Genevere Crary, VP of Global People Operations at LILT, describes the importance of transparency, especially when it comes to employee and hiring expectations. Gwenevere also advocates for using surveys to understand your employees' experiences, and using the findings to improve your workplace.
Gwenevere Crary, VP of Global People Operations at LILT, describes the importance of transparency, especially when it comes to employee and hiring expectations. Gwenevere also advocates for using surveys to understand your employees' experiences, and using the findings to improve your workplace.
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“It's about setting proper expectations, clear expectations. And then helping people meet them. And, you know, making sure that you raise the bar, but you don't raise it so high that it's unachievable, right? Like, you know, you're not gonna run to the moon. You can't do that, right? But maybe you can run to the next city or the next state.”
“setting the right expectations, communication, and then it's about accountability in regards to How are they doing? Checking in, where are they at? Did they fall down? Do you have, do you need to help pick them back up?”
“There's also going to be this need to help people understand. We asked you to do this. But now we've readjusted and maybe we still want you to do that, but it's not as high a priority…
So constantly engaging with them and then just asking questions, asking to see if they have the understanding. You've given them all this information. Do they understand what you have shared with them? And if not, then have a clarifying conversation and continually asking questions to just make sure.”
“The WHY is so powerful. If the person understands WHY, you have just empowered them to take it to the next level, which you may not even realize. That's what that next level is, because you're not ingrained in the role like they are, but they have the WHY, so they understand. And so when they're doing their day to day, they might make this maybe a simple decision or change. And yet, it'll have this profound impact on the team and or the company because of it.”
“Going back to transparency. When you do an engagement survey, share the results, even if they are like in the dumpster, crappy, like you're so ashamed, you're like, I can't believe this is where our culture is or where our employee population is. That is their experience. Right? That is what they're experiencing and it is so healthy to acknowledge that. Say,
Here are the things that we're going to take action on to make improvements and then follow up.”
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00:28 - Quick Hits
03:16 - All about LILT
05:18 - Gwenevere’s role
07:14 - High-performance tips
17:10 - Interviewing strategies
25:46 - All about Guide to HR
30:35 - Managing with limited resources
40:21 - Use surveys well
43:57 - Find the right management structure
49:57 - Where to find Gwenevere
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Find Claude on LinkedIn
More about Office Libations
[00:00:00] Claude: Hello and welcome to Office Libations Unwrapped. I'm your host, Claude Burns, and I'm here today with Gwenevere Crary, the VP of Global People Operations at Lilt. And the founder of Guide to HR. Gwenevere, welcome.
[00:00:11] Gwenevere: Thanks for having me, Claude.
[00:00:13] Claude: Yeah, we're really excited to learn more about you and hear more about your in depth experience in HR. But before we really get into you and your current role, we want to get started with our quick hit segment. You ready for these?
[00:00:26] Gwenevere: I'm ready.
[00:00:27] Claude: All right. Coffee or tea?
[00:00:30] Gwenevere: Oh, absolutely tea.
[00:00:32] Claude: Okay. Do you have a favorite brand or flavor?
[00:00:34] Gwenevere: Uh, definitely chai. Uh, I like the pig's, uh, tea from UK. I'm actually drinking it right now.
[00:00:43] Claude: So we really liked our tea. Um, are you kind of a morning tea, afternoon tea, all day?
[00:00:50] Gwenevere: Uh, if you can infuse it into my veins through an IV, that's kind of like who I am. Yep. I'm all day. Yep. Yep. Herbal, black, half, whatever.
[00:00:59] Claude: Outside of tea, what's your go to or, you know, snack or drink?
[00:01:05] Gwenevere: I'm not really a snacky person and my drink really is tea or water. I'm kind of boring, I guess that way, but, uh, if you put carbs in front of me, I'll definitely eat them. So maybe, maybe some bread, some toast, some crackers.
[00:01:19] And now we got a new question, which we kind of alluded to earlier. You can make an animal any size. What do you do?
[00:01:27] Yeah, uh, I probably would go and get the, the biggest cat out there, uh, and shrink him down and turn him into my little household kitty cat.
[00:01:38] Claude: Okay. How would your current cat feel about that?
[00:01:40] Gwenevere: Oh, he would hate it. He is a one cat per household. He just like, he is an affection whore. He would not, he would not like it at all.
[00:01:49] Claude: Okay. Um, you're retired, money's no object. Where do you live?
[00:01:54] Gwenevere: Either where I'm at right now, which is in the mountains of Utah by Park City or in Lake Tahoe, which is my background. So I'm going to say maybe Lake Tahoe. Yeah.
[00:02:02] Claude: Okay, so I'm guessing mountains is, uh, is what we're going for. All right.
[00:02:07] Gwenevere: 100%.
[00:02:07] Claude: what's the last book you've read?
[00:02:10] Gwenevere: So I actually am, uh, in the middle of reading a book called Give and Take by Adam Grant. And it's a, a similar concept of the GoGiver con, um, concept. And so, yeah, I was just really enjoying that. It fits my philosophy of who I am to try to give back to my community, to my friends, my family, my, my employees, managers, executive team. And, uh, yeah, it's a fun read..
[00:02:33] Claude: What's something we wouldn't know about you by just looking at your LinkedIn profile?
[00:02:39] Gwenevere: I am into Victorian reenactments and dressing up, and I've actually made my Victorian outfit from scratch, including the corset underneath. Although after I finished the corset, I realized I was about 50 years too early, so I got to redo it. Yeah.
[00:03:00] Claude: Well, thank you so much for sharing that. That is, that is a new one. I would not have guessed that looking at your LinkedIn profile. Um, so let's get into, get into the, the main course, if you will. Um, why don't you tell us a little bit about your current company, LILT and what they do?
[00:03:14] Gwenevere: Yeah, absolutely. Love it. So LILT is an AI language translation localization company, and we focus on bringing in, uh, our customers and helping them have this platform that allows them to translate their localization products, whether it's marketing or website or collateral or whatever it is that they need, uh, and whatever language that they need.
[00:03:37] And, uh, one of the things I love about our platform is we have a module called Create, which basically allows our customers to create blogs, write ups, whatever they want. It actually is an AI, like, I want to create a blog about how to run a marathon in, uh, or how to prepare to run a marathon in 10 weeks.
[00:03:55] And it would actually create a blog that gave you those instructions. And then you can say, now I want that in Spanish, but we also have all the dialects too, well, maybe not all, but a lot, we have a lot. Uh, so it's, it's really great. It's a cool tool to use. It really helps move quickly. Our quality is high, our speed's high, and the cost is definitely a lot more affordable.
[00:04:16] I think one of my favorite stories, and I know I can share this one, is that we work with NOAA and the National Weather Service. They're one of our biggest advocates because we've helped them be able to send out warning announcements in different languages that have positively impacted people's lives in a way where they're still living or not injured.
[00:04:35] Uh, and so it's like, it's so cool to know that I'm a part of this organization that is being able to have positive impact to people in their lives. NOAA actually took our story, uh, to the Congress and was, you know, in regards to their budget. And got approved for their, a large budget because of the story that they were able to bring with our AI tool. Yeah,
[00:04:57] Claude: of like you think of like early tsunami warning systems and stuff like
[00:05:00] Gwenevere: Absolutely. Yeah. NOAA believes that there's going to be a larger hurricane season this year. This coming up season and so that's why they were asking for more funding so that we'd be able to do more warnings and announcements and in other languages.
[00:05:14] Claude: So what's your role entail at, at Lilt?
[00:05:18] Gwenevere: Yeah. So I oversee the people operations for Lilt and that includes the HR and talent acquisition and everything that encompasses human resources. So we have about 130 employees internationally, uh, about 80 ish in the U S and then the remaining half in the UK and Germany with a few people sprinkled throughout, including Ireland and some other locations.
[00:05:38] And so when I first started, it was more of helping the executive team Really evaluate the skill set and the performance of the team. And we've really been working really hard to create a culture of high performance. And so sometimes that does mean that people are going to self elect out. And sometimes that means we have to ask people to leave and it's unfortunate, but always a good place for someone.
[00:06:06] And sometimes that place is not where they're currently at. And so hopefully through that, you know, they might have learned some good things here and then been able to take it on and be in the right place for them. And, you know, Lilt is a startup. It's a, it's a growing startup company. We've been around for nine years and we have a lot we need to accomplish on a very lean structure.
[00:06:27] And we need everyone to show up with being a high performer. And so we've been really raising the bar and then people meet it and then we raise it again. And it's just kind of like, you know, when you're going back to that training analogy, uh, when you're training for a marathon, you don't just stop because you finally hit that first mile.
[00:06:42] You have to keep going. And not only do you get that first mile, now you've got to get that first mile faster. And now you've got to get your fifth mile and you've got to get that fifth mile. And the same time it took you your first mile. What a week or two or however long you want to train for it. Right.
[00:06:55] So that's kind of the mentality that we have right now. And, uh, yeah, we're just, uh, we're really, we're rocking and rolling here and really doing some really cool things.
[00:07:04] Claude: What are some tips to, you know, create high performing cultures and, and create employee experiences that get the outcomes that the business needs?
[00:07:14] Gwenevere: It's about setting proper expectations, clear expectations, which is probably the right way of saying that. And, uh, then helping people meet them. And, you know, making sure that you raise the bar, but you don't raise it so high that it's unachievable, right? Like, you know, you're not gonna run to the moon.
[00:07:31] You can't do that, right? But maybe you can run to the next city or the next state. The next state might be, if you're in New England, it might not be that hard. If you're in California, that might be a really challenging situation or Texas, maybe, right? Like the bigger states. So, um, you know, it's just about, about making sure that you, as you raise the bar, it is manageable and it is something that someone can do, but.
[00:07:52] It's a stretch goal, right? But it's a, it's a nice stretch, not an impossible stretch. So setting the right expectations, communication, and then it's about accountability in regards to How are they doing? Checking in, where are they at? Did they fall down? Do you have, do you need to help pick them back up?
[00:08:09] Or they fell down, but they picked themselves back up and they're moving along, but you know, they might be a little far behind there, you know, maybe they're the 99th person out of the hundred because they fell down when they were the first person a minute ago. So it's just constantly checking in with people and ensuring that they have what they need while you're trying to get them to grow.
[00:08:30] Claude: Okay. From more of a like practical or tactical sort of look at things, what, what does like setting clear expectations look like? Is that just like a job description or is it more in depth?
[00:08:42] Gwenevere: Oh, it's more in depth. It's a, to me, it's a lot of different things. I think people hear messages differently and people need to hear the message multiple times throughout their, throughout the week, throughout the month, throughout their course of their life. So I think having multiple touch points is really important. Yes, the job description is important. That's kind of setting them up when they first walk through the door. Then you get through the door and you say, okay, here's, here is what it's like to work here. You kind of, you know, I just did this, this morning, actually, I did a culture call with our new hires. And what does that mean?
[00:09:11] It means, what is it like to work here? What is it that you can expect from us? What do we expect from you? What are the behaviors that we expect, you know, that we strive for at this company? And so then it's studying that. Okay. We expect people to be accountable. We expect people to be team players. We expect them to think outside the box. We expect them to be quicker than they expect. We expect, et cetera, et cetera, and our values. And then from there. People know, okay, this is what it's like to work here. I know what my job description requires me to do in this space of what it's like to work here. Great. Got those two pieces down. Then you add another layer, which is your company OKRs or goals.
[00:09:49] And OKRs are more stretch, uh, than goals, right? That's the difference between the two high level wise. So then you have your company wide OKRs. Okay, I now understand the company business, where we're going, and how, what we, how we plan to get there. All right. Well, how does that relate to me and my role or my team?
[00:10:06] So then you have your department heads and your managers ensure that the individuals have quarterly or semi annual depends on how fast your company is, maybe monthly. I've not really seen monthly, but I've seen quarterly goals mostly. And that is, uh, Where then you're, the manager and department head are helping the individual tie what they're doing in their day to day basis or week to week basis on how that's going to impact that company goal.
[00:10:30] So it's connecting those two things and helping the employee understand how they're valuable and what they're doing is a key piece of this bigger plan, puzzle.
[00:10:40] Claude: Yeah.
[00:10:41] Gwenevere: All those, like that's a lot of information. So that's why it's like constantly like reminding them, constantly re evaluating. In a fast paced tech company, startup company, you're going to be readjusting what you're doing. So there's also going to be this need to help people understand. We asked you to do this. But now we've readjusted and maybe we still want you to do that, but it's not as high priority. Or maybe it's like, we wanted you to do that in six weeks, but now we have something else that's higher priority. So it's okay if you do that in 10 weeks kind of thing.
[00:11:08] Right? So constantly engaging with them and then just asking questions like, you know, asking to see if they have the understanding. You've given them all this information. Do they understand what you have shared with them? And if not, then have a clarifying conversation and continually asking questions to just make sure.
[00:11:25] Okay. Everyone's on the same page. And like, you know, if you're thinking about a rowboat, you have someone yelling, like, you know, go, go, go, right? I'm sure they do more than that, but, and then you have a lot of people like doing the one sided row or two sided depending on the rowboat. And, uh, you know, they're, they're just kind of looking straight. Focusing on like, I got to get this faster and faster with the group. Right. And they don't see that what they're doing, maybe they're a little, they're, they're maybe a little off. And so they're starting to make the boat go in the wrong direction. Right. So it's like making sure everyone is rowing and rowing in the right, same direction to get to the end goal.
[00:11:59] Claude: Yeah, I think from our prior conversation, one of my big takeaways was helping everyone on the team understand how their particular role impacts the bigger company and sort of building it up from the ground. So everyone understands, like, I do, you know, the way I contribute is this and this is what it leads to. And this is how it leads into overall success for the entire team.
[00:12:20] Gwenevere: Yeah. The why is so powerful. If the person understands the why you have just empowered them to take it to the next level in which you may not even realize. That's what that next level is because you're not ingrained in the role like they are, but they have the why they understand. And so when they're doing their day to day, they might make this maybe a simple decision or change. And yet, it'll have this profound impact on the team and or the company because of it.
[00:12:51] Claude: Yeah. And I think your background in particular, you've not just worked with startups, but startups that have grown very quickly and very fast and very big. So what are some of the tips for managing like that, you know, insane growth and adding new team members while still making sure the team stays, you know, all rowing in the same direction?
[00:13:12] Gwenevere: Well, uh, my favorite response to that is don't forget to breathe. Just breathe. It's a quote from Ever After by Drew Barrymore's character. Just breathe. And I think that's like, sometimes I have to tell people like, okay, you need, you need to breathe because if you don't, you're going to pass out. You're not going to be any good to me.
[00:13:31] So that's like my first step is making sure everyone's breathing. I would say that like, it's really, it's, it's making sure that you're having those connections, whether they're async, whether it's a biweekly, maybe it's a 15 minute scrub call. Once a week or daily, it depends on the situation. There's so many, my brain goes in so many different directions.
[00:13:49] I think the key at a very high level is constant communication. Over communication so that everyone knows the status of what things are, where, what's going on. Where are things at and what needs to happen next to take it to the next level? Um, in the chaos of things, especially when you're growing really fast, as you had mentioned in my prior life, I had taken a company from about 120 employees to 600 employees over a two year span of time in the middle of COVID.
[00:14:15] Uh, you can imagine that was a rollercoaster ride. And I think it's also the way to be successful at that, it's not just on the HR team's shoulders, it is the entire org. The executive team needs to be on the same path of like, we are going to double, triple our headcount, or do whatever it is that we're trying to accomplish.
[00:14:35] And they are on board in executing it with you as a partner. And the team, the hiring team, the, the team receiving all these new hires, they're also on board. One of the biggest challenges that we had in that org was we weren't, we weren't really prepared to onboard people successfully. And there have been many articles and, you know, probably studies out there that say like, Within the first 30 to 60 days, that new hire is analyzing whether they made a good decision or not and whether they should start looking for a different decision to be made.
[00:15:05] Uh, which, you know, is a lot of waste of time and effort and money to organizations as well as to the individuals. So we really worked fast and furious on creating an onboarding plan that was, yes, it was the HR and the corporate and the, you know, sign your handbooks and, you know, make sure your payroll is good and all that kind of stuff.
[00:15:22] But we actually took it a next step further where we made a template. By department and even some like subsets of like roles and locations, like this location needs a key to get into this office list. Location just needs the app and parking or whatever it might be. Right? And so we have created all these templates.
[00:15:42] And then once we got to the point where an offer was being sent out, or I think we waited until it was signed, we then sent the hiring manager, Congratulations, this person signed the offer. Here's the template you need to complete for this individual. 80 percent probably is already completed, but now they're just making it more customized to the individual walking through the door.
[00:16:00] And our onboarding experience just shot through the roof because everyone got what they needed. A great example of tactical on there is that we, we were very clear in our Slack, like we use Slack and here are the channels that you, employee of this department in this role, in this location should be following.
[00:16:17] Um, so yeah, we were, we were very, and same thing with our Google drive and all these other things that really tried to like, Make it easy for someone to walk through the door and be acclimated in a week. Because next week we were already onboarding somebody else.
[00:16:30] Claude: Uh huh. Yeah. And you kind of, it's like, well, you're not the new employee anymore.
[00:16:33] Gwenevere: Not in the, yeah, I think we actually were, we joked at two weeks, you were no longer a new employee.
[00:16:39] Claude: Mean, at that level of growth, yeah, that's, that's kind of true. Um, I want to talk a little bit about, you know, the hiring process, like how were you able to hire that many people and, you know, make sure you were getting the right people in the door, uh, so that all the rest of the onboarding and training could, you know, deliver the results you needed.
[00:16:57] I mean, that's a lot of interviews. That's a lot of, you know, different requirements, and I'm sure a lot of new jobs that, uh, were sort of being originated for the first time. You know, can you talk about kind of the structure and some of the strategies you used?
[00:17:09] Gwenevere: Yeah, so I will never ever say I am a recruiting expertise person. It's been one of the, probably the least amount of time I spent in the HR space. So what did I do? I went to, of course, to hire the person that's knows more than I do. So I went out and hired a director, shout out to Suzanne Brown. And we, uh, we built the, the talent acquisition team.
[00:17:30] And we also focused on our employer branding. So we did a lot of things socially. And I think between those two, that's where we kind of started the foundation and, uh, one of the other things I've learned actually through Lilt, which I wish I had implemented at my prior life, uh, was more of like a structure of having, you have your job description, but then actually let's work hiring manager and team, what are, who's going to be a part of the interview process?
[00:17:56] One, making sure it's not too many. To making sure it's not too little, right? Depending on the role. We actually have a structure where the level of the role we'll have, the higher the level of the role, the more people we recommend being part of it. But if it's an entry level role, we shouldn't have five, seven people.
[00:18:10] We should have like two or three, like, let's make this easy. Right. And so then we also, uh, incorporate, okay. What are the questions that you should be asking for each panel, each per, not panel, but each interviewer. And we try, we tie it back to our values. We tie it back to the competencies that the role needs in regards to the skillset. And then we get into different types of questions. So we might have a technical person join the call and do a technical question. And then we might have a person that's more operations, backend stuff, depending on the role. Right. And then we also incorporate that. So I as the head of HR, I sit on all interviews of manager level roles.
[00:18:52] So if we're going to hire someone who's going to come in as a manager, I do a people manager, uh, interview and I find out what's their management style. Do they fit inside of our culture of how we manage people here, that higher expectation, raising the bar and, um, you know, having, being able to have the tough conversations and yet still be able to drive their team to growth as well as, you know, be able to help them grow personally.
[00:19:17] So I love this structure. It's, it's some people, there's a couple of people that don't like structure, so they're not going to like this, but I find that what is helpful is that means every candidate that walks through the door has a similar experience. Right? You don't have a hiring manager or an interviewer that's asking random different questions,
[00:19:34] So it really allows us to have a really succinct, clean interview process. And, um, it's really been helpful to weed out, like, You know, you ask people to be part of the interview process because you want them to give you feedback on something that maybe you didn't hear or you didn't ask the same way.
[00:19:51] And so making sure that you are also the hiring managers also listening to the feedback, because we've had a couple where, like, the hiring manager loves this person. And the feedback's like, oh, it's a 2 out of 4 kind of like, you know, it's not, I wouldn't hire this person. And okay, tell me more, like, why, what did I miss?
[00:20:06] Right? And a lot of times when I'm interviewing managers, I'm on their own. experience in interviewing when they have a poor, uh, poor hiring decision. Half the time, these managers are saying, well, I should have listened to my interview committee because they told me they didn't think this person was a good fit, but I liked him so much.
[00:20:22] I brought him in, you know? So that's another key thing is to listen to those around you. I've had stories where everyone thought a person was amazing and then they get in and you're like, who are you? That's not who I hired, you know? And so that happens too. It's really hard to, hard not to have all the bad apples in the If you, if you put a process in place and you make sure people are listening and have, you know, help them with their interviewing skills and being, making sure that you do the open ended questions and ask for more detail. I think that's very helpful.
[00:20:52] Claude: Yeah. I really like that you kind of brought in employee experience and the kind of interviewing process and sort of the, you know, then the onboarding process. It's just like Yep. You know, we want someone to join our team once they join their team. We want us to stay on their team. Transparency was really valuable to building that employee experience. Can you talk about some of those key things that transparency brings to the table?
[00:21:14]
[00:21:14] Gwenevere: I think starting with the recruiting process, there's a lot of different states that are now doing the, I'm going to call it Transparency Pay Act. It's mostly what it's called. And, um, I think that's really healthy. I think it's, it's a hard for some companies to do if they don't have salary bands and, or if their people are not in those salary bans, you got a little, uh, cleanup to do before those go live. But what I love about it is that it has definitely reduced the amount of interviews I have where it's, The first call, I'm knocking them out because they want too much or they want, or they want to be in a location that I can't, I'm not in or whatever it might be. So being very transparent on your job postings, uh, if the state doesn't require you to do the salary bans, but you can, and maybe you're doing it in other states, I would recommend doing it on all your posts.
[00:22:03] It just helps not waste time on both sides. And then also just kind of sets that like, here's, we are transparent from the very get go. So I think that's really important because it goes back to setting the expectations, right? If you can be clear about what your needs are and what you can and cannot do, Then the person will understand if they fit within that realm.
[00:22:24] Think about it as like a road, right? A road without guard wells, people couldn't go off the roads a lot, but if you have a guard well, or even though like, you know, the, um, the roads that have like a cut in half where you like, when you go across, it's like, makes this really weird noise as you drive
[00:22:37] Claude: Yep, you have to rumble
[00:22:38] Gwenevere: you have that, let's say, yeah, those strips, things like warning sign, warning sign, you're going to be in danger soon. Like having those in place to allow people to. Come in and do what they need to do, but understand where they need to stay within those guardrails is really helpful. And you can only do that if you are transparent and clear about what, what those guardrails look like.
[00:22:58]
[00:22:58] So yes, you, most leaders I work with want to be transparent. Most find it's challenging because not, you're, you're talking to a wide range of people. Entry level all the way up to someone who's knocking on on your door ready to take your seat. Right? And so. That's a wide range of knowledge, experience, and understanding. When you pull, go out and say, Hey, our revenue number is X and we're trying to get to Y.
[00:23:25] And this is, we've missed by percentage, you know, whatever. Or if you do it like a month over month or whatever frequency, and you're showing a downward trend, like, you know, you don't want to freak people out, right? You don't want them to start like leaving your business just because you had a bad month or a bad quarter.
[00:23:42] So it is really about the story you're telling. Along with the data. So people at all levels can hear what you're, you're saying, you can share the information, but it's not in a way where it's like, yeah, our numbers are down. Okay. Next slide, you know, kind of thing. So, uh, and, and not all companies, can you share that?
[00:24:00] And so then it's like, okay, why, what's happening? What I have found the underlying theme is, and I hate to be repetitive here, but the underlying theme is that there's no, the trust is gone. It's the trust, the leadership team doesn't trust management. Management doesn't trust the employees. Employees don't like, it's all over the place, right?
[00:24:16] Nobody trusts nobody. And it's just kind of like a, you know, feast or die
[00:24:20] Claude: hard, hard to row in the same direction,
[00:24:22] Gwenevere: Right. And hard to run around the same direction. So then it's about building that and how do you build that? It's, it's starting to repair those relationships by giving some information that if it got leaked, is it going to matter? No, not really. Is it, if, if someone interpreted it differently, how much of an impact is it going to be? Okay. Then you got to think about that. Like everyone hears and says things differently. interpret things differently. And so that's another factor. As an extramural mathematics major, I think that is my biggest hurdle as a professional is like to understand that when you say blue, you might mean turquoise and I might hear like gray silver, like, you know, so it's like, okay, how do we make sure we're very clear and succinct on what we're saying without having 40 narratives get spun up after we say it?
[00:25:09] And that's where you then follow up. And you, like what I'm trying to accomplish right now is following up with our leaders. How did that message go? What did you hear from that? What is your team hearing from that and understanding what people are getting out of the message so that we can fine tune it as we continue on?
[00:25:28] Claude: that sort of check for understanding that you're kind of mentioning earlier,
[00:25:31] Gwenevere: Yes, exactly.
[00:25:33] Claude: makes sense. I want to switch gears real quick and talk to, talk about, uh, the company you started, uh, Guide to HR.
[00:25:39] Gwenevere: Oh, yeah.
[00:25:40] Claude: Um, you know, what made you start that? And tell us a little bit more.
[00:25:45] Gwenevere: Yeah. So when I left my prior life, I took about two months off and I told my family and friends, I'm going to go dark. I'm okay. I'm just, I just, you know, after being in a company for two years, barely taking any time off, really not taking any time off and growing it, dealing with COVID, IPO and merchant acquisition, there was just a lot happening.
[00:26:03] I just needed some space. And then I came up and I was like, well, okay, what do I want to do now? And yeah. The crazy woman in me is like, I want to do it all over again. And so we started having interviews and conversations with founders who came out of series C or D just recently wanted to grow their headcount again, similar to my prior life.
[00:26:22] And, uh, I kept hearing the same situation. We haven't put much time, energy, effort, resources into the people operations side. So we expect this new hire, this executive new hire to come in and be able to grow our headcount two, three times without anything. So playing the, you know, flying the plane without, uh, while you're building it basically.
[00:26:42] And so I'm like, gosh, there seems to be this opportunity that if I could get in front of these founders to be an advisor and help educate and train, give them some coaching, maybe even help build some foundational. pieces of HR into their practice, into their business, so that when they're ready to do that, there's actually a plane to fly.
[00:27:00] So I usually use the analogy of like, everyone knows like Spirit, Frontier, Allegiant, like I think that covers pretty much the wide range of West and East Coast. Their baseline, Planes, right? They're baseline airlines. Like, you know, you're not going to get a pillow or blanket. You know, you're not going to get entertainment.
[00:27:17] You know, you're not going to get wifi. You're lucky if
[00:27:19] Claude: get from point A to point B.
[00:27:21] Gwenevere: I might charge you for the restroom. Not sure about that. Still TBD, right? Kind of thing, but I'm going to get you from point A to point B. And that's better than you like walking or whatever the situation is, right? So I kind of look at that's what I have built.
[00:27:35] I have built this really like point A to point B very simple structure, but you got something. And then when you get that funding and you're ready to grow your business, then go out and hire your full time executive. And have them be able to upgrade while actually meeting the requirements, uh, of the role, which is to go out and grow the business.
[00:27:57] Claude: Can you share some of like the mistakes that you see kind of those stage companies making in their people operations and things that you may need to clean up and, you know, maybe someone will hear it and they'll be like, I am doing that and let me fix it now.
[00:28:10] Gwenevere: Yep. Uh, so typically the first hire in the HR people operations realm is going to be a recruiter, which is fine because you're maybe 20 people and now you want to get to 50. Well, yeah, having an in house recruiter is way cheaper than an agency. So that's great. Yeah. It's the, and then you expect that person to be HR and run your HR department.
[00:28:30] That's when I see a lot. And I'm like, Talent Acquisition Recruiting is, is different than HR, just as much as, uh, a controller. is different than an FP& A finance person. They are two different things. Now, can one person ultimately get there and become a CFO? Yeah, sure. Of course. But usually like, it's like, if you're focused on recruiting talent acquisition, you're not going to, you're not necessarily going to have the experience to do the HR stuff and vice versa.
[00:28:59] Um, and a lot of times I've seen that the recruiter is maybe two to five years into their life cycle of, of working. So then that also is a struggle too. So that's one. Um, too, a lot of times I will see this, not only in the HR front, but in all high level roles, they will hire, let's just say a director level, and, you know, talking about expectations, here's the job description, it's a director level role, I'm going to hire you because although I need all this other stuff above you, I can only afford a director level role, so that's who I'm going to hire, and then they start and they come in, and then all of a sudden, you, CEO, founder, executive, team leader, whatever, you your expectations of what you really need, but you can't afford, now starts to sit on that director and you expect this person to be able to be a C level person, which is not fair to them, setting them up for failure, right?
[00:29:54] Setting yourself up for failure. And then all of a sudden you're wanting to fire this person because they're not doing what you need. Well, yeah, no kidding. I, you know, I'm not going to go and hire, um, a cowboy to go and fly my plane. Right? Like, so I think that it's really, I see that a lot.
[00:30:11] I see that the, uh, the founders will hire someone and then expect them to be something else that they needed, but weren't honest with themselves during the recruiting process. And then set both them and the new hire up for
[00:30:24] Claude: Yeah, that one hits close to home. So,
[00:30:27] Gwenevere: I'm sorry.
[00:30:28] Claude: it's okay. It's okay. Like I said, if I had listened to this before, I would have known better, but what advice would you give to that person who's like, you know, I, I have the budget for a director, but I need a C level. How do you navigate that gap?
[00:30:41] Gwenevere: Yeah. So then it's like, okay, think outside the box, think differently. We're no longer in the 1980s, right? Structure of work, like pre post COVID fractional and interim work has become a huge space. One of the communities I'm in, that's a fractional, I think there's probably almost a hundred thousand fractional people in there now of all different roles, right?
[00:31:04] Uh, so, you know, think outside the box. You don't have to have a full time person. If you can't afford them, bring in the expertise you need to make the decisions and the structure you need to put in place, but then, you know, be okay that may be a lower level individual is going to actually execute on that.
[00:31:22] Um, so a lot of times it's more about, Hey, you can afford a director. Why don't you bring in an executive? Maybe, maybe not even part time, but as a fractional, you're coming, a fractional comes in and is actually like an employee, they are fully ingrained into the business, like an employee is. They're part of the leadership team and they're running their function as if they were full time.
[00:31:44] But you're getting that expertise and maybe saving money too. And heartache, a lot of heartache.
[00:31:50] Claude: Yeah. So kind of hire the fractional at the top level, maybe hire someone below that director level to actually carry out the, the execution of the
[00:31:59] Gwenevere: Maybe a generalist or a manager in the HR perspective, you know, maybe manager, some maybe middle level individual contributor professional to execute on. Yeah,
[00:32:10] Claude: Okay. I, I feel you're just full of great advice. So I got another, I got another question for you. A lot of, a lot of teams, you know, have gone sort of hybrid or remote. How do you build culture, uh, among sort of that, that hybrid workforce or that remote workforce? Have you seen anything done in companies you've worked with that have had kind of good, good sort of shared experiences that created, you know, a better outcome for the team?
[00:32:34] Gwenevere: a million dollar question, right?
[00:32:36] Claude: Yeah. It's what everyone
[00:32:37] Gwenevere: I'm going to pull, I'm going to pull up my mother out of me and I'm going to answer, it just depends. Um, so like, you know, in a couple of examples, like I, I worked with, um, I worked with a beauty products company and they were mostly in Southern California.
[00:32:54] And they had an office, but during COVID, like they got into this really large space office prior to COVID happening, thinking they were going to grow and expand and have all these people in the office. Then COVID happened and obviously things transpired. And so they had this large office with like four people coming in.
[00:33:09] And so it was really like, at that point, it was really actually like disappointing to come into the, like, I don't want to go to the office to be in this huge space with like four people. So, um, yeah, that's it. They ultimately, um, ended up getting out of that and moving to a smaller space, but then also recognize that a lot of people had kind of moved away, um, from drivable distance still in California for the, they were a very small 20, 25 employee population.
[00:33:32] And so they ended up doing a, uh, in person event that was really cool. They went down there and like the San Diego area. So they went down to Hotel Coronado and they had, they paid for everyone to stay there the night they did. And it was more of a. I think they might have had like maybe 10 percent of the agenda might have been business related, but it was really more about like, let's just get together and hang out.
[00:33:53] They did like a yoga thing and they did a hiking and they did like this food fest thing. And so they did a lot of fun, like let's be humans and build our relationships and our bond and friendship beyond just like we're co workers. So I thought that that was really helpful and it does seem to impact the relationships at the afterwards because then you start seeing communication happen better.
[00:34:15] Because now I've met you in person. I've broken bread with you. I understand you a little bit better. I understand where you're coming from. You understand where I'm coming from. And so, uh, I find that that is very helpful. Um, so that's one of my clients, uh, situation in my past life when we had, you know, in the COVID, like everyone's always doing like, you know, those wine events or cooking dinner events, um, you know, through, through Zoom or whatnot.
[00:34:38] I'm not the holder of all the answers, and nor should anyone be the holder of all the answers. So, because it depends on your org, your situation, where are your people at, how many do you have, what's your culture like? I would say the first thing to do is get your employees involved, uh, build an employee ambassador group if you don't have one or something similar to that and let them really drive what is it the employees want.
[00:35:02] Because I find a lot of times the mistakes being made is people who are prescriptive. Oh, I heard my friend's CEO do this. So I'm going to do this for my company. Well, that like that your employees don't care about that. Right? So a great example. Uh, we had done an employee engagement survey. And I had, in my prior life, the company flourished during COVID.
[00:35:25] We were supporting, uh, the gambling industry, the, you know, the brick and mortar, the winds and, and, and whatnot, getting online. And so we flourished during that time. And a lot of the employees, Felt like a little bit of survivor guilt of like, I can't believe I, you know, I'm, I got a great job. It's very stable.
[00:35:44] I'm, we're getting rewarded. We're getting more shares. We're getting more pay, like blah, blah, blah. And all my friends and family around me are like losing everything. And so there was a lot of desire by the employee population to give back. At the same token, we also recognize, especially for our Europe team who walks a lot, right?
[00:36:01] They, they have a, they have the cities that you just, it's walkable. So, uh, we recognize that a lot of our employees were also being impacted physically and mentally because they had just been stuck behind the desk, you know, in their homes. Some people live in really small flats. So, Once it was safe to go out everyone, you know, legally and from different countries and all that good stuff.
[00:36:22] We ended up combining their desire to give back to the community and our desire to help them get physically and mentally like well again. And we did a walking challenge and we donated, uh, for every mile an employee walked, I think it was 50 cents. And, uh, for every, I think it was every two miles, uh, we tied it to, a wonderful charity called Soles for Souls.
[00:36:45] We intentionally picked an international charity so that we didn't isolate any one country. Right. We didn't, especially when a lot of times when you're a US based company, but you're international, you know, US employees are the favorites.
[00:36:59] Right. So trying to make it like, this is an international charity. And then every time they went out and walked, they put on their shoes. You know, walked, run, bike, and, uh, they were, they were actually earning shoes for people who were in need. And it was really cool. We, we had a really huge success and then we added a little reward to it.
[00:37:18] You know, anyone that hit over a hundred miles in the month would then be tossed into a raffle, uh, for money. And, uh, and then we took it one more step further, which was to actually celebrate and acknowledge people who made, who hit the hundred miles. And we did that online. We socially celebrated and acknowledged people online.
[00:37:37] And I just like, you know, just a way to like, give back to them, right? And like, good job. Like, 100 miles doesn't sound like a lot in a month, but when you think about it, you gotta get out
[00:37:46] Claude: a day.
[00:37:46] Gwenevere: you gotta, yeah, you gotta move. You gotta hustle.
[00:37:49] I mean, I didn't even realize it, but it was still going. It's such an employer branding boost for us. Months later, I'm holding interviews. I'm like, why do you want to work here? Well, I saw your post about the charity and the moving. And I was like, I want to work at a culture like that.
[00:38:02] And I was like, mind blown. I was like, Oh my gosh, I didn't even think about how that, it would even impact us from that perspective. I mean, that gives, goes back to the give and take book I'm reading, the given giver concept, right? It's all, it's all about helping others. And ultimately it just circles right back and, you know, here you are eating Five course meal because of it kind of concept.
[00:38:21] So, um, going back to what I was trying to say here in my example is know your employee population, talk to them, find out from them, what is it they want. If you were to send me, um, a wine or beer event, It's going to fall flat. I might go, I might participate because I want to engage with people, but it's not an event I would choose to go to.
[00:38:42] Why? I'm allergic to alcohol. No, I'm a, I'm an anomaly, right? I know I'm an anomaly, but if that was like more people or maybe, maybe you have, um, maybe you're, maybe you're trying to offer a wine event during Lent and that was what half of your population decided to give up, right? Like, Oh my gosh, you need to be in tune with your employee population.
[00:39:02] Otherwise it's a waste of time. and money for your org. And you're also going to like fall flat with your employees and your employees and be like, they don't even know me. They don't care. They don't, they're just trying to, they're just trying to fluff it up and say that they care about us by giving us this event or doing this X, Y, Z, but nobody wants, nobody wants to do that. That's going to be even more damaging.
[00:39:22] Claude: really, really interesting. And I think the theme that I'm grabbing across this conversation is that it's, it's really important to, to continually talk to your team and sort of get their, their feedback, get their feedback. You know, under, make sure that they've understood what's been put out, why it's been put out, um, so that you can be on the same page and grow in the same direction.
[00:39:42] Gwenevere: Yeah. And I've learned, and I'm still learning right now. One of my, my weak points is that I, I always assume everyone's really busy and I don't want to, I don't want to hound them or harass them or bother them. You know, we all got a lot we've got going on, but I have started to learn and realize like, that's actually the detriment of myself, my team, what I'm trying to accomplish at the business, which therefore it means it's also detrimental to the employees and the business itself.
[00:40:05] And so, you know, taking the five minutes and asking a simple question to somebody about something is not going to. And if they're busy, then they're not going to respond right away, or maybe you'll never hear from them again, but okay, but you tried, right? Like, you know, hopefully you don't get ghost
[00:40:19] Claude: You only could try, right?
[00:40:20] Gwenevere: Exactly.
[00:40:21] I mean, employee engagement surveys, that's where you get a lot of information from, but where a lot of companies do end up kind of falling on the sword there is that they don't share. They're not going back to transparency. When you do an engagement survey, share the results, even if they are like in the dumpster, crappy, like you're so ashamed, you're like, I can't believe this is where our culture is or where our employee population is. That is their experience. Right? That is what they're experiencing and it is so healthy to acknowledge that. Hey guys, we got this back and wow, I, I totally thought we were, we were healthier than we were, but we're not. And here's where, here's where we're the worst at. And here's the second part.
[00:41:01] Here are the things that we're going to take action on to make improvements and then follow up. Continuously, where are you at with that? How has that helped? Have you completed that action plan and you're starting to see changes? Yes or no? Or, you know, I've had a time where, guys, we, we, we kind of created this action plan and about, you know, halfway through the process, we realized that actually was not making an impact and we really need to focus on something else and we had to scrap the whole thing.
[00:41:28] But being transparent and honest to the organization, one, it lets, it validates how they're feeling. It also lets them know that you hear them and that you're taking action on them. And so then when you ask them again, how's it going six months, 12 months, however frequently you do it, and you're starting to see a trend of upward or downward, you know, where to dial up and make adjustments.
[00:41:51] Um, but so many times a company will go and ask for employee engagement and then just say, Didn't we do this survey like six months ago? Did anyone hear what happened? Like
[00:42:00] Claude: got filed away and
[00:42:01] Gwenevere: and then you're never going to hear, if you ask for their point, their opinion again, guess what? They're not going to give it to you because they realize you don't care, that you did nothing with the first one.
[00:42:10] So why should I spend my time giving you the second one?
[00:42:13] Claude: It's really, really interesting, really good advice. And sometimes that just perception of we did do something with it, but not telling people, not showing
[00:42:20] Gwenevere: yeah, you got to tell them like, this is what we did. And this is the, this is either, this is what we plan on doing and the expert and what we think is going to happen. Or, and you know, here's what we did. We thought it was going to be this, but it turned out to be that. Uh, one time we actually did, uh, a follow up.
[00:42:35] We did, um, some, uh, round table discussions, try to get a bunch of different department, um, employees from different departments together and do follow up questions. Cause one of the hard parts about employee engagement survey is most of the time you're going to do it anonymously. Which is fine when it comes to the numerical at the qualitative, but when you're wanting the quantitative or sorry, I always get that
[00:42:55] Claude: Yeah. Other way.
[00:42:56] Gwenevere: Yeah, it's really good when you have, you know, just looking at the quantitative, but when you want the qualitative, you want to understand and dive in. Why did I get a 3 out of 10? Sometimes employees leave comments and sometimes they don't, and when they don't, it's like, okay, the other part is to say, hey, you can expect us to get better.
[00:43:15] However, you need to be a part of that conversation. We cannot get better if we don't understand what we need to improve. And so that's where it gets really like, that's where we ended up doing these focus group roundtables was like, look, We appreciate the feedback. We understand that you guys are experiencing this in a not so healthy way.
[00:43:33] We want to improve. However, the feedback we got, wasn't enough for us to figure out what actions we need to take and then get into the round table and actually hear from people. And so that is also a very beneficial way to hear from your employees. And then your manager group, your manager group is another great way.
[00:43:48] Claude: So are there any other kind of people, HR operations, sort of challenges that you see in early stage startups that you advise?
[00:43:57] Gwenevere: Yeah. Another thing that I see a lot of is getting really bulky in your middle management level. And what I mean by that is you have your leaders and you have your doers, the individual contributors, and the people that are managing the individual contributors.
[00:44:16] You have an individual come in, you know, maybe your employee number 20, and then you get to 100 employees or maybe even 50, 60 employees. And you want to grow that area. Well, this person that has been here and has basically built that area or been the subject matter expertise of that area. You feel like you have to promote them to the, to the manager. They're the ones that know what's going on inside of your org. It makes sense. And then have them hire underneath them. What ends up happening is that person, your 20, 30 people doesn't get any support. And what does it mean to go be a manager?
[00:44:52] Being a manager and ultimately, hopefully a leader is skillset than what that person is doing for you today. And especially in the tech world, a lot of engineers and tech people don't want to be managers. They never want to be managers. So forcing them into that is not going to be a good situation. So what ends up happening is You end up having those people who are very uneducated because you don't have the resources.
[00:45:17] You don't have a L& D team that's learning and development for those listening L& D team. Uh, and so, you know, maybe you don't even have the resources to give them the library card to LinkedIn's plethora of training, but even if you did, do you even know what you want them to focus on? Because like going in there is kind of like Pinterest and you get lost in the rabbit hole of information.
[00:45:38] Great. Great resources, but you've got to be structured on what you want. Uh, and the other thing I see is that when you're a startup company, people really, they want to grow. Most people want to grow their careers and learn and grow. And so I think what ends up happening is that we get stuck in this thought of like, that means becoming a manager and growing like by level of management, not necessarily an IC or individual contributor, but you can grow as an individual contributor.
[00:46:05] There's multiple levels there. So what ends up happening is you either feel obligated to make them a manager, to keep them, uh, because that's, they're, they're demanding it, or for whatever reason you think that's like what they want. And so you create these roles that you don't really need. You don't really have because you're not a big org.
[00:46:24] And so that's where it ends up being the situation where all of a sudden, few months, a few years later, you're looking at your org and you're like, gosh, like that, that one pound burger now became 10 pounds. And I, I don't, we can't afford that. That's like, think of all the, the, the fatty juices coming out that are ruining your org. And so the reason why it's unhealthy to have such a big manager level for a small company is think about it like that burger, right? If you think about it, if I'm trying to get a message down, well, one level is easy to get down two levels.
[00:47:00] Okay. Now it gets harder. And the thicker that is, whether it's levels or just number of managers, it's harder to get down to the employee. Contribute the individual contributor or level and making sure that that message is getting down to them. It's almost like telephone, right? I tell you something, you go tell that another person, and then all of a sudden, 10 layers later, I'm hearing what I told you.
[00:47:23] And it's like, whoa, completely different message. And that's when you start getting all these negative narratives. And with unexperienced managers, they don't know how to handle that. They don't know that what they, what we, what the, you as the leader have shared with them, they should be executing downward and telling their team, right?
[00:47:40] So there's all these different factors that end up happening and creating a very, you know, Uh, chaotic, maybe toxic environment, if you just thin those layers out, and then you really give the support to the managers that meet the, the way to do that, start with what does the business need? What are the skills we need in this business?
[00:48:00] And then what's the structure we should put into place? And then start putting people back into your org. Never do that with the people's names in there. Do a blank screen. What is it that
[00:48:10] Claude: yeah, that's great advice.
[00:48:11] Gwenevere: For where we want to go? And then start putting in people. And then now I have these five people over here that I don't see how they fit in the org.
[00:48:20] Awful, horrible. I get it. Especially if those people were like maybe your 3, 10, 15 employee, right? That's really hard, especially since a lot of times the first initial employees are usually family friend or friends or friends of friends. So it's a lot of connection to your personal life, but in order to grow your business, you have to be able to scale up your team and have the right skills in the right roles doing what you need done.
[00:48:45] Claude: And especially for managers, because they make such a big impact on your ICs. So if you're not putting good managers in place, like that flows down to all of your different ICs. So you may
[00:48:56] Gwenevere: Absolutely. I kind of
[00:48:57] Claude: care of that manager, but they're going to hurt the rest of your team.
[00:49:01] Gwenevere: Oh, a hundred percent. Your managers are the blood in your body and you are the veins. Like you are, again, going back to guardrails, like the veins are the guardrails of like, where the blood should be going in your body. The managers are the, are the blood and they're taking the information.
[00:49:14] They're taking the oxygen to the employee population, the people who are actually out doing and getting the work done. And so it is, they, they are the most crucial piece of your people operations. Um, so I would say be wise in how you grow it. and take care and ensure that you are growing, bringing in the right experience, the right skill set, growing the people. I'm not saying don't promote people. I do believe in promoting people, but promote them when your business needs that role and they have the skill set, right? So that's, that's the key.
[00:49:48] Claude: Okay. Thank you so much for sharing.
[00:49:50] thanks so much for joining us, Guinevere. Uh, for people that are listening, you know, how can they connect with you or find you online? Yeah,
[00:49:57] Gwenevere: the LinkedIn, right? Uh, there's not a lot of Gweneveres out there. So I think there's only one Gwenevere Crary. Uh, easy to find. Uh, so that's my easiest way. And then I do have my website, uh, guide to HR. com. And that is for my business. And then lastly, for any founders or leaders, uh, wanting to continue the conversation and grow, we have a Scaling with People podcast that can be found on YouTube Apple and all the typical places that you're probably listening to right now.
[00:50:25] Claude: Smash that subscribe button.
[00:50:27] Gwenevere: Exactly.
[00:50:29] Claude: Well, thanks again so much for taking the time and sharing all, all your insights with us. Uh, we really do appreciate it. All
[00:50:35] Gwenevere: Absolutely. It was a blessing and wonderful to be on the show and thanks for letting me be on it.
[00:50:39] Claude: Thank you for joining me and Gwenevere today on Office Libations Unwrapped. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast for future episodes filled with inspiration, ideas, and strategies to optimize your workplace culture. And remember, happy employees make happy customers. Until next time, I'm your host, Claude Burns.