peopleandculture

From serving fried chicken to co-ordinating military air traffic for the Royal Australian Air Force, Lucy's career has been anything but straightforward. Today, as CEO and founder of Study Life Grow, she uses the leadership skills she learned in her ADFA days to help hundreds of thousands of kids figure out what life after school looks like for them. In this episode, we unpack the 6 careers clusters her team have uncovered, explore the future world of work through the eyes of Gen Z, and unpack the importance and value of starting meaningful careers conversations early. 

For links to tips and tools discussed, and free insight to action cheatsheet, visit the episode page - https://www.marianepower.com.au/blog/navigating-careers-conversations-with-gen-z 

To watch the conversation in action, head over to YouTube via the link here https://youtu.be/2UfnwzdCWtM

With special thanks to My Video Producer, for sponsoring Season 3 of Classroom 5.0! 

Check out their good work by visiting https://www.myvideoproducer.com.au/

Are you able to confidently spot the psychosocial hazards your team may be facing? Caitlin Ible, an employment law expert from MinterEllison, joins us to provide the practical tips every leader needs to quickly and easily identify and minimize their team’s psychosocial risks. 

You'll learn:
[02:47] - Caitlin explores the differences between psychosocial hazards and risks.
[04:43] - Caitlin discusses the Work Design hazards.
[09:56] - Caitlin explains Social Support hazards.
[17:05] - Caitlin discusses Work Conditions hazards.
[20:32] - Caitlin discusses Work Experience hazards.
[25:55] - Caitlin discusses the workplace responsibilities towards employees and contractors.
[32:27] - Caitlin discusses the necessary risk assessments.

To stay a part of the conversation and up to date with the latest research and evidence-based ways to supercharge safety for your people, join us on The Leaders Lab LinkedIn Page https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/theleaderslab/ 

Thanks for listening!
Please leave an honest review for Making Leadership Work on Apple Podcasts to help us continue to improve, and reach more people. 

We do read each and every review and we are grateful to anyone who takes the time to share their thoughts with us. 

Until next time, take care. 

We’re celebrating Pride Month on “Inside on the Circles.” For this edition, we’re joined by technical program manager Mark O’Looney and vice president, social impact communications, Allison Kahn. (You may also be familiar with Mark and his story through his ever-growing Instagram account ‘Two Men and a Surrogacy’).

Mark and Allison will join host Latoya Bennett-Johnson for a discussion on their career journeys, the importance of equity and inclusivity in the workplace, what Pride Month means to them and Mastercard’s commitment to supporting the LGBTQ+ community.

For links to tips and tools discussed, and your free copy of our youth fun sheets to take into your learning spaces visit https://www.theposifygroup.com.au/podcast/michael-ellis/

With the occasion of World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development, we sat down with Tom Gruber – the inventor of Siri and had an insightful  conversation about how AI, if put to good use, can accelerate sustainable development and contribute to creating a better world.  

It's no secret that industries still stumble, struggle, and in some cases, fail when it comes to building #inclusive workplaces. On today's Tech Reimagined podcast, we sat down with Meri Williams to get her view and advice on achieving diversity and inclusion in our industry.   

Please tune in to learn more about where we need to go as an industry so that women, people of colour, members of the LGBTQ community, and other underrepresented groups are adequately represented. 

This podcast was a unique and different podcast compared to the normal Culture Crush Business Podcast. This was an opportunity for our host, Kindra Maples, to join another podcast in the Phoenix community. Kelly Lorenzen, the host of the Collaborative Connections Podcast and the owner of KLM Consulting, brings 3 individuals together from the community to connect and collaborate. 

The best part of this podcast conversation was the topic that it quickly leaned toward- CULTURE! This is a conversation that people can always contribute to and as we saw in the discussion here, it was a topic that they wanted to bring up and be part of.

This was a great opportunity for the Culture Crush Business Podcast and we hope to join forces with Kelly again in the future.  

Alcyon Consulting can help you in two ways…Financial & Business Operations Management and Business Consulting & Advisory Services. With Alcyon’s financial and business operations support, you can shift the burden of managing and overseeing those necessary, but non revenue generating activities, to a professional who has the passion, experience, and training to assess, manage and improve your company’s business infrastructure thus freeing you to focus on generating revenue and building the business. 

If you are looking for a fresh set of eyes to review and analyze any or all aspects of your business…from financial statements to fraud prevention, then Alcyon’s Business Consulting & Advisory Services could be the answer.

As an Accredited Small Business Consultant (ASBC), Bob and Alcyon utilize a proprietary approach to review and analyze your business, and along with its broad business partner network, Alcyon will not be able to not only make solid recommendations for improvements but will be able to identify, vet and implement the right solution.

Bob Blum leverages over 35 years of extensive and varied experience, in both staff and leadership roles, helping companies build and maintain stable business operations by focusing on maximizing both financial and human assets.

These roles include Principal and Chief Financial Officer for Peerless Candy & Tobacco Company, Senior Human Resource Consultant for Peoples Energy Corporation, Controller for Ben Brooks & Associates, Controller for Incentive Logic, and most recently CFO for MAC6.

Bob is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), an Accredited Small Business Consultant (ASBC), a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, and has a Bachelor’s in Business Administration from Ohio University. In addition, Bob earned a Master’s in Human Resources, with a specialization in Organization Development, from Loyola University in Chicago.

Connect with Bob on LinkedIn.

Bell Insurance is one of the largest independently owned, full-service agencies. They’ve worked in insurance for more than 100 years, giving them unparalleled experience and expertise on policies designed to serve you, your family, and your business in the best way possible. 

in 1911 as Warner and Company Insurance in Fargo, N.D., they became Bell Insurance in 2019 when they joined forces with Bell Bank, one of the largest independently owned banks in the nation.

Bell is known for exceptional service and high integrity, where people matter, which shows in how their team members treat each other, their customers, and those around them.

They understand one of your biggest challenges is managing around the things you can’t control. They can help you by building an insurance plan based on what you need to address the unique risks your operation faces.

By getting to know you and your business and working with you to figure out an insurance policy that gives you the right coverage at the best rate, they’ll help you protect what you’ve worked so hard to build.

Whether you need small business insurance or coverage for a large, niche operation, they’ll help you protect what matters with commercial insurance coverage options in your best interest, competitive pricing, stress-free claims, and the high-quality service you can expect from Bell.

Sara Kelley has over 20 years of experience serving clients in a risk management capacity. She started her insurance career in Chicago, IL with the world’s largest insurance brokerage firm and moved with them to the Phoenix market. Since being in Arizona, Mrs. Kelley has developed her expertise to serve the businesses that thrive in the Valley of the Sun.

Sara specializes in property and casualty insurance and risk management for a variety of industries including Healthcare, Social Services, and Non Profits, as well as Indian Nations, contractors, manufacturers, and many other businesses. Sara provides clients with insurance solutions for various insurable risks.

For Insureds, Sara Kelley delivers risk and policy coverage reviews that focus on your firm’s expense reduction, cash-flow improvement, balance sheet protection, and decision-making insight.

Connect with Sara on LinkedIn.

Conscious Capitalism Arizona 

Free enterprise capitalism has served to lift more people out of poverty than any other socio-economic system ever conceived – empowering social cooperation, human progress, and elevating humanity. 

Good business is the answer to many of the global issues that humankind is facing.

For too long, capitalism in the media has been associated with lying, cheating, manipulating, gaming the system, and taking advantage of society.

But for every horror story being told about the selfishness of corporate America and Wall Street, there are thousands of stories of businesses supporting their communities, investing in their employees, and making the world a better place.

We are working to change the capitalism narrative by shining a bright light on good business – telling the stories of conscious Arizona companies (and encouraging others to follow in their footsteps).

There is a lot in her background that has led Kindra Maples to where she is today.

Her past experiences, interactions, careers, and partnerships have led her to grow the roles she holds in the community; the VP of Volunteers with Conscious Capitalism Arizona, Sales Development with YellowBird, and the host of the Culture Crush Business Podcast.

She is a spartan racer, past animal trainer, previous magician’s assistant, and has a weakness for Oreo cookie shakes. Her journey working with people actually started working with animals as a teenager (don’t worry we won’t go that far back for her bio).

She worked for over 15 years in the zoo industry working with animals and the public. Her passion for working with animals shifted into working with people in education, operations, and leadership roles. From there her passion for leadership and helping people develop has continued to grow.

Her experience in non-profit operations, communications, and program engagement have brought her to the place she is today. Her experiences have built her passion and her “why” in areas of culture building, engagement, and growing strong teams.

Connect with Kindra on LinkedIn and follow Conscious Capitalism Arizona on Facebook, Twitter ,and Instagram.

This episode of Culture Crush focused on the conversation of employee recognition. We were able to highlight two great individuals leading two employee recognition companies. Dan Silivestru with Chocolate Soup and Jonathan Fields with Assembly provided insight into the need for company recognition to the employees as we way that can increase company culture, brand recognition, and increase engagement and retention of the staff.

Their two companies compliment each other with the support they give to employee recognition. Assembly allows the employees the opportunity to provide recognition to their peers while Chocolate Soup allows the leadership team to provide recognition to the employees on all of their special days.

85% OF HR LEADERS SAY EMPLOYEE RECOGNITION PROGRAMS ENHANCE THEIR ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE.

79% OF EMPLOYEES SAY THEY WOULD BE MORE LOYAL TO THEIR EMPLOYERS IF THEY RECEIVED MORE RECOGNITION.

This episode is great for all listeners. We can all connect with working for a company with a good culture or a bad culture, so we can all connect to the discussion of employee recognition as well.
We encourage company leaders to listen to this episode to gain two new resources that are designed to help employee recognition and therefore the overall health of the company culture. These two resources can drastically help improve the engagement of the staff by showing them the recognition they need.

Chocolate Soup was born out of a sheer passion for building great company culture in support of happy, caring, and respectful teams. They’re here to help companies of all sizes discover the power of radical generosity, surprise and delight by recognizing important employee milestones with expertly curated, personal gifts.

Chocolate Soup offers a subscription-based employee recognition program that delivers beautifully curated gift boxes filled with treats and gifts. Companies can recognize their employees’ work anniversaries, birthdays, children and pet birthdays and more.

They also offer custom gift boxes for company events or for unique milestones including weddings and new home purchases.

Chocolate Soup lives and breathes employee happiness!

Dan Silivestru is the co-founder and CEO of Chocolate Soup. A life-long entrepreneur, Dan and his partner Pj Lowe have founded three previous startups, selling TinyHippos to RIM (BlackBerry) in 2011.

Their experience closing down their last startup, bitHound, gave them the idea for Chocolate Soup and its mission to help companies with employee recognition, engagement, and retention through beautifully curated, locally sourced gift boxes.

In addition to running Chocolate Soup, Dan also serves on the board of several startups and mentors early-stage founders with their startups.

Follow Chocolate Soup on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Assembly is an employee recognition and rewards solution that ensure employees feel appreciated and acknowledged for their hard work.

Jonathan Fields started his career in investment banking. After one short year he realized that his efforts were not truly valued and wanted to work in a more collaborative environment. Jonathan joined a small startup called ZipRecruiter as the 15th employee. The company went on to grow to over 1,000 employees and recently went public.

After 7 amazing years at ZipRecruiter Jonathan realized he wanted to better the employee experience and make work more efficient so he went on to build Assembly. In the past year Assembly has grown over 3,000% and continues to better work life culture in this changing environment.

Jonathan is an avid golfer, lives in Marina Del Rey with his fiance Eliana and has a mini golden doodle named Charlie. Jonathan also has a very immature sense of humor and is obsessed with Coldstone.

Follow Assembly on LinkedIn.

During the nearly 18 months of constant anxiety, stress and fatigue, the pandemic has affected the global population in unimaginable ways. For millions, the line between work and life has been blurred, and there should be no shame in admitting that our wellbeing is sometimes suffering.

On the latest episode of "Inside the Circles,” host Latoya Bennett-Johnson chats with Mastercard's Chief People Officer Michael Fraccaro about the company’s approach to wellness: “We put our hand on people's back, not in their face,” he says. 

Even before the pandemic, wellbeing was a priority for Fraccaro. He noticed employees working long hours and travelling a lot, but there seemed to be a stigma against speaking up about feeling overwhelmed, he says.

Once the lockdown hit, Fraccaro recognized that keeping the workforce happy and healthy was a key priority, so he and his team implemented meeting-free days to combat Zoom fatigue, shorter summer hours on Fridays and global benefits including COVID leave for employees to recover from the disease, to care for others, or to get vaccinated.

Fraccaro says it has been an unprecedented year, and this whole wellness journey for employees comes down to a few key attributes: "Take care of yourself and find out what works for you," he says. "Look out for each other and then focus on what matters."  

The Culture Crush Business Podcast is a podcast that we hope is for all listeners. With that being said, this is a great episode to listen to if you are leading a company or working for a company that is trying to build its company culture into the onboarding and training for employees. Culture starts at the very beginning and Journeyage is helping to make that possible.

This is also a great episode for those company leaders and employees to listen to if they are wanting to find a few new tips for adding “spice” to their company culture. We want to help companies build their company culture while also showcasing the companies that have a great company culture. There are not many companies out there where you can show up to work on your first day dressed as the Easter Bunny (wink wink…. You should just listen to the show) but we are here to showcase them to the community.

This was an episode with Michael Zalle from YellowBird. Kindra, the Culture Crush Podcast host, and Michael were both attending the Behind the Mic event with PBRX and ended up in the same breakout room. After the connection and conversations, Kindra now works on the YellowBird team. Yay relationship building with PBRX!!!

YellowBird is an online marketplace that simply and easily connects Environmental Health and Safety Professionals with businesses on-demand. Their vetting process ensures the deep roster of nationwide professionals are interviewed, background checked, insured, and certified so they are ready to perform when needed.

YellowBird uses technology to save companies 25% and match professionals with projects 15X faster than traditional consultants or staffing agencies.

Michael Zalle is the Founder and CEO of YellowBird. As a career tech entrepreneur, Board member, and advisor, he has a passion for making a difference through finding ‘the better way’ to solve big problems through tech. He’s responsible for creating and building new concepts and companies, resulting in multiple successful exits over a 25-year career.

He attended San Francisco State University and Pepperdine University with a focus on Business Management. Michael enjoys traveling with his wife of 20 years and two awesome kids.

He engages in a variety of outdoor sports including golf and tennis; he ranks himself as an incredibly average golfer and perhaps even worse tennis player but remembers a day when he was competitive at both.

Follow YellowBird on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Journeyage is an enterprise training solution for onboarding remote employees. We believe that one-size training doesn’t fit all, but one platform can! People have unique personalities, roles, locations, backgrounds, preferences, and possibilities. Use our robust personalization features to simply—and automatically—tailor what every employee experiences in the training you deliver to them.

50’s housewife by interest and intersectional feminist by passion, Lisa Glenn Nobles is just as likely to be whipping up strawberry jalapeno preserves as crafting a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging action plan for Journeyage.

Her professional passions include building systems, creating strong cultures that value humans over profits, and making Slack a fun place to be. When she’s not working on operations at Journeyage, she can just as likely be found:

• Hiking in the Phoenix Mountain Preserve
• Binge-watching Queer Eye while having a good cry
• Planning her next international trip (South America, Japan, Kazakhstan, and New Zealand are on the shortlist)
• Hanging out with her husband throwing the ball to labrador Clarence or cuddling with ragdoll cat Honey

Lisa came to Journeyage after a journey through the nonprofit, operations, and education sectors, finding her true home at Journeyage (where she gets to do all those things!). She volunteers regularly with ConstellateAZ, a local nonprofit dedicated to getting high risk youth involved in entrepreneurship. If you’d like to share a recipe or an idea for generosity initiatives, Lisa can be found on Twitter and LinkedIn, and by email.

Follow Journeyage on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.