Open Org Journal: Sept Update

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. - Walt Disney

This quote resonated with me massively this month because it's been jam-packed with me diving headfirst into trying a heap of new things that I've never done, which has been super insightful, full of mini-fails, but more importantly a lot of learnings, which I wanted to share below.

TL;DR..

• We launched a petition to bring Salary Transparency to the UK! You can view and sign it here ?
• We ran our first ever Open Org Cohort! ???? ... and learned a sh*tload about remote cohorts in the process (If you want to join the next one, or future ones, more detail here)
• We've been testing a new product idea ??More details below!...But first 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?

So let's talk about Cohort first. Because this has been something ?? John Faulkner-Willcocks and I have been working on for months and it finally arrived this month. Firstly a HUGE amount of gratitude for the following pioneers who took that first leap with us on OOC#1: Pat Caldwell from Send , Emily Sivey from Bippit? , Agnès Chauvigny from Figures , Adrienne Smyth from TXOne Networks , Sadie Moloney from Circuit , Kate Parker from Kepler Interactive , Abigail Cooper from Juro and Ise Palmstierna from Altruistiq .

We can't thank you enough for putting your faith in something new and the above quote is for you just as much as for me! You will go down in Open Org folk lore I promise!

The cohort has been awesome, but we have also come out of it with a heap of learnings which I've talked about below. It's been 4 weeks of action-packed workshops, coaching calls, and real-time changes to these folks businesses though which has been really awesome to watch.

We had a couple of roundtables, topics selected by the group (DEIB and Compensation), and a great session with Alistair Fraser from Justly on Pay Transparency. As I write this today we also have a very exciting Keynote lined up with Bryan Adams from Ph.Creative , Co-Author of 'Give & Get'.

We wrap up this week, and I've loved it, but we also have a retro planned in a weeks time to sit down and go through our learnings with a fine-tooth comb so we can focus on making our November cohorts even better.

This aside, we decided to bite the bullet and launch a petition! ?? Energised by what is happening in the US and EU at the moment with pay transparency laws, we decided enough is enough, and it's time for the UK to do something about this. If you believe the same you can sign it here

It's been interesting to see both sides of the argument from people since Ive been posting about this. I fully get it's not for everyone. Although I have to say, I've not really been met with any genuinely solid arguments from anyone yet as to why it shouldn't be done, other than 'it should be up to a business whether they want to or not'. That's all well and good until your compensation structures unravel and you end up in a situation like Birmingham Council has this month

So we're on a mission. We have 6 months to get 100k signatures. That's a lofty target, and we won't be letting it distract us from our core focus at Open Org, but we do genuinely believe this will happen at some stage and if we can be part of trying to make that change then great.

And if all this wasn't enough, we decided to test out a new product idea, because, hey, why not? ????♂?. We got some great feedback from our cohort on a couple of workshops we ran so wondered if we could offer something up outside of those workshops to businesses. Gratitude's below to all those who put their hands up to be guinea pigs. We appreciate you. We think this has legs too, so we may well be looking at launching something soon. Watch this space ??.

?? The Wins

• We have now had over 45,000 views on our monster employee handbook template ??. If you haven't see it yet check it out on our resources page here
• We launched our Open Job Ad Template! If you deal with Job Ads at work, you have to check it out - here
• We're filling up our next cohorts in Nov for UK/EMEA and US/Canada. There's still spots left though so check out details here
• We got some great feedback on our product testing mentioned above, which was encouraging
• We got some really great mid-way feedback from our OOC#1 cohort
• We announced that we're joining in an AWESOME initiative - a 24-hour charity live-stream podcast with a bunch of amazing People Leaders, kick-started by Jessica Z. . That'll be in Jan - details to follow!
• Podcast episode with The Second Crack was released! Hosted by Martin Alderg?rd and Dr. Gerrit Pelzer - It was an awesome chat - must listen for any Leader - you can listen here
• Also another podcast episode dropped with EquityPeople - thank you to Tamas Varkonyi and ?pela Prijon for having me on- you are doing great work and this also is a must listen! here

?? The F*ck Ups

• We lost 2 days sleep over a very low NPS score on our mid-way feedback, which turned out eventually to be one that I submitted when testing our typeform ?? (sorry John).
• We had a couple of teething problems and learns on the 1st cohort, but nothing disastrous. In-Call logistics, expectation management (mostly our own!), peer-to-peer collaboration and how we can improve that. Also the biggest one was just how we can make this experience even more personalised and curated for people- so the work we do in the run up around gathering info for Day 1 that is contextually relevant to that person's journey is something we think we can do a little more on. Bring on Nov!
• I've found it hard to keep spinning plates once the cohort began. Foot came off the gas on business development and keeping one eye on November was harder. Plus everything else going on. We need to try to figure that out to avoid peaks and troughs.

?? The Learns

• I was told by Matt McFarlane (??) I wasn't doing enough to highlight our OpenWorks newsletter, so added a CTA to all my posts, and our subscribers have grown nicely since. And on that note if you haven't signed up yet- you should do. news.openorg.fyi/subscribe (Proud of me Matt?)
• We'll possibly re-jig a couple of things for OOC#2 and 3 based on learnings from our first cohort, which is really cool. No doubt that will keep evolving anyway
• Juggling time is hard when you are deep into a cohort. I have had to be way more strict with my time-management and try to dedicate time to sales. Which doesn't come naturally to me either- definitely out of my comfort zone there.
• Personal Accreditation is proving to be a big hit vs company right now. Budgets are constrained, and some companies aren't quite ready to publicly signal that they are committed to transparency yet, so there's work to be done! But there's no shortage of People & Talent leaders out there who want to make that change and we are seeing a lot of interest there.

?? The Thank You's

Long list this month! But thank you to the following...

Aydan Al-Saad (????????), Amki Moors , Alistair Fraser , Bryan Adams , Ginni Lisk , Miguel M. , Kelli Herrick , Samuel Leduc , Steph Thommen , Luke Slaney , Jessica Z. , Luke O'Mahoney , Max Encke , Fiona Jane Wright , Chloe Black , Kim Goddard , Alex Hilleary , Jill Felska , Sarah Power , Merita Ramadani , Lars Schmidt ,