In this week’s Happier at Work podcast episode, Aoife O'Brien chats with Fania Stoney, Business Development Strategist with Great Place to Work.

They explore a range of topics relating to the future of work: the challenges faced by entry-level employees in remote work settings, including the lack of cues and guidance needed to navigate the workplace effectively, the growing concern of isolation and the need for organisations to bring people together and create opportunities for collaboration.

The main points throughout this podcast include:

● Job crafting: how to create a career you love

● The importance of listening to your employees

● The future of work is now and how to get remote/ hybrid right

● Employer branding and the importance of stories

● How to help women succeed at work

● Menopause at work and the introduction of the Menopause Friendly Workplace Award

“Any organisation can create a great culture. I truly believe that and sometimes it's about making what you're already doing explicit and sometimes it's about making those tweaks that can really kind of drive that overall experience. Always focusing on the three Cs. So communication, connection, and career. And that's gonna look different in lots of different organisations, and it's gonna look different for different people."

Connect with Fania:

Email - fania.stoney@greatplacetowork.com

LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/fania-stoney/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/faniastoney/

GPTW Website - https://www.greatplacetowork.ie

Do you have any feedback or thoughts on this discussion? If so, please connect with Aoife via the links below and let her know. Aoife would love to hear from you!

Connect with Happier at Work host Aoife O’Brien:

https://happieratwork.ie

https://www.impostersyndrome.ie/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/aoifemobrien/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/HappierAtWorkHQ

Inst - https://www.instagram.com/happieratwork.ie/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/happieratwork.ie

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm0FKS19I5qSlFFmkx1YGqA

I have a question for you. What are you doing to support women to leadership positions in your organization? From all of the work I have done with both individuals and organizations, I have compiled my learnings on this issue in my new guide, 15 Ways to Support Women in Leadership. You can download it for free at Happier at Work ie resources. The guide addresses us not only the individual responsibility of us as women looking to get to those leadership positions, but also the challenge of creating a supportive environment. A reminder of that, address happieratwork. Ie resources. You're listening to the Happier at Work podcast, and I'm your host, IFA O'Brien. Through a combination of solo episodes and interviews with some incredible guests, we bring you the insights and practical tips to create happier working environments for you and your teams. If you enjoyed today's episode, consider sharing it with a friend or a colleague and leaving a rating or review on your favorite platform.

Any organization can create a great culture. Like, I truly believe that. And sometimes it's about making what you're already doing explicit, and sometimes it's about making those tweaks that can really kind of drive that that overall experience, always focusing on the three C's, so communication, connection, and career. And that's going to look different in lots of different organizations, and it's going to look different for different people.

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Happier at Work podcast. I'm so thrilled that you decided to tune in today. My guest today is Fania Stoney from Great Place to Work, and we chat through a lot of different topics. We go from job crafting, employee listening, looking at employer branding, talk about the future of work and the challenges and benefits of hybrid and remote working, talk about the importance of telling stories to get your culture across. We talk about women at work as well, women in leadership in particular, and menopause, and how that impacts on women at work and how it impacts on everyone at work. So lots and lots to cover in today's episode. I know that you're going to really, really enjoy it. As always do get involved in the conversation. I'd love to know if there's anything that you learned, anything that you're already doing, or anything that you're going to do differently as a result of listening to today's episode. You'll find all of my social media channels on Happier at Work ie. That's my website happier at work. Ie. And as always, I will be doing a synopsis of some of the key points that we covered at the end of today's episode and challenging you to do one thing differently. So what would you do differently as a result of listening to today's episode? I hope you enjoy. Fania, you're so welcome to the Happier at Work podcast. I know we've been talking about this probably, I don't know. I want to say it could be a couple of years at this stage that we must get on a podcast and record something together. So I'm so thrilled that we're finally getting around to do it. And do you want to let people know a little bit about your background, who you are and what you do?

Yes. Thank you so much. As you say, I think it has actually been I mean, we talked about the podcast before, COVID I feel we're finally here. So we're here. We're here. And so thank you so much for having me on. Absolutely thrilled to be a part of it. So, yeah. My name is Fanny Stoney. I'm a business development strategist at Great place to work. Very fancy title, but I've been with Great Place To Work for coming up on seven years. My role, I suppose, has really changed in that time in some respects, because of what we do as a business has changed quite a lot over that time, but then also kind of carving out my own nation role and figuring out what I kind of, like, really want to do and what I enjoy. In a nutshell, for those people who don't know who Great Place To Work are and what we do. And we're probably best known for bringing out the best workplaces in Ireland every year. So we go into organizations, we survey all the employees, it's fully confidential, fully anonymous, we take all of that data and then when organizations meet minimum criteria, they can be certified as a great place to work. And from all of those who get certified as a great place to work, we go on to recognize the top 100 organizations in Ireland every year. So that's our best workplaces. And that happens in February. And it was really exciting this year because we were actually able to get back into the Burlington and have a celebration and bring all of our all.

Of our classes after at least two years of no in person, if not three. Yeah, amazing. So it might have been just before COVID that the last one was the.

Last Wednesday in February of 2020. We had 950 people in the Burlington.

Wow. And that's a nice fancy hotel for anyone listening outside of Ireland or Dublin. That's a nice fancy hotel here in Dublin.

Very everyone together for a nice dinner and a few drinks, right, and have a bit of a celebration. But it was a strange time because there was whispers of stuff happening in change and a couple of our clients had had to cancel kind of your trips to Asia and APAC and that kind of piece. And there was talk of this flu piece, right. Little did we know that two weeks later we were going to be in full lockdown ourselves and that kind of piece. So really felt like we've come full circle being able to get back there in February of this year. And people were definitely up for it. That's also in a nutshell from a recognition point of view, we obviously support organizations through that journey. So not everybody we work with starts as a great place to work, but we very much build a partnership with the organizations to try and make everybody get there or try to help everybody to kind of get them through that process. And we're constantly looking for new ways to support people or what are those trends coming out or where there are certain pinch points for organizations and then bring solutions that can have big impact. And this was my own role. One of those has been specifically around the experience of women in the workplace. So I've definitely kind of spearheaded a fair amount of that over the last few years. We have our best Workplaces for Women recognition. It is very much a premium recognition. We have a lot of very stringent criteria and only 30 organizations in Ireland made it this year, right. So it's very much kind of the top echelon. But we really wanted to go after that. We wanted it to be a distinction of excellence. We didn't want it to be a turn up and get it type piece.

Yeah.

And then this year in particular, we were noticing that the data was beginning to show us that leadership scores in particular for when we're hitting kind of a there was a challenging piece going on there. Right. And we did a little bit of follow up, and we did a bit of kind of, like, work with the organizations, mainly qualitative at that stage. And there was definitely need around addressing menopause in the workplace. We went and chatted to Loretta Dignum, who's the CEO of Menopause Hub, fantastic power woman. She's just one of the most incredible people I've met over the last few years. And so we announced our partnership with Rasha and the Menopause Hub earlier this year. We partnered with them on Best Workplaces for Women and we're also working with them now bringing Ireland's first Menopause friendly workplace award to the Irish market. And again, just trying to break that taboo, destigmatize the conversation, make it part of that experience so that we can continue to support people to give their best selves no matter where they themselves in their life cycle. So it's been an interesting couple of years.

There's actually so much I want to unpack with what you've just said. The first thing I want to pick up on is this idea of carving out your own role. So I mean, to me that just sounds like very unusual but very an amazing thing to be able to do. So correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you get in there, maybe you start trying a little bit of everything and see what you're good at and see what really lights you up. Do you want to describe that kind of process for people to understand? Because I think so many more companies can capitalize on this opportunity for people to really work to their best strengths and for things that really give them a sense of meaning and purpose.

Yeah. I think I was lucky in that I had an interesting confluence of timing within the organization itself. It was going through a bit of change. What we were in the market was changing and I was building my own career portfolio. Right. So it was kind of a good time to be able to do both of those. My ability to carve out my own role is underpinned by performance. So, like, if I was just turning up and being like, oh, I would like to do this.

Course. Yeah. Yeah.

So again, I think when people are thinking about framing this and going after this kind of approach where you can carpet your own niche, you've got to demonstrate you're delivering value. The way I always frame this is like, I'm very lucky in the organization. I am. When I look at the leadership team I'm a part of, if I was to go and say, look, I think we should be making blow up pink elephants and this is the business case, right. And this is where I think it's going to either bring value to client or value to us as a business. The answer is always go for it. And I have the safety for it not to work out. Like I feel it's a real privilege that I can bring ideas, test it. Not everything has to work out.

Now.

If nothing ever worked out, I don't think I'd be kept on either. The occasional thing has to laugh.

It's the performance thing has to come in to that as well. So you're blown up pink elephants and they haven't sold. The clients don't want them. And your next idea better not be, we're going to try blue elephants instead because maybe that's not the best.

But when you can demonstrate that and bring that, then it's a really interesting space to kind of carve out where's the confluence of what I bring and what I can really deliver for either for our team or for our client network and what's the market need, what's our team need and what's the new way of doing that? Right. And where's that edge? I'm the type of person where I know I can turn up and do a job, but where I perform my best is when I'm playing with that edge a little bit. So, like, okay, kind of figured this out. We know how that works now. I'm going to be able to deliver that. But what if we just reach this bit where we looked at doing this slightly differently or we brought a slightly different angle to that. And that's what keeps it interesting for me and that's what allows me, I think, to turn up and bring my best self and I have a really great team around me where I can kind of debrief around that. Jeez, that works. That didn't work. What are we thinking? Are we going to do that slightly differently?

Yeah.

And then we try.

I think that team element and that safety that you talked about is so important. It's just really great to hear. And I hope that for people listening today, it at least sparks some ideas of what is possible in the workplace. You don't have to stick with what you do in a day to day basis. If you can prove that you're performing well, that you're delivering results, then look for opportunities within your own organization. I think there's opportunities there. The other question I wanted to ask Fania was about the criteria. If you can share the criteria in relation to great place to work, so, like 100 best places to work in Ireland, for example, how does someone get onto that list?

Yeah, so it is a global methodology. We're headquartered out of the US. I think we're in something like 98 territories worldwide now. So it's a well established, well tested methodology, and we, I suppose, bring it to life in the Irish market. So organization approaches us, it's a full census survey. So we go into everybody in the organization. Everybody has their chance to have their voice heard and then across all the statements. If you are averaging 65% or above right in your scores, you'll be certified as a great place to work. We're realists at the end of the day, like, we're not expecting everybody to get 100% across every statement, because in every organization, even in the best organizations, there are certain people who have a transactional relationship with work. They turn up, do their job, and they leave. That's fine. What we would like to see is, okay, are two thirds of people having a great experience? What are the things that are really working for them that we can learn from and transform across the rest of the organization? What are our specific opportunities and pinch points where maybe we can make a few tweaks and drive some really strong cultural change and then those who go on to get that premium recognition. So our birth workplace recognition, they've got the strongest scores, right. So the stronger you score, the more likely it is that you're going to be recognized on that top 100. And that's across a range of scales too. So our minimum is 20 people. So this isn't a game that only the big boys plays. That makes sense. We work a huge range of organizations, and the way the Irish market is set up, like, there's a huge SME market. And we know that takes a different style of organization and a different style of approach and culture and all the rest, and we recognize all of that and then try to try to reflect that in our recognition.

Yeah. Love that you mentioned pinch points. That's kind of something you mentioned at the start as well. I'd love to know what are the key pinch points that you're seeing out there for people at the moment?

Okay, so the big piece at the moment is what is the way we're going to work into the future, right?

Absolutely.

Are we hybrid? Are we remote? If anybody has it fully figured out, I'd love to hear from you because I don't think anyone I don't think.

Anyone has the answer. And what I find failure with my clients is they're looking down the road to see what the other companies are doing and no one has it figured out. And really, for me, it's about listening to your own employees. It's about trying stuff out exactly as you did in your career. Trying stuff out and seeing if it works, measure and then revisit it, all of those brilliant things. I think it's so important to do that but really listen to what people want and what's working. And just because they say they prefer working from home doesn't mean you need to measure the outcomes of what they're achieving from home as well. It's not just about saying, oh, I love working from home because I don't have that two hour commute every day or whenever it might be.

No, I think and if you hit the nail on the head there like, I know we have this shared love of data, right, measurement.

Are we going to nerd out on data?

We're going to bore everybody now. So each and I are going to get to a technical conversation around data. But you've hit the nail on head. So the only way we know it's working is if we're actively listening. And I think the organizations that we're working with, those who are doing this best, are listening like they never have before and making sure and needs change over time. And needs are different across the type of people you have in your organization, the type of work that people are doing where they their own personal life cycles. So there's a lot of play. And we work with clients from a range of industries, so we might work with a big retail where everybody has to be on site. Right? So this idea of remote is never going to be an offering versus people who are now fully remote. First, they have no office. It's all digital, but the elements remain the same or that there's like continuity across the experience. So as you said, IFA how are you listening to your people? How do you know what you're doing is working? When you're listening and when you're asking the questions, how are you demonstrating action on the back of it?

Because first thing going, don't ask something that you can't take action on.

This is it. And even how you frame questions can be tricky.

Right?

And I know a lot of organizations feed into the great place to work process because they want to know where they are, like you said, against the people DownStreet and their comparators and all that kind of, that kind of thing. But actually what we see is organizations being like jeez, we never would have thought to ask it in that way because we've now got something we can actually action or okay, we've got this overall sense of where we're going but department X is actually really struggling with this so how can we support them? Right? So getting quite specific around that. But it all comes back to communication. Even in the best workplaces, the advice we're always giving is around communication. What are your communication practice? What's going on? How are you keeping in touch with people? How do you know the mechanisms you're using are working? I'll give you an example. One of our clients did a big piece of work around distraction, right? So even though they're fully remote and fully digital, they noticed a slip in productivity and they were thinking okay, so what's going on there? And they went and they asked their people and they said look, we're just getting notifications from so many different streams. And one of the challenges we're having is when we were all together it was really obvious when someone's got the head down and they just need to get some work done. But it's less obvious in a remote setting and you've got somebody on your internal comms channel being like hey, can I have you for a minute? And then you have a client coming at you on email and teams call coming in and you've got there were so many ways for people to get in contact and no ways for those people to demonstrate actually I'm having a head down moment right now. And they brought in, again, it's all by simplicity but they brought in a really simple piece of there's effectually, an emoji that you can put on your internal channel to be like don't disturb me right now. And again they worked on this and iterated it and it was things like look, we know people need to go into flow dates but you also can't be offline all day, so figure out your day. How are we going to help you set that up? How are we going to help you put boundaries around your email notifications? How are we going to help you put boundaries right? Various bits and pieces and again they've seen that productivity come back up. But like you said, they asked the question, they figured out what the next steps were going to be. They tested they iterated and they're continuing to ask the questions, right? But it's always communication. It's always communication.

Yeah, but I love this idea of the distraction because I think that there's so many different ways that we can be distracted and interestingly and I don't know if this exists. So someone please tell me if this exists out there. Is there a centralized place that you can put all sorts of communication? Whether that is your emails and your WhatsApps and your notifications from social media. Like if there is one centralized place where you can just go and be like, I need to action that. I don't need to action that other thing. This is going to turn into a project, so let's turn that into a project. Management within. I mean, I'm talking about my ideas for technology, right? You heard it there first, everyone. I would love something like that. I think that it would work, so I don't know how you would create it, but I think something like that would just be so useful for people to avoid all of this stuff and you just kind of turn that off knowing that it's going to be saved there or whatever. In terms of email and boundaries and things like that. I think for me, what I've done is I say I have an out of office that says I check my emails twice a day so people aren't expecting an immediate response from email. And I think oftentimes we feel like we treat it as if it's an instant message, as if it's a conversation and we need to have an immediate response. Whereas if we really thought about it, people don't need an immediate response, they might need a response within 24 hours, for example. And I also put my phone number and say, if you want to get in touch, you can call me. Or even better yet, you can send me a text or a WhatsApp because that is my preferred mode of communication. I prefer for someone to never call because you're going to get my voicemail and I'm not going to know. I do check my voicemail, but it's really interesting and I suppose that whole concept sort of brings us into the idea of the future of work, which you touched on at the start and I'd love to know what sort of things you're seeing out there at the moment in relation to that.

Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of things. Right? So the first would be what's the role of the leader in this? And I think the future of work is now. I don't think it's some abstract future, I think we're in it and I think it's a space a lot of people talked about for a long time and suddenly we've kind of found ourselves there and we can't talk about a hypothetical feature anymore. Like it's here. So the first I'd definitely say is like, who are we and what leadership do we want to demonstrate for our organization? And I suppose one of the things we saw come out across COVID experience in particular was there were a lot of leaders who were traditionally very good leaders, but really struggled in a digital space, right? So they were great around the office, really good at back and pace, but would have struggled to do stuff like performance management online or those kind of bits. I know a lot of organizations invested in trying to figure that out and support their leaders. And one of the kind of knock on effects, a lot of organizations have kind of figured that out and figured out, okay, they need to maybe kind of support those leaders in this new way. But also now what we're seeing is what, let's say in particular remote or hybrid means to those leaders can be very different within the same organization.

Okay. Yeah.

Some leaders might think, do you know what? As long as my team's getting their work done, I don't care if they're working at 05:00 a.m. 10:00 P.m.. I don't have a huge preference about where they're working or how they're working, as long as ultimately that job is getting done. Right.

Yeah.

Then you have a leader in the same organization who's like, yeah, I'm totally for this remote thing, but I want you at your desk, not to. And I need to know that you're there and I can see that you're online.

And I love this. I'm totally into remote working, but I want you at your desk from nine till five.

So we're not commuting, but I need you at your desk in that traditional.

Oh, sorry, you mean at the desk at home? I thought you meant the desk in the office. Like, I'm all about this remote thing, but I want you at your desk in the office from nine till five.

And there's the that right. Which is I'm totally invested in remote, but Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, I kind of need you in because, like yeah. Doing it now.

Right.

And these styles are existing in the same organization.

Yeah. Which is frustrating, I imagine, for team members who are looking at other teams going, well, they get to work five days from home. Why do I need to come back in the office? What do you think is driving that? Is that like a sense of fear from the manager? Is it that they know that they can't maybe perform at their best when they're working from home, they're projecting onto their employees or they prefer to be in the office and they would like to see their employees in the office as well. Do you get any sense of what's driving that difference?

Yes. To all of that.

Okay.

I think it's all of that and what our data is showing us is the most senior and the most junior are the ones driving the one feet back together. Right.

Oh, interesting. Yeah.

So there's this kind of piece of look at a senior level coming together. We can get round a problem in an hour altogether in a way that we're slowing down decision making in a remote setting. Right. And it's difficult to get to that action and difficult to get to that follow through. If I need something from one of my people, if they're just on the card or I can go have a chat, I can do contact setting. Like, that's easier for me to in that space. I'm not saying that's true or not. It's just like I think that's where the perception is. Right?

Yeah.

And then we have, again, I suppose, entry level. So we have people who are coming into the workplace for the first time and they have no cues, right. They have no way of knowing, okay, so actually this is how we work here. Or, oh, that's the dynamic between X department and Y department, or that's the person that I probably need to get myself in front of to get a bit of performance ability. Or that's a good stakeholder for me. Or that's a good ally for me. There's no learning by osmosis or it's harder to do the learning biosmosis in a remote setting. And then I think also kind of creeping into that sense of isolation. Right. So again, it's wonderful that I can be in my childhood bedroom tapping away at my work. But also there's a sense of like, I think organizations are realizing the need to force collisions and bring people together. And I'll give you an anecdotal piece. Right. So one of our organizations was talking to us and saying, look, what we're hitting with our newest, youngest employees is even when we're coming together, so they might be coming together on a monthly basis. Each time we're coming together for those employees, it's feeling like they're meeting people for the first time all over again. And it's a huge wood on them and it's exhausting. Right. So they're building it up. They're getting anxious. We're having to start from scratch again. And then I go when I have this couple of hours and I'm gone again and okay, it'll be another month and I'll have to do that whole piece again. Right. And I'm not saying we have the answers, that everybody has this or anybody has this figured out, but that's what our data is telling us. Right. So leadership at the top. There's a desire to come together and it's almost like getting around problems. And then at the kind of entry level, it's how am I going to figure out who I am in this organization and how my role is going to make a difference in a virtual setting if I'm not getting this kind of other level of exposure and that kind of thing?

Yeah, it's kind of picking up on the behaviors and like you say, who are the important people to know and how things are done around here? It's really hard to pick up those cues, I think, in that remote setting. But let's not forget early career, you're out of school or you're out of college where you had an automatic friendship circle. And you're going into this situation where you don't necessarily have that automatic friendship circle through work because you're not necessarily seeing people on a regular basis to form those friendships and to head for dinner after work or. Drinks after work or whatever it might be. I know. Certainly that was really important to me early in my career.

Yeah. I don't want to stamp on the remote experience, too, because we're actually seeing this in the in person piece as well, but in a slightly different way.

Okay.

I heard it for the first time earlier this year where organizations are actually getting what they're calling Ghosted. So somebody turns off yeah, I know, I know.

I know all about Ghosting. Like, Ghosting has gone from the dating world into the business world.

People turn up to sign contracts, they start a role, and then they disappear. And you're like what? And obviously that's tricky for the organization because it triggers this long goodbye with no goodbye, and that's like a huge administrative load on. But it's also this idea of how we got ourselves to a space where I'd rather exit than have a conversation around, look, this isn't really working for.

Me, or just running away, running away from their problems rather than having an adult conversation.

That's a tricky spot for an organization to find themselves in. Right. And again, we'd hear from our clients, they want to nurture great talent. They've invested in getting the right people in through the door. They're investing a huge amount in getting their correct brand out into the market. The fact you've entered that workspace. There's been a huge investment in you already as a person. They'd rather nurture that bring you along on their journey than have you disappear. Right. I find that fascinating and kind of intrigued to see where that's going to go, how that's actually going to play out at a larger scale across time, or whether it'll begin to kind of ride itself over the next few months. It's like, interesting.

Yeah, absolutely. I wonder myself where that will go. Fania I want to come back to this idea of women. So I'm intrigued by the idea that only 30 organizations reach that kind of pinnacle, reach that top level. So maybe we talk a little bit about that and the criteria and what those organizations are maybe doing differently that other organizations could learn from. And then we can talk a little bit more about the collaboration with menopause, because I think I see that everywhere these days in relation to a really positive way of supporting women in the workplace. Yeah.

Okay. So the best workplace women, like I said, it is a premium recognition and it's based on that employee experience. Right. So that's the core element of our data. So we're looking at things like, what's the relative experience around career and development within the organization, around promotions within the organization, work life balance within the organization, and then that overall sense of being treated fairly. Right. So what does that look like? We have a couple of, I suppose, organizational level metrics, like percentage in well, percentage of women, first of all. Right.

Yes.

Manager and leadership roles and that kind of piece. We do have qualifying criteria across that, but it's a tougher set. Right. And it's specifically set up that way. And then I suppose from those organizations who've achieved it, what would they say is their piece? What will be the learning from them? I know we've talked about it already, but it is that piece around. How are we listening? How are we identifying needs? How are we adapting to needs? How are we making sure we're updating accordingly? And that kind of piece, a lot of them would talk about role modeling. So what does good female leadership look like in an organization? What does strong female presence look like here? And I suppose the one qualifier I'm going to put on this is it's a great place to work for. All right. So that's our underlying philosophy. It's not one put it expense of another in any direction. Right?

Yeah.

We have to have that. And then it's in particular, what are we doing to sports female experience?

Yeah. So you can't just be a great place for women, but you're not actually a generally great place to work at all.

Exactly. Like, say, if your female scores were in the 90s, but your male scores were in the 50s, you wouldn't be a best workplace for women because you're not placed work for all as a founding. I always think that's an important qualifier, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

So there's the role modeling piece. And actually, one of the interesting ones we're beginning to see is this idea of reverse role modeling. So again, how can our longer tenured or kind of women who've been in the workplace for a longer time, what can they learn from the female workers that are currently entering? Right. So what new skills we bring in? What new agility do we need? That kind of piece. So, again, that's an interesting step up around what it is that we're doing to support that wider female experience within the workplace. So what do those paths look like? I think the idea of a career ladder is losing traction. We're seeing more language like career portfolios. And if it's not vertical, it could be lateral. Or even if we are talking about career ladders, is the ladder on the right wall for that person. Right. So came in doing X, and you might think that your progression is going to look like this, but maybe you found out that that's not for you or that's not a good fit. Or are there other ways that we can position your ladder to make sure that you're still getting the progress that you need? One of the kind of big trends we're seeing is there's been a shift away from the only progression is promotion into people management. Like, that would have been a very traditional thing of like, you're really good at your job, but make you a people manager. And maybe that not being kind of the most obvious piece. And actually there's one of the guys one of the companies we work with are called Clidera. They're based down in Cork, and Jamie Griffin is one of their people there. And he would talk about, look, whatever it is that we're doing within the workplace, we'd rather see somebody moving down the corridor than down the street.

Right? Yeah.

If it's a case of we got to figure out that lateral interest or that lateral move or that project you want to be part of, we'd rather make that work than you go to another organization. And I think that's a really clever way of mapping that out for people. We don't want to lose you. We've invested in you, so let's figure out which we can.

And I think if only more organizations had those honest conversations. I think sometimes leaders treat people as if they're just a number, they're a cog in a wheel, and it is an investment. We've invested in hiring you. We've invested in training you. We've invested in developing you over time. We've invested your salary. We pay you every month. So if only more organizations, I think, have that attitude towards we want to keep people in the organization, especially if they're good performers, if they're a really good fit. And yeah, I think if people just had that attitude of what can we do to keep people rather than, you know and it's going back to our earlier conversation. It's not this siloed conversation separate to everyone else. It's about listening and having those honest conversations about what's going on at work.

Yeah. And if we can demonstrate that and we can showcase that and we can tell the story around that, then we're also more likely to keep more people. Right. So as you say, we've made that big investment in people to date. And one of my things is, look, great talent deserves great culture. If you're a performer and you understand your strengths, you're kind of pushing, you want to learn, you want to develop, then be in an organization who's going to provide that for you. And then if we're in an organization who's providing that, understands that that's an opportunity, and then can showcase that to the wider organization, then it's an upward lift cycle. Right. And it also counteracts this idea of, well, that's just because they've got a good manager, that's because their manager or their leader kind of has figured that out for them. It's like, no, this is a way in which we work here, so we're going to highlight this. This is what behaviors, this is what good progression looks like for us and should be able to experience this consistently across the organization, regardless of your role or your manager or your lead or anything like that. So it's almost like through that storytelling, they're committing to a way in which we do things around here and then specifically going back to what got us into this conversation in the first place. Organizations in that Best workplace is for women piece are specifically doing that around the female experience. So it might be that, look, I've been here for X number of years. I chose to start a family. This is what balancing early family life in my career looked like for me. This is the way in which they helped me navigate that. This is how coming back looked like. This is what ongoing support looked like. And now that I've had that experience, I want to drive on and continue to commit and continue to do my best work within this organization, bringing all my new skill sets around, balancing kids and that whole life. And we can demonstrate that we can make that work for our future. Pipeline coming into right. And look, I don't want to generalize the entire female experiences. You become a mom when you figure that out for it, because that's not the case either. And we can equally do the storytelling around this was my chosen path. This is what it looked like for me, and this is how that cascaded from the organization. This is what that support looked like. And I've opened up that conversation brilliant.

I love that idea of using stories. I don't think I've seen that in any organizations that I personally worked in. So I think it's a really nice way to kind of show people what's possible at work. So it's not just about saying, here's the opportunities, or here's the supports that we provide. And to use your example of maternity leave, here's the support we provide. It's about showing someone who's at the other side saying, this is how the company supported my journey and I was really struggling and this and that and whatever it might be, and it just shows what's possible. So I think oftentimes if people don't have call it a role model, call it whatever you want, but if people don't have that as something to aspire to, then they don't know what's necessarily possible in that organization.

This is it. Like, policies on paper are boring to call a state of fate. And we've seen it specifically, I suppose, in the employer branding space over the last while. There's a lot of research going into that and really simple facts. Like a prospective candidate is three times more likely to believe what somebody else working there says about an organization than what the organization is saying themselves. Right? So there's definite value to be had in doing the storytelling piece. But it starts from within. It starts from finding those people, finding those stories, bringing it to light. And we've seen that those organizations who support people to build almost like their own brand, like their personal brand and their career portfolio, from an internal point of view, it's like a recognition piece. It's like, you've done this incredible job. We want to shout about it from the rooftops.

Yeah. So it's got two kind of two positive benefits.

There is it and then we can translate that to the external market and be like, you want to come and work for a place that does this with their people? This is what it looks like in reality. And actually, in case anyone's interested, we would have partnered for Best Workplaces for Women. In particular, we partnered with the Glass, and they would have done interviews with women from the specific organization, specifically around this. Right. So what experience? What does that look like? How is this actually worked out in reality? And that kind of piece. And it's just this really like I'm inherently nosy, so I did those interviews because I'm like so tell me actually look like I think we all are, right? We all kind of want to know what's going on and where people are and how they've got that kind of space for themselves.

Give us the juice. I think we want to say, yeah.

Wars and all right, it doesn't always work, but it's this fascinating window into the reality of an organization and whether or not that would be a good fit for me or my future or whatever that might be.

Yeah, absolutely. Love that story. So that kind of brings us on to menopause and the collaboration. And I think for me, it's exploded probably in the last two or three years, especially here in Ireland. But I think it's a global trend that we're seeing as well. More and more people are becoming aware of it, talking about it. Certainly going back five years when I still worked in corporate, there was no one even talking. There was no mention of that. You don't talk about those kind of things that work. I think she's going through the change. I know we can't talk about it.

Ireland particularly, you layer on a good legacy of Catholic shaming guilt, and that makes it even more difficult to talk about it. Right? But I don't think it's a surprise that as we're seeing a growing number of women in leadership roles, that it's becoming a more talked about phenomenon. Because actually, people who are running and driving organizations are also experiencing mental. One of the things that kind of came out of our data was when a woman is hitting peak performance, right? She's got good tenure, she's worked her way up through the ranks, and then one day she wakes up and she can't think straight. Do you know what I mean? The challenge that exists within that. I was part of the menopause summit in the mansion house, and I learned a lot from that. But one of the things they were saying was when you look at the range of experience menopause within women, 25% don't experience symptoms at all. It's things you turn up one day. You've been through the menopause, it's done. 50% have a range of symptoms, and then 25% have such extreme symptoms that they end up, leaving work, connecting, and it has a disabling effect on their life. Right. But there is that spectrum of experience, and organizations should be able to sit up and be like, okay, what are the reasonable accommodations that we could make? And it was fascinating to me listening to the stuff that was kind of being called for from the stage, which is, are you able to open windows? Do people have access to cool drinking water?

None of this seems like practical things that you don't really think about unless you're experiencing yeah.

If you're in, I don't know, in a healthcare setting or hospitality setting, are your uniforms breathable? Because you're probably going to be a bit warmer. Right. It's at that level that the ask was being made, and it was almost shameful listening to it being like, how are we there? Are we not at a space where we're creating that space for people to do that?

And makes me think, what did people do up to now? They just lived with being feeling really hot, feeling overheated, and probably sweating a lot in a uniform that was just making them feel even hotter than they already felt.

Yeah. And this is it. And look, it's okay, look, it's going to affect 50% of the population, right. Like, as a given. And it's probably going to impact 100% of the population because everybody's got a mom or a partner or exactly. Everyone's going to hit it at one stage. And again, kind of the work that we've done since when you look at it, there was a lot of fear is the wrong word, but managers, leaders worried about getting it wrong. Like, they want to have the conversation, but they don't even know how to start to have that conversation. Or we want to be able to provide accommodations for people, but we wouldn't know where to start, or whatever that might be. And it's like, well, maybe start by having the conversation.

Yeah. And that's, I suppose, again, who are the employee listening? Going back to ask people, what do they actually want?

This is it. Yeah. And I said that's where we linked in with the Menopause hub because okay, so this is their specialty area. They have clinics across Ireland that are dealing with it from a medical perspective, but they're also doing this piece around how are we going to equip organizations to do better in this? What does learning look like? What does workshopping look like with HR, with managers, with leaders? What would a strong menopause policy look like? Really kind of building out that story. So, yeah, we partnered with them for Best Workplaces Women, and then we were like, there's more that we can do here, and we want to capitalize on the wave of the narrative at the moment. Like, yes, it is an emerging topic, but we also don't want to be something that in three years time, there's the next wave. And this becomes a quieter thing. Again, how are we going to actually empower and reward those organizations who have been investing in the space for a longer time? And then how are we going to make that something that all organizations want to do? So we want to recognize Ireland's menopause friendly workplaces and we're going to again, the criteria isn't going to surprise you. It's how are we talking about it, setting up, learning around it, and how are you measuring the impact of what we're doing. And from that, I think we're going to learn a lot about where it's almost like the state of the nation, like where are we actually where want to be and where are we aspiring to be. We kind of give the organizations who are already acting this is based good profile and the ability to press on and be able to demonstrate that again as an internal retention tool, but also branding piece and being able to tell the market about it.

Yeah.

And there are organizations doing good work. So we want to recognize that.

Yeah. Do you think the question that's kind of weighing on my mind, I suppose, is it easier for some organizations to do something rather than others. And maybe this applies to women in general at work, that it's easier maybe for larger organizations to support that, to support maternity leave, to support menopause because they have other staff to cover, people need to take leave and things like that. I just love to have an honest conversation about that. Are you seeing anything in particular from what you've seen already?

It's one of these interesting, I think quite specifically interesting about the Irish market in particular. Right. So, again, I know we talked we're a predominantly SME market, right? So there's a lot of small family owned businesses and while those businesses might not have, quote unquote, big budget and lots of people to cover and that kind of piece, they're probably better at knowing the person.

Right, okay.

I can tell something's going on for you. Let's have the honest conversation. Right? Like do you need sport? What's for? Going to look like you're probably going to know them in a different way. And then obviously when we go up into the kind of your big scale organizations, you've maybe got the budget to bring solutions at scale. So matter how well you know your people, you can kind of put those solutions in place. Right.

And they can access the solutions themselves.

But again, I don't want to discount the challenge that can look like in a smaller organization, but they should and can lean into the fact that they probably know their people on a more personal level and at a level that's.

A really nice way to look at it, I think. A really nice way to think about it. So yeah. Love it. Fania is there anything else that you want to cover? Is there anything else that we haven't kind of touched on anything else. Any words of wisdom that you want to impart?

I think, look, the main pieces for me are always any organization can create a great culture. I truly believe that. And sometimes it's about making what you're already doing explicit and sometimes it's about making those tweaks that can really kind of drive that overall experience. Always focusing on the three C's. So communication, connection, and career, right. And that's going to look different in lots of different organizations and it's going to look different for different people. But if I'm the person sitting on the podcast today thinking about my own organization, I'd be suggesting, okay, so how is the organization currently communicating with me? Or what are my own communication styles and practices and what am I creating for my teams? How am I fostering a sense of connection? Because it's in those connections that we might get opportunities we never thought were going to happen and also bringing that sense of satisfaction at work. Right. And then career, like, it's okay to be ambitious, it's okay to be driven, find the place that's going to be able to help you carve out that space, figure out how you're delivering that value, and then we're all going to work towards that same trajectory together. I suppose the one piece is in particular if anyone's interested about the menopause friendly workplace award or greatpaced work, greatpacedwork e is your best is your best bet. And then the menopause friendly also has its own microsite and there's links to that out of greatest work so people can find all that information and I'm sure we can share it afterwards and that kind of piece as well.

Yeah, put all the links in the show notes anyway. Yeah, if we don't have them already, I'll get them from you. I'll add them to the show notes. That's no problem. So anyone who's listening as this is released, then they will be already in the show notes. Fania the question I ask everyone who comes on the podcast, what does being happier at work mean to you?

I love this question. If right, and I was listening, I've been a regular listen to your podcast and I love where people take this because it's such a higher level philosophical piece. But then also it's innately personal, right. And it's kind of this interesting gap. And I keep coming back to this one piece. So for me, I love to swim, right? So swimming is a big, big thing for me. And I swam before. We used to call it sea swimming. So like I swim in the sea.

Okay. I was going to ask, are you.

Talking about the sea or are you.

Talking about pool swimming? Sea swimming. Okay. And actual swimming as opposed to dipping.

I mean, I've been known to dip when it's very cold, but I do try and do the actual swim piece. Right. And being happy with me is when I'm in the water having that moment, I'm thinking, I'm thinking through a couple of things and there's a couple of pieces that I'm mulling over in my mind. How am I going to change that? What's that going to look like? How's work going? How are those connections I'm having with people? But also, like, how's home going? Right. So I'm very lucky. I have a little two year old boy. I got to spend a lot of time with him. How am I managing that slice of the pie? And then the fact I'm in the water means I'm having a bit of time to myself too. It's how well each of those elements are operating at any one time. And big qualifier, I do not have it figured out. I know I've got this perfect recipe. I do not. It's an on challenge, it's an ongoing juggle. But when I'm in that space in the water and I'm able to take through a couple of those things in.

My head, but it also means, like you say, the biggest thing that comes across from that is that you have that time to yourself. You actually have the time to go and you're giving yourself that permission to go and have that time for yourself as well. So it's not that you're too busy at work to do that. It's not that you're kind of sacrificing yourself almost for spending time to do something else, but you're like, no, I need to give myself this time for myself. So I love that.

And people are bad at that permission. Right. And it's okay. It's okay to do that, and it's okay to not always be able to do it, but knowing that it's an important priority for you, I think is a big piece.

Yeah, absolutely brilliant. And Fania, people want to you mentioned about great place to work and the website and the information that they can find directly on the website. If people want to connect with you, what's the best way they can do that?

LinkedIn or email? Again, very happy to share both. And always, always up for a chat, right? So just hear what people are up to. Never feel afraid to kind of drop me line or set something up because we only learn by listening to others.

Absolutely.

Yeah. There you go.

Love it. Thank you so much for your time on the podcast today.

Thanks, Eva. Really, really appreciate it.

That was Fania Stoney from Great Place to Work. I really hope you enjoyed today's conversation. I want to cover some of the key points that we talked about and maybe have a think about anything that you might do differently as a result of listening to today's episode. I am all about the doing, not just about knowing, but actually taking action on the back of what you do know. Before I go on to do the key points, I would love to remind you to get involved in the conversation on social media. You will find all of my channel links on my website, happyretwork. Ie and I'd love for you to be involved in the conversation. What are you doing differently? What challenges do you have? Do let me know. I'm mostly active on LinkedIn and Instagram, but that's not to say I'm not active in other places as well. But do feel free to connect with me through any of my social media channels. Now we started the conversation, I wanted to kind of drill in a little bit to Fenia's own career and how she talked about how she crafted the job so the job that she is currently in, but by understanding by performing really well at work, by understanding the needs at work, and then also by understanding her own strengths. So I suppose maybe it's an opportunity for you to think about is there a chance to do that in your own organization? So maybe something to ponder. We went on to talk about the future of work and some of the challenges then associated with that. So what's the role of the leader in the future of work? Also, as a reminder, the future of work is happening right now. So I don't know, do we need to find a new word for that? But it's not the future anymore, it's happening right now, right in front of us. We talked about this idea that remote and hybrid mean different things to different people, especially different leaders. So there's that challenge that organizations are facing where managers are doing different things with different teams. And so there might be a sense of injustice or unfairness in organizations as well. Fania mentioned that it's the most senior and the most junior people who are driving that return to the office for different reasons. And I think from the more junior perspective, it's about having that learning by Osmosis and just being around other people, picking up the cues and understanding more about how we do things around here. So what is the culture actually like? We talked about employer branding and the importance of telling stories. Now that kind of came up a little bit more detail when we're talking about women and women in leadership in the workplace as well. So I'll touch on that again in a second. I wanted to know more about what the companies that are being recognized for doing really great things with women, what are they doing differently? So it's the overall employee experience. It's not just about the experience that women are having, it's the overall employee experience. It's the opportunity for promotion, it's looking at the career trajectory or the opportunities again that exist for career development. It's looking at work life balance and then fairness across the board as well. And some of the learnings to come from that. Again, this idea of employee listening and how important it is to listen to what your employees needs are adapting and changing as. Things change as well. So having that agile mindset, role modeling then as well. So do you have someone who role models what female leadership looks like in this organization and also reverse role modeling and then looking at a career path. So it's no longer about having a career ladder, it's about having a career portfolio, which I think is a nice word, I think of various different things that you've tried and I think for me also that helps you to understand where your strengths are, what really lights you up as well. So it's no longer about rising to the top necessarily, but having a varied career. Fania also mentioned that there is a move away from people management as the only way for progression. And I'm so delighted to hear that because it's something I've been talking about on the podcast, because I've been seeing it out there myself. And I'd love to know in your organization, is the only way forward as a people leader or are there opportunities to operate as someone who is a specialist but doesn't necessarily have people management responsibilities? I loved the example that she shared in relation to stories and how we can use stories to tell what it's like rather than talking about policies but using stories. And one of the stories that Venia shared was about cloudera and how they talk about that they would prefer people to go down the corridor than down the street. Absolutely love that. It's such a nice simple way, I think, to explain it. And one of the quotes that I took from her from the episode was great talent deserves great culture. Absolutely love that. Now the other thing that I mentioned that I was going to touch on again was this idea of stories and having those stories from women. So the example she shared was a first time mother. So rather than saying this is our policy around maternity leave, for example, just because it's an easy I think it's an easy example to share, but use that in your employer branding. Have someone share their own experience of what that was like for them, what the company did, maybe get some feedback on what the pitfalls were for people to watch out for, but it shows other people what's possible in that organization. The last thing that we talked about was menopause and I suppose the reason that she identified for a greater number of people talking about this is that there's a growing number of women in leadership roles and they're being impacted by this. Now some of the stats around that 25% have no symptoms whatsoever, 50% have a range of symptoms and 25% have debilitating symptoms. And I do wonder from you, is this something that you'd like me to cover in more detail on the podcast? Let me know, let me know through social media, let me know through email. Interact directly with the podcast on Spotify as well if you want to again, stories can be used in this instance. And what does being a menopause friendly workplace look like? So it's about empowering organizations through talking about it, through learning, and through measuring the impact of what you're actually doing. It's really great for retention. It's really great for employer branding. Now, the final thought I wanted to leave you with was something that Lafayania mentioned at the end, that is that any organization can create a great culture. Either you explicitly say what you're already doing, you don't necessarily need to change it. You need to explicitly talk about it more and be more intentional about it, or you can tweak things to create an even better culture. Fein, you talked about the three C's the communication, the connection, and the career. So that is it for today's episode of the Happier At Work podcast. I really hope you enjoyed listening, and I would love to know what you thought of today's episode back again next week. That was another episode of the Happier at Work podcast, and if you've made it this far are well done you. Thank you so much for taking the time out to listen to today's episode. If you did enjoy it, please consider leaving a rating, a review, or share it with a friend. I would love for you to get involved in the conversation. And also, if you'd like to know more about how I can help you or your business, head on over to Happier At Work ie.