Office Libations Unwrapped: The Art of Rebuilding Office Culture

It’s possible to turn those new-hire fuzzies into long-term passion. Today Claude interviews Becky Lehman, Senior Manager of Employee Engagement at Babylist. She’ll describe how to sustain a positive employee experience with intentional onboarding and consistent opportunities to provide feedback to leadership. She also demystifies feedback by describing how it can be a growth driver. She and Claude dive into the value of continuous learning, and the best way to model company culture. 

---------

“I love asking new hires, why did you decide to join us? ‘Cause they're very different across different people, different roles,  but hearing what they have to say gives me really warm fuzzies about my decision to be at this company and invest my time and effort into this company. And then really thinking about how we can capitalize on that  excitement and passion of new hires and extend that as long as possible as part of their employee experience. I've been a BabyList for over two years now, I still feel that excitement and passion about the work that I'm doing. So I hope we can continue to pull that for people for as long as possible”

“It can feel like someone is telling you that you are bad and you did a bad job and you are a horrible person. And no one likes that feeling.  But actually, when someone is giving you feedback, what it really means is that they feel like they have a strong enough relationship with you that they can give you that feedback in a way that you'll hear it. And it also means that they believe in you and they believe that you can be even greater than you are now. And that's real neat. “

“My philosophy on the employee experience is that it should be closely tied to that user experience. And so we want our employees to feel the same things, feel secure, feel celebrated, feel like they have the information they need to do what they need to do. When we show up for our employees like that, then they can take that and bring it to our users, which is what we want.”

“Always be learning is our value. So I like thinking about how we can train and lean into those growth edges and really support each other and teach each other across the company in those different areas.”

“One of the important things when you're thinking about culture specifically is that you're modeling it all the time. So how you treat people every day that you work with them, how you show up on Slack, how you show up on Zoom, how you show up in every way you like interact with your users or your coworkers, that's your company.”

---------

00:18 - Quick Hits

03:22 - Becky’s story

07:44 - Building a remote company culture

10:28 - Why Becky loves onboarding

16:20 - Employee retention tips

23:56 - The benefits of ERGs

26:53 - Building culture across teams

37:48 - Leadership should showcase culture, too

---------

Find Becky on LinkedIn

Find Claude on LinkedIn
More about Office Libations

How do we navigate a major shift in workplace dynamics after COVID? Tony Deblauwe, VP of Human Resources at Celigo, has some ideas. Celigo is an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) that allows IT and line of business teams to automate both common and custom business processes, enabling the entire organization to be more agile and innovate faster than competitors.

Tony explains how holistic thinking, adaptability, and showing up with authenticity lead to both organizational success and employee satisfaction. Join us on this episode of Office Libations Unwrapped, as we explore beyond data and metrics, and dive into the human element of today’s workplace.

“We look at that holistic view. What is the person looking to achieve while they're here? What is the employee experience? And then you start to mold different pieces together around that. So  I feel that our success is rooted in that holistic thinking. To ensure that it's not just, hey, find the best person for the job. How are those skills going to evolve and grow over time so that there's that mutual benefit between the employee and the company?”

“I always thought it was funny when people would ask, Where do you see yourself in five years? That's a ridiculous question. My joke was always, I'm going to be your boss. Just to see the reaction, right? Because I never understood. I don't know where I'm going to be in five years. So all of that is completely thrown out the door. It's more about, What are you going to learn and contribute here holistically that contributes to your view of a professional growth path?”

“We have to think about it still as a business, still with some structure, but it's always in the showing up part, right? How do we show up? How do we listen? Let someone have their voice, but put it in some kind of a structure that They can understand and they can work with you.”

“It's very difficult to gain trust and motivation for people when you start to put forth demand, when we just went through the great social experiment where you were forced to shut down, forced not to come into office, and it worked, people got promoted, people got increases, people came and left. So, it's difficult to then mandate: that's all gone now, COVID's no different than the flu, so come back, do 9 to 5. It's very difficult, and so we've moved away from that.”

“There's a difference between making an effort and then we make a stumble, versus, I'm deliberately doing it this way and I'm completely oblivious to the effect that it's having in my remote workforce. I think that's the difference now because of the difference of not just where people are, but again, the age side of the workforce, you have to be a little bit more deliberate how you think about rolling things out and not just mandating it with a limited group of stakeholders in a room and then just throwing it out there.”

“Everybody's gonna say,  what does the data say? Data can be, again, survey, anecdotal, login time, like there's a lot of different ways people look at the data. But I try to look behind that, right? Because as an HR person working in business, that's always the first thing that's thrown out. Well, you know, data, decisions based data. But there is an element that is intrinsic to how a person works that no one set of hard data is necessarily going to answer.”

00:00 - Big Takeaway

00:38 - Quick Hits

03:27 - Hiring/Retention Experience

04:58 - How to train successfully 

06:16 - Tony’s story

09:09 - Four generations in one workforce

24:54 - The Rebuild

---------

Find Tony on LinkedIn

Find Claude on LinkedIn
More about Office Libations

More about Caspian Studios

Work has changed. Our relationship with the office is different. How do we modernize the same old corporate routines? How do we rebuild our office cultures to keep our teams motivated and productive? If you’re looking for answers to these tough questions, you’re in the right spot.

Welcome to “Office Libations Unwrapped: The Art of Rebuilding Office Culture” - the podcast that brings best practices from leading companies to create a spark in your team’s workday and drive your business forward. 

In each episode, we'll chat with industry experts, office professionals, and even some of our favorite local brands to discover the latest trends redefining workplace experience. From top tier food and beverage programs featuring specialty coffee and local snacks to flexible schedules and non-traditional work arrangements, we'll explore the range of tools HR professionals have at their disposal to keep their team happy, whether in-office or remote. 

Happy employees are more productive, stay at companies longer, and most importantly, make happy customers. Happy customers make successful businesses.

So grab your favorite beverage, settle in, and get ready to be inspired.