June 5, 2025 • 33 mins
In this episode of the Inside Out Culture podcast we talk to former People and Culture Director of Boost Drinks, Eleanor Gooding about the role and other culture-related issues:
Key topics covered include:
- What practical things did she do at Boost to create a vibrant culture?
- Ideas to positively evolve the culture
- Why deliberately designing and building culture is key
- What’s her take on the new book about Facebook?
Find out more about Eleanor at:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eleanor-gooding/
---
Join us as we reveal strategies to close the gap and craft a workplace where values are not just spoken, but lived and breathed, paving the way for a more authentic and engaging organisational culture.
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Email your questions to: insideoutculture@gmail.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Colin (00:02):
Welcome to the Inside Out Culture Podcast, where we look
at insides of working cultureand provide ideas, insights and
actions for you to take on theoutside.
I'm Colin Ellis.
Cath (00:12):
And I'm Cath Bishop, and in each episode we'll examine a
different question or adifferent organization, and
we'll use case studies, researchand our own insights and
experiences to help you changethe way things get done in your
world.
Colin (00:27):
We hope you enjoyed today's episode.
Please like, subscribe and, ofcourse, let us know what you
think.
Hello everybody, and welcome toanother episode of the Inside
Out Culture Podcast, and I'mdelighted to say that we have a
guest joining us today, Cath.
Cath (00:40):
I am really excited that we are joined by Eleanor Gooding
, who is a self-confessedworkplace culture geek, so she's
absolutely welcome, isn't she,colin, in our kind of total
workplace culture geekery.
Her roles in her workplace, hercareer, has been about helping
companies go from good to great,and she's passionate about
(01:08):
modern people practices whereeveryone can thrive.
Eleanor (01:11):
Welcome, eleanor, hi, and thanks for having me on the
podcast.
I'm really excited to be here.
Cath (01:17):
Thank you.
So one of the things that whenwe were discussing and I heard
you talk at a conference lastyear and it really grabbed me
all of the experiences you hadin your recent role for about
six years, I think as the headof people and culture at Boost
Drinks.
So what we're going to do isdive into that.
So this episode is a real sortof getting perspective from the
(01:37):
front line of someone who thinksvery proactively about culture,
and you yourself have said youknow you just don't get.
You know companies often don'tget.
The culture is more than justcleaning up problems, toxic
behaviours.
It's way beyond that and partof this podcast is about helping
people think proactively andyour whole role was about that
world.
(01:57):
So tell us a bit about how yougot into that role, what your
sort of real task was and howthings unfolded.
Eleanor (02:04):
Okay, brilliant.
So, yeah, I think my backgroundis quite diverse and I think
it's important to say at thispoint that I got brought up by a
couple of managementconsultants.
So really early in my life itwas kind of like oh fine, right,
you want to go and be a hippieand travel across Europe, that's
fine.
How are you going to afford thevan?
(02:25):
How are you going to get around?
How are you going to keepyourself safe?
Let's build a strategy.
You know everything.
In our household there wasalways this kind of what's the
problem?
How do we solve it?
How do we get there?
How can we empower you?
That kind of thing.
And so sometimes I get asked atinterviews or when I meet
people why there are certainthings that I could do.
I was brought up to think thatway, so I think that's an
(02:46):
interesting thing, and I've hadquite an interesting career and
I spent years and years tryingto be an artist and I worked in
retail all that time and I gotup into management in retail
with a number of differentcompanies of different sizes and
I learned how to people manageand I learned what works and
what didn't work, and I've beenon the front line.
(03:09):
I know what it's like to have afantastic manager and I know
what it's like to have an awfulmanager.
And then, before I joined Boost, I had done some freelance work
as a strategic consultant,usually on the people stuff
myself.
But I also worked for an HRcertification company for some
time, which I was part ofbuilding the certification
(03:30):
itself, and it meant I got to goand see the best practices the
HR departments were doing in notbig, big sophisticated
companies across the UK, andthere were a lot of them
international and so it.
So it's with that kind ofexperience all combined that I
came ended up applying to a jobat Boost.
Colin (03:52):
I've got a quick question , eleanor, just jumping back to
what you said about kind of yourprogression started on the shop
floor, like literally, andwe've talked about this in the
past.
That was certainly mybackground kind of working my
way all the way up, looking atwhat worked, looking at what
didn't.
Do you think, before we talkabout kind of boost, do you
(04:13):
think we're deliberate enoughnow around how we train managers
and I'm interested in yourexperience, obviously, having
been in the role where you'reresponsible for learning and
development Do you think thoseopportunities for new managers
to learn, like we did, stillexist?
How has all that changed?
Do you think?
Eleanor (04:25):
I think companies would probably say that there's more
support, more training in placefor those.
But it's so different incompany to company and I have
worked probably more with SMEsthan with big corporations in my
own working experience and theyoften don't have much at all in
the way.
It's a person who does well intheir job that gets promoted and
(04:45):
then they're suddenly a peoplemanager, and so you talk about
this on your podcast.
You can see how somebody who'sbrilliant at the job doesn't
necessarily make a brilliantmanager, and I do think I'm
probably jumping ahead tosomething that I might have at
the end.
But whenever I've worked withany company, whether it's as an
employee, in a senior role or asa consultant, if they say, if
(05:09):
you can only invest in one thing, what would it be?
And I would say train yourpeople managers, because they
will determine the dailyexperience of the people in your
company.
Cath (05:19):
Yeah, so tell us a bit more about the mission, the
cultural mission that you camein to lead at Boost.
Eleanor (05:29):
Yeah, okay, so Boost was privately owned and the CEO
was the founder, simon Gray, andhe hired me as one of the
leadership team members andthere were about six people in
that team at the time and anon-exec director as well,
kirsty, who has featured quitelargely in the work we did as
well.
And you know, boost had beenaround for I don't know 15 years
(05:55):
maybe at the time, and theculture there when I joined it
was on the surface.
It looked like a vibrant placeto work, an exciting place to
work.
You start to pick at things andscratch below the surface.
It looked like a vibrant placeto work, an exciting place to
work.
You start to pick at things andscratch below the surface a
little bit.
And was the company in chargeof the culture?
Not really.
Were all the behaviours in linewith what Simon had in his head
(06:18):
?
Not really.
And did they have the tools tokind of go through that process
themselves?
No, that's why I was hired andI was the first people role.
There were, you know, HR thingsbeing done.
So obviously, you know therewas all the legal requirements
and that kind of thing.
There were some values in placealready and there'd been some
good work done in that kind ofarea.
(06:40):
But Simon was brought into thewhole idea of culture.
He's somebody who educateshimself and he belongs to lots
of groups and you know, and hewas really liking what he was
hearing about the people agendaand what you know.
He wanted to take that furtherin boost and didn't know how.
And essentially that's why Icame into the business and and
(07:01):
very early on I had to ask himwell, what you know, what, what
is it that you want here?
So that led really straight tothe work that I started to do,
which was to say what are wetrying to do here and why?
And I'm a really big believerthat you need to understand the
nature of your business.
So the first thing I did was totry and get used to the
business myself, but also totalk to Simon a lot about what
(07:24):
he wanted, what he didn't want,what was okay, what was
fantastic.
But I kept saying well, thekind of HR that we do in the
company needs to reflect thiskind of feeling and tone in the
business that you want.
And he didn't really understandthat.
He'd be the first person to sayI understand the words he's
(07:44):
saying, but I don't know whatthat looks like.
So I developed something that Icalled the sliding scale of HR
and I kind of made this tablewhere on one side we had quite
traditional people practices, inthe middle there was modern
(08:09):
people practices and on theother side there was progressive
people practices, and then Iwould divide it up and I would
say, first of all, what kinds ofcompanies would they suit Each
kind of practice suit?
And then, okay, let's use someexamples.
So a really easy one isholidays.
So a traditional company wouldprobably offer what the law was.
(08:31):
Maybe you would accrue somemore over time.
A modern company would probablygive above what was legally
required and they might have abuying or selling program in
place.
And a progressive company isgoing to be someone like Netflix
, who you know unlimited holiday, but how do you manage that?
So you know program in place.
And a progressive company isgoing to be someone like Netflix
, who you know unlimited holiday, but how do you manage that?
So you know, they all havetheir pros and cons and I think
one of the things is is I don't.
(08:53):
I genuinely believe there isnot a right and a wrong as long
as you're above the law.
You really need to take thattime to understand the nature of
your business, and between usand the leadership team and
non-exec Kirsty as well, wedecided that we wanted to be
aiming between modern andprogressive.
Something I think is importantis Boost was a challenger brand,
(09:16):
so we were a fast follower, andso that was something I always
had in mind Am I trying toinnovate here, or am I trying to
follow, or what am I trying todo?
So I always had that in my headI trying to innovate here, or
am I trying to follow, or youknow, what am I trying to do?
So I always had that in my headas well, and we weren't the.
You know, we didn't want to bethe first people to try out
something crazy, although maybewe did.
What sort of stuff?
Cath (09:36):
then were you?
Did you have to change?
You said there were values, butI get the sense they weren't
really embedded in behaviours.
What were some of the reallycritical things, what things
perhaps were most impactful inchanging the culture?
Because I think often peoplehave lots of initiatives and
then some land and some don'tand your perspective now,
(09:56):
looking back on that period, Ithink it'd be so interesting to
get a sense of which were thereally critical changes you made
and perhaps which are the onesthat you thought would be more
important and maybe weren't soimportant.
Eleanor (10:09):
Yeah, I think it's an interesting question that you're
asking and I hope I'll answerthis.
But one of the things Iactually I mean Simon really
wanted to run ahead with change.
He had seen things that wereexciting and he wanted the
company to win awards and allthis kind of stuff and I had to
say, slow down, there is nopoint in us doing anything until
we have the behaviors at thetop of the company all aligned
(10:33):
with this direction we wanted togo in.
So, as the second part of thework I did, along with the
sliding scatterbite chart, wedid an aspirational cultural
definition and that wasabsolutely critical and key in
everything that followed.
So you ask about things likethe values.
The values were good and peoplewere trying to talk about them
(10:55):
and they did remain the valuesuntil the end of the company,
which we'll touch on at somepoint.
But we again, even with thevalues, I said it's not that
much pointless doing a lot ofwork on some of these things
because we'll roll them out,they'll be beautiful, they'll be
shiny, but if we haven't gotthe right behaviors, those
(11:15):
behaviors will undermineeverything else we try and do.
So this has to be a case of uswalking before we can run and I
think that was the firstcritical moment was us kind of
putting a stake in the groundand saying, okay, we want to be
modern, progressive and this iswhat we want to aim for.
And then, as part of aiming forthat culture that we described
(11:36):
in this lovely statement, wetook it out to the business and
we engaged them with it.
How are we doing on this?
What part do you play in this?
You know who owns this.
And that was really key,because I think that was the
very, very beginning of theprocess and by the end of that
process, every single person inBoost understood how they
(11:57):
contributed towards the businessand towards the culture and
they all looked after it andthey all tried to help it and to
get to that kind of point, ICan I ask a question, eleanor,
in terms of the leadership team,because every time I start
working with a leadership team,there's usually one like the CEO
(12:18):
often is like yes, and Simonsounds like he was the guy.
Colin (12:21):
Hr, 100% culture is the thing.
There's always one cynic andone skeptic.
Maybe that didn't exist inBoost.
Maybe everyone was aligned fromday one.
How did you get that alignmentaround?
We're going to make aninvestment of time and money in
culture and we all believe it'sthe right thing.
Were you the catalyst for that?
(12:43):
Was Simon the catalyst for that?
Eleanor (12:44):
I think Simon wanted us to be the best leadership team
that we could be and I think Iwas probably tasked to helping
us move to that point.
And I worked a lot with ournon-exec director, kirsty, in
that as well, because I was oneof the team as well.
So if there was something Iwanted to do as a team and we
did a lot of work together as ateam in lots of different ways,
(13:06):
using established tools and justgroup work but what I often get
Kirsty to facilitate, thatbecause she knew the business
inside out, she knew thecharacters inside out.
I think you are absolutelyright and I always want to be
extremely careful what I say,because it is my genuine belief
that there's not a right and awrong, but there are good
(13:27):
alignments with people and theirroles and there are people who
would be best off in a differentrole in a different company,
and that's fine.
But I think companies sometimesget scared to face that.
And let's just say that we dida lot of work and we had one,
two within the first three years, three of the leadership team
were gone and then we had a new.
(13:51):
We had yeah, we just got newpeople in who we hoped and
believed were much more alignedwith that kind of culture we
wanted to create, because weknew that we had to set the tone
for that culture at the top.
And one more thing onleadership there was we
collectively had a saying thatcame from our marketing director
, adrian, which was as leaders,we cast a shadow.
(14:14):
We have to make sure thatshadow is a good one, and we
really tried to live by that astime went on.
Cath (14:20):
Yeah, I love that, I love that phrase.
So you came with all these HRpractices in your head.
What else wasn't in your headthat you kind of realised, oh, I
need to do more of this or hangon.
For culture to go deep,something else is needed.
Eleanor (14:36):
Yeah, do you know?
That led to the biggest kind ofmoment of my time with Boost,
which I really I mean, this is apiece of work I was so proud of
and now that I have lived withthis, I'll tell you what it is
in a second.
I don't know how I livedwithout it.
I think you know, as a peopleconsultant, as a person in an HR
(15:01):
director role in the past, andthen this people and culture
role, there are assumptions thatyou make about what the company
is willing or not willing to dofor their people.
There are assumptions that youmake about what is right and
wrong.
You know that you do thesethings, and what I realized was
that there was something in thebackground missing for me, and
we all had these assumptions andwe were mostly when we talked
(15:23):
about them as a leadership team.
We were on the same page, butthey weren't written down
anywhere.
So that led me to lead theprocess of developing what we
called the People Manifesto.
They really liked the name,probably wouldn't call it that
again, but that's what we calledit at the time.
It was kind of a working titlethat never went away, but it was
(15:46):
a brilliant thing to have andit defined the parameters of our
approach to people.
So it was in three sections.
It had our beliefs, then it hadwhat we pledged to do for our
people and then what we expectedfrom them in return.
And just to give you a littlebit of an example, I think sorry
, I'm rustling paper around hereso the kind of beliefs were
(16:10):
things like we believe that thespirit in Boost was unique and
special and we all had aresponsibility to look after it.
That was one of our beliefs.
Your experience working at thecompany should be positive and
rewarding.
There's an equal give and takebetween you and the company.
Our values live, breathe andevolve over time according to
the needs of our business, andwe expect you to be part of that
(16:30):
.
And our last belief was thatbeing a high quality progressive
employer is a worthy effort.
So you know, putting those onpaper, agreeing them and then
knowing and second you, put themout there, people will hold you
accountable for that was a bigthing.
So then we had the two othersections, which were what we'd
strive to do.
So, you know, provide highquality, high quality,
(16:52):
motivating EVPs, treat you firstand foremost as a human.
It was things like that.
So how are we going to treatpeople?
And then we expect from it inreturn you to help the company
to grow and win and be the bestit can be, you to immerse
yourself with our vision andvalues, you to be accountable
for your actions and behaviors.
(17:12):
It was things like that.
I don't think I will ever workin or with a company that isn't
willing to put something likethat in place.
Now, because I've seen thebenefits and I think we were
doing really well by the timethat we did this piece of work.
But then we did brilliantly andthat was the real turning point
for me.
So, if you think about it.
We had the people manifesto, abit like a constitution in the
(17:36):
background, and it helps witheverything.
You have a people decision tomake.
You know you go back to thatand you ask what makes sense in
line with this, and it also canhelp you explain why you might
make one decision for one personand, in the same situation, a
different decision for adifferent person.
It sits there and you have tobe able to go back to it.
(17:57):
And anyway, it was a joy.
I loved that thing.
And then we've got thedefinition, which is where we're
heading to.
So that was the vision.
Colin (18:03):
I think there's a key lesson there for people
listening around who are sittingon the fence about do I make an
investment in culture?
And something that Cath and Ihave talked about before
sometimes.
I was talking to a client, apotential client last week once
you make an investment inculture and you see the return
it brings, you'll never, ever goback.
You'll never go back, and it'ssomething that you just
reiterated there, eleanor, isyou made that commitment?
(18:25):
I guess for me it'd be great tohear what you did at Boost to
then evolve the culture.
So cultures don't changeovernight.
They take time, it's medium,long-term.
What kinds of things did you doover the medium and long-term
to make sure that you got thatevolution of culture, so you
maintain that sense of vibrancy?
Eleanor (18:43):
Yeah, absolutely.
It's a great question, okay.
So we involved everybody.
We constantly consistentlyinvolved people in both the
cultural definition and what itmeant.
Consistently involve people inboth the cultural definition and
what it meant, their actionsand the people manifesto.
So the culture became a wordthat we used daily in our jobs.
(19:03):
We did things like we wrote howpeople have contributed towards
the culture into ourself-evaluation and performance
reviews.
We've made a video that showedoff a culture that we could use
with hiring and just makingourselves feel good.
But it did, you know, and yeah,so we did lots of work.
But on positives, we made surethat the EVP and everything we
(19:26):
put in place was aligned withthat culture.
And I'll tell you what I meanby this is if you're putting
something, you you know thatsomebody might describe.
I know you guys love the wordfluffy oh my goodness, we must
overuse that right notes triggerif you're going to put some
fluffy stuff in place, that'sfine, but make sure the fluffy
(19:50):
stuff comes back to the strategythat's come out of what you're
trying to achieve here, becauseif it doesn't, why are you doing
it?
So why are you having officeskateboards?
Okay, if you can explain whyoffice skateboards will help to
build that culture you want,absolutely fine.
We did things.
We put some of those nice,nicer things in place.
A really good example and Ialways use this one.
(20:10):
So sorry, Cath, you've probablyheard this one when you saw me
speak we had a Be the Best youallowance, and it was an
allowance of up to £500 thatanybody in the company could use
on enhancing or furtherbuilding a skill or gaining a
new skill or on their health.
So it was about improving theirlives, but it had to have
(20:34):
nothing to do with work.
We had an L&D budget in place.
If we wanted to do a trainingcourse at work, we'd pay for
them to do a training course.
So we had people who took horseriding, golfing, sailing,
indian food, cooking lessons.
Somebody did a DJing course,somebody did a stand-up comedy
course, and people started touse them towards their diagnosis
(20:56):
assessments for things likeadhd as well.
So.
So that was one of the thingsfor one of the small fancy
things we did, and if you thinkabout the payback from that,
people loved that so much andthey used to go off and tell
their friends and their friendswould want to come and work at
boost.
But it, you know what, we couldhave been a toxic culture and
had that in place and it couldstill have been popular, but the
(21:18):
fact that we had an amazingculture in place meant that it
was, you know, icing on the cakefor people.
Cath (21:24):
Were there things that people resisted?
Did you have resistancesomewhere?
There must always be resistance.
Were there things that youthought, oh, come on, come on
board this.
I get that people like the bethe best, you allowance.
Were there other things that,oh, the behaviour wasn't moving
in the way that you wanted?
Eleanor (21:42):
Yeah, I mean, there were people who left because
they didn't want to or couldn'tbe on board with it, and there
were people that we asked toleave as well.
And again, I think you know, Ikind of am racking my brains a
bit there were always thingsthat you'd start to go okay,
this is what we want to do.
There'd be, there'd always be,people who would roll their eyes
or say, yeah, let's see.
(22:03):
And, and you know, while peopleare people, they come with a
set of baggage.
You know there was, there werepeople in our company who had
really had negative, awfulemployment experiences before in
multiple ways.
And I think the more emotionallyintelligent and fluent your
company becomes, the more thatpeople can relax.
(22:26):
And we just called it unmasking, and that wasn't just about
neurodivergence.
But the more that people couldunmask and be themselves, then
the more important I think itwas for you to get things right
and to take your time and allowpeople to actually work through
some of the stuff that theyneeded to work through.
So you know that I worked witha manager who was managing
(22:48):
somebody who definitely hadbaggage from a previous
experience and it was kind oflike well, this is how we need
to manage her because she'sunpacking that.
Give her the time, she'll be anabsolutely brilliant employee.
So, Cath, back to your question.
I've got one other thing Iwanted to tell you, about which
one of the big pieces of workthat we did, which was a real
game changer for us, was when wedecided we wanted to do some
(23:10):
EDI work.
Colin (23:12):
EDI.
Sorry for people who arelistening.
Eleanor (23:15):
Equality, diversity and inclusion work and they need to
also say we, we called it allbe the best you.
Um, we tried to stay away fromhr talk.
We tried to stay away fromtechnical language as much as
possible.
Again, part of that whole whoare we and the nature of our
business.
We need to be using languagethat reflects the business.
We need need to dress and lookhow it reflects the business.
(23:38):
We need leaders to set the tonefor what we want for the
business.
So we called this whole programto be the best you.
And we started by doing somework with a really well just.
She was an absolute brilliantEDI professional who worked just
with the leadership team tohelp us to actually get on board
(23:59):
before we went any further andwe had such good discussions.
But, you know, even in a greatstrong leadership team, which we
were by that point, there werestill people who said, yeah, but
can't we just hire the bestpeople, can't we?
I think living and breathingEDI is different from
understanding it.
So, anyway, we, I think,matured as a leadership team
(24:21):
around that point and it wasreally great.
And then we started to do workwith the same woman and we had
mandatory sessions for everybodyin the whole business.
And this was, I think, duringthe tail end of COVID, so these
were mostly online COVID, sothese were mostly online.
We got to a point where Igenuinely believed that
(24:41):
everybody could be themselves.
We had somebody who wasvisually impaired, who had never
even realized until thatsession that she actually had a
disability.
She'd never kind of embraced it, she had always kind of it had
been this negative thingfollowing her around that she
kind of was almost in denial of.
And after that, the secondsession that we had, she wrote
(25:01):
this open letter to the wholecompany and just went.
You know, that just blew mymind and I've realized that I
have a disability.
Listen everybody, this is whatmy life is like, this is what
it's like, and she shared thisand it was so moving.
Everybody cried when they readit and it was a real empowered
moment for her and I was justreally proud of it.
Cath (25:22):
Gosh, that's amazing.
You've got so manyinspirational stories and we've
just been able to dip into a fewof them, but it really shows
you the possibilities opened upby a proactive, ambitious,
aspirational approach to culturecan be so extraordinary.
Now we've been so positive fornearly half an hour we're just
(25:47):
going to flip for a minutebecause we were all reading this
new book that's come out bySarah Wynne Williams Careless
People, and, my goodness, you'reinspiring us, and this book
actually ought to also inspireus to invest in culture, because
you know the power.
Greed madness is the subtitleand it, you know, the relentless
(26:07):
pursuit of growth at any costis what you see.
Just give us a crazy about howit's blowing your mind at the
moment, eleanor.
Eleanor (26:15):
Yeah, do you know what?
It blew my mind in multipleways.
I mean, just talk about badbusiness practices.
I mean bad businesses, businesspractices, an unhealthy culture
.
That was the dangerous kind,because from the outside it
looked like quite a fun cultureand I've got a lot to say on
that.
If you ever want to invite meback on that topic, on that, if
(26:38):
you ever want to invite me backon that topic, then I'm already
in.
But the other thing is, youknow, as a human being, it blew
my mind just to say you don'ttreat people like that.
There were so many things.
But then also HR and I've got alot to say on this topic as
well.
But HR I mean for for a functionwithin businesses that are
meant to be all about the people.
Sometimes HR people don't evenseem to like people and
(27:01):
sometimes they close ranks andit undermines the good work
being done by all the other HRpractitioners.
You know I mean it underminesthat and it's sad.
It's such a wasted opportunityand you know I can be talking to
people and then they say whatdo you do?
And if I choose to say I workin HR, there's often a wouldn't
(27:22):
have put you in HR kind of thing, and I do specifically go out
of my way to say actually I ampeople and culture, which I see
as a different thing, but a lotof HR practitioners, some of
whom don't seem to even likepeople very much, seem to be
just changing their titles topeople and culture and then they
don't know how to strategicallydesign and manage a culture,
(27:46):
and also I think it leads tosorry I'm babbling now, but I do
have a point here there is apoint of who should be owning
your culture.
I've been putting some contenttogether and I've done a bit of
research and I think people andculture director is the fastest
growing title within the kind ofhr world, but there's very,
very few companies that have achief people and culture officer
(28:11):
.
They there are chief peopleofficers, but the amount of the
amount of companies that have arole that is something like this
recruitment and culture managerand you just want to go is that
the importance of culture inyou culture?
(28:41):
You don't understand the vastpossibilities of managing a
culture as part of your businessstrategy, which is where I
believe it should be managed.
Colin (28:45):
I want to do a whole show now called Does HR Hate People?
Oh my God, just imagine if youcould get someone for yes, we do
, we hate them.
Cath (28:54):
We're only for the organization well, maybe it's a
natural consequence if you're ina poor organization, that that,
that the sphere, and you've gotprocesses and it's like you're
in a machine the hr machinerather than human.
Maybe it's a sort of where youend up yeah, I just just on that
cat.
Colin (29:11):
Sorry it is so.
When I was reading the book itprompted the age-old question
does hr serve the employees orthe organization At Facebook?
According to SarahWynn-Williams' book, it very
much served Mark Zuckerberg andthen the organization and almost
never the people.
It's quite stark, yeah.
Eleanor (29:29):
But if you were to ask me that question, I would say HR
serves the strategy and HRpeople and culture.
Whatever role you're in there,you really should be aligned
with what are we trying todeliver as a company?
And you have to be fair.
And if you only protect thecompany, then you're missing
opportunities and that's how youwill be perceived and
(29:51):
experienced.
If you are only protecting thepeople, then you're going to end
up in a fight with your company.
That's right yeah, you have towalk the line, you have to be
both but ultimately serve thestrategy.
So did that answer yourquestion?
I was appalled by the book.
The story is that it's a greatread.
It's a great read, I couldn'tput it down.
But it's appalling.
(30:11):
Some of the stuff that went onthere uh, that's.
Colin (30:13):
I mean, this has been been an absolutely brilliant
half an hour, Eleanor.
Now we normally round off theshows with kind of six things.
Sorry, three things.
You said you've got six.
So if you can give us a senseof what three six might be, that
would be great.
We'll put them in theinformation sheet.
If you're not yet subscribed tothe information sheet, drop us
(30:33):
a note and we can add you.
So what are those things,Eleanor, that people need to be
thinking about?
Eleanor (30:38):
Yeah, okay, so sorry, and the reason I've done six is
really because I did three, butthe thing is they were all
really quite high level andthese are really aimed at
business leaders at the top yourCEO, your founder, your owners,
somewhere in a role that's gotresponsibility for the overall
business.
You need to understand thenature of your business.
(30:59):
You need to go through thatprocess, understand it and be
honest about it, and what I meanby that is what I just said
about Facebook being dangerousbecause they appear to have
quite a cool culture.
I think you need to be honest.
You don't have to have the mostvibrant, fluffiest, progressive
modern culture.
(31:19):
You don't have to have that,but just face up what kind of
culture would suit your businessand then do your best to get
there.
So I would understand thenature of your business.
I would absolutely get yoursenior people on board, and that
might mean getting them offboard.
The business will reflect thenature of the people at the top,
and I think that's kind ofinevitable.
So if you want a really vibrantmodern culture, you need
(31:42):
leaders who like people and getpeople, and then I would define
the culture that will deliver onyour business strategy and I
would then make a strategy todeliver that.
So those things are all veryhigh level.
So the reason I did anotherthree was just, you know, there
will be people who listen tothis who might go well, that's
all well and good, but I reallydon't.
I can't influence those thingsat all.
(32:04):
I'm working at a level where Ican't.
So what I'd say is the three,maybe more easily tangible for
most people.
Practitioners would be reallyengage your people.
Find good ways to engage yourpeople with your cultural vision
or what what you think thecultural vision is.
If your leaders won't put acultural vision in place, you
need to align people with thatin whatever way you can, and we
(32:27):
did it through all sorts ofmethods, and I again, I could
use a whole podcast just to dothat.
But even if you add a questionto your people's performance
reviews and you write intopeople's job descriptions like
that is a start, it will help.
And just use it in the languageof your company all the time
and clean up.
The third thing is clean up,just clean up the behaviors,
start at the top and just keepworking on them, because they
(32:50):
will make a enormous difference,and I think the way that you
have to kind of do, that isthrough training your people
managers.
Colin (32:59):
Eleanor, it has been just a fabulous 35 minutes.
It really really has Brimmingwith energy and excitement.
After the conversation, andspeaking for Cath and I, I just
want to say a huge thank you forcoming on and sharing your
thoughts, ideas and experiencehere on the Inside Out Culture
Podcast.
Eleanor (33:17):
Thanks for having me.
I hope I wasn't too all overthe place.
Cath (33:20):
Thanks for listening to today's Inside Out.
Colin (33:23):
Culture Podcast.
Please remember to like,subscribe and, of course, share
with others who you think may beinterested.
Welcome to the Inside Out Culture Podcast, where we look
at insides of working cultureand provide ideas, insights and
actions for you to take on theoutside.
I'm Colin Ellis.
Cath (00:12):
And I'm Cath Bishop, and in each episode we'll examine a
different question or adifferent organization, and
we'll use case studies, researchand our own insights and
experiences to help you changethe way things get done in your
world.
Colin (00:27):
We hope you enjoyed today's episode.
Please like, subscribe and, ofcourse, let us know what you
think.
Hello everybody, and welcome toanother episode of the Inside
Out Culture Podcast, and I'mdelighted to say that we have a
guest joining us today, Cath.
Cath (00:40):
I am really excited that we are joined by Eleanor Gooding
, who is a self-confessedworkplace culture geek, so she's
absolutely welcome, isn't she,colin, in our kind of total
workplace culture geekery.
Her roles in her workplace, hercareer, has been about helping
companies go from good to great,and she's passionate about
(01:08):
modern people practices whereeveryone can thrive.
Eleanor (01:11):
Welcome, eleanor, hi, and thanks for having me on the
podcast.
I'm really excited to be here.
Cath (01:17):
Thank you.
So one of the things that whenwe were discussing and I heard
you talk at a conference lastyear and it really grabbed me
all of the experiences you hadin your recent role for about
six years, I think as the headof people and culture at Boost
Drinks.
So what we're going to do isdive into that.
So this episode is a real sortof getting perspective from the
(01:37):
front line of someone who thinksvery proactively about culture,
and you yourself have said youknow you just don't get.
You know companies often don'tget.
The culture is more than justcleaning up problems, toxic
behaviours.
It's way beyond that and partof this podcast is about helping
people think proactively andyour whole role was about that
world.
(01:57):
So tell us a bit about how yougot into that role, what your
sort of real task was and howthings unfolded.
Eleanor (02:04):
Okay, brilliant.
So, yeah, I think my backgroundis quite diverse and I think
it's important to say at thispoint that I got brought up by a
couple of managementconsultants.
So really early in my life itwas kind of like oh fine, right,
you want to go and be a hippieand travel across Europe, that's
fine.
How are you going to afford thevan?
(02:25):
How are you going to get around?
How are you going to keepyourself safe?
Let's build a strategy.
You know everything.
In our household there wasalways this kind of what's the
problem?
How do we solve it?
How do we get there?
How can we empower you?
That kind of thing.
And so sometimes I get asked atinterviews or when I meet
people why there are certainthings that I could do.
I was brought up to think thatway, so I think that's an
(02:46):
interesting thing, and I've hadquite an interesting career and
I spent years and years tryingto be an artist and I worked in
retail all that time and I gotup into management in retail
with a number of differentcompanies of different sizes and
I learned how to people manageand I learned what works and
what didn't work, and I've beenon the front line.
(03:09):
I know what it's like to have afantastic manager and I know
what it's like to have an awfulmanager.
And then, before I joined Boost, I had done some freelance work
as a strategic consultant,usually on the people stuff
myself.
But I also worked for an HRcertification company for some
time, which I was part ofbuilding the certification
(03:30):
itself, and it meant I got to goand see the best practices the
HR departments were doing in notbig, big sophisticated
companies across the UK, andthere were a lot of them
international and so it.
So it's with that kind ofexperience all combined that I
came ended up applying to a jobat Boost.
Colin (03:52):
I've got a quick question , eleanor, just jumping back to
what you said about kind of yourprogression started on the shop
floor, like literally, andwe've talked about this in the
past.
That was certainly mybackground kind of working my
way all the way up, looking atwhat worked, looking at what
didn't.
Do you think, before we talkabout kind of boost, do you
(04:13):
think we're deliberate enoughnow around how we train managers
and I'm interested in yourexperience, obviously, having
been in the role where you'reresponsible for learning and
development Do you think thoseopportunities for new managers
to learn, like we did, stillexist?
How has all that changed?
Do you think?
Eleanor (04:25):
I think companies would probably say that there's more
support, more training in placefor those.
But it's so different incompany to company and I have
worked probably more with SMEsthan with big corporations in my
own working experience and theyoften don't have much at all in
the way.
It's a person who does well intheir job that gets promoted and
(04:45):
then they're suddenly a peoplemanager, and so you talk about
this on your podcast.
You can see how somebody who'sbrilliant at the job doesn't
necessarily make a brilliantmanager, and I do think I'm
probably jumping ahead tosomething that I might have at
the end.
But whenever I've worked withany company, whether it's as an
employee, in a senior role or asa consultant, if they say, if
(05:09):
you can only invest in one thing, what would it be?
And I would say train yourpeople managers, because they
will determine the dailyexperience of the people in your
company.
Cath (05:19):
Yeah, so tell us a bit more about the mission, the
cultural mission that you camein to lead at Boost.
Eleanor (05:29):
Yeah, okay, so Boost was privately owned and the CEO
was the founder, simon Gray, andhe hired me as one of the
leadership team members andthere were about six people in
that team at the time and anon-exec director as well,
kirsty, who has featured quitelargely in the work we did as
well.
And you know, boost had beenaround for I don't know 15 years
(05:55):
maybe at the time, and theculture there when I joined it
was on the surface.
It looked like a vibrant placeto work, an exciting place to
work.
You start to pick at things andscratch below the surface.
It looked like a vibrant placeto work, an exciting place to
work.
You start to pick at things andscratch below the surface a
little bit.
And was the company in chargeof the culture?
Not really.
Were all the behaviours in linewith what Simon had in his head
(06:18):
?
Not really.
And did they have the tools tokind of go through that process
themselves?
No, that's why I was hired andI was the first people role.
There were, you know, HR thingsbeing done.
So obviously, you know therewas all the legal requirements
and that kind of thing.
There were some values in placealready and there'd been some
good work done in that kind ofarea.
(06:40):
But Simon was brought into thewhole idea of culture.
He's somebody who educateshimself and he belongs to lots
of groups and you know, and hewas really liking what he was
hearing about the people agendaand what you know.
He wanted to take that furtherin boost and didn't know how.
And essentially that's why Icame into the business and and
(07:01):
very early on I had to ask himwell, what you know, what, what
is it that you want here?
So that led really straight tothe work that I started to do,
which was to say what are wetrying to do here and why?
And I'm a really big believerthat you need to understand the
nature of your business.
So the first thing I did was totry and get used to the
business myself, but also totalk to Simon a lot about what
(07:24):
he wanted, what he didn't want,what was okay, what was
fantastic.
But I kept saying well, thekind of HR that we do in the
company needs to reflect thiskind of feeling and tone in the
business that you want.
And he didn't really understandthat.
He'd be the first person to sayI understand the words he's
(07:44):
saying, but I don't know whatthat looks like.
So I developed something that Icalled the sliding scale of HR
and I kind of made this tablewhere on one side we had quite
traditional people practices, inthe middle there was modern
(08:09):
people practices and on theother side there was progressive
people practices, and then Iwould divide it up and I would
say, first of all, what kinds ofcompanies would they suit Each
kind of practice suit?
And then, okay, let's use someexamples.
So a really easy one isholidays.
So a traditional company wouldprobably offer what the law was.
(08:31):
Maybe you would accrue somemore over time.
A modern company would probablygive above what was legally
required and they might have abuying or selling program in
place.
And a progressive company isgoing to be someone like Netflix
, who you know unlimited holiday, but how do you manage that?
So you know program in place.
And a progressive company isgoing to be someone like Netflix
, who you know unlimited holiday, but how do you manage that?
So you know, they all havetheir pros and cons and I think
one of the things is is I don't.
(08:53):
I genuinely believe there isnot a right and a wrong as long
as you're above the law.
You really need to take thattime to understand the nature of
your business, and between usand the leadership team and
non-exec Kirsty as well, wedecided that we wanted to be
aiming between modern andprogressive.
Something I think is importantis Boost was a challenger brand,
(09:16):
so we were a fast follower, andso that was something I always
had in mind Am I trying toinnovate here, or am I trying to
follow, or what am I trying todo?
So I always had that in my headI trying to innovate here, or
am I trying to follow, or youknow, what am I trying to do?
So I always had that in my headas well, and we weren't the.
You know, we didn't want to bethe first people to try out
something crazy, although maybewe did.
What sort of stuff?
Cath (09:36):
then were you?
Did you have to change?
You said there were values, butI get the sense they weren't
really embedded in behaviours.
What were some of the reallycritical things, what things
perhaps were most impactful inchanging the culture?
Because I think often peoplehave lots of initiatives and
then some land and some don'tand your perspective now,
(09:56):
looking back on that period, Ithink it'd be so interesting to
get a sense of which were thereally critical changes you made
and perhaps which are the onesthat you thought would be more
important and maybe weren't soimportant.
Eleanor (10:09):
Yeah, I think it's an interesting question that you're
asking and I hope I'll answerthis.
But one of the things Iactually I mean Simon really
wanted to run ahead with change.
He had seen things that wereexciting and he wanted the
company to win awards and allthis kind of stuff and I had to
say, slow down, there is nopoint in us doing anything until
we have the behaviors at thetop of the company all aligned
(10:33):
with this direction we wanted togo in.
So, as the second part of thework I did, along with the
sliding scatterbite chart, wedid an aspirational cultural
definition and that wasabsolutely critical and key in
everything that followed.
So you ask about things likethe values.
The values were good and peoplewere trying to talk about them
(10:55):
and they did remain the valuesuntil the end of the company,
which we'll touch on at somepoint.
But we again, even with thevalues, I said it's not that
much pointless doing a lot ofwork on some of these things
because we'll roll them out,they'll be beautiful, they'll be
shiny, but if we haven't gotthe right behaviors, those
(11:15):
behaviors will undermineeverything else we try and do.
So this has to be a case of uswalking before we can run and I
think that was the firstcritical moment was us kind of
putting a stake in the groundand saying, okay, we want to be
modern, progressive and this iswhat we want to aim for.
And then, as part of aiming forthat culture that we described
(11:36):
in this lovely statement, wetook it out to the business and
we engaged them with it.
How are we doing on this?
What part do you play in this?
You know who owns this.
And that was really key,because I think that was the
very, very beginning of theprocess and by the end of that
process, every single person inBoost understood how they
(11:57):
contributed towards the businessand towards the culture and
they all looked after it andthey all tried to help it and to
get to that kind of point, ICan I ask a question, eleanor,
in terms of the leadership team,because every time I start
working with a leadership team,there's usually one like the CEO
(12:18):
often is like yes, and Simonsounds like he was the guy.
Colin (12:21):
Hr, 100% culture is the thing.
There's always one cynic andone skeptic.
Maybe that didn't exist inBoost.
Maybe everyone was aligned fromday one.
How did you get that alignmentaround?
We're going to make aninvestment of time and money in
culture and we all believe it'sthe right thing.
Were you the catalyst for that?
(12:43):
Was Simon the catalyst for that?
Eleanor (12:44):
I think Simon wanted us to be the best leadership team
that we could be and I think Iwas probably tasked to helping
us move to that point.
And I worked a lot with ournon-exec director, kirsty, in
that as well, because I was oneof the team as well.
So if there was something Iwanted to do as a team and we
did a lot of work together as ateam in lots of different ways,
(13:06):
using established tools and justgroup work but what I often get
Kirsty to facilitate, thatbecause she knew the business
inside out, she knew thecharacters inside out.
I think you are absolutelyright and I always want to be
extremely careful what I say,because it is my genuine belief
that there's not a right and awrong, but there are good
(13:27):
alignments with people and theirroles and there are people who
would be best off in a differentrole in a different company,
and that's fine.
But I think companies sometimesget scared to face that.
And let's just say that we dida lot of work and we had one,
two within the first three years, three of the leadership team
were gone and then we had a new.
(13:51):
We had yeah, we just got newpeople in who we hoped and
believed were much more alignedwith that kind of culture we
wanted to create, because weknew that we had to set the tone
for that culture at the top.
And one more thing onleadership there was we
collectively had a saying thatcame from our marketing director
, adrian, which was as leaders,we cast a shadow.
(14:14):
We have to make sure thatshadow is a good one, and we
really tried to live by that astime went on.
Cath (14:20):
Yeah, I love that, I love that phrase.
So you came with all these HRpractices in your head.
What else wasn't in your headthat you kind of realised, oh, I
need to do more of this or hangon.
For culture to go deep,something else is needed.
Eleanor (14:36):
Yeah, do you know?
That led to the biggest kind ofmoment of my time with Boost,
which I really I mean, this is apiece of work I was so proud of
and now that I have lived withthis, I'll tell you what it is
in a second.
I don't know how I livedwithout it.
I think you know, as a peopleconsultant, as a person in an HR
(15:01):
director role in the past, andthen this people and culture
role, there are assumptions thatyou make about what the company
is willing or not willing to dofor their people.
There are assumptions that youmake about what is right and
wrong.
You know that you do thesethings, and what I realized was
that there was something in thebackground missing for me, and
we all had these assumptions andwe were mostly when we talked
(15:23):
about them as a leadership team.
We were on the same page, butthey weren't written down
anywhere.
So that led me to lead theprocess of developing what we
called the People Manifesto.
They really liked the name,probably wouldn't call it that
again, but that's what we calledit at the time.
It was kind of a working titlethat never went away, but it was
(15:46):
a brilliant thing to have andit defined the parameters of our
approach to people.
So it was in three sections.
It had our beliefs, then it hadwhat we pledged to do for our
people and then what we expectedfrom them in return.
And just to give you a littlebit of an example, I think sorry
, I'm rustling paper around hereso the kind of beliefs were
(16:10):
things like we believe that thespirit in Boost was unique and
special and we all had aresponsibility to look after it.
That was one of our beliefs.
Your experience working at thecompany should be positive and
rewarding.
There's an equal give and takebetween you and the company.
Our values live, breathe andevolve over time according to
the needs of our business, andwe expect you to be part of that
(16:30):
.
And our last belief was thatbeing a high quality progressive
employer is a worthy effort.
So you know, putting those onpaper, agreeing them and then
knowing and second you, put themout there, people will hold you
accountable for that was a bigthing.
So then we had the two othersections, which were what we'd
strive to do.
So, you know, provide highquality, high quality,
(16:52):
motivating EVPs, treat you firstand foremost as a human.
It was things like that.
So how are we going to treatpeople?
And then we expect from it inreturn you to help the company
to grow and win and be the bestit can be, you to immerse
yourself with our vision andvalues, you to be accountable
for your actions and behaviors.
(17:12):
It was things like that.
I don't think I will ever workin or with a company that isn't
willing to put something likethat in place.
Now, because I've seen thebenefits and I think we were
doing really well by the timethat we did this piece of work.
But then we did brilliantly andthat was the real turning point
for me.
So, if you think about it.
We had the people manifesto, abit like a constitution in the
(17:36):
background, and it helps witheverything.
You have a people decision tomake.
You know you go back to thatand you ask what makes sense in
line with this, and it also canhelp you explain why you might
make one decision for one personand, in the same situation, a
different decision for adifferent person.
It sits there and you have tobe able to go back to it.
(17:57):
And anyway, it was a joy.
I loved that thing.
And then we've got thedefinition, which is where we're
heading to.
So that was the vision.
Colin (18:03):
I think there's a key lesson there for people
listening around who are sittingon the fence about do I make an
investment in culture?
And something that Cath and Ihave talked about before
sometimes.
I was talking to a client, apotential client last week once
you make an investment inculture and you see the return
it brings, you'll never, ever goback.
You'll never go back, and it'ssomething that you just
reiterated there, eleanor, isyou made that commitment?
(18:25):
I guess for me it'd be great tohear what you did at Boost to
then evolve the culture.
So cultures don't changeovernight.
They take time, it's medium,long-term.
What kinds of things did you doover the medium and long-term
to make sure that you got thatevolution of culture, so you
maintain that sense of vibrancy?
Eleanor (18:43):
Yeah, absolutely.
It's a great question, okay.
So we involved everybody.
We constantly consistentlyinvolved people in both the
cultural definition and what itmeant.
Consistently involve people inboth the cultural definition and
what it meant, their actionsand the people manifesto.
So the culture became a wordthat we used daily in our jobs.
(19:03):
We did things like we wrote howpeople have contributed towards
the culture into ourself-evaluation and performance
reviews.
We've made a video that showedoff a culture that we could use
with hiring and just makingourselves feel good.
But it did, you know, and yeah,so we did lots of work.
But on positives, we made surethat the EVP and everything we
(19:26):
put in place was aligned withthat culture.
And I'll tell you what I meanby this is if you're putting
something, you you know thatsomebody might describe.
I know you guys love the wordfluffy oh my goodness, we must
overuse that right notes triggerif you're going to put some
fluffy stuff in place, that'sfine, but make sure the fluffy
(19:50):
stuff comes back to the strategythat's come out of what you're
trying to achieve here, becauseif it doesn't, why are you doing
it?
So why are you having officeskateboards?
Okay, if you can explain whyoffice skateboards will help to
build that culture you want,absolutely fine.
We did things.
We put some of those nice,nicer things in place.
A really good example and Ialways use this one.
(20:10):
So sorry, Cath, you've probablyheard this one when you saw me
speak we had a Be the Best youallowance, and it was an
allowance of up to £500 thatanybody in the company could use
on enhancing or furtherbuilding a skill or gaining a
new skill or on their health.
So it was about improving theirlives, but it had to have
(20:34):
nothing to do with work.
We had an L&D budget in place.
If we wanted to do a trainingcourse at work, we'd pay for
them to do a training course.
So we had people who took horseriding, golfing, sailing,
indian food, cooking lessons.
Somebody did a DJing course,somebody did a stand-up comedy
course, and people started touse them towards their diagnosis
(20:56):
assessments for things likeadhd as well.
So.
So that was one of the thingsfor one of the small fancy
things we did, and if you thinkabout the payback from that,
people loved that so much andthey used to go off and tell
their friends and their friendswould want to come and work at
boost.
But it, you know what, we couldhave been a toxic culture and
had that in place and it couldstill have been popular, but the
(21:18):
fact that we had an amazingculture in place meant that it
was, you know, icing on the cakefor people.
Cath (21:24):
Were there things that people resisted?
Did you have resistancesomewhere?
There must always be resistance.
Were there things that youthought, oh, come on, come on
board this.
I get that people like the bethe best, you allowance.
Were there other things that,oh, the behaviour wasn't moving
in the way that you wanted?
Eleanor (21:42):
Yeah, I mean, there were people who left because
they didn't want to or couldn'tbe on board with it, and there
were people that we asked toleave as well.
And again, I think you know, Ikind of am racking my brains a
bit there were always thingsthat you'd start to go okay,
this is what we want to do.
There'd be, there'd always be,people who would roll their eyes
or say, yeah, let's see.
(22:03):
And, and you know, while peopleare people, they come with a
set of baggage.
You know there was, there werepeople in our company who had
really had negative, awfulemployment experiences before in
multiple ways.
And I think the more emotionallyintelligent and fluent your
company becomes, the more thatpeople can relax.
(22:26):
And we just called it unmasking, and that wasn't just about
neurodivergence.
But the more that people couldunmask and be themselves, then
the more important I think itwas for you to get things right
and to take your time and allowpeople to actually work through
some of the stuff that theyneeded to work through.
So you know that I worked witha manager who was managing
(22:48):
somebody who definitely hadbaggage from a previous
experience and it was kind oflike well, this is how we need
to manage her because she'sunpacking that.
Give her the time, she'll be anabsolutely brilliant employee.
So, Cath, back to your question.
I've got one other thing Iwanted to tell you, about which
one of the big pieces of workthat we did, which was a real
game changer for us, was when wedecided we wanted to do some
(23:10):
EDI work.
Colin (23:12):
EDI.
Sorry for people who arelistening.
Eleanor (23:15):
Equality, diversity and inclusion work and they need to
also say we, we called it allbe the best you.
Um, we tried to stay away fromhr talk.
We tried to stay away fromtechnical language as much as
possible.
Again, part of that whole whoare we and the nature of our
business.
We need to be using languagethat reflects the business.
We need need to dress and lookhow it reflects the business.
(23:38):
We need leaders to set the tonefor what we want for the
business.
So we called this whole programto be the best you.
And we started by doing somework with a really well just.
She was an absolute brilliantEDI professional who worked just
with the leadership team tohelp us to actually get on board
(23:59):
before we went any further andwe had such good discussions.
But, you know, even in a greatstrong leadership team, which we
were by that point, there werestill people who said, yeah, but
can't we just hire the bestpeople, can't we?
I think living and breathingEDI is different from
understanding it.
So, anyway, we, I think,matured as a leadership team
(24:21):
around that point and it wasreally great.
And then we started to do workwith the same woman and we had
mandatory sessions for everybodyin the whole business.
And this was, I think, duringthe tail end of COVID, so these
were mostly online COVID, sothese were mostly online.
We got to a point where Igenuinely believed that
(24:41):
everybody could be themselves.
We had somebody who wasvisually impaired, who had never
even realized until thatsession that she actually had a
disability.
She'd never kind of embraced it, she had always kind of it had
been this negative thingfollowing her around that she
kind of was almost in denial of.
And after that, the secondsession that we had, she wrote
(25:01):
this open letter to the wholecompany and just went.
You know, that just blew mymind and I've realized that I
have a disability.
Listen everybody, this is whatmy life is like, this is what
it's like, and she shared thisand it was so moving.
Everybody cried when they readit and it was a real empowered
moment for her and I was justreally proud of it.
Cath (25:22):
Gosh, that's amazing.
You've got so manyinspirational stories and we've
just been able to dip into a fewof them, but it really shows
you the possibilities opened upby a proactive, ambitious,
aspirational approach to culturecan be so extraordinary.
Now we've been so positive fornearly half an hour we're just
(25:47):
going to flip for a minutebecause we were all reading this
new book that's come out bySarah Wynne Williams Careless
People, and, my goodness, you'reinspiring us, and this book
actually ought to also inspireus to invest in culture, because
you know the power.
Greed madness is the subtitleand it, you know, the relentless
(26:07):
pursuit of growth at any costis what you see.
Just give us a crazy about howit's blowing your mind at the
moment, eleanor.
Eleanor (26:15):
Yeah, do you know what?
It blew my mind in multipleways.
I mean, just talk about badbusiness practices.
I mean bad businesses, businesspractices, an unhealthy culture
.
That was the dangerous kind,because from the outside it
looked like quite a fun cultureand I've got a lot to say on
that.
If you ever want to invite meback on that topic, on that, if
(26:38):
you ever want to invite me backon that topic, then I'm already
in.
But the other thing is, youknow, as a human being, it blew
my mind just to say you don'ttreat people like that.
There were so many things.
But then also HR and I've got alot to say on this topic as
well.
But HR I mean for for a functionwithin businesses that are
meant to be all about the people.
Sometimes HR people don't evenseem to like people and
(27:01):
sometimes they close ranks andit undermines the good work
being done by all the other HRpractitioners.
You know I mean it underminesthat and it's sad.
It's such a wasted opportunityand you know I can be talking to
people and then they say whatdo you do?
And if I choose to say I workin HR, there's often a wouldn't
(27:22):
have put you in HR kind of thing, and I do specifically go out
of my way to say actually I ampeople and culture, which I see
as a different thing, but a lotof HR practitioners, some of
whom don't seem to even likepeople very much, seem to be
just changing their titles topeople and culture and then they
don't know how to strategicallydesign and manage a culture,
(27:46):
and also I think it leads tosorry I'm babbling now, but I do
have a point here there is apoint of who should be owning
your culture.
I've been putting some contenttogether and I've done a bit of
research and I think people andculture director is the fastest
growing title within the kind ofhr world, but there's very,
very few companies that have achief people and culture officer
(28:11):
.
They there are chief peopleofficers, but the amount of the
amount of companies that have arole that is something like this
recruitment and culture managerand you just want to go is that
the importance of culture inyou culture?
(28:41):
You don't understand the vastpossibilities of managing a
culture as part of your businessstrategy, which is where I
believe it should be managed.
Colin (28:45):
I want to do a whole show now called Does HR Hate People?
Oh my God, just imagine if youcould get someone for yes, we do
, we hate them.
Cath (28:54):
We're only for the organization well, maybe it's a
natural consequence if you're ina poor organization, that that,
that the sphere, and you've gotprocesses and it's like you're
in a machine the hr machinerather than human.
Maybe it's a sort of where youend up yeah, I just just on that
cat.
Colin (29:11):
Sorry it is so.
When I was reading the book itprompted the age-old question
does hr serve the employees orthe organization At Facebook?
According to SarahWynn-Williams' book, it very
much served Mark Zuckerberg andthen the organization and almost
never the people.
It's quite stark, yeah.
Eleanor (29:29):
But if you were to ask me that question, I would say HR
serves the strategy and HRpeople and culture.
Whatever role you're in there,you really should be aligned
with what are we trying todeliver as a company?
And you have to be fair.
And if you only protect thecompany, then you're missing
opportunities and that's how youwill be perceived and
(29:51):
experienced.
If you are only protecting thepeople, then you're going to end
up in a fight with your company.
That's right yeah, you have towalk the line, you have to be
both but ultimately serve thestrategy.
So did that answer yourquestion?
I was appalled by the book.
The story is that it's a greatread.
It's a great read, I couldn'tput it down.
But it's appalling.
(30:11):
Some of the stuff that went onthere uh, that's.
Colin (30:13):
I mean, this has been been an absolutely brilliant
half an hour, Eleanor.
Now we normally round off theshows with kind of six things.
Sorry, three things.
You said you've got six.
So if you can give us a senseof what three six might be, that
would be great.
We'll put them in theinformation sheet.
If you're not yet subscribed tothe information sheet, drop us
(30:33):
a note and we can add you.
So what are those things,Eleanor, that people need to be
thinking about?
Eleanor (30:38):
Yeah, okay, so sorry, and the reason I've done six is
really because I did three, butthe thing is they were all
really quite high level andthese are really aimed at
business leaders at the top yourCEO, your founder, your owners,
somewhere in a role that's gotresponsibility for the overall
business.
You need to understand thenature of your business.
(30:59):
You need to go through thatprocess, understand it and be
honest about it, and what I meanby that is what I just said
about Facebook being dangerousbecause they appear to have
quite a cool culture.
I think you need to be honest.
You don't have to have the mostvibrant, fluffiest, progressive
modern culture.
(31:19):
You don't have to have that,but just face up what kind of
culture would suit your businessand then do your best to get
there.
So I would understand thenature of your business.
I would absolutely get yoursenior people on board, and that
might mean getting them offboard.
The business will reflect thenature of the people at the top,
and I think that's kind ofinevitable.
So if you want a really vibrantmodern culture, you need
(31:42):
leaders who like people and getpeople, and then I would define
the culture that will deliver onyour business strategy and I
would then make a strategy todeliver that.
So those things are all veryhigh level.
So the reason I did anotherthree was just, you know, there
will be people who listen tothis who might go well, that's
all well and good, but I reallydon't.
I can't influence those thingsat all.
(32:04):
I'm working at a level where Ican't.
So what I'd say is the three,maybe more easily tangible for
most people.
Practitioners would be reallyengage your people.
Find good ways to engage yourpeople with your cultural vision
or what what you think thecultural vision is.
If your leaders won't put acultural vision in place, you
need to align people with thatin whatever way you can, and we
(32:27):
did it through all sorts ofmethods, and I again, I could
use a whole podcast just to dothat.
But even if you add a questionto your people's performance
reviews and you write intopeople's job descriptions like
that is a start, it will help.
And just use it in the languageof your company all the time
and clean up.
The third thing is clean up,just clean up the behaviors,
start at the top and just keepworking on them, because they
(32:50):
will make a enormous difference,and I think the way that you
have to kind of do, that isthrough training your people
managers.
Colin (32:59):
Eleanor, it has been just a fabulous 35 minutes.
It really really has Brimmingwith energy and excitement.
After the conversation, andspeaking for Cath and I, I just
want to say a huge thank you forcoming on and sharing your
thoughts, ideas and experiencehere on the Inside Out Culture
Podcast.
Eleanor (33:17):
Thanks for having me.
I hope I wasn't too all overthe place.
Cath (33:20):
Thanks for listening to today's Inside Out.
Colin (33:23):
Culture Podcast.
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