Employee Stock Ownership Plans with Jeremy Huish
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
"Words don’t define your culture, employee experiences do. So we have to know what experience they're having and create better employee experiences."
– Betsy Allen Manning
The Importance of Integrity in Leadership
Integrity is identified as the most crucial characteristic of a great leadership team.
The quality of a leader is reflected in the quality of their team.
Integrity in Action: Leaders need to walk the walk, being reliable and trustworthy by doing what they say they will do.
Defining a Destination Workplace
A destination workplace is where employees love to work and where prospective employees aspire to join.
Just as one chooses a top vacation spot based on reviews and offerings, employees today look for workplaces with high employee review scores (ERS) on platforms like Glassdoor and Indeed.
The ROI of a Destination Workplace
Attraction and Retention: A strong company culture serves as a magnetic attraction and retention strategy.
Financial Impact: Reducing turnover saves significant costs associated with hiring and training new employees. For example, losing a manager can cost up to 30% of their annual salary to replace.
Five Key Areas of a Destination Workplace
1. Culture: Ensuring alignment and consistency in employee experiences. Culture is not defined by words but by the actual experiences of employees.
2. Leadership: Effective leadership is crucial for retention. Leaders need to understand and address employee concerns to prevent turnover.
3. Growth Opportunities: Providing development and career advancement options is essential. Employees, especially millennials, highly value learning and development opportunities.
4. Team: Building a sense of family and effective communication within teams. Regular team-building activities and collaborative sessions are important.
5. Well-being: Focusing on employee mental health, stress reduction, and overall wellness. Implementing corporate wellness programs can enhance employee satisfaction and productivity.
Understanding and Assessing Company Culture
Assessment: Regularly evaluate the actual employee experiences versus the stated values. Conduct company-wide assessments to understand the true culture.
Implementation: Integrate the mission, values, and behaviors into everyday tasks. Core values should live in the hearts and actions of employees, not just on the walls.
Living the Core Values
Practical Application: Define values clearly and infuse them into daily work. Ask employees how they can incorporate these values into their roles.
Recognition and Rewards: Use stories and rewards to reinforce core values consistently. For example, recognize employees who exemplify core values in their work.
Ownership and Accountability in Culture Shift
The entire executive team must be involved in the culture change process.
Assign specific individuals to coordinate and implement cultural initiatives. Often, the HR director plays a key role in rolling out new cultural strategies.
The CEO should communicate the new culture and lead by example.
Leadership Skills for Culture Transformation
Essential Skills: Key skills include people skills, delegation, communication, and change management.
Focus on People: Understand and leverage individual strengths and address change fatigue. Regular career pathing conversations can uncover hidden talents and aspirations.
Challenges of Remote and Hybrid Work
Cultural Consistency: Ensure alignment across multiple locations and remote teams.
Purposeful In-office Days: Use office days for team-building and collaboration rather than solo work. Remote and hybrid environments require tailored strategies to maintain culture and engagement.
Measuring Success in Culture Shift
Measure progress quarterly or monthly. Initial assessments and regular benchmarks help track the impact of cultural initiatives.
Employee Review Score (ERS): Track and improve scores on platforms like Glassdoor and Indeed. High ERS indicates a positive workplace culture.
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Mike Goldman: Featured on Fox, CBS, ABC, NBC, and TEDx, Betsy Allen Manning is an internationally known leadership speaker, best selling author, and company culture expert. Her specialty is helping businesses become a destination workplace. Place so they can predictably attract and retain talent in a hyper competitive workplace.
Betsy's the owner of destination workplace, one of the top leadership training companies in Dallas, Texas. They've trained over 15,000 leaders and teams for companies such as Toshiba, Aflac, Fidelity, and the US department of defense. Her mission is to put purpose, accountability, and loyalty, back into the workplace. Betsy welcome.
Betsy Allen Manning: Thank you so much. I'm excited to
Mike Goldman: Yeah. so Betsy and I met at a weekend mastermind in Tampa. That was amazing. So we got to know each other pretty well. And what, what's your nickname? You got to tell everybody your nickname for me before.
Betsy Allen Manning: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Since I met you, Mikey Ike, I don't know why,
Mike Goldman: So everybody, everybody out there do not start calling me Mikey Ikey can only Betsy could do that. So we're going to have fun. We're going to talk a lot more about this idea of a destination workplace and what that is.
But the first question I always ask is, you know, Betsy from all of your experience, what do you, what do you believe is the one most important characteristic of a great leadership team?
Betsy Allen Manning: I would say, so one of the quotes my dad taught me years ago is the quality of a leader is found in the quality of their team. So I can literally walk into any office and I can look at the team and I know exactly who the leader is and what type of person they are by looking at the people on the team, if the people gossip on the team, that's the type of leader you have.
If the people are negative on the team, guaranteed, that's the type of leader you have as well. And for me, the number one characteristic, I think it's something we cannot live without as leaders, and that's integrity. It's integrity. You, I mean, it's walking the walk. People trust you when you're actually able to do what you say you're going to do and you become that person that they can rely on in your character and in your work as
Mike Goldman: I have seen that. I love that answer. I've seen that more than I'd like to admit in, in leaders that I work with. if the CEO doesn't have that integrity and by, and what I mean by integrity is they, you know, They don't do what they say they're going to do. They commit to things and don't do it.
They don't, you know, that's integrity. It's not just being dishonest. It's you're not, you're not doing what you commit to do. Then, then they wonder why the rest of the leadership team is doing the same things. And, and they're very frustrated. So, I love both of what you said. That it starts from the leader and, and integrity.
Thank you for that.
I want to talk a little bit about, your backgorund first and how you, how you got to where you are today, cause I know, we talked about your experience on cruise ships. So, tell us a little bit about that and how the heck do you go from, from cruise ship, entertaining to culture and leadership take us through that a little bit,
Betsy Allen Manning: Right. How does that even happen? So yeah, years ago, I started off singng and dancing, traveling the world. I started on cruise ships, graduated to Las Vegas and other amazing shows around the world. And it was. Phenomenal. and then I realized this is not something I can do forever. And I actually got nodules and lost a little bit of my upper range.
So I went into the real world where they do not give you a standing ovation for doing a good job at your work. That just surprised me right there.
Mike Goldman: Betsy, you're not doing it right. I get standing ovations all the time. We're going to figure that out.
Betsy Allen Manning: I did this report really well. Where's my standing ovation. Yeah. but I made myself really valuable. I got into the hotel industry and I made myself extremely valuable in an industry. I did not want to be in. Nothing against anybody out there in the hotel industry. It is literally, it, you work nights, you work weekends, you work holidays, and would, I would. I would be the person that they would call and say, Hey, we're putting two new venues inside of the Beverly Hilton. We're going to host the Golden Globes afterwards parties. We need you to hire and train staff for us and develop our entire training program. That was, where I made myself valuable.
and I, I loved it while I did it, but the hours were excruciating 12 to 16 hour days. And, I just realized I had a calling and a passion to speak and to help others. And I really started, my passion came when I had worked for a company that ruled on fear and punishment. And it was such a toxic workplace. And as I moved up into roles in the leadership roles, I realized that I was starting to treat people like I was being treated. And I remember going home one night looking myself in the mirror and I did not respect the person that I saw. And I just was thinking like my dad would not be proud of this woman. it was always my goal to make my daddy proud. So I went out and, well I called him and I said, Hey, I don't think I'm good at this leadership thing, this management thing. It's not for me. I feel like a glorified babysitter for staff if you've ever been in a leadership role, right, Mike? You know what I mean? And my dad said, I didn't raise my daughter to be a quitter. And he's a ex Marine. So that's his way of consoling someone. And he said, honey, he said, look, the easy way out is fire people or quit. but give yourself a chance to be a better leader first. And then see if it's for you. So I started studying leadership.
I joined the John Maxwell team. I learned disc and understood personality styles and human behavior better. I just started to become a student leadership and a student of company culture and how to build it. I started to work for companies that had extraordinary leadership experience. Extraordinary culture. And it became an addiction. I wanted to make sure I could go out in the world and teach this to other companies and make sure that people were never mistreated like I was. And like the rest of our company was at that one company. And it, it just, it was my mission especially after COVID happened, it just became my mission more and more to put purpose and accountability and loyalty back into the workplace because that got stripped away.
Mike Goldman: And so tell us more. I mentioned in, in the introduction, this idea of a destination workplace. It's the name of your company. It's, it's your purpose in what you do. What is that? What's, a destination workplace?
Betsy Allen Manning: Yeah. So think about you go on vacation. Right. You're about to go on vacation somewhere. You want to make it a destination vacation, maybe one of those all in one inclusive resorts. So you're going to go and you're going to look at reviews online. You're going to see who has the best reviews. You're going to see who has the best plan for you, the things that you want to actually do while you're on this vacation.
And once you've decided this is it, this is the perfect place. That's when you actually book it. think about how companies are. Now, people, employees are savvy today. They're going online. They're looking at Glassdoor reviews, Indeed reviews. They're looking at what I call the ERS employee review score. And if employers have a bad ERS employee review score, guess what? They're not even going to apply at that company, but if they have a high ERS, they're going makes people say, huh, what is it about them? And they're looking for two specific things, five things, but two very specific things when they look at employee reviews, what other employees are saying about a place looking at, what do people say about the leadership and what do people say about the culture? Those are the top two reasons people stay or go. A destination workplace is a place where people say, I love it here and I don't want to leave. And they also is a place where people say, I am dying to work there. What does it take? Are you guys hiring?
Mike Goldman: So when you think about the ROI of becoming a destination workplace, is it. Part of it's about attracting the right people who want to come work for you. But, but I imagine it's more than that. What, what is the ROI? What's, what are the dollars and cents of doing this?
Betsy Allen Manning: Yeah. So it's way more than just the attraction strategy, which is, it's great for what we call a magnetic attraction. using your culture as a magnetic attraction strategy, it's also retention strategy. So if you ask a company, well, how many people are you losing per month? Right? If you're losing a manager, you and I know the stats on that, that could be 30 percent of their annual salary that they're, they're losing every time you're losing a key leader within your company. And so it costs that much money to replace someone that's leaving. If you have constant turnover. And we, you know, you've got to look at a company that was first one of the first things we ask when we're talking with a company about revamping their culture is how many people are you losing per month?
And most people, believe it or not, don't know the number. They're not aware. So the first thing we want to do is. Just have them start tracking and measuring. How many people are you losing? Why are you losing people? Are you conducting exit interviews to know why? Is it because of the leadership because of the culture is because it's burnout, no growth opportunities.
Is it because they don't feel a sense of team?
Those are by the way, just named the five key areas that make you a destination workplace.
Mike Goldman: say, so say those five one more time, a little slower. What, what are the five keys?
Betsy Allen Manning: And just so you know, this isn't me just making this up and pulling it out of a hat and going, Hey, these sound good. This is us conducting massive research to find out what employees are saying. We ask them, why are you leaving? What is it that you want in a workplace? What makes you stay? What makes you go? And we found there are five key areas that will make them stay or make them leave. We also ask leaders, though, what do you think is happening here? And we're bridging gap between the two by showing those five key employee experiences that make you a destination workplace. Number one culture, having that culture alignment across the board.
And this includes whether you're, even if you're a remote workplace, you've got a remote culture, whether you want one or not, hopefully it's the right one. So you've got culture to think about what most people miss out on this employee experience is that they say they have one type of culture. But the employees experience is something completely different.
And so I always like to tell people, words don't define your culture, employee experiences do. So let's create better employee experiences. The next one is leadership. Leadership is the number one reason. People will leave a company. They could experience other things like burnout, not having growth opportunities, all of that. But the majority of the reason people will leave is because the leaders don't understand those problems or how to address them. So working, that's why you and I both do what we do. We work with leaders to help them become better because they are facing the employees every single day and the C suite is not always facing employees.
So they need to tap into developing the rest of their leaders so that the rest of their leaders have alignment as well and accountability. And when the CEO does not hold their leadership team accountable, when you start to see they're not having coaching conversations. Work is, is a miss here and there. we're not hitting deadlines and then, then you start to see the culture go. So that's why accountability
Mike Goldman: I, and I think there, I want to hit, just hit on that. And I know we're only up to number two out of five, but I want to hit on the accountability piece because I think it's easy when people hear something like destination workplace and employee experience, I think people skeptics tend to go down the road of, it's not about making everybody happy all the time.
But I think when you say accountability, it's not just about we have to be nice to everybody and make sure they're happy. Sometimes it's about holding people accountable, which could be a difficult thing. It's not all about smiles and birthday cakes. And you know, it's, it's some difficult stuff we're talking about.
Betsy Allen Manning: Yeah. Hey, let's take our team bowling. Let's have a pizza party. Those things are wonderful, but that is not what makes a destination workplace or a great leader. And you're absolutely right. One of the things we always ask before conducting a leadership training for a company, we'll always ask them, what are the areas your leaders have the most trouble with?
Yeah. And believe it or not, and I'm sure you know this too, coaching conversations and not just coaching people to their full potential and coaching for career path and conversations. No, it's the hard coaching conversations that they're not having. And so I'll always ask what happens when you don't have these conversations. And what's their answer? Well, yep. The bad behavior permeates throughout the rest of the organization. other people start to spread that behavior. People get angry or they leave because they don't want to be in an environment where this behavior is being allowed for one person, but I'm expected to be a
different way
So you're
Mike Goldman: Yeah. So number one is culture. Number two is leadership. What's number three?
Betsy Allen Manning: Number three is growth, growth opportunities. And that doesn't always Equal money, right? We always think that's monetary when we talk about growth opportunities. So yes, if we can help people grow into further leadership roles, people want to know they're being developed, they're being trained. I was just on a call with a client earlier who was saying, we want our people to know that we value them and that we want to develop them because they've been asking for it. So 49 percent of millennials say that learning and development opportunities is fair. Are what one of the top things they look for when they are applying for a job. And it's one of the top reasons that they will stay at a job or leave. Because if they're, if they say there's no growth opportunity for me here, and that doesn't mean there's something available right now for me to move into.
It means I'm being groomed. I'm being developed. There's they're pulling out of me, this leadership potential and developing this in me. So when a position does open up. I have an opportunity to go there. It's also saying, Hey, growth opportunities don't just happen this way. You may want to look at what this department does or what this department does.
There may be a better fit for you in another area that you've never thought of. And we want to utilize your talents where you're going to be happiest and where you're going to be best. So let's look at these other areas and that's another growth opportunity for leaders is taking them around and having them shadow people at different departments to say, Hey, you might want to grow this way first before you grow this
Mike Goldman: And that takes a special leader that is not just trying to hold on to the people they have that sometimes they need to let them go to go somewhere else to grow. All right. So number one is culture. Number two, leadership. Number three is growth opportunities. What's number four?
Betsy Allen Manning: Number four is team. So think of it as team building. think of this as. The way a team communicates, the way a team connects and bonds together, a sense of family. and we always say, it depends on what your family looked like growing up, but when we say family, we mean that people that you love, that you can depend on, that you come together and you actually really enjoy working together.
You want to collaborate with them, that team building is so important and we found that so many companies, they think if I do a team building event once every once a year, once a year. If they're lucky, sometimes they only do it once. Right. One that once a year, they think that that's enough, but we need to bring people together on a monthly basis at the least, especially the remote organizations where they're because people are working in silos.
They feel lonely. Loneliness has actually gone spiked up the loneliness rates in our nation. And people we need to start looking at that. How do we create a sense of team? And that being how do we create a sense of team where people know how to communicate with one another? There's a respect there is a unified language that we have within our team that people understand.
This is why disc training is so important. Why I always bring it in, you know, making sure people know how to collaborate together and giving them opportunities. Uh, we actually help companies use, we call it a collaborate and innovate sessions where you bring teams together and have them collaborate and innovate on what are some things that we could be doing, what are challenges that you're seeing in your area, and now let's collaborate together to help each other overcome these challenges.
Cause you get the best ideas from your staff, but you don't ever get them unless you ask for it and create the opportunity during creating that team building, right. To get those ideas
Mike Goldman: Love it. And what's number five.
Betsy Allen Manning: Well-being. And this is where some people go, like this would be, this would be our generation that would usually look at the head above that would look at it and go, what?
That's just silly. Well-being, but this is our up and coming generations are highly focused on well-being and well-being means helping them reduce burnout. Helping them reduce stress and negativity, even having a corporate wellness program. if you just do that, maybe once, once a quarter, twice a year, in your employees and letting them know, Hey, we care about your mental health and your wellbeing.
Mike Goldman: I want to go back to the first one, to culture, because that's such a big one. And that's a word people throw out so often and everybody's got a different definition. So let's talk a little bit about that. That first piece of culture first, how do you define that? How do you define the word culture?
Betsy Allen Manning: People have different definitions. Our definition at destination workplace culture is a combination of your mission, your values, behaviors, and the most important one employee experiences.
Mike Goldman: Okay. So, how should a CEO be thinking about assessing their culture and And defining what culture they want. I mean, is it a matter of going and creating your mission statement and your core values? And, like, what are the steps they can take to actually. Figure out whether, and, and here's part of where my questions coming from in, when I say assessing their culture is when I, I survey CEOs all the time and one of the questions answer has to do with what they think of the culture within their organization.
And I asked them five questions about it and their scores are always very high. They always think they have a great culture until I inform them that they have no clue what their culture really looks like because people treat them very differently than they treat each other. So the, the CEO always thinks everybody's aware of our vision and they're living our core values, but that's just not true as often as they think it is.
So how should a leader go, go about understanding what their culture is really like and what they need to do to improve it.
Betsy Allen Manning: Yeah, and this is so important. It's, and you're absolutely right. When you say the C suite, always say, Oh, we've got a great culture. Everybody loves it here. And then you assess the employees, even sometimes the middle managers. they say, Oh no, that is not it at all. That's why I say words don't define your culture.
Employee experiences do. So we have to know what experience they're having. So we actually are in the midst of creating our destination workplace culture, revolving around those five key areas that I just mentioned. Culture, leadership, growth, team, and wellbeing. And so we look at those key areas and we have a list of questions that we'll ask to determine and. it gets CEOs having to be pretty honest about themselves and pretty honest about the culture that they have. You really truly know what kind of culture you have when you have your entire organization take the assessment. It's that's truly the only way you're really going to know. You can go on Glassdoor.
You can go on Indeed. I had a company we worked with and they said, well, so our Glassdoor reviews are low, right? 2.5, our glass door reviews are low. Does that really matter? Well, if I'm an employee and I'm looking to potentially work with you, and I go and I look at your Glassdoor reviews and he said, yeah, our last one was from two years ago. So if I go and look at your Glassdoor reviews from two years ago, and there's a 2.5, and you all you have are negative reviews that people say, I'm gonna go elsewhere. I'm not even gonna give you the opportunity to interview me. For your company. I won't even show up for this is the reason why when people say we can't even get people to show up for interviews. Now, you know why, the first step is company wide assessment, knowing where you actually stand and how close you are to being a destination workplace culture. Then after that, it's looking at things like your mission statement, your core values, and it's not just there. I went into a bank one time, Mike, and I looked at their core values, the mission.
I thought, wow, this must be a great company to work for. They were incredible. And I get up to the teller and she says, Oh honey. That's where they stay. They stay on the wall, right? That's why I always say your, your mission, your core values, they're not meant to exist on the walls of your company. They're meant to live in the hearts and the actions of your team.
So this is where we really need to take the mission, the core values, and how to infuse it into every single task, everything that every leader does, every employee does as well. And this starts from top down because if the C suite is not implementing this and showing these core values, no one else will fall in line either. So that's what it starts with. And it's defining what What do we want our ideal culture to look like? you know, everybody needs to be on board. It has to be culture alignment. So once we say, this is what we want our culture to look like. And that includes non negotiable behaviors. I call them NNBs, non negotiable behaviors.
These are things that you absolutely will not accept. So for instance, gossip should be on everybody's list. Right? No gossip. That is a non negotiable behavior. If you are gossiping and here's what gossip looks like, we have coaching conversations around this non negotiable behavior and we have an exit strategy because three strikes you're out. That's how strong non negotiable behaviors are. Most companies don't
Mike Goldman: What, what's the relationship between non negotiable behaviors and values? Are they, is, is values what you want to see and non negotiable is what you're not going to accept? What, how do, how do they work together?
Betsy Allen Manning: values are what you live by. It is values are what give you a sense of purpose every day. Okay. So for instance, I, and some values can, can seem, okay, I'll give you one from back in the day when I worked for Wynn hotels, care about everyone and everything. was one of our strongest core values. Well, we actually used to tell stories around the core values to bring it to life.
So if someone would write in a story about how, what someone did to go above and beyond for them. And at the end of their letter, there was a lady that said her daughter had lost this little stuffed lamb. And when she was looking for it, the lady that worked there, cared enough to take her to the lost and found and the security guard came out and said, anything that's been left here longer than a year gets donated to a child in need. the girl burst into tears. Well, Rachel is her name. The employee did not sit well with her. So on her lunch break goes to the nearest Walgreens, performs a thorough hug and squeeze test of all the stuffed animals there. And she gets this little bear and she brings it up to their room herself and says, No, it's not a lamb, but we hope the little stuffed bear helps you sleep better at night. And a little girl smiled with her heart when the lady wrote in, when a client, a customer wrote in to Wynn properties to say what Rachel had done at the end of her letter, she said, it's obvious here at Wynn hotels, your people care about everyone. And everything that is living the core values that you say you have within your company.
And if people aren't, if your customers aren't shouting about that or saying, saying it back to you, what they feel they're getting from you, then you're not living core values or you're not showing people through those stories, how to actually live
Mike Goldman: I love it. I want to dig into this a little bit more because I have seen, and I'm sure you've seen similar situations where, Some smart coach or consultant or trainer talks about core values and they go, yeah, we got to do that. And, they create a set of core values and they check that box.
Yes, we have core values and more than anything, it's marketing BS that's out on their website, which makes them look good, but no one knows what they are. They're not really living them. They don't take them seriously. So I do want to talk about some other ideas. To make sure that as a company, you are living and breathing the values.
And you mentioned one, which is telling stories. What are, what are some other ways that you've seen organizations or you've helped organizations to make sure they are actually living and breathing these core values?
Betsy Allen Manning: Yeah. The first thing we do is, is define what the values are and make sure we're, and then we having the team. So that's one of the things we asked from the team members is, Hey, we've come out with some new core values, or we want to reestablish our core values and really bring them to life. We want to know for you in your role, how would you infuse these core values into what you're doing? first thing is to ask your staff, how would you use this every single day? Cause it makes them think now we need to keep it top of mind awareness with them. So tying rewards. and compliments to core values. Anytime you say, great job, Mike, the way you were with this customer, you hit spot on with our one, you know, one of our core values, which is, communicate with compassion. So for instance, right? So if that's one of our core values, I, every time I'm complimenting, I'm tying it back to a core value. Rewards programs, rewards programs should revolve around your core values. So for instance, know, employee of the month, this is one of the things we did at Wynn property, January through December, everybody knows that you can have your wall of fame that everybody sees January through December, the person's picture, their name beneath it. And then that's it. Well, when we went a step further, we told the story. Of, of the customer or another employee that wrote in to say what this person did, and at the end of it, tied it back to which of the core values that aligned with, so we're always keeping those, those core values top of mind.
Mike Goldman: Who owns this? Like I'm, I always, I'm picturing one of my leadership team sitting around the table and I'm picturing the, probably the most skeptical CEO type who's going to look at the head of HR and go, great, you own this, make us a destination workplace, who should, who, which is, I think, probably not the right answer, but who should, who owns this?
Who's accountable? For making this happen and kind of owning and spearheading this whole thing.
Betsy Allen Manning: Yeah, so when we, things we do when we have our culture shift strategy sessions. when we're creating a destination workplace culture with a company is one of the core items, create decide, determine who it is right then and there, who your culture shift coordinator is going to be. So, and they may have a couple, you may have a couple different people assigned to different things, the entire culture change.
You want your executive team on board. I don't think it's just the CEO. I think your entire executive leadership team needs to be involved and own. That together. Once you've decided together, this is how we get alignment with our leadership. And then you decide who's going to own which piece of this. And I do believe it starts from top down.
We need to, we need to display it ourselves. So how does it, what does this look like in our own roles? But you do need one person. And oftentimes it does fall in the HR director because they're the ones that are going to roll it out. I love it when the CEO, because we usually ask them, you need to roll this new culture shift out the communication.
We help them with a communication strategy and we want them, we want the CEO to be the one that actually conveys. This is our new culture. Here's where, what we're doing about it. And it takes time. I mean, it can take time. It takes six months to 18 months to see an entire culture shift. And people think we've been doing this for a month and we haven't seen the change yet. You do you work out for like a week and then expect your body to transform? No, it takes time. And it takes time for people to buy into what you say your new culture is when they're in change fatigue and they don't trust that change is going to stick.
Mike Goldman: When you think about these employee experiences and everything it takes to make this happen, what are the most important leadership skills to implement this and to make it happen? what are the leadership skills that are. That, you see are kind of lacking most, like, are there certain skills that leaders really need to work on that, that are going to make or break this,
Betsy Allen Manning: Well, you need people skills. So in order to get people on board with you, you need to understand which personality style could spearhead which part of this. for instance, I had one girl that on my team, 175 team members, right? I had one girl that anytime it was someone's birthday, she just took it upon herself. She'd get cupcakes for that, that department side which was usually about 30 people get cupcakes for everybody to celebrate with this person's birthday, a card that everybody would sign. And so when we rolled out a rewards program, who did I ask to help me head up that rewards program? I asked that key employee because I said, this is you, this is your personality style. So it's honing in, it's knowing our people well enough. It's also asking in those, in those career pathing conversations where we're saying, what skills do you have that I'm not using? What do you want to do? What do you want to try that you haven't been trying yet? Those, those conversations need to be had.
We don't know what we're missing out on on some of our staff members until we ask them. So a key component is just knowing your people. another one is knowing if you're going to overload. You've got to be able to benchmark this and say, okay. First benchmark, we're going to, we're going to make a change in the values and we're going to tie it back to rewards.
Here's how we're going to do it. We map the whole thing out. We roll that out first. Next, we're going to create an, a company wide leadership program. So, so everybody's trained the same way and we know they're all getting the skills that they need. So then we're training everybody the same way. You talk about those skills that they need. Delegation. They need to know how to delegate as a leader, which most of us are poor at anyway as leaders because we don't want to give up control. So delegation important. People skills is important. knowing how to attract people to a certain role. Something you want done as important as well as attracting new staff. So developing that skill communication, you've got to know how to communicate clearly to people what the goal is and having that, that end date time management strategies. I could go, I could go on with a little list, but this, those are the main ones and change management, probably the biggest one of all people are in a state of change fatigue since the pandemic, because they have gone, So much has changed for them. a lot of companies have merged, gotten acquired. And then they're going through changing all their processes, they're changing leadership and they're in change fatigue. They don't know what's going to stick. knowing how to manage the changes that you're making and get people on board with it. You can lower change resistance because studies show that 75 percent of change initiatives fail because the leaders didn't know how to get people on board with it.
Mike Goldman: how much you talked about the pandemic, how much harder does it make this when you've got. The remote work environments, the hybrid work environments, the people that could work at home, you know, three days a week, but they've got to go in, you know, Tuesday and Wednesday, and they're all pissed off because they're doing the same work they did on Monday, but now they've got the commute back and forth.
So why do I need to be in the office? I mean, it's a tough one, right? Because if they're not They're not building those bonds. You know, your number four was team and it's about those bonds. So, so how much harder does remote and hybrid make this?
Betsy Allen Manning: That's such a good question. Mike it's, it is harder. It is more challenging. It's not only just the remote teams. It's also companies that have multiple locations. So you have people at this location that have a great culture and then people at this location that are constant turnover because their leadership team and their culture is failing their people. So when there's not alignment across, that's where we start to see it fail remote hybrid environments. Yeah. People are complaining right now. And that's going to happen. We have to, we have to recognize. Their, their pain. I've been working from home. It's been fine. Yes. However, this is our strategy to make, to ensure we have a sense of team. To ensure that you understand the culture. To under, just to ensure that you know how to collaborate with your different teammates. That's why we're bringing you in a couple of times a week. There's also some strategies that work remotely. You just need to know each of those areas. You could build a remote culture. just, S you've slightly changed the way you do it. There's a lot of, software programs that you can use to recognize and give shout outs. Nectar, N E C T A R is one of them and they actually allow you to give shout outs to your teammates or leaderships to give shout outs to, Hey, this person did a great job and you always tie it back to, and this is the core value that it aligned
Mike Goldman: I also think part of it, and then I want your thought on this when, when it comes to the hybrid work and we're in two days a week and we're remote three days a week is what I think companies have, most companies have not figured out yet, is that. Those days that you're in the office should be different.
In other words, there is, there's work that we all do by ourselves in our home office where we could be most productive without a whole bunch of other people around. And then there's work we can do where we are more productive being together with others. And I think, what I've seen is what most companies do is they want people in the office two or three days a week, but they're doing the same damn thing they could have done at home.
And I think most companies haven't quite figured out how to leverage the team being together. And it doesn't mean, Oh, let's bring ice cream in for everyone. It's like, how do you leverage the team being together on those days that they are together versus just having them do the work they could have done at home?
Betsy Allen Manning: don't discount the ice cream though. I
Mike Goldman: Yeah, true.
Betsy Allen Manning: a good motivator. No, this is actually one of the complaints I've been hearing a lot from, from the employee side is I don't get it. We, we work remotely. We do find actually a more productive when I'm working from home, we have to go into the workplace to the physical workplace twice a week.
But when we go there, we're doing the exact same thing. We're in silos. We're working alone. What's the point. So I love that you hit on that because companies need to learn how, when you're bringing them in. You need to bring them in for a reason. Have a purpose behind bringing them in. Use it for a little bit of a team building time.
Use it for those collaborate and innovate sessions that I was talking about earlier. This is problem solving time. So yes, get your work done when you're at home. When you come into the office, let's make it a, a half day where we're doing some team building. We're collaborating and innovating and getting sorting through anything we need to sort through any of our other challenges. And
Mike Goldman: And then ice cream party.
Betsy Allen Manning: look. Then ice cream party, or then go home and you can work the rest of the day, you know, from home siloed, you know, from home, but it lets people get that chance to collaborate a little bit more and the sense of team. Spot on on
Mike Goldman: So how do you know, how do you know when and if you've, you've done it, when you wake up one morning and say, Oh my God, I've got a destination workplace. I could, I can go play golf now. Like is there, I'm sure it's, it's, it's never ending, right? You're probably always working towards that. But is there a way to measure a way to assess that you are making the progress you want to make?
Betsy Allen Manning: It's the only way to know if you're, if you're measuring the only way to know if you're actually becoming a destination workplace, that's why you can't just say, here's our initiative when you start getting it rolling and then you wait till six months down the road and go, okay, it looks like I think we are one now and there's nothing else you do. It, we have to look at measuring on a quarterly basis. So, you know, if not monthly, depending on how fast companies want to move, but we, it's, we always do an assessment at the very beginning. Right. So we're assessing your culture. We're looking at your ERS at that time as well, the employee review score. And then we're assessing at the end, it could be six months, could be 12, it could be 18 months. However, it depends on how long a company has and the time they have to be able to dedicate toward this because it does the number one objection, right? Well, it takes time and we don't have the time. You know, what?
We're not worth making the time to know that your employees love the place that they work. You're going to keep people longer. People are going to complain less. They're going to be less burnt out. They're going to feel a sense of team. You're going to get more out of them. They're going to be more productive and you're going to leaders are going to be stronger within the company.
Your numbers are going up. All right. Financially, this affects our bottom line. studies show that companies with a stronger and very distinctive company culture will outperform their competition four times by four times. So assessment in the beginning benchmark along the way, let's see where we're at.
How are we feeling? Do we need to make modifications? What's working? What's not, we're assessing along the way. And at the end, we do another assessment and then we again, look at the ERS.
Mike Goldman: What tell you mentioned the ERS a few times and I'm not sure what that is. What is an employee review score?
Betsy Allen Manning: The employee would be on, like, on glass door or indeed. That would be the five stars. And by the way, they measure in all of these areas. They just might call team, diversity inclusion. they may call it that, but it is a sense of team, within that area. So they all measure in these areas as well. you get to know your CEO score, which can be a little tough to look at as well, as well for the C suite. but you also get to know where people really struggling in our company. And the top two that we see. our leadership and culture all the time, leadership, culture, leadership, culture, burnout is real. The wellbeing part, people are struggling there as well. So we're seeing that, down at the bottom where people are rating at the bottom, but leadership is number one, Mike, that's number one reason people decide to leave that company is because of their
Mike Goldman: Yeah. They say
they say people don't leave companies. They leave managers. Right. Yeah.
Betsy Allen Manning: Yeah. They don't leave bad companies. They leave bad
Mike Goldman: leaders
Yeah.
Betsy Allen Manning: And that's why. So at the end we look at, we help them throughout raise their employee review score and you can't, you can't, you can go and ask people to go and give good reviews, but guess what? People are very honest in those reviews and I would never ask an employee to give a review before I've actually worked on these five areas. Because we, if we know we've, we're truly providing a destination workplace, then I want to actually ask people to brag about it because customers, we give five star reviews. also give one star reviews. So, you know, we give, we give what we feel we experienced.
Mike Goldman: Tell me more, about the company destination workplace, your company.
Tell me more about the scope of what you do.
yeah
Betsy Allen Manning: I would say the top thing that we do are our culture strategy sessions with people and helping them map out the ideal culture and exactly their roadmap on how to get there. and the other one would be our leadership development because we do, we offer trainings in all five of those key employee experience areas. but I would say the leadership development, we have a rock solid team. Two day leadership program, one day with executives, senior managers, and another day with middle managers. We also have an add on that we do for emerging leaders as well, and we find companies love it. I mean, we're hitting on every single thing that you need in a strong leadership program, but the where the key is, Mike, is in our after call when we get with companies and say, look, you did a one off leadership training. want this to last because my name's on that company, right? This is my company. I don't want people to say, yeah, we worked at destination workplace and we had a great leadership training, but nothing changed for them. I want them to say, we look like going and getting your hair done for a woman. I mean, I'll walk out of a salon, I am literally a walking reputation of the person that did my hair. I feel the same about my company. Anyone we work with is a living reputation of what we did to help them. So the leadership training, our aftercare call, we're always saying, here's your next steps. This is how you continue the message moving forward. So it's, and that, that is how you truly. Continue that in that message and keep it going.
Mike Goldman: Excellent. If people want to find out more about destination workplace, you, you do what we haven't talked about your, the public speaking, you do, you do a ton of that stuff, you're traveling all the time. People want to find out more about destination workplace or about your public speaking, where should they go?
Betsy Allen Manning: Yeah, so destinationworkplace.com
there is a destination workplace in Europe, so we are just.com, not.com, dot eu, just so you know, but destinationworkplace.com and you can take a look at all of our training programs there that we offer. and then if you are interested in my keynote speaking on any of those topics that we mentioned, especially the overall becoming that destination workplace,
Mike Goldman: amazing. Thanks so much for doing this. You know, I always say, if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team, Betsy, thanks for getting us closer there, today, really appreciate it.
Betsy Allen Manning: Oh, thanks for having me, Mike. Appreciate it.