EP96: Pauly Grant - How to Balance Between External and Internal TA

All-In Recruitment is a podcast by Manatal focusing on all things related to the recruitment industry’s missions and trends. Join us in our weekly conversations with leaders in the recruitment space and learn their best practices to transform the way you hire.

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This transcript has been edited for clarity.

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Lydia: Welcome to the All-In Recruitment podcast by Manatal where we explore best practices, learnings, and trends with leaders in the recruitment space. If you like our content, please subscribe to our channels on YouTube and Spotify to stay tuned for our weekly episodes.

My name is Lydia and with us today is Pauly Grant of Publicis Groupe. Welcome to the show, Pauly.

Pauly: Thanks for having me.

Shaping Environments for Creative Excellence

Lydia: So, you've had leadership roles, overseeing people in talent strategies in the creative space for some years now, Pauly. How would you describe the journey so far?

Pauly: Well, it’s been a very interesting, inspiring, and fulfilling career in this space. It’s quite timely that you ask this question. This week, I had a 20-year reunion with all my colleagues from an agency called ‘Naked Communications.’ This was truly my first role in the creative sector way back in 2005. I was very fortunate to join a company like Naked Communications at that time. It was an independent agency. They were disruptors in the UK, New York, and Australia. They strongly believed that culture and brand should be at the center of work and the workplace. So, I felt like I really cut my teeth on understanding the meaning of culture and how to create the right environment for people to do their best work. This is where I was able to test and experiment, discovering the importance of a ground-up culture, and having a clear brand and proposition for our people. Additionally, we believed that everything we did communicated something—whether it was the way we spoke to someone, how we recruited, or the language we used in our policies. All of these reinforced the culture we had created and wanted to sustain.

We also put a lot of effort into shaping the physical environment we worked in. How could we make it intriguing? How could we enable people to express their values in the workplace? It wasn’t just about words on paper; it was about creating an environment that allowed people to innovate—a crucial aspect in the creative industry.

I then took this knowledge and learning and moved to my first role at Publicis 11 years ago, which was with Zenith Media. Although it was in the same industry, it was a slightly different sphere—Creative Media. What made it interesting was that it was my first experience within a larger holding company. Publicis Group, with 100,000 staff worldwide, presented a different scenario for me. As a leader in this space, I challenged myself to apply what I had learned in a new way, with different measures. Instead of just coming in with a one-size-fits-all approach, I worked closely with the organization and its people to create what they were looking for.

Fast forward to my current group role a couple of years ago, I was able to take those learnings and step back. Publicis shares a strong belief in having humanity at the center of everything we do. We view our people as part of their whole life experience, acknowledging what happens both inside and outside of work. Using this as a measure for our business decisions has led to success. Ultimately, motivating, caring for, and inspiring people to do their best work has been the consistent narrative throughout my career.

Lydia: It's interesting, how 20 years ago, such a mindset or such a perspective was considered a disrupter. If you look back on your journey so far, how much has that emphasis on culture and communication changed throughout this period in this space?

Pauly: People in organizations have definitely caught on to that and I think people do it really well. I think it's really interesting that organizations, probably up to COVID, were very good at the idea of employee experience, and how do we create a workplace that is better? So, I think organizations were doing that really well.

I think there's been this shift, and we can't just look at employee experience, we have to look at life experience because people have started to adjust their priorities. They recognize after COVID that their life is something that they want to have control over in some instances. It's all blended together, whether you're working hybrid or remote. So, organizations need to take a really big step back now and look at, “Okay, instead of just making work life better, how do we make work fit into someone's overall life? And how do we actually recognize that?”

That comes with this whole push the need to create a human lens, personalization. We used to be able to do one policy or initiative for everyone, and everyone was happy. It is not the way anymore. So it's become more challenging for HR professionals and for businesses to actually hone in on the different life stages that people are going through, what their particular needs are, and how the business answers for that.

So, I think it's kind of moved, somewhat, and people need to catch up to that next stage. I think also, the days that we can just do initiatives [like] a yoga class and something else, to me, again, we've really got to stop and look. I think a lot of the work that we do is really acknowledging the times and the moments when we need to do deep organizational change.

That comes back to your culture piece because you need to recognize what is happening in your organization. If you need to get from A to B, that's not just rolling out a program. Quite often, there are behaviors that need to be changed in that organization. There are processes and approaches that happen that need a total overhaul.

So, recognizing where those moments are and doing the hard work, it might not be able to be rolled out in three months; it might actually take you a year if you're going to do proper organizational change. But I think that's something that's really important as you go forward as an organization to keep that in mind.

Lydia: You oversee the APAC and ANZ regions, right? So, what are some key areas that you've prioritized for Publicis in these regions?

Pauly: So, if I think about the last year [or] more recently, maybe I'll start with ANZ. We really felt like in the last couple of years, more and more is being piled onto our leaders.

I think it's becoming a lot more complex. I mean, being a leader has always been a privilege, but there is a penalty that comes with that and there's a lot of responsibility and it has expanded even more.

I think there are a lot of new aspects and perspectives that we're asking our leaders to have. So, we have launched a program called Threads in ANZ Publicis Groupe, and that's really around threading through the capabilities of leadership to help our senior leaders have the right tools to go forward, not just in the leadership of others, but also in themselves.

So, as part of this program, we've defined what the success of Publicis Groupe looks like and the leaders within that. We're highly adaptable, and constantly transforming, and we need to be at the precipice of new technology for our clients constantly and what it also means for them in their own energy. So, we have a great module that's been rolled out around their own sustainable energy, how they find it, sustain it, and then, are able to give it to others. That's a really important— one that we felt moving forward was important for our leaders.

We also have, how they collaborate with other CEOs across the agency and other leaders across the group to help grow the organization. Then we're actually doing a whole session around sustainable leadership and understanding sustainability, and what it means for us as leaders and as a business, and the change and impact that we can make on our business. But also, we're in a very privileged position to be able to change and make an impact on how we look at production, how we look at media, and how we spend it for our clients, which has an impact on the environment as well. So, that's been really exciting. That's the ANZ one.

I think also around ANZ, we've done a lot of work around disability. We have an ERG Group called ‘Enable’, and we've recently launched our disability and inclusion plan. That's been really important for any people that have visible or invisible disabilities. I have a son who has dyslexia, dysgraphia, and ADHD, so, I'm very passionate about this.

One in 10 people have Dyslexia at a minimum, it could be even more than that. Yet, no one talks about it in the workplace. How do we support people with that through technology, through understanding? How do we help managers manage how people work the best way? Because everyone is brilliant in their own way, but how do we actually engage with that?

And then if I look at APAC, we're really doubling down on this idea of an internal marketplace. So, how do we start to use the skills we have in our organization, to move around, to retain those skills, to retain that knowledge across the region? So really, we're currently in the kind of data and insights stage of that, talking to our people through surveys, one-on-one focus groups, understanding what currently happens, what they would want from this. So, we can start rolling this out in July, to help connect people to opportunities across the group.

Retaining Knowledge, Reducing Disruption

Lydia: It's interesting that if I want to sum this up, for ANZ it will be sustainability being the core, and then looking at APAC, a very diverse and large region, you've got the internal talent marketplace, that's moving about. I suppose both of them complement each other. Both the concepts of sustainability and also the internal marketplace.

Looking at internal marketplaces, I mean, is this the kind of approach you see to nurture high-potential talent within a large organization like Publicis? Would this be the way forward for nurturing that internal talent?

Pauly: Absolutely, I think it's a really great way to harness growth. I think our high-potential talent wants to move and develop, and they want to do it really quickly. Publicis is quite uniquely positioned to do that because of our connected platform of agencies. So, when you come into our organization, you'll come into an agency. However, you have the ability to go to another agency, you have the ability to go to another totally different role with different skills, and then you have the ability to go to a different market. So, all of those are accelerators for growth, absolutely.

I think it's really interesting ever since coming into this APAC role, we can see there are centers of excellence in different parts of Asia Pacific. We've got a great production hub in Malaysia. How do we actually leverage that? How do we leverage those skills? Can we move someone from there into one of the other markets to help teach and accelerate that product or that capability in another market?

So, we see this as a really strategic approach to how we start to leverage the skills we have, and also the knowledge that you have in an organization is so valuable. It's so important and I actually would say it's business critical to retain that knowledge and to really reduce that business disruption when you have someone leaving the organization. So, it's really interesting. I mean, businesses that do it well have around about 24% of their open roles filled internally. So, at the moment in ANZ, we're sitting at around 12%, which isn't bad, we can get better. I think if you start to utilize that it becomes a really strong business tool as well against other competitors.

Lydia: How do you put such an approach in place within a large organization like Publicis? I would assume there is some kind of step-by-step, or there's a lot of groundwork that needs to be done - stakeholder management and just getting people on board with this program.

Pauly: It’s interesting when you say that. We were talking before about change, and the importance of deep organizational change when you're trying to make a major shift in something. So, our markets do it relatively well at the moment, but if we're going to really accelerate this to where it needs to be, then it is organizational behavior change.

It's really interesting some of the data that's coming out around how I have the conversation with my manager, even to the point that I don't even know what it would be like to live in another country. Am I going to like it or am I not? So, there are so many other elements.

There's also just the practical things around, it's really hard to get visas in certain countries, depending on the level that you're at, for example. So really, what we're doing is the deep work of those insights and understanding, and off the back of that, we're using a similar rollout to what we did when we introduced a flexibility program back in 2019, pre-COVID.

It was all about gathering those insights, what are the barriers that exist to success? This is where we want to go, what are the barriers? And then we create workshops, behavior change workshops around that, we create playbooks for managers and people, and education and training to get us there. But when we do that, we start at the top.

So, we already have alignment on this across our APAC exco. Everyone's really excited, they can see the value in the business, and they can see the value in our people. Therefore, we had permission, which is important to get that alignment. But then the insights will inform the barriers and then we pick apart the barriers with our leaders and managers. Then we give them the tools to make it very easy to access. How do I do it? How do I get connected to jobs? And we measure the success off the back of that.

So, I think that's a really important part. If you want to take it to the next level, this is where some organizations do it really well, you need to understand your skills in your organization and then you tie your skills to learning. This is what we started as well and went, “Okay, once we know our skills, once we understand the future skills we need, how do we actually help people reskill?” So, if you look at Gen Z, for example, they want 18 jobs and six careers, and they're not going to wait for you, their tenure is about 1.4 years. So, if you haven't got anything for them in that time, they're going to be gone.

So, how do we actually play into that? If you look at now, the workforce of 2030 is going to be a third Gen Z, already in our organization, Gen Z matches Gen X. So, instead of fighting it, we need to move with this. So, how do we actually get people with certain skills, and then create learning opportunities for them to be able to pivot across the business in different ways? I think that's when you really unlock the potential when you have that foundation of a learning program that helps support that movement and that internal talent marketplace.

Lydia: That interestingly goes back to the whole concept of sustainable talent that we were talking about earlier, right? So it sustains itself, it grows by itself. How do external recruitment [or] getting new people into the organization? How does that fit into this picture? Or is there an optimal balance between who you need to hire or what percentage of talent you need to hire from outside? Or how much can you look? I know you mentioned 24% earlier, but what have you found so far?

Pauly: A certain amount of attrition is a good thing. Let's face it. I think it's important to get fresh thinking, and different diverse backgrounds into the organization for sure. Do I know the perfect level? No. When I've done a bit of research, organizations like Nestle, for example, they kind of have that level of about 24% of their open roles.

So, organizations are still recruiting externally, and that will always happen and it should always happen, by the way, but I just think organizations perhaps aren’t harnessing what they already have.

I think actually some organizations did that quite well during COVID. So they kind of bunkered down a little bit and they started going, “Okay, how can we be a little bit more innovative in how we use our staff across different parts of the organization?” And isn't it interesting in times of need pressure or stress or when something happens that we're not expecting when the best innovation and ideas come out for change? But I think we need to hold on to the benefits that came off the back of that.

So, to answer your question, I'm not sure of the perfect mix. But for me, I would always believe it's important to have that balance between both.

Lydia: This might also be listening to what you're saying, this might also be a strategy to sort of future-proof [recruitment strategy.] Is there such a thing as future-proofing talent [strategy], for instance?

Pauly: Absolutely. If you think of some of the stats that are coming about AI, it's well and truly been around for ages, but there's going to be something like, in the next five years, 97 million new types of roles. There's going to be about 85 million roles totally displaced, they'll be gone.

So, we really need to radically transform the roles we have and that's where, before, it was like breaking down the skills you have, what are the future skills, and there's going to be some skills in the middle that are going to become redundant. So, how do we also help our people? How do we help them move and pivot and shift into those new future skills or into the skills that are here now, actually, that some of us haven't caught up with?

I think that's a really important way that we can support our people, and also move with that transformation that we're experiencing in our businesses.

Supporting Talent Mobility Goals with Learning and Development

Lydia: For any HR leader or people leader who's looking into maybe putting such a program or such a structure in place in the long term. This brings about so many business benefits. It really retains the talent, the people, and the knowledge that you need to drive the business forward.

So, for anyone who's looking to structure such a program for their organization, what kind of timeframe, for instance, would they have to be looking at for planning and to move into actual execution later on?

Pauly: Look, it depends on where your business is now. So firstly, you've got to do an audit or an analysis of where you currently sit. Do you move your staff around at all? Is it even acceptable? Do they know how to access it? I think that step is really important. Otherwise, you take off and you could be taking off into the wrong spot. So firstly, you need to do that data analysis.

And then I think it's also important for them to know, “Okay, what do I want from my career? Where do I want to go and help people and give people tools around that?” So we have a 21st-century career toolkit, and we have an internal career guidance coach that helps them understand that. So, you're helping the people at the same time that you're making business change. Then it's looking at where, to my point before, once you get that analysis, in order for this to be successful, we need to go here. What are our barriers? And that's going to be different for every organization.

So for us, we have great connections across our group. That's not a cultural issue for us. But it may be for another organization, they might have quite territorial departments or companies within their organization. So that might be something they need to work on. I think the second part is, do people even know what's the awareness that this can happen or that they can do it? If they don't have the awareness, how do you create your awareness? And then creating a process that is clear that everyone has agreed upon, so there won't be any bumps along the way.

Once you do start that internal talent marketplace, it’s actually quite a smooth, rewarding process for everyone. Because again, if you start it and people have bad experiences, they will not want to go there again, and it'll quite quickly carry through your organization as a bad experience.

So absolutely, do your data and analysis and your insights first. Where are you at? Where do you want to be? And that will reveal if a cultural change is needed. Is that a process change? Do you not actually understand the skills or the roles that you have in your organization?

If that's the case, that's going to be much deeper because you're going to need to look at a skills taxonomy, plotting out what those future skills are. The other really important part of this is your learning and development piece. So currently, is that lining up to where you want to go? Have you got the right access to cross-skill training? Power skills training that is going to need to be there to support that? But again, this will all get revealed when you do that kind of map of where you're at now. But there are some very clear steps to take along the way.

To answer your question about timing, depending on where you're at, it could take six months, it could take two years. But there are quick wins you can have along the way.

Empowering Personalized Experiences with AI in Talent Development

Lydia: So, this also involves a significant change management piece, right? Is this something that falls under the people's space? Or is it a collaborative effort with maybe a different department or other managers or senior-level leaders?

Pauly: I believe we do a lot of change in the people space. There's a lot of change management; it's ongoing. I think it's continuous change management, especially in the industry that we work in. I work closely with internal comms and a change manager. I'm just very lucky that she has both of those skills because communication and internal communication and how you go to your business and your people with this is extremely important and I'm lucky enough to have that in the team.

I think there's a very close synergy between people and HR and how we communicate with our people, so I'm really fortunate in that. We have done major change programs as we go along. I think if you don't have that in your team, it really helps to get access to it. Even if you have to bring a change consultant in, if you want to. Or if you've got someone across the business who can help with that, even to plot out where you're going, what you need to do, and some of those key principles of change.

Lydia: It's a process that involves lots of data and lots of analysis into what's going on. In terms of using technology to help augment these efforts that you'd have, what kinds of technologies do you use, or rather, how does that come into play when you roll out or when you conceptualize something?

Pauly: It's an interesting question. If we're talking about AI, Publicis, way back in 2017, actually went into partnership with Microsoft on a project and a piece of technology we call ‘Marcel.’ It's an AI-powered technology that connects all of our staff across the globe. That has been going on for nearly six years now, which has really helped us. It's a great piece of technology to use as a platform, but also to give us insights and to be able to keep across what our people want and what skills they have.

It really helps us to personalize our approach. Remember I spoke earlier about how people don't want a one-size-fits-all anymore? They want something for them. So, we have this incredible technology where all our staff have a profile with their skills, their passions, what they like to do outside of work, and their career ambitions. We can actually feed them knowledge and learning pathways. They can connect to jobs and opportunities across the group, they can put their ideas in and go on a gig or an open brief, where we could put a brief up there from anywhere across the world and have responses from anywhere across the world. We have mentor matching by Marcel, so it has been a really integral part of how we better understand our people and also how we start to create this personalized experience for them around their own growth, understanding, and knowledge in their roles.

Lydia: All these insights have been so good to see, especially when you know it takes a lot of effort to bring all these elements together and roll them out with the help of technology, and of course, in a large organization like Publicis, it is both a challenge and an advantage to have that many perspectives all in one place and being able to take advantage of that.

Thank you so much, Pauly, for your insight. These have been generous insights, and they're valuable to me as well as to the audience. For those who may be listening in and want to pick up a conversation with you, where can they find you?

Pauly: The best place is on LinkedIn. It's Pauly Grant. You can contact me on that platform. I'll definitely get back to you.

Lydia: Thanks so much for joining us, Pauly. And we have been in conversation with Pauly Grant from Publicis Groupe. Thank you for joining us, and remember to subscribe and stay tuned for more weekly episodes of All-In Recruitment.