Doing Things Differently at LEGO | Johnny Campbell & Eunice Clements-Tweedie

Sam, Hello.

And you're very welcome to this week's the Shortlist with myself, Johnny Campbell. I am the CEO and co founder of Social Talent and your host for the Shortlist, our weekly show, which broadcasts live on LinkedIn and YouTube and can also be found on Apple and Spot and all your favorite podcast choices. So don't forget, if you want to find out more about the Shortlist on our previous shows and our future shows, you can go to socialtown.com the shortlist this week we're going to be talking about storytelling, innovation. And if you're watching a video, I'll give you a hint as to where our first guest might come from. As this monstrosity of bricks and characters and beautiful artwork travels across my screen, stolen from my eldest son who turns 12 tomorrow, we are of course talking about the fantastic 88 year young toy product company that is Lego and more than a toy product company. And joining us today we have the global head of talent acquisition, Eunice Clements Tweedy, who's going to be sharing with us the LEGO story and talking about storytelling and the power of storytelling within talent acquisition. Before I introduce her though, I'd like to just remind those of you listening live or watching on YouTube or LinkedIn, we'd love to get your questions and your comments. Please do put them into the chat. Eunice and myself would love to hear from you. I'd love to try and kind of hear what you think about storytelling, how you're using storytelling and innovation within your team. But without further ado, let us introduce this week's guest. Eunice Clement Sweedie is the global head of Talent acquisition with the infamous LEGO company Yunus. For those who perhaps don't know who the LEGO company is, can you tell us a little bit about your job and your role as well?

Amazing. Thank you Johnny. Hi everyone. So I work for the LEGO Group. They are a family owned Danish based business headquarters out in Berlin. Although we have hubs globally stretching from America all the way across to the right in China and we're in so many global locations and we fundamentally make toy products made of bricks and every single brick that we have ever made fits in with all our self, all our sets in an interlocking system. And we have children playing with our products through to grandparents kind of third generation. So they're incredible, super, super product. And I play with them most days, which is highly encouraged if you're at lego. So that's the LEGO group. What do I do there? I am global head of talent acquisition and I Constantly say to my team, I've probably got one of the best jobs at lego, although I know a lot of my colleagues think that. So in essence, my team and I curate the infrastructure end to end of our talent acquisition at the LEGO Group. So super exciting.

My 12 year old is very excited downstairs right now that I'm, that I'm on the show with you. I have a house that literally there isn't a place in my house you can't go 1 meter without finding a LEGO brick somewhere. And it's we, you know, I have four boys, Eunice, and they share the lego. And I grew up in a house with lego. Except my story is that I had an older brother and my older brother had a great LEGO collection back in the 80s. And as I was growing up, I decided because I always wanted to be a businessman, the best thing to do with such a great collection of LEGO was to sell it without him knowing it. So I still get abused by my family. And it's brought up at dinners how Johnny sold all the LEGO toys and all the other toys in the house that would have had such value and we were left with nothing. So we keep all our LEGO in the Campbell house these days. No one's going to sell it. Piles of bricks everywhere. Every, every second day is a new adventure and how we're going to build something. And I love that and my boys, it's brought out such a creative side and it is just such a wonderful way to play, especially in the kind of world where you have so many digital interruptions that kids can still sit down for hours and build Lego. You know, from my 2 year old all the way to my 12 year old and me included. It's a great thing to get involved with, exciting to have you here and we've lost to talk about. And I want to get, to get to our topic of storytelling and particularly some of the LEGO stories. But before we do that, I want to jump in and check out this week's news. I want to chat with you about unisys, this one that was published in forums and there's many about it actually, because I think in the last few months, if nothing, the common interests around talent acquisition haven't been filled with stories about the pandemic. I'm hearing tons and tons more about AI platforms, right. And I was hoping that this would die away and we would, would lose this buzzword. But the author here talks about how, in his opinion, based on a, a webinar, I think that the author was attending how AI platforms are improving talent management in 2020. Tell me about this. Is this something you would share a similar opinion on? That AI is going to permanently change the way talent management is done? Or have you seen any of that in Lego or elsewhere? What are your thoughts on this?

Oh my gosh, that's a big topic to open up with. Blimey, Johnny, It's a big question and I'll probably maybe share some of my thinking and then maybe talk a little about lego. So I think there's a myriad of technologies that make up AI and I guess for me it depends on your need and it depends what you're trying to fix. And we all know there's a ton of AI out in our everyday. You have Alexa, you have Cortana, you have series. So it kind of, it surrounds us anyways. We're quite, quite used to it. Perhaps we don't think of it that way. It all depends on your need and there's tons and tons of benefits around AI. It depends on a lot of data. You have to chunk through a lot of data kind of to get kind of to the right analytics. I think it potentially drives efficiencies, it definitely harnesses your process in the better way. But you have to be also very mindful that for some candidates it can put them off, for some processes it can actually increase bias because potentially you're not actually harnessing a lot of diversity of thinking so you could kind of lose out on that. So fundamentally I think it goes back to what is your need and what you're trying to fix. Now here at Lego we are hugely focused on a high touch consumer and candid experience. And we're also on a journey around our talent acquisition function and our technology. So we right now AI for the LEGO group probably isn't quite right. Potentially in the future we might look at it. But I guess what would sit with me really strongly is that candid experience is so king for our candidates that I'd have to be pretty convinced and I'd have to convince Lego as well that we wouldn't compromise that experience for us. So I think it's great. If you have a very specific need, you have volume of trying to fix a very specific problem. But be mindful that the balance is there for you. I guess that's just my very humble opinion on the topic.

I really appreciate that comment because I think too often leaders and budget holders will go into a decision trying to, for example, just find a way to get AI into their process as opposed to saying, hang on a second, from an experience point of view, from the candidate's perspective, perhaps the hiring manager's perspective, what are we trying to fix, improve, develop, and then you look at all the solutions. Of course, if AI, an AI powered solution becomes the right solution for you, great, fantastic, that becomes the one you'll use. But it's much better to pull back and look at the individual, look at the person, look at the experience and try and solve for that and not worry about whether it's going to be AI or not. I think that's one of the challenges I find with articles like this and trends like this is that it can tend to shift people towards the trend. Rather than saying, hang on a second, let's fix a problem, let's solve the issue at hand and then when we have a solution, we'll go find providers that can fix that. And if they have whatever the technology is called, big data, AI, et cetera, then great. But let's not try and just, you know, you know, just hammer AI into our processes unnecessarily. So I think smart words and the bias issue, we talked about this in our show last week with a great guest who brought the same issue up. So I think there's, there's tons there. But I'm going to go into our second article this week now. Can you bring up our second article? And this, this got me really thinking. It's based on a, on a piece of research that the Kellogg School of Business published on a webinar recently and it was around cultural fit. And I understand that this, the, the root of this article came from the, the, the authors, the original authors, interviews with 120 different leaders, understanding what they assess for and how they make hiring decisions. And it, it, it lent on this cultural fit thing. And I've seen lots of articles and we say we should stop hiring for cultural fit or hiring for cultural fit is bad. Tell me more about that. Like is cultural fit a problem or is it that we don't understand what culture fit actually is?

Johnny this is one of my favourite topics, like my totally favourite topic. So I think organizations are defined by people and culture is really nebulous, you can't quite touch it. And then fit is very subjective. So if you put them together, actually what you're doing is actually something super, super complex. And then there's a, there's. And then if you put, if you think about the reality of hiring for cultural fit, hiring leaders tend, sometimes, not often, but sometimes tend to recruit in their, in their shadow. And I've been very Mindful of this, you know, recruiting my new team at Lego, it's, it's easier to recruit somebody who you have a connection with, who you get on with, who you socially like to spend time with. And that's the danger of kind of cultural fit recruiting in your shadow. But actually we don't do that at Lego. We recruit to cultural augmentation. So we try and augment the amazing culture that we have in the business. And I think if you augment, then you bring diversity into that cultural mix. Diversity of thought, diversity of thinking, diversity of experience. I mean, diversity is so huge that you actually end up with a cultural mix that is broad as it is deep. And I think organisations that get their cultural hiring right is when they go broad and when they go deep and when they fundamentally use some of their values to recruit and they ensure that their values show up in different ways throughout the hiring process. I think for me that is the absolute magic of cultural fit hiring. But for us, it's certainly augmenting the culture we have.

Can you give me any specific examples or explain exactly how that works? Like for anyone viewing or listening today who's thinking, I want to do what you do, but I need to understand exactly what I need to change. What are the core things, the specifics that make it work within your process?

Look at your organizational values. That's your first starting point, because your values are your anchors. They're kind of rooted in your DNA. And the way we made things work at Lego is we ensure that our values are felt by our candidates. So, for example, one of our core values is caring. Now we have a very high touch, candidate care and candidate experience, part of our TA process. And we know it works because we measure it through our NPS system and it is really high. And we have this way of caring with candidates, with allowing them to access whoever is doing the scheduling, allowing them to have real conversations with recruiters and hiring managers. And we look after them and we give them feedback and we treat them respectfully. And at the end of the process, whether you have been offered a role or not at Lego, you feel cared for and people will always remember how you make them feel. I think one of the other values that we have, well, a couple actually, is creativity and fun. We always try and make our interviews fun. Recruitment as a process is quite hygienic. It's very difficult to bring fun into a system when you're going through the steps, but you can absolutely influence your interviews. So think about creative and fun way that you could do your Interviews. We have a build, for example, as part of the interview process. I remember my own terrifying interview where I had a big box, big. A tub of Lego, and I had 20 minutes to build a scene which would represent my journey into lego. And I was like, holy smoke, what am I going to do? And it was massively fun, but it also tested my creativity and I felt it. And it was only later that I, you know, I came to realize that actually those are a couple of the values that had bubbled up in my process. So organizations should look at their values and should really see how they can make candidates feel through their values without having actually to talk about them. And that's, that's where the magic happens.

I love that. It's not screaming values in their face. It's not emailing them saying, this is what we stand for. It's having them experience it and come out of the process saying, hey, I think this company stands for X, Y, Z. That's what you're talking about, is it?

Yeah, 100%, yeah.

Side question on that, on the LEGO challenges part of the assessment process, how has that been going in the last six months? Have you been able to adapt that so that you can still bring a kind of LEGO challenge to what I'm guessing is for most of your hires, become a virtual process?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's been tough for many organizations still recruiting. We've had to pivot pretty quickly to a virtual world. So we've managed and had to adapt in very subtle ways where perhaps we can't build a LEGO set with our candidates, but there's nothing stopping us from sending a LEGO set to a candidate who's gotten into. And we can build it together virtually. So we've pivoted and we've adapted and we've almost really kind of over indexed on that care piece because people, it is an uncertain time and candidates are even more anxious about getting a role. And some people aren't used to kind of this kind of virtual interaction. You and I perhaps are, but a lot of people aren't. So we, we ensure that we've adapted and change. So we're complementing the environment that we're all having to live in for a little while. Yeah, for sure.

Our audience and viewers are really jumping on your comment around the augmentation piece, James, mainly saying, you know, culture add rather than fit, and backed up by another viewer saying, you know, it's more to enhance than to fit. I love that idea. I think too often we talk about fit, which, you know, Narrows down our view and what we're looking for, as opposed to the idea that we want to try and see can this new person add something more than we have today to our culture, to our organization. Which I think is a fantastic approach. And it's an attitude, I guess it's not just a, you know, process, it's an attitude to say that we want people to bring something new to the table, something different, something. What do you think you bring different to the organization or you brought when you came into the, into the team or the organization? Do you augment the culture in Henway, do you think?

Oh my goodness, Jonny, I now have a couple of my team on the call, actually. I think I've always been a little bit different in terms of who I am and I've always been super comfortable with who I am and I have loads of idiosyncrasies. I'm super high energy and I don't sharing my feelings. I don't mind telling people that I deeply care about them because they're important to them. I'm super open with my emotions. So I think I definitely add to the LEGO culture. I've got, you know, quite unusual background, loads of kind of different kind of experience. So I bring, I bring a bit of popping candy to LEGO in an unexpected way, which sometimes take my colleagues by surprise, but we enjoy a bit of popping a candy together. So definitely that's such a great question. I've never been asked that before.

I'm intrigued because you talk about doing things differently at Lego and the augmentation is very much different. But is there a risk that some might perceive that as being deliberately contrary from the organization perspective, that it's like going out of your way to be different? Is that how it works or what's it really like?

So it's really interesting because LEGO is very steady in terms of how we do things and the business never tries to be different. They have a bit of a mantra around uniquely LEGO never seen before. So we look to all those amazing brands out there who are doing cool things. We have a pulse on the industry to make sure that we're never being left behind. And we try and trailblaze to the front. But fundamentally, I guess when we do things, we do things at LEGO that we know works for our consumers, our candidates, but we add a LEGO lens and I guess that brings us back to the value of creativity. Whatever we do, we try and do it with a lens of just that, something a little bit different that makes us, just makes us unique because I think as an organization, LEGO would never want to stand out and stand out for the wrong reasons because, because that's not in the DNA, the ethos or the family culture that we're, that we work in either.

It's interesting, you know, you mentioned at the start and maybe you took the lead from me when I mentioned about being a toy company company and we can see you could, you know, one could see LEGO as a toy company. But you know, I'm remembering back now over the last few years, the things I've done with my children around lego. You know, we went to an art, an art gallery to see an exhibition of LEGO that was an artist was turning this around and we saw fantastic pieces of works created in lego. And when we go to, to, to, to, to, I regularly, probably once a year go to something that involves lego, an expo or some sort of exhibition with the kids. And again, I'm gonna bring it on because my son will kill me otherwise. Fantastic, you know, pieces of work. You know, to say this is a toy just does it an injustice because the, the love that goes into that, the work it's built, it's played with and then it's, you know, I really get it, it's augmented. I see this in the toys. You follow the instructions.

Instructions.

Beautiful instructions, right. IKEA and lego, the best in the world for making instructions, you know. But then, then you see, you know, children are adults alike. Once that's done, they begin to try and adjust it. And I see it in my kids toys, they are augmented. Then they bring their own stamp to it over the months and years. And so therefore two years later you'll see the toy that was built on a shelf, but it's not quite the one that was originally built. It's been augmented and their bit of personality has been stamped into. I guess that's, that's probably the LEGO way. It's that, you know, an organization that has a firm, you know, culture that it's not going to change fast. Call them the LEGO instructions, but you're encouraged to add bricks, take away bricks, put a bit of color on it, do what you want with your creativity because that's, that's, that's the product, that's the organization.

Yeah, yeah, you absolutely nailed it. Yeah, 100%. And I guess that our products are meant, you know, we encourage people to follow instructions, but not everyone is instruction legs. We just follow people to enjoy our product in whatever way, shape form you want. Whether you put a dinosaur's head on a shark's tail, that's amazing. So we fundamentally just want people to love the products that we make and encourage them to build. Yeah, spot on.

Several of you are saying, love your energy units to keep that going. A question that maybe you can help answer from our 8 comments. So Mairead's asking, and she's probably explaining her own environment in a quite traditional engineering environment. How would I start the conversation with the hiring manager about not hiring for fit? Because, you know, we do use that term a lot. I'm assuming she doesn't mean her organization, maybe all of us in recruiting. So how do you have that conversation? Maybe it's not an issue in Lego, but how would you. What would you recommend to those listening who are struggling with this, where you have hiring managers who are determined to hire for fit or culture fit and you know it's wrong. How would you advise people like Mairead and others on having those kind of conversations?

Oh, gosh, Mairead. It's always a tough one, hiring leaders, sometimes super tough. We all know that in the recruiting world, I would always start with the positive. So I would perhaps give them, bring examples to them. So probably do a little bit of research or some insights, bring examples to them. When hiring difference or hiring to your values has actually really worked for perhaps another hiring leader in the organization. And what you're sharing with them, you're sharing them an experience that has worked and you're potentially showcasing the value that that individual can bring. And fundamentally using a bit of data, which everyone loves a bit of data, because there's a bit of safety in that data. So I would just share an example where you've experienced that has actually worked in the business before, or even the business, maybe a competitor has done something or an industry leader that you look to bring that outside in because then it shows that a. You've got a really broad eye on the landscape and everybody loves doing something successful that perhaps a competitor has done as well. It's like, oh, brilliant, we must do that. So a little bit of data, insights, but start with a positive as well. And just make sure you acknowledge that you're listening to them as well. I think that's an important one, too. Great question.

It sounds to me like, you know, the theme of your advice is to, you know, to display great storytelling. And I'm gathering that, Eunice, apart from being popping candy, you are a great storyteller and storytelling is a passion of yours. Tell me about storytelling in the LEGO group and within your team. How does that manifest itself and how.

Do you Use storytelling every day, another great topic. So storytelling at LEGO is fundamental because that's, I think, how our brand has bubbled up over the years in such a positive light. And I think if I think about storytelling, I tend to put stories in three buckets. So you have stories about your product, which is kind of your product marketing, which is a little bit one dimensional. You have stories about your company and that really talks about your employees, your products and what you're doing. And that could be your employer brand. And then you have the third bucket, which is around stories that are created by others, whether it's your consumers, whether it's the media, the press, your employees. It's a real cauldron mix of storytelling. But people listen to stories and people share those stories. So we are told stories every day by our consumers. We use children as our role model. They write to us all the time and our CEO Niels often reads them and they always get a response from our customer services team and they're pinned on our wall at Lego and they're just extraordinary because they are our consumers. And then stories are shared with us around. I can give you one now if we have time. We've got a couple actually around how our product has served good. So. So I'm a tortoise owner of a little tiny little hatchling. He's called Sheldon and I've always wanted tortoise and he'll live far beyond my age. He's called Sheldon Otis Tortellini Tweedy. And he's adorable and he's about half.

Sorry, say that again.

Sheldon Otis Tortellini Tweedy. And I, I got this little gem about 18 months ago and whilst I was doing my research and I wasn't quite here at Lego, I was just under 18 months at Lego. I was doing my research on the tortoise and I came across this story about this tortoise out in Maryland in the US and it had got really injured and it had lost its, one of its back left legs and they had managed to repair its shell and managed to this tortoise, but it couldn't walk. And if the tortoise can't walk, it would die because it's meant to be released back into habitat. So they engaged one of the team who was a massive enthusiast LEGO fan, and he built this LEGO harness on wheels with plumber's putty onto this tortoise so this tortoise could be mobile in the absence of a little egg. And over the case of two years, its shell hardened and it repaired itself enough where the LEGO harness and wheels could be taken off even though it only had three legs. And two years later it was kind of released back into the wild. And then you just think, our product was made for playing, but the creativity of it and the innovation was served, you know, to enable an animal to have a fulfilling life. Amazing. Amazing.

Literally, a bionic leg for a tortoise made out of Lego and Putter's clay. That's insane.

Isn't that amazing? And that's the beauty of our product. It is so innovative, it can be used in many, many different ways. And play. Yeah. So storytelling.

I love that and I love the really strong culture and the really strong LEGO story. And I've, you know, I'm always hungry for LEGO stories. I go online, I try and watch documentaries on Netflix and the places about Lego and I find them really exciting. And, you know, you know, a cynic could look at the organization and say, gosh, it moves very slowly. But I look at it and say, that's a company who knows what it's about and knows what it's doing and isn't going to turn its head at the latest fat, you know, fashion or thing. And it's also a company that, although you can find documentaries on it, there isn't a whole lot of official Lego. It's always somebody on the outside trying to uncover it, because LEGO is, and maybe this is typically Danish, Lego seems a quite understated, quiet, getting on with things organization that isn't about to jump up and down and, for example, weigh in on an election or tell the world what it thinks of Brexit or anything else. It's just going to do its thing really well that it has been doing for decades. You know, is that the culture inside the business? Is that what you feel as an employee of the organization?

No, no, not at all. I think the company is Danish owned, so there's a Danish heritage there which fundamentally has a belief that no one is better than anyone else. So there's a lot of parity and equality in the culture. And it's also family owned, so it's cared for and curated very, very well. Because it's owned by a family. It's not floated, it's not a plc, it's not shareholders. So with that care comes a very mindful approach to how business has grown and the business growth plans. And the strategy is very balanced and it's very thoughtful. And that strategy has served itself well in the last six months and 88 years as well, because it is so, so balanced. That I think without that measure it can go in different directions, which perhaps wouldn't have been as successful as it has been today. I guess as an employee, I feel very, very well looked after by the business, very cared for, very well supported. And sometimes, you know, I personally want to move a little bit faster around our innovation. I sometimes want to do things a little bit quicker. But fundamentally I know that that wouldn't be the right thing for Lego. So I think timing is everything in the business and when we do things, we do things really, really well. I mean, it's extraordinary how well we do things, which means they're sustainable and sustainability is just so core in everything we do. So it's interesting, the external and the internal perception, because it's very, very different. For sure.

It's interesting when you talk about, you know, the, the pluses and minus of these things. We have Shannon Kushner from Ikea, the global hotel acquisition, joining us next week. And Ikea, from what I hear sound like a very similar organization. Again Swedish, not Danish, but very similar. A lot of similarities in culture and again the family owned ethos. And you know, myself and Shannon have chatted before about speed of decisions, but the trade off I think is worth it when you look at organizations can move too fast. You know, as a European working here in Europe, you know, I often hear of the US culture versus the European culture and I think there are big differences. You know, there is a speed and profit focus, let's say in the US and then, then in Europe it's a lot more socialist. Although, you know, when we say socialist we typically mean it in a very positive way. It's a negative word in the, in the U.S. but that kind of, that approach to people, to family, to caring, which goes beyond the short term, I think beyond the investor approach is very important. I actually had a call with one of our new colleagues who joined us in the last week or so and she was telling me a story of her former employer back in March or April and US corporate who, who let her go without even telling her boss, the cfo, Wronger said, you're gone. Disconnected from our systems that day because they were cutting back. And it was just really quick and obviously not very well thought out and not even informing people. And you think about the approaches and it's, it's the whole, okay, it may be financially advantageous to cut someone off early to cut costs, but there's the human side. I know, know from my perspective, I much prefer that approach, which is more family, more for the Long term, yes, the trade off is maybe decisions don't get made fast, but the upside is decisions don't get made fast for the negative time is taken to consider others, to consider the impact, to slow down and realize, I imagine after 88 years it's okay, we're six or 12 months behind the trend here. Let's just make sure it's actually the way things should be and then we'll do it our way.

Way.

Which, which strikes me as, as the LEGO culture. I want to ask you, if you don't mind, Eunice, about, about, you know, your views on, on talent within an organization like, like Lego. Like what do you say? You know, obviously apart from talent acquisition, which you had up and obviously it's fantastic. What do you think are the other strengths that come from that kind of a culture that values based organization? You know, one of the articles at the very start of the show mentioned, you know, AI and its ability to bring together things like internal mobility, diversity, inclusion, talent acquisition, talent development, all these different things. When you look at that broader talent spectrum and Lego, what are the other advantages of such a strong culture that play out in perhaps some of those areas?

Well, it's really interesting because at Lego you, and it goes to the consensus piece, you can't really get anything done without doing it shoulder to shoulder with your colleague. And that's how decisions get made at Lego. You plant a burning seed and then you water it with your colleagues and you build ambassadorship, you build sponsorship, and then after a period of time you have so many people around your decision making process that actually doesn't become a decision anymore, it becomes something that collectively needs to get done. So it's a really subtle way of navigating relationships and managing stakeholders. And you have to do that really, really well at Lego. And I think if you try and shortcut anything, it just doesn't work. And some of those maybe bigger ticket item decisions or if you're driving innovation, it just won't fly at all. And that I think sings to the climate culture and it sings to the fact that perhaps AI for Lego, if we ever used it, would need to be trying to solve something very, very specific. Because we have such close unity around what we do, you know, across talent, across HR and across the business, that we don't need technology to help unite us because we do it as part of our everyday already.

I love that. I think that's a challenge from lot of organizations is how they can bring unity to what has become fragmented, you know, HR and talent resources that aren't talking, aren't connected, aren't, aren't aligned. To have that alignment, I guess through the consensus culture, which very different to just for anyone listening who might, might misinterpret that, I imagine as a political culture, it's, it's very different to a consensus culture. That's they're quite distinct, although they might sound the same.

Yeah, 100%, I would say. It's very flat structure at Lego. We've only have a certain space spans and layers in the business and it's pretty tight. And I'd say that I've not experienced any political struggles, which is not what I've said from many other brands I work with. It just isn't there because that Danish culture around no one is better than anyone else just doesn't allow it. And it would be stamped out pretty quickly if it tried to bubble up for sure. It just doesn't work here.

I'm going to put a shout out to any of our live viewers and listeners who want to just ask any final question questions of Eunice as we head into our final 10 minutes here, please jump on the chat on YouTube or LinkedIn. We'd love to hear from you. One question I'd have for you, Eunice, you mentioned brand a second ago. How advantageous is it to have such a strong and iconic brand as Lego when you're hiring? And does it always present an advantage? Are there times when it perhaps is a disadvantage?

Oh, brilliant. Another brilliant question, Johnny. Our brand is super strong. It's the most loved brand in the world and we are very humble and very privileged to have that. So I guess we, I think the plus side is we have huge amounts of interest in our roles. We have a huge amount of applications and we're very lucky. But the downside is our recruiters have to then work super, super hard in ensuring that they review all those thousands of applications that we receive. They ensure that they give the feedback and the candidate care that we are known for and we accept to give to others. So it comes with lots of advantages and lots of disadvantages. And I think the thing we're struggling perhaps a little bit at the minute is candidates look to our organization and they have their own perception about what we do and what roles we have. But through our innovation, we're looking at broadening our kind of our engineering function, we're looking at innovating around kind of our digital offering, we're looking at our Omni channels and our E commerce and we sometimes wonder if candidates, especially passive Candidates look at us and realize that we have such innovation and breadth that they perhaps don't look at us as a brand, that perhaps they would. They think jobs are there for them where in essence they are. So I guess the downside is, and it's probably no different to anyone else, we're having to work super hard and be extra innovative to say, hey, we've got loads of tech roles and we've got loads of engineering over here. And did you know our designer community, we're looking to increase our diversity around females. So we have all these slightly nuanced challenges that we have to work super hard on, that even a brand like Lego is the, you know, can only do certain amount. And that's where our storytelling needs to shine more brightly, to help educate the audience out there of what are potential. There are potentials out there for them as well.

I think that storytelling is important around a brand and misconceptions that can happen. I remember speaking with the TA leader in the UK who was working with, I think, guide dogs to the blind, and she was saying they had an enormous amount of applications from people who were dog lovers and they had a real challenge because their business wasn't around pet care, their business was helping the blind. But you have people who are saying, I'm passionate about dogs, I'd love to work for your organization. And so they're so excited and how do you basically disposition them in such a way that doesn't offend them? But then how do you try and target people who actually care for the real cause of that business stands for? And so there can be that misconception in that example. But I know that, you know, other organizations of the challenge you mentioned, you know, the accountancy firms, the audit firms, no problem hiring accountants, trying to find marketeers or, you know, engineers, and they just don't naturally think of those organizations as having those jobs, you know, whereas, you know, again, I imagine Lego is a great place maybe for those involved in design, maybe even manufacturing, which kind of requires to roles. But maybe an accountant isn't thinking, I want to have a career on Lego or would naturally jump to that. They'd look to the other competitors, which I think all of us, we, we always look to brands like Lego and think, oh, it's going to be easy for them. But as you pointed out, you know, if you're delivering on a promise of a candidate experience, experience. And I actually had a conversation earlier this week with a group of TA leaders around this topic and, you know, all of them were facing Pressure to reduce their cost base. Their organizations, like many at the moment, are feeling the pinch of a global recession, looking at downturns, asking all departments to try and trim the budget. But recruiting, I don't know if you share this opinion, Eunice, but the opinion of the group was that, you know, there's a misconception from, let's say the CFO's office that hiring, if hiring volume drops 20%, you can reduce recruiting costs by 20%. That it is perfectly correlated. And the group was sharing. You know, we have a lot of fixed costs that go into delivering, for example, an experience you mentioned. And then you can't just dial it down 20%. You know, a lot of that is just there. And it's a case of, you know, deciding what kind of a TA organization you're looking to fund. Is it a TA organization that gives best quality candidate experience? Experience for all time, so invest in your future and the brand and the equity, or is it a business that just puts the lowest amount of money in as possible to deliver whatever the output is? And there are different types of TA organizations to fund, are they not?

Yeah, 100%. I think you get in what you put out. And I think everyone thinks recruitment is easy. Right. But it's actually very complex. And what people don't realize is you have commitments with job boards, with partnerships, with channels that you just can't turn off. You have, you know, your strategy is and lean, it's not short and fat. So you just can't turn that tap off. So when, you know, you do have budget pressures, when you do have potential hiring freezes, it's very, very different. It's very difficult to go from eight gear to second gear because by the time you get down all the gears, you're probably going up the gears as well. So I would say be, just be super mindful of what you, you know, which gears you, you deprioritize and which you go down. Be very careful but because it could take you actually longer to go back up 100%. Yeah. And you have to decide on your trade off and you have to decide what is the one thing that is super important to your business. And then you stick with what you need and fundamentally believe in and you have that trade off in the back of your mind. That's what I'd say as well.

And I'm guessing, you know, apart from that say, I'm sure like everybody, I'm sure there's a type of volume row that you have hire a lot of or groups of Roles. But imagine there are some very specialist roles where LEGO looks for, you know, very specialist individuals and you'll go to the ends of the earth to try and find them. And the recruiting process might be very long because you have to develop a relationship with that person. You might be looking at them saying, if we get that person for the next 20 years, we can do this. So if we have to wait two years to court them, you know, does that happen? Have you been involved in assignments like that, or your team involved in assignments like that, where you have this kind of real long term view of a candidate coming into Lego and you're kind of happy, not happy to wait, but you're willing to play the long game to try and get really, you know, niche talent into the business. Is that a thing that happens in lego?

It does, and we do it reasonably covertly. So we look at our strategy, which is very well laid out, and then we roll back to try and understand what type of talent do we need to court. Now if we know that in 18 months we're going to be dialing up this function or this agenda, or we're perhaps doing a different kind of mould for a product and a set, etc. And we have conversations with people around interest to gauge where they are in their, in their life, in their career journey. And we initiate those conversations early and then we just keep in touch with people because sometimes those roles don't materialize and sometimes they actually come a little bit quicker and we have to accelerate those conversations. They tend to happen in, like you said, in the really specialist areas or in the super senior areas. So we do that in pockets, but we usually do that in the background in the shadow and we, we try not make a too big deal of it either. So. Yeah, but you know, our recruiters are pipelining and talent pooling all the time and they are so good at what they do. You know, we're so lucky to have.

I love, I love hearing how the LEGO group is doing things differently, how really how important the values play into everything. I think that's just so important that, you know, from an employer brand perspective, you know, people.