E032: organisational Design

This is the world of work podcast with James and James, hi. This is

James. Just before we start, I wanted to remind you that you can read our articles, explore more podcasts, and learn about our online personal and management development programs and workshops by visiting our website, www dot, World of work.io. All right, onto the podcast. Hello, Mr. James. I'm James, and here we are again with another episode of The World of Work podcast. We are in our summer specials for 2019 This is a whole mini series in which we're speaking about colleague engagement, colleague experience and what culture is like in an organization. We look at some of the benefits of culture for organizations and what it means for employees in those organizations. And throughout this series, we're speaking to different practitioners from different parts of the industry, looking at different roles within how you can affect it and modify employee experience and measure it and things like that. Yeah,

I think for all of the people we're speaking to, it's very practical. It's a bit different from our usual podcasts. And I think this is a really good example of that, someone who is very active in the field, in practical places, working with organizations, and gives you a flavor of the kind of work they do and the challenges they face. That's

right. This week, we're speaking to Jane Garza. She works for Nobel collective. They're a consultancy that improves organization through change consulting and employee experience and design. So she's got some really helpful insights into employee experience, which is a core topic of today. So we'll be speaking about what employee experience is, how you can modify and change employee experience, and some of the lessons from her career, around how she's done this.

Yeah, I think it Well, firstly, it's quite interesting. So Jane was speaking to us from a client workplace. So the sounds not fabulous in the sense that she's in a very specific building that doesn't necessarily have the greatest acoustics, but also it gives you the sense of someone who is literally in the process of working with organizations to improve their employee experience. And I think it means that when she talks about it, it comes from a very immediate place, which I think is really helpful. And I think some of the unexpected things that we talked around, specifically around the maturity of organizations, I thought was really interesting, and how she talked about small organizations growing into bigger ones, and the challenge about managing people at that point. So I really enjoyed that.

Yeah, good. Well, why don't we hand over and jump into that conversation that we've had with her?

Yeah? And just probably a call out that you'll hear during the chat that she offers people to get in touch with her. Yeah. So don't forget, on our Twitter, we will put out some information on the website as well about how people can do that when you hear that bit great stuff. All right, let's get into the conversation.

So here we are. We're at the core part of this podcast, this conversation that we're going to be having today, and today we're focusing on employee experience and things like employee design. Let me try that again. Experience Design, and we're speaking with Jane Garza, who's joining us from the US, and who's going to speak a little bit about this. Jane, would you like to say a bit about yourself and your background before we get into

a topic? Sure, yes. So I'm an organizational designer with a consultancy called Nobel collective. We at Nobel are culture and change consultants. So what that means is a lot of companies do consulting around, like, what you want to be in a business. Like, what is your business offering? What what is your vision? What is your purpose, all that good stuff. We kind of do the how so like now that you know what you want to be, how you actually get there, and that's the change management fee, we help you get from A to B, and really work embedded with you to do that. And my actual background is I came from the HR world. I did that for almost 10 years, and I started in HR culture and strategy. And when I originally started, I was in a very like traditional HR role, and noticed, looking around the organization I was in, that we had a finance strategy and we had a marketing strategy, and basically strategies for all of our major teams. We didn't really have an HR strategy, or, like a people strategy, something that has an umbrella over everything we did to really connect it all together and give it one one theme that aligned with our both our business strategy and the culture that we want to build that

sounds like a really interesting background and an interesting route into the type of work that you're doing now, and it sounds like you've got a lot of good experience to bring to what you're doing. Can we start off with just like a really basic question, just to bring listeners along a little bit, when we use the phrase employee experience, what exactly do we mean by that?

Yeah, employee experience is start to finish the journey that an employee has in the company. So it actually starts like before they even step foot into your doors or your. Wall. It's what they know about the brand as an employer. And then when they finally apply, if they're attracted to apply, when they go through interviews, when they get onboarded, what does their what mentorship look like once they've been onboarded? How do they then get turned into a manager at your company, and eventually, maybe they leave and become an alumni? All of that is part of that employee experience and that journey.

And when you're working on things like employee experience, what are the benefits of focusing on it from an organizational perspective and from an individual's

perspective? Yeah, so the benefits are, they actually come from, you know, the whole idea of like journey mapping comes from a design perspective, and it started from the concept of, so, for designing a thing for a person, we may as well look at it from that person's perspective, right to see what are they feeling when they're interacting with that thing. The very same thing is applied here when we think about employee experience. So if we're as HR people design experience or our team, we're really trying to think about from their perspective, what are they feeling and how do we make whatever they're feeling best aligned with what we want them to feel? How do we best make them feel empowered to be a mentor once they've been onboarded? How do we best, like turn them into a manager, all that stuff. And the thing to think about is you have an employee experience now, so if you're any company in existence, pass on, right? But not all of them are thoughtful. And so when you take the time to really think about it from a person's perspective and kind of map it out, you have the opportunity to design that and design and once you start doing that, starts to actually influence behavior. Okay, that's kind of the key to it is we're starting to design and tweak things in that employee journal journey so that we can influence the behaviorism.

Yeah, okay, cool. And as a result of doing that, what kind of changes do you see in employees, and what are the benefits specifically for an organization? Other, you know, hard metrics, what you guys look at when you roll out employee experience change initiatives, yeah,

so I'll tell you one that I think is like appealing to most companies. Almost every company we work with is in the state of hiring. And when you're hiring rapidly, you not only want to get those people in the door quickly, but you also want them to be caught up to speed quickly, on your IP, on your brand, on how they talk about your company, on the work that they actually do day to day. And by designing an experience like, if we zoom in on just the onboarding experience, by designing that a little bit more from the human perspective, you're able to help that onboarding be much more quick than it would be at a typical company. So at some companies, they'll say, like, part of the culture is to say it takes about a year to know us, right? It takes about a year before you feel like you've got your feeling that is a long time for someone to be working at like half capacity. So partly, by designing this part this experience, we're really shortening that amount of time. So it's less like a year, and maybe more like three months or six months.

So, and when you talk about because you mentioned the journey, which obviously has its and you sort of talked about user design as the similarity you some of our listeners are working in medium or smaller organizations or with less resources. Do you have a personal preference of where you start working on that journey? So do you prefer to start working on the part of the journey with existing employees, or do you think it's best to start right at the beginning, when you're recruiting, when you start to sort of make changes?

So I think it matters at all stages of the company, and the part of the exercise of designing the journey helps you think about a little in a little bit more of a focused way, who you're hiring and why. So like at an early stage of the company really small, let's say, like you were mentioning some of those smaller firms, let's say you're hiring people who are down to do a whole lot of things. Like, they're not coming in to just do one special specialty, right? They're there to kind of build the company from the ground up. And that's amazing in the early days. But as you grow, you need to start hiring specialized roles, people who are just like, excellent at, like, data and insights, let's say, and knowing when that turning point is starting to happen, and being really conscious of it is what will help you scale your company, even, like, more successfully. And having the process of really reflecting on your journey is a way to start doing that reflection moment and understanding it's okay. So we've been hiring for this role, but is that role, but is that still right? And should we pivot what we what we actually need from the people are coming into our doors? I would say, like at any stage in the in the size of the company, it's always important to take a look at it just might be a shorter exercise, which is totally fine because you're a smaller organization, that journey is like a little bit more close knit, and a lot of it is maybe more implicit rules, rather than, like explicit things that you need to share with people in, like a 10,000 size, person size company.

So if we think about then what I'd call a colleague journey, or, I guess, the employee journey, so that start to end process, if you were going to maybe pick out one or two areas. Within that colleague journey to really focus on. Are there any that would be priorities, or does it just depend on the organization

it? I'd say it depends, because you usually know, like, where your pain points are. I would think, like, the things that you hear over and over again, you're like, yes, we need to get to that, but we haven't had it any time to, like, get to how we'll train our people, or how we'll turn them into manager. It's usually one of those three things, right? It's like onboarding is number one when no bell, we really think that onboarding is more important than recruiting, because at the end of the day, there are like, 1000 smart people out there. It's more about how you get them into the company and help them understand their expectations internally and how they can help you. So onboarding, and I think is a huge one. Second one is like training. So once you've got the people in and they've been there for two years, how are you upskilling them? How are you like your company should kind of be like an academy in the science of you as a company, right? So how are you like helping them better understand how they can support your company and you as you grow, and then closely tied to that is management training. So many companies we work with don't do any version of management training, and all of these things fall on that experience kind of journey, because that is really the flow that most people go through in a company. They're usually just kind of thrown into a managerial goal for a leadership role, but they don't actually have the experience for the education to know what's expected of them in that role. And it's more like they're replicating what they see around them, which is sometimes fine, but it's like a lot of implicit learning. So again, it's slower. It's like not paced the way you might want it to be. And it's also less you're not actively designing it just kind of happening naturally.

So it sounds to me like as much as the employee journey is absolutely the way that you think about it and the way that you understand it, there are actually key points in an organization's life that makes it really, really important that they go back to their employee journey and understand so you've got that early days to avoid costly errors and to avoid just recruiting without thinking about it, and be much more deliberate. And then you've also got this period of growth or restructure when you have to start your staff bring them alongside through change. Does that and that that, for me, sounds like something that most organizations don't really think about, that actually they probably need to change their employee journey to reflect the experiences of the organization or the or the maturity of the organization.

Exactly, yeah, like, over overlaying what's going on in the organization, what's going on in, like, the founders journey, all of that stuff. Or, like, your board, did you recently spin up a board, and how does that connect with the employee journey and what you want your employee to learn over time?

Too Cool. So we've got the different stages of the colleague journey itself, and then parallel to that, or I guess, overarching that, we've got the organizational life cycle, and like you said, the life cycles of the key members of that organization. And those can all be sort of trigger points that would initiate, I guess, something like an experience design review. And you then try and introduce initiatives to change that employee experience, to help it align with what's beneficial for that organization at the point in time. Exactly, yeah, and I can, like,

if it's helpful, I can also give some of our like secrets to change, because I think when we say it that way, it sounds daunting, right? It's like a thing that you have to review every year, and then you have to make changes. And who has the time really, like, especially the scaling organization, where you're rapidly bringing new people in and figuring out where to place them. So what we say the goal really is, like, two things, it's have moments like your selection, that's the key is, like, make sure you're making time to look back and see what's working so well. What's working so far about our employee experience, what's working well with us? That's number one. And you could do that like monthly or quarterly, or whatever it is, and that can just be the HR team doing it, or HR team plus a couple of key like culture gurus in the company, whatever makes sense. And then the second piece is just worry about incremental change. What are like, low hanging fruit, things that you can continually improve time over time. We're not looking to like revamp onboarding every time, so maybe you're just changing their first hour with the company. Okay, we realize they walk in the door and we don't have any signs on the conference room. They don't know where to go. They don't feel well done because there's no front desk. So maybe we just like, we make sure that their arms with the map, they have a buddy their first day, and at least we change that first hour. And that's the change that you make for that month. And then again, you look back, you reflect, did that work? Did that help? Does it make a difference? And go from there? Sure. So it's fairly sort of iterative and agile in the approach, is that fair? Yes, absolutely.

So I guess if you were in an organization, it's clearly important to reflect and make time for the types of things, and then to do that sort of conscious assessment of what's working for you and what isn't. And then it's about identifying small things that you can do that are within your control. And I guess you can sort. Of test and fail fast and move on quickly and things like that. If you're maybe a small organization that's thinking about this, have you got any thoughts on how they could identify where their pain points are, or how they'd go about that early reflection period? Yeah.

So I would say, keep it light and easy. Bring in, like I said, your HR team, or whoever, whoever's like, the person most excited about this. Let's say, if you don't have an HR team, maybe you have some one person who's, like, excited about people off or the process of this, that person, have them lead the charge and and start kind of like a task force, and maybe pull in a couple people who are, like, I said, like culture gurus, or people who are really connected to what the culture is, what you want it to grow into, go into a room, spend an hour and like, literally map out the journey via post this or on whiteboard, whatever, start to finish what happens as of today, and then ask those employees to give you their honest feedback on the high points and low points for them so far, and go from there and just and brainstorm together some, some of those, like you said, those incremental well hanging through potential solutions they could start

with. And just one from me, what are the what are the biggest or the most common mistakes people make, or the things that you know you see time and again in organizations that might be, they might be well meaning, but the sort of damaging people's employee experience.

Good question. So two answers. One is around change, just because that's like, near and dear to my heart, and we do this a lot. So I'd say around change. The few biggest mistakes that people make, like, if you're starting to make these incremental changes to that employee experience is one like not communicating that you're making change. So to the people who are affected by it feels like a surprise and much harder for them to get on board with you. So I think bring people along the way at any way that you possibly can, whether it's like I said, bringing them into a room and having them help you with like a focus group process or or just like sharing as widely and loudly as you can via email perspective, or what have you. The other thing I would say is also, in terms of change, is asking people for feedback, like sending on a survey or bringing them into that focus group kind of setting, and then not doing anything about it, or not communicating what you're going to do about it, and that makes people lose trust in you and trust that you're actually going to implement the things that they'll do, and also makes them much less likely to be on board with that process or on board with giving you any feedback in the future. So those would be the two things I would mention from that point of view, from employee experience in general, I would say, like, more often than not, people have bad stories of their first day at work, like they they felt like I said they felt lost. Someone took them to lunch. They never met their boss. I just talked to someone who, like, I didn't talk to my boss for a week after I started at work, or my computer wasn't set up, and they just kind of gave me a box, and they're like, Here you go. Set it up yourself. So whatever you can do to make that process feel welcoming. Huge difference. First impressions. There's a reason why we talk about first impressions so much in our you know, just human culture in general, right? It's because they really stick with us. It's something that you're going to remember for a good amount of time. And whatever you can do to make that more welcoming will make a huge difference for that employees experience. And also, like, if you think about it in terms of engagement, measuring engagement, it is much easier to keep someone's engagement high if you started at a high point rather than starting it at the low point, trying to raise it up over time? Sure. Yeah, so that would be a big one that I would mention.

And you know, I think what often happens is, when you're hiring a lot, you're spending a lot of time recruiting, interviewing, and it's very time consuming. So by the time that, like, the offer is fine, people on the internal side kind of feel like, Oh, it's a done deal. Like I did my part. This project is done. Now, as we move on to the next thing, this person is already going to walk in the door on Monday, kind of like, I'm done. That's, I think it's just remembering that the hiring process does much further than just offer a letter.

So there's a lot of good stuff in there. I was wondering, you know, as we talk through this, and we talk through the different stages, and some of the insights that you've had, in your view, is there a sort of consistent definition of what good looks like for an employee experience of a different stages, you know, is a good onboarding process kind of the same across all organizations? Or is there a fairly bespoke definition of good depending on the organization that you're working with?

Yeah, so that's interesting. I think at its very core, I think most of the people that we talk to want to feel like the company, in some way or another, is caring for them. So like at onboarding, it's like I said, all that stuff around welcoming, around. It's, you know, upskilling. It's giving them opportunities to get trained when they're when they're, like, promoted into a managerial role. It's giving them the scaffolding they need to level up. So it's, it's the care across the board that is really what matters. And putting in that caring and like the human caring kind of things, rather than just the have to do logistical kind of paperwork, side of things, which sometimes is more where people off plan. That's the thing that I think connects it all. When it comes to customization, I think it's absolutely key and healthy. It's because you're defining how people should, how they should excel at your company specifically, rather than some other company, right? Like, I think what we the the mistake that we often make is we look at companies like Google and Apple and we say, let's just recreate that. Like, I'll just do the same thing here, because it obviously works there. But we don't do that with like, product design or any kind of other kind of design, because we want to be individual when we're putting something out into the market or customers. So if you think of your employees as customers and your company as, like, this product that you're designing, what is the, what are the key, like levers that you want to make sure you're pulling as you're bringing an employee through it? And I think there is I would avoid, just like, copy and pasting from another company, I would take the time to really think about what's special about you guys, and I think there's like, a healthy amount of that. So you don't need to feel like you need to create unique rituals for every single little piece of the experience. But if they're the things that connect to what your company does and and how you want people to feel about it, then definitely include them when

you when you're doing this. We've talked about a bunch of different things. So we talked about, you know, stepping back and reflecting on things and and we talked about trying new new things as well. And we've talked about how it's important to take people along when you're looking at making these types of changes, how much of a change do you think is about the mindset of the people in the organization, and how much do you think is about the processes and procedures and policy.

Yeah, it's hand in hand. So it's, I would say, like almost a safety, I think so mindset. So resistance to change is a very real thing, and we encounter it all the time in our work and and really, the core resistance is like a fear of loss. Like you, you're losing your pride because maybe you're responsible for the last version of the thing, or you're losing confidence because this is a brand new way of working, and you're not used to it. Or, you know, familiarity, we as humans, like to know what's around the corner, right? Like we like that. We like to play the lottery. We like to bet on the Super Bowl. We like to do all that stuff. And so when you take away familiarity, that's scary. And even just like autonomy, like we want to control our decision, so when someone else says these 10 changes we're making and good luck, that feels very It feels like you're taking away a sense of autonomy. So so mindset is definitely a big part of it, and thinking through how to work around that is huge, but process is partly what lets you work around it, because mindset is, like a very personal thing, but when we start to think about process, that's like, aimed at the system and the company, rather than myself or what I did, or what my team did, and so kind of connecting The two is what helps move around resistance to change? That is that a helpful answer?

Yeah, no, it's helpful. I just wanted to explore and see, see that both of us were in there really, yeah. I just

it's really interesting listening to talk about your work. And I guess we have quite a lot of listeners who are early in their career and looking at creating meaningful change. And I guess I'd just be really interested, from your perspective, what, from a personal point of view, is your favorite part, or the bit you most enjoy around supporting your clients and your organizations you work with? I love that question.

My absolute favorite part is, every time I go into an organization, I meet tons of people who are incredibly smart and dedicated to their work and want to do a good job, but feel blocked by process, by mindset, by politics, etc, and getting to I think, like we do a lot of large scale behavioral change, basically is what we do, right? We help teams at scale change how they behave at work. And those opportunities are really fun, getting to work with, like, a big team and helping them try anything to look at things new ways fun. But I, personally, I love the like, one on one moments where I get to work with leaders and help them think through how they can be a champion of change when they've, you know, maybe for the last five years, have been trying to attempt to self block being able to be like that extra muscle and extra coach for them is really fun for me.

And on that last piece regarding leadership, how important do you think the role is that leaders play in supporting redesign and change of things like employee experience?

Yeah, I think so. The way that we work at Nobel is it's a. But when we work with companies, it's kind of like a diagonal slice. So we'll work with leadership. We work with middle managers and Frontline, you know, entry level, whatever the term is at that the company. And that's purposely so that we can talk with every type of population. Because if you like your entry level, people are close to the customer, right? But your leaders are the ones who are really directing the future and making these like large scale decisions. So all pieces are important without the buy in of any of them change what it works. And I would say, like leadership to your question is absolutely important. I think the thing that we have to remind our clients often is, I don't know if you ever seen that cartoon, but it's like, Who wants change? And everyone raises their hand and then it says, like, who wants to change? And everyone put their hands down. Part of the thing is, like, when we work with clients, is they, as leaders, need to figure out how this change will affect them and how they'll change to help encourage it and support it too. So it's kind of all across the board. We expect a bit of that embracing of it. Well,

that sounds like a good insight into the leadership piece. In our experience, leadership is really important but but the necessity to look at that diagonal slice as you talk about it is pretty helpful as well. I think we're kind of getting towards the end of the time that we've got here. Is there anything that you wish we'd asked you that we haven't asked you? Or have you got any final thoughts that you'd like to check out?

Oh, good question. Let's see nothing that I think you guys asked. Like all the best questions, all the things I love talking about is we can probably tell I can talk about this forever. So, yeah, so this is a very fun conversation. I think I'm always I'll just like say I'm available on Twitter and find my email via Nobel. So feel free to ping me if you guys, if anyone who's listening has extra questions, I'm happy to be a mentor. I love connecting with the HR community, so that, to me, is really important and really empowering the HR community to be a champion of change and helping them happen in organizations. I think it's so important for the future of organization, so I'm here to be a resource for that. That's

a that's a really kind offer. Sorry. We both spoke at the same time because we're both thinking how lovely that is. And we'll, what we'll do is we'll when we put the episode out, and people will be able to go to our Twitter feed, and they'll be able to find your details there that you've shared on Twitter, so that they can do that. My last question, just because you mentioned the importance of empowering HR community, is, if you had advice for someone starting out in all of this, what one piece of advice would you give them about how to sort of find an organization like yours that's really passionate about stuff. Oh, interesting.

So I guess my initial piece of advice is worry less about like finding your tribe if you're just starting out, I would actually find an organization where it desperately needs change, and you're going to have to fight the winds a little bit, because that's how you learn, like you got to learn that resistance and how to bring people along, and how to really encourage the people around you to change, and how to use the powers of influence. I think that's like such a key lesson, and it's really important to see it from the inside out, to be in an organization, to really help that happen. That would be my one piece of advice. I think, aside from that, I would also say, like, be careful about taking action too quickly, especially if you're just starting out. I think more important than anything is listen like, go into an organization. Let's say you're starting out, you're an HR assistant in a company. Listen like talk to as many people as you can. Listen to what's not working before you do anything, and then, as you're trying to initiate change again, find your champion, tell them what you're doing. Be as open and transparent as you possibly can, and bring them along with you for that journey.

Those days. Exceptionally good advice. And it's, it's real food for thought, because I think there's a piece about not finding your place too early that I absolutely resonates with me really, really well, that learning journey from a personal perspective. So thank you. That's really good. And I know there'll be some, some members of our listeners who are really interested in that side of things and are excited about, you know, eventually getting to a place where they get to do the kind of

work you do, yeah, and I hope that doesn't sound like, like I had to go through it. You have to go through everything that you get some other jobs. It's more just like the learning experience of being able to understand the sensitive emotions people have around change and being a partner. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's great. All right, so

I think it's just time for us to say thank you very much. I know that you're busy, and it's great that you've made some time for this. We really appreciate it. Think listeners will as well, and hopefully we'll have another conversation at some point

in the future. Amazing. Thanks so much. James and Jane, I really appreciate chatting with you guys.

Thank you, Jane. Have a great day. Bye. Right?

So that was our conversation with Jane. Jane Garza from Nobel collective, I thought it was a really good conversation. I thought we covered a lot of things, and we kind of went from the start of what employee experiences through to some specifics around how you can change it. Yeah,

for me, there was a real moment where I realized how similar it is to how we talk about volunteering. So in the nonprofit sector, we talk about the volunteer journey, and mapping that out, and understanding where people fall off, because it's obviously volunteering. People don't have to be in work. There's no contract. And I it made me realize just how relevant that is to to the concept of a journey through work with an organization, and how simple that is for a way for any small organization to start thinking about it, even on a micro level, yeah,

yeah. Echoed, and I thought there was some really good insight in there for me. Some other stuff I liked was around the importance of making time to reflect on what's working for you as an organization, giving yourself that space to think through how things are going, what your employee experience is like, and then just picking one or two things and trying to make them better, and doing that as a regular sort of Bite Size approach to improvement while taking people with you seems eminently sensible and effective to me. So I really like that summary of a way that they

were, yeah. And then, you know, one of her points was little and often, right? Yeah, little change often, and keep checking if it's working. And me, that is a far better way to create a culture of ongoing improvement than big change projects. Yeah. And

one of the things that's come out in our conversation with Jane, which I think has been reflected across most of these conversations, is the sort of drive and passion and purpose that people feel about the work that they're doing. So Jane's clearly, you know, treating this almost as a labor of love. She's really passionate about what she's doing. And I doing, and I think she had some good advice for other people looking to enter this field as well. Great. So I guess it's just time for us to remind you how you can get in touch with us. We've got our website. You can get in touch with us there, and of course, we're on Twitter and all the other social media as well. All right. Well, I think it's just time for us to say goodbye, goodbye everyone.