July 23, 2025 • 26 mins
The days of mandatory office attendance are (mostly) behind us, but how do you maintain a vibrant workplace culture when your team is scattered across 15+ countries? In this conversation, Dessalen Wood, Chief People Officer at Syntax, reveals the company's innovative approach to workplace flexibility that's become their competitive advantage.
Drawing from 25 years of experience across retail, entertainment, and technology sectors, Dessalen shares how Syntax transformed workplace flexibility from a pandemic necessity into a permanent, branded employee experience called "Global Flex." Unlike companies that offered remote work only to later withdraw it, Syntax made a public commitment they couldn't rescind, complete with company-wide town halls, dedicated branding, and clear guidelines addressing when, where, and in which country employees can work.
The results speak volumes—Syntax recently earned Great Place to Work certification across all eligible countries with over 80% employee participation. Rather than mandating office attendance, they create meaningful in-person experiences that naturally draw employees in, resulting in growing participation rates year over year. As Wood explains, "The biggest buzzkill for an employee experience is the word 'mandatory'... The word trust and having experts and mandatory cannot be in the same sentence."
Dessalen also unpacks the challenges of developing leaders in a global organization, emphasizing that leading across cultures requires far more adaptability than simply managing remote teams. At Syntax, over 50% of leaders manage team members in different countries, necessitating a leadership approach that respects cultural differences while maintaining core company values.
Whether you're an HR professional seeking fresh approaches to remote work policies or a leader navigating global team dynamics, this conversation offers practical insights for creating authentic workplace cultures where flexibility enhances rather than diminishes employee engagement. Connect with Dessalen Wood on LinkedIn to continue the conversation about evolving workplace strategies for today's distributed workforce.
Feature Your Brand on the HRchat Podcast
The HRchat show has had 100,000s of downloads and is frequently listed as one of the most popular global podcasts for HR pros, Talent execs and leaders. It is ranked in the top ten in the world based on traffic, social media followers, domain authority & freshness. The podcast is also ranked as the Best Canadian HR Podcast by FeedSpot and one of the top 10% most popular shows by Listen Score.
Want to share the story of how your business is helping to shape the world of work? We offer sponsored episodes, audio adverts, email campaigns, and a host of other options. Check out packages here.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's
most downloaded and sharedpodcasts designed for HR pros,
talent execs, tech enthusiastsand business leaders.
For hundreds more episodes andwhat's new in the world of work,
subscribe to the show, followus on social media and visit
hrgazettecom and visithrgazettecom.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show.
Hello listeners, this is yourhost today, bill Bannum, and in
this episode we're going to talkabout workplace flexibility,
and joining me on the show thistime is Desalyn Wood, chief
People Officer over at Syntax.
Hey, desalyn, how are you today?
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I'm great.
I'm great, I'm really happy tobe here.
Thank you, bill.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Beyond my short introduction just a moment ago,
Des, why don't you take a minuteor two, introduce yourself and
also share the mission of Syntax?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Thank you for introducing me.
I'll tell you a little bit moreabout myself.
I've been in the HR or peopleand culture, whatever you want
to call it for the last 25 yearsand in that time I've seen a
huge transformation in thepeople and culture function and
in the work environment and workmodels, so this is a really
exciting topic.
My role has been Chief PeopleOfficer at Syntax for the last
(01:22):
three and a half years and we'rea company that's grown
incrementally over the lastseveral years and we're in many
countries around the world.
Syntax is an IT andprofessional services company
and we provide managed servicesas well as professional services
in ERP and cloud.
Excited to be talking aboutflexibility at work today.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat
Podcast.
If you enjoy the audio contentwe produce, you'll love our
articles on the HR Gazette.
Learn more at hrgazettecom.
And now back to the show.
Yes, you've worked across awide range of industries.
I was looking through yourLinkedIn ahead of our interview,
(02:06):
doing my homework, so youworked, for example, from retail
to entertainment, to tech.
How have your experiences inthose different environments
shaped your approach to buildingworkplace culture?
At Syntax?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Well, you know, it's an interesting thing because I
started out in the serviceindustry or the retail industry
and I spent most of my career, Iwould say, in that frontline
industry, working with a veryhardworking demographic that
didn't necessarily choose thatcareer, and you're creating an
(02:53):
employee experience in anenvironment that's quite
challenging.
It's open all the time, it'sopen late at night and on
holidays, and you want to have agreat environment with employee
development and retention, andyet you're in an industry that
doesn't have very high marginsand therefore doesn't have a
tremendous amount of money toinvest, and so you have to be
(03:14):
really scrappy and creative tocreate value within that
framework.
You also have a challenge ofhaving a difficulty in
differentiating yourselves.
You also have a challenge ofhaving a difficulty in
differentiating yourselves, soyour turnover the number of
people who are leaving, istypically quite high, because
you can get similar jobselsewhere and everyone is
competing for the same talent,and so, at the same time, you're
(03:37):
investing and attempting toretain to make sure that you're
getting your return on thatinvestment.
So this was a big challenge forme was creating great
environments in a very volatiledemographic of people Coming to
tech.
The biggest difference, I wouldsay in tech is that you know
(03:57):
this is a team of experts, ofprofessionals who have been
educated and selected to be inthis industry, professionals who
have been educated and selectedto be in this industry and
you're looking for differentthings than people are looking
for in the service industrybecause you know the kind of
quality of life concerns change,and so here people are looking
for interesting projects andcareer challenges and growth and
(04:20):
global projects, and so youhave a different set of
expectations around how acompany differentiates and
provides value to that group ofprofessionals than you have in a
frontline retail environment.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
I'm curious now what role does leadership development
play in syntax and strategy,especially as the company
continues to scale?
Are there specific traits ormindsets you aim to cultivate in
emerging leaders?
Speaker 3 (04:51):
So it's such a great example of a question, because
when you're a multiple, we havehad a lot of acquisitions and so
you have a lot of people whocame through smaller
organizations.
And one thing typical ofsmaller organizations there are
exceptions is that there is lesseffort and less time spent in
leader development and more timein technical kinds of training,
(05:12):
and the luxury of a largerenvironment is then you have an
argument to create leaderdevelopment, to have succession
plans and to talent map, and sothose are our processes and
practices, that we were able tobring a large group of leaders
that, while they had beenleaders for long periods of time
, they might not haveexperienced any development just
(05:34):
because of the nature and sizeand scope of the company they
were in.
So to me, one of the benefitsof coming to a larger mid-market
organization is that we do havea leadership framework and a
point of view that we can bring.
So, to answer your question,what does it mean at Syntax, to
be a leader?
One of the biggest things thatwe've been focusing on?
(05:55):
I would say it's two majorareas, and that's obviously
remote leadership, because weare a remote and hybrid and
flexible environment, and theother one is global leadership
and I would say globalleadership is actually far more
challenging to learn than remoteleadership.
I think it doesn't get the sameenergy and maybe the same
spotlight, but global leadershipis challenging.
(06:17):
I'm gonna use myself as anexample.
I've been in large companies,canadian and US retail players
and different exhibition and youknow types of environments.
This was the first time I wasin 15 countries with many
different ways of doing thingsand each culture is different.
Each kind of you know.
The way we treat employees aredifferent, the expectations are
(06:39):
different and having to have aleadership role and over 50% of
the leaders at Syntax leadglobally, meaning they have one
or more people in a differentcountry.
The assumption that you can cutand paste your leadership style
from your country onto somebodyelse's culture is a mistake and
we see this really often.
(07:00):
So what I would say I havelearned is you can be a global
company in the sense that youhave offices around the world,
but the home base is reallywhere the culture comes from and
all the leaders are generallyanchored in one or two countries
and they lead the same way foreveryone.
The syntax model is quitedifferent.
We want you to have a globalmindset, meaning that you will
(07:21):
be able to be flexible and leaddifferently for each of the
different countries that you'rein, and we encourage our
leadership roles to be placed inall of our countries, not
choosing certain sort of Acountries that get all the
leaders where the B and Ccountries don't, and so pushing
ourselves to have leaders leadfrom different countries.
(07:42):
And so, even though our homeoffice is in Canada, pushing to
not have our leadership allbased in Canada and have them in
our countries, whether it beSlovakia, india, mexico, spain.
We have leaders all over theworld and those leaders lead
global teams as well.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
So I'm curious.
Just a quick follow up to whatyou said there.
It's important to be sensitiveto cultural differences when
you're leading a globalorganization, of course, but to
use the Simon Sinek term,starting with, why is it also
important that employees,particularly leaders within an
(08:21):
organization, buys into the whyof a company, but buys into the
values of a company, regardlessof their geographic situation?
Speaker 3 (08:30):
I think companies have a lot of taglines.
They say they're one company,they talk about belonging and
they talk about their companyvalues.
And again, what does that mean?
It really means a consistentset of experiences, and one of
the challenges companies have isthat they have an external
facing message about what theircompany is about, and then they
(08:51):
have an internal reality, andI've been very sensitive to that
, growing up in the retailindustry, where it's a lot of
young people and they're notvery fearful of expressing their
dissatisfaction with companiesonline, and I think that that
taught me to make sure that youdon't claim to be something that
you're not going to be able todo.
And so when we're looking athow we have people identify with
(09:16):
a company, regardless wherethey are, you have to choose
which things are going to bevery important that will be
foundational and felt everywhere, and which things will be
different because each countryis different.
And our CEO his name isChristian Primo.
His tagline when I started withhim was boutique at scale,
(09:36):
meaning we're not a huge playerwhere everything is a machine
and we're not a teeny mom andpop, but we have aspects of both
.
We have to be able to scale,but in the times of leadership
development and people andculture.
But we also have to understandthat we have differences that we
wanna be aware of in ourcustomers as well as our
employees.
So I use that boutique at scale, which was really a tagline for
(10:00):
our customers, for myselfpersonally.
We have a lot of differencesinside our countries to honour
those country cultures, but wehave some prevailing themes that
are experienced by everyone andthat's really what we drive
through when we talk aboutleader development and leader
expectations.
Are those consistent factors.
I'll leave the local factors tomy local teams to work on with
(10:24):
leaders, but globally we alltalk about the same important
factors of differentiation tomake sure Syntax stands out as
an employer of choice.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Syntax recently received its Great Place to Work
certification Congratulations.
Can you tell us more about thatand why it matters?
Speaker 3 (10:45):
So I can tell you something that probably won't
surprise you, and that's everyCEO will eventually tell a
person in my role I want some ofthose badges.
Where do we get those badges?
I see badges on everybody andthere's different kinds of
badges.
You can buy badges, just so youknow.
You can buy all sorts ofrecognition and you can have
(11:05):
recognition that you submitbased on your media about your
company.
So basically, it's a, it's anapplication.
And then there's the hard ones,and that's the ones where your
employees have an anonymoussurvey with a lot of rules about
what you're allowed not to sayand say, and you still write
your own narrative about yourcompany, but then it's tested
(11:27):
with a survey to your employees,and those are the ones that are
the scariest but they're alsothe most valuable to get,
because if you get one of thoserecognitions, your employees
know that they gave that input,and so to me it was the sweetest
thing to go after, but thehardest thing.
So I told you I started threeand a half years ago.
I didn't do this the first year.
(11:48):
You can't just go and say, hey,employees tell everybody how
great we are.
They have to experience somereally important and meaningful
events in their life cycle inorder to be able to complete
that survey and to getrecognized, and so you have to
be really intentional about that.
And then, when you drop thatsurvey and to get recognized and
so you have to be reallyintentional about that and then
when you drop that survey,you're still worried.
(12:08):
You don't know what's going tohappen.
This is not monitored internally.
I have no sense in thedashboard what anybody's saying.
So it was exceptionallymeaningful, and on a few levels.
One is that we had over 80% ofour employees participate, far
above the required threshold.
To me, the most important levelof engagement, the number that
matters more to me than anypercent I can give you, is the
(12:31):
number of people participate.
Non-participation is a verystrong message, meaning that I
don't have any faith.
Participation doesn't mean highscores, but it means I'm still
in the game.
So I was really excited that wehad high participation and then
, over the top, thrill that wewere certified in every country
that we were able to apply for.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
As a people leader.
How do you try to encouragethat participation?
By the way, do you gamify?
Do you incentivize?
Are all of these wonderfulnumbers of people who did
respond just that engaged withthe company culture?
Is it a bit of all of thosethings?
Speaker 3 (13:07):
So it's an interesting way.
Okay, so I've been doingsurveys for 15 years and
actually worked for a companybefore that specialized in this.
So it's a little bit.
I would say I have a prettygood time doing this thing.
I can tell you for great placeto work.
You are not allowed toincentivize pizza party or push.
What you can just do is sendreminders.
So one of the things that I cando that I was able to do is I
(13:31):
like to do country competition.
We are, all you know, everybody.
We belong to so many differentgroups at work.
We belong to syntax as a whole,you belong to your function or
department and then you belongto your country and everything I
do I talk about on those threelevels.
Here's the company identity.
You have your department, teamor function identity and then
(13:52):
you still have your countryidentity and in fact, the
country identity is the one thatlikes to probably be almost the
most competitive.
So I would just put up countries, you know, cheering them on.
I would, you know, put questionmarks next to the other ones,
and it was just fundamentally anemail campaign.
And then I would let ourcountry leaders which is a
really important role that wehave, our country leaders who
(14:14):
hold in all different positionsin the organization, but they've
been named a country leaderbecause of their strength as a
leader.
The country leaders then do thework for you because they just
want to beat each other.
The country leaders then do thework for you because they just
want to beat each other, and soit's a self-fulfilling where I
just do some nudging.
I think I once called myselfchief reminding officer.
I basically am just sendingreminders all the time and then
(14:35):
I let the countries fight it outand they always deliver.
You know, some get to the 90sand some just get in at 82.
But they all get there.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
So, as I mentioned in the intro, today we're talking
about workplace flexibility.
I remember during the pandemicI'd speak to lots of senior
leaders and they'd say to me,bill, the days of needing the
employees in the office are over.
Forget about it.
It's been a terrible time time,this pandemic, but the big
silver lining is we trust ourpeople.
(15:06):
Now they can work wherever theywant to.
Those same leaders are in manycases clawing back their
employees, making them come backto the office at least a few
days a week.
Others are saying, oh, we'renot that mean, but they've got
to be in the same time zone, etc.
Etc.
You know they're going backcertainly on what they said a
few years ago.
Personally, I'm a a bigproponent of being able to work
(15:28):
remotely if you can do the joband you can demonstrate to
others that you are committedand you are productive.
But this is not an interviewwith me.
There's a question coming heresomewhere.
The question for you is, withan ever increasing push to
return to the office, what issyntax'sax's take on?
Mandatory in-office time versusworking from home, versus
(15:48):
hybrid?
Tell us more about the waysthat you guys are approaching it
.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Well, I can tell you, the biggest buzzkill for an
employee experience is the wordmandatory.
Got to be really careful howoften you use that word if
you're going to say you have awonderful corporate culture.
So that's something that I'vealways been really cautious
about.
You know, what we did here issomething I think pretty
exciting, and it might not soundthat exciting from the
(16:15):
beginning, but if you go with mehere to where we are today, it
is exciting now.
But dial back to 2022, right aswe're coming out of Omicron and
companies are saying thingslike we're going to continue
being flexible or we'reevaluating it or we are flexible
only to a year later.
Change your mind.
And my CEO, again Christian,said, right as I was starting, I
(16:38):
want us to stay flexible, andwe were not necessarily a
flexible environment before.
We had offices full of peopleand we'd actually just expanded
three of our offices and donerenovations, so we were in the
same boat of expensive realestate that might be empty, just
so you know, that's probablythe biggest deterrent of
flexible work is empty offices.
And so when he said I want tobe flexible, I was like great.
(17:02):
He said I really want to makethis part of what makes syntax
different.
I want this to be basically thefoundation of our employee
experience, and I thought, okay,this sounds interesting.
But at that time, over 90% oftech companies were still
entirely flexible.
So to me it was like, great,we're going to say we're
flexible like everyone else.
That's kind of like saying Ihave a brown dog, okay, so does
(17:26):
hundreds and thousands of otherpeople have a brown dog.
So saying we're going to beflexible wasn't this exciting
statement anymore.
And so one of the things I saidto him is, if we're going to do
this, we need to name and brandit and launch it.
Launch it with a real, I wouldsay, point of view on how this
flexibility differentiates anddefines our employee experience.
(17:47):
But here's the caveat we can'troll it back.
You can roll back, we're goingto be flexible, for now we're
staying flexible.
We still believe it matters.
You can't roll back somethingthat you name and launch on an
employee town hall as afoundational part of your
employee experience, and so thiswas a big commitment.
So we branded it Global Flexwith this element called Global
(18:11):
Tourist.
We got a logo, we got all thedifferent swag for it, and we
had a global town hall and welaunched it, and when I mean
launched it, we explainedexactly what we meant about
three different things what doesit mean to have flex time?
What does it mean to be able tochoose around the way you're
going to work?
What does it mean to have flexworkplace and location home or
(18:34):
office?
And then, what does work fromanywhere really mean?
And we were able to clearlydefine those three factors in it
there's a timing of the day,there's a location office, home
and then there's a countryfactors in it.
There's a timing of the day,there's a location office, home
and then there's a countryaspect to it.
And we were able to show allthree and then layer them
together under this name ofGlobal Flex and essentially have
(18:55):
people enroll in the program.
So this is where I would say wasthe big differentiator for us
and because of that, even whenI've had different leaders
challenge, send me the.
Which company is now rolling itback?
Should we?
I'm like we can't.
You can't drive your carlooking through a rearview
mirror, you look through thewindshield and, yes, I'm aware
(19:17):
there were things you likedabout it, but we're not going
backwards and that's beensomething we've held strong to
and, in fact, the more companiesthat have rolled it back, the
better it's been for us so Iloved everything you just said
there.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
However, my job is to be devil's advocate, okay, so
really can you never roll back?
I mean, we're living inuncertain times right now.
Uh, jobs are not as easy tocome by.
Uh, there are various tariffwars going on around the world
which are affecting economies.
Ai is taking over lots and lotsof different uh tasks of people
and, in fact, taking overentire jobs.
(19:50):
Um, there are certainstatistics, by gotler, for
example, that by 2030, 30percent of jobs that exist today
will not exist anymore.
Uh, bill gates came out just afew weeks ago, as we record this
episode in, in middle of june,saying by by around same sort of
period, a lot of people canexpect to only be able to work
two days a week because AI isreplacing so much.
(20:11):
So, in that kind of context,those companies that are rolling
back and insisting that theyget to be more selective about
where their people work are theyonto something?
Just putting it out there, justplaying devil's advocate?
Speaker 3 (20:23):
I think what's an interesting thing that you're
bringing up is there's aperception, if you say you're
flexible because, just so youknow, we continue to have our
offices, we did not divest ofour offices, we shrank some of
them, we right-sized them sothey'd be more intimate there's
a perception that if you'reflexible, that nobody shows up
for anything, that you can'tfind anybody anywhere.
(20:46):
That is, in fact, not the casewhen you have an attractive
employee culture.
One of our big pillars of ourculture in our countries is to
have a community.
So we have our corporate socialresponsibility, we have
training, we have a town hallstrategy where we have reasons
to come to the office that aremostly social but also for
(21:07):
development and also for teambuilding.
And what we have seen byoffering this flexibility and
not rolling back, is that wehave actually seen participation
grow incrementally every yearand every event in our offices,
and so it gives us this, I wouldsay, a challenge to have to
create meaningful experiences.
(21:30):
And now we see people say youknow when is my team going to
meet?
Oh, I didn't know you weregoing to be in town.
I would have come to the officepeople talking about it'd be
great to know who's in town so Ican come in and having a bit of
FOMO for not being at theoffice when there's cool things
happening, but we don't use theword mandatory.
To me, the word trust andhaving experts and mandatory
(21:51):
cannot be in the same sentence.
We have to be attractive and wehave to be intentional, and
that is something that our teamworks very hard on, and we help
leaders understand the value increating moments.
But we have allowed people tocome to this on their own and
because of that, the win is somuch sweeter okay, great answer
(22:14):
I.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
I tried to throw you a curveball there, but you
knocked out the park.
Very well done.
Uh, we are already comingtowards the end of this
particular conversation.
Just a couple more questionsfor you.
I guess the next one is whatelse?
What other programs does Syntaxoffer to keep employees
invested in the organization andthe culture?
Speaker 3 (22:33):
That's a really interesting question because one
of the things that we have beensome, you know we've had faced
challenges like everyone else is, you know, do we hire people
all over because we can, or dowe want them to be closer to one
of our hubs so they have theopportunity to attend events?
And how do we balance the factthat great talent is everywhere
(22:54):
and it's also kind of cozier tohave your talent closer, because
the challenge is how do Iparticipate when I can't drive
or go on a train to get to theoffice?
So one of our, I'd say, mostsuccessful events was earlier in
this year.
We had about 800 participants,more close to 3000.
And that was one of thesechallenges, these step
challenges to plant trees.
It's called the tree challengeand essentially by country,
(23:17):
depending on the number of stepsyou got to plant trees, and I
believe we planted about 5400trees to plant trees, and I
believe we planted about 5,400trees, walking 60,000 kilometers
, and there was a leaderboard bycountry and so many people were
participating.
It was literally people werejust trying to walk around the
room do the challenges and thiswas global.
So you need to create eventsthat everybody can participate
(23:40):
with and interact with and wekicked it off and then we did an
award ceremony at the end.
So this is where I talk aboutbeing intentional around
companies.
So our CSR, which is ouremployee resource groups,
environment, mental health wehave events every month.
We have in country events andwe have virtual events.
(24:00):
And whether you go to yourvegetarian cooking class class
or you go to AIDS Awareness Day,I don't care, I like that.
It's in your calendar.
We pop it into everybody'scalendar and you see it, because
seeing those moments shows thatwe care about you and we care
about creating special moments,whether you participate or not.
You know there's a yoga thisweek.
I don't know if I'm going toget to go, but just seeing it in
(24:23):
my calendar in the morning, Iwas like, well, it's cool,
there's yoga this week.
And so we have, I think, done areally interesting job at
having a lot of different thingsgoing on for neurodiversity,
women in tech, veterans.
We do so many differentinitiatives that I think create
an identity, even though we'redispersed around the globe and
(24:45):
even in our own cities.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
My daily steps.
Target is 9,000.
I've just come back from ahiking weekend.
I did 22,000 yesterday, prettyhappy with that.
My legs are aching today.
Okay, last question for you ishow can we connect with you?
So is that LinkedIn?
Do you want to share your emailaddress?
I bet you're super cool and allover TikTok and Instagram and
places.
And, of course, how can folkslearn more about Syntax?
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Well, we have.
You know, our Syntax careerspage has our roles.
We also post them on LinkedIn.
So I would be excited you know,I literally can say excited for
anyone to apply so that we canget to know you and your
qualifications.
We have so many roles intechnology as well as in the
traditional support functions.
I'm Desalyn Wood.
(25:29):
I am the only one, I believe,on the entire planet.
That's probably difficult tosay, but I am the only one.
So if you did want to find me,you could, and so I would
definitely be.
Linkedin is my favorite place.
I do post, I do share contentand I really love it when people
reach out, especially if theywant advice or they just want to
(25:49):
talk through a challenge.
When I do sometimes talks likethis, other HR professionals
reach because it's a continuousthing you've got to talk about.
You know, remote work is notgoing to stay alive and well if
you assume a decision threeyears ago is relevant in three
(26:12):
years.
You have to nurture thatmessage and you have to evolve
that message.
So if anybody does want toreach out for some guidance on
that, I would be very happy tohelp.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Well, that just leaves me to say for today thank
you very much for being myguest on this episode of the HR
Chat Show.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Thank you, Bill.
It was a really fun discussion.
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
And listeners as always.
Until next time, happy working.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show.
If you enjoyed this episode,why not subscribe and listen to
some of the hundreds of episodespublished by HR Gazette and
remember for what's new in theworld of work?
Subscribe to the show, followus on social media and visit
hrgazettecom.
Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's
most downloaded and sharedpodcasts designed for HR pros,
talent execs, tech enthusiastsand business leaders.
For hundreds more episodes andwhat's new in the world of work,
subscribe to the show, followus on social media and visit
hrgazettecom and visithrgazettecom.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show.
Hello listeners, this is yourhost today, bill Bannum, and in
this episode we're going to talkabout workplace flexibility,
and joining me on the show thistime is Desalyn Wood, chief
People Officer over at Syntax.
Hey, desalyn, how are you today?
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I'm great.
I'm great, I'm really happy tobe here.
Thank you, bill.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Beyond my short introduction just a moment ago,
Des, why don't you take a minuteor two, introduce yourself and
also share the mission of Syntax?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Thank you for introducing me.
I'll tell you a little bit moreabout myself.
I've been in the HR or peopleand culture, whatever you want
to call it for the last 25 yearsand in that time I've seen a
huge transformation in thepeople and culture function and
in the work environment and workmodels, so this is a really
exciting topic.
My role has been Chief PeopleOfficer at Syntax for the last
(01:22):
three and a half years and we'rea company that's grown
incrementally over the lastseveral years and we're in many
countries around the world.
Syntax is an IT andprofessional services company
and we provide managed servicesas well as professional services
in ERP and cloud.
Excited to be talking aboutflexibility at work today.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat
Podcast.
If you enjoy the audio contentwe produce, you'll love our
articles on the HR Gazette.
Learn more at hrgazettecom.
And now back to the show.
Yes, you've worked across awide range of industries.
I was looking through yourLinkedIn ahead of our interview,
(02:06):
doing my homework, so youworked, for example, from retail
to entertainment, to tech.
How have your experiences inthose different environments
shaped your approach to buildingworkplace culture?
At Syntax?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Well, you know, it's an interesting thing because I
started out in the serviceindustry or the retail industry
and I spent most of my career, Iwould say, in that frontline
industry, working with a veryhardworking demographic that
didn't necessarily choose thatcareer, and you're creating an
(02:53):
employee experience in anenvironment that's quite
challenging.
It's open all the time, it'sopen late at night and on
holidays, and you want to have agreat environment with employee
development and retention, andyet you're in an industry that
doesn't have very high marginsand therefore doesn't have a
tremendous amount of money toinvest, and so you have to be
(03:14):
really scrappy and creative tocreate value within that
framework.
You also have a challenge ofhaving a difficulty in
differentiating yourselves.
You also have a challenge ofhaving a difficulty in
differentiating yourselves, soyour turnover the number of
people who are leaving, istypically quite high, because
you can get similar jobselsewhere and everyone is
competing for the same talent,and so, at the same time, you're
(03:37):
investing and attempting toretain to make sure that you're
getting your return on thatinvestment.
So this was a big challenge forme was creating great
environments in a very volatiledemographic of people Coming to
tech.
The biggest difference, I wouldsay in tech is that you know
(03:57):
this is a team of experts, ofprofessionals who have been
educated and selected to be inthis industry, professionals who
have been educated and selectedto be in this industry and
you're looking for differentthings than people are looking
for in the service industrybecause you know the kind of
quality of life concerns change,and so here people are looking
for interesting projects andcareer challenges and growth and
(04:20):
global projects, and so youhave a different set of
expectations around how acompany differentiates and
provides value to that group ofprofessionals than you have in a
frontline retail environment.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
I'm curious now what role does leadership development
play in syntax and strategy,especially as the company
continues to scale?
Are there specific traits ormindsets you aim to cultivate in
emerging leaders?
Speaker 3 (04:51):
So it's such a great example of a question, because
when you're a multiple, we havehad a lot of acquisitions and so
you have a lot of people whocame through smaller
organizations.
And one thing typical ofsmaller organizations there are
exceptions is that there is lesseffort and less time spent in
leader development and more timein technical kinds of training,
(05:12):
and the luxury of a largerenvironment is then you have an
argument to create leaderdevelopment, to have succession
plans and to talent map, and sothose are our processes and
practices, that we were able tobring a large group of leaders
that, while they had beenleaders for long periods of time
, they might not haveexperienced any development just
(05:34):
because of the nature and sizeand scope of the company they
were in.
So to me, one of the benefitsof coming to a larger mid-market
organization is that we do havea leadership framework and a
point of view that we can bring.
So, to answer your question,what does it mean at Syntax, to
be a leader?
One of the biggest things thatwe've been focusing on?
(05:55):
I would say it's two majorareas, and that's obviously
remote leadership, because weare a remote and hybrid and
flexible environment, and theother one is global leadership
and I would say globalleadership is actually far more
challenging to learn than remoteleadership.
I think it doesn't get the sameenergy and maybe the same
spotlight, but global leadershipis challenging.
(06:17):
I'm gonna use myself as anexample.
I've been in large companies,canadian and US retail players
and different exhibition and youknow types of environments.
This was the first time I wasin 15 countries with many
different ways of doing thingsand each culture is different.
Each kind of you know.
The way we treat employees aredifferent, the expectations are
(06:39):
different and having to have aleadership role and over 50% of
the leaders at Syntax leadglobally, meaning they have one
or more people in a differentcountry.
The assumption that you can cutand paste your leadership style
from your country onto somebodyelse's culture is a mistake and
we see this really often.
(07:00):
So what I would say I havelearned is you can be a global
company in the sense that youhave offices around the world,
but the home base is reallywhere the culture comes from and
all the leaders are generallyanchored in one or two countries
and they lead the same way foreveryone.
The syntax model is quitedifferent.
We want you to have a globalmindset, meaning that you will
(07:21):
be able to be flexible and leaddifferently for each of the
different countries that you'rein, and we encourage our
leadership roles to be placed inall of our countries, not
choosing certain sort of Acountries that get all the
leaders where the B and Ccountries don't, and so pushing
ourselves to have leaders leadfrom different countries.
(07:42):
And so, even though our homeoffice is in Canada, pushing to
not have our leadership allbased in Canada and have them in
our countries, whether it beSlovakia, india, mexico, spain.
We have leaders all over theworld and those leaders lead
global teams as well.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
So I'm curious.
Just a quick follow up to whatyou said there.
It's important to be sensitiveto cultural differences when
you're leading a globalorganization, of course, but to
use the Simon Sinek term,starting with, why is it also
important that employees,particularly leaders within an
(08:21):
organization, buys into the whyof a company, but buys into the
values of a company, regardlessof their geographic situation?
Speaker 3 (08:30):
I think companies have a lot of taglines.
They say they're one company,they talk about belonging and
they talk about their companyvalues.
And again, what does that mean?
It really means a consistentset of experiences, and one of
the challenges companies have isthat they have an external
facing message about what theircompany is about, and then they
(08:51):
have an internal reality, andI've been very sensitive to that
, growing up in the retailindustry, where it's a lot of
young people and they're notvery fearful of expressing their
dissatisfaction with companiesonline, and I think that that
taught me to make sure that youdon't claim to be something that
you're not going to be able todo.
And so when we're looking athow we have people identify with
(09:16):
a company, regardless wherethey are, you have to choose
which things are going to bevery important that will be
foundational and felt everywhere, and which things will be
different because each countryis different.
And our CEO his name isChristian Primo.
His tagline when I started withhim was boutique at scale,
(09:36):
meaning we're not a huge playerwhere everything is a machine
and we're not a teeny mom andpop, but we have aspects of both
.
We have to be able to scale,but in the times of leadership
development and people andculture.
But we also have to understandthat we have differences that we
wanna be aware of in ourcustomers as well as our
employees.
So I use that boutique at scale, which was really a tagline for
(10:00):
our customers, for myselfpersonally.
We have a lot of differencesinside our countries to honour
those country cultures, but wehave some prevailing themes that
are experienced by everyone andthat's really what we drive
through when we talk aboutleader development and leader
expectations.
Are those consistent factors.
I'll leave the local factors tomy local teams to work on with
(10:24):
leaders, but globally we alltalk about the same important
factors of differentiation tomake sure Syntax stands out as
an employer of choice.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Syntax recently received its Great Place to Work
certification Congratulations.
Can you tell us more about thatand why it matters?
Speaker 3 (10:45):
So I can tell you something that probably won't
surprise you, and that's everyCEO will eventually tell a
person in my role I want some ofthose badges.
Where do we get those badges?
I see badges on everybody andthere's different kinds of
badges.
You can buy badges, just so youknow.
You can buy all sorts ofrecognition and you can have
(11:05):
recognition that you submitbased on your media about your
company.
So basically, it's a, it's anapplication.
And then there's the hard ones,and that's the ones where your
employees have an anonymoussurvey with a lot of rules about
what you're allowed not to sayand say, and you still write
your own narrative about yourcompany, but then it's tested
(11:27):
with a survey to your employees,and those are the ones that are
the scariest but they're alsothe most valuable to get,
because if you get one of thoserecognitions, your employees
know that they gave that input,and so to me it was the sweetest
thing to go after, but thehardest thing.
So I told you I started threeand a half years ago.
I didn't do this the first year.
(11:48):
You can't just go and say, hey,employees tell everybody how
great we are.
They have to experience somereally important and meaningful
events in their life cycle inorder to be able to complete
that survey and to getrecognized, and so you have to
be really intentional about that.
And then, when you drop thatsurvey and to get recognized and
so you have to be reallyintentional about that and then
when you drop that survey,you're still worried.
(12:08):
You don't know what's going tohappen.
This is not monitored internally.
I have no sense in thedashboard what anybody's saying.
So it was exceptionallymeaningful, and on a few levels.
One is that we had over 80% ofour employees participate, far
above the required threshold.
To me, the most important levelof engagement, the number that
matters more to me than anypercent I can give you, is the
(12:31):
number of people participate.
Non-participation is a verystrong message, meaning that I
don't have any faith.
Participation doesn't mean highscores, but it means I'm still
in the game.
So I was really excited that wehad high participation and then
, over the top, thrill that wewere certified in every country
that we were able to apply for.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
As a people leader.
How do you try to encouragethat participation?
By the way, do you gamify?
Do you incentivize?
Are all of these wonderfulnumbers of people who did
respond just that engaged withthe company culture?
Is it a bit of all of thosethings?
Speaker 3 (13:07):
So it's an interesting way.
Okay, so I've been doingsurveys for 15 years and
actually worked for a companybefore that specialized in this.
So it's a little bit.
I would say I have a prettygood time doing this thing.
I can tell you for great placeto work.
You are not allowed toincentivize pizza party or push.
What you can just do is sendreminders.
So one of the things that I cando that I was able to do is I
(13:31):
like to do country competition.
We are, all you know, everybody.
We belong to so many differentgroups at work.
We belong to syntax as a whole,you belong to your function or
department and then you belongto your country and everything I
do I talk about on those threelevels.
Here's the company identity.
You have your department, teamor function identity and then
(13:52):
you still have your countryidentity and in fact, the
country identity is the one thatlikes to probably be almost the
most competitive.
So I would just put up countries, you know, cheering them on.
I would, you know, put questionmarks next to the other ones,
and it was just fundamentally anemail campaign.
And then I would let ourcountry leaders which is a
really important role that wehave, our country leaders who
(14:14):
hold in all different positionsin the organization, but they've
been named a country leaderbecause of their strength as a
leader.
The country leaders then do thework for you because they just
want to beat each other.
The country leaders then do thework for you because they just
want to beat each other, and soit's a self-fulfilling where I
just do some nudging.
I think I once called myselfchief reminding officer.
I basically am just sendingreminders all the time and then
(14:35):
I let the countries fight it outand they always deliver.
You know, some get to the 90sand some just get in at 82.
But they all get there.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
So, as I mentioned in the intro, today we're talking
about workplace flexibility.
I remember during the pandemicI'd speak to lots of senior
leaders and they'd say to me,bill, the days of needing the
employees in the office are over.
Forget about it.
It's been a terrible time time,this pandemic, but the big
silver lining is we trust ourpeople.
(15:06):
Now they can work wherever theywant to.
Those same leaders are in manycases clawing back their
employees, making them come backto the office at least a few
days a week.
Others are saying, oh, we'renot that mean, but they've got
to be in the same time zone, etc.
Etc.
You know they're going backcertainly on what they said a
few years ago.
Personally, I'm a a bigproponent of being able to work
(15:28):
remotely if you can do the joband you can demonstrate to
others that you are committedand you are productive.
But this is not an interviewwith me.
There's a question coming heresomewhere.
The question for you is, withan ever increasing push to
return to the office, what issyntax'sax's take on?
Mandatory in-office time versusworking from home, versus
(15:48):
hybrid?
Tell us more about the waysthat you guys are approaching it
.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Well, I can tell you, the biggest buzzkill for an
employee experience is the wordmandatory.
Got to be really careful howoften you use that word if
you're going to say you have awonderful corporate culture.
So that's something that I'vealways been really cautious
about.
You know, what we did here issomething I think pretty
exciting, and it might not soundthat exciting from the
(16:15):
beginning, but if you go with mehere to where we are today, it
is exciting now.
But dial back to 2022, right aswe're coming out of Omicron and
companies are saying thingslike we're going to continue
being flexible or we'reevaluating it or we are flexible
only to a year later.
Change your mind.
And my CEO, again Christian,said, right as I was starting, I
(16:38):
want us to stay flexible, andwe were not necessarily a
flexible environment before.
We had offices full of peopleand we'd actually just expanded
three of our offices and donerenovations, so we were in the
same boat of expensive realestate that might be empty, just
so you know, that's probablythe biggest deterrent of
flexible work is empty offices.
And so when he said I want tobe flexible, I was like great.
(17:02):
He said I really want to makethis part of what makes syntax
different.
I want this to be basically thefoundation of our employee
experience, and I thought, okay,this sounds interesting.
But at that time, over 90% oftech companies were still
entirely flexible.
So to me it was like, great,we're going to say we're
flexible like everyone else.
That's kind of like saying Ihave a brown dog, okay, so does
(17:26):
hundreds and thousands of otherpeople have a brown dog.
So saying we're going to beflexible wasn't this exciting
statement anymore.
And so one of the things I saidto him is, if we're going to do
this, we need to name and brandit and launch it.
Launch it with a real, I wouldsay, point of view on how this
flexibility differentiates anddefines our employee experience.
(17:47):
But here's the caveat we can'troll it back.
You can roll back, we're goingto be flexible, for now we're
staying flexible.
We still believe it matters.
You can't roll back somethingthat you name and launch on an
employee town hall as afoundational part of your
employee experience, and so thiswas a big commitment.
So we branded it Global Flexwith this element called Global
(18:11):
Tourist.
We got a logo, we got all thedifferent swag for it, and we
had a global town hall and welaunched it, and when I mean
launched it, we explainedexactly what we meant about
three different things what doesit mean to have flex time?
What does it mean to be able tochoose around the way you're
going to work?
What does it mean to have flexworkplace and location home or
(18:34):
office?
And then, what does work fromanywhere really mean?
And we were able to clearlydefine those three factors in it
there's a timing of the day,there's a location office, home
and then there's a countryfactors in it.
There's a timing of the day,there's a location office, home
and then there's a countryaspect to it.
And we were able to show allthree and then layer them
together under this name ofGlobal Flex and essentially have
(18:55):
people enroll in the program.
So this is where I would say wasthe big differentiator for us
and because of that, even whenI've had different leaders
challenge, send me the.
Which company is now rolling itback?
Should we?
I'm like we can't.
You can't drive your carlooking through a rearview
mirror, you look through thewindshield and, yes, I'm aware
(19:17):
there were things you likedabout it, but we're not going
backwards and that's beensomething we've held strong to
and, in fact, the more companiesthat have rolled it back, the
better it's been for us so Iloved everything you just said
there.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
However, my job is to be devil's advocate, okay, so
really can you never roll back?
I mean, we're living inuncertain times right now.
Uh, jobs are not as easy tocome by.
Uh, there are various tariffwars going on around the world
which are affecting economies.
Ai is taking over lots and lotsof different uh tasks of people
and, in fact, taking overentire jobs.
(19:50):
Um, there are certainstatistics, by gotler, for
example, that by 2030, 30percent of jobs that exist today
will not exist anymore.
Uh, bill gates came out just afew weeks ago, as we record this
episode in, in middle of june,saying by by around same sort of
period, a lot of people canexpect to only be able to work
two days a week because AI isreplacing so much.
(20:11):
So, in that kind of context,those companies that are rolling
back and insisting that theyget to be more selective about
where their people work are theyonto something?
Just putting it out there, justplaying devil's advocate?
Speaker 3 (20:23):
I think what's an interesting thing that you're
bringing up is there's aperception, if you say you're
flexible because, just so youknow, we continue to have our
offices, we did not divest ofour offices, we shrank some of
them, we right-sized them sothey'd be more intimate there's
a perception that if you'reflexible, that nobody shows up
for anything, that you can'tfind anybody anywhere.
(20:46):
That is, in fact, not the casewhen you have an attractive
employee culture.
One of our big pillars of ourculture in our countries is to
have a community.
So we have our corporate socialresponsibility, we have
training, we have a town hallstrategy where we have reasons
to come to the office that aremostly social but also for
(21:07):
development and also for teambuilding.
And what we have seen byoffering this flexibility and
not rolling back, is that wehave actually seen participation
grow incrementally every yearand every event in our offices,
and so it gives us this, I wouldsay, a challenge to have to
create meaningful experiences.
(21:30):
And now we see people say youknow when is my team going to
meet?
Oh, I didn't know you weregoing to be in town.
I would have come to the officepeople talking about it'd be
great to know who's in town so Ican come in and having a bit of
FOMO for not being at theoffice when there's cool things
happening, but we don't use theword mandatory.
To me, the word trust andhaving experts and mandatory
(21:51):
cannot be in the same sentence.
We have to be attractive and wehave to be intentional, and
that is something that our teamworks very hard on, and we help
leaders understand the value increating moments.
But we have allowed people tocome to this on their own and
because of that, the win is somuch sweeter okay, great answer
(22:14):
I.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
I tried to throw you a curveball there, but you
knocked out the park.
Very well done.
Uh, we are already comingtowards the end of this
particular conversation.
Just a couple more questionsfor you.
I guess the next one is whatelse?
What other programs does Syntaxoffer to keep employees
invested in the organization andthe culture?
Speaker 3 (22:33):
That's a really interesting question because one
of the things that we have beensome, you know we've had faced
challenges like everyone else is, you know, do we hire people
all over because we can, or dowe want them to be closer to one
of our hubs so they have theopportunity to attend events?
And how do we balance the factthat great talent is everywhere
(22:54):
and it's also kind of cozier tohave your talent closer, because
the challenge is how do Iparticipate when I can't drive
or go on a train to get to theoffice?
So one of our, I'd say, mostsuccessful events was earlier in
this year.
We had about 800 participants,more close to 3000.
And that was one of thesechallenges, these step
challenges to plant trees.
It's called the tree challengeand essentially by country,
(23:17):
depending on the number of stepsyou got to plant trees, and I
believe we planted about 5400trees to plant trees, and I
believe we planted about 5,400trees, walking 60,000 kilometers
, and there was a leaderboard bycountry and so many people were
participating.
It was literally people werejust trying to walk around the
room do the challenges and thiswas global.
So you need to create eventsthat everybody can participate
(23:40):
with and interact with and wekicked it off and then we did an
award ceremony at the end.
So this is where I talk aboutbeing intentional around
companies.
So our CSR, which is ouremployee resource groups,
environment, mental health wehave events every month.
We have in country events andwe have virtual events.
(24:00):
And whether you go to yourvegetarian cooking class class
or you go to AIDS Awareness Day,I don't care, I like that.
It's in your calendar.
We pop it into everybody'scalendar and you see it, because
seeing those moments shows thatwe care about you and we care
about creating special moments,whether you participate or not.
You know there's a yoga thisweek.
I don't know if I'm going toget to go, but just seeing it in
(24:23):
my calendar in the morning, Iwas like, well, it's cool,
there's yoga this week.
And so we have, I think, done areally interesting job at
having a lot of different thingsgoing on for neurodiversity,
women in tech, veterans.
We do so many differentinitiatives that I think create
an identity, even though we'redispersed around the globe and
(24:45):
even in our own cities.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
My daily steps.
Target is 9,000.
I've just come back from ahiking weekend.
I did 22,000 yesterday, prettyhappy with that.
My legs are aching today.
Okay, last question for you ishow can we connect with you?
So is that LinkedIn?
Do you want to share your emailaddress?
I bet you're super cool and allover TikTok and Instagram and
places.
And, of course, how can folkslearn more about Syntax?
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Well, we have.
You know, our Syntax careerspage has our roles.
We also post them on LinkedIn.
So I would be excited you know,I literally can say excited for
anyone to apply so that we canget to know you and your
qualifications.
We have so many roles intechnology as well as in the
traditional support functions.
I'm Desalyn Wood.
(25:29):
I am the only one, I believe,on the entire planet.
That's probably difficult tosay, but I am the only one.
So if you did want to find me,you could, and so I would
definitely be.
Linkedin is my favorite place.
I do post, I do share contentand I really love it when people
reach out, especially if theywant advice or they just want to
(25:49):
talk through a challenge.
When I do sometimes talks likethis, other HR professionals
reach because it's a continuousthing you've got to talk about.
You know, remote work is notgoing to stay alive and well if
you assume a decision threeyears ago is relevant in three
(26:12):
years.
You have to nurture thatmessage and you have to evolve
that message.
So if anybody does want toreach out for some guidance on
that, I would be very happy tohelp.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Well, that just leaves me to say for today thank
you very much for being myguest on this episode of the HR
Chat Show.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Thank you, Bill.
It was a really fun discussion.
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
And listeners as always.
Until next time, happy working.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show.
If you enjoyed this episode,why not subscribe and listen to
some of the hundreds of episodespublished by HR Gazette and
remember for what's new in theworld of work?
Subscribe to the show, followus on social media and visit
hrgazettecom.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com