​Recently, there was a short article in the Wall Street Journal regarding the monitoring, tracking and data-mining companies are doing with their employees. It’s a natural response to be alarmed, but in my humble opinion this isn’t anything new. The tools to collect employee data and Large Company Corp’s ability to interpret that data have evolved, but the act of making sure your employees are using their time on the clock effectively, efficiently collaborating, and/or not breaking the law has been happening for a long time.
 
Stoking some nervousness around the potential police-state you’re working in makes for a great story and cute animation, but there is another way to interpret organizations having all this data that errs much more on the positive side. One that relates to our thoughts around the ‘Consumerization of the Employee Experience.’ The move by companies to treat their employees (and their data) with the same intent as brands do. Personalizing, customizing and aligning the working experience to the individual’s expectations (stated or unstated).
 
Interestingly, there was a recent post on the app, Fishbowl, about a similar situation where IT flagged to a manager that their newest hire was actively searching for jobs a month into their new role and on company time - the manager was looking for advice on how to broach this with their employee. Not surprisingly a large number of comments on this post were about the IT team’s actions (most employers make it quite clear that they are monitoring you and make you sign a contract in acknowledgement - IT is just doing their job).  But there were also a handful of comments directed to the manager trying to understand what may have caused the employee’s unhappiness in their new role, asking why they wouldn’t use this information from IT to turn what might be a negative experience into a positive one.
 
That’s the key shift that employers, managers, leaders in companies need to make and need to prioritize. If we only use this new, rich employee data to contain, monitor and homogenize our people, we’re creating a terribly unbalanced relationship that fundamentally has no trust built into it.
 
However, if we use this data in ways to anticipate wants and needs, address nagging issues, build better processes and enhance experiences, we’re showing our people that they can trust us with their data, that we understand them on an individual, human level, and that we care about their experiences and well-being.

Tim Middleton,
Agency Director

Last week I attended Culture Amp’s second-annual Culture First Conference. I had high expectations based on reviews of last year’s event and was not disappointed! It was a great few days of community, thought-sharing and strong thought leadership from speakers like DeRay McKesson, Josh Bersin and Simon Sinek.

Here are some of my biggest takeaways on how to put culture, well, first!
 
It starts with hiring
To operationalize culture, attraction and hiring are your starting points. If your organization gets hiring right, the rest is easier - and pieces begin to fit together. This is not to say hire for culture “fit” to make everyone homogenous. Hiring for culture includes sharing your culture externally, discussing it in initial conversations, and asking questions during interviews that are not directly related to job processes. These questions should explore how the individual thinks, what they value and what truly matters to them – and then examine how that adds value to your organization.
 
It’s important to note questions about culture shouldn’t be treated like a test. There is not a right or wrong answer. People have different priorities, values and are not all seeking the same thing out of their career. That’s okay, because organizations also have different values and priorities as well. Apple is not hiring the same kind of person that Southwest is. The key is clearly articulating and raising awareness of what your organization values, so individuals can self-select and see if they envision themselves being successful and happy at your organization - and your hiring managers should be enabled to do the same.
 
It’s bigger than you
Culture is defined as the values and behaviors that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organization. Culture is unique to each organization. It’s not something you can copy and paste from another organization or build out of thin air.
 
Many companies fail to build a strong culture, as they see culture as a check-box, and not a priority. An organic culture is not something you can give a tagline and half-heartedly implement. It’s invisible to the eye, as it exists in the heart and minds of those who live it. When a culture is good, its seamless and hard to pinpoint. Its only when a culture is not working that you can feel it.
 
So, what are some things that can weaken culture? Claude Silver, Chief Heart Officer at Vaynermedia identifies secrecy, micro-management, negative bias, cynicism and fear as leading contributors to a weak culture. Many of these negative experiences can be tied back to one thing - a lack of a clear purpose.
 
People want an opportunity to be a part of something bigger than themselves. As Simon Sinek shared in his inspiring talk, people need a just cause.  “A cause so just that not only do people feel like they are part of something bigger than themselves, but they are willing to sacrifice in order to advance that cause.”  The just cause has meaning, Sinek shared. It’s what makes employees work hard, give their best ideas, sacrifice time away from family to travel, and builds trust and meaning amongst teams – a key part of a positive culture. What else promotes a positive culture of belonging? Transparency, communication, possibility and inclusivity are commonly identified traits.
 
You have to live it
Building a culture of belonging as described above requires leadership to walk the walk.  If you say leadership is open, what does that actually look like? To be authentic, organizations must put their values into action, and engineer them into processes and employee’s day to day.
 
It's easy to say you want a great culture, it's another to actually build it. Leadership is just one piece of the equation. You can have a poster of your values on the walls, but if that’s not the lived reality of your employees, it’s not an authentic culture. Your people are already exhibiting behaviors and engaging with each other in ways that can help you uncover the values of your organization. It’s those experiences and beliefs that become the blueprint for your expression of your company's culture.

That’s where Havas People comes in. We’re passionate about helping organizations build thriving cultures by empowering people. We have resources to help enhance all points of the employee experience to maximize the performance and happiness of your talent, including recruitment, on-boarding and internal engagement.

Jo Schopper
​Business Development Manager

On Thursday, June 6th I had the opportunity to attend and speak at the Wellbeing @ Work event in New York. It was an eye-opening day filled with exceptional speakers and interesting perspectives on wellbeing were shared.
​
Havas was invited to talk about Meaning in the Age of the Employee and how the consumerization of the employee experience is intrinsically linked to your people’s overall wellbeing.
 
Stay tuned for my next blog post where I’ll highlight some of our top-level thinking around that subject with some key thought starters worth mulling over!
 
Today, I want to share a few thoughts from the day that I keep coming back to. Things that were mentioned across a few of the different speakers’ topics that I believe are fundamental to employees feeling ‘their whole self’ at work and for employers to concentrate on when looking to build an environment where their employees’ wellness is a priority.
 
Homogenization isn’t just about looks.

As keynote speakers go, we were extremely fortunate to have Claude Silver, Chief Heart Officer at VaynerMedia kick off the day. Claude shared personal anecdotes about her journey with VaynerMedia and the steps she took to forge a career that matched her principles and allowed her to lead and build in the way she wants.
 
A lot of great content and advice was shared, but I keep coming back to Claude’s point about a homogenized workforce. It’s natural for a company that was founded by a few friends to grow and employ friends of those friends – then friends of those friends, but as growth increases that friend network can become very harmful to company culture, morale, and ability to innovate.
 
Now, if we park the inevitability that these employees will all most likely resemble one another and look at some other issues of ‘going with who you know’ we can see that all of a sudden you have a workforce that has a relatively similar profile. They have all the same reference points, they approach opportunities and problems in the same manner, and probably view the purpose, meaning and value of work in a pretty uniform way.
 
For a current employee, is this environment going to give them the confidence or freedom to shake things up and try something new – to be who they are, not just another version of everyone else? For a candidate, are they going to feel like they can add anything to your company, or that they’ll need to compartmentalize elements of who they are to fit in?
 
Essentially, it’s another way to look at the move from hiring for cultural fit to cultural add, but I would say we need to go a step further and begin to start hiring for cultural miss. What types of people are you missing in your culture, what types of skills, approaches, ways of working and thinking will unlock your people’s potential further? Every new hire is an opportunity to add a little bit of a change agent to the mix to keep pushing your culture further.
 
Rethinking indicative proof points for future performance.
 
I’ll preface this by saying, I’m not sure how many of us are ready to ditch degree requirements from our job roles, but when Annette Alexander of WP Engine and Ann W. Marr of World Wide Technology spoke in their session about removing degree requirements from a large chunk of their jobs, it made me wish that we could!
 
This is something that’s been on my mind for quite a while. I’ve been talking with friends and colleagues and asking them if they could do it all over would they have gone to their alma maters and studied the same subjects, gone elsewhere to learn something else, or even skipped school and just gone into the workforce sooner. Very unscientific, but these conversations have been interesting.  Very few people would have taken the same path they did. Most would have gone to different schools to study different topics, but a few (like me) would have been happy to just get right into the working world.
 
When I was looking for a job in advertising, the thought of getting an opportunity anywhere without a degree or some internship experience was crazy to me. But in the (relatively) short time I have had a career the whole landscape of advertising/media/content has shifted. Some high-school aged students have a better grasp on branding and forging meaningful connections with people than folks who’ve spent their lives doing that work.
 
And this is something we’re seeing across industries. There is this massive pool of self-starters out there who are being ushered into a 2-4 year holding pattern before corporations deem them worthy of contributing. This seems like a huge waste to me. Capturing their passion for work, for creating things, for building communities bigger than themselves shouldn’t be put on hold.
 
Every aspect of the working world is transforming today and will transform again completely in the next decade or so. If how we evaluate people, identify who can contribute, or even where we look for the next big hire doesn’t completely change too – we’re going to be training and hiring people to enter a workforce that no longer exists!
 
Walking the floor matters so much
 
Interestingly, this point was mentioned by a handful of speakers at the Wellbeing event – and it’s something I’ve certainly heard at other events and from some of my mentors over the years. Yet, it’s so important when creating a meaningful environment where your employees can feel healthy that it’s always worth mentioning again and clarifying what this is and what it should not be. As a leader, a colleague, a new joiner, or even someone who thinks they are the lowest rung on the ladder ‘walking the floor’ is one of the greatest things you can do. It’s about stepping outside of your work for a moment and appreciating your environment, your coworkers, and your place. It’s a moment to build camaraderie, to check in on a human level, and to celebrate, commiserate and experience all the wonderful emotions that come with being a human being!
 
It has nothing to do with making sure people are working, are at their desks, are getting their job done. We have other ways to measure and observe that. “Walking the floor” is the opportunity to foster community, to humanize yourself and your teams. To check in and show you care – and maybe get a little care back in return. It’s building that connection between others and yourself. A chance for everyone to show they’re not just automatons working away, but that we’re all people looking for a little extra love in a crazy world.
 
And this just isn’t about the people you are in the same physical location as. ‘Walking the floor’ with your remote workers is just as, if not more, important. Are you checking in with them in the same way? Are they able to virtually ‘walk the floor’ If needed in other locations or departments?
 
It only takes a few minutes to check-in with someone and wish them well – to show them you appreciate them. It’ll take much longer to invoke that appreciation if all you’re ever doing is asking them for work or work-related updates.
 
Tim Middleton
Agency Director, Havas People USA

Businesses require conflict to function. And conflict takes many shapes and sizes: delegating a task to a colleague, choosing who to promote, etc. These are essential to day-to-day operating functions, yet we often dread and run from conflict. This creates conflict debt.
 
Like most debts, conflict debt will get paid, but often it’s paid by those who don’t have the context to make an informed decision.
 
For example, consider that you’re a CEO for a retail company. Your CMO wants to collect demographic data on your shoppers and your CFO wants shoppers to sign up for credit cards. Instead of choosing one, you say yes to both, leaving your sales staff on the front-lines to make an uninformed decision on what to collect – they know your shoppers will not fill out a survey AND apply for a credit card. And all of this was because you didn’t want to tell your CMO or CFO that what they wanted was not a priority at that time.
 
Conflict debt erodes at organizations, because it erodes the trust your people have in your business. Coworkers count on each other to make hard decisions and deal with conflict. When it isn’t dealt with, it leads to higher burnout rates, greater turnover, lack of innovation, etc.
 
But conflict gets a bad rep. Many see conflict as the antithesis of teamwork, when in reality conflict is what makes teams. What is the point of a team if everyone is going the same way and there is no diversity of thought?
 
Think of a team of people pulling a tarp across a tent. They’re all trying to accomplish one thing – keep the tent from getting wet – and everyone is pulling in opposite directions to accomplish this goal. If a team member pulls too hard (e.g. is more powerful, is a loudmouth), then someone will get hurt. And people “let go” of their rope because they’re exhausted, they don’t feel heard, etc.
 
So how do you create productive conflict? It’s a team effort. Ask everyone on your team to identify what their unique “ropes” are:

1. What is the unique value of your role? What are you bringing to the table?
2. What are you representing? What defines success for you?
3. What’s the one thing that your role offers that drives everyone else nuts? (e.g. finance – “can we afford it?”)

 
Doing this will allow you to experience conflict as a role-based tension instead of a friction (an interpersonal experience).
 
For more info, read on here: https://hbr.org/2013/12/conflict-strategies-for-nice-people

March was a particularly jam-packed month for us at Havas People, as a whole host of events dropped into our calendar across the globe. And with a multitude of events, comes the opportunity of gaining further, fresh insight into the changing world of work and technology.

Our team in the UK were delighted to experience UNLEASH for the first time, followed by the annual Changeboard Future Talent Conference, while our team in the US attended both Workhuman and HR Transform. Additionally, our Managing Partner Danni Brace flew out to Singapore to complete the final leg of the Havas NextGen course - a year-long leadership journey that brings together 50 of Havas’ high potential leaders from across the globe and challenges them to become more team-centric, strategic and future-focused.
So on reflection of our particularly busy end to Q1, we thought we’d pull together the top insights that got us inspired last month. So without further ado, let’s get into it.

Using technology to embrace humanity
At this year’s Changeboard Future Talent Conference, speakers talked through their methods of using technology to support the growth of their businesses.  One speaker who impressed our team was Lucy Winkett, a Rector of St James’s Church.  She was inspirational, engaging and funny.  During her talk, one of the questions she asked the room to consider was “who are we at work?”.  She encouraged everyone to think about who they think they are, and who others perceive them to be. She then spoke about the ways in which human interactions can make our work fairer and explored how technology can help us to build a future which embraces humanity, rather than isolating us.

Being Human
So what exactly does it mean to embrace humanity? Albeit from different perspectives, both UNLEASH and Changeboard reinforced the fact that we are human beings not human doings. “Who we are” is not defined by our activities but by our beliefs. Not being robots is our gift, our USP. We are not machines. People are not to be optimized but to be experienced. Quite often, we don’t need personalized experiences, we just need personal experiences. Now that we have robots we have to retrain humans how to be humans, to embrace creativity, complexity and empathy – to become less like robots than ever before because we can never be better robots than robots. We need to reinvent the value chain with people being the differentiating factor, and so people working in HR/talent have a real opportunity to be the new meaning-makers.

Vulnerability is not a weakness
Across the globe in the United States, Workhuman keynote speaker Brene Brown built on this idea of ‘being human’ as she outlined how vulnerability is a vital piece of developing a strong workplace culture. “If you set up a culture within your organization where there’s no tolerance for vulnerability, no tolerance for failure - then there’s no room for innovation, productivity, or creativity” she said. When people are in an environment where they feel they can bring their whole selves to work, they feel more connected to their organization and a sense of belonging. This sense of belonging is vital to building successful teams and businesses. It also builds trust among employees, managers and leads to better work outputs.

Engaged employees drive business success
Moreover, at HR Transform we once again heard a spin on how employees are often the determining factor between successful companies and ones that never reach their full potential. Employee engagement is driving business through human capital. Successfully building an employer brand and engagement strategy aligns a company’s culture with its brand. This creates an authentic experience and allows you to easily train employees on brand purpose and what role they play in delivering on that brand. Investing in your people is the key to business success, and if you put a promise out there, it’s vital to ensure your people are ready to deliver on it.

And it seems the final module of NextGen did a pretty great job of raising awareness of all these factors across our wider Havas community.

The module focused on leading through a disruptive and ever-changing environment with a lens on the importance of building your organizational culture and talent to drive your strategy. One quote that particularly resonated with Danni came from Vishnu Mohan; ‘Customers will not love a brand until an employee loves it’ – and at that moment there were a few ‘aha’ moments across the group at the realization of why Havas People’s specialism existed within a comms group such as Havas. If you don’t invest in creating a positive employee experience why would you think your customers are going to have a positive experience themselves – your brand isn’t a thing in isolation it is the sum of every individual you employ – if they enjoy where they work your brand is more likely to succeed.

So what has attending these events taught us? It’s confirmed that building a culture that embraces the true essence of humanity - one that puts trust in people’s strengths and supports them with their flaws - allows them to make meaningful connections with the organizations they work for. And the result of this? Meaningful experiences for your customers too, and an inevitable improvement on your bottom line. Which is exactly why we do the work that we do, across the entire people agenda, here at Havas People.