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AIM High: Shrinking or growing your marketing teams? Tips for handling both conversations · Two in Twenty

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: Hello and welcome to another episode of AI.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: My name is Twink Field.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'm the CEO of White Marble and Director of the Association of Investment Marketers.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: And in the podcast today, we're talking about handling team growth as well as team reduction.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: It may seem a strange subject here in this remote working world, but we are definitely finding that marketing teams are incredibly busy.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: Some are thinking about recruiting, and many other companies, as we we know and hear about, are struggling.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: It feels like there's a real polarization in terms of um how marketing teams are faring through this period.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: So this is really um uh trying to help people with um both those scenarios, and we've got two great speakers, uh Ruth Johnson from Inc.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: Group, um who provide a range of uh HR services, um helping with the practical stuff as well as the motivational stuff through employee life cycle.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then Charlie Walters as well, who's a trainer, facilitator.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: He's um he's led LD teams uh before, and we've worked with him within AIM as well.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: So he's familiar to many of you.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm gonna hand straight over to them.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: Ruth and Charlie, thank you so much for joining me today to talk about sort of handling the growth of marketing teams and and indeed on some occasions uh helping um people to think about reducing the teams and how to go about that.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: I think um it's a really interesting time.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: Marketing teams are actually incredibly busy and in the spotlight in this period of remote working, not least um you know, looking at getting regular communication and content to to clients, as well as looking at you know the best digital experience they can give clients, uh, obviously in this remote working world.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I think a lot of teams um may well be, it's not a big leap to think about teams recruiting in this environment.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so I wondered whether we could start there, um, both to introduce yourselves and then um talk about key considerations for for you know effective recruitment strategies.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: Should we start with you, Ruth?
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, why not?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: So introducing myself, I'm owner and director of the Inc Group, which is an HR business working inbound to SMEs across three key areas, which is HR, employee benefits, and payroll.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um I am talking to clients currently mostly about reduction, I have to say, in headcount, rather than growth.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: So growth is a great problem to have.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and it's a as I say, it's it's interesting, interesting times.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um when it comes to strategy though, for recruitment, I would say uh the same prevails now as ever.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so if you if you are developing your recruitment strategy, I think one of the main things to start with is to consider do we need to recruit internally first, as distinct from going out into the broader marketplace?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Have we got some untapped potential?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: After all, we did say we are a company that believes in developing our people, so this could be a great opportunity to promote within, uh realize potential from within before going out into the marketplace.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of the things about the current marketplace is that there may well be more talent available now than normal, but that talent may not be looking specifically for you or at you.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: They may just be looking for a job.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: So your recruitment strategy has to have that, I think, somewhere you know, close to close front of mind.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, the the talent pool is bigger and different, but not necessarily better.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: Really interesting.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: Charlie, do you want to introduce yourself and give some thoughts on that as well?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but thanks, thanks, Twink.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_03: So my name is Charlie Walters.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: I run my own training consultancy, CWL.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um, many of your listeners may know me because along with Quentin, uh, I run the leadership program as part of the Academy and the various other attendant programs there supported that over the last couple of years.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um, over the last 20 or so years, I've worked for a couple of investment management companies.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_03: Most recently as the head of learning at Schroeder's and previous to that, I was in fact the recruitment manager for what is now Janice Henderson.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_03: So I've worked both in recruitment and in and in learning.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_03: Now, to your to your question, and in fact, just building on some of Ruth's remarks there, really, about internal uh internal recruitment strategies.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I always have the view that you should always challenge a line manager who's hiring, and as you can imagine, I've done this on many, many dozens of occasions around internal recruitment and mobility.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um, investment management companies are uh you know the original pyramid structure.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_03: In other words, that means there are fewer people at the top than there are at the bottom, and that makes development opportunities pretty thin on the ground and very, very important when you have them.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_03: If you have vacancies at a mid or senior level, if you can move somebody internally, that may well give you the opportunity to move three or four other people further down the organization internally as well.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: You create a kind of a chain of moves, and if you can just do the senior one internally, you get a lot of other internal moves as well further on down through the organization.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_03: So strategically, internal recruitment is very, very desirable.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_03: And the challenge I always used with line managers when I was working in recruitment was can you train somebody internally to do this inside nine or twelve months?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: Because if the person already knows the company, they've already got their email account set up, they already know they have relationships across different departments, and you can you can often find that recruiting internally, the person has that natural um familiarity advantage that somebody coming in from outside will spend a good nine to twelve months learning.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_03: And so so your internal candidates can often seem very, very much more attractive once you've appreciated that you're going to spend the first maybe eight, twelve months training up an external person anyway, no matter how good their technical skills are.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's interesting, isn't it?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: Because there's nothing more frustrating than being interviewed for a job as an external person, and then the job ultimately goes to somebody internally.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: It strikes me that it'd be better to try and make that decision up front before we even start to look externally, just to sort of save everybody's time and frustration.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we we used to have a fairly strong moratorium in my old organization around internal recruitment.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and in fact, in fact, if I think back to the end of the tech boom in 2001, 2002, 2003, we absolutely laid it on the line and said we want to be a company that redeploys, just as Ruth had said there, and moves people around the organization.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_03: And if that's where your real growth opportunities are coming, both horizontally as well as upwards into broader disciplines, um, then recruitment could absolutely be an interesting um contributor to helping businesses manage challenging times.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_03: If you're prepared to make those moves and to see people, you know, we're talking from a marketing perspective here, but you know, if you're thinking about people who've worked with clients before or people who've worked in technology before, or you can think really, really, really broadly.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um I once remember hiring the head of the staff canteen into quite a technical role in the business, and everybody fell about laughing until we'd done it and then went, Well, what a great idea was that.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: So I always think you should encourage people uh hiring managers to think as broadly as possible about how people could be redeployed within businesses.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: Skill sets can be remarkably mobile, yeah, remarkably mobile once people are working within an organization, and it's really important, I think, was to encourage that thought and that fertility of ideas, because that's where you can really get mobility without having to look externally.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_03: But I agree with you, Twink, absolutely, um, go internal first would always be my advice to any organization.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think you'd have to have some significant gaps that can't be filled to be going externally right now.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because as you were saying, Charlie, um when you bring someone in, when you in normal circumstances, the process of acclimatizing the new person, almost irrespective of the extent of their experience, uh, is is time consuming.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and and you know it's it's not easy.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: So when you are generally working quite remotely uh and you don't have access to colleagues and to actually to clients uh or opportunities for shadowing, um, then the induction uh experience for people coming into businesses now is going to be quite slow and drawn out and very different and difficult for for businesses to manage.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's that's a key point of your recruitment strategy now.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so so when we think of the interview process, I guess maybe we need to think of sort of two different streams.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: If there was an in you know the internal interview process versus somebody kind of external, what would what would best practice look like there?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: Charlie, maybe you could kick us off.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: Well, yeah, I I have a process that I used to both train the managers on, um, and it was a really good discipline.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and the process really was that you should think of recruitment never as selling.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I know people always use the phrase now, sell the job, sell the job, sell the job.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_03: I I was always encouraging line managers and people when they're hiring, um, and also when I've been a manager hiring, to think of recruitment as two-way buying.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: We're buying the candidate, and the candidate is buying us, the company, the team, whatever.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_03: So, whether internal or external, a number of subsequent meetings are always desirable.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_03: So, in other words, never make a decision quickly when recruiting.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so I'm my my belief is that you should have three stages in any recruitment process, and that you should try to get it done inside a month.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_03: You want three stages to your recruitment process, and you should try to get it done inside ideally four weeks.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_03: And the first stage of any recruitment process, you would have the hiring manager working probably alongside a professional recruiter in most large investment companies.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_03: There is an internal recruitment team, and they should see all of the candidates and make that first sift.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_03: Now it's really important that the hiring manager does the first round of recruitment.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I've seen many occasions where the hiring manager uh um uh tries to step back and let their teams do the first round of interviews.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_03: In my experience, that just defocuses a recruitment process and means it ends up taking longer.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_03: So for me, the hiring manager does the first round of interviews and probably only then puts maybe two, three or four options forwards to the second round of interviews, which is the panel.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_03: And the panel should be made up of both peers, internal clients, and other internal stakeholders.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_03: So you should seek to have maybe between three and five people at that second stage, and and you may well have the candidate sitting in a room and just kind of um fire those individual people past them over about an hour and a half period.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_03: So you've got a series of 20-minute interviews which make up your second stage of interview, at which point you've probably got a favored candidate, and that favored candidate should go on to a final interview, which should be with the hiring manager again, and probably the hiring manager's manager or divisional head or a senior executive to kind of rubber stamp the whole process.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_03: So for me, a good recruitment process has those three interviews done inside one month.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_03: And the reason you go for three is because it allows the candidate at each stage to ask questions, and so you're therefore creating a really powerful dialogue between the candidate and the hiring, uh, the hiring company, the hiring organization, the hiring team.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lovely uh slang phrase in recruitment hire fast, suffer slow.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_03: And and and the number of times I've seen people leap in and make recruiting decisions quicker than was wise, and that process simply prevents you from doing that.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's also it's also quite disarming if you're the person being recruited.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: If you see someone for half an hour and then you're offered the job, you're like, uh uh, I'm not I'm not sure I've investigated everybody fully enough, and it gets quite awkward, isn't it?
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: You you want to make sure that nothing feels hurried and that the and that the candidate realizes you are taking care in your selection process and that they are taking care in theirs.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_03: And and by the way, I mean you heard me say earlier recruitment is not about selling, it's about buying.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um I used to find that really effective as a sales process, if you want to call it that, because most of the other companies we were competing against when I was at Henderson didn't realise that was what we were doing.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_03: They thought we were selling the job, and we never, never were.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: We were always kind of being very careful and deliberate and structured.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_03: Because you know what?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we've all been candidates in the past, haven't we?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: And felt a job being sold to us.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_03: And it feels really insincere in my experience, anyway, whether I'm an internal candidate or an external candidate.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_03: I trust what I see as a candidate much more, and so do most candidates I've come across.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_03: So if you see the hiring team taking real thoughtful care about how they're hiring and what they're hiring, that's a much better sales pitch than you know the standard spiel of we are a team-based environment who really take care of our people.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_03: You know, the kind of the sell never looks as good as the reality.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why I really liked that three-stage process.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: I'll say one final thing on it.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um I I appreciate it's the ideal.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_03: And if you've got a candidate who had to fly across Europe to attend the interviews, you might choose to kind of put the third interview stage into the second interview to try to shorten it or whatever.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, there are reasons why you'd want to flex the flex the model, but as a basic model for recruitment, I found that really robust.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Charlie.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Ruth.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I I'm yeah, I'm slightly I'm going to challenge some of that, Charlie.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: I feel, I feel that the uh the three-interview approach may be absolutely fine.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: For me, the main thing is not how long the process takes, it needn't take a month.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's that we're asking the right questions at the right time, and that we're not perhaps getting into a process that becomes for a lot of people, and this is certainly something I've seen in my practice, a process with tick box questions and answers.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I think for me, the best practice for interview is being really considered at the front end about what questions are we asking, what do we need to know, and how much do we have to put the candidate through.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to put this person off either.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: I agree we want the candidate to know we are taking our time and we are this is due diligence for us.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: But if they have other opportunities, which they might in other circumstances, then we might lose them.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got to be very considered about that approach to the interview.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you were talking, Charlie, about uh the candidate asking questions.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: I totally agree with that.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: I would add to make this a really democratic buying process, I think it's nice to give the candidate an opportunity to interview one of your team.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: And for that interview to be entirely off the record and outside of the ticks and checks and balances that you're doing at your end, because one of the best results you can get from recruitment, weirdly, is when somebody deselects themselves.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: You want people to deselect themselves before you've hired them and not afterwards.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: So get your teams involved in the recruitment process.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Have one or two people who you know reliably will be good ambassadors for your business, will be able to sell, hopefully, but also be authentic about what the experience will be like working in your business because you know you don't want to be going through this again in two or three months' time when it's all gone wrong.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: Brilliant, thank you.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: Really interesting, and um I guess you know, having conducted a number of interviews myself, um I'm really I'm really conscious that there are probably some kind of traps that I probably fall into and some classic mistakes that that you can make during this process.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: Is there anything you would say, maybe come back to you, Ruth, around you know, some of the some of those mistakes and sort of just flagging them now so that people can avoid them next time?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think there's one one or two for me.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think um that we have traditionally thought that building rapport is the essential thing to do at the start of the recruitment process.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm very inclined to disagree.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think rapport uh can can hide some stuff.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what we need to do at the beginning of the process is get a sense for the technical competence of an individual.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I think right now a lot of people are interviewing via Zoom or phone call.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's great because in fact you just get straight to it.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's no fluff, there's no nonsense, this is just a screening process.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: We can do the rapport bit a bit later on, but if you're focused on rapport, you might be looking for people in your own image, and that's not going to give you a diverse workforce.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: You're not necessarily going to get those gaps filled in your business.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's one thing.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: I definitely do that then.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a cross against my consumer.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I do because I I I try and make people feel relaxed, and so by doing that, I'm sort of probably trying to be overly kind of familiar and sort of build the rapport.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: So that's probably a bad mark against my name, right?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: Next.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's not a it's not a bad mark, and I don't want to suggest you shouldn't be friendly or make people feel relaxed, but maybe question how how you're doing that and and are you perhaps getting a wee bit too close, both of you, when you're not really focused on the technical?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think the second interview is where you can just go into the rapport space.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: I do think technology is going to help us significantly with that.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: We we do a lot of um phone or um video calls as a first interview process.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's very efficient, you know, it really is an efficient start.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: I also think that the candidates understand that and they appreciate it too.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you're not if you're if they're gonna fail at the third hurdle because of something you didn't check at the first, they're not gonna appreciate that, and neither neither are you.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think the other thing for me, um, two quick ones.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: One, just don't ask hypothetical questions.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: What would you do if people will always give you the question they think you want?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so therefore, dig, dig, dig for evidence when you ask a question.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: You want to know that they've done this thing and they can give you evidence of it.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the other thing I would say is when you're in a physical uh meeting uh at an interview, think about the ergonomics.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are sitting behind a desk and if you have a panel of people, you're not going to make that person feel comfortable.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not, you will not create rapport.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, in the rapport space at the first physical meeting, try to make that as physically comfortable as possible.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: Brilliant.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: Charlie, any other thoughts to add to those?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_03: So I absolutely agree with Ruth's remarks there around wanting to make sure that the candidate feels feels the rapport rather than sees it as a Process that you're going through.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_03: You want the candidate to build their relationship with you during any interview process that you run.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm particularly keen on the idea of assessing the candidates first round on their technical capabilities because you can waste time with candidates who seem really nice and you only technically discover they're not strong enough later on in the interview process, by which point you might have interviewed out other candidates.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: Essentially, we took we touched a bit on some of the advantages of using Zoom and sort of recruiting in this remote world.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_02: Are there any other general observations or considerations for people when interviewing and recruiting, and I guess onboarding somebody remotely?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: How is this best done, Charlie?
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_03: Much of the onboarding by the large investment companies is now done as a as a remote, as a remote process, if you if you like.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_03: To Ruth's earlier remarks about using Zoom and other um virtual um uh conferencing tools here during the interview process, I think I think that's uh I think that's a really desirable thing.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I would say to anybody who is encouraging people to have multiple interviews, make sure you differentiate those interviews.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: There's nothing worse than a candidate coming in and having three identical interviews with different members of your team.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: So if you're going to do this virtually, you want to make sure people have different things to present so they can share different documents and different perspectives, which again is a is a useful thing to help the candidate to buy and also to help uh uh you know to help you guys to make a to make a more richer and more informed decision.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Ruth?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Oh I yeah, I would add uh just think about where you're sitting when you're doing this.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: So to weave experience of someone sitting in their bedroom, and um yeah, yeah, that's not best really, is it?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I I think you you're you know, Charlie earlier was talking about, you know, this is a selling and buying experience, indeed it is.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so consider your brand and make sure that your recruiters are aware of the brand and that they're not, as I say, in the bedroom or in the kitchen when they're uh in a Zoom interview.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I do think I'm very keen on this form of um interviewing as a as a as a first screen, as I was saying previously.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: We've been doing some of it recently, and what I have noticed as the recruiter is that those candidates who've been able to show us their face, if you like, we've been able to remember.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so, and we've had a couple of candidates who've not had the technology, and I feel they've been at a bit of a disadvantage.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I I'm inclined now to give them all the heads up and say, be great to be able to see you so we can remember you.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you don't want to lose somebody just because you've forgotten what they look like.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's definitely something that we've experienced recently.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: And having got people on board, you know, we we've obviously got to continue to engage them, motivate them, and and make feel like they've made the right decision.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: We hear a lot about talent retention now.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I wonder whether you could just expand on the companies that you work with, Ruth, you know, the most effective ways that you see people companies addressing this and engaging their teams, creating that load.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Indeed, indeed.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think uh a couple of things.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think firstly, we're all getting very realistic that people move on.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Talent does move on much quicker now than ever.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we also need to be realistic about the hygiene factors that keep people in the business.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: So your reward and recognition, uh, it's fundamental, you've got that right.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there are a couple of other areas which do um lend themselves to enduring relationships, and I would say that the first is the quality and the nature of the work that you're giving to these individuals coming into your business, particularly in terms of the purpose of the job and their space to innovate in that role.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: I I've rarely come across any individual who doesn't enjoy a creative approach to their work, and if you can give that to them, and they're not just going through the same old, same old forever, uh keep it fresh, keep it renewed, um you'll keep them.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing would be opportunity for growth, definitely.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is about their professional development, but it's also about their growth outside of work.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: So the work-life balance is increasingly something that all employees have an expectation of that we will provide.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think coming out of this period of extended lockdown, a lot of people are questioning will they work that way again?
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Work-life balance is going to be a critical part of the conversation around talent retention, I think, moving forward.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: I guess also um, you know, the way in which you behave as a business, if you have to let people go, also, you know, impacts everybody uh within the team, doesn't it?
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I wondered maybe Charlie, you know, you could sort of lead the way in terms of how do you how do you go about having those tough conversations with the individual concerned and then and also then you know the impact that that that has and kind of managing the wider team as well in those instances.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_03: I think I think um I think without question that is one of the really challenging issues facing people who lead large teams at the moment.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: Let's think in the marketing space how we've seen some of the biggest brands in you know in in the UK, as we're sitting here, um pivot in the last in the last month or two in terms of their approach, in terms of their advertising campaigns, in terms of the way they wish to present themselves to the market, um and you know, in investments is no different.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_03: So I can see as you say, right at the top of this cast, marketing departments are working flat out at the moment in terms of in terms of um uh brand and awareness in the marketplace.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_03: However, the nature of the work may pivot very, very, very, uh, very rapid, very rapidly towards probably more digital platforms, right as right as we speak.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_03: So in terms of having the difficult conversations, I can see um I can I can I can see that it has to be led by the goals and the direction of the department and the deliverables of the department.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I think I think many people in a professional uh setting, apart from the difficulties and the hardships that may be created if they are either losing their job, if that's a hard conversation, or potentially if their job is refocusing on a different area that they may be less interested in, which equally could be just as difficult a conversation.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's really, really important to tie your messages to the strategy of your department and of your organization.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_03: And in a sense, that's what makes it so very challenging at the moment.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_03: I think the chief investment officer at um at one of the big investment houses was quoted a week or so ago as saying it's difficult when you can't see six inches beyond the bump, the front bumper of your car to drive effectively.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um but I think it's really important for leaders in these circumstances, therefore, to keep communicating and keep very, very clear on what the vision is, what the messages are, what the goals and the objectives are for the next three, six, and nine months.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_03: And through that clarity, you know, the most difficult conversations any manager's ever going to have can have a powerful context.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_03: So, whereas a difficult conversation is as unique as the relationship between each manager and their member of staff, and those are always unique, I think I think it's the clarity around the vision, the direction, and the deliverables that sets the powerful context.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_03: That's my my sense of it.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think uh that the in in doing doing that um, you know, in a in a leadership capacity, uh the managers uh or leaders if they are um you know directors of the business need to be very careful about how they are communicating with the team so that they're not giving false confidence.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because there will be a legacy of people who remain when others have gone.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: And those people who remain don't want to be thinking they're telling us everything is rosy, but they said that six months ago, just before so and so lost their job.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: So being authentic is fundamental right now.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is a test of leadership metal to communicate clearly and honestly, to not give false hope, I would say is really, really important.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in terms of uh doing the do, being the person that has to dismiss people who are working in our teams, I'm afraid there is no uh easy answer to this.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um it is indeed a difficult conversation.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think if you enter into the conversation knowing the decision you're making is right for the business, that helps.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: You're not you're not doing something which is wrong for the business or wrong for the individual.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you can remember that generally speaking, people do find themselves on their feet again relatively soon.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: I know we can't tell how long it would be for people to recover from the current economic situation, but generally, generally speaking, people do do find their feet and sometimes they find new and fresh opportunities.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's really hard.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: There is no easy, there is no easy um answer for that question.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_02: No, absolutely.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm conscious, conscious of time taking away, so I wonder whether to sort of finish off this session and sort of delving into your both your experience and um whether you have any other sort of final broader tips for listeners on how to manage or or right-size their teams to create that cohesive, motivated team.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe Charlie, how about you?
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: Start us off.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_03: I think I think at the moment, um, and building on you know all of the remarks that we we've uh shared earlier in this in this cast, I think the role of the leader as a communicator is absolutely critical.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't just mean in terms of how you communicate to the team who you manage.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: So in terms of how you as a leader sit amongst your peer group, now that now that's the kind of network that can really suffer when we are sitting at home.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we do the parts of the job we have to do every day.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: We talk to the people who are immediate reports to us and to whom we immediately report.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: But I think I think it's really it's it's a really substantial uh uh um act of anyone who is a leader to really make sure they plug into their networks um horizontally across the business.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean not just in the sense of networking as a as a as an end in itself, but when you talk about being a powerful leader for your teams, it it's gonna it's very, very easy for teams to feel disconnected in this current time.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't just mean from the standard senior communications executive C-suite communications that come out of the business, I mean connecting with the team that sits next to you, which of course people do informally by the coffee machine all day, every day.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_03: So I see the role of leader as communicator as absolutely critical in terms of keeping people feeling that they are connected not just vertically through the business in terms of the specific work that they do, but more broadly and more homogeneously horizontally through the business as well.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um that that's that's that that that's probably for me one of the critical things that great leaders will do that will differentiate them from the leaders who are just sort of surviving.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_03: Uh uh that they will be comfortable to ask their peer group, you know, how are you doing, and be open and supportive of people who they don't work with specifically on a day-to-day basis.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_03: But I do appreciate that's that's much harder to do when you're not sitting in the same building.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_02: Ruth, some final tips.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't think I've got much to add to the to what Charlie has said.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: I I think I would just say in all times as a leader, you've got to be strategic.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it's difficult now because it's hard to predict and hard to know uh what is going to happen economically.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I think to have a strategic mindset uh is the thing that will always um set you apart and will hopefully help you to steer through um you know these potentially stormy times and then into the clearer, better waters that we all anticipate ahead.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: And you can act according to that strategy as opposed to being too knee-jerk or reactive to the near-term issues.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, be be planful, be planful.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you both so much for taking the time today to to really sort of talk through all the tips and uh and thoughts around recruitment strategy, interviewing, and and as well as trying to have those difficult conversations if if needing to let people go.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, thank you both very much indeed.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: A pleasure.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks very much.