The Grass is Brown Everywhere

Like every other employer we’ve seen some workforce churn this year. Our rate is about what it used to be pre-covid, but it probably feels higher because of a couple of slow lockdown years. Either way, people are seeing and taking new opportunities. Many of these are good but some are not all they seem to be. At least a couple of the Delt family have been offered silly money or silly Ts and Cs to recruit them. They have been sold a trip to the promised land but the reality is sometimes it is not what it seemed to be on the tin. The money might be good but has the flexibility you used to have gone? Does the new employer have values that match your own? Do you have any ability to influence or are you just a cog in a giant machine?

I’ve made this mistake, in my case, making a move just to chase the money. This didn’t end well for me, or the employer. Chasing money probably works just fine for a lot of people but I think it depends on why you work and do the job you choose. Yes, I work to earn money, to support my family and fuel my addition to millennia old dinosaur squeezing’s – and on that point I really need to follow Gary’s lead and go electric. However, work for me and many of the Delt team is as much about the belief in what we are doing, as it is in the paycheck. This isn’t just something we see in the higher paid either. I did an induction interview a few weeks ago where a new starter, in an entry level role, said that they had chosen to join Delt, in significant part, because of the investments we make in people, both formal and informal. How many organisations have an events team, funded by the company, specifically to get people together outside of core business hours doing things just for fun?

As well as increased churn, this year we’ve seen something else. More people coming back. A handful of people have boomeranged – gone for less than 3 months and then come straight back into their old jobs while we were still in the process of trying to recruit their replacements. They all have their own stories but broadly the message is that the grass is not always greener on the other side.

Like every employer, there are things we don’t get right but if I’ve learnt one thing from having a blissfully varied career is that despite what things look like from across the street, the grass is brown everywhere. Its what’s under the soil that matters.

Giles Letheren, Chief Executive Officer

Photo by visnu deva on Unsplash

Bringing Meaningful Authentic Connections into Work

Remote and hybrid working has become the norm, a new balance of working remotely while maintaining employee connections is the new gold standard in workplace wellbeing. You do not have to go too far into a Google search to find 100’s of articles on how to make remote working and hybrid working effective for both employees and the business.  

Not unlike many other organisations, we have created our own hybrid working practice, at Delt, to ensure our employees maintain a level of human connection and whilst we do remote working really well, we recognise that there are certain times, with certain work activities, where being face to face can make it a better experience for everyone.  

But it isn’t just about being person to person that is important; how many times have you have gone into the office, sat at your desk in an open office environment, joined a meeting or ate lunch with your colleagues but never felt properly connected? It happens more than you think!  

Let’s face it – we are living busy lives and even if we aren’t physically busy our minds are going 100 miles an hour: we are thinking about our current tasks, tomorrow’s tasks; the 100 things we need to do once we finish work; what is for dinner? where do my kids need to be?  So it isn’t surprising you could be interacting with people every day without being present – and never actually having an authentic, meaningful connection with anyone.  

No one defines authentic and meaningful connections better than Dr. Brene Brown for me:  

“I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued: when they can give and receive without judgment; when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.” – Dr Brene Brown  

The reality is, connecting with colleagues can become ‘routine’ whether you are doing it virtually or in person. We can often find ourselves running through the motions and niceties and forgetting to truly connect 

The 2021 World Happiness Report (The Power of Human Connection: 6 Ways to Achieve It (betterup.com) ) found that people who experienced an increase in connectedness with others during the pandemic had: 

1. Greater life satisfaction 
2. More resilience 
3. Better mental health 

By no means do I profess to get this right all of the time. I have found this particularly challenging since we started working virtually more.  It does not make me feel good and I am quite sure I am not adding the value I could to those interactions.  

And so, I now I make it a point to purposefully take stock before, during and after my interactions…. sounds like a lot of work but it is literally only a mind shift… 

Before I enter a meeting or start up a conversation, I take a moment to PAUSE before I engage. And when I say PAUSE, I mean stopping all the noise in my head and clearing the clutter in order to make a commitment to being with who is in front of me (virtually or in person). It literally takes 2-5 secs and makes such a difference.  

During the conversation I remember my own personal mantra ‘BE CURIOUS’ – this keeps my focus on the individuals and conversations at hand rather than any other agenda or tasks I might have floating around in my head.  

I make a point of offering the recipient genuine positivity. It is easy to get swept away with the burdens of the day or negativity that may be waying us down. But through channelling positive energy I find connection comes much more easily.  

And lastly, I believe more than anything in the power of listening. The ability not to fill the silence but hold space for the other(s) person to share and open up will, almost certainly, leave them feeling a sense of connection from our exchange.  

At the end of the day, this is about mindfulness and whilst it is simple in concept…it is a practice that needs to be honed everyday….and so my journey continues…. 

Jane White, Chief People and Culture Officer

Photo by Rémi Walle on Unsplash

Should Passwords be a thing of the past?  

How many times have you forgotten your password and had to go through the process of resetting it? The same old security questions have you digging around your memory bank for your first teacher’s name. And you can guarantee it always happens at the most inconvenient time. In my opinion forgotten passwords are one of the greatest bug bears that frustrate users of IT and as a result impacts the user experience. The pace of technology advancement and transformation has been accelerating and continues to accelerate at pace, and password resets still account for a large proportion of calls to IT Service Desks, taking up valuable time for both the user and Service Desk. So why do many organisations still live with this password problem? 

I read an article on the BioConnect website which suggested that between “20% and 50%” of all IT Help Desk calls were for password resets” and on “average it costs an [US] enterprise $70 for a single password reset”.  That’s a lot of cost and use of talent which could be used doing something more valuable to the business, also not to mention the number of productive hours lost by the user.  

Over the last few years technology has advanced and the introduction of Biometrics has improved the situation a lot, yet the problem of forgotten passwords remains a tale as old as time. 

So, with that in mind, why haven’t we eliminated passwords altogether? After all the phrase, “Prevention is better than cure” [often attributed to the Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus] feels apt in this situation. The future is password-less as it must be and this will undoubtedly improve user experience, security and reduce calls to IT Service Desks. According to Gartner, “by 2025, more than 50% of the workforce and more than 20% of customer authentication transactions will be passwordless”  

Right now, IT specialists need to exploit the capabilities available to us today such as Windows Hello for Business and the further adoption of Biometrics to reduce the password burden. Alongside this, we must prepare for user hesitancy as biometrics can be controversial. Some will celebrate the removal of passwords whilst others will be late adopters of new technologies that often appear intrusive.  

I know that I will be kicking passwords out the door as soon as technologies are fully established to replace the traditional security processes. But for now, we continue to encourage strong and safe passwords for our customers. We support their tireless log in issues, and we seek to educate on password best practice.  

We won’t solve the forgotten password issue alone, but we move towards a passwordless future that will free up time and resource once again. 

Are Password Resets Costing Your Company? | BioConnect 

Take 3 Steps Toward Passwordless Authentication (gartner.com) (Gartner subscription needed) 

Paul Jones, Chief Information Officer

What do pies & HR have in common?

Today is, I am told, International HR Day.  

It’s also World Bee Day, National Endangered Species Day, National be a Millionaire Day, National Defense Transportation Day (in the US by the spelling), National Pick Strawberries Day, International Clinical Trials Day and World Meditation Day. As if that wasn’t enough, we are in National Walking month too. I was going to make a joke about the need for a National Pie Day when I discovered that there already is one (January 23rd). Ditto National Sausage Dog Day, which is on June 21st. 

Hilarity notwithstanding, this has prompted me to think about how important HR is. 

Regular readers of my ramblings will probably be aware that I love my job but have calculated that it would be at least 6 times better if I didn’t have any employees, customers or suppliers. Without them, life would truly be blissful, if rather dull. 

I should start by saying I don’t even like the term HR. Back in the old days, HR used to be called Personnel. I liked Personnel. It recognised people as being special and different and not just another ingredient you need in the recipe for running a company. Human Resources make people sound a bit like nuts and bolts or cleaning products or other SKUs you might keep lying around in case they are needed. Don’t even get me started on the idea of Human Capital Management. For the sake of a quiet life though, I will call what I still think of as Personnel, HR. It is after all, International HR Day, not International Personnel Day. 

One of the joys of being a CEO is I tend to interact with people when they are at their best. I get to hang out with those who have gone above and beyond or done something amazing. I don’t often have to deal with people at their worst. People who, because they are human, are struggling with work or family or just life. I think I probably have the empathy of a cabbage and the patience of a hippo, on his way to eat a cabbage. This makes me a very poor manager of people. Yet, at Delt we have super high staff engagement, a Best Companies Award, the Workplace Wellbeing Charter and more. This is all down to our HR team. This small group deals with the collected daily challenges of nearly 600 people. I can barely manage to deal with my own.  

Who looks after HR? 

I’m sure it should be me but as mentioned, I feel poorly equipped to do so. Which means they have to look after themselves as well as everyone else. This is a pretty thankless task. People are quick to complain if something goes wrong but slow to praise when you get paid correctly, hired fast, trained well, supported through whatever life or work challenges you have, or exited well enough that they are singing our praises long after leaving for new opportunities. 

Delt’s various support service businesses are delivered quietly behind the scenes, enabling other people to do amazing things. Delt’s HR team work behind the scenes, enabling our own people to achieve the very best they can, for themselves and our customers. Without them, our personnel cannot succeed and without that, we have no company. 

Despite my new found passion for National Pie Day, I think that I could probably live happily and (more) healthily without pies. I could not live without HR. Probably, nor could you.  

Happy International HR Day team. 

Giles Letheren, Chief Executive Officer

Photo by FitNish Media on Unsplash

Anxiety: Hindrance? Or Hero Power?

It seems in the present day that Anxiety is a negative attribute to have. As if it’s some sort of ‘disorder’. However, I’m of the opinion that, in fact, anxiety is perfectly normal and, in most cases, healthy.

Being able to second-guess, internally debate and question ourselves is a trait that we should see as a strength, yet society strongly recognises it as a weakness. The tremendous growth of diagnosed anxiety is remarkable, from teenagers to adults. 30% of the British public ‘admit’ to having experienced a high level of anxiety in their lifetime with many ‘solutions’ being delivered including, squishy toys, fidget cubes and of course, every teacher’s nightmare, the fidget spinner. Notably these solutions also supported those with ADHD alongside anxiety and in some cases I’m sure they ‘worked’ but even the inclusion of these devices, it only increased the negativity surrounding the anxiety epidemic.

With a (not-so) simple change in perception we could change anxiety into our greatest human superpower.

My name is Adam. I’m 35 and a ¾  years old and I have Anxiety.

And these are my (fantastic) four reasons why Anxiety is a superpower.

 Time

Specifically, when it comes to decision making, I take my time. Very rarely do I make an impulse buy. To be fair, this is usually split between me being anxious about buying something and trying to find it cheaper elsewhere. Items have been known to sit in my basket for days whilst I ponder paying £2.85 on a second-hand book on eBay. Underlining our anxiety is our desire to create a good impression, to be valuable. The anxiety makes us feel uncomfortable is we deviate from doing what needs to be done. Our time management skills are on point because of this.

Talking to myself

This is a big one. The number of times I probably seem crazy because I’m (internally) talking to myself but pulling faces whilst having this conversation. Though If we’re experiencing a bout anxiety our sometimes talking to ourselves and making the nerves ‘real’ helps us feel released from some of the pressure, we can better talk ourselves into the taking the next step. This is how we succeed; one-step-at-a-time.

Risk

Risk is overrated. Sure, we need some of it in our lives, but there’s no harm in taking things slow and playing it safe. That being said, the value of risk should be understated. Its power can be the leap from losing all confidence in yourself, to actually feeling what your worth. The adrenaline rush that often comes with risk can be where the lines between excitement and anxiety are often confused. We must train ourselves to embrace the unfamiliar, and what it feels like to be there. Risk, in large amounts is overrated, train yourself, take smaller, more calculated risks and slowly build your confidence. My ability to lower the risk I’ve things I partake in keeps me alive.

Pressure

Pressure is a nasty word, especially in workplace. Ever heard of the famous sentence ‘I work better under pressure’ ? I have, a thousand and four times. Being a teacher, I was always reminding students of deadlines and was told they work much better under pressure. Amazingly, it’s that generation of students who are in the midst of the anxiety epidemic…. go figure.

However, It is when we’re under high-pressured situations that we are the most alert. Our body responds automatically, putting us into the biological experience of fight-or-flight.

But instead of viewing this anxiety as negative, train yourself to see it as fuel; the energy you need to run into action. Just remember to do it at your pace.

I’ve always wanted to be a superhero, and for a while I thought that stuff just belonged in comic books or in movies. But I’ve come to realise that alongside the emergency services, teachers, forces personnel and many, many others that we can be superheroes in our own right.

It’s an upside-down way of thinking, but my kryptonite, my anxiety is the actually core of my strength and decision making.

My anxiety is my ‘Spidey-Sense’. It gives me a feeling, a strong sense of something being wrong, dangerous, or a suspicious situation.

It makes me, me.

Adam Dyer, IT Trainer

Photo by Ali Kokab on Unsplash

Ukraine Ts and Cs

I’ve managed to deliberately avoid politics for most of my career taking an uncomfortable position sat firmly on the fence. In one organisation I was a member of the Board and also the general secretary of the employee’s trade union. That was awkward. 

However, what’s been happening in Ukraine over the last 26 days (arguably the last 6+ years) is something that is well beyond politics and goes to the very soul of what is right and what is wrong. I find it rather sad that after 200,000 years of evolution we still find that the best way of solving disagreements is killing each other.  

That the vast majority of the world has recognised that this is wrong and is trying to do something about it, is certainly a positive evolutionary step, if rather too late. I have a great many conflicting thoughts and emotions at the moment. Did I feel ashamed when a politician recently suggested on Question Time that Britain was leading the world in our response? (This was at about the point that Poland had taken in around a million refugees and we had found room for about 104.) Absolutely. I find the whole ‘we are the best in the world’ narrative to be not just implausible, but dangerously Trumpian (more of my personal politics leaking out perhaps). However, I’ve spent many years working on the fringes of both the military and diplomacy and understand the need to be very sure before you act on a global scale, even when you might be pretty sure that not acting quickly will just make matters worse. I’m glad I don’t have to make these decisions. It’s hard enough trying to do the right thing for the right reasons in a £20m company of 200 people, let alone when you are carrying the weight of history on your back. 

In time, I suspect we will find that Volodymyr Zelensky is as flawed as the rest of us, but right now he has given the rest of the world a masterclass in leadership for the internet age. He’s probably ineligible to be Prime Minister of the UK, but I’d vote for him tomorrow anyway. 

How best to support Ukraine is a dilemma faced by everyone, not just company CEOs. We can donate money to one of the hundreds of charities helping the displaced; we can fly a virtual Ukrainian flag on our Teams calls; some of us are even bold enough to take up arms. Having found myself on the pointy end of a gun a couple of times, I know the latter isn’t an option that’s going to help anyone. However, I am a bit of a closet geek AND a closet lawyer and what better way to show my support than to point you to one of, what I expect to be, many new terms and conditions popping up in software code. This one is from the terraform-aws modules (a collection of open-source tools designed to make creating and managing cloud computing resources easier). 

Enjoy. 

599 ## Additional terms of use for users from Russia and Belarus 

600 

601 By using the code provided in this repository you agree with the following: 

602 Russia has illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 and brought the war in Donbas followed by full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. 

603  Russia has brought sorrow and devastations to millions of Ukrainians, killed hundreds of innocent people, damaged thousands of buildings, and forced several million people to flee. 

604 Putin khuylo! 

For anyone put off because this looks like code it’s just a set of licence terms, written into the code, that say if you come from Russia or Belarus you may only use the software if you agree that Putin is a (rather derogatory term you can Google for yourself). 

I’m faintly ashamed that repeating a Russian obscenity in a blog has made me smile, even while survivors are still being dug out of the theatre in Mauripol. However, for somebody who has made it a rule to never mix politics and business, it’s a small step in my own evolution. 

Giles Letheren, Chief Executive Officer