Our People Pioneers in Action interview series finale with the sharp and insightful JooBee Yeow.

The brilliant Nic Cuthbert, VP of People & Talent at Jiminny, shares his secrets on how to be a company that truly lives their values.

The award-winning Sophie Theen, Start-up Advisor and Coach, has a wealth of experience to share with those of us who are determined to build great company cultures from the outset.

Sophie Amato, Head of People and Culture at Social Value Portal, has perfected the art of treading the tightrope between day to day firefighting and building for the future. Find out how she does it and how this has helped build a resilient company culture.

In this episode, Daniel Illes shares his experience of what it’s like to join a company with a truly exceptional culture and then be responsible for not messing it up as they grow!

We kick off our Pioneers in action interview series with the brilliant Laura Smith, Chief People Officer at Trade Ledger. Laura generously shares her lessons learned through scaling and downsizing.

Watch our Pioneers in action interview series, where I interview leaders who are pioneering in the world of start-ups, scale-ups and small businesses. If you’re a fellow people person who wants fresh ideas, tips, and tools for creating a kick-ass culture (plus advice on what not to do!), register and we’ll send you the episodes as they premiere, on the second Wednesday of each month.

Traditionally HR teams have built people processes from the inside out i.e. from their own perspective of whats needed from the process and how this can be run as efficiently as possible. It’s been the HR team’s job to take into account what the organisation needs from the interaction. The challenge is this often misses what’s really important to the employee. Let’s take on boarding as an example…

Before you start to think about how you change your culture to support your growth, make sure you and your team are clear about what it actually is that you’re looking to change!

You’ve spent years building a great business from scratch. But after decades of hard graft you’re ready to enjoy more time with your family and maybe sip a cocktail or two on the beach. So how on earth do you step back from a business that relies on you everyday to keep plates spinning and wheels turning?

They say if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. Well you might think your culture isn’t broken, but if the world moves on without you, you could lose the trust and respect of your customers. It’s difficult to be a taken seriously if youre driving a horse and cart and everyone else is in a new car…

If your ways of working are dated, you’re going to struggle to attract and retain new talent. If you can’t convince your own flesh and blood to join your company, then something needs to change…

Employee experience is all about making work better by redesigning workplaces and HR processes around the needs of employees. So if you want to improve your employee experience then the first step is to really understand who you’re designing and building these new products and services for – your employees.

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You can’t create a great employee experience in one hit. Even if you’ve identified where you want to begin, it’s very hard to predict how your people will respond to new interventions. Instead of trying to design the ‘perfect’ employee experience, our suggestion is to take an iterative, data led approach that responds to user (employee) behaviour over time.

The concept of a 9 to 5 job has been a dominant narrative in society but it’s been dying for a while now and COVID-19 is finally going to kill it off. If your company wasn’t already some way down the path towards more flexible working, the past few months will no doubt have been a period of serious adjustment.

Congratulations! You’ve just landed your dream job as a new People Director. Go you! You’re gonna be great. But you know what they say… you only have one chance to make a first impression. So what are you actually going to do when you get your foot in the door.

Employee experience is a concept for making sense of what people see, hear, feel and do at work by recognising that people construe their working lives as a journey, not as a series of disconnected events.

If employee experience is a concept for making sense of what people see, hear, feel and do at work by recognising that people construe their working lives as a journey…. what does that mean in practice?

If you’re genuinely interested in making your company a better place to work, then adopting an employee experience approach necessitates a profound culture change in HR teams.

When it comes to improving employee experience we shouldn’t worry about every one of the thousands of interactions between an employee’s and an organisation’s journey. Instead we should focus on a few key interactions.

Is your team so busy getting work out the door that the very idea of finding time to stop and look back seems crazy? It’s more important that you press on and get the work done – right? Not so fast… If you want to improve the way your team works together, you should start with improving your retrospectives.

If your business has grown to 100 people you might be noticing the people dynamics changing. It doesn’t matter how great you are as a leader or how hard you work, there comes a point where you can’t get the best out of your people unless you take a more systemic approach…

If you’ve read a few of our blogs, you’ll understand what we think company culture is and why we think culture engineering is critical to the success of scale-ups, but you’ll also know that we don’t think you can just copy someone else’s homework and that you need to put in the hard yards to build your own distinctive culture.

Truth be told, most of the people who bang on about how important culture is, literally don’t know what they’re talking about. But don’t worry, you’ve just found the one blog you have to read to join the select group of people who actually know what they’re talking about.

So you want to create a great culture, one that makes your people more engaged, improves customer experiences and drives your business performance and growth… And if you’re growing through about 100 people, you know you need to create a seamless peopleOS… but how?! Well, here are five key principles to get you started…

So you get what company culture is and why it matters. And you’re starting to buy into this notion of a people operating system and the role that plays in influencing your culture. This blog explains why at The Pioneers we think a great people operating system is all about flow…

This blog explains what we mean by a people operating system and by the end of it you’ll have a completely new perspective on how to approach culture and people management in growing companies.

Culture is distributed shared learning. It sits in the minds of everyone who works for your company. The right attitude as a CEO is to try and influence your culture. To try and influence the learning that takes place about how people ought to work together and to deal with customers. You’re trying to guide people’s discovery.

Culture change is what failing businesses need - right? Wrong! If you’re the leader of a successful start-up or scale-up you won’t sustain your growth unless you change your culture. Why? Read on to find out…

75% of VC backed scale-ups fail. 80% of the barriers to growth are internal. Discover the secret to successful and sustainable growth.

How do you avoid a scenario where your culture kills your growth? Here’s our top four reasons why scale up companies tend to mess it up…

If you’re the founder, CEO or People Director of a start-up that’s looking to grow, your success now depends on your culture. If you don’t get it right, more people will just = more problems. (Read more)