The Future of Work: Building Elite Teams by Embracing a Distributed Workforce Model

CheeTung Leong: [: 00:00:00

So thank you so much for being with us on the show today, Evelyn.

Evelyn Bassett: Thank you for having me. C. T. Appreciate it.

CheeTung Leong: So tell us a little bit more about Elasticsearch as a company and what you do there

h. We now just go by elastic [: 00:01:00

You'll need a company like ours to help you observe it. And then the third solution here is cybersecurity

behind Uber using our search [: 00:02:00

So we're a business to business company that supports thousands of other businesses to help them run their companies. So you're using elastic every day. You just don't know you're using it. If you looked up a stock price, or you went through an airport through immigration or what have you that's going to be our technology supporting those efforts.

CheeTung Leong: Yeah. Thank you. I was going to say as a technology company I'm super familiar with elastic, we see you guys all the time. But for many of our listeners that it may not be that familiar. And it looks like they just decided, Hey, Evelyn's great. Let's just chuck everything at her.

What would you say is the achievement that you're most proud of across all of these roles?

ees elasticians because it's [: 00:03:00

There's just been so many things unprecedented that we have had to experience and the HR function, the people function leading through that. So be well for me is absolutely Barton. Probably top of my list because our employees have come through this feeling very much supported. And we know that as evidenced by some of the feedback that we get both externally through other organizations, giving us awards for it.

oes in under Be Well. That's [: 00:04:00

CheeTung Leong: sound like quite a multidisciplinary task force that just cuts across many different aspects of the work. If you were to think about your moonshot goal for next year, what would make 2024 a home run for you?

Evelyn Bassett: One of the things that we actually have as a company is an AI and artificial intelligence product called Esrae. We actually sell that as part of our suite of products available to other businesses. We certainly don't want to be the shoemakers kids without any shoes. So we're teaming internally to better understand how Esrae can help us in HR.

or our own teams in terms of [: 00:05:00

we have data scientists, but, there is a way to better understand that product and ingested so that we can absolutely amp up on productivity and efficiency effectiveness and what we do. And to your point, I manage eight different businesses within the HR function. And it's all of the, what we would call this mostly the centers of excellence.

ation, anticipating it going [: 00:06:00

CheeTung Leong: So when do you see that Esrae products being like a front facing employee self service, interface for elasticians, or is that something that's going to support the business partners for the people team or the HR team on the backend?

Evelyn Bassett: Yeah, good question. We're early days. I would say we're taking a page on partnering with the sales side of the business. Who's now beginning to use the product for the sales team. And so taking out a page and working with them to better understand how we could use it in HR. And yes, I would say the first step would be for our immediate team and then to better understand how it can be front facing to our employees.

We also have one of our vendors in a distributed environment like, this is Service Now and they have a virtual agent. So we'll have to figure out. How their AI capabilities as a provider venture to us would live with, and they do, there's connectors between our AI and a ServiceNow AI and really how we optimize it for our employees.

But [: 00:07:00

It is a moonshot, way more to go. The first step really is to better understand what we can do for ourselves first to operationalize, optimize that way and create some productivity.

CheeTung Leong: It sounds like I should circle back in a year and

we have a different episode on that specific topic. That would be so cool.

What do you think is one leadership or HR myth that you just wish would go away?

inancials and things of that [: 00:08:00

And we occupy the number one and two spot on the P& L, the profit and loss statement. In general, though, HR has come a long way. When I started my career over 30 years ago, and it's hard to believe I'm even saying that it was called the personnel department personnel. And what a difference to really migrated over.

In a large way, yes, still human resources, some companies have called it people function and other names, but it is far more than that in the sense that it's a strategic partner sitting adjacent to the CEO, If you think about it The number one resource in any company, unless you're manufacturing something, but in a professional environment like ours is your people.

ly dialed way, way away from [: 00:09:00

CheeTung Leong: A great one because you wouldn't be talking on the personnel impact show for sure. We've now come a long way

I think sometimes we don't give the function enough credit I think as a function, HR is still continually trying to reinvent itself and make that difference in the business.

And I like that about the function because it's so value driven where everyone's always thinking about how do I earn that seat at the board table.

Evelyn Bassett: One of the forcing mechanisms, definitely one of the external factors that is really moving this along is just typically that financial disclosures and now just disclosure. So if you think about public companies, what they're required to do, they're required to disclose.

And now[: 00:10:00

From simply just financial disclosures to now a more fulsome view of your resources. So that is certainly help move that discussion along in terms of the seat at the table for HR, because who better can talk about your human resources than your head of HR? Now, again, whether it is your CEO and your CFO doing the earnings calls, you're going to have a big view of this in terms of your people.

e momentum is around ESG and [: 00:11:00

CheeTung Leong: It's so great that the financial community and investors are actually demanding that level of disclosures today because, and the other thing that I might add to what you're saying is through the pandemic. The role of HR has just been elevated and the gauntlet was really thrown down to HR to say, we really need some solid thinking about our people today and how we can get people to work.

was very strategic about how [: 00:12:00

Walk us through the difference. What's the difference between having a distributed workforce versus a remote workforce?

Evelyn Bassett: Yes. Lots of times folks use that term interchangeably and they think it's actually the same thing. Being distributed and being remote are similar, salt and pepper maybe, but they're different. And here's why remote denotes that you are remote from some place, and it's usually you're remote from an office environment that you're either domiciled to or you're attached to or somehow, and there's even an expectation typically that you will visit or frequent that office at some point, and that frequency depends on the company.

go in person other than when [: 00:13:00

Although we have had some instances where people are traveling the world and going around doing that through, RVs, recreational vehicles, but largely speaking, it's going to be in locations around the world and in environments where you feel most productive. For me, this is my home. It has to have a secure location though, meaning secure internet and security is obviously one of our solutions. So we're looking for stable, secure internet connections, but it could be in a satellite office. It could be in some other environment where you find that most productive and around the world globally, I can work anywhere pretty much well in areas that I'm going to say we support globally.

on the East coast. I work in [: 00:14:00

If I choose to relocate somewhere, of course, I'll change my address details with Elastic, but you're distributed. Distribute it means we're distributed in many different places, locations, and we're in over 40 different countries at this stage, obviously on different continents and different time zones, all working together.

CheeTung Leong: Yeah. that is really interesting when it comes to the design component of it, because it's not like you're just managing a team of five or six people. How many thousand were you guys at again?

Evelyn Bassett:: 3000

CheeTung Leong: What are some of the key that you use to think through making people successful, making these 3000 elasticians successful. When they are completely distributed.

Evelyn Bassett: [: 00:15:00

But while he was CEO, and I joined over five years ago, it was about making sure we had structure, consistent structure. How does that get demonstrated or manifested? You have to have technology like Slack as an example a tool that we can collaborate 1 to another.

m. But even more so than the [: 00:16:00

If you're operating globally. I have an accent to somebody else. So why is that important? Because when you have asked me anything, so AMAs, you're asking questions that make your experience connected to the cluster of, and our logo is a cluster of everyone else. So we come together, we assemble and that communication, that construct and having all of the tools.

We work with a lot of [: 00:17:00

It's just about having that ability to work with agility and having the tools to support it. So that's really important. We also create experiences. And what I mean by that, even though we're virtually located globally, we have a fantastic workplaces team. And we do have offices, by the way, if you choose, it's a choice to go.

You may want to go into one of those offices, but we do things where we will create slack groups and have them team up together. So folks working in entirely different functions that I would have no work with, assignments associated with we'll get together and twice a year, do some stuff together. The company gives us a budget to do that.

things like we call it donut[: 00:18:00

There's a bunch of sessions you can join in and learn something that other elasticians are leading. So there's all these things we curate to make sure that at any given day, really at Elastic, something is happening.

It's a community and you can tap into that. While we have virtual environments, the other thing that we have done to make sure it's connected is once a year, depending on where you in the organization, could be more than once, we'll get large teams together. So that they see each other in person.

ents and then we'll see each [: 00:19:00

CheeTung Leong: One of the trickiest things about having a distributed workforce is assessing and evaluating the health of the organization on a regular basis because you don't have that sensory input where you're face to face and in person. So you have to rely on metrics and data, but at the same time, it's so easy to get drowned by metrics and data.

So what is Elastic's approach to thinking about organizational health? And what are some of the key metrics that you guys watch?

sus the many metrics you can [: 00:20:00

What does that tell you? But if you can decisively get it down to a slate of key performance indicators, what we're calling key health indicators, because we're looking at people factors and those are aligned to your business strategy, then you're rowing the boat in the same direction, and then you're looking for patterns and not only just are you able to get insights, you'll be able to get into the world of predictive analytics, which allows you to look into the future and start leaning into that.

s like recruiting and our HR [: 00:21:00

We have the data and the insights that we're seeing on that spectrum, the content and our partners have the context. So while we might look at a data point that looks like attrition is rising, one of my peers might have some context as to why that is some recent event or some change in operating model or structure or something to qualify what we're seeing. And that creates for a very robust business discussion. We're doing that through technology. We partner with a vendor called one model that enables us to customize our own internal dashboards, which at the fingertips of a leader, if you can go in and open up a dashboard

termination of the health of [: 00:22:00

CheeTung Leong: What are some of the biggest questions that you feel that this approach has allowed you to answer about organizational health? Or is there something that you wish that you're currently working on that's like the biggest question that you're trying to answer.

you are and making sure that [: 00:23:00

Or our hiring practice should be emblematic of the local locations that we're in. We're looking for all of those patterns and ensuring we're leaning into it and doing great work there to help our leaders better understand it. It is not about just looking at numbers and drawing some hasty conclusions.

It's about peeling back that onion and better understanding and getting insights there.

CheeTung Leong: If you could summarize everything into a set of a framework or a checklist how would you advise another chief HR officer thinking about being deliberate and designing a successful and effective distributed workforce?

drawing the insights out of [: 00:24:00

I'll use maybe an American metaphor. I call it sometimes the IKEA model, not the distributed model. If you've ever been in an IKEA store you follow a path. And it's very structured, and you go through the same departments, and typically at the end of that experience, studies have been done, forget the dollar value, but most people have stuff at the end of that, because the last part of that path is the cashier.

dea, you could be located in [: 00:25:00

So we have a number of guidelines and areas that we lean into.

CheeTung Leong: I love that. So global frameworks but locally relevant. And I loved also the metaphor and the idea of having the employee journey like a walk through Ikea. That's something that's really stuck with me.

If people wanted to find you to continue this conversation, what's the best way for them to do so?

Evelyn Bassett: CertaInly hit me up on LinkedIn, but I will say I do have a big remit, as you can tell from my title. I'll try to be as available as I can. I do have other members of my team that certainly could talk about this as well.

ost productive place you can,[: 00:27:00

CheeTung Leong: Thank you so much for hanging with us today, Evelyn. And for those of you listening, thank you so much for joining us today. And I hope you enjoyed the show. Do head on over to www. engagerocket. co slash HR impact to find more show notes write ups and the rest of our community that are featured there.

I'm sure that you'll find something and little nuggets that will be useful for you. I've been CT and had a great pleasure speaking with Evelyn today. See you again next time.