Innovative Employee Experience Strategies To Create a Balanced Workplace

Helena 00:00

Kendra, it's wonderful to speak with you today. Thank you so much for making time for me. So we met under, I don't know, slightly unusual circumstances. I do a weekly post on future of work jobs, and that resulted in me reaching out to you on the Internet because you had a really cool looking job and I wanted to meet you. So tell me a bit about yourself and your background.

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Kendra 00:24

Yeah. I loved that you reached out and that we live in the same city so that we could actually meet up in person. So, you know, don't be shy out there. Reach out to people on the Internet. It's not that scary. Yeah. So I, at the time that we met, I was the future of work, employee experience lead for Avanade, which is a global IT consultancy, so joint venture through Accenture and Microsoft.

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Kendra 00:48

So some really amazing parentage. And I was with them for 16 years, and at the time was in the role of that future of work lead, and it was a really amazing position. I definitely feel over my career within the organization that I really crafted a very unique career and was kind of influential in creating that next step for myself. That role and that role actually had come about through my relationship with our chief people officer, through a conversation with her, where I had expressed an interest in working more in employee experience rather than just business. HR, which had traditionally been the role that I played within the. And I remember telling people, the next role that I have doesn't exist today, but it will. And that became true.

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Kendra 01:40

And 2020, thanks to Covid, she pulled that trigger and decided that we needed an employee experience team and tapped me on the shoulder and said, okay, help us deal with this thing called Covid. How do we support our employees through it? But thinking about the longer term future of work, how else can we kind of impact our people through people programs and supporting them?

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Helena 02:05

And. Maybe I'll dive into that a bit more. And I appreciate you might be able to share anything, like super confidential, but when you were thinking of the future of work, what did you imagine might be different, and what kind of things were you trying to prepare for?

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Kendra 02:22

Yeah, I think one of the really clear things is that we. Had identified was this idea of a liquid workforce although it's a bit of a ambiguous term and I think throughout the corporate sphere people use it for different meanings but for me it really was this idea that we needed to develop different relationships with our contractors, be more fluid in our employee relationships and acknowledge that the future of work was likely to start leaning towards more freelancing consulting contractual type of relationships. Relationships the entire employee employer proposition has really changed. What mattered to me as an employee 60 years ago is not necessarily going to matter to me today because the experiences are so vastly different. You don't see people having longer term relationships with their organizations right? I mean just the monetary that we can talk about inflation and all of those things but every aspect I think of life was so different and with the onset of COVID I think we saw a lot of people coming to two conclusions. One that they needed more flexibility and that they could do it differently and that perhaps the.

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Kendra 03:42

The structure, the framework, the security. They felt working for a large organization might not have been benefiting them as much as they had thought. And so I think you saw a lot of people starting to dabble with entrepreneurship and that idea of freelancing and consulting, thanks to Covid. And the silver lining of being potentially laid off was that they got to explore these new options.

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Helena 04:08

And we're kind of out of the, I don't know, the main throws of COVID now, but I know that there have been some lasting impacts. But you're a great example of someone who, I guess, has experienced this, right? Yeah. You've worked in many different geographies as well, so I know that your career has taken you from the US. I think it was the UK next. And then you finally landed here in Australia. I'd love to hear some of your observations about.

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Helena 04:37

What you found different or unique about each of those markets, maybe focusing a bit more on your experience in HR functions in those three different countries.

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Kendra 04:48

Yeah. So I didn't have much of a HR function necessarily in Australia, since I was in a global role, but certainly in the UK and in the US. And, you know, in the US, I had started my career in global mobility, working with people through relocations. I held an HR tech role for a while as kind of a help desk, and then I moved into business HR, and have been working with thousands of employees across the US, moved into the UK, where I was also in a business partner role, supporting the UK business. And one of the things for sure, and you hear this as you start to travel the world and certainly hear it here in Australia, as well as, oh, you Americans, you're so obsessed with your career. It's your identity. And, yeah, that's true, but I didn't necessarily feel like it was that different in other locations.

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Kendra 05:39

People still very much attribute a lot of their identity to the role that they have and the career that they have, but the. Then, I guess the drive to work, the status of it potentially was slightly different. And so you do see people in the US not taking advantage of vacations. There's certainly a European. Shared experience where a lot of cultures really honor summer vacation. Right? So you see like Spain, who changed their office hours so that their employees can really utilize that.

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Kendra 06:17

You see countries like Italy who traditionally have this period of Ferragosto where they shut down most places in August. So there's this really deeply rooted tradition and honoring of that vacation time in summer. You don't see that as much in the US. And so you don't see people taking advantage of that PTO. You see them really stocking it up for fear of losing their job. And that's also because they don't have the same remuneration packages. They don't have the same security should they lose their role.

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Kendra 06:51

They don't have a contract period. They don't have their entire well being wrapped up through their corporate sponsored insurance program. So there is, I think those are the two biggest things that I noticed is they're not necessarily taking care of themselves. They are constantly thinking about the future in the US and should I lose my job, I need to have those PTA days basically stocked away to cover me during that transitionary period. I don't think the Europeans are that much different in also being somewhat worried. But there is definitely a little bit more of an observance of PTO and enjoying that summer period. And I think they are lucky to take care, take, make use of that because they have.

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Kendra 07:40

Potentially three month contracting period. So they're going to have that Runway.

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Helena 07:45

Yeah. That's so interesting. And in terms of innovation, I think there's the perception that perhaps the US innovates a bit faster and harder. Right. Maybe that's because there's less regulation. I know privacy is a little bit less regulated, although that might change. There's some legislation in draft at the moment in privacy.

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Helena 08:06

But which of those markets that you've worked in do you think is more innovative as it relates to work and people?

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Kendra 08:15

So that's a really tough one as well. I don't want to say anything disparaging, but I think they are operating in, again, different environments, like I just pointed out. So I do think in the US there is a bit of innovation stemming from I'm trying to make the work work for me. I don't want it to be miserable. Like, how can I make it better? Because if my work sucks, my life sucks. Right.

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Kendra 08:42

Because we're so entwined with it. In Europe, maybe a little less, where there is a little bit more of a focus on that holistic being and people have better boundaries and do create time for themselves where they're probably innovation is coming more from a passion.

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Helena 09:02 

Yeah.

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Kendra 09:03

And so a desire to improve solely for the improvement itself. Does that make sense?

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Helena 09:09

Yeah. I think I observed in my transition from the UK to Australia. Perhaps a little bit less. Just a bit. I don't exactly want to say slower pace, but I think people value their balance here. Maybe they don't live to work here in Australia, and I don't think that's completely crazy. We have great weather, great beaches.

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Helena 09:35

I don't know who's crazy, really, but that would be my observation of moving from the UK to Australia in the last few years. But maybe in terms of some things that you're really proud of having achieved, programs or projects or initiatives across any of the geographies that you work, is there anything that stands out that you did that you're super proud of?

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Kendra 10:01

I think it's a really great question. And like you just said, I also recognize the same things in Australia. It's why I love to live here. There is a much better balance of that work and life. But as far as being proud, I mean, I'm exceptionally proud of just the career that I've carved, and not just for, you know, the title or kind of the accolades or awards that I've received, but really because of the impact that I've been able to make. And that's always been my next move was always about how can I make a bigger impact? How can I impact more people?

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Kendra 10:35

How can I make a deeper impact? So I'd say the programs that I helped spearhead at the end of my career within Avenad, I'm super proud of one of the things that we did as a result of COVID and how are we going to try to utilize this as an opportunity to experiment with something different was to introduce a four day workweek. Now, it's not. We didn't go all the way. It's a compressed work week, but. Right. We're an Accenture Microsoft shop.

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Kendra 11:04

Like, are we going all four? Going four days, 32 hours. I think hopefully, ideally, is where the entire world will get to soon. But we moved to a compressed workweek under the idea that our people needed to have that freedom to make the choice of where and when to work and to create that more flexibility so that they could actually honor their boundaries. I think it's really easy in every culture for us, especially now that we're working, a majority of folks are working remote or from home, is that those boundaries blur. Oh, I'll just jump online before my first meeting. Oh, I'll just finish this last thing before dinner.

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Kendra 11:44

Those boundaries of our life have, you know, we've really blurred into work, which is not such a bad thing. If you look at it as work life integration and you found ways to create others. Carve out other time for yourself. But that rarely happens. That's not a skill that we learn in most corporate organizations. We see people disrespecting boundaries all the time, when you're constantly getting invites for meetings, when you clearly have your calendar blocked off. So I don't think we had the rigmarole around that.

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Kendra 12:19

And so what we said was, if we move to this compressed workweek, our employees are starting to kind of feel that they've met their contractual obligations. They're paying attention to the hours that they're working, and then they've hopefully carved out half a day or even a full day where they get to focus on themselves, focus on their lives, do the grocery shopping, do the things that are important to them. We had HR leaders who said, I'm now using this kind of extra time, this more protected time to coach my daughter and her sports team. People were using it to take care of their own wellbeing, feeling like they could actually carve out that time to go for a run religiously or to spend it taking care of family members. And so I think when we start to be more conscious of how and where we're spending our time, we start to honor those boundaries a little bit better, and we start to unplug ourselves from that work, and then we're 100% into our actual life. Like, how many times have you, you know, snuck your phone out during a dinner to check a work email and you're still tethered to your work? We need to learn how to cut that tether and actually be all in at work while we're at work and, like, all in at life while we're in life.

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Helena 13:32

I mean, easier said than done, right? I have to say, I have, as a co founder, sort of zero, zero boundaries. So it's definitely on the list of things to get better. Now, you said a couple of interesting things there. You raised this whole working from home, working from office concept. And you mentioned people who maybe have caring responsibilities. I don't know if you're familiar with a guy called Doctor Nicholas Bloom.

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Helena 13:58

He's a Stanford. I think he's a Brit, actually. But he's a Stanford professor, and he's done a number of pre and post pandemic studies on the impact of remote or virtual working, hybrid working, and how that impacts people's careers. And he did a pre pandemic study that I thought was really interesting. It was a chinese company, with quite a large population of workers in a contact center, and they did this all pre pandemic, really interestingly. There were quite a few thousand workers who were fully remote, and then they had peers who were fully at work, and they monitored the promotion rate of the people in the office versus the remote workers. And they found it was really interesting that those who were remote had a 50% less chance of being promoted.

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Helena 14:48

So he's expanded these studies post Covid, and found a few things. If everyone's remote or everyone's in the office, your chances of being promoted are equal. When you've got people who are in versus out of the office, those who are out of the office tend to suffer. And I guess my hypothesis there would be FaceTime, I guess, does matter. And if you've got some people in and some people out, it's not a level playing field, because those discretionary conversations, that chance to put your hand up for a project, it kind of does matter, right? We're humans, we're biased. We don't mean to be biased, let's say.

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Helena 15:24

But it is so much easier to connect with someone if they're also stood next to you. What do you think about that? Do you believe that's true? Do you think people who are kind of hybrid might suffer from a career perspective?

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Kendra 15:40

I think, I think a lot of things. It's really interesting. One of the things that we did when we looked at our alternative work week, which is what we called our compressed work week, we did look at the promotion percentage, and our promotion percentage of our participants was identical to our, I think by like three tenths, maybe off to our, those who had not participated. So participating in a compressed workweek at least was not negatively impacting them. I think it's a really important thing to look at. But I also think if we're thinking about when you've got a split difference, yes, there is proximity bias, and if we don't acknowledge and recognize that and do things to try to avoid it, we will continue to see those disparaging, those different, the difference in those promotion rates. But I also think if you're working remotely.

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Kendra 16:33

You might have had a reassessment of what's important to you. So perhaps career trajectory has shifted as well. Maybe you're actually spending more time with your loved ones and you're thinking, I don't really want the added responsibilities of that next level of managing people, or managing people in today's world has gotten too complex. It doesn't sound appealing to me. I'd rather continue to be an individual contributor. So I think there have been so many other changes within the world, and that there are other underlying aspects that potentially could be influencing that. But you are 100% right.

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Kendra 17:09

If you're in the office, you are more likely to get tapped on the shoulder to take on this special project. And if special projects are what's needed to get promoted, then you're at an advantage. So I think. I don't know if we'll ever get to 100%. I don't know that that's either. That's necessarily the right way either. Now, there are organizations like get lab.

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Kendra 17:31

Yes, they've operated that way. They're doing fantastic. But you still. I think having an office is a really nice add on. There are certainly people who feel more productive in the office who enjoy that daily commute. I miss my, as much as I hate to say it, I miss my, you know, daily to bride through London, where I was listening to a podcast or reading an audiobook, or just catching up on my socials. I don't have that commuting time anymore, and I don't build it into my daily life.

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Kendra 18:03

So I think you're always. I don't necessarily think it has to be one or the other, but I think we have to have these conversations about what could be the impact and ensure that we're trying to make it as fair as possible. And that means employees raising their hand to say, I'm going for a promotion this year. What do I need to take? That's where I think the world is shifting. And when we talk about the future of work. Is about the articulation of outcomes, being very clear about what impact we're driving towards and how we're going to get there so that we can actually look at productivity so that people really feel like they're able to be measured against something and it's very clear whether they met those objectives or did not, whether they did what they needed to do for that promotion or not, regardless of where they did it from.

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Helena 18:52

I think unanimously we see this inside the platform as well. The go figure platform is people really, they crave clarity and that's not just employees, it's also managers. They crave the clarity to be able to support their people. I guess it's like going to a wedding and not having a table plan, you know, it's just uncomfortable. So I think the more clarity we can give people on expectations and the more support we can give them to get there, I think the better for everyone. I see that just time and time and again. Now I want to segue into the future of work, which you just mentioned.

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Helena 19:30

It's like this, I don't know, vaporous concept, the future of work. It's never quite here. Right? It's always in the future. But I want to try and pin you down to a few, maybe a few predictions or maybe hopes that you have for the future of work. So what trends, perhaps are you noticing right now? Maybe, what are your hopes and aspirations?

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Helena 19:51

And maybe let's not go too long term, because who the heck knows what's going to happen just in the next one to two years? What are you noticing? What do you hope might happen as it relates to the future of work?

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Kendra 20:02

We've kind of touched on it. One I think is. I think we'll continue to see organizations really promoting their well being aspects, their programs, their offerings. And I don't think that's necessarily the wrong thing to do. I think organizations do need to be cognizant of the wellbeing of their employees and offer personalized plans, options, a buffet of sorts of insurances or wellbeing programs. But I don't think that that's going to solve the issue. I think that promoting that is probably the wrong energy to be spending where you need to be spending that energy is exactly what you just said, is on the clarity of objectives and outcomes and measurement.

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Kendra 20:48

You know, we know that what gets measured gets done. So we're seeing this proliferation of workplace analytics and looking at data with organizations, and that's great, but I think we need to go deeper. And I think the organizations that we'll see succeed are those that recognize that collecting the data points is important, but being very transparent about it and showing that you trust your people is equally as important. As soon as you introduce a mandate or if you're tracking keystrokes, you've lost trust with your employees.

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Helena 21:20

Yeah. And behaviorally, people hate that. Right? That's the first. That's the easiest way to disenfranchise your workforce.

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Kendra 21:25

Yep, 100%. So I think I am giving them that freedom. But fixing the work, if the work is toxic, then all the well being programs in the world are not going to keep me engaged. So having the conversations about what employees need through the work, and I think part of that is not just. The clarity, like you said, but also the recognition that I come to this piece of work differently than you do. And so giving me the freedom to do it the way that I was designed to do it, allowing me to problem solve, I think that's where that innovation comes, is people will be extremely innovative if they're doing it for themselves. So give them that opportunity to solve their own problems and to really spearhead the efforts around there, because they're going to deliver and design a better product than you could have imagined.

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Kendra 22:19

So I think, you know, I think those are. That's my hope, is that we really recognize that we can't keep cramming people into these square boxes of these roles, but that we really need to acknowledge and help them as individuals, acknowledge the gifts that they bring to the table and provide them an opportunity to bring all of that to the table, to express themselves through the work that they do, to encourage that passion and that drive. And that all happens through kind of self discovery, self acceptance, and then the company facilitating additional personal development in that space, kind.

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Helena 22:52

Of like the HR functions going through some of the same. I don't know, growth that the marketing function did. Right. So as soon as some of these. I don't know what exactly drove that. Maybe it's just the fact that technology caught up. Right.

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Helena 23:04

And it was infinitely more possible to really know your customer. Yeah, I think we're going through the same transition. It's now about knowing your employees and recognizing their uniqueness and like you say, putting them in the place where they can thrive. And I agree with what you said. Like, our needs change. Like, I'm a totally different person, thankfully, than I was when I was 20, and my goals and aspirations are completely different now. So I think we're going through this same journey of hyper personalization, and I personally see that.

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Helena 23:36

I don't want to be too sweeping just to say that all younger workers want and crave this, because I actually think no matter your generation, everyone wants to have a bit more of a tailored experience. But we're getting to the stage now where we're going to have something wild, like six generations in the workforce. So it has to change, right, to accommodate, you know, someone at the beginning of their career versus someone who's maybe approaching the end of their career, especially if we're going to work longer. We just have to design work and workplaces differently, I think.

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Kendra 24:07

100%. And one of the things I see a lack of, and I guess I haven't looked that hard, but. What about those transitioning out of the workforce? We do have this amazing opportunity for these boomers who are leaving the workforce, and oftentimes it's like, okay, when are you retiring? Especially at critical times, like right now with the way the economy is, HR is looking at cutting heads who can kind of see if they're ready for early retirement. But this is an entire generation that we should be tapping for their knowledge because there's a lot of really beautiful, useful things there. So what about, you know, transitioning them out to partnerships, part time roles, to contracting roles?

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Kendra 24:49

I think we just need to get more creative about that. Again, like I said before about that employee employer value proposition, the dynamics have changed so much. We've got to take advantage of short term and part time and different contracting systems because there's a lot of people who want to be involved. They just don't want to be involved. 40 hours a week, from the hours of nine to five at this certain location, I think you tap onto something or tap into something really important there and.

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Helena 25:20

We have a kind of, I don't know if you'd call it an engagement module or like a career. We call it the career upgrade experience. And in that we ask people what makes them tick and what we found. We don't monitor age demographics in the platform, in all honesty, but we did notice with more tenured or more experienced employees, there was a higher propensity to want to teach others. And that's such an untapped goldmine. I don't know when it clicks over in you, whether you. I don't know when that clicked over in me, but I sort of flipped over from kind of wanting to take as much as I could from the workplace to actually being equally, if not more motivated by giving.

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Helena 26:05

And so, you know, imagine that you could take your more seasoned or experienced workers or even some of your younger workers and have them kind of cross mentor each other, develop each other. It's such an untapped goldmine, I think, in my view.

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Kendra 26:19

Yeah, completely. I think bringing people together, when we talk about diversity, we have to also look at diversity and demographic of age and experience. And so bringing people together through things like reverse mentoring is such an untapped playing field. There is so much that could be gained by just. Providing that opportunity to get different people in the room and at the table.

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Helena 26:44 

Get out of the way.

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Kendra 26:45

All of it. Yeah, just let them go. So I think that's a really important group of people that we should really be thinking about and focusing on. And like you said, you know, asking people, I'd be really curious to know if you did look, if you did have some of that demographic, the age information, you know, are the younger generations able to articulate what motivates them? Are they able to articulate better than the older generation? Because I think, again, it gets into that personalization, and it's what I see in the conversations I'm having these days, is that people are feeling unmotivated by the workplace. They're feeling unsatisfied.

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Kendra 27:21

They're unfulfilled. They feel that there's things lacking, and they don't have that opportunity necessarily to teach or to have the impact that they want to have. They're feeling a little bit more like a cog in a wheel, and nobody wants to feel that way. That takes away all of our uniqueness and the ability to really make that impact. And so. Asking the question is a really first important step. And I think engagement information, we need to continue to collect it, but we need to also be digging deeper into the questions that we're asking, because we haven't necessarily done that for 40 years.

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Kendra 27:57

We're still asking quite a bit of the same questions. And what I'm hearing from more and more people who are leaving the workforce, whether that's through choice, through burnout, being laid off and deciding not to go back into the workforce and doing something on their own, is that they lost that motivation. They didn't feel like they could bring their whole selves, they didn't feel like they were sharing in the profits or that they were fully satiated and satisfied by the work that they were doing. So there's a lot to uncover there.

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Helena 28:28

I really wonder if AI knows that, like, as we record this today. chatGPT four o got released yesterday everywhere. Some of that, I mean, it's taken a real growth leap, right? And I can't help wondering if it's going to go one of two ways. The optimist in me is like, okay, it's going to take away all of the robot type work that we do. The pessimistic side of me is like, okay, what's going to be left and what will the human's role in this be? Any views on that?

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Helena 28:58

What's your probability of doom?

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Kendra 29:01

Yeah. My doom's high. I do think, I think the thing that scares me the most about it is the loss of creativity, which is the thing that we as humans bring to the table that I don't see AI fully replacing. So we've got to be very clear about when we use it and how we use it because it does have so much potential in alleviating a lot of our daily grind. Right. And the mundane tasks that we do. You know, we think about the past and the invention of, with Ford bringing in the assembly line.

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Kendra 29:38

Right. He talked and Tesla talked about, oh, in the future they're going to be working 4 hours a week. Well, yeah, well that hasn't materialized. Yeah. That has not materialized. And I don't think that AI is going to necessarily reduce our work hours because we're not actually focused on reducing our work hours. We're just focused on the work that it can help product uses.

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Kendra 29:58

Yeah. So I do think that it's a bit scary and I think we have to be very clear about relying on it too heavily for some of those creative, for writing, et cetera, because people will lose that touch. So there was an interesting study that just came out this week, I think from Accenture. They talked about how 75% of organizations are not prepared with strategies to really ensure positive employee experience outcomes as a result of generative AI. Right. So most companies are not prepared to tell their employees how to use generative AI. So it's a really great asset.

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Kendra 30:35

But again, we have to be very clear. Let's make sure we're using it for the right things and not the wrong things, that we're not stripping away the human beauty that we bring to the table and that we're just using it in more of that kind of task oriented way.

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Helena 30:50

I love it. I have to say, using generative AI has changed my life. I use it to draft things, inspire me. I get to do analysis that I just couldn't do myself. I don't have the brainpower, the resources to do it. So in terms of kick starting ideas, it also shields my team from a lot of my craziness. I can ask the AI, rather than asking some poor soul in my team to do something wild.

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Helena 31:15

So I don't know. A big fan, but your comment about companies not preparing their workforce. I wonder if it's because they themselves are still coming to grips with what might this mean? And I don't know. The way I think about it, in terms of horizons, there's the kind of right now horizon, maybe. What could I do quicker, faster? What don't I have to do?

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Helena 31:38

What would take me one person that it took me two people to do in the past. But there's a bit of an existential threat. It also makes me think what will my company do in the future? So again we're an HR tech startup. There are things that we can do now that would have been inconceivable just nine months ago that really get me thinking about what it is that we should be doing and building. So if I level it up a bit it's quite big and it's quite scary to imagine what this might do to not only at a company level but an individual level. I still feel optimistic, I still feel excited.

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Helena 32:13

We're going through a decline in birth rate. I know it doesn't feel like a today problem right? But if we are going to continue shrinking as a population we almost have no choice but to automate. So I don't know. I'm scared and nervous and excited and everything all at the same time.

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Kendra 32:32

Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I think that, like you said, it does it spur some brilliant ideas, and it has so much potential and so many possibilities. And even now, I'm already carrying my child, who's seven. You know, we talk about how to ask questions that are going to generate the right answers. We talk about prompt engineering, you know, because that's going to be the skillset that he's going to need more so than how to write cursive.

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Helena 33:01

I 100% agree. You know, the analogy I was laughing about this online with someone is like, you know, how. How useful is trigonometry or whatever it has been in my life, you know? Well, not very. Yeah. What your son will end up learning, or even not learning. This is interesting to think about, what he won't need to learn because of generative AI or AI holistically.

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Helena 33:22

So fascinating to think. I'm almost glad I'm not a really young person now, if I'm quite honest.

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Kendra   33:27 

Yeah, I agree.

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Helena 33:29

You have gone through your own interesting transition, and we can see in the background there you have a new podcast. What's next for you? And tell us about your podcast.

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Kendra 33:42

Yeah. So I've launched the like minded Radicals, which is a podcast really focused on kind of workplace transformation, cultural transformation. It's predicated on the idea that the workplace is broken. There are a lot of people who are leaving. And again, like I said, either it's burnout layoffs, just hitting the top of the ladder and looking around and thinking. It's not really what I expected. And I'm meeting a large percentage of people who are choosing not to go back, not to go back inside, as they say.

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Kendra 34:17

And so I'm exploring, well, what is it that made you leave, and what is it that you are potentially trying to fix? Because what I also see is that a lot of people leave and then say, well, I'm going to help fix it from the outside. And so it's like, well, let's figure out what that.

What's wrong so we can fix it before we lose all of our really great talent. And what I'm hearing is, I don't know if it's an existential crisis, things that were brought on by Covid, you know, again, things that are brought on by a burnout. But a lot of people are feeling like they're not able to make the impact that they want to. They don't necessarily find as much meaning in their work.

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Kendra 34:54

You know, I love that companies are starting to talk about purpose, but. Your purpose isn't necessarily my purpose. So how do you facilitate me to understand what my purpose is so that I can find ways to ensure that I'm living my purpose in the work that I'm doing that's working towards your purpose as an organization? Again, it's about that hyper personalization. And so we speak to people who are still within organizations, what they're doing to approach things differently. People who have left, like yourself, who are founders, are just trying to explore like what is it that need to change so that we don't continue to see an exodus of top talent and that we can really influence and impact the experience for everybody. Because work has become, it's not just about my employee experience, it's about my human experience.

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Kendra 35:46

It dominates my time. And work should place, the workplace should be a place where I can go and express myself fully and bring all of my talents to the table and produce something that is meaningful and impactful. And right now that's not always necessarily the case.

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Helena 36:05

Where can people find your podcast?

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Kendra 36:07

Yeah, it's called the like minded radicals. You can find it on Spotify, Apple, Amazon, all of the smaller podcast producers. You can also watch us on YouTube at the like minded radicals and follow along and get to know the radicals a little more on www.thelikemindedradicals.com.

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Helena 36:28

Now, final words from you. What advice do you have to anyone in an HR or maybe leadership role who is trying to think a bit more radically or innovatively? Any final words for anyone watching this?

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Kendra 36:45

Yeah, I think. Get deep. Get deep with yourself first, and then find ways to get a little bit deeper with your employees and understand their desires and their needs and their experiences and provide them the freedom to explore. Those would be my advice.

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Helena 37:08

Kendra, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me. I have, as ever, thoroughly enjoyed this conversation.

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Kendra 37:13

As have I. Thank you.

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