People Ops from the Top: Sarah Pearson, Chief of Staff at SparkChange

In this ‘People Ops from the Top’ we talk about; committing to benefits based on company milestones; how to get your team into a positive mindset; Work From Anywhere policies; and how hiring is key to culture. 

Sarah Pearson, Chief of Staff at SparkChange. What is SparkChange? SparkChange is a specialist provider of carbon data, analytics, insight and financial products empowering financial institutions to capitalise on the opportunities — and manage the risks — arising from the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Seasoned ops generalist, business partnering with C-Suite to facilitate efficient day-to-day ops and position for scale. I work in cross-functional roles, often setting up new business disciplines and processes, running special projects, contributing to strategy and execution plans, and supporting the wider leadership teams in working effectively, however, they most need me to. Most recently this has been in early-stage tech startups (where my passion lies), but in the past, I’ve also worked extensively in insurance, fire safety, travel, and business improvement consultancy.

SparkChange is a specialist provider of carbon data, analytics, insight and financial products empowering financial institutions to capitalise on the opportunities — and manage the risks — arising from the transition to a low-carbon economy. My title is Business Manager; practically and on a day-to-day basis I run our Finance and People disciplines but in addition I business partner with the CEO on cross-functional projects like strategy and execution plans and OKRs, fundraising, and special projects (like registering us as a foreign employer in Germany).

After a recent benefits review we have identified some changes we’d like to make, but we aren’t yet mature enough to be able to dedicate the budget we’d need to, to make them. Instead, we have made some small changes that offer our employees some additional value in the short term, and have committed to introducing bigger and better improvements when specific company milestones are met. By doing this our team can see that we are doing the work to identify and implement what rewards them are reassured about how much we value them, and can see what’s on the horizon (and when) as their hard work continues driving our success.

At our last offsite, I ran a tennis ball exercise at the start of the day to loosen everyone up, and get them into a positive frame of mind ready to contribute to the upcoming sessions. Usually, this is used to demonstrate why lean approaches are effective in the context of continuous improvement, but it’s also really good for getting people to work as a team and encourage some physical collaboration (and the continuous improvement mindset is a valuable one to instil!).

We operate on a hybrid model, typically most of us will be in the office 1-2 days a week. We also have quite a few who are fully remote, and our office is open to those who prefer to be there more. We also have a Work From Anywhere policy in effect. My biggest recommendation around making your solution work is to remember that one size does not fit all – even where we have a policy in place we always caveat that there may be exceptions to it, and anyone not sure how something may or may not apply to them should just ask. If you are too prescriptive and there are too many rules, people won’t take advantage of something you offer for fear they’ll fall foul of the terms and conditions. If your intention is to be flexible, just ask someone what they need, and figure out how to offer it to them (within reason!).

From a financial perspective; equipment and software. You can’t expect your team to be able to work effectively if they don’t have everything they need to be able to. From an employee experience perspective; leaders with empathy. It’s critical that employees feel seen and are treated as human beings, and being an empathetic leader really positions you to make decisions that positively impact the business and its employees. Examples could be offering paid sick or compassionate leave beyond a limit noted in a policy, or giving someone additional flexibility in the work-day to attend counselling.

I came to my own conclusion on this one and it’s that whilst a good culture can (and should) be actively nurtured, it is near impossible to actively build one; culture is the sum total of the actions and behaviours of a group of people working together (and as such, looks very different from workplace to workplace). The most important thing to do that will facilitate the development of a good culture is to hire well, identify the values that your team genuinely embody, hire to those values, and address any behaviour that doesn’t align with the values quickly before it can negatively impact the culture your team have built together.

I get to learn a lot from some extremely intelligent people across a wide variety of disciplines, and as a generalist, I get to work with all the teams in the business which allows me to have a really good overview of everything that’s going on. It’s a privileged position to be in and for the business, it means decision-making is not just data-driven but also takes account of every important perspective.

For more from Sarah, follow her on LinkedIn . 

Tally Workspace know that company culture is the foundation upon which a company's success is built. A strong and positive company culture creates a sense of identity and belonging among employees, fosters collaboration and innovation, and drives overall performance. And tips from people at the top of PeopleOps are key to driving positive culture within organisations.