-- INTRO --
Chris Moriarty
Hello, one and all and welcome to the Workplace Geeks Podcast, the podcast on the mission to unlock the world's most fascinating workplace insights. I'm Chris Morty, and Ian is somewhere in the out. So today's hosting duties fall squarely. On my shoulders. Now I'm recording this right in the middle of the summer holidays.
So all the Workplace Geeks are taking a well deserved break and recharging their intellectual batteries. So I thought this would be a great time to bring to you some conversations that we've had with some very smart folk back in April at the Office event, which is a co-located event with the water cooler, which you might have heard of, and that brings together the worlds of workplace experience and wellbeing into one.
Two day gathering. I have to say the speaker lineup this year was superb. Now, there was some familiar names on the roster past guests like Esme Banks Marr of BVN, Leah Jones from GPA, Chris Higgins at GSK, uh, who you might remember from our recent Workplace Geeks webinar. We had Kasia Maynard at the WORKTECH Academy was on the stage.
Caroline Pontifex from savis. He might have even spotted me up there a couple of times, chairing some panels. Anyway, look, I could go on, but whilst we were there, Ian had the chance to chat with some of the speakers about their talks and panel discussions, and more generally due the fact about all things workplace.
So let's get straight into it with the first of those interviews, and this one was with Matthew Blair, who's the principal at BVN Architecture. Yes, the same BVN as friend of the show, Esme Banks Marr, Matthew leads BVNs, London and Europe Studio, overseeing projects across sectors including workplace, public buildings, education, health and life sciences, commercial urban design, and residential.
He relocated from Sydney to London to grow BVNs presence in the uk and he joined me and as me on a panel that was looking at sustainable design. So we grabbed him after and stuffed him in the pod with Ian.
-- INTERVIEW --
Matthew Blair
So my name is Matthew Blair. I am an architect. And a principle of BVN, which is an Australian founded architectural design strategy practice.
There are about 300 or so of us, and we've done work across Australia and around the world and here in the uk. So you're like a far-flung traveler. I've always liked being a far flying Trevor in my time at BVN. I've actually worked. In a whole range of different countries doing different things. I prefer it to just sitting in the one place sort of part of my nature.
Ian Ellison
I think as a Brit, it astonishes me that you'd ever want to leave that beautiful, sunny, warm, resplendent place that is Australia. And yet here you are. And yet here I am. How does that work?
Matthew Blair
Different reasons. It's an adventure. It's always interesting just going to different places, I suppose, and seeing different things and having a.
Peripatetic nature means you're always kind of looking for the next place to go.
Ian Ellison
So tell me about BVN in the uk. What do you specialize in, what you about? Is it the same globally or is are you trying different things in the uk?
Matthew Blair
So we, as a large architectural practice, we tend to work across all built environment sectors and all stages of projects.
We. Perhaps a little bit unusual that over the years we've had some explorations in doing different things. So for instance, at the moment in our New York studio, we don't do traditional architecture anymore. We have a product called Reply. It's a SaaS type service. Really? Oh. Where we design a product, which is an outdoor enclosure for restaurants in Central New York that we design, manufacture, install, maintain.
De-install, refurbish and store because in New York has these newish post COVID rules where, uh, you can have an outdoor covered space over summer, but not over winter. And our time here in London, in the UK is also a bit of an exploration where focusing here primarily on health. But also research life science type facilities, but always with an eye on commercial.
Ian Ellison
Interesting. And you work with friend of the show ESMI Banks ma, correct?
Matthew Blair
I do. I have that pleasure.
Ian Ellison
And you've also been on stage today with her and with Chris Morty, fellow Workplace Geek. So what were we talking about and why is it important? What was the topic of your discussion today?
Matthew Blair
It was a very big topic, uh, related to sustainability in the workplace and how that connects to ESG.
Now you would say that sustainability and the E of ESG are conceptually the same thing, but when you go beyond that, what else is there? We spoke about a whole range of different things and the challenges for organizations, whether they're a building owner or an occupier, a tenant, a provider of services, FM or an architect, what does that mean to create a sustainable environment in the workplace for the workplace?
And that very large topic moved on to a bunch of things about longevity, carbon and design.
Ian Ellison
But you mentioned a bunch of different stakeholders who all have a vested interest in this thing, this subject, ESG, but also it's a system at work, right? Would you say it's complimentary? Would you say the different perspectives create tension?
Is it, is that a good way to start thinking about it?
Matthew Blair
Well, we're all trying to get different things. However, everyone's heading in the same direction by and large, but various individuals or organizations, incentives or comes do very little bit and that can cause conflict. If I speak to design and architecture, and one of the challenges or one of the opportunities, dare I say it that we've seen here, is we tend to design from the person or the human or the the ecosystem out, whereas.
Dare I say it, some of our colleagues, competitors here tend to design from the architecture down. So capital a architecture, and that in a design for workplace sense tends to mean that the person occupying that space ends up with what they're given rather than necessarily what they need or want.
Ian Ellison
That's a classic tension within workplace design when it comes to functionality and.
Whether it's aesthetic first or whether it's human first, I guess, how does that unfold when you put an ESG lens on it?
Matthew Blair
I think one of the big challenges you have there is. When ESG requirements suddenly make everything more complicated for everybody and from the person who is using that workplace or visiting that workplace, suddenly there's all these layers of complexity to achieve that outcome.
As an architect and designer, if you are ticking boxes or as a building owner. Satisfying legislative requirements and ticking boxes. Or as an FM provider who is trying to make sure that the bits and pieces are maintained and provided that tick, all these boxes suddenly have a whole bunch of people ticking boxes rather than necessarily thinking about the experience or the long term sustainability of the place and the elements of that place.
So what does that mean? Uh. That means that if you design holistically, which is bleeding obvious, you can perhaps tick a lot of those boxes on the way through without having to focus on just ticking the boxes. The boxes aren't the outcome, obviously. They're helping people get to an outcome.
Ian Ellison
Well, you would hope they weren't the outcome.
You would, they can become an outcome you would hope,
Matthew Blair
And that can be very challenging, that you don't end up in a situation where you cut other corners to achieve ESG goals. You need to actually achieve all your goals, including ESG goals, because actually they're the same thing in the end.
Ian Ellison
There's a parallel here for the main pod.
We were discussing with Kay Sergeant from HOK about neuro inclusive design off the back of her book launch Neuro Inclusive Design. Almost being, well, if you design with that in mind, you tick so many other boxes just by doing that because it's for the greater good.
Matthew Blair
If you step back a little bit from neurodiverse design to universal design or universal access, suddenly all sorts of things open up and here we are in.
The Excel center before the panel we were just on, if I can share this with your audience, I had to go and pee and here in this building I had to go down a bunch of flights of stairs. Correct. Now. I was gobsmacked by this. It's extraordinary in a building of this age, of this type with this function, that this is how it works.
Now that's a failure of design right there. And I suspect for the operators of this facility, they're in a problem where they know they need to fix it, but it's gonna cost them a huge amount of money because this building, um, in its current format is almost getting to the point where it's. Sellable to its market because you're like, what?
What are you talking about? It's basically crap. Dare I say it. So that's about universal access. Now that's not about disabled access or neurodiverse access, or ambulant access or whatever it is. That's just basic access.
Ian Ellison
Hmm. Okay. Right back in the ESG direction. Hmm. So, for somebody who wasn't at your session, if we were gonna do three takeaways, and let's be a little bit cheeky and say, let's have an e takeaway, an S takeaway, and a G takeaway.
Where does that take us?
Matthew Blair
Okay. The big ones, uh, challenge about embodied carbon versus operational carbon, which means designing for the long term.
Ian Ellison
So in plain English, that means when you do anything, when you refurb, when you design something new, think about
Matthew Blair
That means that you want to use less stuff and use it for longer.
And if you can reuse it. So circular economy principles and circular approaches to, um, furniture and other parts of buildings is important there. So that, that, that thing that was pulled out of the ground or chopped out of a tree or whatever it may be, has a much longer, much longer life and that the investment in it.
Pays off for longer. I don't mean the financial investment, I mean the carbon investment into that.
Ian Ellison
Does that, that's the e. Does that mean asking slightly better or different questions when you're doing your research?
Matthew Blair
It means that the financial model of turning buildings over at the end of every lease needs to evolve, which means that organizations playing off this building owner against that building owner.
So that we can move every 15 years or 10 years or whatever it is. Is that the best way of delivering on your ESG goals? Mm-hmm. Because the typical argument is this new place we're going into is in itself more sustainable because it uses less, uh, operational energy and has less seas from furniture, that sort of stuff.
Like it's a healthier place, but you've just created a carbon cost by moving. Now we can get kind of lost in the accounting of all that a little bit, but as a headline, the idea that you design for longer and you use less stuff is the headline.
Ian Ellison
Okay. Other headlines.
Matthew Blair
So in the S is that places that are well designed and that are sustainable and do all those other things we were just talking about and are pleasant to be in action.
Prove people's lives and a happier person is a better person in their community. And so companies that invest in their people to create places for their people that, uh, help them to, dare I say, thrive, are actually helping other communities at the same time. We talk a lot about optimism in our practice, that an optimistic approach to the work that we do and the way that we interact with our clients and collaborators, et cetera.
That is what gets you good outcomes. So if you can become, help everyone become a little bit more positive, a little bit more optimistic, that helps your s.
Ian Ellison
Okay. And I can see a theme here, so, and onto the GI
Matthew Blair
know. Now, do I have anything for the G? So G, I think you touched on it before, Ian is the fragmented nature of all the different people try and do different things.
So we spoke briefly at the end there about different ratings, tools and the challenges. You know, you've got well, or BRE or lead, et cetera, green Star in Australia, neighbors, like all these different kind of tools and what does that mean? The tools are incentivizing change, but they are not the outcome that you, you're looking for.
They're helping you to get to a more sustainable outcome, but the governance structure around what we do tends to head towards the box ticking. So how do we at a governance level, step back from the box ticking and focus on actually achieving the longer term holistic goals?
Ian Ellison
And how can the person in the organization, or on behalf of the organization or prospecting for future organizations, wherever they are in their ecosystem, how can that individual person make a difference?
Matthew Blair
So we had a fabulous question right at the very end about who is it that can make the change? And in the end, the person that chooses. The architect chooses the builder, chooses the furniture, chooses the building, chooses the lease terms, et cetera. That person has extraordinary agency to influence change just through their choices.
And who in an organization gets to be That entity within an organization is critical. And if I was in an organization and I was hoping for change, I would be encouraging for, uh, property. Deals, if that's kinda what we're talking about. So where the office is going to be to be led by the people side of the business, the HR side, if you like, rather than the, um, financial slash property side.
Then a lot of this stuff gets built in from scratch.
Ian Ellison
It feels like that means that the s is the most powerful part. The s almost sort of has a ripple effect on the E and the G.
Matthew Blair
I think that is absolutely, and g to a certain extent needs to get out of the way.
-- REFLECTION --
Chris Moriarty
I always, always love hearing insights from the workplace community in Oz. There's a really dynamic and progressive community out there generally, and having someone with Matthew's experience unpack it for us over here is a real pleasure. Right. Let's get onto our next guest, and this is the one, the only.
Maud Santa Maria. Now, I think it's fair to describe her as a force of nature on the workplace circuit. Now I've known her for about eight years from a previous role, but these days she's the Global Corporate Real Estate and Workplace Director at GWIA Market and Audience Research company. Where she oversees their global portfolio from their London hq.
She was on stage exploring the four day working week with Sam Hunt from the four Day Week Foundation, who's a colleague of former guest James ey. We keep connecting the dots here on the Workplace Geeks Podcast. So let's head over to Ian and Maud.
-- INTERVIEW --
Maud Santamaria
So my name is, uh, Maud Santamaria and I'm the global Workplace lead for GWI. I also take care of the real estate. We are an organization that started as a market research and because we have created our own platform to, uh, to kind of analyze, uh, the market, research, the people and what they need. Which is interesting for our topic.
Uh, then we also have, uh, moved into the tech space. So I would say now my organization is more of a tech, uh, company, which again, would be interesting for the, the topic we are. Yeah,
Ian Ellison
Yeah, yeah. So how, oh no, hang on a minute. So how many people GWI and what sort of. Breadth of organization? Are we talking global?
Are we talking national? Yeah,
Maud Santamaria
So that would be global, but still on a scale up. I will say kind of position right now is with growth. Uh, but we are in America, in Greece, in Singapore, in London and Prague. And uh, we are only about 600 people. So I would say it's funny 'cause we are quite global, but we, we remain on a, on a scalable path for, for people that are working for us.
Ian Ellison
And you are based here in London?
Maud Santamaria
I'm based in London, but uh, as the job title mentioned, I kind of take care of all of the, the workplaces across the world, so I have the opportunity to travel. Very good. Yeah.
Ian Ellison
Okay, so here we are at the water cooler. You were. On a panel discussion. Yeah. Talking about a very specific, very specific thing, which is getting quite a lot of interest and press at the moment.
So what are we talking about? And then let's get into, talk to why it was important for GWI.
Maud Santamaria
Uh, so we were talking about the four day week and, and almost the attraction to it. And on the panel that was myself, which is then a company that have. Uh, I would say a baby step into this, uh, this, this four day week.
And I, I can tell you more later. Yeah. Yeah. And on the panel with me was one of the, um, the person that worked for the company that now provides the consultancy to create the four day week, uh, journey for companies. Yeah.
Ian Ellison
Called Sam. And Sam is a colleague of Joe Ryle. Mm-hmm. Joe's been on the show with us before.
Joe was talking conceptually. Mm-hmm. About. Four day week. And it's not just compressed hours, it's about making a real step change to a shorter working week. And he was talking about their initial pilot study and the findings from that pilot study. So I think what we've got here with GWI is, you said baby steps, but we've got a living, breathing case study Yeah.
Of an organization that is entertaining the idea.
Maud Santamaria
Entertaining the idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would say the trial and um, what I would say is. The particular thing that we have making sure we have is understanding the measurement of productivity before we go into this, and I know that sounds like it's a separate thing, but.
If you're not sure how you're gonna measure what productivity means for each team, which is very vari, sales might be easy. Uh, finance might be harder, marketing might be harder. Once we kind of capture what productivity means, then it meant that if we go into a journey of a four day week, and at the moment, again, baby step, we're doing only in June, July and August and we have our Friday afternoon free.
Uh, what happened was if we knew that productivity. We could achieve, there were a decline. And I think that's the critical piece of it. You, you need to be able to measure and equally share with your employee to say, we are gonna try this. It's important to say, if we see that productivity is decreasing, this is as a reminder what productivity means for your team, X, Y, Z, then we may revert back.
And I think that that's a critical piece because if it doesn't work business wise. We need to make sure that can't have an an impact to the business.
Ian Ellison
I was gonna skirt around the shallow end of this conversation for a while. I went and talk about the benefits and you literally went to the deep end and you lept in and it's like, right, if we're gonna do this, the most important thing, it's obvious that from a people's perspective, this is gonna be beneficial.
Be beneficial, right. And. For many, many people. That is an incredibly attractive proposition. Yeah. But it's all good and well, if it's good for the people, it has to be good for business. Yeah. And you are saying that baselining what performance is, mm-hmm. Has to be the starting point. Yeah. Is that what Sam and Joe also talk about?
The fact that you have to be able to measure so you can work out if this thing is successful or not.
Maud Santamaria
Yes. I think one, one of the things he mentioned was some company didn't, it did not work. Which was an interesting thing of the panel is making sure that, you know, you also say when it doesn't work and when it does, we are a bit biased 'cause we already put so much care into the employee experience at GWI that you can see where we would be attracted to something like this.
Equally, I think there was a, a great attraction as, uh, I mentioned we, we are and we're a market research company. We moved into the tech space. That means we competing with. Facebook, Google, some companies that have an attractive name already, potentially a package that goes with this and a crazy office that'll have a slide and perks and free lunches.
So how do you compete with this, with Talen? I think that was a, not an easy one. 'cause I would say again, that that measurement is difficult to, to achieve. Making sure the team understand what is productivity for them. But it was a a, a good perk to kind of trial already. And we see the, the attraction that has, when people see this.
They don't mind. And to see a salary that is more market rate as opposed to crazy, uh, you know, law firm, Google firm type of type of salary.
Ian Ellison
So you have trialed and implemented a, you called it a baby step where during June, July and August of. The past two years. Yeah. You have said we don't our work on a Friday afternoon and that's not a compressed hour thing.
Maud Santamaria
No. It's literally we don't work during those summer months. And that's global.
Ian Ellison
That's all 600 odd employees in whatever office. Yeah. Whether it's in Prague or London or wherever. And because of the time shifts, you can still offer clients a full Friday service. That's right. Okay. So
Maud Santamaria
I think that's, there was a critical global work in your favor,
Ian Ellison
Doesn't it?
Maud Santamaria
Yeah. I have to say that's a critical, uh, piece of work that really worked on our favor, and I could see why there may be a question for any organization that look into this, how am I gonna sustain, not necessarily. Doing some business development. If there's no sales, fine, but how am I gonna support Mike current client, which is so critical and such a business dream, right?
We, we need to have this. So again, I think if you don't have this breadth of, of companies across the globe trying to find a way, and maybe that is you shift the morning to the afternoon for some teams, or if you're just a uk, UK business trying to find a way to make sure that your clients are still supported.
I think that's
Ian Ellison
Okay. So I've got two questions then. How did it land?
Maud Santamaria
Mm-hmm.
Ian Ellison
How has it landed for people within the organization? Wi Mm. And what's it done for your brand? What's it done for? How your company looks? Yeah. And then let's get back to productivity.
Maud Santamaria
Uh, without a surprise, you know, it looks amazing.
It looks amazing. I think it looks like the company understand that people may be inclined to enjoy life on those days, especially in the summer when you do wanna go outside, you wanna pick up your kid, you wanna walk up with your dog, you wanna Yeah. You know, climb a mountain. So. I think it's important that that shows that GWI always care for his employees and, and probably listen to, to a certain degree.
So definitely massive tick. And actually, obviously the first and, uh, Friday of September, it's, you could think it's a bit of a M day. So we try to do a good events globally. Uh, what, whatever that is, you know, maybe it's bring some, bring your dog at work and we are gonna do something fun or, uh, try, try to kind of get back into it.
And equally because September is where you do are ramping it back up. You, you wanna be back into this. So it, it kind of works. But I have to say within Gwis and the GWI people that were already working for G. Amazing. Uh, would probably push for some more, but equally are super excited because you get excited then what?
Like we are coming into May up, we're coming out to the buildup, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, so we are now super excited to go into this. So equally that kind of rebuild up to good is, is also really nice. That kind of really help. And for the external piece, when we try to attract talent, the fact that the, the salary bracket that we, we always be market rate and we try to be better, but equally we can't compete sometime with a bigger organization.
And that's a massive card that people are looking to this 'cause time. Time is so precious. It's precious, like so precious.
Ian Ellison
So even this baby step has immediately, immediately raised your profile in the market
Maud Santamaria
Immediately without an impact on productivity like we discussed. Okay, so at the moment, the no brainer card.
Then for the C-suite, the return on investment is yes. It doesn't really cost us money and it brings the best talent and it retains the best talent and it doesn't affect our clients. Le let's go. Right? Like
Ian Ellison
Any downsides at all? Any black, any, any, any marks against as, as well as all the marks for,
Maud Santamaria
At the moment, I feel because we have this, this time zone that really help us with taking care of the clients.
No. As a business, as I mentioned, maybe in September, there's this home thing. I think the workplace experience team has to really kind of think deeper to
Ian Ellison
Get, to get the energy back.
Maud Santamaria
To getthe energy back. Okay. And, and maybe the senior leader, if it was on another company, maybe you don't have a workplace experience.
The senior leadership. Team, the manager have to kind of say, okay, what am I gonna do for that team on that first, first week? You know, it's like back to our blues,
Ian Ellison
isn't it?
Maud Santamaria
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ian Ellison
Okay. I'll say this burning productivity thing, then you said right at the beginning, sales might be different to marketing.
Mm-hmm. Might be different to finance. So you need to understand what productivity is for each department. Mm-hmm. So at GWI. How did you work that out and could you give us some example of what sort of things you think about to be able to really confidently baseline? Mm-hmm. What productivity is for your organization?
Maud Santamaria
Yeah. What we have done is we have done a lot of work with the manager to make sure they understand what productivity means for the. As opposed to individual productivity.
Ian Ellison
So sort of So sort of perceived, have I worked hard today? Yeah. Have I had a good day?
Maud Santamaria
That's if you ask everybody, and you said it yourself when we started the podcast, I, I had a really long day.
I've worked really hard today. Did you, like, did, did you that for your team? You've done an amazing productivity day 'cause you've created. Not only connection in the conference, but you actually created podcasts. So yes, today your day was productive, but maybe if you stay at home and you're a manager, your day was been not productive because you were not there for your team.
They couldn't help you. Shadow mentor, you know, so. And I'm not saying this isn't for the, for the manager all the time, but that's a good kind of understanding. So look into your team productivity. Yeah, and I would say really as opposed to individual productivity. 'cause I know I'm the workplace manager, I should be, uh, constantly in your office to make sure that works.
So every time I am not in your office, I get so much done. But I'm not productive for my team.
Ian Ellison
That's, it's a very, so the unit of measurement is team level, team
Maud Santamaria
Productivity.
Ian Ellison
And so does that mean you are thinking about team outputs? Mm-hmm. Does that mean you're thinking about tasks? Is there an equation?
Maud Santamaria
I wish there was an equation that were, like a recipe. I would say this is happen and I, I think this is where the productivity debate is so, uh, important. I think this, we literally leave every manager to tell us. Okay. Right. So we have a new product to launch by March. It sounds like your engineering product, productivity team metrics would be, have you launched this?
Are you on your pathway? Are you gonna try to deliver this, your roadmap? Um, and that may be a good, good productivity for your team because it's not all that person that just managed to discord. Yeah, but that has done nothing. If that person hasn't done that, if the product
Ian Ellison
Doesn't launch that's can write, write as much code as you want.
Doesn't matter. Yeah.
Maud Santamaria
Yeah. It doesn't matter. So, so as the team has a ease on, so that's a, that's a really good example. So we have launched, uh, our product called Spark, which is. Surprise, surprise ai and uh, you know, you can type into the model and then you get, um, truthful based on our market research data, uh, kind of percentage.
So not hallucination ai Yeah, Chad GPT type of thing. So it's really good. Um, but I was also really time precious. 'cause Chad d PT is already there for so long, right? So we, we behind a time pressure, uh, moment with that team. So the roadmap was created quite. Quite harshly and I was a burst, so we also needed to change that.
So is the productivity for that moment, if those guys needs to come on those days, then you can also change that. You can also change your productivity. We've achieved that and it's important to stay flexible. So that's why I was, um, mentioning, are you confident about the measurement? Never because he changes too quickly, but as long as the manager kind of tell us and can measure this, at the end of that, that kind of bracket we have June, July, August, fine.
Ian Ellison
Okay. So I think
Maud Santamaria
It's more complicated that than we thought, isn't it? Yeah. Well, pro
Ian Ellison
productivity always is. It is. And you sort of, you per your ears up and you go, oh, I wonder if there's a, there's a lovely way we can think about this. Mm-hmm. And there's always ideas, but the moral of the story is productivity is so linked to your own organizational context, but you still have to work really hard.
Yeah. To understand in objective terms. Okay. So let's say for example, that in principle. A listener is going, oh, four day a week. I love the sound of that. Yeah. And now we're talking to somebody who says it is possible and you don't have to go the full way. You can explore it with baby steps. Mm-hmm. What top advice would you give to people in organizations that want to learn a bit more and want to seed some sort of change?
Maud Santamaria
So I would say we talked plenty about productivity have, have you got the right measurement in place to be able to equally say. This is working. Yeah, this is not. So you need a baseline. Need a baseline to
Ian Ellison
Measure performance of any trial.
Maud Santamaria
Then the second piece of it is communication to your employees. We are gonna do this if it works, we keep it every year.
We'll see the progression. If it doesn't. You are understanding, we will revert.
Ian Ellison
So this is expectation, right? It's not threat. Totally. It's expectation management. It's interest expectation. Yeah. If you want this, we're all in it together.
Maud Santamaria
We'll in together. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that the, this, this critical understanding of what happened with, if he fails, you know, we, we talked about this all the time.
You need to understand you can fail. That is okay as long as you communicate, manage expectation with your employees, then. Then they won't have any pushback to say, yeah, it kind of didn't work. I completely missed that project. I didn't do X, Y, Z. I think that's, that's a, and then, and then the baseline is very, very clear.
So I think this is the two one. Right? So understanding your measurement, then communication to your employees to a certain degree. I would say probably to your clients communication as well, tell them that you're trying to do this. So maybe you won't have Chris from London responding to you on a Friday, but you will have somebody in at attend or somebody in Singapore.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So that's interesting as well. And then the third one to look into is, is take you Yes. With this type of conference, right? Like. Keep on trying to say, okay, you know, mode mentioned some, some advice, some tips. What she's done kind of doesn't work for my company, but it looks like maybe, uh, Sam, the, the person that came on your podcast before might help me more.
Maybe you need at some point a professional that might put some baseline, because what happens is if you do go into the full on. Four day week, then you look into, am I changing the contractual hour? Am I compressing the, this, this is where the, there's, there's lots. Yeah, I would say there's lots. So I would say, do I, I really enjoy the do the trial.
I think it, it helps the, it helped the business case to C-Suite to employees. And then after that, if you do wanna do the steps, I think do go with a professional. So,
Ian Ellison
yeah, I think what I'm hearing there is almost a test and learn. Do a pilot. I mean, four day week in this country and in many other countries, started with an invitation for pilot organizations.
Mm-hmm. Do a pilot, learn, learn, work out what you need to tweak and then implement.
Maud Santamaria
Yep.
-- REFLECTION --
Chris Moriarty
More to unpack some of the practicalities of it, particularly around demonstrating and measuring impact and productivity. So perhaps we'll catch up with her again to see if she did that trial and how it went. And now to our final guest, Paula Rockwell.
Now, I think I'm right in saying we hadn't originally planned to talk to Paula, but she was hosting a workshop right next door to us, and we were hooked by some of the ideas that she was sharing. So we persuaded her to step into the booth. Now, Paula is the driving force behind the Employee Experience Project, a culture strategy consultancy.
Founded on the belief that workplace culture is far more than perks. It's a strategic foundation for performance. And inclusion. Now with over 20 years of experience helping organizations unlock high performance environments, she works with leaders to shape cultures where safety, flexibility, and mutual accountability fuel both individual flourishing and business success.
So let's head over to hear more from Paula.
-- INTERVIEW --
Paula Brockwell
I am Paula Brockwell. I'm an occupational psychologist, and I'm the founder of the Employee Experience Project.
Ian Ellison
So tell me a bit about the Employment Experience Project. For some reason, there's gravitas in that title. Oh, well,
Paula Brockwell
I was trying because I'm not naturally someone who brings gravitas, so I had to bring it into the business name I think.
Well, so we are a culture change consultancy, but I don't really feel comfortable with that. Title because really we build capability in organizations to shift culture. So I fundamentally believe that an external organization can't change the culture of another's. So we support coach build capability in organizations to help them own and ride the culture that they want.
Ian Ellison
I can really empathize with that perspective because I have literally stood there in a former life. I would describe myself as a workplace change consultant. Mm-hmm. And quite often you get brought into an organization to quote unquote fix the office. But what you actually discover is a bunch of behavioral issues with a smattering of tech issues and a little bit of space that you could tweak and improve workspace stuff.
But fundamentally it's about people. Yeah. And I have literally stood there, Paula, and said, right, there's only two of us. And there's a thousand of you. We cannot change you. Only you can change you, but we are gonna help.
Paula Brockwell
Yeah.
Ian Ellison
So it sounds like that's where you are coming from. Absolutely.
Paula Brockwell
Hashtag be the change you seek, even though you never say that out loud, but that's what your brain is thinking the entire time.
Yeah, absolutely. Okay,
Ian Ellison
So that feels to me like if organizations want to be better, from your perspective, culture change, behavioral change is at the absolute heart of performance improvement. Yeah.
Paula Brockwell
Yeah. For me, culture. Is a strategic lever of performance. You know, people see it as this fluffy thing about whether people are happy or not, but for me, it drives the behavior that we get in our organizations and behavior is what drives our performance.
So. Sort out what drives your behavior. You get the behavior you want and your business flies. So for me, like we are disruptors in this space, we want people to look at culture as that lever of performance. We want them to see it as a mass behavior change piece. So we do a lot of work around kind of social science systems theory, mass behavior change.
Rather than trying to develop people and, and connect their brain, get them to understand the change, we want 'em to feel it and want it so that they come with us. Really. So
Ian Ellison
Hearts, not minds. Yeah, absolutely. Change the heart and the mind will follow. Yeah, absolutely. So how does that work? I'm fascinated about this.
What sort of methodologies, what sort of technique.
Paula Brockwell
Yeah. Well, so I suppose there's, I suppose there's three things that we really focus on. One is getting past the narrative that culture is this thing that's just about making people happy at work. So we talk about, we are the employee experience project because for us it's about creating experiences that nudge people towards having the beliefs, the energy, and the kind of desires to display the behavior that you want.
So there's a piece there about moving from, we want to make it feel nice. Two, we want you make you feel like you're supported and you feel clear about what is expected of you, and you feel safe to do the things that are important to do your job. So culture is about enabling the right behaviors rather than it being about just making people feel a bit happy and hoping that the behaviors will come.
So there's a piece about being targeted, I think. Okay. Um, and that kind of leads to the second one, which is about setting a really clear deal. So not only do you recognize that it's your job as an organization to create the conditions for people to thrive, you're really clear about what your expectations are around what you can offer.
And the third one is about asking why more. So I think most culture work is obsessed with explaining the what. How people are behaving around here and actually the why is the bit that's important. Why are people behaving like this and how do we change that? Why so they behave differently.
Ian Ellison
This dovetails for me to something which I find myself regularly getting frustrated with Bruce Daisy about, with Easley work.
Repeat his podcast because he sort of. Talks about culture like it's a given, and I get a bit pedantic about this because for me, and this is a bit of a weird sort of Forest Gump steal or something, but culture is as culture does, right? It's the water that we swim in as people. And we are responsible for the quality of that water.
You can have a aggressive culture. You can have a positive supportive culture. You can have a happy culture, you can have a confrontational, toxic culture. We are responsible for the culture. Some people, when they talk about culture, they're disconnected from this realization that it is fundamentally about us and what we do.
And I think what I'm hearing with you is we are. Absolutely about a positive culture, a performance culture. But that's not just about being happy, but it's about being intentional through who we are and what we do to make sure that we make this business the best we can be. Yeah. For everybody. Absolutely.
Or what we're trying to achieve.
Paula Brockwell
Yeah, and I think a big piece for me is I think, I think the industry has grown around this idea of going in to talk to leaders and them saying, we need everybody to be more accountable. And the culture industry goes. Okay. We'll make them more accountable. We'll do training on goal setting and put performance management in.
And for me, our instinct should be to say, what is it that you are doing? That means that people don't feel like they need to be accountable. Okay. Or they don't feel safe enough to be accountable because it's,
Ian Ellison
It's quiet. Hold the mirror up. Yeah, and And that can be quite un uncomfortable for a leadership team.
Absolutely.
Paula Brockwell
Yeah. Which makes it, we are very careful about the businesses that we work with. They need to be ready. We've got a readiness framework that we use in terms of looking at whether different parts of the organization, but the organization as a whole are ready to have that conversation. And I think that's why I love.
Big chunk of the work that's happened in mass behavior change and behavioral science, which annoyingly a lot of psychologists have built, but they're never applied into their practice. Mm-hmm. It's, it's this separate weird theoretical thing that marketeers and social policy people use to the max and, and we don't seem to bother to use, we just go and do a bit of training.
Yeah. But that piece around creating the conditions for people to accept their role, understand their influence in the system, that's massively important. So we talk a lot about. Building the runway before you ask the plane to take off. So a lot of what we do is about role definition, creating safe spaces for people to understand how they are influencing the dynamic and creating, um, we do a lot of origin story work, which is kind of saying, you know, let's, oh dear,
Ian Ellison
interesting.
Paula Brockwell
Let's not just say that here's the super villain. Let's say when were they a decent person? And when was that behavior functional and fit for purpose? And that helps people accept. The dysfunctional behavior or dynamics because they know, 'cause generally most dysfunction has come from a good place. It just has been mis, it's about misalignment rather than true toxicity.
So that bit of work I think is massively important and has missed a huge amount. So that's why I come to things like this, to shout about things like that because I just think. We're not gonna shift the world of work because we're looking at the wrong part of the system to try and fix.
Ian Ellison
So speaking about coming to things like this and shouting about things like that, you have just very specific, recently stepped off stage.
Yeah. One of the workshop sessions. So what were you that, what were you talking about?
Paula Brockwell
My observation is that most organizations. Get stuck in the place of trying to improve colleague sentiment. You know, the whole lift around employee engagement and even the revolution that there's been around employee experience over the last few years is focused on this idea of how do we make people happier at work?
And for me, there's a piece around. It's not just about the organization owning people's happiness at work. Um, I guess the key takeaways were twofold. One was about understanding that culture isn't just made up of the organizational action, but it's also about the expectation that people have. So whenever you're looking at sentiment, you've gotta filter it, not just on what can we do to make people happy?
'cause we create this kind. Parent child dynamic, which means mommy and daddy have always got to make the kids happy. And I, I certainly have tried to enter t of my children in the school holidays and I never have the answers that they need in the circumstances. So I understand why that's frustrating in a professional setting as well.
Yeah. Um, but there's that piece around who owns. The culture and making sure that you create a team sport around that and create that balanced contract of what we really can offer and what you can expect and who owns that experience. So that was a big piece around that psychological contract setting or the deal reset as we call it.
And then the other piece was as well as looking at expectation. Being much more curious about the environmental drivers of people's experience, not just assuming that it's about surface level behavior and capability, but digging into the infrastructure of your organization and thinking what is it that we are creating?
How, how, how we work are the. Looking at it as ways of working. So how we, how is how we do stuff around here? So yes, our behavior, but also how we approach our business planning, our systems and processes, what we hold people accountable for and what we don't. How does all of that drive how people are feeling and behaving, and how do we make sure that our action plan isn't just line manager capability and do a bit of training, but we're looking at actually if line manager capability is the symptomatic issue.
Why is that a problem in the first place, and how do we fix the system behind that? So if we do something to lift their capability, they're gonna be motivated to apply that learning rather than just carry on in a system that's telling them that it's not their job and they don't need to bother anyway.
So that piece around. Really understanding the whole system and influencing the stuff that's actually gonna make a difference was, was a big part of that. So we've got a culture driver map that, that's based on a thematic analysis of all of the cultural inquiries that I've done through my career, which is saying, look at these 16 things and see what's really driving this.
Don't just default to training.
Ian Ellison
Okay. Last question, I think. Did anybody ask you after your session an, uh, an interesting question that made you kind of go, oh, I did not expect that, and do you know what, that's really insightful. Yeah.
Paula Brockwell
Well, I had probably a question I did expect, but was a really insightful question, which was asking about the idea of subcultures and how you map that.
So one of the things talked about in the talk is that ideal of moving people into the build mentality for your culture. Defining rather than evaluating your culture against some predefined framework that's normed against other businesses. Mm-hmm. Or whatever, define what your ideal is and then map your gap against that.
And somebody asked me the question of, well, what about the subcultures that we might have? And I was talking to them about. How having a global standard is important, but empowering your local leadership to really own that localized gap analysis and localized action plan for different business areas and different business units being important.
So you're creating a a standard view of what the end goal is, but you're giving each of those businesses and leaders that ownership to find their route towards that goal. That's right. For their own business area And context
Ian Ellison
Subcultures are subcultures, right? Because we all belong to different tribes.
Yeah. Right. Whether it's. About my profession, whether it's about my team, whether it's about the building that I work in compared to your building. 'cause yours is shiny and mine's a bit rough around the edges. Yeah. Whether it's about, I don't know, gender or age or the sports I'm into. Right. Like subcultures exist.
Yeah. And to try and take that monoculture view is in some respects, almost trying to drive the life out of what makes us us.
Paula Brockwell
Yeah. Yeah.
Ian Ellison
So you harness it. Yeah, but you don't stifle it.
Paula Brockwell
Yeah. Yeah. And I think it also shows how a lot of the traditional work that happens is idealistic. Nobody really believes that it's gonna get past the point of interesting conversations, because if they did, they would've.
Solve the subculture problem. You know, I think we have got so used to just going round and round the circle of the vision, values and purpose conversations that most businesses never get past that point because they do some training and then it dies. Mm-hmm. So, you know, it's a great question to ask because it suggests that people are really thinking about, but how do we get this to live into the, the tentacles and the realities of our business?
So, yeah. You know, I could go on all day about, hi. We are educated, tooled up and support, you know, by professional bodies and by suppliers. There's, for me, there's a huge thing that's going, we need a revolution around how we do culture. So that's what we are here for. I mean, I'm ready for it to be honest.
-- OUTRO --
Chris Moriarty
Systems theory, behavior change that's right up Ian Street, which I think, I think you could probably hear that in the chat that he's just had there with Paula. Uh, Paula makes a strong case there, I think, for culture being treated as a core strategic lever, uh, and not just a fluffy nice to have. So, amen.
To that, uh, and that's the end of our first water cooler episode. We've actually got more conversations from the event that we'll share in the coming weeks. As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode. Find us on LinkedIn by tagging Workplace Geeks, or using the hashtag Workplace Geeks, that's hashtag Workplace Geeks.
You can also email us at hello@workplacegeeks.org. You can visit the website, that's again workplace geeks.org or even send us a voicemail straight from. The show notes, just scroll down there and you'll see a link and it'll show you exactly what to do. There are just so many ways to get involved in the Workplace Geeks community, so make sure you do speak soon.
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