“Fantastic work culture” with Stuart Hearn CEO & Founder of Clear Review
As a part of my series about how leaders can create a “fantastic work culture”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Stuart Hearn is a speaker, people management specialist and the CEO & Founder of performance-tech company Clear Review. With 20 years’ HR experience, both as an HR Director at Sony Music and a consultant, he has spent the last 10 years helping organisations to embed practices that engage, develop and retain their people.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
Having worked in Human Resources since I graduated, I’ve always been involved in developing people and building workplace cultures within organisations. I always thought that one day, it would be great to start my own company and build my own culture. And sometimes it takes something to push you into that. That day came when I was working at a global media company and the new CFO announced to me that I couldn’t have any budget for developing and motivating our staff. In fact, his exact words were “They’re lucky to have a job.”
I resigned immediately after that conversation and decided to start my own company where people were genuinely valued.
Are you working on any exciting projects now? How do you think that will help people?
What we’re doing at Clear Review right now is hugely exciting. We’re tackling one of the most hated workplace activities — the annual appraisal. We’re helping organisations to transition away from annual reviews to a culture of regular, meaningful performance and development conversation and real-time feedback, and we’re using technology as the enabler. We recently won the Vendor of the Year prize at the Employee Engagement Awards, which was a big deal. Performance management has had a history of negatively impacting employee engagement, so for a performance management tech company to win an employee engagement award was a huge step change in our industry and people have really taken notice.
Ok, lets jump to the main part of our interview. According to this study cited in Forbes, more than half of the US workforce is unhappy. Why do you think that number is so high?
‘Always on’ technology such as mobile email and instant messaging platforms such as Slack have meant that employees are bombarded with information at work and many are finding it hard to cope. Our workplace habits have evolved slower than technology so many of us haven’t yet worked out how to maintain a healthy balance amongst all the data surrounding us and gunning for our attention, both at work and in our personal lives. This is partly why I believe we’re seeing unprecedented levels of workplace stress and mental health issues. Many people are simply exhausted mentally.
Based on your experience or research, how do you think an unhappy workforce will impact a) company productivity b) company profitability c) and employee health and wellbeing?
Research by IZA World of Labor showed a clear link between employee happiness and productivity, and companies that are more productive are obviously more profitable — they can achieve more than their competitors with less. This is one of the reasons why there is such a focus on wellbeing in the workplace right now. Measuring happiness and engagement levels used to be something that fell to HR departments, but increasingly workplace happiness is becoming a business measure. In Jeff Sutherland’s hugely successful Scrum methodology, he recommends that all teams do a happiness check at the end of each sprint and implement one idea for improving happiness in the team during the next sprint.
Can you share 5 things that managers and executives should be doing to improve their company work culture? Can you give a personal story or example for each?
1. Get rid of annual performance appraisals. Ditching annual performance reviews should be the first step any organisation takes to improve their work culture as they are one of the most hated and demotivating of workplace practices — 95% of managers are dissatisfied with them. This is why my company has been on a mission to eradicate them from workplaces all over the world. And the impact on employee engagement can be dramatic. Indeed, when the companies we work with announce to their staff they are getting rid of appraisals, they are regularly greeted with applause and cheers!
2. Implement a culture of regular coaching conversations and feedback for staff. When you ditch appraisals, you need to replace it with something more effective. Research from Gallup has found that employees whose managers have regular one-to-ones with them and who receive regular feedback are three times more likely to be engaged at work. So adopting this approach is a no-brainer for improving work culture. In our organisation, we call these conversations ‘check-ins’ and we do them each month. Although it takes time, it’s the best value time that our managers can spend as our employees tell us that check-ins give them a massive motivation boost each month and they couldn’t imagine a workplace where these didn’t happen.
3. Seek upward feedback regularly and act on it. For a healthy work culture, feedback needs to be two-way and you need to demonstrate to your staff that you value their opinion. Doing this once a year via an annual employee survey no longer cuts it. You need to seek feedback from staff regularly — this can be done via pulse surveys or by training your managers to ask for upwards feedback during their staff one-to-ones. However, you get the feedback, make sure you take time to analyse it and take concrete actions to improve things on the back of it. In our organisation, we uncovered an easy win that has had a massive impact on productivity — our employees were finding it hard to get high concentration work done in the office, so we now allow them to work from home for up to 2 days per week. Interestingly, nobody told us about this problem until we asked — so if we haven’t asked, we may never have known!
4. Demonstrate the right behaviors from the top. Companies often come up with a set of company values or behaviours that they want their staff to demonstrate at work. But deeds are much more important than words. So if you want do embed positive behaviours at work, hire leaders and managers who live those values every day, and hold managers accountable when they don’t. A set of values pinned to the wall will make no difference if your staff see that their managers aren’t embodying the behaviours themselves and nothing is being done about it. One behaviour that I’ve seen have the biggest impact in organisations, including our own, is transparency. I received some feedback only yesterday from one of our top performers in marketing saying that the thing she values about me most as a CEO is that I’m completely open with our employees about everything that I’m involved in — from our financial situation to what’s been discussed in board meetings. Doing this builds trust and it also eliminates rumours and suspicion that can quickly corrode a healthy work culture.
5. Regularly reward and recognise effort and achievements. Managers need to show their employees that their work is appreciated and valued. On top of this, employees deserve to have their efforts acknowledged. Praising effort as well as achievement promotes a healthy growth mindset, which is something that can ultimately hugely benefit a company’s productivity (on top of employee engagement levels).
It’s very nice to suggest ideas, but it seems like we have to “change the culture regarding work culture”. What can we do as a society to make a broader change in the US workforce’s work culture?
As a society, we all need to feel like we’re contributing more than just our work. But with people working harder than ever how do we make time for this? I recently saw the renowned TED speaker Matthieu Ricard, a scientist turned Buddhist monk, speak at a future of work conference about the importance of altruism at work — bringing happiness to others. Matthieu explained that the number one factor in happiness is not money but the quality of human relationships. By showing loving compassion and kindness to others at work, we can directly impact happiness on a personal level which over time will lead to societal and wider cultural change.
How would you describe your leadership or management style? Can you give us a few examples?
My default approach is to inspire and influence rather than direct. I treat people like adults, pay them fairly and trust them to deliver what is expected, without micromanaging them. This is easier said than done, especially when you own the company and it’s your baby! To be able to resist the temptation to interfere too much, I’ve learned through experience that you need to have great people and agree clear deliverables with them.
Before Clear Review, I owned an HR consulting company which performed OK but didn’t grow spectacularly. And when I look back, the people I hired were just OK and not spectacular. That led to me not delegating enough and working too much. I ended up burning out. That was a big learning for me. So when I started Clear Review, I made a concerted effort to hire people who are better than me at what they do. And that’s worked brilliantly — once my team know what needs to be achieved, they will get on and deliver it. So my job has become more of a coach and a confidante, to keep them all motivated and happy. That’s a much better job than working late correcting other people’s mistakes!
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I’ve had various advisors and board members that have helped me at different stages, but the single most important person who has helped me to succeed is actually one of my employees, Dan, who is our Chief Revenue Officer. I had some great advice early on from a business coach who said I needed to change the company from being a tech-driven company to a sales-driven company, so I borrowed all the money I could get hold of and spent it on hiring the best, most experienced sales executive I could afford. A contact introduced me to Dan who had built sales teams before and he agreed to come on board and do the same for us. Considering we only had two employees at the time, it was a bold (and expensive) move for our small startup. But it was the best business decision I’ve ever made. Since he joined, we’ve grown 200% each year and he’s become a close friend as well as a colleague. Being a founder or CEO can be a lonely job, so having someone who can share the burden with you, who you can bounce ideas off and who can give you honest feedback that nobody else would give you, is invaluable.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
The mission that we’re all on at our company is based on making the working world a better place. As I mentioned earlier, we’re helping organisations all around the world to replace annual performance reviews which bring anxiety and unhappiness to employees every day. And we’re starting to see real progress in our mission. We recently spoke to an employee at one of our customers who broke into tears describing the anxiety she used to feel in the lead up to her annual appraisal and how our approach and technology has taken all that away. The Head of People at a major bank we’re working with recently told us “What you guys are doing has the potential to make working life better for thousands of people”. It’s feedback like that which gets us out of bed in the morning!
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My favourite quote is from Henry Ford who famously said “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t — you’re right”. That’s always struck a chord with me as I’ve always had great ambitions and ideas from as early as I can remember, but I equally remember the amount of people around me who tried to stop me from thinking big, saying things like “Don’t waste your time on that, you’ll never achieve it” or “You’ll only be disappointed”. As Ford suggests, if you think like that, then you will be disappointed. If you want to achieve something big, and then you plan and act as if it is going to happen, there’s a good chance you’ll end up achieving it. Maybe not on your first attempt, or even your second, but keep believing and you’ll get there in the end.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
Just as bad managers can ruin lives in the workplace, I’ve directly experienced the effect that poor parenting can have on young children. A few years ago, my wife and I adopted two young children who had grown up in an environment of extreme neglect and fear. The impact that trauma has on young minds is devastating but there isn’t enough financial support available to help support these children. Most will need years of professional therapy to help them to lead happy lives as adults and we’ve had to fight hard to get this therapy for our children, but we know many adoptive families who haven’t been as lucky as us. So I’d love to inspire a movement that brings greater awareness of the lasting impact of childhood trauma and encourages more support to be made available to these children and their families.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you continued success!
