We’d love to know a little about you Julia…tell us about your journey through the years in tech…
In terms of sector my career has been a bit of a winding journey but has always involved one thing- organizational culture. I started noticing the power of culture when I was working at Walt Disney Studios as an intern, it was quite early in my career. There I witnessed the passion that people had for what Disney stood for, and the impact it had on the world. While working on the growth team at Facebook, I saw that again — the most successful people there were the ones who were truly aligned with Facebook’s vision of making the world more connected. And then at Bain & Company, I recognized my own alignment with the culture — I felt like I could trust my colleagues with far more than slides and analysis. That’s also when I started to slowly understand the importance of measuring employee engagement. I went into full swing with the culture-tech intersection starting at LinkedIn, where I worked as the senior manager of global talent brand, and have continued that part of my journey ever since, focusing more and more on how to harness tech to enable the kinds of strong, healthy cultures that I’ve had the fortune of seeing first-hand.
We’d love to hear about your work and role at Lattice…?
My day is a mix of a lot of things, super diverse actually and quite full, to be quite honest. These days I’m trying to make a new practice team and figure out how we fit in with all of the Lattice stakeholders we have, as well as with customers. Thus, my time is divided between helping the team grow, establishing best practices, and continuing to lay the groundwork for where to focus as we continue to grow. I am also trying to grab as many opportunities as possible to get to know our customers better. My typical day might be concluded to: work on a best practices document, meet with a partner about a joint project, chat with a colleague from marketing or product, get pulled into answering a question about our POV for a specific customer, and then interview a candidate to grow the team.
What are the 5 best practices needed to foster a balanced organizational culture in this new normal?
- Stability is extremely important. The whole world almost is shaky right now, and we can’t change that. But creating stability in other areas is possible. It’s important to have a weekly all-hands meeting, even virtually, and provide a consistent cadence of listening cycles. I’d also recommend the CEOs to send an email to the team every other week. Organizations should foster behaviours that give employees a sense of being there for them, and with them, every step of the way, they should feel supported.
- Communication is the key to building a good level of understanding amongst the team. Overcommunicate everything. I once had a leader who said that until and unless the rest of us are sick of hearing what the company’s vision and goals are, he hasn’t done his job of communicating them well. Since many organizations are working almost entirely remotely, the need of communication becomes even more crucial; just because you said it over Zoom or put it in an email doesn’t mean that it successfully landed and sunk in.
- Engage in organizational active listening. We all know about active listening, where you say back what you’re hearing from the other person, and engage in collaborative problem-solving when it’s called for. The same needs to be done at the organizational level! When you ask your employees to tell you how they’re feeling and what they’re thinking, you need to engage in the same kind of active listening.
- Start respecting boundaries. Giving each other space is extremely important. Provide space for folks to introduce as much of themselves to the corporate environment as they’re comfortable with. For some that may mean PJ days, and for some, it may mean having nothing but virtual backgrounds on their calls. Leadership must give permission by setting an example, and then meet their colleagues where they are.
- Enable your managers wisely. There needs to be a balance between enablement and overloading. Listen for what managers need and work on ways to provide them with it. They along with their team know well enough where the real support is needed.
How do you see businesses have lacked behind in their employee practices in this new normal; also, share with us a few great initiatives you think HR teams in tech and B2B have taken to create better work cultures amid this pandemic?
In terms of what’s lacking, I do see a few trends.
There are two main groups of people in the corporate setting who are burning the candle at both ends right now: HR Teams and Managers. We need to find ways to cut both of these groups some slack, or at least we must acknowledge the enormous effort it’s taking to do their jobs. That includes acknowledging ourselves and indulging in self-care.
We can see companies pulling back from processes right now but on the contrary, this is the time to double down each one of them. Companies need to be giving folks guardrails for what is otherwise a very unpredictable ride. Set expectations, and then meet those expectations. In terms of some great initiatives to focus on instead: When there’s high uncertainty and little predictability, it’s important to keep up with (and respond to) employee sentiment. We’ve seen a lot of customers engaging with our Crisis Response survey, checking in with their employees and making real adjustments accordingly. I’d also feel it’s good for businesses continue to carrying out their experiments and see what works for their people; so far, some of my favourites have been four-day work weeks and CEO AMAs (“ask me anything” Q&A sessions).
As HR leaders try to meet the businesses’ needs of the new normal; what would you like to share with them when it comes to implementing HR Tech to drive business goals and strengthen policies keeping current challenges in mind?
There’s a yearning to do all the things at once. I should know…but any of our Implementation Managers will tell you that charting down a map and doing one thing right at a time is the best way to get employees bought in and actually derive value from your tech.
What do you think are some of the top tech trends and in-demand skills you feel will dominate HR and HR Tech in the near-future?
In terms of strategic importance people teams have been on a slow and steady rise in the last couple of decades. This year has seen a step-function increase in that trend. Suddenly, leaders are turning to their people teams and saying, “How do we keep our people engaged?” and “How do we keep our people productive?” Thus, my hope is to have the opportunity to keep People Strategy in the spotlight of Business Strategy. And the first thing that that requires is having the data and analysis to back you up: people analytics teams, tools, platforms. For some companies, that in and of itself could be a significant shift. But for companies that are already there with people analytics, I think there’s one more minor shift that can happen. If you think about all the functions that have had a lot more experience with analytics — Ops, Marketing, Sales, Customer Care – all of these functions are dialled into how their function drives revenue-driving metrics: growth, profitability, customer experience. But HR metrics majorly are about cost: cost per hire, cost of benefits. Even retention is typically thought of as a way to avoid the cost of hiring and onboarding someone new. But learning how to reduce costs is not business strategy, its business health – which is important but it’s not the same thing. So, if I was to predict anything, I would say that the next major focus area should be upgrading People data analytics that People Teams can use, similar to other functions, so that they can keep that spotlight and really drive their organizations’ strategy, not just health, beyond this year’s crisis.
Before we part, tell us a little about the employee culture and experience at Lattice!
I am very glad to report that the culture at Lattice is as phenomenal as you’d expect. Three top markers for me would be:
- Lattice prioritizes unity and operates from a place of humility and transparency. The two are very closely tied for me. We are all constantly trying to better ourselves and are open to the possibility of being wrong, so we share what we’re thinking and ask “what are is missing?” “how can we do better?”
- Customers are the top-most priority for people here at Lattice, from our Customer Care team to our Engineers and in-between. It’s easy to find common ground for how to move forward on any initiative given the value we place on the success of our customers.
- We believe in our values and try our best to live them. There’s not even a single day when we don’t mention one of our values in the context of strategy. They’re in our feedback platform (Lattice, of course), in our Slack channels, in our all-hands meetings. Values truly are a major part of our DNA.
Thank you Julia for answering all our questions!