Emma Freivogel, Radical Recruit, Crowdfunding to tackle homelessness, one person and one job at a time

Let me introduce you to Emma Freivogel the founder and powerhouse behind Radical Recruit. Radical Recruit is a not for profit recruitment consultancy that exists to excite, agitated and shake things up in the recruitment industry!

They represent the UKs most diverse ‘hidden’ talent, help employers do recruitment better and create real and lasting social change.

They are currently piloting Radical Futures, a recruitment project in partnership with homeless charity, St Mungo’s.

Together, they are working against the clock to ensure that no homeless person who has been temporarily housed by government (at the Camden Stay Club) during lock-down is forced back onto the streets through lack of employment.

They believe that everyone deserves the opportunity to work, support themselves and build futures that they love, whatever their background.

Whether your business operates in catering or construction, administration or finance, hospitality or hygiene services we can help with introductions to London’s most diverse hidden talent who have been expertly risk-assessed and are ready to work.

So, if you’re an employer who wants to take advantage of our free recruitment service, create real social impact and make a lasting difference in the lives of people who experience homelessness we want to hear from you!

For more info, connect with Emma on LinkedIn or via the website to organise an obligation free chat.

Remember … it won’t cost you anything, but it’ll change everything.

To find out more about Guy Bloom and his award winning work in Team Coaching, Leadership Development and Executive Coaching click below.

The link to everything CLICK HERE
UK: 07827 953814
Email: guybloom@livingbrave.com
Web: www.livingbrave.com

Transcript

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it is absolutely wonderful to have you on this episode of leadership bites welcome thank you for having me[Laughter] and listen i've uh i've reached out to you via the powers of uh linkedin and uh i must be a walking advertisement for linkedin because um all of this entire podcast is due to linkedin but i reached out i was looking at what you were doing i was seeing the posts i was hooked quite quickly by um the what i thought or understood it to be and um so i know who you are and on the audio podcast i've done a bit of a description on the video one i don't do that so um just for people that don't know who you are uh who are you and um what are you doing my name is emma i am the founder of a um not-for-profit recruitment consultancy called radical recruit so who am i i am a person who has worked um in what i call the human services sector for about 15 years uh so working with individuals and groups of people who are essentially marginalized disenfranchised and kept on the outskirts of our society because of the systems and the structures that exist within it um i guess you know i work with the underdog if you like and i started my career in in disability and i worked with lots of different constituencies who are under-represented in lots of ways but in particular within the labor market and i before i found a radical recruit i was working for an organization that supported women who were coming out of the criminal justice system to find jobs on release so there's about 5 000 women in prison every year um compared to 90 000 men and um across the board 80 of them are released without jobs and are often also homeless and during my time there i was i was there for about 22 months i think um and i had the the privilege and the honor of supporting uh just over 400 women to find jobs on release and um reintegrate within society re-establish themselves as as within their sort of family units and become better citizens whatever that looks like and i was talking towards the end of my tenure i was talking at um the road the reward gateway nx summit which is um was the most amazing conference i've i've ever been to it was themed hr rebels and i was invited to talk on a panel with my then candidate chanel who's actually about to come become my trustee um and the head of uh people from honest burgers and we were all telling chanel's story from our different perspectives chanel had been she was one of 16 um uh siblings born into generational poverty young black west midlands based her father was and still is a prolific drug lord um her she was taken into care when she was very young and as soon as she was old enough she went to prison um to a young offenders institute and then she was transferred into hmp downview which is a women's prison in in surrey um and when i when i met chanel it was in my first week um and i was tasked with the job of calling her from prison to understand who she was what she'd done previously and what she wanted to do with the view to sort of developing a cv for her because she was due for release two weeks later and um i discovered all these things about her but also i discovered that she was this amazing um baker and she loved food and that she'd actually um founded a business a catering business within the prison called down the cake hole i don't know have you ever been to a prison before no never been in never visited anyone well for anyone who has um they will all tell you the same thing it's really really hard to do anything beyond the usual regime so the fact that she had founded this business she trained up two lifers to take over the management of the business and she'd been catering for the governor inside and outside all of his events meant that she was like this amazingly savvy um person who could negotiate who could network who could you know make things happen and i was just incredibly impressed by her determination and get up and go and things like that and i mean i didn't know her from a bar of soap but i felt like she had left sort of her life of crime um and all of the things that she'd been born into behind her and she was ready for a new style anyway we blagged this cv for her and called up on asperger's and said please can you come and interview her before she gets released because she's going to be released homeless without a job and they came to the prison and the person interviewed her um tasted a piece of her carrot cake and he said it was the best damn carrot cake he'd ever ever tasted and gave her a job on the spot anyway we're at this conference telling chanel's story and i realized for the first time in the two years that i'd worked for that particular employer that the appetite for social recruitment had changed um and i'd pitched a room of corporates who seemed to be interested in chanel's story um and and were wanting to learn more about how they could potentially replicate this model within their own workplaces and i'd realized that like chanel was saying things like for the first time in my life i feel valued i feel safe i'm contributing i haven't reoffended all these things like we take for granted and i was like bloody how all it took was literally 20 minutes on the phone to me um one meeting with an inclusive employer and a piece of carrot cake and this woman had transformed her life so at that point she'd been out of prison for 18 months she started as the dish pig and she was training to become a head chef i was just like if this works for someone like chanel like the odds were stacked up against her on paper she should probably never have been even alive at that point you know why couldn't it work for other people with other sort of barriers to work or who had similar experiences to chanel so that's kind of how radical was born where when a not-for-profit recruitment consultancy we represent london's hidden talent and they're typically people with barriers to work um so that people who've had contact with the criminal justice system have been brought up in care who are sort of at imminent risk of or currently homeless we work with individuals from sort of deprived geographical locations typically they're from vain backgrounds we work with people with disabilities victims of modern slavery people in recovery domestic violence survivors really anyone who who struggles to get a foot in the door of the corporate world really we work with and um in addition to sort of supporting them with the recruitment piece we also get them work ready so that they can compete on an even footing with their mainstream counterparts yeah so that was sort of how we were born long answer i know it's a wrong answer but it's a bloody good one[Laughter] that's a beautiful thing janelle's just one of these people that i mean she really propelled me into action she's so like she was she was talking to an audience of you know 100 people she'd never met um and she was so courageously and bravely telling her story but also advocating for other people have been born into tumultuous circumstances who really didn't ever get an opportunity just to even start in life and and also sort of trying to convince people the merits of giving people have made mistakes another chance to be better yeah um which is you know she takes sort of both boxes and the fact that she's got from where she was born into to where she is now is just a testament to her her resilience and her her determination and grit she's just remarkable so on that note just do one little thing for me you're on a laptop right just pull it down slightly just so i can see that's it beautiful just so i've got yeah exactly yeah whatever's in the front don't worry about that that's perfect because i know this is so powerful for me that i just want to maximize it for for everybody uh on a slightly separate note do you think she'd be up for an episode just her and me yeah yeah we could pick up on her story and um maybe that's something we could yeah i'd love to do that i'm sure she's a she's she'd make a great guest grandma me absolutely not true but that's okay uh and uh i'd expect you to have probably said that so emma you know i can feel that in you it's it's coming you know it's i'm feeling it from a long a long way away that that connection and what that means to you probably emotionally as as well i i'm a big believer in understanding somebody's journey in life to add value to what it is that they have to say and you know we're on a podcast i'd like to say it's just you and me but it's you and me and everybody else right but just what's your journey that's taking you to a place where you are doing something that intellectually most people might go oh yes i'd love to do something like that but they're probably not going to so what is it that's your driving force it'd be interesting to hear how you got to this space and maybe some of the drivers that that go with that yeah i mean i think there are a couple of things um worth mentioning my so i was born into incredible privilege i had you know two parents who loved each other and and loved me and my little brother um i always had i mean we didn't have a lot of money but my father always had work my mother had the the option to be a stay-at-home mom um and i was always cared for i always had food on my on on on the table i always had sort of clothes on my back my only priority as a child was to get an education i wasn't even allowed to get a job when i was 16. so um i i think i was made aware of that at a really young age because my mother um was what the youngest of seven and born into generational poverty and in stark contrast to my father who wasn't um and what at my house when i was young and growing up we had this open door policy and mum would invite anyone into the house that needed love or educating or feeding or or housing so we always had we always had you know the strays um the kids with you know parents who you know perhaps weren't being the best parents or what i don't know how to determine it but so so there was always like i was brought up knowing that that's how we treat each other you know that's that that humans are humans don't matter where he comes from everyone deserves to feel safe to feel like they belong to have love in their life blah blah blah and my dad would feed them my dad would do all the feeding mom do everything else and can i just ask something not to interrupt you but to help me make sense of it which is that language that you're using you know that we we take care of people was that conversations you were having or is it something that you've just observed no this is just this is how i was raised this is this is so you were being told this is what we do no this is what this is that that was my experience that was my life and that was and that was the expectation i mean it was never we were never we didn't talk about you know race and we didn't talk about sexual preference reading talk about we just respect people no matter who they are where they come from so that was that was inherent in everything that my family did all of their behaviors our actions as a group blah blah blah so i i've always had that they were they i guess for my my values and my my beliefs growing up as an adult and then i kind of fell into disability and and all of that was became my my work life as well um so it was managing sort of programs and accommodation services things like that for people with sensory impairment then brain injury and drugs and alcohol and um yeah so i guess that's sort of how it all started they say care runs in the family um my mum when she wasn't sort of caring for us as children or you know the neighborhood kids that needed caring for she was a she worked in disability as well and then she became a teacher's aide and now she's a teacher so these are all caring professions i think it's just it runs in the blood so i guess that was um that's how it starts or started for me um it really i've worked in the charity sector for 15 years one of the things that um i have always found really frustrating is the fact that um charities are expected to[Music] sit in the corner and behave like good women legs crossed speak when spoken to never too loud you know these types of things but when you're representing people who are undervalued by society or who um you know are perceived through like a lens of mistrust or are perceived as sort of lacking motivation or incapable of getting jobs whatever it is like like if you look at homeless people you know the first thing you think about is that they must be a drug user you know these types of things so when you're representing people who are sort of in the outskirts of society at the absolute fringes you can't as an organization sit in the corner and be quiet and act like a good lady so and i i felt like like i throughout my career that that has been a requirement regardless of the level of the role that i had within any of the organizations it's always been like you must behave in a certain way and i kind of feel like if you're representing the people that we represent radical you have to be bold you have to be unapologetic you have to challenge the status quo and i couldn't do that in my previous role so that was i guess one of the catalysts um and and that conference you know i was just i went to the pub afterwards and at that time i wasn't one for sort of self-reflection and i felt the need to when i went to i went to the local pub afterwards ordered a really big glass of red wine and i wrote down all of my thoughts and those thoughts form what is now my manifesto at radical and um you know they're they're the beliefs and the things that really underpin all of our work and it's essentially that they it's it was a bit of like a martin luther i have a dream kind of moment for me but essentially what i believe is that everyone should have the right to um a great job that they love that provides opportunities for progression and um lots of people don't have that and you know if you look at like recruitment consultancies there's over 30 000 registered as trading in the uk they remain largely inaccessible to people with disabilities to people with convictions to people who don't have the confidence to walk into the office angels or the read and sell themselves to a recruiter you know if you don't have an ats optimized cv it doesn't even get to the recruiter so for me like radical one of the catalysts was actually believing that everyone should have access to a really great recruitment consultancy and that service because that opens up so many doors doesn't it they're they're the three things i i think that really so this conference what was in it that triggered what was obviously inside of you you know but what was it that triggered that what were you seeing or hearing it was it was chanel saying it was it was a realization that chanel was probably one of the most complex people that i'd ever worked with okay and with the tiniest amount of support at the right time she completely changed the trajectory of her life so chanel was in prison she i think it was a six year sentence she got um just before on her last um custodial and she done three years of it so her crimes were pretty serious and um just to be given one opportunity meant that she didn't go back to her her family that were unhealthy for her that that put her in harm's way and had always done um and it just it meant that she could get accommodation it meant that she she was now feeling part of the community she was paying her taxes like so it was seeing that that the reality of that that got you yeah yeah and i was like oh my gosh if this works for someone like chanel or the male estate why can't i work for people with disabilities why can't work for you know young people who are born into care these types of things so i guess that was that was it really and there was a real buzz in the air like it was people were really it felt like they it felt like social recruitment was less sort of fashionable and more something that people could understand might drive business success that diversity was was more than just sort of this you know rhetoric sort of three-hour box ticking training exercise once a year if that makes sense it felt like things had shifted so how do you then go from a big glass of red wine and an epiphany to actually setting up a business and making how did you make the contacts how do you know where to go how much of this is because you know people or google search engines or how did how did that first 12 months look um the first time i wasn't even thinking about the first 12 months so i kind of i um rather naively admitted that my plans to my employer and uh they they terminated my contract on breach of contract so that was that's probably was the mental note itself yeah don't be honest that's right um so yeah i got i got the sack for the first time in my life and i was like in the depths of despair for a moment or two and um i was speaking to my mother and she was just like just do it emma so i had this grand plan that i would while mum was paying my rent and and um my grocery bill that i've got yeah my mom's the best woman the whole entire world i don't care what anyone says she's just the most generous person um but she really believes in in what i believe in which you know i'd been talking about this for a while and she was just like just do it and i was like in two months i was like[ __ ] i've just i've literally just given up this cushy job that paid you know relatively well that meant i had a comfortable lifestyle um i was a ceo at the time so you know all of these it was it was comfortable um to go and then try this sort of concept that hadn't really been proven previously and and by myself with no money so what i did what did i do i actually put an ad on a um a uh like a free in london sort of facebook group um for consultancy services and i said i want to meet people from these constituencies care leavers ex-offenders homeless people because they were the three groups that i was really interested in and often they're the same people at different points of their life journey and a young man um called michael who is one of my advisors now contacted me and he too was in the depths of despair he was um emotionally not very well and physically not very well long-term unemployed a care leave i had been homeless and just really really struggling um didn't have a lot of hope for his future just nothing nothing in his life there was nothing positive he didn't have anything to look forward to and he didn't have any support around him and he was really having a tough time anyway he responded to this and he said i need a job and so we had a good old chat like two hours i think we spoke on the phone and i discovered he was just such a he was an amazing um performance artist he writes spoken word he um was really active in the care lever community advocating for young people who had sort of also shared experience of um care and um perfectly employable you know but just didn't have a cv that marketed his skills and didn't have anyone that really believed in him so that's kind of how it how it started i started off with michael and i placed him and then he told his friend chad and then i placed her and then before i knew it i sort of made 10 placements and then 20 placements and and we're on over 85 now um 14 months later so that's how it started and literally i kind of started talking on linkedin and networking i mean i i was touring um other charitable organizations pitching us our serp my service saying refer your people to me i'm going to get them jobs like it was there was no plan um like in an ideal world i would have made 10 placements proven the concept and then gone to a funder like big lottery or the oak foundation tutor trust and said this model works give me money let's scale up together but brexit happened and then the election happened and christmas and now the plague and um you know my plan went straight out the window um but we've got a team of five um currently and we've made over 85 places i think we're on 86 or 87 we're not entirely sure and we've placed some amazing people into some great jobs and we're actually seeing a year on like michael's just being promoted um so there's like people are sort of moving and progressing within their chosen careers which is a beautiful thing and i'm working with just the most the most amazing people you know um and we've just been funded by the the biggest funder there is the ministry of uh communities housing and local government might be the other way around not sure how um and uh we're working with with rough sleepers that have been temporary temporarily housed um on account of covered and we're getting them jobs and it's just yes there was no plan really there still isn't a plan where we've got a strategy meeting tomorrow because you two need to be more organized yeah if this thing's gonna keep rolling then yeah yeah yeah i mean it's amazing you know i was begging businesses for their vacancies and i was doing it for free we've just signed warner brothers we work with mighty we work with compass group we've got some big you know high street brands that have approached us which is a testament to the caliber of the people that we're representing um and the hard work the team put in over the last 12 months to to build our brand improve the model so yeah things have really changed over the last 12 months i'm very proud hmm it makes me pause it makes me pause it's it's um it's very powerful to hear somebody talk about something that um a they're passionate about but also adds value to the world you know we we often try and there's lots of people that work in roles where there's a product or a service and you know they're very proud of it and they're genuine people working incredibly hard but the product or the is relatively benign you know if it's hubcaps or something like that for car wheels it's the product itself isn't per se doing something um so to to hear somebody talk about something that is having a definitive effect i think is um is is hugely powerful has has the power of has social media been the key to being heard 100 i don't have a marketing budget so i mean we rely on i think the the biggest barrier to the to our people finding work is the public's perceptions of them um and when i was really green i was trying to change people's minds and what i realized 12 months ago yeah yeah really i i mean i i was sort of on this mission to change everyone's mind which in hindsight is incredibly naive it's a lot easier to add to people's perceptions um and i think the best way to do that is to prove that one person one job at a time that homeless people that ex-offenders that young people all of these people that are sort of viewed through a lens of mistrust who are perceived to be anti-social who assumed to not have sort of the skills or the the qualities required to sustain work get it in the first place um do actually make valuable members of staff and also the community um and so i do a lot of step storytelling on on linkedin because it's cheap well it's free actually and people love a good news story i saw it i saw it i see a photo of a beaming face and yeah yeah i'm kind of i'm in you know yeah i mean it could i mean i know i'm no influencer or anything like that but i mean like a good a good post you can get sort of forty fifty thousand views um one you may not be an influencer but you definitely have influence and getting 40 to 50 000 views with what linkedin's just done to the algorithm recently which is to reduce people's scope and scale because they want people to advertise yes that's massive well i mean there it's it's a story itself that's massive i mean it's you know i'm thinking about no the fact that that reach it tells you the power of the of what you're offering that it's still having that reached it tells you how powerful it is yeah yeah i mean we do so that's sort of my my focus and i think like partly it's because i really enjoy writing the success stories i think i um it's a beautiful thing to be able to celebrate someone's success especially if they've come from like huge adversity like many of our people have so yeah i do use a lot of i use linkedin as a way of obviously talking about what we do but also engaging with a whole range of stakeholders from referral partners who are working with potential radicals i call my candidates radicals or with the media or with uh you know employers and and probably the most amazing people are my volunteers so we've had over 300 volunteers support our work and i found them all on linkedin and they're typically recruiters or ta specialist or some description and they are amazing talent acquisition acquisition yeah and they they do sort of what i call the grunt work so we we get them all in a zoom room before the plague it used to be in a community hall and you'd they'd come and use their corporate volunteering hours and we'd all roll up our sleeves and and really develop cvs and do mock interviews and teach them how to use the star technique tanza competency-based questions all this sort of stuff um so i mean linkedin has been just an amazing vehicle for one telling our story the radical story celebrating the success of the people we support um championing like the the great practice that's that's happening with our um partners because like it really does require we only we only work with businesses who can sort of prove their their dna rhetoric is more than hot air so we work with businesses who want to turn their rhetoric into action by recruiting sort of diversity and inclusion right yeah yeah just saying that for people that may not know the actual sorry i assume everyone this is like i dna for breakfast um yeah so diversity inclusion because i mean you get lots of big businesses that say we're diverse and say we're inclusive but actually when you strip it all back their policy doesn't translate into practice and when you land on their website the first picture you see is a big group of white middle-aged men as the executive management team and and you know they're it's just they're they're way off being diverse a way of being inclusive and it really is hot air so we we work with all um employers it's an intellect not an actuality right yeah yeah and it's a dishonest intellect as well it's not it's it's there's one thing to be seen to be diverse but actually being diverse and ensuring like your people feel like they belong they're completely different things um and i think like off the the black lives matter movement and the murder of george floyd you know that has really brought diversity to the forefront again and i'm seeing more action in addition to more talk which is really heartening um i think like the the pandemic has made businesses giving them the opportunity to stop and like pause and and look inwardly and and and consider whether or not they're purpose-driven and what being purpose-driven might look like um and that really links in beautifully with radical as well because we're all about people and diversity and inclusion there is something about one of the biggest things that's impacted is just working from home and you know i keep joking about it but you know that meme that went out that said hey you know that job they said for the last 20 years that you can't do from home it turns out you can yeah and i think what that's done is woken business up to ah we weren't trusting people were we but the moment we had to well it still worked yeah so we've learned a lot about themselves very quickly i think absolutely i think that's a it's a like a a big sign of poor leadership as well not trusting your people it's one of my bug bears um you know there are 14 million people in the uk with a disability most of them are not working and it's because employers aren't offering agile working arrangements you know one of my colleagues um jurgen he has been in recruitment and done account management for all the big brands for 15 20 years he lost his sight overnight last year really struggled to get a job because employers are terrified of the prospect of employing someone with a disability they just don't know what to do so that's when sort of enter radical we support employers to think about what that might look like for their business and how they can become more inclusive and again going back to your point about sort of agile working or flexible working that has opened up opportunities for um parents single parents you know it's open up opportunities for people who really struggle to get on the tube because of their mental health um people with physical abilities go ahead no no i was interrupting you going no i was finished i mean i'm just walking i was just thinking it's um yeah don't worry yeah i was just i was just saying stuff but it's i've got a little boy uh i've got two boys one uh eight and six and one of them the little one has autism uh you know to a you know there's capital a autism and there's sort of lesser versions of it and you know he's yeah but he's very statemented we have some some issues with own et cetera but of course very often these things only become real when you have the experience of it it's it's very often i mean it's not that people can't make the association and have the empathy that's not what i'm saying but you know i have intellectual empathy i say oh of course i understand well that's a terrible thing you know oh gosh that must be very difficult i'm not going to do it but i do recognize it when something becomes real for me i suddenly go hmm i wonder what's going to happen to him when he's 18. exactly yeah i mean i think reality for me yeah i think um regardless of whether you have empathy for someone as an employer you have a legal obligation to everyone and people with protected characteristics um in particular so when we're talking about people with disabilities it doesn't actually matter whether you understand it or not you have to make your workplace accessible you have to ensure that they can participate in your recruitment process so you see i agree with you 100 my and or my butt or my however or whatever the right conjunction is there is that um the intellectual cert the servicing of the law will never be as genuine or as welcoming or as comfortable as an organization or a team or an individual that genuinely buys into it so yeah so i do buy into the fact that legally you have to but nothing ever worked out well when the law was applied right yeah i mean sometimes it doesn't and often it does i mean i think that's 90 of the hard work we do and again it's about going back to that that bit around sort of adding to people's perceptions and building our employers so we sort of do this radical ready test um before we sign an employee and we have conversations that are challenging and we ask questions around accessibility and things like that because ultimately you might have all the will in the world but you're not set up to employ a radical person a radical candidate so so when you do that person's not likely to succeed in their role so we do a lot of capacity building with our employers and we offer sort of um facilitation so one of the things that we're offering at the moment is um being consciously unbiased facilitation and it's a sort of a take on unconscious bias um training which generally or has been in my experience sort of an e-learning module that everyone has to do company-wide that's compulsory once a year or like a three-hour off-the-shelf um session that you also have to do once a year yeah um all this tick box exercise and there's a there's a body of evidence to say that actually it doesn't change attitudes but at radical we kind of feel like it's really important to be able to identify your bias but businesses and individuals need to take that one step further by being consciously unbiased so that's about changing behaviors so doing it on purpose having the effort to say right you know what what are we doing here um yeah and holding themselves accountable and i kind of like so we we offer a half day facilitation and then we um we tail that with a half day workshop so the facilitation is all getting you thinking about what your implicit biases are what your patterns of thinking are um we talk about diversity because diversity when you think about diversity what what what's your definition of diversity give me give me an example this is a horrific moment but i think the ability and the will to factor in difference right so what when you so when when when i ask this question of employers i generally get the answer well diversity refers to people with um disability we talk about gender we think about um you know sexual preference religion these types of things things that are in theory protected by the law but if you think about diversity if say diversity is a circle and you've got three um rings within the circle the diversity that we think about the gender uh race disability blah blah that's a that's the center of the circle and then on the the next ring is external diversity so it seems like um where a person lives their geographic location their edu educational entertainment whether or not they grew up in care whether they've been to prison um their accent yeah yes exactly these things that are not protected by law but actually you know when it comes to if we use recruitment as an as an example are huge barriers to work and then you've got organizational diversity that looks like looks like the seniority of the the role um that you hold it might be the type of employer these types of things so when when we do this facilitation we explore what diversity is and we prescribe to the three-dimensional definition of diversity and the idea behind the training is not to tell people that they're biased and they should be better but it's about facilitating thinking around their own biases and and what they might might want to do at work or in life in response to knowing these well you said that you said earlier don't try to change people's minds you know add to their perceptions so i can hear that that's that's what you're doing there yeah and by meeting people who are so the second part of this this facilitation is i put them all in a room with my radicals and they're people that have been on the other side of their unconscious bias and this facilitates a connection and there's there's storing telling that happens there's something real and tangible in front of me that i exactly and all of a sudden people care because actually the people they're meeting are lovely humans course you know they've just had a tough time well they've just been discriminated against and all of a sudden how would you have managed in that context you know would you have ended up half as good as this you know would you have taken a left instead of a right exactly so so they do so what we we get them to do is a practical task and it to the benefit of the radical because i'm very efficient like that so we get them to do either a coaching session it could be teaching them how to develop a personal elevator pitch it could be getting them on linkedin it could be a cv review it could be a mock interview whatever and then we debrief at the end and we ask those questions we have those conversations if you were this person you know what would your life look like now or if you had this barrier when you were 16 if your mum left you and your dad was never in the picture and you were taken into care or a drug lord yeah there you go um what would your life look the same and all of a sudden things that aren't really relevant to people like you and i because we're incredibly privileged become not relevant but they they think things that we may be relevant i don't know what their word is what they're doing is they're experiencing a reality they've never had in front of them they may have seen it on tv and they may have driven plastic but they haven't had the human being in front of them and that yeah and this is this is the idea so it's just it's literally and the conversations go i mean everywhere there every session is different and it really depends on who's in the room um but they're always really like you walk away even as a facilitator you walk away thinking oh god i've learned something about myself about the world about other people and and what we do then is we give we ask people to sign up to be change makers in their workplace and we give them practical tools that they can use and go and implement in their workplace so it might be like you know starting a dni book club whereby a member of staff reads a piece of literature relating to a dni topic like white fragility for example and reports back what they've learned to the group or it could be that they put dni on the senior leadership leadership team team meeting agendas for example or it could be reviewing policy to ensure that the language we're using when we describe people with disabilities is inclusive you know these are the types of things and then we check in with them once a quarter to keep them accountable and to share the best practice and exchange ideas and support with other delegates from the same courses joining in and so there's this sort of peer learning happening and and essentially it's to keep people accountable because you can't just do a three-hour session would you offer that out to people that as as a training program to organizations and which would maybe also be a revenue stream for you outside of sort of yeah we've had to we've had to look at what we can commerce um take to market so a lot of the sort of capacity building that getting employers radical ready stuff that we used to do for free we've had to um find a way to make money off because my business model relied on pre-op um charging for recruitment fees because no one's spending money on recruitment and um they're less likely to pay for an ex-offender candidate or a homeless candidate or whatever so it's pretty tough so yeah we do offer that um we soft launched it um we've not got loads of beautiful sparkly marketing materials but that too is on its way um and so we delivered that and another session for corporates about um it's called man um leading radical people um and basically we support people leaders hiring managers to revisit the fundamentals you know of leadership like empathy and curiosity and adaptability and an active listening and then we also introduce them to a trauma-informed approach because most of the people that we work with at radical have experienced some trauma in that in their lives and i think that's probably true of the the population of the world i think there's a lot of people who are functioning through by the time something's happened to you probably yeah why and i can't it's what we what you know when i think back to the managers that i've had they weren't managers they were leaders number one they were empathetic always they asked questions they were curious they cared they were adaptable but they also acknowledged that we're you know just human at the end of the day we all make mistakes we all need support in different ways these types of things so it revisits all that it um provides sort of a level of supervision ongoing for people managers so that when they're hiring our radicals say who are coming from you know a homeless background surviving the streets is bloody hard it's traumatic i mean the things that these people have lived through but their adaptability their their tenacity their problem-solving absolutely they bring so much yeah that you cannot learn in the classroom yeah yeah you can't teach resilience situational sensing their ability to kind of realize when an emotion has shifted you know that's that's it may not be elegant but it's in there yeah absolutely absolutely and with the right leadership the right support um delivered through a trauma-informed lens these people can become assets these are and like if you think about like right now in this moment who are the best people to have in your business ones that know excel really well or ones that can change and flex their approach and who don't shake easily and you know like these are traumatic times aren't they they're hard times ever forged in fires and i think if you've been through something of a level then you know it's the crocodile on the kind of gag of you know you think this is a you know this is a knife no this is a knife well oh this is traumatic oh no no no this is not traumatic let me assure you yeah i've experienced traumatic and so the level of their kind of um capacity is greatly improved by the by the experience that never and then so you might you might have the most you know the i can't think of a good university i didn't go to university well i did but i didn't finish anything what's the best university in the uk let's just say oxford or cambridge or something yeah okay yeah so you can have a cambridge um grad who's had the best education on paper looks fantastic but actually anytime something changes within the business or they're put in a pressurized situation when they have to think on their feet or they come under fire because the stakeholder is not happy or whatever their degree is not going to help them manage that situation organizations that have stopped hiring you know we've got to have a first we've got to have somebody from university actually what we want is somebody i think it's google that have put programs online that go rather than do your three-year degree complete these online courses and then come to us for an interview because the reality is we want to hire the right human beings and as long as you're of an intellectual capacity we'll show you how to do it learn exactly and everyone's capable of learning aren't they i mean the three-year degree and the merit that goes with the three or four or whatever it is degree i mean if you're going to be a doctor fine i'd like you to understand medicine but that would be really nice i think that'll be pretty handy but there are certain things where you go how does your you know history degree help you you know being an i.t consultant or whatever it is so it that is fascinating and i was just talking back to this question about diversity i worked with an organization that brought in a new head of leadership and the first thing they asked me was so guy well they said oh so guy you don't have a degree and i was like um no i don't know is that bias yeah and that's that's that that's the um that's that middle ring of of diversity that we were talking about and the thing and then as i got to know them i said there's a matter of interest if i came for a job would you would you have given me the job and they said oh no i wouldn't have even seen you no because your cv wouldn't have had a degree on so i wouldn't have seen you i said so just to be clear you wouldn't have given me the job no okay now about a year later when testimonials are coming in and i'm achieving certain things it's oh yes i'm really happy for you to i like the fact that you know i'm happy that you're in the role i said but interestingly enough you're still not using anybody apart from me that doesn't have a degree yeah so even though you have data in front of you that proves and evidence is a new truth you're still not shifting and that was very interesting to me well it's it's interesting it's infuriating it's so commonplace um and it's like we have these i have these conversations i seem to get away with it i think it's because i'm australian people just assume we're all really brash or whatever but actually it's they're infuriating these conversations i'm constantly saying you are not being radical enough yes you know there's this body of evidence that says that diverse teams innovate better they problem solve better they affect your bottom line better they drive business to success but it's most comfortable it's not as easy to manage it requires management competence it requires emotional intelligence to manage i don't know i think it actually it requires people with power to give us some of their power away i agree but that requires an emotional intelligence that requires a willingness to not to control everything yeah yeah i mean i think there are plenty of emotionally intelligent people that understand the business case the ethical case for operating business in this way but what it would mean is less money what it would mean is less power what it would mean is less the way less clout whatever it is that they they have that they're not prepared to give away um and it's you know that is the the way of the world and we keep chipping away you know organization there is a rigidity as an organization gets larger that seems to inherently become true because the beast becomes more less wieldy so processes get put into place and then there's a safety in fulfilling you know if i do what i'm supposed to do i can never really be at fault so i just i applied the process which then by definition creates a lack of tolerance for anything that's outside of the norm so yeah there is that how do i bring the weight of the value of yeah yeah yeah yeah that's an interesting that's a that's a i could probably crack open a bottle of wine with you on that one and spend most of the evening on that topic maybe some bread because they're perfectly paired together i think again like we we talk about this through our facilitation it comes up um and i think you know you need a if if it's not being led by the top and if the culture isn't there or whatever you need people to champion it and it needs to be relevant and and they need to be equipped to sort of challenge the status quo and they've got to have the right language and they're going to make it everyone's business like diversity equality inclusion belonging it has to be everyone's business it can't just be a policy it can't just be a strategy you know everyone has to be responsible for otherwise it doesn't work um it feels very much like health and safety which is when i when i work with construction site construction companies and utilities companies they look at health and safety fundamentally differently to office based non-construction orientated organizations because health and safety is a thing but when you're on site and people can not go home if it goes wrong these people live and breathe health and safety so they it's beyond the tick boxing exercise it's it's a definitive need i used to sit on in these really really boring board meetings and um i had the the wonderful job of um developing a uh what are they called risk make risks register risk register on this register you've got health and safety you've got finance you've got blah blah blah and that no mention of of health um no mention of uh diversity equality inclusion belonging not not even a sniff of it so if we treated yeah it's in the hr policy somewhere in the same way if it weren't no but if it were if it were the responsibility of the board and it was delegated to the executive who delegated down everyone had a job to ensure that from a risk perspective dni was on the agenda it was built into and your organization's system structures policies processes it was lived and breathed it was important it was as important as being financially viable it's as important as has been um you know having safe places for people to work then it would be a completely we'd be having a completely different this is the triple triple bottom line concept right commercials culture and sort of the uh and society and i think the thing about health and safety is that senior group can be sued and it doesn't matter how far away they are from the front line they can go to jail and or of course that's one thing so i am definitely paying attention to that um and then for certain things well i get bonused on it so again this comes down to people risk and reward if something's highly risky i'm gonna compensate if something's highly rewarding and if it's got to go into that until people just have an inherent will to do it at the moment it almost has to be put in to something that says if you don't do it there's a risk and if you do do it there's a reward and i guess getting that onto the table for example i work with certain private equity-based organizations so intellectually they understand everything we're saying and they all believe about getting the work done through people but we're on a three-year run out here so am i really going to take on some of the issues that are going to help the world or i'm going to make a shed load of money in the next three years and that's really where my energy is going so there's a lot of stuff going on there i mean i think that the the corporate world the business community have huge power i mean if they all invested a tiny amount of money into a social cause the world would be a far better place yeah it would be a far more uh equitable place um you know that the power of the corporate world cannot be understated and actually in times like these its leadership is indispensable you know we while the corporate world have been furloughing themselves the third sector of being powering on and supporting even more individuals who are now living in poverty just to survive every day you know i visited a soup kitchen the other day they feed 150 people um three times a day six days a week they're located on tottenham court road that they're powered by volunteers and donations you know 100k from an organization like i don't know someone you know changed constantly talking about um csr and dni and stuff like that that would power them for a whole year yeah you know and enable them to to bring on some paid staff and and really plan for the future like it's just you know doing doing good doesn't have to cost a lot of money either it's if everyone threw a couple of grand in the pot we could go for for years and years and years radical and change you know put hundreds and hundreds of people into work i spent less than 60 grand last year and we put 80 people into work well i hope somebody hears this and i'm sure they will you know it's um there's lots to be said i'm super alert to time emma because i have this absolute tendency just to want to keep talking and uh and to go on and uh people's tolerance for listing might outweigh my curiosity for talking to you all the rubbish stuff as well yeah well the thing is well i've loved this i've loved hearing your passion i've loved hearing your fluency on the topic and you know people can be passionate and not well thought through and you know you've you know what you're saying you you get it 100 and you're you're doing it you're not just theorizing so um it's incredibly powerful so um i'm going to bring us to a gentle close i'm going to make sure that we stay in contact to see if you know maybe sometimes i think yeah there might be another podcast that can help or add value or whatever but uh who knows but just on a personal note oh website how would or how would people make contact with you to see and to review what you're about i'll put the links in the description anyway but it'd be great just to hear that from you yeah so we have a website which is um needs reviewing but um it's it's all it's all very monthly thought i have a dream so it's my manifesto is on there and it was it's not fit for purpose but you can reach us there and there's a contact form uh that's dot co www.radicalrecruit.com uk we're on linkedin um and if you're you want to treat yourself to a good news story linkedin is the account to follow we also are on um twitter and instagram and you can email us at hello at radical recruit dot co dot uk okay well i'll put all of that in the description so just on a personal note uh thank you so much i'm going to press the stop button in a moment but i just want to say thank you so much for coming on always like our chats thank you i know awesome right[Music] you