[00:00:00] what's on your plate to accomplish this year? Is it exciting or maybe a bit daunting? Could you use some support figuring it all out and talking it through? Maybe you could use some ideas and some proven tactics to try out and a supportive community of smart like-minded professionals. Great news. My new community-based program exclusively for talent management.
[00:01:13] Is now open for enrollment. The Talent Trust combines powerful peer-based learning and private coaching to help you get more inspiration, more influence, and more impact, so that you can implement and sustain your initiatives with ease and confidence. Check out the talent trust.ca for details and to book a call to discuss if this program is right for you.
[00:01:35] Once again, that's the talent trust.ca. See you there. If you're like most talent leaders, you think a lot about engagement and passionate purpose. Maybe you have a tired engagement survey and are thinking of refreshing the questions to get better data. Perhaps you're dreaming of how you could infuse passion into the commercial aspect of your work and your organization's culture.
[00:01:59] Tune into this episode for some innovative ideas on how you might do these very things. My guest is Sarah Isley. As VP of People and organizational effectiveness at Brand Active, part of her role is fostering company culture, elevating the team member experience and driving organizational effectiveness.
[00:02:18] Sarah has some big and innovative initiatives on the go coming up in the future as well, so she may just show up to talk about the mono future episode. I sure hope so. Enjoy the episode.
[00:02:29] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Hello and welcome back to Talent Management Truths. I'm your host, Lisa Mitchell, and today I'm joined by Sarah Eisley Hill. Sarah is Vice President of People and Organizational Effectiveness at Brand Active. Welcome to the show, Sarah.
[00:02:47] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: Thanks Lisa. It's so great to be here.
[00:02:50] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: So let's warm up by sharing with the audience a little bit about who you are and what you do in your career.
[00:02:57] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: Yeah, for sure. So I've been with Brand Active for about five years now. My role is very broad in scope and one of my key focus areas is really focusing on creating an inclusive culture at brand active Working on our learning journey for each of our team members and really fostering that sense of belonging that people can feel when they, when they join our team.
[00:03:17] Prior to working at Brand Active, I was actually focused on the employee relations space. I worked at larger companies such as kp, m g, pwc, and Canadian Tire.
[00:03:25] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Wonderful. Oh, and that was very, very eloquent. You just wrapped that together so beautifully and you got me all interested in some things. So, so at brand active, so, you know, you started talking about this, this learning journey for each, each of your members. Can you expand on that?
[00:03:41] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: Yeah, for sure. And when I say learning journey, I'm really focused on like what are they interested in learning today and what do they need to learn to tomorrow to get us to our five year strategy. And so part of what we do in order to facilitate this is we're really clear about what does success look like in your role?
[00:03:57] What does success look like for your. Day to day, and what does success look like as you start to master your role and progress into your next journey? We also, we try and weave in those competencies that are also needed for the future. Things like data, things like learning more about marketing, which is the function in which our professional services organization consults with things that will help us move forward as an organization and really enable our.
[00:04:22] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: So tell us a little bit more about what Brand Active does. You just alluded to it. If you could sort of fill, fill in the gaps for us.
[00:04:29] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: Yeah, for sure. So Brand Active is a professional services firm. We're based in Canada. Most of our clients are out in the US and what we do is we are C M O advisors and our core business line that we started out with about 20 years ago is really focused on how do you do a rebrand, right? So you can imagine a.
[00:04:44] Large company, you could say like a Rogers or something like that, is rebranding. We're gonna work with marketers to figure out how much is that gonna cost. At the outset, you might not even know what the logo looks like, the colors you're gonna use, and we can really work through that situation to create a cohesive budget.
[00:04:59] And then initial plan, we'll, we'll work with clients all the way from that scoping all the way through to the rollout. We also have auxiliary offerings such as like brand and marketing operations. So what that is is strategy and operations consulting. How can you be smarter, faster, better? In running your marketing department?
[00:05:15] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: So the, the, the clients that you serve, are they in a particular niche area or industry? Typical.
[00:05:23] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: Yeah, we work with clients of all industries. I would say the only, the only group that we have yet to, to really work with is that C P G. And, and the reason for that is that those marketing departments are getting new labels all the time. And so they're experts in, in what we do already. And so we really focus on other areas like healthcare, telecommunications, et cetera.
[00:05:41] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: So something I find really interesting cuz you and I have been talking off camera and off, off the recording is, is, and I think it's partly because, you know, you are a professional services firm specializing in marketing support that you really, the way you view your role in supporting the people at brand active, there's this very strong.
[00:06:00] Connection to, to marketing, to user experience. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about, you know, when, when I think about what you're doing with your engagement survey you're doing some really innovative work there. Could you fill us in?
[00:06:14] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: Yeah, for sure. So about a year ago we moved from doing an annual engagement survey to doing more monthly pulse surveys. And what was really the catalyst for doing that is that we really wanted it to be more. Real time. We wanted to, we felt that we were almost shackled not to be dramatic by that annual survey as like what's happening in that moment and being reactive to someone's feelings maybe in that particular time.
[00:06:37] And so by moving to the monthly survey, we can pulse in on those key questions and understand the experience over time, understand the impact of what we've been doing. and we also expanded our questions. So it wasn't just about that core kind of engagement questions, but we got the full picture, right?
[00:06:53] How are things going with the equipment you have? Do you have what you need to be successful? Are you, do you feel like you can be efficient? Do you feel like you can do things with ease and work through like complicated tasks in a way that minimizes the complexity that's presented?
[00:07:08] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: So what was, what was behind that decision to, to expand it like that?
[00:07:12] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: We really felt that when we looked at the surveys that we were doing, it was only one picture. And so what's interesting about my role is I actually, I oversee other areas other than hr like it and some kind of operational pieces and. things that seem like they, they may be in another department actually impact how your team member feels about their experience at an organization.
[00:07:34] Like for example, if your laptop's super big and clunky and heavy and you gotta lu it back and forth, that can be really frustrating, right? And so by keeping a pulse on those factors that. Maybe don't seem like they're in the talent space. We were able to get a fuller picture of how people feel working day to day.
[00:07:51] Right. We even ask questions about understanding your role in the cybersecurity strategy, just to keep a pulse on, on if people are understanding the training that we're putting out there or the larger picture,
[00:08:03] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: So moving from a, let's just dig in a little bit from this, this annual to monthly survey. So How do you use the information?
[00:08:12] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: it's hard. I mean, I think there's a lot of critical thinking that goes on every month, Because you wanna look, you, you can easily go down a rabbit hole and, and miss the big picture. And so we really work as a team in order to challenge each other to say, , what's the really critical piece here, right?
[00:08:26] You wanna look at the historical information. How are things trending over time? If you've made any changes to the questions over time, making sure you understand where those breaks are so that you can make sure you're comparing apples to apples. You wanna look at the scores relative to each other between like different demographic groups whether that's gender or tenure or whatever.
[00:08:46] May be, and you wanna actually kind of break it down so that you're creating multi-dimensional plans. So our plans actually do manager specific groups. We do department specific groups. We do organization wide, and we kind of feed that information to whoever needs to have it to make the biggest impact.
[00:09:02] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: So I'm picturing an army behind you who can really slice up this data in all these different ways and get this out to the right people. What, what actually happens
[00:09:13] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: Yeah, I'd love if there was an army that would be a nice
[00:09:17] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: I
[00:09:17] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: we do have a few people that help and I think what we, we've learned a lot along the way, right? So before we had one person and they were really focused on doing the data analysis, coming up with like, Why the data might be telling the story.
[00:09:29] It's telling and coming up with recommendations. And what we found is when you're working by yourself in a silo, it's a lot easier to go down that rabbit hole. And so we've actually broken up the process, so it's, it's not like an assembly line, but it kind of is like one person takes the data and they look at.
[00:09:44] What are the numbers? How are they changing, what's interesting about them? The next person tells the story and then the person after that does the recommendations and the person may change depending on the category of the question. So we have, its on the team. We have like someone who's more kind of in integrated into the business who's doing the like methodology pieces.
[00:10:03] We have our talent team and even our recruitment team gets involved and our a d I, so we're all. Staying in our area that we most understand in order to do that.
[00:10:14] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Okay. All right. So a picture is, is forming for me. So you're really using that real-time data to make decisions if. All that time. what about your clients? So within the other areas that you don't oversee, what's been the shift for them? What, what do you, what would you say is, is, you know, the biggest difference that this change has made?
[00:10:36] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: Yeah, it's been really interesting and I think it gives a sense of self-awareness that you might not have otherwise. So every month or every other month, what we do is we, whoever we work directly with, like I work directly with the directors and then the manager on our team works directly with the managers and senior managers, is we send them reports every month or every other month to.
[00:10:57] This is what came up in your results. Here's where I think it may have come from based on our conversations, here's some tweaks that you can do, and then let's discuss it in our next meeting. And what's been interesting is a lot of aha moments around, I can give a quick example. We have a question around receiving appreciation, right?
[00:11:13] And we've gotten into some really exciting conversations about what does appreciation mean? Wh when is it meaningful? Do. Like I was giving people gift cards for Uber Eats or whatever the case may be, but how can I move towards something that's gonna move the needle? And you can see as you shift and make changes, what's actually moving the needle because the question is asked every quarter.
[00:11:33] And so what we really got into is how do I understand what people value so that I can show them appreciation based on that.
[00:11:41] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Okay. Yeah. So they're actually able to, to, without a lot of effort or, or worry really , you know, they can, they can experiment and try different things and see, and see what, what's the impact. Now you just mentioned quarterly, so, so are some of the questions asked quarterly and some asked monthly.
[00:11:59] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: Yeah, so we have a, we have a question bank of about 60 questions, and we wanted to make the pulse survey short, right? 10 or 10 to 15 questions every month. And so what we did is we figured out cadences that we could regularly ask the questions at. Tied to like what's going on in the organization, right?
[00:12:15] So questions around understanding the organizational strategy. We make sure those are right after a big town hall or something like that so that people are kind of, it's top of mind for them. And we also do the ones that are things that should be more integrated in the day-to-day, like appreciation are asked more frequently.
[00:12:32] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Okay. That makes tons of sense. All right, so, so it is interesting cuz it's a way to keep things top of mind, right? Like to, to draw attention to where you want the employees to be reflective or, or thinking about their experience a little bit. That's, that's a very subtle and important strategy I think in, in what you're doing.
[00:12:54] Really interesting. Something too that came up in the, in the green room was this, this idea. You know, the fact that sometimes you're tweaking the questions because, you know, in any organization it's so important that we be agile. We can't just sort of say, well this is the way it is cause we know how that works out.
[00:13:12] So it's always thinking about, you know, if an organization is a living, breathing, involving things, so to speak, then having static questions over the course of years. Some may, some may stay the same for a long time, but maybe not. So how do you respond to that?
[00:13:27] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: Yeah, I love that question. And one of our core values at Brand Active is agility, right? And so we're always pivoting, making sure things are the most efficient. And at the same time, to your point, you wanna compare apples to apples and you want the best business outcome. And so, We, we work as a team if we wanna adjust any questions, right?
[00:13:44] We kind of question each other and make sure it's, it's actually needed and what's the actual purpose we're gonna serve. So we don't change questions often or add questions often. But we really need to, in order to kind of keep up with what's been shifting or if we're noticing there could be something that could be improved with a question.
[00:13:59] So an example is we, we had a, we have a question in our survey that's there's a strong sense of collaboration between departments and we were noticing some of the internal teams might have, were scoring. closer to neutral when everyone else was scoring much higher. And so we, we broke it out into two questions and we've added, when working cross-departmentally, I'm, I am able to effectively collaborate to bring about meaningful outcomes.
[00:14:20] So shifting it from something you may notice in someone else to what's actually happening for you to get your work done. And when we made that change, one of the key things we did is we, we know that that'll also impact how you answer the first question. And so when we look at our historical graphs, we have a line that.
[00:14:36] there was a shift made that might, in, impact how this question was answered so that we can kind of understand when we're looking historically where that shift or change in the score may be coming from.
[00:14:45] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: So, yeah. So it is interesting when you're looking at it regularly ongoing like this and you get that frequent input. What would you say, has been the main benefit for you as an agile organization in terms of having this realtime feedback ongoing?
[00:15:00] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: Yeah, I think it's really. , it's really helped us in thinking about one of our core things that we try and do as our team member value proposition is about creating an individualized experience, valuing people's uniqueness, and it really helps us get insight into what people are thinking and feeling about our organization so that we can pivot, we can see it by demographic groups so that we can.
[00:15:21] Break that down and be really targeted in what we're doing. I can give you a quick example. We had some of our more junior team members were scoring lower than the average around close personal connections. And so we created social events for them to get to meet each other and spend more time together in a remote environment on a peer-to-peer alignment way.
[00:15:38] So quick little pivots like that have been really helpful. And I think from a. Working with business leaders' perspective is it can be hard when you're working on the talent side to know what's actually going on in the day-to-day cause you're going off what people tell you, right? And so having that quick feedback to say, you know, I could, I could get some more appreciation in my day-to-day.
[00:15:57] And then you have a business leader who may feel they are doing a lot for appreciation, and they probably are, but where is that mark? Where, where are we missing the mark? Or where could we do better? Has been really helpful in transforming those convers.
[00:16:09] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Well, it almost, I'm picturing it, it moving from, you know, on that maturity con continuum really, of HR and talent practices from being more transactional to truly partnering, right? Because you're providing valuable insight and you've thought it's made a data, you're, you've done the critical thinking, the analysis around what's this telling us.
[00:16:27] So that's, that's helpful for any people leader.
[00:16:32] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: Yeah, definitely. I think that it's really invaluable, right? And you can really see the trends over time. You can even see like when things happen in organizations that have an impact to the culture, you can see what the impact is really easily, right? Whether it's like something that is more social that happened, if someone.
[00:16:50] Quit or something like that, you can quickly see how people are receiving it.
[00:16:54] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah. Beautiful. Okay. Thank you for sharing, sharing that whole piece with the, with this engagement survey because I think that for listeners, It's really important to think about some tool. You know, a tool is a tool and it can work for a time, and this is an example of taking a tool and constantly tweaking it evolving it and using it in a very effective, realtime way to.
[00:17:18] To get the outcomes you want. So building relationships with stakeholders that, you know, being that trusted partner that's invited at the table, that's valued at the table. This is something that, that isn't we can't take for granted in many organizations. So you've kind of leveraged the tool to give you that In
[00:17:35] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: Yeah.
[00:17:35] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:17:36] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: I love that, that, yeah, that's something that's so important to me is, is having, being in lockstep with the other business leaders. Right. And I think that having that trusted advisor relationship with them really enables, Them to be the champions of the talent work that's going on, right? I don't see myself as the owner of feedback or the owner of Appreciation or whatever it might be.
[00:17:56] They're the ones that bring it to life, right? And so they need to be the faces of it, even if I'm supporting them. In order to do that.
[00:18:02] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah. Yeah. Beautifully said. Okay. Well, let's, let's shift a little bit because something that, that I am curious about is, is how, how you would describe the culture at brand active.
[00:18:15] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: Yeah, it's a great question and I think that our organization has a really unique and highly inculcated culture, and so it's, it's really well documented and. , it actually comes to life in a way that, that I think is really special to us. And I'll talk a little bit about after, about how we do that. Our, our culture is really set around one key North Star, and that's trying to be a team of great people doing great work and having a great time doing that.
[00:18:41] Doing it and the way that we get there. Is by, is there are three core values of trust, agility, and growth. And what's interesting about our culture statement is that the, the values are actually backed up by behavior statements. So it's like really actionable about how you can bring them to life, right?
[00:18:57] I can give an example under trust, it's, we give each other the benefit of the doubt, right? When you feel like someone assumes you have positive, you are so much more quickly able to trust them. Let your guard down and feel that they're in your corner, which I think makes such a huge impact. And then we also kind of rally around a purpose larger than ourselves.
[00:19:15] So to be a compassionate commercial endeavor. Right? And so what does that mean for each of us? We maybe can't impact everything in the world, but we can impact what happens for each other and for our communities. And so being driven by that, that bigger purpose, I think really helps in terms of our culture.
[00:19:31] And on the day-to-day. I think the way that it's, it's really brought to life is through our people leaders, right? They set the tone for how people experience the organization. So we invest a to. in leadership development, right? What does it mean to, to have a trusting relationship with your team member?
[00:19:47] How do you foster their growth? And how do you enable them to be the best that they can be, both personally and professionally? And I think that those elements really bring it to life for people on a day-to-day. We're also very fortunate that we have amazing people that work brand active, that bring it to life day to day, right?
[00:20:05] People are genuinely interested in each other. They go out of their way to kind of get to know each other, socialize, whether that be at work or even outside of work as well.
[00:20:13] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Oh wow. So let me unpack cuz there was so much good stuff in there. All right, so when I go back to those core values of trust, agility, and growth I sort of had like, you know, the hair rose on my arms a little bit in a good way. When you talked about trust being, giving the benefit of the doubt because the world would be an easier place.
[00:20:32] I think we'd all get along a whole lot more if we did that more often. And, you know, I'm talking about myself, I'm talking about everybody. It, it gets. it, it invites people to lose the judger. That's, that's always present right within us. We judge ourselves, we judge others. It's, it's, it's ingrained, but to notice when we're doing it and think, okay, so Sarah's, Sarah's said this or, or done this, what might be behind that?
[00:20:58] What's the intention underlying now that. Communication breakdown happens when there's a misalignment between intention and impact. Certainly. And yet we'll never get to what, you know, what was that, that breakdown so that we can fix it if we're not even open to the fact that intention is, is usually positive.
[00:21:19] So I I, I find it fascinating. You've actually got that baked right in Bravo
[00:21:26] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: Yeah, for sure we did. One of the most impactful trainings that we did, in my opinion was with someone named Rumi. Gillian. And what she said was, we judge ourselves by our intention and we judge others by their behavior. And we've taken that saying, and we've almost integrated it into a lot of our trainings around how to show up in line with our culture.
[00:21:48] And I think when you take that perspective, Turn it so that you, you understand when you are acting, you're doing it with positive intentions and it's very likely that other people are too. So even if you can see 2% of someone else's positive intentions, you set yourself up for a better relationship with that person.
[00:22:08] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah. Yeah, indeed. It's true. That's such a famous quote. Judge yourselves on the intentions and, and judge others on the impact on the behaviors. Okay, so now I'd like to, to dig in a little bit to you know, this idea that w. With you, you, you mentioned it in the green room, but that you've really tried to integrate user experience and marketing to have those, those lenses involved in how you look at overall employee experience.
[00:22:35] Can you elaborate for us?
[00:22:38] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: Yeah, for sure. We've, we, I try to borrow things from different disciplines or departments just because it, there's so much to learn when it comes to talent, right. And I think that from a user experience perspective, it can be really helpful to map your team member journey, right? To understand the personas.
[00:22:56] Who are, who are the people? What do they value? What do they like? How does that show up for them? What are the. Complicating factors about how they in they interact with your culture. And it can really help you generate a lot of empathy for a lot of people and ask questions like you're those people when you're mapping your journey.
[00:23:12] And so that's how I think UX kind of comes into play. It helps you understand how people are actually experiencing the team member experience. And then with marketing, I think it's two ways. A lot of the time you think about marketing. and talent, and you think about employer brand, which is critical, and a lot of the times that's external, externally focused.
[00:23:30] And you also need to think about it internally focused, right? Do people know the employer brand? Do they see it as their day-to-day? How can you amplify the stories of your team members so that other people can see how people are connecting to your culture and connecting to what's going on in the organization just to break down silos, help.
[00:23:49] See each other as individuals lower their waterline a bit so that they can socialize and work more productively together at the same time.
[00:23:57] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Thank you. I think there's so much wisdom in that And, and just for listeners, I'm going Reference a couple of other episodes that, that if they want to expand their, their, their thinking or re or reflection on this user experience. Paula Eisen join me a few episodes back. He's, he's a PhD in Human Factors and we were talking about the intersection of user experience with employee experience.
[00:24:18] So that might be a, a good one to connect into just to build on what Sarah is describing. And then on the marketing side, there was an episode with Sherry Evans who, who, like you, has a bit of a hybrid role. I mean, you. Hr, O e and you've got it in that bucket. And Sherry's got all of HR and she's got marketing and, and there's, it's for the very reasons you described there, it's so that, you know, there's that, that external focus, okay, what are we putting out there, but also what are we shining in internally at our employees?
[00:24:49] Right. How are they experiencing it? I just, I think there's so, much possib. In, in marrying these things together. So we're, we're coming near the end of our, of our time together. It always flies so much. I mean, we could just talk about the, the engagement piece forever and ever. But I'd love to to know when you think about the landscape right now, it's challenging.
[00:25:12] You know, everywhere I go, every newspaper I open, every conversation I have these days seems to be. You know, are we in recession or are we heading for a bad recession? Oh wow. Amazon laid off 10,000 people. Are we going to need to put the brakes on stuff? And employees well actually candidates ghosting employers midway through the, the selection process because they've got other offers and they can shop them around.
[00:25:38] It's a, it's a kind of a, an interesting time to be in HR and talent. what would you say are the biggest challenges right now and the biggest opportunities for talent management leaders?
[00:25:49] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: I love the intro to that question. It really highlighted how varied it is, right? It de
[00:25:54] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: hugely variable.
[00:25:55] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: Yeah. It depends. It depends on the industry you're in. It depends on the company you're in. It depends on the economic outlook and being in management consulting, we really love saying it depends um,
[00:26:04] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah.
[00:26:05] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: but I, I really do think like, people have a lot of options these days when it comes to work.
[00:26:10] And if you're not offering something that's unique and meaningful, you're gonna have a really hard time attracting and retaining talent. And so I think the key word there is really figuring out what's going on for your organization and what do need to do to create something that is unique and meaningful to that organization.
[00:26:29] Whether that's, and I, I really think in order to do that, you have to start with listening. You have to understand what's going on for. , your business, your leadership team, right? What's important to them? What are they seeing for the future for their departments? And what about the team members who work there?
[00:26:43] Why do they, why do they work there? What's important to them? What's been meaningful to them since they've begun working with your organization? What happens in those moments in between, right when, when they make a mistake or when they need something personal? How does that show up for them? And then where does your organization overall wanna be in five years?
[00:27:00] And from there, you can kind of start to craft a plan, either, whether that's to fulfill needs that are missing, whether that's to figure out how you can further support or amplify the culture that exists, or if there's some shifts that need to be made, starting to work in a plan for that. You really need to have a picture of like, what is the lay of the land in order to move forward and figure out what your unique opportunities.
[00:27:25] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I, I really appreciate, you know, what you were saying about starting with listening first and foremost. And, and it, you know, no matter how you do it, it start with listening. So it could be those one-to-one conversations. It could be in groups, it could be with those pulse surveys every month, or a combination ideally.
[00:27:46] So I think that's really, really you know, it's something I think we all know and something that you can forget in the complexity and in the swirl that's happening around us and in our own brains sometimes. Right. The other thing that you, that you mentioned that I just wanted to highlight and pull out for, for folks is, is this concept of being aware, of being inquisitive and curious about what happens in those moments in.
[00:28:11] because I think we can get stuck with looking at, you know, the stages of an employee experience, right? And, and so it's like, okay, let's, let's dig into what's, what's going on when they leave the office? What might be happening in their experience, in their minds, and, and how do we, you know, we can't, we can't control it, but how do we create experiences that help them overcome it if it's a challenge, or help them leverage it, if it's, if it's a strength or an opportunity.
[00:28:39] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: definitely. I think that's really where your culture ends up lying, right? Like it's not in those big moments, it's in the moments that matter. And those tend to be those smaller moments that add up in that add up in between.
[00:28:52] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah. Yeah. Gorgeous. I love it. Thank you so much, Sarah. What an absolute pleasure. I, I really appreciate you giving us a window into your world at brand active and, and the work you and your team are doing. Really, really fascinating and helpful information. Thanks for sharing.
[00:29:10] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--guest126737--sarah: Thanks, Lisa. It was so wonderful to be here.
[00:29:12] sarah-icely_recording-1_2022-12-06--t01-54-25pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Thank you.
