Speaker 1
0:05
All right. Hello everyone and welcome to our weekly power lounge. This is your place to hear authentic conversation from those who have power to share. My name is Amy Vaughn and I am the owner and chief empowerment officer together digital, a diverse and collaborative community of women who work in digital and choose to share their knowledge, power and connections. You can join the movement at WWW dot together in digital.com. In today’s episode we’ll be discussing then now of work and why flexibility is a must. With Brianna Starmer, who is the founder and CEO of lions and tigers, a professional staffing and Workforce Solutions partner enterprises like Microsoft, Google, Alaska Airlines and set up organizations call her team to call on her team to modernize their culture and tap into diverse consulting talent for added capacity and innovation. Because of Brianna’s unique talent model, lions and tigers has enabled $26 million of economic access to over 100 plus consultants who are 70% Women 65%, caretakers and 32% buyback. These are such great stats, the Bria thank you so much for being here. I’m excited to talk with you today.
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Speaker 2
1:26
So excited to be here. Thank you for having me. This is such an epic platform that you’ve built. And I’m so happy to dig in today.
1
Speaker 1
1:33
Thank you so much as you know, as a fellow founder and entrepreneur, it’s not something we can do alone, right? It takes a village. It takes a village. But I love love, love that you’re here and I’ve been a big fan of lions and tigers for a long time actually have another woman we probably know in common. Confer Flannery right as also a big fan of lions and tigers and has been telling me for probably years, you need to get the podcast. So here we are camphor. I know you might not be listening right this moment. But if you are in the future, thank you so much for helping make the connection and encouraging this opportunity. All right, let’s get into it, bro. Yeah, we’ve got a lot to cover today. Right? We’re talking about the great resignation a bit. So in 2021, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, over 47 million Americans voluntarily quit their jobs. 47 million, that’s a lot of people’s an unprecedented mass exodus from the workforce spurred by COVID-19 now called the Great resignation. And I kind of hesitate there with the COVID-19. Because I know it wasn’t just that, but let’s just say that was a big factor. So my question is for you, how has the great resignation affected progress specifically for women, communities of color, and caretakers in the workforce, which and we both work hard to serve?
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Speaker 2
2:57
Yeah, thank you for that question, Amy edit. So what’s really just next to be in this community and with this, this group of folks who I know are making incredible change in your organization. So I’m going to talk fast, and I’m gonna give you a lot of data. And hopefully you can use that to justify and build some change within whatever organization you’re influencing. And I love this question as an opener, because we should take a step back and think about where we work is so much has changed in the last three years. And I don’t know about you, but I never want to hear terms like she’s she’s session again, like these are not things like concepts that I want to see in my future. But if we’re to step back, and think about kind of the great resignation and what that meant for, for underrepresented communities, you know, 2020 20, that that year was such an important one as we look at female female labor economics, because our labor force participation as we closed out, 2020 was under 55%. So and as we as we took that out to 2021, we saw women working at historic lows. 33 years, we had never seen that the women in the workforce. And of course, if you layer in racial data and other underrepresented identities, that gets exacerbated. You know, you talked about folks resigning in droves, which is true. I mean, we saw 4 million people a month quitting their jobs. And of course, caretaking was a major reason for that schools were closed, of course. And we saw that caretakers, especially those women, especially that were in age 30 to 45. They were resigning 20% faster than anyone else in our economy. Now and of course communities of color were really hit we lost 200,000 Black and Latina women over the course of the great resignation, who have not returned to work. Wow. So there was just a real like absolute Cliff for our talent, ecosystem and our economy. But if we’re like, let’s catch you up Now, I mean, that was the great resignation, and then we’d have the great reset, or whatever we call it, we’ve made some really strong gains back. So in 2022, we really saw a recovery that I don’t think a lot of us anticipated that really, by the end of 2022, we had recovered to pre pandemic levels. So it really dipped in it came back up. It’s not nothing, we lost a million mothers that year in 2022. And so we still had trouble. I mean, there’s still disparity in our in our groups. But now in 2023, that’s a pretty wild labor market we’re in today. I mean, it’s a little bit nutty. So mothers, especially you asked about that group, I just saw a report last week, mothers with kids aged five and under, I fall in that category, you’re just outside that category. 70% of us are working through it from 55% to 70%. In a matter of three years, that is wild. And we’re still seeing a very tight labor market. I mean, we see 3% unemployment. Now, that’s different for communities of color. Black women are our biggest concern. They see almost two times the amount of unemployment as white women, so almost 6% unemployment among black women, and that they’re really see it still seeing a lag in in recovery. But here’s what I think is really interesting. Okay, so there’s like a whole stat salad for you, but I think is underrepresented in our media. And that I think is really fascinating. Is that is the amount of Americans and global, even in global economies of folks preferring independent work. And I know that your community is really a home for folks who are thinking about independent work and the fluidity of work, especially in the digital space. And so this is something that I think is really validating is that in our economy, the fastest growing segment of work is independent workers. So we are as of last year 42% of the American economy is preferring independent work 80% gain in one year, it seems like everybody I know is going freelance, it’s because a lot of them are of that group. It’s not just gig workers. These are not just delivery drivers. These as of last year, there are more highly skilled, independent workers, independent worker. So anyway, I think what’s interesting about this discussion, as we think about what I consider the future of work economy gap, is to think about the the sort of major trends affecting who wants to work where, yes, access for those people. So I want to dig into that with you and start talking about that kind of economic gap that’s really available for us today.
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Speaker 1
7:45
Yeah, absolutely. You are spot on. We were founded on the premise of helping women who work in digital and it was typically marketing advertising agencies brand side, but we were just talking even before we went on here to start recording, how like looking at our member numbers and surveys, like there’s more women that are going independent, and definitely all with a number of reasons for that. So seeing that entrepreneur solopreneur group grow, has been something that we’ve been really focused on and keenly aware of. So I’m glad to see that the data supporting our own suspicions as well, because it’s not just a trend I do you really think it’s the way that we’re, you know, looking at the future of working our mindsets so different, our minds have been changed by everything we’ve experienced over the last three years. But let’s focus on organizations for just a moment. What are some immediate strategies that organizations can do to start to implement and address some of these challenges that are being posed by the great resignation? Because again, you do have this more of a change in gig economy, you’ve got people wanting to work hybrid remote. It’s a different playing field for them as well, what can they do?
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Speaker 2
8:48
Yeah, I think so I have a lot of thoughts on those. But let’s start with kind of recapping this economic gap that I just talked about the sort of like future work or economic gap. So if we just look at on a if we’re to step back and say, the role of an employer in a capitalistic society is to make money and profit, right? So how do we use labor to our benefit when we’re designing our work systems? And so the major issue is, who do we get to do these jobs, we need highly skilled, dedicated workers to do the work. And if we look at kind of the trends over the last three years of what people’s preferences are, this is where the gap comes in. And one thing that I think that folks are really not taking advantage of and that I love to spend time talking about is building blended workforces as an economic lever. And this is what’s so interesting as as your suspicions and data are suggesting this move towards independent work, that the idea that we can harness that work those workers and integrate them into these blended work ecosystems thoughtfully as a driver of economic impact and business impact and by the way, equity as well. It’s really to me the big unlock This next generation of work. And so, you know, basically what are the major trends to think about is that there’s a high number of jobs available, we still have a 5 million job gap in America that we have unfilled. There is a low unemployment rate. There’s just not enough people who want those jobs and a rise of independent workers. So how are we going to get the work done? Blended work ecosystems, that’s really where this is headed. And so we can get into some of the specifics of that, and what that looks like. But that’s the headline that I want to share with the community about that. Yeah,
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Speaker 1
10:32
blended work communities, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I worked in agencies for close to 15 years. And you know, I had plenty of relationships with permit, Lancers, as we would call them, you know, these and then you’re seeing the rise of like fractional C suite folks, as well. So I do think there are some companies and organizations that are getting that, that are starting to understand the value in the equity at play when you don’t have to have people even in like, a culture of fear instead of as an employee, when the pendulum swings. I mean, that’s something I’ve seen agencies and companies do for a long time. It’s like when you are waiting for the dollars to come in. But you need the extra help you do contract versus permanent. Like there’s times when it even behooves the company. So I think taking another look at that, and amplifying the benefits of a blended approach to that workforce, I think makes a lot of sense. It’s smart. Actually, it’s a win win, in my opinion, possibly for everyone.
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Speaker 2
11:29
But it is, and I want to comment to I want to step out of context for the folks that work in digital every day. This industry, this work that you all are doing is far more advanced than most of the rest of the ecosystem, like basically, most other industries are behind digital in your adoption of freelancers of blended workplaces. And so a lot of what I do is like convincing other people to believe you all right. It’s a great point. I mean, my husband’s been in out of agencies for years. And there’s like a really big practice of copywriters, and freelancers and designers, and that’s just really kind of part of the ethos. But when we think about client side brand side, yes. Very different model for how they’re different. Yeah, tapping in this talent.
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Speaker 1
12:14
No, exactly. It’s a great point. All right, how does flexibility and impact play a role in creating a sustainable workplace and the cultures of belonging and new work, again, kind of sticking to the side of what organizations are doing and how they can do it?
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Speaker 2
12:28
Yeah, it’s a great question. Because, you know, we’re thinking about the now of work, I mean, so much of us are thinking about and researching, at least I am this future of work concept and what that means, but I really am focused on the now of work, because this is already happening. You know, we’re already seeing organizations that implement, you know, intersectional identity strategies that think about ESG, or environmental, social, societal, and governance approaches, have strong HR policies, outperform those without right, so you’re starting to already see some LP seeing some performance with organizations that do that. But from a people perspective, you know, the common thread is that people are tired. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I feel very tired all the time. But they’re still driven. They’re still loyal and committed folks inside of organizations that want to be there. And so really, no matter how you are building from your HR side, how you’re you’re ahead of people are thinking about flex policies, and HR. HR, well, you know, cures, the symptoms still sit and lie with the leadership team, and the way that they run an organization. Now, the position that lions and tigers takes on the world kind of the unique view that we have, Amy is that we have a concept called highest and best use. Now. It’s a term that we stole from real estate, but you apply it to people. Because it makes so much sense to me to think that if you are working in the space that only you can do this, the true capacity that you have. And when we do that in alignment with the work ecosystem around you, that we can create more sustainability, and more economic access to diverse voices. If we truly spread that work out in a more sustainable way. We would avoid burnout. We didn’t increase innovation, we did increase profitability, we’ve lowered attrition. Those are all the benefits of a system like highest and best use being applied from an organizational design perspective.
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Speaker 1
14:36
I love it. I love these kinds of systems because I think it really helps to do what I think you know, corporations namely have struggled to do in the past and that’s put people over profits, and then be able to see the return on their investment for doing such systems like this. We’re going to definitely talk a little bit more about the era of sustainability and HBCUs. But for the moment, what’s the impact of prioritizing people and the core corporate setting? And do you have any data to help back that up? To help companies, corporate folks a little bit more?
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Speaker 2
15:06
Yeah, let me let let’s break this down a little bit. I told you I was going to help you justify some of this to the folks in power that you need to believe in this model. So yes, certainly, there’s tons of data available about you know, especially from an HR perspective, we think about retention as one of the major levers we use, thinking about prioritizing people. And of course, companies with a strong track record and emphasis on gender issues, especially are 50% more likely to have higher earnings than their peers. So there are many data points supported across many studies that show us time and time again, the benefits of having caring workplaces, but I want to talk a little bit Amy to the CFOs, and the chief innovation officer. So I want to frame this discussion a little bit differently. I want to run a quick cost scenario for you. So I’m gonna justify my point here really quickly. Yeah, so let’s just take an employee, let’s call her Amy. Okay. And any, let’s just say she makes $100,000 a year just for easy math. Okay, if Amy quits her job, she’s a employee, we wish that she wouldn’t quit, she does a great job. It will take us on average six months to backfill her through a recruiting cycle. It’ll take us if we’re lucky, three months to train her up to the same level of productivity, and so and to onboard her. So that’s a $75,000, sunk time cost and losing Amy as nine months worth of progress we would have made on that work. Now, if we compare that to a blended work ecosystem, where we’re starting to think about layering in workers thoughtfully, we take that same ami $100,000 employee that we love and we want to cherish and we added 15 hours of support freelance support capacity support underneath her let’s call her a contractor, will Cumbria I’m going to bill $100 an hour for her time. That scenario will cost us $58,000. To add Bria to Amy’s team, we will have gained nine months worth of productivity at 1.4 heads people’s productivity. So we will not only have saved $17,000. But we will have gained almost 2000 hours of productivity by having those folks in our workforce. And he was probably a lot happier. Yes, business continuity in case he wants to take a vacation heaven forbid, we have standard operating procedures for us to transfer to somebody else should Bria want to take another contract. And then rehab you know, there’s no expectation that I’m with you full time or long term. Yeah, I can manage my own life and schedule in this model. So I just wanted to run through a little cost scenario because I think we’re often talking to the heads of people. And I want to be talking to the CFO and the chief procurement officer who are designing our people systems that are cost systems.
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Speaker 1
17:52
I love it. That’s a great example. I love a good breakdown of numbers and time. Because time is also money, right? That’s another return on your investment and something worth considering. And I asked, I appreciate it because especially in the space of digital marketing, advertising and tech, where women seem to land and oftentimes we land vague titles, marketing director, but we do everything soup to nuts beginning to end with zero support. And so it’s like women doing big titles with basically doing multiple jobs, multiple roles. And then they’re like, why are they leaving? Why do they need more help or support? Instead of having teams to support them, they’re kind of expected to do it all and be at all. So I
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Speaker 2
18:33
want you I want to pause on that because you hit on such an important topic. The do it all mentality. The all or nothing mentality is what’s causing our burnout is the system and this is not our fault. I have a playbook and we can reference this student is open and available. But I talked in there about the unicorn mindset. And this is like, I absolutely want to get rid of this idea that because it how many times that we’ve finally said, You know what, I just need a unicorn, they can do it. They can write copy, they can build ads, they can do paid out paid strategy on the weekends, and that the answer is like we are burning out our people by asking them to stretch into areas that are not in their highest and best use. And if instead we thought solely about the work that was best suited for our folks, we would have much more depth of experiences, and we would not be
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Speaker 1
19:24
burning out our people. Oh 100% Because we’re not unicorns, we’re, oh, you’re looking for a unicorn. It’s a mystical animal, y’all, you’re gonna find it. But by looking at your existing workforce and understanding what are their desires, where do they want to grow? How do they want to grow? What do they want to do? And you know, I think that’s another thing too, just getting gosh, I could go on so many tangents I’m trying not to. But like even this idea of going and staying and being in your lane is another thing I think that holds, you know a lot of people back because they feel like there’s only one way to grow. And there’s only one path for them within an organization and if you don’t have opportunity and flexibility to let them test their own limits in a way that’s healthy for them. They’re not going to stick around. You’re right burnouts going to be the result. And yes, it is not, it is not your fault. Ladies, please, I want to underline that thank you for saying that Umbria. It is important, it is not your fault, triple underline. All right. We talked about retention and the era you reference a lot of the era of sustainability, CSRS and whatnot. And why is it that leaders should focus on building these? We’ve talked about already a little bit of blended teams of employees and non employees, and how can this benefit the workforce and the organization itself? So let’s dig a little deeper on that blended teams idea.
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Speaker 2
20:42
Yeah, I mean, data suggests that we are already in the middle of another industrial revolution. So that’s why I say we’re in the now of work, because the rise of AI and the talent shifts that are underway. We’re already doing this as it’s happening. And so if we’re starting to think about, you know, going from the great resignation to the great reset, you know, my belief is that this next phase, as we think about sustainability, in all the ways you would define sustainability, too, when we think about sort of the environmental impact, the societal impact, and also the health and wellness of our of our people, leading to, you know, capacity for innovation and growth inside of our workforces, so that we receive more profitability at work, like there’s just so it to me, it’s just the most obvious place for this to go. It will take though, leaders believing that that that is the right bet. And that requires change. And that’s the biggest barrier that all of us collectively have to acknowledge, like, I’m not completely living in the clouds, like we are working with clients who think this way, who build teams this way that see the benefit of it, that are able to move faster, with more agility with less risk to their p&l. There’s many reasons why people are enlightened to think like this, but it is not everybody, I certainly run into people who don’t believe me. And that’s okay. Like, I’m happy to compete with them.
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Speaker 1
22:10
Time will prove time, data will prove, I think that that’s great. Let’s dig in a little bit more to because we are talking about these blended teams and making the most of retention and sustainability. Let’s talk more about the hbu or hbu, the highest and best to use. How would you describe this in the context of today’s workforce? And how can leaders identify it and leverage this idea?
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Speaker 2
22:35
Yeah, I mean, I think in the past, you know, there’s been a lot of like zone of genius, like, this is where you you’re, you think like, okay, to get you to your point, or like I’m in my lane. And I think that work is super important. And I want to acknowledge that your highest and best use changes over time. Of course, like as you ascend within an organization, you do, you know, more strategic work, etc. The the stretching that I want us to do, and the introduction, introduction of highest and best use as a system helps us think not only about our individual zone of genius, or skills and practices, but also the capacity relative to the business objectives at hand, and the total ecosystem of talent we have available to us. The biggest question for leaders right now is, do I give this project, a project that I trust someone that can come in and do this work? Are they on my payroll? Are they employees, are they not? Because what is available to me now? And the answer to that is very different than it was 10 years ago, there are so many more options to who you can tap and how you can tap them to do that work. And so hbu is a system that aligns all of that talent in a way that is in service of the business and in service of the people.
Speaker 1
23:47
That’s great. I love it. That’s great framework. And I can imagine it’s tremendously valuable and insightful. Like all the things that you have to learn and to see it satisfies the curiosity in me to know, you know, what is it that we have the capabilities to unlock? To help the business grow? I don’t know why this I don’t know why people don’t believe you. Bria it doesn’t make any sense to me. But just me, you did reference zone of genius. And I do want to say for those of you who are individuals are independent contractors are just kind of are in a space zone of genius. I don’t know if you’re pulling exactly from that reference. But the big leap the book, The Big Leap talks a lot about you working from your zone of competence, incompetence, competence, excellence and genius. And it’s a great way to distinguish for yourself, where you sit and what your zone of genius is. Because I think a lot of us, especially women find ourselves trapped in our zone of excellence, we get picked for projects because we are a finisher, or because we are an organizer, or planner. And it’s maybe like because that’s what we’re great at, but it’s not our zone of genius. It’s not where we find the most passion and purpose. And so we ended up doing all of this hard, exhausting work because it’s our zone of excellence or zone of competence, versus our zone of genius. So wanted to throw out that book reference because it’s not a podcast unless we’re referencing a book And episode ipla. All right, we’ve got another framework, which again, love all of the frameworks that you have built and established with lions and tigers. Could you elaborate on the significance of what you call the three M’s, which is magnets, momentums and maximums? And how do they help contribute to achieving the highest and best use?
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Speaker 2
25:21
Yeah, so, so high CMS, you think of this as sort of like the philosophy and the framework for organizational design to unlock talent, right? The way that that plays out is that we use three ends to build the structure. So three M’s can apply to like if you’re kind of talking about zone of genius, or if you’re thinking about your individual sense, but it also works across the system and across an organization. So the three M’s and number one, magnets, the magnets, these are the things that draw us together. So for an individual, these are our skills and talents, the gifts that you talked about for an organization, these are the strategies the product market fit, the things that, that present that, that bring us money for the work that we do. So that’s m number one. And number two is momentum. These are the unseen forces that drive us forward for an individual that might be your network, that might be the kinds of things that people bring you into speaking events for, for example, press you might get for an organization and momentum might look like product market fit, they might look like increase, like culture scores, for instance. So again, I’m trying to kind of give you the basics of their framework as you apply it to these various scenarios. And the last thing that I think is different than what you’re seeing in a lot of other frameworks, the third M is maximums. And this is how we achieve the era of sustainability is by being truly honest with what our capacity is what our limits are. And really talking about those things in a way that is guilt free. That’s most for an individual, it might be hours, it might be location, it might be for office, for an organization, your maximums might be the pace at which your team can work without breaking them. So think about three M’s. And so when we’re designing the systems, we use that framework for us to be able to audit and make recommendations of how we do org design aligned to those three items.
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Speaker 1
27:11
That’s beautiful. I love it because I think what it also does is it breeds some inclusivity, especially with the maximums by allowing you to create the healthy boundaries that they need in order to operate and provide what they do best. I love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. All right, I’ve got a few more questions. And then of course, as always live listening audience, we’ll have time at the end for extra questions for Bria. So if you have a question, while we’re talking, feel free to drop it in the chat. Otherwise, I’ll keep rolling. And then as we get to the end, I’ll give you one more chance. So my next question, we talked about the three arms now, do you have any inspiring examples of corporate community building initiatives that has successfully jumpstarted the HPU ideation within organizations like what does this look like once it’s finally in process? Yeah,
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Speaker 2
28:01
well, I’ll tell you two stories. Okay. One is one that my team worked on. And one is one that I just admire. Okay. So the first one, we were working with the big client at Microsoft, she got a bunch of funding, she wrote a business case got a bunch of funding, she had 11, team members, they had been working super hard, which is why they got funding to expand, they basically got some investment for scale. But the leader that we were working with was really worried about the attrition of these team members, because they had been working so hard and had really gotten her there. And she wanted to sort of honor them. On my team, I have a licensed psychologist, Dr. Renee on staff. And so she comes in often to an organization that is either burned out or there’s something just not quite highly optimized about the org, and we do some assessment. And so we built basically a culture rectification plan or protection plan for this organization as they took on this investment scale. And so we did some change management work associated with this group. And then what this this boss did that I thought was so smart is that she bought staffing services as a means of employee wellness. So instead of just, you know, getting some additional benefits around like, you know, MGM, she said, I will get every person on this team, half head of a project manager to help you as we scale. So we buy teams staffed in 20 people to support the 11. And we all like sort of work together to build out this whole ecosystem. And what happened was pretty amazing to her her score. So as a manager, she scored some of the top employee health scores within her organization across all of her peers. And she was able to get promotion and more investment in the following year. So it was like a really smart investment strategy that was a culture first build. Oftentimes, we see management consulting firms or agencies come in and just like roughshod, the way that we do org change, took a really different approach to it. And so that was a really inspiring way to think about this kind of change management work. The other thing that other story that I’ll tell you that I just am like really obsessed with this at Procter and Gamble, you know, really thoughtful organization, Unilever, especially has done a lot of really talent centric work. But they have been piloting for the last five years with a platform, a SaaS platform called gloat. And what they’ve done is that they realized that a lot of their more senior talent wanted to retire. And they didn’t want to lose that talent. There’s also of course, caretakers that wanted a little bit less capacity at work. And so they allow their full time employees to opt in through this global marketplace, often to be hourly employees at their pay rate. So they could go in and use like, basically a full time employee marketplace for people to jump in and say yes to projects without quitting their full time jobs, their full time jobs, or their permanent jobs. And I thought that was really innovative. And they’re doing some really great case studies around the the major benefits they’ve seen as an organization to their brand for doing an investment like that. So there’s a couple of stories of innovation happening and how people are thinking about this kind of change.
1