"80 grand can numb a lot of feelings"

"80 grand can numb a lot of feelings"...

This surprising observation came in a fascinating discussion about people power. The audience laughed, while the bosses of SMEs in the North East were left with the painful reality of how to keep the staff they love.

Some are being tempted away by big salaries from big nationals. But is it all about the money?

Neil Bestford doesn’t think so. “We’ve gone out of the office, gone back in, gone out again and bought dogs”. He says post-Covid the employees are in the driving seat. Neil says more people are now focussed on good benefits, values, purpose and the wider wraparound in their work.

So how do you retain these now powerful people? Well, the most important experience at work is TEAM according to Lysa Morrison. After extensive research, she pointed to Gallup research which shows the key to high performance is whether each member has the chance to use their strengths at work every day. That’s how you motivate people to stay. Looking through the lens of Emotional Intelligence, Lysa also says companies are now seeing how valuable ‘soft skills’ are in a workforce. So much so, they’re now being called ‘power skills’.

Our region has long been known for having uniquely strong power skills. It’s why we’re the beating heart of the nation’s contact centre industry. People who have empathy for others, communicate well and have a strong teamwork ethic. I then suggested to the People Power conference that this was one of the reasons our North East talent is being poached by multi-nationals.

As a journalist I love a robust discussion and I was pulled up for using the word “poached”. Lysa Morrison felt that it should be reframed so that we see these moves more positively. Effectively, we have done such a great job training and developing these people that they’re now not overlooked but are being appreciated by bigger competitors. It’s good news for them and it’s good news for us that they’re being allowed to grow further in bigger, respected corporations.

This is a really interesting way of looking at this situation. Afterall, it is generally accepted that North Easterners don’t shout about their achievements. We're told that mindset is key to success.

I countered however that this doesn’t help the smaller homegrown businesses retain these working diamonds. They can’t compete with larger salaries, and they’ve already invested valuable time and financial resources in these colleagues. For instance, the founder of Just Williams Jessica Williams recently lost candidates to the public sector “because of an extra 15 grand being put on the table.” This is despite her company scaling up whilst offering additional staff benefits and heading for BCorp status- widely regarded as no mean feat.

Even Ammar Mirza CBE talked of being bereft when a couple of his core team left for more money. “It was like the breakdown of a relationship”, and this coming from a man who emanates positivity and business success. His ‘Power of 3’ mantra is Communicate, Collaborate, Celebrate.

So I further proposed that we do have to consider this “virtual brain drain” as a risk to our region’s economy in an era of hybrid working. Companies realise the value of North East talent in terms of skills, loyalty and cost. They offer salary increases without mandating a return to the office, or the need to relocate away from the communities we love and without leaving more affordable lives. We’re in a cost of living crisis and many say they feel they have no option to jump ship to a shinier model, even if it’s just temporary.

However, another audience member agreed with Lysa, saying that local SMEs losing staff could actually be celebrated. From an academic perspective, she suggested these people may earn their bigger salaries from companies rooted elsewhere but they’ll be spending that money in the North East if they don’t have to move for work. She argued this trickle-down can be a big boost for the region. It’s an angle some politicians have made part of their levelling-up strategy.

It fed into a later session at the conference led by the insightful former barrister Jo Darby where she talked about OAR...Observe Accept Reframe.

And then again the subject was woven into Sam Conniff’s session on the superpower of dealing creatively with uncertainty. The neuroscientists he’s working alongside have highlighted that (if my shorthand is correct)…

We have 50-60 thousand thoughts a day.

85% of them are negative.

95% of those negative thoughts are the same as the day before.

…This is startling. It shows that taking a different look at a situation could help us in the long-term.

This idea was further supported by another delegate at the conference. A woman put up her hand to tell the auditorium that history teaches us that SMEs will survive the Great Resignation. We’ve seen a similar challenge before, when women were being considered for work but were seen as a risk, especially those of child-bearing age. She pointed out that businesses adjusted their perspectives and actively chose to employ women, allowing them to leave to raise children, trusting they’d return and be of added benefit. I like this thought about resilience. Everyone wins.

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Article by Charlie Charlton

?(Excerpts of conversations held at the People Power Conference 2022, Northumbria University Organised by https://projects-studio.co.uk )