Operational Resilience: From Foundations to Growth - Key takeaways from a successful live event

It was with immense excitement and pride that we gathered together last week with a highly engaged and enthusiastic group of People professionals to host a successful in-person event. It served as a welcome break after the oftentimes hectic period we all know and ‘love’ as tax year-end, a chance to get out of the office for a few hours, meet likeminded individuals, and hear insightful talks from some of the brightest minds in the People Ops community. 

And, of course, who could forget the delicious coffee, pastries and other breakfast goodies that kept us all fuelled for the morning?

If you missed it, fear not, for not only will we be hosting more events like this in the very near future, but we’ve gathered a selection of the key talking points and takeaways, together with some images shot by our photographer, to give you a flavour of what went on.

We hope to welcome you at our next event in person!

The Shackleton Principle

After some delicious breakfast and relaxed chatter in the beautiful surroundings of the Techspace building in Central London, Sapienx founder Luke O’Mahoney kicked off proceedings by talking about the so-called ‘Shackleton Principle’.

Referencing the fabled expedition of his ship Endurance, which sank after becoming trapped in pack ice in Antarctica, he spoke of the resilience of its crew in surviving on the ice for weeks and then sailing over 700 miles to safety in lifeboats. Everyone made it home safely, with the team going the distance together.

In doing so, Luke pointed out, Shackleton managed to cultivate a strong team culture, lead through adversity, and was able to call upon the skills of a crew that was well prepared to face such challenges. “Resilience is less about survival, and more about thriving,” was a line that stood out from Luke’s opening talk.

In essence, the takeaways were that People Ops leaders need to ask themselves:

• How well is your organisation prepared for the hazardous journey ahead?

• Do you have the right people on the boat?

And this provided the ideal segway into what was to come from our next speaker.

Resilience is like a river

Next to speak was Becca Sweetman, an Executive & Team Coach specialising in helping startups to build resilient teams.

She likened resilience to a river, in the sense that when the river is full, it is well equipped to keep flowing through any obstructions, such as rocks, sharp turns, or wide, slow sections. A high river has enough momentum to shift rocks out of the way, and enough energy to continue carrying some of the long-term obstructions downstream.

“True resilience is being able to deal with a high level of change,” Becca argued, and that the top three resilience enablers that People leaders can promote to teams are being (i.e.: having time to relax and focus on wellbeing), energy (not being overloaded, creating the right conditions for productivity) and learning (being given space to make mistakes, and bouncing back or learning from them). She also stressed the importance of giving people purpose, in order to strengthen their resilience.

People Ops leaders, she said, need to understand that the individuals within their teams are only one human, that their resilience can be impacted by what’s going on both in their professional and personal lives, and that this is something to be constantly aware of. If one suffers, both will likely suffer.

She concluded by saying how crucial it is that leaders understand their teams’ energy levels, and that employees should be encouraged to do the same. Ask yourself and your teams, “what percentage of capacity are you at”, she suggested, in order to help understand when somebody is close to being overloaded, or when others can support.

In short, it’s about visualising your workload, how close someone might be to overload, to ensure that the resilience buffer stays strong.

Which, once again, leads us nicely onto our next speaker!

The irrigation system analogy

Our third and final speaker, JooBee Yeow, loves gardening. The problem is that she hates having to water the plants every day. So, she installed an irrigation system in her garden that meant she could indulge her love of outdoor vegetation without having to worry about the time consuming manual processes and upkeep.

It’s something she compared to HR. She loves working with people, but dislikes manual processes. The biggest mistake that HR leaders can make, she said, is to not prioritise optimisation. It’s all about putting in place the right processes to make things simple (back to the gardening analogy).

“Workloads will expand, the HR team will not”, was JooBee’s assertion, illustrating the importance of streamlining and automating the time-intensive and fiddly stuff, so that you have the time and capacity to do the things you love with your teams.

Visualisation is key

The morning concluded with an insightful Q&A roundtable discussion, where the panel took questions from both Luke and the floor. A key theme that kept coming up in this wrap-up session was the importance of understanding what’s on yours and your teams’ plates, what’s on the horizon, and how long each thing is taking.

Circling back to the themes discussed in Becca’s talk, JooBee was keen to stress the importance of task visualisation - to understand that your time is finite, and to ensure that it’s spent working on the right things.

“What are we going to achieve, rather than what are we going to do,” was JooBee’s mantra for minimising processes but maximising the impact.

Becca was keen to point out that People leaders need to ask themselves (and their teams) - what is in their buckets, how long are they spending on each thing, and how can they restructure things to ensure that the proportions are right. This, she argued, can help to prevent burnout, allow individuals to know their boundaries, and build resilience as a result. 

And, if the level of resource available to you is an issue and you want to ask for more, be sure that you can illustrate the value of HR to the Exec, try to understand what their priorities might be, and don’t wait until breaking point to have the conversation with them, argued Becca and JooBee collectively.

Overcoming manual processes

And to finish, a member of the audience asked how to go about reducing the amount of manual processes within the HR function. JooBee stated that writing down every step you have to do, and every step your team has to take, is a good starting point. Work out what steps can be combined, and what can be dropped. Visualising everything helps you know where to start, she said.

Understanding what it is that is sucking your time, what the big projects or tasks are at certain times of the year, and the impact these can have on the team, is all crucial to knowing which processes need to be streamlined.

Thanks again to our wonderful panel, to Techspace for hosting us, and to our highly engaged attendees for taking the time out of their day to come and talk People Resilience with us.

Stay tuned for more!