Cute Survey. What Are You Going to Do About It? with Jeffrey Fermin

Marian Anderson: Foreign.

Kashidora: Welcome to the Elephant New York presented by the Fearless People Experience. Do you know those things in the workplace that make work suck but remain unchanged? Well, those are the elephants we're here to talk about. We believe that these topics can and should be addressed with common sense, courage and compassion. We may not have all the answers and we're definitely not always going to be right, but we're here to build a, uh, better people experience. You gotta start somewhere. Let's go.

Marian Anderson: Cute survey. Now what are you gonna do about it? Surveys aren't the problem. Silence after surveys is the problem. And it lands as don't even bother. So today we are making it practical. Five steps to close the what to say, what to do and how to Report Back without spin. And um, we're doing it with our pal, Jeff Furman. This is the Elephant in the Org. Let's go.

Danny Glitch: Welcome back to the Elephant in the Org, everyone. I'm Danny Glitch and I'm joined as always by my co host, Marian Anderson.

Marian Anderson: Really me. Hi, I'm so honored. Nice to be here.

Danny Glitch: And Kashidora.

Marian Anderson: Hello.

Kashidora: And Marion's the problem today.

Jeffrey Furman: She is.

Danny Glitch: But we've got a guest to help handle the problem. Jeffrey Furman.

Jeffrey Furman: Hey everybody. Excited to be here?

Danny Glitch: Well, we actually have a really, really interesting Elephant in the org today. The fact that organizations have more data and more feedback from their employees than ever, but seemingly less action. And I love the idea, Jeff, that you brought up about performative listening and how it's just such a big problem. So we're going to dig in and you have a particular expertise. You've been working in HR tech for, would you. 13, 14 years now.

Jeffrey Furman: It's up there.

Danny Glitch: Yeah. So tell, tell us how all of that history has, has brought you to wanting to talk about this elephant with us today.

Jeffrey Furman: Yeah, I, yeah, early on I started, uh, actually I won't say I invented, but we came up with one of the first people analytics platform at Office Vibe. Essentially we were gathering information through Pulse surveys. And every single week we'd, we'd ask all these questions and have all this data and you know, these very impressive dashboards that would just showcase all this stuff. So I thought very early on in my career, especially in the era of big data, right. 2011, everyone wanted big data. It was big buzzword, big keyword. And you know, companies were investing heavily in finding out like all these issues came up with this, this new concept and it worked. It was very effective at collecting data. Now that's, that's the first part, right? But we really had to nudge people not even as like within our product, but people that were using us, we, they would call us like our customer. Success was essentially hr, I guess, consulting. So be like, okay, well we saw that we have a 4.0 in wellness. What should we do? And then we'd actually have to write blogs, write content, and then, you know, give them a little bit of knowledge on the subject and then say like, oh, you might want to invest in XYZ corporate wellness initiative and do this and your numbers in office vibe will improve. So I don't know. I learned very early on that this problem that still persists to, to this day, you know, it's, it's one that still hasn't really been solved. And I want to say it's gotten even worse, right? Like we have all these systems spread out, giving us all this information, all these numbers and you know, we're supposed to kind of just look at it and make our decision. So I think that's the big elephant in the room, right, or elephant in the org. We, we have all the data, but what's going to be the next step and what are we going to actually do to take action to make workplaces better? So, yeah, my rant's done. That's just why I've been so interested in this topic for so long. But yeah, I now use the floor.

Marian Anderson: So many, so many thoughts. So many thoughts.

Danny Glitch: Well, but before you guys go and I want to, I want everyone's thoughts. Do you think that this is just over, like paralysis by analysis? They've got too much information. Is it a lack of skill? What? Like a lack of experience knowing what to do to get the outputs that they want. Like, what do you think is, is the core issue?

Marian Anderson: Uh, let me, let me double click

Kashidora: on that for you.

Danny Glitch: Oh, God, no. You're the corner. You're the double clicking corner.

Marian Anderson: If you follow that up with a lean in, we're gonna fall out.

Kashidora: No, I would never. Ew.

Marian Anderson: But it was worth it to see

Kashidora: your faces that no one else will get to see, as I said that. But I think that, I think that having all of that data is so important. And I think that, yes, you could look at it through the lens of a lack of experience or not sure, not, not sure of what avenue to take because there might be so many different things depending on what the data is telling you and depending on what narrative you're now throwing on top of that data. But ultimately, and I think we've talked about this in many podcasts but the HR unit, whatever you're calling it in your organization, people team, what have you, is not the one that makes the decision. They are the ones who do the recommending. And they might be waving every color flag under the sun to point out what some of these core issues are, but they don't have the power. And it ends up in a politics game. I'm sure organizationally we have better words for it, but I think it really just is a politics game of what people do and don't want to address. And I think it gets even trickier when you're looking at organizations, depending on the stage of growth they're in and depending on if they're public or private. I think all of those things, when people start looking at data, those all factor into how intense that politicking can evolve into.

Marian Anderson: I want to build on that. I think

Danny Glitch: you want to circle back.

Marian Anderson: No, I would never, Papa, never. So, no, where I was going with this was when you said that, when you said big data, right? Like, I felt like I was having PTSD as well, because it was such a phrase. It did have a moment. And when I think about that evolution since then of um, people data and people analytics, you know, it's such a big industry, right? Like there's so much tech, there's so much airtime given, there's so much discussion about all of the previous unconnected data points that no one was ever able to do anything with before. And all of a sudden we're able to synthesize this data because we have all these great tools now, which is amazing. But here's the thing, and I have a very simplistic approach to this in view of this. But when you look at pretty much any employee survey, right, Any company in the world, doesn't matter after you've stripped out anything which is like compensation, benefits related, like the transactional stuff, once you've taken all that transactional stuff out, the coffee and the tea rooms crap, like all of that's out, what's left, right? All the sentiment that's left goes back to three things, and I will die on this hill, right? When you look at all of the qualitative data that comes out, it goes back to either lack of leadership, transparency and trust, lack of psychological safety, and lack of manager capability and enablement. And you can map every single comment back to one or more of those three things, right? And I think that because even with enhanced tech, we fail on the last one, we fail on the capability and enablement. So you can give all of these managers, all of this incredible data, but they're so overwhelmed already, right? And no one's ever really trained them on how to use it effectively and what to do with it. And let's face it, most of them don't have the teeth to be able to make any decisions anyway. None of the stuff that people want is in their control or very little. Maybe there's an element of influence, but very little control. So, like, it's. It's. It just becomes this, like, continual circus of, we're gonna ask you what you think, and isn't that great? Because we're trying to be, you know, get good information, be transparent, and yet when we get stuff back that a. We don't know what to do with or we can't do anything, and we just, like, brush it under the rug and spin it, and we'll make it sound like we've done something and we've actually done all right. Like, that is the reality of what happens in a lot of organizations. Not all by any means. There's some really great ones out there, but certainly in my experience, that's how it rides in the majority of companies. And so for me, that's where the performative stuff really kicks in, and that's where the damage gets done. Um, because if you ask me 10 times to tell you what I think and you do nothing, then all of that, that transparency and trust, my psychological safety, those are the three things we keep coming back to. That's gone. And my psychological contract is broken, and I'm peace out, and I'm going to go to the next one. He'll probably do the same thing again. But that is the cycle. I'm sorry I seemed really negative Nelly today, but that is the reality, right? Unless you can tell me something different, Jeffrey, is there companies out there that are doing this really well?

Jeffrey Furman: I will disagree with you on one thing. I don't think you're a negative Nelly at all. I don't. Don't put that label on, you know, a couple points. And I want to start off with some of the things that, uh, Kasha was like, uh, discussing. Right. Office politics, uh, plays a very large role in what decisions can be made. I've spoken to a couple folks, Kim Rohr, Sarika Lamont, and it was specifically around, like, what to do with survey results. And, yeah, they both kind of said the same thing where, like, you know, you bring these results from a platform, like an office vibe, you know, culture, amplitude, and then you say, like, here's what the employees are Asking for, like, there is a clear, there's clear data points that say, like, hey, they want benefits. Everyone's asking for, I don't know, wellness stipends or, you know, better health care. Why am I paying 50%? Health care in America is expensive. You know, can you do the 400? And they have to take that back as a chro or consultant, whatever the role is. And then go to the C suite and say like, hey, we need you to invest more in people. You know, can you do these things? Guess what happens right there. They're in the C suites mind. The conversation becomes, well, like, what is the output? Like, what are we going to expect from a business perspective? Like, what are we going to get in return? You know, do we. I don't want to fund that. They have enough already. That's most of the case. I'm not saying that's, uh, every organization, all that stuff, but traditionally here in the United States, that's, that's kind of how things are. Very horrible opinion. And you could call me a negative Nelly now, but, uh, more times than not, yeah, I feel like that is the conversation that's being had and. Oh God, I'm gonna go on a tangent, but I feel like that's, that's the problem with maybe that negative perception of hr. There's this whole thing like, oh, they're just being the, the fun police. No, they're actually like doing things, collecting data to actually advocate for people, for employees and doing all these things so they can make workplaces better. And I feel like it's very unfair that HR folks have this negative light around them when they do so much to make workplaces better. So, yeah, that's whole thing. I wanted to address that. Like, the office politics part plays a very massive, probably the biggest role out there. And Marion, you're absolutely right too. Right. Like outside of those transactional, like, oh, I don't like the coffee that we use here. The grounds are awful. The beans suck.

Kashidora: Right.

Jeffrey Furman: A lot of the problems that stem in workplaces that you'll see in these surveys are things like psychological safety type of topics, their, you know, relationships with peers and managers. And maybe you have like one manager that, that is a, I don't know, micromanaging, uh, type A. Can I curse on here?

Marian Anderson: Absolutely.

Jeffrey Furman: I was going to say. Maybe I was just being polite. Yeah, maybe you have like an asshole manager and you're just like, oh, man, like, everyone is writing bad about you. So what's the next step? What's the follow up? What can you do as an organization to say like, oh man, well everyone says this guy's an asshole, but his department produces. Well, like what, what can you do as a higher up in the organization to make any kind of change? And even if you have both quantitative and qualitative data, what's that next step? You really just have to just nip it in the bun, sweep it under the rug and that's just about it.

Marian Anderson: And you also need to have an element of savvy with this day. Like, you know, let's, let's think about the reality of where we are today. Right. The job market sucks, particularly in certain sectors. Right. Tech is a good example. And I know just from reading a lot of industry commentary that engagement surveys are, are very conflicting this year where employees are saying things like, you know, they're not happy that engagement slow, they don't feel psychologically safe, yada yada yada, but their intent to stay as high. And the company's like, well that's great that you're going to stay. We must be fabulous. No staying because you're fabulous, they're saying, because the job market shit. And if they leave, if they have a toddler tantrum and storm out, they could be unemployed for an extended period of time. Particularly again in certain industries where there's compounding factors like AI and what have you. Right. So you have to have a little bit of savvy and an ability to question that data in a really analytical and thoughtful way and not just accept it at face value. And I don't think that again, manager capability and enablement companies do not train managers on how to interpret this data properly or certainly with an analytical or open mind. And I've seen it time and time again where you'll get paradoxes in data like that, but the company just puts a really positive side spin on it, you know, and jazz hands and it's not great. It's not great. It's far from great. But you know, it's like why are we collecting this data if we're just trying to spin it into this narrative that actually doesn't exist, you know?

Jeffrey Furman: Mhm.

Danny Glitch: Yeah. That it's, it's not like ill intentioned. I, I think it's, it's that misinterpretation though and, and not actually understanding the data. And this is one of my questions for Jeff is how often are these teams getting all of this data? You know, you had the big era of big data that I think is like softening a little bit where it's not just like data, data, data all the time. It's uh, we're now using like AI, like give, give the data to AI because we don't know what to do with it. And I really do think that there was a skill issue in interpreting and in crafting narratives. And like you said, people were like seeing the numbers and be like, I got a four. What do I do with that? Because I don't know. I'm a professional but I'm not an expert in data analytics and strategy. So what do people do?

Jeffrey Furman: And oh God, there's like so many ways I want to answer everything you just said. I'll start with the latter. What, what do we do? Well, I think of like a company where I'm currently employed at head of Demand Gen at All Voices. You know, I'm very happy at what they've built. You know, it's an employee relations platform. But m, they also act as a whistleblower hotline, ethics hotline, all that fun stuff. Go check out the website. I'm a horrible salesperson for the company, to be honest. But I really love the fact that they did a great job of sort of weaving in AI to get all, like all the issues that are going on in large corporations where there's frontline employees, where there's, you know, let's say it's restaurants, you have plethora of workers, different, you know, level types, you have corporate employees, all that fun stuff. Right? We actually provide actions and we use AI to do that. So if we're like, you could upload your policies, your procedures, state laws, country laws, national laws, all that fun stuff. And then you, you can then do follow ups. Say, okay, there was going to use sexual harassment as an example here, right? Like there was an incident over here in the California office. Uh, so what can I do to address this situation here are the people involved, President, all this fun stuff. So you could have those follow ups and kind of take action as an individual to ensure that you have the best possible outcome. I don't know the current lay of the land for the people analytics, uh, space or employee survey space and what's being done there. But I have to assume that they're on there and if they haven't done it just yet, please contact me. I'll be your product consultant. Haven't done this stuff before, but that's where the opportunity really lies. You have all these large data sets and you really don't want to act on it. You like, come on guys, like get it together here. A lot of these companies have millions and millions of dollars going into R D and, and you know, sales. God, I can't even begin to describe all the nonsense that these companies, uh, buy and you know, they might overspend on marketing. Reality is if you build products that could genuinely affect people's lives and people's workplaces, everyone's going to flock and gravitate towards you. The same way back in 2011, 2013, people were coming to Office 5. I lie, forgot. I'm gonna not lie to you and say I forgot the other points I wanted to make because I got so passionate about that. I was like, man, we gotta do something. And then I forgot it's good.

Marian Anderson: And HR tech needs that passion.

Jeffrey Furman: Um, I just remembered the point I was gonna make. I don't like the fact, and this might be a little bit of a tangent, but the same way we're kind of entering this era where the market kind of sucks, employees aren't necessarily a major investment for companies because you automatically as a C suite person of a not so good org. Right. Um, I'm putting, putting that ICP out there. You're probably thinking, I'm going to replace them with AI. So every employee feels like they're walking on eggshells. Every organization right now, especially in the tech space, right? Why is there this ebb and flow of like, oh, since it's an employer market, we cannot necessarily invest in employees. I think if you really want to stand the test of time right now, you need to double down on your employee engagement initiatives. If you really want to build like satisfaction, you invest in tools like people, analytics platforms, employee relations platforms, pull surveys, you, you know, give, give your employees healthcare. You do all these things. And if you really want to improve performance, loyalty and satisfaction. I have no, no current stats to back this by the way. But it's just a suggestion. I do think that is the way forward. I think as long as organizations are continually investing employees, even in down periods of times, and not making employee engagement this fun to have thing, that it's only when employers kind of dominate the market when we can have them. If we could change that mindset and have orgs invest in people, we can see very strong positive outcomes and um, long term and um, organizational success. So that's. Yeah, that was the point I wanted to make.

Marian Anderson: No, and it's a, it's a really good point I think is a balance though, right? In my experience, you know, like if you're in a larger organization and you have more resources to be able to do a lot of that then that's phenomenal. If you're in a small to medium enterprise, if you're a startup, right, and you're maybe in the tech sector and it is very precarious market right now, you've got to try and hedge your bets a little bit. And I think that absolutely meeting those basic, you know, going back to, you know, Maslov's hierarchy of needs, right? But meeting those basic, basic things that humans need is absolutely essential, of which I would include. Health care is one of the most important. But there's something to, there's something in there about the balance between the transactional and the physical as well as the emotional. Emotional. And I think the emotional piece is really important. Like if I think about would I rather work for a company where my healthcare was really good but every day I felt psychologically unsafe, I felt terrified to make a mistake or to take a risk or would I rather be in a company where maybe yes, I'm paying more for my health care but every day I leave work and I feel like I've done something bit good and I've got a smile on my face. Like that's the trade off that employees are having to make. And that's very specific to the United States. I think like if I compare that to being in the UK we have national health care, it may be crap at the best of times because it's so over, so over subscribed and under resourced. And when I say it's crap, I don't mean in a negative way. It's phenomenal. But it doesn't compare to private healthcare, right. Like if I needed an MRI M in the UK it might take me 18 months to 24 months. If I need one here, I'll get it next week, right? Because I'm paying for that privilege. But when I compare the psychological trade off versus the like the mechanical, the transactional, you know, I think it can be a really difficult balance for companies to maintain, right? Other and the other extreme, you've got companies that are like if you look at the fang, right, those companies are shocking things that their employees, you know, RSU is the golden handcuffs, like the big salaries and all of that. But you just have to look at blind and read blind. They're all fucking miserable, right? They're absolutely miserable. They are stressed, they are burned out, they are in, in pieces. But yet you know, they're walking away with maybe two, $2 million in that issues or whatever. So like uh, uh, it's like it's such a difficult balance to Find and to maintain and I think to kind of like be able to do it in a way which reflects your, your pay philosophy and your values and your company ethos, but still let people live in a, in a, uh, in a good way.

Jeffrey Furman: Papa, I want to ask, if I had to do it, I had to do it.

Danny Glitch: I'm sorry, God.

Jeffrey Furman: Papa, I had to ask. I want to open this one up for, for everybody. Would you, would you do that trade off? Do you think, uh, you know, it's worth kind of taking that, that extra dollar if it meant like, oh, you know, I'm gonna make 200, 300, 400k if you felt like, not necessarily psychologically safe or you're just constantly stressed? Because I say that because I, I do know folks that work at Fang and they like, oh my God, my, you know, they tell me all the time my job is awful, but I get to travel, I get to do this and that. But I have such high, like, expectations from leadership and I have to do it every single quarter and it sucks. So just want to hear everyone's thoughts.

Danny Glitch: Uh, that's a great question.

Kashidora: This is a fantastic.

Danny Glitch: I'm going to defer to my co hosts. Let them answer.

Kashidora: Oh, all right. Well, I'll say this. I feel like, I feel like this is a bit of a cop out answer, but I actually think it's very nuanced. Is it almost comes down to the season of life that you're in in where that answer 100% could change if you're trying to put money away for your kids college fund and you're like, I'm going to make this sacrifice because I know what this end goal is five years down the line or you're going to give yourself a term limit. Not to make any puns here for other things going on in our country, but, you know, I think, I think it kind of depends on where you're at as far as like, is it worth it, right? Like, are you even in a spot from where you've been in your career that you could mentally take that and if you know that it would just turn you into sawdust, then you wouldn't even think about it, right? Like, your mental health is way more important. Your physical health is always more important important because there's only one of you. But are there other things that kind of weigh out? Like, I've had some of those golden handcuff moments and they're helpful until they're not. And suddenly those handcuffs mean jack. Because you or the people around you who are witnessing what's happening to you mean way more so. It's like I feel like it's a season of life dependent. If I knew I had a goal in mind and I was like, oh, I need to save money for this, I would be like, I'd probably do it for a few years and apologize to everybody that loves me for that period time and then I would gtfo.

Marian Anderson: Yeah.

Kashidora: But it really just comes down to that season on if it's even cap. Plausible, capable.

Marian Anderson: No, you're absolutely right. Like I am at that point in my professional development and uh, in my career and in my personal life where I'm like that for a game of soldiers. I would m. I value much more my mental health, my physical health, my ability to spend time with the people that I love, doing things that I enjoy fluttering about in my garden, like doing this podcast, doing all the thought leadership stuff, my PhD. Like, I value that more than, you know, extra zeros on my bank. I mean, obviously everyone loves money, right? Money, we need money, money makes. Well, go around your area. But I've also worked in those environments and to what end? It really impacted my mental health, it impacted my physical health, it impacted my self confidence, my ability to function as a well rounded human being. Like so for me, no. But I'm also at a stage in my life where I'm at the hardly dead. But I'm not at the beginning of my career. Right. I'm, I'm.

Kashidora: You have a breadth of experience to speak to at this point instead of trying to collect the experience.

Marian Anderson: Right, exactly. Imagine towards the later stages of my career. And now I think as well, we talk about this a lot working in human resources. Your values get louder and louder and louder as you get older and I cannot turn them down. And now I'm at a point where I use that for good and I use that to advocate for others. And you know, I guess that's kind of very much the basis of my research. And I'm trying to advocate for psychological safety in workplace. He's right. I think it's really important. So that's me. But, uh, if I was in a very different financial situation, like I don't have kids of my own, but if I did and I was having to think about college and think about, you know, other, you know, like parents and later stages of life needing care and all of that stuff in a highly capitalist society like the United States, my opinion would be probably be very different. Right. And I would probably be putting myself under those types of pressures. I have the capability, but do I have the mental capacity and the mental wellness to withstand that? I don't think I do. Not for any sustained period of time. But unfortunately places like the United States and others put humans in very dire situations and have to make those types of decisions. And so it's certainly not an easy path to walk. But yeah, it's very nuanced, as Kasha said.

Danny Glitch: Yeah, it's, it is complicated, but it for me, like I think I would do well. You know, I was in sports and very competitive in games and whatnot and I think I would do really well in environments like that. I would be a top performer even with the uh, heat turned all the way up. But I don't think I would last very long. I think I would see the pressure and the situation and how it affects people and I can't stay silent and especially if they're doing surveys of like, hey, what's the employee experience? Like I'm not going to hold back, like I'm going to speak up. And so like I know my time there would be short lived because I would either completely burn out on the, the emotional ability to stay engaged, the ability to seem m a uh, future like for myself with that company would just vanish. I would, it would immediately become short term and I, I'm pretty sure it would affect how I was around my kids and stuff too, which I wouldn't want. But like uh, you know, yeah, it would be nice for like uh, three months. But I don't think I would make it to the sixth month even if I was doing really well. And I suspect that I might.

Marian Anderson: But you say that. Right. But think about that three to six month mark where you're not sleeping well and you're having anxiety attacks and you're having, you know, panic attacks and you're not eating properly.

Danny Glitch: Yeah, no, that's why I don't think

Jeffrey Furman: I would make decisions.

Marian Anderson: Yeah, you're shouting at your kids. It takes out. There's a ramp up to that doesn't just go great to the next day. Like it's a, there's a, there's a change. And, and having gone through various points of that in my life and in my career, I would not wish that my worst enemy.

Danny Glitch: So I mean I would wish it on my worst enemy, but I would

Marian Anderson: wish on people that say things like circle back, but other than that, no, I wouldn't wish I'm my worst enemy.

Danny Glitch: What about you, Jeff?

Kashidora: You can't just ask.

Jeffrey Furman: No, I have been at those workplaces and I Bad ones and great ones. And I don't think I could do it again. I feel like, you know, you all touched on it, right? Like you have these kind of, you know, I don't even know how to sum it up into words. You have these anxious moments. You kind of turn in like non verbal after work, you know, the second 5 o' clock hits or 4:59 hits, you're looking at the clock and it's almost like a blessing, you know, like I've been in those places and I really feel like having been there really drives my work moving forward. Like what I do now, I, I do my best to understand. I've been in those places before and I want to make sure that I can like eliminate those places before and eliminate managers that are going to act like that and stop giving, you know, give the employees enough of a voice to not have to deal with those circumstances. Especially in like today's day and age, right? Like the market being the market and how things are. Everything's kind of employer centric, right. Like I feel like, God, I'm like so stressed just talking about it and thinking about my own personal experiences. Uh, I would love to do whatever I can to ensure that organizations are psychologically safe and they're doing what they can for employees. And you know, whether it's through data or just, you know, talking to people, HR becomes more of a function to eliminate these types of environments and not have people make those choices and like the ones we're describing and we can just like all have a good workplace where we can be productive and find our flow states and enjoy doing what we're doing. So very long winded way to say I would not take the money. I've done it before and that's what currently fuels my work now and the people that I talk to and the work that I do. It really stems from my hatred of bad workplaces, which is a very strong way of putting it, um, in.

Kashidora: It's interesting that the negative experiences we have truly inform our emotional intelligence and how we work, each and every one of us right individually, I guarantee works really hard to create a psychologically safe environment because we've all experienced the antithesis of what that looks like and or feels like. Right? Because it's not just how it looks or how it feels, it's also how you experience it and what that means. And I think it's a awful teacher, but one of the best teachers is the bad stuff.

Jeffrey Furman: Yeah, Danny, we talked a little bit about the Batman and philosophy books, but that's kind of the big thing, right? Like those negative experiences either make you a good person or a bad person and turns you into either Batman or the Joker. Right. How you overcome these situations are the true teller of like who you will become as an individual. So, um, I will say I hope I'm doing a good job. I hope I could be. Uh, I'll make that my LinkedIn headline. Right? Like HR is Batman and people off Batman. That's very corny. Please don't.

Kashidora: I love that.

Danny Glitch: I love you may hit some trademark violations.

Jeffrey Furman: I'm m just gonna say, okay, perfect. Uh, but yeah, no great points. And please for the love of God, don't work at these places. Let's not even buy from them as consumers. If you see them have like one star glass door ratings, let's not work with these folks. Let's not give them platforms. So yeah, let's start a revolution.

Kashidora: Yeah.

Marian Anderson: And this is where I struggle though, because here, let's get into the Amazon discussion, right? Like when I think about how things have gone in that company in the last few years in particular, especially right now, 14,000 employees, flattening of structures. Andy Jassy making some very questionable, non data driven decisions for the company. That's the most data driven, uh, in the world, she says. Making inverted quote signs and yet none of us can give it up. It's like the worst addiction in the world because it's so convenient and it, and it. In our very complex and busy lives, we're using tools like that to be able to function and to keep going and to uh, you know, I couldn't have decorated my basement and speakeasy that I was telling you guys about earlier without being able to use, you know, resources like that. But, but as an HR practitioner and just as a, someone who I like to think is a relatively decent human being, when I think about how people are being you know, treated. Oh, wow. So it gets really complex, right? Like it's super complex. And we have enabled these behaviors and we've enabled these organizations and we continue to enable from a place of what convenience. Like we're going off on a slightly different tangent, but you bring it back to the employee experience, bring it back to that person who Is in the DCs, who's running logistics, who's you know, uploading catalog merchandise, like whatever that may be. Yeah, we're, we're complicit.

Danny Glitch: I mean it, it's hard, right? Like there's there. It would be great if there was a competitor who treated their employees well, and also had that ecosystem built. And, and they just don't. And I, I want to say I don't think that Amazon is in the position they're in because they treat their employees poorly. I think they're in that position despite treating their employees poorly. One of my, one of my curiosities is right, because. And that's their people strategy. Their people strategy is to be cutthroat. And I think there's a lot of organizations who do that. A lot of people read the Steve Jobs book and kind of have this sort of pressure cooker mentality of how they want their teams and their organization organizations to run. And you know what? Bless them. I hope that people find better places to work. What I'm curious about are the people who unintentionally have these tough places to work, whether they think they're trying or at least they think they're fairly neutral. Like they know they're not the best, but like they're not trying to be bad. You know, they might even have the intention of being a really good place to work, but they're failing at it. And the data and the dashboards and the culture and everyone knows that they're failing at it. Like, how does that happen? How can you be like, what are, what are. In your experience, Jeff, with the data and your experience in HR tech specifically looking at this, what are some of the things that companies get so wrong when they're not trying to be awful but end up being just really, really bad place to work?

Jeffrey Furman: Is a great question and I wish I had like a very straightforward answer for it. I immediately think my crutch is to say, like, they're not listening well enough. And I hate blaming senior leadership because that's who I directly talk to and say like, hey, you know, if you take actions in your workplace off of like listening to your employees, you're going to be able to make the changes to be great. I feel like that could be the missing part there where, you know, you have everything laid out, everyone kind of understands and the company might be trying, but it might just be performative and they might not be hearing from the employees to understand what's truly going on. So if that in this particular situation, maybe that's what's happening. That's the perfect situation to institute employee engagement initiatives, have pulse surveys or employee relations platforms to really understand why the, uh, you know, the big thing is why, uh, why the place sucks. Right? That's all we're trying to get down to. The nitty gritty like, is it managers? Is it, you know, benefits, is it, I don't know, salaries? What can we be doing to be better? Uh, I gave Marian an example of like during my tenure at Office 5, Bose was one of our first enterprise clients and they were kind of in this situation where, you know, they were a good organization. They are obviously a world known enterprise. I mean if you have Bose headphones, it's like luxury, right? It's almost identical to having like a Louis Vuitton purse, I'd say. And yeah, like they just couldn't get it together and they were trying to figure out why. And the second that first whole survey came out and all the responses started coming in, they found that, you know, they had employees that were going in from Ireland to London every week and they were doing hyper commutes from other countries trying to get to the main HQ is back in 2011 when remote work was not like a thing at all, but they were, they tried to come up with solutions. They spoke to their employees and said, hey, you know, what can we do? We see that this is one of the biggest pressing complaints on here. We genuinely want to get better. We like actually give a shit about you. What can we do? And literally within two months they instituted a remote work policy. Back in 2011, probably one of the first to do it in London at least, you know, one of our first customers to do it. They took action and right afterwards their scores, engagement scores all across the board went, went up. They found out that they like, you know where they had like, what's it called? One of our pillars was wellness. They saw like mental health go up. They saw manager to, uh, employee relations go up, employee to employee relations off. One little change here. Granted that's back in 2012. Ish. Now fast forward. I hate to be the negative Nelly again, but now you have people that don't give a damn and they're just like trying to take away things like RTO and do all this stuff. But that's not the question that's being asked. I just wanted to vent a little and tell you guys, I don't like the world of work right now and I don't know doing.

Marian Anderson: But this is my hot spot, right? Because this is the center of my research. So I do want to jump on that a little bit. And I think that this is where HR practitioners are really stuck between a rock and a hard place. Right? We know what the research tells us, right? And if anyone comes at me and says, oh, the research says that you're better together Off. It doesn't. There's no data that supports any of that.

Kashidora: Define better together because you can be better together anywhere.

Marian Anderson: Exactly right. Like do not. And there's a lot of manipulation of data to try and form a narrative for companies. Right? And that truly does not exist right now. There's nothing, there's no data that supports or refutes that being together is any better or worse than being remote. It's not about being, being in office, it's not about being remote and it's not about being hybrid. All of them on their own as individual constructs are pretty shit. Right? It's about flexibility. It's about adult to adult. It's about treating people as human, as an ad, and let them work how they best work. Some people work better in an office, some people don't. Some people have disabilities and it works better for them not having to deal with whatever drama it is to get to work. And different, different strokes. Right? And that's what people thrive in. And I think that where the world is right now is that we're weaponizing data in a lot of ways to suit a narrative. And that's almost worse than not collecting the data to begin with. And so I have a lot of concerns about how we, huh, spin a lot of the stuff that comes out of our surveys. Surveys are important. Employee voice. This is my bread and butter. This is what I do all day, every day. And I think it's hugely, hugely important. Important. But if we're not really taking that data with the intention that it was given in and the spirit it was given in and not doing anything really meaningful with it, what waste of time. And it just goes back to that whole thing of breaks trust and it damages psychological safety. And so it, there's that whole question of was it better to just do nothing at all than do something that you're, uh, not doing anything with? Do you know what I mean? Like, it's, it's, it's really messy. And I think that the, the return to office thing really underpins just how damaging that can be.

Jeffrey Furman: Yeah, go ahead.

Danny Glitch: Oh, no, no, go, go ahead.

Jeffrey Furman: I was going to say like, did you all see that picture? I want to say it's Goldman. They just like showed their new office up and it's like this open concept. It's like the desk or the computers are all like right next to each other. You have like one foot of separation between computers and, and all the comments were just insane. Everyone's like, what is this? Looks dystopian. Is this what we're fighting, like, this is what we're going, uh, pushing all these return to office mandates so we could come back into a building and handle Zoom calls. One foot away from the person next to you.

Marian Anderson: Like, oh, it's the hell. It's wild. Like, I have been in that situation where, you know, I'm sitting in a, I'm, uh, sitting on a Zoom meeting and I'm looking round and half the people that are in the Zoom meeting are sitting like three feet away from me. You kidding me with this, right? Like, how is that enhancing my life? Oh, man, it's wild. So, no, that is a reality. And man, like, I think that that just does even more damage ultimately.

Danny Glitch: Yeah, it's not a good look or feel. And, and I, I think that's the. I love the name office vibe because it's, it's about the feel. What does it feel like to be a part of this company? And what I loved about the story of Bose was they asked and then two months, like, that's a big. I honestly don't understand how they pulled that off. But the, the level in the pace of that reaction and response and movement and change based on listening. Boy, their employees, even if that didn't affect them. And I think this is the important part because you're going to take a survey, there's going to be a lot of things and you can't respond to all of them.

Jeffrey Furman: Them.

Danny Glitch: But I feel like they moved and moved big enough and fast enough to where everyone probably felt heard even if their ask wasn't specifically actioned on. And feeling heard is one of the things that I think these surveys do the opposite of is oftentimes the, uh, action is two years down the road if there's anything. And it's impossible to feel heard because you never even see it.

Kashidora: There's always that lack of transparency that pops up sometimes where, if it's easier to say, I think. Right. Like with my no decision making role in an organization, like, I think it would make so much more sense to be like, we heard you this. You don't realize how intense this change is, but we're trying to figure something out. It might take two years, but you've been heard. And I, I think that there is an immense pressure, kind of going back to what you were saying earlier, Marian, on our HR teams, to not say that and to do the thing, but sometimes doing the thing is a very time and labor intensive thing to make sure that it does hit all of our criteria in an organization to make sure. That you're within policy and on um, compliance and all the things that you have to check all these boxes for. But so many businesses across the board and there's so much, so much academic research on the lack of transparency. Right. The lack of communication and how if we were to do that one simple thing of just. We're working on it. We heard you.

Danny Glitch: It's one simple trick.

Marian Anderson: Yeah, but let me really, really simple, right. Lack of transparency breaks trust. Transparency builds trust. Mhm. Right. It's really that basic. But here's, here's the, here's the thing. When it starts to get complicated, it's ah, scale. All of this stuff is fine if you work in a small to medium enterprise. And apart from Bose being a big brand, they're still a relatively small company in comparison to their peer group within consumer electronics. Right. They're luxury brand so they're smaller but high end. But when you start working in Fortune 500, Fortune 100 companies where you're millions of employees, global employees, you know the analogy I always use, it's like, it's like the biggest cruise liner or oil tanker or cargo ship you can think of and it's gone off course, right. Like it's not like a speedball that you can just course correct within a few, you know, within uh, a minute you're less than a minute, you're back on course. Course. If you're like a gazillion ton tanker and you've gone 180 off course, it's going to take a long time to be able to course correct. Especially if you've got headwinds and tides and what have you coming at you. Right. You can't do that overnight. It's exactly the same in an enterprise organization. And so you can have these issues that kind of manifest and then get bigger and bigger and bigger. But it takes a long time to course. Correct. Whereas if you're smaller and nimble like your friends at Bose, you can course correct a lot quicker. Now I do, I say that and I believe that. But I also think that size gets used as a convenient blocker to fixing problems. Right. Well, we're big, it'll take too long. But that's just bureaucracy. It's really taken, it's nonsense in a lot of cases. And I think that there's probably enough examples, case studies out there where large companies have made relatively nimble decisions and it has had a positive result. But conversely it's probably at a. There's been negative results too, right. Similar situations and it hasn't gone well because what works for a small to medium enterprise does not work in a big company. I mean there's a reason why. And Jeffrey, you and I have had this conversation and Kasha and Danny and I have definitely had this conversation. There's a reason why all the great HR tech that uh, exists today is not built for enterprise solution yet because it doesn't work in a complex matrix organization. And there's a reason why these complex matrix organizations have all the, shall we say, less enjoyable technology to use. Not naming any names.

Danny Glitch: I was going to say baggage, but yeah, yeah but that's enjoyable.

Marian Anderson: The tech solutions that are open to enterprise companies are not the greatest, they're not the, the most UI UX enjoyable, they're certainly not ex enjoyable and, but that's the best that we have because they work for these very complex organizational structures. And so you know, it, it really isn't that straightforward. Like it's easy to sit and, and moan and be like oh well, you know. But it really isn't. When you work in an enterprise organization you see just how difficult it is to course correct and the tools that you have at your disposal are not necessarily able to help you do that in a, in a quick way. So unfortunately employees are the collateral damage of that.

Jeffrey Furman: I want to add on to m that point that you just made around like enterprise tech looking a little not so nice to look at from a UX or just the whole entire interface is always trash. Um, I want to say I've consulted or worked at, I want to say nearly 10 HR tech companies with the exception of all voices. The other nine have been uh, when you get that first enterprise client you essentially become a dev workshop for them, especially if you're a smaller startup. So you have to build in features that kind of go towards that Fortune 500 company and make sure that you are keeping them happy. And that kind of makes the product not so fun and not so engaging for anyone, which is such a shitty way of approaching design. I have to give kudos to all voices and the product team there. You know, they do a lot to make sure that you know, we put our product roadmaps out there, we make it very transparent with folks, but we work with a lot of enterprises. I don't want to name names because you never know. Churn and legal stuff. Right. But reality is we understand what it takes to manage employee relations from a large enterprise level. So we're able to kind of build features out that are going to affect the whole entire market or all of our users and people that we want to eventually gain. That said, uh, not the case with Office Vibe. We're a dev shop with Butterfly AI. We got uh, you know, the big fortune one, right? So we be essentially became, we had a massive contract, we became their dev shop. God, all the other small ones. I've seen it happen every single time. The second you get, you see that check come in or you see the deal about to be closed, you are just getting customer success tickets to build out, tickets left and right. So I say that as a product person and it's been stressful having to be on that part of things and I'm more than happy just sticking to marketing and having fun creating content with brilliant folks like you.

Marian Anderson: So now we hear you. And you know like I have this thing, right? Like I, I'm, I talk about this a lot. Like I'm super passionate about HR tech, having been the poor sword trying to create Tech Stack, a people tech stack which gives you everything that you need to give your employees an incredible experience. But also try to balance that with not killing them with tech fatigue, right? Because you can get one thing that does one thing well and another thing that does something else well and another thing that does something else well. And before you know it, people are like, wait, what? I go where for what? And they get confused and it just becomes a whole thing. And then you know, the, the, the usage of it just drops because people are like, oh, this is shit, I don't know where to go for anything. Or they're just so burned out by jumping between platform to platform. And you know, it's not always as simple as ah, an open API and white labeling and all of that is as great as that sounds. The reality is very different. So like I, God, I would, I am um, such a cheerleader for some of these smaller tech platforms, I presume like where all voices started and have evolved into like the company that can figure out a one stop shop, right, that really does tick all of the boxes. That does a good job of being HRIS employee relations talent. Like if you can get a ah, One stop shop that does all of it and does it well and works for enterprise. It's like the holy grail of HR tech, right? The person who figures that one out will never work again a day in their life. They've nailed it. Uh, they've solved half the big problems in industry today. But unfortunately it just, we're not there and we can't quite figure out. And so the tech that is available is Good in some ways and shit in others. But it certainly doesn't create this incredible employee experience that we really want our, uh, people to have.

Jeffrey Furman: Sad note. And good note. Sad note is that's before we got acquired. That was the end goal for Office five now Work leap. Right. Like we wanted to have this massive ecosystem where every HR person can kind of like handle everything, you know, end to end. Right. Good note. I'm gonna send this over to Brian, our CEO, see if we can make something happen. No, so. Oh God, I hope no competitors are listening.

Danny Glitch: I, I would.

Marian Anderson: And if they are hiring us because we have all the answers.

Kashidora: Super smart peoples on this podcast, I

Jeffrey Furman: want to add one more thing on that Bose example. Um, you know, there's, I strongly believe that was a sign of the times where like, yeah, they're a smaller organization, but, you know, maybe there was less technology, less data going around and since we were kind of the first in line with, you know, this people analytics solution, they used us and they were like, wow, okay, there's all this information. Big data is kind of this trend we have. Like we, we need to make decisions fast because that's kind of in mode with the market right now and we have to, you know, empower our folks to do that. Back in 2012ish, when that was a thing to do, you can make those decisions and not have too many folks kind of chirping, telling you like, oh, that's not the right thing to do. Feel like maybe now, you know, paralysis through analysis to make these types of changes. You look at it, you, you kind of have to worry about the numbers, you know, budget, and then somebody in from compliance has to go in and give their opinion on that and they probably bring in some, some more analytics and then somebody else brings in another sheet that says, I don't know. Deloitte found that remote workers and all that good from all these studies. Right. You have all these kind of reports and it makes it difficult to make a decision. So, uh, could, could that have been just a sign of the times and less technology and one source of data in encouraging a company to make a decision and now it's a little bit more difficult because you have so many more variables that you have to take into account and more people that you have to kind of please, for lack of a better phrase, in order to make that decision?

Danny Glitch: Right, yeah, absolutely. It goes back to the, the politics. I think it's a more complicated, you know, and, and one of the things about the going remote during COVID was it really stripped out all of that bureaucracy and politics and, and the finance because you just had to, so, so companies just had to make it work. There wasn't, you know, oh, well, let, let's do a decision on this and can you research that? And you know, let's ask some, um, some of our companies that are in a similar industry of a similar size and see how they handled it. It was like, no, you just have to go, go, go, go, go. So in one hand that was, that was kind of a, a nice little blessing to, to cut through all that red tape. Not that a global pandemic was a blessing, but to sort of smooth through, right. And as, as we're like wrapping up is, I realized it's been almost an hour, it's been a great conversation. But to smooth through all the data, all of the vibes that you're feeling in the office, you're getting the signals. How do you go from that to not necessarily the right decision? Because there is no perfect decision, but one that is going to be beneficial in the long run. Is there a process? What have you seen successful organizations do from deciding they want to collect data to making a decision that is beneficial to the employees?

Jeffrey Furman: Got it. So turning data into action, right? So plain and simple, you want to spend around with pulse surveys. You get the data every single week. But I personally feel like there's a good two to three month window where you can really get accurate results and understand what's going on in your organization. You've probably heard phrases like survey fatigue and um, all the different things like maybe somebody could incentivize someone to take a survey. So it kind of influences uh, answers, right? You want to make sure that you have a data set that is, you know, free from any type of bias. And if you give like that two to three month window of collecting information, you'll get a true understanding of how your workers feel, how your leadership feels. Whole lay of the land. That's uh, a next thing then becomes, you know, collecting, seeing that information, trying to analyze all these things. Back in the day we did not have AI or sentiment analysis. We would just kind of go in and say like, all right, based on this, want to do this. Nowadays the platforms are a lot more advanced, so I would say, you know, look into the suggestions or you know, maybe bring in a outside source or don't even bring an outside source. You have talented HR folks that are looking at these things nowadays. So just kind of come up with ideas based on what are the industry leaders doing, uh, what can we do to train our managers to improve their soft skills? Because we see leadership being down, all that fun stuff. You can use data to tell the story of what actions to take next. So I think after you decide on that, come up with an internal comm structure and say, hey, we noticed that these scores are down. We want to improve on all these things. We're here for you. Here are some initiatives that we want to maybe propose. Do you think they could work? You want to send up a follow up survey and just make it like a multiple, uh, selection of things that would make employees feel better and understand, like what is the things that, what are the things that are scoring the highest? What are the things that people truly want? Get both quantitative qualitative data and then start taking action with another internal comms and say, okay, based on whatever we approved with our C suite, here's what we're going to do for you right here. Here's what we worked for, here's what we negotiated. Wham, bam, thank you ma'. Am. Here's a three month plan to get that out there. And understandably so like Marion brought up a great point. With larger enterprises, this might stretch out a lot longer. It could be a whole year, two, maybe even three years of, you know, reshaping how your organization runs. Um, it could be one year of like internal communication letting people know that like, hey, we're going to collect, post survey information for 6 months and understand what's needed in every single country or department or office, whatever the case may be, right? You get all this information, uh, it remains the same. You get all the information you analyze, you think of, you bring it to your C suite, you kind of come up with a resolution and then you just communicate it with your employees and do a slow rollout or quick rollout

Marian Anderson: if you're a startup, uh, do meaningful stuff, right? Just do stuff that's meaningful and be honest, be transparent, build trust. Just don't do the quick gratification just for the sheer hell of it. Because it's that Red Bull effect, right? Doesn't last and it doesn't sustain. And don't use phrases like a low hanging fruit either because that just you know, really undermines, I think, the value of what it is that you're trying to do. That's not the point. We're not here for quick wins. We're here to do something meaningful that's really going to change the employee experience over the long term.

Kashidora: And if people have taken the time to give you their opinion the most, an Organization, or maybe the least, I don't know, whatever the right word to use here, uh, an organization can do is to tell them, we got this and this is what we're doing. Right. Like, because I feel like if you're not that if you don't give some kind of transparent message, everything happens in a void. And that void is then the assumption of they're doing nothing. And that sucks because you know that there is work that's being done. But since you didn't say anything and they haven't seen a result of their feedback, they think nothing's been done. And then that's just like detrimental to the people who are doing the hard work that might be taking three years, you know, like what Jeff and Marian were saying. So it's like say something.

Marian Anderson: Yeah. Or you get the opposite. But it's all jazz hands, but it's all far coat, no knickers as we see in Glasgow. Right. So show no substance. So it's trying to find that balance between.

Danny Glitch: You now have to log into some app,

Marian Anderson: but it's trying to find that balance between that, that visibility, that stuff's happening, there's progression happening. But it's not just some like, you know, lack of substance, Red Bull effect that really means nothing and isn't going to move the needle on anything. So you're always trying to walk a line and that's where our poor HR friends is tough.

Jeffrey Furman: I have one, uh, more thing. I gave a long, drawn out way of like telling people how to do your job, plain and simple. Make your workplace cool. That's it. Make. That's it.

Kashidora: Everyone was throwing metal hands and horns. Everyone. You just couldn't see it.

Marian Anderson: Exactly. Make work suck less.

Danny Glitch: Yeah, you know, it's one of those. I think having a motto for why you're doing these surveys would be really beneficial. Right? Do you want to make work suck less? Do you want this to be a workplace that everyone looks forward to coming to? Right. Or, you know, they look forward to signing in Monday morning or are they posting all weekend about already having the Sunday scaries? Right. Like that's, that's the difference and that's why you're gonna, you know, ask these questions and that's why you're gonna make these decisions and have actions. Because that's gonna fix culture. Just doing the surveys isn't going to fix the culture. In fact, it could make it worse. And yeah, thank you so much. This was such a fun conversation. Jeffrey, where can people find you? What are you working on?

Jeffrey Furman: Oh my goodness. So you can find me on LinkedIn. And yeah, Jeffrey Fuhrman. J, E, F, F, R, E, Y. I don't know. Common misspelling. People do er Y. And Fedming is F, E, R, M, I, N. I'm on Instagram as well. Furman talks work and threads. That's my new favorite obsession. Um, Furman talks work as well. I'm owning that handle. Tick tock. Threads, Instagram. Meet me there. Get out of X. That place is a cesspool.

Danny Glitch: Uh, I don't know.

Jeffrey Furman: All right, sponsorship, Sorry. No, no, X is great. Sponsor this podcast. Give them millions and millions of dollars. That's the only way I like you guys. And I am currently working at, uh, All Voices. I am their head of Demand gen. I get to interview brilliant people all day, every day. And Emily Fennec and I, we are the two marketing people that fight for HR folks every single day. So yeah, we love you guys. We're here for you. And yeah, give All Voices a look. If you want to get down to any employee relations issues, solve them, manage them, use AI to do them. I don't know, I'm not a good salesperson for the company. I will say what we do, we actually impact workplaces and we change people's lives. So that is a big mission statement right there. And yeah, check us out. We love you guys.

Marian Anderson: Yeah. Links in the show notes, all of, uh, Jeffrey's contact details and they should check out your podcast as well, which I've been on. I was honored to be a guest and is a lot of fun and yeah, and there was, uh, a guest appearance from our cat Izzy as well. So, you know, anyone wants to see Izzy clawing on to me while I'm talking psychological safety, you can find it on All Voices.

Danny Glitch: Yeah, well, be sure to check out that podcast again. Links in the show notes. Be sure to subscribe to this feed so you can get all of our episodes as they come out. We're trying to do them every two weeks with a few breaks for the holidays in summer. Be sure to leave a five star review that helps everyone be found in the algorithms of Spotify and Apple podcasts and even LinkedIn. Thank you all very much. We'll see you next time.

Marian Anderson: Takeaway. Close the loop or stop asking. Acknowledge, Prioritize, Commit, Explain. Not yet. Report back and follow the fearless px.

Jeffrey Furman: Breaking.

Danny Glitch: You were on my b. Mhm. There's so many roads still worth taking. There's no more wasting time. Are you ready for the ship?