I’ve always found it fascinating to study high growth companies and start-ups that are seriously scaling up. Things move at a million miles an hour, and some serious lessons can be learned about culture, skills development, talent management and talent acquisition.
My guest this week is Sandy Scholes, Chief People Officer at Flipp, a fast-growth retail technology company based out of Toronto. Toronto is a highly competitive talent market, and Sandy has some very valuable insights to share on acquiring and retaining the right talent for a scale-up business.
In the interview, we discuss:
▪ The people challenges at Flipp
▪ How do you build a culture?
▪ How the pandemic has changed Flipp’s approach to employee experience
▪ Ensuring the right skills are in the business.
▪ How to stand out and attract talent in a tough market
▪ Raising the bar on recruiting.
▪ Career Journeys
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Eightfold AI. Eightfold AI delivers the talent Intelligence platform, the most effective way for companies to retain top performers, upskill and reskill the workforce, recruit top talent efficiently and reach diversity goals. Eightfold AI’s deep learning artificial intelligence platform empowers enterprises to turn talent management into into a competitive advantage.
Matt Alder [00:00:48]:
Before we start the show, I’ve got an exciting announcement. The Recruiting Future Podcast has teamed up with the excellent team at TA Tech to bring you a live podcast conference. The event’s called Peering into the Talent Acquisition Future and it takes place on April 21, 2021. Now I know there are lots of virtual events out there competing for your attention at the moment, so we’re running a super simple format that you can dip into and out of as you so desire and everything will be recorded and archived to watch or re watch at your convenience in the future. Over a half day I’ll be hosting five different panel debates on the future of various aspects of talent acquis position with some outstanding TA leaders from companies that include Intel, Siemens and SNC Lavalin. I promise that you will take away some great ideas and be challenged to think deeply about the future of what we do. The event is free to attend or watch at the time of your choosing. In the future you can find out more and register at Bit Ly RecFuture Live. That’s Bit Ly RecFutureLive and that’s all in lowercase. Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 343 of the Recruiting Future Podcast. I’ve always found it fascinating to study high growth companies and startups that are seriously scaling up. Things move at a million miles an hour and some serious lessons can be learned about culture, skills development, talent management and of course talent acquisition. My guest this week is Sandy Scholes, Chief people Officer at flip, a fast growth retail technology company based out of Toronto. Toronto is a highly competitive talent market and Sandy has some very valuable insights to share about acquiring and retaining the right talent for a scale up business. Hi Sandy and welcome to the podcast.
Sandy Scholes [00:02:49]:
Hi Matt, how are you?
Matt Alder [00:02:50]:
I’m very good, thank you and it is an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell what you do?
Sandy Scholes [00:02:57]:
Sure. Thank you. This is such a pleasure by the way. So thank you for inviting me on the show. So my name is Sandy Skoles. I’m the chief people and culture officer at Flip. Flip is a technology company in Toronto. We’re a midsize organization and we’re an app. So we work within the North American area, so the North American region. So for those of you who live In Canada, the U.S. you may be familiar, we’re a retail app and we bring all your weekly circulars, coupons, deals, all those great deals to your app so that you can save money when you’re planning your shopping experience. So it’s always fun for shopping and you can save like 45 to 50 bucks a week if you use our app.
Matt Alder [00:03:37]:
Fantastic stuff. And tell us a little bit about you and this of the journey you’ve been on to do what you do now.
Sandy Scholes [00:03:44]:
So I’ve had a little bit of a different journey, I think, than your traditional HR journey. I started my career off in HR and international HR with a telecom company and worked my way, started thinking that culture was very, very important to me and realized very early that, you know, the company I thought I was going to work for for a long time just wasn’t the right kind of fit. So I moved over and worked for a wonderful organization in the medical device arena, was there having wonderful international experience. Everything was great. And it got to a point though in Canada where I was not able to relocate and wanted to do something different and grow and learn. And I followed another journey and started my career within the pharmaceutical industry and found lots of interesting and amazing things around process and efficiencies and learning and development and just kept on this journey. I wanted to learn about manufacturing, I wanted to learn about being in a private company, not just public. So I started along that journey and worked with other organizations after that within hospitality, within software entertainment, which allowed me the opportunity to get global experience in private, public, different size organizations from small, medium, large, to the point where, you know, at about two years ago I sat back and really asked myself the question, what do I want to do for the rest of my career? What would really make me happy? And I spent a lot of time understanding what kind of culture of an organization do I want to work with, what kind of job, what are the types of people I want to interact with and coach and develop. And I pursued the opportunity where I’m at right now and I’m working for Flip, which is, you know, I feel like I’m back home in an organization where it’s just completely aligned with my values, where I’m focused, what I want to do and that’s where I am at the moment.
Matt Alder [00:05:47]:
Fantastic stuff. I want to talk so specifically about things like culture and employee experience and some of the things that are going on at Flip. But I suppose just give us a little bit background to the organization. You know, how big is it, how fast is it growing? What are the sort of, the, what are the kind of key challenges that you have?
Sandy Scholes [00:06:07]:
Okay, great question. So Flip is a midsize organization in the tech field in Toronto. Our area, our areas that we play are really within North America. Our growth, we’ve been on a really huge, we’re a private organization. We’ve been on a very huge growth trajectory within the 10 years. Obviously we went from a few people up to 400 right now. It’s interesting because we can’t consider ourselves a startup anymore. We’re really a scale up. So we’re at the point in the organization where we want to continue to have heavy growth. We’re looking at 30 to 40% growth year over year this year and moving forward. So that causes obviously lots of challenges. I think the number one area of focus, which is also one of the biggest challenges is how do you make sure that you have the right people? How do you attract and retain your top talent? Tech is a massive competitive industry within Toronto which I don’t think a lot of people know in the world. Toronto is the third top city for tech people and we’ve added about 80,000 people over the last five years in the tech field. So very, very competitive. And this is what we’re facing on a daily basis is how do you scale up an organization, continue to drive innovation, different additional product capabilities and enhancements while trying to compete against all these organizations that are coming from Silicon, like coming from California and other parts of the US they’re moving into Toronto and they’re putting a lot of pressure on the talent industry. So very competitive marketplace at the moment.
Matt Alder [00:07:48]:
I did not know that about Toronto. That’s really, that’s really interesting and it’s kind of really interesting to see which cities are sort of booming when it comes to tech businesses and having to attract tech talent at the moment. Lots of things that I want to ask you but maybe, maybe the best place to start is to talk about a little bit about culture. So how do you build culture and what does culture look like within your organization?
Sandy Scholes [00:08:11]:
It’s a great question. I think there’s lots to think about. It’s, you know, if you Google what corporate culture is, you’re going to get various, you’re going to get variations. It’s going to say things like beliefs, behaviors, norms, right that you create in a company. So to me, I think what’s most important is you need to step back and ask the question, what kind of an organization do you want to create that will help you understand the culture that you want to create? Then you need to say, do you have the right leadership to live and breathe that culture? And then you think, how do I implement and integrate all these decisions you make around the culture and your leadership? How do you implement that into your practices and programs so that you can build the culture and you can sustain it over time? So, you know, over my career I’ve had the opportunity, like I said, to work for various organizations and some companies had really strong cultures. They were very positive. I would say the employee experience was great by all the team members and then in one or two other organizations it was not so great. And you can see how culture is pretty impactful. It can really make an experience for employees pretty detrimental to their health well being. They don’t love to go into work every day. So I think if you’re going to build a culture, you really need to figure out what you want to create. And then I think if you can reinforce that and bring in the right types of people in the organization and be relentless. It’s so important to be relentless on if you identify cultures and principles or values and principles that you want to create for the company, you know, you need specific leadership to reinforce that. You put programs in place to reinforce the accountabilities and reward those kind of experiences. You have to be relentless and make sure that you walk the talk and you live that, that that’s how you truly build a strong culture.
Matt Alder [00:09:59]:
You mentioned employee experience there as being sort of absolutely, absolutely critical. How is the, the. So the last 12 months and everything that’s been going on in the pandemic sort of changed your strategy there or how have you had to, have you had to adapt?
Sandy Scholes [00:10:14]:
Oh, so employee experience, I’d say that’s what keeps me up at night as leading the people and culture function for our practice for our organization. What keeps me up is trying to determine how we can have an amazing employee experience in our organization for a couple reasons. So before the pandemic, as I mentioned, the tech industry in Toronto is really hot. So before the pandemic, we had challenges and constant pressure on trying to make sure that we were focused on the employee experience, we could attract and retain top talent. So in our market, generally speaking, 90% of our organization are millennials or Gen Z. So you know what, Millennials and Gen Z Want are very different from other generations of workers in the past. So what’s absolutely fundamental to create an experience is you need to understand what they want, what they need, and how you can deliver that. So that is huge. Really, really getting an appreciation and understanding that. So, you know, prior to the pandemic, we were working on that. I would say we have a very good idea. And the tech industry in general tends to be very focused on people, and people are at the center and the core of what we do. So we try really hard to make sure that everything we’re doing is at the center of responding to what the needs are of our people. So they have a great experience. Since the pandemic, I would say this pressure has put. There’s more pressure on putting the person at the center, but in a more holistic way. So an employee experience now isn’t about going into work every day and doing work and having the best tech stack or having the people that you work with on a daily basis being really brilliant and wonderful. There’s more to it. There’s so many other impacts around all the pressures in society, the family pressures at home. So we’re approaching this very holistically and looking at this as the whole person, and we kind of approach it with our four quadrants. So looking at someone in a broader perspective, I think is essential. So no more employment experience. Being around the work itself, it’s a lot larger than that. It’s about making sure that we respond to our workforce, that we create programs and practices that they think are really valuable, that are really helping them be a better person and a happier person, not just at work, but at home.
Matt Alder [00:12:42]:
So moving on to talking about skills, we’ve sort of talked about your location and the, the concentration of tech businesses there. And obviously we’re seeing sort of dramatic, dramatic digital transformations across industries and lots of things changing very fast. How do you make sure that you have the right skills in your business? I suppose that’s from a development and from a talent acquisition standpoint.
Sandy Scholes [00:13:09]:
Yeah, it’s a great question. So I’m gonna. If you. I’m gonna refer back to the first question that you asked me earlier around building a culture. So I think the first thing you need to do to ensure you have the right skills in your business is to look at, look at the skills and how a person can deliver based on both the what and the how you deliver it. I think that’s really essential for an organization so that you can get the right skills for your business, you can support a culture and sustain a very strong foundation. So and foremost I think you look at the what and the how and then you know, you need to look at what are the technical skills that you need within roles and the leadership skills. So I kind of approach it in, in the way that I look high level across the organization. So organizational, organization wide, what do we need to create around values and principles in a company and really ensure that these are true to who we are? The second part is really moving to functional discipline. I think it’s important to work with your HR business partners in your organization or however a company does this and really understand what are the functional competencies. So what are those functional skills required for that specific discipline and area? So now you’re going to have both what are the cultural values and principles? So how you do things in an organization, you’ll have the functional discipline around what you’re expected to deliver. And then to make sure that you have this in the company, you need to communicate, communicate, communicate. You hear that all the time. But you need to integrate it into everything you do. So I’m a true believer that you can’t just say things, you can’t rule programs out, you can’t tell people we need these skills and these roles and just put that into the interview process if you don’t try to reinforce it. So I would say whatever you determine you need, you bring it into your scorecards and your interview questions obviously, but you need to also bring that into assessing performance. So when you look at your performance programs, how do you integrate those skills and requirements into your performance program and reward people accordingly? And how do you build it into the development plan so that when people are building their skills in the organization and progressing, they’re being assessed both on the what and the how and it’s really clear to them as to what they need to do to deliver. So I think that, you know, building and understanding what your capabilities are, integrating it into your programs will help you ensure you have the right types of skills.
Matt Alder [00:15:37]:
And I suppose my next question really sort of applies to everything that we’ve talked about so far, but you mentioned that the company’s growing very, very quickly. What are the sort of key people challenges that you have when you’re scaling a digital business this quickly?
Sandy Scholes [00:15:54]:
Yeah, that’s a great question. So for those of you who are listening, who have been working with startups and, and have remained through the evolution of growth, you would notice a lot of changes a company goes through. So some people may choose to leave because they feel the company’s lost its edge or it’s not entrepreneurial anymore. And some people decide, hey, I’m going to give us a chance. I’ve loved the ride so far. Let’s see how things play out. So I’d say in either case, this is the first challenge when you’re trying to scale a business, how do you keep your top performers? How do you keep your innovative thinkers and entrepreneurs? How do you preserve that entrepreneurial spirit while also evolving? And you have to build efficiencies in order to scale. So generally with startups and smaller organizations, you know, process isn’t quite as important because people, you know, people just roll up their sleeves and they get stuff done. They just get stuff done. But when you’re scaling, you need to do this in a much more efficient way. You need to put process in place, which, you know, process to some people is a bad word. And you need to start to build the efficiencies while also not becoming a bureaucratic and big corporate kind of environment that’s not nimble and doesn’t move fast. So it’s really challenging. I mean, I know that as I’ve gone through and I’ve been working at Flip, this is, we’re in the process of scaling out our business and we’ve had superstars who have been with the company since the company started. And I’m hoping that we can keep those superstars and we can help them understand, appreciate some of the challenges that we’re doing and they can grow along this journey. Because there’s nothing better than having people who have been with the company since the beginning and their role models, people really look to them and follow them. So it’s really important that you know, if they love where you’re trying to go, that they are one of the key change agents that you want to leverage. But I think, I think the biggest challenge is really taking the organization, scaling it up and moving to a more efficient, process driven organization while not becoming bureaucratic and making sure that you look at your people, that maybe what got you here is not going to get you there. I know we’ve heard that saying a lot, but it’s true. You need to assess where are we going and what kind of talent and capabilities do we need now for this new market? You know, it could be very different types of talent and you need to make that decision, step back and start to put a talent strategy in place to try to get there.
Matt Alder [00:18:23]:
As a final question, you’re obviously working in a very competitive market for talent. What do you do to Stand out to make sure that the best and the right talent is attracted. Attracted to your business.
Sandy Scholes [00:18:36]:
Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean one of the pieces of feedback we got at FLIP with people who work in our organization, we have a set of values and principles that are extremely foundational to the like. They’ve been here since the founders joined the organization and I would say people live and breathe them. It’s what we, we call the three H’s and oh so hungry. Humble, highly intelligent and we’re other centered. Like that’s, that’s kind of who we are as an organization. We’ll hear in all of our engagement surveys that people stay in the organization, they love their fellow flippers. We call them flippers. But the highly intelligent, loving to work with, amazing people. I think what makes us stand out is we do step back and we take a look at the snapshot of our talent on an annual basis and then we continue to action and take a look at how we nurture our talent. But we’ve really looked at our bar and what we call A players. So we’ve, we’ve made a decision as an executive team that we want to ensure that we have, we attract and retain as many A players as possible. So I know it’s nearly impossible to have 100% of your organization A players, but you have to make some tough decisions. You need to step back at times and say especially what are the critical roles? What are the critical types of talent that we need? And we need to make some hard decisions and, and bring in A players or do everything we can to nurture, develop, grow and support our A players in the organization so we don’t lose them. That I believe is a key differentiator for us. We have amazing people and our bar. You know, one of our key principles in our organization is making sure that we raise the bar. So we’re raising the bar all the time and we keep a focus on our A players.
Matt Alder [00:20:25]:
What do you sort of do in your recruitment process to ensure that you are continually raising that bar?
Sandy Scholes [00:20:32]:
A great question. So we have a pretty robust recruitment process. First and foremost, we have scorecards. So our scorecards have our values. Like I talked about the three H’s and O’s. And we have some of our principles, so that’s a given. So we have a process where our talent acquisition specialists screen all candidates. I’d say 70% of the emphasis we put in our organization is on fit and living our values and principles. So huge, huge emphasis. From phone screens to behavioral interviews. Once people make it through that, we identify who, who are our top people that should be interviewing with the hiring manager and we have case studies. So we put case studies out there and we ask all applicants, whether they’re internal or external, to go through a process where they create a case study and they come in and they present and the case study is a 90 minute presentation and conversation with a group of people. So we make, we really go through and we grow people to make sure we are bringing in the best we are, you know, they’re passing all the tests. It’s a pretty thorough process. And then for leadership we generally have individuals talk. It could be virtual. Now it’s virtual coffees, discussions from a fit. Can you work with that team all the way through to depending on levels, whether they go and they meet with executives as the directors and above. We make sure that we have key executives that meet these individuals and if they’re not seen as being a, like someone absolutely outstanding, we go back to the board and we look for more candidates. So we make these decisions and points along the way to ensure that they’ve got an A player. And then we go back and we assess everyone’s scorecards and if there’s ever not a thumbs up or there’s a red flag or yellow flag, we go back, we dive deeper and we either, you know, they pass or we go back to the drawing board.
Matt Alder [00:22:21]:
Final question, what’s next? What’s, what’s next for Flip? What are you planning and looking forward to over the next 12 to 18 months?
Sandy Scholes [00:22:28]:
So I think the, the biggest area that I’m focusing on is around career journeys. So, you know, over the last couple years the biggest piece of feedback we’ve seen on engagement surveys has been the request around career pathing. Help me with my career path. Many people, they join Flip, they love it, they don’t want to have to leave, they want to stay. But some people are saying like, what’s my career path? What journey do I have? We’re not a multi, you know, multinational organization. We don’t have, you know, 10 different layers of titles and levels within the organization. So we have to be very creative with how do we continuously help people grow, how do they learn, grow and develop so they feel like, you know, they are marketable. If people feel marketable, then they know there’s any time they can leave, but they don’t leave because they don’t want to and they’re getting what they need. So the biggest area of focus right now is around creating a career journey. We’re working with an external vendor at the moment to bring a tool in place place to help us along with working in the background to say what kind of journeys can you have? What are the different types of experiences that you can develop and grow and put into your portfolio? And what do we look for on the higher levels of these positions so that people can start to own their own career path, they can navigate their way through and create a unique lattice type experience. So I’d say that’s the biggest area which I, I’m really excited about and I think the second one is really more around wellness. It’s around. I truly do believe that if an individual is really happy in all different facets of their life, they’re going to make a massive contribution. If there’s one area that’s not working, you feel it in the workplace. So how can we as an employer help people with a more holistic, happier life where they have a better balance in all the different facets? So that’s the areas that I’m very excited about.
Matt Alder [00:24:25]:
Sandy, thank you very much for talking to me.
Sandy Scholes [00:24:27]:
Thank you. This has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for the invite.
Matt Alder [00:24:31]:
My thanks to Sandy Scholes. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts on Spotify or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow the show on Instagram. You can find us by searching for Recruiting Future Future. You can search for all the past episodes@recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to the mailing list to get the inside track about everything that’s coming up on the podcast. And don’t forget, please, please, please sign up for the live event taking place on 21st April. The link is Bit ly Recfuture Live and I’ll also put that link in the show notes. Thanks very much for listening. Listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
