Episode 123: How To Maintain A Positive Employee Experience During Rapid Growth (an Interview With Ivori Johnson & Emily Connery)
In this week's episode of the Digital HR Leaders, David features ChartHop's very own VP of People & Talent, Emily Connery, and Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, Ivori Johnson.
Since ChartHop came on to the podcast last year, it has experienced fantastic growth. From just under 50 employees in 2021, it is now an organisation of over 200. And during this rapid growth, ChartHop has always kept its employee experience at the forefront of everything it does.
Looking to learn more about ChartHop’s employee experience and DEIB secrets, this conversation will cover:
Insights into creating fair recruitment, compensation and performance processes and building a thriving culture in a mostly remote workforce.
How to promote and measure belonging
The role data and HR technology plays in enhancing the employee experience.
Support for this podcast comes from ChartHop. You can learn more by visiting: charthop.com/digitalhr
David Green:
If you're a long-term listener of the podcast, you may recall that last year we had Ian White, CEO of people analytics technology firm, ChartHop, on the show. Well, since then, ChartHop has really gone from strength to strength with some amazing growth. To learn how Chart Hop has maintained a positive employee experience during such rapid growth, I sat down with ChartHop's very own VP of People and Talent, Emily Connery, and Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, Ivori Johnson, so they could share some of their employee-experience and DEIB secrets with us.
Ivori Johnson: We need to ensure that we are linking every single project or accomplishment to a KPI, and then that rating system will automatically generate what their bonus payout will be or what their compensation increase will be. So if they get an "outstanding" or an "exceeds expectation", they get this amount of a raise. So that way, it's equitable, and it's already in the process.
David Green: As well as providing insights on creating fair recruitment compensation and performance processes, Emily and Ivori also talk about how they have built a thriving culture in what is a mostly remote workforce. Our conversation also provides guidance on how to promote and measure belonging. We also discussed the role data and HR technology plays in enhancing the employee experience as Emily and Ivori share their perspective view on the future of HR technology.
So, without further ado, I'm delighted to welcome Ivori and Emily to the Digital HR Leaders podcast.
Ivori, Emily, it's great to have you on the show. A big welcome. As the sponsors of this season's podcast, please could you give a brief overview to ChartHop and both of your roles within the organisation.
So maybe Emily, you might want to go first on that one.
Emily Connery: Sure. At ChartHop, I'm the VP of People and Talent, so I have the pleasure of running our recruitment HR teams, and I was ChartHop's second customer, actually, so that is my claim to fame. I'm a huge fan of the product. We are a people analytics platform. How I use it on a daily basis is for org planning and management.
I use it many times every single day; it is a key piece of my daily ChartHop life.
David Green: Perfect. A great story to hear that you were the second customer, and now you work within the organisation leading recruitment and HR. And Ivori, if you'd like to give an introduction as well.
Ivori Johnson: Hi, I'm Ivori Johnson, pronouns she/her, and I lead all the diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging at ChartHop. I've worked for companies in the past, such as Google, Twitter and Dupont, but my role is really around advocating for equity, fairness and representation across all of ChartHop, but also extending that out into the industry as well.
David Green: It's wonderful to have you both on the show, and it's quite good because it's about 18 months on since your CEO, Ian White, was on the show, and he was very much talking to us about how to create actionable insights through all the people data that we have within the organisation.
Since then, I know that ChartHop has experienced some phenomenal growth. So before we hear about how you're using ChartHop internally within the organisation and some of the HR and recruitment and DEIB practices that you're developing within the company itself, I think listeners would love to learn a little bit more about how ChartHop has grown in the last year.
Emily Connery: Well, we grew by over 100 employees, so that was one of our biggest areas of growth. We also added several key executives to the team. We added our CFO, Matt Wolf; we added Ivori, our Director of DEIB; Justin Garrity, our VP of Product; and Paul Szemerenyi, who is our Chief Sales Officer. So, big changes on the executive team very exciting.
We also had a key partnership developed with Jobvite to streamline hiring and headcount planning. We just launched our compensation reviews, which is really exciting, to help people and finance teams make more equitable, streamlined decisions around compensation.
We had an acquisition of Gather, which really advanced our abilities to automate workflows across the entire employee journey. Most recently, we were recognised by Quartz for Best Remote Company, so that was really exciting too.
David Green: So not much then, in 18 months!
Emily Connery: Just a few things.
David Green: What's it like to be in an organisation that's growing so quickly, particularly within HR and recruitment, because, of course, recruitment is absolutely key if you're going to grow the organisation at the pace that it needs to grow at?
Emily Connery: For me, it's about being adaptable and really remembering to help people live through the change. So every single day as a leader, you need to wake up and think, "How can I best communicate around the change or help people adapt to this change?" remind people to be flexible, and as quickly as possible, every leader needs to get on board with change, so that they can then lead through the change.
Ivori Johnson: It's very exciting to be a part of a company that is moving very fast and intentional as well. And I think folks like to join start-ups because you're able to have an immediate impact and then see the results of that impact very quickly.
So it's definitely exciting, but I agree, you have to be adaptable, you have to be willing to change directions, keep up with the pace; but it's a very exciting thing to be a part of.
David Green: When companies experience such growth, in some organisations, there's a tendency to lose sight of the whole employee experience, but I know at ChartHop you practise what you preach, which is fantastic.
You're focused on ensuring that the employee experience is at the forefront of all your people-management initiatives. Could you give us an overview of some of the initiatives that you're working on to enhance the employee experience at ChartHop?
Emily Connery: A few things that we do on a routine basis.
The first one is our company all-hands.
Those take place every single week for an hour. We cover updates from every department as well as key announcements. We do anniversary highlights and milestones, such as weddings or babies being born, and we highlight all birthdays as well. So it's a great chance for everyone in the company to come together and hear the same message at the same time.
We're very transparent around achievements and challenges that the company is facing, and it's a great chance to reiterate our values as well. For example, we do our quarterly values awards, and so people are nominated by their peers and managers and then given those quarterly values awards in front of the whole company.
We also have a programme called Social Captains, where basically there are volunteers from every department that, on a quarterly basis, run the monthly events for their department, and so it's up to them to pick what would work best to connect their team remotely. If there's the opportunity in person, fantastic, but in the world that we're living in now, often remote.
Then something else that we just started this past year is our annual retreat, and so we're really excited to do it again next year. We called it CampHop; getting the whole team together, we went to the Poconos. It's all about team building; there really wasn't much in terms of presentations; it was really about getting people together and building that trust that is a little bit more challenging to build in a remote context.
David Green: And I believe you've also introduced, maybe Ivori, you can talk about this, some employee resource groups and a DEIB council as well.
Ivori Johnson: Yeah.
So we were able to launch four ERGs at ChartHop. So we have IRIS, which is a community base for the LGBTQ community; we have CARE for diverse ability community' and then we also have Women of ChartHop; and then we also have Asian Alliance; so, four. Hopefully, by the beginning of next year, we'll have more. But these are really places where our employees can go find a safe space, but also build community and also just learn more. So, anyone that even does not identify as being a part of that community can join to just learn and be an ally.
We also introduced a DEIB council. So the council is a governing body that sits beside myself and DEIB but also is really taking a look across the organisation around what are the gaps when it comes to DEIB and then what are most important to our people and where can we make the biggest impact. But they're also bubbling things up to our executive team, so that way, the DEIB is always a conversation, and everyone knows what's actually happening. So this group was introduced about two months ago, but right now, they're working on a strategic plan, so a lot is happening.
The only other thing that we launched from a DEIB perspective is ChartTalks.
So this was an employee-volunteered programme. So, an employee came to me with this idea and said, "I think we need more safe spaces". So ChartTalk is something we do every month where employees come together and talk about a heavy topic, but it can also be like a light topic just around DEIB. And it's really just that safe space for everyone to just learn more and express themselves at work. So, yeah, we've gotten really good reviews from it, and we're continuing that on a monthly basis.
David Green: What's the feedback been from employees and maybe from leaders in the company as well around these initiatives that you're taking?
Ivori Johnson: The feedback has been really good. However, I would say employees say, "We want more". They want to see more of these things. It's exciting to see these things come across, and they're seeing the impact immediately, but there's definitely an appetite for more, so we'll be able to see more things come out of it.
But one thing that I really wanted to come to the organisation and say is, "I'm just one person. I don't have all the ideas. In order for us to do this the right way, we all have to come together and build it together". So an example is ChartTalk, and it was an idea from an employee. So I want our employees to be able to come to me, to our leadership team and say, "Hey, here's an idea, let's try it. Let's try and see if it works", and if it doesn't, we can always change and shift as well.
Emily Connery: And what Ivori is being very humble about right now is that in order to have those three bodies of work be successful, she first needed to build trust within the organisation. And so, Ivori started in January; she spoke at all hands. She started with smaller events, with a speaker series, focus groups, really getting to know the population, and being involved in an engagement survey. And once she knew the population and they knew her, she was able to successfully implement these things, and I think that's really key to be able to be successful; otherwise, people don't have the trust and feel like it's a safe space to go out there and start an ERG. That's a really big thing to do for the first time at a company.
David Green: These are a lot of initiatives.
Obviously, the company's growing very fast, but it's great that it's not just all about growth; it's about sustaining that growth and keeping -- with the all-hands, for example, there's so much probably happening, there are new people joining all the time, having those weekly all-hands is a great way to keep everyone informed around what's happening, get people to obviously contribute to that as well; and it sounds like the awards that you're doing related to your values as well, which is very important.
Emily, I presume obviously Ian probably owns culture, although you could argue everyone owns culture within an organisation, but as the person implementing some of the cultural stuff in ChartHop, I guess the culture is kind of shifting and evolving as well as you grow so fast, and having those weekly all-hands is probably a really helpful contributor towards evolving that?
Emily Connery: Absolutely, it can be really challenging when a company grows so quickly. I mean, when I joined last April, I was employee 38, and now we're over 200 people, so that's just rapid growth. And I think manager conversations in one-on-ones, team conversations when people have their weekly team meetings, and then those all-hands; the more that those conversations can be formalised, sometimes we get a little scared of the word "formal" or "formalising" things, but I think communications need to be really thoughtful and really planned out. And what a manager brings to a one-on-one, to a team meeting, they make sure it's being reiterated at company meetings.
It's really, really key, especially with a dispersed workforce.
David Green: Yeah, very good. You have some great examples here, I think, for many listeners who are either leaders in smaller companies that are growing rapidly or maybe working in or thinking of joining a company that's growing faster as well.
Let's dive a little bit deeper into the work that you've been doing around compensation and performance benefits because, again, I think this is something that's going to really resonate with listeners.
Obviously, again, you've invested a lot of time and effort and money into this; it would be great to learn a little bit more about what you've been doing and how you've both been working together to ensure that everyone in the organisation has a fair and equal opportunity.
Emily Connery: This has very much been a partnership between the two of us. Obviously, the entire process, to be fair, we wanted it to be transparent; we're all about transparency at ChartHop, not just culturally, but our product supports that in the ability to access the people analytics. And we wanted the company to fully understand how they can get promoted, how do they get a raise, and when can they get a raise, and we really wanted feedback to be continuous throughout the year and not just be saved for these special review conversation moments.
So, starting with compensation, twice a year, we do our benchmarking, and we partner very much with finance on that in making sure that we have the data science work done. That needs to be communicated in advance to leadership, to managers to make sure everyone understands any changes that were made to compensation bands and then communicated back to the company in terms of, "These are our bands". We've always been transparent from day one on, "Here are our compensation bands by level, by role, at the company".
Then we use our tool to really empower managers so that when they're going in and they're doing their performance reviews and then their compensation decisions thereafter; they have clear guidelines in terms of, "Okay, someone was rated this way, here's the percentage guideline, here is their comp band". We have clear indications if somebody is eligible or not and how exceptions to that work, and all of that has been communicated to the company. We spend a lot of time training the company before we even launch our performance cycle every single time, and these happen twice a year.
So, I think it's a huge effort, it's really, really important, it is how people are feeling, recognised on their work, how they're being told about how to improve, and something that I really want Ivori and I to partner on next time is really helping managers to have very effective conversations, not just in terms of the review content but, "Okay, what next; how can we help you build on your career from here?"
David Green: Obviously, part of that, with the technology you've got, is actually helping give the insights through the data to support those conversations as well, presumably?
Emily Connery: Yes, exactly. So basically, what it looks like is, a manager goes in, and they're able to see their people in terms of the guideline that is recommended, the comp band that they're in, their tenure, last raise. I can really pull in any data that I want, and they make the recommendations that roll up to their manager, and then so on and so forth up the management chain until it's finally approved by HR and finance. So, it's wonderful. There's no back and forth in spreadsheets, no user error; it's the facts, straight from the system and just input right back into the system.
So, when it's all said and done, I just merge all of these compensation scenarios, and it's effective for payroll.
Ivori Johnson: This was my first time going through a performance process at ChartHop, but working really closely with Emily and from a DEIB perspective, just making sure that we're doing the right thing, that was really top of mind for me. So, I have a chance to join every single calibration session and just listen to the way that managers are speaking about their people, just to ensure that there isn't any bias, and the reality is we all have a bias; so, having someone there that is on the outside and just can really give the different perspective around what's being said and how that could look, and if it's fair or not, I think is really important. So, just being able to understand what's happening and then shed light on, "Well, actually, maybe we ought to think about this a little differently, we need to do this instead", was very eye-opening for us, and it's something that we definitely want to continue.
Also, ChartHop makes it super-easy. I haven't had this type of software in the past, but being able to look at our people data, look at trends over a certain timeframe and then overlay that with DI data, so we can see if, over the last 12 months, we just promote men? Maybe we need to think a little bit more differently about these things. So, being able to do that in analysis before going into these conversations was very valuable and super-helpful for us and only helped us create a more equitable and fair process.
David Green: What advice could you give to guide them on the right path towards eliminating biases and ensuring equal opportunities across the board; it's probably building on some of the stuff that you've already talked about, Ivori?
Ivori Johnson: I would say it all starts at the beginning of the process. So, before you hire someone, looking at the team, making sure that when you are posting a job, we should be posting the salary in the job description just to create transparency there; but also looking at the benchmarking for that role from a conversation perspective, and ensuring that it's aligned to what the team looks like. I think that transparency, with putting the salary in the job descriptions, eliminates the need for negotiating or for anyone to feel like maybe they're being undervalued or underpaid in relation to the rest of the team. I think it starts there.
If we hire people at the right salary that is actually equitable when looking at the team, then the rest of the process looks easy. Then when we go onto the performance review and compensation process, we need to ensure that we are linking every single project or accomplishment to a KPI, and then that rating system will automatically generate what their bonus payout will be or what their compensation increase will be. So if they get an "outstanding" or an "exceeds expectation", they get this amount of a raise. So that way, it's equitable, and it's already in the process.
That way, there isn't any bias to allow a manager to maybe pay a high-performing, or maybe a favoured on the team, more than in relation to anyone else.
So, I think if you're able to eliminate some of those biases upfront, then you'll see less of these things happen. I think even doing analysis over time, continuously doing them after the process, will also help; so, analysing who has been promoted, what does that group of people look like, what is the relation from men to women, race, sexual orientation, etc, to see maybe did we exclude a certain group. So, just looking at some of those things, creating a story around what's actually happening, to really see if the process is as equitable and fair as we'd like it to be.
David Green: Now, I'm particularly looking forward to the next discussion around belonging, so the B in DEIB. You've both talked about how you recently introduced four ERGs and more to come, a DEIB council, and the ChartTalk platform as a safe place for employees to talk about their life challenges. Why is belonging so important in the workplace? That would be great to understand that for listeners that hear the word "belonging" but don't necessarily understand what it actually means. And, what can those HR leaders listening start doing to promote belonging in the workplace?
Ivori Johnson: Yeah, it's a really great question.
I get excited when talking about the word "belonging" because it's something new that's coming up in this space. But I think of it as the result of DEI. So, diversity is around having that representation from all communities, equity around fairness and making sure that we're doing the right thing, and inclusion is just making everyone feel like they have a voice and that they're heard.
I think if you're able to focus on those three things, belonging is a result of that.
So, belonging is really that sense of security, support, and actually feeling like you are accepted and included, no matter where you come from. So, I think the belonging piece is super-super-important to really create that community and that environment, where we want everyone to feel like they can come to work and that they're accepted and that they can excel and that they're supported.
I think some things that leaders can actually do is really focus on what is the culture that you're wanting; what is the culture that your people are actually asking for, because culture's going to look different for every organisation, no one's going to have the same culture.
So, allowing your actual people to help drive what the culture's going to look like, so trying to foster that culture, and then make sure it's not toxic. So, try to put guardrails in place, so your people aren't feeling like they're being harmed at work, they feel like they have that psychological safety, and they feel like they can come to work and they're actually excited to be here every single day.
I think it's also important to really create those safe spaces. Things are going to happen outside of these Zoom rooms, outside of work, and it may bleed into our work life. Being able to create those safe spaces internally, where your employees feel like they can actually find people that are maybe going through the same things, they can express what they're going through and also educate those around them.
So, something that came up for us was ChartTalk, we were able to create that, and it really helped to drive those safe spaces where employees felt like they were able to express themselves, even if it was things happening in the world, they felt like at work, there were other people going through it with me.
I know that we're here to show up each and every day to do a job, but we're all feeling the same thing, so how do we continuously motivate each other to actually do our work while these things are happening? I think if leaders can focus there, that can be super instrumental.
David Green: And, Emily, anything you'd add as someone that's leading HR and recruitment at ChartHop?
Emily Connery: Yes, I would say, in addition to the programmes that Ivori has built, the routine channels is really the one-on-ones, so how is a manager remembering to say, "How are you?"
So often, people forget to just check in with the human being across from them. You don't need to dive right into the items on the agenda; seeing what's going on with them on a personal level, keeping track of that as a manager goes a long way.
Team meetings: what are you doing to just have a little bit of fun with your team? It's not like it needs to take a ton of time away from what needs to get done from a business perspective, but some of our teams, they spend the first five minutes talking about their favourite foods or what they did over the weekend or something that's a personal goal that they're working on in life, just to remember the human side.
Then, a company all-hands: Ivori almost every week has a spot where she's either giving an announcement about what's going on, maybe it's from a, for example, Suicide Awareness Month, or she also does these wonderful monthly awareness moments. So, for example, "Hey, did you know, when you say, 'You guys', it can make women feel isolated from the conversation?" Just something like that, it's quick, but it's a moment to just remind people of how they might help everyone else feel like they belong.
We also do a monthly update in terms of how we're doing as a company, in terms of our DEIB, from a metric perspective and any new programmes as well. So, just keeping that top of mind for the company, as something that is important, that we are investing in, and that there are all these safe spaces, whether it be the ERG or the council or the ChartTalks, where people can come forward and feel like they can talk and share their feelings.
David Green: We're going to dive into the measurement piece in a minute, actually. But one extra thing, given what you said right at the start of the conversation, Emily, about obviously ChartHop's won an award for Best Remote Workplace, many companies now are either mostly remote or at least hybrid.
When it comes to inclusion and belonging in particular, are there some things that leaders and managers particularly can be intentional about when they're managing teams that are mostly not in front of them as such physically, but they're mainly managing people who are remote from them; are there steps that you've got at ChartHop?
It may be some of the stuff that you've talked about; you might have some specific examples, perhaps, around how you make sure that you're really doing that inclusivity and trying to create that sense of belonging in a remote workplace.
Emily Connery: I think now that we're all remote, it's just a tad bit easier because everyone's in one place. I think the difficult piece, though, is how do we all connect? When we were in the office maybe three years ago, we were able to bump into someone at the snack station or at the coffee bar and just have a conversation; you were able to meet people organically at work that maybe you don't work with on an everyday basis. So, that piece is a little harder.
I think at ChartHop, we've introduced ways to create that connection across the organisation, through our Social Captains programme, through the ERGs, through the council and through ChartTalks, just creating the spaces where folks can get together outside of their normal jobs, outside of connecting with the same people in their same orgs, where they're able to meet new people, understand where people are, what their actual roles are, and really create that engagement just across the organisation through programmes like, and that's actually helped.
David Green: Is that one thing that it's hard to create, but it sounds like you're doing, those serendipitous encounters, where I mean everyone talks about meeting at the water cooler, but you do have them, whether you're walking up the stairs, or whatever? And I'm guessing Emily or Ivori, that talks to the retreat that you talked about earlier. You said it wasn't just for the presentations; presumably, the main aim of it, or one of the main aims of it, by the sounds of it, was to get people to meet physically and get to know each other better?
Emily Connery: Something to just add to what Ivori was saying; I think the quick feedback loops that we have are really helpful.
So, for instance, we hear from somebody that in a team meeting, it seems like the manager, even if it's inadvertent, is calling on people that looks like them and not everybody else. So, we go to the manager; they have no idea.
They're so glad to hear there's feedback; they're going to work on it, and we immediately notice improvement.
So, if people feel comfortable coming to Ivori, to anyone on the people team, or even better, directly to their manager in this case, so that they can quickly respond to it, that's really what we're trying to create, is that people come to us, we can quickly change on it.
Let's not let these things build.
You hear the expression, "Death by 1,000 cuts"; we don't want that to be the case here. These are simple things that can be fixed if we're just continually educating people on having more awareness and just changing some of their behaviours they might not even know they're doing.
David Green: And I guess you're focused on, you talked a little bit earlier around making sure you've got a psychologically safe culture. Part of that, I guess, is people then feel comfortable to give that feedback, either directly to the manager, or via you, Ivori, or via some of the ERGs. So, that's so important, isn't it; that's the bedrock really to actually allowing this culture to thrive?
Emily Connery: Absolutely, and we do our engagement service twice a year, but honestly, having Ivori has been a huge impact to the employees because she is such a safe space. Her objectives are very clear in terms of she is here to help us build a diverse, equitable, inclusive place where people feel like they can belong; and who doesn't want to talk to the person in charge of that?
So, they come, and they talk to her, and then she's able to work with whoever she needs to to make sure change happens.
We're going to go to one of my favourite topics because it's around measurement. How do you measure the impact and effectiveness of all these initiatives that we've talked about; for example, have you seen improvements in employee engagement, and of course, have you seen improvements around some of the metrics you might measure around diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging of those growing within the organisation?
Emily Connery: So, we do our engagement survey twice a year, but like I said, we make sure that there are all these open channels to provide feedback to Ivori, for example, or we do pulse surveys. We also do a DEIB survey twice a year, so there are sort of four formal ways of getting feedback, in addition to more ad hoc. But for the formal surveys, really making sure that all the leaders and managers understand that they need to be a part of the action plan.
So, while HR might be gathering the data, it is not an HR initiative.
Everyone owns employee engagement, and everyone owns taking action. So, from our most recent survey, we actually have four major projects going on to make improvements. There are executive champions assigned to each of them, there are managers leading each of them, and then there are a small group of employees in each of the projects as well. And so, hopefully, we see improvements the next time we take a survey.
But as Ivori was saying, and she can follow up with this again, but getting the feedback, it's not just to make improvements, but employees have better ideas than we do. We don't want all of the ideas for programmes to come from us. And so, Social Captains that she mentioned, and a lot of the programmes that she's put in place came from employee ideas. So, it's so key to not just get the feedback and improvement, but what do they think would work in terms of solutions.
Ivori Johnson: For most of the DEIB programmes, the ideas came from just understanding what our employees wanted. So heard that they needed some of these things: so they needed a safe space, we created ChartTalk; they needed community, we were able to launch what ERGs are going to look like, how do you structure them and provide that, but the guidance to even allow our employees to be able to create these things. So, a lot of these things came out of that feedback, and how we're continuously measuring these things going forward are, how is that shifting employees' behaviour; how is that shifting how our employees are feeling and how they're engaged, following some of these things?
So, I think for me, I hear from our employees probably on a daily basis about, "Hear our new ideas, hear how this is going" even the instant feedback that we get after an event or a programme just provides that, "Okay, I think we're going in the right direction, we need to keep building on this". So, my philosophy is, let's start small, let's pilot it, see how it feels, and then let's continue to build on it so that way we have something that is scalable that we can continue to grow over the years, especially as we continue to grow as an organisation.
David Green: What role has data and technology played in driving your diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, and wellbeing initiatives at ChartHop?
Ivori Johnson: I'll say for me, I've always taken a bit of a data-driven approach, but in order to see the true gaps and disparities across different diversity dimensions, but also just across the organisation, from different department levels, we have to be able to use the data to really help build a foundation of what's actually happening. Then we can add in the qualitative data and any anecdotal data to just really understand what the true picture is. But ChartHop makes it super-easy for me to do that.
So, I can look at all of our people data; I can overlay that with race, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, so many different things, and look at intersections of data to see where the gaps are per team, per department.
And I can see maybe our HR team is all women. Maybe when we think about a role opening up, we need to go after more, either non-binary or male talent, to create a little bit more representation within our own team.
So things like that, we really need to begin paying attention to, and the data really helps to tell that. In our reality, if we look around, sometimes it's not as obvious to us of what the gaps are, but the data will actually tell us the true gaps and where we really need to focus.
David Green: Really good.
Emily, anything you'd like to add to that at all?
Emily Connery: Yes, I would say to Ivori's point, the way that you can visualise data in ChartHop, or in a people analytics tool is really interesting. So, for example, we have our org chart. So, if I'm meeting with a manager as an HR business partner, I can pull up their org chart, share the screen, we can change the filters on the org chart so that they can look at it in terms of demographics, for example, or base pay, tenure, so that they can really visualise the makeup of their team and understand what the gaps are, or where there are inconsistencies or where things are not equal.
I also love coming out of the performance review process, was able to make a dashboard that I shared with the entire leadership team that has by department performance across demographics, by manager, by team, by tenure, and so we could really look at the big picture; but also, within specific teams or within a specific manager, where we might have some blind spots, and might need to make sure we're making more equitable decisions moving forward.
David Green: We're going to look into the future now. If we look in five years' time, where do you see HR technology sitting within the HR function, particularly what role do you predict it will play in further enhancing the employee experience?
Emily Connery: So, it might be a bold statement, but I see HR technology not sitting in HR. I hope that it is just owned by the business, that something like ChartHop, when they're thinking about the ideal buyer, it's not the Chief People Officer, it's any of the executives, it's the CEO, it's the CFO, it's the COO. I think it should be a tool that is looked at as so intuitive to use that you don't need HR training you on it; it's so helpful that you go into it without HR pushing you to do so; so integrated in what you need to do as a manager, in terms of planning for your org, taking actions around your people, that you need to go in and use it. So, I hope to see HR technology not in HR.
David Green: I love that; that's a great quote. Ivori, it's going to be hard to follow that one, but I will let you follow that one!
Ivori Johnson: Actually, I agree. I think when it comes to people data and people insights, a lot of managers and leaders look to the people team to give that data. But I think that it should be driven from the business because outside of needing or building a product or increasing sales, we also have to think about how we're engaging with our people, how are we creating the right workspaces. In order to do that, you have to look at the data; and if the business isn't owning that, then that's always going to be an HR responsibility, and it should be led from the business in partnership with the people team. So, I do see that transition happening. Hopefully, it happens in the next five years, but I definitely agree.
David Green: Now for the final question of the day. So, this is a question we're asking everyone in this series, and I think it flows in quite nicely with what we've talked about throughout our conversation, actually.
What do you think the role of ethics is in HR and maybe in HR technology?
Emily Connery: Yeah, so Ivori and I were talking, we actually talk about this all the time.
It comes up just organically because it's a really interesting partnership between our two roles. HR is in a position where we need to think about how a decision or a change in direction impacts the team impacts the company; but of course, we also want to take into account an individual. And ultimately, we want to do the best by everyone that we possibly can, and it's really tough.
I think whatever is done, there is often a perspective that it wasn't the best decision for the individual or for the team or the company, and so it's not so clear; there's not always a right decision, wrong decision, there's ambiguity there, and I think the partnership is really key because we need to talk about all angles and then figure out the best possible outcome.
And so, we make sure that when we're making a decision around a person, or changing the structure of a team, for example, that we're thinking about the individual team and company level and hashing it out in terms of what is the best possible outcome for everyone.
David Green: Anything you'd like to add to that, Ivori? I guess a lot of what you talked about around the fairness element of what you're doing is really around good ethics, really?
Ivori Johnson: I definitely think it's interesting. Even when I started at ChartHop, I quickly began to see that employees really trusted DEIB as the safe space, and it was very interesting to see that. I think that just speaks to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in general, that the workforce sees this as kind of this safe space and having more of an ethical responsibility for people. But I also think the partnership between Emily and I really helps us to balance how do we support our people in the right way, but also how do we also support the business, so it's a really great partnership, and it's very, very interesting to see it come to life.
David Green: Well, I've really enjoyed talking to you. I'm so impressed by the growth of ChartHop since I spoke to Ian 18 months ago; that's phenomenal. Employee number 38 in April 2021, and over 200 now. I think it probably shows the success of the technology you're providing, but great to hear how you're using it within your own organisation. And of course, the one question that I haven't asked that I'm going to ask quickly now how much is your own experience of using ChartHop within the company helping influence the way that you're developing the product for customers?
Emily Connery: I think at this point, I probably spend 15% of my week, whether it's with the product team, UX team, sales, customer success, marketing; so, we are very much continually sharing how we're using the product, how we would like to see the product evolve. And our input is looked at from different angles, so from the expertise that Ivori has versus me versus our head of recruiting, and so it's really fun, honestly.
It's one of the most interesting parts of the job to me right now that we get to help with the product.
David Green: Emily and Ivori, it's been absolutely fantastic to speak to you. Thank you both for being guests on the Digital HR Leaders podcast. Can you let listeners know how they can stay in touch with you, follow you on social media, if you do social media, and also find out more about ChartHop?
Emily Connery: Yes, you can absolutely find us both on LinkedIn, Emily Connery and Ivori Johnson, and you can find information about ChartHop on charthop.com. You can read about the product, and you can also read about our company and any open roles that we have.
David Green: Thank you very much for being on the show.