catherine or someone like Catherine to go and get that advice. Don't use the things I talked about with spreadsheets and chat GPT. That's not going to work. Lee, what would work? Do you know what? It never even crossed my mind. when we were talking to Jeanette on the show and she said about how they convert days into hours and I was like well that makes loads more sense because that gives you much more flexibility um so yeah but it's clever HR people like that isn't it that figure out figure out the processes to implement the things that that yeah that we know psychologically and from the research is really positive for the employee experience so yeah thank you so much to Catherine and Liam and everyone at the Curve Group helping who helped to to put that together Sam special shout out to you thank you very much um yeah if you enjoyed that let us know um and we'll we'll include some more hr-based questions in the future if you have a hr-based question send it in and we'll get it answered by a member of the team at the curve group um as always i'll leave links to the curve group in the show notes um should you want to get in touch and ask about working out that holiday allowance and i still can't quite wrap our head around i feel like i should say other hr agencies are available and not sponsored it's not sponsored but uh i think that this this hopefully this will become a relatively semi-regular thing because there's lots of questions that come in that just um you know certainly i'm not qualified to and i think you say they're too better to defer to an hr specialist okay so that is all for now join us next tuesday in fact well join us on thursday for an interview you know what happens on thursdays uh we've got a great interview this week oh my god i'm so looking forward to thursday's interview we i was a bit starstruck uh because essentially i'm not giving anything away i don't think here but there's a number one spot on the podcast in the uk and it kind of alternated over the last six weeks between this person and us so yes welcome stephen bartlett is no he's not we've got a great guy for you next week um we are going to be doing something different as i mentioned in september in august yeah as of from next next tuesday we're going to be taking a little bit of a bit of leave as well which means that our tuesdays are going to be a bit lighter a bit more chatty so with that if you've got a question you've always wanted to ask al and i maybe it's about living abroad maybe it's about working abroad maybe it's about working with your partner and how you make all that work without killing each other how to travel with dogs while working um any questions like that would would be up for answering how to do a pod on the road how to do a pod on the road if you want some insider of podcasting secrets we we are we are not gatekeepers we will tell you everything we know open book um yeah um and then probably some of the little funny things in there as well and we've had some people reach out to us recently who have got books being launched and stuff that we're very excited about so we might start some kind of summer book club maybe yeah that's a great idea yeah i don't know we're still it's still in development but we'll we'll be here next tuesday in some form and what i can promise is that next tuesday we'll also still be in development it'll be in a flow it'll be it'll be liquid we'll see how it goes Lucy Goosey Lucy Goosey so do the things you know subscribe like tell all your friends post about us on LinkedIn go and see Leanne go and check out Leanne on LinkedIn she is killing it at the moment some of these posts she comes out with I'll be honest some of the posts she did like 12 months ago I was like oh that's nice these ones everyone that comes out I read and I quite often comment which is not like you don't often comment actually but what you will say to me is you'll look at me and go, do you know what I like about your LinkedIn?

54:58I'll actually, no, my name's Leanne. Do you know what I like about your LinkedIn? Leanne, I actually want to read your shit. I'm like, thanks very much. And the BrewDog thing that we spoke about on the podcast, I posted about that and it kicked off.

55:09Al Elliott:Yes, we're getting sued by BrewDog. So more on that next week. We'll see you soon. Bye. Bye.

55:22We are joined by HR and H. Who am I? We're joined by HR and recruitment specialist, the Curve Group, who will be doing something.

55:34Al Elliott:We're going to get into all of that right after this very, very quick break from our sponsors. We're going to get into all of that right after this very quick word from our sponsors. So here's Becky Sims from Reflect Digital and also check out Aspirational. so here's becky sims from reflect digital and also aspiration digital work so here's so here's becky sims and check out what she's talking about with so here's becky sims and check out what she's talking about with aspiration digital really cool