Our People Pioneers in Action interview series finale with the sharp and insightful JooBee Yeow.

The brilliant Nic Cuthbert, VP of People & Talent at Jiminny, shares his secrets on how to be a company that truly lives their values.

The award-winning Sophie Theen, Start-up Advisor and Coach, has a wealth of experience to share with those of us who are determined to build great company cultures from the outset.

Sophie Amato, Head of People and Culture at Social Value Portal, has perfected the art of treading the tightrope between day to day firefighting and building for the future. Find out how she does it and how this has helped build a resilient company culture.

At The Pioneers we love meeting people who manage their businesses differently. I interviewed Peter Kelly, founder of IT infrastructure provider Softcat, about his innovative approach to managing people.

In this episode, Daniel Illes shares his experience of what it’s like to join a company with a truly exceptional culture and then be responsible for not messing it up as they grow!

We kick off our Pioneers in action interview series with the brilliant Laura Smith, Chief People Officer at Trade Ledger. Laura generously shares her lessons learned through scaling and downsizing.

Watch our Pioneers in action interview series, where I interview leaders who are pioneering in the world of start-ups, scale-ups and small businesses. If you’re a fellow people person who wants fresh ideas, tips, and tools for creating a kick-ass culture (plus advice on what not to do!), register and we’ll send you the episodes as they premiere, on the second Wednesday of each month.

Find out how to take a data led approach to building out your people experience, and learn how to get to a more holistic perspective on your people and their behaviour with the help of our expert guest speakers.

Traditionally HR teams have built people processes from the inside out i.e. from their own perspective of whats needed from the process and how this can be run as efficiently as possible. It’s been the HR team’s job to take into account what the organisation needs from the interaction. The challenge is this often misses what’s really important to the employee. Let’s take on boarding as an example…

Before you start to think about how you change your culture to support your growth, make sure you and your team are clear about what it actually is that you’re looking to change!

You’ve spent years building a great business from scratch. But after decades of hard graft you’re ready to enjoy more time with your family and maybe sip a cocktail or two on the beach. So how on earth do you step back from a business that relies on you everyday to keep plates spinning and wheels turning?

They say if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. Well you might think your culture isn’t broken, but if the world moves on without you, you could lose the trust and respect of your customers. It’s difficult to be a taken seriously if youre driving a horse and cart and everyone else is in a new car…

If your ways of working are dated, you’re going to struggle to attract and retain new talent. If you can’t convince your own flesh and blood to join your company, then something needs to change…

Is recruitment the bane of your life?! We know many founders who feel like this... If that’s you, here are three things you absolutely should not do if you want to make your life easier when it comes to recruitment (and one thing you really should do).

Wondering what we're like to work with? Watch this short video...

How are you becoming data-informed? How can you constantly be learning and iterating on your hiring process to become more efficient as you grow? Let’s explore some simple steps you can take today for a data driven approach to your hiring...

Employee experience is all about making work better by redesigning workplaces and HR processes around the needs of employees. So if you want to improve your employee experience then the first step is to really understand who you’re designing and building these new products and services for – your employees.

How we took improved the onboarding experience at Five Guys to reduce 90 day turnover by over 20%

You can’t create a great employee experience in one hit. Even if you’ve identified where you want to begin, it’s very hard to predict how your people will respond to new interventions. Instead of trying to design the ‘perfect’ employee experience, our suggestion is to take an iterative, data led approach that responds to user (employee) behaviour over time.

The concept of a 9 to 5 job has been a dominant narrative in society but it’s been dying for a while now and COVID-19 is finally going to kill it off. If your company wasn’t already some way down the path towards more flexible working, the past few months will no doubt have been a period of serious adjustment.

Congratulations! You’ve just landed your dream job as a new People Director. Go you! You’re gonna be great. But you know what they say… you only have one chance to make a first impression. So what are you actually going to do when you get your foot in the door.

If you’re an ambitious start-up then getting recruitment right is going to be absolutely critical to your success. If you hire the wrong people, or if you hire them too slowly, or if you burn through your cash by wasting it on recruitment agencies and high turnover… you’re going to undershoot your growth potential. Here’s our advice on the five things you need to look for in your first Head of Talent…

Who to hire when is always a dilemma for start-up founders and the decision about when to hire your first Head of People is no exception. Indeed, it’s a topic that creates quite a lot of debate. So here’s our advice on some things founders should think about before hiring their first Head of People…

So you’ve decided the time’s right to hire your first Head of People, but what exactly should you be looking for? At The Pioneers, we know this can be a tough role to fill and an important hire to get right, so here’s our advice on the three things to look for...

Looking for some practical strategies for creating culturally inclusive hiring processes and internal cultures for remote and hybrid teams to thrive? Great stuff. Have a watch of our Founder Bee Heller's chat with Wendy Christie, Chief People Officer at The Social Element, and Michelle Davies, Chief Operating Officer at Wefarm, as they share their tips - from finding, attracting and assessing candidates, through to onboarding, plus everything in between.

Want to take meaningful steps to making your recruitment more inclusive and equitable? Our founder, Bee, chats to pioneering leaders Michelle Davies, COO at Wefarm and Gaynor Francis & Fahrah Gulamhusein, Co-founders at Space for Race about DE&I across the whole recruitment process, from talent attraction tactics, to data and selection, through to onboarding.

Watch Chris Jones, Head of Customer Experience at Enboarder and our Founder, Bee Heller, discuss why onboarding is a moment that really matters in your recruitment journey and how to create a kick-ass onboarding experience,

If you want insightful, practical advice on how to hire developers, this webinar is for you! Watch the brilliant Andy Clarke, Co-founder & CTO at Evidenced, and our awesome John Hazelton, Director, Recruitment, as they share practical strategies you can implement straight away.

Looking for some practical recruitment strategies from leaders who are pioneering in people-first scale-ups? You've come to the right place! Dig in to this kick-ass webinar series...

User experience is critical in HR Tech, because it’s not what your tech can do, it’s what people actually do with it that counts. Our Founder, Bee Heller, chats to Elisa Mirkil, Data Designer extraordinaire.

Thinking about developing your HR tech strategy? But where should you start...

If you want to create great employee experiences at scale you have to have great technology. But the choices are now endless, so how do you create the right HR tech stack for you?

Those questions you had about HR tech, but were too afraid to ask? Fear not, our expert speakers are here to help. This webinar covers everything from the technical terms you need to know, to the questions you should really be asking before you invest in yet another bit of software...

I've saved you a seat at our a brand new webinar series for People people in scale-ups! We have an incredible line up of expert guest speakers, ready to answer all your questions.

If you’re genuinely interested in making your company a better place to work, then adopting an employee experience approach necessitates a profound culture change in HR teams.

When it comes to improving employee experience we shouldn’t worry about every one of the thousands of interactions between an employee’s and an organisation’s journey. Instead we should focus on a few key interactions.

Is your team so busy getting work out the door that the very idea of finding time to stop and look back seems crazy? It’s more important that you press on and get the work done – right? Not so fast… If you want to improve the way your team works together, you should start with improving your retrospectives.

If your business has grown to 100 people you might be noticing the people dynamics changing. It doesn’t matter how great you are as a leader or how hard you work, there comes a point where you can’t get the best out of your people unless you take a more systemic approach…

If you’ve read a few of our blogs, you’ll understand what we think company culture is and why we think culture engineering is critical to the success of scale-ups, but you’ll also know that we don’t think you can just copy someone else’s homework and that you need to put in the hard yards to build your own distinctive culture.

Truth be told, most of the people who bang on about how important culture is, literally don’t know what they’re talking about. But don’t worry, you’ve just found the one blog you have to read to join the select group of people who actually know what they’re talking about.

If you want to change your employees behaviour or decision making… don’t just use methods that speak to the rational rider (slow brain), because unless you can engage the emotional elephant nothing’s going to change.

At The Pioneers, we think having employees who are intrinsically motivated to do their work is critical to sustaining high levels of engagement, great customer experiences and good business performance. We think there are seven sources of intrinsic motivation that people managers and businesses should be aware of...

Company culture doesn’t determine behaviour – a cultural norm (what you need to do to fit in) isn’t the only thing that might affect how a team member behaves – but in a people system, your culture is almost certain to be the biggest influence on your people’s day-to-day behaviour and decision making.

If you’re the founder, CEO or People Director of a start-up that’s looking to grow, your success now depends on your culture. If you don’t get it right, more people will just = more problems. (Read more)