Recruitment and Culture: Attracting and Retaining Excellent Teams 

Resources

• Transcript

  - Co-founder of Spektrix. I've also actually been a board member at the Leeds Playhouse here in the north of England for the last almost six years, specifically supporting with things related to organisational culture and I've been involved quite a bit in senior recruitment there. And I chair the subcommittee on HR people and culture. So naturally we have lots of Spektrix users in this session today, so welcome to all of you, but also some who aren't. So for those who maybe don't know of us, we provide cloud-based technology for ticketing, marketing and fundraising to the arts and culture sector. We work with 400 arts organisations here in the UK and in Ireland and 200 or so in the US and Canada. We're also a certified B Corps, which I always like to talk about to raise awareness of the movement. But it's essentially a global movement focused on businesses holding themselves to a significantly higher standard than they're legally required to, as well as encouraging businesses to be purpose driven. The phrase I like that sums it up is business being about solving the problems of people and planet without causing harm in doing so. So do check out B Corp if you wanna know more. So why am I talking on this topic today? Well, we are now a team of more than 230 and some of our biggest challenges, if not the biggest ones as we've grown, have been on this topic of recruitment and people and how to grow and maintain a strong culture. So we hope to use the combination of our experience doing this as well as the fact that we know the industry pretty well to offer some of those learnings in ways that we hope are relevant to lots of you and some of the challenges that you may be facing. So I'm gonna focus on two areas today. The first of those is how we make our recruitment practices more inclusive, so we bring in the best talent and also diversify our teams. And secondly, I'm gonna share some thoughts on how we might improve our organisational culture. So on the first of these, we are an industry that lacks diversity and isn't also always very good at looking outwards and realising that actually people in other sectors may have skills that could transfer really well into arts and culture and on the second of these, we work in an amazing sector with incredible people and a huge amount of talent. We're also facing a lot of headwinds and more and more is being demanded of art organisations with less and less funding available. And it doesn't feel like any of those problems are going away anytime soon. So if those aspects of the funding are out of our direct control, let's think what is in our control and how we might be able to make change in those areas to address some of our challenges. And the most important thing that we all have in our organizations is our people. And I'm not for the moment saying that people in the arts don't work hard, quite the opposite, but that's different to always working most effectively and on the most important things that will deliver against our organizational goals and that's where culture comes into play. And when we say culture, what do we mean by that? I see culture as essentially the sort of norms in an organization. So things like how people go about their work, how people behave with each other, how decisions are made, those are all elements of culture among many other things, of course. So onto the first topic of inclusive recruitment, quite a bit of what I'm talking about today comes from this resource that we published a couple years ago now I think available on our website. And I've spoken on this topic for the last couple of years. So, if you've been to any of those sessions, you might have had some of these ideas before, but every time I do speak on the topic, I spend a bit of time online just looking through some job specs and application backs just to check that it is still relevant and I can confirm that it is still relevant. There are still lots of examples in my view where we could be doing better in the sector. So let's start by asking why is inclusive recruitment important? And we'll talk actually in the second half of the session about why asking why is always a really important place to start. So first of all, and this is just in my view, first of all, it's the right thing to do. We want to shift to a society where there is more equal access to opportunity and recruiting more inclusively is a key way that we can achieve this. Secondly, though, it's great for our organizations. Recruiting inclusively is the best way to make sure that we're hiring the best people for each role. And it's also likely to increase the diversity of our staff team. And that diversity will make our teams more vibrant, exciting, and ultimately more successful through the different lived experiences and the people have and will bring to their roles. So if we think specifically about all audiences, because a lot of people in this room will have audience focused roles, we all want to diversify our audiences so they become more representative of our communities and audiences will be bigger as a result and that will be great also for our bottom line. But we'll only be in a place to do this most effectively if our staff team, our core staff team is also diverse and representative of our communities. We just can't think that we'll ever know how best to market to or program for or fundraise from our entire community unless we are representative of them. There was a drive here in the UK and I believe something similar in the US after the George Floyd murder back in 2020 around arts organisations publishing their workforce data and specifically around nth race and ethnicity, here in the UK, it was called Pull Up or Shut Up for those of you who remember this. And you can still find it online, and it was certainly encouraging to see that happen, but has it gone anywhere? And I don't believe it's necessarily that organisations now regularly reporting on demographics and therefore to holding themselves to account on things changing and just bearing in mind, this cannot just be sort of freelancers we work with. It has to be the core staff team in all areas, all levels of our organizations. So if that's our why, let's move on next to the how. So how might we actually go about this? And I wanted to bring in some ideas from this book by Ibram Kendi that some of you may have come across and one of the key ideas in this book is all about looking carefully at policies and the fact that actually lots of policies in our everyday, whether that is government ones or workplace ones or whatever else are, from Kendi's view, racist. And when he says racist here, he means that they are designed in such a way, often not intentionally, that produce or sustain racial inequity between groups. So just as a simple example, let's imagine there's a policy in your workplace that requires you to have five years of experience in some specific thing before progressing. Is there a good reason why five is really needed? Because by requiring five, there's a chance that you'll be disadvantaging groups who may have historically faced barriers to gaining that experience, such as those who've experienced racism as early in their career, perhaps, as others. And so the question here is why can't it instead be based purely on a demonstration of skill and competence that you need? So if we then extend that policy idea to other forms of difference like gender, religion, whether someone's a parent or has caring responsibilities or is neurodivergent, and then let's think about how we might apply that sort of approach in a recruitment process. So if we then think next to our job description, our job description is essentially a form of policy. It's defining the things that you are saying you need to see in someone for them to get the job and how you're going to assess candidates against each other. So next, I wanted to have a quick look at some of the extracts from job specs that we've seen recently in the sector and just sort of critique them a bit and see how they might sort of stack up against this idea that we're talking about. So here is one recent one here. So this is a box office assistant role. Experience of working in a theater in the arts, experience of working with a customer database. So this is quite an entry level role in the US and Canada, 20,000 pounds is pretty much an entry level salary here in the UK. So I wanted just to see if in the chat, anyone wants to share any thoughts on why these requirements might be problematic for a role like this. So yeah, please feel free to pop them in the chat . Thanks Brian, yep, it could be . Any entry level role requiring specific experience. Yep, yep, thanks Leon. They will, but you need experience, yep, absolutely. So I think yeah, all of those absolutely right, yeah, not skills based, can we teach the skills? So yeah and absolutely customer service skills and frankly customer service is actually the really key bit that sometimes is the harder bit to train, like how good somebody is at sort of engaging with a member of the public. So yeah, I think, and there's general humour there that we perhaps don't need any of those two bits of experience. And I would even say to your point, Brian, that yeah, yeah, sports might, but do we need that either that actually, perhaps we don't need any experience of selling tickets and that it can be that that can all be taught essentially. And so now if we now look back at this lens of sort of racist policies. If we're saying this experience isn't needed, but yet this experience is more likely to have been gained by people from perhaps more privileged backgrounds and perhaps less likely from people from historically marginalized ones, whether that's somebody who's black or perhaps or another group that experiences racism or someone who's from a working class background to name just a few examples. So by Ibram Kendi's definition, if we're saying these aren't really needed, this potentially would be considered a racist policy. Now that's not to say that the person who wrote this is racist in the way that we might traditionally think of it, but it is the case that we're often so busy and so used to the things, the ways we've always have done things that we don't even stop to consider whether something as simple as this could be a significant barrier to why we're struggling as a sector to diversify our teams and build inclusive and equitable cultures. So I was gonna ask what might be actually be important for a role like this, but we've already got an example of that, that yeah, customer service skills, I think absolutely. Someone with strong customer service skill, perhaps someone who's computer literate by that place, and most people these days should absolutely be able to do a role like this, be very capable at it. So I like that, thank you for those thoughts on that one. So we're gonna go on to another example next. So any thoughts on the issues with this one? Perhaps both what it's asked for and how it's worded? Yep, definitely difficult. Is it families, caring responsibilities? Yep, anyone who's a caregiver, be more specific. Yep, yep, absolutely, great ideas there. So yes, now look, this is a tricky one. We work in theater and there will be times when some evening or weekend work may be needed, but how could we still get what we need? And I think it's about how you write this, the way this is written is entirely one way. You need to meet the business needs. Not even given info about what those needs are. And so first of all, how can we be clear on what the needs might be? And also make clear that we can have a conversation about this and figure out if there's a way of making it work. So, I'm not saying here we have to stop and say, no, we can't, require someone to be in for an evening or whatever, yeah, we can still be far more inclusive in how we look for this. Yeah, so yeah, it could give specific days, absolutely. Yeah, or even, yeah, better it could say, look we can figure out together what days those might be or whatever to work around other commitments, absolutely. Great, thank you for those ideas on that one. And then the final one here, so actually I'm just gonna jump straight into this one. So yeah, excellent leadership skills and with the ability to collaborate with others to get things done and achieve fantastic outcomes. So I suppose here how many people would really would describe themselves as having excellent leadership skills? I certainly know leadership is a very wide thing. I would say very few of us are really excellent at this. Certainly wouldn't say myself and so even something that seems innocuous, like excellent, we need to be careful 'cause very few of us have that. And then leadership itself like is such a wide ranging skill and can mean so many different things to different people. And some people would think they have it and some people won't think they have it. And then if we look at that end bit on fantastic outcomes, we might all aspire to fantastic outcomes and occasionally they do happen. But that's a pretty high bar to set. And yeah, again, yes, a good point there. No definition of what fantastic outcomes are and yes, absolutely. Thanks Katie, too high expectations. So more specifically, if we think actually through the lens of gender here, you may have heard the statistic that men will apply for job if they meet 60% of the requirements while women only if they meet a hundred percent. So here is an example of requirement that most people technically probably wouldn't meet, but men are more likely to ignore that than women would be. So if we were to rewrite this, we could simply say, look, we want experience collaborating with others to deliver business outcomes or something like that and then ask for examples of that in interview. But the key way is just avoiding the superlative language. But yet we do see a lot of that in job descriptions. It's a natural go-to I think for so many of us. So thanks for the thoughts on that one as well and then, so we're gonna go on from there. So let's next think about the idea of transferable skills, which you've already shared ideas on the first example. So, I think the point here is there are so many potentially great skills that are out there in other industry that could be applied in our industry. We saw the box of these example earlier in customer service, perhaps people with social media or social advertising skills could apply those to marketing in arts and culture. And I would say we certainly could do with more of those skills in our sector and people with perhaps sales backgrounds maybe that could apply to fundraising. And I think a really key way of rethinking your job requirements is to try and come away from what you are used to and think about what the sort of core skill or actually behaviour is that we really need. And I introduced behaviours here because skills can often be quite easily trained in somebody, whereas behaviours are often the things that you really want to be looking out for when you recruit. And it's absolutely possible. So we're gonna go on next to talk about role requirements. So of which we just saw some examples of. So first one here is just really to carefully consider what's really essential and can you frame things in a way that allows for the transfer of skills and behaviours and can you avoid putting in things that can actually be learned easily enough. So we saw that box of this example at the beginning and I think we'll all agree that actually focusing more on customer service experience or dealing with members of the public, something like that could be a far better way of getting a wider pool. And also just trying to keep the essentials to a minimum. Like it's hard enough as it is to test on all these long lists of essentials. You can do a far more objective evaluation if you actually really boil it down to what's really needed and then focus on how you test for those. Not including desirables is a really key one and this, I still see a lot of this happening. So why is this important? So, people may be discouraged and reply if they can't meet every requirement. We've already talked a bit about that. And again, it's often those from more privileged backgrounds or whose career paths are similar to those of existing team members who have had the chance to acquire non-essential experience. So you're gonna again be, it's that back to that racist policy idea 'cause if you put something desirable then you need to be factoring in. If someone has more of those things, you need to weight them higher. It wouldn't be fair to just put it down there and then ignore it, so just get rid of it. If its not essential, it shouldn't be there. The third one is easy language changes. So we've seen that idea of the fewer superlative, we saw the example of the evenings and weekends and obviously that's a bit of language and a bit of sort of just approach you're taking. And another really good one can be explain the relevance of each requirement 'cause that can really help people, particularly from outside the sector to understand how skills might be relevant and something like digital marketing, for example, and how what they've got could transfer into the sector. So we're gonna go through a few more examples in a moment. But first of all, let's ask the question, why is all this important? Well, the key in all this is to attracting is wide, diverse and strong a talent pool as possible. And why is this important? Simply means we have a better likelihood of diversifying our team, and of appointing the strongest possible individual. So let's look at some examples next. So we're gonna look at some examples. So these have all originally come in some form from things that we've seen out there. So this one here is able to work under pressure and to tight deadlines. Any thoughts on what might be an issue with this one or thoughts on how it could be better? But I think some people are doing their comments just to host some panelists, so do switch it to everyone if you're happy for everyone to see. Stressful, yep, yep. Yep, yeah, so it's certainly gonna put some people off, absolutely, vague. It's just a place where it's pressurised, yep. Yep, its gonna give you a good impression of their culture management, absolutely. Great, thanks for those ideas. And if we think that from an inclusion perspective, some people might read this and go, oh yeah, that's great, love pressure or this, whereas some people will be put off by this. And again, that may well be linked to something like, caring requirements or that sort of thing. And I think the point here is, actually, with the right time management skills, what matters here is the outcome, can they get done what's needed? And you don't need to necessarily work under pressure to get what's needed done. So how about instead we reframe it to something like this, good time management and prioritisation skills. So next one we're gonna look at here is a fund to do with fundraising. So let's imagine this is a relatively entry level role in fundraising, fundraising offers or something like that. So two years fundraising experience, preferably in an arts or educational charity. Any thoughts on this one? Yeah, this is with it, what we could look for instead perhaps. Yeah, type of charity maybe doesn't matter, yeah, yeah, rather than a fixed amount, absolutely. Great, so yeah, I think, those are two really good points and perhaps even another, I mean, I often like think that fundraising, at the core of fundraising, particularly if it's sort of fundraising from individuals, trust and foundation, probably a bit different, but is sort of being able to capture people's attention, engage them in conversation and actually people may have made those connections in any number of customer facing roles in education, in care. So perhaps we could even look outside of previous fundraisers here and perhaps what we get could really add to our industry. So yep, so that's that one. And also, so perhaps so we could potentially reword that one to something like this, experience of interacting with members of the public and engaging with the individual interest. Now I'm not saying do that for sure. No, if you really do feel that fundraising experience is needed, then yes, maybe you just limit it, they're still fundraising, but in the wider charity sector. And before I go on to the next one, I did actually used to have a slide on requiring degree experience, but that one feels like it's really changed. I can't remember the last time I saw the requirement for a degree in an arts job. And so yeah, great that has has happened. And so gonna go onto the final example, which is this one here, experience of using Spektrix. Any thoughts on this one? No, you won't offend, don't be worried. Yeah, thanks, Katie. Yeah, absolutely, yes, yeah, you can learn. Yeah, it's teachable on the job, absolutely. Yeah, or willing, yeah, or even just willing to learn new programs, absolutely. So yeah, I mean, we certainly think Spektrix is easy to pick up. We provide training, but also most organizations can train people easily in-house as well. Depends what the specific role is. And so yeah, how about instead computer literacy and again, that's a pretty wide... That allows us to really go pretty wide with people 'cause lots of people do have that these days. Thank you for all those comments there. So look, and these examples I've given, perhaps are slightly more focused on more entry level roles, but I do really feel that this can apply to more senior ones as well. So most marketing director roles, for example, would ask for industry experience, but perhaps someone from outside the sector could bring a whole different set of experiences and could actually be supported in by people in the organisation, in the marketing team in terms of things that are more industry specific and someone from outside could bring a whole new perspective to how we go about things. So let's go on there to, so we've focused so far on, so the role in how we structure our role, that sort of thing, we're gonna talk next about applying. So the key point here is let's really make things as easy as possible. And I still see some quite hefty application forms out there and situations where people are told, no, don't send your CV or resume, answer this big long list of questions instead that basically gets you to repeat all the information and fill it in. So we sometimes unintentionally put some pretty high barriers up to people applying. Just go, yeah, I'm gonna sort of, throw my hat in the ring here. And we really need to be thinking what's the lowest barrier that we can put in place to applying. There is always going to be some. So what's the lowest barrier we can put in? But whereby we still get what we need and just really thinking like why is it fair to get them to put all that work in when they've done that work on their CV or resume, on the LinkedIn profile. And aside from that point around, like, fairness, we're gonna get more applicants if we do this, which as we talked about the start, a key part of all this. So at Spektrix what we typically did, we asked for the CV or resume and we typically asked perhaps three questions like why Spektrix, why the role and why does your skills and experience meet the requirements? And we find that the answer to that does plenty to allow us to effectively screen. And I would often question like, when I see those really long applications, I question, are people actually using the answers there they're given because it can be pages and pages sometimes. So that's first point, then onto sort of the thoughts of the rest of the process. So when we sort of get to interviewing and there, so another principle I find helpful is to remember that the recruitment process is not a test. And instead thinking about it. Our job as employers to do everything that we can to help each candidate find the evidence that we need from them to prove that they can do the job. So we should be working really hard when we recruit and if we come out of a process thinking, eh, I'm not sure I saw the best from that person, we need to make sure that we do better the next time. And rather than going, oh, they didn't perform well in the interview. And when we think about fairness through like, a process, I don't believe it's about treating every candidate in exactly the same way. It's a really great opportunity to be equitable, by which I mean appreciating that every candidate has a different set of needs and your job should be looking to address those needs and no matter what those needs are, making sure that you give 'em the best chance for you to get what you need from them to prove they can do the job and I'll give you some examples of that in a moment. So really it's that how can we make the process as effective as possible to allow people to perform at their best and give us that evidence that we need. So one of the key ways is sharing as much as possible about what the process is gonna look like. And remember, we are not interviewing people to find out how well they interview. You are interviewing them to determine their capability or suitability for the role. So it's your job to correct for the fact that some people naturally interview better than others and that's not a sign of whether they're gonna be good in the job or not. So sharing the process can be really helpful with this. So the sorts of things you can do are sort of giving clarity on what to expect, who they're gonna meet, lengths of interviews. And that could have people who may be nervous, feeling more confident coming in. If you're assessing them in some way, you may wanna send the structure of the assessment and also share with them in advance what you're going to ask about. So, and this is all about, remember, how do we set candidates up to deliver at their best? It's not about who can give the best answer on the spot. That is a specific skill that you probably don't need in most situations. So here is an example of what you might send out. So you might say, hey, we're gonna ask you to give us examples of some firsthand experiences of delivering great customer service. So very simple thing to ask, but if you are asked for that on the spot, your best examples may not come to you in the moment and someone new to the sector or someone who's feeling more stressed in the moment and someone who's less stressed may do less well. So sending out in advance just really allows for that levelling of the playing field, which is that the idea of equity and just really, yeah, making sure that what you want is the best example that each person has to give from you. Not sometimes the one of the less good ones. So, and again, back to the idea of we're not judging who gets their quickest on the spot. So, and when we say share things in advance, like you could share the questions or you could share the themes that you're gonna ask about, it doesn't need the exact wording, but just enough that lets people really prepare for the interview. So let's touch next then we're sort of now going into sort of the interview process or screening on this idea of unconscious bias. So we all have this simplicity in recruitment. Maybe it's the idea of unknowingly thinking better or worse of someone because of some factor that shouldn't be a consideration in the decision, like personal demographics. So in an interview that may manifest as someone having a similar background to you, just more easily sort of getting what you are looking for from them versus someone who perhaps you don't click with quite as well and therefore doesn't as easily get what you are looking for from them. So you naturally might think the second person doesn't have what you need, whereas actually it's your differences that have led to that. So good news is we can solve that in interviewing by taking a systematic approach. And I'm gonna suggest one to you next. So, let's go on to interviewing. So I see interviewing is all about gathering evidence. So we've got our list of requirements and it's about gathering evidence against the ability for the person to deliver on each of those essential requirements and hopefully you've boiled that down to a relatively short list. And the best way that you gather evidence is by finding examples of them having done that in their experience from their past essentially. So let's say you're interviewing for a customer service role, you could ask someone like, hey, what do you see as good customer service? But anyone can answer that. And it doesn't mean that the candidate has ever offered it in real life, it's just an opinion. So much better to ask something like, hey, can you give us an example you are proud of of delivering great customer service. Next point here is don't necessarily confine examples to work particularly for more entry level roles where actually there may be times, if it's very entry level actually there's something from educational days or from whatever else is in people's background. So then if we go on to sort of talk a bit more about technique, and this is where you can really bring inclusive and equitable practice into play. So first one, this may sound obvious, is making sure you've been understood and that people know what you are looking for. So some people may immediately get what you want, but for others you might need to reframe the question or reframe it again, or maybe give 'em an example to help 'em understand what you're looking for and none of that is a sign of a problem. It's simply you helping the person to find what you need from their experience and to help 'em locate those examples. And remember some of why somebody understands your question more easily than someone else could be because of elements of their background that are similar or dissimilar to yours. So the types of organizations they work with or all manner of things. So this is a really great example of the potential for unconscious bias to get in the way, but where the solution is just to keep making sure you've been understood and until you get to a place where there just aren't those examples there. Another one here is just not always settling for the first answer you get. So you may get an answer back and think, hey, that's okay, but not great and you shouldn't stop there. You should say, oh, thanks for that answer and maybe ask for another one or maybe say, hey, address that aspect, but could you gimme something that addresses this aspect, remembering that you know what you're looking for, they don't know what you're looking for, so sometimes you need to guide them on that, again, just because the first answer they gave you isn't quite what you're looking for doesn't mean that they don't have that evidence from some other example. So it's really that systematic approach I think, this idea of looking for evidence and that systematic approach of trying to work with somebody to find it. So we're gonna go next from there to just looking back at some of these role requirements and going, well how might we test for this interview? And the good news is a very easy formula. You take the role requirement and you simply come up with an example based question against it. So here, good time management and prioritization skills. Give me an example of a situation where you've had to manage a number of priorities in order to meet one or more deadlines. And as I say, you may ask that and you may get an example back and you may say, oh, that's a great example, that and that, but could you maybe give another one that covers this area or something like that. But it's quite a simple formula. And another example here, so experience of interacting with members of the public and engaging with their individual interests. So can you gimme an example of a conversation you started with a member of the public. How did you learn what they were interested in and how did you adapt your conversation to their needs? And remember, we're sending those out in advance so people have got plenty of opportunity to really delve through their backgrounds and think what's bringing to the table. So that's the end of the first part. And just before we move on, I think, we keep talking about the topic of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And as a sector we clearly want to do better. But when it comes to diversity of our core staff teams, which as I said at the start, I think is so key, if we want to have our organisations to properly be able to serve our entire community, I still think there's times when we can be doing better. And I think a key reason for this is that when it comes to recruitment, we're still not giving it the time and we're still continuing to do the things that really matter largely in the way that we've always done them. And therefore we sort of can't expect that much to change. And the only way that will change is if we do take the time and look really carefully at how we do everything and then make the changes that we need to. So we're gonna go straight into part two and then we're gonna open up for questions at the end. So the next part is improving our organisational culture. So why does culture matter? Well, ultimately, it's key to an organisation being able to maximise its effectiveness in delivering against its vision and mission and a strong workplace also makes for a great place to work. And that will lead to great staff retention as well. Now there are so many things we could talk about when it comes to culture. I've aimed for one today that I hope will feel relevant to this audience and that you'll feel you can take directly back into your day-to-day in some way. But there are plenty of other things we could have talked about, but the one we're gonna talk about today is this idea of aligned outcomes. So what do we mean by that? So this is a cartoon from Spotify back in about 2015, I think, and it's all about this idea of the importance of teams having both autonomy, so being able to make their own decisions and not to being told what to do and that being a far more scalable way to build an organisation as well. As well as having far more rewarded and empowered teams and leading to better decisions because people who are closer to the problem are the ones solving it. But you also have to have alignment because if you have autonomy without alignment, then people can be focusing on the things that actually aren't important for the organisation. So we can set in the bottom right, that we said, hey team, go and do whatever you want, but actually never told them that we need to cross the river. So they're all going off in different directions. So, versus top right where we've say, hey, we need to cross the river and it's up to you, team, to figure out how we do that. So, and what are we trying to be aligned to? Well ultimately it's the vision and mission of our organization, but day-to-day we generally distill that down into something that we're sort of focusing on now to make progress. The vision and mission is usually a little bit too far away for most of us in our day to day. So let's just do a quick poll on this. So we're gonna ask two questions. First of all, how in your role at the moment, well, how well do you feel on the alignment side? These are all anonymous? So we're gonna score this one to five. So one for least, five for most. So five, if you are really clear on how what you're doing is playing into the current priorities of the organization and the mission and vision and one if you're doing a bunch of stuff, but what's it really for who knows? And then on autonomy, five, if you're feeling, you've essentially got full control on how you're going to go about achieving that goal. And one, if you're being told what to do every step of the way, so let's go for it. Okay, I think we're slowing down there a bit now. Chrissy, can we put those on the screen? Is that how it works, .

   

  - [Chrissy] I am not sure how to share this with everybody. Here we go.

   

  - Oh, share result, yep, good. So there we go. Yeah, so actually quite well aligned in general, mostly on the threes and fours. There's quite a few fives as well, just one, two, and then on the autonomy. So again, three to four being the main area we're living in, some down on the ones and twos and then a few up on the fives. Great, well that's actually, yeah, pretty good situation, but it could be better, so let's talk about it anyway. And so let's talk through some ideas on how we might specifically increase that alignment piece and then we'll talk about the autonomy bit as well. So, this is a model you may have come across by someone called Simon Sinek and there was quite a famous Ted talk on it, maybe 10 years or so ago. And the point he makes here is that most organizations start with what, they just jump straight into what they're gonna do. Some know how they do it, but the best organizations start with why. They say, well, what are we trying to actually achieve? And then they work back out from that into how are we gonna go about it and then what are we actually gonna do? So if we use an example of audience inclusion, so perhaps we're planning to roll out some training to frontline teams and to make our audience feel more welcome. So what are we gonna do to improve audience? We're gonna do that, but instead of jumping straight into doing this, let's actually just step back first and ask why. So let's ask why is audience inclusion important in the first place, 'cause then we can know is that actually the best thing to do? So we're gonna dig into that question next. So, if we were to ask that question, here's perhaps examples of how we might answer. It might be a mixture of things. So perhaps so that people from all backgrounds should feel welcome, it will grow our audiences and therefore make us more fundable. Or perhaps it's we should be a destination for all of our community. And it's worth saying the why often isn't that easy to come up with. So, just think about, if you think about the things you're working on, how easy sometimes is it to go, why am I really doing this actually. We all know it's important, but answering it can be quite difficult sometimes. So let's go back to the golden circle here. So, if we say, well... If we now figure out why is audience inclusion important? We're gonna use our how here to say, well how are we gonna know that we've made audience inclusion better? And only once we've done that, will we then go into the right, what's the best thing to actually do? And so by giving teams the answers to these questions, and so going here's why this is important, teams can now be in the best place to figure out what is actually the best action to take rather than being told roll out this training for example. So I'm gonna introduce one more idea and that's gonna help us with this and it's the difference. It's the importance of a thing called outcomes. And outcomes are the things that tell us whether we've succeeded. So, that they are essentially the why and let's think about outcomes versus this other concept of initiatives. So most of us naturally think in terms of the things that we are doing or are going to do every day. So we're gonna do that training or we're going to, can't think of an example right now, but it can be much harder to actually think in terms of the outcomes and these are the things that happen as a result of, hopefully good things that happen as a result of the things that we do and ultimately are the things that matter in our organisation. So we could do all sorts of initiatives, put loads of work in, but we might not have actually moved the needle on what really matters. Now it can sometimes be quite difficult to go straight to the outcome. Often you can, so sometimes actually the initiative can lead you to the outcome. So you're working on this plan for training team members on being how to be more welcoming or whatever. What you might do is you might say, well why is that important and that could lead you to the outcome. So initiatives can be helpful in taking you to that outcome. But the point we're trying to make here is let's always make sure we are thinking with these outcomes in mind because they are what really matters. And if you ask why, by the way too many times, you should get yourself back to the vision and mission of the organisation. If you've done that, you've probably gone a little bit too far and you should have stopped a little bit sooner. So let's use an example here. So we've got this initiative, which is training for front of house teams in how to help audience members feel as welcome as possible no matter their background and that may well be a great initiative. But it is possible that you do this and it doesn't actually lead to any better results in terms of how welcome people feel. And we can measure this initiative. So we can say, hey, what percentage of the team have had this training? But all that tells us is that we've delivered some training, not that the training has actually had any impact on feelings of welcomeness. So if we actually instead ask why, then we might get to something more helpful, so now we think about what might the actual outcome be that we are wanting to get to? So perhaps that's something along these lines, ensuring that audience members no matter their background feel as welcome as possible when visiting. But now let's see if we can measure that outcome. Any thoughts from anyone on how we could know whether we're hitting that outcome? Audience surveys, yep, absolutely. And this point around no matter their background, yeah. So yeah, I think surveying is a key one here I think. But in particular 'cause saying no matter their background, we need to understand those backgrounds. So, including demographics in some way in that surveying perhaps. So yeah, so that's how you might go about measuring this and hopefully you can see that now and that that may lead us to thinking this is the right initiative to do. But actually if you give this to a team and say, look, that this is what we're trying to achieve, going back to that alignment and autonomy piece, the team can now be in that top right and going, well, we're gonna try this, but actually maybe that's not going in the right direction. We're gonna try something different instead. Whereas if they're just focused on this idea, we need to roll out training, then they're not actually focused on what really matters for the organisation, which is likely to be what we have on the right there in that example. So we're pretty much there I think, but I just thought we'd spend a moment just over to you for a moment. No need to share any of this, but just a few moments just to think about perhaps an initiatives that you are working on at the moment and think, are you clear on the outcome that that's helping you work towards? And again, and then if you are, are you measuring that? Have you got a way to measure that outcome. Actually given time, we'll send the slides around, so I will leave that one with you and just gonna come back almost there. So I think in summary, perhaps this idea of aligned outcomes, what's it gonna lead to where everyone's clear on the outcomes, but also given the scope to determine the what, I certainly believe that leads to higher team performance because the teams are now figuring out what are the best things to work on, they're solving problems more directly and also more empowered teams. And both of those are key aspects of strong culture. Both of those are likely to lead to higher retention. Yeah, so we could touch on culture, but hopefully those pieces were helpful. So that brings us pretty much to the end. I think just to finish it's worth, I think remembering that everything to do with people and culture, well these are all complex things. There are no like quick answers. Culture is always work in progress. Something like recruitment is always work in progress. We can always be getting better, both as organisations in terms of processes and approach, but also individually in our technique and looking at our biases. I personally still find interviewing is one of the hardest things that I do and I still regularly come out going, oh, could I have done better? So yeah, I think just worth remembering that this is a sort of, dare I say lifelong journey for all of us. So thank you everyone for everything, over to you, Chrissy.

   

  - Thank you so much Michael for sharing all that expertise with us today. And thank you to everyone, all of the participants for really making this such an engaging conversation. We love that. We have about six or seven minutes for questions, so do please ask those in the Q&A tool. We will do our best to answer them all now, but if we do not get to yours, please do get in touch with Michael afterwards. So let's start with this question. Michael, what are your thoughts on anonymous shortlists?

   

  - Yes, good question. So I think what we're talk about there is this idea of sort of taking out any sort of personally identifiable information or names of universities like that. So we actually got some advice in this on a recruitment consultant we worked with a few years ago who was specifically focused on inclusive recruitment. And her advice for us was don't do it because actually you can be more equitable if you don't do it. And actually you use the fact that you do have that information to potentially fill in narratives that might help you go, actually the reason why someone might not have got to this place or whatever might be because of that, not because they're not capable, whatever. So we therefore deliberately don't do it. And yeah, I can see there are arguments both sides, but yeah, that's the approach that we take from.

   

  - Great, thank you. All right, moving on to the next one. How can we encourage people from the global majority to apply for positions in organisations where there is a clear lack of diversity in the workforce?

   

  - Yeah, that's a good question and yeah, it's a tough one. 'Cause I think, yeah, it's not always going to feel welcoming when we are not there yet and we don't have that diversity. I think it comes back to a lot of what we've been talking about, which is just really trying hard to frame things in those ways that are just more inclusive and I often use the term draw people in rather than push them away essentially. And I think there's loads more as well. And I think we've actually seen some really good examples in the sector of application packs, some of the requirements might not always but some of the bits outside of that actually, I think there are some really good examples out there of strong application packs that do do a good job of that. And then I think, yeah, we can also think about the idea of more proactively, I suppose, going out to communities and encouraging people to apply or encouraging people to come and visit, those sorts of things. So yeah, I think it's certainly plenty. I think that's, yep, really helpful.

   

  - Great, let's see, our next question is what other practical ideas for measuring or improving culture could you share?

   

  - Oh, yeah that's a good one. So I mean, so I think culture covers so much. What else, I mean, let's see, I mean a big one that we focused on last year is this idea of personal feedback, so the importance of people sharing with each other what they really think and when we say personal feedback, we mean not just people generally are okay at sharing feedback on like things that are more objective, like people's work and stuff like that, but less good at feedback on sort of more underlying behaviours and things. And actually, it's called radical candidates that's all about this, but actually, it's only when that happens that you really get places and stuff. So that's probably, that's one. And no, perhaps, I mean I think, we strive for as Spektrix is this idea of leadership at every level, which we sort of touched on a bit today, but this idea that how can we push decision making down through the whole organisation, we as Spektrix, we talk about everyone being a leader, like managers, only some people manage others, but actually we like to think of everyone as a leader bearing in mind leaders are people who are prepared to be held accountable for things. People who won't just drop something and you know, actually that can apply to everyone in an organisation.

   

  - Great, all right, next we have, I like the approaches suggestion, but I'm at a manager level. How do I influence my senior team to start thinking about these types of things?

   

  - Good question, yeah, well, I mean I think when it comes to recruitment, I like think just yeah, go for it and set the example yourself 'cause I'd like to think that most of what we've gone through you're not gonna get necessarily pushed back on saying, oh no, you have to word it in that way. But, so I think, and then I would say share the results and hopefully, show that it's changing things. I think one of the things we probably, if you're not doing, is trying to capture demographics in the application process. And that's one that obviously if you don't have control of that that could be tricky. So yeah, but I suppose, yeah, that's probably my main one. And also, obviously anything you are able to do to engage people in that conversation directly. Yeah, so a few ideas there that's helpful. And then yeah, I'm sorry.

   

  - I think we have time for one more question, which is we receive so many applications, we need way of shortlisting, like using desirables. How would you recommend doing this while remaining inclusive?

   

  - Yeah, so I would say here that for me it's a combination of you've got your essentials, you might have six on that, and you assess against those and absolutely, you may end up having quite a lot of people who all meet that. And that's where I then find that some of these application questions can be helpful. So, we do want people, and I don't think it's not inclusive to want people to show some interest in the organisation, all that, so that's, I would say, some of those questions that we sort of posed as what things you might ask can be really good ways of then screening further depending on, yeah, how long that short list is essentially, yeah.

   

  - Great, that is all the time we have left for questions for today. So thank you again Michael for this. This was very informative. I have one last favour to ask of everyone here today. When you leave this webinar, you'll see a Zoom webpage with a super, super short survey. But we all know survey fatigue is real, I know it. So we've made this as short and sweet as possible. It really helps us to understand what you need and what we can do to help make events like this. So please take a few seconds to share your thoughts when you leave. Otherwise, thank you so much for joining and we look forward to seeing you all the next time.

• Resources

  View the session slide deck.

  Download Rethinking Recruitment

  • Easy, quick-to-implement ideas for job descriptions, questions and interview tasks that will widen your talent pool.
  • Templates and resources to help you design inclusive criteria and objective selection processes.
  • Lessons we've learned from rethinking recruitment at Spektrix.