198. Should we all move to Iceland? PLUS! Reverse bucket lists, imposter syndrome and the trust crisis we can’t ignore, with Rose Soffel - This Week in Work 20th May 2025
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Coming up this week in work, do you struggle with imposter syndrome or lead someone who does? Science may have a solution. This week, we explore a simple mindset shift that helps people recognize their progress, rebuild confidence and stop feeling like a fraud. What can the UK learn from Iceland's 36-hour work week?

And in this week's workplace surgery, how do you know if you're actually good at interviewing?

One business owner asks whether interview style is attracting the right people or quietly holding their team and their business back. This is Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture. Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a charter occupational psychologist. My name is Al. I'm a business owner.

And together, we help organizations build amazing workplace cultures. We'll be diving straight into this week's episode after a very quick word from our sponsors. HubSpot's Inbound Event 2025 is bringing together the brightest minds in business, AI, and entrepreneurship. We're talking Amy Poehler, the genius behind ChatGPT, Dario Morode, and Sean Evans from Hot Ones, because apparently even hot sauce interviews

can teach us about business strategy. Yes, September the 3rd until September the 5th in San Francisco. And no, this isn't just another one of those conferences where you pretend to take notes while secretly checking your phone. This is three full days of actionable insights that you can actually use to grow your business. What I love about this is the focus on practical application. We enjoy applied science here. You're not just sitting through fluffy keynotes.

You're getting tactical breakout sessions, networking with people who are actually building things and learning from entrepreneurs who figured out how to thrive in this AI powered world. Plus, come on, you're in San Francisco, the global headquarters of Let's Disrupt Everything and See What Happens.

It's the perfect place to meet your next co-founder, investor, or just someone who gets why you're obsessed with optimizing your customer acquisition funnel. Head to inbound.com forward slash register to see the range of tickets, including VIP options. Fancy. Fancy, fancy. Fancy. Trust us, your future self will thank you for actually investing in learning something useful. Guess what, Al? What? We're going to be there.

No, we're not. I am. I'm manifesting. Oh, okay. Yeah, you can come and meet us there. That's the reason to go and book your ticket today. VIP experience will no doubt include us. I'd imagine they'd invite us to the VIP area. So go and visit inbound.com slash register to get your ticket today. Welcome back. Before we get into Leanne's favorite time of the week, Leah, you're in a different background and you're not also, you're not sitting opposite me. I'm back on the road again.

Can't keep still, Al. I can't keep still. No, I'm back in the UK. I came back for a Eurovision party, annual Eurovision party, which was fantastic, apart from the scoring. That was disappointing. Then I went to the 10K run in Manchester to see a few of my friends run, which was also a glorious day. And now I am back in North Wales, where I'm from, fun fact, from

and I'm here with my mum and dad for the rest of the day and then I fly home back to you all tomorrow. Fabulous, fabulous. Just the short five and a half hour round trip to the airport to pick you up. Anyway, it sounds like I don't want to do it. I do. I really miss you. I really do miss you and it's not just because our dogs are doing my head in. Anyway, it's time for you. It's time for the news roundup. Yes, it is. It's still my favourite time to read to you, Jingles.

Right on brand. Beautiful, beautiful. What have you seen this week, Leigh? Reverse bucket list. Any ideas what it might mean? Reverse bucket list. Stuff that you're not going to do in your life. No. Although I like the sound of that. I'm not going to do the Manchester 10K run. That's my reverse bucket list. I'm just not, I ain't doing that. I'm not built for it. I don't like it. I don't want to do it. So you've heard of a bucket list? I have. That is, there's a list of containers you really like to keep water in.

Your favorite things to carry milk in in Alpine countries, no? In some circles. Just in case anyone doesn't know...

Just in case anyone doesn't know what a bucket list is, go on. Yeah, so I'm talking about the bucket list that you make with all of your big dreams, your goals, things like going to the Maldives, swimming with dolphins, writing a book. The things that you need to do before you die. Well, there is a new... It's all about buckets, isn't it? All about buckets. Well, that's where it comes from, isn't it? It's the list before you kick the bucket. It's called a bucket list. Anyway, carry on. Right, so...

It's flawless as ever. Carry on. It's a reverse bucket list. Well, you let me speak. I'd like to say there's a delay, but there's not. Carry on.

The reverse bucket list is all about looking backwards instead of looking forwards. So I saw this in HuffPost, an article by Caroline Bologna, I think that's how you say her name, and it's pretty simple. Instead of focusing on what you still want to achieve, you take some time to reflect on

on what you've already achieved, the wins, the progress, just the things that you've managed to get through, like a really, a really tough year or a very sad making your original song contest results segment. Or this segment here where I keep talking over you. That's a tough situation, yes.

So, psychotherapist Omar Terez described it as this, a mindfulness exercise that could include anything from being promoted to learning a new skill, just rebuilding after a hard year. It's about recognition, not goal setting. So, Al, I know you're kind of into the whole mantras and the manifestation. You've done a lot of that before in the past. How do you feel about having a reverse bucket list to reflect back with you?

I honestly think, all joking aside, I think it is absolutely brilliant. I also think that you make up these names. We've got Caroline Bologna. We've got... Who have we got? Something Torres. I'm sure you make these names up. But no, I think there's a huge... I didn't know anything about psychology, but I read a lot of the sort of self-help books. And so a lot of them are saying that you...

that, yes, it's great to have goals, but if you just continually look at the stretch between what you haven't achieved and where you are now, great, that pushes you forward, but God, it can get you down. And as someone who has been bankrupt with about £5.50 in their bank account to where we are today...

I know that that is such an important thing to do because even when I was bankrupt, I look back and go, look what I did. I was really pleased. And that's, that was some of my biggest moments. I think of bankruptcy is I could have looked at it and gone, well, I did have a business and I did have two houses and now they both got repossessed. And now I'm on the bones of my ass.

But instead of doing that, I was like, look what I did. I bought a house at like 24. I bought another house at 27. I built a business. Well, it didn't work, but I built a business, 20 people, 20 grand a week. So yes, I'm a huge, huge, huge believer in this. Yeah. And as you say, it's not necessarily about pretending everything's fine and falling into that kind of toxic...

positivity state it's just kind of trying to take a an objective view of what has been done and the article suggests that this counts as something that's called success amnesia which is when you tend to forget what you've achieved because you're already six eight on what

next that's particularly common in high achievers what's also common in high achievers is imposter syndrome and one of the key issues if you do have imposter syndrome is an inability to internalize your achievement internalize your successes so actually going through an exercise like this sitting down and thinking about

what you've achieved today, what you've achieved this week, what you've achieved this month, this year, could actually be a really effective way of combating imposter syndrome and actually starting to absorb those good things, which is also going to improve our confidence or our self-efficacy, as psychologists like to call it, which is a key part of our psychological capital, which helps us be resilient when everything's really bad.

really tough. So there you go, a reverse bucket list. It is fact and science, mainly mindfulness science, and seems to be something that might be worth looking at. In terms of if you want to do this with a team, some suggestions here. So you can ask your team to reflect on one thing they've achieved this year, not just targets, but personal growth, because

You can build on some reflection alongside goal setting in your performance review from one-to-one. And for yourself, as I said, jot down five or ten things your past self would be genuinely impressed by. I will leave a link to the full article in the show notes. I'm not leaving as we go. Well, before we move on to that, I just want to say that I think actually if you were to... Maybe you tell me the psychology behind this, but my temptation would not be saying, what have you done this year? But every week...

is to have a chat with either in a group or whatever basis and say, what have you done this last week that you were proud of? And it doesn't have to be you shipped some great big update. It could just be that you managed to get in touch with someone who you were trying to get in touch with for a few months now. Every week then you're getting a little, is it dopamine boost? Serotonin? I don't know which one it is. But it gives you that boost because you're feeling like I've done something

And then you then also allow it kind of like has that there's lots of things going on here in my head. There's something called the Seinfeld, the Seinfeld something Seinfeld syndrome or something or Seinfeld something. And the idea was that Seinfeld wrote one joke every single day and he put across in his calendar to write, say, wrote a joke. This is the comedian, not necessarily the guy in Seinfeld, although he is the same guy and they look very similar.

But yeah, and so it created this chain. So every single day, so when he looked at his calendar, he got months and months of crosses every single day. He's like, well, I can't not write a joke today. I've got to, even if it's bad. So I think this brings up the idea that you are grateful. And we all know gratitude is like so, so important. You're grateful for what you've done. You're proud of what you've done, but also almost create something like, well, Monday, I'm going to have to tell the team what I've done this week. So I'm going to have to do something.

or make it up. Yeah, or I think if maybe you want to take that pressure off them. Because the problem with kind of these things is when you say, right, every Monday or every Friday in our meeting, in our wrap-up meeting, we're going to talk about something that you've achieved that week and you start to feel a bit formulated, a bit pressured and a bit like you're digging around for something to say. So I agree that small frequency is good.

every week I'm not sure it may depend on the individual or maybe how busy things are certainly every month what might be nice is if you alternate it so one week you say one thing that you're proud of achieving this week and maybe the next week you have to nominate somebody else and say I was really impressed by what Al did this week

in terms of doing that. And then that also builds that recognition and that respect and stability amongst team members. So I think having an ex-file like that, if you mix it up a bit so it doesn't get too formulaic and too repetitive, as you say, can do all these things in terms of team building, in terms of imposter syndrome, in terms of recognition, in terms of goal setting, yeah, it would be really great. Oh my God, I love that. That you go around the room and say something that you were impressed by someone else doing.

That is incredible. We're going to call that the gopsal method from now on. That's your move. The gopsal method. Anyway, right. So talking of names, I was reading The Guardian, as would be my... As you usually do. As I usually do. Do you know what's really funny? You could go, really? I know. Do you know what's really funny is that politically, I probably couldn't be further from The Guardian, but actually it is...

Really, really good stuff. Even though they keep coming around and keep guilting me. The little pop-ups are going, are you paying? I'm like, no, not yet. Not yet. But I might have to pay now. If you're from The Guardian, you're listening, send me a message and I'll check on your LinkedIn. And if you do work for The Guardian, then I'll pay for it. There you go. There's my guarantee. So The Guardian, it was an Icelandic lady called Maria. Now we talk about surnames here.

I'm going to spell this really quickly and then Leanne, you can tell me how to say it. It's H-J-A-L-M-T-Y-S-D-O-T-T-I-R. Nearly. It's H-J-A-L-M-T-Y-S-D-O-T-T-I-R.

It's not really, I just made it up. Sorry, if you are Maria, if you're listening. No, I just had a go. So anyway, so she's a Icelandic. She's been living and working the four-hour working week for six years. But the question is, is it actually working? Now, this is a longitudinal study, Leanne. You love a bit of longitudinal studies, don't you? Back in 2019, Iceland officially reduced the standard work week from 40 to 36 hours.

which affected nearly 90% of the working population. Just to give you a bit of an idea, we've had some brilliant people from the Working Time Directive on, both people actually, I think Grace and Joe were both on as guests previously. They've been doing a trial in Ireland and also in the UK, but it's like a tiny percentage, probably like 0.9% of the workforce. This is 90%. Nine out of 10 jobs were cut to four days. The change followed the successful trials,

that involved about 1% of Iceland's workforce, which again is maybe good news for the UK. I don't know. But unlike Belgium's four-day working model, which they brought in, I think, three years ago, they compressed 40 hours into four days. Iceland genuinely reduced... I know, Leigh-Anne, shake your head. Iceland genuinely reduced everyone's work, so they just do work for four days. They don't have to do...

the full five days now it is improved gender equality because women who previously worked part-time 36 hours now a full-time status full-time pay benefits etc for example the author maria she said her husband who's a government worker um and also pigeon fancier as well if you're not if you don't know what pigeon fancy means it's it's not anything weird it's just someone who likes pigeons

He now takes two full Fridays off a month, and he loves to spend his free days sleeping in, according to Maria, calling fellow pigeon enthusiasts, cleaning and picking up their son from school. I can't imagine you'd be doing all that at the same time, but anyway, it sounds like a relatively fun Friday. So the author describes seeing a visible happy feeling on her husband's face every Thursday before his day off. That's how she knows the following Friday is his day off.

There was another example at a large car dealership. Office workers chose to work shorter daily hours or full half days off. And the mechanics, they adjusted their shift patterns, but they still fixed the same number of cars on time. So despite these initial concerns, productivity has remained stable or improved.

There you go, Joe and Grace, you knew this, Leanne knew this, and it's just down to better prioritization, more efficient meetings, just getting rid of the stuff, as we've talked about with Benitez, Bert Benitez, I can't remember who's another guy came on, phenomenal guy. Banks Benitez. Banks Benitez, that's it, sorry, sorry, Banks Benitez.

And he basically says that all of this is going to increase job satisfaction. It's going to reduce stress. It's going to give you happier employees overall. Now, this is the key bit. This is science. In Reykjavik, they measured the rush hour traffic on a Friday and they notice it has been noticeably decreased, obviously making city travel easier, making people happier. And that's the core thing, isn't it? On a Friday, you can see how many people are not working.

Now, there is a Gallup World Poll every year, which measures the happiest country. 2025, Iceland, number three. Finland, Denmark, then Iceland. Now, what's interesting is Belgium, you know, where they've compressed their five days into four, they're 14th, and the UK and the US are 23 and 24, respectively. So, I think there's something in this, Leigh. What do you think? There's definitely something in this. Um...

And I think the first thing to say, a reduced working week is the goal here, not compressed hours. So whether you want to call it, I think people get hung up on the four-day work week, doesn't it? Like it has to be four days. And it's when we spoke to Jeanette from the Curve group, that's not necessarily the ideal solution for everybody. It's actually working for carers, for example, people with children.

Having a shorter working day five days a week is much better than having a four-day work week. But either way, compressing 40 hours into four days is not it. We're talking about overall a reduced working week.

So those cynics out there that might be thinking, oh, that's really nice. But, you know, we have a 40-hour working week for a reason. We always have done. People are just lazy. They need to continue to work 40 hours. And I'm sure there's some Americans that are laughing out loud right now going, 40 hours? That would be nice. I work 65 on a regular. So I think it's, I would leave you with this as a little point of reflection.

When the 40-hour working week came in, we were back in like the 1920s, was it Al? 30s? Henry Ford? Yeah, Henry Ford, yeah. 8-8-8. So it's eight hours sleep, eight hours work, eight hours recreation. That was fine when for those eight hours at work, you'd go to work, you'd be there for eight hours, you'd leave and you wouldn't be taking any work with you.

Nobody would be intruding your recreational time or your rest time about work. Whereas now we have our phones, we're getting calls and emails, we're getting WhatsApp messages from our manager, we're getting those phone calls. It's so much interruption from work in our other eight hours and eight hours, our rest and recovery and our recreation. So it's not sustainable.

And the sign that's not sustainable is mental health is getting worse, burnout is going up, productivity is down, engagement is down. All the statistics are showing us in the UK and in a lot of European countries and in Australia and America that work as we're currently doing it isn't sustainable.

And what we're seeing now as a potential solution, and it's one of several, a reduced working week as a possible solution, is that it is working. And all the data is showing that it's working for the individual, for the business, and clearly now from Iceland at a societal level as well. So be sceptical.

But make no mistake, how we're currently working is not sustainable and something needs to change. So, Lee, to round this off, I'm sure you've got one more thing you want to talk about. I have. Well, sticking with the theme of mental health, really. So, you know that I kind of say quite a lot, if you do one thing, train your managers. Train your managers, yeah. Well, I realised last week after a surgery question that I'm a bit guilty of not always explaining what you should train your managers in.

And I thought that was probably a bit of a... A bit of a... Yeah, I let the team down. Is that YouTube comment once said? Did you see the YouTube comment from the other day? No. Some little twerp has called me grotesque. What do you mean? The comment just said she is grotesque. To be fair, I was talking about touching grass. So maybe they meant the subject matter. But...

You know you made it when you get trolled on YouTube, don't you? As soon as we get off this call, I'm going to go find that comment and I'm going to log in as my account and I'm going to offer this person outside. I'll find out where they are in the world and I'll fly over there and I'll punch them in the face. Anyway. Thanks, love. You're not grotesque. Thanks, love. You are beautiful. But you are talking about training managers, not grotesqueness.

Yes, or indeed touching grass. So there is a new study that has been published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, the JUPE, as we like to call it in the psychology world. That's not true. I've totally just made that up, but I'd like to make it a thing. JUPE. I love it.

It's basically looked at mental health, at managers and how training could make a difference. So the research is doing over 7,000 UK businesses over three years. What's that, Al?

That's a longitudinal study. That's a longitudinal study with a large sample size. We like those two things very, very much. And here's what they found. Companies that train their line managers in mental health are less likely to see presenteeism in their team. So just to explain very quickly what presenteeism is, it's basically when somebody shows up for work where they're not well enough to be there, but we're not really talking about necessarily having

having a bit of a cold it's people that are really not functioning properly whether that be physically or psychologically they are not capable of working but they are showing up to work

Now, some people might go, well, that's good because they're really engaged with their job or they're being very loyal to their employer. Chances are they're feeling pressure to be there rather than wanting to be. But even if it is, you know, the case that they're just very dedicated, presenteeism slows organizational performance down because people make mistakes. People are tired. Decisions

take longer things are easy to miss it's much easier for a manager to plan around somebody not being there and make sure that things still get done than assuming somebody is there doing their job and actually they're struggling to keep up and actually perform at a level that that the organization requires the presentism is a problem and it is estimated across the uk economy billions of pounds each year in terms of lower productivity and performance

So anyway, that's presentism. So what this study found was that when managers are trained to support mental health, staff are less likely to push through when they shouldn't. The companies were also more likely to be doing other things as well, like encouraging early conversations, promoting boundaries and doing regular check-ins. Um,

The researchers also did find something else that was interesting and a little bit frustrating from a psychology perspective. Even when the companies had the right intentions and knew what to do, they often struggled with the follow through. And the study called this the knowing doing gap.

So for example, they might give their managers mental health first aid training, but then not give their managers the time to have these regular check-ins with managers. They'll pack their diaries for the client meetings so they don't have the time to actually spend with their people on these one-to-ones and set aside this relationship building and check-in time.

ways that you could close the gap according to researchers it's not just about having a policy or that one training session it's about building in that ongoing support giving managers the time and resources they need to act on what they've learned and making sure that mental health stays on the agenda not just a part of an awareness week through a really interesting and strong piece of research it really pinpoints actually an area of

of training that we can give managers and it'll have a very positive impact across the workforce as long as it's backed by action and supported in an ongoing way through all the systems and processes. What do we think? About time to Leah and to be honest I know when you say train your managers if you do one thing then I can answer that question probably most regular listeners can. It's a good point though you're not really sure what to start in because you know do you train technically do you train how to manage

And this sounds like a really good start. We're going to go to a short break in a second. I just want to explain. I put this shirt on thinking it looked nice and cool and summery. And I suppose to make up a word, crumple chic.

And now I realize on camera, it looks like I'm not eyeing my shirt. So if you're on YouTube, I'm really sorry. It's supposed to look cool, but it just looks like I'm unkempt. So after the break, we've got the weekly workplace surgery. We've also got the hot take. We've got lots more. We've got more of my shirt. So we'll see you in a second.

Listen to Billion Dollar Moves wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome back. Right now, it is time for our hot take. If you're a regular listener, you will know that this is where we bring you the spicy, sometimes controversial opinions about the workplace that get us all thinking. And today we are talking about something many of us have felt, but perhaps draw to name, the growing disconnect between bosses and their staff.

Yeah, if we think back, what, God, it's five years now to the pandemic, everyone was always had this thing of going, we're in this together. Don't worry about it. You know, we're a team. If you fast forward to now, and it just feels like we've gone completely backwards, it's back to getting bums on seats and treating remote work like it was all just some kind of like weird dream. So what happened to all that trust we supposedly built during the pandemic?

And that is exactly what our guest today calls the trust crisis. Rose Soffel helps organizations scale without breaking their culture or burning out their people. She's been watching this shift unfold from the front lines, working with companies, trying to balance growth while keeping what made them special in the first place. And she's got some thoughts on how behavioral science might actually offer us a way forward. So my

So my name is Rose Sofal. I am a talent and culture consultant and I'm a coach. I help organizations grow and scale without breaking what makes them great, which is usually their people and their culture. A lot of time as organizations grow, they find that they kind of lose that original culture or their core values that they kind of founded their organization with. So I help leaders kind of steer their organization.

in a growth trajectory without losing kind of that culture that made them fantastic in the first place. Tell us, there's something you want to get off your chest. What is your hot take, Rose? So my hot take is that we are in a trust crisis at the moment between employees and employers. But I believe that behavioral science might be the answer. Tell us more. First of all, explain what you mean by a trust crisis. So trust.

In 2022, when I decided to go back into education, so I didn't go to uni straight out of school. I did my CIPD as kind of professional development and I decided to do a master's in organisational psychology. So when I made this decision, we were in...

a really interesting place from a people and culture perspective. We were really focusing on putting employee well-being first, people having much better work-life balances, people were approaching work differently. You know, we were no longer in that kind of contract in exchange for services. We were really focusing on what works well for individuals, how people work well. And that was one of the best things to come out of COVID. You know, I think that maybe

years, maybe even decades worth of progress was made over the course of just a few months where organisations had to adapt in order to deliver. And we know now from looking at the research post-COVID that the productivity wasn't actually impacted. So that was amazing. But that has meant that now we're in a bit of a trust crisis because fast forward to 2024 when I actually started my master's, we're in a completely different landscape. You know, we are seeing

mandated return to office. We are seeing diversity and inclusion policies being scrapped. We are seeing disengagement across the board at organisational level. Burnout is the highest it's ever been. And I think really the progress that we made

And, you know, the freedom that we gave people by taking that away from them is causing this trust issue. And I think we're really regressing with the progress that we made, which is such a shame. So are we fundamentally talking about a one-way trust issue that the employees don't trust their bosses or is it going two ways?

Definitely two ways. So as you've seen over the last few months, you know, return to office is a key example of this, you know, being mandated, coming back into the office, which is, you know, really a control thing from an organisational perspective. We know from the research that it's better to have a hybrid environment, you know, people work together.

and feel more trusted, they're more engaged, they have a better work-life balance, which we see from post-COVID that that's really, really important to individuals. So I suppose the real issue is around this erosion of trust. So as I mentioned, diversity and inclusion policies being cut, return to office being mandated is another really good example. So forcing people to come back into the office.

There was something that was published this week actually to say that the return to office is actually a way to quietly restructure organisations. But what will happen is as a result of that, you're going to lose the best talent.

And actually, I've had a comment stuck in my mind all week. I saw there's an economist that I follow. He's a Stanford professor called Nick Bloom on LinkedIn. So Nick says that markets work and you get what you pay for. So what that essentially means is if you're mandating return to office, you will get worse talent, you know, ultimately. And I think...

That is something that's going to be hugely detrimental to organizations when they're trying to grow and scale. They're not going to be able to get the talent that they want in the organization. And I think ultimately this issue of this erosion of trust, this disengagement, people quite quitting, you know, losing really good talent, retention problems, trying to hire again, you know, especially if you've got return to office mandated.

This is ultimately going to have an impact on the organization's bottom line. This is going to hit their revenue. It's going to be a commercial impact. So it's not just a HR issue. It's a commercial and strategic issue that needs to be really, really looked at. You started off this by saying that there is a fundamental trust issue and that behavioral science can fix it. What is behavioral science and why is it going to fix it?

So when I'm talking about behavioral science, I'm talking about using kind of psychology. So for me personally, I would say that my kind of role now is taking everything that I've learned in the last 10 years or so of my career. I've worked for huge organizations like Amazon. I've worked for kind of fintech startup unicorns like Revolut and taking all of what I've learned in my career

which has predominantly been around building high performance cultures and shaping strong strategic leadership teams. And how do I take all of that practical knowledge that I have learned in my career and use the academic research and data and science and use that to work with

the companies and organizations and leaders to shape that in a way where a they're doing the right thing for their people and b they're realizing the positive impact it's going to have on them commercially that now leaves hr leaders you know people working strategic hr roles organizational business psychologists even operational leaders who've ended up with that people hat and

They now have this huge responsibility to take the science, the data, everything they know about what works and change.

turn that into digestible enough content for the right people in the room. So we are now in a world where HR fluff is no longer tolerated. We are in a place where you have to make sure that when you're articulating these people strategies, these human first policies, all this incredible work that we did over COVID that we don't want to lose, that you're making it digestible enough and understandable enough for the people in the room who make the decisions.

that it links directly with the organizational growth plans and their business goals. And that's really important. You've worked with some big companies like Amazon, some startups like Revolut. What are you seeing that's working

in those companies? And does it differ if they're a large company or a small company? I think there are some basic principles that can be across large organizations and smaller organizations. And the biggest thing is communication. I know that sounds really simple, but it's not always as simple as it sounds. So letting people know what the organizational goals are and really clearly communicating

you know, letting people know where you are against the progress of that goals. And if there are any changes that need to come up just by being as transparent and as honest and open with the communication as possible. Obviously there's some information you can't share across businesses, but it's when you start to see things happening and no one's saying anything about it. People are being exited, you know,

you know, it all feels a bit cloak and dagger. That's when people start to feel that discomfort and that threat, you know, and then that can really impact trust. Whereas if you're open and honest as an organisation,

then that's something really really easy to fix so I mean easy but not easy you've got to be consistent with it as well and another thing and Revolut do this beautifully is they have that great hybrid work setup so you can work anywhere in the world you can work in their office they've got a beautiful office in Canary Wharf and go in five days a week going one day a week they're really really focusing on you work what you choose a working pattern that works best for you and I

And I think that really does get the most out of people when you allow them that flexibility and that freedom. Some people love being in the office five days a week. Other people like to go in, you know, hybrid. Other people are just remote only. And that's, you know, up to them, whatever they get, however they work best. And it

And it's really about understanding your people. This is a real opportunity to build something that is better, smarter and sustainable, all while being profitable. So the organisations that continue to care about these things will be the organisations that get the best talent. These will be the organisations that are connecting the science with the data into their strategies. They'll end up having happier, more engaged people. And as I mentioned, they'll have that kind of

more impact on their bottom line, they'll be more profitable and it's just better all around for everyone. And you know what makes me

I guess, chuckle in sadness. Do you know what I mean? I'd cry, but I've got no more tears, so I'm going to laugh instead. We've so quickly just undone all the great work we did during the pandemic, all the progress that we made, and that the research clearly shows

support. Productivity didn't suffer during remote work, yet companies are now rushing back to push people back into the office, these old, archaic models of control, let's be honest about it. As I said, there's lots of evidence that when you give your people autonomy, you're

when he gives them that flexibility, then the worst thing you can do at that point is take it away. It's going to be worse than if you never gave it to them in the first place. Yeah, and Nick Bloom, who was mentioned, they've got a name check in the heart tag. Nick, if you're listening, we need to get you on the pod. Everyone talks about it. Yeah, call us.

Anyway, Nick Bloom, he talks about markets work and you get what you pay for. If you're demanding people to commute the extra two hours daily just to sit in your office, you're essentially just paying them less per hour of your time because they're doing a 10-hour day, not an eight-hour day. The smart companies are the ones who are using this as a competitive advantage. They're the ones who are snatching great talent by saying, you don't have to come to the office. You can work from anywhere. You can work from Bali. You can work from your bath.

Maybe, but we need to be careful with electricals. It could be a terrible accident. Good point.

I think as well, you know, the psychological contract here as well that's so important has been broken. And we discussed this last week, a psychological contract is really just the expectations and promises we have with our employer. And once it is broken, then, you know, engagement is going to go down and performance is going to go down. A commitment is going to go down. And the companies that are treating flexible work as what I've called a pandemic perk,

which actually makes me feel a little bit nauseous rather than just should be I know you know it's not a perk it should be a fundamental shift in the way we work and you know as we heard before in the news roundup the system is broken and we're all paying for it and organisations are paying for it in terms of turnover and recruitment struggles and yeah and the skills gaps we're seeing it's

It's just, it's broken now. It's broken. Lee, really quickly, Rose was talking about behavioral science and how that could be the answer. Now, you two are obviously these big fancy psychologists and scientists, so you know exactly what that means. But can you just sort of tell us normals just what we can use behavioral science for and how we can use it to rebuild our trust at work? It's a simple case of understanding human motivation, how the decision we make impacts human motivation and behavior.

um, it's everything that pushes away from gut to what actually works in practice and how we can look at that and how we can measure that and how we can use it to predict what will happen. We've got decades of research that shows us that trust and openness and relationships and autonomy and purpose are the things that make us feel like we are engaging in meaningful work and purpose-led work. And that is what

makes us feel great about ourselves. It builds our own confidence. It builds our own resilience, our well-being. It means that we want to perform. It means we want to stay in an organization, do amazing things for them. It's everything that is so overlooked. And what's funny, you know, is that I have so many conversations with people that I just meet

out and about and they ask me what I do. And there is an intuitive psychologist, intuitive organizational psychologist in every single one of these people. Because they'll say something to me like, I used to love my job, but then I got a new manager and, you know, they didn't give me as much control over my work and they're always on my back. And you hear so many anecdotal stories and that all comes down to behavioral science.

because that cycle of contract has been broken or you've been treated in a way that doesn't make you think great about yourself or feel great about your work and that impacts how you behave and show up to the workplace. So really it's a simple thing that behavioral science is about the science of behavior and to understand that in the workforce is one of the great things we can do to improve organizational life and organizational performance. I

I smell a part two from Rose. All the links are, as always, in the show notes and go follow Rose on LinkedIn. She posts some really interesting stuff. She clearly knows her stuff. And if you feel like that problem sounds familiar, maybe drop her a message and have a chat with her. She's a really lovely, lovely woman as well. Yeah, really good.

Anyway, on to my favorite time of the week. It's time for the World Famous Weekly Workplace Surgery, where I put your questions to Leanne. Leanne is an occupational psychologist. Some people call it business psychology. Some people call it industrial psychology. Basically, she's an expert in workplace culture. I've got three questions to put to her today. Leanne, question number one. Do anonymous surveys...

actually work? I run a small SaaS startup and I'm thinking of introducing employee surveys to get a sense of how the team is really feeling. I've read that to get honest feedback, you need to keep it anonymous, offer a small incentive and explain why you're asking. But I'm still not sure how useful these actually are. Do surveys really work? Do they give you a good insight? And is anonymity the only way to get people to be honest?

of Rick and Danny, especially if you're asking about leadership and how the companies run. Oh, great question. Lee, I'm just going to put the three quid in you like a jukebox and press play. Go. What a great question. And this is right up my street, Al. Like you said, you put 50p in me and now I'm going to go. Are employee surveys a good way of gaining feedback? Yes, but they're not the only way of gaining feedback.

And as you rightly pointed out, the massive plus about doing an employee survey, an employee engagement survey, is if you offer confidentiality, you make sure it's anonymous. Now, in my world, I believe the best way to do that is to have that run by a third party who will basically be that wall that you will never see any of the raw data. So even if you wanted to as an employer, there's no way that you can see this raw data or the comments or identify who said what.

The problem is, is when an organisation runs this internally, even with the most well-meaning of HR practitioners or managers, there is a human tendency to just want to know who said what, especially if it's something negative. Like Al went off on one when somebody off of YouTube called me grotesque. I'm not so bothered, but you know, you get defensive and your back gets up and you want to know who said it and who they are. So my advice would be, if you're going to run a survey, use a consultant, use a third party, somebody like myself, who will be able to

provide that reassurance and gatekeeping. The thing, the point that I always make as well as the teams that I work with in terms of surveys that I do, confidentiality is a key pillar of the ethical code of conduct that I'm governed by, by the British Psychological Society. If I breach that and an employee that I've run a survey with feels that I've breached that, they can contact the BPS, put in a formal complaint and there's a very good chance that I'd get struck off.

And I can never practice again. So for me, maintaining confidentiality is most important to myself, as well as creating this psychological safety that people need to be honest in terms of giving that feedback. So if you're going to use a survey, my advice would be to use a third party. In terms of incentives to fill it in, I don't know of any psychologist who would recommend that.

because it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get the best data. You just want people to be honest. And you almost want to give them the reason that they want to fill that into themselves in that if I know what's happening, I can do something about it. We can look at ways to make this environment better. And after that first survey, make sure that you do do something with those results because if you don't, you'll do more damage

than if you'd never done anything in the first place. People will never trust a survey going forward. So kind of the first time you do this, it has to be so well thought out and well-intentioned and well-structured, otherwise it'll undermine any kind of insights you try and gather again. Are there other ways of doing it? Of course, you know, you can have views and view sessions, listening events, ask for feedback. Of course, it's going to be tricky sometimes in terms of people feeling comfortable to do that.

your immediate defensive reaction that you might have can be really tricky to to manage um and then of course we have the problem with some people just feel more comfortable speaking up um in a group others others less so um you could do the old kind of kind of um comment box forms digitally and all that kind of stuff but i think insights is a really good way to do my advice would be to do it properly from day one um and if you want to have a conversation about that three

no you know no pressure to to work with me just to go through it um a link to book in a meeting with me is in the show notes fabulous yes i think the temptation is particularly if you're in like a tech or a marketing business is to go and find uh go and find like an app that will do it for you um so something like hi bob or something don't do that don't do that

Because the fancier the dashboard on the app is, the more likely it's just hiding the fact that it's got no scientific basis whatsoever on it. The only other bit of advice I would give, and we've said every time we talk about engagement surveys or any kind of surveys, we always talk about this, is don't peg in.

don't peg your worth to the results. This is just a really great way to find out how well things are going, what's going well and what's not going well. And there will be bits on either one of those camps, but don't go, oh my God, I'm so nervous. What happens if everyone says it's awful? If they say it's awful, you'd rather know. It's going to be so much cheaper paying Leanne a couple of grand to find out how bad it is right now

than paying to replace all the people who are going to leave over the next year, which will cost you 200 grand. So that's definitely. Yeah. And remember, as you always say, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. I'd be more devastated if I ran an employee insight survey and got very bland mutual results.

To me, that's a sign that people are so checked out. No one did it. Well, yeah, they're so checked out, they can't even be bothered to moan about it anymore. You know, having some brutal feedback is actually pretty useful as a business owner. Beautiful. Okay, lovely. So don't forget the link for Leanne's email or, no, not Leanne's email. Sorry, hello, Boomer. The link for Leanne's calendar link or SavvyCal link is in the show notes. Question number two, Leanne. How do I know if I'm actually any good at interviewing?

I run a small business and I've done a lot of hiring over the last few years. But if I'm being honest, I still don't know whether I'm any good at it.

Sometimes I've made great hires and sometimes I've made terrible hires. And when it goes wrong, it costs me a lot, not just financially, but also culturally too. I've read plenty about structured interviews and bias and all that, but it still feels like guesswork half the time. My friend, I feel your pain. When I was recruiting back in my very first, my second company and my very first company, oh God, I made a real hash of this before I knew Liam.

So I guess my question is, how do you really know if you're interviewing well and what can you do to get better? Like properly better, they've said, at choosing the right people. Oh, these are great questions this week. They are good, aren't they? I say this with love. You're probably not a very good interviewer. And that's not because you're not a good interviewer. It's because you probably haven't taken the time to understand what you're asking people to.

and the right questions. You want something brilliant with structured interviews and that's my advice to anyone who doesn't really have the money to engage either a specialist recruiter or outsourced HR or somebody like me in Oxite to kind of talk about how to conduct an effective and fair recruitment process is stick to structured interviews because what you're doing then, if you ask everybody the same question, you've got a direct comparison. So person A said this, person B said that.

said this and within that model as well if you can either record their answers i mean this is on zoom that's dead easy um to actually then get a transcript of what they've said and start to point out where rather than say you know oh they'd answer that question really well didn't they they go why did they ask that answer that question well what is it specifically they said in that answer that i liked and what you're probably going to find will likely a behavioral cues

So I really liked how they said they adjust their communication style depending on who they're speaking to. I really liked that example they gave about that customer who was really angry they managed to talk them down. You're looking for those behavioral indicators that are going to be predicted as their future job performance. And that's what interviews are. Interviews are a psychological assessment to help us understand how well somebody is going to perform in their job.

future job to predict how well they're going to perform and actually interviews are one of the most reliable ways of predicting future job performance much more reliable than something like personality tests for example so i would say to it's a really good place to start and there might be ways that you can just just even improve that structured interview process the key is

recruitment starts with what we call a job analysis and I would be surprised if 1% of the companies out there conducted a job analysis and that's probably why recruitment is so shaky and the experience is so bad and people are having constant high turnovers or low success rates with new hires but a

a job analysis can be really simple and it's basically saying what role do we need in our business, not what person, what role, so what's its function, what's its task, what does it need to achieve, how does it fit into our performance, our productivity, our overall mission, you know, what do we want this role to contribute in terms of pushing us forward and that is going to be very task driven in terms of what that

that role needs to do then you can look at right well what type of person would typically be able to do this role it might be x number of years of experience but be slightly careful with that because sometimes you know the number of years doesn't always always give an accurate reflection but it will give you indications of okay they're probably going to need knowledge of this type of marketing system or they're probably getting knowledge of this type of market or a similar type of market

are probably going to need knowledge of recruitment processes and practices. That's basically a job analysis. And then you use that to create a job description and then go out to market. What you should get in that job analysis is what we call core competencies, which are basically just

Just groups of behaviors that probably means that somebody is going to be successful in this job. So communication, for example, or collaboration. And within that, the kind of behavioral indicators we'd expect to see is the examples I gave before. So once you have that, you know how to structure your questions in your interview to hit those points.

But if you're just going in with generic interview questions, then you're probably not measuring a candidate against the job that you're actually recruiting them to do. And it's this disconnect that often causes bad hires to be made.

It's not your fault. Not enough people talk about it. Psychologists are really bad at expressing it in a way that makes sense. I probably massively overcomplicate it and maybe slightly confuse you a little bit. My advice would be take some time to think about the role you're recruiting for. Talk to your people as well, your team, in terms of what they want this role to do to make their lives easier, your managers, your peers, whoever it is in the organisation that is going to have a direct interaction with this role. Help them to...

use them to understand what the role needs to achieve. And then from there, try and structure questions that are going to really tap in to exactly what you want this job function to look like. That alone, I'd imagine that the effectiveness of your interview capability combined with that structured approach that we talked about, you'd see huge differences very quickly.

Fabulous answer. Yes. And just one last thing from, from the lay person's point of view, I would look at this as, and Leanne's probably going to just be horrified by what I'm going to say, um, is I'd look at this as like, it's an acquisition. So if you're going to go and buy a piece of plant or machinery or a, or a truck for your business or something like that, you wouldn't just go down the local shop and go, Oh, do you know what that guy there or that woman there, she was really nice. And I really liked her. So I bought from her. You'd go, right. What does the piece of equipment have to do? How long does it have to last?

You know, what's my budget? All that kind of stuff. And that is essentially, I'm guessing, Leanne, a job analysis, would it be? That's essentially saying the role of that piece of equipment is X and you go and buy against that role. Yeah, exactly. Of course, I don't want to make a direct comparison between people and assets.

But yes, essentially, you're taking the time, you're making a big investment, you're taking time to understand exactly what you need, what's going to work for you in the environment that you're in and making the best possible decision you can with all the information that you've gathered. Beautiful. Okay, so question number three, Leanne. I got the job.

So why am I terrified? I just got a job offer. It's something that I've worked really hard for and I should feel really excited. But honestly, I'm scared. Really, really scared. This is the role I wanted for over a year. But now that it's actually happening, all I can think is what if I'm not good enough? And what if it ends up like my last job where I had to leave that because of some serious management issues? It left me burnt out, anxious and honestly a bit broken.

Oh, that's really sad. And even though this new place seems better, I can't shake the fear that I'm about to go through the same thing all over again, which I just couldn't handle. Is it normal to feel this way after getting a job offer? Have you seen people going through this? Yeah, it is absolutely normal. It's not about the job offer, is it? By the sounds of it, it's what you've been through with your previous employer. It's normal to feel fearful sometimes.

And it's great that you've asked this question because you already have a level of self-awareness of asking, is this normal? Am I thinking about this in the right way? And I guess the short answer is, yes, it's normal. And there are ways we can reframe this to help you as you make this transition. So...

I quote this model quite a lot. It's called the Bridges, the psychologist called Bridges model of change. And it has three stages, the ending stage, which is when you left your last job, where you felt very angry and anxious and fearful and frustrated and hurt and burnt out and exhausted. And you work through those feelings and you clearly work through them well enough to

to look for another role, feel ready to look for another role and get another role. So at that point, you're starting to enter what is called the neutral zone. So you've left, you've ended the part of your life that you wanted to end.

You're getting to the point where you're about to start the new beginning, which is a third stage. We're in this neutral zone. And it is a time of fear. But it's also a lot of time of hope and excitement and creativity and possibility. And it's leaning into those emotions. And you can hold these two emotions simultaneously. You can be excited and scared.

you know you can be excited and apprehensive you can be um you know starting to really think about big ideas and also be fearful of of those being taken away from you in your new job the two things can coexist is where you choose to invest your energy and a key to a successful transition in this neutral stage is starting to um concentrate your energy on the things that are going to move you forward into these new beginnings with that it's worth reflecting on some of the

some of the thoughts you're having that you've expressed in that question there you know you said what what did they ask something like what if it turns out exactly the same as it did previously um that's what we call that's a thinking area that we call catastrophizing where everything's gonna be awful because it was awful previously well there's nothing to say that

that anything from that situation is going to carry over because it's a whole new situation. The only thing that is, is that mindset you're bringing to it. The second one in terms of, you know, what if it fails again? What if I break down? What if I'm not good enough? That's imposter syndrome, which is what we talked about before. We've talked about a really great exercise you could do in terms of that reverse bucket list to help you internalize these achievements and start to settle down the fear that you've got.

day one in that job, you're going to be nervous. You're going to be fearful. It's going to take you a couple of weeks to figure out exactly how this organization works. Go in with hope. Go in with an open mind. Go in with a positive mindset because we can also self-sabotage. That is a very common thing for us to do. We start to see the red flags because we want to see them. It's that self-determination, self-determined philosophy. So be mindful of that. So I think

In short, it's totally normal. Understand exactly where you are in terms of this transition. This is a neutral stage where things are going to feel scary and exciting at the same time, and that's okay. And maybe just go back through your question every time that you've said something around, what if it all goes wrong again? What if I'm not good enough? Take that, write down that statement that you've made and just try and come up with counter arguments. It might not be that way, Dem, because it's entirely new company.

It might not be their way because I've had meetings with the managers and they seemed really nice. It might not be their way because the company has really great benefits in place for mental health. Do the reverse bucket list exercise in terms of that when you write down that statement, what if I'm not good enough, reflecting all the achievements you've had before.

It sounds over labored and it sounds a bit corny at times, but actually doing this level of reflection is what's really important to move us through successfully that ending stage to that new beginning, that really exciting one, our way, this is the next chapter. And if you do that work, you'll start to call out those thinking errors as you experience them. You'll start to feel much more positive, much more confident going into this new role. And ultimately, you'll have much better chances.

Yeah, great advice. I think there's just one last thing I'd add to that is that it's, you know, people who've never been in a bad, you know, romantic relationship, when they do get into one, they're like, oh my God, this is the end of the world. Whereas most of us have had a relationship which hasn't been brilliant. So we're not, you know, we're like, okay, we're going to the next one with a little bit of trepidation rather than throwing ourselves, you know, headfirst into it. Same with a job. I think you're almost...

you're almost fortunate to have had a bad experience because now, A, you know what bad work looks like or a bad culture, what it looks like. And B, you're not going to be blindsided by a terrible boss because it sounds like you already had one.

Whereas there's a lot of people who, you know, who maybe work, particularly if they work somewhere for like 30 years and they leave and go and work somewhere else and go, oh my God, you know, this person's terrible. Actually, they just might've had a really, really good boss in the last place. So, uh, so I feel like, yeah, that's the positive you can take out of it, but definitely do the exercise that Leanne said. Thank you so much, Lee. That is fantastic.

That is all for now. Join us next Tuesday for another edition of This Week in Work. Also, if you join us on YouTube next week, you'll find out if I found the iron, which I haven't used for a year. Join us on Thursday as well. It is going to be an emotional episode on Tuesday, so a small trigger warning, I guess, for anybody...

who may have been impacted by the recent landmark ruling from the UK Supreme Court, stating that under equality's law, the word woman refers to biological sex. It is a legal decision and it is having far-reaching implications for how sex-based rights are being interpreted across the UK. And that's not just the trans community, the LGBT plus community. That's also very much

within cis women's community as well. So join us, we will look into how organisations can navigate inclusion, identity and the law in practice. We will be talking with Sophie Wood, she is a transgender educator and

and trainer in LGBTQ plus awareness and mental health first aid. Sophie is here to walk us through what the ruling actually means, how it's being received in the community and what employers can do better to support everyone in their workplace, not just in policy but in day-to-day practice.

Yeah, absolutely. We're going to ask all the questions that you're too afraid to ask. We'll be brutally honest about the time we've messed up in this area. Things like cis man, cis woman. I had no idea. I thought it meant, I thought it was like a weird derogatory term, but I've learned what that means now. So if you're a leader who wants to build a culture of genuine inclusion, you are going to learn so much from Thursday's episode. There's going to be a tough conversation, but I think it's a necessary conversation.

Yeah, absolutely. So we will be back on Thursday with a fantastic Sophie Wood. Do have a look at the show notes. We have all the links to everything we've talked about to our hot take guests as well. Rose, thank you so much. Come over and chat on LinkedIn. Come and find us on YouTube if you want to troll me or defend me, but

whichever you choose um and we will see you next thursday for um an interview with the fabulous and the hands back in the studio next thursday which is going to be two days time so yeah very excited about that right we'll see you all guys soon this is especially for you jeremy this week we explore a simple mindset shift good start is that right wait a minute i might got that wrong so at that point you start sorry do you give me a nod