Achieving Career Success in the New Hybrid World of Work

Foreign.

Welcome to this week's 300th Treasury Career Corner podcast. On each and every week over the past five years, and it's been more than five years, I've interviewed Treasury professionals about their treasury careers. I've talked to them about how they built their careers, where they are now, and where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. Originally launched the show pre Covid thinking Maybe we'll do 10 shows, see how it goes, see where we get to. A lot of podcasts don't get past that. It's 300 plus shows. What a journey. I've talked to treasurers each and every week about their roles, about how they developed, how they started, a lot of them discovering Treasury. What was the show given me? Well, it's given me you lovely people, my lovely listeners, and I've got to meet you. I've got people meeting me at different conferences. I met some of you recently, Euro Finance. I met a lot of you at AFP in the US and it was amazing. A guy heard my voice just from across the room and ran over, Mike, Mike. I saw a lady in New York.

She heard my voice.

You're Mike, you do the podcast. And I'm like, yeah, that's me. And I just think I'm just talking Treasury.

Why do I talk Treasury?

Because treasury is cool. I love talking about it. It's just something I've done. Been doing it 25 years. We've run the business. 21 years has taken me around the world. We originally started in the uk. We've gone across Europe, Asia, Pacific and we've expanded the business now across the US from the east to west coast and everywhere in between. An incredible journey. Before we dive into the show, I want to thank you. Well, let's give a thank you to you, my loyal listeners. Thank you very much for listening to the show, your support and the comments and do leave a rating for us maybe after this 300th why wouldn't you? That could be your present back to me for doing 300 of these. Give us a quick star rating if you would. Couple of comments. Just click on itunes or wherever you listen to Spotify. I don't mind wherever you listen to it. Just give us a couple of words, a couple of shout outs. Who should we shout out first? We'll give Sam behind the scenes. You don't see him. Sam is our amazing podcast producer and editor and he's the one that gets you guys ums as and everything in between cleaned up. He's been with us virtually since the start over four and a half years now and we couldn't do it without him. Yeah, he gets to listen to you guys and he. He's fallen in love with treasury as well. Although listening to this back, he might fall out of love with Treasury. Anyway, let's move on. And the other person, I'm gonna say, well, as well as the team, Katie and Craig, they've done a great job. But other person who makes sure the podcast goes out on time on all the platforms it's done each and every week is Carly. Carly Larkin Burks. She's not thankless because I'm thanking her now. Carly, thank you for running the show. She does the show notes, she makes sure it appears on all of the platforms and she makes sure all of the shows are arranged. So thank you to her and thank you to my guests and for you listening to my guests. They're incredible. If you want to be on the show, let me know. The other thing I'm going to say is you need to listen to the end of today's episode. We're going to go into the 300th episode, but we've got a bit of announcement. Treasury, career corner live in the us, in the UK and across Europe. Tune in at the end, maybe even want to jump to the end, but don't. You're going to miss the great episode. Tell you more at the end of the show, but this week's episode is extra special. You're with two of my really good friends, lovely Joel Campbell from Trevi Pay and Leanne Perkins, now the assistant treasurer at Ankura. They've both been on the show before, both Leanne a couple of times and Joel. And we've done other sessions together, but we were invited for a second time. We did Philadelphia, we did about personal branding, so we got that previously and then this time, this AFP over in San Diego, we were asked to talk about the ever changing world of remote and hybrid work. It's a great show in front of a live audience. There is some cheekiness in there. It's meant all in good humor. I just loved talking in front of an audience of over 400, which was crazy.

It was.

Until I reflected afterwards when I just stood in front of 400 people. Yeah, it was great. So I hope you enjoy the show as much as I did or the conference session that you get today and listen in at the end for some of the special news coming your way. As I say each and every week and have done for a few years now, five plus, let's get on with the show.

Good afternoon, San Diego. No, no, no, we've done this before, haven't we? We're post lunch, had that little lull, few people falling asleep, just the panelists. Wake up. Good afternoon, San Diego. Oh, well, we are away. Thank goodness. Exactly as my FP colleague there said, Hybrid world. It used to just be to do with cars. Now it's about you lot. Now we will each introduce ourselves and why we were chosen to explore this topic. Obviously there are other people available, but we said yes, the structure of it will be we will introduce ourselves, we will then go through the main session, we'll then do Q and A and then we'll wrap up with our takeaways. As I said to many of the audiences, if you don't get involved in the Q and A at the end, you're stupid. Why? You've got three amazing, well, two amazing treasury professionals and me up here. We've come all the way. I've come what, five and a half thousand miles to do this. If you don't take the advantage of it, it's your loss. And I came to a very good session earlier with Nicole for social media. And was I as a. But after then, was I engaged? Was I present? Not really. Not because of them, because of me. And I can see a lot of you on your phones. Do us a favor, you've come here 3,5000 miles, put your phones away for an hour, make the most of it. So who am I? So Mike, Richard's very big head.

I.

Run the treasury recruitment company. I move you guys around the room and then send out a bill. That's right. So I recruit treasurers and treasury analysts, move them up the scale, treasurers, move them across companies. So I do that again, not as a sales pitch, but that's why I've been invited up here because I talk to you guys about remote working and everything on a day to day basis. How do I get this knowledge? Very successful podcast. Got actually some of the podcast guests here. I had actually the amazing Leanne and Joel on the podcast of the past. And I said to a guy in Chicago when I spoke there, I said, look, feels a bit salesy to tell the people. He said, mike, we need to know who you've spoken to. So had the treasurer of Caterpillar, treasurer of Dow Chemicals, treasurer of Porsche, So some of the best treasurers, the leading global treasurers, that's how I've got my knowledge session. We're going to talk. Well, in fact, as I say, we're going to Pass across the panel members to the introduce thems, and then we will actually go through about the main topic about hybrid and remote and how you guys are handling it. So, Leanne.

Hi, everyone. It's so nice to see so many familiar faces and friends in the audience. And I think this is a great topic for all of us to talk about and explore. It's what we've all been going through for the last three, five years. So thank you for joining us, particularly after lunch, and it's always hard to follow Mike, but. But we'll do my best.

We'll translate for you.

Thank you. So I've been in treasury for about 19 years. It is my passion and I think of my treasury career as both my prose and my poetry. My prose is that it's something I do on a daily basis. It's how I communicate my story of treasury and what I do. But the poetry of treasury for me is being in the advocacy of the function and of just uplifting the Treasurer into the future. I think treasury is such an amazing yet understaffed function in a company, and it's really coming to its own these days. And I have been so fortunate to sit on many boards and committees where I can help to uplift the treasury function, where I can make new changes and advocate for regulations in the industry. One of my favorite things to do is to be on the board of Narcha, where we helped as practitioners to raise the same day ACH limit to a million dollars. So there are just so many great things I've been involved in, and that's where I think I get my passion from and where I want my career to go in the future. I've done a lot of things over the years from starting as a Treasury analyst to reach my goal of being a treasurer of both a private and a public company. So I've really worked hard. I've educated myself through the years, and during COVID was, I think, for me, the pinnacle of my education. Getting a Treasury license in the uk. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. I'm never studying ever again. It was really great. So I think, to sum up in a nutshell, I just really love Treasury. I love the function. And anyone who wants to talk treasury is always welcome to talk with me and hear about how I have moved myself up my career path and just still enjoy the passion for what I do.

Okay.

And over to Joel Leon is by far the most passionate treasury person I think I've ever met. The rose between two thorns is the way I would describe her. So my name is Joel Campbell. I'm chief Financial officer at a company called Trevipay. We're a B2B payments company based in Kansas City. Prior to that, I had a 27 year career in corporate treasury and four large public companies and have done just about every kind of function within treasury that you can imagine. I also have a passion for Treasury. I fell into treasury back in the late 1990s, had no idea what treasury was, became my passion as well. I've been fortunate enough to kind of segue out of treasury now and even though I still love it, I've segued out into a broader CFO role of a private equity owned company and have brought my horizons using my treasury experience and the background I've brought to help grow a company very quickly and generate a return for our private equity owners over time. So I share the same passion. We have perhaps different perspectives which we're going to share with you today. We got the band back together. Some of you may remember we did a very similar session last year on career progress within treasury which was really well received and a lot of fun. So please be interactive with us today and thanks for joining us.

Okay, so the topic of the day post pandemic prior to, you know, hybrid wasn't even a word. You know, it was about cars and everything else. Then suddenly it's like, are you in office? Are you out of office? Remote. What are you doing? Well, there you go. They've even turned on the lights for us. Wow. There you go. Now we can't see any of you. Actually, that's much better. Turn them up a bit more. Thank you. So let's talk about remote hybrid for each of you. We'll start with Leanne and then we'll go to Joel. What's your experiences, particularly to share with the audience about remote and hybrid for you?

Well, I've been remote since March of 2020 and I think we all had that experience when Covid hit and we all suddenly had to go home and work. It was supposed to be for two weeks, mask up and we'll be back in the offices. Turned out to be, you know, three years for some of us. But there was definitely a learning curve when we were all sent home. I didn't necessarily have the IT things at home to help set me up properly. Fortunately had a house big enough to be able to have my own office, but I certainly wasn't equipped to work well at home. But, you know, it took a while and we all realized that you have to be agile in order to succeed. And we just, you know, we all learned about zoom. We all had to figure out how to install that on our machines and get it to work, how to get a camera to work. You know, we always went through that. You were always on pause on your microphone. But it took a while, but we managed. And my company that I was with never went back to the office, so we all stayed at home and we all just figured out how to do it. There were definitely some difficulties at first where we didn't have boundaries. Where you started work at seven and you finished at seven because there was so much to do. There was so much stress in the industry that I was working in. It was oil and gas. So the times were really bad. It was very difficult. So we had a lot of capital market transactions we did from our homes. I remember my boss having to work from his car with his cell phone charger to help the kids be at home and his wife be at home and work. So we all just did what we had to do to get through. But it was, it was definitely challenging. But in order to make it work, we all shifted our attitudes. We, we got what we needed. We, you know, supply chain was tough, but we all got a microphone and we all got a screen and we just carried on working. And then I think we also just settled into a rhythm. We didn't have to get up and drive for an hour each way to get to, to work. We just use that time wisely. And then you had to learn things like boundaries. So once work was, was done for the day, you shut your door and you move on and you enjoy your evening and start again the next day. So it, it was definitely a learning curve, but for me it worked out really well. I'm the type of person who likes to wake up really early, get started for the day, and then I'm, I'm done by like 6 o' clock. I don't think anymore after that. So it worked out well for me. I was home and I could get on with the rest of my life. But it has also been a time where I just like to work by myself. If you give me something to do and you can consider it done, because I'm just going to sit down, work it out and figure it out. I don't necessarily need direction from my boss or a lot of interaction. So I'm the kind of person that I think remote work is well suited to. And I know they were team members and there were people in my office who struggled they needed that interaction. They're more extroverted than me, so they, they got the energy from other people. And I'm not, you know, that way inclined. So while I like being interact, you know, interacting with people and, and being in teams, it wasn't necessary for me. So I think, you know, for my personality and for what I do in treasury, it, it works out really well.

And Joel, what's it been like?

Yeah, I started out very similarly. Maybe some of you will relate to this. I started out in my basement and what I would call a Barca lounger, but it was a little nicer than that sitting at a game table for the first three months when I went home, because I thought, hey, this is two weeks, we're going back to the office. Why would I invest in creating an office? You know, four months later I was in the middle of doing a debt deal for my prior employer, which I had done dozens of debt deals before, but had never done one from home in my basement, sitting at a Barca lounger. We pulled it off. We were actually very successful in what we did. But it taught me a lot about, you know, I'm a little bit different than Leanne. I'm an extrovert. I thrive on being around people. I get my energy from processing things out loud with other people. So for me, going and working in my basement for 12, 14 hours a day drove me absolutely crazy. The fact that I got really frustrated with sitting and having to be on zoom calls after zoom calls, after zoom calls. And anytime I wanted to talk to someone, I had to get on a calendar and wait for them to be available. And I actually found myself working more than if I had gone to the office. Maybe some of you experienced that you could walk by your computer and yeah, I'll just check email for 20 minutes and three hours later, your family wonders if you're still alive in the basement or not. So my experience was a little bit different. I would say though, as Leon said, we settled into a new way of doing things. So I actually got an office chair, I got a desk set up a proper office to make it feel more like something that was professional, that at least gave me a space to go to something to do and then I could go retire to a different life, hopefully after hours. The thing I would say that that I learned through hybrid working though, once we kind of morphed. Two years after Covid, I work for again, a private equity owned company. They were very forceful and very big on us being back together. So we actually built out an Office. We are now in a true hybrid work schedule. And that for me has been a very welcomed opportunity to get back and be with people, to be around people and interact and collaborate and solve issues quickly. Those are things that I got frustrated with in a hybrid environment. Maybe some of you did as well. The thing I saw in some of my staff is you really started to see kind of the bifurcation of the introverts and the extroverts and you could really start to see who did really well. You could see people who were struggling. We had to get a lot more intentional around having team meetings and, you know, drinks over Zoom at 5 o' clock on a Friday night just to make sure people were staying connected. I think we all suffered through all those issues. Now I think it's. We're in a post pandemic environment now. What do we do? I think we're facing into maybe this is the new norm, but what does that new norm look like and will it evolve and change even further? God forbid, if there's another pandemic or if there's another crisis that we have to go through. I think as leaders of your companies, we all have to think through those issues and the impacts that they have on our people.

And for me as a recruiter, it's quite a weird world. I was just looking down some here. Some of the questions prior, when I was recruiting prior to Covid, I, I'd be asked, so what's the job? Who's it for? What's the salary now? And maybe a brave 1 in 10 people might say, what's your flexible working policy? I say, flexible out the door. Now, if I did that, I'd have no one working for me. And if I don't ask that question of my clients, I don't get to help them recruit because that's what I get asked. I just recently I was talking to Leanne. Before that. I've been recruited for a client in Texas, thankfully placed the role. But I approached 100, over 150 candidates for the role. And it was weird. The responses I got back, I would get the following list of questions and here we go. Just so I got it right. So I'd send out the job description, I'd send the link to the job, and then the first bit was, so is the job in the office hybrid or remote? What's the salary? Where is it? What's the job again? And you guys laugh. But I was literally doing this and I'm like, crumbs. And what happened? We actually got to the final stages with this one cat they fell in love with, thought it was really great. And what they were finding is he said, actually, I'm not going to be in the office, I'll be hybrid. And the company itself has actually changed because they realized that their IT teams were a bit sort of separate. They were in the office two or three days a week, but all the finance was coming in five days a week. And they're like, well, actually, do we need to. We've just had two years of working from home. And it's just as Joel told there about intentionality. I gave a session in New York, Cash Exchange, and Steve Rosenthal from Broadridge Podcast Guest, he talks about the fact that within their offices, they were finding. They were going back to their offices. Everyone's. Everyone's back in the office. Back in the office. And then he would go into his cubicle or his nice office, and the fact was then at 5 o' clock, he'd leave and he wouldn't have seen any of his team. They were just doing the job. So what they actually did is they pivoted a little bit. I can't remember the exact phrase. It's about intentionality. He said, if you're going to come in, come in for a reason. Have meetings in your diary. Don't just come in for the sake of. It actually make a difference. Otherwise you're just giving money to the state for your travel and all this and you're wasting time. You've proved it. So we're going to keep going with some of the bits on here and I'm going to push back to Joel because he is a boss and Leanne as well, you know, why are bosses reluctant? Why are senior staff reluctant, would you say? I mean, I, you know, we just talk through some of the. Oh, there you go. There you go. It wasn't good. Drop in productivity could have a lack of trust. How do you train your junior staff? Creation of a team ethos becomes more difficult. How do you deal with that yourself, Joel?

Yeah, I think that the team. Two things I've struggled with as a boss is one is collaboration. I touched on that before. I'm big on collaboration. I'm not necessarily consensus decision maker, but having people and getting input and perspectives from multiple people, I think that really became a challenge in the Zoom world. You could set up a call and you get people together and some people are better on Zoom than others. Some people would have their camera on, some people wouldn't. They'd have kids in the background or the cat Crawling across the keyboard. It was really hard to have kind of a normal conversation in a controlled environment where you could actually talk. So that collaboration, for me, just started to fall apart, and I would get frustrated with that. So we would do things where we would have, all right, everybody has your camera on. Everybody looks presentable today. Everybody's cat is in a different room. Like, we would try and do things where you could actually have a conversation and try and get business things meted out so that you could actually have meaningful conversation. So collaboration was a big one. And then, I think, you know, I think most of us have undersold the social aspect of work. I'm a social person. I love that social aspect. I love. I could talk about Ohio State football until the cows come home Ohio, But I love that aspect of work. And I will stay at work for an extra hour or two to make up the time that I've been social throughout the day. Because I think those social interactions, particularly for the younger generation with senior people, the things they can learn from the experiences we've been through, what we have to share in terms of our career path, whatever that looks like. I think that social interaction goes a lot further in a work environment than people give credit to. And so even if you are an introvert and you love being at home in your basement, in your Barker lounge, or working, that's great for you. But I think you're missing out on social opportunities to interact with senior people. And those interactions can pay dividends down the road when it comes to, you know, whether it's your performance or whether it's job opportunities or being seen as someone who could potentially interact with more senior members of management and be pushed forward to a different level. So those are two things that I think that I went through. I still even consciously. A couple team members here today, I still consciously work through those things because I think it's really important that we collaborate and that we realize that the social impact of our work.

Just want to jump in there quick. And I agree with what you're saying. I think what we do have to be careful about, though, is leaving behind some people who don't have the same personality. So, you know, there's. There has been intentionality in the first few years of COVID where bosses have said, oh, well, we realize this person needs a little bit more attention or, you know, social interaction. But that's starts to wane over time, particularly for those companies who have employees going back into the office, and some are remote, and you do tend to get left behind. If somebody is not looking after you. So I think as leaders, we also have to recognize that they are. The way people work is different to the way it has been pre Covid. We can't go back to pre Covid days, although we wish we could. This is just life. It changes and we have to accept that. So we have to, I think, meet people where they are. Some people are just more comfortable in one arena and in another. So you can't force a prior situation onto this new world that we're in because otherwise you're going to struggle to get the right talent in. Because there are people who want different things from their jobs and particularly the younger generation coming up, they're growing up in a different way. And one of my favorite sayings, and this is more, I think pertains to technology, but treasury is that world that is changing. It's agile, it's always changing with technology and regulation. So I love that saying from Emerson. That is a foolish consistency, is the hobgoblin of small minds. And I think it's really important because while the past and the way we did things is important, you can't just do what we always used to do. You have to evolve with the way the times are. And yes, you know, going back to offices is great for some companies, but companies are paying the bills, they're hiring people, they're. They're the boss, so to speak, in that, in that perspective. So we, we have to, you know, do what the company is asking us to do, but we also have a choice to go to a company that will help us and, and, you know, kind of hone our talents in the areas that we're in.

And Leanne talks there about talent. And that's why I'm here up on here talking about the talent issue you guys face. Back in lockdown, I was asked to give a session to the nact. So some of the top treasurers across the US and did a great virtual session. We were talking about some of the issues they were facing. That was just as we were. There was. People were returning to the office and we run a global Treasury Salary Survey. Treasurysalary.com do that. Go there helps you benchmark your salary and everything else. But as what actually was happening, one of the key things is, although we ask about salary, we will also ask what keeps you happy and what makes you unhappy. Now, that's always been part of our survey and what we've discovered because everyone said, well, salary, service, about the money, isn't it? It's not about the money and this as part of the session nact they were saying, so what do we need to do to be more effective leaders? I said, well, I'm going to go back to my survey, okay. And we ranked all the answers and why were the people happy in the teams? Because they had a good work life balance, good boss, varied work, friendly team, enjoyable workplace. And then salary. That was salary. Keeping people Happy was actually 6 on the list. When you're unhappy it was lack of progression, then salary, then poor boss, lack of challenge and everything else from there. And we'll go about the return to work and actually working from home in a moment. But then they asked me, there was this question, they said, what should I do to keep my team? I said, well it's really simple, go to them and say, how's your work life balance? How am I being as a boss? Am I giving you enough variety in your role? You know, how are the team? How are you finding it? I said, literally ask these and you'll get rid of 85 of your levers and they will stay with you. And sometimes, yeah, there is a time where people have to leave or it's right for their careers but you don't have to, doesn't, don't force them out the door sort of thing. Now I'm going to go on to this a little bit more about this is my colleague Craig. He asked me, well, working remotely here for now, here to stay, this is what we start to do. He actually said that when as we went through Covid, he actually said, look, can we ask the questions about how many days people are coming back into the office, how many days they would be, they wanted to come in, how many days they were asked to be in, asked to work in the office and how many days would you like to work in the office? And if people want access this, just go to treasurysalary.com you'll get, you know, access to that straight away. The reason I bring this up and it being so powerful, as you see there, 8% of people want to be in four to five days a week. Now when I was talking my client in Texas, I was sitting there, we're doing the zoom with them. Yeah, yeah, zooming away. And the thing was with the guys, they were like, oh, but we're back in the office. I went, yeah, you're the 8%. I said, you're happy to come back in. I said if I need to re recruit your job, you know, as I said, I went to 150 candidates and only 15 of which said, yeah, I'm happy to come in the office five days a week. Now it's pivoting and changing. And I was going to go to Joel because. And again, I know that that's changed with you guys. We were just discussing that. What's the balance for you guys now?

Yeah, so we've morphed to three days in the office. Maybe many of you have done that. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are kind of our core days in the office. We've just to step back for a second. We built out an office for 450 people. We have about 450, 475 in Kansas City. So we built out a new office, beautiful new office, really cool spaces that we created to try and draw people back in. On average, we have about 160 to 180 that come in those three days a week. If we have a food event or some other activity, a happy hour, we'll get 200, 225 maybe. I don't think we've seen 250 or above in two years now or in a year and a half that we've been in our office. So. So the ultimate point there is, you know, as much as we want people to come back, there's. There are a number of people, I think, as Leigh Ann said, that that will never want to come back to an office. They love to work at home, and perhaps they're more productive at home than maybe I see or appreciate. So I think Leanne's point is exactly right. I think, you know, I would term it as. I think we have to show some love to the people that work for us. And I think the way you do that is to figure out what works best for each individual person. They still have to meet, you know, standards. They still have to be accountable for their work performance, still has to be there. Like, you can't just kind of shut down and mail it in and work three or four hours a day. So there has to be some constraints around it. But I think at the same time, you have to show people love it. And the way you do that is giving them opportunities to do work a little differently. So the second part of that is we're in three days a week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. As we head into 2024, our private equity owners have asked us to consider how do we get people to be more collaborative? How do we kind of maybe force the issue to bring those reluctance back into the office to be more interactive? So we're likely going to move to a core weeks Concept. There are a few companies that have done this where you're required if you live within a certain radius of the office to come into the office one week a month or two weeks a quarter or something like that. So that we have kind of that more fulsome feeling. Because I will tell you, when we have those days and we've got 225 people in the office, there is a different level of energy, there's a different level of interaction across the whole, you know, the whole group, not just the executive team or some of the back office teams like finance and legal, that we're in all three days, all the time. There's a different level of energy. And so we want to expose people to that by kind of forcing the issue, not being difficult about it, but you're forcing that issue. And then secondly, for the weeks that you're at home, you have to have your camera on, you have to be presentable at work. Those kind of just parameters around it to set the stage and a tone that you have to have an office like area. You cannot have kids running around the background, your cat can't walk across the keyboard. You know, just some of those things to put constraints around it so that people can feel like they're more engaged with us in the office.

Yeah, yeah. So I agree and I think, you know, we can't pander to every single individual's goal at work. I mean as companies consist of a lot of people. But I think for what's worked for me is if you really understand what you want out of your career, you can have that discussion with your bosses and your management and they can understand where you're coming from and where you best fit in the company. So for my example, what I want out of my career is four things. I want autonomy, I want mastery, I want purpose and I want balance. And so in a company that's going to give me all four of those things, I'm going to be happy, I'm going to stick around and I'm going to make it work whether you want me to be in the office, remote hybrid, whatever it is. But what's really important to me is my career growth is it's my autonomy. Don't micromanage me. If you ask me to do something, consider it done. I want purpose, you know, I want to know that what I'm doing is meaningful for what I've studied and also for my life and the way my ethos and how I run my life. And I want mastery as I'm in this stage of my career. I've started, studied hard, I've worked hard. I want to be able to use my skills and to master them. I want to still learn from people. So whether that's being, you know, learning from a boss who's in the office or from my peers, such as conferences like this or wherever it is, you know, that's what I still want. But most importantly, since COVID is, I want balance. And I've always been that person, probably my own fault, but who's worked extremely hard, extremely long hours because that's just how I operate. So I think as I've gotten older and dealt with the whole Covid stress, I want more balance in my life. And whether that means, you know, working remotely because I can start from six without having to commute for an hour, or going to a hybrid situation. It's as long as it's working for the balance that I and parameters I have in my life, then you'll get the best out of me and I'll be that person that'll stick around. So I think we need to invest time in asking our teams what it is that works for them, what they want and how they can be best used in the company.

I spoke to both Leanne and Joel about the fact that, you know what, I actually don't like hybrid. I don't like remote. But I recently again, I said to we in our offices, we had some issues recently with our connectivity. I said to my colleague, Craig, go home. You've got to start these zooms, these team meetings with these clients who he's doing it. And then I was sitting in the office by myself, like, okay, this is a very big, expensive office for me, just sitting here. So we've actually moved to working from home. I don't like it, but I realized that if I want to run a successful company, I've got to embrace it. And you know, when I actually look at this, I was just looking at some of the, you know, the takeaways. You'll hear one of the key ones for me that sticks out you is this collaboration, actually collaborating. You know, we're doing a course with my colleagues in a few weeks time. We were at the Euro Finance conference. We were together actually. It's easier not to be, you know, it's easier just, you know, so. But it doesn't make it easy. You know, work is hard. Now I'm going to go back because I had this amazing man and Leanne on the podcast. I don't. I'll translate for you a little bit later. But, Joel, when we did your podcast way back when, you talked about one of your bosses saying about the value of work, and you were saying about this was a great example he gave me. Can you talk to these guys and explain what work means?

Yeah. So I, in. In a previous life, I lived in London for three years, running a London treasury center for the company I was with. And at the time, I had an American boss who had come over and was an expat. We became good friends. She was great. She was a great mentor for me early in my career and kind of really gave me maybe a deeper fire for treasury in terms of my learning and growth. So one day, I was tasked with a particular task that I didn't really want to do that I thought was probably beneath me and that I could delegate to someone. And so I went into her office complaining about it, not really asking for her advice or what I should do, but just kind of, you know, bitching and moaning. Right. Like, we all do that every once in a while. And, you know, she had probably the best life lesson I've learned in terms of work. As she looked at me and just really solemnly, she said, that's why they call it work. And it was just that reminder of me. It's like, all right, you know, nothing is beneath us, right? If you have the perspective that everything is. You're too good to do everything and everything should be delegated, I don't really think that's the intention of work. I think we should be willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. But in that moment, she imparted a ton of wisdom to me that has stuck with me to this day. I have never used that exact phrase with my team since, but it really worked on me that work is work. Work is intended to be hard. It's not intended to be fun, or as much as I like for it to be social, it's not intended to be social. You're there for a purpose, to drive value in your company and move things forward. And that was a really strong life lesson for me at a very kind of early stage in my treasury career that has stuck with me ever since.

And we're going to go to Q and A, surely, so do get your questions ready. Leanne, you work remotely for a number of years. What would you say are the biggest challenges for you? You know, that come out a bit like, you know, with Joel there. Do you think these guys should be thinking about?

Yeah, I think for me, it was definitely the boundaries, and I, you know, Spoken to a lot of people about this, where you, you do feel like you work longer hours and you, you work harder when you're, you know, alone and just not necessarily working in an office. But what I also struggled with was the company is not 100% remote. So there are a number of us who are hired remotely during COVID but there's still a head office where most of the team is in person. And it's become more of a struggle over time where those working remote are tending to be left out of things because out of sight, out of mind, and particularly if you're someone who is, you know, very task orientated, goal orientated, and you get your work done, you don't necessarily need as much interaction or conversation from your bosses because things are being done in your just managing. So I think you really have to, you have to make it your own purpose to ensure you're speaking with people, you're connecting, your boss knows what you're doing, and you're just having those social interactions where, where you can so that you don't get left behind. And then I also think it's just, you know, it's a different world that we're living in. So just trying to, to do your work the best you can in a remote environment, you don't necessarily, necessarily have the same IT setup or same systems that others have when they're in the office. And my struggle is it like I am not good at it at all. I'll be the first to admit that if it doesn't restart after the 10th reboot, then I don't know how to fix it. But it's just hard sometimes where, you know, like when Bloomberg goes down and I need to put in an IT ticket and I gotta wait 24 hours for someone in the California office to help me. So that's frustrating for me. So I've had to learn how to do a lot of my own IT stuff, but I'm still really bad. So that's definitely a struggle where you just don't have, you can't walk down the aisle and go to IT and ask for help. So there are definitely those struggles, but for me, they're not insurmountable and they're not ones that would make me say, okay, I want to give up this remote work. I think 90% of the way works for me and I do enjoy it.

And we've got a mixed audience here. Some of you are coming up throughout your careers, but a lot of you are treasurers. And I was being asked when I Did the New York conference, they said, what are you seeing as the biggest problem with hiring? What are you seeing the biggest problem for remote work and everything else? And I just literally pointed and said, it's you. And it was like, what? And I was like, look, it's not about you anymore. And I wrote an article a number of years ago, it being about, you know, candidates. You have the power. If you are looking, seeking a new role, if you're looking for something else, you know, because, you know, you don't. You vote with your feet. If you see, if I see a role, this is. We don't do roles that are remote on. People don't need us. They'll put an advert up on LinkedIn, they get 150, 200 applications, slim it down, and they might get the right person. We do hybrid roles and things like that because that's where they need, you know, clients need help, and we're not doing that as a sales pitch. I'm doing more as, if you are a treasurer here and you're thinking about hiring, what do you need? Do you need that person in the office five days a week? You know, my client in Texas realized they didn't. And actually that's cascading throughout the entire company. And when you've been recruiting, maybe, Joel, what have you been thinking about? Or how has this changed for you? Would you say?

Yeah, I. I would echo the same sentiments, I think, you know, I. I've had, even though. Even though I am wired a. And I have certain things that I would prefer, like, I've had to realize that not everybody's wired that way. I have, you know, 30 plus years of experience. I'm used to driving to a downtown office five days a week, working 12 hours a day and driving home. Like, that's, that's how I grew up in my career. I don't know anything different. So I think for me, I've had to learn how to become more flexible. And not only flexible with whether you're hybrid and you want to come in or not. But even as we're working hybrid, you know, a couple of my teammates who are here will tell you, like, we're really flexible throughout the day. If you need to take off and take care of a sick child or something, I want the work to be done. I'm more focused on the work getting done than I am how you actually do it. If your work's not getting done, we're going to have a very different conversation. But if your work's getting done and you're productive and you're pushing things forward and you're leading like you're supposed to. I've had to learn how to lean into letting that be okay, even though maybe I'm not as social with that person as I would like, or I'm not seeing them in person as much and being able to interact with them. As long as their work is getting done and they're putting out good product, I've had to lean into being okay with that.

So I'll ask Leanne the same question, but please get your questions ready. I said earlier if you don't bother asking us, you're going to lose out. You come all this way, you might as well get the best out of us. And you know, and I will translate for Leanne. Don't worry Leanne for yourself.

So for me, I think the, the benefit was being able to hire different talent from different parts of the company, of the country. So, you know, hiring from just your own zip code or just city can be challenging because there are a lot of jobs out there. There's, there's a lot of different skill sets. And when I was, was hiring for insurance, I, I knew exactly who I wanted and the person that I needed, but they were not in my local vicinity. And so I was very grateful to be able to have a remote position where the person we ended up hiring is the top caliber, the best of the best, and she's in a different state and she's on a different time zone to me. But it also works really well because she has two little kids. So she gets up at a different time, gets them to school, then she's productive the rest of the day. She stays longer hours than I do because she's, she started later, but it works really well. And I think it's been such a. As bad as Covid was, we got to look for the bright sides and the things that actually worked for us. And hiring that different talent has been really good. What's also been good post Covid. Now if we can call it that is we have conferences back again like afp where we may not see each other as regularly during the year or in the offices, but when we come back as a community and we thoroughly enjoy these three days, I know I stayed out later than I ever do last night. It's not like me to be up at 11. But it was really fun. It was just different people. We got to interact and then I know I can sleep late tomorrow. So you make the most of what you can. But I wanted to Just go back to an earlier point. You said, Mike, about being really intentional when you go into the offices. And I think that's the time where we don't go to our desk and get on a zoom meeting with somebody else. We actually take the time and go and meet our bankers and our vendors in person. We go and walk across the aisle to it or AP or whoever it is and just make sure you're not wasting time, but you're actually building those social interactions and you're using that week well. And for me, when I go into the office like that, it's exhausting because it's a lot of additional energy and enthusiasm for a week, which is great, but it does wear me out. So I'm grateful to go home the next week and just kind of work at home and be quiet. But it's really what you make of it. And we're in a different world. We got to have a different perspective. If you want your career to grow, you look for those bright sides and you work on that. And you just, like Joel said, you lean into different things and you learn to change a little bit on your side as well.

So the questions come up to the microphone, please.

Anyone?

No, you're all. That's it. You're like, oh, there we go. We've got a question now from the audience. Yeah, go for it.

So I definitely agree that we're not very uvo. I wonder how much of this is generational. And what I mean by that is, I think I'll look around the room. I'm going to make a guess that. So we're probably all senior practitioners and we're probably intermediaries in some degree between senior executive ed is. But Isamakurun might be very set in their waves and very reluctant to embrace the world of Earth versus our staff, many of whom. Many of whom may be younger and then far more fluid in new ways of working. So how much of this do you think at our level, such, let's say the treasurers of the world are gritty. Those two gaps.

I'm going to throw that to Joel first. I will answer my version of the answer in a minute. But Joel.

Well, I would say when we first started in a hybrid environment, I don't think we did it very well, to be completely honest. I think over time we've gotten better at it. But I've said we've had this kind of debate internally at my company, is that I think there has to be a kind of a meeting, a consensus point somewhere in the middle Right. I can't expect Gen Z to come in the office five days a week and work 12 hours a day. That's not how they think. That's not what they value, quite frankly. They value impact and other things that I didn't value when I was their age. By the same token, there are a number of senior people that are coming in day in and day out that they can have really rich interactions with that could be really important for them if they're working on a project or if they're looking for career advancement. And so I think they need to recognize that I may not be able to get some of that richness if I don't kind of come and meet it halfway. So I think the approach I've always tried to take is I'm willing to give and be flexible and be super reasonable on all sorts of things, but there are. There has to be a meeting of the minds. We can't have. We can't. Everybody can't just flip to one way or another. There has to be somewhere in the middle. And I think that's that for me, at least in the way I lead and the way I lead my team. I think that's been pretty successful so far.

Alia.

I agree. I mean, you know, we can't pander to every single person's individual needs, but we do have to. We have to find consensus. I mean, it's a changing world. You know, my generation won't be here for much longer. In the workforce, people are coming up underneath us who want to do things differently. As Joel said, they value their life and their careers differently to the way we do. So we have to be agile. We. I don't think there's any point in just putting a stick in the sand and saying this is the way we do it forever. Because prior to Covid, that's what we did. And then we saw Covid changed everything. And it has to change from the top downwards, otherwise we're going to struggle to find and keep people in our companies because we're being, you know, rigid and not flexible for what people want. And you mentioned earlier, Joel, at the end of the day, as long as the work is being done and it's to the right standards and the right quality, and you're giving the shareholder the value they need. And then I think we, we have to, like you said, find the middle ground.

I was talking to someone earlier. I do the week, so the podcast I do is weekly, so I talk to a treasurer each and every week as they grow their careers. And this is now one of the major topics that we end the show with each week. I said, look, what the big things for you. And, you know, earlier on in the show, three, four years ago, it wasn't actually the people aspect so much. It was like some of the other more solid topics about cyber about this, about that. Now it's. It comes up probably 50% of the time and they say, what do we do with our people? How do we do this? And one of the other things that I've talked about is that a lot of treasurers have risen through the ranks and I say, look, you know, now you are in charge of your treasury and it might be anywhere from 20 to maybe 50 staff. And I'll go, right, how much leadership training have you had? The None. And I'm like, yeah, that's the issue. You know, go and knock on the CFO's door and say, I need some training, I need to you to help me manage these people. If you're in the army, and you were saying, right, you need to, you know, coach, lead 50 people. You'd have done years of coaching and training. A lot of you treasurers have just got there the by accident, you know, you've done well in your careers, but that's one of the key things as well. Just on the second point as well, we recently had a client who said, oh, we, we have five days a week in the office. We're a bit traditional like that. I was like, well, good luck with that. Oh, and. And we're a bit more paper based. I went, we can't help you. I'm like, you know, I was already out of five days a week, like. But we were gently said, I just don't think it's going to be something we can help with. And they were like. And again, we go back to the figures because for the UK figures, it was. It literally, it's a hard focus. 5% are happy to be in. They said, oh, 5%. I said, so you want me to go to 100 people, five of them say maybe, and you put them forward? Yeah, yeah. I went, no, we're out. You know, you know, that's not the kind of client. Because the world has moved on, you know. Got a question?

Yeah, great, great, thanks.

She's all right.

Two questions.

Do you feel that Hybrid is sort of the best of both worlds or the worst of both worlds? And also, I'm a little confused because I thought I've heard you say, Joel, that, you know, you look at the office, Hybrid home decision is something that's sort of got to be tailored for each of your associates. But then it sounded like saying the training guy had a standard policy for everybody. So I'm wondering, how does that work out?

Yeah, yeah. So I'll take the second one.

Yes.

I think the reality is that you have to tailor it to the individual as much as you possibly can, But I think you have to have standards and expectations, and I think those have to be set and clear. So while I can be super reasonable on when you work and how you work and when you come into the office, when you don't come into the office, I'm really flexible around that. But the work still has to get done. And if I see a degradation in the work, then I really probably am going to say that you need to be in the office three days a week until we kind of get the work situation sorted out. So, again, I try to be reasonable, but I think every company has to figure out what works best for their culture, for their employees. What works best in Kansas City may not work great in London. Right. It can be very different even amongst cities that we live in. So I think for me, it's just trying to find that right balance of three days a week. We'd really like you to be in. If you come in two and you work home from two, I'm okay with that as long as the work is getting done. And then your first question was, you see, vibrated. Yes, yes, yes.

No more questions from him. But out.

No, I think it's a little bit of both. I mean, if I'm honest. I mean, I've actually embraced three days a week. I think it's great. I mean, I would go in four or five days a week if I could, but I've embraced working from home on Monday and Friday. Fridays are great. I'm not as productive on Monday as I would like to be, but I'm completely honest because I'd rather be in an office environment. But I do think for a different generation of worker, having flexibility in a hybrid work schedule is probably as good as we're going to be able to offer. Some companies have gone completely forever, got rid of their offices. You know, I say good luck on that as well, because I think culture and collaboration at some point are going to change dramatically. Whether you lean into that and understand it or not. Those cultures that you've built over years are going to change if you're working remotely, completely, five days a week. So I think there's a good balance in between.

We've got Some great takeaways and I don't want to run out of time. There's a couple of reasons. One, it's eight minutes. We've got one more time for one more question, then we'll go to takeaways. It could just be running out of time or at 3:01, I'm going to the pub. Oh, yeah, I'm going to the pub. Right, question.

So you mentioned that the work has yet done, but nowadays we have hybrid trying to go to the office and you are using that time on for meetings before when you're at home. Next click the meeting. It'll not be Gordon, you're still working at the same time, you're not driving to the office, so you're working. So by being home you're too more productive for the work to get done. So now we going to the office in public environment, all of a sudden it feels like there's a little bit more burden crowd get all the work at them. Had you did the workload and your expectations, what work is now, how do you address that? Because it seems like a lot of people are starting from blame more work at furry out just to cover that hydro environment.

Yeah, yeah. I mean it's a, it's a really good question, but I think that's again where you have to put boundaries because prior to Covid, we would all drive into the office and then we'd have our meeting start, you know, beginning of the day or end at the end of the day and you would go home and you wouldn't be expected to have meetings for the most part once you got home. So I think we've just meandered into a world of, you know, if you're, especially if you're in a global company and you're now, you know, having to take a call from the UK at six in the morning, you just need to take it and then you got to drive to work. So I think it's about communicating with your, your company and your leadership that, you know, these are the hours that you can adhere to and this is the schedule you can work. And sometimes you do have to take an early morning meeting, but then you shouldn't have to work late at night as well. Well, so it's about boundaries because if, if you take the monkey, it's going to be yours forever. So you've got to put those boundaries there and you've got to say, this is my working hours, this is what I can accomplish and anything more than that, we have to have a talk about resources and I. I think what I've experienced as well is there's been a gradual shift from leadership in a lot of companies that it just meanders into. You have to come back to the office now. It's mandatory. There's very little direct communication about. The company has now decided to go back to full time in office or full time hybrid schedule, whatever it is, it just kind of makes the rounds in the room. A mole and everybody just does that. So I think it's leadership's responsibility to say exactly what culture they're trying to build, make sure the structure follows that strategy, and then everybody is very clear what their working hours are, what the resources are and how they can get their job done. Otherwise it is. You're right. You're going to end up with burnout. You're going to end up with unhappy employees who will call Mike and look for another job. We don't want that.

Yeah, we do want that. Ignore her, she's mad. Joel, just briefly, because we're going to go to takeaways for you. Hybrid.

Yeah. It's a really interesting question. I believe there's a little bit of a myth around productivity. I think when you're working from home. Yes. Are you more productive? Unequivocally you are. You're productive in a different way. Right. I look at that as throughput. If I'm not commuting an hour on each end of my day, I'm putting 12 hours in instead of 10 in the office. Right. So there's a throughput element there that I think, yes, you're probably more productive. But I would argue when you're in the office and you're commuting on each end, it's likely for those hours in the middle where you're working, you're productive in a slightly different way. It's not through throughput, but it's in collaboration, it's in leading your team, it's in passing on knowledge and experience down to maybe more junior members of your team or interacting with your peers across the company. And I would qualify that as a different type of productivity. Right. It's not throughput, but I'm getting perhaps even more done because I can lead and influence and have interaction over decisions that when I'm sitting at home and I'm in 12 hours of back to back zoom meetings, I can't have those same interactions. So I think there's a little bit of myth around productivity. I think you have to get granular around. Is it just throughput or is it leading and influencing and Having control over what's happening in the company from a different perspective of productivity.

So we've got a minute for each of our takeaways, so pick out your major ones.

Okay. I always have so much to say, but I think it's really important, like I mentioned earlier, to be in control of your career, you have to know what you want. It's not the company's responsibility to guide your career and to get you where you want to. You have to know where you want to go, what you need from a company in order to get there, and what makes you happy in your career. And I think I'm just going to end on this. And I love sayings and quotes, but my new favorite one is from Reba McIntyre. Have you heard of her? It's your people. Yeah, but she said the best way to live your life is to have a backbone. So that is just saying you need to take risks on yourself, you need to bet on yourself and you need to stand up for yourself in your career. Only you're going to be able to do that. You need to have a funny bone. And I think that's probably where I excel. That's how I live my life, is through humor. It's how I get through tough situations. But I think it also diffuses a lot of situations and it's. It just is who I am. And then you also importantly need to have a wishbone. I think you have to have that area of your life where there's something you just really enjoy. It's your passion, it's what you want to become one day. And I think it's really important to have those dreams and those goals and to help yourself to get there one day.

Joel Yule?

Yeah, I have two that I'll call out. The first one's at the top. I think this is probably one of the most challenging things in a hybrid environment is balanced present, like whether you're on a zoom call, whether you're in an office, whether you're working remotely or you're with people. Be in the moment, Put your phone down, close your computer, listen carefully, get engaged in the conversation and have meaningful, thoughtful things that you can add into the conversation. I think we have gotten so used to having our phones in front of our face. I'll have a conversation with my college kids and they have their phone in their face the entire time I'm talking to them and they're not present. Right. They're not hearing everything I'm saying. I'm guilty of this with my wife as well. As many of you probably are, if I'm just completely honest. Completely honest. But I think being present and in the moment is a skill that we have lost and I think it's really important to do that. And then lastly, the second to last one is, you know, especially when you're working remotely, challenge yourself to learn something new, not just when it's convenient. Do it consistently every day. Learn something new, push yourself forward. I say this to our younger staff all the time. Don't just go learn something when it's convenient because we have a meeting in an hour and you want to dazzle me with your knowledge and experience. Learn consistently over time. Don't just do it when it's convenient or it's going to look good in front of somebody that you're trying to impress. If you push yourself to learn consistently over time, you will be successful in your career. Success will come. But if you don't, then you just lean into it when you need it. You're going to have a really hard time 10, 15 years down the road of having substantive knowledge that you can add into your company to create value.

And I've got all the C's. The key one there for me were probably the two the communication connection. You know, it's, you know, I work in the shed, you know, I work remotely from, you know, the home office and I connect over Zoom and I chat. There's nothing better than meeting a team. And you say about hybrid and, oh, having to step into the office.

Yeah.

But then, you know, I had clients during lockdown who they were doing virtual water cooling moments where they would get on the zoom, like 10 o' clock on a Monday, and there was half an hour when they weren't allowed to talk about work. Now, there wasn't much going on at the weekend, but a couple of the clients would just say, well, yeah, what did you do? Well, we went for a walk. We did this. They got to know people, they got to know people about sports and communication and everything else that's key because if you don't communicate, your team will leave. I know, I talk to them. They are leaving. They are voting with their feet. Unless you communicate, unless you engage with them, then they will leave. So we do need to wrap up. There's your CPE code. Thank you to my amazing guests. And it's 301, so it's pub time.

It's lovely to share the stage again with Joel and Leanne. Great to see them both in sunny San Diego. And our US business continues to grow. So if you are looking for a new role in the U.S. let us know. If you're looking to recruit, let us know. We've got people looking for new roles but you wanted the news.

You hung around.

Thank you very much for being here. 2024, we're back on tour in London. These dates are confirmed. Treasury Career Corner live in London on Wednesday 18th of April and Thursday 21st November in 2024 in central London. Well, City of London with in association with Herbert Smith. Come along if you can. We've just had our recently had our November event in London. Amazing. Under 40 odd people get in there and make sure you're on the list if you want to come along. We're going to publish details of the panelists shortly. You won't want to miss that. Mike, I'm not in London, I'm in the us. Where can I see you? Well, we're doing Treasury Career Corner Live, but we're going to be doing New York in March in Times Square. Yeah, with Treasury Career Corner Live, we do one evening for more junior candidates if you're developing your career, early stages of your career, going to do that on the Wednesday night. On the Thursday night, we're going to be looking at some of the challenges, senior treasury professionals, some of the challenges you face and actually sharing those with a couple of amazing panelists. In addition, we're going to be taking it further afield. So we're going to be doing Chicago, we're going to do it in Texas, we're going to be doing it end of the year at the AFP Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Can't wait. There's some amazing US and some international guests coming up on the show as well. So listen after that. But hang on, I'm not in the in London, I'm not in the uk, I'm not in the us what about me across? Well, in Europe we're looking at some other venues but so far and again we're just trying to nail down the dates. We're looking at also doing it in Luxembourg and also in Greece. We've been invited by the association over there to do the event. We've also been invited by atelier in Luxburg. We're just trying nail down down those days but look for this space. So we will also put in the show notes a link to the presentation that we gave in the US so you can have that and some of the top takeaways. But just once again, thank you for listening each and every week. We don't take it for granted. Do Leave us a review. Share it with your friends. Tell us about them. Tell it. Tell why you listen to this. Put me in your ears each and every week. Thank you very much for sharing this journey with me. Really appreciate it and I hope you enjoyed the show. Many thanks.