Shaping talent strategy in a post-Covid world | with Dugald McIntosh

Foreign. Welcome to show 48 of the shortlist. I'm Johnny Campbell, your host for the show, CEO and co Founder of Social Talent. And if you're if you've been on any of the past 47 episodes of this show, you know our format. We're a live show. We broadcast every Wednesday at 4pm UK Ireland time. We broadcast to YouTube and LinkedIn. So you may notice just in case you're not listening to us live, that there is a live audience who often chime in with chats and comments. And if you're listening live, we very much welcome your comments. You can comment on the LinkedIn stream on my own profile on LinkedIn or you can comment on the YouTube stream as well. And if you want to find out anything more about previous episodes or upcoming episodes on, I encourage you to go to socialtalent.com the shortlist where you can find video copies. You can find links to our podcast. By the way, just in case you are watching this live and you want to try and recap or you don't have time next week to join us, you can always listen to our podcast, which you can find by looking up the Shortlist on Apple, Spotify or wherever you find your podcasts. So what does show number 48 have in store for you? Well, today we're going to be talking about how talent strategy is being shaped in a post Covid world. There's no doubt that if you're working in the talent acquisition or even the broader talent space, the kind of the end goal has always been the same. How do you find the best talent or the best people for the roles you're hiring for. But the complexities typically arise somewhere in the middle of the process. And the last year has seen trends change faster than I've ever seen it in my 20 odd years in this business. And companies are focusing and refocusing their shift, you know, and also the demand for hiring, whether it's shutting down, hiring all of a sudden, ramping up like crazy, shutting down again, we're seeing tons of ebbs and flows. Covid has been arguably the greatest disruptor or accelerator of change that I've seen in the last 20, 30 years, and whether that to be the rise from work from anywhere, the increased amount of tech that's been put in to drive gig economy workers, tax compliance issues around, workers working from different parts of the world, an increased focus on the more holistic, wider life of the employee. Unless you work for base Camp, by the way, whom this week decided that they want to give a Screw you to your personal life and only focus on work. That's a whole other topic we'll deal with a different day. Organizations typically on scale especially need to be more creative in thinking about what their strategy is. And I've seen a lot of organizations literally throw their talent strategy in the trash in the bin in the last few months, realizing they need to reset and go again. So to join us to kind of drive this discussion of how we shape talent strategy in a post Covid world, I've been joined by Dougal McIntosh. Dougal is somebody who I last shared a beer with a villa in Sitges above Barcelona a couple of years ago. It seems like a million years ago since we could do that. And Dougal is now the managing partner of a company called Talent in, which is a European consultancy firm that advise companies on talent management strategy. And Dougl tells me that they work with organizations kind of before they implement the stuff or change the process and work with their executives to really think about that talent, that talent in an agnostic product, agnostic vendor, agnostic way to give the best solution. But Dougal, maybe you can tell us a bit more about your own background, what brought you to this today and a little bit more about the services you provide before we get into today's topic.

Hey Jonny, thank you very much for having me and thanks for the intro. I'm actually currently working from anywhere as best I can. I'm down in Cornwall today. My home is Bristol, so unfortunately I can't be in Barcelona, but this is as sunny as I can get. I guess my story I work for big resourcing outsourced businesses my entire career delivering things like msps, RP and I guess I did my time with the Manpower group which is obviously one of the big staffing businesses globally and then joined Capita where I was working within the people solutions business. And I guess I spent my entire career delivering outsource programs, helping organizations actually manage either their perm recruitment or the contingent workers and the service based workers. When I left Capita I thought, you know, how can I work slightly differently? I'll see all the changes going on in the market and ultimately I decided to switch sides and directly help clients to design their strategy and I guess try and you know, I felt that I got a lot of experience as a service provider. How can I help them avoid some of the mistakes that I've been making or have helped make as part of the industry for the last 15 years. And talent in what we do, we don't have any ties to service providers or tech companies. And we'll support mostly companies headquartered across Europe. We're a European business to figure out where they're at now, an operational assessment in terms of trying to understand their current landscape, trying to figure out what they need to do, which is, you know, becoming, you know, right now at the moment, as organizations are trying to answer questions around their talent strategy, who their talent is, who's working for them and on their behalf and then also to execute. So that's helping to select providers, helping to select technology and helping them to really execute a change transformation program.

Well, I'm dying to get into the meat of today's topics because there are many, Douglas, in terms of when you look at strategy and talent and what's changing in the last few years, last year alone, I think it's, it's an exciting time. But before we get into that, I want to get stuck into some pretty big news related to that. And it's, there's no shortage of it to be found relation to talent strategy. But let's, let's go with, with a couple of really juicy pieces that are, have taken our eye in the last week. Nile. Let's go with some news. So first up, Dougal, I wanted to chat with you about the Deliveroo ipo. And no, I don't want your financial advice whether I should buy shares or not. Right. But I wanted to talk to you about the context of this CDAM article that was published last week by Phil Bloomer and it talks about Deliver Deliver ipo Is the gig economy empire crumbling? And to give some background and context to those of you who haven't read the article, not familiar with Deliveroo's ipo. They IPO recently, a few weeks back and since then their stock market price has pretty much tumbled and it's tumbling against kind of backdrop of this, this pushback, particularly in Europe where delivery would be most active as to what is a permanent employee or an employee of the organization and what's a contractor and their rights and you know, Deliveroo are really in the crosshairs of this and the article CDAM is pretty, pretty one sided in its view on this. In my opinion, it really looks at Deliveroo as an evil empire exploiting workers, giving them absolutely no benefits. It implies almost slavery or slave like conditions to their staff. What's your perspective on this, this particular example, Dougals, of the gig economy and then perhaps what's your perspective on the wider gig economy?

Well, obviously the headline is clickbait a little bit there, Johnny. I think on this Specific example, I think it's really interesting because obviously Deliveroo went through an IPO just after the Uber High Court judgment in the UK and ultimately I think that had a significant impact on their value, which is what this article is talking about. And so for those of you that aren't aware there was a Uber had been fighting for five years the judgment as to whether their drivers are self employed or not. And ultimately I think this is the final appeal. And ultimately the answer came back that they were dependent workers and therefore classified as workers. It's worth also noting that there's no actual legal definition of gig workers, but I'll come on to that in a moment. Deliveroo engage their workers in a slightly different way in that they have some personal choice which means that they can accept or not accept shifts and therefore they are continue to be classified or Deliveroo classify them as self employed. And ultimately I think what happened here is that prior to the public release of the shares, ultimately the city weren't that enthusiastic about Deliveroos buying Deliveroo shares despite the fact that, you know, on the surface level they look like a, you know, perfect tech company to buy ultimately because of the way that they engaged their workers. So fundamentally the value of the company was significantly eroded by the way that they are engaging and defining the workers that essentially you know where they get the value from. And it's also probably worth, you know, this is all technical stuff but delivery know this is a continuing problem. They're very conscious of this fact. They put aside 35 million to potentially fight worker claims. So you know, they're deliberately positioning themselves and continuing to position themselves differently from Uber. And then the other thing I think that's worth noting is that a direct competitor of theirs just eat, I think very deliberately have a different strategy and have gone out there and say that they will be directly employing their workers. Now the impact of that is that they will be more expensive, so they'll have a more expensive operating model. But their bet is that long term that'll increase the value of their business over Deliveroo. And I think the other thing that they also betting on is that it will help them to have tie up relationships with partners in their marketplace. So things like for example supermarkets who are obviously very important at the moment as everybody's been in lockdown, so there's kind of big strategic bets here in the marketplace. Deliveroo look like they might be on the wrong side of it. If you look at their share price.

It's interesting that the share price bounced back yesterday on an End of those supermarket kind of tie ins with Waitrose in the UK and for those of you listening in the US to give you some context, the Uber case in the UK is very similar to the Prop 22 case in California. And a similar ruling that kind of went well in the US And California went Uber's way and the UK went all the way to Supreme Court, didn't go in Uber's way. And obviously Uber's stance on these things has matured even since both of those rulings. And I think they're probably taking a more holistic approach and saying, okay, you know, this isn't a one size fits all necessarily. And they've made some statements around that as well. Delivery example is interesting. I think, you know, in the U.S. doorDash and others will be similar, similar types of organizations. It reminds me actually of the, in the US the Uber lift comparison several years ago, like this several years ago under Uber's previous CEO, where I saw this explosion of Lyft, which wasn't available, isn't available in Europe. And I saw Lyft really blowing up in loads of states. And essentially every driver typically had Lyft or, and Uber. Right. But I saw people particularly maybe in place like New York and, and California use Lyft more than Uber. From the ethical perspective. They felt, whatever the perception or if it was reality, I don't know, there was a feeling that Lyft were a better organization, better, you know, treated their drivers better, were more ethical and therefore, you know, they voted with their, with their phones and they used more Lyft. And Lyft grew massively during this period. So it's an interesting comparison to just eat and delivery because there's kind of a precedent for the other company growing off this, even if the price is the same or more expensive.

I think you're right. But you know, we don't see Lyft outside of the US market, do we Johnny? You know, and so the Uber model allowed them to grow very quickly globally, whereas I think Lyft, you know, would have been had difficulty doing that if they had an employment model.

The wider perspective, you know, you've been in the mixed contingent versus perm workforce environment. You've seen it in companies. This is something where it surprised me when I got to know it more. How different some organizations treated their permanent staff versus their contractors. Very different benefits, very different approaches, some of it driven by fear of legal treatments. In Europe, again, how you treat somebody could imply or a different type of worker, which could cost the company a Fortune, you know, you know, post pandemic, what is your forecast as to what direction this will go in? What do you think? Where do you think this will go eventually?

So how do I unpack this a little bit? So first off, I'd say there's a couple of big. So on a macro level, everybody expects flexible workers, if you like, freelance worker community to grow. Yeah. And I think I saw a report by a very big employer. I mean they employ 350,000. 350,000 workers globally.

Right.

Okay. They reckon 20% of their workforce today are non perm. They reckon it's going to be up to 50%.

Okay.

So that's the type of shift we're looking at.

Right.

So number one, it's here to stay. Organizations expected to grow. And I think the other thing that I would say, and we saw it within the Taylor report, is that flexible working is. People want it. Yeah, that's the other thing. People, people want to be able to have to work flexibly. But I think there's two tiers. There's a kind of a two tier system here. You have your, your delivery riders, you know, goober. I mean it's probably too flippant to describe them as this, but ultimately there's a, there's a surplus of people that would potentially do that work. Okay. And therefore it makes them vulnerable to, I guess, you know, organizations taking advantage of them and ultimately paying them less than the minimum wage and you know, all the things that they would, they would expect to get if they're a worker.

Yeah.

And then you have the other tier, which I think, and you know, obviously, because there's no real definition of a freelancer and a gig worker. Okay. Is your, you know, but is your self employed worker in the professional, highly skilled space? And they are, they again, you know, they want, they absolutely want to work in that way. And they're getting significant not only, I guess, work benefits in terms of being able to work flexibly, but also economically, they're better off by working in that way. So you've got two tiers really, I think, Jonny, and it's going to be really interesting to see the impact because you've got the organizations that want to use workers flexibly, you've got individuals that want to work flexibly. And then I think the other stakeholder in this and potentially the most important one in the long term is national governments. And what they want to do is they want to be able to, they're used to, you know, the biggest revenue that they get from a tax perspective is payroll taxes. Yeah. And clearly, you know, they're starting to see as workers are increasingly working like this, is it impacting the tax return that they get? And so what they're trying to do is to do two things. I think number one is they're thinking, trying to figure out how can I protect my tax return income. And that's why you're seeing things like 35 in the UK but other governments all over the world are changing their tax legislation in order to target freelance workers. But they're also thinking about their obligations in terms of enforcing worker rights, which is again, what you're seeing with the Uber case. And they need to do that because obviously their citizens expect them to do it right. And, you know, it's the citizens that vote for them. So, you know, it's all, all of these forces, if you like, coming together at the moment that we're starting to see, you know, that, you know, and it's ultimately down to individual, greater individual choice and organizations operating very differently in a way that the old structures hadn't anticipated and haven't adapted quickly enough in order to be able to cope with.

I'd love to hear from some of our live audience listening your thoughts and comments on the gig economy, the split, whether it's U.S. european or Asia, what's happening, what direction it will go in. So please do join us with your comments and we'll read them out. But I want to move on. Khadouble. I could chat about this topic for quite some time, but I do want to try and cover a few more areas because there's so much happening in talent strategy, gig economy being such a big one by itself. But let's park that for a second and go to our second news item. And you mentioned this. You know, it's affecting you, it's affecting me right now, perhaps most of us listening. And this is from Business Insider, from Marguerite Ward and publishing information on Spotify. And it's that Spotify have said it's letting employees work from anywhere while still paying San Francisco and New York salaries. And the article covers a bunch of other companies, Salesforce and other companies that have made recent announcements. Talk to me about work from anywhere and maybe try and unpack the different implications because there are many the implications that you've seen to be the ones that organizations are most worried about, most anxious about.

I'll start with the Spotify headline there because I thought that was a really interesting one. And when I read it, I couldn't believe it. San Francisco salaries because we've all heard about San Francisco salaries, right? And it was interesting that a lot of organizations are obviously coming out there at the moment and saying their employees can work from anywhere. And I think two things I would say, but a lot of them aren't saying that they will pay them what they were paying them before when they lived. And we're having to pay, you know, San Francisco housing prices or London or Paris housing prices. So I think you'll see an impact on that. I think the other thing I would say is that, you know, Spotify actually only have six and a half thousand employees, I think, whereas, you know, the, the greatest employers, you know, still are, you know, I think Walmart, 2.2 million employees. The NHS in the UK has almost 2 million employees. And, you know, those guys can't work from anywhere. So we're really just talking about people that can work behind a computer. So, you know, that does, you know, I guess, you know, you know, we talk about work from anywhere. But a lot of folks, I'm doing a house up at the moment, for example, and I can tell you, you can't hammer a nail in from anywhere. But I think, you know, one of the things I'm interested to figure out is not only are those organizations that are saying that their employees can work anywhere, I think they need to think about, and you hear it a lot. How do I continue to be creative? How do I continue to kind of have, you know, particularly organizations that are creative, talk about the importance of kind of bringing teams together. How are they going to solve that problem? And then when you start to unpack that creativity, we're not just talking about the creative sector, you know, engineering businesses, IT businesses, any businesses that are kind of trying to design solutions, which is generally most businesses, Right, okay. Are creative. So how do you kind of, how do you kind of continue to get that? The other thing I think that organizations, when they're thinking about working from anywhere are grappling with is their. Is the folks that the new entrants to their business, particularly early careers, you can't pull up that. We know the skill shortages out there and the importance and the need to train people and bring the new generation of talent in and train them. And I think, you know, it's difficult to be able to do that. There's the, the other whole piece as well around. You know, for some people, you know, they don't have access to home offices, you know, so there's a whole, you know, making sure that it's inclusive. I mean, I think there's a huge opportunity to be more inclusive from working from anywhere by giving people access to jobs that they might not have been able to access before because they don't have to go to an office. And I think that's really important and an exciting opportunity. But then there's the, well, how are they going to be able to be productive in a potentially a home environment where there's lots of kids and noise, etc. Etc. So there's lots of challenges thrown in there. But as a workforce wonk like me, the other thing that I struggle with is again, I come back to this. Taxes. Right. Okay. Governments want their payroll tax and they're not going to have it. That suddenly, you know, we've seen it I think at the start of COVID in the UK where Barbados were advertising come and work from Barbados, right? Yeah. If you're going to be locked in at home, get on a flight and come and get, you know, do it from Barbados. You can be on the beach. That's, you can do that and you could do that before COVID and organizations were starting to try and get a handle on it. But where they kept having problems was where the tax got paid. Yeah. And if they get on the wrong side of that then they're suddenly, then they are the ones that the, their tax authorities will come after. It will be the, the hirer, the ultimately that will be expected to pay the tax and the potential for fines and back pay, you know, on, on, on taxes can be enormous. So you could end up finding, for example, that in that example that I just gave with Barbados, Barbados expects the tax to be paid in Barbados. The UK expects the tax to be paid in the UK and the worker thinks the tax isn't getting paid anywhere. And you can bet your bottom dollar that it will be. You know, if it's a big organization, it'll be the big organization that ends up giving, being given the tax levy. Yeah. You know, if it's a. And you know, and if it's a big global organization that has offices in Barbados and in, in, in the uk, you know, they're going to be, that could be a, you know, that could be an expensive hangover.

There's a bunch of things you've touched on that I wanted to respond to. Spotify. Yeah, you're right. Smaller than the massive enterprises with maybe 6,7000 employees. Interestingly though, they are an organization to the best of my knowledge, who apply benefits and opportunity across the board to their employees, regardless of whether they're full time permanent staff or whether They're a contractor. They're, you know, more progressive. Maybe it's to be expected of a Swedish organization. The more Nordic progressive view on employment. They're not distinguishing. And I've seen many, many large companies, much bigger, who would make a very deliberate stance on, well, that person is a contractor. So they're not. For example, in our platform, they don't get a license because they're a contractor. Yet their colleague who's full time get a license. And you're kind of like, well, would you. Don't you want to educate everybody and make them all better? Like, should it matter? And I was surprised. You talk about taxes and legal. You know, I was told by a VP of TA many years ago, if I give that person a license, I have a tax implication that affects thousands of other workers. It's not about the person. I want to give them help. But there's. This is not set up for me to do right by this person. And I have to be cognizant of that and bear in mind my company's perspective. So there's that. I think you're. The comment about creativity I dismiss. I think the idea that creativity can't be achieved through work from anywhere. And maybe you aren't suggesting that it's been said by others is nonsense. I think it's harder and we're just not used to it, but absolutely can be done. The onboarding piece is a challenge. We're actually running an event in May, May 20th. It's a free event if anyone wants to register for it online. You can work from anywhere and learn from anywhere. Social Talent Live, it's our third event like this on onboarding. And you can register@socialtown.com forward slash live. But essentially that's a. We're bringing a bunch of companies together to talk about onboarding, particularly in this virtual environment. We've got Procore in the US, Booking.com in the Netherlands. We've got IBM from a global perspective. Celonis out of Germany in the US talking about how they've transitioned to, you know, in IBM's case, onboarding 20,000 plus people and how they've made that a really brilliant experience. You know, it's amazing what can be done in this work from anywhere environment. But you are right in all the benefits. Like that article as well, pointed to the benefit of being able to hire talent anywhere as being one of the reasons to do this. People do forget you can't. You have to have a legal entity in the country. You're hiring them in. You have to employ them directly there or go through some sort of contracting position where they are based, you know, in Ireland, I know it's more than six months of the year. You're living here, you're domiciled here, you're registered to pay tax here, and all sorts of rules like that. The EU have common agreements across different countries at many different jurisdictions, as does everybody. It isn't so simple, but there is probably a perspective, an idea in lots of people's heads that I can now hire any country in the world and pay them that low salary. That's not. That's not really how it works. To your point. If they do.

It isn't. And it does connect to the. The previous conversation we're having about gig workers, Johnny, you know, because, you know, a lot of that, you know, we're seeing platform companies, you know, what big rise in. It's been very popular in the U.S. yeah. Platform companies connecting often IT workers or workers in the creative industries, you know, copywriters, etc. They don't take any employment responsibility. They're just, you know, making a connection. And the workers will be freelance and often they can be anywhere. Right. Okay. But again, the tax implications of that are. Can be a real minefield for organizations. They need to really make sure they're on top of that before they jump.

I love your point about. And I hadn't really thought about this. Shame on me. I always thought there was two parties. There's the employer and the employee or the contractor or gig worker. But actually there's three. There's governments, the employer and the person. And sometimes we think, oh, the government are just being on the side of the gig worker. The government have a very separate agenda. Agenda in this. And it's a really good point around protecting tax. Now, it's for the welfare of everyone who lives in their country or should be. But it is a really good point. There is a separate agenda there. And too often, I guess, the government comes in and suggests that they are representing the interests of either employers, our employees, when in fact they're representing their own interests. And it's important to recognize that can happen.

I think it's a tricky one because they kind of got dual interests, haven't they, Johnny? Because they want inward investment. Yeah. You know, and in order to be able to kind of encourage inward investment, they want to have a flexible labor market. Yeah. You know, potentially. Look, you're in Ireland, right. You know, low corporate taxes. Yeah. And then at the same time, they have responsibility to their citizens, you know, and they've got to generate tax income to pay for benefits and they've got to have worker rights. So, you know, like everything. Yeah, they're walking a tight, you know, a tightrope. And I think the other thing I was thinking about a little bit because you start to see, you know, you've got the Biden plan, haven't you, with the, his tax plan, you know, whether that happens or not, it'd be interesting. But you know, I think what he's trying to do is to say, you know, big, big international businesses should pay, you know, tax where the revenue has been generated. Right, yeah. And it'll be interesting to see whether we start to see, you know, similarly, you know, whether it's in the EU.

Or.

Elsewhere, you know, oecg, you know, starting to come up with kind of global policies, if you like, around freelance workers, you know, who can, you know, particularly if they're connected through technology, you know, work from work, from anywhere.

Yeah, I think there's nothing new in some of that stuff. And I won't, I won't, I dropped, I'll drop the subject now in a second on tax because neither of us were probably self proclaimed tax experts, but I used to live on a Caribbean island and we know employment tax, but we had consumption tax, very high consumption tax in Ireland. I now live, we have a consumption tax called vat as you do and we have an income tax, we both. So, you know, there's lots of models for, for trying to, to tax consumption or spending but also to tax, you know, employment and all sorts of variance in the middle. But I want to jump off into maybe some other topics that are affecting talent strategy at the moment. Do all get your thoughts, you know, and just to throw a few at you, topics that I've seen that have come up in the last year, topics like internal mobility, you know, areas of technology and investment, the automation of different parts of the process and acceleration of that digitization of processes like interviewing, assessment, onboarding. What are you seeing in that kind of tech space and what are you seeing in maybe some of the process space like intermobility, internal mobility, which maybe typically didn't live in the talent acquisition world and now is beginning to live in the talent acquisition world more. For example, what else are you seeing that's interesting coming out of the last year that's driving different changes in talent strategy?

Hey, well this stuff's been on epo, isn't it Johnny? It's gone absolutely crazy and that's from necessity. So there's a bunch of stuff there. Internal mobility, I think has been. I think. What's that been? I mean, first of all, organizations are kind of probably tried to put a hold on their, you know, additional new recruitment. Right. Okay. So therefore, you know, that's forced them, you know, and also a lot of pressure not to let workers go, which I think has been, you know, one of the big successful outcomes. You know, organizations, unlike the, you know, the financial. The recession after the financial crash, you know, kept onto workers as best they can. And they've also, you know, but they've got much better at trying to figure out who their workers are, what their workers can do, and, you know, moving them around the organization. And I think you've seen some organizations do that really, really well. And I think the technology has matured to a point where they can. And, you know, they can do it much better. Yeah. You know, and you've seen some really good products out there which enable that. And I think I would connect that to learning as well. I think that's the other big buzzword again, you know, something we were talking about pre Covid, but something that's really starting to happen now, you know, giving workers access to learning, which allows them to be more productive and effective. And, you know, and I think that's, I guess, two things. Number one is it's obviously driven from necessity. Yeah. You know, can't hire new workers, need to change, have required different skills. But also we were seeing this pre Covid, you know, skill shortages. Yeah. And ultimately the way that you solve for that is by training people. You know, we knew before that the skill cycle was getting shorter and shorter, so we had to retrain people. And again, now people are actually doing it. And obviously digital tools are enabling it so much better. So really good opportunity for organizations if they're embracing it, I would say.

I spoke to a friend of mine this morning and we were talking about another shift that he brought up which is kind of moving away from the more traditional industrial model of having great products or, you know, efficient factories or machines into more, you know, whether it's, you know, more knowledge businesses or more services businesses, which refocus the organization on people as a strength. You know, so the command control view of people, which was make them do their jobs of the past and some companies still doing that, has quickly been replaced with this view of, you know, who are our talents, do we have the best talent, Are we giving them the best opportunities, Are we going to retain the best people, how can we develop the future leaders? All these themes, you know, from old industrial companies who are changing their mindsets to this, to the new startups who have taken this approach from day one. There does seem to be a much, you know, this time around, much more of a focus on. Talent is the strength of the business. It isn't the factories, the products, the engineering resources, the patents, it's the people we have. Is that a big thing that you're thinking you're seeing accelerators?

Look, I'd say again it's, it's, it's two stream, Johnny. You know, a bit like the gig workers. You know, some of them don't get a choice and they are, you know, you know, you know, continuing to have to kind of work in a certain way. Others where they have a choice. Yeah. Because they have special skills and lots of, you know, and there's a competition for their, for them to come and work for, for you. Yeah. You know, there we're suddenly talking much more about the experience they have as individuals. Organizations, organizations have to be serious about their purpose. Yeah. In order to be able to attract them. Yeah. You know again we were talking about this a few years ago, but this is absolutely, you know, and it has to be, you know, more than just, you know, words. Yeah. You know, I think if you want the people to. And again, I think the other thing I would say, I would, I think is interesting is that reality. You shouldn't just be thinking about applying it to your perm workers. Right. Okay. Your EVP if you like. You know, why should people work for you? Giving them a great experience, giving them a great journey, you know, continuing to kind of train them and develop them so that they kind of, you know, increasing their value both personally and for your business. All those things, you know, HR teams have been talking about and getting good at. I would say that logic should also be applied to your non perm workers as well. If you think about the fact that, you know, increasingly these, the people that are working on your behalf, increasing the value of your business, getting your projects delivered, not going to be your employees. They might be freelancers, they might be provided to you by service companies. You need to think about your talent as everybody that's working on your behalf. And your EVP if you like, is your employees, your freelancers, your service providers, you know, all of those that community, you want them. The winners will be the ones that can attract them to come and work for them if you like would be my, my bet. The ones that get it right are going to see their view. Yeah. Talent view is much broader.

Yeah. That Brings me to kind of another big, huge theme that came out of COVID not because of COVID but just coincidentally, which was the diversity, equity and inclusion kind of the momentum behind that as a theme in the corporate world. And I guess the one that gets the most attention, because it's probably the most visible, is diversity. But equity and inclusion, if you look at them as big topics, when you have a workforce made up of people with different contracts, different rights, it's really hard to be equitable. It's really hard to be inclusive if you see them as different. And do you think that the, you know, in the wake of last summer's big movement, initially driven out of the US but ended up being global, do you think that, you know, renewed focus on equity and inclusion will also perhaps prompt organizations to look differently on their talent, the classifications, the rights of those talent? Back to your point around, maybe just eat kind of saying, we're going to be more equitable and we think equitable work practices will drive better business outcomes. Do you think that has been accelerant as well, that DEI movement that started in the summer 20 to drive some more of this thinking around total talent?

Well, you'd like to think so, wouldn't you? You know, and the opportunities there, you know, it needs to be taken, you know, and executed rather than it just being a kind of an aspiration. And I think. But I would say, you know, I think women have been, you know, more significantly impacted in the workforce than men. Yeah. Through Covid. I think the evidence there to suggest that. I would suggest that, again, you know, particular socioeconomic groups have probably been more adversely affected. So there's a lot of. There's a lot. There's a lot to go at. I think in order to really, you know, really make a meaningful impact that, that, that, you know, impacts people's lives. But the opportunity. Absolutely. We come back to that point, you know, the, the way that people connect much better. You know, there is nowhere to hide any longer because we're all connected through technology. You know, there's an absolute. But, you know, recently I think I saw in the UK the government rejecting the idea of having a bit like, I think the, you know, companies in the UK have to publish in their annual reports the. The pay gap, you know, the gender pay gap. There was a similar debate as to whether they should do that for ethnic groups in the uk, different ethnic groups, and they. They rejected it. So I think there's, you know, I need to see evidence of, you know, and if you look at the boardrooms you know, we're still seeing, you know, not enough diversity, Johnny, you know, so we need to see more evidence of it, more work.

I spoke with a friend of mine who runs Talent for a very large organization, and he surprised me when he was sharing with me that their organization's focus is not on ethnicity or gender. They focus as their primary goal on your socioeconomic background because they've seen that that is the biggest driver to fix the other issues that people typically focus first on. And there's such a large correlation between different ethnicities, genders, backgrounds that are marginalized. And actually the commonality is typically socioeconomic. And if you address the lack of socioeconomic access and ignore gender and ignore race, you actually end up fixing a lot of those things. I think it ties into your original comment about the two streams of gig workers. There's the gig worker who earns $200 or pounds an hour, and there's the gig worker who runs 10 pound or $10 an hour. You know, kind of doesn't matter whether you're black, white, you know, whatever your color or race or creed is. It kind of the difference is one person earns $10, the other person has 200. That's the biggest difference.

It absolutely keeps coming back to that, doesn't it? You know, poverty, you know. So, you know, I think that, you know, when I worked the previous. One of the previous organization I worked with, I was very proud of what one thing the CEO said at the time, and I was quite impressed. He said, anybody in this. He was very, you know, made a lot of. Put a lot of investments into social, economic, you know, socio. Mobility. Right. Giving opportunity to tickets that wouldn't necessarily have that opportunity. And one of the things he said, I remember at one of our big leadership conferences, as he said, if I see anybody giving an unpaid internship. Yeah. To, you know, in our, in this organization. This organization employed 60,000 people in the U.K. you know, then, you know, as far as I'm concerned, you know, they shouldn't be in this organization. Right.

Okay. I won't say they should be fired.

Because I'm from the. You get my logic. Right. Okay. He was very. And you know, it's a big, you know, we all have a big opportunity to make sure that we're giving opportunity. You know, it's this white privilege thing. Right. Okay. To. To people that wouldn't necessarily get it. And we also have it. And I think the, you know, you know, the other thing that I've kind of really hit home to me for the whole you know, Black Lives Matter debates is the fact that very difficult for me from my background to really understand, you know, the challenges that some people have had to go through, you know, in order to be able to get to work, to be able to get to education, to be able to access these things, you know. And so I think again, we just need to really, you know, need to work harder. I think would be my school make.

A great point about payment of interns. I know back in the day we used very early days of Social Town 10 years ago, we would have, we would have individuals working for us as interns and we didn't pay them well at this, you know, the first few years we didn't have any money, we didn't pay them well. And we do now have a policy of paying interns an equivalent salary that you'd pay, you know, an experienced graduate at least coming into the workforce at a kind of first year level that the person is putting their time in, they need an income, they shouldn't be disadvantaged. And it is an excellent point and I've seen some of the best movements on social mobility change. The talent strategy. Like, no, don't just look at, are you looking at the right colleges, the white colleges, the black colleges, like, hang on a second, can we hire someone, just go to college who didn't finish their GCSEs or whatever it might be because maybe they could do the job. Maybe we just don't need a degree. And this idea of is it the right college? Or look at different colleges. Hang on a second. Just look at someone who has, let's have a competency test, let's have a skills test. They have the skills. Who cares how they got to the point where they could actually apply that skill if they have the potential. And again, a movement I'm seeing is a massive movement towards that. Hiring for potential and not hiring just for skills and experience, which I think is a very positive thing and will hopefully help that social mobility piece. So I think there are some of the more aspirational and heartwarming kind of things that have come out of the last year that I'd hope will continue.

Hey, haven't we all got a lot more connected to our communities, a lot more understanding in terms of our own personal responsibility? And I think that's, that's been a real positive through the last, well as well every year now, isn't it? You know, I think that, you know, the realization, you know, I remember beforehand, you know, we were very caught up in, you know, achieving our business goals, our targets, etc. Etc. Now, I think that's, you know, we understand that we're all interconnected, aren't we, as humans and, and that, you know, the, you know, I think that.

That.

I hopefully, you know, as we move out of COVID you know, that will be a memory. Yeah. That, you know, that we all will kind of take forward and grow from, I think. And certainly you're seeing a lot of intent at the moment, aren't you, you know, of organizations recognizing that and recognizing that in order to be able to do well, in order to be able to attract the right staff, in order to be able to keep the right staff, in order to be able to keep. Get customers at the end of the day. Yeah. You know, then all of that needs to be a key, you know, really intrinsic part of how they do things.

It reminds me of something that's on the wall right behind me. Yeah. Which is, you know, to read from that you can do nothing. You can do something when you're thinking about your talent, strategy. Do the right thing. Dougl, we're at Time and I really appreciate you, you sharing those some insights with us today on the show. But we are at the point where I'd love you to share one last insight, one tip if you'd like to add to our shortlist, which could be something that you have been given or passed on to you in your career or something that you just have gleaned yourself from your experience. But I'm going to invite you to share that tip for our shortlist with our audience, if you don't mind.

Well, I was thinking about this, Jonny, and I think, you know, do the right thing is definitely something I've tried to live by. And I was trying to come up with something I didn't realize you're going to have it on your poster. So I'm glad it wasn't and I'm not going to use that, but I think the way I'm going to articulate it is I remember years ago, in the early days of my career, I was working with a Danish guy, actually, you know, and he, a very clever guy, and he leaned over and we were working on a problem together and he said to me, it's very cold in Denmark. He said, we have an expression. He said, it's a bit like wetting your pants on a cold day. It might feel good at the time, but pretty soon you realize it's a bad idea. And I think it's a good test. A good test for when you're Making your decision. Are you doing this for the right reasons? And are you going to be pleased you did it in the long term?

So I love that we're finishing with don't wet your pants from Dougal Macintosh.

On a cold day, Johnny.

On any day, let's just say. On any day. Dougal, thanks so much for joining. A pleasure to have you. We'll have you on again and I do wish you the very best with the business as well. If you want to reach out to you. What's the best way to reach out to you to find out more about your business services?

Hey, well, you'll see my mug shot on our web page, Talent in. And you can connect to me there or obviously LinkedIn. I'm a LinkedIn user, guys, so feel free to reach out as Talent in.

Give them a shout. You won't find too many Dougals out in the world. Dougal, thanks for joining us. Been pleasure having you. I wish you well. Good luck with the renovations in Cornwall and thanks. Thanks to all of you for listening today, for joining the show live, if you joined us, or for listening to the podcast back. Love to get your thoughts and opinions as we move into show 49. I did mention, by the way, before I tell you about next week's show, we are going to be running our third social Talent live event next month and it's on that topic of onboarding, particularly virtual onboarding, how to drive a more inclusive virtual onboarding process. We'll be joined by Experts in Procore, Booking.com, celonis and IBM and many others who will be sharing their insights. And some experts from our platform talking about the processes around onboarding and virtual onboarding. You can register for free. It's a free event, two hours long with short, snappy debates, panels and talks. And you can go to socialtown.com live to find out more about that. But don't forget to come back next week for show number 49 as we head towards the magic 50. Joining me next week, I'm going to have Simon Mullins. Simon is somebody that you may not know unless you're in the world of executive search. If you're in the world of executive search, you will know Simon. Simon's an Englishman living in the US currently based out of Washington State. And Simon is the man to talk to about executive recruiting around the world. Most of the world's biggest companies who do executive recruiting listen to Simon and work with his organization and their kind of group to share ideas. And no better person to have his finger on the Pulse. But Simon's going to be joining me next week to talk about the evolution of executive recruiting. And I think we all still have this image of exec recruiters in their pinstripe suits doing high level C level recruiting. But actually it's evolved and it's moved on to be something that's more about, you know, hard to find our key or critical talent. And he's going to share with us what he's learned from the group he works with as Chief Facilitator at eSix. So that's going to be Wednesday the 5th of May. That's 4pm UK Ireland time. You can tune in live on LinkedIn or YouTube or you can catch it on your favorite podcast medium, I.e. spotify, Apple or wherever you find your podcasts. So don't forget from today, when you think about today's talent strategies and what you're doing and if you are in a position of influence, don't forget those magic four words, do the right thing. We'll see you next week.

You.