Open Org Journal: Nov Update

“A man grows most tired while standing still.” - Chinese Proverb

Ok so this was hands down the most full-on month I've ever had in 12 years of professional work, all whilst heading into December preparing for the arrival of my 3rd child (... 3rd boy ??), due on the 13th.. ??

I for one am going to embrace the above Chinese proverb... because quite simply I have no other choice! But I'd like to just take this opportunity to thank my unborn child for not arriving earlier than planned whilst we juggled multiple cohorts and accreditations! ?

Let's dive in to November

TL;DR..

• We ran and completed two parallel cohorts, accrediting 14 People & Talent Leaders across US, UK and Europe!
• We announced two more accredited Open Orgs! Juro and Whereby ?? joined the Open Org initiative alongside Figures
• We've started 3x more company accreditations with a total 7 underway right now- things are ramping up! ??
• We've almost filled our January bootcamp but we have a few spaces left, if you haven't checked it out yet, do that here.
• We unveiled our Hiring Playbook template for employers! Check it out here if you are looking to level up your hiring and candidate experience in 2024
• We started working on 3 more resources for the People & Talent world ??..
• We've also been building a new product!...a people metrics benchmarking tool which will go into beta soon! We need 200 early adopters, and have some availability left if you want free early access! Fill this out here

Want more details? Read on...

A reminder....

? Follow and subscribe to this newsletter if you:

• Are passionate about building better workplaces
• Believe in transparency as the best way to build trust
• Are a 'People' professional who wants to improve employee-employer trust
• Are a Founder who wants to follow another Founders journey; the ups, downs, learnings...

? Dont subscribe to this if you:

• Have no interest in hearing the ramblings of a tired dad of 2 (almost 3) who is trying to change the world of work
• Don't believe that transparency can improve workplace culture
• Don't believe in Open Org's mission

?? What's happened at Open Org this month?

Cohorts OOC#2 and #3 kicked off and completed in November. Our first foray into the US market was a huge success! We ran these again for 4 weeks, but have had enough feedback now to convince us that next time we need to extend these to 8 weeks.

We got stuck into some unreal roundtables, and workshops helping leaders drive tactical changes within their business across handbooks, job ads, career sites, policies and more.

Thank you to the amazing speakers who came to chat to the groups too!

Alistair Fraser and Tamas Varkonyi delivered an excellent fireside AMA session on Pay & Equity Transparency in EMEA, with Bernardo Luz Teixeira doing the same for our US group.

We were also blown away by the amazing Lauren Gomes & Marie Krebs who talked to the group about their progressive journey through the people world. And Hebba Youssef was kind enough to deliver an equally amazing, and incredibly real talk to our US group about her experience too.

Cohorts are running again in March! If you wanna join the next one apply here

Congrats again to Alicia Henríquez (she/her/ella), Janessa Mondestin, Maggie Schrock, PHR, Kelly Mahoney, Erika Chevez, JaNaye Norman-Halligan, MBA in the US, and Chris Hunter, Simon White, James Hems BEM, Glenda Gataleta, Andrei V. Muresan, Melissa Thomas, Katy Snell, Smitha Sanjeev. ?

Juro & Whereby only went and became accredited Open Orgs! ??. These are two of the OG's of transparency and progressive people practices so to mark our recent launch with two such amazing companies has been a genuine dream come true. If any People Leaders reading this are interested in getting their company accredited alongside these incredible orgs, then it's worth mentioning we also offer companies a 'pending' accreditation status to kick start your journey to accreditation- you can request more info on that here

?? The Wins

• Two successful Cohorts completed!
• Two UNREAL Open Orgs join our initiative
• 2x Brand new resources for the People community - Our hiring playbook, and Operational Excellent framework - you can find them here
• Accreditations are ramping up- it's been amazing to see more companies come our way showing interest in taking that step to building more trust with employees.

?? The F*ck Ups

• Surprisingly, nothing major happened this month! ??

?? The Learns

• More feedback from our cohorts which was similar to our first, reinforcing what we already knew we needed to change. We couldn't make some changes in time for these two kicking off but will be for the next ones in March. Also some interesting new feedback which we'll take on board!
• Our company page following has jumped a lot in the last couple of weeks- posting about companies hiring seems to have made a difference!
• Managed to introduce card payments to our invoicing process which has made a difference to our cashflow as we ramp up from a ￡0 start! Much needed.
• Brushed off the rust and reintroduced myself to the concept of VAT returns which has been... fun?

?? The Thank You's

Big list this month as always!

Hebba Youssef, Marie Krebs, Lauren Gomes, Bernardo Luz Teixeira, Alistair Fraser, Tamas Varkonyi , ?pela Prijon , ?? Charlie Hunt , Olya Yakzhina , Daniel Huerta , Stephen Huerta , Luke O'Mahoney , Kaleem Clarkson , Ben O'Mahony , Sam Stone , Matt McFarlane , Kim Goddard , Ai-Mei Zhu Levine , JooBee Yeow, PhD