Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign to a new episode of unlocking your people all today's episode is a little different. So if you've been listening along with us up until now, you'll know that we've been having guests on with particular areas of expertise and I have been answering questions peppered usually to me by Roz on various situations. But today I am joined by two owners of small businesses who are going to ask me the questions that they have on their mind. And I've asked them to join because then you get a real sense of of the person behind the question which can be sometimes helpful. And because it's real life and we have be able to have more of a conversation and they can share some of the things that they've been doing in their organizations. Whilst people is what we do here at E3, any conversations you have with anybody are going to give you nuggets to share. So everybody's doing wonderful things. My view of the world is steal with pride. So if you can take something great somebody's doing in their organization and apply it to yours and it's going to make a difference, go do it. So let's find out what Steph and Mike have to share with us. They'll tell you who they are and what they're about and we'll see what they have to ask. I am joined today for this episode by the awesome Mike Randall and Steph. I call you Steph, hubby. Is that okay for this? Yeah. Steph Huffy, who are colleagues and compatriots of mine growing fantastic businesses across Atlantic Canada.
And we are just going to have a chat about people so they have the opportunity to talk about whatever people things we want to talk about today, answer questions, see what we get into as we most of the things that I do, I will bring my thoughts to the table. But as both of these people run highly successful businesses, they will also likely have comments on each other's questions and things that they want to talk about. So hoping that this is more of a conversation and we'll see where we get to. So that's the plan for today. I will ask each of you, if you don't mind, to share just a little bit about you for our listeners and then we'll get into the meat of it. So maybe ask Mike first. Tell us a little bit more about you, Mike.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Sure. Thanks. Great to see you, Jess.
Mike Randall. I'm the president and CEO of Portfolio. We're a strategic action company, a management consulting firm based in New Brunswick serving clients across Atlantic Canada. And we Solve really hard problems, not of the people kind, but of the operational kind and the money kind. And helping companies grow and expand out of Atlantic Canada.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: Yes. Super. Awesome. And if you need a strategy, Mike is the man to call, so that's always helpful. And Steph, tell us about you.
[00:02:31] Speaker C: Hi, I'm Stephanie. Heavy. My pronouns are she, her. I am a registered speech language pathologist and the founder of Allied Therapy, which offers accessible speech, language pathology, occupational therapy, and behavior therapy services across Nova Scotia.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: Fantastic. So, yes, as Steph pointed out earlier, we have good geographic representation for Atlantic Canada. We just. We're missing PEIs. Don't hold that again against me. And we'll see where we get to. So I don't know, folks, if you had anything that you were chewing on coming into today that you wanted to start with or we just have a conversation generally. Any. Any things that have come up for you in the last week where you're like, I need to know more about this.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: Go ahead, Steph, you jump in.
[00:03:14] Speaker C: As always, I love picking your brain and love learning from you. I think my biggest learning, as my business is scaling is, and I have lots of questions about this, as always, is the difference between transition management and change management and how to.
I'm really good at making a list. I'm really good at building a system. I'm really great at getting stuff done. But how do I make a plan to make sure I'm supporting all my people through my pace of change?
[00:03:47] Speaker A: Right. That's a great question. And often, I think entrepreneurs and business owners tend to operate at a speed of movement that is a little faster than the norm. So we tend to like variety. We tend to be passionate about driving our businesses, which means we tend to kind of put things forwards. And because it's our idea, you're already further ahead with the absorption of that idea than your people are. So it's kind of not unusual. It's not a given that people are going to necessarily get on board with that. So I love your distinction because not everybody thinks about it this way, but when we talk about change, change is the thing, right? So you've got a new intranet page for all of your people, or you've got a new financial expense management system or whatever it happens to be. That's the change. And so most of us are quite good at planning out, like, okay, I need a system to do this. I'm going to go find various providers, I'm going to check what I need. I'm going to screen them all, decide who it is plan out implementation and get launched.
Then we forget the bit, which is then I got to get people to use it, right? And so we can have the best intentions. But if people don't adopt your change and they're not proficient in your change, then you won't get the financial benefits of it. So when you're doing the planning around what you're going to roll out and what it looks like or whatever it is, that is also the time to do some thinking about what do I need to communicate to people and when about this and what resistance is going to show up. And I'm a big Star Trek fan, so resistance is not futile. People will absolutely resist change. And not from a place of I don't really want to do that, but more from a place of, I don't know how this is going to impact me. And because human beings are who they are, we're wipe the threat first, right? So whenever you launch a new thing, most people's brains do not go, yay, new thing. They go, oh, maybe I won't know how to use this. Maybe this is technology that I'm going to feel stupid using. This changes a system that I don't understand.
I was really comfortable using the old system, and now I'm going to need more time to do this one, and I don't have enough time already, and it's going to stress me out. So all the reasons why this might not be a good idea are what come to people's heads first, right? So when you're sitting down and planning to do the rollout, thinking, okay, I've built this thing, let's launch it, Thinking about how you communicate the positives of it. But also removing those barriers is going to be important. And we use a model called Scarf Model, which I've talked about sometimes with some of you before, which looks at the main reasons why people resist things or unhappy with things, right? And it's a really good tool just to think through. Like, so Scarf looks at five buttons that we have and says, okay, if I press any of these five buttons in a good way, then I'm gonna get excited, happy, motivated people. But if I press any of them in a bad way, I'm gonna get like, procrastination, avoidance, frustration, all the things that we don't want. And so when we do change work, we'll often sit down and look at the communication plan through that lens and say, okay, how do I talk about this change to press those buttons in a good way? And what are the likely issues aligned to those things that will come up for people and how do I take those off the table? So stasis is a good one, right? Like if, if I'm really good at the system you've already got and you've just changed the system. I've lost some of my status in the organization because I was probably known as someone who's really good in the system. People probably asked me questions about the.
You've just taken that away from me without really realizing it. So how do I give you some status back? Do I make you a super user in the new system? If you're adept at technical things, can I train you in how to do that? Do I communicate to you a little bit ahead of everybody else so you've got more time to process it? So it's really sitting down and thinking about what are going to be the barriers of adoption for people with this and how do you kind of take those off the table and then secondly, what is a reasonable time to proficiency?
So quite often the biggest mistake companies make, even if they're good at the communication bit is going, okay, the change is done, so we're done. On to the next.
At the point you communicate the new thing, that's when transition starts for people and they will need at least six months to transition. So you need to be talking, still talking about that change for six months after you launched it, at least to make sure everybody catches up to where you are before you can kind of assume it's business as usual. And I'd say six months is on the short side. So that doesn't preclude you from launching more things. But if you think about every time you launch something, people are going through a transition curve.
If you launch like 92 things within a six month window, people don't have the brain capacity to catch up. So be kind of choosy about that. So I'll kind of stop there and then see if you've got things you want to add or most got opinions for management consulting world.
[00:08:39] Speaker B: And building on that, you know we work with a lot of clients that go through change. And in your experience what's the biggest mistake leaders make before, during and after change?
[00:08:56] Speaker A: Not having a sponsor, right? So sponsor is a senior leaders who's designated as the face of change. That does not mean they need to do all the work to do with the heavy lifting. But if there is nobody saying from the top this is important and you should pay attention to it, then it's not important and no one's going to pay attention to it. So whether it's a CEO or another senior leader, it doesn't matter. But somebody has to be standing up. And I use that term loosely, it could be standing up at a town hall meeting, it could be sending out emails to the whole team or whatever. But says this is something that is important to this organization. You must pay attention to it.
And most people ask the sponsor change, if they're truly going to sponsor effectively, don't really know what that means.
So there's a bunch of work done by prosci, which is a change organization, in the kind of space around sponsorship.
And most senior leaders, because they get why this is happening, already understand what this is about, don't realize the amount of work and effort required to communicate to the team. They under communicate to the team. They forget the kind of hearts bit that goes with hearts and minds. And so the communication is perfunctory, like this is happening and then kind of done. So you need a sponsor and you need to communicate the emotional reasons for doing this, not just the kind of business reasons for doing it. And I'll give you a little example of that. I had a conversation with the CEO of an organization who was going to do an expense management program and we were talking about change management and communication planning. And he said, look, this is really not a big deal. We just need to cut costs. If you just tell the team that they need to cut costs, they will cut costs. And I was like, no, they won't.
Some of them will. Absolutely. But you understand the need to cut costs because you are financially tied to the success of this organization.
Your frontline folks do not have any skin in the game financially as to what our expenses are or why they need to cut any costs, and nor do they feel controlled or equipped necessarily to pull the levers to do that. So unless we give them a lot more information, you will have told them cutting expenses is important. And if you ask them, they will all go, yes, cutting expenses is important, but they're not equipped to do anything with that. So that's definitely a gap.
There's something else. Oh, the other one I see quite often is when we think about communicating change, there's two parts to that. There is the drivers for change, which is why we can't stay the same. And then there is the vision of the future of where we're going to get to. They are not the same thing and we have to have both.
So there's a really great quote, which is an anonymous quote, which is people change when they see the light or feel the heat.
So quite often what I see organizations do is they will communicate the drivers for change. So we need to cut expenses because we're over on expenses. That is okay. We can't stay the same. But that does not excite anybody about a future state. It doesn't explain what's going to be better when we've cut expenses. It only says we can't stay as we are. So. And sometimes people go, well, the vision is that we've cut expenses. Well, no, no, that's not really a vision. That's a description of the opposite state to the one you have now.
But what does cutting expenses allow you to do? What will be different when you've done that? What monies will be available to do different things. Like, give me a compelling reason why I should be excited about this change. I recognize we can't stay the same, but I'm not excited about moving towards anything. And then you don't have momentum. So a lot of organizations do a good job of saying we must change, but they don't galvanize people or align people behind the direction of the change and the future state that they want. So that would be, I mean, two things off. I could probably pick like 95 more.
If I had to pick one more, it would be they stop too soon. Right. Just we, we as a senior leadership. Yeah, we have. We as a senior leadership team are done with this. We're good. We get it. We've moved on. So everyone's moved on. No, there's a. The marathon effect changes. Like a marathon, people start running the race and finish before other people have even started winning the race. Change is exactly the same. If you are involved in driving the change, that means you've been thinking about this, planning it, design in your Steph. Building it, designing it. Get excited about it. You haven't even told anybody else it's there yet.
You put it out there and you're done. They've just started.
So your, your transition management starts the day your change is launched. And so too many organizations are like, okay, we've done that change now and we're on to the next thing. When they barely got anybody aware.
[00:13:21] Speaker C: And I think the surprise I had was the level of emotion that came with change. And I hadn't put that on my checklist.
So do you have any recommendations on how to prepare for the emotional component that comes along with it?
[00:13:39] Speaker A: Yeah. So two, two things we talk about.
One is how do you prep and think about reactions for the specific change you're making?
But Also in today's world, how do you build people to be more resilient in a changing world because it is faster paced today, all the stats I've seen suggest that whilst we thought we were pretty speedy and agile six, seven, eight years ago, we're getting more, the pace of changes is faster and our planning horizons are getting shorter. I mean, we used to do strap plans that were like five to 10 years out. Now they're three to five years out. I've got some clients that do strap planning annually. They just never get past a year. So in terms of staff and employees getting comfortable with things are going to keep shifting and that's now the norm.
That is a kind of different level of preparation to there's this thing that's coming and how do you feel about this thing? So in terms of the thing bit, you need to assume from day one that people are going to be resistant to what you're doing and brainstorm as many different reasons why somebody's going to be resistant as you can think of. Right. And if you have a small enough team. So we've done obviously change projects that are like, for organizations of 10,000 people. So 10,000 people, you can't individually think about each person, but if you have a team of 20, you can, and you can sit down and think about, okay, I am launching this.
How is Fred or Susan or Angelica gonna feel about this? Do I think right? And do I need to do any specific messaging to that person that's going to allay their concerns or their fears ahead of time?
Right. And that will take some, some of the concern away and then be very clear as you roll things out how and where you want people to raise concerns with you.
Because you can't tell people to not be emotional. That's not going to work. All that will happen is they'll squish it and hide it away from you. So having reactions to change is totally normal. So normalize it and create the mechanisms by which people know when to come and talk to you and say, I have a concern, how to raise them with you and what you're going to deal with it. That way you will at least channel the emotion to you as opposed to all over your organization in pockets that you can kind of manage. That's the first thing.
And then talk to people about change as a, as a training thing. So talk to your organization about that. Evolution is normal and change is part of a successful organization, but we don't do change necessarily well as human beings. Teach them the change curve. Teach Them scarf teach them how to raise concerns with you constructively.
Talk to people about what good support looks like. So one of the conversations I like to have with employee groups is that if you watch employees with each other when they're going through change, they will tend to one of a better phrase, getting to bed with one another on it. But what I mean by that is someone will be unhappy and they'll go and talk to their friend at work about the fact they're unhappy and their friend will go, oh, I know. Oh yeah, it's really bad, isn't it? It's terrible. Like, I don't know why we're doing this. And kind of inflate out of right intention desire to support. They will kind of make that person feel validated for the fears that they have without adding anything in to say. But how realistic is your fear really? Let's talk about what you're really worried about. Like, realistically, is that going to happen and who could you talk to about that and what control do you have in the situation? So we don't really coach each other. We tend to support each other by, by saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it, I feel the same as you. That's actually not super helpful. And because we pass moods on, that can mean that people kind of infect each other. So talking to your team about our role, when someone comes to talk to us is not to say, yes, I agree, our role is to support. But let's talk about what support and coaching looks like when you're coaching a peer who's going through change. So that would be my two, kind.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: Of one of the things, one of the things I've noticed we do a lot of stakeholder engagement and through change. And you know, over many, many, many years of doing this, I think the one constant I see is that people are afraid of change oftentimes because they can't clearly see themselves in the new reality. They can't clearly see themselves in what that change will look like. And oftentimes, if you can up front, through the communications, very clearly paint that picture and very clearly articulate and here's how that will affect you or impact you or here's how that's going to really enhance or improve your working conditions, people then are less resistant because they can start to picture themselves in that change. It's oftentimes and you could see it around every. It's not just change within an organization. You know, you talk about increasing immigration in a, in a place and people go, oh, I don't know. What that means, and I'm going to see different colors and different smells and different things, or people are going to come and take my jobs and because they can't imagine life differently. And so if we could do a better job helping people see themselves in the future or see themselves in change, I think there would be less resistance and maybe less emotion as a result of that.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: I think that's really valid. And it goes back to the vision part. Right. We talked about the reasons why we pick immigration. We talked about the reasons why we need more people.
Sure. But I don't know what that means. Paint me a picture of the future state. Because if you don't, not only do I maybe not see see myself in that future state, worse, and that shows up is I think the future state will be bad for me.
Right. Because we will go to like we are driven as human, but what's in it for me is my driver. So if I'm a small business owner who can't hire anybody, then new immigration is a great thing. If I've been struggling to get a job for the last six months and you're talking about bringing in all these new people who I now think are competing for me for the job I can't get, well, guess what? I'm not going to be excited about all of that. So if we're not thoughtful about how to describe that future state and recognize that this word, I love this word. Foinking. I don't know who came up with the word foinking, but foinking is a great word. Fear of imaginary negative consequences.
I thought you thought was coming. I know pointing is a great word. I don't know who came up with that word. It's a chain. It's a word we use the change space. Right. So people foink all the time. Right. This. This is going to be bad. I don't know. No one's painted a picture for me of what this could look like for me. So I am going to, because I'm wired that way, prot myself and assume it is a threat and respond accordingly. And so your job as a leader, you will never ever imagine all the threats that people will come up with. People come up with some of the weirdest stuff.
But your job is to spot when you think someone is flinking and go, come talk to me. Tell me what you are imagining is going to happen here. Because the likelihood is, in most cases, it's not a real threat.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: The reality is, though, change can lead to people moving on. The need to bring More people in, and we see this a lot, is the struggle for organizations to staff up, staff differently through change and after change.
And I don't know what your advice would be for leaders.
I often think maybe we should be bringing HR into strategic development and building it into the strategy and building it into the change.
Oftentimes we're brought in after that fact. But what would be the advice in terms of how do you deal with staffing up, staffing differently, and exiting people through change?
[00:21:23] Speaker A: So my general view of the exiting part is yes, but so there will always be some people who decide the journey that you are going on is not the journey they want to stay on. And I have been there. Right. So I've been in an organization and gone. You know what, you're painting me a picture of where you're going. I really don't think this is where I want to go. So let's talk about what departure looks like. But those are usually the relatively easy exit conversations because the person knows it's not something they want to do.
It is harder when the person you're talking about is stuck in old world and thinks old world was better for them and doesn't want to move or know how to move to new world.
And so there may well be those individuals where you have to make the call. My caveat in most of those situations though is they don't know that we've done a good job in having the honest conversation before we get to that point, like sit down with the person and put the, put the behavior on the table and say, look, this is where we are. And so we have a rule of three. Like, you have three good conversations about what you're seeing before you make the decision to kind of move the person on. Because ideally, everybody who leaves your organization should leave as a champion right now in real world, that's not always going to happen, but it could happen a lot more than I think it does. So, you know, I wouldn't shy away from exits by any stretch of the imagination. I wouldn't say, you know, you should be trying to keep everybody. That's not realistic. The journey is not going to be right for everyone. But, but, but be honest about it.
The other two parts I'd say are. So you said something earlier that I wholeheartedly agree with, which is we don't always integrate talent, strategy into change. Right? We're not thinking about people impacts, we're thinking about business impact. And the business impact should come first because if there's no business, there's no jobs. So fine, but then if this is what you're going to do, what are the people implications of this and how are you managing that? Whether it's we need more, we need a different skill set. The people that we have in this department are going to be retrained and move somewhere else. We're going to lay 10% of our workforce, all of those things.
They can all be very readily managed to be respectful to people and still deliver the business results. So when I see some of these news announcements later of organizations doing kind of mass layoffs in a non respectful way, it doesn't need to be done that way. Right. Don't get me wrong, there's lots of logistic challenges if you're going to lay off 10% of your workforce, but you can always do it with respect in mind. So I love what you said about earlier integration because I think that would solve people a lot of pain.
[00:23:58] Speaker C: Jess, may I ask, you said about having those conversations early and that there's a rule of three for them. How early? What's the tell? When should you be and what does it look like when you see someone that's discomfort with the level of change that you know that you should be having those one on ones.
[00:24:17] Speaker A: So I'd separate into two different pieces. So do your change planning and think about the impact on people and anybody. And often when we do that, we'll actually score factors, right. So this is something we can talk about more depth if you're, if you want to. But we'll often do a process of impact mapping where we'll look at a change and say does this change affect that person's job responsibilities? Does it bring new things they've got to learn? Does it change the reporting line? We'll kind of look at all the factors that will affect that person and score them. And then if someone's got a high score, you know they are significantly impacted by that change. And you're going to want to have a conversation with them because unless they're a superhuman, they're going to be wobbly. Right. And so those people I would talk to up front, when you're, before you're, as you're planning to do your rollout, listen, something's coming. This is what it's going to be. Here's how I see it affecting you. This is what we're going to do about it. Talk to me about how you feel about that. How do we best support you? So those ones I do really early. But there will be some people you think are going to be fine who aren't. And then there are going to be some people who you think aren't going to be fine, who perfectly are. So then there's the folks after you've implemented where you start going, you don't seem like you're quite okay to me or I've introduced this new thing and you're clearly just not using it.
And so as soon as you see it, you have a conversation about it. I don't, don't leave it, don't wait, have the conversation.
It's not a punitive conversation. It's not a, this is a severe problem. It's hey, I'm noticing this which doesn't seem like you. Is everything okay with the ideally open door for them to say, well, actually, I don't know, I feel completely lost and have a good conversation with you?
They may or they may not. So if the behavior continues, you have a second conversation and you say, listen, I'm still seeing this and here's the implication of it. Now I'm getting a bit more serious with you because I really do need you to get on board with this. I need you to talk to me about what you need because this is not what can continue.
I'm here to support you in the best way I can, but I need you to be in it with me on that. And then the third conversation, if it doesn't check changes, we're trending towards an untenable situation here and this isn't going to go well. And then that way they are aware of how that store that that journey for them is progressing and they have the opportunity to address it with you. And some people still won't. And that's okay as long as we've been fair and respectful to them in the process and given them the opportunity to address it. So I don't think unless you are doing acquisition or merger, at which obviously point legally you can't tell people that's coming.
Right? So there may be some things that you do in an organization where there are legal reasons why you can't inform people. Ultimately, I genuinely believe for the most part sowing seeds earlier is better.
Right. If you surprise people, they are still going to have all the same emotional reactions that they would have, but they're going to have to have them in a really short window if they're going to get where they're going and you're going to have everyone do it at once. So you might as well tell people it's coming and start the transition journey and deal with the emotions as they go, go.
And you are a master of handling emotions with people. So that one Steph would be one that I think you'd be great at.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: Picking up on that. And I guess not specific to change, but leadership through change or leadership in general.
How do you counsel leaders or what do you tell them? What are the simple things they can do to make people feel seen and valued within an organization?
Through good times, through challenging times. Right. Like it? I. I oftentimes think we get into a cycle. We're busy, we're busy, we're busy, we're busy. What are those things that maybe those simple things a leader can do to make people feel seen and valued?
[00:27:58] Speaker A: Lovely question. I even love that you're even thinking about that.
There's a couple of different things I'd say here. The first one is it's much easier to lead an organization that's doing well than an organization that's not doing well.
You generally have more money to spend on stuff, you've got more time, everyone's more excited, like all of those things. So I sometimes think the test of great leadership is if you are the one who can lead successfully in a downturn, then you know you've got great leadership for the uptimes.
So it requires a bit more thought in those instances.
We had a conversation very early on in this series with Pierre Batter, who both of you would know from our journeys together.
And he talks about the importance of a one to one. And I would echo that a thousand times over, like making that time for one to one conversations as often, as frequently as makes sense in your organization for the type of people you have. Like, not everyone needs a weekly and everyone needs a monthly, but people need some time that says, I am devoting my attention to you right now for whatever it is that you want to talk about. And for my part, I would agree with him. I think that covers a multitude of things with people. Because it says, you're important enough for me to make time for you. I'm sitting down and building a relationship with you. Think about scarf buttons again. Right. Like they have control over where that conversation goes. We can talk about anything you want to talk about. I can give you certainty on the things that you're unsure of. And so it says you matter now. That's not to say so I have one to ones with my team every week. That's not to say I managed to make every single week work because things come up. But my team invariably don't go too long with me without that one to one time. So that would probably be the first thing that I say.
But the other piece.
Yeah, go for it now. Go for it.
[00:29:42] Speaker C: What we did with our one to ones is we actually added in a catch the good principle.
So my team in their one to one, if they've seen any of their coworkers do something really awesome over the week, we've got a recap of catching the good with someone else. So that they're like, we're building the collaboration right in. But it's also how the conversation always ends. So they come in thinking about, oh, I just saw this person do something so great on the playground or in this clinic or they really went above and beyond for a different client.
And that's really helped our company culture a lot and just, just teaming and all of that. But it's, it's built right into our one on one template and we love it.
[00:30:21] Speaker A: Brilliant. Yes, brilliant.
Similar examples of that would be doing it in team meetings. Right. So team recognition. We used to do like the T shirt of the week.
So like we had a I'm an awesome T shirt and it would get awarding to somebody and the team would vote to who it got awarded to in the week. And then we used to have an Oscar that was dressed as within a Hawaiian. Bunch of things like it. They don't cost. It doesn't cost any money. Right. That's the great thing about recognition. It costs you absolutely nothing to recognize people and yet it goes such a long way in how people feel about things. So that actually ties in quite nicely, which I was going to say Steph, which is noticing. Right. So do you pay attention to the things that matter to your team and the things that they are doing? Because the statistics actually say so. Whenever we think about feedback, people think about giving people good reinforcing feedback and then no feedback and then developmental or corrective feedback. Right. And if you ask people what order they want them in, most people think that people would say, I want only positive, non or only negative. Right. Actually it's only positive, only negative and then none. People would actually rather you only ever gave them developmental negative feedback than none. Because at least you are noticing and talking to them and therefore that someone is paying attention to what they do. If you're giving me no feedback at all, then do you even care?
So noticing this, even big things, little things, paying attention, the high five for a good job, wandering past their debt. Right. Management by walking around, it's been around for a long time, but it's there and it's a Valuable tool in your toolkit. And if you're like me and your memory sucks and trying to remember people's spouses names and kids names and dogs names and birthdays is not your thing.
Notice the other stuff or write down or find someone to fill in that gap for you. Right, but those, those things, right. Do you see your people as people? Are you talking to them as people? Are you noticing what they do and what matters to them? That will, that and some time for them to talk to you about what's important to them will cover 90% of everything.
[00:32:23] Speaker B: A lot of our clients are going through exciting growth opportunities, struggling to find talent to recruit to and you know, not even all my clients portfolio. We're, we're going through this on a fairly regular basis now. And one of the things, there's lots of people with skill, but culture just doesn't feel right.
What, what can organizations do in that sort of, of cycle of growth? Hiring, onboarding, not the right fit girl. Right? Like how do we get better at that?
[00:33:08] Speaker A: Well, I'm going to say, what do you both do now?
[00:33:13] Speaker B: Well, what we're doing now, you know, we, we've got three or four positions open quite literally as we speak to replace some key personnel who have decided to move on and then growth on top of that. And we're hiring the junior position first because it's actually the most important of all the positions in, in many ways. And I, I believe if that person and that, that person comes on board with the right fit and, and helps to build our culture, the other folks will be easier to hire and because they're the ones that will manage our social media and a lot of the way we appear to other people.
So I'm spending the most amount of time hiring the lowest paid of all the people we're hiring because I think it's one of the most important positions and the greatest room for growth and opportunity and the future of the company. I really do believe that. So I'm actually involved in that one more so than hiring senior people folks. So you know, I'm, I'm allowing the rest of the team to hire some of the other folks. But I'm really involved in that one because to me that if we get that right, we're going to be okay. If we don't get that right, everyone will know.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: Right. Makes sense. Steph, anything you think you're doing, we.
[00:34:36] Speaker C: Work really hard on our talent pipeline.
We're coming into a shortage of, of master's level therapists in Atlantic Canada. So this is something that's been on my radar for seven years now, kind of since day one.
And we. We put a lot of pieces in play. So we've actually developed a whole marketing plan targeted to recruitment and have that set up and structured. We take on a lot of university students to get them in as students, to get them introduced to our culture, into our team, start to see who's coming up and what their skill sets are.
As someone reaches out, we're interviewing right away every time to get to know who they are, and then we're nurturing those relationships to make sure we've got a talent pipeline in place.
We've always got volunteer opportunities.
And then I do a lot of, like, professional mentorship through ISINs, so I get a direct pathway of any newcomers coming in that actually have the master's degree that I'm looking for, and then tons and tons of networking to try and get in front of as many therapists as I can and make sure that we've got the brand recognition. So that area for me is a big focus and I think always will be.
[00:35:52] Speaker A: And good for you. And I mean for both of you. I'd say all of that, plus a few things I would add. So what I love about that. So, Steph, I'll stop with yours.
You're doing a lot of things and have been doing a lot of things for a long time that people are now thinking, oh, I'm going to need to. Right? So marketing is a great one. And Mike's. Obviously, you're a marketing guru in this space, but from our perspective, a lot of people market for clients and don't market for staff. Right. I'm not thinking about what my brand is as an employer.
I've asked a lot of people over the last year. Have you ever looked at Glassdoor? Is your organization on Glassdoor? If you don't know what Glassdoor is, it's a website where people write reviews of their workplace. Right. Do you know if your organization is on Glassdoor and what people are saying about you? Because that's the kind of stuff that people are looking at when they decide if they're coming to you. So that kind of thinking ahead to what you want, if you have the capacity, because not everybody would, but if you have the capacity to do the things you're doing, stuff like nurturing talent and building that database of interested people and taking on students, these are all mechanisms to get kind of people in the door.
Mike, your piece about who's the cultural linchpin in your organization is A great point. Right. Because everybody has them and we always know or pay attention to who they are and whether you're hiring for that person or whether you use that person in the hiring process. Back to how do we assume fit or assess fit? Who are your cultural ambassadors who naturally embody the culture of your organization? Do they interview and if they do, do they hit it off with the person or do they come out going, yeah, I mean they seem all right, which we all know is a no. Right. So those, those things can make a difference. And then I think psychometrics for fit are really helpful. It is extremely hard in an interview to ask questions about how somebody behaves. You can ask questions about skill and experience. You can ask questions about like what would you do if hypotheticals. But being able to see somebody's traits and whether or not that person kind of embodies what you're looking for is harder.
Don't rule them out based on psychometrics, but it gives you an opportunity to ask questions. I was in a situation this week actually where there's an individual who's been hired in to an organization we work with, who's in six months now, everyone still agrees, is by far and away the best candidate that came through that process.
But the individual does not quite fit the culture of the organization. They have a desire for more autonomy and independence and working separately in what is trying to become a much more collaborative, consensus driven organization.
And so whilst there's nothing technically wrong with what they're doing every day, they're doing little things that leaves other people in the organization scratching their head. And I very much doubt that that person, unless they can adjust the behavior and they're getting feedback on it, that person will probably opt to go somewhere else in a year's time because they also feel slightly out of kilter with everybody else. And whilst no one can quite put a name on it, we all end up feeling awkward. And the awkward is what makes people look so, you know, it's really tempting when you're short staffed to cut the steps to hire the pair of hands to go for. I just need somebody right now because otherwise I'm going to drown in X.
That also tends to be the time we hire the people that aren't quite the right fit. You're better off from my perspective, if you really can do without the pair of hands, you're better off taking the time to go through all the steps in the process and do psychometrics and reference checks and all those things to make sure the person fits and think about who else has eyes on your candidate. So whether it's your cultural ambassador or other people in your team, if not least of all from a bias perspective, from a cultural perspective, who else needs to see this person to decide if they feel like they're right for you? Right. So I think all of those matter.
[00:39:34] Speaker B: Do small companies still have access to something like psychometrics? Is that accessible to them?
[00:39:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, they're not super. They're not super from my perspective. I don't know. We're not massive. I do not think they are expensive. I think they are an extremely useful spend of money. But maybe I'm biased because we do them.
But ultimately, you know, to do a psychometric assessment on somebody is going to cost you, ballpark, maybe seven. Somewhere between 70 and 150 bucks, depending on what you're doing, which if you don't do for everybody who applies, you're saving it for your top two candidates.
You spend 300 bucks to figure out if this person is the right fit for you. You will save yourself a lot more time and money in the long run by doing that. That work, or at least to recognize maybe this person isn't going to have something. I was quite looking for right back to must haves and knives. To haves. Right. So it's a must have. If it's not a must have, it's a nice to have. Okay. At least I know that person's coming in without this, and I'm going to need to work on training them up on that or building that into the probation when they start. So we can kind of move the dial on that or having the honest conversation. I remember hiring one of my previous team members, and she was fantastic in the interview, except for how she was dressed.
And so I phoned her up for the offer and said, listen, you were fantastic, but I got to talk to you about dress code because my expectation, when you come to an interview, it is your most professional version of yourself. What you wore was fine, but not my most professional version. So I want to make sure we aligned on. When you come to work here, what does professional look like? What am I? Standards and expectations of dress when you're talking to clients, because if that doesn't fit for you, we're not the right place for you. And that's okay. But let's have the conversation straight away and not be like, well, she's pretty good, and bring her in and then worry about whether it was going to fit or how I get to talk to her about clothing. Or you know, or dance around it.
[00:41:21] Speaker C: So, Jess, with the psychometric testing, are you using it to compare to an avatar of what you've built for the role you're hiring for?
[00:41:32] Speaker A: Sometimes, yes. So you can do a process with one of the tools we use where you define what. So you ask very good people in that role who are already good at that role to do their own, and then you use that plus insights from the leaders of that role to shape a profile.
So that is one way. Or you can just say this is how the profile of the person shows up. So thinking about the attributes of what's likely to be wanted at this job, let's ask some questions on it. Either are fine. My own. Only my caveat with both of them is slightly different. So with the, with the. This is the ideal profile one, just be mindful and to not screen out candidates that aren't a perfect fit. Right. So it's not. This is what you have to exactly look like. It is more meant to be guidelines for what to pay attention to interpreting somebody's report. And then similarly, when you get somebody else's right, like two or two sets of eyes on everything in the recruitment process is just a better idea. Like pick someone who's really different to you, who's really good at what they do, and get them to look at everything as well. Because then you're more likely to cast the net more widely in the candidate pool that's available to you and avoid some of the biasy things. So you can do either. Steph, the biggest thing I'd say for anybody who's contemplating psychometrics is if you are not used to reading them, get some guidance on how to interpret them. Because what? Different psychometrics present different information slightly differently. And just because you've seen one doesn't mean you're going to interpret another one quite right. Or in the same way, most psychometrics require you to have done training and.
[00:43:02] Speaker C: How to interpret their reports and to follow that. So say you get psychometrics down on your full team, how do you not lean on them for your expectations? Right. So if the psychometric testing comes back and individual A has a weakness in organization, I'm not quite sure how they work, but say organization, how do I not accommodate for that and still have expectations for them? Does that make sense?
[00:43:33] Speaker A: It does. So there's two slightly different things there. So a psychometric assessment will talk to you about somebody's preferences.
It does not necessarily talk to you about their behavior. So behavior and preferences are linked because if it's a preference, I'm more likely to do something. But not always. Some people have preferences and go to work to do something different so they might show up differently it work. So you've got to be a little bit careful about the questions that you ask. But let's say you got a profile on somebody, let's say we'll take mine. And so my profile says I am really fast paced, I like making decisions, but I'm not very good at analytical data stuff. Right. It's not my preference.
So the first question is, just because it's not my preference doesn't mean I can't do it. So are you not seeing me do it or do you just think I might not be doing it because it's my preference? You need to not see the person do it if it's part of the requirements and then it's like anything with else. If it is an expectation of me to do that in my job and it is a reasonable expectation, you can have a reasonable expectation. I can also have a conversation with you about why it's hard for me to do that and you can support me in trying to get better at it. But I can't just say to you, oh, well, that's part of my job and I don't want to do it because I'm not good at data.
I couldn't say to you, yeah, I know I run the company, but I don't want to do the finances because I'm not good at data. Well, part of my job is doing the fine look at understanding the finances for the company. So if I find that hard, that's perfectly fine.
But what are we going to put in place for me to get better at it? I can't just put my hands up and say I'm not good at that. I'm not doing it. I have to work with you on some plan to improve. And then ultimately it's a question for me of percentages and time. So how much of this person's job are they struggling to do? Because then you probably have a fit issue.
So if, you know, if it's 5% of somebody's job, that's difficult for them. Sure. If it's 50%, you've got a fit issue and then how long does the person need to get better at that fit thing? Because in anybody can learn to do anything. But in an organization we have finite time and resources to support that process. So you have to make a call on yes, I recognize, yes. That you're not so comfortable with the numbers, we're going to work on this for six months and I want to see progress in that area and here's the support I'm going to provide you. But if in six months you're either not motivated to work on it or we're still not getting anywhere, we're going to need to talk about fit in the organ in fit with the role that you're in. Does that kind of what you will get getting that? Yeah. Yeah.
Thank you. And then if you've got someone awesome, they not a role fit, can you put them somewhere else in the smaller organizations? That's tough. Well, sometimes it's not tough because we can shape stuff for people, but sometimes it's tough because we don't have a job to give them to. Right. Then you're having the honest conversation about.
[00:46:06] Speaker B: Fit companies that want to scale.
Haven't figured out the people part yet. Right.
The three of us have spent time together over the last year and we keep hearing about about you've got to have a great relationship with your banker, your accountant and your lawyer. But I keep thinking of the people part and what's the advice you'd give entrepreneurs that want to scale but they haven't had to worry about the people part yet or just haven't thought about it.
[00:46:36] Speaker A: So it's funny, I had a conversation this morning with a client that's never had to worry about it and now they have to worry about it and they're know they're bigger, they're probably 75 people but they've always had they're in an industry that's doing well.
Industry's got a lot of training associated. So people are getting developed in to join that industry and for the first time in a long time they can't hire now. And all of a sudden they've gone and oh, we can't hire. And unfortunately they also weren't developing people either. Right. So a lot of organizations have banked on the fact that I can go out to the market. So clearly not Steph, which she's super now, well placed after seven years to have all these things in place to help create talent. But there's a lot of people doing catch up. Right. So there's a lot of people who've been banking on I've been able to hire and now can't. And so you, unless you have a type of business I have not come across, you cannot run an organization without people if you are not forecasting. So when you do your strategy and there's going to Be some people thinking, I don't have a strategy, that's okay. That's why we have people like Mike and some extent me. Different things, but the strategy is there.
Strategy, talent strategy fits into strategy. So if this is where you're taking your organization, this is where you want to go. Let's talk about what you're going to need. How many people are you going to need? Like what skill sets are you going to need? Do those skill sets exist in industry? Do those skill sets not exist in industry? If you're for example in shipbuilding in Newfoundland, there's only about 20 graduates a year. How many companies want those graduates? Are they all going to competing with you?
What is your strategy to Steph's point for marketing your organization to those people? What is your employee value proposition for attracting those people? And then more importantly, who are you developing internally? So if you're taking in students like Steph or junior staff like you or Mike, how do those people get grown? Right? So you, you just don't want to leave it to chance. And in this market and it is not going to get any better anytime soon, you are not necessarily going to be able to recruit who you are.
So if you're not thinking about development of talent internally now, stop.
[00:48:39] Speaker B: This is why we all have to hire E3. In my opinion, that's my takeaway from today. That is my takeaway from today.
[00:48:48] Speaker A: But it's true. I have had, in the last three weeks, I have had probably six conversations with pretty well known organizations who I have never thought of, who've never had any issue attracting talent. They got a good employer brand in the marketplace, they offer decent packages and now they're all going, what do we do now? Can't find this person. Can't find this person. The person that we were banking on to be a successor for this role has decided they don't want to do that and they're going to move to another country. Like all these things, the talent is much more mobile today. So you can't bank on that anymore. And it's not complicated to do talent development, talent strategy. We just don't think about it until something hits or take a leaf out of Steps prep book and build your checklist of the things that you want to think about and start thinking about.
So we look at it in E3 where we look at growth based on where your head count is today.
So when you're in different stages of headcount, you're going to about to encounter different pitfalls and challenges. If you are in the less than 10 in people camp, the. The thing you're going to have to worry about is who is going to come in other than you.
So you can't keep doing it all. You need to hire the people who are going to hire, you know, hold the hats.
Quite often what we see people do is their first hires are administrative people because they don't want to be doing the admin. That person's not going to advance your business. So is that really the best next hire for you or do you need to hire a 2IC? There's a lot of conversations in that. If you're in the 10 to 20 range, you need lead more leaders now. You need team leads because you might have a 2IC, but they still can't lead everybody. So who is your next leadership generation? How are you training people in leadership? How are you? Who's your succession plan if you're 2ic? Whoever you hired to be your backstop, get sick. It's all back on you. That's not helpful. Right. So emergency succession planning, some of those things become important and then as you get bigger, we're talking about teams of teams and into, you know, organizational dynamics and more training for whose critical talent and technical skills and some of those things.
So, you know, if you're certainly, if you're in the 75 employee and up range, you probably have the HR basics down now, right? Like you're not worrying about how we hire and how we fight. Like, you might not be finding the people you want, but your hiring practices will be fine. You should absolutely be thinking about your talent practices if you haven't before now. And even if you're less than 75, how do you develop your team and your next leaders? Because you can't do it all.
[00:51:15] Speaker B: Yeah, that's good advice.
[00:51:17] Speaker A: And Steph, you need a harassment prevention program plan before September.
[00:51:21] Speaker C: Tell me about it.
[00:51:24] Speaker A: So it doesn't apply in New Brunswick, or at least not yet. Mike. So if you are. But if you are in Newfoundland, and I have discovered some people still don't know for Newfoundland. So Newfoundland introduced harassment prevention plans in 2020. So we've had them for five years. Nova Scotia was introducing it in September.
It's a piece of legislation that speaks to an extension, if you like, of respectful workplace. So it is a policy and plan for the prevention of bullying, harassment and workplace family violence at work.
You are requ. It's subject to the number of people in your organisation. So everybody in Nova Scotia or Newfoundland come September 1st. Well, Newfoundland now, but come September 1st, will need to have a harassment prevention plan and policy that speaks to explain the definitions of bullying, harassment, family and workplace violence. And they are slightly different definitions by province, which is interesting and explains what your procedures are for dealing with incidents in that space. So if somebody has an issue or complaint about harassment, what is the process that you will follow to address that? And you are required to do training of all your staff in those things. So we have a short course that you can do that will do that. But you are required to do training. In Nova Scotia in particular, which is different to Newfoundland, there is also a requirement that you do a specific assessment about the risk of workplace violence. In Newfoundland, it is generally under the OHS hazards assessment that is done. But in, in Nova Scotia, it's a specific thing. So there are some differences between the way Newfoundland has enacted legislation and the way Nova Scotia has.
If you're in pei, in New Brunswick, it's not a legal requirement. I say yet because I generally see with health and safety stuff, Newfoundland tends to start and a lot of provinces follow on. I would be surprised if it doesn't come to New Brunswick and P.E.I. within a couple of years.
[00:53:12] Speaker B: There is some really interesting work being done by the municipal associations here in New Brunswick, the Union of Municipalities and the Francophone association. And they're trying to lead first within municipalities, both from citizens to staff and elected officials, and within the municipalities themselves. But the longer term plan is that they're looking for provincial legislation to apply to the workplace. So I, I think, you know, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia leading the way.
New Brunswick will probably be a quick adopter after the fact, but it is prevalent and important every day in the workplace, particularly, I think with social media. Right.
[00:53:57] Speaker A: So, yeah, and even just thinking about things. So we don't necessarily post Covid.
Probably more relevant in your world, Steph, than in my world. But for individuals who are public facing the incidents with the public of harassment, bullying and violence have increased.
I put that down to the general stress and trauma that we all went through in Covid. And a lot of people have not come out the other side of that yet, despite the fact we've said we've gone back to normal.
And so we are seeing a lot more requests for how to handle difficult people, how to handle incidents in the workplace, those types of things.
And so the more emphasis we can place on that to help people, for me, the better.
We're also seeing at the same time a parallel increase in conversations about psychological safety at work, mental health in the workplace. All of those things are rightly increasing.
We did some episodes on that earlier in the season around mental health at work and psychological safety.
And so those things all tend to culminate in greater awareness around kind of managing those bits and pieces. So it's not, not overly onerous as far as I'm concerned for legislation, but you do need to have a policy around how you handle it and you do need to train everybody and make sure you're ticking the boxes for your province. Yeah.
[00:55:14] Speaker B: Good advice.
[00:55:15] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:55:17] Speaker A: Well, listen, I think the two of you could probably provide lots of advice about the awesome things that I know you do to everybody, but I appreciate you coming on and asking questions and having some conversation with me today and sharing your thoughts and picking my brain. So thank you very much for making time to be here. We are launching our HR Self serve toolkit in September. So if you're a smaller organization and you are looking for some of the tools like a harassment prevention plan and policy and the training that's all included in the toolkit, you can subscribe monthly or annually and have support and access to the team E3 for general questions as well, every month. So we'll let you know when that comes out and that might be of interest for those of you who are not in a place to have your own HR support.
So thank you both very much for joining me. I really appreciate your time and I look forward to seeing you you both very soon. Do take care.
[00:56:08] Speaker B: Thanks, Jessica.
[00:56:10] Speaker A: So thank you for joining us today. Our next episode is actually going to be the last episode of the season and it will be a retrospective on all the best bits from my perspective of our conversations for this round. Of course, we are planning for season three already, so if you have guests you'd like to hear from, topics you'd like us to talk about or scenarios, we're just asking Jess. Then by all means email us at contact3ca. Of course, if you are also a small business owner like Steph, Michael, myself, and you are struggling with some of those different HR pieces and want to be really equipped. Our new online self serve HR toolkit gives you all the tools that you need at your disposal to manage the people pieces. And there is even, she says, rolling her eyes slightly, an AI just consultant in there that you can ask questions to and get answers. But you won't get the lovely British accent to go along with it, I'm afraid. That's, that's extra. All right, so that is there. If you're interested, you can check that out on the website at E3CA.
Looking forward to hearing comments and questions, so please do send them through when you have them, and I will see you next time.
