Emma describes why it’s important to foster a culture of fun and creativity to combat workplace stress and increase productivity. Claude and Emma discuss which return-to-work models work best for both employers and employees.
Emma Calderon, Senior Director of People and Culture at Qualified, shares her people-leading expertise. Qualified is the AI pipeline generation platform for B2B websites that generates pipeline at scale with AI and automation. Powered by the Qualified Platform, Qualified offers an all-in-one solution that maximizes website conversions with live chat, automated chatbots, one-click meeting scheduling, marketing offers, and actionable intent data.
Emma describes why it’s important to foster a culture of fun and creativity to combat workplace stress and increase productivity. Claude and Emma discuss which return-to-work models work best for both employers and employees. Emma also highlights the significance of leadership and development training in a post-COVID world.
00:18 - Quick Hits
03:16 - All about Qualified
04:02 - Emma’s role
08:55 - Why fun is important
11:10 - Measuring employee engagement
15:04 - Today’s trends
19:31 - Why Emma is pro-hybrid
26:47 - The cost of getting people together in-person
29:44 - What do employees really want?
37:10 - Where to find Emma
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[00:00:00] Claude Burns: Hello and welcome to Office Libations Unwrapped. I'm your host, Claude Burns, and today I'm here with Emma Calderon, the Senior Director of People and Culture at Qualified. Welcome Emma.
[00:00:09] Emma Calderon: Thank you so much, Claude. I'm so excited to be here. Happy, happy Friday.
[00:00:13] Claude Burns: Yes. Happy Friday. We're not going to tell people what Friday, but it's a Friday.
[00:00:16] Emma Calderon: It's a Friday.
[00:00:18] Claude Burns: So we're just going to jump right into sort of our quick hit segment and learn a little bit about you. And then we'll talk a little bit about Qualified. Sound good?
[00:00:25] Emma Calderon: Sounds great.
[00:00:26] Claude Burns: Excellent. So coffee or tea?
[00:00:29] Emma Calderon: Definitely coffee.
[00:00:30] Claude Burns: Okay. Do you have like a favorite brand that you sort of go with?
[00:00:33] Emma Calderon: I am a Starbucks loyalist, and I get a Venti Pike Black No Cream No Sugar pretty much every day. And as I tell my husband, it all comes out in the wash from a budget perspective. It's 2, it's all good. It makes me happy.
[00:00:48] Claude Burns: And you use the app, right? So you get all the free rewards. So you're basically getting free coffee.
[00:00:52] Emma Calderon: It's based, it's like the stars, they add up so quickly and I'm so grateful for that program.
[00:00:57] Claude Burns: It's, it's a, it's an amazingly good program. So many people use it. All right. What's your go to work snack or drink?
[00:01:05] Emma Calderon: Ooh, I love a perfect bar. So I have now taken to, so I get, we get them in the office here and I also buy them at home cause I love them so much.
[00:01:12] Claude Burns: Do you have a favorite flavor?
[00:01:14] Emma Calderon: Like the OG peanut butter is my fave.
[00:01:16] Claude Burns: Yeah. Same, same. All right. You're retired. Money's no object. Where do you live?
[00:01:20] Emma Calderon: Trick question. I live in a bunch of different places because money is no object.
[00:01:24] Claude Burns: Yeah, that's fair.
[00:01:25] Emma Calderon: So Colorado, California, you know what? I might have a little pied a terre in Paris as well. London, then somewhere like coastal, like warm watery, like BVI's, St. John,
[00:01:39] Claude Burns: Okay.
[00:01:40] Emma Calderon: get a beach house there. Yeah,
[00:01:42] Claude Burns: Yeah, I like that. I think, yeah, if money's no object, why just go to one place?
[00:01:46] Emma Calderon: exactly.
[00:01:47] Claude Burns: Um, what's the best meal you've had recently?
[00:01:49] Emma Calderon: Ooh, you know what? I had an Impossible Burger for the first time two nights ago and I was pleasantly surprised because as a voracious meat eater, um, I've always been like kind of hesitant, but I really loved this Impossible Burger that I
[00:02:05] Claude Burns: Was it like at a restaurant? Did your friend make it for you?
[00:02:08] Emma Calderon: Was at a restaurant in, um, I live in the Bay area. And it's a vegan restaurant, which we found out once we got there. Um, and it was delicious.
[00:02:18] Claude Burns: Okay. Um, yeah, there's a lot of good like vegetarian and vegan food out there. Um, especially for people who know what they're doing with it. You can, you can make almost anything really delicious.
[00:02:27] Emma Calderon: Literally shocked.
[00:02:28] Claude Burns: Yeah. Um, what's the last book you've read?
[00:02:31] Emma Calderon: Oh, that's a, that's a good question. I'm going to caveat my answer with I have one year old twins. So when I turn my brain off at night, I don't really go for literature. I go more for like housewives. Uh, but the last book I read was actually a work, um, book, work book, um, a book for work. Um, Multipliers. I don't remember the name of the author, but it's basically about categorizing different types of employees and how they impact the organization.
[00:03:00] Claude Burns: Okay. Yeah, that seems pretty, uh, pretty aligned with your role.
[00:03:05] Emma Calderon: It's top, if nothing else, it's topical to my day job.
[00:03:08] Claude Burns: Exactly.
[00:03:08] So let's start talking a little bit about Qualified and sort of what you do there. So for the listeners, can you kind of explain what Qualified is.
[00:03:16] Emma Calderon: Yeah, so Qualified is a pipeline, uh, platform for B2B websites to basically optimize your website for conversion. AI is kind of underpinning our Qualified platform, and we offer a variety, a suite of tools, if you will, that maximizes website conversions with our live chat, automated chatbots, Meeting, booking, and our signals product in addition to marketing offers. So if you're a marketer and you want to drive a bunch of traffic to your website and optimize for conversion, we are literally the perfect platform for you.
[00:03:46] Claude Burns: And is this like all types of companies or are there particular types of companies that you work best with?
[00:03:52] Emma Calderon: For a B2B use cases.
[00:03:54] Claude Burns: B2B. Okay. All right. And, and what about your role? What do you, what do you do at Qualified? Tell us about.
[00:03:59] Emma Calderon: So tell me about yourself. Um, so I started qualified about three years ago, which is wild on the marketing team. And then, like I mentioned earlier, um, I have twins. So once over maternity leave, I kind of had to come to Jesus about, How I wanted to grow in my career. And historically I've always been kind of like an internal comms, hype, girl, go to. So coming back from mat leave, I wanted to do something a little bit different, um, outside of marketing and kind of threw myself into the world of HR or how we call it here as people experience. So now I've qualified. I run basically our culture and people programs. I've been in seat for almost a year. which is kind of wild to think about. Um, and what that looks like from a day to day perspective is I have the responsibilities of an HR business partner, and then I'm also, um, able to kind of come up with our curriculum for trainings, leadership and development and culture programs. So it's really fun. It's a huge new challenge and I learn a lot every single day.
[00:04:58] Claude Burns: Yeah, I imagine. I think, I think when I have conversations with sort of leaders at companies, like one of the things that comes down to culture is always communication.
[00:05:06] Emma Calderon: Mm.
[00:05:06] Claude Burns: Really interesting that you kind of blended sort of the external communication with marketing into a role that's really about internal communication and how if you do that well and your messaging is consistent, it builds better employee experiences. Yeah, it is. Uh, is that sort of, is that, is that a fair assessment or do you want to,
[00:05:25] Emma Calderon: yeah. I mean, I think you just like gave me a glowing review of what I do, but in actuality, um, yes, my number one focus is communicating transparently and effectively to employees and also creating a culture of fun because one of my key values is fun. I love working at Qualified. We have a ton of fun and I want every employee to feel empowered to have the same amount of fun at work.
[00:05:46] Claude Burns: That's awesome. And so when, when Qualified thinks about like hiring, you know, new employees to join the team, is there anything that sort of makes for a special, I don't know, Qualified er? I don't know.
[00:05:58] Emma Calderon: Totally. Good question. We are, um, we hold a very high bar when it comes to hiring, and I think that's really special because having been here now for three years, I've never been the smartest person in the room. In fact, I'm usually not the smartest person in the room. Um, and it's such a collaborative environment because people are so open, smart, and motivated and willing to go the extra mile. And so I think as we think about hiring, one of the key kind of competencies we look at is someone who is always willing to go all in to go above and beyond and to over deliver on expectations, because we have really big goals and it's hard to, it's, let's call it a spade a spade. Tech right now is really difficult. Um, and so we need everyone to be kind of all on the same page, willing to go the extra mile to bring those goals to fruition.
[00:06:46] Claude Burns: And what do you do to sort of create like those employee experiences that make people want to go all in, that make people want to, you know, give that extra mile when sometimes people may be like, nah, not into it.
[00:06:58] Emma Calderon: I'm tired. I get tired too. Um, I think we do an excellent job at internal communication. So every other Friday, we have what we, uh, company all hands, where we really put on a great show. We view it as production, not necessarily like an enablement session for employees, which is a really fun way to not only entertain employees that we find to be very important, but it's a really great way to make sure that everyone is aligned and, um, on message and making sure that everyone is kind of rowing in the same direction to make sure that we're tracking against our goals for the quarter. So those internal all hands is a great way that we keep people motivated and entertain them. Additionally, outside of that, we use a couple of different platforms that are super helpful.
[00:07:39] So bonusly is one of them, which is basically a recognition recognition platform, really important for employees to stay engaged and recognize each other and all the hard work that we put in and the little A little recognition goes a long way, as you well know. Um, and then honestly, Slack. Slack can be super overwhelming sometimes, but it's also such a great way to shout out the good work that our colleagues are doing, and we are really, really good, I think, about shouting out the good work people are doing and kind of giving people their moment in the sun.
[00:08:08] Claude Burns: That's really interesting that you sort of mentioned the Slack channel. We have a, we have one here that we call Bragging Rights.
[00:08:15] Emma Calderon: Oh, I love that.
[00:08:16] Claude Burns: And so everyone's in it, so everybody can post and sort of, you know, shout out somebody. And, you know, as sort of a senior leader, it's, it's nice to see, you know, people that I may not actually see what they're doing every day get recognized by their peers for the work that they do.
[00:08:31] And it's kind of a, it's a really great visibility because most times people get really excited about it and we find ways to, you know, when someone gets shouted out. Uh, to, maybe we should use bonusly, but we'll, we find ways to
[00:08:42] Emma Calderon: Love bonusly. If you ever want to chat about it, let me know. It's
[00:08:44] Claude Burns: great.
[00:08:44] Yeah, I, I may, I, I keep a pen in these and I take notes like occasionally when I, when something comes up because there's always such great ideas out there
[00:08:52] um, and that come out in these conversations, but I want to go back to one thing you said about entertaining employees and having fun. Why is that so important?
[00:09:01] Emma Calderon: I think why it's important is for a variety of reasons. One, like I mentioned, we have really big goals and that can be really stressful. And so keeping an air of levity and, you know, Creativity in our day to day is really important, and I think creativity kind of breeds that environment of fun. Um, and so I think, number one, having fun is fun. If you're having fun at work, you're more likely to produce excellent work. And I think that's just really motivating for a lot of employees, and especially someone like in my seat, where I, you know, I am privy to kind of the struggles that people have, but also privy to the successes people have. Um, and so my job is to kind of focus on where those successes come from so that we can also like solve for the less fun parts of the job with a little levity and a little creativity.
[00:09:48] Claude Burns: Okay, I want to ask sort of a kind of flip side question, uh, when I was in the military, we would call certain events mandatory fun. How do you sort of solve for that problem where some people just may not be really wanting to engage with other team members? Maybe not at your current company, but you know, how do you think about, you know, trying to meet the needs of every team member? Um, every employee.
[00:10:08] Emma Calderon: Totally. I think that comes down to individual communication. In a remote environment, the onus is really on you or me as an employee to communicate to your manager if something else is going on outside in your life. Um, you just mentioned, like, I have twins. There are times when, you know, I can't join a happy hour.
[00:10:24] I need to get home, and I'm very open about that. And I really think that in this new way of working, the onus is really on the employee to communicate up about what our working hours can be, what our schedules can be like, and really establish those boundaries. And I think that's a huge, uh, change from kind of the pre pandemic years of I don't have that fear of like blocking my calendar for pickup or that fear of blocking my calendar for a kid's appointment or what have you.
[00:10:51] Um, and I think being just ruthlessly upfront about that does nothing but kind of like a service for an employee who may not be 100 percent that day.
[00:11:03] Claude Burns: Yeah, absolutely. Um, but then they may show up 110 percent the next day.
[00:11:07] Emma Calderon: Yeah, exactly.
[00:11:08] Claude Burns: You mentioned you have big goals. A lot of times big goals come with big expectations. So how are you guys sort of measuring sort of what, um, what your employees sort of need to do and sort of keeping them track while still keeping them, you know, happy and having a good, good time working at Qualified?
[00:11:24] Emma Calderon: Yeah. Love that question. So we use the V2MOM methodology. Have you heard of the V2MOM before?
[00:11:30] Claude Burns: No, we, we need to go deep. Let's go.
[00:11:31] Emma Calderon: Yes. Okay, perfect. So it's a framework that originated over at Salesforce. So most of our C suite came from Salesforce. I used to previously work at Salesforce. Our ties to Salesforce run very deeply here at Qualified.
[00:11:43] And so the nuts and bolts of this methodology is V2MOM is an acronym for Vision Values. So that's the two V's and then MOM, M O M is Methods, Obstacles, and Measurements. So basically from a company perspective, we set our vision for the fiscal year. We align to our values, which are, do not change from a corporate perspective, which are, uh, one team, customer obsessed and think big, move fast. And then from there. Our C Suite develops what they call their, you know, 9 or 10 methods, which are the priorities for each organization at the start of every quarter. So are we following along so
[00:12:20] Claude Burns: Yeah. Yeah. And so, and as, when you say organization, do you mean the company or do you mean like kind of like a department or
[00:12:26] Emma Calderon: Yeah. So there's different kind of levels to a V2 mom. So we have our corporate V2 mom, which is what we're still getting through. So we have our vision, our values, and then our corporate kind of, Methods that are, um, stack ranked by organization. So when I say organization there, I mean, product team, marketing team, sales team, people experience team, all that good stuff lives on our corporate v2 mom, we identify the obstacles of what may or may not prevent something.
[00:12:53] from accomplishing that work, and then we attach a measurement to each of those methods. So that's at the corporate high level. Then in turn, as an individual, so for example, as a leader on the People Experience team, I take our corporate People Experience method, and then I kind of, from there, waterfall down the individual methods that I need to get done for the quarter.
[00:13:13] That ladder up to the priorities of my team, that ladder up to the priorities of qualified for the year or the quarter or whatever that moment of time needs to be. So basically the most important thing about a V2 mom is that it drives alignment. And, and again, in a remote environment, what I think is really important is there's a lot of days where you can be sitting kind of by yourself in your computer thinking like, Man, what do I need to do today?
[00:13:38] And the concept of a V2 mom basically essentially informs that in terms of what the priorities for your team are, and then how do you take those priorities for the team and articulate it into what you need to get done in your individual role.
[00:13:51] Claude Burns: That, so sort of a line in from top down, um, and everyone sort of knows what they're, do you mind sharing some of your, um, sort of methods, if I
[00:13:59] Emma Calderon: Yes, of course.
[00:14:01] Claude Burns: As a people leader?
[00:14:02] Emma Calderon: Yeah, I'm just trying to think through without having to pull up my slide because I love to document it and then we all track them in a software called Lattice, which is an awesome goalkeeping tool. Um, but some of the main priorities that I had for this quarter, as I look back, we're closing out the fiscal year now, so this is actually a good exercise for me to be doing right now before my one on one with
[00:14:19] Claude Burns: You're so welcome.
[00:14:21] Emma Calderon: Yes, thank you. Um, so developing some people programs in terms of L& D training, which. Check that box. Um, rolling out a V2MOM training, check that box. A couple of other different, like, trainings that were on, um, my method, list of methods. We rolled out a new HRIS system, so helping out with that implementation from a comms and change management perspective.
[00:14:43] Kind of like a full breadth of, like, super HR-ey stuff to other more fun people programming things.
[00:14:50] Claude Burns: Let's talk a little bit about trends. Um, you've probably seen some trends over, you know, pre COVID to now. Um, like what are some of the trends that you're seeing, uh, that as a people leader didn't, you know, have changed from pre COVID to sort of, you know, today.
[00:15:03] Emma Calderon: I think leadership and development training is more important than ever. Uh, I say that because we have so many people coming into the workforce for the first time, having just sat behind their laptop, never having been in a boardroom, never having been to a networking event where, you know, you're forced to, uh, make friends and have small talk. And so really investing in that leadership and development muscle is incredibly important. I think now more so than ever.
[00:15:31] And that kind of dovetails also into executive virtual presence. And what I mean by that is when you finish college on zoom, the assumption is that you should know how to run a sales call or be a put together professional for, you know, a customer facing call. When in reality, like, that's stuff that I don't know about you, but I learned being in my office and my 1st job out of college. So. Having some training and enablement around those 2 areas specifically, I think is really important and probably something that was. Not focused on as much, even call it five years ago, because it was just kind of like a muscle that was built because we're all in an office together.
[00:16:12] Claude Burns: Yeah, I think the learning and development, my wife works in that field. So I hear about it a lot, uh, quite, quite a bit. Um, but that, that changed from a lot of L& D was delivered, you know, directly, you'd go to a seminar, you'd go to a class, you'd go there and now it's. All of that stuff is done through Zoom or, you know, some other virtual mechanism.
[00:16:33] But a lot of our day to day work is also gone to Zoom sales calls and everything. And then how do you learn something that didn't exist before, you know, five years ago, yeah, it kind of was there, but no one hit the volume in sort of the, uh, what I call is like the professionalism that you needed to have when you jumped on a Zoom call definitely has changed over time.
[00:16:53] Do you see anything else that I would say like younger, newer, uh, customers, workers or employees to the workforce are, are kind of, I want to say struggling with, but have, have sort of changed or new challenges they have to navigate.
[00:17:07] Emma Calderon: That's a really good question. I think there is something around kind of like professionalism in digital communications, like people who are coming into the workforce now have only known the age of the Internet. Right? Like, I remember learning the Dewey Decimal System than having to go pull out a library book, not like searching something in the library computer and finding it.
[00:17:28] And so I think that coming, like, coming into the workforce, having always been on Twitter, always on Instagram, always on some type of social media, there's a certain casualness to their digital communication that doesn't necessarily always translate into a business environment. And that's a really hard habit to break when your entire life has been online.
[00:17:48] So I think it'll be an interesting challenge over the next couple of years of, there's all these like memes and TikToks of like how to give feedback to your Gen Z co worker. Um, I don't know if you've seen these, but it's like, so when I tell you something like, don't say like, I don't even, I don't even, I'm not even going to attempt to speak Gen Z and embarrass myself. Um, but I definitely think there is going to be kind of the, a forcing function into developing a more professional sense of self when you're in a professional environment online.
[00:18:16] Claude Burns: Yeah. I, I, I think there's going to be this combination, right? It's like very formal and like, you know, very informal and sort of blending together and sort of hopefully taking the best practices from, from both styles of communication.
[00:18:30] Emma Calderon: Totally, because what I think is so awesome on the flip side of that coin is bringing your authentic self to work has never been easier. Like, I think that is such a huge win for corporate America.
[00:18:41] Claude Burns: Uh, 100%. And just sort of the, you know, I would say the kind of the confidence of putting yourself out there and, and in some ways like not asking for permission, right? Um, because if you've always had a voice, like you're used to using it. And so you get a lot of ideas that may not have kind of Happened 15 years ago. Certainly my experience in the military was not, yeah, just blurt out on any idea that you kind of have. It was like, no, no, no, you're in the meeting, but you're not talking. If you have an idea, come to me afterwards and then we'll figure out whether or not how I'm going to say it. Right.
[00:19:12] Emma Calderon: Totally. That's something though I still have to tell myself all the time, even being in a leadership position is just because I have an opinion, doesn't mean I need to say it right now.
[00:19:20] Claude Burns: Also, also sometimes true. Um, you can, in our past conversations, you called yourself sort of pro office, pro hybrid, why do you think the office is important in getting people together?
[00:19:30] Emma Calderon: Sure. For a variety of reasons, first and foremost, I do, and like, this is like such a eye roll, but productivity is so much higher in the office. I don't mean that from like a hours worked in the office. I mean that from a simple like, Oh shoot, this is like really stumping me. I'm going to look next to my colleague right next door who I know works in this department to answer my question. Instead of going to Slack and saying like, Hey Crystal, I know you're working. Like I need 15 minutes with you, schedule it, get on a zoom. And that's just kind of like time arbitrage that when you're in person. It's just such a quicker and easier way to communicate. So from a productivity perspective, that's what I mean by that, because on the flip side of that, I lost an hour and a half of my day today commuting in. Um, so that's why I'm very pro office and pro hybrid because when it works to come in and collaborate and have fun and get that social aspect of work out too, because again, that's a huge value for me of having fun at work is so important. And that kind of like fills my cup. Both socially and professionally. Um, but then again, I love being able to be at home and work from home. And I really do feel like this hybrid approach is the best of both worlds. Yes.
[00:20:39] Claude Burns: sure. I think people learn so much from watching other people. It's kind of nerdy, but I remember watching the, like, someone actually know how to use Excel, use Excel. And I was like, Oh my God, like, I don't know, like, I don't know anything. Like, I don't know what magic you just did, but that is, you know, that is crazy. How'd you, how'd you learn that? And he's like, Oh, You know, someone taught me, right? And I think sometimes you don't necessarily have that, um, opportunity to see it unless you're kind of shoulder by shoulder, cause you're doing it, you're just doing it, doing it in a very inefficient way compared to someone who actually knows what they're doing. Um,
[00:21:14] So what kind of like tips do you have for, you know, getting the most out of like your in office time? Right. Does that kind of make sense? Like how do I get the most when I go
[00:21:24] Emma Calderon: yep. I have to be pretty ruthlessly, um, I have to ruthlessly prioritize my office time because I have to be home by five. I'm a working mom, so I got to make sure that my boundaries are protected and I have to be home for my babies and I want to be home for my babies. Uh, so in order to get the most kind of out of your office time, I'm a huge believer in time blocking and making, if I, I'll be really conscientious of what meetings make sense to have in person, what meetings.
[00:21:48] Can wait to be at home, also working in HR, there's a lot of meetings that I, it's probably better that I take from home if it's about sensitive subject matter. And so just being really thoughtful about what your calendar looks like and what kind of your objectives are for the day is probably my like top piece of advice of kind of hacking your priority or your productivity in the office rather.
[00:22:07] So it's recommended that employees, Bay Area employees, come in twice a week. We also call employees in when we have an exciting product launch or a board meeting or customers are on site. Like I mentioned, I'm sitting in our studio here. So we have a lot of marketing initiatives in this studio, which is always a draw for people to come in.
[00:22:23] And I think that's really helpful. There's probably like a consortium of, call it, 20, 30 employees that are in Three to four days a week. I like to come in one to two days a week. It just kind of depends on how, what my schedule looks like. Um, so there's no like formal, like tap your badge a couple days a week or else it's just like completely at will, and I think that's really been conducive to having people come back and positively in the office.
[00:22:48] Claude Burns: Do you guys feel there's any sort of like stratification from that group that's in, you know, four days a week to the team that's, you know, the people that are in one to two days a week to the people that may be fully remote.
[00:22:58] Emma Calderon: Interesting question. I think inherently there is always going to be a disconnect between HQ and elsewhere. So I'm going to use my, my, um, an example from my time at Salesforce to that effect. When I worked at Salesforce, I was there for four years. I worked out of the Chicago office and my team was entirely based in San Francisco.
[00:23:18] And so naturally there was always like, I always felt like we were missing a little bit of information and it was through no fault of anyone other than like basically time zone and geography. And so as I think about applying that at Qualified, it's a much different kind of feeling now because the majority of our company is remote, but that also adds another layer of challenges because it's like, how do we make everyone feel a part of everything when almost everyone is remote? Um, so I feel like there's a disconnect. There can be disconnects, but to significantly lesser degrees because more people are remote than not.
[00:23:58] Claude Burns: And so how, you know, people, people leader, how do we, how do we do that? How do we solve that?
[00:24:04] Emma Calderon: Yeah, that's I wish there was like a silver bullet, but alas, there's not. What we do here that I think again, we do a good job of is those biweekly all hands calls when there's like major momentum moments happening at the work at like, in the, and our business will have kind of like a last minute all hands calls to use as a rallying cry. And then really importantly, something that we take very seriously is our investment in bringing everyone together for our company kickoff at the beginning of the fiscal year.
[00:24:31] And that I think is something that is so special because it's just, it captures a moment in time with the team on the field who has, you know, this great big, um, agenda set forth for them. And it's an awesome time to come together to celebrate, to be entertained, have some fun, and kind of game plan and strategize for the year to come.
[00:24:48] Claude Burns: That's awesome. Uh, I'm down for Vegas trip anytime. So, uh,
[00:24:52] Emma Calderon: Me too. I love it.
[00:24:55] Claude Burns: So are there outside that big sort of kickoff, do you do anything else, um, at Qualified to sort of bring people together to forge real, real sort of face to face relationships?
[00:25:04] Emma Calderon: Yeah, so we do, um, offer a quarterly stipend for every employee to get together, with their colleagues in the same regional areas. And then something we're piloting this quarter is, um, kind of assigning like hub captains. What's interesting in a remote environment, obviously was we don't really have like, you know, an office hub, but we have, um, a certain number of employees in each geographic location that usually gets together from a quarterly basis. So Seattle, uh, Portland, Denver, New York, Boston, Chicago. I think we have like four or five now. So we do, um, we're piloting doing a WeWork and then like a little budget for some fun after one of our big marketing launches happening next week.
[00:25:48] So something that's something we're piloting this quarter, and I'm really hoping we can continue it because people really want to get together. What I think is so special about Qualified here is I can literally name, like, four or five occasions when an employee has taken PTO and a picture shows up of them on Slack with, another qualified employee in the location that they're visiting.
[00:26:08] And so I think it's just incredible that we've built this culture where when people are taking PTO, they are still seeking out that connection and relationship with their colleagues. Like that's so special. Um, and something that I think just fills me with pride about the culture that we've built here.
[00:26:23] Claude Burns: Yeah. That's so awesome. When, when people are taking time off to go hang out,
[00:26:27] Emma Calderon: To go see their
[00:26:28] Claude Burns: work,
[00:26:28] Emma Calderon: coworkers! Like what? Is that insane? I just, I think that's so special.
[00:26:33] Claude Burns: yeah, I mean, that, that shows that, you know, people are getting along and, you know, actually forming like real relationships, whether it's in person, remote, hybrid, um, so that's, that's pretty awesome.
[00:26:42] How do you balance the, the cost of, you know, getting people together from like all over the country.
[00:26:47] Emma Calderon: Totally. I mean, finance is our BFF and we'll always say that from an HR perspective, but we just have to, we have to prioritize employee engagement and keeping our talent happy and engaged and throwing budget at retention is incredibly important because like I've said now, a couple of times we have big goals and we need this team on the field to help us get there. So that's, we just, it's never, you know, it's like any business, right? You always have to fight for the budget and fight for, to prove the ROI. And it's just something that we are really passionate about and continue to buddy up with finance on.
[00:27:21] Claude Burns: And, you know, finance likes numbers, right? They like to see like ROI, like how do you gauge ROI? Is there any sort of surveys, you know, metrics that you're measuring in terms of like retention of team members or, you know, number of LNB courses taken? Like, how do you guys think about how happy is our team and like, how likely are they to stay and contribute?
[00:27:42] Emma Calderon: Yep, that's a great question. Something that we rely really heavily on is a semi annual, so twice a year, employee survey. So that'll be going out this time next month, which I'm really excited to get some answers back on. And then we do quarterly kickoffs, where we also survey our employees of, how was not only how was the event, but how do they understand how they're contributing to the vision that we've set out for the quarter.
[00:28:06] So we rely pretty heavily on surveys and then in our new, um, what we call our PXBP or people experience business model. Myself and my counterpart, Allison, who's amazing. Shout out, Allison. Love your girl. Um, we meet with all of our business leaders and basically check in about the health of their team, any risks they see, or how we can better help improve employee experiences or help people feel more bought in.
[00:28:30] So kind of through surveys and call it white glove people experience consultancy, um, is kind of how we stay in touch. And what's nice about Qualified right now is we're still, reasonably small, all things considered from a headcount perspective, we're under 200 employees. So we really can, from a PX perspective, have that high touch kind of, um, relationship with our business partners.
[00:28:54] Claude Burns: And can you give an example or two about like what insights you've gained from surveys and sort of how you use that information to actually make changes for the better?
[00:29:03] Emma Calderon: We get a lot of feedback around kind of how messaging is resonating from like a marketing perspective with our customer base and in sales cycle. So that's always just like super helpful. And then more from the PX side of things.
[00:29:15] That's a great way for us to collect feedback around the benefits we offer, the perks we offer, um, how we should think about allocating budget. Our decisions are actually crowdsourced based on employee feedback. And in turn, that makes our conversations with finance even sometimes a little easier because we kind of already have like the proof in the pudding in terms of we know that this is what employees will want if we, they're asking for it. So it's on us to deliver it to them in a thoughtful way.
[00:29:40] Claude Burns: And when you think about, you know, what do employees want? What's the answer?
[00:29:44] First and foremost, employees want to feel valued and respected in their jobs, and I think we do an excellent job of that here at Qualified through kind of the recognition programs that I've mentioned before. We have a monthly kind of employee of the month award that we definitely make a lot more fun internally. So I think that, you know, feeling supported, feeling respected, and then bringing again that levity and creativity to work is the number one thing that employees are looking for in their day to day.
[00:30:13] Claude Burns: Let's talk about the employee of the month. Like how's that chosen? Is there like a nomination process? Like talk me through how you guys actually execute that.
[00:30:21] Emma Calderon: yeah, sure. So every month we send out a survey, love a survey here. Um, and it's all peer submissions. So I am campaigning the heck out of this guy on the sales team who I think deserves it so much. I've been nominating him for the last, I think like 10 consecutive months, so I can't wait for him to win. Um, but it's all peer submissions and we basically reveal the winner at the first All Hands of the Month. every month.
[00:30:47] Claude Burns: That's awesome. Do, do, do they, you know, they get a bonus? Do they, uh, you know,
[00:30:52] Emma Calderon: It's a pretty,
[00:30:53] Claude Burns: Nickelodeon goo on them? Like,
[00:30:56] Emma Calderon: uh, so you get, um, what we call, we basically, a little bit spot bonus, um, then you get your name etched into a live Real life replica of the Stanley Cup that's held in our office in HQ. I can send you a picture of it if you'd like to see it. Um, and then lastly, you get eternal glory forever, obviously.
[00:31:16] Claude Burns: That's, that's great. I mean, name etched in the Stanley Cup would probably be fine. Uh, also the spot bonus would, would be appreciated. Um, that's a big cup, isn't it?
[00:31:26] Emma Calderon: It's a big
[00:31:26] Claude Burns: yeah, it shouldn't be called a cup. It's, it's gotta be called something else, but, uh, what, why, why a real life replica of a Stanley Cup?
[00:31:34] Emma Calderon: I, you know what, I actually don't know where the Stanley Cup came from, um, but it is pretty cool. So I will follow up with a photo of it, of it after this.
[00:31:41] Claude Burns: Do you guys have anything else sort of like that, that you want to share?
[00:31:45] Emma Calderon: Yeah. So one of our most exciting products is literally based on one of our top performing SDRs. And so she was such a baller, greatest of all time, GOAT status SDR that we have developed an AI BDR to essentially do her job and be better. And so we are using her likeness to go to break, to bring this product to market.
[00:32:09] Its name is Piper and we're so excited to launch her in the next couple of weeks. But from a employee recognition perspective, like, I think it's so special that our executive team wants to like. Memorialize the impact that this employee made by literally using her as like the prime example of a new, a new product that we're taking to market.
[00:32:27] So there's nothing like more qualified than that in terms of celebrating an employee and just showing like. We're so grateful for the hard work that everybody does so much so that we're like putting out a new product that literally has the likeness of one of our employees. It's pretty cool.
[00:32:44] Claude Burns: That is so cool. Uh, I, I'm sure like that, that would make the best story to introduce people to the product. It's like, well, let me tell you why we did this. And
[00:32:52] Emma Calderon: Like she crushed it in her job. And guess what? We wanted to make it, we wanted to scale her with AI. Meet Piper. We did it.
[00:32:59] Claude Burns: is she still at Qualified?
[00:33:01] Emma Calderon: She is, yes. She's now, she started as a BDR back in the day and now she's a sales director.
[00:33:05] Claude Burns: How does she feel about it? She pretty excited?
[00:33:08] Emma Calderon: She's so excited. It's also like, it's like so flattering and also like a little weird. Like this whole world of AI is weird. Right. Um, but overarchingly, she was like,
[00:33:16] Claude Burns: a AI named after me too.
[00:33:18] Emma Calderon: Yeah,
[00:33:19] Claude Burns: it's really weird because I'm not used to hearing my name. Um, so,
[00:33:22] Emma Calderon: totally.
[00:33:24] Claude Burns: um, that's, that's so awesome. So I want to ask you about sort of specific, specific review site, Glassdoor. What do you think about that? Do you guys use that to measure sort of, uh, employee happiness or employee experience?
[00:33:35] Emma Calderon: We don't, like I mentioned, we're like very internally survey heavy. And I kind of have a hot take about Glassdoor in that I don't love it as a platform. When I've used it in the past as a job seeker, whenever I read reviews on Glassdoor, I'm always like, this is kind of akin to someone who had a bad experience at a restaurant and leaves like a negative Yelp review.
[00:33:55] Like there's no way to like verify what information is shared. You don't even know like when this person worked there. Like I just kind of feel like it's a community thing. platform that is built for like no good reason almost from like a company perspective. And then from like a personal perspective, like I just, are you on, um, oh my gosh, what is it, the neighborhood site?
[00:34:18] Claude Burns: Next door.
[00:34:19] Emma Calderon: Yes, I feel it like it's like a glorified like next door for like corporate America. And I'm like, it's just like a platform for people to just kind of, they can make things up. They can say nice things. It's just like, what is the point of this? Like, I think there's so much more good stuff or information that you can unearth from having conversations with actual employees, good or bad than like an anonymous review site.
[00:34:44] Like I just don't like this whole trend of like anonymous review sites. Like if you have, if you have feedback, like. I hope that wherever you are, you feel empowered to deliver it in person because that's, it's going to be more impactful that way.
[00:34:54] Claude Burns: Yeah, I kind of agree with you. Um, I think also companies change so much, um, especially, you know, startups and, the technology didn't exist five years ago and they've grown by like a hundred people. It's not anywhere near the same company. So your experience today is definitely not going to be what, you know, good or bad, right?
[00:35:13] What it was like four years ago.
[00:35:15] Emma Calderon: A, to your point, it's such a snapshot in a moment of time through an individual's perspective that can't be verified. So that's why I find it to be just like, I don't know, I just, it's like a negative Yelp review.
[00:35:26] Claude Burns: yep.
[00:35:27] Emma Calderon: Just not, not something I'm going to spend my time on.
[00:35:29] Claude Burns: And I can tell you restaurant owners don't love Yelp. Um, zoom out a little bit. What trends do you think are going to be facing, you know, people experience leaders, you know, in the short term, midterm, longterm, um, as they try to, you know, you know, really provide the, the lifeblood of any company, it's people.
[00:35:50] Emma Calderon: Yeah, great question. I think return to office is all is going to be continued to be like top of mind for the next couple of let's call it years. Our office is in San Francisco and San Francisco on a Friday. Let me tell you, there's not a lot of people around. So I assure you that this will continue to be like a topic in that's top of mind for people leaders. And I think hybrid will be, if I had to put my money on like. In office, fully remote. Hybrid is going to be the way of the future, which is, I think, is really exciting and empowering for employees.
[00:36:18] Other trends that I'm particularly excited about are being more upfront about like women's health benefits, so offering fertility benefits or paid time off for pregnancy loss or bereavement for that time, I think is so important and I'm so grateful that there are big companies now in the space like Bobby, like Frida, who are really kind of that, leading from the front as it relates to those types of topics.
[00:36:44] Um, and obviously parental leave can always use, there's a lot of room for improvement in corporate America with parental leave. Um, so I think those two things are two areas in which I'm particularly excited to see how the future unfolds. And I think it's only going to be positive things, um, through both of those lenses.
[00:37:00] Sure.
[00:37:01] Claude Burns: That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. And I really, really enjoyed our conversation. If, if people want to connect with you or learn more, what's the best way they should go about doing that?
[00:37:10] Emma Calderon: You can find me over on LinkedIn and you should also follow Qualified on LinkedIn because that is where we post all of our stuff and it's the best.
[00:37:18] Claude Burns: It was great to have you on the show. Great luck. Uh, good luck to you and Qualified. Like I really, really enjoyed our conversation and I do expect a picture of the Stanley Cup replica coming my way. So thanks.
[00:37:28] Emma Calderon: It, Claude. Thank you so much. This was so fun.
[00:37:30] Claude Burns: Thank you for joining me and Emma 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.