Consultant Insights: Helping Clients See the Unseen
In this episode, Sara interviews Ginny Nemchick, a principal consultant of people operations, about the challenges and changes in HR and people operations in the past four years. They discuss the impact of COVID-19 on workplaces, the importance of values alignment, and the need for clear policies and practices. Ginny shares examples of clients who are successfully implementing positive changes and offers insights on delivering hard-to-hear feedback. They also discuss the value of investing in people operations and the role of external consultants in providing a fresh perspective. Stream more episodes wherever you get your podcasts!
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Sara: Welcome to a special episode of, Can I Offer You Some Feedback? My name is Sara, and this is the podcast for those who have a complicated relationship with feedback and are looking to hear from real people across levels and industries with their ideas, perspectives, and best practices on feedback.
Today, I want to share a special episode where I talk with another consultant who specializes in HR and people operations. In this episode, we'll be focusing and hearing their insight across industries and what they wish they could give their clients feedback on. I want to welcome Ginny to the podcast today. They are a principal consultant of people operations and a co-managing director at Work in Progress Consulting. Welcome to the conversation today.
Ginny: Hey, thanks for having me, Sara.
Sara: My pleasure. Well, I want to dive into the conversation today with a little bit about your specific perspective. Can you share a little bit about your primary areas of focus at the practice?
Ginny: Yeah, absolutely. I focus on people operations, which really just means the policies and practices and processes to get the work done. And for me, that really means doing that with an eye on the human experience of the folks who are doing the work. So I work primarily with nonprofits, foundations, and social justice-focused organizations to do this work. And to me, it's really important that the policies, the practices, the experience that folks are having in their workplace align with the values of the organization.
Sara: And I know, we've had the opportunity to work together a bit, that values alignment makes it different. This isn't classic corporate. It's really about how do we see those people and invest to them in a little bit of a different way. So, I think it feels different when you get to work with clients like that.
I'm curious, you've been in a lot of different sectors, you've had a lot of professional experience, and something that I think a lot of folks feel that whether it's an HR or people operation, it feels a little different in these past four years than it did before And I'm curious, what are you hearing from the clients you're working with, or what feels different about the requests or the challenges that they're facing in the past four years as compared to kind of pre-COVID?
Ginny: So much has changed in this time. And I would say even within the last year, it's a lot different than it was even earlier in the pandemic. And maybe you've seen that too. One of the big things is folks are sort of grappling with this reality that we are actually post-COVID but we're still living with it. It's still a huge issue, but also a lot of workplaces just aren't dealing with it. A lot of folks just aren't dealing with it or just not talking about it.
And I understand why I feel in many ways our governments have sort of abdicated responsibility in this area. And then workplaces, especially small ones, they don't know what to do. They don't have the resources to do it. And the public doesn't have as widespread access to COVID data as we had earlier in the pandemic. So it just has a lot of impacts.
Remote work is a huge issue. Safety and accessibility in general is a huge issue. And you know this too, of course, lots of folks in disability justice spaces have been talking about this since 2020 and even before. It's really interesting to see how accommodations could be made at scale for able people, but disabled folks are still struggling to get the accommodations they need. And that's related and unrelated to COVID.
I would also say right now I'm seeing more anxiety about remote work now than I did in 2020, which is really interesting because we even already have all this data that shows that remote and hybrid teams are working for people. But I think because there has been this kind of societal pressure to get back to a "pre-COVID world", we're sort of dreaming that the box never got opened and that's just not reality.
Sara: Right. And I think that, exactly what you're saying, there's this even if the data's there, we're going to look for what we want to see in the data and how we're measuring the data. And with any data, there's bias, right?
Ginny: Sure.
Sara: What data are we collecting? What's the pool that we're looking at? It's very hard to make totally unbiased data. Again, because even the researcher sometimes has a bias, or maybe they're not doing... Like if you do a study of five out of ten Americans. Okay, but which Americans did you talk to? And which folks were there?
Ginny: Sure.
Sara: And what does that mean? And was it on the street? Was it during the day? And so I think that the data shows us what we want it to show us and that makes it challenging when we are doing those pieces and parts of the work. I am curious, you work with a lot of organizations kind of at different points in what they're looking for, or what they're trying to accommodate as a part of their work.
And sometimes, as you know, when we're doing that client's conversation, they're not able to see how that gradual problem has built over time and it's been building and maybe it's no longer a small elephant in the room. It's a giant elephant in the room. What are some of the ways that you help the client see what you're seeing that feels obvious for you, but maybe they're just choosing not to see it or they can't see it. How do you help them see what you're seeing?
Ginny: It's funny you bring this up. I was just talking about this with another colleague recently and she used the phrase, you open a can of worms and inside is another can of worms. And you know that happens all the time. So, I just did this recently. Actually, one of the things that I like to do is kind of reword feedback that we've received as a question. So, I keep the raw unedited feedback. I want to look at that and share that with everyone who needs to see it too. But then I also reword it as a question.
An example is if someone says, "I don't know how to ask my supervisor to flex my time to go to a doctor's appointment." I can see them asking a couple of different things. They're saying, how do I use my flex time? How do I talk to my supervisor? But they're also saying, why does it feel like these policies aren't clear? Why does it feel like this isn't applied evenly? And does this workplace even care about my health? All of those are questions that are sort of underneath that feedback. And so I think when you kind of break down and extrapolate the questions, it can help us kind of figure out themes that we need to focus on.
Sara: Right. Because the question isn't really the question. And to go back to the client to be like, do you want to be a workplace where people have to ask? And maybe you do. And not that they're not going to log it. We do need to document it maybe for the grand purposes or for timekeeping, etc. But do you want to be an organization where folks have to come to you to ask for 30 minutes or 40 or what is the minimum amount of time? And that is a different conversation to have with them that still comes from that question of, should I have to tell my supervisor every time I need two hours to go to the dentist because I have some tooth emergency I've got to handle?
Ginny: Yeah. And I think it's telling us too if policies and practices are working as intended. I've worked with places where the leadership has the intention to have this really kind of open culture, but then we're seeing that maybe different people at different levels of management aren't implementing things in the spirit that they were meant. And so some of that comes down to figuring out why. What's the hesitation there? And sometimes the managers themselves are not comfortable with a more open approach because maybe they haven't had that before. So there's lots of different levels. It's about the policy, but it's also about the implementation and the experience that people are having day to day.
Sara: Right. Which leads into different kind of discussions with them that maybe they haven't thought about.
Ginny: Yeah.
Sara: I'm wondering, I know you've worked with a wide variety of clients. I'm curious if you could share an example of a client of yours, you can keep them anonymous if you'd like, who when you're working with them, you really feel like they're doing the work. There's definitely folks who say it and then you can't tell if they're doing it. Then there's people that you're delivering stuff and they're just paying the bill and you're like, "I hope they're using it." But folks with whom work that you're just like, "Oh man, they are really doing it." They really care about improving the space for their folks or making HR more accessible or making policies in practice. Could you share a little bit about what the difference there is?
Ginny: Yeah, for sure. I'll keep it anonymous just because I didn't ask for permission. I guess I'll speak broadly too because this goes for different folks. But I would say generally, I feel like someone is committed to doing the work when they can sit with those uncomfortable feelings and say, "Mmh, interesting. What is this telling me?" Instead of just letting fear kind of guide them.
A more specific example is I was working with a leader recently who got feedback from staff about some of the needs they had around wellness and benefits. And the person was a little bit confused because actually the organization has a really great insurance, a really generous wellness stipend, like all these other sort of things that they feel like they're investing. But when we dove a little bit deeper and we started thinking about different needs that folks have, for example, some folks from marginalized backgrounds need care that isn't covered by traditional insurance. And so if you have a lot of those folks represented on your staff, it becomes clear what the deeper meaning of the feedback is. And so this person was able to be like, "Oh, yeah. Actually, from my perspective, this all looked good. But now I'm seeing folks have needs that I wasn't thinking about because they're not part of my experience."
I recently worked with another person who got feedback that they were uncomfortable with. And I think it was because it was the first time that they felt... You know, it's a really small organization, really collaborative, and it was the first time that they really felt like they were a boss instead of like a team member on a team of people doing this work. And it made them feel uncomfortable, but then they were really able to sit with that, talk about why it bothered them. And then also getting to a place to acknowledge like, "Yes, actually there is a power dynamic here. And even though I feel like we're all collaborating, and we are, the reality is that there is a power imbalance inherent in this relationship and actually...." you know, acknowledging that even if it feels a little bit uncomfortable is really the only way to make sure that it doesn't get out of control.
Sara: Yeah. I think that one of the benefits of bringing in a third party consultant or outside perspective is you get to hear things that people won't tell you directly. And that's also uncomfortable. Because if you've been leading in such a way that no one tells you stuff you don't want to hear, sometimes the consultant has to work with that person to confront, they're like, "I know you think everything's great, but here's a slice of what other folks are thinking and how do you want to choose to react to that and how do you want to choose to kind of take it forward?" And that can be hard. That can be definitely hard.
Ginny: It can be for some people, but I do think the indicator that they're doing the work is that, okay, it's hard, but I'm still going to do it. And I can admit that I'm wrong and that I'm fallible. And we all are. And so if we can't acknowledge that, then we're never going to make progress.
Sara: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm curious, this kind of segues, you give a few examples. There are times when maybe you do see that organization or that person or that client they're trying. You can see they're trying, they're putting in the effort. Again, it might be colleague, it might be a client. And just regardless of how hard they're trying, it's not working. It's not producing the results. They're not achieving what they're hoping to. And I'm curious, how do you, or what are some of the ways you deliver hard-to-hear feedback regarding how it's actually going?
Ginny: That's a great question. And yeah, it is hard to admit when things are not going the way that we want them to go. I think I try to couch things in terms of a person's own stated goals and values and motivations and kind of use that as a way to discuss why it's important that the work gets done and why the goal is reached. What were we thinking when we set out and what were our motivations and try to focus on the reasons why.
I also think, of course, like leaving space for feelings. So much of this work is really about feelings. And then, thirdly, identifying together what the barriers are. Sometimes things come up that we didn't expect. And that can be internal within us individually as people. It can be internal in other folks that we're working with. It can be external forces. It can be all of that. So I think delivering that sort of bad news with a side of problem-solving.
Sara: And especially, I know I've seen you do this too, it's if the person's ready, right?
Ginny: Yes.
Sara: Like, I have to deliver this and are you ready to proceed? Do you want to take a minute? Because I think sometimes folks rush to problem-solving because it feels more productive. But if we don't sit in the discomfort, and I'm not saying we've got to be uncomfortable forever, but I don't like hearing that I'm not doing a good job even if I'm the only one telling myself. I don't like knowing that. But I have to sit and be like, why does it feel this way? And like, what's going on? And what's happening? And if we just rushed to like, let me fix it, let me fix it. What am I fixing? I could be fixing the wrong thing.
Ginny: Yeah. And I think that's what I mean by leaving space for those feelings because... You're right. You can't necessarily just jump in to fix it. It has to be more of a reflection and a lot of what needs fixed when... I don't want to say that people's feelings need fixed because the way you feel is the way that you feel. But sometimes what needs to sort of be adjusted is your approach to the work, your expectations for the work, and your expectations for how the work was going to make you feel.
Sara: Yeah. I have a team right now that I'm talking to and they're really struggling with other departments not seeing their value. And we've been talking about like, you can't make others love you. You have to love yourself. Which is such like an internal human component and it just keeps coming up. They're trying so hard to get the recognition and the validation from those other areas and I'm like, they're not going to do it. I mean, we want them to do it, I encourage them to do it, we can talk about how you communicate with other areas, but you have to believe it, and you have to think that what you're doing is valuable and that you are making an impact and they're just not that into you. And that doesn't mean you recraft yourself to make them love you. They're not ready yet for what you are trying to offer.
And that has been hard for these four leaders and they're just really struggling with that. And as you're saying, it is a personal component and something to kind of think about and reflect on. I'm wondering, with people operations, I think there's on the surface, a real simplicity of like, oh yeah, you just update documents or like, oh yeah, you just... But I'm wondering if you could share what your hope, if people could just understand blank about the value of really investing in people operations, or really thinking about the way our human systems are designed, what would it be that thing that you wish that they would understand?
Ginny: Well, one of the reasons that I really like doing this work is because I have the opportunity to materially positively impact people's day-to-day work environment. And we're spending so much time at work. And so, that has a huge impact on our mental health. That has a huge impact on our quality of life. I am not a mental health professional. I want to make that super clear, but I do sometimes joke with people that I'm a business therapist, which again is a joke. I don't really, it's not true, but so much about feelings comes up.
And so, I think having HR or people operations that is external to an organization, so not sort of embedded within an organization can be really, really helpful because you get an outside perspective, you're not locked into those kinds of traditional power structures. You might not be locked into those interpersonal drama or organizational dysfunction that might exist.
At the same time, I understand why there is so much fear of traditional HR. It has been wielded as a weapon and a lot of people are literally traumatized by that. So at the same time, I think there is a human-centered way to do this work and I would like for people to understand that. I also understand that there's nuance there.
Sara: Yeah, absolutely. And I love that you frame it that way because I think, yes, there's the structure. Yes, there's the policy or the paper, but there's the how we choose to interpret it and how we choose to enact it. And even something as small as, and you and I, we've joked about like unlimited PTO. Like, unlimited? What were you trying to accomplish with, not in a judgy way, but what do you think that's supposed to be offering? And then what does it actually offer? And if it truly is unlimited, like I don't work Fridays anymore. And like, is that a thing we can do? You know, you said unlimited, so.
And whenever I push on a company like that, they're like, well, no, I mean, and I'm like, well, then it's not unlimited. And again, I know I'm picking and choosing, but your employee is reading that sentence and they're trying to understand what you mean. And I don't want to have to spend extra legwork to figure out, like, well, it's kind of sort of unlimited, but only if you have X, Y, and Z. Then it's not, right? It is really not. It's that extra level of getting clear and I think that that makes a big difference in the end of the work. So, it's huge. Well, for our last question in our time together, Ginny, can I offer you some feedback?
Ginny: I would love for you to offer me some feedback, Sara.
Sara: Well, Ginny, one of the things that I really love when I've had the opportunity to work with you or hear about projects that you're working on, I am constantly impressed at how, and I'm not sure this is the word, but I think about either a combination of resilience/rational detachment. And what I mean is in meetings when the clients or when our customers or when we're talking and the wildest stuff is happening, you just are like, yeah, okay. And like, here's what we're going to do. Or like, here's how we're going to proceed. And it is an unmatched cool. Like a calm, nope, that's not what the feedback was. Nope, that's not how we're proceeding. Or yes, this is how we're going to go.
And believe me, we've had some wild and hairy encounters and I'm just always like, man, Ginny has it together. I'm sitting here getting escalated, and I'm sure you're feeling it inside, but you're not showing that. I'm just like, be the poker face, be one with Ginny's soul right now. Because it is a level of just no-nonsense. It's your very personable ball, but I don't feel like you take any comment the client says personally. And they say some crazy stuff.
And that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. It just means in the moment you're able to separate, like, you're mad about something else right now and you're choosing to take it out on like your vacation policy through me, but it's your policy, my friend! You're the one who wrote this thing. So, I'm here to help you and do you want the help or not? It's such a nice detachment and so reminding of whenever you tell me, I'm the queen of scope creep, but you're like, yeah, sorry, that's not on the deliverables. And I'm like, you're right.
I really love that clarity you have. And that just like, nope, that's not in bounds. Like, that's not what we're doing. That's not on the schedule. And I admire that so much. And I really love that. And I hope that your clients get to see that in the best possible way, even if they're the ones... But all the colleagues you also work with as well and get a chance to collaborate with. So, I wanted to say thank you for that, and I really appreciate that in working with you.
Ginny: Sara, thank you so much for that feedback. I really appreciate it. I need good feedback too and as you know, when you're a consultant, often you're working in a vacuum. And you've got to go to the next project and the next project and the next project. So it is really nice to take a minute and tell each other what we appreciate about working together. So thank you.
Sara: Absolutely. Well, Ginny, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me, and thanks to you for joining us in a special episode of Can I Offer You Some Feedback? You can reach me at [email protected]. We would love to hear from you on your thoughts on feedback and any other perspectives you'd like to hear from next. As always, give us a quick rating on your platform of choice and share this podcast with a friend. And I'm hoping that tomorrow you take a chance and offer some feedback when it's needed most.
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