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In this conversation, Rachel Kohn, VP of People Operations at Sendoso, discusses her journey in transforming the company's culture, focusing on employee engagement, trust-building through transparency, and the challenges of navigating mergers and acquisitions. She emphasizes the importance of creating opportunities for underrepresented communities and rebranding HR to a People Team to foster a more inclusive environment.
Rachel also shares insights on maintaining cohesion in a remote work setting and offers valuable advice for future leaders on building a personal network.
Chapters:
Welcome to the Leading Beyond the Org Chart Podcast by Rise Results, where we bring you real-world strategies to improve employee engagement, boost retention, and accelerate team development - all with a clear focus on driving measurable business outcomes.
Each episode features leaders who’ve successfully navigated these challenges, sharing actionable insights you can implement immediately.
We’ll explore how better people practices lead to better business performance - and how to turn strategic thinking into scalable growth.
Good morning and welcome Rachel.
We're thrilled today to have Rachel Cohen who has an extensive background in talent
management and diversity.
Currently she is the VP of People at Sendoso where she has successfully implemented
strategies for employee engagement and cultural transformation, especially following a
major acquisition.
So let's just jump right in.
Welcome Rachel.
We're so glad you're here.
Thank you both.
happy to be here.
Great.
The first question is, we know you've been steering kind of a major cultural shift at
Sendoso.
What were some of the biggest hurdles when you started and what practical steps moved the
needle?
And I'll say, from taking, this is so impressive to me, taking your net promoter score
from a negative 19 to a positive 41.
We'd love to hear how you did that and some of the steps that.
Yeah, absolutely.
This has definitely been a journey and very much a labor of love um and commitment.
I joined Sendoso uh nearly two years ago and I joined as an acquihire, meaning I was hired
by acquisition by a company I was with previously, was acquired by Sendoso.
And I didn't even realize when I ultimately joined the business, truly the state of the
business being very much in a turnaround.
eh We had come off of a year or so of various reductions in force and would say morale was
probably at the lowest it's ever been in the company history.
And so that's where you see that negative 19 employee net promoter score coming into play.
And so as I started to realize kind of the task at hand of the challenge that was sitting
in front of us is that we had a lot of work to do in terms of rebuilding trust.
with our employees and creating a place where people didn't feel like they had to show up
to work, but a place that they were excited to show up to work.
And so that started with, you know, some things that I know we'll get the chance to talk
about, but it really started with getting an accurate pulse on our employee base and
running a much more extensive engagement survey that didn't just focus on simply asking,
is this a place you'd recommend for others to work, but to start to really dig into the
data to understand.
What was keeping people here?
What were people energized by, engaged with?
And also, what did they think was not going well?
And what were things that they would like us to action on as a leadership team?
And so we started to build up much more intensive uh engagement surveys.
And I think part of the piece is I'm also a huge believer that you don't ask people for
feedback if you don't intend to use it.
And so that was, that was, think one of the big things that really started to move the
needle quarter over quarter is people would give us some, some really, in some ways, very
tough feedback about their experience working at the company, their managers, the way that
they worked with other folks across the business.
And I think for a long time, there had been a history or culture of people would give
feedback and nothing was done with it.
And so.
we started to really rebuild that trust with folks and started to say, okay, we're going
to action on these three things that really kind of rose to the surface.
uh One that we feel like we can do something about.
And two, we want to start demonstrating to you that we're going to take your feedback and
we're going to start to implement things across the business to make your day better, to
make your experience better, to make your working situation better.
And so quarter over quarter, they started with small things and then they became
larger things and they became much larger initiatives that started to really signal to
people that this is a place that actually cared about them as an employee, cared about
their development, cared about them showing up to work and feeling like they were engaged
in that they were maybe finding even a little joy in what they were getting to do on a
day-to-day basis.
And so we started to see that number shift from, you know, from a negative number to a
very low single digit positive number.
to quarter over quarter to the point where we're now sitting pretty consistently in the
high 30s to low 40s, quarter over quarter.
And to the point where even in our most recent planning, we said maybe next year that we
don't say that we look to maintain a plus 25 quarter over quarter, we aim a little higher.
And so it's been an incredible transformation.
I would say that, you
people as oftentimes the face of the employee net promoter score.
However, this has been very much a shared journey across the leadership team, across
frontline leaders.
And also I think a lot of it belongs to our employees for sharing the feedback and giving
us an opportunity to meet them where they are and kind of deliver things for them to make
it a better place.
Well, kudos to you for wanting that feedback in the beginning and then being and
communicating it.
Because building trust back takes a lot of time and it sounds like the transparency and
wanting to do something with the feedback that you got really changed your culture.
Yeah, and I want to say it's um building on that, on what we've been talking about.
And it's been clear from our conversations with you that transparency is one of your core
values.
And you have found a way to promote that.
notion of transparency as a way to build trust throughout the organization.
Especially when companies are going through mergers and acquisitions, it becomes even more
difficult to build and sustain trust.
And so using transparency as one of the tenants to build trust, how have you m
push that out, even though it's your core value, have you helped leaders become
comfortable with it?
How have you promoted it and helped it permeate the organization?
So I think coupled with transparency being a core value, I'm also a big believer that
knowledge is power.
um And getting to share that knowledge with your employees also helps build trust.
And I think with some organizations that I've been a part of, leadership teams have held
information really close to the chest.
And a lot of times for the broader employee base, what happens
in leadership team meetings is almost a black box and they really don't have visibility
into either how the business is doing, how decisions get made.
And I think that's one of the things that especially in a remote environment, folks will,
without giving them the information, they will absolutely start to kind of form their own
stories, their own narratives.
so especially in remote, right?
especially in a remote first culture, you have to be super conscious of how do you help
shape the messaging and how do you also make sure that people have the information that
they need in order to do their jobs really well and also to feel really confident in the
direction that the business is going.
So that started with our meeting cadence and the way that we started to kind of
restructure what we did in the all hands to make sure that we had.
a section that focused on metrics, focused on kind of like how we were performing, how we
were hitting targets quarter over quarter.
And we got a little bit more granular than just simply a revenue number, which was
something that I think had kind of previously been shared in the past of retention and
revenue, but we started to dig a little bit deeper into more functional area metrics.
So people could also understand how were their peers doing and what other departments were
working on and how they were being gold.
And then another piece of this puzzle is we started to implement something called AMAs, so
ask me anything, that started to go into our all hands as well.
And no questions were off limits, and sometimes they were really tough questions.
um And people had the opportunity to ask them anonymously, they were able to name
themselves, but we wanted to create a space that felt safe for people to ask tough
questions and ensure that they were.
going to get some form of an answer, even if it was something that we didn't necessarily
have a fully fleshed response to.
And that's something that's actually continued and it's a part of our all hands.
We reserved the last 10 to 15 minutes of every all hands for people to ask any questions
that they want about, you know, what departments are doing, financials, about strategic
direction of the business.
And also Marilyn, to your point, especially when there's been a lot of M &A activity,
there's a lot of change in that.
you know, ultimately creates a lot more questions than it oftentimes creates answers.
And I think also there's been scenarios in which we haven't had fully fleshed out answers.
And I think another way that we've been able to be really transparent and again, leverage
that transparency to build trust is we'll directly say to our employee base that we don't
have an answer to this yet.
But we are going to work on getting you an answer by XYZ time.
or like this is the part answer or this is the answer that we can share right now, but
more will come on this.
And I think, again, it always circles back to this piece of we always get them an answer.
We don't leave people in the dark.
We create opportunities for folks to get kind of that FaceTime, those touch points with
the leadership team and the leadership team ensures that they hold space for those
questions and make sure that they're connecting with people.
regardless of tenure, regardless of level.
And that's done a lot to just thread transparency through the entire organization.
I just love that.
sorry, I was going to say um we actually just started sharing a template that we created
um called Ask Me Anything.
because so many of our clients are trying to promote the same concept, not just at All
Hands, but for leaders to then do with their sub team All Hands meetings.
And so we created a template.
We're happy to share it with you and with anyone who listens to the podcast.
But aside from that, it's interesting and serendipitous that just this morning we got, I
got an email from one of our, one of the clients
that we coach and she said, I got this request from HR wanting data on one of my team
members.
I have no idea what, you know, what do think this means?
You know, they want to know tenure and they want to know background and they want, you
know, and again, I think to your earlier point, when you don't give people further
information, they fill in the blank on their own and they start to, it creates churn and
anxiety and it's hard to work when your mind is churning around, are they going to take
members of my team and why?
are they asking these questions?
And if the head of HR in this case had simply said, we're updating our files to ensure
that we're consistent with the laws in each country, and so we're going country by country
and making sure that we have the right data in our HRIS system, that's the simple reason
for this.
We're not doing a reduction.
We just want to update our HRIS system.
it would just allay the fears and let people get back to the business of working rather
than build that anxiety.
And so I just want to applaud the work that you're doing to help um promote that kind of
communication that builds trust and transparency.
Now back to you, Kim.
Yeah, no, I just had a follow-up question which is kind of interesting to me.
So those AMA, Ask Me Anything sessions, and you said initially, well, probably still you
have the opportunity to ask questions anonymously.
Given that you've built so much trust, I'm just curious if people are asking questions
under their name more often now than anonymously.
It's a mix.
think some people just appreciate the fact that they can be anonymous, especially if they
feel like it's in some ways like a controversial question.
um so, but I look at like any of those scenarios.
And this is also where I think we have to be really conscious of as leaders that there's
always going to be a power dynamic that comes into play, especially with someone who is
maybe at an individual contributor level or, you know,
is really conscious of like their role within the organization.
I worked at a previous company where the CEO was really insistent that if someone has a
hard question, they have to put their name behind it.
And I argued back and forth constantly about this, that I was like, no, have to,
especially people new in their career.
Like they're so careful and so cautious of what they say.
And we need to let them feel safe to ask the questions that they want to know, because
otherwise they'll never ask them.
And we need to provide pathways for people to ask really tough questions and feel safe
doing so.
And so, but to circle all the way back into your point, but it's a mix.
Some people place their name on it, some people don't, but I think it's also just, and
some of the questions now at this point are like not really tough.
They're things that are not planted questions where people are like,
What are you most excited about for this upcoming quarter?
What are the things that you feel like are happening in the market that we're winning
against?
so the questions have really shifted also from these really almost like fear-based
negative type of questions are, will there be another reduction in the future?
Are these things going to happen?
Or is the business really doing as well as you're saying it's doing to really around like.
What are you hearing from customers?
What's happening in the market?
Where are we going?
What are you excited about?
So it's also been a very interesting shift in where it's like we're not having necessarily
to defend.
We're getting to have really excited, future looking conversations with these types of
questions now.
That's great.
Excuse me, one more follow-up.
Do you keep a list of, uh you know, a historical record in terms of like FAQs so people
can look back and say, I think someone asked that.
And, um because I think as you're speaking, that sounds like a good best practice.
Yep, we use a software called Dory.
It's very inexpensive and it's something where literally it's $200 a year.
you get the opportunity.
It's like in the grand scheme of like a people tech stack, it's like, it's not even a drop
in the bucket.
It's fantastic.
And so I'm a big proponent of it because it has the option for anonymous questions.
You have the ability to embed it into your Google Calendar.
And then you can archive the questions and you can respond to them in real time.
So that's also one thing that we do is we kind of have someone in a note-toking capacity.
So as the leader is answering the questions, someone is kind of transcribing so that if
you weren't there, you can see what was the question, who answered it, what was their
response.
And then we have that list of questions for each respective all hands, because we make a
new AMA link for each upcoming company meeting.
that's great.
We'll be sharing that resource for sure.
great tip.
it's a great little software.
love that.
right, switching gears a little bit.
We've been talking about mergers and acquisitions, but you've been on both sides of
mergers and acquisitions.
Given that, your unique experience of being on both sides, what kind of advice would you
give other leaders who are navigating?
Because we know that when your company is acquired, you're taking two cultures and trying
to blend them.
What kind of advice would you give in navigating that kind of cultural integration to
ensure that you have smooth transitions, as smoothly as possible, right, with that?
And especially with companies that are multiple acquisitions a year, that's a lot of
culture.
try to integrate.
So I'd love to hear what you have to say, how you did it on both sides.
it was interesting.
think I was lucky to have the perspective of being uh on the sell side first and being the
person who was actually acquired because I had the lived experience of, wow, I feel like
this could have gone better.
And so because we had that experience, we were able to take so many incredible lessons
from that to make sure that we didn't make
the same mistakes with the company that we acquired a little over a year later.
But I think one of the pieces of advice that I would give, regardless of what side of the
house you're on, as you're going through the due diligence process, is to really
understand what are the nuances that make a company culture tick?
Because I think that was one of the big conversations that I had with um my now peer who
leads our marketing and growth for Sendoso.
Um, she was the previous chief revenue officer at the company that we acquired and we
started to like really dig into, you know, how do people work?
How do you communicate?
What has like worked really well in the past?
What has completely fallen on its face?
Like how do people have tough conversations?
You know, and also where do people live in terms of their communication?
Are they in Slack?
Are they mostly an email?
Do they prefer to have meetings?
What do you, how, how do you use your meetings?
And so I think there's really never a level of granularity like too far for you to really
start to understand how folks show up to work and how they operate.
Because that also is going to signal to you how well are they going to start to integrate
and seamlessly fit into how we operate and what our cadence is and our communication style
and how we show up to work each day.
And I think that was one of the things as we did the second acquisition, we had a much
better pulse on how they operated and what their operating cadence and what mattered to
them than we did with the previous acquisition, which even had a longer diligence period
than the second acquisition.
So we were able to accomplish a lot more.
the second time we did it around, because I think we were much more intentional in the
types of conversations that we were having.
And we were also, think, as we were bringing folks on, we were much more conscious of kind
of setting the stage and setting the tone and making sure that it felt empathetic, but
also, you know, we signaled the excitement of what we were going to have the opportunity
to do as a combined entity.
And I think that piece was also
missing the previous time, because I think one of the things that you don't think about as
much as the acquiring entity is the loss that perhaps the company being acquired is going
to go through, because especially if they're a smaller company, there is more of a
familial type of community where and we also in both scenarios acquired competitors.
And so there's
moon.
Bye.
of this company that acquired you, you were selling against them up until the day you were
acquired.
And oftentimes you have a really negative perception of the company that's acquiring you.
So to kind of wrap some of this up with a bow, right?
I think there's a high level of empathy that is required as you think about integrating
the cultures and you're still never going to know everything.
But the more granular you can get with starting to just understand people and how they
operate is really going to set you up to hopefully have a smoother transition.
And also our culture of transparency, we did a lot of immediate open forum opportunities
for the company being acquired to ask questions again, right?
We set the stage from the front end that there's not a question we won't answer.
There's not a question that's off the table and we're gonna work with you to start to
establish and build trust from the get go.
As you were talking, was thinking transparency and empathy, that goes a long way.
Yeah.
I was thinking, I wonder if the metaphor of someone who plays for a sports team and then
changes to the team that was their competition, how that could be adapted to knowing that
you are.
you know, it was the enemy almost, and now you work there.
And how you adapt to that has to be a challenge and a loss, as you say.
lots and lots of feeling goes into how you adapt and how you make that those folks feel
comfortable.
with the new company that they work for because they were the enemy now, or the
competition, if not thought of as the enemy.
It's the external enemy.
So again, shifting gears a little bit, our next question relates to your passion for
creating opportunities for underrepresented communities.
Oops, I had some.
sound issue there, um like your work with hack diversity.
um So share a little bit about how you incorporated these types of programs into the
larger mission and how you measure their impact.
So I know I shared this with you.
familiar with hack diversity, so you can share a little bit about why you'd worked with
them and what the work was and how you measured the impact.
Yeah.
So I know I shared this with you when we first started talking, my career started in
teaching.
I did my two year commitment with Teach for America, now at the stage of a million years
ago, feels like.
ah But that really was kind of the turning point, right?
Of how do we create pathways and opportunities for folks maybe from either
underrepresented backgrounds or, know, and start to just
democratize and diversify different parts of the corporate sector.
And I think we can all agree that tech probably has the biggest challenge when it comes to
challenges with creating more pathways for diversity, equity, and inclusion and belonging.
And part of that is you look oftentimes at executive teams, they predominantly are.
white dominant and specifically white male dominant.
And as I started to kind of move through my career, that passion that was ignited when I
started doing Teach for America is something that has carried with me and has been a part
of what I've done, working first in K-12 education.
And then I made a shift into executive search and human capital consulting and got the
opportunity to...
you know, be really conscious of the searches that we were running and the opportunity to
like create pathways for candidates and make sure like we were partnering very closely
with the companies that we were working with to make sure that they had really equitable
hiring practices.
And so that's something that has threaded through all of the companies that have had an
opportunity to work with really kind of.
thinking about like, do our hiring practices look like?
What do we do on a day-to-day basis to create more pathways and also for our existing
employees, making sure that we're being really conscious of the pathways and opportunities
for leadership and growth and development for them.
And, you you mentioned Hack Diversity.
um That's an organization that has actually, they just celebrated their 10 years, but they
also,
made a decision kind of here at the 10 year anniversary that their mission would kind of
evolve in different ways.
So Hack Diversity as it exists and have existed the last 10 years has kind of closed that
particular chapter, but the goal of that organization and organizations like it, right?
Or how do you create internship and career pathways predominantly for underrepresented
populations in tech and.
Hack diversity's mission was predominantly working with individuals who were black and
brown and making sure that they had partnerships with existing tech companies
predominantly in the greater Boston area and more so on the technical side of the house.
So they worked with folks who were majoring in computer science and different types of
engineering in data, data science and getting them into those.
much more technical, challenging pathways to break into.
And so any type of supplier diversity program, I've worked with other ones that some of
which are still around and some of which are not, you know, around how do we create
pathways for folks that are interested in sales, interested in marketing, interested in
customer success.
I've worked with different women-led groups.
I've also worked with ones that predominantly focus on individuals of color, but all
around.
Really, I think there's a lot of value in partnering with supplier diversity programs.
And also, that really just kind of sends a signal to your broader employee base that we
care about these things and we want to, we believe that diversity of experience, diversity
of thought really makes a company a better place.
Because if we all have the same experience, we all have the same mentality.
Yeah.
how do you ultimately create a really successful business?
I think it's much harder to do when you're lacking folks who are typically maybe coming
from an underrepresented.
Sure.
I think we're getting a little noise.
I don't know if it's me or.
think it might be you.
It might be me.
Let me turn my audio off.
Sounds better to me, Merlin.
She can't hear us.
can't?
Oh, good.
We'll have that.
So switching gears, we're talking about, sorry, I'm sorry, my re-audio problems.
All right, so you mentioned when you got to Sendoso, you rebranded the HR team as the
people team and positioned it as more of a strategic thought partner.
culture and can you elaborate on how you did that and why you did that uh and how that
changed the perception of maybe HR being feared within your organization to what it is
now.
uh
Yeah.
And I know I mentioned earlier in the podcast that one of the things that were, you know,
when I joined the business, we were coming off of basically a year's worth of reductions
in force.
so, you know, the individuals or the function or the team leading the charge on that,
unfortunately, as kind of like executioner, was the HR team.
so, but in that process, the
the HR team also basically was completely gutted.
So when I joined, I had one uh individual who was a site leader for our fulfillment
center.
And then I had a shared resource between finance with someone who basically just did
compensation and payroll and benefits.
And so there hadn't also been an executive people leader as a part of the team at Sendoso
probably I think for.
at least a year.
And with myself sitting here at 20 months in seat, I am the longest standing tenured HR
leader that Sendoso has ever had.
So there's definitely, there was a history here, some of which I know, some of which I
don't know, and actually don't really care to know.
But because I think like we had a really cool opportunity to change the narrative.
And so when I joined, had
you know, one and a half resources.
And I had some really kind of frank, good conversations with them.
was like, you've got to tell me what I'm working with here.
And because I think we've got some work to do.
And, you know, and they started to open up and tell me a little bit more about the history
of the team and how the team operated.
And I was like, oh, wow, we really have some work to do to build trust because, yeah.
HR previously, they kind of fell into two buckets of people who were really scary and
really regimented and, you know, were the people that sent you a message when you were in
trouble.
Or they also fell into another bucket is they were just party planners.
And so it was like we had these two really disparate experiences.
And I was like, wow, we've got a
we've really got to redefine what this means for this business, for this population, for
this group of individuals, especially coming off of a year plus of some really challenging
times within the business.
And so I worked with my now CEO and then also other folks on the executive leadership
team.
And it was also so clear how hungry the business was for stability and for empathetic
leadership and also
structure and foundational pieces.
And so part of that was we started again, right?
We said, hey, we're going to do these things.
And then we did them.
And we started to cultivate and build trust.
And one of the other things that I did, which I still do is I was like, hi, you're not in
trouble, but I am going to have a meeting with anyone who manages people one time per
month.
We are going to have a standing one-on-one.
I'm going to start to get to know you.
This time is.
for you to talk through any challenges that you're having with your team and I'm here to
listen and help you to solution.
And we're gonna really get to know like your team, how you operate and I'm gonna be here
to be a resource for you.
I was like, and then my other goal is twofold is like, how do I help you develop as a
leader?
And how do I help you get better at what you're doing and how you're showing up for your
team and how you're showing up to your executive sponsor.
And so starting with that, right?
We started to really work on like, how do we...
build trust, how do we start to build relationships across the business from anyone who
touches or manages people?
And that started to shift from, I was like, even to the point where I was like, we're no
longer like, don't send an email to HR at Sendoso.
We're not the HR team.
We are the people team because we serve the people.
uh And so like, it was even like nuances where it was like, maybe even like a little.
uh
like militant about it, where I was like, when anyone would call us the HR team, was like,
no, we're the people team.
And I would just gently remind people that this is who we are.
over the course, and like, this is, again, it's been a journey, right?
But I think we all feel as an executive team, as an organization, as a company, that the
people team is no longer a feared department or a department that's not worth much.
We are the department where people come to when they have a challenge and they want to
work with us and they want a solution.
And they're like, no, I can't make this decision without bringing Rachel or a member of
her team in because, you know, I want to know what they have to say before I make a
decision that impacts my team or potentially another team.
And it's, it's been a journey, but it really was.
almost like starting from scratch to reset the culture and to demonstrate to people that
we weren't scary and we had a lot of value to add if they would kind of like crack open
the door and let us in to partner.
I love that you meet with the people managers and someone that's not a practice we hear
about consistently every month.
And that changes the perception of managers in HR and that filters down to their direct
reports.
I just, I like that.
love that.
So, Marlon, you to ask the next question?
Yeah.
um So again, really smart, thoughtful processes.
And you also have teams across multiple states and countries.
um And so what strategies have been effective um at maintaining cohesion and a unified
culture as you're building this culture and creating cohesion?
um What's delivered and what hasn't?
So share with us what's worked, what's not worked in terms of the...
the successes and the financial trade-offs along the way to build a culture when you have
this dispersed uh organization across countries and locations.
And I'm gonna go back on mute so I don't have extra noise in the system.
Perfect.
So it's interesting, right?
This Sendoso was a company that predominantly had two offices prior to COVID.
So we had a huge group of folks in the greater Phoenix area and then we had a huge group
of folks in San Francisco.
And then when COVID happened and everyone went home, it's very quickly became two states
to close to 30 states where people just said, hey, I'm going to move to here.
uh
I'm going to keep my job, right?
And honestly, I think that happened with a lot of companies that were in person X number
of days a week to we all just work remotely from wherever now and kind of created this
almost digital nomad type of mentality and mindset that you could work from anywhere.
And so part of that is now we're trying to figure out how do we
How do we reconnect folks that are really geographically distributed?
And I will tell you that it is a work in progress and I do not necessarily think that any
company, especially a company that started in person and had to shift remote is doing it
very well.
And I think like, and I hear that with my peers, we constantly talk about it.
We're all trying so many different things, some of which are working with like some levels
of success.
But I would say that I think if you ask nearly every people leader that predominantly
manages a remote first environment, especially one that didn't intentionally start remote,
it's really, really tough.
And so one of the ways that we do try to do that is, you know, we try to be really
conscious of our working hours and making sure that we have core working hours so that
For the majority of people's day, there is a good chunk of time where we're all online so
we can leverage each other and we can utilize things.
We also try to be really mindful of any company meeting is scheduled at a time where it's
not an egregious hour for anyone.
It might be a little early for some people and a little late for some people, but we're
not holding meetings at 6 a.m.
for people or midnight for people.
And so that's really important for us is that we...
uh
We try to be as mindful of possible core working hours.
uh And I also think this is one thing, Sendoso being a gifting company, um it's more than
that, but if you boil it down to its core, we send gifts.
um And so I think we have a really unique opportunity to connect our team with gifts and
swags and making sure that everyone either gets the same thing or they get something
that's equitable.
um If like, for example, we can't get something
to Canada, but we can get it to Costa Rica or vice versa.
And so we try to be really conscious of like, how do we thread connections and create a
really cool experience for folks with the budget that we have for gifts and that we create
these like surprise and delight moments across an employee's life cycle and experience.
But I would say that, I always welcome.
Feedback and advice, I literally had a conversation a couple hours ago with uh a peer who
advises HR leaders.
I've previously been a people leader herself of how they fostered connection in remote
environment.
We talked about um some homegrown ways to foster communication and connection.
Do we do an article that we take certain leaders and we grow people?
group people into cohorts and get them chatting and in the same room.
Because I think there's things to do that aren't particularly expensive, that facilitate
and foster conversations.
And so that's one thing that's very top of mind for me is when we don't have a ton of
budget, when we have to make sure that we're keeping connection in community, kind of like
first and foremost.
uh
that we're really thoughtful about the things that we do.
So I have a lot of things kind of top of mind for this upcoming year, you know, to
continue to build upon that employment promoter score.
It's, you know, right?
Like the signal says people are engaged, but now the next level, at least to me in my
mind, is how do we take that engagement and shift it into not just, you know, I'd
recommend this place to work, but a place I'm proud to work.
And that's very much kind of top of mind as I think about my upcoming fiscal year goals.
And we'd love to chat more with you about it, not on the podcast, but we'll have another
conversation, of course, because now we're in each other's networks about some things that
some of the companies we're working with are using tools and tips and tricks and
techniques that we're using that we found to be successful in terms of building that
community across distance.
So we'll keep the conversation going offline.
Perfect.
just add one thing.
I think you're way ahead of the game by being respectful of people's work hours.
We often have come across, know, even before the pandemic companies, if your headquarters
was in the US or wherever it was, if you were in a different location, it was kind of like
you were a global outpost of that.
And often you would have to comply with whatever the leadership team, wherever they were
in their time zone.
So to be respectful of meeting times and not having...
We've had clients from at 4 a.m.
because that's what they're under in the U.S.
and in Australia, that's what they require.
So kudos to you for, again, kudos to you Rachel and Sendozo for seeing that and being
respectful.
I think that goes a long way to be respectful of the hours that people work.
uh
And it's been such a pleasure having you.
We have one more question for you.
And this is a question we ask everybody on the podcast.
And I think given your wealth of experience and the things you've shared today, the last
question would be, reflecting on your career and your achievements, what advice would you
give to your younger self looking to make a meaningful impact in workforce?
So I've been thinking kind of like long and hard about this question.
think I've got two answers and one thing Marilyn just said and it sparked one of them,
which is I think early in my career, one of the things that I kind of conflated were my
workplace friendships were my network.
And I realized as I started to evolve and move through my career and leave jobs that some
of those workplace friendships.
They were only friendships because you happen to work there with that individual and they
don't necessarily translate after you've departed and as you kind of continue to move on
in your career.
So I think if I could tell younger Rachel something, it would be like, think about like,
is, what is your board of advisors?
Who is, who are your network?
How do you actually start to build that sooner?
And yes, workplace friendships matter.
And, and I, I have them now in my current career, right?
and in my current place of work, but I think it's really kind of discerning between like,
what is a workplace friendship and what is actually potentially someone that you want to
start to build into kind of your own personal network, your own personal group of advisors
that's going to ultimately help you get better from a career perspective.
I think that, you know, upon reflection, like there are people that, there's so many
people that I talk with from previous places that I worked with, but there's also...
way more than I don't, that I think I expected to kind of keep when I was younger.
And so I think I'm really conscious about now, who do I connect with and what value do I
have to offer them and then vice versa and how can we kind of really create and find these
thought partners along the way.
And so that would be.
If I had to do it all over again, would be maybe be little bit more discerning or kind of
think about what would be, what do you want your kind of personal board of advisors to
look like as you start to move through your career.
I love that.
Marilyn actually, she has a workshop that's around building a personal board of directors
or building intentional connections around that specific thing.
So I think that's incredible.
And that's advice we haven't heard from other podcast guests.
So I think that's incredibly valuable, especially when you're starting out and I think
those workplace friendships.
So as you were saying that I was thinking, yeah, that happened to me too, right?
People that I was really good friends with and I'm still friends with, but it changes,
right?
They're not that personal board of directors or
So we only just want to add anything before we close out.
No.
know just that it's been such a delight.
Every time we have a conversation with you, Rachel, we learn something.
And it's always a pleasure speaking with you.
Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom on our podcast.
And we look forward to many more conversations.
Yeah, thank you so much, Rachel.
It's been a pleasure chatting with you today.
Yeah, thank you both.
I appreciate the invite.
is has really been such a pleasure.