Links:

Book into my autumn programme Time for the things that matter starting 4th October 2022.

'Reclaim Time to Read' 2022 reading challenge:  https://www.helenbeedham.com/2022-reading-challenge

Helen's business book: The Future of Time: how 're-working' time can help you boost productivity, diversity and wellbeing

Jennifer on Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-halliday-a38a264/

The Productivity Institute and its podcast

FT article on work intensity

The Chimp Paradox by Prof Steve Peters

Helen's article for the Chartered Management Institute on 'Is your team managing their time properly?'

Transcript:

Helen: My guest this week is Jennifer Halliday, Finance Director at CF Fertilisers who supply British products to British farms and who are part of North American-based group CF Industries. Before her current role, Jennifer worked as Chief Finance Officer for Universities Superannuation Scheme and as global Finance Director for Quaker Chemical and earlier in her career, she worked in various senior finance roles in both Europe and the USA. Jennifer graduated from Edinburgh University with a Master's degree in French and Business, is FCCA qualified and holds an MBA from Manchester Business School where she's a member of their advisory board. Alongside a non-executive director role at Halston Housing Jennifer chairs the Northwest Productivity Forum which is part of the UK's Productivity Institute. This UK-wide research organization brings together academics, government and business to figure out what drives productivity and what changes have the most impact. Jennifer has four grown up sons and one granddaughter. Welcome to The Business of Being Brilliant Jennifer!

Jennifer: Thank you. It's very nice to be here. Thank you for asking me.

Helen: I think you're officially the first finance director on the show, although we have had CEOs and Chairs before, so it's lovely to tick another box in terms of leadership roles and areas of expertise. And I've given listeners a quick feel for your career history but could you tell us something about yourself that isn't normally found in your bio that might surprise people?

Jennifer: So I don't very often put in my bio that I have four grown up sons. I wanted to do that particularly today because of course I'm very proud of them, and now I have my granddaughter. But the reason that I mention that is because I have a lot of experience of figuring out how to go to work and manage a family and I haven't always done it well so I have lots of experiences that I can talk about there. I've also been very fortunate to have the opportunity to work for some wonderful companies, both in north America and in the UK. In fact, I lived in north America for 17 years and three of my sons are actually now living back in north America. So I've had the opportunity to experience different cultures and understand a little bit about the differences, particularly between north America and the UK. People think, same language, it all feels the same and that's absolutely not the case. So I'm interested in talking a little bit more about that.

Helen: Yeah. Sure. So are you still leading quite a transatlantic life then with three sons in the States?

Jennifer: Yes, exactly and my oldest son actually lives in Dubai now. So they live quite far apart from me, I'm in the northwest of England, but I do feel very fortunate that I am able to travel for work and even during COVID, I was able to spend time in north America. So I do see them fairly frequently. And I just feel very fortunate that I'm able to continue to travel. And now of course we're back into, I I don't know what the new normal is anymore actually, but things are getting back to normal and travel is obviously a little bit more popular and prevalent than it's been over the last three or four years.

Helen: Yes and I hear they're even contemplating removing the requirement to wear face masks officially on planes, which will feel like a huge step forward. I spent the best part of 24 hours in a face mask flying to Australia at Easter, back, and had to sleep in the face mask and everything. So yeah, I think we'll all cheer when that last milestone or one of the last milestones gets lifted. And you mentioned that obviously you have had experience of raising a family whilst progressing your career. Could you say a little bit more about what that experience was like for you and what you found helped you and what you found difficult?

Jennifer: Yeah, so it's interesting, isn't it? I think a lot of people look at others, particularly on social media and think some people can do this really well. There is a perfect way to do this. Actually there isn't (laughs), there isn't a perfect way to do this and everybody of struggles with priorities and how to make it work at work when you've got a young family.

And there are certainly lots of things that I didn't do well. It's interesting isn't it, working through COVID has made it much more acceptable now for people to work from home and work in a more flexible way that wasn't the case 20 years ago. And that's why I think the topic of productivity is so important because it never was about the number of hours that you put in. It always was and should be about the output and what you produce and what you manage to achieve. But so often that is measured in the number of hours that you put in the office and the number of hours that you're seen to be at your desk.  And I've had experiences of people who work very hard and they work very long hours, but they actually don't produce as much as those people who are very busy and trying to make sure that they manage a good series of outputs and they try and multi-task. So I think we're talking about that more and more, particularly when you don't see people in the office every day, thinking about output and productivity is much more important than it's ever been.

Helen: Yes, and I've been reading recently about how surveillance is increasing by companies in terms of just monitoring their employees' online activity in quite detail - when they're busy on calls and when they're even using their keyboards and things - and there's been a lot of talk and articles in the press over the last couple of years about moving away from presenteeism in offices, but just replacing that with e-presenteeism. And so do you feel confident that organizations are genuinely waking up to the fact that it's really about the quality and the output that is delivered rather than worrying about how much time people are spending collaborating with each other and being available at their computers?

Jennifer: So I hope so... now it's a difficult one, isn't it, because sometimes you can only achieve the right level of output through collaboration. I think what's really important is that we start talking more and more about what is the objective that each person needs to try and achieve in their day to day work and then be very clear to people about what we expect and I'm not suggesting for one minute that that shouldn't be monitored. But I do think there has to be a level of trust that you say to people, this is what we would like you to do, this is how it fits into the big picture, this is what we expect from you. However, we empower you to go manage your own calendar, to make it work the way that works for you, but when there is collaboration needed, when there is face-time needed, you figure out how to make that work and we trust you to do it. So putting much more of the empowerment into the hands of the individual employee.  And clearly if there's a performance issue and the work isn't getting done, that's a different discussion, right? That's not about ticking and tying every single hour that somebody does because you are more likely to cause disengagement by doing that. So I'm hoping that it will drive a discussion around what really is the purpose of everybody's role? What are we asking from people? How are we asking for them to behave and manage their time and then empower them to go off and do it themselves?

Helen: I love that point you make about separating out flexibility and working arrangements from performance conversations, because I'm certainly hearing the two things are being muddied together quite a lot, organizations talking to employees about you can only be effective if you are in the office three or four days a week. I tend to rail against that in my mind and think, no, but that's not really thinking about how somebody's able to deliver at their best. It's really placing some conditions around where they need to be a given point in time.

And obviously this is the kind of thinking and developments that you are focusing on closely in your role as Chair of the Northwest Productivity Forum. Could you tell us a little bit more about what you do in that role and what the Forum and the Institute are looking at?

Jennifer: Yes, absolutely. So the Institute was developed from government funding. It was a grant that is intended to last for five years and we're in year two of the funding. And the lead institution is the University of Manchester but there are eight different university institutions involved in different parts of the country, so that each part of the country is represented.

And what each university has done is pull together a group of members who are both from academia, but also from government and from local business. And each regional group has a Chair and each group meets fairly frequently to talk about what drives productivity in the region and what can we do differently with business to improve productivity, and what can we suggest to government around policy that will help improve productivity? It is about research because it's driven from the universities, so it's about researching topics that can then have practical impact. And what's interesting in year two is we've done a lot of thinking, green papers have been produced, they're all very publicly available so I welcome anybody to go to The Productivity Institute website and take a look. And now we're thinking through, well, we've come up with some ideas about what drives productivity and what could be done differently. How can we then translate that into real practical examples that can be used to be expanded across the country and involve other parts. Now some of these regional issues are very similar and some of them will be different. So obviously there's a question about leveling up in the northwest and why is the productivity in the northwest so much lower than in the south and what drives that and what can we do differently? But this topic about managing people and are we really empowering individuals to be creative and innovative and to drive their own productivity seems to be constant across all of these forums so it's quite an interesting topic. The Institute will continue for another three years and hopefully beyond that, and certainly some really interesting discussions that are taking place.

Helen: That's fascinating, and I know you have a podcast as well, that comes out from The Productivity Institute shares some of your latest research and thinking and has various expert speakers on it. So coming back to that concept of managing people, are you talking to businesses at the moment and hearing about some successes there? Is that part of your research approach to talk to businesses, find out what they're doing, what's working well, and then obviously think about how you can encourage more of that across the UK?

Jennifer: Absolutely, that's exactly what we want to do and also part of the funding is available to be able to run projects with businesses. So run some pilots to try and do things differently, provide some resource to help businesses do things differently and see whether or not it really makes a difference.

Obviously the skills shortage, we see that everywhere across the UK and the question is, should we be doing more around that? I think the other thing that we keep coming back to, and we've already touched on it several times already today, is this question of how managers manage people. There is quite a lot that's been written that says do managers really understand how people are spending their time? And are people spending a lot of time performing activities that they've always done because they've always done it? And do managers understand what their teams are doing and are managers spending enough time managing their people, allocating resources, making sure that they're working on the right things, and is the inability to do that, really a key driver in why we're not perhaps as productive as we could be? So I'd love to do something with managers in businesses to really think about how to manage their teams differently.

Helen: Yes, they're such a key point of the organization aren't they in terms of directing and shaping the work of the team and working with each individual to help them understand what they need to be focused on, but also what for that individual is the best, most efficient, effective way of working and what kind of support they need to grow their skills. So it sounds like it might require a bit of a rethinking of the manager role or at least some upskilling in a new direction.

I follow the work of the Chartered Management Institute quite closely and recently contributed an article to their newsletter and website about how managers can think about how their team members spend their time more carefully. And I know they're very keen on professionalizing the role of the manager and making sure that all managers have gained high quality managerial skills. And I think we've often fallen into the trap in many organizations in the past of seeing someone who's really good at their job, who really knows their stuff and thinking, okay, you are ready for the next level up and promoting them to manager, perhaps without really thinking about to be a good people manager, what are the skills you need? Both the people skills, but also the work organization skills because it's like running a little organization of its own. You're having to think about the organization development aspect of that, stand back from the day to day work and look at what are people busy on, what's the priorities that we need to be focusing on, are we really paying time on that?

So, have you come across some interesting things that organizations are doing in the northwest area, or is there a success story or some experiment or trial that an organization's doing that you might be able to share here?

Jennifer: So let me get to that second, I'm just going to tell you a little story first, which is I remember my very first experience being a manager, which was quite some time ago, and I thought I was doing a reasonably good job and what I was trying to do was make sure that the team focused on the basic work of the day and anything that was too complicated, I stepped in to help out and I thought I was doing a really great job. And I got some feedback at the end of my first year and the feedback that I got was, ' she keeps all the very best work for herself'. And I thought, oh my goodness, that is not what I was trying to do at all! What I was trying to do is help and make sure that the team didn't feel too overloaded, but it was seen as lack of trust. You know, 'she doesn't trust us to do that work', and it was seen as 'we don't get opportunities for development'. And I've always remembered that and I've always thought that actually the role of the manager is not to do the complicated work, it's actually to figure out how to trust somebody beneath you to do it, so that they can then be developed. And then what that does, of course, is it creates a sense of empowerment and trust and your team is then going to be thinking about how to do things differently and they're going to feel as if they've got the right to do that.

So, I think today we still see managers exactly as you described, you've been very good at being individual contributors. And they think that being a manager is telling people what to do, those people will do it, and then they will measure the quality and then we get onto the next day, but that's actually not what being a manager is about really. And it's also about setting the tone and the culture of the organization. So if the workforce doesn't feel empowered to manage their own time, to be responsible for their own deliverables, to come up with new ideas, if they feel as if they're going to get into trouble for doing that, and all they're supposed to do is log in at nine and leave at five, and complete simple tasks, then you're losing so much of the power of the workforce and potentially preventing productivity from happening.

Helen: Yes, that's so true and I'm aware of a lot of research around engagement levels and I think roughly a third of employees, generally, have low engagement so effectively, emotionally checked out of their role and just going through the motions. And I guess finding or improving the people management aspect in organizations across the country so that people are very clear on what they can deliver and feel really enthused about delivering it, that alone would have a big uplift on productivity I imagine if you can really target that 30% that are feeling really disengaged.

Jennifer: Yeah, exactly and I know from reading your book that you talk quite a lot about energy, don't you, and you talk quite a lot about if people can bring energy to work and you can encourage that and you can measure it then you will get engagement and productivity. And I think that is so true. And I think what you see sometimes in organizations is low energy and that has to be driven by manager. It has to be.

Helen: And I think a lot of that low energy, certainly in some professional industries is just exhaustion as well, because we're always on, we're got a culture of overwork and nobody's got anything left in the tank to keep on giving and yet we're expected to bounce out of bed and keep delivering for 12 hours straight the next day.

And I know organizations are coming around much more quickly to paying attention to that, and wellbeing and reducing levels of burnout following on from the pandemic. But a lot of people's day to day experiences are still that they're really an asset that's being sweated very hard during the working week, which has got longer and longer.

So some organizations really struggle, particularly knowledge based organizations, struggle to define what productivity means for their employees and actually a number of people have said to me, it's never even really mentioned. Nobody has said, what does a productive day look like? And I know it will vary in the context of different functions and different people's roles, but do you have any advice for employers on how they might very simply try and define what productivity is in their context?

Jennifer: So it's a really interesting discussion point because you can get very factual about it, can't you, and you can say, well, actually, you add up all of the revenue that's been generated and you divide it by the number of hours worked, right, and you want that number to be greater than X. And if it's greater than X, it's very productive.

But actually there's a school of thought now that says, it's got to be broader than that. So it's got to be about wellbeing, and it's got to be about benefit to the community. And it's got to be about if you start the day and then end the day in a place where your employees continue to feel good, be motivated, engaged, and they've delivered against the objectives set and added value, is it that? Without putting specific data points around it? Because you alluded to burnout and I'm sure that there are organizations that if you look at the data, they can say they've added value. But if all of the workforce is exhausted and they feel terrible and health is a big issue, poor health drives lack of long term sustainability and inability to continue down the productivity track because productivity isn't just about what you achieved in week one; it's about building a sustainable business that thrives into the future. So I think there needs to be a more holistic way of thinking about productivity. Did the day go well? Did it add value? Do people feel good? Are we down a sustainable track? It's hard to put some data around that, it's almost like it gut feel and I'm a finance director right? So I shouldn't be going down gut feel roads, but sometimes you have to, because you of know it when you see it, don't you?

Helen: I love it, that you are the finance director saying we don't want to obsess about the numbers here, we want to find a broader, meaningful definition. And I love it, I think the definition you were just describing is really compelling, both for its rounded perspectives but also for its long term perspective, which is something, both of those things I think we've lost but I think we are, and I write about it in the book, obsessively focused on the short term and if another lawyer or banker burns out, well fine, we'll just replace them because there's more to draw on. But I think your point about the long term sustainability and having productivity in the pipeline for years to come in a really healthy way, is a point really well made.

And in terms of people's levels of engagement and commitment and productivity, is there a link between productivity and pay? By tinkering with pay awards and salary levels and bonuses, can employers really drive up productivity or are they barking up the wrong tree?

Jennifer: So that's really an interesting one and this is just a personal view of mine. I know sometimes people do complain about their pay and it's going to become even more difficult in this very inflationary world. But normally when people complain about pay, they're really complaining about something else. Now it is important that you pay people fairly, and it is important of course that people are rewarded for good work. But I'm not sure that it's the thing that drives productivity, assuming that you reach a certain level which is acceptable and appropriate. I'm not sure that it really drives productivity.

I think sense of purpose, I think working for an organization where values are aligned, people feeling as if they're adding value, people feeling as if they're working with a good team, that they really enjoy doing what they're doing ... I think that has a lot more to add to productivity than giving people pay increases.

Now I'm not saying we shouldn't be paying people for good performance, I'm not suggesting that for a minute, but I absolutely don't think it's the number one driver. And when people tend to leave, they may say it's pay but usually it's because of the person that they're working for or it's because of they don't buy into the value of the company or they're struggling with a sense of purpose and so they're looking for more meaning elsewhere. That's typically why people would leave and pay gets woven into it all because it's an easy thing to say, isn't it, I'm leaving for more money and maybe there will be more money involved, but it's not normally the number one thing in my experience that drives productivity.

Helen: No, and it may be the thing that gets them in through the door and hence lots of salary wars in, in industries where there's real demand for certain skills and talent but again, back to the short term view, it might not keep people there if actually they don't love the culture when they get there and they don't have working relationships with colleagues and managers that they really value and respect. Or the working lifestyle is completely incompatible with their own desires of life and home life.

Jennifer: Yeah exactly.

Helen: So you've held many finance roles and you have this fascinating role at the northwest forum. Over the years, or perhaps more recently, has there been a particular resource that you've found really enlightening that's really helped you at a particular point, whether that's a book or a talk or, or just some advice someone's given you that you would be happy to share with people listening?

Jennifer: Yeah, I can do that. I think one of the things that I wanted to talk about was just purely something that you get as you become more experienced. I think the more senior you become in whatever field you choose, you become more and more aware that you can influence if you understand how to manage your stakeholders and you understand the objective of the organization and you understand how to bring people along with you. And some of the failures that I've had in my career are not necessarily because I didn't have a good answer, but because I wasn't able to persuade the stakeholder group or my peer group that it was a good thing to move forward with. And I say now in my job, pretty much all I do is stakeholder management. That's all I do, I talk to people, I provide guidance, I can provide guidance in my field of expertise, but change management and making things happen and moving things forward is all about understanding who your stakeholders are and making sure that you get aligned with them before you move forward.

And sometimes people don't realize that until they're quite far advanced in their career; they think, technically I know what I'm doing, I know the answer. Here's the answer. So, therefore I'm adding value, but if you know the answer but then you can't get it implemented because you haven't managed your stakeholder group. So that's something I think that I wish I'd known that earlier on in my career.

I think the other thing I wanted to touch on was this idea of the emotional intelligence. It's so important that we have a degree of emotional intelligence in the workplace. And I don't very often recommend business books because some of them are very much the same, but I did read The Chimp Paradox recently, I don't know if you've read that? By Steve Peters and I was very much taken with that, because the concept of that is all about we as human beings, when something happens at work or at home or anywhere, we react emotionally first. Because that's what we do, we're human beings. And sometimes when you react emotionally first in a work situation, it's not very productive at all, right? Because it can cause a lot of noise. So I think this idea that you recognize you react emotionally, you take your emotions and put them to one side, you switch on the computer part of your brain, you think logically, and then you figure out how to deal with the situation with a degree of emotional intelligence, we can't do it all the time because we're human beings! (laughs) And sometimes the emotions are just too much, but I think if you recognize it and what's interesting in the book is he uses an example of part of your brain is a chimpanzee and part is a computer. And if you have a chimpanzee, you do have to exercise it, but you don't exercise it in the supermarket, you exercise it in the park. So you still have to let the emotional part of you be exercised in the right place, but there's a time and place and it's not in the workplace. And I think particularly today we see a lot of emotion in the workplace particularly when there's a lot of stress with COVID obviously, and the way that we work today and I think this idea of tapping into the emotional intelligence and being very mindful of how you react to things, recognizing we get it wrong sometimes, I think it's very helpful. I found that book incredibly helpful.

Helen: That's a great recommendation thank you. I have read it and it's very good. And my husband read it too, and actually it's quite handy because we now occasionally talk about, sorry, that was my Chimp popping out sabotaging that unhelpful conversation we were just having! And we kind of get what we are talking about so it gives you a simple way of acknowledging what's going on sometimes when emotions are getting in the way of working well together. So yeah, and I totally agree with your points about stakeholder management and actually it's about bringing people with you and managing those dynamics if you really want to make something happen or implement an idea. It's not just about the task, it's about the people and the dynamics and people's reservations or hopes or fears that you have to be surfacing as well.

Thank you so much. And how can listeners connect with you after the podcast if they'd like to get in touch professionally?

Jennifer: So I'm on LinkedIn, so please go to LinkedIn, which is probably the best place to go. I would also encourage you to go to The Productivity Institute website, which is very easy to find, just do a quick Google search. You can also download the podcasts on Spotify so please do that or anywhere, I think pretty much anywhere that you would normally download podcasts, but Spotify is my place of choice. And yeah, I'd love to hear from anybody who's interested in having a conversation and thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to have a chat.

Helen: Fantastic, thank you. Well, it's been wonderful to talk together and hear about your career and the work you're doing specifically at The Productivity Institute. I'll include a link to The Productivity Institute and its podcast and the book you mentioned in the show notes. And yes, if you are somebody at an organization who's listening, who's thinking actually they'd love to get in touch to talk about getting involved in the research you're doing then do follow up with Jennifer directly afterwards, but thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. It's been a real pleasure and you've been a brilliant guest!

Jennifer: Thank you very much. Thanks for asking me.