Ep47: Lessons from Corporate Giants for SME Leaders

Our guests today represent corporations with more than £160BN in revenue, or more than US$200BN, and more than 350,000 employees.

We’ll be diving into the best practice approaches to people and culture, including wellbeing and diversity and inclusion, and seeing what lessons, if any?!, can be applied to SMEs and owner led businesses.

Resources

Connect with Steve (Jaguar Land Rover):

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-steve-iley/

Connect with Kate (Laing O’Rourke):

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-goodger-phd-c-psychol-7ba6b379/

Connect with Daniel (Dentsu International):

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielchan-tc/

Connect with Karen (Microsoft):

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karensancto/

Connect with Arti (Ocado):

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arti-kashyap-aynsley-0a16871/

Connect with your hosts

• Connect with Al on LinkedIn 
• Connect with Leanne on LinkedIn
• Join the discussion about this episode on LinkedIn
• Email: podcast@TruthLiesandWork.com
• Follow us on Instagram @truthlieswork
• Chat with us on Twitter @truthlieswork
• YouTube channel for the podcast @TruthLiesWork
• Check us out on TikTok (LOL!!!) @truthlieswork

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The Transcript

⚠️ NOTE: This is an automated transcript, so it might not always be 100% accurate!

Kate Goodger 0:00
It’s about listening and it’s helping people to feel heard. Because arguably that’s one of our biggest challenges. People don’t feel that they don’t have time they’re not paid attention to that don’t know how to communicate it. They don’t know how to say stuff.

Leanne Elliott 0:16
Hello, and welcome to the truth lies and workplace culture podcast, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I’m a Business psychologist.

Al Elliott 0:27
My name is Al and I’m a business owner.

Leanne Elliott 0:29
We are here to help you simplify the science of people and create amazing workplace cultures.

Al Elliott 0:33
Yeah, so this is our second ever video podcast. If you’re listening on Spotify, then I don’t think you can see video podcasts on Spotify. Maybe you can maybe find a way to do it. But if you’re watching on YouTube, then please forgive us because we’re not video nerds. We’re not getting this right all the time. But we’re getting there, I hope. Yeah, yeah. So this is very exciting this episode because we are talking to five corporate giants. So we’re talking to Microsoft. We’re talking to Accardo we’re talking to Jaguar Land Rover. We’re talking to Dentsu, which is the love like the fifth largest advertising company in the world. And we’re talking to Lang Oh rock, which is a huge construction company in the UK. Overall, I think they represent I think they worked out $200 billion is what their turnover or their worth is. And they have over 230,000 employees worldwide. They dish 50 actually is a 350 of their just recruited. No, I

Leanne Elliott 1:30
think you just read it wrong.

Al Elliott 1:32
But first is our favorite time of the week is the news roundup, cue the jingle. So what we got this week, Leah,

Leanne Elliott 1:38
I have any word, the word? Rich session. Say it again? Which session rich session rich session, like this session, but which session? Too many S’s in there for my liking?

Al Elliott 1:55
Rich session,

Leanne Elliott 1:56
which session rich session?

Al Elliott 1:58
Why is it rich session?

Leanne Elliott 1:59
Well, apparently this was a term that I came across an article today, not today this week at the Wall Street Journal have coined the term rich session to describe an economic slump that hits the rich harder. So I can’t imagine this story is going to necessarily generate lots of empathy. But what it’s basically saying is that the downturn so far has disproportionately impacted some of the country’s wealthiest people. And we’re not talking about the Elon Musk than the Mark Zuckerberg, although we will be in a minute. We’re talking about people whose salary it’s about 90,000 pounds and over putting them in the top 25% of wage earners. So lots of different reasons. According to The Wall Street Journal, the recent layoffs in the tech sector have been typically higher earners. There have been increases in the bottom 25% of wages, slowdown on spending of luxury brands, the list goes on, really. So yeah, the insider conclude that for some the rich session will be a cause for celebration, a potential leveler in a country where inequity outpaces other rich nations and wealth is disproportionately concentrated. For others. It’s merely a reminder that economy is slowing down, but not necessarily in the way that we’ve come to expect.

Al Elliott 3:13
Yeah, it’s funny, isn’t it? Recession seems to affect different wage earners in different ways. It’s, it’s traditionally squeezed sort of like the middle class of my mom guessing sort of 70,000 $250,000 a year. And they seem to be squeezed quite a lot. Because I’d imagine if you’re if you’re less than 70,000, less than 50,000, then things are probably a little bit tight anyway, whether it’s a recession or not.

Leanne Elliott 3:34
Yes, no, I agree.

Al Elliott 3:37
What else we got Leah? Well, I

Leanne Elliott 3:39
mentioned Elan. Yelena. Mark, there has been a bit of a bit of a week in the world of social media, hasn’t it?

Al Elliott 3:46
Yeah, this is the week where threads were launched by meta. That’s the parent company on Facebook.

Leanne Elliott 3:52
It is so yeah, if you’ve been on your Holly Bob. So you’ve got no internet or you taking immediate break. Or you just prefer to communicate with people in real life then you may have missed that matter has launched its brand new social media platform called threads. It looks a little bit like Twitter out, isn’t it?

Al Elliott 4:10
suspiciously like Twitter is going

Leanne Elliott 4:13
well for Mark they have gained 100 million users making it the fastest ever growing app. And apparently, according to Mark Zuckerberg, they have yet to launch any of their paid for ads that is all organic, which is kind of nuts. So yeah, it does kind of look a bit like Twitter, and there has been some controversy between musk and Zuckerberg ongoing I guess it started just before, didn’t it? But basically Mark started it by Did you see the picture that he put up on Twitter? It’s his first the first time he tweeted for 10 years. And he did that spider man pointing at a Spider Man main. Yes, I did see that. Cheeky. So yeah, of course then it wasn’t long before Elon Musk himself joined threads just so we could start trolling everybody if he doesn’t On Twitter, and one of the first things that he commented on was a story or reporters story that Twitter is suing meta for hiring former Twitter employees to make threads. So Elon himself reposted to a post about the threat to sue saying competition is fine. Cheating is not, which is quite funny actually, considering that there were claims for a meta engineer that threads appeared to be censored on Twitter’s trending feature. But you know, I’m sure that’s totally different. Right, Elon? So yeah, entrepreneur drama aside, why should we care people and culture leaders? Well, we will remember the horrendous way that Twitter laid off 1000s of people just before Christmas. If for whatever reason, you’re not up to date with that, or didn’t hear about it, go back a few, a few 10s of episodes, and you’ll find a two part series on that. So yeah, no notice locked out our systems days without hearing anything. Musk trolling people on Twitter for underperformance. It was it was yet unsurprisingly, a type of leadership behavior that didn’t really instill much loyalty

Al Elliott 6:04
is what is what’s the professionals call a shitshow? I think because it was it was well

Leanne Elliott 6:09
done. And nice terminology there. Oh, yeah. A shit show. So yeah, obviously, it damaged relationships and recognition. And they’re to foundations of people and culture that we talk a lot about our bond with our clients through our x seven model, and you have people don’t feel that they’re being treated fairly, or that they’re being supported in a positive way, even if that is through a redundancy process, then yet that that any sense of belonging to an organization is going to be completely lost, that motivation is going to go and in some cases, people may seek retaliation.

Al Elliott 6:43
So I think there’s a good way there’s a right way. And there’s a wrong way, obviously.

Leanne Elliott 6:45
Yeah. And that does lead me on to my my third item in my news roundup, a new segment, I thought that might be quite fun. Ask an Expert. So yeah, you may be wondering how the best way to manage redundancies is without losing, you know, those trade secrets to competitors. One of our guests today is Aarthi, she is head of wellbeing and inclusion at Accardo group have a same day I interviewed Aarthi was also the day that Accardo announced some significant layoffs, 2300 people, jobs were at risk, and then subsequently the majority have been made redundant. So many tech companies have gone before Accardo in announcing these redundancies and going through the process of reducing their workforce. So having the head of wellbeing and inclusion in front of me on the day this happened, I had to ask, How can organization manage redundancy positively? And how is Accardo handling it? Here’s

Arti (Ocado) 7:41
redundancies are a business decision. They’re not personal decisions. And they happen in all organizations, right. And we’ve seen with things like the pandemic cost of living crisis, the only thing that we can rely on is change, right? uncertainty and change are the only constants in our lives. And so from a wellbeing perspective, our key has been really been around, we understand that these things are going to happen. And we you know, we hold true to how and why they’re being made the decisions that are being made, because they make sense for our business. But from a wellbeing perspective, we absolutely support you. And that’s why we’ve spent so long over the last year or so putting all those right support mechanisms in place, because we want to ensure that people have access to what they need when they need it. And that’s not just for the people that have been that are left behind that are still in the organization, but equally the support that we give to those that are being made redundant, right. It’s not a buy, you’re out and you’re gone that day. It’s a we’re going to support you in the process that you’re on. And all of these mechanisms are there to do that. And I it’s hard, right? Because you just want to make the core of it. You just have to separate the personal from business and understand that it’s as much as it feels like it’s being done to you. It’s being done by the organization to many of you.

Leanne Elliott 8:51
Thank you. I think we will be hearing much more from her very soon.

Al Elliott 8:55
Yes, we will. Now we’re gonna dive into the six corporate lessons that you can use to attract, engage and empower your people in your organization. first guest is Steve Isley. Now Steve is the Chief Medical Officer at an all sorry chief medical officer and Global Head of Occupational Health and Safety at Jaguar Land Rover, just in case you don’t know who Jaguar Land Rover is. There are two iconic car brands Jaguar and Land Rover all part of the same company now. And one thing I did enjoy learning about was it is a skateboard who’s got five skateboards. So let’s go and meet Steve.

Steve (Jaguar Land Rover) 9:28
My name is Steven Isley, Chief Medical Officer at Jaguar Land Rover. I am in charge of health and well being and safety for Jaguar Land Rover all around the world. I am by training an Occupational Physician. So that means I work in occupational health. Most people don’t really know what that is. It’s a term that’s used a lot. So we look after people who are at work. It’s the working age population looking after them usually in big companies, most big companies have occupational health. Lots of small companies don’t but probably should. And it’s one of the things I think as a speciality we’d like to do more for what am I famous for? Probably depends who you ask. At work. I’m probably famous for helping the company survive COVID outside of work. Skateboarding I am five skateboards, you’re never too old to skateboard.

Leanne Elliott 10:27
Our second guest is Dr. Kate good. Jeff K is a chartered psychologist and head of human innovation and performance at Langer rock, the largest privately owned construction company in the UK.

Kate Goodger 10:39
I am a psychologist by trade. So originally, I worked in an Olympic sport for the last 20 years with Team GB athletes. And then I’ve been pulled across to work in corporate and now I work for Langer rock, which is a global construction company with the coolest job title, which is the head of human innovation and performance, which basically lets me be a kid in the sandpit, the best way to describe it.

Al Elliott 11:02
We’re also joined by Karen Sancto. Karen is the senior specialist, the E M E, A benefits of Microsoft. And she also chairs the family’s employees resource group. On the off chance you haven’t heard of Microsoft, it’s a reasonably big tech firm created by a guy or founded by guy I want to say William gates, Bill Gates, I’m not quite sure how he goes these days. Let’s go meet Karen.

Karen (Microsoft) 11:26
So yeah, Karen Sancto. I work in the international benefits team. At Microsoft, I have been in the company for nearly five years, part of the main team, I have been mainly working out of the UK, in the UK on the UK benefit so bit of a subject matter expert on UK benefits and Microsoft have taken the leap and moved into Middle East and Africa couldn’t be more different than the UK multicountry region, such a different culture, different currencies, different languages, such different topics but so, so interesting. So really excited to get my teeth into that and bring the maturity levels of that region in terms of benefits and well being up to what the UK has.

Leanne Elliott 12:17
We’re also thrilled to welcome Aarthi Kashyap Ainsley are the is an award winning global business leader and currently the head of wellbeing and inclusion at Carter group. As we heard, a Carter is a technology lead global software and robotics company. It is also a PWC trained chartered accountant.

Arti (Ocado) 12:37
So yeah, I currently work at Accardo. And I’m the Global Head of wellbeing and inclusion. I guess my path to hair wasn’t as linear as people would expect it to be. So I’ve been with Ocado group for two years now. I joined originally as a global head of wellbeing. And I think what I want to be famous for be known for is having an authentic voice around all things related to well being inclusion, workplace culture, owning who you are, and being able to wear your authentic self at all aspects of your life, whether that is in the workplace or outside the workplace. And our

Al Elliott 13:09
final guest is Daniel Chan, who is the global workplace and wellbeing leader Dentsu. Now Jensen is one of the largest advertising marketing companies in the world.

Leanne Elliott 13:19
And also as well, just a very quick apology to Daniel and our listeners. While we did record Daniel’s video, we had what I believe our calls a catastrophic loss of data. And we no longer have that recording, or I forgot to press record in the first place, but we can’t be sure. I’m really sorry, Daniel,

Al Elliott 13:37
no fingers being pointed. Let’s go meet Daniel,

Daniel (Dentsu International) 13:39
I started off my training as a nurse, working both the NHS but then also working in the private sector. And I always say this, I the reason why I went into nursing was because I wanted to help people and make a difference. That was my cocoa about being a nurse. I then took actually step into working for an investment bank, and they had a health center on site, I actually was a health consultants, the business, advising them on how health matters could affect on a business level. So and back then I will look in was doing a lot of wellbeing kind of programs and health talks, etc. And that’s what got me into the field around using health promotion start that’s kind of fed into where I am today.

Al Elliott 14:23
So just to remind you, we’ve got six corporate lessons from these companies who ever combined 350,000 employees around the world. And our aim is to bring you lessons on recruiting, engaging and managing your employees from these huge companies.

Leanne Elliott 14:39
Yeah, there are so many trends around people and culture and it can feel like they’re changing quite frequently. So what we’ve tried to do is pick out the lessons that seemed like they’re here to stay or have been already pretty established in the world of people and culture. And the first one is without well being you can’t perform all of our experts agree that investing in the well being of your people is no longer nice to have it is fundamental to the success of your business. Without well being quite simply, you can’t perform. To explain more we’ll hear first from Dr. Keiko jet from Langer rock. It’s essentially

Kate Goodger 15:16
within the construction industry. What we’re trying to do is look at innovations that create breakthroughs for people. So it’s not about technology. It’s not about those kinds of gadgets, we might use wearable technologies. But how can the people experience change on a day to day basis. So from a wellbeing perspective, construction is something that damages people’s health, generally, well being isn’t talked about as a front facing component of it. So we’re starting to change the thinking there around how important well being is to performance from the Olympic environment without well being you won’t perform optimally. It’s just fact.

Al Elliott 15:47
And what’s really interesting about this is that despite working for a huge multinational corporation, some of the stuff she’s talking about is quite familiar to SMEs,

Kate Goodger 15:55
it can be because the margins in construction are so narrow. So the killer things are always programming cost. And as a consequence, people are working ridiculously long hours. And also some of the technology that we are seeing advancing elsewhere, it hasn’t yet transferred to construction. So it’s harder for that. And then very simply, culturally, there is a macro culture still. So it’s difficult to talk about well being mental health is just shocking. In construction, on average, two people commit suicide each day in our country that work in construction. But it’s beginning to move and people are starting to recognize that blokes need to talk about stuff too. But also alongside is the challenge of diversity, not so many women. So we’re trying to readdress those balances, so lots of puzzles to solve.

Al Elliott 16:44
Now, what’s interesting is, Kate talks quite candidly about the fact that it’s 70% male in her organization, and that there are mental health struggles amongst males. If you remember back to an episode we did earlier this year with Jim Young, it was called the heartbreak of male leaders. We examined what the differences were between women and men and how they experienced mental health. definitely well worth going back and having a listen Daniel, head of workplace and wellbeing, Dentsu recommends that wellbeing starts with leaders having open discussions and committing to action

Daniel (Dentsu International) 17:16
thing is starting at having an open discussion, creating new spaces where people can openly share and be vulnerable. And that’s not so leadership as well. It’s about coming up from leaders being open about kind of their struggles, perhaps of mental health and your well being. And knowing that it’s okay not to be okay. I think so again, kind of starting that conversation around. Just being open in general, that really helps because I think having that honesty approach, but also that transparency, and that comes a time, it’s not going to happen overnight. So some of the things we do, especially kind of around our perhaps our learning around our webinars, is, as we open this, as you open kind of the webinar, it’s about telling people with those safe space for you to openly share kind of your views. And you know, we can use a chat function or you can use your mic if you want us to really voice your concerns, because we really, really do listen. But then it’s was actually actually upon those as well. So like by our our annual surveys, where we kind of asked questions and asked psychological safety, but making sure that we actually won them. So people know we are kind of really invested and committed to it.

Leanne Elliott 18:26
Daniel went on to explain that well being run through every aspect of the employee experience. It’s not just about the physical side of things, everything you do as a leader, every choice that you make in how you run your business, can and will have an impact on employee wellbeing.

Daniel (Dentsu International) 18:42
If we look at where we were perhaps maybe five years ago, it was a very nice thing to have wasn’t it well being Why think companies has now think about in terms of, it’s not a nice thing to have it so we need to have to support all their people to five to make connections and we’re looking at well being it’s not it flows, right the way through the employee experience and why are they right the way through employee lifecycle. For him, I always say from the moment you look at your job application about wellbeing for the day you leave. So I think as a whole and wellbeing spreads throughout everyday life, everyday working life, it’s not just about one thing, which I think, you know, previously be focused on something like you know, the physical aspect or the medical aspect, where we you know, kind of you know, in the right career, you’re not thinking about development, the right training that will affect your well being. And I think as we as we get more evolved with our being a more understanding around it, this is my company is now having to invest in it to realize that all the elements of your work life do affect your well being. That’s why we need to take a big focus on it.

Al Elliott 19:40
What’s interesting is that Jaguar Land Rover as part of their investment wellbeing, have opened the centers of wellbeing here Steve valet to explain how they all work.

Steve (Jaguar Land Rover) 19:49
So our sense of well being is something that we were doing in Jaguar Land Rover that we believe is a little bit different. It’s, it’s suitable and specific for what our needs needs are. And one of the themes of my talk was very much the well being occupational health support for colleagues, it needs to be specific for the organization, the Centers for well being our physical locations, so they’re located within our premises. So in our factories, or in our engineering sites or in our bases, they are open to colleagues offering a variety of programs covering the whole spectrum of needs. So we aim to target and deliver support to colleagues, if they’re unwell. And that’s a very traditional approach, people would be familiar with going off sick and then getting some form of support. In most places, not all. But looking after colleagues, when they’re still at work is something that most companies don’t do very well, we thought that was best delivered through the centers for wellbeing. So we offer a variety of programs using a variety of clinicians physically located on site. And we’ve built the centers in such a way that they reflect reflect our brand and values. So our brand is very much around modern luxury. The Centers are designed to look good, because we want people to feel the brand and feel like they’re part of Jaguar Land Rover, and some of our factories are factories, so you have to work quite hard to make sure they have that look and feel because they’re busy building cars.

Al Elliott 21:21
Now one of the biggest problems with any kind of well being sort of intervention or idea is that you are going to need buy in from the board and must particularly the CFO, you’re gonna need some money for this. Now, Daniel from Dentsu points out that the commercial aspects of this is lower attrition rate and a better employer brand Gen Zed want to work for employers who prioritize wellbeing,

Daniel (Dentsu International) 21:43
get that down to people really. And I always say your people are like the lifeline of your of your company, wherever you work. If you have happy people, you’re there be productive, they’re likely to stay with you, you’ll have less attrition, etc. So I think really investing in your well people’s well being at work is twofold, really because not gonna help support you commercially. But also kind of with your with your round your proposition as well as an employer to be an employer to join, etc. So, you know, we’re seeing kind of a younger generation Gen Zed really asking around? What is your well being strategy? What’s your DNI strategy? What’s your corporate social responsibility strategy, because they will want to go to companies that they resonate with, but also in line with their main values. And we’re definitely seeing that with our younger generations. So it’s not only investment now, but for the genuine investment from the generations of our future, who are really gonna be shaping that workplace, which is exciting, whatever that looks like.

Al Elliott 22:46
And one of our guests is perfectly positioned to answer this question Aarthi from Accardo, because she used to be a chartered accountant. So we asked her what would convince you to invest in wellbeing and well

Arti (Ocado) 22:57
being especially we always talk about ROI and showing the ROI. And it’s a hard one, right? Because there’s no clear metrics on what you can show. And as an accountant, you’re I’m always looking for, like, what’s the KPI that you can give me that I can actually show I’m doing going up and down, and it’s getting better or worse, or whatever the situation is. I think, for me, when you’re building a business case, it’s what’s it’s a lot about the external tastes and the external market. It’s one about knowing and understanding your executive, how do they read? And what are the things that are going to make them tick. So in our organization, for example, we are very data hungry. And people really want to understand like wellbeing isn’t a topic that they it’s not that they don’t interact with it, but it’s almost like they look at it with a different lens. So it’s being able to translate what I’m telling the internal story into the lens that they’re looking at it from. So for us, it’s about how do I put absenteeism, for example, into a form of lost productivity, so they can see what the bottom line impact is to the workforce and what’s happening? And then externally, it’s what are other organizations that are like ours doing and competitors? And what are some of the things in the external landscape that are driving things and being able to look at from both lenses right, like today, I was in the neurodiversity panel session that they had a woman said the best thing when she built their business case, she’s like, we are commercially focused business organizations are commercially focused, they are there to drive a profit. And so it’s being able to balance that it’s not just about the human factors and doing it from a responsible business perspective, but actually showcasing that by doing something, we’re going to have an end benefit that’s going to benefit the company at the end in terms of its profitability, its success and what it’s trying to do. And I think it’s that balance between those two.

Leanne Elliott 24:31
So Karen is our benefits expert from Microsoft. And she made the point that it’s not often about doing more, but doing better. So rather than adding more and more benefits to your list, put the work into maximize engagement in the benefits you already have.

Karen (Microsoft) 24:47
I think mainly what I’ve learned from the UK, I would say in terms of communication and engagement. That is one of the mature regions. We’re a global company Microsoft, we have a mix of global benefits which we roll out internationally. And then we’ve got services that we manage locally. So in the UK, we do have a generous suite of benefits and services, high engagement levels in comparison to what we had before. Pre COVID, I’ve mentioned that word now and pre lockdown engagement was okay. We had wellbeing programs well being activities, our use of EAP was pretty sort of at that market level. And during lockdown, we intentionally focused on employee engagement and reaching those people intentionally. whilst working remotely. So we developed a program called Thrive, which was an engagement platform based on four pillars of well being community, inspiration and career. So I very much focused in my work on the community, and the well being pillars.

Leanne Elliott 26:15
So during this time, Karen also founded the families employee resources group, to provide information and serve as a voice of support for diverse families across Microsoft. In taking her approach to engagement, she was able to identify and fill a gap in provision. Let’s hear more from Karen.

Karen (Microsoft) 26:34
I think the nature of that engagement and capturing employees making them own their own well being the success was in the brand, it was an identifiable brand. We had exec sponsorship as well. Also, thanks to a brilliant comms team, we we put those activities in people’s diaries. So we invited all of the UK, so that’s nearly 6000 employees, it was in their calendar, they could choose to decline, they could choose to ignore it. But it was our way of empowering them and telling them it’s okay to take this time out to listen to this event to take part in this activity. And it showed how important well being was all our business in general as well.

Al Elliott 27:21
It’s a great start to take inspiration from other businesses. But as Steve from Jackie Lanre points out, there’s no real silver bullet.

Steve (Jaguar Land Rover) 27:28
My cautious word to anyone listening is it needs to be specific to your organization, your place of work, your ethos, your culture, we have reflected the Jaguar Land Rover culture. So the look, the feel, the lettering the word, even the wording is very much around Jaguar Land Rover so that our colleagues are immersed in it and feel it, touch it Live it. Other company cultures are different. And we will see that not only in the colors, but the materials, the wording, the shape, it’s everything. And it all goes together. And one of the challenges is bringing that all together. And that’s where I you know, have to take my hat’s off to our design colleagues, because they do do things that you would just not think of.

Al Elliott 28:18
Steve also explained that all right is great when you get the approval to do the work. But you also need to continue to prove that he’s actually working. So you can obviously ensure there’s an ROI on the investment. In short, we need to evaluate the work that we’re doing.

Steve (Jaguar Land Rover) 28:33
The evidence for well being is hugely mixed and missing. We don’t really have a good evidence base for a lot of things that we do at work to look after people it’s done on gut instinct it’s done on it feels like the right thing to do. And some things might feel nice. But you question the validity of whether it’s making a difference or not. To build the evidence base, and to really prove that what you’re doing makes a difference takes time and effort and needs to be built into the program. You have to collect the data all the way through. And that takes time and really does take effort. It’s hard work. But if you managed to create a data set by the end of the program, you can talk to your any of your stakeholders, and that may be the trade unions, it may be colleagues, it may be the board, it may be the chief financial officer or indeed the Chief Executive Officer and say this is what we’ve done. This is the proof of what we’ve done. And that allows you assuming you’ve done a good job to then get more money or more investment to do more. But it is difficult and unfortunately a lot of things that are done within the wellbeing space have no evidence behind them at all.

Leanne Elliott 29:50
This leads us nicely on to our second lesson. Don’t skip the science. If you are a regular listener, you would have heard I talked before about having ping pong table in the break room having pizza Fridays does not a good culture make. And yes, these are lessons taken from big corporates like Google and Amazon, whoever, these huge complexes. But the reason that they have these huge facilities is because they have connected the science with the solution. They know that having these fancy breakout areas is really good for encouraging people to take breaks to support collaboration to help people build relationships. But there also needs to be some intention behind that we need to connect the walk with the why. And businesses that fail to connect the what and the why is skipping the science. So Daniel admitted, there are a lot of buzzwords out there. And it’s important to take the time to understand the trend and the science behind it. Here’s an example of psychological safety.

Daniel (Dentsu International) 30:46
I think it’s really, really important, but I think is also a bit of a buzzword. It’s been used at the moment, but it’s all about, I guess, making sure that when you come to work, you feel comfortable. Being able to openly express views, your concerns about having any risk of those having consequences as well. But it’s also brings about inclusive inclusivity. And that helps bring culture, because if you can come in with new ideas, fresh approaches that, that that that allows innovation, and again, that builds that culture in that diverse aspect. I think one thing about surgical safety is we all think something should be nice to each other, and overly friendly. But that doesn’t happen. That’s not always the case cycle of safety, you got to come to prepare to be challenged, you’ve got to be counterparts to have your views perhaps not agreed with. And perhaps you’ve got to have some active conversations. And I think we need to remember that will help us build only you as a person, as you understand that self awareness piece also helps that and foster that kind of openness and having that open conversation discussion.

Leanne Elliott 31:50
So by not skipping the signs, it also means that you’re much more likely to engage an expert when you need it, experts or consultants can not only help you identify a clear path forward, but help you identify the risks along the way, Steve, use the example of the pandemic and how he helped to prepare Jaguar Land Rover for this type of disruption.

Steve (Jaguar Land Rover) 32:09
I like most of my colleagues, and I think most in the medical professional always thought there would be some form of pandemic, it was always on most of our sort of agendas somewhere. I don’t think any of us could have predicted how it played out. And I can remember sitting in a boardroom trying to tell the board of Jaguar Land Rover, this something in China, we have operations in China, we have a factory in China. So we were lucky in some ways to see it very early and start to deal with it. And I can remember telling them, this is getting really bad. And they didn’t really believe me, I think at the time, and it was only when flights were canceled, that they suddenly realized this was going to have a much bigger impact. But even then we didn’t understand the global nature of it. We didn’t know what we were going to do or how we were going to do it. As it starts to play out.

Leanne Elliott 33:02
double loop learning is also ingrained in experts way of working we take the time to reflect to evaluate, to take lessons forward into the future. So things will be better. In

Steve (Jaguar Land Rover) 33:13
the UK where we have a lot of our operations, we actually ran out of parts before the official shutdown date. And that’s one of the learning lessons very much from the pandemic is, although we were very well supported, we had health and safety professionals, we obviously have a lot of a lot of people in my team, we realized that our supply chain, some of whom were very small companies had very little access to support. And they fell over before we did. And we ran it apart because they couldn’t produce. So we’d like to do more with them. And that’s one of the things in the future that’s come out of the COVID pandemic.

Al Elliott 33:51
One of the recurring themes, this podcast is that although you can do some things yourself, at some point, you’re probably going to want to bring in an expert. So Steve, although he’s an expert in his own field, he knew there was a limit when it came to building these centers for wellbeing. We,

Steve (Jaguar Land Rover) 34:05
as in the health professionals, decided very early on that we were not the best people to do this. We’re good at clinical stuff. We’re not good at design. That’s not our job. We’re not good at events. So we we reached out and I think one of our learning lessons is making sure that you stay within your sphere of expertise and pull in colleagues who are very good at what they do. So we worked with our design colleagues, and we worked with our events colleagues to say, this is our space. This is the purpose. We would like to be able to put in a physiologist, we would like to put in a physiotherapist. We want a counselor. We want privacy. But we also want it to look and feel nice now please help us and they actually took the brief and then gave us back a design principle. And it’s stuff that as a clinician we certainly don’t think about and I think unless you’re in design, you may not think about it Using the same type of finish having fixtures and fittings that look and feel and match each other, and are placed in a certain way, it doesn’t matter where you place your couch, it doesn’t matter where you place your carpet, it doesn’t matter where you have the picture on the wall, it the picture must reflect the brand. So the pictures are very specifically chosen. All of that goes together to create an aesthetic, if I can use that word, that means it looks like head office. And that I think is the the bit that makes it tangible for the colleagues. So a lot of colleagues would say, and we see this in all companies, oh, head office looks very nice, but actually out in pick location. And this is not to struggle. And I think many companies have this discrepancy between what head office looks like or feels like and what other locations look and feel like so we were we we were rebuilding the look and feel of head office in each of these centers.

Leanne Elliott 35:58
So we can’t get the science and the science of people is psychology. So when it comes to that, as humans, there are three innate needs, that if math help us perform optimally, as K explains, I look

Kate Goodger 36:10
at people from a human functioning perspective. So how are you designed? How are you wired? And there are three innate needs that if you have them, then it gives a chance of people performing optimally? And if you don’t have them, then good luck. So the first is meaningfulness that things feel like they’re significant to an individual, it matters I matter. Second, is belonging that we feel that we’re connected to people that I’m valued and heard and listened to, I’m seen. And finally, purpose, which is our sense of why, what is this in service of something greater than ourselves. And from a biological basis, they are an imperative, they are fundamental, but equally from a performance perspective, that’s when you can unleash performance is when you’ve got those three elements. If you counter that to environments, where you don’t have those things, or those things are challenged, then, again, good luck performing well in those environments, you’re more in a survival mode. And you’ll we will be suboptimal purposes of feeling, right. It’s not a statement. Yeah, that’s how you might describe it. But it is a feeling if it didn’t know how you feel in your gut, you’re energized by it. And again, businesses that are doing well in this space are realizing it’s a filler for performance. And equally, it will kill performance if it’s if it feels inauthentic.

Al Elliott 37:19
So that’s lesson two, on to lesson three, what we’ve got here.

Leanne Elliott 37:22
So lesson three is leaders find your purpose for our people to feel authentic purpose, we need to know our own purpose. And this is exactly what our third lesson is, Kate brings this to life explaining her purpose, and how she helps others find this.

Kate Goodger 37:39
My purpose is contribution. And what I mean by that is I want to put more into the world than I take out. And I think how I do that is through one skill, really, which is about listening. And it’s helping people to feel heard, because arguably, that’s one of our biggest challenges. People don’t feel that they don’t have time, they’re not paid attention to. They don’t know how to communicate it. They don’t have to say stuff. And my work is to try and give them skills so they listen to themselves better. But in turn that has a positive effect in their relationships with others.

Al Elliott 38:09
Kate’s got a really interesting background in this she was involved in the Olympics. So I wanted to learn a bit more about how this all works and how this shaped what her purpose was,

Kate Goodger 38:18
as a kid, I watched a Thompson and say, I want to go to the Olympics. That’s gonna be amazing. And then I realized as an athlete, I wasn’t that good. So that wasn’t gonna work. And then I went to my first Olympics as a psychologist in 2004. And I didn’t know what I was doing, get to 2008. And it was worse because the athlete I worked with meddled. And when people said, What did you do, I was like, I don’t know, just chucked a load of stuff at them. And I then had a mentor. My mentor was Professor Steve Peters, who wrote the Chimp Paradox. And Steve just enabled me to see how human beings are made up and how we function and therefore what is essential to have around them and the environment that you create for yourself, or that you choose to live and work in.

Leanne Elliott 38:55
Aarthi also has a really interesting origin story. She progressed from a big for trained accountant to the head of inclusion and wellbeing at Carter group.

Arti (Ocado) 39:05
I guess my path to hair wasn’t as linear as people would expect it to be. So I’ve been with Ocado group for two years now. I joined originally as our global head of wellbeing. And before then I’m actually a management consultant by trade. So I’ve spent 16 to 17 years of my career and professional services. First Five Years are with PwC, and their audit tax and advisory practice. I’m a chartered accountant. And then I moved into finance consulting with Deloitte and I was with them for over 11 years, worked all around the world settled into the UK about four or five years into working with them. And then as I was getting more and more senior starting to look at my career and what I wanted, I realized that finance transformation wasn’t really the thing that was getting me out of bed every morning, but I always had this passion for wellbeing. And you know, I happen to be in the right time at the right place. Deloitte in the UK was starting to look at well being initiatives and highlighting a few things. I got him at the tail end of the pilot, the pilot was so successful that they needed to put investment behind it. And I stepped into lead. So I was leading that for a few years. And then just before the pandemic, I went on maternity leave, and then actually went straight to Accardo. After

Al Elliott 40:13
what asked Steve about his purpose. I’ll be honest, he really surprised me with his answer.

Steve (Jaguar Land Rover) 40:20
I, I got into occupational medicine, like a lot of colleagues by accident. It’s a speciality that is very niche. But in no other speciality that I know of, do, you get to go and visit the bottom of a mine, the top of an oil rig, fly in a helicopter fly in a fast jet? See, and live all of the different businesses that there are in the world. The opportunities are amazing. I’ve worked all around the world. And it all started with the death of somebody in the middle of the desert from a snakebite who died, who shouldn’t have died. And we went out to investigate. And that investigation of how to protect people at work was actually occupational medicine. I just didn’t know it at the time. And that sparked my interest. And the rest is, as I say, history.

Leanne Elliott 41:13
So great leaders not only live by their purpose, but they help communicate it to inspire where there’s, there can be a confusion between purpose led businesses, and for purpose businesses. The latter typically started with some form of NFP or NGO or even an organization with a charitable or social impact. But as Kay explains, even the most transactional of businesses can still be heartfelt.

Kate Goodger 41:38
Let me answer that in a couple of different ways. The first would be certainly from an engineering perspective, I think what has really grown on me since I’ve worked in construction is the impact engineers have on society. Very simply, they give us choice. So we’re at Lundbeck cell. Now, how do we get here, the Elizabeth line, we built that. And what it gives people is the opportunity to travel to be educated to be supported in hospital and all of those components. So engineers have helped to engineer a society in which we live, and we have choice. So that speaks to purpose, you know, Thames tideway, there’s a project there at the moment, which is to make the Thames clean. Imagine that, you know, is that possible? During our work, in COVID, we completed a couple of hospitals early because these hospitals were going to run out of beds. And by accelerating our programs, we were able to provide those much needed beds. So there’s a sense of purpose in some of the structures that we build. But equally for our workforce, they feel an awful lot of pride in what they do, because it’s tangible. There’s a legacy, they can see it, they talk about packing the kids in the car at the weekend and drive them through London, we built that one built that one, that’s one of ours. And there’s a real sense of giving something to communities and the world around us. So there’s lots of different ways that people find purpose. And in in construction, I found it to be surprisingly purposeful, because it’s people pulling together to deliver something often for other individuals, it’s less about the self in this.

Al Elliott 43:00
So we’ve talked before, and in fact, some of our guests have said the same thing. There’s generational difference in marketing is that millennials and particularly Gen Zed are looking to buy from brands who have got an obvious purpose, and they mark it up as well. It makes sense, though, that that Gen Zed want to work for a company who also have a similar purpose. But there’s no point in having a purpose unless you communicate it properly. This is where internal communication teams are essential. Here’s Aarthi. From Accardo,

Arti (Ocado) 43:31
we have an employee experience comms specialist that works in our team. And we work hand in hand and she helps us with everything because it’s all about that consistent crafting and messaging. It’s everything from your external platforms to your internal platforms, your message, I mean, anything that’s inconsistent or different, just confused as employees and I think worse in our real lives. We’re like, bombarded with so much stuff all the time. Just think about the number of notifications that are probably gone off on your phone last one, two minutes. So it’s all about like, how do I just make information easier for to disseminate and for people to digest?

Leanne Elliott 44:04
So that is our fourth lesson leaders find your purpose.

Al Elliott 44:08
Lesson number five is to redefine success. So the chances are that some of you listening might be the next Moscow’s Zuckerberg or Bezos, but the fact is that unless you’re number one, there’s always gonna be someone better than you and always someone you’re gonna be looking up to. And that is the problem. There is this heartbreaking story about I think he was a Finnish entrepreneur, who was the richest man in Finland and then dropped in him before and stepped in front of a train because he just couldn’t cope with the idea that he wasn’t number one. So we have to be really careful about defining success. For example, some most employees, they want to pay rise and promotion. But do they really want the actual money or do they want the job title or the corner office? Or is he about more than that? The athletes

Kate Goodger 44:51
that I was working with, you could just see these penny drop moments that yes, it was about success, but it was about the definition of success, the meaning associated with them. It’ll, it was never about I’m gonna make Olympic champion. That’s it. It’s I’m an Olympic champion, which means I will role model for my sport and I’m an ambassador for, you know how athletes should be there was a whole range of purposes there. And I think it was at that moment of working with Steve and seeing that human beings are often standing in our own way

Al Elliott 45:18
from Accardo agrees.

Arti (Ocado) 45:20
I mean, I still remember going into the office on my first day of my new job when I was at Deloitte, doing well being and having this like, absolute freakout moment of like, Oh, my God, when am I getting promoted next? Like, what does this look like? And I was working with an external, external coach at the time, and she was like, you don’t need to know where you’re going next, it’s okay to just be present where you are and figure it out as you go. And that sense of being clear on what your path is, and that’s kind of how it is in professional services, right? Like you, you have a sense of logic in terms of how things work out, you look at things in a different way. And being clear on like, what your next steps are, you know, I you almost lose sense of that. And that has been probably the hardest thing, but also the most freeing thing to embrace because it’s almost a sense of, I don’t need to know what my next step is, or my someone doesn’t need to calculate that next step for me, I can just kind of let the opportunities come to me and, and follow where that takes me. I’m a really big fan, one of my favorite books is Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. And if you haven’t read it before, I need listeners listening in. It’s all about this idea of following your curiosity and being okay with, I’m at point A, I know I want to get to point B, but I don’t know, like that path is going to be up and down the hallway through. And it’s getting okay with that. And I think as a consultant, you were just like, No, it’s like a straight line in this direction. And it’s been really nice to go up and down. And I think also, I mean, I transitioned to a mom in that whole period. So I think my life also changed because the way I looked at it, and how I interacted with work also changed as a result, because my life outside of work changed. So it’s been quite invigorating. But equally I would I would be lying to say that it’s been easy, because it hasn’t. And I think also, I’m not working when the same environment that I was once working in. So that expectation of what are the standard everyone has to adhere to in a professional services company isn’t necessarily the same in other organizations and getting used to that pace. And what people how they operate is a whole new thing.

Leanne Elliott 47:29
I think what’s really interesting about this is the emphasis seems to be on on kind of onwards and upwards rather than onwards and sideways. And some business leaders do get exasperated with young people when it comes to their expectations around career progression. And wonder, you know, why aren’t they satisfied taking a sideways step or working on new projects or some kind of skill development? Or my question is what type of example as a leader are you setting for them, if as a business leader, you’re setting a very linear path, the business, its performance, and its growth, then does that help shape the expectations of our people?

Al Elliott 48:05
I think one of the things you have to do if you’re in business, or you’re a lead or whatever, is except that there are going to be some bad days. So as he talks a little bit more about how she copes with the lows. I

Arti (Ocado) 48:19
mean, nothing is permanent. So this moment that you’re in isn’t going to last. And I can think of a Million Moments that I’ve had like that, where you just think, how am I going to get out of it. But actually, sometimes being at the bottom is like the best place to start. And actually the most beautiful things tend to come out of that. I think it’s just you have to give yourself the space to feel what you need to feel. And then allow yourself to dust yourself off and be like, right, I’m just gonna get back up and go at it. You know what I just somebody told me what I feel like, I’m not gonna say it, right, because it’s in my head. But I know it’s not going to come out that way. But it is that sense of like, it’s sometimes everything has to fall apart before it can fall together. And it’s that sense of like, you know, I can think of even the brink of moving to the UK and moving to Deloitte, UK. And like kind of moving with them and sorting my life out. I just thought like, I was just talking to someone on my team actually that like, a year before that. I just turned 30 And I thought I had my whole life mapped out. And then the 10 mindset ensued after that, my job my life dramatically changed. And everything that I thought became a one way ticket to the UK being like, I’m just gonna figure it out and see where it goes. And, you know, I’m I guess I have to say my age, but now I’m like, I just turned 41. And, you know, when I turned 40 Last year, I remember looking back thinking, oh my god, like what, like how many things changed and in that moment in those low moments, and after I turned 30 When I was going through like some really hard personal stuff. I just never imagined that my life could become what it became. And I think sometimes it’s you got to just trust

Al Elliott 49:57
Mike Tyson has got this great quote everyone has a plan until they’re punched in the mouth. And like Aarthi did back in 20, she set out this life plan, I think we’ve all probably done it, we’ve written down exactly what we’re going to do by the time we’re 3040 5060, etc, etc. The problem is we get punched in the mouth quite a lot. So instead of having this sort of cast iron plan, then what we have to accept that we’ve got a destination, and there’s probably going to be some kind of circuitous route to get to that destination. But as long as we’re kind of in the right direction, then these setbacks we know exactly what the our setbacks, they’re not just obstacles that can’t be surmounted. Lesson number six, stop being the hero be the guide. You might have heard of this, if you know anything about story brand, or Donald Miller, or JJ Peterson, one of our previous guests from about five, six episodes ago, definitely go back and listen to him. You know that the whole point of storytelling, the whole point of leadership is that you are not the hero of the story, you are the guide, don’t think that you’re gonna have to be the guide for everything, you might need an expert at some point, every business is slightly different. There is no silver bullet. If it was easy, everyone will be doing it. So Daniel from Denso points out, there’s no point in mandating what you got to do based on what other people are doing.

Daniel (Dentsu International) 51:13
You’re dealing with people’s emotions, or thoughts. And people really, they’re all human beings, and what one person likes the other person doesn’t mind health and well being needs are very different to yours. Yeah, and aren’t they? And I think that’s difficult when you look at mandating things. Because it makes it’s not a one size fits all, I guess someone organization level, I guess kind of, is a must. So kind of you need to think about kind of looking at well being and it’s not a nice thing to have. But it’s a must thing to have within a business, if I can mandate that across every single business that will be in kind of, you know, my Goldstar I guess,

Leanne Elliott 51:52
Karen from Microsoft agrees and make the point that even within the same organization, you’ll likely have people with different needs.

Karen (Microsoft) 52:00
Microsoft is big. And there there therein lies the challenge, because we are meeting a wealth of employees who are based at home in the office at customer sites they’re traveling. And I guess it’s like looking at Microsoft as a global organization, you can you can shrink it down into, okay, let’s not look at Microsoft globally, let’s look at it per country, or let’s look at it per office location, or let’s look at it per community. Yeah, we want to do something for the feminist community, what do we need to do? And then you get your feedback, you listen to them what they would like, what they need. And then you don’t have to do any any of this cost. I mean, yes, there are apps out there, yes, there are services out there, you know, you can get a wellbeing provider in to come and tell you what you need to do to organize sessions. But actually, you can empower those employees and get them to do the activities. We’ve got internal experts who just well, experts talking about their own well, being someone who’s done a couch to 5k can come and talk, tell their story, and inspire others to do that. And then they’re in build your community of well being champions, people who want to talk and inspire others.

Leanne Elliott 53:28
And we’re here, again, employee insights. And as Daniel points out, and all of our corporate leaders agree data is your friend,

Daniel (Dentsu International) 53:37
always like a data. And I think people can be a bit afraid of data as well. But data is your friend if you know if you use it correctly, and it can give you some great insights. And like I said that it’s fresh open in places where your data lead data driven. And being flexible with that as well. But not just looking at the hard data or numbers. I said, using conversations with people because that’s such a valuable resource as well. Asking touchpoints around kind of what do they want? What are they because we’re talking about people, and they can only tell you what they want, I can put in things in place. But sometimes that might be right. So it’s finding out kind of what they need, kind of what they really kind of understand when we’re being kind of what they want more of what they don’t like. And that really kind of shapes, shapes what I do moving forward.

Al Elliott 54:21
Our feet from Ricardo, on surprisingly agrees and then also wants to steer the conversation to EDI as well.

Arti (Ocado) 54:27
I think people think it’s like a one size fits all. And it’s not I mean, at the at the core of what drives inclusive inclusivity is diversity. And if you look at diversity and just basically look at our demographic data and our diversity attributes and what make us up, you know, there’s like gender, their sexual orientation, there’s ethnicity, religion, ability, I mean, the list goes on right? And you take someone like myself, you can’t just design something. Oh, you look at me and like okay, she’s a female, great I can design something that helps her be feel inclusive from a fee. male perspective, but actually, I’m not. I’m an ethnic minority female who’s a foreign living in a different country who’s a mom, like so there’s all these different things that you have to tailor. And so there’s not a one thing that you can do. And you have to constantly be thinking about all that, that intersectionality because I think too often and inclusion, we look at each sub sect on its own, like neuro diversity is a big topic at the moment. And we just spend time looking at neuro diversity. But are we thinking about neuro diversity? And what that means for different ethnicities? Are we thinking about it for different socio economic statuses and backgrounds like, it’s are we thinking about all these different elements and that intersectionality is huge.

Al Elliott 55:37
So that’s lesson number six, stop being the hero be the guide. Lian, we’ve covered a fair amount.

Leanne Elliott 55:43
But we won’t leave you there. Of course, we have three action points to help you get started and apply these lessons is corporate lessons within your organization.

Al Elliott 55:53
Lesson number one is, listen, listening might be the most impactful skill that you’re gonna learn as a leader. We know because we were Samaritans in the UK, which is a Listening service. That’s how we’re really good at what we do, because we know how to listen, here’s Aarthi to explain how listening helped her develop her role at Accardo. So I

Arti (Ocado) 56:15
joined two years ago, when I first joined, I spent quite a bit of time listening. And I think that’s probably a consistent theme. The thing that has probably worked, the best is to never stop listening, and to listen to understand not to listen and solution eyes right away. But actually just to understand and hear what people are saying and what the actual challenges are, so that you’re designing things that are relevant, and not things that are just going to get lost in the organization and the size of it. And so that’s a really big thing. I think the thing that we’ve focused on the last 15 months has really been putting in base foundation.

Al Elliott 56:47
Lesson number two is to experiment, you’re really lucky, because you’re not Microsoft with 200,000 employees, you are x who’ve got maybe 50 6070 employees. So you could come up with an idea tonight that you could implement next week. But as Arthur from Accardo says, You really need to keep it simple.

Arti (Ocado) 57:07
Think there’s a big piece around keeping it simple, right? Like one of the questions that we never got to was on what’s our biggest piece of advice for small organizations starting out exactly what you’re asking. And I think, actually, sometimes I think smaller organizations have it easier, larger organizations are way more complicated, especially global, you have to think about different regions, cultures, legalities, it’s so complicated. But in smaller organizations, you already have, like a benefit that it’s small people tend to know each other, it’s a lot, there’s a lot less red tape. So you can start by doing an engagement survey, you can start by creating employee resource groups, you know, creating communities, opening conversation, testing things out. I mean, it’s such a great playing field to have a small organization to do stuff with. And I think oftentimes people think things think it costs money to do lots of things. And that’s why they think big organizations have such a higher, you know, sense of being able to do stuff. But actually things like starting employee resource groups, or administering a survey to your people to find out what they’re feeling and what they’re struggling with. Those things don’t cost any money. And you can put on a lot of events and activities, like open conversations panel conversations with people internally that have lived experiences, doesn’t cost anything. It’s just about starting somewhere and not feeling like you have to start somewhere massive. It’s, you know, oftentimes, it’s the little things that make the biggest difference. Like, are you? I don’t know having a coffee morning where people can come and openly talk about different topics. It’s just how are you starting to open up a conversation? Essentially,

Leanne Elliott 58:42
Daniel agrees, and suggests that business leaders just start by finding their pain point, then building out the strategy,

Daniel (Dentsu International) 58:50
I think started looking at data also pinpointed what it is you want to focus on around well being? Or is it is it sickness absence, is a kind of poor mental health is that your attrition is high, and you want to look at that. And I’m looking at that piece. So you want to start back and build out a framework. And that framework will gradually grow over time as well. I think what we’re seeing as if you put in too much or too, too much all at once, that can overwhelm not only you as a person who’s putting in that strategy, but also overwhelm your people as well. So I think kind of using any your data where you want to improve on first, that’s a great great way to start. And in a we don’t have to look at Hardee’s like I said it’s about kind of looking at your employee surveys, what is it your what are the what are those pain points? What are your people asking for? What are your what what are your organizational needs, for example, and looking at that as a starting point, and then building out building over time. There are lots of frameworks out there around well being strategies. One thing I always say is if you are looking at those, make sure you adapt it to fit your organization, don’t just take that carbon copy and put headings that won’t work. Because those are great as a starting point, but look at your organization as a whole. Does it fit in line with some of those pieces or key things you want to deliver? Does it fit in with your culture? Does it fit in kind of with your own values, and your perhaps your mission statement. So don’t just take any carbon copies, make sure you kind of adapt it to fit your needs, because I will say kind of, I’ve seen it happen in the past, those don’t work. So let’s look at kind of your own, your own wants your own needs, and really adapt it.

Leanne Elliott 1:00:33
So once you’ve experimented, the third lesson is to consolidate, it’s time to get all of those interventions, those teams, those champions under one strategy under one, umbrella consistency, and synergy, really are the siblings of intention, and can help you to both save money and maximize impact his Aarthi

Arti (Ocado) 1:00:55
we’ve done a lot over the last 15 to 18 months in terms of making sure that support is consistent globally and available to all of our employees and looks the same and feels the same in that employee experience is like, consistent throughout. And I think that’s worked really well because there’s now a clear line to take on where people go. And there’s no like, oh, actually, if you’re in this country, call this number. And if you’re in that country, it’s like just this is everything. And you can go to here for everything. I think that’s worked really well. I think the other thing that it’s worked really well has been how we’ve started to combine inclusion and well being together. And that’s because now we’re having we’re having more joint conversations, it means that it’s not just joint conversations with inclusion. But breaking down that silo has enabled that silo across multiple areas to break down. So it means that I’m working with so many other Centers of Expertise across both inclusion and wellbeing, to make sure that we’re looking at things holistically. So I work really closely with our talent and development team with our reward and benefits, health and safety, corporate responsibility, I mean, we’re starting to group everything under sort of the s of ESG. So there’s like a view of breaking down starting to really break down silos, and we definitely are not perfect. But being on that journey feels like it’s the right thing, because it just feels so nice. Like I just finished doing this external wellbeing benchmark that we have to complete as a footsie 100. and filling it in this year versus last year was just so nice, because I could pull on all these different parts of the organization and things that are happening, I know what’s going on. Whereas a year ago, it felt very siloed in the response and being very sort of well being centric. Now it feels like actually, we’re doing all these things around the organization that can tell this wider story. And especially in the case of wellbeing, well, and it applies to inclusion. They aren’t standalone things. They’re the employee, they’re baked into the employee experience. So the thing that you feel as an employee when you come and experience when you come into the workplace every day. So being able to weave that into everything just feels like it’s the right thing.

Al Elliott 1:02:52
Consistency and synergy. other siblings have intention to make that all digital and that is nice, I’m getting a t shirt with them.

Leanne Elliott 1:03:03
So thank you to Artie there for shaping out our three action points, and the rest of our incredible guests for shaping those lessons. So lesson one without well being you can’t perform. So our second lesson lesson two, don’t skip the science. Lesson three is leaders find your purpose. Our fourth lesson is redefine success. And lesson five, stop being the hero be the guide.

Al Elliott 1:03:32
So we’re going to leave all of the links while I say we is going to be Leanne who’s gonna be the show notes. We will have all the links to everything we’ve talked about in the show notes, Jaguar Land Rover have a public resource which is pretty cool. Here’s Steve a bit more about that.

Steve (Jaguar Land Rover) 1:03:44
So we we have a website. We actually use that website for our own employees it’s open access wellbeing, dot Jaguar Land rover.com Anyone can go and have a look at it see what we’re up to see what’s the centers for well being are doing

Leanne Elliott 1:03:59
so huge thank you to all of our guests today. As always, we will leave the links in the show notes our what we got next week.

Al Elliott 1:04:06
We have got a great interview with Bernard Brogan x I think he’s GA I don’t not really up on football that long Gaelic football but he was quite a big cheese for the Dublin Gaelic footballers. I should probably find out the team name before next week, but also just a really really nice guy. And he starts to comical pep talk which is really really interesting way to look at well being but putting science and data behind it which is what the end talks about all the time. Also, he is got a lovely Dublin accent. So if you are into accents, then you’re gonna enjoy next week.

Leanne Elliott 1:04:42
Yeah, it should be a good one. We will see you there. Take care bye bye