James: Hi everyone. Welcome to this episode of the future of team podcast. My name is James Giroux and I am joined by my cohost Dee Teal. Hello Dee. Hello, James. It’s great to have you here. We have a little bit of a scheduling change. We got mixed up between whether we were talking about leadership this, this time around, or we were going to talk about crafting the employee journey.
And in the last episode, we talked about starting with, with leadership, but we’re going to skip that one. We’re going to flip it around a little bit and we’re going to start with crafting the employee journey which I am very excited to talk about. You have been thinking about this for a little while now.
And getting excited about it. And so I’m curious to hear from you when, when you hear this, this concept of employee journey, what does that even mean? Because like, maybe that’s a topic that people who are listening have never even heard of before.
Dee: Well, it’s that whole sense of a person focused approach to their journey.
I mean, it’s kind of an overused term, but the acquisition and starting with your company and the whole experience that they have until then finished with your company, for whatever reason that may be, it’s that whole space of what is it like for somebody to actually What do we look like in the market to attract people?
What, when some, when we’ve You know, when we’re looking for someone, when we’re trying to bring someone on board not even bring them on board, but attract them to apply with us, what do we look like out there? What is the experience once we’ve got somebody in our, or once somebody’s applied to us, what does the experience of that look like?
You know, the application process once they’ve been hired or the interview process once they’ve been hired, what does, you know, onboarding look like? And, you know, we have some unique challenges because so many of us are working in the remote culture. What does remote onboarding look like? And that can be a really fun or a really lonely experience just depending on how people approach that.
And then, but once you’re there. What are you looking at? Are you just focusing on what you’re doing now, but are you focusing on where you want to get to and, and how does the company support people moving through that and I, you know, all of us, I think have had varying experiences and the different roles that we’ve had about what that looks like.
And then, you know, as you, you know, grow and develop, if you grow out of that company and you’re going on. What does the, what does the wrap up of that look like and how have we supported that person into that next space?
James: One of the things you and I say a lot to each other and in, in these conversations is that people leadership working with people is a pro active thing.
It is, I like to say it’s a, it’s an action sport, right? Like it requires us to get in the middle of things and, and, and do it. And I think the employee journey is one of those spaces. I have a marketing background. And so for me, The idea of, of a customer journey is very obvious, right? Like I do the same things.
I’m trying to figure out how do they find who we are and when they find who we are, how do we stay in their mind? You know, we do thought leadership, we do brand, we do, you know all like pain point discovery, all these different kinds of things. And we try to break, bring them into the funnel to get them to convert.
And then once they’ve convert, we try to keep them and then increase the value. Of the customer over time. Right. And that kind of a journey we see in marketing is, is something that good marketers are intentional about. Right. Yeah. And they work hard to just go, no, you’re going down the path. I want you to go down.
And I think when we talk about an employee journey for many of us, probably in the workplace, we feel like work just happens to us. Employment just happens to us. And whether you’re in management or you are an individual contributor. This can be the lived experience that we have and one of the flips we are hoping, I think when we talk as future of team or, or just as people who care about, you know, people first culture is to actually flip that a little bit.
And get us, as you say, thinking about everything. Like what does our brand look like when our employees are out in the wild? What do people think about us? How do, how does that hiring process go? What does it mean to onboard? Well, right. And then how do we do, and then have them grow with us as employees, hopefully for a long, long time.
Cause we don’t want to be hiring the same role. Every six months. Yeah, exactly. It’s super expensive. So all of those kinds of things that we really can avoid if we are super intentional in the, the, the employee journey or the employee life cycle that we create. So we, we talked a little bit about it and I think you mentioned it, Dee, but what do we like?
When we break it down, what are some of the stages, like the common stages that you think apply to most roles? In the employee journey,
Dee: do you mean what you mean? And so from the get, right, there’s attraction in terms of, okay. Yep. So the attraction, you know, how do we attract talent? I mean, to what extent do we break it down in this part of the conversation?
But I mean, if we’re just looking at the stages, there’s attraction, recruitment, onboarding. Development, retention, and then exit. So that’s kind of the whole flow of, you know, what I was, was talking about earlier.
James: I
Dee: was going to ask, I was gonna, you know, you, you know, when I say attraction, I’m like, is that, yeah.
So the attraction is actually getting somebody to apply for the ad. Right. And then recruitment is, yeah. Once you’re actually going through that process and getting them to sign the contract. I was just kind of thinking about what that looks like. Cause I, yeah, anyway, I’ve, I’ve got more to say about that, but I think we’ll,
James: we’ll jump into
Dee: that.
I’m sitting there looking at the, at the list going, Oh,
James: it’s coming. It’s coming. It’s coming. Well, one of the other things is like, obviously you and I both have a WordPress background. That’s, that’s been our world. And you know, WordPress is often remote first that tends to, to be the environment. So not only are we talking about.
The concept of an employee journey or an employee life cycle, but we’re also talking about it primarily in the context of remote and being fully remote. And what does that look like? And I’ll start with a story. And, and this is my story for the first, not maybe the first, but like the, one of the big roles of my career that I’ve had, which is when I, when I went to work for Envato.
And it was about this season, actually right now it’s a few days shy of Christmas 2023. And so it was December 2015, I believe, when, when I was applying and going through the motions. I’d, I’d been I went through, oh, four. interview stages and also had a homework assignment as well as part of that where I had to do a presentation when those were all the rage back in, in recruitment.
And and anyway, so I went through all of that stuff, did the reference checks, found out I had a role, and I was based in the eastern time zone in North America. And my entire team was based in the Eastern time zone in Australia. Well, for those of you who can do some rough maths, that’s like 16, 18 hours away.
And so my first day at 9 AM, I had. Nobody on slack there was it was a ghost town. I didn’t know anyone I had no Anything no onboarding. No. Welcome to Envato. No, here’s the team here You know, no join this slack channel. It was nothing and I Sat there honestly for the first couple of days with nothing To do being like, what’s going on?
It’s so
Dee: awkward. Right. When you’re like, I’m taking their money and I am not contributing anything. Yeah. That’s feels really awkward and uncomfortable.
James: Yeah. It was, it was really, really different now. Keep in mind. This was at this point now, well, 2015, 2016. So what are we like seven, eight years ago, seven years ago.
So. Systems have completely changed. COVID has completely changed the way we approach all this stuff and the tooling that we have available. And to be fair to Envato, they’ve changed and they’ve gotten a lot better at onboarding and even, even to the point where the first staff I onboarded, the first person I hired to join my team, I had to remotely Onboard while I was in North America and they were in Australia.
So I had the reverse right where I was working for the company Outside of their their main zone. So they’re in the office with no idea who to talk to or what’s going on Right and I had to to do those kinds of things but That’s my little story, but I guess maybe we can, we can jump in to the next segment, which is really just having a think about maybe some best practices for each life cycle stage.
And we’re going to start with attraction. Now this is all about your employer brand. And if you don’t have an employer brand. That you are proactively creating, just like your regular brand. It exists whether you’re doing anything for it or not. Yeah. And Dee, I think you were telling me a little bit earlier, this has been my story
Dee: about your
James: story, so I’m curious to hear that.
Dee: So my story’s about human made which I worked for, for, or who I worked for for six years. And the attraction element of this. Was weirdly actually in person that there’s there’s a couple of reasons I like I loved them because half of my friend group from WordPress in Australia was was working for them or at least three or four.
I had three or four connections already there But I have a big team
James: based in Brisbane, right?
Dee: Well, they did have, at that time, less so now, but yeah, that at, at the time they had bought an agency based in Brisbane. And so you know, our, our crew from there was, was working for human made, but the employer branding around that was, was twofold.
One, they had just a really, like everything that I was hearing from my mates about what it was like to work for them. Was good. It was the experience of what the benefits were like, but what the culture was like and actually work. And so that was, you know, you’ve always got that in the back of your mind.
They reinforce that with their open handbook. So you could actually see what it was, you know, what they offered in terms of, you know, if you’re coming to work for us, this is what it’s like, and here’s the handbook. You can just stay, look at it, but they had this other thing and I mean, it’s kind of, you know.
When they were in person, they would all rare where the red human made hoodies, you could see where they were anywhere. And I just wanted a human made hoodie. And, but I spent years going, I’m not good enough. I’m not good enough. The brand was so tight that I’m like, Oh, I’m not good enough. I’m not a good enough developer.
I hadn’t started moving towards project management at that point. And so I always had in the back of my head to go, Oh, not quite good enough. I mean, there’s a whole other story about how I did actually end up there, but we’ll save that one. But the, but yeah, that sense of who they were, that branding, that attraction was, you know, Sort of deeply rooted in how their internal team were talking about it outside.
James: I had a similar experience. I remember Envato had put together a bit of a video of this is us, right? Like kind of thing. I must’ve watched that video a hundred times in the interview process, just dreaming. About what it would be like to work. And for me, it was like big tech, right? Like that was like Facebook or, you know Google.
It was, it was that level. Once you’re inside. You know, you see how it’s held up with duct tape.
Dee: But,
James: No, but it was, you know, and, and to be fair, my picture is still on their recruitment website, even to this day with my team and I’m in their latest recruitment videos. So it’s, it’s funny, like, I, I don’t mind that.
I’m, you know, like, I’m very proud of the time that I spent there, but I mean, that speaks to this idea of attraction, right? Of these brands. You know, like, or, or the importance at least of building a strong employer brand. Another company we know in the WordPress ecosystem is 10 up well known for a couple of things.
Number one, they’re always hiring. In fact, there is a website is 10 up hiring and it’s just a URL you can go to. And the answer is always yes. And those of us, No, that right. And part of that is the word of mouth that spreads that doesn’t come just from, you know one case, right? Or one situation. It comes from, you know, You know, an ongoing reinforcing of that value or the values of what it’s like to work there.
And so as you know, to be fair to, to, to everybody here, big brands, lots of probably capital or, or available revenue and, and, and money to spend on some of these things are dedicated resourcing to invest in these kinds of things. But as we’ve said, If you can be proactive in some small ways, right about just telling your story about sharing what it’s like to work in your company and not just you as an owner or you as an executive, but finding the stories of your team and telling those that can go a long way to contributing to the employer brand and the experience that’s out there of what it’s like to work with you.
Dee: Yeah, definitely.
James: All right. Well, recruitment is, is what comes next. So once you’ve got a brand out there, once you say, Hey, we’ve got a role available and we’re, we’re looking to hire, obviously the next step is recruitment. And that I will tell you right now is Oh, it’s heartache, it’s headache, it’s stress, it’s joy, it’s all of those emotions.
Even if you don’t get the role. .
Dee: Oh, you mean for the applicant? For the, I thought you were talking. Talking about the recruiter also.
James: For the recruiter, all of
Dee: those things as well. . Oh,
James: I, and, and to be fair, I have gone through all of those emotions on the hiring side as well. Absolutely. Yeah,
Dee: definitely. You get all the way through, you find this perfect, you think you’ve got this perfect candidate, and they go, oh, I’ve had a better offer.
James: Yeah. Yep. Or they come to you at the last minute with a very weird condition, right? Or a very weird, by the way, now that you want me, here’s You know, or there’s like a intense salary negotiation or the offer that You were very clear about up front is not enough and then now they want to know you would Yeah,
Dee: well you weren’t clear I was in an interview and I knew five minutes in That we were wasting the next hour and I should have just cut it off there and then because we hadn’t advertised The what what we were The salary band, and he has asked was going to be double or triple what we were.
And then we had this interview for an hour and I was the whole time going and he goes, I think we’re wasting our time here. And I’m like, I think we are and cut it off. But anyway, that’s a whole other lesson in terms of, you know, transparency around that stuff. But
James: well, and, and I think that that speaks a lot to Where we’re going in recruitment, like here in, in Ontario where I’m based just in the last couple of weeks, they’ve come out with a new law that they’ve got before the, the local government here.
Saying that salary bans now have to be published for all roles that are in the province. Wow. Yeah. And we’re seeing that. We
Dee: have it here, but it has to be over, you have to have over a hundred employees. Which for our audience, it’s still, it’s, it’s still not helpful.
James: I think it’ll become a default expectation, right?
That as more and more organizations in that hundred plus space are doing it. If you are a smaller organization and you want to compete for talent, you’re going to have to mirror some of those practices as well, just to be aligned with it. But so a couple of best practices from my perspective, as far as recruitment goes Nail your process down ahead of time.
Be really clear about how many stages you’re going to go through. I would, I would say no more than three. Do you really need more than three interviews? I don’t know. Do you need homework if it’s not a development role? Is that really something that you need? What about you? Do you have any thoughts?
I don’t want to just, I, I’ve got like a hundred. So,
Dee: yeah, I mean, for me, the salary transparency was, is a thing up front. Put that on your ad, put it on your ad. Like, you know what you can afford. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a, that’s a really big one. I think in terms of there’s so many automated tools out there.
I think one of the challenges around using the automated tools is also keeping the humanity around what you’re doing. So I’m really, really careful about how we craft even those response emails. Remember the, I think the other thing too, is remember the human on the other side of that. I don’t know how many jobs I’ve applied for and not even got a.
An e response. Yeah. That’s like, Hey, thanks for your, thanks for your application, and you, the tools will do it. You don’t even have to sit there and write it. Yeah. But, but just thanks. But no thanks. Is is, yeah. Remember the people on the other side of that and craft your process around that more than. That sense of that kind of almost venal sense of we’ve got to fill this role and just not thinking about the humans on the other side of it.
James: Yeah. Cause I mean, at the end of the day, that’s, you know, when we talk about open people, first culture, people first matters. Right. Yeah. And when it comes to attracting people, your, your recruitment process will become known. Right. Yeah. And that will become a hindrance to many people. I yeah. To give, you know, a bad experience of mine that I had where I was the hiring manager, I gave out a homework assignment in the roles because that’s what we were doing at the time.
Right? We would do two interviews, homework, you know, and then the next one and or first round homework, second and third. And we had somebody, a couple of people come in, do the homework, come back and get frustrated because they didn’t pass. After the second interview round, like they just weren’t the right fit, the, you know, like and we’re concerned that we were going to use their homework as material in, in now.
And to be fair, some people do that, right. Some people use that as a means to get creativity. This was before AI. So we didn’t have chatty to, to go and generate all this stuff for us. But. You know, obviously we didn’t do that. But that to me was a lot was the wake up call. It was the last time I ever did homework in an interview process because I said, I don’t actually I don’t actually need it.
If you if I need to see examples of your writing or if I need to see examples of your work. I’ll just ask. Right. I don’t need you to create new stuff for me. And one thing I will also say, and this is something that I have been thinking a lot about and that I hope recruiters and interviewers and hiring managers take on board.
You are asking somebody to come into a meeting prepared for everything. They have no idea what questions you’re going to ask. They have no idea the context you’re coming from. They have no idea why you are going for this role, despite what you write in your job ad, they don’t know enough. And you are in an hour hoping to glean whether this candidate is going to be able to fulfill the needs that you have right.
Or fit the culture or have the chemistry and all those kinds of things. And I would just say one of the best things you can probably do for your candidates is approach it from the side of how do I set you up? So that i’m getting yeses every step of the way Rather than i’m looking for the no right or or doing an interview in such a way To eliminate you it’s not it’s how do I set you up?
Right, and this is things as simple as you’re struggling to answer that question in the interview. That’s okay Let me give you a minute to just pause and collect your thoughts and maybe I can tell you a little bit more about why that question is important to me as an interviewer You So that you have the context to better answer the question, what I’m trying to get at or what my goal is in this interview is to find out if your experiences match up to some of the challenges or opportunities that we’re facing.
And if I have confidence that you’re going to be able to, you know, do the kinds of things that we want. It’s like, If I had that’s, I mean,
Dee: that’s, that’s a mind shift for me. That whole sense of we’re trying to open the gate to let you through instead of trying to close the gate. Like that’s, that’s radical.
Here’s another thing in this process. It’s like, you know, somebody asked me, um, I won’t say it, but like, I listened to a podcast and one of the things that they do is what chaps your ass. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say but one of the things that chaps my ass in this whole. Experience is also when you have this job description that is actually probably generically aligned with what you’re actually asking for, but not once you get your boots on the ground, you realize actually a lot of what I’m doing.
I wasn’t captured in the job script because honestly, if it was, it’d be four pages long, but also. Just yeah, like I’m thinking about a role that I was in recently that was like hang on just a second I’m doing all of these things. I wasn’t expecting that I was going to have to do and so it’s that Oh, we’ve got this person and now we’re going to reshape the role around what they do Sometimes that’s not a bad thing, but this whole sense of the, the thing that you’re advertising is a really, really hard thing to capture.
And more often than not, what you’re actually trying to get from the person is do they have the basic skills to be able to do, but are they also going to be a value add for our aim and you can’t, you can’t capture that in a. In a piece of paper that says, here’s what you’re going to be doing for the next 12 months.
James: Exactly. And, and, and so, I mean, we need to move on because we’ve got a lot to cover, but I mean, we should, we could, we should probably do a whole episode just on a recruitment rant. Yeah, but let’s, let’s move on. Okay. You’ve now been hired. You’ve gone through the process. Communication was great. You had clarity and transparency from the team that got back to you within two to three business days, every single time to let you know whether you made it to the next round or not.
So the, the interview process that was three or four rounds that. Normally would take three or four weeks ended up only taking two and a half weeks. Yes, you’re in. Yeah Not another rant
And now you’re sitting there and you’re being on boarded what a great opportunity to be proactive again, right like be action oriented what do you think d what what are your thoughts on that? Like? Any, any like best practices or positive experiences?
Dee: Positive experiences we had when I started with HM, we had a buddy.
So you had somebody that was dedicated there to make your welcome warm, able to answer any questions, ideally at least close to your time zone so that they were there when you were there. Able to answer, you know, where do I find, you know, this document or that document. I think one of the challenges of the remote work is we tend to rely a lot on.
Here’s our handbook, read the handbook day one. Here’s this, read that day two. Here’s the team. Here’s a couple of meetings. Here’s the JIRA board. You can see what’s going on there. Like a lot of reading. And I don’t know how to fix that. This because, you know, when you’re leaning into asynchronous work, there is a lot of reading.
It’s reading slack in the morning when you, when you start to see what happened overnight. But that can be a lot for a lot of people and not everybody handles that well. So I think. And I know that the more remote work has developed, the more tools and things there are out there for onboarding, but it’s still a lot of reading.
It’s chatbots and Slack or it’s, you know, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t, again, we could do a whole episode on this, on what, what some of the ways that people are. Sort of solving that. But I think personalizing it and being aware of the person going, okay, so they’re going to be starting at 9 a. m.
their time. That’s so and so our time. I’ll jump on for five minutes to say hi and just let them know that we see them. I mean, that’s a big, that’s a pretty big, good first step.
James: I think, I think absolutely. Number one is get them their email address and their Slack access before their start date. Right.
Dee: People don’t do that.
James: People don’t do that. Like
Dee: people don’t do that. Oh my God. Yeah. No, that was the first thing I was doing was like, I mean,
James: it’s an easy technical thing today, but. You know, when I first started, that was, that was it. Right. Like that was one of the things not grumpy, but but, but even like some emails of what to expect, like, Hey, you’re coming up, your, your first day is Next Monday. It’s Wednesday of the week before. I just wanted to send you a quick note to let you know what to expect on your first day, right? You should receive an email from so and so with your temporary password, right?
You’ll get access to slack. Snoop around, open up channels, jump in, jump out, don’t join the channels and just read, do whatever you think feels comfortable for you. I’m gonna set you up with this meeting at 9am your time or this meeting is gonna be recorded and ready for you to watch. I’m gonna, the first task you have is to write your bio.
Right and just introduce yourself to the rest of the team in your own words you can do a video you can do just written you can do whatever makes sense for you And post it and so that’s your first assignment. So it gives them something to do That yeah, they can be confident in doing that has absolutely nothing to do with the role But everything to do with the culture and the people side of it and getting to know folks and getting in.
Yeah And doing that. So that’s what I did. My first my, when I, when I with Envato, they would do these all hands every couple of weeks and they would introduce new staff. And so one of my first assignments was to create a video of myself. So it was me doing Tim Tam slams in my garage, right. With, you’re going
Dee: to have to.
So Tim Tam
James: is a cookie and you bite the corners. It’s a chocolate covered like wafer cookie and you bite the, the, the opposite corners of it and then you suck tea or coffee through it and then you slam it back in your mouth. That’s incredibly tasty. But it’s a very Australian thing and I only knew about it because I had Aussie friends who’d come to Canada and, and, and had, had shown it to us.
So we were doing that and I was, I was trying to ham up the whole. Canadian thing and while, you know, talking to Australians. So I was like, I was wearing like like a plaid lumberjack jacket in the, in the garage, right? Like just really, Oh, Hey, how y’all going? Hey, you know, like trying to just drop the thick accent and, and, and all that.
But meanwhile, having like Aussie. You know, I think it was like ACDC music in the background, like just everything I could pull that was like Aussie just to like offset it. Just for fun, but that was me and it showcased me and, and, and allowed me to, to bring some of my creativity into the mix.
And I think, you know, like those are the kinds of things that help individuals connect and not everyone’s going to be like me and do that. And, and you might not realize that me making that video. Like I’m a super introvert like super introvert and you would not have guessed that from that video right but you know Yeah onboarding things that help get people connected and help getting them feel productive Even if you’re not ready yet to hand over specific tasks who are like your job as a hiring manager Is to get them meeting as many people as possible Sitting in on on on conversations that they need to be a part of or don’t need to be a part of But would be good for them to just have as context, right?
Yeah doing the reading I would avoid You know, having them sit through it security or, you know, those kinds of things as their first thing. Because getting them into the team, in my opinion is more important. Now, again, there’s probably security and legal and compliance reasons why things are done in specific orders, health and safety, depending on your jurisdiction.
So I’m not. Advocating going against that, but if you have some control over the timing of things, be, be people first, right? Like consider the perspective of them. And rather than checking the boxes, you have to get checked off as a, as an HR manager, as a, as a hiring manager, think about it from their perspective and what’s going to be the best fit and the best win for them.
Dee: I wonder if there’s scope for taking a particular phrase out of the vocabulary in this situation. And that phrase is hitting the ground running because it sounds like there is this expectation and that whole time of you need to be productive from the minute that you get there. And I can say from the role that I’m in now, it took me six months.
To feel because there was a huge transition in my head from the culture that I’d come from to the culture that I was in now, there was this huge transition to the kind of elements of the role that I was doing that was really different and the sense of you need to be productive and paying your way from the minute that you get on the ground.
Even if that’s not what is meant to be communicated is, yeah, it’s another one. There’s a sense, even,
James: even as a new recruit of wanting to show you the value, wanting to repay that trust, right, or that, you know whatever in, in doing it you know, I, I, I am, I think I got burned by this a couple of times in roles where I was very capable at doing the wrong things.
They were the right things in the previous role, but they were the wrong things in the current role. But because of that high capacity, right? Like I can do a lot of things, right? Like you throw something at me, I can do it. That sense of competency and that sense of capability can actually hinder my development further down the road because I am not taking the six months that I need to really get up to speed on the right things in the right order.
I’m jumping ahead, right? Because you know, I’m capable of doing this thing and I’m capable of doing that thing and I’m not slowing down enough. To learn the new culture. So that’s maybe a flag as well for managers to consider as well that, Hey, you can be highly capable of doing the wrong things and that’s not going to win.
But it’s a good also segue potentially into the next conversation, next thing, which is development, right? And this idea of you’ve got people, you know, and keep in mind, we’re in the context of the employee journey of how they’re growing. They’ve, they’ve onboarded now, they’ve been with you six months, they’re moving into the things that they’ve demonstrated capability.
How do you then keep them moving forward? How do you help them to keep growing?
Dee: Well, if we’re using the analogy of a journey, right? You have the signposts that they can follow. So you have to know where that journey is going and knowing what the destination is. I had the great fortune of, of helping set up a development.
A progression framework. With it was with human made, actually. So the whole company was going through this process. And so put a number of things in place for those of us who were managing teams and managing groups to be able to kind of start this process. And so we gathered all of the skills. That we knew that we needed for our team and we mapped all of those skills into a really clear framework of how you would, what we would expect you to have as an intern, what we would expect you to have as a junior or an intermediate.
And this was, of course, I was managing the project managers, so this is all the project management skills. And then what. You know, most of the team that we had were, were senior or close to senior. If you were wanting to go further, what would that look like? And it was really clear. So, and I mean, the great beauty of having that document in the same way that the great beauty of having a document that shows your values is that you’ve got something to keep pointing back to.
So as me, as a manager, if I’ve got a team member in front of me and we’re working on their performance, you know, half yearly or annual performance review, we know all of the things that we want to hook onto. I know the skills that they need to be just demonstrating in the role there. I know where they need to level up.
And so we can talk about that, but also we can have that conversation. Well, where do you want to get to? Well, I want to get to this level. Okay, well, here are the steps that you, these are the competencies that we need you to demonstrate. Okay. So now we can have a conversation about, ah, these are all the things I’m going to have to work on to get there.
And then me as their manager and them as the contributor can go, Oh, well, we know the journey that we’re going on now. And we’ve got the signposts that actually can, can get us from, from there. One point to the next. I don’t, I don’t know why more people don’t do it. It was an expensive, it’s an expensive exercise, but it was so valuable.
James: Well, the, the good news is, is in this day and age, there are examples out there for us to refer to and, and for lack of a better, you know, term copy, right? Like you don’t have to invent this. This is out there. And, and because of that you know, like I can tell you, honestly, when I was, you know, in my management life, people, people, leadership journey, there have been roles where I have not had a pathway for myself or my team to go on because the company didn’t have paths or, or journeys.
And, and I can remember it, you know, being left up to individual Team leads to decide when somebody has hit promotion You know, readiness, how different would the conversations I have, I would have had with my team in some of those situations, if we were both sitting around the table going, all right, our goal is to get you promoted.
Right. Yeah. Together, we’re work on getting promoted. Cause that’s awesome. Right. And yeah, that’s, I mean, that wins for everyone, right? Like the company wants you to be promoted. I want you to be promoted. You want to be promoted. Right. It’s a game changer as far as like, As far as like the, the relationship dynamic you have, I’m not here to, as a, as a, you know, people lead to, you know, get you in trouble.
I’m here to empower and support you to grow in your journey because the more, more competencies you display, the more valuable you become to the company, the more, more opportunities you’re going to get to work on bigger, adventurous projects and products like it’s like, you know, there’s just so much.
Dee: Well, when you’re in that too, sorry, I feel like I cut you off then. But when you’re in that and you’re the contributor, right, how much more engaged are you in your work? How much easier is it? I mean, are we going to jump right into retention at this point? Right. How much easier is it? To keep staff if they’ve got a reason to stay.
James: Exactly.
Dee: If they know where they’re staying, if they know where they’re going.
James: And it’s linked, right? To me, development, continuous learning, career progression, all of that is linked to retention. And this is ultimately why people leave. People don’t leave. Because, you know the work they’re doing or the role they have isn’t great.
It’s because it’s not going anywhere. They feel stuck. That’s why people leave now. Not everyone, but yeah, you know, let’s not all.
Dee: And it’s not the only reason, but it’s huge. It’s a huge factor.
James: Yeah. And I think that, you know, part of, part of that comes down to that. Like there’s more we can be doing, you know, and, and I think too, like this is a, this is a thing we talk about in, in people leadership and management where your role becomes different to the, what you were doing before when you were an individual contributor, your work is no longer, the deliverable itself.
You’re not working on the deliverable. Your deliverable is your people, the team that you’re managing and cultivating. And so it becomes important for you as a leader to be thinking and if, and, you know, adding to your KPIs, not just the output of the team, but the growth of the team as a KPI. Hey, we’re the engaged team, but we managed to help, you know, our, you know, We, we had this year two juniors become mid level and we had one mid level grow into like a principal.
Because we were able to articulate the competencies that they needed. We gave them a pathway to do that. And we have a team that is now We can actually break that team up into other groups and other projects and add people to that, that maybe are weaker from other things. And we’ve, we’ve gained flexibility as a, as a company we’ve gained operational excellence.
Right. And that’s going to help me win more clients or win more business. Like, again, these are all we have to paint the business case. Yeah, it feels common sense. But, but what stops us doing all of these things is probably not knowing where to start. So that’s why we’re talking about this and giving you some ideas.
But ultimately, eventually, there does come a point in time where maybe the work is monotonous, or you hit that ceiling, or there’s a situation that happens where, you know, the company can’t afford to keep staff, or there’s a downturn, whatever, there is an exit. You decide as a as an individual it’s time to move on the company decides for you.
It’s time to move on right and There needs to be a process around that as well. This is part of the journey. Ending well, yeah, have you Have you ended well? I’ve, I’ve had, oh, what’s my track record? Have I had a good track record of ending well? No.
I, I have never voluntarily left a role. Wow. I’ve, I’ve been made redundant. The last three roles, my role was made redundant.
Dee: Ouch.
James: Yeah.
Dee: That sucks. Yeah. So we could do a whole episode on breaking down how different comfort, how, what those experiences have been, right? We could. Like there’s a variation in terms of how each company handled that.
Yeah. So I, I would say my last role ended in redundancy. And there are lots about that that were challenging. I think probably both sides of that equation learned a lot through that process, it lasted six months for a whole year. I, I negotiate like it was, it was not me being, well, it was, my role was made redundant and so, Hey, there’s a change where it was a company structural change.
Here, we don’t want to lose you. Here’s where we’d like you to go. And, and, you know. I negotiated a transition period where I could decide and at the end of that transition period and managed to keep the severance pay on the table and got to the point at the end of that negotiated period where it was I needed to step away.
Well, we’re kind of think by the time we got through that process, it was like, yeah, this was, this is not the role. The new role is just not the role for me. And so, and so I left and I think there was a lot of learnings in that on both sides in terms of how do we. If you’re going to do that with somebody, come prepared.
If you don’t, come prepared. You know? So know exactly what’s on the table. Know exactly what you’re offering as an alternative. And so, which was a big part of the reason why that was such a long drawn out process. Which was good for me and for them because it meant we got to keep working together and contribute for that extra time.
But it was agonizing.
James: So on the flip side of, Redundancy where you are not choosing to leave. There is the choosing to leave. And often what accompanies that is a process called an exit interview, which is where you sit down either with a leader or an HR person or somebody. And they ask you why you’re leaving.
And I’ve heard stories of what this is like. I’ve never had to experience it because the decisions were always made for me. So it would not be good, but, but I often wonder what it would be like. If a company sat down with me, you know, as part of the redundancy and said, you know, like, let’s, can I get your feedback on how this redundancy process went?
The things that were missing are things we could have done better. Right. Feedbacks all should always be welcome. Right. And if you are going to take the tough decision to make a role redundant, Then can you also take the tough decision to receive the feedback you’re going to get? Because maybe there are truths in there or there are things you need to hear as an organization about how, how the work is done that can contribute.
To future change and growth and development for the company as well.
Dee: I think there’s a number of things that have to be in place for that to work. Right. I think it’s not just something that you can ask for at the end of an interview. I think for any of that to be beneficial, the company has to be, have an open culture of, you know, continuous improvement and wanting to learn and being willing to hear that.
I think one of the other interesting things is. Whether or not the interview is in person or whether it’s a questionnaire.
James: Yeah.
Dee: Yep. And I think it’s really, really easy. To send out a questionnaire and say, what do you think? And then not read it. Or whereas when you’re sitting there looking and I’m looking you in the eye and telling you, this has been my experience.
This has been, you know, the challenge or this is, you know, why I need the extension. I mean, not everybody’s leaving and it’s not always bad. I mean, you mentioned the ceiling. So if we have gone through that process of extending and growing these people, you can’t, there’s the, the, the. Pyramid gets narrower, right?
By the time you get to the top, there’s less, there’s less roles available. And so it may well be that you’re actually growing and extending this person for someone else. And so I think there’s also that sense within the company of if we are people first, we also have to be mindful that that can happen.
And so the exit interview may not actually even You know, maybe just a hey, thanks. It’s been an incredible experience. I’ve absolutely loved it. I’m excited to go somewhere else. But because what that also does is then leaves a space for the next person to come and sort of grow into it as well.
James: Exactly right.
And we’re seeing more and more as well. The concept of boomerang employees of employees that leave. a company, go off and do a couple of other things and then come back a few years later. You know, with that growth, with that new experience and, and that, that, that depth that makes them even better the second time around than the first.
Hopefully, and, you know, hopefully,
Dee: yeah. I would love to have a conversation with people that have done that actually. Yeah. Because. Because, yeah, I would love to have a, and I know some people that have done that thing. What was it like coming back? Do you know? What’s onboarding like when you come back?
James: You know, like considering the companies I’ve worked for in the past, I could go back and work for a couple of them. Yeah. Genuinely. Sure. Right? Yeah. I think I think it would, it would be humbling, right? In some regards, because again. Yeah. It wasn’t, in, in the roles, it wasn’t my choice to leave, but because it wasn’t my choice to leave, I’ve still got, You know, unfinished business, if you will.
Not a negative way, but in like, oh, I could have done so much more if things were a little bit different or if changes had been made or whatever the case may be. So I, I think getting. Getting there, you know, exits aren’t necessarily always enjoyable, right? They can be freeing for the person who’s leaving, you know, on both sides, right?
Like there may be a hiring manager or a manager that’s like, yes, you know, when somebody heads off and that’s okay too, right? The other thing I wanted to think, we don’t have a ton of time. We’re, we’re, we’re probably well, well and truly over at this point is just to mention as well in the world of redundancy.
There is survivor’s guilt and that’s another whole angle. We could probably spend an entire episode just talking about managing your team. That’s leftover after a redundancy round. I’ve talked to a number of people in the WordPress ecosystem who’ve gone through. Redundancy rounds this in 2023. It’s been a big year for that.
And that’s that’s one of the things that comes through is, you know, it was tough, right? We had a lot of work to get the team back together, build that sense of camaraderie and, and excitement and engagement around our vision. How can we be excited and engaged, you know, and have permission to be happy when, you know, a bunch of my colleagues have just been made redundant.
Like it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s tough.
Well, we have talked a lot. We’ve gone over the different stages of the employee journey. We’ve probably talked way too much at this point. This is a big topic. A couple of, of things maybe just to wrap up is, is that, uh, you know, the number one thing I say, be intentional. Whether it’s an attraction or retention or onboarding all throughout the entire employee life cycle, figure out how to be intentional about where you’re taking your staff, where you’re taking your team.
That is the number one takeaway that I could give anyone. I don’t know if you’ve got anything to add to that D.
Dee: Well, I, I would still have that sense of, or encourage people to have that sense of it’s people first from the get, not, not from the minute that they start. It’s people first. So what are we, so what is our experience like and thinking through and making all of those plans with what’s the experience of this going to be like for the people that we’re trying to attract and recruit?
James: Now, I have the kind of personality where I like to have all of this stuff figured out before. I start anything and have it all done. That’s not always possible. You’re not always going to be able to have all of these ducks in a row. But figure out the ducks that are most important for the stage you’re at now so if you’re about to go through a major hiring blitz get your job descriptions in order your job ads your onboarding and your your attraction stuff figured out first write your Development and career progression and retention all that can come later even your onboarding A little bit can come later, but I’m not, not too much later.
You know, and if you’ve, if you’ve hired everyone focus on retention then, right. And what are the things you need to put in place for that? And we’ve got a couple of tools. Yeah, go ahead.
Dee: I was just gonna say leverage the experience as you’re starting that for the next time around right because I see so many times Oh, we have it’s rebuilding it every time that you go through this process I actually set the process up so that the next time you have to go through this year I’ve got the you can hit the ground running too.
Yeah, I’ve
James: got a couple tools just to Throw at you as as you’re considering all of this You I, I would say if you’ve not yet check out remote. com’s employee handbook, they have it fully public. One of the really cool things about that is you can go into it and see their career pathways, career progressions, and all that kind of stuff.
Check out as well. Job ads from companies like WP Engine They’re doing this really cool thing in their job ads right now where they list the KPIs for each of the roles So, you know before you even start conversations the things they measure or the things that are important to that role Which can give you confidence as somebody who’s applying I know how to measure that, or I know how to manipulate that KPI towards the result that most companies would want.
And I just think that’s really cool. Any tools or, or. Things from you for, for folks in this space.
Dee: That’s pretty good coverage, but I would also, if there are companies that you are interested in go looking at their websites you know, I’ve mentioned human made in their handbook. That’s always worth a look.
I often use that to measure what I’m seeing in other places, which is probably an unfair way to approach it, but, but. I mean, I, I mean, certainly when you’re in the, in the market for a job and, and, and it’s challenging it’s, my recommendation to people is looking at the companies, it’s not, you’re interviewing them as much as they’re interviewing you, and so do that research.
I’m sure this is overused too, but do that research around the company that you want to go to. who you’re talking to before you, before you sort of get in there.
James: Awesome. Well, that’s it from the both of us. We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you have any comments, thoughts, questions, we’d love to hear all about it.
And you can, you know, post a comment here on YouTube or wherever you’re listening or watching this podcast or find us on, you know, all of the, the things, what is it? X now, not Twitter. I was going to call it the Twitter, but. You know, we’re, we’re around and subscribe. We hope to, to have you around for the next one where I think we’ll actually talk about what we were supposed to talk about this week, which was leadership and remote leadership, which is going to be fine.
It’s going to be a really good episode. I’m looking forward to it as always. Thank you so much, Dee. It’s been awesome having this chat with you and I’m looking forward to the next one.
