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Culture


PEOPLE OVER PERKS PODCAST EP. 1 – TILL NEATBY, CO-FOUNDER & HEAD OF CULTURE AT
MARLEY SPOON



In the first episode of the People Over Perks podcast, we sit down with Till
Neatby, the Co-Founder and Head of Culture at Marley Spoon. Till shares why the
Head of Culture role was created, the big levers that have helped them scale
their culture as they’ve grown to over 1,500 people, how they run employee
engagement surveys, and a whole lot more.

‍



‍


SHOW NOTES

 * Till's book recommendation: “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership
   Fable” by Patrick Lencioni.

 * The Slack App that Marley Spoon uses to schedule coffee meetings with
   colleagues is called “Donut”.

‍


SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST

 * Listen on Spotify
 * Listen on Apple Podcasts
 * Listen on Google Podcasts
 * Listen on Stitcher
 * Watch on Leapsome’s YouTube channel

Or find it on your favorite podcast platform

‍

— Have a chat with one of our experts to find out how Leapsome can help you
bring the Future of Work into your organization while developing high-performing
(and highly engaged) teams.





FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

‍

Andy Parker (Host) (00:04)

Excellent. Till, thank you for joining us on the People Over Perks podcast.




Till Neatby (Guest) (00:08)

Hi Andy. Thanks for having me. Nice to meet you.




Andy Parker (Host) (00:11)

And so to begin with, tell me, whereabouts are you right now? Where in the
world?




Till Neatby (Guest) (00:17)

I'm sitting in my Berlin flat — in the study of my Berlin flat. I'm working from
the home office right now. We have our offices in Berlin and most of the cities
open at the moment. Usually I spend two days per week at the office and the rest
of the time I work from the home office, so currently at home.




Andy Parker (Host) (00:38)

Okay. Excellent. And so you are the Co-founder and Head of Culture at Marley
Spoon. Before we jump into to some of the topics that obviously we're going to
discuss around around people operations and culture and HR, to begin with, can
you tell us what Marley Spoon is?




Till Neatby (Guest) (00:55)

So we always say we bring delightful market fresh and easy cooking back to the
people while building a sustainable supply chain for a waste free world. So a
lot of things that we were trying to achieve is on the one hand side, me help
our customers to cook better at home. We deliver all the ingredients that you
need, we inspire with new recipes on a weekly basis. We really take care of all
that whole topic, take the hassle out of the cooking, send it home. And at the
same time we are, fighting food law, food waste. We are trying to shorten the
supply chain and we are shortening the supply chain by directly connecting
customers to producers and that's what we do in a nutshell.




Andy Parker (Host) (01:41)

Okay. Thank you for that. And just so everyone listening can can understand, can
you tell me a bit about the scale of Marley Spoon? I know it's an international
business and you recently also had a a big milestone in Q2 that I saw was
publicly announced around the company being profitable for the first time.




Till Neatby (Guest) (01:59)

Indeed. Yes, we’re operating in eight countries globally. We have roughly 1,500
team members. We grew within the first half of this year, we grew roughly 90% to
about 160 million Euros in revenue for the first half of this year. Q2 even 73
million in revenues. So on a nice upward trend there right now, this whole [is
equivalent] to 21 million meals, I believe that we shipped in the first half of
this year.




Andy Parker (Host) (02:32)

Wow. Okay.




Till Neatby (Guest) (02:33)

So quite a few boxes.




Andy Parker (Host) (02:36)

Yes, I can imagine. Absolutely. Excellent. And so let's talk a little bit about
your role specifically then. As the Co-Founder and Head of Culture, obviously
the co-founders of any business implicitly, typically set the culture, or are at
least, you know, a large contributor to what the culture becomes. But what made
you decide to explicitly give yourself a Head of Culture title?




Till Neatby (Guest) (03:05)

I agree that the founders to players certain role in creating a company culture.
At the same time though culture is built on a daily basis by the whole team. So
really that's something that we try to emphasize always. And when, when
onboarding new people, that it's really all of us building the building the
culture on a daily basis, I had a bunch of different roles at Marley Spoon. And
as you can imagine, when you, when you start a company so one and a half years
ago, my fellow co-founder Fabian and me decided to, for me to focus on our
culture and people team. And that's when I took on that role. And we explicitly
wanted to have the word culture in there are to emphasize the importance that we
believe company culture at the end has on building a good team and company
success in the end.




Andy Parker (Host) (03:57)

Okay. And was this something that, you know, is an area of expertise of yours or
something that between you and your co-founder felt that it was something that a
co-founder should oversee?




Till Neatby (Guest) (04:09)

Rather than latter to be honest. We always over the last couple of years brought
in a lot of experts from outside that at the end know a lot of things much
better than we as the founders do. And that's a little bit the same case here in
our Culture and People Operations team, we have a large number of highly, highly
skilled, amazing people in my team that know the classical traditional HR area,
much better than me. No, I don't, I didn't have a particular background, but
I've been building companies over the last 20 years. I've worked in numerous
management functions, so I have a good idea of what, what I believe is
important, but again, there is a lot, a lot of experts in the team that know
most details much better than me.




Andy Parker (Host) (04:57)

Okay. So let's dive into that then. Obviously as you, as you touched on with
that with 1,500 team members across the company you know, you obviously need a
strong People Operations team to support that. What does the structure of that
team look like?




Till Neatby (Guest) (05:16)

So we have a bit of, we have a matrix organization overall at Marley spoon. So
we have, on the one hand side, we have regional teams, we have our Australian
team, our US team and a European team. And we have local CEOs is for all of
these regions and we have local Heads of Culture and People operations team that
report on the one hand side, directly into the local CEO role. On the other
hand, we're currently in the process of creating the position of CHRO that's
also part of the executive team. And eventually you will have this matrix
organization set up where you have two direct lines, one to their, to the
regional CEO and one to there the CHRO, in a central function.




Andy Parker (Host) (06:06)

I see. Okay.




Till Neatby (Guest) (06:09)

And then of course, you know, on a, on a more, on a more functional level on the
one side, you have your operational service centers where, well, which
traditionally, of course, we had to focus on most in the past, we always had a
rather lean setup, but at the same time we are running, we're operating seven
fulfillment centers globally. And a huge part of our team are the production
associates, our team members at the fulfillment centers actually picking and
packing all the boxes so it was always very, very important of course, to focus
on really operating these fulfillment centers and onboarding team members for
these sites. And at the same time, of course, we have our HR business partners,
we have our center of excellence and our community of expertise where we try to
focus on individual areas.




Andy Parker (Host) (07:07)

Okay. That makes sense. Thank you. And so you touched on the fact that you're
looking for a CHRO. Why is now the right time for that role?




Till Neatby (Guest) (07:18)

We've luckily already identified a very, very good candidate. And well, we
believe that, you know, we have reached a certain level of maturity as a
company. At the end of the day, you know, this topic was always a very, very
important one for, for us at Marley Spoon, really from day one the focus topic
for Fabian and me. But over, you know, we have grown now to a certain size where
we really feel that certain processes are getting more and more complex. It is
not the same to run a team of five people or 50 people or 1,500 people. And
we're growing strongly. We still believe we're at at the very beginning of a
long journey. So we decided to take the step now. We could have as well, I've
taken that a year ago already, or a year into the future but you know, I think
it's, it's definitely a good signal also internally that we are even doubling
down on our efforts with regards to culture and, and our team and people, our
team members.




Andy Parker (Host) (08:20)

Okay. And did you have any any like specific requirements for that, that role
that you're willing to share? Like, what are the, what is the sort of the makeup
of of that person?




Till Neatby (Guest) (08:33)

We were looking for someone with on the one hand side with a very, large
experience in this area. So we really wanted someone that had the experience of
running, such a function in a large organization and an organization larger than
ours. At the same time, we are a very agile company. We still consider ourselves
to be a startup, in a lot of ways. So you have to be able to work very hands-on,
very autonomously, not necessarily with this huge support staff that you might
have an in larger companies. So that was very important for us that, that the
person joining us brings all of this.




Andy Parker (Host) (09:24)

Okay, excellent. Thank you. And and so, so coming back to the processes that you
say that you know, obviously need to be in place to create a high-performing
culture. Can you talk me through a little bit about what the calendar looks like
as such for you? What are some of the people operations processes that your team
is in control of and how does that operate throughout the year?




Till Neatby (Guest) (09:49)

So we have a number of processes that we organize as the Culture and People
Operations team, but where the ownership then at the end sits within the team,
so with every single team lead. So, you know, we have for example everyone at
Marley Spoon is doing a monthly, at least monthly 1:1 on a really on a, on a
cultural level, on a team building level. So it's not, not, it's not the weekly
jour fixe where you talk about operational stuff about have you done this?
What's the plan for the next week? But it's really this, how are you doing? What
can I do to help you? And how happy are you with your development at Marley
Spoon etc? So it's really, there's a very, very open communication where we
really expect every team lead to do that at least on a monthly basis with team
members.




Till Neatby (Guest) (10:41)

We have formalized processes such as 360 degree reviews between, obviously, team
members, leads people on the same level above, below.




Andy Parker (Host) (10:54)

And how frequently do they happen?




Till Neatby (Guest) (10:56)

So we do them always after three months for new joiners. We do them always for
role changes, and we encourage leads to do them on a regular basis. Very often,
most of them do them on a yearly basis to get feedback and they are they are
anonymous, so people can do them completely anonymous over the tool. I
personally always write my name on there underneath when I give, when I give
feedback, I would tell people that it doesn't have to be anonymous, but for some
people it feels more secure and there's, there's more open communication. And
then there is a bunch of you know smaller cultural topics, donut dates.




Till Neatby (Guest) (11:42)

So something that we've heard, especially now in this COVID-19 situation, we had
that before, but we encouraged that now even more so that, you know, randomly
people meet up when you don't have this meeting at the, at the coffee machine
anymore at the water cooler that now at least you have this random 20 minutes,
half an hour, with someone in the company where you really chat about, about you
and not about yeah, what do I need to get done this week? And then there is a
bunch of other like regular meetings where we are supporting, we have a weekly,
TJF all hands on deck meeting that we always have on Friday, where all team
members participate. We always communicate big updates to the company. So again,
it's not, this is not a cultural people operations meeting, but we are the ones
facilitating it.




Till Neatby (Guest) (12:42)

Weekly team meetings, monthly MBRs, business reviews, quarterly business
reviews. Quarterly OKR sessions is something that we facilitate also with, with
our, with the tools that we have using, using Leapsome in this case where we
really, everyone on a quarterly basis aligns goals top down, bottom up at the
same time. So this is some of the processes that we do. Monthly lunch and learn
sessions is something that we've recently introduced from my team where we said,
Hey topics that topic X, Y, Z, also remotely of course, that people from all
over the world can can learn about specific topic, choose, vote upvote topics
that they want to learn more about. This is like some of the topics that we do
on a, on a regular basis.




Andy Parker (Host) (13:36)

Excellent. And so, so just to jump back to the, the random coffee meetings did I
catch it correctly that you're using the Slack donuts app to, to match people?




Till Neatby (Guest) (13:45)

Yes, that's correct.




Till Neatby (Guest) (13:47)

Really quite. I find it quite amazing. I mean, especially like before the, you
know, there's this Corona crisis, we had them localized, so I would meet up with
other people from the Berlin office and we would actually go outside, go for a
walk, grab a coffee, a walk along the canal Paul-Lincke-Ufer; beautiful, really
nice. I always was much looking forward to this like half hour of, you know, get
some fresh air and exchange a few idea ideas, but what's also nice now that you
know, that we can't really do this in person anymore and not as much anymore
that we've extended that where it works time zone wise. So just like this week,
actually beginning of this week, I had a, I had a donut date with someone from
our fulfillment center in Texas, where a lady that started with us two and a
half years ago as her as production associate; really on the line picking and
packing boxes and, and worked her way up to, to become a team lead there. It was
super refreshing, you know, to talk to someone there, to, to hear how they are
experiencing the whole situation at the very moment, and to really get a
completely different view of the topics that we're facing at the very moment. So
that I quite enjoyed.




Andy Parker (Host) (15:06)

Yeah, really cool. And I imagine that's a, that's great learning for you and
obviously a nice as well for you know, w the employees that randomly get matched
with you.




Till Neatby (Guest) (15:17)

She was a bit surprised, I have to say.




Andy Parker (Host) (15:20)

Yeah. Excellent. And I wanted to come back to the topic of OKRs. Can you tell me
a little bit about Marley Spoons OKR setting process, and you mentioned how you
facilitate these quarterly meetings. But what does that process look like in
terms of communicating the goals? You know, whether that comes from the top down
or whether it comes from bottom, or how do you work that across the business?




Till Neatby (Guest) (15:44)

Yeah, so it's really both. On the one hand side, always in the month, beginning
of the month before a quarter ends, we sit together on the executive team and
think about, okay, what did we achieve in the last quarter and what are really
the big topics for the next quarters? So we, we do also have strategic offsites
where twice per year, we get together and think more about their midterm
long-term vision, but these ones are really the quarterly based on the midterm
long-term vision, what is, what is there, what should be the priority topic for
the next quarter? And we kind of higher level define them at this very moment
already and already start communicating them, into the company so that then
every single team member can think about, okay, in my area, what could I
potentially do that links towards the big company goals?




Till Neatby (Guest) (16:43)

And obviously not every single OKR links to the big overarching company goal,
but the vast majority do. And then it's really, you know, team by team quite,
quite time-intensive process. But I believe that this, you know alignment
process this so thinking about a) what did we achieve in the last quarter? Why
did we potentially change priorities during the quarter? And then sitting with
the team to define this is really what we as a team want to commit to for the
next quarter. I think that's always a very, very good exercise. I usually try to
combine, and my teams, I tried to combine that also is with an offsite be it a
real offsite, or some, some digital version of it, but to really take a full day
to, to, to go through this and really rather have the team then come up with
their goals.




Till Neatby (Guest) (17:35)

So where we say, Hey, this is what we want to achieve in the next quarter. And
yeah, and then we will, at the very beginning of the quarter, we all would
always do like a "mise en place" meeting as we call it where we communicate the
high level goals for, for already, for the company and for all regions towards
the teams plus a few midterm projects that we have like a sustainability
project, for example. And we always give updates and say, Hey, for the next
quarter, this is going to be a focus topic here.




Andy Parker (Host) (18:07)

I see. Okay. That makes sense.




Till Neatby (Guest) (18:10)

as well, it's part of our Friday all hands on deck meeting, or it, it, it's a
dedicated one to that one and a half hours really, where we only talk about next
quarter's goals and last quarter's achievements or fails and, where it's a big Q
and A session where people can ask a lot of questions.




Andy Parker (Host) (18:27)

Okay. Yeah, that's great. Then obviously everybody gets the visibility as to
what's actually going on across all the various parts of the business.
Excellent.




Till Neatby (Guest) (18:35)

And, and I mean, the goals are visible of course, as well. And then everyone can
go into the tool. Everyone can look at anytime. What's what's, what's your
particular goal? What's on the company or what's in this team, what what are
they working on with, with biggest priority? So that's of course also nice that
you have this constant visibility in the tool.




Andy Parker (Host) (18:56)

Yeah. Excellent. Great. And and obviously as you continue to grow, you know,
there's, this, this alignment is going to obviously become so important as the
company continues to scale. And what are some of the other challenges that you
have faced as the company has grown? In terms of, in terms of head count,
obviously that you've already had to overcome.




Till Neatby (Guest) (19:20)

So we had a few tough situations when it came to restructuring, you know, in the
course of six years, obviously there is events, or there is moments when, when,
when certain teams are being restructured. We had fulfillment sites or
fulfillment centers where we had to close down certain sites because it was more
or they, they became too small and we had to find a new place and sometimes a
new place for a fulfillment center was not in the same region. And this is of
course from a people operations perspective, but also for me as a founder, or
was it a tough decision to, you know, to, to, to go towards team members and
say, listen, this particular position will unfortunately not exist anymore. And
then of course you try to offer. We also had the situation when we built a short
service service center, Lisbon, where we had a number of really fantastic team
members where we said each and everyone is more than welcome to join us on this
and come with us to Lisbon, but obviously not everyone was able to for personal
reasons.




Till Neatby (Guest) (20:30)

So these are of course challenges where that, that are moments that are, that
are tough, that are not fun. And I always found, you know, the most important
part in this was a very, very open, transparent communication from as early on
as possible and show people that you genuinely care and that you try to find a
solution for them. But I mean, obviously you have to accept that you will not be
able to find a solution for everyone. So that was like, you know, we had a few
of these events and then obviously, you know, you kind of need to reinvent
culture on a on a continuous basis when you grow this quickly. And as I said
earlier, 5 people, 50 people, 500, 1500 culture is changing all the time. And
it's that that's, that is a big challenge. It can be a lot of fun as well. But
you're, you know, you really have to think hard, how can you, how can this
culture continue to grow? And it's really has a lot to do with how you recruit.
Our whole team is involved in every single recruitment process how you onboard
people and in the end, how you give autonomy to people to, to build that culture
and help build us, build this culture on a daily basis.




Andy Parker (Host) (21:54)

Interesting. And when, when you speak about reinventing culture, are there any
like kind of formal processes that you've been through along the way on the
journey? I dunno, perhaps have you sort of like redefined your values at some
point, or is there anything that you've had to kind of completely overhaul or re
document when it comes to the culture? Or would you say it's more iterative
based on, you know, kind of small tweaks here and there to to to improve the
culture in certain directions?




Till Neatby (Guest) (22:23)

I would say it's definitely more iterative. So we have we have changed our
values and we are we always tell new team members when we onboard them, Hey,
these are our values, we try to work according to them every single day. We also
fail on them every single day. And it's fine as long as we keep reminding each
other and trying to hold each other accountable to them. We always tell them if
there is something that you don't like, approach us, let's change them. You
know, nothing is set in stone. So we have changed them in the past a bit, not,
not massively, to be honest, we had them really since day one and we've changed
the wording here, a little bit, and we've added a few things that we saw were
missing or that team members saw were missing. That was certainly more of an
iterative process. We are constantly as part of every major, every strategy
offsite that we have from, we are always talking about these topics. I mean,
especially, well, over dinner, or after dinner over a couple of, couple of
bottles of wine or so, but it's there it's, it's, it is a constant topic for us,
but we did not really have this massive overhaul though, no.




Andy Parker (Host) (23:42)

Okay. And so you, you mentioned, then obviously it comes down to onboarding and
training and things like that. Are there any like big standout changes that you
made along the way that you think were particularly big levers for, for changing
or improving the culture?




Till Neatby (Guest) (24:01)

I believe one of the biggest changes that we made was the recruitment process. I
mentioned that earlier on that now we really involved the team. In the first two
years of Marley Spoon, we hired very, quickly, very traditionally maybe that the
team lead, must said, Hey, that person sounds interesting and the person started
the next day and that worked in some cases and others, obviously it did not. I
mean, which I guess it's normal, but some point we said, no, we, we would like
to, have this hiring process a bit more objective and include more team members.
I believe as soon as you include more team members, it does become automatically
more objective because unfortunately we all have our biases and, we like someone
dislike someone usually within the first 30 seconds that we speak to someone.




Till Neatby (Guest) (25:00)

So it is very difficult to over what's the right word to, to ignore or to, to be
aware of this biases that you have and, and, and then ignore them. So that, that
process we changed probably after two years or so. This new process, we already
now have it since, since four years or so. But the responsibility for hiring
remains with team leads. It's not, the culture and people operations department
that's responsible for hiring. That was always something that was very important
for us. So the team lead is really responsible to build his team, to build the
best team. That's really their main number one priority, and he's doing scale
interviews and thinking about, okay, do we need, do I need to do with some kind
of challenge with that candidate or, but then once that, that box is ticked, we
have a round of cultural interviews where really at least three team members
from any team potentially come in and ask a bunch of questions based on our, on
our company values.




Till Neatby (Guest) (26:16)

And it's really, we don't tell, we don't tell the team members, which questions
to ask, we give them an idea. We say, okay. I mean, the team leader basically
decides you go for topic one to three or area one to three, you go for area four
to six and the last one, seven to nine. And then there is a bunch of in all of
these areas, there is a bunch of potential questions that you could ask, but at
the end, you're completely free to ask whatever you want to, but we do recommend
if you do multiple cultural interviews that you always ask the same kind of
question, so that you are also less biased and that you can also objectivize the
answers a little bit. And then try to really dig, dig deep, using like a STAR
methodology where you're, you know, trying to get to their situation, task,
action, result, and, this process, then you know, then it goes, it goes onto a
hiring committee where everyone gets together. Only if everyone agrees, we then
move on to a final interview, to CEO interview and then to extend an offer. So
this is a hiring processes probably, or it's at least one of the things that
changed massively since, since we started. And I really believe for the better,
because I really believe that, people that now join usually are a very good
cultural fit and it's at the end for both sides, of course, always very painful
if you have to decide or if you realize one of, one of the two sides realizes
after a few months that it's not a fit. Um, I think we've, I know that we've
been able to, to really, improve on that.




Andy Parker (Host) (27:57)

Yeah, absolutely. So that's really interesting. And then with the, the cultural
questions, are those questions defined by, by the people and culture team?




Till Neatby (Guest) (28:08)

Oh, we have them since a long time. Yes, I believe so.




Andy Parker (Host) (28:11)

Yeah. And are the interviewers then are they then like — what's the word I'm
looking for — are they, they're they're then basically evaluating the candidates
against a set rubric or you know, there's certain things that they are looking
for in candidate's answer that they're then evaluating against the question.




Till Neatby (Guest) (28:32)

No, it's really, you know, we have our values and and then let's take an
example, like one of our values is to be data-driven and so that could be an
area for, for question. And so if you would be doing the cultural interviews
with candidate X, Y, Z, we would say, okay, this is one area for you. And the
other one is to be, I don't know, to build the best team. And the third one
would be, you know, work autonomously and entrepreneurial, et cetera. And then
within each of these areas, we would give you, again, the number of questions
that you could potentially ask, but you don't have to, if you have a great
question, it's really just to help people to give them, a bit of guidance, to
conduct these cultural interviews. We do train on these cultural interviews as
well, that, because we really try to involve every single team member here.




Andy Parker (Host) (29:32)

Okay. Okay. Excellent. And and so as you continue to grow what are some of the
challenges that you are already foreseeing that you might need to overcome?




Till Neatby (Guest) (29:46)

I mean, currently we're facing the same situation as everyone else, and it's not
necessarily that much grocery related, but this whole remote work or hybrid work
is of course, a very big topic for us that we expect to continue at least for
the next year, but probably this hybrid remote, hybrid work set up will, will
remain. We are planning to offer that indefinitely to our team members. We've
seen in surveys, internal surveys, that a lot of team members very much enjoy
the flexibility to also work from home. But the flexibility to work from home
also has a downside that actually the majority of our team members work much
more than before. And, you know, a lot of them don't take about proper breaks.
Cause it's, of course it's easy, you know, in the morning to just grab your
laptop, sit down and start typing away.




Till Neatby (Guest) (30:42)

And then all of a sudden you realize it's eight in the evening and you haven't
done a, you haven't taken a proper break and you've worked 10 hours straight or
so. And that's, of course, not healthy and not sustainable. So that's a big
topic. And we do also see that in internal surveys that people say they are
they, they feel stressed, but work-life balance is a topic. So that's a big one
for us where we, that we're trying to, to, to work on that we're working on,
trying to lead by example, give people tools. And also in that context, of
course, onboarding new team members, you know, creating this glue, creating the
culture. We have a very good solid culture build over the last couple of years.
And that, that helps us of course, but, whenever you bring on new team members,
they, you know, they don't, and that might potentially work fully remotely or
almost fully remotely. That's, that's a different situation. And so that I
believe will remain a challenge for the upcoming upcoming years. And then as you
said, I mean, we are growing strongly. And that has a lot of challenges on its
own. A lot, a lot of processes where we are still working very agile at this
point will need to be more formalized and that, you know, always comes at a cost
as well.




Andy Parker (Host) (32:13)

Yeah. And do you have any examples of that that already come to mind?




Till Neatby (Guest) (32:18)

I mean, compensation, is one of these, it comes, you know, compensation,
fairness is a, is a very important part in our perception. How do you- what, how
happy are you with work? And this is a topic that always comes up and it's much
easier in a smaller team where, people know each other. And we're not
transparent as some companies are, we don't have full transparency on, on, on
salary. But people tend to have a good idea or they, they speak to each other,
et cetera. And that's okay. And I believe while it's, while it's a small team,
they understand much better contributions. But it's also not just the, the cash
component of offering renumeration and some people, we also have an equity
component in our remuneration scheme, and also some people choose to, to go for
a position where, they might have seen exceptional growth learning and
development for themselves, and, and don't necessarily go for the, you know, the
highest cash option, et cetera, et cetera.




Till Neatby (Guest) (33:29)

So the larger the team gets, the more difficult, of course it is to, to know
this about the next person and the other person. Then you start wondering, and
you're like, Hmm, am I, am I really fairly being fairly compensated? So there
is, of course, you know, this is one of the topics where we're discussing, what,
what, what will we do as a next step, external benchmarking data, et cetera, et
cetera. Diversity inclusion in this context is this is of course also big one is
there. And we, he are, we have a super diverse culture when it comes to
nationalities. I believe we have over 50 different nationalities working in the
Berlin team alone. And, and we love that. And we always, in our internal
service, score very highly on any diversity and inclusion question. At the same
time though, we haven't in the past formally, looked at this in a way as to,
female leadership participation.




Till Neatby (Guest) (34:27)

We've changed that about a year ago. And going forward, I think we'll have the
majority of exec team members will be, will be women at Marley spoon. Our board
members are majority women as of today, but there's a lot of other areas where
we haven't really looked into in the past. If you look at the black lives
matters discussion in the United States, we have a huge US team and ethnicity,
wasn't a topic for us in the past. We did not, not one that we actively
discussed and probably we need to. And, and so this is all, again, not based on
the larger you get, you need to think more and more about these, these kinds of
processes.




Andy Parker (Host) (35:11)

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. All all extremely important topics, obviously, as
you say to, to tackle as as you keep scaling. And I'd love to jump back quickly
to the internal surveys that you that you mentioned how frequently are you
running them? What kinds of things are you asking? And how do you, how do you
use that data?




Till Neatby (Guest) (35:32)

So we have twice per year, we run a global survey where which is fairly
extensive — 50 plus questions, or so — where we're really touching touching
pretty much all areas. And that, that one, we run truly globally to be able to
benchmark all the regions and teams against each other. And then pretty much
after that, it's a very different, there is, you know, pulse surveys on our, on
a team level happening on a weekly basis, or like during, the height of Corona,
we sent out surveys on a weekly basis to understand, Hey, how are you coping
with the situation how you're doing? There is monthly regional topics where, you
know, in Europe, we might have a different topic than, that's pressing at the
moment then in the US or in Australia, etc.




Till Neatby (Guest) (36:31)

So it's really starting from these two huge biannual ones, and two small local
pulse surveys on a very frequent basis. And that, of course also then defines
what we do with the data. So there are these big, biannual surveys. We tried to
sync them in a way that we always have that data available for our strategy
offsite meetings. So we can use fresh data to really see, Hey, what are the pain
points? What are their celebration points, but also what are pain points? How
did they develop over time, and define action items based on these. And other
than that, we really try to be very democratic with, the data that we have more
of these survey results so they are available, readily, so that the individual
team leads can compare themselves also to, to other teams and say, you know,
what does this result actually telling me, am I doing with this result?




Till Neatby (Guest) (37:34)

Or am I here I'm better or worse than, than the average of Marley spoon who are
good people that I could go turn to learn from them to understand why, I dunno,
if my team is doing particularly well or bad in work-life balance, I might look
for someone that has a good score and discuss with that person. Hey, how do you
manage? Why, why is your team perceiving that situation very different from,
from my team? I think that is probably the most important. There's really very
granular follow up. The big high level company level one is also important, of
course, not to miss any major trends, but it's really this working on it on a
very local, granular level, where I believe you can have the quickest wins.




Andy Parker (Host) (38:27)

Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And then, and obviously the employee engagement
metrics are obviously something that, as you said, like even your team can use
for taking the strategy offsites and obviously that's something that you keep an
eye on. Are there any other big metrics or how else would you define success for
you and your role as head of culture?




Till Neatby (Guest) (38:54)

I mean, the eNPS you already mentioned is of course, a very, very important one.
And so at the end, all the survey data, around, engagement, recognition, growth,
wellbeing, the cultural topics, that's really, one of the main KPIs that we look
at. And then of course there is the lagging indicators, like, turnover and
tenure that is of course, something that we look at, exit poll surveys that we
do with, team members that leave us, why do they leave us? Where did they go?
But this is all rather the lagging indicators around the leading indicators is
really the surveys that we try to run very, very frequently. And of course also
very soft data as well, you know, just, coffee chats where like, you know, you
get feedback from people or over a beer after, after work. I do believe that
it's also very, very important.




Andy Parker (Host) (39:54)

Yeah, Absolutely. Yeah. There is a there are qualitative conversations that, you
know, are never going to show up in surveys. Yeah. Interesting. And and then
finally, how, how do you see the role of people operations is developing? Are
there any like trends that you're particularly excited about for the future?




Till Neatby (Guest) (40:16)

I think what we've seen over the last few years is that the, this whole field
becomes much more data-driven and you know, using analytics to, to then deliver
insight and, and deliver impulse towards the wider team. I believe that's a very
exciting, exciting part of, of what's happening in our area.




Till Neatby (Guest) (40:47)

And, and yeah, and I guess, you know, that, that you can really then extend to
all potential areas. I mean, it goes to workforce planning, to talent,
acquisition and talent management, overall performance and succession planning.
And I mentioned the diversity and inclusion topic before, learning development
is of course is a huge one for us as well, where, you know, a ton of new
opportunities nowadays with blended learning. I think there is a number of very,
very exciting, exciting trends. But at the end, it's really, trying to
objectivize what you do and trying to build business cases around projects that
you do and really trying to, not, fuzzily talk about are our people happy? But
to be able to show this has actually a great impact on the bottom line.




Andy Parker (Host) (41:51)

Yes. Yeah. Interesting. So, yeah, that really, it sounds sounds like, you know,
connecting the work that the people operations teams are doing to the whole
strategic objective of the, of the business and how, how that, as you say,
really, really connects to profitability.




Till Neatby (Guest) (42:06)

Yeah. I mean, it is like, I mean, we see it really starting at our fulfillment
centers, you know, where the bulk of our 1,000 out of 1,500 team members are the
production associates. So they are the most important ones to, to ensure that
our customers are happy. At sites or fulfillment centers, where we have a higher
turnover rate we see it immediately and in complaint rates and also in
productivity, so if, you know, we, we managed to keep them happy and show them
career paths, et cetera, we see it immediately in complaint rates and
productivity. So it's really very, very simple maths to do. And it's the same at
all our offices, people couldn't can work everywhere on this, on this planet
nowadays. Now we have, you know, as I said before people from all over the world
working here, but they could be working, you know, tomorrow that could, they
could go somewhere completely else. So well you need to give them a reason to be
working for Marley Spoon and that's, that's the us working on that culture and
having an exciting challenge for them and working on it on an important topic.




Andy Parker (Host) (43:20)

Absolutely. Excellent. With that. That was a, a, I think a really nice note to
end on just one final question from my side. Do you have a book or any other
sort of resource recommendation, that you would recommend our audience to check
out?




Till Neatby (Guest) (43:38)

So book, I do believe I have to stick to the, you know, the classic Lencioni
'Five Dysfunctions of a Team'. That's you know, it's very quick read, but
that's, you know, not, not just for People Operations but really for everyone in
business, because it really explains why, you know, trust is so important and
why this is really the underlying function. And, and because it's so nice and
simple I like it a lot, and that's why it's like probably the one book that I
would always recommend.




Andy Parker (Host) (44:11)

That's a, that's, that's a good one. And we will link to that in the show notes.
So thank you for that recommendation. Till, this has been an amazing
conversation. Thank you very much for joining us, and I hope you had fun as
well.




Till Neatby (Guest) (44:23)

Yeah. Thank you very much. And no, it's been a pleasure. Have a great day.




Andy Parker (Host) (44:27)

Excellent. Thanks. Bye bye.




Till Neatby (Guest) (44:29):

Thank you. Cheers.

‍




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