The Edge of Work
The Edge of Work provides new insights and ideas to help leaders navigate the changing world of work. In each episode, we’ll talk to leaders, practitioners, and innovators to explore new ideas for attracting and developing talent, leadership, and workplace culture, all to help you lead and succeed in a changing world of work.
The Edge of Work
Best Hits: Improving Employee Retention and Internal Mobility Through Career Development
Note: This is a replay of one of our most popular episodes from S2 of The Edge of Work.
Nick Holmes is the Head of Career Experience at Fishawack Health, a healthcare organization based in the United Kingdom.
As the head of Career Experience, Nick’s role is to build an organization that not only attracts great employees, but develops them, retains them and provides them opportunities to grow so they can contribute to Fishawack Health. Upon taking the role, Nick had a bold mandate, which was to develop and implement a new strategy around career development and the transformation to enable it so Fishawack Health could compete for top talent in a very competitive labor market.
During this conversation, Nick spoke about the “why” for going under this massive transformation. Nick also shared some of the feedback that employees provided on the new programs, technologies and pathways, how they were able to change the culture and behaviors around career development in “drumbeats, not lightning bolts.”
Nick also spoke about how the various technologies and programs that were a part of the transformation engage and interact with employees, Nick’s own learnings to date from leading the transformation, as well as his advice to others who are thinking about developing and implementing a career development strategy for their organization.
Links:
- Nick’s LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickholmeslandd/
- Profile on Fishawack Health: https://fuel50.com/2022/11/talent-experience-fishawack-health/
Welcome to the Edge of Work podcast. I'm your host, Al D. This is a podcast for leaders who want to make sense of workplace trends and are looking for new ideas about how to lead people and grow their business in a changing world of work. During each episode, I'll bring you the latest experts, researchers, founders and leaders to share new and unique ideas, as well as actionable advice around attracting and retaining talent, developing people and building healthy and sustainable organizations. Welcome to the Edge of Work podcast. My name is Al D. I'm the host of the Edge of Work podcast and the founder of Better Work Labs.
Speaker 1:Today's guest on the Edge of Work podcast is Nick Holmes.
Speaker 1:Nick is the global head of career experience at Fisherwack Health and Nick is a pioneer, I would say, in helping his organization put career development front and center to better retain and engage an employee base.
Speaker 1:Fisherwack Health is in a pretty in-demand field when it comes to looking for talent and Nick's journey at Fisherwack Health. He's really helped them roll out not only new technologies but also policies and programs and really shifting the culture to one that really develops their employees internally and, as a result, they've had significant improvements in retention as well as making it a place where people want to come work, so this is a great episode to listen to if you're wondering what it's like to actually roll out career development strategies internally with an organization and how that can help lead to better employee experience and better outcomes for your business, so make sure to listen to Nick's story. All right, well, Nick Holmes, thank you so much for being here today. I always love starting off every conversation with a warm-up question and since this is a podcast about work, I would love to know from you, Nick, what was your first job and what did you learn from that experience?
Speaker 2:What a great question. So technically, my first job was working in a nightclub university in the beautiful town of Middlesbrough and now, being from the south of England and going to school university in Middlesbrough in the northeast of the UK, obviously I have to have my wits about me. So one of the things I learned I was serving in this I was a barman in this nightclub which is newly opened One of the first bits I had to learn was agility, because I remember quite vividly a local chat downing a bottle of WKD or VK and then wanting to throw it at me from behind the bar. So I remember like having to duck quickly for a second and then making good connections to big bouncer friends to come and help support you. I think is one of those things that didn't last particularly long for pretty obvious reasons.
Speaker 2:But after that, during the same sort of time I worked at Nando's, actually behind the grills, working under pressure, was one of the first things you know if you've ever worked in hospitality on a Saturday night. We've got hungry, hungry revelers. They need their chicken man. You've got to get chicken wrapped, burgered up out on the grill pretty quickly. So that was pretty awesome and introduction to the world of work, understanding how a fast-paced kitchen runs and then dealing with that under pressure on the hot grills as a student, yeah.
Speaker 1:So first off, shout out to Nando's. Definitely some great food and I was recently in Chicago and I actually, I believe I had Nando's and the second thing to say is yeah, yeah for sure.
Speaker 1:But the second thing I was going to say is that there are a surprising amount of guests who come on the show who asked this question to, whose first job is in the service industry of some time, whether it's working at a restaurant or working fast food or working in an ice cream stand and I think that there are just so many great lessons to learn from that, particularly if you are younger, in your work journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally agree, like grafting right, working, working hard, long hours on your feet, like you know. Endurance, working with members of the public, different people having to not even realising. These essential skills you'll need as you like you know, take your careers at different levels. Yeah, it's an awesome, awesome. It's a recommended to anyone.
Speaker 1:Well, you've had a come a long way in your journey since starting off at Nando's. And, I guess, to start, why don't you tell us a little bit about your role right now, what you do and maybe perhaps, what motivates you to do the work that you do each and every day?
Speaker 2:Yes, again, love this, love this question so my you know my, my business card reads global head of crew experience for an organisation called Fisherwack Health. So we are purpose in life is we imagine a healthy, a healthier world and create the connections to make that happen. So we have a number of different capabilities to do that, but what I, what I do in my role, is I try and make work as enjoyable, entertaining and fulfilling for all of our 1500 humans as possible. So from the moment you enter a organisation, from the moment you become an alumni, really I find myself, I want to make myself accountable to way the way you think and feel about work. I'm driven to do that for a few reasons and I think you know for me I've got a high purpose that goes, I think, beyond Fisherwack, for now, you know, within it.
Speaker 2:I love my job, I love my organisation, but I do want to change the way the world thinks and feels about work. And you know I've got a three year old daughter, so by my calculations you know 20 years. She's in this world of work. She's at Nando's or she's hopefully not getting bottles thrown at her in a nightclub, working there, but she's working in this world. How can we make it amazing for her and for the other children or generations to come, and not just then now, right. So that's kind of my motivation might get out of bed every morning filled with a lot of energy and passion and people to be able to do this, and it means we can start to play with some fun things for sure.
Speaker 1:Absolutely and certainly. Having a child and wanting to create a better world for her is a great, incredible motivation. But I just be curious is there anything in your own work experience that really inspired you to want to create a better world of work for more people, anything personally that happened or influenced you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love, yeah, so it's funny, let's talk after Nando's thing. And when I left university, one of my first sort of into starting on my career is a work of an organization called Magic Memories and they're retail photography. So they work in tourist attractions around the world taking pictures, making memories, and their whole thing is that we make people smile. Right, and I was working sort of front line selling on this point like interaction, customers selling them images of themselves and these pictures around crazy backgrounds like riding on sharks and penguins and things like that. And I just remember thinking like I you know, when you're engaging with people like that and people around you, we make people smile like this. The world that we live in can be so, so heavy, especially now, right, but even throughout, you know, there's always something, some disaster or crisis. And the second the thing we do most after sleep in our lives is work. So you know, we want to make that time as enjoyable, as fulfilling and making people smile as much as we possibly can, because it's too short not to.
Speaker 1:So it's just really from those my.
Speaker 2:You get it and I just.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I'm I when you say that.
Speaker 1:I'm reminded by the the late Harvard Business School professor, clayton Christensen, father of the concept of disruptive innovation and one of the top management and strategist thinkers of all time.
Speaker 1:But in one of his books, how will you measure your life, he talks about how he views management as these practice well, as the noble profession, and to illustrate this point, he tells a story about how, when he was a manager, he oftentimes would envision a world where he had a direct report and if he was a good manager, she could go home that day, drive home and when she got home, she went to her kids and her family and her family said, oh, how's your day? And she said, oh, it was a great day, and these are all the reasons why. And then he imagined a world where, if on a given day he wasn't such a great manager in the impact that had on that same woman, and envisioned her driving home, going down to her kids, you know, and going to the dinner table and her kids saying, oh, how's your day? And and saying it was. Oh, it wasn't so good. And that was something that always stuck with him and and really drove him to think about?
Speaker 1:What does it mean to be a good manager, leader, and so that story resonated with me with what you just said, because it does work to take up a pretty significant portion of your life and while not everyone may want it to be this amazing thing, it doesn't mean that we can't work to try to make it enjoyable for for those while that they are there, for those hours of the day 100%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, no one was to go home angry, frustrated the noise and then Related I love ones or themselves. It's exactly. We got a lot of power to change this.
Speaker 1:So I want to drill into some of the work that you've been doing at fishwack health, so could you maybe just start off with sharing a little bit more about what is fishwack health and why does this topic of career development in, and maybe even more broadly, employee experience matter so much?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. So we're, we're a, we're a health care agency. We work in the health care industry. Like we said before, we are on this planet to create connections, to imagine a healthier world. So what we do is we have a number of capabilities Consulting, we have marketing, we have policy value-advance and access medical communications. So what we can do working with the big pharma and health care industry to solve really complex problems, whether that's launching a new product to market or breaking into new worlds or markets, evp, all these kind of good things that we do and Because we are the way we are, people are our product right.
Speaker 2:So we, our services, is what we offer this really crucial, critical industry. So people are the number one thing that generates revenue in our organization because it's our services, our knowledge or expertise, what's in people's minds. So why 6p crew experience, employee experience is so critical? Is that not only a is our talent pool in our industry very shallow, so we've got to work hard to offer something pretty incredible so people come and work with us, but also we've got to keep them here, because once you get someone great, once you're in an environment and professional service Like we are one, two, three years of training, of knowledge, of education, of experience. It's so valuable as you move up sort of the organization that if you let that walk out the door you know it's really detrimental to our organization.
Speaker 1:So it's it's a huge priority for us as a business and a passion project for a lot of the team in the organization as well that certainly makes a ton of sense, and particularly around the knowing that you're In a market where you're competing for top talent and wanting to hold on to them, in the sense that there is a scarcity of talent, and the just doing the math in terms of being able to retain them and how that drives ROI as well as not having to go and search for new talent, and so that that component makes a ton of sense to me.
Speaker 1:I'd be just curious to learn a little bit more just about the some of the work that you've done, and I guess the the context of this is that I came across some of your work through an article in a recent talk that you did at fuel 50, which is an internal mobility Platform, that in terms of some of the career development programs and offerings that you have to retain that top talent, and so could you share just a little bit about how did this work kind of come about? It sounds like it started with some employee survey data that you took a look at. What, what is the context for, or part of the reason why Internal career development and broader employee engagement is so important to you and your team?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So I joined the organization May 2021. At that point, we had a blue ocean. We were about 800 employees with, today, 1500.
Speaker 2:There was a lot of opportunity, should we say, in terms of this big Organization, which had a blank canvas, to sort of upskill and put in everything around talent, talent development at the time there's just a wonderful lady working in professional development who retired at the end of last year and it was an opportunity to say, well, let's redesign the way that careers are thought about inside these four walls of this business. So what we did is we quickly scaled the lay of the land and we build a utopia. What did we want to do Last year? What do you want to do this year? We went with some pretty aggressive plans. We wanted to go through a big digital transformation of what the crew experience looked like, and that was a big, bold move, and what I mean by that is a the team is scaled, so where it was one when I joined, we're now a team of seven and 12 less than 12 months, and we also Improvented five global technology platforms across the organization in the space of about eight weeks last year. So we wanted to redefine that way that careers are thought.
Speaker 2:So we put in fuel 50 for internal mobility, using AI to define skill sets and how we progress people through your organization. We put in thrive LXP, which we use as connect to Connect the business together. We put in high-five with a world recognition system called Sarah. So no, you know it's no good. Just know what skills you've got. You've got to close them some way, shape or form. So last year, 2021, was that transformation. You're right. The other piece of technology put in was culture and to understand how people think and feel, and all different parts throughout the employee life cycle. So when you join us, pulsing engagement at different points and places, why people are leaving. So a combination of all those dates, these insights, analytics, that helps formulate where it is you need to spend your time and energy. And we knew if we invest in the right technology now, then over the next three to five years, we're in a position where we can scale and grow sustainably and also we can offer something pretty special to our employees over the next 218, 24 months as well.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of great nuggets in there and I think to, before we drill down into them, maybe one place to start, could you provide some context just with your employee base. We talked about a little bit in the beginning how you're in a competitive market. Top talent is hard to come by. You want to hold on, to retain them. But as I think about the massive transformation that you've been on, clearly there's a reason for it and part of that is because you want to retain these employees. So could you share a little bit more just about the demographics or the types of people that are coming into your organization?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, what wonderful human beings across across majority across the US and the UK, even though we've got some folks laying out of Singapore, switzerland, greece, island, etc. 1500 people and they're made up of very different skill sets. We have medical writers, we have creative minds, we have obviously your traditional group service roles HIT, finance, it. We have consultants plenty across our organization as well, and varying levels. So we have a mix of entry level roles, mid and then senior level roles as well across those organizations, each capability structure slightly differently with different levels of expertise. But you know specifically some of those very technical jobs and consulting, or in in our policy evidence access, or in medical fighting and and then those expertise zones.
Speaker 2:You know competition for those skillset which are you know, spot is pretty huge, so participating in it right is important, and we're not of us, we're not a big name of people. I'm just going to work for the name. You know, it doesn't matter what happens. We're going to work for the brand right. We're good, we're a good, great size in our marketplace, but it means we have to offer something really compelling for people. Yeah, right, so, and that has got to be what they experience from second minus one, joining us all the way through their career and how we make them feel is going to do the success, but we don't want to keep them on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And as a follow up to that, maybe what we can do to just even make this more real, because the transformation from a technology system perspective is pretty impressive for one year. But maybe to make this even real for the listeners, let's pick a person. Whether it maybe it's someone in a consultant, could you walk me through how they might experience the various technologies that you implemented through the programs that these technologies help you drive, or, in some cases, I'm assuming, like the courses or the functionality? But how does this impact that employee in a way that wants them to develop and grow and ultimately stay with you? Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:So imagine you've got to, say, take a project management function, which is very real. You've got project management across our organization. You've got a junior PM who wants to progress their career, doesn't know how to start, and you've got a manager who's relatively green as well, who doesn't really know what to do for that junior PM either. So you engage with fuel 50, you start telling the platform exactly what it is you love to do in your work, what drives you. The manager gets that information, can start to have a better career conversation. Through the platform, the employee targets a senior PM role and through that platform you can then see oh my gosh, those are the skills I need, I have today and those are the skills I need to level up in right now. I know the skills I need to level up in. How on earth do I do that? Well, what we've done is hooked in a Coursera course to every single skill that exists in fuel 50, thousands of skills, right? So what we've done then is that, as a junior PM, go, I need to improve agile project management so I can then go on to that skill, go directly through Coursera and start working more my way through that course, I complete it. I turn around to him and I'm like, hey, look, I want to be a senior PM. I'm upskilling myself in that and you can see that evidence through Coursera. Which point that senior, that manager, can go hey, great job.
Speaker 2:Now let's talk about mentoring. Is there someone in the in the organization you can mentor again through fuel 50, you're facilitating that conversation through high five, a recognition platform. You're rewarding that behavior. To that employee say great job on completing that Coursera course. Here's 25 points. That's 25 bucks towards an Amazon voucher, right? So these little nuggets and behavior drivers that are happening throughout the entire time and then that person gets promoted within a quarterly cycle that we offer that internally. So there's always these opportunities to drive and grow at regular touch points. Annual appraisals do not change behaviors. Annual performance cycles don't do anything to drive employee habits or behavior. They need to be more frequent, more relevant, more light touch and more in the moment, more just in time. So you enter through the platform that way and it drives all these different processes, policies as we go through. Now, look, we are less than 12 months in. We are embedding this wonderfully quickly, but we've seen 90% engagement across our platforms. It's been pretty great.
Speaker 1:Hey, there it's Al, and thanks for listening to the Edge of Work podcast. I wanted to take a quick break to ask you a small favor. I'm loving doing this show and I hope you're enjoying it. Unfortunately, it's still pretty hard to spread the word of podcasts and that's where I'd love your help. If you're enjoying this episode, I would really appreciate if you take a few minutes to leave a review and rate this podcast, wherever you get your podcasts, or simply just share it on social media or with your friends. I'm incredibly grateful for your support. Thank you, and let's get back to the show.
Speaker 1:I can definitely see, as you're walking through that experience, how this impacts a particular employee as they think about their employee experience within the company. So I'd be curious to know, as a result of the changes that you made, it seems like there's a lot of technology that comes with that, that makes a ton of sense and it seems like that experience for the employee. They're going to see that right away when they feel it. But, as you alluded to before, there was a cultural piece that came with this as well, and so could you maybe talk a little bit about how you are shifting the culture internally within your organization to enable not just the implementation of these technologies but in a way that people actually embrace them and perhaps even change some mindsets or behaviors around how they view developing employees or the employee experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, I mean, the very first thing I'm going to say on this is culture doesn't change with lightning bolts, it changes with drumbeats, right? So, and that's the only way, that's the only way you can change an organizational culture. There are no flashes in the pan. Now to the organization. Initially, when you say we did five pieces of technology and we literally launched these things within weeks of each other, that seems like big, heavy lightning bolts that flash out. But they're Trojan horses because, all of a sudden, what we've done we had 800, there was about 1000, now we're 1500, different agencies from different ways of working, doing things differently all of a sudden we've got consistency across the board. Now, once you start implementing consistency and you know you've got the tools, the education, technology that's going to see you grow and scale over the next two, three, five years, you can then make these initial drumbeats action. So now we've got a consistent way we talk about careers. Now we've got a consistent way to our performance management cycles. Now we know what we're talking in, a common language, common skillset around our behaviors, which are baked into every single role. Now we're starting to talk about jobs at the same pace when it comes to responsibilities and descriptions as consistency.
Speaker 2:And the key isn't just going and this is what brings a lot of organizations down. I've done it, it's in and now I'm like I'm just going to sort of sit back and maintain that and maintain that and it's like that's the easy thing is putting something in. The hard thing is making sure you stay really bold and strong to the vision of that technology, that culture, that mindset that you're trying to create, because the drumbeats make change. It's the Simon Sinek conversation where he says there's not one action where you fall in love with your partner. It's a series of showing up, buying flowers, going on dates, laughing at jokes, it's all of that that creates a culture. But you've got to set the tone for that and as a team, what we've done is we've sort of we've ramped up the humanized touch of this. So we are incredibly responsive one on one workshops with managers and employees.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter who's in the organization. If you need time, you get the time. The education, constantly building tools, iterating. And now the key thing is feedback right, constantly getting feedback and not taking it, as you know, because when you implement a system, platform or any initiative, you become very personally attached to that. So when you get feedback, you're going oh, that person just didn't use it or didn't do that right, but actually it's going, no matter how constructive it becomes, even if you feel it's a bit below the line. It's like, no, thank you, like let me use that and then keep telling the business how you're using that feedback to improve things. And every single one of those things is a drumbeat. Right, that's that's what's going to help change culture.
Speaker 2:Are we there? Are we at Utopia? No, we're 12 months in, like less than, but we are definitely on the path to that and it's exciting because you start to see it come through right. So when, when you know, a year ago, the number one people reason, reason people left was because of career development, was because of not skills not being utilized, that's no longer the case. Right Now it's moved on to salary benefits, personal things that are going through. The number one reason why people are joining us is because of their career experience, opportunities that they have an offer now, and that's in a very short space of time that we've turned the tide. Retention is now going up. Like all these things, you start to see the fruits of the drum beats, the tune that starts getting played and the rhythm you start building in your organization, and rhythm and momentum in organizations is so, so powerful, right so? And it's about generating that rhythm to change the culture.
Speaker 1:So you talked a little bit about the feedback and getting that feedback as a means to fuel further opportunities to develop and grow the programs. And the technology Would be curious what are employees telling you about what you've rolled out or the different, whether that's from a technology perspective, from a policy or program perspective? How are they been experiencing it? Or what have you learned from the conversations with employees?
Speaker 2:Oh, we made this calculate risk. Whenever you put you put in four, five technologies in a global organization within a space of weeks, it's like whoa, that is a lot right. So you inevitably got this feeling of overwhelming. But by doing it this way this year, it's like everyone knows what the name of them familiarize and how you embed rather than going. Here's one this year, then next year, and then, oh gosh, the world and the markets change. We no longer need that. We're no longer relevant. It's about going.
Speaker 2:We know that this is overwhelming, but look at the benefits you're now getting that you never had before. And once you break that down for individuals and people that actually start to go, oh my gosh, yeah, look where we are compared to where we were a year ago, where I had nothing. And now look what we've got. We've got this real cool open, this real cool opportunity to take in and tap into all of these exciting new resources. And so when people get over that initial oh gosh, overwhelming, actually then start to go into oh gosh, like wow, actually, yeah, I can get hold of this Now because you've got different demographics in the organization, new people, you've got people who've been here, lots of tenure. You know, we started to see that experience for new people really skyrocket and go through the roof, whereas people who've got a lot more for change fatigue maybe they're like I've seen it, I'm gonna need a little bit more convincing, I'm gonna need a little bit more time. Do you know what I mean? So, but overall, we're stoked with how it's been received internally.
Speaker 1:One of the things that you mentioned earlier in passing was just the sum of the work that you did with managers to help them adopt these new technologies and programs, but also to have a I'm assuming to have a role in this process. Could you share more about just your own or your company's philosophy on the role that managers play, I guess, both in the employee experience but also, more specifically, within career development for their employees?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the line, the managerial line in organizations is the most critical line, most critical line that we can ever hope to support and get our arms around. They are pinched through deliverables, through work. They've also now got to think about how they maintain well-being of their people as well as their careers, and you've got people who've been managing for years and managing for five minutes. So one of the ways we can and we address it early and we'll continue to really hone into this over the next 18 months in particular is just as much education support as these people need. You build it and you design it. It doesn't matter what it is, you just do it.
Speaker 2:So, whether that is micro grab and go, is that we've created one page of checklists more deep dive e-learning, more deeper dive SOPs, building a community of leaders and managers who can share their thoughts and their ideas and their challenges together. Her capability, her function, her department. We've done that and will continue to do that. So, is that over? Or I'll talk about for the future of employee experiences in hyper drive. Is this hyper human touch for managers that we need to just do to then support them with whatever the material looks like, we design it.
Speaker 1:So the role of the manager. I definitely agree that you can underscore it enough in terms of how important it is. One of the things I would love to hear from you a little bit on is that I know from my own experience working with organizations and also having been an employee in an organization, a lot of times when an employee and a manager have a career conversation or talk about career development, often what is defaulted back to, for better or for worse, is this idea of career development equals a promotion or a race, and while a lot of times that they can for sure, I think there are probably more expensive ways to think about that. I would be curious to know how do you view career development in your organization outside of just those things, or what's kind of the approach that you've taken or try to create so that not so that people can't get promoted because they think they still need to, but to maybe think a little bit more expansibly about what career development looks like.
Speaker 2:The reason why we steered away from like. So we're, in January, rebranded the whole team to career experience, right, so that's why we are what we're called, because we want to think of careers and feel 50 as a great way of talking about this, as portfolios, as as experiences that you encounter when you're doing the thing you love Now, a development opportunity or an experience, as we like to coin it. Yes, you've got promotions, you've got raises, but actually going on wild excursions, experiencing different relationships or comments for whether it's a day, an hour, three weeks, three months, six months, all of these things add up to experiences and we know through research that the more experiences you have, the higher the uplift in your fulfillment, the happier you are, the more likely you are to stay, to keep coming back, and you need those jolted experiences regularly. You know promotions, raises for most organizations happen once a year and and promotions quite hard to get and they're not always transparent. So baking much more transparency into promotion, tying it into skills, clear pathways, absolutely.
Speaker 2:But you can craft experiences internally now, with with no resources, just by introducing different people and opera, opening up different work. When I was at a previous organization I even started a cross company experience, you know program where you take a piece of talent and it's risky in your organization, connect with another organization to spend two weeks over there right just to learn and get skills. Then come back and implement what you learn, not in competitive market and something different, but offering something that's going to stimulate the difference to experience using different skills. That is what career development is all about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think the one of the things I've always believed is that there was a lot more there than than what we just talked about in terms of promotions and raises, and I think it's just part of it. Which you seem to have done is to help people think more expansively about it, but then certainly to put in some of the tools and processes and programs in place to enable it to happen, and there's there's work that needs to be done to do that, but I think what you've proven is that it is possible to in fact, do that. One other thing I wanted to ask you about and to to get your feedback on was one of the things that strikes me just about what you've been able to put together, particularly with all the technology that you have. If I think about just how we, as consumers, just use technology right. So take for a second of just the food you order from your food delivery app, the Uber you order to take you around town, your Gmail or your email, for that matter. All of these technologies and apps. They have all this information on us and they give us feedback back constantly that we can use or choose not to use.
Speaker 1:And what strikes me about what you put together with your technology stack internally is you've kind of conceptually done the same thing, in the sense that your employees now have these feedback loops to get more, to gain more insights about either what they are doing, what they could be doing or what else they could be doing. And I think what's interesting about that is, in my experience, at least with respect to career development there's a lot of people out there who do want to grow or do want to develop, but they don't know where to start, and sometimes all you need is a prompt, and so I'm just riffing on this here for a second. But what strikes me about the technology stack that you put together is that you're basically giving these pulse signals to people to kind of say, hey, have you thought about this? Or hey, here's some behaviors that you're driving. Could that lead to something else? And so I could see a lot of potential value in that. Does that resonate at all?
Speaker 2:100%, it's the environment you create as an organization that enables your people to be successful. And it's exactly the same thing. If it's hard for me, right, it's the path of least resistance out there. If it's hard for me to go out and move my career and it's easier for me just to go on LinkedIn and apply for another job, I will apply for that other job. But if it's easier for me to just go, I can do a course. I've always wanted to learn photography at the weekends.
Speaker 2:100%, you can do that for us, right. Well, actually, you know, I want to reach out to I've never I'm in client services and I wonder what being consultants like. Well, actually, we've got whole mental hub of consultants you can speak to instantly, who is super responsive, that give you the advice. And also we've got a human career experience team that says email any one of us. We'll not only talk, all you, all you write back. We'll design something for you.
Speaker 2:We've started this initiative where we're calling everyone at two years. So if you start, if you hit your two year tenure mark, one of our team just calls you and says how are you? Are you getting everything you need? It's about creating that environment where, as an employee. I want to know that I matter, I want to feel validated and I want to reach out and just get it, and managers then can help and take some of the burden off. Going God, now I've got to open up my PowerPoint deck. I've got to create this plan for you, which is now out of date two weeks later. How do I do it? Oh, I'm just going to. It's too much. It's too much resistance, the hill is too steep. No, like we want to flick the boulder down the hill and push it up Right.
Speaker 1:So there are folks out there listening to this podcast who they look at what you're doing and they think to themselves and, because they're leaders, I would love to do that in my organization. But where do I start? What advice do you have if there's someone listening out there who wants to find a way to build, have a career development strategy or maybe even eventually go on some kind of technology transformation to enable it? But what advice do you have to them on either how to get started or how to how to frame this right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, I've. You've got a first and foremost like big piece of paper white boards. Write down everything you think you'd love to do within your organization, right? So big picture thinking, or write it down. How have you take notes listening? If you're listening to this podcast, you're obviously wanting to further register yourself and upskill. That research is going to help you. So, whatever it is, whether it's that one nugget or that thing, first of all write all the stuff down that you'd love to do and put that on a big picture and abort right now.
Speaker 2:Take two of those things you think that are the most realistic to get across the line in the next three to six months little things, small drum beats Remember, drum beats, not lightning bolts is what's going to change this? Now look at the thing. That's the part. What's the easiest thing to do right now? Right, and that might be creating a talent mobility philosophy for your organization. A document, two pages. What do we sign up to? What do we believe in? What can we do now? It might be creating a pulse check, for your organization says how do you want your careers to be seen? Right, use Microsoft forms, gmail, whatever it is.
Speaker 2:You don't have to spend thousands on digital transformation to make a start. Once you're getting data, once you have research and creative ideas and big ideas, let your passion take over and don't take no for an answer. If you get, if, just because we get the first hurdle, it's interesting, it's fascinating reading the book, effortless, in a minute. We want something from Google. We stop, we stop after we find the first, the very first thing we think looks real right, I need to know how long does squirrels live? For? You know, I see something on a squirrel, so I'll stop there, but I won't have another look, or another look. It's to ask another question, do another piece of research and that helps formulate this argument or the story that you're building your mind. You don't have to have the big, flashy PowerPoint decks. You just got to start. Keep it simple, keep it attainable, measurable and do something in the first three months. Don't wait a year to do something. Just start, do it.
Speaker 1:So it sounds like you made a lot of great progress so far. I'd be curious to know what is next for you and your team for the rest of the year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we, we. So, as we've rolled out global plans across the organization, we have this huge desire to be hyper personalized, hyper healthy, hyper human in what we're doing and over the next 12 months we are building what we're calling capability personalized career blueprints. So every single person has this personalized, beautiful architecture, built journey, these wonderful career maps that hook into every skill possible for that role, ready for 2025, for big scale and growth, and taking the organization on that journey.
Speaker 2:So hyper personalization is where we're at next year, because we've got the technology to do that and to deliver that. It's about embedding that now drumbeat, drumbeat, drumbeat and just making sure we deliver it. It's an exciting time for the team for sure.
Speaker 1:It absolutely is Okay, nick. Now we're at the part of the podcast where we get to do the speed round, so I got a couple of questions for you that I'll just ask you rapid fire, if you're up for it. I'd love to dig into these last couple of questions, yeah do it, let's do it. Awesome, all right, great, okay. So first one yeah, what is one thing that you'd like leaders of organizations to do in order to make the workplace better for their people?
Speaker 2:Listen, truly listen and actually understand what the understanding gap is. So what you think is not the reality right. Understand what your people really need by listening more. Stop talking.
Speaker 1:Who is one leader who has had an impact on your life or career?
Speaker 2:I think I've got to go back to Magic Memories and a guy called John Weekstrom who was the founder of that organization, who who made people smile, he's. You know I owe a lot to that guy. He's a Kiwi who has the biggest dreams and there's the most charismatic plate you've probably ever met in your life. So he, for me, is a big influence, always a big influence.
Speaker 1:That's great, I love that Okay, and last question for you what does a better world of work look like for you?
Speaker 2:No matter where you come from, your belief system, your race, your ethnicity, no matter where you are, who you are and what in the world, the minute you step foot in an organization, you feel like you're home, you feel like you belong, you're included. That is the most important thing we need to achieve. And once you're in that organization and that you feel like you belong and you feel like you're at home, you never want to leave. Right, because you have the opportunity to do all the things you imagine. And when you do leave because I use the analogy of a house right, you can, you can be the most amazing house, but you're in a studio and you love it, but you want to move to a two or three bed. When you leave, you look back so fondly that you tell other people to go and live in that house and you sell the house for them. I think we have to do that. We are out to ourselves. The future can be amazing, can be incredible, but we need a couple more drum beats to make that happen.
Speaker 1:What a great way to end the show, nick Holmes, the global head of career experience at Fisherwack Health. Thank you so much for coming on the Edge of Work podcast. It's been awesome to chat with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll apologize, mate, absolutely brilliant. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Hi everyone, al D here. Thank you so much for listening to the Edge of Work podcast. If you like what you heard, encourage you to share the episode with a friend, as well as to head over to Apple Podcasts to leave a review and let us know what you think. I would be forever grateful if you did that. I would also love to hear directly from you about what episodes you're listening to or any suggestions you have for how we can make it better. You can find me on LinkedIn.
