What is a culture first organization and how can culture be quantified and measured? As the relentless pace of change in recruiting and HR marches on, these are the kinds of questions that employers are finding themselves asking for the first time.
To help us understand the space where culture, technology, and analytics are colliding, my guest this week is Damon Klotz from Culture Amp. Damon’s career has surfed the wave of HR Technology growth in the last few years, and he also has helped create one of the most significant active communities in the industry.
In the interview we discuss:
- Damon’s career story and his move from HR practitioner to vendor
- The growth and power of the People Geeks community
- What does culture mean and how do you measure it
- The most common culture metrics
- The importance of belonging
- Building a culture first organization
Damon also shares his view on the future of HR Tech and the value it needs to provide for employees.
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast is brought to you by cultureamp. Eliminate the guesswork of company culture with cultureamp, the world’s largest independent employee feedback platform. Culture Amp goes beyond aggregating survey results to deliver rich insights and data driven action plans on an easy to use interface. With a powerful platform, science backed surveys and a focus on customer success, cultureamp helps you increase employee engagement and and build a positive company culture. Start developing a deep understanding of your employees experience today by visiting cultureamp.comFuture that’s cultureamp.comFuture.
Matt Alder [00:01:01]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 177 of the Recruiting Future podcast. What is a Culture first organization and how can culture be quantified and measured? As the relentless pace of change in recruiting and HR marches on, these are the sort of questions that employers might find themselves asking for the first time to help us understand the space where culture, technology and analytics are colliding. My guest this week is Damon Klotz from cultureamp. Damon’s career has surfed the wave of HR technology growth in the last few years and he has also helped create one of the biggest active communities in the industry. Enjoy the interview.
Matt Alder [00:01:47]:
Hi Damon, and welcome to the podcast.
Damon Klotz [00:01:49]:
Thanks so much for having me.
Matt Alder [00:01:50]:
My absolute pleasure. Could you introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
Damon Klotz [00:01:54]:
Hi. Yeah, so my name’s Damon Klotz and I work for the Australian HR technology company called Culture Amp.
Matt Alder [00:02:00]:
Fantastic. Now, I’ve kind of known you for, well, for a number of years now, and you kind of got a really interesting sort of backstory that’s taken you from the start of your career to where you are now. Could you tell everyone about your story, how you got into HR and how you ended up in coltramp?
Damon Klotz [00:02:18]:
Yeah. So as a young student in Australia, I kind of did what a lot of us students do is you pick a degree and I picked a Bachelor of Business. Kind of went in not exactly knowing what I wanted to do, but having some vague interest in actually being a sports agent after doing some work experience in that space that wasn’t really a major offered at most business schools in Australia. So I ended up actually just picking HR a little bit on a whim, but I felt like maximizing human potential and understanding the motivations around how people work was something that was of interest to me. I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into at the time. At about three Weeks into my sort of first HR subject, I went up to the lecturer and I said, I’m really enjoying this subject. I’d love to kind of get some work experience to learn a bit more about how to make this applicable. And she said, I’m going to give you two pieces of advice. One, learn how to network and two, cut your hair, it’s ridiculous. And I was like, okay, I’m willing to do one of those two things. And I kept my head, which was down to my shoulders and I learned how to, how to network. This was as simple as literally googling networking skills and then finding a HR event in Australia to turn up to. And that’s exactly what I did. And I walked away from that first ever event actually with a contact who was looking for a HR administrator to go work in the Queensland government. And four weeks later, at the age of 19, I went up to that lecturer and I said, you won’t believe what happened. She goes, what? And she goes, well I know that your hair’s still intact. I’m like, I know and I’ve got a job at hr. And from there it’s kind of just been this incredible journey of curiosity and taking chances. And I think starting my HR career in the government was actually a really fascinating place to start because you kind of learned what you can and can’t do and like how bureaucracy can slow you down and industrial relations and employee relations is really important there. So to now kind of fast forward to living in San Francisco and working for HR tech startup. I’ve kind of seen both ends of the world from the incredibly large 65,000 person department and what you’re trying to do to service that from a 300 person HR sort of headquarters approach all the way down to joining a company as like employee 15.
Matt Alder [00:04:36]:
So filling the gap a little bit for us there. So how did you get from working for the corporate Queensland government to working for a startup in San Francisco?
Damon Klotz [00:04:48]:
Yeah, so I think what actually working for the government allowed me to do was it allowed me to, you know, like it was a job which had requirements and a role, but it was a place of a lot of curiosity because I actually found myself in a learning and development department and I spent a lot of time thinking about facilitation and how to effectively communicate new skills. And at the same time I was actually learning and educating myself a lot about the role of technology on the world of work, on the world of young professionals in terms of like personal branding, how to build a online presence, how HR could be thinking about technology. So I actually started focusing on educating other people who are interested in where I saw technology going in terms of the impact on the HR world. This started internally at this government department where I was running training sessions on this. It became some of my core projects where I was doing whole of department work as a HR graduate at the age of 21. From there I actually started doing a lot of speaking and consulting in Australia about the role of HR technology. Then before I knew it, it wasn’t just HR departments or companies who were coming and asking about my opinion on this. I was doing whole of company digital transformation projects and I actually had a chance to go work in house for one of the largest private healthcare groups in the world and become the global head of digital strategy. And that was an incredible opportunity to really drive something home and do a project over three or four years that was really transforming this publicly traded company’s relationship to emerging technology. I think it helped me put a lot of runs on the board and validate a lot of the ideas that I had. And after being there for about three years, I soon realized that I was probably in the highest role I was ever going to have at that company. They weren’t going to let me do surgery or run a hospital anytime soon. So I started thinking about what are some other things that were interesting to me and the idea of actually going to work for a HR tech vendor and kind of impacting where the space was going. Because when I started talking about this about 10 years ago, there really wasn’t a lot of technology and there wasn’t like there was a little bit of stuff happening. But compared to where we’re at now and just the sea of vendors and the amount of technology that’s being used in the workplace, I couldn’t imagine how far it’s come. So I think I was always fascinated by this space. It just a little bit of navigating to finally get here.
Matt Alder [00:07:19]:
Yeah, absolutely. I think you’re right. The last 10 years has been incredible and I’m not sure any of us could have quite predicted just how much technology there would be. I think we could probably predict how much change there would be, but perhaps not how much technology is sort of launched and is available to sort of HR and recruiting practitioners. So what was it like? Because I always think this is interesting because I know a number of people who’ve made a similar move. What’s it like going from being a practitioner to actually working for a vendor?
Damon Klotz [00:07:53]:
I think similar to yourself, I’ve met a lot of people who’ve made this switch. And maybe, you know, back in the day there would have been a little bit of animosity in terms of like selling out and going to work on that side. But I think most of us would probably agree that there’s a really interesting relationship between the talent function, so both HR and recruiting, and the role of technology where, you know, we’re here to support each other and we’re here to improve the employee experience. So I am completely fine with that decision. I think one of the things that I was able to bring to the table when I joined Culture Ramp was actually drive a project that I was really passionate about from the start of my career. If you know, if you recall, my kind of early experience into actually breaking through into the industry was through an event where I was able to go meet practitioners. What I didn’t tell you was that like I was so desperate to go meet HR practitioners that I ended up going to an industry relations made up when they were talking about employment law because I just wanted to kind of like really see what this all meant. It wasn’t that fascinating, it wasn’t my favorite part of hr, but it gave me a chance to meet people. When, when I joined culturerand, what I was able to do was bring my practitioner angle and my passion for connecting people through community to actually build out one of the largest communities of HR practitioners in the world. And it’s what we call our people geeks community. And you know, a people geeks is anyone within the talent function or within any part of the business who is passionate about the relationship between the role of, you know, employee experience and building that and using technology and data to actually improve that and to be able to kind of, you know, just look at the first 100 logos that Coltrane was working with and said if I could get five of these companies in a room and five people who are willing to learn, we could really create some magic. And it’s been an incredible journey to kind of build out what’s now over 50,000 people globally with hundreds of events around the world. An online community with people from all parts of the world learning and sharing. And I feel like that’s going to be one of the biggest legacies I’ll be able to leave not only just for Culture Amp, but also for the HR communities around the world, for maybe that there’s a 19 year old student and she’s on the other side of the world and she wants to know where the future of HR is going. And I hope that she can find this community and be connected to people and kind of keep that passion going.
Matt Alder [00:10:21]:
I’m familiar with the, you know, the community that you’ve, that you’ve built and you know, you’ve done some, done some great work there and the community’s done some great work in sort of, you know, moving itself forward. What have sort of been the best things that have happened in your opinion that have come out of that community?
Damon Klotz [00:10:39]:
Yeah, so just to kind of make it real for people who aren’t familiar. So, you know, I wanted to make a place both online and offline that was accessible to everyone. So online we’ve got, you know, educational content in the form of our People People Geekly newsletter which goes out every single week. And that’s actually curated by the team inside of Culture Amp, where we’re looking at the articles that we’re reading and then sort of summarizing them. We have an online slack community of over 5,000 people being able to share ideas with each other. We have a forum where there’s kind of Q and A and a place to kind of ask questions that can sort of live and become a body of resource as well as even a job board for people to go find other people geeks that they’re looking to hire. So you know, helping people find new information and get new jobs is obviously quite impactful. I think the story that really resonates the most with me was I was down in Los Angeles and visiting some of our customers there. And you know, Coltrane works with a variety of customers from the small, you know, startups they’ve never heard of to, you know, hundred thousand plus retailers. And this company was about 300 people. They had a three person HR team. And I was just kind of, you know, checking in with them and seeing how it was all going and they turned to me and they kind of said, look what Culture Amp and the community that you built has given us is it’s made it feel like that we’re a four person HR team and that you’re the fourth member. And I was like, wow. Like, you know, to actually feel like you’re providing enough value and inspiration and content where someone feels like they’ve added a whole headcount to their HR team and that they’re tapped into something bigger. I think to me is incredibly moving because I know that there’s so many practitioners in the talent space who are looking for validation, looking for more budget, looking for more buy in and to feel like that before they’ve even got there for that next headcount that they’ve already got access to someone who’s, you know, being able to sort of fill that opportunity for them and inspire them is one of the most impactful stories that I’ve heard today.
Matt Alder [00:12:36]:
So moving from community to culture. Culture is obviously a big part of what you do. What do you actually mean by culture?
Damon Klotz [00:12:47]:
Yeah, so obviously I think a lot of people will have a different definition of it. And culture is in our name, but it’s not the only thing that we measure. We are a platform that helps you understand your people and culture through feedback. But I think what we’ve been able to do is however you define it, you know, within your company, what we’re able to do is actually prove to the moments that matter and a real measurement on some of those things that used to be hard. So I think one of the best ways that I sort of describe it is thinking about when you say your external brand, you’re talking about, like, how you, how you communicate to the market and that, that sort of that vision that you’re trying to create. But to really build upon that external brand, it needs to be delivered by people. And that’s kind of where that connection between, like, brand is a promise to a customer, and then culture is how you deliver on that promise. So at the end of the day, like, you know, it’s people that make decisions, that’s people that create products. It’s people have to deliver on that. So the way we think about it is like, culture is not soft and fluffy. Like, this is built for purpose. This is something you need to manage and have true communication on and measure. So you can actually say that, like, are we the type of company that’s going to deliver on the promise that we’ve made to the market? And that really comes down to the people that you have. So, you know, I think a lot of the customers and the idea of putting culture first is when you look at the customers that, you know, work with, culture ramp. They’re like industry leading. They’re the ones that you’ve already heard the stories about, like what they’re doing with their employee experience to drive better business performance. So I kind of see it as the couple of thousand companies that we’ve been able to work with are already ahead of the curve. I think it’s up to the rest of the world to catch up.
Matt Alder [00:14:26]:
You mentioned that there are maybe a number of different definitions of culture and certainly lots of different ways of measuring it. From what you’ve seen working with those 2,000 companies, what are the Common measurements. If someone’s working in a company and they want to start measuring how they’re doing, what should they be looking at?
Damon Klotz [00:14:49]:
Yeah, so I think what we are able to do is looking at the entire employee experience and asking whether you are actually collecting pieces of feedback along the way that will help you sort of curate and constantly evolve and ultimately take action on the feedback that you’re getting. So if someone was to look at their entire employee experience, they could be capturing feedback around the candidate experience. So does your external employer brand actually then make it all the way through to the candidate experience, and is that resonating with candidates then onto the onboarding process where there’s kind of like automatic pushes for feedback at all the milestones that you’re trying to create. So maybe it’s like a day five, day 30, day 90, then we start going into sort of the moments in time, so measuring things like employee engagement, diversity and inclusion benefits, well, being all the way through to managed feedback, leadership feedback, individual, you know, performance and 360s, and then through to exit. So basically you’re able to kind of dive in and go like, what are we working on right now? What are the key projects? What’s the feedback that we’re getting based on the work that we’re doing that helps you understand, are your employees ready for a merger and acquisition? You know, what’s that going to mean when you bring two cultures together, how ready for change are they? If you’re looking to do business transformation in terms of, you can look at the questions that we ask around innovation and whether you think the company takes action on innovative ideas. If sentiment around that is really low and, you know, we’re about to go through a business transformation, that’s an indicator that says we’re maybe not ready for this and we actually need to better communicate with our employees what we’re doing if there’s any chance of this project being successful. So I think looking at all the questions and the things that, you know, people can be asking and mapping it to the actual business issues that people are facing right now is an incredibly powerful way of just how some of the companies have been utilizing platforms like ours.
Matt Alder [00:16:47]:
And what does it mean to be a culture first company?
Damon Klotz [00:16:49]:
Yeah, so this is kind of one of the legacies. Our CEO Didier Elzinga wants to leave and, you know, we want to lead from the front, basically. We know that, like, putting culture first can be difficult. You know, when things like, you know, sales numbers aren’t being hit or employee retention is low, the Idea of investing in your people and culture might be a hard thing. The way that we think about it is like putting culture first, like, literally means putting culture first and saying that it’s the reason why you win, not something you do to celebrate after you’ve won. So actually connecting it to what is the type of experience that you’re trying to create for employees? How is the culture that you’re creating actually helping people do better in their work? Are you creating an environment where people feel like they belong? We’ve done a lot of research around the idea of something like belonging, which might sound a little bit soft and fluffy, but the link between employee retention in the first six months and the feeling of someone belonging is incredible. We’ve done a lot of work with predictive analytics to make people feel like. To show that if people can feel like they belong, not only are they more likely to kind of stay with the company, it also means that they’re more likely to grow and develop into the talent that you originally hired them to be. So I think the idea of starting with culture as the first part of the conversation and then looking at everything else you’re trying to create, as opposed to which I think a lot of companies have done it for a long time, is it’s the thing that gets talked about at the end. I think some of our customers are putting it in their culture metrics in their board decks, which I think is a really great way to show that the reasons why we’re hitting these numbers are because of these following metrics. And I think that’s an incredibly powerful way of being able to sort of throw those linkages together.
Matt Alder [00:18:34]:
So, final question. We’ve talked about the sort of the explosion of technologies over the last decade or so. What’s your view on the future? What do you think is going to happen next? Where are we going sort of, particularly with technology and hr?
Damon Klotz [00:18:47]:
Yeah, it’s a great question. Like, if you walk around any of the major tech conferences in Europe or in the US or even Australia, you are inundated by things that look the same, sound the same, that are giving away the same swag, that have the same positioning. It’s such a confusing time to be a buyer in the talent space. I think one of the places where it needs to go is if it’s confusing for the HR buyer, what does that actually mean for the end user, which is your employees? Do they know where to go to find the right information? Do they know how to best utilize these platforms? I think we’ve come up We’ve still got a long way to go. When I think about some of the multimillion dollar, multi year projects just to implement one piece of HR software that when the employee logs into it, and I’ve seen this firsthand, they go, it still doesn’t tell me anything I already know. So I think we really need to think about what is the core reason that we’re actually implementing this technology and do your employees know how they can actually improve or do something with it? Because at the end of the day, if we’re just implementing technology for our own sake, then I think we’re kind of losing track of the impact of it. So I think for me, where I want to see it going is as an individual employee who doesn’t even care about HR technology, can I log into these systems and get value from them and will it help me actually do my job better? And I think that’s one of the core reasons why I’ve been so proud to work for Coltramp is like the impact that our software has on improving employee experience and improving individuals chance to develop and grow and actually have their voice heard is, you know, it means a lot to me because work really matters. And if we’re not in a place that actually invests in our experience and wants to develop us and hear our voice, then, you know, that’s not the kind of place that I want to work at.
Matt Alder [00:20:41]:
Damon, thank you very much for talking to me.
Damon Klotz [00:20:43]:
No worries. Thanks for having me.
Matt Alder [00:20:45]:
My thanks to Damon Klotz. You can subscribe to this podcast in.
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Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice.
Damon Klotz [00:20:53]:
The show also has its own dedicated.
Matt Alder [00:20:55]:
App, which you can find by searching.
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For recruiting future in your app store. If you’re a Spotify user, you can.
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Also find the show there. You can find all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com. on that site you can subscribe to.
Matt Alder [00:21:10]:
The mailing list and find out more about working with me.
Matt Alder [00:21:14]:
Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
