Episode #36. Investing in Employee Experience with Fiona Wynn
“...you can probably tell pretty quickly if that organisation takes security seriously or not. Because they are investing in it, they are putting in place practices and systems, they are giving [security] a seat at the table.”
— Fiona Wynn
Fiona Wynn is a business psychologist, independent consultant and startup co-founder with extensive experience in people and culture, organisational development, and experience design. Previously, Fiona was Head of Culture, Inclusion and Innovation at Australia Post, where she built strategies and platforms for cultural change around inclusion and innovation. Fiona has worked with leaders across a broad set of industries over the years, solving unmet problems in new ways. Fiona is co-founder of Werkling, a start-up connecting on-demand professional talent with dynamic, future-ready businesses.
In this episode, Fiona shares her knowledge on company culture and its impact on your team. Learn about acculturation, and how strong organisational culture can work for you or against you. We discuss setting people up for success from day one, how a candidate can use the interview process to confirm a good cultural fit, and turning culture around as a new leader of an existing team.
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Time Stamps:
00:29 - Fiona’s introduction and background
02:15 - How to evolve and nurture leadership skills in a security leader
04:01 - How the values and belief systems of a company impact the people in the organisation
05:05 - “Values of an organisation impact on everything. It impacts on the extent to how people show up, it demonstrates or helps shape the customer experience, it shapes so many things about commercial outcomes. But ultimately…to the individual, it does impact their decision making and behaviour.” - Fiona Wynn
09:13 - The impact of acculturation on staff
12:01 - “If you’ve got a really strong culture that permeates and reinforces certain behaviours or certain attitudes or certain ways of working that actually reduces diversity, that’s a real risk. You can end up with very homogenous teams.” - Fiona Wynn
12:45 - Do we show up to work culture consciously or subconsciously?
17:59 - Setting people up for success from day one
20:20 - "If your employee experience is aligned to your brand experience, that is very powerful from a performance perspective. You’re much more likely to give customers a great experience if your employees are feeling really engaged, empowered, having a really good time." Fiona Wynn
21:32 - Designing the perfect onboarding experience
22:55 - Three things a candidate should ask during the interview process to confirm value alignment with an organisation
27:15 - Turning around culture as a new leader of an established team
28:00 - “Hold your assumptions. It is easy to pick up on stories... Blame culture might have actually really gotten its claws into that team. I think the really important thing is to stay quite impartial and to not make judgments on the former leader or make judgments on the team that was, and see this as an opportunity to start again.” - Fiona Wynn