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Unlocking Leadership, previously Leadership 2020, is a podcast helping leadership lead in a world that is changing ever quickly. Join us as we interview even more inspiring people who provide information and skills on how to tackle the big questions affecting today’s leaders.
We blend real-life leadership experiences of our guests with the latest management theory to provide practical, relevant tips for anyone in a leadership position.
Unlocking Leadership asks the big questions about being a better leader in the modern workplace. Hosted by Clare Carpenter.
[00:00:00] Clare Carpenter: Welcome to Unlocking Leadership, a podcast about leading in a changing world, brought to you by Corndel, your strategic skills partner. I'm your host, Clare Carpenter.
I'm joined today by Helen Tomlinson. Helen is the Head of Talent and Inclusion at the Adecco Group and the UK government's first Menopause Employment Champion, wow, Helen, welcome.
[00:00:33] Helen Tomlinson: Thank you very much, Clare. It's a pleasure to be here.
[00:00:36] Clare Carpenter: Thank you. Oh, so much to talk to you about. Before we dive into that conversation, let's get to know you a little bit better. Who are you? How are you arriving today?
[00:00:47] Helen Tomlinson: Okay, so I'm arriving today on the back of a week's holiday. So it's been a bit of a whirlwind since coming back into the business. But just to give you a little bit of context and background. So my day job, as you alluded to there, is Head of Talent and Inclusion at the Adecco group. I came into this role a couple of years ago now.
Prior to that, I got more of an operational background. So I've been in the recruitment and employability and talent space since about 1995. So pretty much when I graduated from university, fell into recruitment like many, many people do, and just built a career around recruitment and supporting people back into work who may have been unemployed, disadvantaged, et cetera, and then going into this role, two years ago. So a lifelong career in people really, and, now taking on this job to develop other people. I absolutely love what I do. My role covers talent acquisition, talent development, talent mobility, the whole ED& I inclusion piece. So it's a really broad remit. But if anybody said to ask me about my job, I would say it's not really a job because I absolutely love it.
[00:02:05] Clare Carpenter: Such a varied role. What is it about that that really sings to you?
[00:02:09] Helen Tomlinson: I think partly it's the variety. I enjoy variety. I like to work at speed, at pace, I like to be involved in a lot of things, I enjoy the bringing people together to create something. All of those things really. But with regards to the external role that you just alluded to, and I guess we'll talk more about that, the thing I love about that so much is I feel that it is a privilege to be able to advocate for women who don't have the platform that that's given me, the employer understanding that my career has given me, but and also maybe probably the confidence to speak out and speak up for women who can't do that for themselves. So that for me is a real gift.
[00:02:56] Clare Carpenter: Such an important platform as well, and it's so needs someone to champion it, I think. I wonder there's something really interesting about working in the world of recruitment, isn't it, and you and I share that background because we have sight on what's going on within our own organization and the Adecco Group being an enormous part of that recruitment sector.
We also have sight of what's going on outside of it for the clients that our businesses have supported, don't we? I wonder what challenges you see emerging now that perhaps are different to those that you noticed, I don't know, 10 or 15 years ago, as the role has expanded for you.
[00:03:37] Helen Tomlinson: I think very much, so there's two real aspects to that, I think, probably three. The first one is that there are five generations in the. Workforce that is in the Adecco group and also externally across our client base. We're just a representation of the broader employer community, and there are five generations in the workforce now.
So that creates a complexity in lots of different dynamics, in terms of how people like to be managed from different generations, how they work in different generations, how they interact, what they bring to the table, et cetera, so there's all that going on. I would say that the whole purpose and, and this again is slightly generational that, you know, generation Z coming through now, it's all about purpose.
It's all about, they want to know what our purpose is, what our ED&I strategy is, what we stand for, what we believe in, etc, and that translates again into the employer community. So purpose and having a fulfilling role and having a message and being passionate about something is really, really important. So that's something that has really changed in the last, I would say, probably, five years even.
So there's the generational piece, there is the purpose piece, but there is also the fact that women over 50 are the fastest growing demographic in the workforce. So that is a real, you know, I never imagined when I started in recruitment when I was, I think I was 24, I never imagined that I would still be in this industry when I was over 50 and I remember, you know, my area manager at the time was probably about the same age as I am now, and I thought she was really, really old and actually she really wasn't, but you know, we are absolutely, my colleagues, my peers are similar age to me and we are still in the industry and we are still, you know, adding massive amounts of value , Adecco is specifically 64% female at leadership level and right through. So, you know, we are a very female dominated organization and, you know, real passion and purpose and delivery there. So we are having a brilliant time, you know, and that is, I think, for women over 50, if they're in an organization where that midlife experience is well managed, well supported, and it's seen as an advantage, those sort of post menopause years, which are getting longer in the workplace, we're having to work for longer, is a real game changer.
So those three things, all of which really, you know, I love and I'm passionate about, so the intergenerational workforce, the purpose element of it, and the women over 50 becoming the fastest growing demographic, that's absolutely perfect for me, you know, I'm having the time of my life.
[00:06:44] Clare Carpenter: I'm thinking about how some more traditional industry sectors still have that balance really way askew, don't they? It's 64% of leadership roles being occupied by women in Adecco is an astonishing number. Even in a recently published update to the McKinsey report on, diversity, there's really not much change in many areas, are there?
Those that are embracing diversity, and I'm not talking just about women here, but all areas of diversity, are seeing significant benefits from that, both in terms of performance, and those that aren't, are really not. The gap is widening, isn't it? It's not narrowing. What do you see with your clients there?
[00:07:29] Helen Tomlinson: So that's a real, we see that as being a really important opportunity that the work that we do internally, we then start to talk to our clients about that, and, you know, diversity is incredibly important for a number of reasons for our clients, but the way we look at it is, and this is, you know, widely documented, widely researched, there's an employer will look at diversity for one of three reasons, maybe legally, because from a compliance perspective, they have to be compliant from a financial perspective, because diverse teams are more productive, ergo, they make more money or from a moral perspective. So it doesn't really matter because it's the right thing to do. It doesn't really matter why the. client or the employer walks towards that, it's what you can do to support that when they get there almost. So it's about finding what the, the opportunity is to either just share best practice or upskill them, et cetera, and we spend a lot of time looking at those three opportunities.
There is never a reason not to have an ED& I conversation with a client because often that our colleagues think, what if they're better at it than us? Well, actually, it doesn't matter because we can learn from them. If they're about the same evolution as us, we can just share that best practice. But if they're at very early stages of their journey, we can support them and educate them.
So there's always a positive reason to broaden out that conversation, and that's a lot of the work that more recently, I've been doing in my internal role, but very much so in my external role talking about how employers can support women from a women's health perspective so that they don't leave the workforce and they don't become, you know, part of the 630, 000 women who are claiming universal credit between the age of 45 and 55 and I've lost track of the number of women who've left. the workplace in midlife because they haven't been supported or they haven't felt they had somebody to talk to, et cetera, and if you overlay that with different areas of society, the intersectionality that sits behind that women's health piece, and that covers very much to your point, different races, different socioeconomic groups, women who are neurodivergent and the impact of all of those things together, that just exacerbates the feeling of not having anybody to talk to, the feeling of being unsupported and the feeling that they have to leave the workplace.
[00:10:05] Clare Carpenter: This feels like a good place to maybe dig into how you came to be the UK government's first menopause employment champion. How did that happen?
[00:10:15] Helen Tomlinson: There are honestly, there are days, Clare, when I ask myself the very same question, because you mentioned earlier that you Googled it and it literally came up with list after list, and honestly, I just. Sometimes when people say that to me, I just think, I don't know, how did it happen? But I think basically the Women and Equalities Select Committee wrote a paper recommending that government had a menopause employment champion. The 50 plus task force, so that's a DWP program, getting people over 50 back into the workplace, they had an employer group that also wrote a paper recommending the role. So both of those things kind of came together, and after I launched our menopause policy in Adecco in October, World Menopause Day 2022, I started lobbying government to make a menopause policy a legal requirement for organisations over 250 people.
So I was meeting with MPs, talking to, you know, shadow cabinet, et cetera, talking to the all political party group for menopause headed up by Carolyn Harris, et cetera, and those conversations were all happening while I was carrying on with my day job, and then completely out of the blue in February of this year, they invited me to a call to talk about the Menopause Employment Champion role. I'd never heard anything about it before. So I took the political PR company that we have on the call with me and they started talking to me about the job, and obviously with my recruiter hat on, I thought I was taking the spec down to fill the job for them. I thought they were giving me it as a job description. So I'm making all these notes and then I got to the end of it and they said, so what do you think? And I was like, I was a bit like, Oh, and so we kind of wrapped up the conversation, then I phoned the PR lady and I said, Do they want me to do it? She went, Yeah, absolutely they do.
So I thought I was taking the job on to try and find somebody. It was such a bizarre situation. So obviously spoke to the Adecco team and asked if I could, you know, undertake that and went back to them and next thing, I was being interviewed by the Guardian, having a photo shoot at a Premier Inn to launch their menopause strategy, and it's just literally snowballed from there, and I can't even, I've just written my six month report of the first six months in the post, which I have to do that was one of the requirements, and I had to document the number of organizations I spoke to, the number of bodies that I'd spoke to, the number of interviews I'd done, and it was when you pull it all together like that, it's just phenomenal, really. I'm delighted that it's had such an impact because it means that employers are starting to take interest, take notice etc, and women who can't advocate for themselves because they don't have the platform or the voice or the confidence are having their stories heard.
[00:13:16] Clare Carpenter: I guess it comes at a really opportune time where this Subject is also really getting quite a lot of press coverage, isn't it? You know, good old Davina McCall's out there, you know, doing her stuff for access to menopause support for women and having a tremendous impact as a result of that. Where's the gap between having a policy? Actually, having a policy is a cracking start, isn't it? Where's the gap then between having the policy and actually understanding what it means and doing something meaningful to support people within that?
[00:13:49] Helen Tomlinson: That's a really, really good question, and I'll come back to that in a second, but just to go back to the celebrity aspect of it. I think the celebrity aspect of it is really important because it starts the conversation. But the celebrity aspect of it doesn't necessarily resonate the experience that a teacher going through perimenopause or somebody who works in a supermarket or somebody who works in a call centre.
So I feel really comfortable that my role is about the normal working person who has got to get up in the morning, get to the office, get to their place of work and do the job, and it's interesting that the US, I would say, are about 12 months behind us. It's still the celebrities that are driving it, which is brilliant because that gets it traction and airtime, but actually the practical things tend to come more from boots on, on the ground. So those two things have got to happen really to make the good stuff happen like you've just talked about, like the policy. So in terms of the policy, when I launched our policy, I gave myself a massive pat on the back and I thought you've done a great thing there. But actually, in hindsight, all it was was the catalyst that started the conversation that changed the culture of the organization. So if an employer said to me now, is it critical that we have a policy? I would say it's critical if it's going to be your catalyst. If you think it's critical and it's going to be your job done, we've got a menopause policy, aren't we brilliant? Absolutely not, because it is literally piece of paper, a type document, a PDF file that somebody would refer to if they weren't getting the right support and they didn't feel that sense of inclusion and belonging in their organization.
So if it starts your conversation, if it's the kickoff for the conversation, that's great, but it's not, you know, the good stuff that happens after it, whether that be the mandatory training, the menopause coffee mornings, the all male safe space conversations, the network groups, you know, the, the awareness, the allyship programs. All of that, that's the good stuff, that's what makes an impact, not the policy itself.
[00:16:17] Clare Carpenter: Let's say more about that then bringing it to life, creating that environment that you've just described, thinking about some of the listeners to our podcast will be people in leadership roles, maybe for the first time, you know, your first time team leaders, managers, often in many sectors, perhaps younger than the people that we're talking about without personal experience of that, not necessarily having that to refer to, how do you equip that leader to understand the experience and to be able to provide the support and the environment that would retain that talent in your organization?
[00:16:58] Helen Tomlinson: And that's the most important thing because all this conversation, all the, you know, celebrity narrative, whatever that looks like, what that's doing is empowering women to open up the conversation. So giving them the confidence and the tools to say to a manager, you know, this is my experience, this is what I'm going through and some of those symptoms are really quite unpleasant to discuss with one of the main symptoms, extremely erratic and heavy periods. That can be a really tricky conversation to have with a line manager. If it's impacting on your ability to do your job, as can be, you know, one in three women post menopause are incontinent to a greater or lesser degree. Again, really difficult conversation to have with a line manager. So this is empowering women to have those conversations, if it's appropriate, and they need to do that. What we then need to make sure happens is that the people who are taking in receipt of that conversation absolutely handle it in the right way.
So I think that management support and education is really important, and if I did a lessons learned or I looked back when I launched our policy, I made manager training, non mandatory, so it was optional, and I got on one call, I got two managers, one of which had dialed into the wrong call and he was too embarrassed to dial off.
However, over time that has really changed, and I've been asked by, you know, senior leadership team to put on more of the management training courses, and over time, the numbers have swelled and the demographics changed as well. So I've had younger leaders coming on saying actually I don't know anybody for sure who is perimenopausal or menopausal but I bet they actually do but just don't realise of the population.
But, you know, this, I want to be able to support my mum better or, you know, or some We've had one colleague who English isn't her mum's first language and they're from the South Asian community and they don't really talk about menopause. So her mum knows her periods are going to stop and she can have no more children, but she doesn't understand why she's experiencing what she's experiencing. But now her daughter cantalk to her in her own language and take those tools and apply them at home. So that education piece is so important and so far reaching that I would say in hindsight, and I advise clients to do this, make your training mandatory because actually the skills that we teach about empathetic conversations, good listening practice, just asking what is it I can do to help you? That can be overlaid into a multitude of different topics. I mean, that is just about somebody being able to bring their whole self to work and being listened to. It's not menopause specific. So, and sometimes there are things that, you know, there's not a lot that you physically can do, you know, there are some reasonable adjustments. But it's more about the being heard and being understood. That's the important thing.
[00:20:20] Clare Carpenter: Thinking about your comments in relation to so many mental health areas that the skill of listening and being available, being able to give attention to is so valid and so important, isn't it? And the bigger reach of that across your organization must also have a strong performance impact in terms of reduced grievances, less absence, I mean, it just goes on, doesn't it?
[00:20:46] Helen Tomlinson: It absolutely does, and you know, we look at our data. We're very data led and when we capture our data twice a year, we look at that and what it's telling us and we, you know, apply our strategy accordingly. But I think a point on the making that training mandatory, but talking about the fact that sometimes there is nothing you can do. I think that's really important because we know from research that particularly men are very solution orientated. That's why talking therapy on its own doesn't work for men in the way that it does for women, because women tend to think a problem shared, problem halved, et cetera, lived and joint experience is really important.
Men want a solution and we've applied that to our men's mental health approach. But if you think about this situation that we're talking about, if you confide in a male manager or you talk to them about, you know, the fact that this is what I'm experiencing, they will naturally go into solution mode and actually that can be quite damaging.
So let me give you an example. When I worked at a previous recruitment business and I was perimenopausal, I was going through hot flushes before I went on to HRT and it was a much more male dominated recruitment business, and I kept saying to my manager, Oh, I'm having a hot flush, et cetera, and my office was all glass, so it was like a greenhouse in the summer, and one morning I got into the office and he bought me a fan, like a full height, on a stand, on wheels, a fan, and he put a sticker on it that said, Helen's fan, do not move, and he thought this is a great thing to do. To me, it didn't matter that much, but what happened was people were coming in and saying, how come you've got a fan and I haven't? Because I'm hot as well and blah. So I kept having to reiterate my story. Oh, so I'm having hot flushes, perimenopausal, that's why I've got a fan, and then I come in in the morning and somebody who worked overnight had moved it, so I'd have to move it back and accept, so on and so forth. So the point being. I'm a fairly confident person, had I not been a confident person and my manager had gone into solution mode, brought me a fan, it could have destroyed my confidence because I kept having to tell my story again and again. So the importance of the manager training there is that don't go into solution mode, just ask, what is it I can do to make your life easier or to be able to support you in a better way?
[00:23:17] Clare Carpenter: Yeah. You've described your experience there of a solution being put in place for you, which perhaps if you hadn't had the confidence to deal with it, might have been really tricky for you to wrangle in the workplace. I wonder what your experience is then instead of allyship and actually, how, within that context, both men and women as leaders act perhaps slightly differently to someone having this experience in the workplace.
[00:23:52] Helen Tomlinson: Absolutely. That's a really, really good question, and I would say that very often men can be better allies than women because women bring their own bias of their own experience to the conversation. So 25% of women don't have any symptoms at all other than the stopping of their periods, etc. So they don't feel any physical symptoms necessarily. 50% of women have some symptoms that have an impact on their day to day. 25% have really difficult to manage symptoms. So if you're one of the women that haven't had any symptoms and you are managing somebody who's in the 25%, that can actually be quite challenging because you're overlaying your experience onto how they're feeling and it's human nature to want to chip in almost and help, but it's not helping because you can't relate to what they're going through.
So sometimes that can be a bit of a challenge, particularly when it's around, you know, needing time off, not feeling on par, et cetera, et cetera, and there's a really interesting case which created legal precedent, actually, back in 2012, and this was actually a male manager, but the point is the same, that was managing a woman who worked at BT and he was performance managing her and she said, I'm not performing because I'm perimenopausal. Probably actually at that point in time she was menopausal because that was more of the widely known term. I'm menopausal, I've got insomnia, night sweats, restless leg syndrome, so I'm not performing in my job, and his response was, those aren't symptoms of menopause because my wife didn't have them, and he carried on managing her out. She took them to a tribunal, etc. But my point being that, you know, if you haven't experienced it yourself, it's often difficult to understand how difficult it can be for another person. So there's that aspect of it, there's still, whether we like it or not, a little bit of stigma around ageism and the fact that, you know, I don't really want to be part of this conversation because I don't want people to realize that I am that age because there is still a fear that that could be impactful on career, etc.
But very often, all men want to know is how to say the right thing. So I've done a number of men only sessions and in great volume, I've done them across government departments where, you know, I've had hundreds of men on a call and I've been talking about menopause in the workplace, lived experience, et cetera, et cetera, and I do it like that because it's a safe space. So I've said to them, ask me. anything you want. There is nothing, I've had my symptoms in print in the Times, I've talked about them on the BBC, but I'm okay with that because if it gives another woman the opportunity to say, Oh, that's happening to me and get the help they need, I'm absolutely okay with that. But I said to them, don't be embarrassed, there's nothing you can say that will embarrass me. So, let's have a really safe space conversation and one of the men said to me on one of the sessions that you know I just don't want to say the wrong thing I'm scared to say the wrong thing at work from a legal perspective almost and at home from a I just don't want to say the wrong thing perspective so and very often the conversation starts off about the workplace and It just takes one man to say, so can I just ask you a question maybe outside of a work context? Yeah, absolutely, and then off we go. But it doesn't matter why they're asking the question. It's helping them to learn, and then once they know, I've just had a brilliant conversation this afternoon with a man who works in a premiership football club, and he was probably one of the greatest advocates I've come across and, you know, he was absolutely passionate about supporting female colleagues, the wider community, et cetera. So I do think that allyship from men and women is really important, but sometimes it's easier to get it from where you, you didn't think you would probably get it.
[00:28:07] Clare Carpenter: That sense of not saying the wrong thing and getting into trouble for saying the wrong thing weaves into so much of the diversity agenda, doesn't it, as well. We're frightened to get it wrong, so we either do nothing or worse, we get it more wrong than we might have done if we'd asked for help in terms of how to say it. So it's being able to reach out and ask for help to have the conversation as well, isn't it?
[00:28:29] Helen Tomlinson: It's, I think it's about being vulnerable, and we, you know, we say when we talk to clients, we don't say we are experts in ED&I because nobody is. It's just, it's such a fast paced environment that I would be really nervous of somebody saying I'm an ED&I expert. All we're saying to clients is let us share with you what we've done, our experience, our journey, what our data has told us, how we've managed that data and created a strategy from it and if you can take anything from that. Please do. But, you know, to say you're an expert, I think is really quite disingenuous, but it's also about having that humble approach to say, you know, I want to ask a question, but I don't want to say the wrong thing. So please, I'm just going to ask it, and if I do, you know, tell me if I've said the wrong thing, it's about really being humble in your approach and I think that is so important with every aspect of ED&I.
[00:29:26] Clare Carpenter: This links really into that sense of inclusion, doesn't it? That is obviously half of your job title. I'm thinking about, it also creates more of that sense of belonging, doesn't it? We talk about belonging now as well as ED&I don't we? And I think that there's a sense here that that's really important measure of being allowed and belonging, being allowed to be whatever you are and belonging in a place regardless of that and having that sense of attachment to it. It's all of that, isn't it?
[00:29:55] Helen Tomlinson: I mean, that, that just drives everything, doesn't it? Productivity, wellbeing, your view of the organisation that you work for. And it was at our conference this year, we previously had ED&I committed, diversity and inclusion committee, and this year we launched. Equity, diversity, and inclusion, and we, we spent quite a bit of time explaining because a lot of people said to us it should be equality, not equity, but it absolutely shouldn't and the difference between equality and equity means that ultimately you will have belonging, because if you just provide equality, you are almost giving everybody an open door. But if you provide equity, you're giving them a very personal path to get through that door. That's the important thing, and only once you've got that, can you create true belonging.
[00:30:45] Clare Carpenter: It's that sense, isn't there, that there are so many misconceptions about what we want and need in order to have that personal path, that sense of belonging. Exactly as you say, from the sort of solutionizing through to assumptions that I've seen that before, it must be the same. I wonder what other biases and misconceptions you've come across around not necessarily just women's health, but around creating that sense of equity and belonging rather than the sense of equality.
So that's a really important distinction, isn't it?
[00:31:16] Helen Tomlinson: It absolutely is, and I think we, we apply it. So there is a famous quote and it actually relates to an aspect of neurodiversity, and I might be paraphrasing, I can't remember if it's ADHD or autism, but the quote is when you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism, and actually in my mind, I overlay that to any aspect of ED&I that we are talking about because when you look at people as an individual, you know, I am obviously now post menopause, but there are so many different aspects to me other than being post menopause. So when we look at the intersectionality piece, you can't just make somebody, you know, a binary topic almost. So, you know, to look at that complexity, you've got to treat somebody as an individual to be able to understand the full sense of them.
[00:32:11] Clare Carpenter: I'm drawn to this habit perhaps that we have as human beings of looking for what makes people different instead of looking for what makes people the same and putting you into that bucket of difference or this bucket of difference or, you know, here's a label. I'm a perimenopausal woman. I'm a postmenopausal woman. Well, actually I have been through the menopause. I'm not anything, I have done a thing rather than I am a thing, there's an interesting twitch there, isn't there, really to it.
[00:32:39] Helen Tomlinson: Absolutely, and that is really important, isn't it? That we are all individualists, you know, one of our strategic narratives is we believe in talent, not labels. So actually, whatever you've been through and whoever you are and whatever you've done is almost irrelevant. It's what that makes you the person that you are.
[00:33:00] Clare Carpenter: I guess moving away from the topic of menopause and women's health in total, what other things are really important for you at the moment as you think about the future of talent and inclusion both within Adecco but also within the client field that you as an organization have such strong influence over given the volume of people that you're finding work for. Where else are you focusing your time?
[00:33:26] Helen Tomlinson: So I think broadly, we are focusing on what our clients are talking to us more and more about recruiting inclusively and providing them with a diverse shortlist, et cetera. So we are focusing a lot of our work internally on recruiting inclusively for our clients, but also talking to our clients about how they can recruit inclusively as well.
The navigation of managing across the generations, again, really important because that's only going to increase within the next five years, there will be six generations in the workforce, you know, the average retirement age is increasing all the time. Our life expectancy is increasing, the mortgage rate and is forever increasing, so arguably, you know, you will have, you will be working for much longer. So that intergenerational piece is really powerful and really important that employers get that right because that one size fits all of, you know, you have an annual PDR and we tell you how great you are, that absolutely doesn't work for many of the generations in the workplace. So it's about changing how you retain your staff and what you do to retain your staff. So that's a real area of focus at the moment for us and diversifying our talent pools because there still isn't enough talent, particularly in certain sectors and looking at how we can help our clients to look at talent pools that they may not have thought about more recently, so we spend a lot of time working on that aspect of it. My background, in addition to recruitment is employability. So looking at those harder to help groups, how we get them into the workforce, working with, you know, ex offenders, et cetera, people returning to the workplace. There's so many, you know, we haven't got the volume of unemployment that we had back when, you know, the work program was first implemented in 2011, but we've still got pockets of people in different groups that need support into the workplace, so don't go for your usual, you know, we'll get them from a job board, let's look at it a little bit more holistically.
[00:35:45] Clare Carpenter: Yeah, longer term, I guess, as well, in terms of your strategy towards social mobility around education and thinking about how that works, and it's this time of year, isn't it? Here we are in sort of, you know, late August, exam results of, you know, come and traumatize half the young people in the country, and we find ourselves thinking again about the volume of people going to university, the lack of accommodation that's attached to that, the cost of it, et cetera. Where does Adecco stand in terms of other entry level for its own people and also in terms of encouraging clients to look outside of the graduate population as well?
[00:36:21] Helen Tomlinson: So we run specific programs, creating brighter futures about supporting young people into the world of work, and for us, you know, it's not necessarily graduate entry, and actually, probably when you and I started our careers in recruitment, it was more, I remember, you couldn't start, the company I worked for at the time, you couldn't start until you were 23 because they felt like you didn't have enough life experience or you would struggle to make the transition from either school or university. I'm sure that's not applicable anymore, but it's not a prerequisite to have a university education at all because as we both know, our industry is based on I would say broadly, really hard work, a lot of personality and a lot of tenacity, and I think going to university and getting an academic qualification doesn't necessarily give you that, you know, it is, we can give people the tools, but we can't give them the personality to thrive in recruitment. So I think that is brought about by the individual and we can just fine tune that.
[00:37:31] Clare Carpenter: Yeah. There's that Simon Sinek quote, isn't there, on that, there's something like, recruit attitude, train skill, something like that, isn't it?
[00:37:37] Helen Tomlinson: Yeah, and that's why, you know, that's why it's so important that we utilize, you know, the apprenticeship levy and we gift a lot of our levy to organizations that don't have access to that to help them to support their staff to do the very best that they can be.
[00:37:54] Clare Carpenter: As we, I guess, come to a close in our conversation today, I'm thinking about what advice you might offer with your two different hats, I might invite you to give two different batches of advice here. Firstly, in your role with the government as the menopause employment champion, what's one thing, if I'm an employer now and I don't have a policy, or I do, but no one really knows anything about it, what are the first couple of steps I should take towards improving that?
[00:38:22] Helen Tomlinson: I think if you have a policy, do something with it. So don't let it just sit there and become a backstop almost, something that you would, somebody would ask to see if they weren't being supported. Use it as your catalyst to change the culture of the organisation, and if you don't feel, a lot of small employers don't feel that they can do that themselves, so if you feel it's better to get somebody in to launch the conversation, do that, because I've gone into organisations where it's been very Male orientated and it usually it's the job of HR to start to launch the policy the HR Person which is often female didn't feel like she could have that conversation with an all male group and then because we've been in lived experience is actually really valuable in that situation to bring it to life, but then to have to sit in the canteen with them for the next God knows how many years that she didn't feel comfortable doing that. So if you don't feel comfortable, there are lots and lots of people who would come in and start that conversation. So I absolutely think bring your policy to life, otherwise it will never change the culture of the organization.
[00:39:39] Clare Carpenter: I'm thinking that advice could be applied to the other side of your sort of day job, as it were, as well. But I wonder again, then, without me deciding, what would you say to someone thinking about inclusivity in particular, around their talent space? How do they move the dial from, you know, the traditional ED&I conversation that's a tick in the box to say, yes, we've done it and we've reported our numbers, as we must for compliance, how do we move the dial from there to a place of real belonging and real inclusivity in our workplace?
[00:40:11] Helen Tomlinson: I could honestly talk for a couple of hours on this, but I would say use your data. So data, what sets us apart as an organisation is our qualitative data. So we know that the work that we are doing is having an impact because we can see in our PECON scores whether they're going up or they're going down and act accordingly.
So we do two things. We take our data, we analyse it, and that drives our strategy for the next six months in terms of our ED&I. We've got an annual strategy, it's under the five pillars of inclusion, and we have four different forums within the committee and everything we do is driven by our data, but it has to sit in one of those particular streams so that we know that what we're doing is having an impact and then we go out to our people and say, what has that meant to you? So it's not about a tick box. It's what's meaningful for the organization, but you will never know that unless you've got that real data that tells you that
[00:41:16] Clare Carpenter: Yeah, okay, so have the data, do something with it, pull out some really important parts.
[00:41:23] Helen Tomlinson: And help make that the driver of your conversations and your strategy.
[00:41:28] Clare Carpenter: Yeah. Brilliant advice. Thank you so much. So many things in that conversation for people to go away and think about. You've been a fantastic guest. Thank you for joining me.
[00:41:39] Helen Tomlinson: Thank you. It's been a pleasure to talk to you, Claire. Thank you very much.
[00:41:43] Clare Carpenter: Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode of Unlocking Leadership, you can subscribe through all the regular podcast channels, and please do leave us a rating and review there. We'd also love you to share any episodes you've found interesting so that others can join the conversation and share their experiences.
This podcast was made in association with Corndel. It was produced and edited by Story Ninety-Four.