August 7, 2024 • 38 mins
In our latest episode, Rick and Kaleem chat with the brilliant Adam Horne, co-founder of Open Org, for a captivating discussion you won’t want to miss. Dive into Adam's remarkable journey, the complexities of today's workplace culture, and the inspiring mission behind Open Org.
Adam, who also was co-founder and Chief People Officer at Scout, has helped over 60 companies hire around 1,500 people. Named a LinkedIn Top Voice in HR communications, his insights are invaluable, especially given his introverted nature and preference for a quiet life outside of work. This intriguing mix of public professional persona and private nature sets the stage for an in-depth exploration of his professional philosophy.
Adam stirred up a buzz with his recent LinkedIn post likening company culture to processed food, coining the term "ultra-processed culture." He explains how companies often present glossy facades to lure talent, much like processed foods use flashy packaging to entice buyers.
This conversation highlights the importance of genuine transparency in company culture. Adam believes open communication and realistic expectations are key. Companies that share handbooks and maintain detailed knowledge bases tend to retain employees better and foster a healthier work environment!
The trio discusses the impact of remote work on company culture. Adam notes that remote companies must excel in communication and transparency, as they can't rely on physical proximity to manage their teams effectively. When it comes to communicating work culture effectively, Adam stresses the importance of honesty and transparency. He suggests that companies provide a balanced view of their work environment, highlighting both positives and challenges. Drawing on insights from Brian Adams, an expert in employer branding, Adam underscores the value of clear and honest messaging about what it's really like to work at a company. This balanced perspective allows candidates to make informed decisions and ensures a better fit between employer and employee.
Adam's insights reflect a profound understanding of evolving workplace dynamics, emphasizing the crucial role of transparency from employers and the necessity for job seekers to be diligent in their research. His focus on clear communication and resource accessibility aligns perfectly with Open Org's mission to support HR and people-focused professionals worldwide. Adam’s advice serves as a comprehensive guide for both job seekers and employers navigating the complexities of modern work environments. Whether you're looking to understand workplace culture better or improve it, especially in the era of remote work, this conversation is a must-listen!
Learn more about Adam:
- Adam’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-open-org/
- Open Org Webpage: https://open-org.notion.site/Apply-for-Open-Org-Community-Membership-db23d711b708434ca3f4b906065ecd4e
More about us:
- Remotely One’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/remotelyone
- Remotely One’s Webpage: https://www.remotelyone.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Adam (00:00):
I've just got a very cheap headphones, very cheap
(00:02):
microphone, both from Amazon.
Kaleem (00:04):
have a man that is like both from Amazon, I like the way
Amazon.
I like that.
That's
Adam (00:10):
Amazon.
Kaleem (00:11):
Amazon.
sounds way more classy.
They should change how theypronounce Amazon.
Like Amazon.
Sounds like you're in thejungle.
Like I'm in the jungle and I'mlike, uh, but Amazon, that's
classy.
They should have thought aboutthat.
Rick (00:26):
They should have.
That's quite the cock up.
if I had to say so myself.
Heh heh.
Heh heh heh.
Kaleem (00:33):
that we learned that with one of our guests.
We, he said, Oh man, what a,what a cock up that was.
Adam (00:38):
We've got those sorts of sayings, I don't think anyone
even really knows what theymean, to be honest.
You just grow up saying themwithout thinking about the
meaning.
In the UK, there's a lot ofpeople talking about cock ups;
someone cocked up at work.
Kaleem (00:51):
That's way someone cocked up at work.
Like, obviously we'd say fuckedup, but like, cocked up is just
way better.
Rick (00:59):
It's so much better.
Welcome back everyone toRemotely One.
I am your co host, Rick Haney,joined by my esteemed colleague,
Colleen Clarkson.
What's going on, my brother?
Kaleem (01:15):
Oh, sir.
You know, just the normal,normal, nervous as hell as
usual, you know, enjoying,enjoying the weather.
Things are good, man.
How about you, bro?
How about you?
Rick (01:25):
Oh, fantastic, fantastic.
always look forward to newepisodes, but this one in
particular is It's kind of nearand dear to my heart.
The subject matter is veryimportant to me.
So I've got a lot of goodquestions that I've
Kaleem (01:36):
Me too.
Me too.
Nothing like being transparent,baby.
Rick (01:40):
no, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Uh, but to our audience and ourviewers and listeners, since you
know how to find us, please dous a huge favor.
Go to ratethispodcast.
com forward slash remotely won.
Just leave us a review.
Again, rate this podcast.
com forward slash remotely one.
And if you could leave us areview, we would be ever so
(02:01):
grateful since 2015.
Remotely one is one of thelargest communities of remote
work professionals with over3000 Slack members and 5, 000
email subscribers.
It's free to join, baby! Free tojoin.
Go check it out at RemotelyOne.
com And with that out of theway, Kaleem, Please give us a
(02:22):
tease or two about today'sesteemed guest.
Kaleem (02:25):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Another, another, anotherrockstar, Rick.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, if you want to talk abouttrust, you want to talk about
company trust, organizationaltrust our guests today knows
about that ish.
Let me tell you that our guests,they were born and raised and
they're still a resident of theUnited Kingdom, AKA the UK.
(02:48):
All right.
Across the pond.
Rick (02:50):
pond.
Kaleem (02:50):
Yeah, That's my attempt.
I know they hate it when we dothat shit, but we have to do it.
We have to do it every time.
Rick (02:55):
Stop being such a stupid bloody American.
Kaleem (02:58):
you caught that off, didn't you?
Um, let's see.
Let's see.
Our guest today, they were theco founder and chief people
officer at Scout, which was atalent consultancy.
Yeah, they helped like over 60companies, hire 1, 500 people
across all sorts of differentthings.
So knows what he's doing.
Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
our guest.
(03:19):
Is another LinkedIn top voice, around of applause, Rick, round
of applause.
LinkedIn, LinkedIn, top voice.
And you know, what's reallyinteresting about that, Rick,
our top voice, despite like themtalking about how to communicate
all day and he's all active andhe's a top voice on HR
(03:40):
communications.
He's an introvert.
He's an introvert and he's ahuge hermit and doesn't even
talk to people outside of work.
So we gotta talk to him aboutthat, Rick.
Rick (03:48):
We'll have to see where he stands at the end of this
episode.
He might not be an introvertafter this show.
We might crack that shell.
Kaleem (03:55):
I haven't felt it though.
I haven't felt it.
Rick (03:57):
not at all.
Not at all.
Kaleem (03:59):
Last but not least our guests today.
They are the co founder of openorg, which helps companies,
okay.
Define and maintain healthylevels of communication, Rick,
which in
Rick (04:12):
That's a key
Kaleem (04:12):
trust.
Yes, it does.
Yes, it does.
So.
Well, that said, listeners andviewers, please give a warm
welcome to Adam Ho!
Rick (04:33):
Okay, take a breath.
You're gonna pass out.
Breathe.
Kaleem (04:38):
Let's go! Let's go! Settle down.
Woo! Settle down
Rick (04:42):
hey.
Take it down a notch,
Kaleem (04:44):
Settle down people.
Sorry, Adam.
They get excited.
Rick (04:47):
This is a professional show.
Check one.
Check one.
Studio audience.
Adam (04:53):
Way to introduce an introvert there.
Rick (04:55):
Yes.
Kaleem (04:57):
try Adam you are the star of today's show you are the
champ round one, baby, let's
Rick (05:03):
Round one.
Adam, thank you so much for, uh,for, first of all, not only
tolerating us this far, but, uh,agreeing to come on the show and
talk to us.
Adam (05:12):
No worries.
My pleasure.
It's been, um, yeah, awesome.
Awesome to be here.
Rick (05:15):
Good, good, good.
So, diving in right head first,we know that you're laser
focused on culture, and yourecently compared culture to,
processed food on LinkedIn, andI'm, I want to know a little bit
more about where you were comingfrom that regard.
I think the term was ultraprocessed culture.
(05:38):
So, can you talk a little bitabout that and where you were
coming from and what exactlythat means?
Adam (05:43):
I'll try to.
So yeah, I'm not a huge food,nut, but, um, you're listening
to a podcast a while ago,actually about.
The doctor who was talking aboutprocessed food and how bad it is
for you and health claims thatcompanies throw on it.
And I've been that, I've beenthat guy previously who's, you
know, um, bought like the highprotein energy bars and stuff,
going to the gym and things likethat and getting pretty hooked
(06:05):
to them because they taste greatand thinking that they're good
for you.
And actually deep down knowingthat they're probably not
actually that good for you.
Anyway, I listened to a podcasta while ago and as I was
listening to it.
Him talking about companies andhow they market food products
and how they, it's like a raceto get consumers attention in
the supermarket.
You're fighting for space,you're trying to get people's
(06:26):
attention.
Shiny wrapping, big labels thatsay protein, low in fat, that
sort of stuff.
It started getting me thinking alittle bit about the world of
employer brand and talent andhow that's headed in a very
similar direction over the lastnumber of years.
Companies.
Talk about this war for talentand companies employer brands
have become about being a shinyand amazing and, you know,
(06:48):
perfect as it possibly can be totry and attract people into
their companies.
And a lot of the work that we donow is looking at companies
career sites and trying todissect them a little bit beyond
some of the words that they puton there around great culture or
autonomy or freedom or.
diversity and what's behindthose words ultimately is a big
(07:08):
part of what OpenOrg is tryingto achieve.
Anyway, this idea around ultraprocessed food being similar to
the world of culture and ultraprocessed culture is something
that's been milling around in mymind for a while.
And I saw an article online theother morning, talking about it
and finally made me think, yeah,let's post something about it
and just see how it resonates.
And yeah, it went down quitewell, actually.
(07:30):
It was some, there was somegood, good other comparisons
there from other people in thecomments.
Kaleem (07:36):
so let me just understand this.
You're also saying kind of likethe processed food, like the
food business that every companynow is just.
putting up shiny things and talksaying the right things.
Is that really kind of whereyou're coming from?
Cause everybody knows aboutlike, Oh, we enjoy workplace
flexibility.
(07:56):
And then you get there andthey're like, you got to come
into the office five days aweek.
Where are you seeing, employees,where are you seeing like
employees and even potentialemployees, candidates, are you
seeing them kind of, Gettingthrough all of that BS or flash.
And are people taking that a lotmore seriously now?
Adam (08:16):
There's definitely a recognition of some of what I
post about on LinkedIn frompeople who are looking for roles
or in between jobs.
There's a lot of support andaudience for what we're doing
and the topics we're talkingabout.
Candidate experience has beensomething that's just been on
the floor for God knows howlong, really, really long time.
So this is a huge problem thatneeds to be fixed.
(08:37):
The people are frustrated andit's not just that experience
you have during the interviewprocess or pre hire companies
really struggle on the wholewith.
early attrition.
So people effectively joining abusiness and probably leaving
within the first 12 months orso.
And that quite often, it's notalways down purely to culture or
mis selling of that, but it'snormally misalignment to, to
(08:59):
company culture, not fullyunderstanding what you're coming
into.
So a huge part of what OpenOrgis doing is trying to help
companies embrace the idea ofbeing more open and honest about
what you're actually going toget here.
How do we genuinely work?
What do we genuinely, you know,what's a genuine approach to
things like meetings andfeedback and communication and
help people understand whetherthey'll thrive in an environment
(09:21):
or not, so that they don't walkthrough the door and end up
leaving after three or fourmonths because there's the
genuine costs to a company'sbottom line, and time by having
to rehire all the time if peoplearen't working out.
So it's a big problem.
And there's a serious problembehind it to people's mental
wellbeing as well.
It's slightly anecdotal, but Iknow.
Quite a few people who havejoined companies under the wrong
(09:42):
pretense have had to leaveBecause they've had completely
the wrong manager There could bethe wrong working conditions and
culture that were actually soldto them in the first place And
it's caused them some genuinescarring which is not great
Kaleem (09:54):
No, it
Rick (09:55):
not at all, not at all, So, what was the spark or the
kind of the aha moment you, youhad?
The motivation behind creatingOpenOrg and how do you
specifically help companies.
Adam (10:08):
Yeah, so and I had pre OpenOrg In 12 years or so of
being in that hiring world andhiring for tech startups and
scale ups all over the world.
And I had the opportunity tohire for some very open,
transparent companies.
They had like the wikis, thehandbooks, all the information
you could ever want.
And frankly, your job as arecruiter is the easiest thing
(10:29):
in the world.
You just, very easy to sell topeople because they've got the
information they need already.
You don't have to try and sellbut more importantly when they
join the business they stay theyknow what they're getting
already They're prepared for itExpectations are managed they
thrive but I've also worked forcompanies that
Kaleem (10:46):
say Adam real quick, were you saying, the companies
that you were hiring for hadthose handbooks?
Were those readily available forpeople to read even before they
applied?
Like, I think I missed that partwhen you said that it was so
easy for you to sell thecompany.
Can you
Adam (11:02):
yeah
Kaleem (11:02):
little bit about that part?
Adam (11:04):
Yeah, open handbooks, which I should clarify.
Handbooks can mean slightlydifferent things in the U S to
the UK.
So an employee handbook in the US quite often is slightly more
legally binding document orcontract that someone might have
to sign.
Which is not necessarily thecase in the UK.
So I refer to it more like aknowledge base or a wiki.
So effectively here's an onlinesingle source of truth about how
(11:27):
we work as a company, like ourculture, our values, our
behaviors, you know, how we domeetings, how we do this, how we
do that, how we communicate.
So they're becoming a really,really big thing, particularly
remote companies that they'rereally embracing this idea of
having one single central placeto.
talk about their business andgive as much information about
their company as possible.
But this was a thing going backa few years ago now and having
(11:50):
access to one of those things,honestly, was like an best sales
tool you could have as arecruiter.
You share that with someoneduring the interview process and
they've got all the informationthey could possibly ever need
about the company.
And they know all about theinterview process is coming up.
They know sometimes whatquestions are going to be asked
of them in the interview, whatformat is going to be, it, it
(12:11):
just, it just, um, absolutelysort of.
Yes, it's not common practice,as you say, it's not, it's quite
rare still, but some companiesare starting to actually share
those interview questions withpeople in advance.
So there's a heap of likeamazing benefits there to things
like inclusion and accessibilityand diversity because you're not
sort of, you know, you'rereducing that, that opportunity
(12:33):
for bias as well in the process.
There's so many great things youcan do with these things, but
had access to all of thesethings with some companies and
life was easy, but also peoplethrived when they joined the
company.
And then I worked for some moresecretive companies that weren't
evil.
I want to say they're evil likethat.
They weren't intentionally likesecretive, but Employees in
(12:55):
those businesses couldn't tellyou what those company values
were.
They couldn't tell you whatfunding stage the company was
at.
I was having to go around allsorts of people, you know, at
leadership level saying, are weseries B or series C?
And they were like, well, Idon't really know.
It's not like it's complicated.
And so as a recruiter trying tosell that company to someone,
being faced with questions,you're like, I can't really tell
(13:16):
you this, but come and join usbecause it will be fun.
You can hire people, but.
You could see very, very easilythat people were leaving just as
quickly as they were joining.
So long story short, over 12years, I've had a very clear
idea in my mind, at least, ofwhat I think works well, what
creates healthy organizations.
And I've pulled that into howI've built my own ones as a
founder or co founder, and it'sworked well.
(13:39):
How I set up OpenOrg, I left mylast business scout at the end
of 2022, and actually didn'twant to set up another business.
I was pretty fatigued with beinga founder after like nine years.
So I became a candidate insteadfor the first time in 12 years.
And that was the light bulbmoment for me.
I was like, this sucks.
I like, I can't find out anyinformation on career sites.
(14:01):
Job ads suck.
Interviews, people can't tell meanything about job, like what's
going on, where the company is.
And there was a lightbulbmoment.
I was like, why does this suck?
And it was transparency andinformation and knowledge.
And that took me back to all theother stuff.
Anyway, I got chatting to my cofounder, John.
We've been friends for 12 years.
Really good friends.
(14:22):
Always talk about how work'sbroken and we'll fix it one day.
We don't know how, but we will.
And we got chatting, and that,long story short, led to
OpenOrg.
Kaleem (14:31):
Wow.
Wow.
Rick (14:33):
What a great story.
Kaleem (14:34):
It is.
It really is.
And what you were saying abouttrust, and transparency, I'm
sure you work with organizationsthat aren't fully remote or even
as flexible as others, but I'mjust curious in your opinion, Do
you feel like trust andtransparency is more important
(14:57):
in remote companies versus inperson companies?
I'm just curious.
What are your thoughts on that?
Adam (15:03):
I, rather than more important, it's definitely
healthier.
And I think, I can't remember, Ilose track of when I post about
this stuff, but I posted aboutthis the other day, was, you've
got people like Atlassian whohave talked about how much
they've thrived.
fully distributed all over theworld and so on and so forth.
For me, it's not necessarily thecatalyst for that.
It's not necessarily the factthat you're remote, but it's
(15:24):
about communication.
Remote companies by default haveto be good at communication.
They have to be good at givingtheir employees access to
information all over the worldso that they tend to have these
central places people can go to,to get things when they need
them without asking to acrosstime zones.
So.
They are very intentional withhow they allow people to access
information and that for memakes them, I don't want to use
(15:48):
the word better, but it makesthem better when it comes to
communication and how they sharethings with employees.
And then there's the trustelement there as well.
If you hire someone on the otherside of the world, and it could
be working completely differenttimes to you when you're asleep,
by default, you have to put yourtrust in them.
You have to show them.
A certain level of trust, andyou show them trust, you will
(16:09):
get that back from them as well.
So I would suggest as well.
There's definitely higher levelsof trust, generally speaking,
remote organizations who dogenuinely operate on a fully
remote basis.
And to a final point, thesestereotypical company that comes
to us or that we tend to seewhen we put, look, finding new
(16:29):
wikis or handbooks or knowledgebases that we can put into our
ones here.
to curate nine times out of ten,it's a fully remote business.
So there's a definite trendthere.
You know, remote companies tendto be the ones that document and
share and are more open.
Rick (16:43):
So in your experience, you've met a lot of different
types of people, you've workedwith a lot of different
personalities, you get a lot offeedback doing what you do.
In your experience, where do youfeel that people place the most
value in, in their communities?
Are they looking for more inperson events?
You know, are they looking for,you know, centralized support
resources like forums, differentthings like that.
(17:06):
What are people looking for?
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(18:51):
Alright, well that's a bit much,but for you, I'll do it.
I'm Rick Haney, and if you're abusiness owner looking for a
creative voice in yourmarketing, look no further.
I'll tell your story the way youwant it told.
Follow along at RemotelyWeAreOneor visit my website at
rickhaney.
me for more information.
(19:14):
And now, back to the show.
Adam (19:16):
I deal very specifically in the sort of HR and people
space, from a community point ofview.
So I'm probably little bit of abubble there.
But there's a, there's a cleartheme there in terms of two
things really, two core themes.
One is access to information andresources.
And again, I'm in a bubble here,but the typical persona of
person that we work with atOpenOrg tends to be someone in a
standalone or very small peopleteam in a startup or scale up so
(19:40):
they don't have lots ofcolleagues around them to bounce
ideas off of they often feellonely and isolated and they
don't have much resource aroundthem in terms of budget or
finances so that they're doingeverything on a shoestring and
they often are very verystretched and overworked and
they don't know where to go.
So.
From a community point of view,people want to be able to go
somewhere and access informationquickly, ask questions, get
(20:04):
answers back quickly.
So that, that speed of responseis huge from a similar sort of
network that also work in thatspace.
And then the secondary to thatis definitely the community
element.
I, so many of our calls that wedo on our programs with people,
whilst they might set out totalk about openness and
transparency in what you'redoing in your work.
(20:26):
They often turn into therapysessions, which is not great
really, but like the HR andpeople world is in this such a
state at the moment wherethere's so many people are
looking at changing careers,moving out of roles, you know,
they are, they've been throughlayoff after layoff, they're,
you know, pulled between pillarto post with like CEO to
employees and not knowing whereto turn and that a lot of them
(20:47):
are very burnt out and broken.
And, um, that support.
Yeah from communities is vitalas well, whether that's in
person or not, I think it wasmore like personal preference.
I like a little bit of both, butmost people tend to be able to
thrive on that remote communityset up now as well.
Kaleem (21:04):
Yeah.
I mean, people ops hasdefinitely had a tough, the
field of people Ops slash HR inthe past four years, it's been
very difficult, a lot ofpressure.
That's really cool.
Does Open provide any type of,community support for people,
ops, people like, like, or isthat something that you're just
kind of doing on a one on onesituation or are you starting to
(21:25):
think, starting to see, Hey,maybe these therapy sessions,
um, are, are, are valid and,and, and maybe we could start
offering these
Adam (21:34):
Like, yeah, honestly, we've talked about whether we
pivot into like an HR therapy,center or something like that.
Like it, it's, it's a weirdthing to say.
Yeah, it's a weird thing to say,like I, I, you don't want to be
having these conversations withpeople, obviously, like it's not
a great sign.
But it actually feels reallysatisfying to see people helping
each other out, leaning on eachother, you know, who have common
(21:56):
threads there.
And that's something that we seefrom like a bird's eye view.
From our side, we're speaking tolots of different individuals
who have these challenges, thesetroubles, these headaches.
And we see other people havingexactly the same ones.
So you're dealing with like a,you know, a narcissistic CEO,
or, you know, like, uh, uh, uh,uh, co co founders who just
won't work well together anddon't want to communicate with
(22:18):
employee.
You feel very lonely at timesand get sucked into this
problem.
And what do I do?
But we're able to see all theseother people who are having
similar problems and startconnecting them together.
And that actually feels reallygood to be able to do that.
So whilst it's not great to be,it's like, it is awesome.
And.
It's not a core part of whatOpenOrg is necessarily doing,
but actually it is sort of onehalf of it is we've got an
(22:40):
accreditation we work withcompanies on to help them drive
change around how theycommunicate and document, etc.
But we also run these L& Dprograms for people leaders to
come and do cohorts and bootcamps and they become part of
our Slack community off the backof that, which is very small at
the moment, but growing.
That is something that we'recontinuing to try and build
without turning it into like anHR therapy, you know, center,
Kaleem (23:02):
No, I hear you.
no, Congratulations, man.
The community is great.
And you Guys provide sometemplates and stuff like that.
So you are helping, you know, ifI'm stressing out about how do I
design, an interview process,you know, like I'm assuming open
org helps with providing sometemplates and you're collecting
all this information from allthese different groups.
(23:24):
So in a weird way, yourresources are kind of helping
alleviate some of thoseanxieties when you're a single
person.
That's how I, as a person whohas to do that sometimes, um,
that's what I really feel goodabout open Oregon as a resource.
So it's, it's, it's really cool.
Rick (23:40):
Hmm.
Adam (23:40):
it's, it's, um, genuinely like blown us away a little bit.
We're two, I don't want to saymiddle aged guys, I'm 34, but,
we're two guys in the UK, like.
Setting up this business lastyear, we genuinely thought let's
see how we get on picking upsome audience and, you know,
support in the UK and We haveconversations with people all
(24:01):
over the world who sort of say,follow you guys on LinkedIn,
love it, using, been using yourresources for the last few
months.
They've been, it's been so coolto like speak to people in
Australia and you know, HongKong and, US and like, you're
like, I can't believe it.
So the resources that like, lotsof them are curated.
So I always try and give creditto the companies who actually,
(24:22):
we're trying to pull themtogether for people to make them
easier for people to find.
We, and we have created our ownthings as well, which we hope
are useful, but it is awesome tobe able to sort of pull stuff
together, make it easier forpeople to find and help them
through some of the stuff thatthey're trying to do, even if
they can't get involved with uson a slightly deeper level, I
suppose.
Kaleem (24:39):
That's great.
Rick (24:40):
Fantastic.
That's amazing.
You know, these days everybodyseems to be looking for, feels
like the buzz word isflexibility, right?
Everybody's looking for a betterwork life balance.
Everybody's looking for a careerwith as much flexibility as
possible.
But companies aren't always asflexible as they say they are.
So.
(25:01):
What are some of the criticalthings that, that candidates
need to be on the lookout forwhen they're hoping to integrate
into, into better flexiblepositions, you know, what do
they have to do to get it right?
Adam (25:12):
Yeah.
It, like, honestly, it's so hardfor candidates and applicants,
like, to even ask questions.
It, before they've even gottento an interview, like, who do I
go and ask a question to, tofind this stuff out?
You can go and read.
Things like Glassdoor and stuffto try and understand it.
But you could spend an hourtrying to research one company
and people having to apply to athousand jobs at the moment to
(25:34):
even get a few interviews.
It's tough.
And you take things on facevalue and you see a few words in
a job advert.
You trust it, sadly.
But companies aren't clearenough about particularly that
word hybrid.
You know, I think you tend totrust fully remote, you know,
you tend to trust remote first.
And, you know, and you tend totrust on site, and some
(25:56):
companies are very, very good atbeing clear about this, but that
word hybrid and, you know, weoffer flexibility or we're open
to flexible working, however youwant to put it, doesn't mean a
thing, you know, you go, you,you hit apply, still not knowing
whether I'm going to be asked togo into an office once a week or
four times a week, and there's ahuge difference to that.
So things people should beasking for, and it's hard to do
(26:17):
it until you're in interview,but, I would encourage people to
start really, if they get tothat interview stage, really
push for some clarity on like,what is your definition of
hybrid working?
And actually, what is yourdefinition of remote?
Because there's a lot ofcompanies who talk about remote
and then they're like, Oh yeah,but you do need to come in on,
you know, Mondays because that'san important team meeting day.
Kaleem (26:37):
Right.
They don't even consider thathybrid.
They don't even they don't evenconsider that hybrid.
They're like, oh, no, no, no,we're fully remote.
But you got to come in like, youknow, twice a week for like what
the hell that's hybrid orwhatever.
Rick (26:48):
Hmm.
Adam (26:49):
um, so like just pushing for some real clarity and
definition of like, what exactlydo you mean by this?
And something we're trying toencourage companies to do is
just be a bit clearer atdefining this for people.
And one other thing that you canmaybe do to take that a little
bit further is if a company istalking about being remote or
remote first, or leaning moretowards that sort of slightly
more flexible way of working isjust trying to understand if you
(27:11):
can find any resources from themaround.
How they work flexibly and howthey work remotely for me, some
of the best remote companies ontop of what they give you on a
job advert, they've got an openknowledge base or wiki or blog
article about how wecommunicate.
You know, we default toasynchronous communication and
this is how we talk to eachother and share information.
(27:32):
And this is how you should lookafter yourself when you're
working from home.
Companies that.
invest time and effort intobuilding out resources, whether
that's on a blog, a handbook, a,you know, whatever, a career
site, you can take that as a bitof a signal that, okay, this
company takes remote workingseriously.
They've invested inunderstanding what it means to
them and how they can helpemployees to thrive in that
(27:55):
environment rather than I can'tsee anything.
And it just says remote, likethat is great.
It's remote, but you could alsobe heading into a business that
just does not look after peopleremotely and remote working
doesn't suddenly default to youthriving and, you know, doing
really well, it can actually bereally hard to do, to, to work
well in a remote environment ifyou're not used to it.
So that's the signal.
Kaleem (28:17):
Yeah, you know, Adam.
That's interesting that you saidthe research researching each
company's.
It can take you hours and you'reabsolutely right.
And I would say, you know,obviously you can't research a
million, a thousand companies ifyou're applying for a thousand
companies.
But I would definitely say, Ithink there was an article that
I was quoted in HBR where Italked about this of, of you
(28:39):
have to do your own researchregardless, like you can't not
do the research.
So I would say once you get theinterview request, I would say
that's when you dive real deep,you know, so that you're more
prepared in the interview.
And I love social media.
I, you know, that's what I kindof talked about.
Like what you were just saying,if a company is embracing
(29:01):
workplace flexibility and theydon't have anything at all on
their social media, if socialjustice is important to you and
you look at their social mediaaccount and go back during
George Floyd and there wasnothing posted during that time,
like.
You can kind of feel based onlike what you were saying on
their content that they'reputting out to the world,
(29:22):
whether they're fully behindwhat they're saying.
So unfortunately I think youkind of do have to dive deep.
I think there are some resourceslike the flex index I think is
starting to put out a lot ofgood information about how
flexible companies are.
But you're absolutely right.
I think doing research for everycompany that you're applying for
is difficult.
(29:42):
But when you get closer, doingsome of those things, like you
said, like, are they talkingabout workplace flexibility on
their blog?
Do they have a good careerspage?
Like, I think the careers pageis a huge, huge, um, you know,
it's a huge predictor of whetherthat company is fully engaged
in, in, in attracting the besttalent and stuff like that.
(30:04):
You know, company has a horriblecareers page.
Doesn't have anything about whatit's like to work there kind of
assigned to me personally.
that's, I think I agree
Rick (30:14):
Could be considered a red flag.
Adam (30:16):
yeah.
massive.
Like, yeah.
But the stereotypical careerspage has some like smiley faces
of people, thumbs up and saying,this is why it's amazing here,
you know, and I get that you'retrying to sell to people, but
People can see past that now andnine times out of ten, I think
people just cycle past thosesmiley faces and quotes because
they're like, it's going to besomething smiley and happy and
(30:38):
telling me why I should workhere.
I'd much rather try andunderstand like, what does a
tough day look like?
How do we handle failure?
How do we, you know, whyshouldn't I work here?
Like, it might feel negative tosome, but actually understanding
a little bit more about like,what, what am I coming into?
I think is probably one of themost powerful things you can,
you can do.
So seeing like a really, really.
Awesome trend at the momentwhere companies are starting to
(30:59):
embrace a much more balancedview of like sell versus repel
to try and help people selfselect out and think okay, you
know, you know what like This isa remote company, but this is
how they communicate andactually i'm not going to work
well in that environment Likethey're remote but i've got to
spend Six hours a day inmeetings, you know because of it
like that does all of a suddenyou lose that freedom.
(31:19):
So Some clarity around yourculture and how you actually
work Regardless of whether youremote or on site.
I think it's the key thing forme.
Kaleem (31:27):
Wow.
Fascinating.
I love that idea, by the way,like a Netflix.
We work hard, play hard, butyou're going to work 60 hours.
Just put that right on yourwebsite.
Not for me.
Rick (31:36):
Yep.
Adam (31:37):
There's a there's an amazing amazing guy Called Brian
Adams.
Not not not the one everyone'sprobably thinking of not the
musician but He runs an employerbranding
Kaleem (31:48):
with the raspy?
Rick (31:50):
Yes.
Adam (31:51):
This the other one runs an employer branding agency and he
he did some work with some hugecorporate brands.
I think he does some work withApple.
So he was telling us a while agothat like, yeah, a lot of work
to embrace the idea that Apple'smessaging to people is very much
like you will, you will get towork with some of the smartest,
brightest minds.
(32:11):
And that is a big, big pro, butthe con is you'll have no social
life, you know?
So like embracing what the harshreality of working here is and
actually accepting that somepeople will be okay with that
because they want to work withthe smartest, brightest minds
and build the best products.
And they're actually okay withnot having a social life.
Others are happy to self selectout of that.
So even big companies canunderstand and, you know,
(32:35):
embrace that.
Kaleem (32:37):
to Brian Adams, by the way.
Everything I do.
I do it for you.
Rick (32:45):
Now it cuts like a knife! But it feels so right.
Going way back on that one,folks.
Sorry about that.
Kaleem (32:53):
out, BA.
Shout out, BA.
Rick (32:55):
So, uh, Adam, can you tell us about a comical or inspiring
moment you may have had whileworking remotely?
Adam (33:04):
Yeah, and yeah, I do have one which was, uh, embarrassing,
to say the least.
So I, my last company Scout, um,managed to co found it and get
it up to like 70 odd peoplebootstrapped and.
hit something like four million,four million revenue in under
two years.
Um, you know, did, did well.
(33:25):
It, it was good.
So yeah, I'm like impressed.
I'm happy with that, but had abit of an embarrassing founder
moment.
Kaleem (33:32):
What you're saying.
Okay.
Adam (33:36):
What's that?
Sorry.
Kaleem (33:37):
I was going to say, so there's some pressures, you
know, you build up the company,you got to make, you got to do
important meetings with more andmore important people.
Right.
That's what I'm trying.
I'm trying to get a feel of theseriousness of the situation.
Adam (33:50):
We're just making it look like you know what you're doing,
I suppose, as a founder, Ithink, is the general, general
hope.
So, anyway, we, we, we, we wereremote, but I would say, like,
we were remote first.
We did have an office space inLondon.
I was outside of London.
People didn't have to come in ifthey didn't want to, but we got
together a couple of times ayear for socials and stuff.
So, anyway.
I was planning the social andlogistics, so I spent a lot of
(34:13):
time speaking to about 60 or sopeople about travel
arrangements.
Please book your train, please,please be an adult, book it,
look at times, plan ahead, thinkcarefully about your journey.
This is on you and we'll, we'llpay for it, but you've got to
book it.
So I spent about two weekstelling people they needed to do
this.
And then I had a trip booked upto London a couple of days
later, just, just to go up thereand see a few people and so on
(34:35):
and so forth.
I packed my bags, got to thetrain station early in the
morning and then realized therewere train strikes that day in
the UK and there were literallyzero trains running and they'd
been announced weeks, weeksbefore that everyone had them
and no one was at the trainstation.
So I was walking through thetrain station thinking like,
this is quiet this morning.
What's going on?
This is amazing.
(34:56):
Anyway, get to the platform andstand there and like, what is
going on?
No trains, no nothing.
And I'm stood there with my workstuff, my overnight bag.
And I jump onto Slack, and Ijust mess, I had to mess with
the team, I was like, I've spentthe last two days telling all of
you to like, be on top of like,booking your travel, be adults,
be, and I'm sitting therethinking I'm, I'm meant to be
like, running a, a relatively,you know, good business here,
(35:20):
we've done, and I can't even getmyself organized, so, yeah, the
downside of remote working forme is like, uh, yeah, when you
do have to travel, I wascompletely, the.
Unaware of train strikes andtravel and when you get so zoned
in on like just not having toleave home, you know But anyway,
that was embarrassing butcomical
Kaleem (35:39):
that's, a good one.
That's good.
Do as I say, not as I do.
Adam (35:45):
this is a test this was a test for all of you
Rick (35:48):
Right?
Never mind this, get back towork.
Kaleem (35:52):
as soon as I, got that slack and I'm one of your
employees, I'm like thismotherfucker.
Rick (35:56):
Ha ha Practice what you preach, man.
Kaleem (36:00):
I was like, good, good.
Don't tell me I would have beenlike, I would have been like all
emojis, like laughing emoji, youknow what I mean?
Like all sorts of shit.
Ha ha ha
Adam (36:10):
to To jump on Slack and make fun of myself, um, and then
walk home again and rebook myjourney.
Rick (36:17):
That's the trick right there, you gotta own it.
You owned it well.
Kaleem (36:21):
That's a quality story, sir.
Thank you.
Rick (36:24):
can our viewers and listeners find you, Adam?
Adam (36:27):
Yeah, I live my entire life on LinkedIn 24 hours a day
pretty much.
So find me on LinkedIn, connectwith me, drop me a DM.
Yeah, always posting andrambling and, you know, always
online.
That's probably the easiestplace to go.
Check out OpenOrg.
FYI as well, there's a, wetalked about it earlier, but
there's a resources page onthere that's got a heap of free
and curated resources for likeHR and people folks.
(36:50):
Um, so hopefully
Kaleem (36:51):
amazing.
It's amazing.
I love it.
That's why you're on the show.
I got sucked in.
I use some of the resources.
It's a good thing.
So shout out to you.
Keep doing what you're doing andreally appreciate you coming on
the show, bro.
Appreciate you.
Adam (37:02):
Thank you.
Rick (37:03):
Adam Horn, thank you so much for joining us.
It was great to
Adam (37:06):
No, my pleasure.
Thank you.
Kaleem (37:08):
Awesome, man.
I've just got a very cheap headphones, very cheap
(00:02):
microphone, both from Amazon.
Kaleem (00:04):
have a man that is like both from Amazon, I like the way
Amazon.
I like that.
That's
Adam (00:10):
Amazon.
Kaleem (00:11):
Amazon.
sounds way more classy.
They should change how theypronounce Amazon.
Like Amazon.
Sounds like you're in thejungle.
Like I'm in the jungle and I'mlike, uh, but Amazon, that's
classy.
They should have thought aboutthat.
Rick (00:26):
They should have.
That's quite the cock up.
if I had to say so myself.
Heh heh.
Heh heh heh.
Kaleem (00:33):
that we learned that with one of our guests.
We, he said, Oh man, what a,what a cock up that was.
Adam (00:38):
We've got those sorts of sayings, I don't think anyone
even really knows what theymean, to be honest.
You just grow up saying themwithout thinking about the
meaning.
In the UK, there's a lot ofpeople talking about cock ups;
someone cocked up at work.
Kaleem (00:51):
That's way someone cocked up at work.
Like, obviously we'd say fuckedup, but like, cocked up is just
way better.
Rick (00:59):
It's so much better.
Welcome back everyone toRemotely One.
I am your co host, Rick Haney,joined by my esteemed colleague,
Colleen Clarkson.
What's going on, my brother?
Kaleem (01:15):
Oh, sir.
You know, just the normal,normal, nervous as hell as
usual, you know, enjoying,enjoying the weather.
Things are good, man.
How about you, bro?
How about you?
Rick (01:25):
Oh, fantastic, fantastic.
always look forward to newepisodes, but this one in
particular is It's kind of nearand dear to my heart.
The subject matter is veryimportant to me.
So I've got a lot of goodquestions that I've
Kaleem (01:36):
Me too.
Me too.
Nothing like being transparent,baby.
Rick (01:40):
no, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Uh, but to our audience and ourviewers and listeners, since you
know how to find us, please dous a huge favor.
Go to ratethispodcast.
com forward slash remotely won.
Just leave us a review.
Again, rate this podcast.
com forward slash remotely one.
And if you could leave us areview, we would be ever so
(02:01):
grateful since 2015.
Remotely one is one of thelargest communities of remote
work professionals with over3000 Slack members and 5, 000
email subscribers.
It's free to join, baby! Free tojoin.
Go check it out at RemotelyOne.
com And with that out of theway, Kaleem, Please give us a
(02:22):
tease or two about today'sesteemed guest.
Kaleem (02:25):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Another, another, anotherrockstar, Rick.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, if you want to talk abouttrust, you want to talk about
company trust, organizationaltrust our guests today knows
about that ish.
Let me tell you that our guests,they were born and raised and
they're still a resident of theUnited Kingdom, AKA the UK.
(02:48):
All right.
Across the pond.
Rick (02:50):
pond.
Kaleem (02:50):
Yeah, That's my attempt.
I know they hate it when we dothat shit, but we have to do it.
We have to do it every time.
Rick (02:55):
Stop being such a stupid bloody American.
Kaleem (02:58):
you caught that off, didn't you?
Um, let's see.
Let's see.
Our guest today, they were theco founder and chief people
officer at Scout, which was atalent consultancy.
Yeah, they helped like over 60companies, hire 1, 500 people
across all sorts of differentthings.
So knows what he's doing.
Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
our guest.
(03:19):
Is another LinkedIn top voice, around of applause, Rick, round
of applause.
LinkedIn, LinkedIn, top voice.
And you know, what's reallyinteresting about that, Rick,
our top voice, despite like themtalking about how to communicate
all day and he's all active andhe's a top voice on HR
(03:40):
communications.
He's an introvert.
He's an introvert and he's ahuge hermit and doesn't even
talk to people outside of work.
So we gotta talk to him aboutthat, Rick.
Rick (03:48):
We'll have to see where he stands at the end of this
episode.
He might not be an introvertafter this show.
We might crack that shell.
Kaleem (03:55):
I haven't felt it though.
I haven't felt it.
Rick (03:57):
not at all.
Not at all.
Kaleem (03:59):
Last but not least our guests today.
They are the co founder of openorg, which helps companies,
okay.
Define and maintain healthylevels of communication, Rick,
which in
Rick (04:12):
That's a key
Kaleem (04:12):
trust.
Yes, it does.
Yes, it does.
So.
Well, that said, listeners andviewers, please give a warm
welcome to Adam Ho!
Rick (04:33):
Okay, take a breath.
You're gonna pass out.
Breathe.
Kaleem (04:38):
Let's go! Let's go! Settle down.
Woo! Settle down
Rick (04:42):
hey.
Take it down a notch,
Kaleem (04:44):
Settle down people.
Sorry, Adam.
They get excited.
Rick (04:47):
This is a professional show.
Check one.
Check one.
Studio audience.
Adam (04:53):
Way to introduce an introvert there.
Rick (04:55):
Yes.
Kaleem (04:57):
try Adam you are the star of today's show you are the
champ round one, baby, let's
Rick (05:03):
Round one.
Adam, thank you so much for, uh,for, first of all, not only
tolerating us this far, but, uh,agreeing to come on the show and
talk to us.
Adam (05:12):
No worries.
My pleasure.
It's been, um, yeah, awesome.
Awesome to be here.
Rick (05:15):
Good, good, good.
So, diving in right head first,we know that you're laser
focused on culture, and yourecently compared culture to,
processed food on LinkedIn, andI'm, I want to know a little bit
more about where you were comingfrom that regard.
I think the term was ultraprocessed culture.
(05:38):
So, can you talk a little bitabout that and where you were
coming from and what exactlythat means?
Adam (05:43):
I'll try to.
So yeah, I'm not a huge food,nut, but, um, you're listening
to a podcast a while ago,actually about.
The doctor who was talking aboutprocessed food and how bad it is
for you and health claims thatcompanies throw on it.
And I've been that, I've beenthat guy previously who's, you
know, um, bought like the highprotein energy bars and stuff,
going to the gym and things likethat and getting pretty hooked
(06:05):
to them because they taste greatand thinking that they're good
for you.
And actually deep down knowingthat they're probably not
actually that good for you.
Anyway, I listened to a podcasta while ago and as I was
listening to it.
Him talking about companies andhow they market food products
and how they, it's like a raceto get consumers attention in
the supermarket.
You're fighting for space,you're trying to get people's
(06:26):
attention.
Shiny wrapping, big labels thatsay protein, low in fat, that
sort of stuff.
It started getting me thinking alittle bit about the world of
employer brand and talent andhow that's headed in a very
similar direction over the lastnumber of years.
Companies.
Talk about this war for talentand companies employer brands
have become about being a shinyand amazing and, you know,
(06:48):
perfect as it possibly can be totry and attract people into
their companies.
And a lot of the work that we donow is looking at companies
career sites and trying todissect them a little bit beyond
some of the words that they puton there around great culture or
autonomy or freedom or.
diversity and what's behindthose words ultimately is a big
(07:08):
part of what OpenOrg is tryingto achieve.
Anyway, this idea around ultraprocessed food being similar to
the world of culture and ultraprocessed culture is something
that's been milling around in mymind for a while.
And I saw an article online theother morning, talking about it
and finally made me think, yeah,let's post something about it
and just see how it resonates.
And yeah, it went down quitewell, actually.
(07:30):
It was some, there was somegood, good other comparisons
there from other people in thecomments.
Kaleem (07:36):
so let me just understand this.
You're also saying kind of likethe processed food, like the
food business that every companynow is just.
putting up shiny things and talksaying the right things.
Is that really kind of whereyou're coming from?
Cause everybody knows aboutlike, Oh, we enjoy workplace
flexibility.
(07:56):
And then you get there andthey're like, you got to come
into the office five days aweek.
Where are you seeing, employees,where are you seeing like
employees and even potentialemployees, candidates, are you
seeing them kind of, Gettingthrough all of that BS or flash.
And are people taking that a lotmore seriously now?
Adam (08:16):
There's definitely a recognition of some of what I
post about on LinkedIn frompeople who are looking for roles
or in between jobs.
There's a lot of support andaudience for what we're doing
and the topics we're talkingabout.
Candidate experience has beensomething that's just been on
the floor for God knows howlong, really, really long time.
So this is a huge problem thatneeds to be fixed.
(08:37):
The people are frustrated andit's not just that experience
you have during the interviewprocess or pre hire companies
really struggle on the wholewith.
early attrition.
So people effectively joining abusiness and probably leaving
within the first 12 months orso.
And that quite often, it's notalways down purely to culture or
mis selling of that, but it'snormally misalignment to, to
(08:59):
company culture, not fullyunderstanding what you're coming
into.
So a huge part of what OpenOrgis doing is trying to help
companies embrace the idea ofbeing more open and honest about
what you're actually going toget here.
How do we genuinely work?
What do we genuinely, you know,what's a genuine approach to
things like meetings andfeedback and communication and
help people understand whetherthey'll thrive in an environment
(09:21):
or not, so that they don't walkthrough the door and end up
leaving after three or fourmonths because there's the
genuine costs to a company'sbottom line, and time by having
to rehire all the time if peoplearen't working out.
So it's a big problem.
And there's a serious problembehind it to people's mental
wellbeing as well.
It's slightly anecdotal, but Iknow.
Quite a few people who havejoined companies under the wrong
(09:42):
pretense have had to leaveBecause they've had completely
the wrong manager There could bethe wrong working conditions and
culture that were actually soldto them in the first place And
it's caused them some genuinescarring which is not great
Kaleem (09:54):
No, it
Rick (09:55):
not at all, not at all, So, what was the spark or the
kind of the aha moment you, youhad?
The motivation behind creatingOpenOrg and how do you
specifically help companies.
Adam (10:08):
Yeah, so and I had pre OpenOrg In 12 years or so of
being in that hiring world andhiring for tech startups and
scale ups all over the world.
And I had the opportunity tohire for some very open,
transparent companies.
They had like the wikis, thehandbooks, all the information
you could ever want.
And frankly, your job as arecruiter is the easiest thing
(10:29):
in the world.
You just, very easy to sell topeople because they've got the
information they need already.
You don't have to try and sellbut more importantly when they
join the business they stay theyknow what they're getting
already They're prepared for itExpectations are managed they
thrive but I've also worked forcompanies that
Kaleem (10:46):
say Adam real quick, were you saying, the companies
that you were hiring for hadthose handbooks?
Were those readily available forpeople to read even before they
applied?
Like, I think I missed that partwhen you said that it was so
easy for you to sell thecompany.
Can you
Adam (11:02):
yeah
Kaleem (11:02):
little bit about that part?
Adam (11:04):
Yeah, open handbooks, which I should clarify.
Handbooks can mean slightlydifferent things in the U S to
the UK.
So an employee handbook in the US quite often is slightly more
legally binding document orcontract that someone might have
to sign.
Which is not necessarily thecase in the UK.
So I refer to it more like aknowledge base or a wiki.
So effectively here's an onlinesingle source of truth about how
(11:27):
we work as a company, like ourculture, our values, our
behaviors, you know, how we domeetings, how we do this, how we
do that, how we communicate.
So they're becoming a really,really big thing, particularly
remote companies that they'rereally embracing this idea of
having one single central placeto.
talk about their business andgive as much information about
their company as possible.
But this was a thing going backa few years ago now and having
(11:50):
access to one of those things,honestly, was like an best sales
tool you could have as arecruiter.
You share that with someoneduring the interview process and
they've got all the informationthey could possibly ever need
about the company.
And they know all about theinterview process is coming up.
They know sometimes whatquestions are going to be asked
of them in the interview, whatformat is going to be, it, it
(12:11):
just, it just, um, absolutelysort of.
Yes, it's not common practice,as you say, it's not, it's quite
rare still, but some companiesare starting to actually share
those interview questions withpeople in advance.
So there's a heap of likeamazing benefits there to things
like inclusion and accessibilityand diversity because you're not
sort of, you know, you'rereducing that, that opportunity
(12:33):
for bias as well in the process.
There's so many great things youcan do with these things, but
had access to all of thesethings with some companies and
life was easy, but also peoplethrived when they joined the
company.
And then I worked for some moresecretive companies that weren't
evil.
I want to say they're evil likethat.
They weren't intentionally likesecretive, but Employees in
(12:55):
those businesses couldn't tellyou what those company values
were.
They couldn't tell you whatfunding stage the company was
at.
I was having to go around allsorts of people, you know, at
leadership level saying, are weseries B or series C?
And they were like, well, Idon't really know.
It's not like it's complicated.
And so as a recruiter trying tosell that company to someone,
being faced with questions,you're like, I can't really tell
(13:16):
you this, but come and join usbecause it will be fun.
You can hire people, but.
You could see very, very easilythat people were leaving just as
quickly as they were joining.
So long story short, over 12years, I've had a very clear
idea in my mind, at least, ofwhat I think works well, what
creates healthy organizations.
And I've pulled that into howI've built my own ones as a
founder or co founder, and it'sworked well.
(13:39):
How I set up OpenOrg, I left mylast business scout at the end
of 2022, and actually didn'twant to set up another business.
I was pretty fatigued with beinga founder after like nine years.
So I became a candidate insteadfor the first time in 12 years.
And that was the light bulbmoment for me.
I was like, this sucks.
I like, I can't find out anyinformation on career sites.
(14:01):
Job ads suck.
Interviews, people can't tell meanything about job, like what's
going on, where the company is.
And there was a lightbulbmoment.
I was like, why does this suck?
And it was transparency andinformation and knowledge.
And that took me back to all theother stuff.
Anyway, I got chatting to my cofounder, John.
We've been friends for 12 years.
Really good friends.
(14:22):
Always talk about how work'sbroken and we'll fix it one day.
We don't know how, but we will.
And we got chatting, and that,long story short, led to
OpenOrg.
Kaleem (14:31):
Wow.
Wow.
Rick (14:33):
What a great story.
Kaleem (14:34):
It is.
It really is.
And what you were saying abouttrust, and transparency, I'm
sure you work with organizationsthat aren't fully remote or even
as flexible as others, but I'mjust curious in your opinion, Do
you feel like trust andtransparency is more important
(14:57):
in remote companies versus inperson companies?
I'm just curious.
What are your thoughts on that?
Adam (15:03):
I, rather than more important, it's definitely
healthier.
And I think, I can't remember, Ilose track of when I post about
this stuff, but I posted aboutthis the other day, was, you've
got people like Atlassian whohave talked about how much
they've thrived.
fully distributed all over theworld and so on and so forth.
For me, it's not necessarily thecatalyst for that.
It's not necessarily the factthat you're remote, but it's
(15:24):
about communication.
Remote companies by default haveto be good at communication.
They have to be good at givingtheir employees access to
information all over the worldso that they tend to have these
central places people can go to,to get things when they need
them without asking to acrosstime zones.
So.
They are very intentional withhow they allow people to access
information and that for memakes them, I don't want to use
(15:48):
the word better, but it makesthem better when it comes to
communication and how they sharethings with employees.
And then there's the trustelement there as well.
If you hire someone on the otherside of the world, and it could
be working completely differenttimes to you when you're asleep,
by default, you have to put yourtrust in them.
You have to show them.
A certain level of trust, andyou show them trust, you will
(16:09):
get that back from them as well.
So I would suggest as well.
There's definitely higher levelsof trust, generally speaking,
remote organizations who dogenuinely operate on a fully
remote basis.
And to a final point, thesestereotypical company that comes
to us or that we tend to seewhen we put, look, finding new
(16:29):
wikis or handbooks or knowledgebases that we can put into our
ones here.
to curate nine times out of ten,it's a fully remote business.
So there's a definite trendthere.
You know, remote companies tendto be the ones that document and
share and are more open.
Rick (16:43):
So in your experience, you've met a lot of different
types of people, you've workedwith a lot of different
personalities, you get a lot offeedback doing what you do.
In your experience, where do youfeel that people place the most
value in, in their communities?
Are they looking for more inperson events?
You know, are they looking for,you know, centralized support
resources like forums, differentthings like that.
(17:06):
What are people looking for?
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(17:27):
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Alright, well that's a bit much,but for you, I'll do it.
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(19:14):
And now, back to the show.
Adam (19:16):
I deal very specifically in the sort of HR and people
space, from a community point ofview.
So I'm probably little bit of abubble there.
But there's a, there's a cleartheme there in terms of two
things really, two core themes.
One is access to information andresources.
And again, I'm in a bubble here,but the typical persona of
person that we work with atOpenOrg tends to be someone in a
standalone or very small peopleteam in a startup or scale up so
(19:40):
they don't have lots ofcolleagues around them to bounce
ideas off of they often feellonely and isolated and they
don't have much resource aroundthem in terms of budget or
finances so that they're doingeverything on a shoestring and
they often are very verystretched and overworked and
they don't know where to go.
So.
From a community point of view,people want to be able to go
somewhere and access informationquickly, ask questions, get
(20:04):
answers back quickly.
So that, that speed of responseis huge from a similar sort of
network that also work in thatspace.
And then the secondary to thatis definitely the community
element.
I, so many of our calls that wedo on our programs with people,
whilst they might set out totalk about openness and
transparency in what you'redoing in your work.
(20:26):
They often turn into therapysessions, which is not great
really, but like the HR andpeople world is in this such a
state at the moment wherethere's so many people are
looking at changing careers,moving out of roles, you know,
they are, they've been throughlayoff after layoff, they're,
you know, pulled between pillarto post with like CEO to
employees and not knowing whereto turn and that a lot of them
(20:47):
are very burnt out and broken.
And, um, that support.
Yeah from communities is vitalas well, whether that's in
person or not, I think it wasmore like personal preference.
I like a little bit of both, butmost people tend to be able to
thrive on that remote communityset up now as well.
Kaleem (21:04):
Yeah.
I mean, people ops hasdefinitely had a tough, the
field of people Ops slash HR inthe past four years, it's been
very difficult, a lot ofpressure.
That's really cool.
Does Open provide any type of,community support for people,
ops, people like, like, or isthat something that you're just
kind of doing on a one on onesituation or are you starting to
(21:25):
think, starting to see, Hey,maybe these therapy sessions,
um, are, are, are valid and,and, and maybe we could start
offering these
Adam (21:34):
Like, yeah, honestly, we've talked about whether we
pivot into like an HR therapy,center or something like that.
Like it, it's, it's a weirdthing to say.
Yeah, it's a weird thing to say,like I, I, you don't want to be
having these conversations withpeople, obviously, like it's not
a great sign.
But it actually feels reallysatisfying to see people helping
each other out, leaning on eachother, you know, who have common
(21:56):
threads there.
And that's something that we seefrom like a bird's eye view.
From our side, we're speaking tolots of different individuals
who have these challenges, thesetroubles, these headaches.
And we see other people havingexactly the same ones.
So you're dealing with like a,you know, a narcissistic CEO,
or, you know, like, uh, uh, uh,uh, co co founders who just
won't work well together anddon't want to communicate with
(22:18):
employee.
You feel very lonely at timesand get sucked into this
problem.
And what do I do?
But we're able to see all theseother people who are having
similar problems and startconnecting them together.
And that actually feels reallygood to be able to do that.
So whilst it's not great to be,it's like, it is awesome.
And.
It's not a core part of whatOpenOrg is necessarily doing,
but actually it is sort of onehalf of it is we've got an
(22:40):
accreditation we work withcompanies on to help them drive
change around how theycommunicate and document, etc.
But we also run these L& Dprograms for people leaders to
come and do cohorts and bootcamps and they become part of
our Slack community off the backof that, which is very small at
the moment, but growing.
That is something that we'recontinuing to try and build
without turning it into like anHR therapy, you know, center,
Kaleem (23:02):
No, I hear you.
no, Congratulations, man.
The community is great.
And you Guys provide sometemplates and stuff like that.
So you are helping, you know, ifI'm stressing out about how do I
design, an interview process,you know, like I'm assuming open
org helps with providing sometemplates and you're collecting
all this information from allthese different groups.
(23:24):
So in a weird way, yourresources are kind of helping
alleviate some of thoseanxieties when you're a single
person.
That's how I, as a person whohas to do that sometimes, um,
that's what I really feel goodabout open Oregon as a resource.
So it's, it's, it's really cool.
Rick (23:40):
Hmm.
Adam (23:40):
it's, it's, um, genuinely like blown us away a little bit.
We're two, I don't want to saymiddle aged guys, I'm 34, but,
we're two guys in the UK, like.
Setting up this business lastyear, we genuinely thought let's
see how we get on picking upsome audience and, you know,
support in the UK and We haveconversations with people all
(24:01):
over the world who sort of say,follow you guys on LinkedIn,
love it, using, been using yourresources for the last few
months.
They've been, it's been so coolto like speak to people in
Australia and you know, HongKong and, US and like, you're
like, I can't believe it.
So the resources that like, lotsof them are curated.
So I always try and give creditto the companies who actually,
(24:22):
we're trying to pull themtogether for people to make them
easier for people to find.
We, and we have created our ownthings as well, which we hope
are useful, but it is awesome tobe able to sort of pull stuff
together, make it easier forpeople to find and help them
through some of the stuff thatthey're trying to do, even if
they can't get involved with uson a slightly deeper level, I
suppose.
Kaleem (24:39):
That's great.
Rick (24:40):
Fantastic.
That's amazing.
You know, these days everybodyseems to be looking for, feels
like the buzz word isflexibility, right?
Everybody's looking for a betterwork life balance.
Everybody's looking for a careerwith as much flexibility as
possible.
But companies aren't always asflexible as they say they are.
So.
(25:01):
What are some of the criticalthings that, that candidates
need to be on the lookout forwhen they're hoping to integrate
into, into better flexiblepositions, you know, what do
they have to do to get it right?
Adam (25:12):
Yeah.
It, like, honestly, it's so hardfor candidates and applicants,
like, to even ask questions.
It, before they've even gottento an interview, like, who do I
go and ask a question to, tofind this stuff out?
You can go and read.
Things like Glassdoor and stuffto try and understand it.
But you could spend an hourtrying to research one company
and people having to apply to athousand jobs at the moment to
(25:34):
even get a few interviews.
It's tough.
And you take things on facevalue and you see a few words in
a job advert.
You trust it, sadly.
But companies aren't clearenough about particularly that
word hybrid.
You know, I think you tend totrust fully remote, you know,
you tend to trust remote first.
And, you know, and you tend totrust on site, and some
(25:56):
companies are very, very good atbeing clear about this, but that
word hybrid and, you know, weoffer flexibility or we're open
to flexible working, however youwant to put it, doesn't mean a
thing, you know, you go, you,you hit apply, still not knowing
whether I'm going to be asked togo into an office once a week or
four times a week, and there's ahuge difference to that.
So things people should beasking for, and it's hard to do
(26:17):
it until you're in interview,but, I would encourage people to
start really, if they get tothat interview stage, really
push for some clarity on like,what is your definition of
hybrid working?
And actually, what is yourdefinition of remote?
Because there's a lot ofcompanies who talk about remote
and then they're like, Oh yeah,but you do need to come in on,
you know, Mondays because that'san important team meeting day.
Kaleem (26:37):
Right.
They don't even consider thathybrid.
They don't even they don't evenconsider that hybrid.
They're like, oh, no, no, no,we're fully remote.
But you got to come in like, youknow, twice a week for like what
the hell that's hybrid orwhatever.
Rick (26:48):
Hmm.
Adam (26:49):
um, so like just pushing for some real clarity and
definition of like, what exactlydo you mean by this?
And something we're trying toencourage companies to do is
just be a bit clearer atdefining this for people.
And one other thing that you canmaybe do to take that a little
bit further is if a company istalking about being remote or
remote first, or leaning moretowards that sort of slightly
more flexible way of working isjust trying to understand if you
(27:11):
can find any resources from themaround.
How they work flexibly and howthey work remotely for me, some
of the best remote companies ontop of what they give you on a
job advert, they've got an openknowledge base or wiki or blog
article about how wecommunicate.
You know, we default toasynchronous communication and
this is how we talk to eachother and share information.
(27:32):
And this is how you should lookafter yourself when you're
working from home.
Companies that.
invest time and effort intobuilding out resources, whether
that's on a blog, a handbook, a,you know, whatever, a career
site, you can take that as a bitof a signal that, okay, this
company takes remote workingseriously.
They've invested inunderstanding what it means to
them and how they can helpemployees to thrive in that
(27:55):
environment rather than I can'tsee anything.
And it just says remote, likethat is great.
It's remote, but you could alsobe heading into a business that
just does not look after peopleremotely and remote working
doesn't suddenly default to youthriving and, you know, doing
really well, it can actually bereally hard to do, to, to work
well in a remote environment ifyou're not used to it.
So that's the signal.
Kaleem (28:17):
Yeah, you know, Adam.
That's interesting that you saidthe research researching each
company's.
It can take you hours and you'reabsolutely right.
And I would say, you know,obviously you can't research a
million, a thousand companies ifyou're applying for a thousand
companies.
But I would definitely say, Ithink there was an article that
I was quoted in HBR where Italked about this of, of you
(28:39):
have to do your own researchregardless, like you can't not
do the research.
So I would say once you get theinterview request, I would say
that's when you dive real deep,you know, so that you're more
prepared in the interview.
And I love social media.
I, you know, that's what I kindof talked about.
Like what you were just saying,if a company is embracing
(29:01):
workplace flexibility and theydon't have anything at all on
their social media, if socialjustice is important to you and
you look at their social mediaaccount and go back during
George Floyd and there wasnothing posted during that time,
like.
You can kind of feel based onlike what you were saying on
their content that they'reputting out to the world,
(29:22):
whether they're fully behindwhat they're saying.
So unfortunately I think youkind of do have to dive deep.
I think there are some resourceslike the flex index I think is
starting to put out a lot ofgood information about how
flexible companies are.
But you're absolutely right.
I think doing research for everycompany that you're applying for
is difficult.
(29:42):
But when you get closer, doingsome of those things, like you
said, like, are they talkingabout workplace flexibility on
their blog?
Do they have a good careerspage?
Like, I think the careers pageis a huge, huge, um, you know,
it's a huge predictor of whetherthat company is fully engaged
in, in, in attracting the besttalent and stuff like that.
(30:04):
You know, company has a horriblecareers page.
Doesn't have anything about whatit's like to work there kind of
assigned to me personally.
that's, I think I agree
Rick (30:14):
Could be considered a red flag.
Adam (30:16):
yeah.
massive.
Like, yeah.
But the stereotypical careerspage has some like smiley faces
of people, thumbs up and saying,this is why it's amazing here,
you know, and I get that you'retrying to sell to people, but
People can see past that now andnine times out of ten, I think
people just cycle past thosesmiley faces and quotes because
they're like, it's going to besomething smiley and happy and
(30:38):
telling me why I should workhere.
I'd much rather try andunderstand like, what does a
tough day look like?
How do we handle failure?
How do we, you know, whyshouldn't I work here?
Like, it might feel negative tosome, but actually understanding
a little bit more about like,what, what am I coming into?
I think is probably one of themost powerful things you can,
you can do.
So seeing like a really, really.
Awesome trend at the momentwhere companies are starting to
(30:59):
embrace a much more balancedview of like sell versus repel
to try and help people selfselect out and think okay, you
know, you know what like This isa remote company, but this is
how they communicate andactually i'm not going to work
well in that environment Likethey're remote but i've got to
spend Six hours a day inmeetings, you know because of it
like that does all of a suddenyou lose that freedom.
(31:19):
So Some clarity around yourculture and how you actually
work Regardless of whether youremote or on site.
I think it's the key thing forme.
Kaleem (31:27):
Wow.
Fascinating.
I love that idea, by the way,like a Netflix.
We work hard, play hard, butyou're going to work 60 hours.
Just put that right on yourwebsite.
Not for me.
Rick (31:36):
Yep.
Adam (31:37):
There's a there's an amazing amazing guy Called Brian
Adams.
Not not not the one everyone'sprobably thinking of not the
musician but He runs an employerbranding
Kaleem (31:48):
with the raspy?
Rick (31:50):
Yes.
Adam (31:51):
This the other one runs an employer branding agency and he
he did some work with some hugecorporate brands.
I think he does some work withApple.
So he was telling us a while agothat like, yeah, a lot of work
to embrace the idea that Apple'smessaging to people is very much
like you will, you will get towork with some of the smartest,
brightest minds.
(32:11):
And that is a big, big pro, butthe con is you'll have no social
life, you know?
So like embracing what the harshreality of working here is and
actually accepting that somepeople will be okay with that
because they want to work withthe smartest, brightest minds
and build the best products.
And they're actually okay withnot having a social life.
Others are happy to self selectout of that.
So even big companies canunderstand and, you know,
(32:35):
embrace that.
Kaleem (32:37):
to Brian Adams, by the way.
Everything I do.
I do it for you.
Rick (32:45):
Now it cuts like a knife! But it feels so right.
Going way back on that one,folks.
Sorry about that.
Kaleem (32:53):
out, BA.
Shout out, BA.
Rick (32:55):
So, uh, Adam, can you tell us about a comical or inspiring
moment you may have had whileworking remotely?
Adam (33:04):
Yeah, and yeah, I do have one which was, uh, embarrassing,
to say the least.
So I, my last company Scout, um,managed to co found it and get
it up to like 70 odd peoplebootstrapped and.
hit something like four million,four million revenue in under
two years.
Um, you know, did, did well.
(33:25):
It, it was good.
So yeah, I'm like impressed.
I'm happy with that, but had abit of an embarrassing founder
moment.
Kaleem (33:32):
What you're saying.
Okay.
Adam (33:36):
What's that?
Sorry.
Kaleem (33:37):
I was going to say, so there's some pressures, you
know, you build up the company,you got to make, you got to do
important meetings with more andmore important people.
Right.
That's what I'm trying.
I'm trying to get a feel of theseriousness of the situation.
Adam (33:50):
We're just making it look like you know what you're doing,
I suppose, as a founder, Ithink, is the general, general
hope.
So, anyway, we, we, we, we wereremote, but I would say, like,
we were remote first.
We did have an office space inLondon.
I was outside of London.
People didn't have to come in ifthey didn't want to, but we got
together a couple of times ayear for socials and stuff.
So, anyway.
I was planning the social andlogistics, so I spent a lot of
(34:13):
time speaking to about 60 or sopeople about travel
arrangements.
Please book your train, please,please be an adult, book it,
look at times, plan ahead, thinkcarefully about your journey.
This is on you and we'll, we'llpay for it, but you've got to
book it.
So I spent about two weekstelling people they needed to do
this.
And then I had a trip booked upto London a couple of days
later, just, just to go up thereand see a few people and so on
(34:35):
and so forth.
I packed my bags, got to thetrain station early in the
morning and then realized therewere train strikes that day in
the UK and there were literallyzero trains running and they'd
been announced weeks, weeksbefore that everyone had them
and no one was at the trainstation.
So I was walking through thetrain station thinking like,
this is quiet this morning.
What's going on?
This is amazing.
(34:56):
Anyway, get to the platform andstand there and like, what is
going on?
No trains, no nothing.
And I'm stood there with my workstuff, my overnight bag.
And I jump onto Slack, and Ijust mess, I had to mess with
the team, I was like, I've spentthe last two days telling all of
you to like, be on top of like,booking your travel, be adults,
be, and I'm sitting therethinking I'm, I'm meant to be
like, running a, a relatively,you know, good business here,
(35:20):
we've done, and I can't even getmyself organized, so, yeah, the
downside of remote working forme is like, uh, yeah, when you
do have to travel, I wascompletely, the.
Unaware of train strikes andtravel and when you get so zoned
in on like just not having toleave home, you know But anyway,
that was embarrassing butcomical
Kaleem (35:39):
that's, a good one.
That's good.
Do as I say, not as I do.
Adam (35:45):
this is a test this was a test for all of you
Rick (35:48):
Right?
Never mind this, get back towork.
Kaleem (35:52):
as soon as I, got that slack and I'm one of your
employees, I'm like thismotherfucker.
Rick (35:56):
Ha ha Practice what you preach, man.
Kaleem (36:00):
I was like, good, good.
Don't tell me I would have beenlike, I would have been like all
emojis, like laughing emoji, youknow what I mean?
Like all sorts of shit.
Ha ha ha
Adam (36:10):
to To jump on Slack and make fun of myself, um, and then
walk home again and rebook myjourney.
Rick (36:17):
That's the trick right there, you gotta own it.
You owned it well.
Kaleem (36:21):
That's a quality story, sir.
Thank you.
Rick (36:24):
can our viewers and listeners find you, Adam?
Adam (36:27):
Yeah, I live my entire life on LinkedIn 24 hours a day
pretty much.
So find me on LinkedIn, connectwith me, drop me a DM.
Yeah, always posting andrambling and, you know, always
online.
That's probably the easiestplace to go.
Check out OpenOrg.
FYI as well, there's a, wetalked about it earlier, but
there's a resources page onthere that's got a heap of free
and curated resources for likeHR and people folks.
(36:50):
Um, so hopefully
Kaleem (36:51):
amazing.
It's amazing.
I love it.
That's why you're on the show.
I got sucked in.
I use some of the resources.
It's a good thing.
So shout out to you.
Keep doing what you're doing andreally appreciate you coming on
the show, bro.
Appreciate you.
Adam (37:02):
Thank you.
Rick (37:03):
Adam Horn, thank you so much for joining us.
It was great to
Adam (37:06):
No, my pleasure.
Thank you.
Kaleem (37:08):
Awesome, man.
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