Episode 3: Conversations That Matter - Elizabeth Cowper, We Are Ludo

Welcome back to our Conversations that matter podcast series. This week, we're joined by Elizabeth Cowper, Founder and CEO of We Are Ludo. For our next episode, OpenBlend's Founder and CEO, Anna Rasmussen, sat down with Elizabeth to discuss how organisations can and should foster an individualised approach when it comes to the employee experience, ensuring that today's workforce feel seen and heard. 

We Are Ludo provide tech for inclusion, working to close the gender pay gap, educating, informing and supporting HR. 

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Transcript

Anna Rasmussen 00:09

Hello, and welcome to the OpenBlend Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm Anna Rasmussen, founder and CEO of OpenBlend. OpenBlend is a software platform that replaces the performance management approach of yesterday with a tool that recognizes the human being in the achievement of goals and enables one to one conversations that drive outcomes to retain and grow high performing cultures. We've created this podcast series to share the opinions and experiences of individuals who deeply believe in the power of conversation. In each episode, we'll hear from people that we've handpicked. for their unique perspective, some of those personal, some of those professional, and all incredibly insightful. We hope that you'll gain some valuable tips, advice and perspective on driving your own conversations that matter. 

Anna Rasmussen 01:01

Hello and welcome to another episode of conversations that matter. So as with all my guests, I'm very excited to have this conversation today with a wonderful human being called Elizabeth Cowper, who has got a fantastic career, formerly was the HRD at LVMH, then moved on to group HR and people development director at Harvey Nichols, then was the VP of HR for tapestry. And then for the last three years has been the founder of Ludo and Ludo is tech for inclusion. I first met Elizabeth when I saw her present at an industry event and I knew instantly that I needed her in my life, and I'm absolutely thrilled to introduce you to her today where we're going to be focusing on an individualized approach to ensuring that today's workforce feel valued and seen. So, Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining us today

Elizabeth Cowper 02:00

Delighted to be here. Thank you for having me. 

Anna Rasmussen 02:02

I think maybe if we kick off, so it's a big question. So if we can kick off with what, what have you learned from this fantastic career that you've had? And why did you almost turn your back on that to set up We Are Ludo? 

Elizabeth Cowper 02:19

Um, thank you that, yeah, big question. My career has been 25, nearly 25 years in HR and I've had a generalist career the whole way through, but towards the end morphed more into Harvey Nichols and Tapestry, more of the wellbeing culture work and really looking at inclusion. And I think what I've learned is that we know that when you look at, well, if you look at the profit line of a business, we know that all businesses who are profit making want to take a commercial view, and one of the biggest things I've learned in a business is that when you have engaged, happy, productive employees, that will impact the bottom line. So how do we do that in a really human way as an HR leader to get the best from our people but also maximize the success of a business. And when I really started to look at the wellbeing of individuals, and how we truly include them in the workplace for success, you begin to see the metric shifting and see brilliance, not just in individuals, but also collectively as a whole in teams. And my last role at Tapestry, who owned Coach, Kate Spade and Stuart Wiseman, I was global head of wellbeing alongside my HR role and on the global DEI committee and that really brought together all my favourite things in the HR space, I suppose.

Anna Rasmussen 03:49

And then so how, so I totally understand that, makes complete sense. So you've obviously got this kind of, what you've taken, I think what a lot of people struggle with and being able to prove this art will create some ROI. So you've taken this very sort of commercial stance to this and, and marrying it with obviously this sort of, the passion that you have about repackaging it into a corporate, so you can, so you can articulate the benefits of this in a corporate capacity, which I totally understand. How are you, how are you doing that? So we are Ludo, tell us about the products and how you're using that tech to support your, your findings from your, from your corporate career

Elizabeth Cowper 04:37

Yeah, no, of course. And actually, just jumping on to the other part of your earlier question, which I don't think I fully answered, sorry, which is what made me kind of turn my back on my corporate career to do it, and then why did, because the two things are intricately linked on what you've just asked me. I've turned my back on the corporate world as it were because I had this deep passion and belief that actually we could really support businesses in how to do this effectively in a way that gave a toolkit to businesses, HR leaders, line managers, and a support to employees in this space. 

So in terms of how Ludo works, we are a subscription platform for companies. Companies subscribe onto our tech and once they subscribed, all employees have immediate access to supporting specific areas, and the areas we cover so far are maternity, menopause, health, including mental health, and fertility. So if an employee is in any way wanting more resource, a bit of extra help, wants to learn more, is looking to help their own wellbeing through any of those areas, once their company has subscribed, they can jump in and get help from our expert partners, and that could be anything from hypnobirthing to managing guilt when you go back to work, to what is HRT, to how will the right nutrition support my menopause or mindfulness and meditation, et cetera, that's the company element. So we can really step in and allow employees to get quick and easy access because we know that a lot of the time with employees, unless we can create a culture of openness and inclusion, they might just put their head down, pretend it's not happening, get signed off sick, be absent from work, be emotionally struggling with these things outside of work, and we want to bring that to the forefront and say, you are welcome here, we are supporting you. Then we have an HR learning hub for HR and line managers really on the how and the why to drive a culture of wellbeing and inclusion to support that drive and that how to really embed it into the day to day lens of how that business is run.

Anna Rasmussen 06:55

Okay. So, I mean, it's very female led, as a product. Do you, when you go into organizations, is it that the suite is more focused at females? I know you mentioned the mental health side of it, but with sort of fertility and menopause and maternity. Does an organization take this on for everybody or is it very much focused on women?

Elizabeth Cowper 07:17 

No, that's a great question. Absolutely. It's taken on for everybody, and we started at the beginning when we started with our maternity module and then menopause being far more female led. We then launched health and you're right, of course, that's across the board. But then for fertility, you know, 49 percent of fertility issues are men's issues, and we see it as a woman's issue, but particularly really developing into, you know, it could be two men who have a surrogate or whatever it might be, you know, there was a big rise in fertility challenges, whether you identify as male or female.

Anna Rasmussen 07:54

Okay. So you mentioned there in there around, from a cultural perspective, creating this culture of openness, once an organization is working with you, because I understand the resource and obviously hugely valuable, how do you then help an organization to bring this to life, embed those new behaviours and truly sort of drive this culture of openness? Because so many of the, and I know that you'll agree with this, so many people, like, you know, they see it as a tick box exercise, how do you take this kind of really rich content, this really helpful information that can transform people's knowledge around these areas? How do you create and embed new behaviours with it? 

Elizabeth Cowper 08:41 

It's a great question and I think one of the things that's really important when you're doing culture work is to understand this is never a one and done situation, and what I mean by that is that there are many brilliant benefits and resources available to employees and I've certainly seen this in my career where HR launched it and said we've got this new benefit or it might go in the handbook or the welcome letter and then it's not spoken about again. And you know, we're not pointing fingers, but because they've moved on to something else. I'm, you know, being really simplistic about this, but when you do deep culture work, one of the things that's really important is repeating the message and in different ways. So, if you look at driving a culture of inclusion, that's a perfect example. You want to talk about that at onboard for every new starter. Every single time there's a town hall, or there's a company meeting, or there's a, whatever you do in your business that brings the company together, it's spoken about then, whether you have an intranet, or you have a monthly or weekly bulletin, you know, how are we highlighting different parts about what the company's doing? We don't want to say the same thing every single week, but if we're standing up and saying, we have a resource available to you to support your mental health and the next month we're talking about a resource to help give a really consistent support throughout maternity leave, but talking about it over and over and over again to give as much resource as many reminders as possible is really how to get the uptake and the embedding of a resource platform, such as Ludo into your business. Because then it will be just that moment or just that day that an employee goes, actually, I've just that. I'm going to have a look at it. We hear there's actually stats on this, but we hear about different benefits platforms that, or benefits that sit on intranet systems and companies, and they just, they sit there and there's all this stuff available, but the employees just don't know, or they've forgotten. So to really drive the culture, it's talking about it, reminding people, speaking to line managers, having it as part of your conversation, sharing it together in one to one updates and really embedding it into how the business operates. And we, and we help our clients do that. We send them a monthly update, a monthly comms update, which our clients can copy and paste or edit or, so we're giving them a really easy kind of reminder and handhold of what to communicate with their employees about in that particular month.

Anna Rasmussen 11:27 

Okay, so that, that's on a kind of macro approach, so I understand that it's a really effective comms program, repetition of the message, standing by what you do, reminding people, because, you know, our minds, we're looking at different things at different times, so being reminded at an optimum time will drive people to understand the resource because they need it at that particular part at that particular point. How about with, so obviously OpenBlend, you know, we're all about kind of facilitating and enabling very effective one to ones between a manager and an employee. So some of these topics are quite sensitive and it's, you know, maybe that content is to be consumed as an individual. How, how does what we're talking about link into those individualised one to ones?

Elizabeth Cowper 12:17

I think it's having line managers understand why it's important to talk about it in the one to one, and the why, as you all know, is the amazing work you guys do, is so important. You've got to know sort of the purpose of that person and what they're really, you know, what motivates them and how you connect with them, and I think line managers understanding the why of the benefit of these conversations is really, really important. You know, we know that actually, employees want to feel included and valued. I mean, inclusive businesses have improved team performance by up to 30 percent that’s a Gartner stat, and inclusive companies are 30 percent more success, financially successful than their competition, which came from McKinsey. So we know that there is deep personal reasons, but also financial reasons for line managers to get behind these conversations and truly take the time to engage and understand each employee's purpose and motivators to have them feel a sense of belonging and psychological safety in the workplace. A more engaged employee is more productive, they have a higher happiness index, they want to stay longer. So this really is a deep, deep purpose as to why this benefits individuals who are supported in the workplace.

Anna Rasmussen 13:38 

So actually let's move on to the ROI piece, actually, because then as you mentioned it there about, you know, you quoted a Gartner as a stat, how do you measure the ROI of these types of initiatives? So if you're talking, say, because, you know, I would imagine talking to people that, who are in your old roles now and going back and they, they've got to create a business case, haven't they, to communicate internally, to get sign off for it, how, what do you pull from the tech that supports the ROI here that enables you to sort of create that business case? 

Elizabeth Cowper 14:22

So, ROI is measured in a variety of different ways and we support in our learning hub of the backend of the tech for line managers and HR to know how to start measuring the ROI.  Now there are different stats you can draw on from length of service to numbers of sick days, to percentage turnover, but then you can go a bit deeper.

So if you look at something like length of service, when are your leavers leaving? Now, let's say that we have most women leaving between the age of 40 to 50, let's say. We know that last year, global productivity losses reported by Bloomberg topped 150 billion, that’s a global number. Now, if you've got your women leaving, then you might suggest that there is support needed around the menopause, for example. So where are those people living? At what age? How long have they been there? So you can dive a bit more deeply into that. We can also look at engagement, that's the right word, engagement on wellbeing initiatives. So do we have employees signing up to our wellbeing initiatives? Do they attend wellbeing talks that we run? You know, what's their feedback on that? That's another way to cross then check of who are the people who are engaging in this and how long have they been there, to be able to cross check your data. There are most businesses or many businesses don't have necessarily a Qualtrics deep data analyst tool, but you can do a lot of this work on spreadsheets. I didn't have, when I was at Tapestry, we didn't have a deep analytical tool, but I had an amazing guy on my team that was a total spreadsheet whiz and really helps us do this. There are ways you can do it without having a deep data tool. So that's another way, numbers of sick days and types of sickness is also important. Now we also know a high percentage of sick notes don't tell the truth, so when you are getting to a point of more psychological safety and being able to have return to work meetings on sickness, diving into reasons for sickness is another area of us looking at measures of why people out of the business and if it is around stress and anxiety, what are we doing about it? So really crunching into your data, and if you're in a business, incidentally, that is a retail business or a sales business. What's the sell through? What are the sales targets? Are they being met? Is this team more impacted by turnover than another? And drilling into that data. And then starting with a point in time where you put these numbers into your spreadsheet or your data tool, and then you review it in three months, and then in six months, and then for each stage, putting actions in place to drive your numbers up, and all this ought to tie into an employee engagement survey, which typically these are long gone of being done, done annually but if you do surveys or check ins, which give you instant immediate results of that day or that week. What does that look like compared to the other data? So, it's really important to bring data together and cross reference it and then look at actions that come from that. And this is a cycle all the time on a quarterly basis, and I recommend running it quarterly because a month is too short, and six months or a year is too long. So, you'll really get proper data a year down the line. But six to twelve months is when you start seeing the real shift in numbers. Because three to six months is almost too soon to call it. By the time you get to a year, you'll be able to see across four quarters, some trends or how where you pulled one lever, you've shifted the dial on those numbers. So that's how we look at it. 

Anna Rasmussen 18:07

Okay, so sort of pulling together two of the key things you're talking about there. One is sort of the comms and the repetition of the message as to, why we're doing this and that this resource is here. And then asking people, and then feeding that back through comms as well, because I mean, the focus of this conversation is about this approach to ensuring today's workforce with all this kind of diversity of, um, uh, well, not, it's not diversity, but all these various different, you know, fertility or menopause or maternity or as, as you said, all the complexities that come with all of that, for whatever gender. It’s about making sure that these people feel valued and seen in an organization. So you've got a piece of tech that's saying everything you need is in here to refer it, but also taking all the data from those quarterly surveys and saying to people, this is what we're hearing you're saying, so therefore this is what we're putting in place to address that. So that, that is almost, it's not necessarily an individualized approach, but it's taking the data and communicating that back so people feel heard and valued, isn't it? Through, through that, in that repetition of message. What else do you think, in your experience, sort of throughout your career and sort of how you're influencing your products and how it's being shaped now, what else can make today's workforce feel valued and seen? I mean, that's a huge question. I know we're coming to the end of the podcast, but what other things do you think really will impact how valued and seen today's workforce feel? 

Elizabeth Cowper 19:45

Getting feedback from your people is critical, and I’ve seen this with, clients that we've worked with Ludo where when we first meet them, they say, we're doing this, this, and this around inclusion and wellbeing. And I say to them, tell me, what did you learn then when you spoke to your people? And a lot of the time they put in a great strategy, but I didn't ask the people first, and I think, That's a really important key in the, you know, in how you shift the dial is every company is different, and you want to know where you're starting from to know where you're going, and ERGs employee representative groups are another really key part of this. So if you, if you have ERGs in your business, create a methodology in which they give you feedback and then take the action to share it on what you're going to be doing about it. Now, two things happen with that, first of all, you're listening to those groups and really hearing what they want. And that is bringing individual voices into a group, but you're getting the feedback. And then it's really important to take the action, and if for any reason that action isn't appropriate, or it doesn't, work at that time, or there might be funding required to particularly put an initiative in place, even if you feedback and say, we're looking at this for next year, or we can't do it now, but you can't ignore it, you have to be able to openly speak about them. And what that does is getting that feedback and having that loop and feeding back. Is it creates safety, so people feel that when they speak, they're heard. And even if the action doesn't happen immediately, they know that's on the radar, and they've been heard, and they've had a voice, and that it's something that's being taught about or considered, and you might commit to going back in a year and revisiting that thing, but that person has still been heard. And then what the safety element does, is it knocks onto people, feeling they're more able to show up at work as their authentic self. Cause they can feel free to have a view, and that builds a very safe culture, so talking to your employees is, it's massive, It's really big. 

Anna Rasmussen 21:51

And directly acting on it, looking at the data and doing something about it. And that, I guess that is where the business case for We Are Ludo comes from, you're getting this feedback through these engagement surveys, through these ERG sessions, listening to employees, hearing what they need, and then providing the solution back.

Elizabeth Cowper 22:11

Yeah, and if you can't, that's okay. But then you say you can't, and you say, why? Because it can't be a free for all of we want a swimming pool on the roof and oh yeah, we'll put one in tomorrow. But it's just being able to talk about the rationale to why and also understanding why that initiative might be required. Now it could be that employees ask for a meditation space. Well, rather than say no, potentially is there a meeting room that could be used for that, even if it's just in the mornings or whatever it might be. So, it's thinking creatively, laterally, to be able to find compromises or solutions to support their employee requests for their own wellbeing to feel valued and included.

Anna Rasmussen 22:55

It's fascinating, isn't it? Because I think everything that we've spoken about, and I think where you and I come from, we're both solution providers. But actually, there is a huge piece of work that needs to take place in these organisations, up front of the technology going in, but also as a result of the technology going in, which all sits under comms. And that has more or less, significance depending on the size of the organization as well, and how that's filtered down. But I think when it comes to this approach to ensuring today's workforce feel valued and seen, it's about listening to them, acting on what they're saying and communicating it all back to them all the time and in regular occurrences to make sure that they, they know that what they say they want is being implemented, and this is the resource that they have. 

Elizabeth Cowper 23:48

And a nice way to do that for HR leaders is to just have a cadence, so for example, we had a monthly town hall in my old company, and that was the moment that when I stood up once a month in front of the company, that's when I would present, and in between that, I didn't talk about it. But what happens is then people knew that that was the moment when we get the feedback on the last set of suggestions, initiatives, whatever it might be, and that's also good because then unconsciously it becomes a pattern formed and the business knows when they're going to hear that information, rather than drip fed, you know, in a more sporadic way, so that regular cadence does work really well. 

Anna Rasmussen 24:27

Yeah, fabulous. Right. Well, Elizabeth, I knew that it would be a fantastic session with lots of sort of light bulb moments. And I really hope that everyone listening today has, has got a huge amount from that, so thank you so much for your time today. It's really generous of you to join us on, on the podcast, and yeah, it's been a great pleasure. Thank you very much, Elizabeth. 

Elizabeth Cowper 24:53

Thank you so much for having me. It's been amazing. Thank you.