In the twelfth episode of this season of CultureClub X, We have Rebecca Price, Partner at Primary Venture Partners, who discusses how leveraging technology can help people leaders to retain their top talent.
About Rebecca –
Rebecca is a seasoned CHRO and people leader. She has worked in HR at Johnson & Johnson’s esteemed rotational Leadership Development program across a wide range of HR specialty groups, business units, and cultures.
She also moved to operate as the first Head of People and Chief People Officer at startups Sailthru and Enigma Technologies.
Rebecca has spent her career focused on bringing the best out of people, building strong teams and workplaces. She believes in laying the foundations for strong people processes on which companies can scale.
An alumni of University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University, she holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and masters in Organizational Psychology.
Here’s a gist of what Rebecca speaks about in this video:
- How the pandemic has forced leaders to adapt to the new normal in terms of workplace culture and how it has helped leaders to realize the actual need of employees and work towards that.
- The importance of making employees feel connected to their work and motivating them to find the purpose of the work they do to retain your top talent
- The significance of understanding what motivates your employees to stay with your organization, and providing your employees the flexibility and autonomy at the workplace to make them feel engaged
- Why it is super crucial to empower your frontline managers by leveraging technology and how that can help in improving team productivity and overall engagement
Catch all this and more with Rebecca Price in Episode 12 of Season 3 of CultureClub X.
Transcript –
Nicole – Hello everyone, and welcome to the latest episode of CultureClub X, powered by CultureMonkey.
I’m your host. Nicole Patrick. CultureMonkey is a complete employee engagement platform that helps people leaders to measure and improve their workplace culture.
Nicole – In the 12th episode of this season of CultureClub X, we have with us Rebecca Price, partner at Primary Venture Partners, an early stage VC for startups.
In her current role, Rebecca focuses on people operations, talent and networks. She works closely with founders on their journey from founder to CEO and helps scale their businesses and teams.
Nicole – Rebecca is a seasoned CHRO and people leader. She has worked in HR at Johnson & Johnson’s esteemed Rotational Leadership Development Program across a wide variety of HR specialty groups, business units and cultures.
She also moved to operate as the first Head of Chief People Officer at startups Sailthru and Enigma technologies, Rebecca has spent her career focused on bringing the best out of people, building strong teams and workplaces.
She believes in laying the foundation for strong people processes on which companies can scale.
Nicole – An alumni of University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Master in Organizational Psychology.
Rebecca, it’s great to have you with us today. Welcome again to CultureClub`s video cast on the great resignation and retention challenge global impact on organization.
Before we begin, please tell us more about yourself and your organization.
Rebecca – Yeah, great. Well, thanks for having me. Anything that can help companies and teams build great places to work is a topic that I love to participate in and talk about.
So that was a great introduction. I’m a three time former Chief People Officer who grew up in corporate America, and I think that’s the best way to sum it up.
My work now is working with startups seed stage companies at Primary and helping those companies get launched and build great places to work and helping those founders launch the products that they dream of launching.
Rebecca – And that’s really it. I try to be as bespoke as possible. So while this topic and many others, you can see pattern recognition across the industry and I can learn from the multiple reps I have behind me. I also think when it comes to people and talent, the answer is it depends, Right?
It depends on the person, depends on their needs. It depends on the culture, it depends on the founders, it depends on the product. So I kind of also want to keep that in mind as we talk today because while there’s themes and learnings, humans are still individuals at the end of the day.
Nicole – Absolutely. And we’re really excited to have your take on things. This is our 12th episode for this season, and this has been a topic we’ve spoken about a lot, and it’s really interesting to see different people from different career paths and their take on things.
So I’m very excited to hear your take on everything, especially right now when the landscape is changing so much. Let’s get into it.
Nicole – Many HR experts say that organizations were caught off guard by the great resignation. Were there signs of this drive that people ignored before the Pandemic struck?
What could be the factors that drove this paradigm shift in employee expectation? Yeah, I think it’s easy to feel surprised in the moment and then it’s easy to look back and have hindsight.
Rebecca – So I just want to say, don’t beat yourself up over this. If you feel like you were surprised with something, the best we can do is just adapt to the information we have today and make smart decisions.
All that being said, though, I think I’m old enough. I don’t know how old your listeners are, but I’m old enough to have experienced the economic crash in 2008 and to see friends and colleagues. I fortunately was in a role that was more stable, but I saw friends and colleagues, well educated, well in jobs that pack up their desk.
Rebecca – Their companies totally crashed in 2008. And so there is a generation of people who appreciate work for just that it’s a paycheck, that it’s stable, that they’re able on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, they’re able to provide the food, water, shelter for their family and lives.
But anyone who enters the workforce 2009, 2010 and beyond has only ever seen a rising economy. And that’s awesome. There’s always been jobs, especially in tech, especially in cities.
Rebecca – And then the venture money, more capital has entered in the system, which has also created more companies and more jobs. So particularly in the last several years, we’ve just seen the balance of supply and demand really tipped towards the talent market.
Again, I know I’m talking about the tech industry and specific niches are there because I know for services or other jobs, it’s quite different, but very specific to the tech industry. If you had a skill set that a tech company needed, you could likely find a job. If you picked your head up, you could likely find another job that paid more money because another company could always pay you more.
Rebecca – And so I’ve been inside those organizations where I was challenged around engagement and retention and another company could always provide more money, more perks.
So we are always trying to find like, what’s our lock? And I think those were our signs that employees were seeking more, seeking something, and companies needed to be doing things differently. I don’t think it was until the Pandemic that we really had like forced permission to turn the whole thing upside down.
But you saw companies like GitHub, Envision, these companies that were always distributed, started in a distributed way, pioneered that it could work. So I do think there are clues, but it’s so easy to say that now. It’s kind of like the Pandemic just sped things up a little bit.
Rebecca – A black hole for us to bring us to the other side. Yeah. And I do think the Pandemic forced people who are really scared of change, forced people who are really stuck in their ways, even more old-fashioned thinkers who felt like, buckle seats, nine to five, clock in, clock out, work has to be done in person.
There’s people who rigidly hold those frameworks, who otherwise would have been 100% resistant to anything. But yet the Covid forced us to even try it. And I think a lot of people learned, maybe even shattered their ideas that they were, like, so tightly held in the past that work could even get done, that our products would continue, that our company could continue, that distributed teams could work.
I’m not saying distributed teams are perfect. I’m not saying all distributed teams are created equal. But you saw the economy continue, and sometimes some industries even thrive despite being distributed.
So it’s like when faced with no choice, you can disrupt your tightly held views.
Nicole – Exactly. I completely agree. Yeah. Do you think the great resignation is lynch pin that will lead companies to adopt a more employee centric model?
Rebecca – I think it’s really Covid. I don’t know if it’s hard for me to separate the pandemic and the great resignation because I think they’re so tied together. The great resignation is a result of people being forced to like their basic survival needs. Right?
Like, you were faced with people who were faced with being at home, perhaps being alone, perhaps juggling childcare.
And in that you have your home and you have your job, and you’re not really getting out of your house and having these other pieces of your life that fulfill you, like, maybe your hobbies, your friends, your community, whatever your activities or extracurriculars.
Rebecca – And it just put everyone face to face with, what does my job mean at its core? Because I’m just sitting at home with my computer versus getting dressed, which could be fulfilling going into a city, commuting, which people may enjoy getting out of the house, being with other people, colleagues.
There’s so many other social, community, spiritual, emotional aspects that involve going into an office that when you strip it down to just being you and your computer at home, people really came face to face with, like, is this what I want to be doing?
Is this the work that I love? And so I think Covid really stripped work down to the basics and forced people to ask themselves hard questions. I think while many companies saw people resign, in some ways, I think it’s a healthy shake out.
Rebecca – Every employee has to be hooked into the job for some reason. Not everybody has to have the same thing. So employees are either connected to the work through the mission, like, the bigger purpose. So regardless of the people they work with, regardless of their specific role, they love the product, they love the mission.
So there’s a mission, then there’s work. Regardless of the people I work with, regardless of the bigger, I love like the work that I’m doing, the problem I’m solving, the code I’m writing, I love solving hard problems. And then there’s the third hook, which is just on the people or community.
Rebecca – So regardless of the mission, regardless of work, I just love my people. So as an employer, you need to have a true understanding of each employee. It’s like what’s truly motivating them?
Why are they here? Is it the mission? Is it the work? Is it the people? And whenever I’ve been an HR leader and I’ve done work with my leadership teams, I require them to have a clear articulation for every employee.
What is motivating them? Why are they here?
Rebecca – Because then you can manage them. People are still individuals, like I said, up top. So you need to really motivate them towards what is driving them personally. And you might have three people on your team and what are they by three different things.
I think the great resignation just showed this. Individuals realigning their personal selves against mission, work, community, and then leaving if they felt like there was an assignment.
And that’s what you would think that companies at the end of the day would actually want, is to make sure that they really do have those people there that are hooked in for the long run and that for one reason or another do want the company to succeed and to continue and to continue their journey with them.
Nicole – So I like how you said it’s kind of a shake out to get everyone where they’re meant to be.
Rebecca – Yes. And I just want to say, like, you don’t want companies to be toned up either, right.
Needs have shifted. People are realizing, oh, I can do my work from home. Maybe I don’t want to be living in a city. Well, I like that I don’t have to commute or I have more time in my life or I can be with my kids more. I can tell you for me personally, I have two kids for 20 years up until 2020.
My whole career, our kids whole life. I would leave in the morning, I get home around seven if we would only have dinner with each other on the weekends. And one of the gifts of COVID was I was able to be with them more.
Rebecca – I was able to pick them up from their school and activities. And we have had dinner together as a family almost every single day. And I don’t want to give that up.
And I think that’s my story. Right? And if anyone out on your podcast is listening to this and their managers and leaders, what are the stories of your employees.
What do they want? And can you still achieve your business goals by giving your employees what they want? It’s hard not to take that back.
I personally want to work for a leader, a manager, a boss who said, oh yeah, no more having dinner with your family, like back to buckle seats.
Rebecca – That’s just tone deaf to what we’ve learned. So even though there has been this shake out, I think companies also need to adapt and incorporate the things we’ve learned to be able to fill, achieve business goals while also helping people be true to like their own values and needs.
Nicole – Absolutely. And that is really one of the gifts that Covid gave to us. Obviously, it was a terrible thing that we’ve been through as the people together, but there are these silver linings that hopefully will last for much, much longer than the effect of it. Right.
Nicole – What role do you think lack of collaboration, flexibility and freedom plays in people leaving an organization? How can companies combat the great resignation? By creating a culture of connection.
Rebecca – Yeah, I might just repeat the things I said earlier about really understanding your employees and what’s hooking them to your company because connection is different for everyone, but it’s being clear of where the connection is.
So is it in the mission of our company? Is it at work? Is it in the people?
And then how can we be clear on that and make sure people’s experience with work is aligned to their specific motivation?
The other thing I would say, and this has nothing to do with today’s climate, but something that I think leaders forget. It’s this idea of intrinsic motivation, right, like extrinsic motivation is when people are motivated by the things outside of them, like rewards, recognition.
It’s not to say that shouldn’t exist, but the people’s best work and truest fulfillment comes from that intrinsic motivation.
Rebecca – I personally am so motivated from fire in me to do X, Y and Z. And that’s really what great resignation or not. Like all leaders and managers and individuals really just like what’s going to unlock the intrinsic motivation?
And you can read the theory of intrinsic motivation, but it comes down to autonomy, mastery and purpose. Right?
People want autonomy, the right to self govern themselves, pick their conditions, make their choices, like what work they’re doing. They want mastery, they want to continue to grow and learn and they want purpose.
Rebecca – How does my work connect to something bigger? What is the reason for it? So that I think with great resignation, Covid, people are kind of assessing my purpose on this earth. Like it’s just me in my house, in my computer, like, what am I doing?
Do I need to be doing this? And there’s so many jobs. But I think it only just facilitated the perfect environment for intrinsic motivation to have a slight shined on it, right?
Like people realize, okay, I don’t have to commute, wow, this opens up a whole like more jobs. Is this really what I want to be doing?
These are really the people I want to be doing it with. So I think it’s just a reminder that you want to unlock that intrinsic motivation. You want to create environments where people are getting that fire from them to do that work every day.
Nicole – Absolutely. And I think it’s probably because you do work with so many founders that are on their way up in their journey. It’s probably very interesting for you to be able to see. Okay.
How can I take this motivation and this intrinsic motivation that a founder might have and relay it to a large corporation where you’ve got all different levels of employees.
All different people doing different things. And how can I pull that same buyer out of them and give them that sort of stove to burn with?
Rebecca – Yes, absolutely. And I think the exciting part is that my work at Primary is working with seed stage founders. We are at the very beginning where the page is blank, and that I love that I love beginnings, I love creating, I love building.
And for these founders, there’s so much opportunity to start from scratch and you hire your first person in your second and you can be really deliberate about that.
So when people say, how do I build great cultures? My first piece of advice is you need to have some amazing self awareness. Do some hard work, whether through journaling, meditation, partners and friends, therapy, whatever is but the self reflection to know who you are as a founder, what you value, why you’re starting this company, how you act under stress, how you make decisions, what you need in conflict.
Rebecca – Because all those attributes are going to come out as you build this company. And you’re going to have highs and lows. And that ultimately will be like the essence of like, why people will want to work for you, why they’ll stay, and your culture.
And so that feels like it’s easier when you’re at a stage company. But again, I’ve worked at companies like Johnson & Johnson that were hundreds of thousands of people. And I would give the same advice to managers and teams there too, because you have these micro cultures, micro teams.
Rebecca – So even though it sits in a bigger vision, if you’re managing people, if someone wakes up in the morning and they call you their boss, that is a significant, huge responsibility that you have to take that responsibility seriously, care for that person, understand what’s motivating them, give them that sense of autonomy, mastery and purpose and listen to them. Right?
Rebecca – And if it’s not the right place for them, it’s okay. But if it is, how can you nurture and cultivate it?
Nicole – Exactly. I think that’s another topic that has come up in a lot of these video casts that we’ve done is having bosses on every level really be the head of their microculture and making sure that they’re listening to their employees constantly and actually taking actions based on what they’re finding and not just saying. You know what.
I’m just going to leave it to somebody else to deal with. I’m not going to actually invest my time and care.
Right. Because it’s just so important. Yeah. And sometimes listening is important, but sometimes the best answer is, this isn’t the right place. Right.
Nicole – Like, it’s that tough conversation, but, like, where it isn’t the right fit for whatever reason.
Rebecca – So in my years of working with hundreds of managers and leaders, I sometimes had that cynical manager who’s like, why do I have to constantly cater?
No, that’s the wrong lens. You need to listen. You need to be authentic and real, and you need to have the honest conversation around where you need to change and adapt and meet them where they’re at, but also where you can like the right fit and obviously do that with, like, dignity, care, and respect.
Nicole – Yeah, absolutely.
Nicole – The great resignation has forced organizations to take a hard look at their employee relationships. What can organizations do to truly improve the employee experience and retain top talent?
Rebecca – Yeah. I feel like these are the themes we’ve been talking about. And so when I first read this question, my immediate instinct was like, it’s different for everyone. And it’s like what I said at the top of the hour, like, it depends. So before you even recruit anyone, why would someone come work for you?
That’s the question you need to answer. Why should they work for you? Why should they take this job? Why should they stay? Why is this an important, critical job for someone?
You need to be able to articulate that before you even recruit someone. And then when you start thinking about if you’re running a commercial funnel, you hear marketing and sales people say all the time, ICP is an ideal customer profile.
Right?
Rebecca – Candidates have an ICP. What is the persona of the ideal person? Why would they come to work here? What job do they have today? Where can I find them? What are they reading? How can I recruit them? And then why should they come to work here?
If you’re very clear, even before you start interviewing and recruiting people, you’re more likely to get the right people in the job. And then once you get people further in your funnel or even hiring them, like we’ve talked about earlier, why are they here?
Rebecca – What’s motivating them? And then you’ve found the right person because the work really aligns, and you’re retaining them based on what’s motivating them.
When I was the chief people officer at Enigma, enigma was a very technical organization. We had over 80% engineers and data scientists. And that’s a difficult talent pool. There’s way more jobs for engineers and data scientists than there are there is talent.
So we would put a ton of energy into recruiting top technical talent. And we started by looking at the employees who were already at our company, who are they?
Who are the most successful ones? Why are they successful?
Rebecca – And what we realized is we had multiple personas of successful engineers. There was the mission driven engineer. There was the one who loved to solve hard problems. There was the one who loved to be part of a team. There was the one who was really connected to our product.
We were data processes, data driven. So it’s like, what are the personas? And then when we started meeting candidates, we would require our recruiters who did the phone screen to bucket their candidate into one of those personas.
Right? And then it’s like, okay, well, this is the mission driven candidate, but this is the one who loves to solve hard problems. Okay, then we can align the work for the team, and then that helps retain them. There’s compensation theories that show that more money, more perks, it doesn’t actually drive attention.
Rebecca – It is around the connection to the meaning of the work, the people, the product. So it all starts from the very beginning. And it’s not to say if you already have a team, it’s too late.
These are exercises you should be doing. People can reach out to me. I can send you a quick template. You can hopefully work with your HR professionals, but you should be kind of thinking about it from the lens of talent management, who everyone is, what’s motivating them, and is there alignment between their work and team and their motivation.
Nicole – I love that, and I think that’s such a great exercise for organizations to be doing, especially if they’re already established.
Yeah, just for down the road. Also for hiring. Very smart and very cool. So I hope that a lot of our views at home do take that opportunity to reach out to you and get a template and start using that.
Rebecca – And I would also say it can change over time. I could tell you, like, I’ve been in the workforce for 20 years if you talk to me, when I first started, it was different than when I was a new mom.
It was different than when I moved to Tech. It was different than when I moved to IT, it changes. So it’s a continuous conversation, and I need to keep checking in.
And there’s this concept of what’s called stay interviews. Like, exit interviews are as old as time, but that’s too late. Rearview mirror, you’ve lost that person.
But this concept of stay interviews where you can objectively check in every six to twelve months with your employees around, like, what makes you excited, what concerns you, what advice do you have that feedback you should be regularly getting so that there’s no surprises.
We’re surprised if someone quits or resides; that’s a failure for the company.
Nicole – Absolutely. Yeah.
Rebecca – The goal isn’t like 100% retention. The goal is that you’re like, oh, of course
you’re going to grad school, or of course you’re going to work at this company or that company.
Nicole – Like, yeah, we’ve been talking about that. That makes sense. Exactly. It’s a given that for leaders to understand the pulse of their employees and retain them, they need to constantly listen to their employees’ voices and take swift action.
But if you have a large organization, it becomes extremely difficult to keep track of your employees’ pulse.
With that said, how can people leaders leverage technology to help companies with the retention process? And how do you think it can help in scaling an organization?
Rebecca – So there’s no silver bullet answer here. If I was going to give one answer. One thing you can do if you can help your front line manager, full stop. If anyone out there manages people, you remember the day when yesterday you didn’t manage a person and
then all of a sudden today you did.
And hopefully someone explained to you how your days and weeks were different now
that you are a manager of people. Unfortunately, the system lets frontline managers down.
Frontline managers, middle managers. They are the most important critical layer in any organization.
They are the ones who most people report to them. They are most people’s bosses.
And they are where the executive team leadership team information flows through.
They flow up, they flow down, keeping them healthy, happy, engaged, trained, skilled, supported, clear on mission and decisions like essential. And so often we let that group down.
So nurturing that group in a series of ways is something I’m personally very passionate about.
And when I was in a very small people team, at a startup, I couldn’t do everything, but that’s where I spent my time.
Rebecca – How can I make my people leaders better people leaders? On a scale of one to ten?
Rather than trying to make everyone a ten out of ten, my mindset was, wherever they are, if they’re a two out of ten, how do I get them to be a three?
If they’re a seven, how do I get them to be a eight.
Rebecca – Give them not assessments, but 360 reviews so they have a good sense of where they are and how to build their skills. So I think there’s a lot of technology that can help with this, but I think it’s like human to human, recently being a primary.
I see a lot of seed stage companies. I’ve recently seen a bunch of newer technology companies, like trying to crack this idea, going from training to via services to a tech.
So if anyone out there is thinking about developing tech, I think this is like a really right market. So I don’t know that tech has solved it.
There are engagement surveys, but engagement surveys are just data. You still need the brain power to understand what the engagement surveys are. The other thing that’s not quite about keeping track of employee pulls, but I just thought
Rebecca – I’d make a plug for it. Especially in distributed worlds, we can forget about the human side of people. We get so stuck in our Emails, our Slacks, our Zooms, and it’s like, the more you can just humanize interactions, you have to find your way to do it.
But like, using GIFs, Right? Like, for example, to make people laugh, use loom as, like, a plugin.
Just do a quick video, personalize it, have fun activity, just small moments of connection, I think just kind of reminds everyone that we’re not these Zoom boxes, but we’re like, poor people.
Nicole – I totally agree. There’s so many different ways that you can do it now, especially because we know, okay, everyone’s going to be home at this hour.
And my friend, she works for a large corporation, and they just sent her out of the blue a box. And on the box it said, don’t open till Zoom. Meeting at 02:00 PM. On Wednesday.
And it was a whole fiesta party in the box when they opened it. And they still did their work and had their meeting. But it was like just with a little personal touch that kind of made it like. Okay.
We can’t all be together at the same time like we used to. But at least we can do something that will give us connection and fun and kind of make us want to stay and not just feel like you said we’re just a Zoom box and sort of a robot screen.
Rebecca – Totally. And one thing I like to do is for the people who report to me directly, and I’m their boss I like to have a touch point with them every day, like, not work in the morning.
I’ll try to send them a message like, good morning, how’s it going? What are you up to? If I’m, like, taking my dog for a walk, I might give them a call just to chat, check in, no agenda.
Not our set one on one, just to just like that water cooler talk. It’s interesting to talk to them.
I think they like it, and I think they appreciate it, but it helps. I started this new job at Primary remotely, so, like, I on boarded as a partner at a VC firm remotely so that had its challenges.
Rebecca – And I think I’m a very people person. I’m a very relationship first person, and it’s taken, like, extra time to build those human connections and human relationships, and I try to find low key ways where I’m like, I’m walking my dog, I’m folding my laundry. I have five minutes as I’m walking to pick up my kids from school. How’s it going?
What do you have to do? What’s on your mind just to open those connections where you would normally have, like, walking.
By someone’s desk or pouring a cup of coffee, like the water cooler talk, I think that goes a long way. And I think if you’re a manager of managers, skip level is really good too, just to make people feel connected to the bigger purpose.
Rebecca – Never underestimate the power of reaching out to people around the organization, especially people who are earlier career junior talent. If you can make it sort of like low stakes, high intact, like relationship driven low stakes, not like, report this, give you this report, but kind of like, what are you working on?
What’s keeping you up at night? What’s on your mind? That goes a very long way.
And I think especially now with this new landscape of work and working remotely, you are going to find more and more people, especially in the coming years like yourself, that do on board at new companies totally remotely. Right.
So you’re never going to have established that sort of water cooler talk in real life. So to do these things and take these actions are really important to start making that just a regular thing to do now so that in five years, when possibly 50% or 70% of your company has been on boarded remotely and maybe meet each other once or twice a week, if that, it’s important to get those guidelines.
Not guidelines, but it’s important to do that now so that you’re establishing real connection. Even though we’re not connected.
Nicole – As a culture expert, how important is it for people, leaders to understand the mindset of their employees, to come up with retention strategies? What is your personal learning in this space?
Rebecca – Yeah, it’s a two way street. It’s what we’ve talked about before. It’s being hyper clear and intentional around why someone would come work at this company, work on this team, work in this role. And then when you find that person, why do they want this?
What’s motivating them? I always remember this. So when I worked at Johnson and Johnson, there’s this long hallway in their corporate headquarters. It has hundreds of plaques that indicate when someone had hit their 25 year anniversary.
And I remember being in my early 20s, being like, holy crap, like 25 years at one company. To me, that was just like, unimaginable.
Rebecca – And I think that’s not how people do work anymore. That is just not the expectation that it’s not like, common, especially tech roles, urban environments.
So knowing that people are going to maybe stay at your company for multiple years or maybe only stay for a short time, I think it’s really important to make sure that both sides are getting value from that time together with your one step on their journey.
How is this job getting them to their next job? How can they be like ambassadors of your brand, of your company?
How can you have helped train them to get them to their next week? How can you feel more like a graduation than a resignation. And how can they have contributed to your product? I think it’s just as it should be. Like.
Rebecca – Normalized that people are going to come and go and that we shouldn’t be not avoiding resignations or avoiding attrition.
But it’s like living with it. Celebrating it. And doing right by people. The people we want to stay.
The people we feel like where the work is aligned. Let’s really invest in that. Where we find someone. Hit the end of their road. Or like my colleagues last week, I say this a lot. Like, sometimes you just reach an impact.
Like this person’s trajectory is just not on the trajectory of this company. And like, that’s okay, like, we can accept that, celebrate it, people leave on good terms. Like, it can be a role model for the company as well.
Nicole – Totally. And all of this whole conversation that we’ve had just sounds like it’s exciting because it sounds like things are moving into a more healthy space with work and with work life balances and also just people’s trajectories.
And I absolutely agree that it’s important that it feels like a graduation and not like something that’s even for the employee, just nervous to tell them that I’m resigning, I’m moving somewhere else, like you said, with those full check ins, if you know, okay, this person isn’t going to be here forever and they are going to be moving.
Rebecca – It helps you, A, to fill the role easier, but B, just to know, okay, I’ve had five people in this role.
This is where they all seem to be going off to. This is how I can tell new employees that other employees have graduated from this position.
And it helps everyone.
Nicole – Yeah. And you and I were chatting about this earlier. There’s been a rise in jobs, and with that, it allows people to have a lot of choice, especially then you add with the pandemic and distributed work, it opens up opportunities even outside our own commuting radius.
Rebecca – When I was invited to speak with you, it was a couple of months ago. And what we’ve even seen in the last couple of weeks, because it’s May 25 and where I am, lots of layoffs, right, the contracting market, people concerned about where the economy is going.
And so I think when there’s layoffs in a contracting market, it does kind of bring it’s interest to like, if we talked in six months or a year, what is kind of the next wave?
I think that’s, like, when you think about talent and talent rhythms, you’re always in a cycle.
And so we see a market that’s very high in demand, low supply, but perhaps we’ll start entering a new phase where there’s layoffs and contraction and there’s going to be more people looking for jobs and that will then tip kind of people’s motivation, needs, requirements, expectations.
So it’s early days still, but it’s possible that we’re on the edge of a new wave.
Nicole – Exactly. It’s always moving. And you’re right, it has changed a lot in these past few weeks.
Rebecca – And it’ll be very interesting, even when this episode airs, to see where things are at that point.
Nicole – Yeah.
Rebecca – With that though, I will give a plug to Primary. Primary Venture Partners has over 75 companies in our portfolio. You can go to primary.vc, look at our job board. There’s over 1000 jobs open across all our portfolio companies.
You can apply directly. You can find me there if you’re looking for there’s any job that you see or any company or portfolio that you see that you think you’re a great fit, hit me up.
I can help make a warm introduction if we think you’re a right fit. Because while bigger companies are contracting, the work that I do is early stage companies. And early stage companies, they still need their first founding engineer, their first marketer.
They’re early sales team, they’re early OPs. People like recruiters, Right?
Rebecca – They still are in the growth phase. Early stage companies need the right persona, right? You have to have an appetite for comfort, ambiguity, comfort with some risk.
But if you love to build and create, check out those companies, even if you’ve gone through some sort of reduction at your own company. So why don’t you tell us now actually, how our viewers can reach out to you, because that sounds like an amazing opportunity for, I’m sure, some of our viewers.
Nicole – Yes.
Rebecca – So if you go to primary.vc , all the links are there, you’ll be able to find a link directly to me, you’ll be able to find a link directly to our job boards and you can reach out to us directly from there.
Nicole – Great. The great resignation is still an evolving topic as we’re seeing it’s domino effectively across the globe. I think your answers are applicable to the real world and offer us a great perspective on how to deal with this challenge.
The one solution for people leaders here, in my opinion, is enhanced focus on listening to employees to understand their needs better.
This is where CultureMonkey can assist people leaders so beautifully. It enables them to constantly listen to their employee sentiments in real time and take decisive actions based on real time analytics.
Nicole – So, if you want a super swift tool and to improve your company culture, visit www.culturemonkey.io today.
With that said, thank you so much for your time, Rebecca. It was such a delightful conversation as we learned so much from you today.
Nicole – And I’m sure our viewers at home will agree. That’s all we have for you in this episode of CultureClub X powered by CultureMonkey.
Until next time, this is your host, Nicole signing off.