Omnifia Meets Janice Berneman

Janice-Berneman

Ivor Colson: [00:00:00] So hello everyone and welcome to Omnifia Meets. In each episode, you'll meet a HR people op soul, future of work leader, and learn how they're overcoming challenges and inspiring workplace success through unique insights, stories, and opinions. I'm Ivor Colson . I'm co-founder of am. And today I'm really excited to introduce Janice Berman from Monte, which she's the head of workplace and culture.

Ivor Colson: Pleased to have you here, Janice. How are you doing? 

Janice Berneman: Thank you so much for inviting me. Yeah, I I'm really, really good. Very excited end of the year, lots of holiday things, so getting things finished then strategies for next year. So it's a very 

Ivor Colson: exciting time. Yeah, it's a fun time for sure.

Ivor Colson: And I'd like to firstly just apologize to listeners. I currently. A bout of, I think maybe covid. So I sound like my, my voice is coming up my nose right now, so apologies for that. I don't hear it. . [00:01:00] So before we get started, I'd like to ask an icebreaker question. So, if you weren't working in workplace and culture, Janice, what would you be doing?

Janice Berneman: That's a really good question. I think it would mostly, Still helping people somehow. So it would be coaching or as a therapist, I really like to do that anyways even to put it inside my job. Even though it's not a part of my requirements, I really like to support people. So I think that would be just privately.

Ivor Colson: Oh, cool. Yeah. And I think, I think these days do have a lot of therapy. So I'll definitely take you up and off if you have take it up. So, How do you, maybe on that kind of topic actually is kind of a nice segue. So how do you actually ensure you are taking care of employee wellbeing at Monte? 

Janice Berneman: Yeah, so like, you know, for, for us it's very important that since we're. A very fast paced, hyper-growth company. You know, that that we look a little bit at how, [00:02:00] how the whole journey is for that person, right?

Janice Berneman: Like, how do they feel from when they start to being here in the office. So for us, it's very much about like inclusion, belonging listening, you know optimizing all the time continuously. So we, we hear a lot what people need. We do a lot of surveys. So every 15 days we have a survey one about inclusion like diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.

Janice Berneman: Atta. And then the other one that we do is about general things, right? How are you feeling with your manager? How are you feeling with your team? All these things are all anonymous, so it gives us a very good chance to, to work with it and see all the anonymous comments and work on it and figure out what people need.

Janice Berneman: But also, you know, many times people don't even know what. besides what they already tell you so many times. It's looking at how, how are we supporting this? Are people feeling stressed? Can we see the signs of this? How can we return into that in, in a, like, how can we modify this if this is what's happening in that team?

Janice Berneman: So we really try to look at what's happening, how are [00:03:00] people feeling and reacting to it. And and then we, yeah. Optimize all the time and, and work on. 

Ivor Colson: Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. I think I was, I was speaking to someone else the other day and they actually kind of have a similar approach and they have, instead of the employee being seen as an an employee, they kind of look at the employee as a, as a user and understand them throughout the whole kind of life cycle cycles when they get on board with the engagement and everything else that comes into it as well.

Ivor Colson: So yeah, that's, that's really interesting. . Yeah. So how are you going about kind of creating an engaged working environment in 2022? Especially kind of, you guys are growing very quickly and adding new team members the whole time. That must be quite challenging to actually maintain an engage working environment.

Ivor Colson: So how do you, how do you solve that? 

Janice Berneman: Yeah. I think a lot has to do with first. for the new people that are coming to really be [00:04:00] mindful and unconscious of really explaining, you know, the purpose of the company, the values of the company, really. Hmm. Understanding why they're here. That's why they want to be here as well.

Janice Berneman: But also looking at everyone that is already here. How do we take care of them? How do we make this merch happen? and then there's, I'm not going to lie, a lot of team building activities, a lot of workshops, a lot of things happening for people to keep learning, keep developing themselves, to keep seeing what, you know, once you're a year in a job, usually you, you relearn your task.

Janice Berneman: You already kind of know the company. So then it's after like, okay, what, what happens after that? So, so that's where having people continuously coming to different teams and the people that are there, okay, how do we merge them? So it's a lot about creating belonging at. Creating that sense of like, okay, no matter who keeps coming or who is here, we understand the feeling and the values, and we understand the idea of why, why we're doing this.

Ivor Colson: So it's multifaceted. 

Janice Berneman: For us, you know, we, we are a company [00:05:00] that doesn't want to put things very abstract especially, you know, values or different things.

Janice Berneman: So, so we really try to show from the beginning how we're implementing everything that we're doing. So if we say we're transparent as a company, how, how are we transparent? How are we doing this in actions, you know, we have, for example, transparent salary system. We have different structures. How do we do that?

Janice Berneman: How. Internal communication work in the office and all in the, in the company and all these different things. 

Ivor Colson: . Okay. That's really cool. And, you know, when you do those workshops and activities, how do you understand that they are effective and they do increase engagement with employee?

Janice Berneman: Yeah. Well, first I think this like this, art surveys really help us see if there's been progress on something. Usually we try to take let's say that I don't know, I'm, I'm making this up, but let's say that the engineering team has a problem with onboarding. Then we try to look a little bit at okay, what are the managers of that team not getting Right that we need to change.

Janice Berneman: So then we work with them, okay, how can we do a better onboarding for [00:06:00] these people? How can we do a better onboarding for the roles? And then keep looking at the new people that will come and see if, how they feel about the onboarding that just happened. So it's a lot of checking in and seeing how people are feeling and okay, what is wrong?

Janice Berneman: Then fix the problem as fast as we can. Usually we try to be ahead, so there's not problems, but But with such a fast pace, there's always going to be a little hole somewhere, and then you just go and, and yeah. And give up the power again. You know, like, you, you told me that this was bothering you.

Janice Berneman: Let's see how we fix it together. 

Ivor Colson: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Do you ever find , those surveys don't actually give you all the data that you need? 

Janice Berneman: I think with, when you look at I don't know from management of departments or different things, sometimes the, that data, the number doesn't tell me anything.

Janice Berneman: But we've been encouraging people to write more, so it's anonymous. Comments. So sometimes people write a whole note, gigantic thing like, Hey, I think we, we should work on this. I don't think we're paying attention to that. Or yeah, yeah, this is happening in my team and no one is looking at it, or whatever it is.

Janice Berneman: And then [00:07:00] it, it's more actionable. We, we are asking people like, okay, don't give me things that I cannot work on because we are here as the people and culture team to support you to make you feel safe and. Yeah, and we need to have that data. Like there's, I cannot read every like 150 people's thoughts at this point, and I cannot interact myself as the people and culture team with everyone all the time to figure out every week how they're doing.

Janice Berneman: But what we can do is have different tools to help us. Know what to target first, what the biggest problems are, and then just work on that. 

Ivor Colson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that makes a lot of sense. And I guess a lot of those anonymous answers might leave quite a lot of clues on why employees might potentially say, leave the company or might be unhappy.

Ivor Colson: So what strategies do you currently have in place to ensure you stop the high performing employees leaving to the competition. 

Janice Berneman: Mm-hmm. , I think like it connects a little bit to what I was saying as well, like, spin it very much [00:08:00] like purposeful, like to really listen.

Janice Berneman: To be clear as well on expectations and goals, I think many times people live not only because they could be, I dunno, a relationship with manager or, or with a team or any kind of thing that we're trying to tackle as much as we can. So there's a lot of workshop for leadership and things like that.

Janice Berneman: But more than that, I think it's the transparency of what it's expected of you and what you're performing all the time. So we have, for example, a very. Like a feedback, a constant feedback culture. So we don't wait like, oh, now there's their review. Let's talk about this. It's just like, Hey, Janice. I think I don't know.

Janice Berneman: Like I, I feel like this month I, I would have liked you to see working on this, so maybe let's make a plan so you can do it better next month or something like that. Let's work together, see how I can help you. And I think it's a little bit for people not to feel like , yeah. Things come as a surprise, but that they have like, they're empowered to take care of their own things with.

Janice Berneman: I mean, obviously we are our headquarters is in Scandinavia and that's a trust culture. So we trust people, mm-hmm. to their jobs. We hire [00:09:00] very qual, like very well qualified people and we trust them. We are not over them. Like it's a lot about self-management as well. And I think that's how we can retain.

Janice Berneman: But making sure that they understand the trust we have in them and just being there to support and to guide. 

Ivor Colson: Yeah. Giving people the autonomy and, and trust to do their jobs is quite empowering. 

Ivor Colson: So like, let's kind of change gears a little bit and instead of looking kind of back let's look to the, the future.

Ivor Colson: And so in your role mm-hmm. , what are the key things you are looking to focus on in 2023? 

Janice Berneman: Oh I think since the company is like only two years old There's a lot of things that it's with the biggest function, there's a lot of things happening. I think it's yeah, as I said, and, and you mentioned scalability.

Janice Berneman: So for me it's a lot. How do the processes that we have in place now can grow to the amount of people that will keep adding? Is this Yeah. Realistic or not? What do we also need from the people and [00:10:00] culture team in itself? Like, are we not looking for example, I, I know that by this point, we should have a better learning and development plan that we are going to start.

Janice Berneman: Offering more to each department a little more. Specifically not so broad, like, oh, we are going to work on unconscious bias, or, you know, things that are too broad, but more like, okay, for engineer that is working on Java, can we teach another stack tool like they need? Or can we do, you know, for a marketing team, they want different tools and some people don't know some can, can we teach that better?

Janice Berneman: What kinda courses or what kind of things can we. , can we offer and support people better so they feel like they can kill developing themselves? Yeah. And I think, you know growing this will keep, will keep the, the belonging and empowerment of every person in place. I think that that's, that's the goal for next year as well.

Ivor Colson: Yeah. And if I look back to something I've mentioned before, but I look back to maybe one of the reasons why I kind of left a position or couple positions. Whenever I've wanted to, move on from a role, [00:11:00] the learning and development stopped and that frustrated me.

Ivor Colson: So I think that's really great that you guys are focusing on that. It will really empower a lot of people. And if we look to the future, how do you guys, and how do you personally think technology will play a role in the future of HR and, and people ops?

Janice Berneman: Yeah, I mean I think it will play a huge one. I think it already ask, that's for sure. You know, like makes the process easier for the people and culture team first, but also it makes every step of the life cycle of the people and culture team a little easier to understand for other people. So from their recruitment process, it's easy to optimize.

Janice Berneman: But, but let's say for example, the onboarding you can get now onboarding with a tool. So it's easier for people to follow what they're going through, what they've, what they've done, what they're missing for them to feel fully onboarded or how they can, can keep developing themselves or, I don't know, a, any kind of tool is there for not only the people and culture team to [00:12:00] help, but also for the outside for every person in a company there as well to, to feel the power of people culture a little more. 

Ivor Colson: Thank you very much, Janice, for, for joining today. Tons of really good insights, and our listeners will absolutely love learning from you. 

Janice Berneman: You so, so much for inviting me and and for talking about this topic.

Janice Berneman: I, I really enjoyed it. 

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Janice-Berneman

Ivor Colson: [00:00:00] So hello everyone and welcome to Omnifia Meets. In each episode, you'll meet a HR people op soul, future of work leader, and learn how they're overcoming challenges and inspiring workplace success through unique insights, stories, and opinions. I'm Ivor Colson . I'm co-founder of am. And today I'm really excited to introduce Janice Berman from Monte, which she's the head of workplace and culture.

Ivor Colson: Pleased to have you here, Janice. How are you doing? 

Janice Berneman: Thank you so much for inviting me. Yeah, I I'm really, really good. Very excited end of the year, lots of holiday things, so getting things finished then strategies for next year. So it's a very 

Ivor Colson: exciting time. Yeah, it's a fun time for sure.

Ivor Colson: And I'd like to firstly just apologize to listeners. I currently. A bout of, I think maybe covid. So I sound like my, my voice is coming up my nose right now, so apologies for that. I don't hear it. . [00:01:00] So before we get started, I'd like to ask an icebreaker question. So, if you weren't working in workplace and culture, Janice, what would you be doing?

Janice Berneman: That's a really good question. I think it would mostly, Still helping people somehow. So it would be coaching or as a therapist, I really like to do that anyways even to put it inside my job. Even though it's not a part of my requirements, I really like to support people. So I think that would be just privately.

Ivor Colson: Oh, cool. Yeah. And I think, I think these days do have a lot of therapy. So I'll definitely take you up and off if you have take it up. So, How do you, maybe on that kind of topic actually is kind of a nice segue. So how do you actually ensure you are taking care of employee wellbeing at Monte? 

Janice Berneman: Yeah, so like, you know, for, for us it's very important that since we're. A very fast paced, hyper-growth company. You know, that that we look a little bit at how, [00:02:00] how the whole journey is for that person, right?

Janice Berneman: Like, how do they feel from when they start to being here in the office. So for us, it's very much about like inclusion, belonging listening, you know optimizing all the time continuously. So we, we hear a lot what people need. We do a lot of surveys. So every 15 days we have a survey one about inclusion like diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.

Janice Berneman: Atta. And then the other one that we do is about general things, right? How are you feeling with your manager? How are you feeling with your team? All these things are all anonymous, so it gives us a very good chance to, to work with it and see all the anonymous comments and work on it and figure out what people need.

Janice Berneman: But also, you know, many times people don't even know what. besides what they already tell you so many times. It's looking at how, how are we supporting this? Are people feeling stressed? Can we see the signs of this? How can we return into that in, in a, like, how can we modify this if this is what's happening in that team?

Janice Berneman: So we really try to look at what's happening, how are [00:03:00] people feeling and reacting to it. And and then we, yeah. Optimize all the time and, and work on. 

Ivor Colson: Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. I think I was, I was speaking to someone else the other day and they actually kind of have a similar approach and they have, instead of the employee being seen as an an employee, they kind of look at the employee as a, as a user and understand them throughout the whole kind of life cycle cycles when they get on board with the engagement and everything else that comes into it as well.

Ivor Colson: So yeah, that's, that's really interesting. . Yeah. So how are you going about kind of creating an engaged working environment in 2022? Especially kind of, you guys are growing very quickly and adding new team members the whole time. That must be quite challenging to actually maintain an engage working environment.

Ivor Colson: So how do you, how do you solve that? 

Janice Berneman: Yeah. I think a lot has to do with first. for the new people that are coming to really be [00:04:00] mindful and unconscious of really explaining, you know, the purpose of the company, the values of the company, really. Hmm. Understanding why they're here. That's why they want to be here as well.

Janice Berneman: But also looking at everyone that is already here. How do we take care of them? How do we make this merch happen? and then there's, I'm not going to lie, a lot of team building activities, a lot of workshops, a lot of things happening for people to keep learning, keep developing themselves, to keep seeing what, you know, once you're a year in a job, usually you, you relearn your task.

Janice Berneman: You already kind of know the company. So then it's after like, okay, what, what happens after that? So, so that's where having people continuously coming to different teams and the people that are there, okay, how do we merge them? So it's a lot about creating belonging at. Creating that sense of like, okay, no matter who keeps coming or who is here, we understand the feeling and the values, and we understand the idea of why, why we're doing this.

Ivor Colson: So it's multifaceted. 

Janice Berneman: For us, you know, we, we are a company [00:05:00] that doesn't want to put things very abstract especially, you know, values or different things.

Janice Berneman: So, so we really try to show from the beginning how we're implementing everything that we're doing. So if we say we're transparent as a company, how, how are we transparent? How are we doing this in actions, you know, we have, for example, transparent salary system. We have different structures. How do we do that?

Janice Berneman: How. Internal communication work in the office and all in the, in the company and all these different things. 

Ivor Colson: . Okay. That's really cool. And, you know, when you do those workshops and activities, how do you understand that they are effective and they do increase engagement with employee?

Janice Berneman: Yeah. Well, first I think this like this, art surveys really help us see if there's been progress on something. Usually we try to take let's say that I don't know, I'm, I'm making this up, but let's say that the engineering team has a problem with onboarding. Then we try to look a little bit at okay, what are the managers of that team not getting Right that we need to change.

Janice Berneman: So then we work with them, okay, how can we do a better onboarding for [00:06:00] these people? How can we do a better onboarding for the roles? And then keep looking at the new people that will come and see if, how they feel about the onboarding that just happened. So it's a lot of checking in and seeing how people are feeling and okay, what is wrong?

Janice Berneman: Then fix the problem as fast as we can. Usually we try to be ahead, so there's not problems, but But with such a fast pace, there's always going to be a little hole somewhere, and then you just go and, and yeah. And give up the power again. You know, like, you, you told me that this was bothering you.

Janice Berneman: Let's see how we fix it together. 

Ivor Colson: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Do you ever find , those surveys don't actually give you all the data that you need? 

Janice Berneman: I think with, when you look at I don't know from management of departments or different things, sometimes the, that data, the number doesn't tell me anything.

Janice Berneman: But we've been encouraging people to write more, so it's anonymous. Comments. So sometimes people write a whole note, gigantic thing like, Hey, I think we, we should work on this. I don't think we're paying attention to that. Or yeah, yeah, this is happening in my team and no one is looking at it, or whatever it is.

Janice Berneman: And then [00:07:00] it, it's more actionable. We, we are asking people like, okay, don't give me things that I cannot work on because we are here as the people and culture team to support you to make you feel safe and. Yeah, and we need to have that data. Like there's, I cannot read every like 150 people's thoughts at this point, and I cannot interact myself as the people and culture team with everyone all the time to figure out every week how they're doing.

Janice Berneman: But what we can do is have different tools to help us. Know what to target first, what the biggest problems are, and then just work on that. 

Ivor Colson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that makes a lot of sense. And I guess a lot of those anonymous answers might leave quite a lot of clues on why employees might potentially say, leave the company or might be unhappy.

Ivor Colson: So what strategies do you currently have in place to ensure you stop the high performing employees leaving to the competition. 

Janice Berneman: Mm-hmm. , I think like it connects a little bit to what I was saying as well, like, spin it very much [00:08:00] like purposeful, like to really listen.

Janice Berneman: To be clear as well on expectations and goals, I think many times people live not only because they could be, I dunno, a relationship with manager or, or with a team or any kind of thing that we're trying to tackle as much as we can. So there's a lot of workshop for leadership and things like that.

Janice Berneman: But more than that, I think it's the transparency of what it's expected of you and what you're performing all the time. So we have, for example, a very. Like a feedback, a constant feedback culture. So we don't wait like, oh, now there's their review. Let's talk about this. It's just like, Hey, Janice. I think I don't know.

Janice Berneman: Like I, I feel like this month I, I would have liked you to see working on this, so maybe let's make a plan so you can do it better next month or something like that. Let's work together, see how I can help you. And I think it's a little bit for people not to feel like , yeah. Things come as a surprise, but that they have like, they're empowered to take care of their own things with.

Janice Berneman: I mean, obviously we are our headquarters is in Scandinavia and that's a trust culture. So we trust people, mm-hmm. to their jobs. We hire [00:09:00] very qual, like very well qualified people and we trust them. We are not over them. Like it's a lot about self-management as well. And I think that's how we can retain.

Janice Berneman: But making sure that they understand the trust we have in them and just being there to support and to guide. 

Ivor Colson: Yeah. Giving people the autonomy and, and trust to do their jobs is quite empowering. 

Ivor Colson: So like, let's kind of change gears a little bit and instead of looking kind of back let's look to the, the future.

Ivor Colson: And so in your role mm-hmm. , what are the key things you are looking to focus on in 2023? 

Janice Berneman: Oh I think since the company is like only two years old There's a lot of things that it's with the biggest function, there's a lot of things happening. I think it's yeah, as I said, and, and you mentioned scalability.

Janice Berneman: So for me it's a lot. How do the processes that we have in place now can grow to the amount of people that will keep adding? Is this Yeah. Realistic or not? What do we also need from the people and [00:10:00] culture team in itself? Like, are we not looking for example, I, I know that by this point, we should have a better learning and development plan that we are going to start.

Janice Berneman: Offering more to each department a little more. Specifically not so broad, like, oh, we are going to work on unconscious bias, or, you know, things that are too broad, but more like, okay, for engineer that is working on Java, can we teach another stack tool like they need? Or can we do, you know, for a marketing team, they want different tools and some people don't know some can, can we teach that better?

Janice Berneman: What kinda courses or what kind of things can we. , can we offer and support people better so they feel like they can kill developing themselves? Yeah. And I think, you know growing this will keep, will keep the, the belonging and empowerment of every person in place. I think that that's, that's the goal for next year as well.

Ivor Colson: Yeah. And if I look back to something I've mentioned before, but I look back to maybe one of the reasons why I kind of left a position or couple positions. Whenever I've wanted to, move on from a role, [00:11:00] the learning and development stopped and that frustrated me.

Ivor Colson: So I think that's really great that you guys are focusing on that. It will really empower a lot of people. And if we look to the future, how do you guys, and how do you personally think technology will play a role in the future of HR and, and people ops?

Janice Berneman: Yeah, I mean I think it will play a huge one. I think it already ask, that's for sure. You know, like makes the process easier for the people and culture team first, but also it makes every step of the life cycle of the people and culture team a little easier to understand for other people. So from their recruitment process, it's easy to optimize.

Janice Berneman: But, but let's say for example, the onboarding you can get now onboarding with a tool. So it's easier for people to follow what they're going through, what they've, what they've done, what they're missing for them to feel fully onboarded or how they can, can keep developing themselves or, I don't know, a, any kind of tool is there for not only the people and culture team to [00:12:00] help, but also for the outside for every person in a company there as well to, to feel the power of people culture a little more. 

Ivor Colson: Thank you very much, Janice, for, for joining today. Tons of really good insights, and our listeners will absolutely love learning from you. 

Janice Berneman: You so, so much for inviting me and and for talking about this topic.

Janice Berneman: I, I really enjoyed it. 

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