HRchat Podcast
Listen to the HRchat Podcast by HR Gazette to get insights and tips from HR leaders, influencers and tech experts. Topics covered include HR Tech, HR, AI, Leadership, Talent, Recruitment, Employee Engagement, Recognition, Wellness, DEI, and Company Culture.
Hosted by Bill Banham, Pauline James, and other HR enthusiasts, the HRchat show publishes interviews with influencers, leaders, analysts, and those in the HR trenches 2-4 times each week.
The show is approaching 1000 episodes and past guests are from organizations including ADP, SAP, Ceridian, IBM, UPS, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Simon Sinek Inc, NASA, Gartner, SHRM, Government of Canada, Hacking HR, McLean & Company, UPS, Microsoft, Shopify, DisruptHR, McKinsey and Co, Virgin Pulse, Salesforce, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and Coca-Cola Beverages Company.
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Podcast Music Credit"Funky One"Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
HRchat Podcast
Why Your Employees Won't Tell You The Truth (And How To Fix It) with Maureen Brown
Maureen Brown joins the HRchat Podcast to reveal why employee voice isn't just another corporate buzzword—it's the untapped resource transforming workplace culture and employer branding across industries. As founder of Sullivan Brown Resourcing Partners and MySay, Maureen brings 16+ years of recruitment expertise to this conversation about why companies struggle to truly hear their employees.
We dive deep into the disconnect between conducting engagement surveys and implementing genuine listening strategies. Maureen explains why even well-intentioned HR teams and managers often can't hear feedback without bias, and how independent partners create the psychological safety essential for honest communication. "People want to feel heard," Maureen emphasizes, "and I don't know how heard you feel when you've filled in an online survey."
The conversation with Bill Banham reveals a fascinating post-pandemic shift in workplace dynamics. While pre-COVID exit interviews often contained negative feedback about direct managers, today's employees express positive sentiments about their managers while directing frustration toward leadership teams. Maureen unpacks the complex reasons behind this change—from decreased leadership visibility to middle managers increasingly identifying with their teams rather than with leadership.
Perhaps most compelling is Maureen's challenge to conventional employer branding approaches. Rather than investing in slick recruitment websites or referral schemes, she advocates for fostering genuine employee advocacy through meaningful listening practices. "There's nothing more powerful than genuine advocacy," she asserts, pointing to the missed opportunity when companies fail to amplify authentic employee voices.
Whether you're struggling with retention, rebuilding your culture post-pandemic, or simply wanting to strengthen your employer brand, this episode offers actionable insights on creating psychological safety, conducting effective stay interviews, and transforming employee feedback into strategic advantage. Connect with Maureen on LinkedIn or visit sullivanbrown.co.uk and mi-say.com to learn more about amplifying employee voice in your organization.
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Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom. And visit hrgazettecom.
Speaker 2:Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. Hello listeners, this is your host today, Bill Bannam, and in this episode, I am joined by the amazing, fabulous, wonderful Maureen Brown, founder and managing director over at Sullivan Brown Resourcing Partners and founder at MySay. Maureen is an HR recruitment professional with more than 16 years of experience across agency and in-house recruitment. In 2013, Maureen set up Sullivan Brown Resourcing Partners specialising in HR appointments across the North East, Cumbria and North West of beautiful England, offering interim, temporary and permanent recruitment solutions. And Maureen was also recently a speaker at the Disrupt North East launch summit and her talk was called A Voice Value Visibility, and we'll get into that, I'm sure, as part of the conversation today. Maureen, how are you doing?
Speaker 3:I'm good, thank you. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much for joining me, as we like to do, on this show. Before we get into the meat of the conversation, why don't you take a couple of minutes and tell our listeners a bit about yourself, your career, background, your loves and what gets you up in the morning?
Speaker 3:Well, career-wise, I have actually been a HR recruiter since about 1999. I spent a couple of years doing finance recruitment, way back when, and then moved into HR and knew that I'd found my home. So that was where I was and I worked within other recruitment businesses and then set up my own business and then that went into another business called MySay, which I know we're going to talk about today. So I've actually got two businesses, I think probably I always knew I should have been self-employed. I just wasn't maybe brave enough to take the leap at some point. So I'm very glad that I did that.
Speaker 3:And I'm based up here in the northeast of England, but probably tell from accent I am a Northwest girl, so I'm from Widnes originally, so over Liverpool way, and that is where I grew up. And then I moved up to the northeast near Newcastle 18 years ago. What gets me out of bed in the morning? Do you know what I genuinely love, what I do? I mean, I'm a mum, I've got two kids, which obviously you know means that I have to get out of bed in the morning, otherwise they wouldn't go to school. But I think one of the lovely things about being self-employed is you can shape your work around what you really enjoy, and that's what I've managed to do over the course of the last 13 years or so. So, yeah, just opportunity and conversations and working with some brilliant people.
Speaker 4:Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat Podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette Learn more at hrgazettecom. And now on the HR Gazette Learn more at hrgazettecom. And now back to the show Wonderful.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. And so the context of how you and I came together is a few months ago. A couple months ago we hosted the launch event of Disrupt Northeast just outside of Durham, and you were one of our fabulous speakers that day. Can you take a couple of minutes and tell our listeners a bit about the session that you presented?
Speaker 3:First of all, it was totally nerve-wracking, I've got to say I mean thanks for having me, but oh my goodness, what a challenge for me to be succinct and stick to the time limit. So that was interesting. I've never done anything like that before. But yeah, I spoke about voice and visibility and value, and also advocacy, the power of employee advocacy and I chose that topic because I think, across the two businesses that I have whether I'm looking at it from a recruitment lens as a HR recruiter or whether I'm looking at it from my, say, employee research so we are looking at data from exit interviews, starter interviews, stay interviews, engagement surveys.
Speaker 3:One of the things that I see as being common across all of that is that companies are not necessarily understanding how to encompass the power of employee voice.
Speaker 3:They do engagement surveys, but they're not necessarily having a listening strategy.
Speaker 3:They have an engagement strategy, but the power of listening and the power of voice and promoting employee voice is something that I just think a lot of companies still aren't good at and actually listening to that feedback but then utilizing it in a way that can influence recruitment strategy and people's onboarding journey and the decisions that they make, the very complex decisions that they make to join or leave a business.
Speaker 3:So for me that all comes together perfectly, but it's something that organisations seem to really struggle with.
Speaker 3:So that's why I wanted to talk about that, because I'm on a bit of a crusade Bill, to be honest, to really promote the power of employee voice, but done in a way that businesses are really getting some useful insight, some actionable insight that they can go away and do something with. And I also believe that if you promote employee voice and you truly understand how your employees are experiencing their work life with you, whether that's when they're starting or leaving or throughout their career if you can focus on employee advocacy as a measure of success and how good you are as an employer, that will do all of your work for you when it comes to your employer brand. There's so much effort goes into creating great websites or refer a friend schemes People still ask me about, and I just think there's nothing more powerful than genuine advocacy. So, yeah, I'm on a bit of a mission to promote it, both from my recruitment world and my employee voice world. I just think it's a really underutilized tool and companies need to think about things differently in that world.
Speaker 2:I agree, and I think maybe we should talk more about employee advocacy shortly. Let's just focus for the time being, though, on one of the things you mentioned there in terms of the power of employee feedback. I talk to people a lot on this show about ways to garner useful employee feedback to shape the company culture, shape the direction, make it more attractive to future talent, et cetera, et cetera, to future talent, etc. Etc. The the question often is around how can you make sure that feedback is genuine, that is authentic, because employees are going to be concerned about saying the wrong thing and then having repercussions with that. So is that down to anonymity? Are there actually? Is it better that, um, that you do know who's saying what, because then you can shape a particular department? If so, how do you ensure that the feedback is authentic and helpful?
Speaker 3:Yeah, in the main, I think our superpower, in my say, is the fact that we are not you, we are independent and we do guarantee anonymity and confidentiality and for a lot of the work we do, particularly when we're looking at stay surveys rather than just lever surveys people want to have a safe space that they can share and if they don't feel that they have that internally, the best thing you can do is give them the opportunity to speak to somebody who doesn't work there so that they can be honest. And people want to feel heard, and I think a lot of companies rely on an engagement surveys and pulse surveys, but I don't know how heard you feel when you filled in an online survey. I certainly don't feel very heard and a lot of the work that we do. So we don't just do online surveys, we do telephone interviews and face-to-face interviews, and a lot of our time is spent actually reassuring people that their feedback is going to be genuinely anonymous and in confidence, and part of that is because some of the companies that bring us in know they have a challenge. They know that they have something that's not right and they want to understand what that is, because they have something that's not right. They don't have that culture of psychological safety and promoting employee voice that's going to enable people to share their honest feedback. I think it's better to engage with an independent partner, because then you know that the feedback that they're giving is not being influenced by the fact that they're nervous about who they're speaking to.
Speaker 3:I think the other important side of that coin, though, is that, even if they trust you as a manager, even if they trust you as a HR team and they do give their honest feedback, it's really, really difficult for HR teams and managers to hear that without bias. So if you work in that organisation and here's just a kind of real example that we see a lot if you're in a HR team that's spent months on a project to really increase the employee benefits and promote those employee benefits, but all of the feedback you're hearing is but I didn't even know what the benefits were, and that's a real example that we hear a lot it's really hard to hear that without thinking, yes, you did, we've spent months doing this. So it's hard to hear it without bias as well, and because people are generally well intended if someone's had quite an extreme experience, it's also really difficult not to go down a rabbit hole with that example rather than looking for the overall themes that are going to have the biggest impact for you. So if you're looking at something like stay interviews, where you're literally asking people have you looked for another job in the last six months? Do you see yourself being here in 12 months, so you can truly understand the risk profile of key areas of your workforce, if they're looking actively for another role at the moment and they don't have full confidence and trust in you, they're not going to tell you, you're not going to get the information that you need to understand what you need to do. They're not going to tell you what frustrates them or what drove them to apply for another job. So definitely that independence.
Speaker 3:I think culture is a massive thing as well. So if you are not promoting employee voice or people are giving feedback and not seeing action happening from it, then the chances are they will stop telling you. So it's actually really difficult to do internally, and engaging with an external partner I think gives people that real opportunity to be heard. Partner. I think gives people that real opportunity to be heard and they appreciate that. You know we have people say to us I'm so glad I got this opportunity to share this and you know, in an ideal world what I'd love to do is stop everyone typing on Glassdoor and give really constructive feedback that can actually help employers to make that experience better for the people still in the business.
Speaker 5:This episode of the HR Chat podcast is supported by my Staff Shop, the UK's only employee-owned employee benefit provider. We provide a range of competitive and flexible employee benefit solutions to help you improve your employee value proposition, from exclusive deals and discounts to help your people stretch their salaries to effective reward and recognition programs and a comprehensive health and well-being offering. We pride ourselves on our friendly and collaborative way of working, putting the interest of our clients at the heart of everything we do. Learn more at mystaffshopcom, thanks.
Speaker 2:And now back to the HR chat show so you guys go to extra length to reassure folks that what they are sharing is in confidence, etc. Is it fair, though, to assume that the stay interviews are not going to be quite as authentic as the lever interviews, because you know at that point you've got nothing to lose, have you?
Speaker 3:do you know what? No, I wouldn't say so. I think some of the most fascinating projects that we've done have been stay interview projects, and generally people like to be honest with us during those projects because they can see there's a benefit to them to doing so. So, um, for example, one of the recent stay interview projects that we did was with a local authority in the run-up to local elections here in the in in the uk if you're not listening in the uk, um, so these are our local councils and that particular chief executive wanted to understand the impact that the local election results might have on the motivation and engagement of the senior leadership team. Those people were really open and honest with us because and we see this a lot with stay interview projects I think what employers don't always get is the fact that a lot of the people that work for you love the organization and are really committed to the purpose, not just of the organization but their own purpose within their work life to deliver that they will share it, because they hope that you're going to take that feedback and do something with it that's going to enable them to really feel satisfied in the work that they're doing and feel that they're delivering for their stakeholders, for their communities, for the people that are in their care, whatever it may be.
Speaker 3:So actually we find that the stay interviews people are really, really honest with us, even though sometimes it hurts them to say it, and some of the information that comes out of that is probably the most useful insight that employers can get. But you have to create the right conditions for people to share.
Speaker 2:I'm guessing that the coaching that you and your team offer to employees as part of this process is probably quite useful when they're getting to the annual employee review stage, the conversations, the hr department and their manager or um. I'd like to think most companies don't do an annual review these days and they do more regular touch points, but you know the, the education that you're giving them in terms of the, the language that they should be using, things that they should be focusing on. I'm guessing that all feeds in. Is that fair to say?
Speaker 3:yeah, I mean we try and stay as independent as possible so we don't really coach those. If somebody's telling us something about their employer, we don't. We can't even really empathize and say, oh gosh, that's awful. Or you know, what we try and use is language like I'm sorry you felt that way. Have you had the opportunity to share that? Rather than actually empathize with them. Because, of course, just because you don don't like your manager or your leadership team, it doesn't mean that they're not good managers and good leadership teams. So we try and hear the feedback and take the feedback as independently as possible, without offering reinforcement, because what they're experiencing might not be what everyone is experiencing.
Speaker 3:What I think is interesting there that you raised about the kind of coaching conversations and the one-to-ones and the feedbacks. You're right, we should all have moved away from annual reviews. Now I hope we have um, I don't really like the word appraisal, I'm not a fan of that, but what we see is that managers will give us feedback that they find those conversations difficult. They find them difficult to do, mainly because of content, but sometimes just because of time and the sheer volume of work that is passed to them and the pressure that's put on them. What's been interesting post-COVID is that pre-COVID, people were actually very negative about their managers. When we were doing exit interviews it was actually really extreme feedback a lot of the time.
Speaker 3:Since COVID, we've seen that shift and we've seen people saying no, my manager cares about me, my manager wants to do the right thing by me, but the leadership team are making it very difficult for them to do so. So this kind of negative sentiment or negative experience is no longer perceived necessarily as just a direct manager problem. It's shifted up a level. We see people crying out for one-to-ones, for regular feedback, for coaching and performance, and yet it's something that managers are quite nervous about.
Speaker 3:So in not doing it, people don't feel supported or like they're having an opportunity to share. So there's definitely some work that organizations can do about making sure that they are regular and that managers are giving the time to do them, but also that they understand that a one-to-one is not an appraisal. It's not a manager sitting there telling that person what they think of their performance. It should be a two-way conversation where people want the opportunity to say I'm struggling with this or I could use support on that, and if you get them right, they can make a massive difference to engagement and employee experience and advocacy, but it's definitely an area that businesses are very weak on across the board. We just see it all the time and people craving that support and not getting it okay, so you have whetted my appetite there.
Speaker 2:Uh, why? Why the shift, this post-pandemic shift from um blaming having a bad relationship with your direct manager to that now being focused at the senior leadership, the C-suite, if you like. What are some of the reasons behind that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, do you know what? There are a number of reasons. In fact, there's lots of reasons that always are on there because it's individual across different employers. But there are some key reasons that we think sit behind this. The first is that the pressure on middle management has never been greater. You know, let's face it, economic times are difficult. The world is constantly changing, Businesses are constantly realigning and there is a lot of pressure being put on managers to get more from the teams that they're managing, often with less. So the pressures on those managers are really difficult and so they don't always have the time.
Speaker 3:Where the alignment has come and the different perception of where the blame for this sits, I think there's a number of reasons. Firstly, during COVID, managers really rolled their sleeves up and they were in there with their teams delivering. So that camaraderie, that who do I work with, who are my colleagues day to day, those relationships grew. So, firstly, where those managers align themselves has changed. Also, we're living through a cost of living struggle. You know people are struggling with their money. It's not going as far. And those middle managers, you know, all of a sudden they can't necessarily afford their holiday every year. You know those wages haven't necessarily changed. They still see leadership as having that, but they align themselves more with the people working for them than they do the leadership. They don't see themselves as part of that leadership group anymore. They see themselves as part of my team, and so that whole alignment has changed. Now there is definitely some evidence to show that in some ways it's just managers kind of passing the book a little bit because they've got closer to their teams and that's often an easy way out.
Speaker 3:But the other thing that we see sitting hand in hand with this is often a lack of visibility of leadership. The managers are very visible. They're sitting with their teams. The leadership scores around visibility have dropped quite significantly since COVID. So if you're not seeing the leaders, we get comments like the leadership don't understand what we do on a day to day, we never see them, they make life really hard for my manager, et cetera, et cetera. That might not be true, but if you're not present and you're not visible and you're not showing that you understand, then the perception is you don't care about me and you're making life difficult for my manager. You're making life difficult for all of us.
Speaker 3:So I think there's a visibility thing going on here. Some of that will be driven by hybrid, but that doesn't mean that I think everyone should be calling the workforces back in. I don't. I think it's this problem with voice. I think if leadership really could show that they were listening and they cared and they were taking action on that, that lack of visibility would be less of an issue. So I think that is one of the main things.
Speaker 3:The other thing that we do see as well, though, is people who feel really strongly about their employer and wanting that business to succeed and they believe that leadership aren't getting the strategy right.
Speaker 3:And if they feel a real sense of ownership of that business to succeed and they believe that leadership aren't getting the strategy right, and if they feel a real sense of ownership of that business say, they've been there a long time or it's a brand they're particularly passionate about if they believe that leadership aren't getting it right, they will disconnect from that leadership, but they'll still have a relationship with their manager, who they see all the time. So I think it's complex, I don't think it's okay. Businesses need to do this, and that will change, but it's a definite change. It's a marked difference, In fact. We often see, when we look at employee experience heat maps for leavers, we often see my manager sitting right at the top in terms of positive experience and leadership sitting at the bottom. So it plays out in the data and it plays out in the feedback, but it's quite a complex issue.
Speaker 2:I've got so many more questions for you, but we're out of time, isn't it? And the way you present it is excellent. Um, one more question for you, though, before we do wrap up before today, and that is how can our listeners connect with you? Is that linkedin? Do you want to share your email address? Are you super cool and all over the tiktoks and places? And, of course, how can folks learn more about my safe and Sullivan Brown?
Speaker 3:yeah, uh, I can definitely say I am not super cool. So, um, you won't find me on TikTok. I wouldn't know how to use it or my kids would definitely tell you I'm not super cool. Linkedin is the best place to find me. So, um, I'm Maureen Brown on LinkedIn. You can find me on there or you can visit our website, so wwwsullivanbrowncouk if you're looking for support with HR recruitment, or wwwmysaycom if you are looking for assistance with amplifying employee voice and understanding how people are really experiencing the world of work in your business.
Speaker 2:Excellent. Is that my-say? Just to be clear, my hyphen saycom.
Speaker 3:You're right. M I hyphen s a y, you're absolutely right. And and the m? I stands for meaningful insight from people having their stay. That's where the name came from. So, yeah, m I hyphen s a y, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2:Sorry, and there will, of course, link a bit listeners be links in the show notes as well, so you can find all of that there, in case your pencil broke when you're trying to write that down. Um, maureen, that just leaves me to say for today, I'll uh, I'll be nagging you to come back on, I think, but for today, thank you very much for being my guest no, thank you for having me, it's been great and listeners as always, until always, until next time, happy working.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work? Subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom.
