Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with Anna Engman, VP People and Culture at Detectify.
Description
Diversity is a term we hear a lot these day, but what do does it actually mean? And how do we embed it into the DNA of your organisations so it's not another tick box exercise?
Anna Engman, VP People and Culture, has been working with this very topic at Detectify and one of the things she did was conduct an internal diversity survey results of which are available publicly. A crucial element was to generate actionable insights for individual departments not just P&C. Apart from sharing the thinking behind and process of the survey, Anna talks about how to get stakeholders involved feeling comfortable with some of the potentially uncomfortable findings of such surveys, and how the people and culture department fits into and contributes to the success of an organisation.
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Transcript
Lech: Welcome to the show.
Anna Engman: [00:01:23] Hi. Thank you. It's very nice to be here.
Lech: [00:01:26] I'm really delighted that you can make the time to join me.
First question I like to ask my guests is when you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Anna Engman: [00:01:35] I thought about this question. And I would say there was two stages, maybe the classical, like being, very small, like I wanted to be a veterinarian because I liked animals. Like those kinds of things. But I think I quite early on, went into. Wanting to teach or wanting to interact with people. So like a pre stage of where I'm at now.
And for example, I did a lot of horse riding, so I wanted to be like a teacher within that. I did a lot of working with when I got a little bit older. I did a lot of working with young adults and teenagers, summer camps and that sort of stuff. And I realized that like, Helping people to kind of make the connections to how they can grow and develop and how they can progress.
So for awhile I wanted to be a teacher. And then I realized that there are certain limitations to being just a teacher. So that's how I kind of came into. Like grown up, learning and development and hence human resources and people that I'm in today. So, I mean, I could have gone, I could have had a completely different plan, but it's been a long those lines at least.
Lech: [00:02:50] So you always had an element of basically of trying to help others being a veteran veterinarian, helping animals, but then also obviously teaching people and helping people and actually in a way that a little bit steals my thunder, because I was going to ask you a question a bit later on about the belief that you and I share, which is that it's people that make or break an organization. And I was going to ask you where that belief came from you. I think you partially answered that, but is there anything that you want to kind of contribute a little bit more to it?
Anna Engman: [00:03:22] Yes. I think so. Part of it is. My kind of belief in people as a bit of seeing that development early on of how like, Especially, for example, in summer camps, you have teenagers coming in with a background that isn't very beneficial for them. They might have bad confidence or have bad parents basically, and you can see kind of how you can help them grow and improve.
And you see that like power in people understanding what they can do and their own potential. So, so, so that is kind of one of them, I would say And like that has been, that has been one important part of it.
Lech: [00:04:02] And how has that evolved, obviously, because that's kind of where you started in terms of the teaching and that that element of help helping others. And you said camp summer camp teenagers, how has that evolved over the years into basically where you are. Now which I'm pretty, certain is not a final stop for you is something that will continue to develop and continue growing in different, fantastic ways and directions, but how, how did it get from where you were in the teaching days to your role as, as VP of people?
Anna Engman: [00:04:33] Yeah. And I think that like building on what I just said, I think that there's definitely. Experience coming into it, where you've seen that this works and using the proof of what people can do in an organization. And you've also seen the proof of the opposite when people are hindered and when there are organizational structures or culturals structures that kind of hinder people from, from reaching their potential.
So, so I would say that is also a part of it. Like the big split that I have, but also seeing over time, those differences. And I also think, I mean, I've always been of course have it coming from the human resource side there. And from the recruitment side, there's always the curiosity about people and wanting to explore and understand them.
But there is also, I think I've always been very curious about how to make, like, how to contribute to progress and how to like rather project manage whatever it is culture or other things to get progress to not only build that kind of like where the little fluffy function in the corner, and we're going to hold your hand and it's going to be super nice and like, will be forgotten when it's hard and no one has time for us.
And we're going to be super interesting when everyone has a lot of money. So, so that has also come into it to kind of see that, okay. So how can we create that value over time, which is always relevant and how can my function be. Taken seriously over time. And that is through creating that value and that is, we know people. So our approach to creating value is that so that is also an important part of it. I would say.
Lech: [00:06:13] Yes the perception within a lot of organizations is that it's either a fluffy department or it's a department that you get in touch with when something goes wrong.
Or when you need somebody to join your team, maybe I guess, on the recruitment side which is often not being given enough credit in terms of what it does. And the other thing that I've often found is that any type of initiative that comes from people's department is more difficult to implement when it comes to development and training, coaching, and kind of tying time of culture work with an organization, I find that it's more difficult to implement it if it comes from the people's department compared to if it just comes like from product or marketing directly from the department that wants it.
So what's, what's your take on that? Why do you think that is.
Anna Engman: [00:06:53] I think it's a not to do with experience in organizations. I really connect to what you said about like, people have different experiences of what HR is. And I, and I've seen that as kind of my mission or like my intro to people who are new in our organization, for example, to be like, So, let, let me tell you what we do, because you can have very different experiences of, of my type of department, depending on where you come from.
So that is key that's needs to be kind of a constant kind of like, I understand why you think it might be one thing, but we're actually another thing. And I think what we also need to do, which over time is to work on that. Like kind of check ourselves. So how do we actually contribute to that value?
Because I do also think that even if there's a wish from the people in culture, parts of organizations to create value, we can also fall back into kind of fluffy things or things that are hard for other people to grasp or see the outcome of, for example, we work with Isaiah as like a general. Concept don't work that much with metrics or as much as we could, or just setting goals.
So if, since everyone else does that and everyone else is used to that mindset of like, how do you reach what we want to achieve with, we set goals for it. We take measurements, we understand if we are doing the right thing. And if we don't provide that, and I understand that it's hard to kind of grasp because everything else is so kind of checking off a list or trying things or meshing things or following up on things.
And. It's easy that our type of cultural things, for example, end up in the category where it's just like, let's just do this. Cause it's nice. And then we might see what happens or we just got to do it. And that's where I think that's why I think it's hard for organizations to grasp the value of it because it's just like nice things in a row, but not really talked about or communicated outcome or action, or like goal that you want to reach.
Lech: [00:08:55] Another thing that I often find in the kind of in relation to what you just said is that I think. Many many people within organizations come to the HR people's department, on the brink of it being too late to address an issue or a problem kind of as a last resource. I don't know whether that's a good or a bad thing.
Depends on the situation. It depends on the organization, the autonomy that people are given to problem solve, I guess, but maybe that's for a . Different topic. There's a couple of things that I'd really like to get into. You just said the first thing is metrics, but I'll leave that for for a little bit later.
The other thing actually quite interested, if you could share what is it, or how do you describe the people's departments at Detectify. Said that you often get asked, what's a description because I'm curious, and I think it might be, the listeners might be too, in terms of how would you describe a department that contributes to the greater good of the organization?
Anna Engman: [00:09:42] This is such a good challenge because I usually start with like trying to make it one snappy sentence, and then you add kind of like 10 other things to it. But I would say my department over a very broad spectrum handles any process or improvement project relating to the development and effectiveness of people in our organization. And then we can add a lot of like sub things to that, what that contains and means. But I would say everything that we try to do, and when we try to set our own goals and follow up our measurements, it's like effectiveness and like helping people to perform is always two very important parts of what we do.
And if it doesn't. Would you think that doesn't provide to that in the long or short run, then we should really consider if it's something we should do. And then there are, of course, seemingly fluffy things, nice cultural aspects like that contribute to good things that will be, keep us on track over longer periods of time, but we should not do like, we should know them.
What that connection is.
Lech: [00:10:52] And how do you deal with situations? Because you mentioned you talk about effectiveness and getting the best out of people and things like that. In a lot of organizations, we've got this business mindset that is basically everything that we do. It can be followed up with the question, is that, how does this.
Contribute to the bottom line to the sales figures and all that, because it's important. That's what drives our organizations. And that's absolutely fine. I think I'm of the belief that we put too much stress on that, but again, that's up to individual organizations. When you have these types of discussions, when, when you were asked this questions in the past is not okay, how does you improve in this efficiency or sending my people from my team for a two day training session when they can't.
Actually do any work, how is that going to change things? How did you try to maybe not convince people why, but explain the value of this.
Anna Engman: [00:11:39] There's no one good answer to that, but kind of how I try to break it down is that usually what you find when you break down the problem for a manager in an organization of why they are not reaching the goals that they want, there are always like humans, human, like attributes to it, performance attributes, like effectiveness questions which is where we come in.
So that's how you can how you can help managers, an example could be for example, that we don't have, like the sales figures aren't there, or the marketing team is not providing enough leads for example. And we can see that a big part of that is motivation. And we can help to identify what are those things that are affecting motivation and what are those things that have maybe made it take a downturn and then help you to set actions or like concrete actions in how to improve that and help you make sure that we actually, like those actions actually have an effect. So, so I would say it's like by helping them understanding why they are not reaching the goals that they want and then to help them see, how can we, like how can working with your people in this actually be an important component of reaching your goals.
Sometimes that is a bit more fluffy in terms of just like, okay, so, people were like this, like when we need it, like, we need to consider that I know that you would like them to be in a certain way, or you'd like things to work in a certain way. But what we see in our organizations so far with our like data and our knowledge of the history of our, of our organization, that's not what happened.
That's not what's happening or this is what we need to improve. So there can be like more fluffy or more like. Relationship based discussions that you need to have, but I think you can get to that how do we contribute to performance and effectiveness by actually showing them which part of your problem is actually people related so that you can then help them with that problem?
Because usually when you get to that point, then you say that you can identify that it's actually motivation for example, or engagement, then, most orgs, if you actually want the need your help, because it's quite a hard topic to approach. So then we have an in and we have a collaboration that is agreed upon because there's actually an area where we can come in with expertise.
Rather than if it's like our tools aren't working or something like that.
Lech: [00:14:12] Have you managed to actually achieve whatever the definition of a healthy balance for you for you might be the situation where it's people coming to you, proactively to address some of these issues and seeking your help and your support to say, Anna, we've got this problem with motivation, with efficiency. Can you help us out because we don't know how to do it, or is it that you, they either come too late or it's something they use spots and then you kind of engage them?
Anna Engman: [00:14:38] Hmm. I think we can always get like the end goal, I would say, or we sometimes joke about that, but the end goal for us is not, is to kind of, work ourselves away from the organization where we're not needed. I mean, if everyone has this mindset and we make, do we create great enough processes and tools that will help everybody and they know which one to use when they need it.
I mean, that's the end goal, the ultimate end goal. We won't get there, but that's, that would be great. So, so I would say that you can. I think to get there, you need to have a mix. There needs to be the like weekly, everyday, a weekly or biweekly, whatever it is, check ins where you have the opportunity to talk about these things because sometimes, if, depending on the experience of the manager, it's not always that you make these connections on your own.
So sometimes we actually just sit down and talk about like, what are you doing? What's working. What's not like, not even connected to people specifically, but just tell me what's up and I can help you to make those connections. And if you have that relationship with the managers, then there's a greater chance that people also get to know these processes and get to think about them and use them on their own, or come to you and ask both proactively and when they needed to ask for help.
So I think for us, for example, having measuring eNPS, for example, and all the different drivers that go into that measuring has also helped managers to think about things on their own, because they don't need to ask us. They can actually go into their tool and see their data on their own, which, which also helps them.
But I think it's, it's, it's like mostly trying to be clear about what's available. How can you set, let's do it in a few examples together so that you get enough base knowledge to kind of do it on your own. And then let's sync like as we go along and that might just be for you to. Double-check or, or discuss the things that you are doing or for us to find the things that you should be doing.
I think you were always going to have a mix of that in the organization because people are just going to have different interests for that. And we just have to kind of roll with it.
Lech: [00:16:50] You actually put the, that an ideal scenario would be for the, for the people's department to be .Something that is kind of in a way not needed because everything that you've set up, all the process and anything else that it's, it, it can run without you. That's kind of the ideal that you'd hope in version, which is, which is really cool.
And you also yet, again, mentioned data and metrics and eNPS surveys and things like that. I think that that's the right time to get into that, but it would be probably useful to understand that a little bit more about Detectify. Can you tell us what is Detectify about , from your perspective and from, from the people's departments?
Anna Engman: [00:17:27] I think there's a few different aspects which are very important for us. One of them is transparency. Where we have worked quite hard to to be very concerned with like our own progress. That's a company, but also in terms of how this processes work, how are they set up?
Why do they work a certain way? How, what are we looking at? What, like, what metrics are we measuring on? How are we evaluating people on of those parts? So that is one very important aspect. And the other one, culturally, I think where we came from was that we saw when we were very much in the beginning of the startup before, before scale up time was that we saw that there are startups and scale-ups in Stockholm and in the rest of the world that go from kind of everything is very nice and we are all driven and we're a little family and we treat each other very well. And then as you grow the kind of aspect of like taking care of each other and collaborating and, and doing like reaching good decisions together, fight easily gets lost, or it gets a little bit lost along the way because drive like people's drive and people's ability to like get the end result that kind of trumps, I mean, if you have to run over a few people on the way, it's fine.
So the collaborative, like the informal aspects of being leaders and self-leadership has always been important. So that is the other aspect of our culture, which we're trying to balance kind of, how do we, how can we like go all in, in our projects and as a company, but at the same time, Not do it like at the cost of someone else, but do it together.
And I mean, that is definitely not always a straight road and something that we always succeed with or that every, like it's mirrored in every part of what we do, but it's been an important aspect in how we've been creating our development tools and how we have our growth conversations and how we set our core values. For example, that kind of balance between ambition and, and collaboration.
Lech: [00:19:30] That is very, very interesting and actually a very common challenge for a lot of startups, as you said, is how do you move from being a startup and you scale? And a lot of the behaviors and values that we have or startups have fall by the wayside as they scale is to say, if you, because you know, that's the kind of nature of the beast.
And if you have to run over a couple of people along the way, so be it that's, that's the general attitude, which which you see in, in the world of, of, of startups and scale-ups and, mm I'd really like what you said about the kind of, how we're influenced, what you do or kind of, you kind of moved upwards and then scaling up with Detectify and the, kind of the metrics and things that you've introduced as a result of that. And another one of the things that you've you did recently, cause you mentioned it to me, of course, is the diversity and belonging survey . My guess, is that the stuff that you've just mentioned, that how important certain values and behaviors are for you in terms of developing people, that's been the motivation thinking behind that survey. Is that, is that right?
Anna Engman: [00:20:31] And I would say, yes, there's many different aspects, but that is one of them. Definitely. And for us, I think there's two interesting aspects of diversity for us and, and like pragmatically, there's two aspects. And I think they're also interesting because it's. So easy to just say that you do things because you have a high, like, moral purpose of it, and I'm not disclaiming that.
And I think there's definitely a purpose like that in helping to create diversity within organizations and setting the framework for. Every type of person to be able to be involved on equal circumstances. But for us, it was also, diversity is not, has also been driven as we've talked about before value and performance for our organization, because being a startup and a scale-up in the Stockholm market, it's Very unrealistic for us, especially in the beginning to be able to attract only like a non diverse group of people from the Stockholm market.
So we had to reach out and we had to go broader in the world to find the competence that we needed and to find like the people that we needed. So there was, there's also in like over time, but that striving the diversity, but the good benefit of that, and also. Like, which is also in with it, is that we got a very good diversity within our organization.
And when we saw that we could scale and keep that we also saw the benefits of having that diversity. So now it's like it started with kind of, we need to get diverse people in because we're not going to find enough people if we don't. And now it's definitely transitioned more into that. Like, there are so many other values of having a diverse organization and especially if you want to work on collaboration and you want to work on those softer values of an organization, it's like, you can't really not care about those things.
So that's why we like. We've always managed to be quite good at diversity when it comes to recruitment. And we've had a very diverse team of like in many different aspects, but we've never put it on paper and we never investigated it. More than face value. What we saw So when we knew that we wanted to set, like now we're at a point in our development and our size where we need to act actively take actions to continue to have this good trend because It's not going to happen of its own, especially not.
When you want to start to increase your pace hiring or your scaling you need to have format in place to keep your good structures. So, so that was base idea around our diversity survey to say kind of like. We think we have a good structure. We think we know from what we know, we have a good diversity spread in our organization, but let's figure out what it actually looks like so that we can use that to then create real metrics that we want to achieve and then have something tangible for the, for our department leads to work on.
So basically we chose to approach diversity in the same way that like any other kind of market research or product research or whatever would do, we decided to kind of see what is actually going on and where can we actually, what have all these super important aspects of diversity, should we zoom in on or more, more specifically start with to be able to show tangible results for the organization so that everyone.
Can keep on being on board and keep saying that they can really affect this. So it doesn't become something too fluffy. And so that's the base of it. That's why we wanted to do it from the start.
Lech: [00:24:14] One of the things that I'm often asked when if by, by listeners is then kind of with requested is we have all this data, all these kinds of analytical tools that are disposal at this moment in time, that the request is like, can, how do we. How do we use that? What do we do with that? And that's kind of what people ask is try and get out from, from your guests, kind of examples of how they've actually practically utilized what is available to them and maybe using the survey that you've done and, and some of the other eNPS things that you have done, what are some of the things or some of the actions that you've taken based on and based on which data kind of, how did that guide some of the decision making in
different processes that you can share with us?
Anna Engman: [00:25:00] Cool. I can, I can actually walk you through the whole kind of process as far as we've done, because we did our survey. We did our survey in early Q1 and the work with that of course started a bit earlier. So we're still early. I mean, we, we still have to prove ourselves during this year, but I can tell you how, what we've done as far as we've come.
And that is that we, we did the survey. And there is a lot of considerations depending on your market. So I don't need to go into specific like Sweden EMEA regulations, but there were a lot of things to consider in terms of how can you ask questions? What kind of data can you collect? So there was some work with that, but then we send out our survey to our organization, collected the data from that, and then the people team sat down and looked at that data and together with other data that we had available for us that we could use in the organization.
And we basically set up a summary. What does our organization look like? Where do we see that there are imbalances? Where do we see that we're really strong? What are the things we want to keep? What are the things we could improve? And that overview, we then took and discussed together with our CEO to decide on.
Okay, so we can do everything because that would not be like, we don't have time for that. And the organization is going to be overwhelmed and we might not even get results on everything. So what can we start with that? Where we see that we can take actionable result or actionable actions. And then we created for us, it's three major diversity goals for the organization.
And when we agreed on that, we then made a breakdown for each department where we created a workshop for them, where we said, so this is what it looks like in the organization as a whole. These are the goals that we set for the organization. And this is why. And if we then take these goals and look at your function, these are your imbalances.
So these are places where we see that you could affect the company goals. And then we suggested focus areas for them. So we, we didn't set the goals for them, but we said like given given our company goals and where you might have imbalances or where you might be strong already, you should probably think about setting goals within this.
Yes. And we shook hands on that and agreed on that. It's these are relevant things to focus on. And then they got some time or in the phase where we're, now they get some time to think about work with their organization, their managers in their fund, their departments to kind of figure out what they can do.
And then we follow up that up with kind of Like, I don't know if she should call it a planning session, but we basically do a mini version of that workshop with succession planning. So from the people's side, like given how you want to grow your organization and where you key individuals or key roles are here, we see that you have actually opportunities to make metrics around diversity or belonging from the people's side.
And then we do the same on the recruitment side, which could mean for example, that. Okay, you need more peop people of X group in your seniority level, in a certain seniority level. If we look at how you recruiting and how you're working internally with succession planning, we see that like it's realistic that we could put our efforts into this group.
And give that suggestion and then we put that together to get the metrics that they want to do work on. So it's basically kind of a scaling. I don't think we will always need this many steps, but to get the organization to really concretely understand where kind of. Like, what's the bigger picture.
Why are these goals? The ones that we should do, how can I affect that? Like what's from the fluffy overall view, what is actually concretely happening in my organization where I can affect this and what will it require for me and my organization. And then. A lot of like handholding and actually creating measurables, we use OKRs.
So measurable key results. How do you actually create a measurable key result around diversity? For example, it might be a bit scary on how to phrase that because you don't want to give the wrong impression, or it might just be very hard to know where to focus. So we put quite a lot of time into kind of.
Helping your organization, but then it's the key results are owned by the departments themselves. And they are going to be the ones who follow up on them with support from us during the quarters and during the next quarter and during the rest of the year. And then we will, from like an overall organizational perspective, we will follow up on sort of these things with a new survey in six months, because it will, it doesn't make sense to just work on them locally.
For like the whole year, but we will kind of make a halfway point of how are we doing? So I think like it's about making diversity and belonging that could seem quite fluffy or like very like non concrete to setting it into a structure that most of the organizations actually use for like anything else they set metrics for.
But you need that background information and understanding of how are things connected and what does it look like me and where can I actually make a difference? And I think that's where many organizations kind of. Go wrong because either like the stakeholders don't understand the value of having a diverse organization.
So it's quite like unnecessary to make the goals for them, or they want to see that it's important and you want to do something, but where the hell do you start? And then they get kind of left on their own, like trying to figure that out on their own. And I understand that that is hard and that, that gets down prioritized because we have a screening need of a certain type of a role.
And we, like, we could either fill it now and like relieve a headache or we can do strategic kind of long-term work where we might, we might take longer to get this roll in and we need to have solutions in the meanwhile. And that's where we need to work together because like, if we're only going to say like, hardcore, like you need to fix everything straight away and you need to work on all levels all the time.
We're not going to reach any of the goals and we're not going to get anyone to want to work with us at all. So, so we try also to kind of scale the expectation so the function is to not make it scary for the ones who think it's hard and to kind of help to make it realistic for the ones who want to go overboard and do everything. So, so that's kind of. Our process in our thinking around that process.
Lech: [00:31:40] Well, thank you very much for sharing that it's very, very detailed and very insightful. I'm sure people will find that very useful. The one thing that's on my mind in, in all the kind of exit the, in the, the insight exercise that you've, you've done. There's obviously a lot of data, a lot of decisions, a lot of steps, as you said and working with the departments directly in potentially pointing out things that might be a little bit uncomfortable in terms of what is being uh, where you found, especially around diversity and inclusion and belonging.
You mentioned that it's even when such chaos, that can be, that is a sensitive topic that people don't know how to tackle. But in terms of overall, in terms of the findings of the, of the survey and having these discussions, what, what was the reception that you had from the people were from the departments concerned?
Anna Engman: [00:32:26] I think aspect to keep in this, which I'm mindful of is that we had a lot of buy-in on the topic of diversity and belonging from the start that does not by any means mean that everyone exactly knew how to work with it or had done it before. Well, we were very fortunate to have a CEO that is really promoting and saying that this is important.
And I think that that is that's where everyone needs to start to. Before you launch it to the organization, before you set your goals, you need to work with the. Department leads and the management and whoever like is going to lead it to them and be part of this work to help them to understand the benefits.
And if that is from a purely like monetary perspective business perspective, if it's from efficiency perspective, if it's just from like a cultural perspective, there are different angles that you can take, but we've had a lot of help of having them on board. But then I think it's also important to be mindful of how you communicate around it and how you open up for questions and also critique or like like things that people are worried about.
Because for example, I mean, in, in Europe, for example, there's a lot of thinking around GDPR. And also if you have like, depending on your organization, if you have an organization with high integrity, You also need to be able to in a good way to answer, how are we handling this data? Why are we asking certain questions?
Like, I understand that this might feel like a strange question to get, but because of X, Y and said, that's why we needed the information. And I think that is done partly through communicating before sending out a survey like this, but also to have steps and like information steps or Q and A's or whatever it might be after that, to clarify those kinds of common misconceptions.
So I think that is kind of how you can get people to feel more comfortable with it, then not everybody's going to feel. Strongly about it, but I think it's important too. There are some easy kind of misconceptions that you can usually kind of stave off or be clear about that will help you. And then I think, again, it's about, for us, it's been a lot about following up on, so what if we break this down?
What does this mean? How do we do it? Why do we do it? How do we measure this? Because. We've gotten some feedback on that, that, that mid, like a very fluffy interesting, but very fluffy topic be actually tangible and understandable for everybody. Not only the people that like, like have a burning passion for this, from the start.
Lech: [00:35:07] We've mentioned this earlier in terms of how all of this type of work feeds into contributing to business success. How, how do you. Kind of link those two together. How do you see that all fitting together as, as a, in a way as a way of summing up everything that we talked about today?
Anna Engman: [00:35:26] I think that again, like two parts of it, the one about the, the metrics that we have is that we see that. Engagement. One of the things that we measure is engagement and engagement. We know, and we can see quite clearly affects performance and, and the, the amount of effort that a person can or wants to put in.
So to be able to work on those concurrently and make actions to improve, it will actually help us to be more, get better results in the end. And I think when it comes to diversity, we also talk about like, there are so many kind of physical aspects of diversity, but we also try to talk a lot about diversity of minds, meaning that different input, getting different input from different types of people will create better solutions in the end.
Then if we're all the same or we're all agreeing, or there's only one person who makes the choices and everyone else just has to listen in. So I think that creating, like by working with diversity and belonging, we create the breeding ground for that kind of diversity of minds. And that will we've seen, has given better outcome in our projects.
And that is also giving us business impact in the end because we get stronger, better, more effective solutions from getting a lot of input from different places, rather than having like two, three people who thinks to sit and to work on things.
Lech: [00:36:54] That is a fantastic way of kind of recapping everything. And we could be talking about this for that for days on end I'm sure. And you've got some amazing experience and, and some of them fantastic. Knowledge, knowledge around this, these topics. I do wonder kind of in relation to obviously diversity uh, handling the survey, you've mentioned, what, what kind of next steps are, what you're planning for the, for the rest of the year, in that sense, but what other things you've got coming up in the next few weeks and months that you, you looking forward to?
Anna Engman: [00:37:21] I would say I'm in for us as a people team and a recruitment team. It's, it's getting to dig into this goals that we've set to actually kind of start to work on together with the function. The goals that we set together and see the effect of that, that is definitely something that we're excited about.
I also think that it's exciting, like from a general organizational perspective to know being in this kind of potentially middle phase of remote work, where we see that we've like, we came over as like the first phase of it. And now we're dealing with kind of the challenges of being. Used to being in this situation, but things that come up from being remote longer term, which creates challenges for, or like an opportunities where the organization.
So I look forward to kind of seeing how that then transitions into finding how to come back or how to not come back like that. What does our way of remote work look like in the future? That is also going to be super interesting and very much connected to like, How we utilize our people and how we can enable our people to do great work.
So I would say for us as an organization, those hard, like from a people and cultural perspective, those are things that we
look forward to.
Lech: [00:38:39] That does sound exciting, especially when you've got such an important project that you've, that you've begun. And you want to see how that kind of what results that gives and how that builds and, and evolves as well, because I'm sure this is kind of the first iteration of this type of work and this type of server that you're gonna be doing, that you're gonna be building on that and seeing the results and impacts of that on people and how they, the other people within the organization it kind of welcomed that and changed the attitude a lot of the time.
And as a result, that must be really, will be really rewarding as well. If people wanted to potentially get in touch with you or follow some of the work that you do, what's the best way for them to do that.
Anna Engman: [00:39:13] I would say we get, like, there's always LinkedIn to, to, to connect with me on LinkedIn. Send me a message. If there's something specific that you're interested in, that we talked about now, or that you've seen there is also Detectify's Instagram, which is you can just search for the testify and you will see that.
And we also have like a lot of things updates, both from the, like the like people in culture side, but also around what we do as an organization, our product, our thoughts around security and how we drive that kind of space where you can find us on LinkedIn and on Facebook as well. So I would say like, if, if you're, if you're looking to know more about.
The work that I've been driving specifically hook me up on LinkedIn. And if you want to see more about Detectify and the work we've done, or our culture than all social media is where we're at.
Lech: [00:40:04] I highly suggest getting in touch with, with Anna, as you've just heard, she's a fantastic human being with so much knowledge and so much, so much brains to pick that. It's unbelievable. So I highly suggest that you do that. And it's been an absolute joy. Thank you very much for, for, for coming on.
Thank you for devoting the time and sharing your knowledge with us.
Anna Engman: [00:40:23] Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.