Bailey Parnell Helps Us Create Digital Culture in a Remote Workplace
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In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with SkillsCamp and #SafeSocial founder Bailey Parnell on how we need to look at creating digital culture for remote work.
A few reasons why she is awesome — she is the founder and CEO of SkillsCamp, a soft skills training company; founder and board member of #SafeSocial, a charity helping gain the benefits of social media with less risk, including investigating social media’s impact on mental health; she was named one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women by Women’s Executive Network; has spoken twice for TEDx and is a keynote speaker and entrepreneur.
Connect with, and learn more about Bailey on…
“Digital culture is workplace culture. That’s it because if you are hybrid and remote… THIS is the experience of your company. There’s no “oh but in the office, we get cake for people on their birthday.” Well, guess what? Half your people, half the time are not in the office, so you better change that up. What was the intent of the cake?”
Bailey Parnell
Russel Lolacher
And on the show today we have Bailey Parnell, and here is why she is awesome. She is the founder and CEO of Skills Camp, a soft skills training company. She’s the founder and board member of #SafeSocial, a charity, helping gain the benefits of social media with less risk, including investigating social media impact on mental health. Going to talk about that a bit. Today, this organization was actually launched, based on a researcher at the World Youth Forum in Egypt. She was named one of Canada’s top 100 Most Powerful Women by women’s executive network. She’s got not one not one, but two TEDx is under her belt. And she’s a keynote speaker and entrepreneur, and she’s here. Hello, Bailey.
Bailey Parnell
Thanks for having me. You make me sound very good.
Russel Lolacher
I just read the words, Bailey, you’re the one that does the accomplishment. So no, all you. But I have to start every episode, as I do with the question, what’s your best or worst employee experience you’d like to share?
Bailey Parnell
The one that pops out in my head is actually the worst. And I think it’s because you wouldn’t actually expect it. Because when I went into this experience, I thought that it was my dream job. So I used I started my career in television. And I eventually wanted to move over to social marketing. It was kind of new at the time, we’re talking over a decade ago now. But I was really drawn to it. And I liked that form of storytelling. And so I found through school, I thought my perfect job would be doing social marketing in the world of television, because that would combine kind of both my worlds. And I thought at one point, the perfect job would be social marketing for HBO. Now, HBO in Canada is about media property. So if you want to work for them, you got to work for Bell Media. And so I took on a contract with Bell Media, and I was doing social marketing for music and entertainment channels, which was MTV, MC3, MuchMusic and E!. And this was just a form of contract. Honestly, thank goodness, I can’t believe I’m saying this, because it was I learned so much about what I don’t want in a job. It was just a lot of red tape, a lot of corporate infrastructure, antiquated processes, no one had any autonomy to make decisions. And it was so opposite of my personality, which, as you know, now is was clearly very entrepreneurial, or even intrapreneurial, within the organizations I was helping. And so I remember little things like we would have to send, we would get graphic design templates, and we would have to send it to MTV America for them to create our graphics. And then they would send it back days later. And in the world of social marketing, of course, the story’s done. And so I used to be there, like, I can do graphic design, I mean, I can do enough of it to understand your design templates and work within I’m like, just let me do it, you know, none of that stuff would fly. And so it was the only job that I can remember where I actually was looking at the clock, because even if I had nothing to do, there was like, you would try to do more like you’re one of those people, but you weren’t allowed. So then I’m like, I actually don’t know what to do right now. And that’s the first time that’s ever happened. And let me tell you Russel, I have cleaned public bathrooms after sports games. So that was not the worst job. If we wouldn’t believe it. It’s actually one of the funnier ones because of exactly what you’re talking about on this podcast, the relationships with my colleagues.
Russel Lolacher
So what I’m hearing is truthfully a branding issue too, because as somebody on the outside looking in, you’re thinking, creative, HBO, it’s a creative outlet. It is a place where artists go to create and see their vision, when it actually ends up to be a bureaucratic nightmare on the inside of it.
Bailey Parnell
Perhaps maybe it would have been different if I were in U.S. Like so then with HBO was because I took that job doing music and entertainment, which was in the same building, like my marketing, people would meet up with the HBO marketing people, I actually got to see the day to day job of the person doing that role of specifically what we were doing before HBO. And I thought, Oh, my goodness, Thank gosh, I’ve seen this in real life, because that person left while I was there. And it was kind of a poetic moment of life that shortly after I left, the job for social marketing at HBO came up online. And I was like, x. So but you’re but to your point. To give some context, we had about three full timers. And me for those four brands, MuchMusic, MTV, E! and M3, those are big brands. Now MTV us had 15 full timers alone at that time. So I think maybe they were getting the chance to be more creative down here.
Russel Lolacher
So looking at our topic today, which is social media in the realm of the workplace and the employee experience, but the employee journey doesn’t just start when you get the job it starts when you’re researching the job when you’re learning about the role. Would you have approached it differently in hindsight now knowing what you know of social media and how an accompany shows up online?
Bailey Parnell
What I have approached that role differently?
Russel Lolacher
Would you have not applied for that role or known differently in research of looking going “Well, actually, if you look at this, this and this, maybe I shouldn’t apply for that job.”
Bailey Parnell
Well, if I could understand things about culture, and if I could certainly have understood ahead of time, the limit and limitations of the role, I suppose I wouldn’t have… you know, I don’t know. It’s hard to say, because I was young, then like, I needed to go through that to figure out that it wasn’t what I vibe with. And if I didn’t actually go through it, and maybe I wouldn’t have known that, you know, the corporate, the very old school, corporate red tape culture is just not who I am.
Russel Lolacher
And that’s a danger too, because I mean, you can do all your research all you want. And if culture is not being shown, or being able to be picked a way out and are fine as a red flag before you apply, that’s yeah, you can waste a lot of time, obviously learned lessons, but a lot of time applying for jobs, that might not be the right fit.
Bailey Parnell
Well, that’s exactly right. And had I had that chance or that opportunity to talk with people ahead of time? Well, unfortunately, and I’m sorry, because I feel like I’m putting them on blast. I’m not I know, I know that the work. Some work has been done in last, however many years. But I would have learned from colleagues at that time, the same thing I’m describing, it was not that different among people, and afterwards, and in various parts of the building. So yeah, I probably would have hesitated more had I been able to learn about the culture beforehand.
Russel Lolacher
Social media, workplace, employee engagement. So when I think about social media, and just the work sphere, the two things that always jumped into my head is either employers being pissed because their staff are spending too much time on social and not working. I’ve heard that one a few times, or the other one, which is employers monitoring or paying attention to what their employees are doing. horrible examples. But how do you feel social media is being used by employees in their journey? Like what is what what does that look like? Because a lot of people just think to those two examples.
Bailey Parnell
Yeah, people often think about young people overusing social media. But I will say, you could go in any direction here. I’ve seen social media used very well actually to create company culture. And there’s, what’s it called competitions, there’s contests, there’s people sharing, there’s like whole accounts for just company culture that are specifically for the employees. If you see it, you see it, but it’s really more so to let them know what’s going on to celebrate people. And I think that’s a good use of it, you know, you can social media can be used for good or for bad. But on the personal use side of it, we’re almost kind of getting into like the social side of my life, the, you know, they’re by every measure, right now, there’s mass addiction to social media. And that’s for all ages. And it’s kind of become this thing that used to be, you know, the old metaphorical smoke break or water cooler, or whatever you want to call it. Now. It’s just I need a mental break. And people are conditioned beyond beyond belief to open up and get ahead of social. And it’s kind of it’s very often mindless, but it’s certainly not mindless on the people designing and the people posting content. So even though you might be mindlessly taking in it is having a very big subconscious effect. And I would say if you want to relate that if you’re doing that, in the kind of middle of the work day, you never know what you’re going to see on social, you know, anytime you open it up, it’s like a risk is why I call it a risky behavior in my work. So yeah, you could be entertained for 10 minutes on your break, which honestly, for me, I’ve gotten to that point, I open tick tock, it’s a hoot. I am laughing I am learning. But um, but for the other ones, I don’t know what I’m gonna see, I could be taking a break. But now I’m stressed and pissed off, or, you know, I’ve experienced I’ve been triggered and I got PTSD, because I didn’t know what I was gonna see. So there’s all that then there’s bosses checking your social, as you’ve noted, and I suppose I’m just on the fence of like, if you put it out there publicly, it’s up for anyone to see. I mean, if you’re posting while you’re working, that’s just doesn’t seem very wise if your boss can see it, or if you’re public in any way, actually. So I wouldn’t do that. I suppose I’ve just always had a relationship at all my workplaces where we kind of got over that relationship pretty quickly. I’ve always had all bosses on social media, and I’ve always had all employees on social media, though, when I became a boss I had to consider it was so natural for me to want to add them but I had to consider you know, maybe I should let them make that choice. Because there’s power dynamics at play. If I add them, they’re gonna feel like they have to accept whereas I’ll just wait for them to add me so that they can make the choice.
Russel Lolacher
I’m glad you brought that up. Because that was one of the questions I wanted to ask was, is it so I dance that dance, as I move through my career or within an organization, all perhaps out a friend, but the power dynamic might actually change through our employee journey both through the organization. So somebody that was a friend is now a boss, maybe five years later ..or so it’s so relationship based. So you say it’s okay to do it, but let the employee lead that?
Bailey Parnell
You know, that’s just my approach. I think it’s different on it’s different on LinkedIn, for sure. That’s the professional platform, like really do what you want there. I think if it’s in the professional realm, you can keep it there. I can think I’m talking more. I staff I don’t know Instagram, Facebook, like a lot of people are still there. Especially with my my older colleagues. TikTok is often public, I, again, I think if it’s public, it’s kind of more open, fair game. But like adding to Facebook or something, I’ll leave it to them. If you started out as friends and someone’s become someone’s boss, I would hope for you that that relationship is not ruined, because one of those, you know, characters is promoted, I would, I would think that it would stay the same, I would hope.
Russel Lolacher
Let’s navigate into your research and safe social, especially around mental health. I’ve worked in the social media field in work and represented a brand as part of the organization. And that is not an easy role. When you get into the vitriol and you get into the nonstop. Well, boundaries tend to be a little gray area when it comes to representing an organization versus representing yourself. What is the role of social media and mental health that you’ve seen? For those that are working in social media as a career?
Bailey Parnell
That’s a great question, because let me give you my context. First, I mean, the way I look at social media is a risky behavior like sex or drugs or alcohol. That’s kind of the important premise of, of my work. Basically, risky behavior. And psychology is something where when you participate, you expose yourself to potential harm. And we know for sure, now that you expose yourself to potential harm on social media, all the things we’ve said stress, frustration, PTSD, harassment, I mean, the list goes on, you can become lonely, become anxious, become depressed, these are risks of using it doesn’t mean that it’s everyone’s experiences, because like drugs or cannabis, you can mitigate the risks, so long as you know, the risks and you’re able to in you have an understanding, and there’s a support system and, and all these things. So now imagine, you have, gosh, a bunch of people who have been exposed to this over the last decade and a half. And there’s mass use, there’s been very little education about it. Research is, you know, just a burgeoning baby field, of course, you know, in my world, and, you know, usually starts in the world of academia before it hits policy, and practice and business and all that stuff. So it’s just a baby field. But that means there’s been a lot of people exposed to this risky behavior without the requisite knowledge to do it well, and to stay safe for both themselves and others. And then you enter someone who is making their life here. And if you ask me, that would be someone who is exposing themselves to more risk, and therefore has to do double the work to make sure that they can handle this. Now, in my five steps toward safe social awareness is just the first piece of it, but it also includes self awareness, like what actually stresses you out? Because the reality is, I’ve talked to influencers who could not give two craps about the comments, you always hear about the comments, even the main ones, they’re literally like, I don’t care. I don’t know, these people, like they’re spending their time watching me, I’m not watching them, and it literally won’t even faze them. So for them, their safe social journey is going to look so different. Like for them, it’s going to probably be more, you know, comparison against people who are in their level, if they want to call it that, you know, who are in that world, and comparison can still cause damaging side effects. So for them, I would say, That’s cool, you’re not so worried about harassment, like you don’t need to disable the comb comments, you don’t care about them. But for you, if you’re having a bad day, that’s not the time to go consume your feed, you might still have to work though, no doubt about that. You might still have to post, you might still have to have someone engage, I don’t know. But that might not be the time to scroll. So it’s such a it’s such a fine tuned experience these days, but that can actually work for you too. So basically, if you are engaging with this risky behavior more than anyone else, and you make your money here, you also have to practice safe social more than anyone else.
Russel Lolacher
How can organizations support that because I don’t I don’t know your experience. But most executives keep putting the word the in front of these platforms to demonstrate how little they know about it. The Twitter, Facebook, the Tick Tock and Like, if you put a thumb in front of it, you have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. And these are the people that are supposed to be putting policies in place that defend or boundaries for their employees around social. How do you tackle that?
Bailey Parnell
Well, I think that it’s a multi pronged approach that’s required. Honestly, step five, in the five steps is to hold the responsible parties accountable. And it’s interesting, I’ve not really explored this line of thought as much of is, how much is the employer responsible for people’s social media use sooner, I would go to government policy on big tech, the companies themselves parenting and education as like, responsible parties, of course, you yourself too. But the employer, I would say, I would, more so ideal in the world of digital culture, actually less with social media, strangely, and more with social tech that facilitates communication at work like email, or slack, or teams, and kind of what’s the new digital etiquette here to make sure that employees can do their job effectively and efficiently. But I’m also considering the humanity of my employees. That’s where I would say employers need to focus more of their attention these days, which is, what does our digital culture look like? In fact, what does our company culture look like in general? And how do we translate that on into the digital world? Because if we’re saying wellbeing is important, and we’re saying we want our employees to have work life balance, well, then you can’t require them to be connected to teams all day, every day. And that’s kind of like, do we get digital breaks? Because I know, and, you know, of course, it’s different if I have to be, you know, I might not physically be at the office. But even if I have to be mentally on call that is very different than a break, I can’t go I might not be able to take a walk or even make lunch if it’s possible that someone could, you know, send me a video chat at any moment. That’s not like safety. So I would say employers, probably these days, social media should be number two to your digital culture, and then we’ll get to social media.
Russel Lolacher
Well, I would argue some people even argue that TEAMS, Slack… is social media.
Bailey Parnell
I would say so you know, I would say it is a social medium, for sure. It’s just used for different purposes.
Russel Lolacher
And in that with the pandemic, really reinforcing these because everybody being much more remote work. How have you seen organizations handle this actual push? You know, the thing with innovation, nobody leads it, it’s forced upon them. So situation, they’re, they’re scrambling to catch up. I mean, we’re now kind of out of the brunt of it. But people are still scrambling to figure out what remote remote work looks like. How have you seen social, be a part of that internally?
Bailey Parnell
For everyone listening, let’s make sure that we are including in our when we say social, we are now also going to include things like Slack and TEAMS and LinkedIn and internal comms chat, whatever you’re using, we will include that. And in that way, I would say, you know, gosh, companies need a lot more help here. Of course, you know, I have a lot of empathy for these leaders who who are going through the pandemic themself. And didn’t think about how am I going to structure remote hybrid work and also maintain relationships? I just had another company reach out to me literally, yesterday we had this conversation. X company had great culture before the pandemic people met up they used to go out for you know, even unprompted by themselves. And then pandemic hit, and now we’re hybrid people don’t not want hybrid, majority of people want hybrid or remote. So got, I mean, you got to honor that. If you asked me, I think it is more humane, that people get to live, however, okay, now we got to sync with with a lot of intention about how we want to continue to make culture a thing here. Now, it can happen digitally. I know we do it for people and I have culture in my company. So I know it can happen. For example, all the stuff that people did intentionally with relationship building before or even unintentionally probably have to be made more intentional in the digital world. So you had the benefit of running into people on the way to the washroom Well, you don’t have that anymore. So how are you going to replace relationship building for no sake other than relationship building? Well, you’re gonna have to do it on purpose. If you have remote and hybrid work, you’re actually gonna have to set time for it. You’re gonna have to take five minutes of your 30 minute meeting and do an icebreaker digitally again, I know it can happen I have card decks I’ve done it all will bring up I’ll bring up a card deck and I’ll be like this is your question and this is your question and you know in a way leader sometimes just need to have the courage to shake it up because it can be strange no coming to a work meeting and being like, alright, we’re doing an icebreaker but I promise you it will be better. Are you doing? Are we getting together maybe doing virtual team building? If we are hyper Good, let’s make the days that we come in, like, let’s do it on purpose. These are the days we’re coming in to gather in part, so y’all can talk to each other, what we’re not, we’re going to do that we’re going to, we’re going to talk to each other, we’re not going to have you come in and spend your whole day on Zoom. Because then I’m not building the culture, I’m just making you sit in an office I paid for.
Russel Lolacher
Anything defines a good or a bad leader, the pandemic kind of did that. Because most of the leaders I see that have a problem with remote work weren’t great leaders to start with, in creating a culture and now using remote is, oh, I don’t know how to do this. Well, you didn’t know how to do it when they were in either. And you’re also demonstrating your ability to handle change, which is apparently not good.
Bailey Parnell
Preach, Russel, because because you’re just right there. And I know that my husband was on this podcast too. So if ever anyone listening, I know Hamza Khan must have talked about this. But he says this one thing that I really like about how it when he was in the army, they teach you that in times of trouble, you don’t rise to the occasion, you sink to the level of your training, which is why they go through the reps, and they go through this training so that when your amygdala and the stress is taking over, and all this change is happening, and the biological reaction is to want to kind of invert that the level of your training is oh, I’m already primary building culture, I already have relationships with my employees, I checked in on my employees, when we were together in person. So it’s a very natural extension to say, Hey, how you doing today, I know you’re out of the office, just want to make sure everything’s okay. And, and the funny thing is, I have like a very interesting vantage point, I think, because I get to work with the bosses, or the managers or HR who brings us in, but then the people in our classes very often are the people or the employees or the students. So I get to see like both perceptions. And the people, the employees are saying like, Oh, what makes a good leader? Like they care about me, they say things like they check in on me like those exact words. And so it might seem like such a small gesture that the leaders like I don’t care if my leader checks in on me, well, that’s not what it’s about, right? It’s about you creating culture on your team. And they do notice it. So you’re just right there. In the pandemic, I think you did see a lot of people sink to the level of their training.
Russel Lolacher
And the level of personalization, I love that you sort of highlighted that is just because it works for you. What you think success looks like doesn’t necessarily mean is what your employees think success looks like. I like to be checked in, I like to be ignored, but that comes down to knowing your staff, regardless of their geography
Bailey Parnell
100%. And I would say, I will even tell my employees, like if I think something is corny, or that it could be perceived that way. I don’t care. I’m gonna say y’all can make fun of me for doing these icebreakers. But you’re gonna thank me someday, and they do you know what I mean? Or, like, if we’re doing a Secret Santa, and we’re mailing it to each other, or if you can get in person we’re bringing it like these things are the things that build culture. But what people need to remember I almost think in the world of work is I’ve had the benefit of studying culture, period, like my master’s was in communication and culture and the way we build culture anywhere outside of the world of work, is this stuff is shared experiences, traditions, talking, sharing moments, communicating similarly, like, do we have you know, internal vernacular, do we set up like, I don’t know, call it what you want. I’ve seen everything I’m Mo moment of the week who gets it this week, or like, we’re calling out cool things we’ve seen each other do this week, like, this is how you build culture outside of the world of work, right? So to do this stuff, Traditions, habits, communication, all this stuff with intention is how you’re going to build it in your company do.
Russel Lolacher
It’s weird that organizations will put the word digital in front of things to make it sound like it’s a different thing. Like I’ve heard the word digital leadership, I’m like, it’s just leadership. Same thing. It just happens to be branded differently or, but they just seem to be able to have to understand it differently to incorporate some of the things you’re talking about. Oh, social. Well, that’s a digital leadership problem. Nope.
Bailey Parnell
Yeah, well, you know, 100% You’re right there. You put digital in front of culture, like I just said, and I will say digital cultures I think it’s like, but as I just said, culture, anywhere is culture anywhere. You could just call it culture of the company. And kind of one of my new keynotes right now. That is called digital culture is workplace culture. That’s it because if you are hybrid and remote this is the experience of your company. There’s no “oh but in the office, we get cake for people on their birthday.” Well, guess what? Half your people half the time are not in the office, so you better change that up. What was the intent of the cake? Was it to make someone feel special on their birthday? How are we gonna translate that to a hybrid world of work? Well, maybe we send them something in advance, maybe we have a moment in our team meetings is one of my faves. Where we, I do this even at dinner is actually for people’s birthday, we literally just go around, and everyone says their favorite thing about the birthday person. And first, they don’t like being the center of attention. But by the end of it, they’re like, well, weeping. I feel so good. So that can be done did Billy of course that can be done. So what was the intention of the cake would be like, the question to ask with everything. If you’re trying to translate your old offline life to digital worlds/
Russel Lolacher
I love that you repeated that line, because I’m like, that’s a t shirt. What’s the intention of the cake?
Bailey Parnell
What is the intention of the cake?
Russel Lolacher
And it’s a good point to that leaders need to understand is that this digital culture, which is not different than normal culture, is good or bad. For instance, if as a leader, you’re not checking in with your staff, and they’re wondering why that’s your culture. It’s a culture of ignoring your staff. It’s how you’re showing up. And so I’m thrilled you highlighted that. But the problem is kind of highlighted before is, a lot of these executive who are supposed to be setting the trends are not so well versed. And you’ll get these lines I’ve seen written on LinkedIn more than once. All CEOs should be on social media. And my heart was like, no. How do you feel about that statement, where it’s these are tools you have to use?
Bailey Parnell
I’m not for it, just because I can’t be like I know way too much about digital wellbeing and the harm that social media can do people forget that, yes, even LinkedIn is a social experience for the person. So if they don’t want to be on like, that’s fine. However, I’m also not naive to the benefits of this, which is, of course, why I kind of espouse a harm reduction approach in the world of social How can I get the benefits of it with less risk? So okay, CEOs or exec leaders, if you cannot, you basically what is the? What’s the intention of the cake? Right? So if if the if the goal of you being on social is internal corporate branding, which is what I’ve heard a lot like, basically personal branding within my company, I want people to know who I am, I want them to know that I care. I want them to know like, what I’m thinking about, Okay, well, if that’s LinkedIn for you, wonderful, everyone will be able to find you there. Perfect. But if you hate that, like there are other ways that leaders do this, they do it through a video chat they have like, it’s just something I’ve seen like, they do it through a weekly all hands, it is just 15 minutes. That is it. We are all on and you hear from me once a week. I’ve seen it a newsletter where the CEO sends out like personal letters, I’ve seen it. They do, kind of what’s it called into? What’s the word for this stay interviews with different departments and pulse checks. And they go and visit our department, maybe maybe virtually, maybe not, you know, maybe it’s just a once a year I come I come to the all hands marketing team, and I kind of get to know them, and I have some FaceTime with them. And even though it might seem like an inconvenience at some times to I’m presuming a CEO that has a lot to do, this is how it starts company culture starts from the top. And you best believe that when they start modeling that the director of marketing is going to start visiting the front hands meetings. So yeah, you know, maybe it doesn’t have to happen on social media. But what’s the intention of the cake?
Russel Lolacher
And I love that you also expanded the definition of social media, because people immediately will think, you know, Twitter, LinkedIn, so forth of being present, but social, how are you going to be social with your employees? What medium? Are you going to use IE media. But that makes a lot more sense. Because they’ll put themselves in a box, and then force themselves into it, as opposed to why not just pick the intention of the cake? The right tool for the job?
Bailey Parnell
Right, right. Yeah, who knew that would stick maybe that’s maybe that’s my next keynote, Russel? What’s the intention of the cake?
Russel Lolacher
I’m gonna be fighting with myself on whether what I’m calling the name of this episode. What’s the intention of the cake might be gold, not greedy, SEO, but gold for this episode. So a bit on the bad side of social media, which is and this definitely jumps into your mental health area, which is the bullying portion of it in school. I would hate to grow up in a world now where bullying in the classroom doesn’t end at 2:45. It can easily bleed into a Facebook page that talks about how horrible you are. But that’s also becoming prevalent in the workplace as well, where people are going on pages and just ripping people to shreds and taking that negative culture online, how do you address that? How do you approach it?
Bailey Parnell
Well, yeah, so I mean, it’s funny because I go to high schools, and I talk about cyberbullying and online harassment. And I actually don’t change the presentation that much when I’m talking to grade six, literally, and when I’m talking to adults, because it’s a new thing for everyone right now. And they’ll and let me tell you, harassment offline is the same when it’s online, like bullying offline is bullying online. If you’re talking about someone in an unconstructive way, when they are not there, that is gossip. It’s gossip offline. It’s gossip online like it. It harms workplace cultures, like you wouldn’t believe it detracts from psychological safety from everyone, including the person that you are gossiping to, even if it’s virtual, because now they know it’s a possibility, you will do it to them. So they might be or even your work bestie. But it’s a possibility here. Now, this is kind of how we move here. You can do this in quiet, quiet corners. It’s not to say you can’t have your work besties. You know, commiseration is a stress management strategy. It’s just not a sustainable one. And it can harm workplace cultures and long term. But yeah, people going on pages. Or when when you say “on pages”, do you mean like on for pages? Or is like an app?
Russel Lolacher
No, no, I meant going on to like a Facebook page or going on.
Bailey Parnell
Right? Like, is there? Besides GlassDoor? People will go on there and those in those threads and stuff for sure. I would they you know, as a leader, if it was getting to that point, I’ve done something wrong. For sure. I would, I would own that because I my approach to leadership is kind of in the inverted pyramid and kind of a servant base approach. So if my customers clients, whoever we serve students is at the top of the wide pyramid and you’ll see like a heart kind of, and everyone my approach as a leader is how do I support my frontline workers to support my clients? How do I, as a director, support my managers so that they can support the frontline workers and I as a CEO, how do I support the C suite so that they can support the directors? That’s how I really view it. So let me tell you, if I’m seeing that my managers are gossiping about each other, I’ve done something wrong to not create a good level of culture here to not create a culture of feedback of healthy conflict of all this stuff. I would own that as the leader. But that’s just my approach. I think it should be everyone’s approach. But we teach it skills.
Russel Lolacher
We’re changing the world right now, Bailey. I appreciate that. You brought up your and I did want to mention GlassDoor as well. What is that as a landmine as an employee? Because I know it’s anonymous and GlassDoor I’m talking about all the websites where you can talk about your organization. Glassdoor allows it to be anonymous. But what are the dangers of being using that? Because I mean, they can use people use specific examples that could call them out?
Bailey Parnell
Well, I’ve seen I’ve seen the good and bad with GlassDoor. Actually, you know what, that’s a tough, I will say, I have seen more. Okay, maybe not great for the employer all the time. But you should be reading it. Like you should absolutely be checking up on GlassDoor and be seeing because there’s, you get a level of feedback, or maybe hopefully accountability when you use something anonymous like that. Like I said, if they’re going to GlassDoor Do they feel like they’ve not been provided the opportunity to give this feedback internally? That would be what I would be thinking as a leader, which is, again, something has broken here in my world of culture, in my world of soft skills in my company. If they’re going to GlassDoor like well, I maybe have not created enough psychological safety for them to be able to give that feedback directly to me. Or to the manager or, or to something. So if I, as a CEO, I’m seeing a couple of people complain about a certain manager, I’m going to be talking to the director of that manager. And I’m going to be saying what’s going on here. We might need some feedback, culture work, we might need some relationship building work, but something’s broken if gone there. However, people do have grievances. And this is also an individual, you know, I put a lot of pressure on the leader, but like I said, we work mostly with the individual. So we’re also trying to equip them with the skills to be able to give that feedback if the manager is also working on the skills to receive it and invite it. You know, sometimes though, they don’t have it. Sometimes they go to GlassDoor and they want to rant or something like that. But it can you can see how it can be both valuable and then you also just have to use your judgment at the end of the day.
Russel Lolacher
Based on your research based on your experience, working with organizations, leaders and so forth, where do you want organizations to move when it comes to SafeSocial? When it comes to like, what’s your pie in the sky, blue sky, “We’re getting there. But we’re not there yet” scenario?
Bailey Parnell
To go very top level. I’m Team Human, and I’m team, whatever makes humans more human. And I don’t know if sitting in an office with no windows, and fluorescent lighting from nine to five, when it’s light outside not seeing your kids is inherently human. So I would try to get to, and I will connect this to digital. But basically, I think all systems and solutions should be trying to get us to more humanity, and less greed, and late stage capitalism, basically. So I would say then fast forward to digital, and our digital cultures and tools should be supporting the humanity of people, which has always meant collaboration, communication, relationships, yes. Even with my introverts, you know, all those people do, right. So they might, they might laugh, and they everyone will. Not everyone, but a lot of people will prefer hybrid and remote work. And I think that in a way, this does promote humanity, when you can take a break, and make yourself a lunch at home or see your kid or do all these things like, like, do a load of laundry, so that you can actually spend time with your family later. Like, that’s a beautiful thing to me. And if I can, if I can promote autonomy in the welfare of my people, while also making money, then that’s, that’s kind of like the blue star and the digital culture should just support that it should be supporting, facilitating that facilitating their relationships, facilitating the communication and the kind of human connection.
Russel Lolacher
I have the big last question to ask, Bailey, which is, what one simple action people can do right now to improve those relationships at work?
Bailey Parnell
Well, let’s we’re going to talk about improving relationships via actually, I think this is actually connected to what we just said about humanity. Your one simple action should be to start with self awareness to start with how can these tools serve my humanity? How can they serve my relationships? On my team? If I want a good relationship? For example, maybe I do set up a virtual coffee with one of my teammates, and yeah, we’re all sick of it. But if we’re staying in hybrid forever, guess what you got to do it? So maybe that’s your one simple mode is how can I use these are one simple action is how can I use these tools today to serve my connection with a colleague.
Russel Lolacher
That’s Bailey Parnell. She is the founder and CEO of SkillsCamp, and the founder and board member of #SafeSkill, trying to keep social media and mental health on the right side of history. Thank you very much, Bailey.
Bailey Parnell
Thank you for having me.
