As you grow quickly, it's integral to listen and respond to the needs of your team. Tia Fomenoff, Senior Director of People & Culture at Thinkific gives her insights on this journey of growth.

Some questions Tynan asks:

What are company leaders today realizing is the most important thing for their businesses when it comes to culture?
Are you seeing a lot of mobility (people bouncing around) between startups in your city? How do you deal with that?
When a startup Founder & CEO decides to introduce a Director of People & Culture role, what are they thinking?
As a non-native People & Culture leader, what has been the most challenging part of stepping into your role & what have you learned about yourself?
How do you balance non-traditional experience with the need for the compliance that a Chartered Professional in Human Resources (CPHR) brings? How do you split up these responsibilities on your team?
What is the difference between culture fit and culture add… and what does values fit seem to be something you look for when hiring?
How do we build cultures where people speak up?
How do we properly survey our employees? How do people at every level of the company bring forward ideas to leadership?
What mistakes have you made in your hiring over time?

In this episode, you will learn:

Great recruitment becomes a primary competitive advantage in a high-paced, fast-growing tech cities
How to transition from a different area of business (e.g. in Tia’s case, she was in marketing) to People & Culture (P&C)
Having a non-strict-HR background can be an advantage for a leader in the P&C department, you can understand all the roles & their needs, how to help people grow & be happy opposed to having a key focus on compliance
Diversity is very challenging to obtain when looking for culture fit. When you look for a values fit however, you will be rewarded in the beautiful diversity you have in your organization.
Amazing to see that when people are encouraged to adopt the value of “We give a shit” how people will roll up their sleeves to pitch in when needed.
Set up a channel for communication of new ideas to leadership! Having a flat structure internally allows for people to bring ideas forward to their people leader, even one level above without much feeling they are stepping out of place.
Structuring your employee engagement surveys with (1) evidence-based questions, (2) net-promoter score (e.g. How likely are you to recommend working at Thinkific to a family or friend) and (3) free and open-ended questions (e.g. What’re your favourite things about working here? What are some things we can do better?).
How to act on your employee’s suggestions, group them into themes, and then make them fully transparent by sharing them with the whole company so people know of the progress towards change and understand what is happening!

Connect with Tia:

LinkedIn

EXCLUSIVE OFFER FOR CULTUREING LISTENERS: 1 month FREE with Thinkific plus $500 in Bonuses

Also mentioned on this show:

Chartered Professionals in Human Resources (CPHR)
Blankslate Partners
Applicant tracking systems options
comeet
greenhouse

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The CultureING PodcastBy Tynan AllanMay 29, 2019