loader from loading.io

A Community Approach to Building a Company, Culture & Employee Experience with Damon Klotz

Work Life by Design

Release Date: 08/14/2023

Season 6 - Wrap Up show art Season 6 - Wrap Up

Work Life by Design

info_outline
Optimising Real Estate to Build Community - with Jeremy Pollak show art Optimising Real Estate to Build Community - with Jeremy Pollak

Work Life by Design

info_outline
Building Community with SMART Work Design - with Sharon Parker show art Building Community with SMART Work Design - with Sharon Parker

Work Life by Design

The role that our workplaces play in encouraging and enabling our relationships at work, was largely taken for granted, until they were taken away from us.  A silver lining of the pandemic, we realised the impact of our workplaces and the role they play in our establishing and supporting the social & support networks in our lives.  And social connection is a foundation for building any community. Today’s guest ARC Laureate Fellow Sharon K. Parker.  I was first introduced to Sharon and her work through my friend and Colleague Dr Meg Hooper of Carousel Consulting, and her...

info_outline
Using place to connect to the hearts, bodies & minds of your people show art Using place to connect to the hearts, bodies & minds of your people

Work Life by Design

Using Place to connect to the Hearts, Bodies and Minds of your People   Often when we look at our workplaces, we think of them as property. As real estate.  And sadly, often as a balance sheet liability.  But they have the potential to be so much more than that!⁠   Your work place is an underutilised asset in attracting and connecting to your people.   Often spoken about in the terms of “People, Place & Technology” our workplaces should not be devoid of our humanity.   They are created for our people.  That means that they need to Personal....

info_outline
Shifting Culture with Everyday Actions - with Meredith Wilson show art Shifting Culture with Everyday Actions - with Meredith Wilson

Work Life by Design

  How can we create workplaces where our people are empowered? Where they are given autonomy and choice?   It all starts with culture.    Now that might sound overly simply, but at the grassroots of this, it’s the everyday actions that leaders take that shift and create culture in their teams and organisations. And it really is the simple things that make the difference.    And today’s guest, Meredith Wilson has written the book, on how you too can you use GRASS in your workplace to shift your culture.    Meredith makes culture simple and actionable....

info_outline
Corner Offices don't build Community | The Evolution of the Workplace show art Corner Offices don't build Community | The Evolution of the Workplace

Work Life by Design

Over centuries work has evolved from a labour some, back breaking manual task to what today some of us refer to as a "cushy office job"! And we have the invention of machines and technology, a few key players and a pandemic to thank, as the catalysts for this change. However, some things have very much stayed the same, even though the world we are living and working in today, is very different to the world in which these things were created for. In today's episode I'm winding back the clock just over 100 years as we start to look at; The impact of machines and technology on how we...

info_outline
Creating Memory in Place through Community - with Imelda Miller show art Creating Memory in Place through Community - with Imelda Miller

Work Life by Design

  Curating a community is not a passive activity.  It takes conscious effort, care, and a respect for the people that you are embracing in this community.  But when you bringing together a community with no traditional “place” how can you engage with a place temporarily and make it your own? This is exactly the work that today’s guest, Imelda Miller, does in her role as the Curator of First Nations Cultures at Queensland Museum Kurilpa.  A third generation Vanuatu woman, Imelda is a proud South Sea Islander and responsible for bringing together communities of origin...

info_outline
The Art of Gathering, a placemaking perspective show art The Art of Gathering, a placemaking perspective

Work Life by Design

  Hey! Have you read Priya Parkers book, ? If you haven't yet, I highly recommend you do, it's a good read!  In her book Priya shares: "gatherings in our lives are often vague & unproductive" And I would argue that our workplaces are in fact a place where we gather, rather than places we "go to" to "work", and if we want people to come to the workplace, we need to be offering them an experience. It needs to be a purposeful, and productive contribution to their lives.   In today's episode I'm expanding on the framework that I share with you in , to dive deeper into the...

info_outline
Working your M.A.G.I.C at Work - with Sharon Darmody show art Working your M.A.G.I.C at Work - with Sharon Darmody

Work Life by Design

"When work starts to work again, it becomes a place where people want to be" Creating a thriving workplace where people want to be, voluntarily, requires us to take a different perspective to the "productivity" approach that our workplaces once swore by. Today's guest is Sharon Darmody. With a background in Occupational Therapy, Sharon is an Organisational Consultant, Mediator and the Founding Director of Strive Occupational Rehabilitation. With over 25 years consulting to organisations, she identified a recurring theme, leading her to develop her M.A.G.I.C model to help businesses, teams and...

info_outline
It's not about RTO Mandates. It's about Fostering Community show art It's not about RTO Mandates. It's about Fostering Community

Work Life by Design

If we’re still talking about getting people back to the office, we’re having the wrong conversation”.   I don’t know about you but I’m getting frustrated with all this RTO talk!  I think those that are stuck in this vortex, are completely missing the point!  What we should be talking about, is what makes a workplace a COMMUNITY. In the work that I do, creating a workplace where people WANT to be is key, BUT while the physical environment plays a large part, it’s not the whole story.   “For centuries our communities have centred around sharing an imagined...

info_outline
 
More Episodes

Establishing a strong and purposeful employee experience in your organisation can take an incredible amount of time, dedication, and invested energy.

 

So, if you could find all the People tools and resources that you needed packaged up in one platform, backed by science and data, how much easier would that make your life as a leader and give you the confidence to know that you were giving your organisation the best possible advantage?

 

Well, today’s guest is here to tell us that this is possible. Damon Klotz, who has what could be described as one of the coolest titles, is a Work Culture Evangelist at Culture Amp, a market-leading employee experience platform.

 

I first discovered Damon and his podcast Culture First, in the midst of the pandemic tuning into his episode with Jen Sauer-Klein, an experience designer in the States. This singular episode gave me a new perspective on the role of our environments in how we influence experiences consciously through design, adding another tool to my tool kit.

 

Jen is among a number of incredible guests that Damon has had the opportunity to engage in conversation on his podcast, so I was incredibly happy when he agreed to join me here to learn more on what have been some of the most impactful conversations that he has had.

 

What I also learnt through this episode is the diverse career that Damon has had that led him to his current role as Work Culture Evangelist. As you’ll hear Damon is quite the overachiever, prior to Culture Amp he was leading community HR groups, through to being the Global Manager of Digital Strategy for Ramsay Health Care, a keynote speaker on the future of work, and the Co-Founder of Spur Projects, a social enterprise dedicated to reducing the suicide rate of men in Australia.

 

And he shares how a desire to be a sports manager and leverage the community of teams has found its way through to the work he and the team at Culture Amp do.

 

You’ll also learn more about

  • Culture Amp and the wealth of data that they have accumulated from supporting the employee experience across numerous countries since launching in 2009,
  • How the platform supports organisations to leverage this “data lake” to continue to enhance the employee, manager and team experience
  • And how taking a community focused approach to building Culture Amp has been a key foundation in its success, growing the company from 100 to 6500 customers, and the role that Damon played in establishing it
  • Plus what Damon has learned about communication, transparency and trust from his conversations about People & Culture throughout the pandemic

 

So many interesting highlights in this episode, along with some great additional listening recommendations over on the Culture First podcast.

 

Damon also leaves us with some insights into how he has consciously continued to grow with the organisation from start up to now and its various iterations, all great self-reflection points for us to consider in our own growth mindset and experience of comfort.

 

LINKS
Get your copy of Mel’s new Book The Next Workplace; Designing Dynamic Environments that Inspire Human Potential”

 

Connect with Damon;

LinkedIn | Culture Amp

 

Connect with Mel;

Email | Insta |
 LinkedIn | Website | Website | Whitepaper - The Road Map to Employee Experience