Office Libations Unwrapped: The Art of Rebuilding Office Culture

Creating a Global Workforce Culture

Jean Bays, Chief People Officer at Neat, shares the importance of a positive candidate experience when building a positive and inclusive work environment. She also dives into the challenges of international work teams, the evolution of workplace dynamics, and the potential Neat’s video conferencing software provides for future teams.  Neat designs simple video devices to make virtual meetings feel more real for a better hybrid working and learning environment. --------- TIME STAMPS: 00:23 - Quick hits 04:10 - About Neat 06:28 - Jean’s role 10:00 - Onboarding and retention 15:18 - Understanding your employees 25:15 - Respecting cultural differences 42:29 - Where to find Jean --------- LINKS: Find Jean on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jean-bays-3b34507a/] Find Claude on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/claudeburns/] More about Office Libations [https://www.officelibations.com/]

Pursuing In-Person Innovation

Orla and Claude discuss the benefits of in-office work, and how Sigma Computing creates a stimulating, inclusive workplace culture. Orla also shares Sigma’s data-driven approach to internal feedback and decision making. She emphasizes the value of a supportive office culture to promote high quality work. Sigma Computing redefines business intelligence by enabling instant, in-depth data analysis on billions of records through an intuitive spreadsheet interface. Its write-back capability and comprehensive support system accelerate organizational growth and innovation.

Always Go Beyond the Resume

Juan Betancourt, CEO of Humantelligence, emphasizes the importance of understanding the behaviors, motivators, and work styles of employees to improve team dynamics and performance. Juan and Claude also discuss recruitment trends, better fit-based hiring practices, and psychometric insights.  Humantelligence provides personalized insights in everyday communication tools to help people connect, communicate, and collaborate more effectively. Humanatelligence was named Best in Class HR Tech for Culture & Collaboration. KEY QUOTES: "When it comes to sourcing better candidates, I think HR managers need to look at the data of their current candidates, not impairment surveys of who's happy or not, but performance data, most. Companies that are over a thousand employees do know who their high, mid and low performers are. And they have the answer right there. Give a psychometric tool because the answer is not where they go to school because all those, the a hundred people they have in that role with a third doing great, a third doing mid, okay. And a third doing horrible. They went through the great  practices that that company has vetted for years on how to hire great. And then they still fail every year. The answer is in, Why don't you look at the behaviors, motivators, and work styles of the high, mid, and low, compare those, and there are tools out there that do that, and you will have, out of like 25 characteristics, the three or four things that will explain performance for individuals, in that role." — "Where most startups fail is that the CEO is still in the interview process and trying to hire more people like themselves. And many of them on the exit interview for the 999 of 1000 CEOs, Why do you think you failed? They mistakenly say, because we kept growing and we weren't able to maintain the same culture. No, the problem is actually kept the same culture, which was not applicable to the problems and challenges and organizational structure you need when you go. But it's very hard for 10 people who've gotten from zero to 1 million to interview five people and say, Hey, who do we like the most? Well, let's hire the one we like the least. They can do the job. They all have the right skills and resume. Let's all hire the one none of us got along with because we need a different way of thinking. This is a challenge that leads to the failure of all or most startups because they're still hiring for more of the same. Through who they like and subjectivity and not data like ours, it shows them that they're only hiring more of the same." —-  "I think the world would be a better place if everybody had a psychometric that's on the back of the resume. The resume is the worst tool for this whole job matching between supply and demand. Every resume, LinkedIn, everywhere, every job board, people should carry around a resume with their psychometric on the other side. It's the duality of a human being." --------- TIME STAMPS: 00:25 - Quick Hits 03:33 - Juan’s background 04:52 - Humantelligence’s beginning 08:34 - Fixing old problems 12:04 - Advice for HR managers 20:04 - Ensuring retention 28:36 - Creating good managers 39:52 - The alternative to surveys 48:02 - Where to find Juan --------- LINKS: Find Juan on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/juanluisbetancourt/] Find Claude on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/claudeburns/] More about Office Libations [https://www.officelibations.com/]

The Best HR Advice You’ll Ever Get

Gwenevere Crary, VP of Global People Operations at LILT,  describes the importance of transparency, especially when it comes to employee and hiring expectations. Gwenevere also advocates for using surveys to understand your employees' experiences, and using the findings to improve your workplace.  --------- KEY QUOTES: “It's about setting proper expectations, clear expectations. And then helping people meet them. And, you know, making sure that you raise the bar, but you don't raise it so high that it's unachievable, right? Like, you know, you're not gonna run to the moon. You can't do that, right? But maybe you can run to the next city or the next state.” “setting the right expectations, communication, and then it's about accountability in regards to How are they doing? Checking in, where are they at? Did they fall down? Do you have, do you need to help pick them back up?” “There's also going to be this need to help people understand. We asked you to do this. But now we've readjusted and maybe we still want you to do that, but it's not as high a priority… So constantly engaging with them and then just asking questions, asking to see if they have the understanding. You've given them all this information. Do they understand what you have shared with them? And if not, then have a clarifying conversation and continually asking questions to just make sure.” “The WHY is so powerful. If the person understands WHY, you have just empowered them to take it to the next level, which you may not even realize. That's what that next level is, because you're not ingrained in the role like they are, but they have the WHY, so they understand. And so when they're doing their day to day, they might make this maybe a simple decision or change. And yet, it'll have this profound impact on the team and or the company because of it.” “Going back to transparency. When you do an engagement survey, share the results, even if they are like in the dumpster, crappy, like you're so ashamed, you're like, I can't believe this is where our culture is or where our employee population is. That is their experience. Right? That is what they're experiencing and it is so healthy to acknowledge that. Say, Here are the things that we're going to take action on to make improvements and then follow up.” --------- TIME STAMPS: 00:28 - Quick Hits 03:16 - All about LILT 05:18 - Gwenevere’s role 07:14 - High-performance tips 17:10 - Interviewing strategies 25:46 - All about Guide to HR 30:35 - Managing with limited resources 40:21 - Use surveys well 43:57 - Find the right management structure 49:57 - Where to find Gwenevere --------- LINKS: Find Gwenevere on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/gwenevered/] Find Claude on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/claudeburns/] More about Office Libations [https://www.officelibations.com/]

Breaking Bread and Building Bonds

Marisa Pozas, Micro Kitchen Operations Manager  at Zoox, describes the unique ways her food team creates an extraordinary experience for in-office employees at Zoox. She and Claude explore how food acts as a central hub for social interaction, and the office kitchen’s vital role in bringing people together while enhancing workplace culture. Zoox is reinventing personal transportation by transforming mobility-as-a-service. They’re developing a fully autonomous, purpose-built fleet designed for AI to drive and humans to enjoy. --------- Key Quotes: “The good thing about our food team is we all come from very diverse backgrounds, whether we've worked in tech or restaurants or Michelin star restaurants, we try to create an experience with all of our past experiences and put 'em together and bring it to life for the employees.  I think the thing that's important is every company has a different culture.” “I think food just brings people together. If you think about food, like when you're entertaining at home, everybody always migrates to the kitchen, right? Same thing here at work. I think food is important.  Obviously it's to nourish yourself, but it's also a good place to be. I think a lot of our employees here love to go down at lunch and collaborate and tell stories around our tables.” “We like our people in house. We like them to come in. We like them to collaborate and we like them to be here. So we try to offer as many perks for them. So they want to come into work and it's exciting for them.” --------- TIME STAMPS: 00:24 - Quick Hits 03:07 - Marisa’s role 06:52 - Building culture with food 10:40 - Diversifying spend 13:01 - Building the right perks 19:42 - Leaning into new things 28:07 - Where to find Marisa --------- LINKS: Find Marisa on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/marisa-leinaala-pozas-7805219/] Find Claude on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/claudeburns/] More about Office Libations [https://www.officelibations.com/] Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Subscribe on Spotify