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At KCSA Strategic Communications, Chief Human Resources Officer Katie Roland has introduced dedicated onboarding guidance to explain everything from punctuation and phone etiquette to communicating boundaries and understanding career progression.
Managers are also encouraged to learn how their employees prefer to receive information, while recognizing that adaptation must work both ways.
Roland joins the HR Grapevine Podcast to explore the consequences of leaving these communication gaps unaddressed, why early-career employees cannot learn every workplace convention through remote working, and how curiosity, clearer expectations and compromise can help different generations work together more effectively
Speaker: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the HR Grapevine Podcast. I'm your host, Benjamin Broomfield, head of content here at HR Grapevine. And I'm joined today by Katie Roland, the Chief human Resources Officer at KCSA Strategic Communications. Katie has spent over a decade transforming HR departments into strategic partners across industries like communications, luxury, fashion and media, and her approach centers on aligning company goals with employee needs to build cultures rooted in empathy, accountability, and transparency. Today, we're going to be discussing the topic of bridging the communications gap for new professionals, following a trend that Katie has been noticing as new pros enter the workforce, we'll be touching on expectations in communication for new pros and also how they can professionally communicate boundaries and a little bit as well about how KCSA is helping to bridge that gap. But first and foremost, Katie, a warm welcome to the podcast and thank you for joining us.
Guest: Thank you so much for having me. It's always a pleasure.
Host: Lovely. Well, maybe you can kick us off by catching us up with this communications gap that you've observed, perhaps in new professionals entering the workforce. What is it? And yeah, any examples you can share?
Guest: Yeah. So, you know, over the last couple of years, you know, I've, I've noticed some frustrations. And I think it's, I think it's normal at any generation where you start to have new people come in, they communicate differently. They have different ideas of what the workplace is. And there's some friction, right, that that happens. There have been a few things that I've noticed, particularly over the last couple of years. Some are very surprising to me, ones that I did not anticipate and, and ones that I think are, like I said, growing pains, you know, so the, the first two that took me by surprise. So I had a junior come into my office. So I say come into my office, into my Zoom room. And she was very upset, you know, and she was like, my manager's been yelling at me and I don't know what I've done wrong. And like, I'm trying, but I just don't understand what's happening. And I said, oh, okay. I said, well, walk me through the, the interaction. Like what? What happened? Did they call you, you know, were you, you know, we do have an office. I was like, were you guys in person? They said, no, no, no, I'll send you the text. Right. So I get a text and it says something to the effect of, can you please have this to me by five o'clock period? Right? And I was like, I think, I think you sent me the wrong text, you know, and she said, well, what did you what did you get? And I said, I read it to her and she goes, no, that's it. And I said, I'm sorry, I don't, I don't understand. And she goes, do you see the period? And I said, I, I do see the period. And she said, that means they're mad at me. And I was taken aback. And I was like, I, I think you're misunderstanding. You know, I think this is just them using appropriate punctuation, you know? And so like, I walked her through reaching out to the manager and touching base and, you know, and saying to and said, you know, just ask the manager, say like, you know, I felt like I read this as if you were upset with me. Are you upset with me? And they did. And the communication was, you know, fixed at that point. And then it happened again. I had another employee a few weeks later. Similarly tell me that a manager was yelling at them because there were periods in their sentences. And so they started asking around, right? I started asking other juniors of that age, and I learned that in the world, their world of texting, right? Like if you're not using exclamation points and emojis, you're upset with somebody. And so they were reading this communication from somebody who was just using appropriate grammar, right? You know, and so similarly, I had this one was a little bit more stunning. I had someone resign another junior. They'd been with us for about five months. They were, they were struggling a little bit. But, you know, they, I was surprised to see that they had resigned and had some good conversations about, you know, what was going on and how to, you know, improve on some of the things that they were doing. And so when I sat and did the exit interview with them. They said to me, well, my the most terrifying words in HR. My manager doesn't understand personal boundaries. And so I was like, oh no. I was like, okay, I'm going to need you to tell me more about that, you know? And I'm like poised to like, take notes and like, you know, make sure I'm documenting everything. And they said, well, they call me all the time. And I said, okay, at three in the morning, you're like, you know, like, what time are they calling you? And they said, no, no, during work hours. And I said, okay, well, I don't understand. How is that a personal boundary issue? And they said, well, they don't even text first. And again, I was stunned. You know, I just, I, I struggled to understand in that moment. I asked them to tell me a little bit more and they said, you know, when they call me, I think I'm in trouble. And they don't even give me a heads up that they're going to call. And, and so again, I thought this was sort of an anomaly, but I had learned from my last interaction to ask some questions. And so I did. I went around and I asked, you know, again, some people who are at a similar point in their career. And they said, yeah, like it's it's jarring to have someone call you without texting first. They said we would. The only time we ever get calls is if somebody dying or somebody like, you know, something really terrible is happening. And I was like, whoa, these are like really big communication gaps, you know? So in those two cases, one of the things I started to do, and in some of the other things is I put together a slideshow for all junior hires, right? People who are starting out in their career, maybe only one or two years into their, their time. And I started laying out some of these things in, in generalizations, you don't really love to talk and but, you know, I basically said, you know, listen, if you're dealing with somebody over forty, we came into the workforce when you still had to write memos to people and that emails were not the professional way of communicating. And when you did communicate in an email, it had to be perfect grammar. You had to write it like a real letter, right? There was none of this, like, shoot off something quick to somebody. You checked that thing multiple times, right? So when texting became a way of communicating with people, we translated that experience directly to it. And we speak in complete sentences, you know, so don't, don't take it as if there's, you know, like, if you're concerned and you can't come up with a reason why somebody might be mad at you, reach out, have a conversation. Similarly with the calling, you know, I said, if calling is drawing to you, certainly share that with your manager. But realize that sometimes things are deadlines, sometimes things they have to pick up the phone and talk to you quick because they have five minutes and they don't have time to write you an email or a text, right? So just be aware that that's part of how people who have been in the workforce for a longer time communicate. And I think this is particularly helped because I, we have not had as many of those issues come up in the future. The other two places that I'm seeing a communication gap is one of the things I love about this generation is that they have such. They have wonderful boundaries. Boundaries that I would have never had coming up in the workplace. And I think it's great that they're protecting their mental health and, you know, making sure that they are, you know, separating their work and their play as they need to. That being said, I do think we're finding that they need to work on how to communicate those boundaries. A lot of times they come up off very abrasive and unlike immovable and so they are getting branded fairly or not as not team players. Right. And so I've been working on coaching a lot of them on how to communicate their boundaries, right. And why it's a boundary. You know, obviously not asking them to share personal details or, you know, anything that would be protected. But you know, if someone is saying, you know, we have found like that, people will say something like, I don't work on the weekends, right? We're in a client services team, right? Like that. Like sometimes there's work on the weekends. We are really good about making sure that we give comp time and, you know, make sure that people aren't working insane hours, but occasionally you have to work outside of that time. And so, you know, I've been working with people to say things like, you know, hey, you know, it's really important to me that I be at this birthday party on Saturday. You know, my niece is turning two and, you know, is there any way somebody else can do this this weekend and I'll take the next one. Right. You know, that approach, right, becomes a much better conversation than, you know. No, I don't do work on Saturdays. Right. Like then then the manager is like, well, now you're not giving me any, any room to work with you. And then the last one, which I think is really interesting, is they all want roadmaps to the next level. And now, I don't mean to say that we shouldn't be communicating how you grow in a company, what you absolutely need to, but they want a checklist. They want to be like, you've done X, Y, and Z, and now you become this next thing. It doesn't really work like that and it doesn't service them in the long run, right? Because a lot of the skills that you need, particularly in our industry, where a lot of it's relationship and, and as you climb the ladder, you'll start managing people, right? It's showing things like leadership. Leadership isn't a thing. You can check off a list, right? It's not like, oh, I displayed leadership today, right? Like it's the situations that come and being adaptable and being able to, you know, step in and think on your feet and, and that's not something you learn by checking off a list, right? That's something you learn by doing the work and being there and, and figuring out how you can plug into that. And so we're finding that a lot of people are frustrated because they say we're not giving them feedback and we're like, we are giving you feedback. It's just not as easy as check this list and you know, you've done what you need to do. So again, like, I think it's a lot about communication across the board and setting expectations and helping people understand that and helping the managers understand how these people are coming and thinking, because if they don't understand that, they are going to make assumptions about them that are not necessarily fair.
Host: Yeah, definitely. Well, it sounds certainly like a case of really misaligned expectations, sort of from both sides. You've already spoken a little bit about how we can start bridging that gap, and we'll come on to that in a bit more detail in just a moment. But maybe before we do, if these, you know, misaligned expectations are sort of allowed to go unaddressed, what are some of the negative impacts that there might be for, you know, for employees? Obviously, you shared one example where, you know, the answer was simply, I'm just going to leave. I don't want to be I don't want to be here for it. So obviously there's going to be some negative impacts for, for employees, but also for the, for the organization as well, for frustration for managers or, you know, for, for the business in terms of its talent pipelines, what are some of those negative impacts that you might potentially see if these kind of misaligned expectations go unaddressed?
Guest: Yeah. Well, I mean, first of all, when a yes, it sucks for the employee when they feel like they have to leave. It also sucks for the team, right? Because we've taken time to train somebody, we've taken time to think. We're expecting them to be able to plug in and, you know, start to relieve some of the pressure that might be on some of the other team. And when they leave, we have to start again, right? And so that's certainly one issue. I think the other is that there's this constant friction and this constant feel that from the manager side that the employee is not doing what they need to do, and they don't have the ability to get them to do that, right. Like they don't have the tools to do that because, and a lot of times they go, well, they just don't get it right. Like they just don't get the get the world. And the reality is, is that they get their world and we get our world. And we need to figure out how to bridge that, that gap. And, you know, I tell managers all the time, because sometimes managers sit there and they go, well, I shouldn't have to do this. I had to figure out growing up, well, yeah, okay, I get it. Like we all had to like, we got thrown into the fire and we were told there was none of this, you know, like checking in to see how you're feeling. Thing like that didn't happen when we were coming up in the in the business world. But times have changed. That's something that people value. And if we remember correctly, like I said, when I referring back to, you know, when I entered the workspace and we were still sending memos, there were managers who insisted on me communicating them through a memo like I was not allowed to send them an email. Right. And so I had to adapt to them. But guess what? Five years later, they were adapting to me, right? Like they were adapting to the email because we eventually outnumbered and started to take over the workforce. Right? And how we did things. And that's going to happen again, right? So if we're not working as employers to communicate and show people how to compromise and show people how to work through problems, we're eventually just going to get pushed out, right? Like that, like they're eventually going to come up in the world and they'll be like, well, I did it your way for a while, and now it's my turn. Right? And I think that we, we need to be mindful that those are the things that are that are going to change over the years, and that friction can be really bad while it's happening. If you constantly have friction on the team and you constantly have one set of people who feel like they're doing all the work and putting all the time in, and another set that, you know, feels like that the expectations are unreasonable, right? It's, you're not going to have a cohesive team that's working together and, and really gelling.
Host: Definitely. I think sort of coming back to some of your points, it would be quite easy with these sort of situations just to, to take the lazy approach and say, well, you know, this is just Gen Z or Gen. I blame a particular generation and say, well, there's just a lack of, you know, readiness for the workforce there. And that's their problem to deal with. But actually to, to your point, this is not necessarily a new problem. It's just, you know, new forms of communication, new standard practices that we're seeing new cultural approaches. And actually, there's stuff that we can learn from maybe those previous instances. So it'd be good to, to touch on a bit more really around sort of closing this communications gap, whether it's around, you know, preferred communication styles, whether it's around development opportunities, whatever it might be. What are some of the ways that you can, I guess, sort of help new professionals enter the workforce and really sort of help them feel comfortable to, to sort of communicate their preferences or, you know, communicate maybe in the right way with their managers, but also make sure that managers aren't just saying, well, this is, you know, I'm not used to this, so I'm just going to not engage with it. Also getting that adaptability from, from managers, how do you sort of balance closing the gap from both sides?
Guest: Yeah. So on the new hire side, every new hire gets I go through a slideshow with them, one that is constantly adapting as different things come up, but I call it lessons for success at KCSA. And it's some of it is intuitive to them, right? Some of them it might be like it depends on where they are in their career. And some of it isn't right. And I do an entire section on communication and talk about this, you know, over forty you're going to grammar. Grammar is going to be a thing, right? Like, and that's you're going to notice that. And that doesn't mean they're yelling at you. But it also goes through things like how to dress. We are a remote company, and so a lot of things that became you or you learned through osmosis just by watching other people, right? Like if you walked into an office and you were wearing jeans and a t-shirt and everyone else was in a suit, you were going to real quick figure out like, maybe I am not dressed appropriately when you only see somebody in a little boxes. You know, all day long, they're not necessarily learning those things. Right? And that goes for etiquette. That goes for, you know, like I said, dress. There's so many things that we didn't have to say out loud necessarily that is just not being picked up. And so what I've done is I've put together a slideshow and I, and I give that disclaimer, I say, hey, some of this might be really, you know, like nonsensical, like we're sensical to you, right? Like, and you just sit there and go, obviously, I would never do that, right? Or obviously I wouldn't do this stuff. And some of it might not be. So, you know, I'm going to go through it all because these are things that have actually happened at our office at some point or another. And I want to make sure that, you know, we're setting you guys up for success on the manager side. You know, I'm constantly having conversations with them as they run into some of these frictions and trying to, you know, explain to them the point of view of the junior person. I think it's really important, as at least in my role and how I, how I run my HR department, for me to be able to understand both sides, where the frustrations lie so that we can find that common ground. You know, and I tell managers all the time, I say, listen, you should be asking your people how they communicate, right? Like, how do they best communicate? Because there are going to be times where you need them to understand something quickly and immediately, right? And it cannot get messed up. And if you're not giving them that information in their preferred way, right, it's going to blow back on you. Right? Like, and it's, and you're going to be frustrated in that moment. That doesn't mean that you, if you know, somebody prefers to have something written, like all instructions written down in an email because they're a visual learner, right? Like they read and that's how they collect information. That does not mean that you're going to have time to write them an email every time, right? Like they will have to also figure out how to take notes, how to, you know, record meetings so that they can go back and get the information that they need. But you should know what those things are for them so that when it's important to you, you can make sure that they're getting it the way they need to. And I tell, I tell employees the same thing. I say, listen, your manager is not always going to adapt to you, but you should understand how your manager gets information best, right? And how they prefer to communicate so that you can figure out how to adapt at times as well. And, and I think so far it's worked out pretty well. We have not had a lot of a lot more big explosive conversations where all of a sudden I'm like, I had no idea this was going on. I am sure it will happen again. Um, but, you know, I think that, I think that those have been the two best ways to get them to kind of be on the same page.
Host: Yeah, absolutely. I think especially that point in that sort of early kind of training, onboarding, not being afraid to say things that are quite obvious. I'm reminded actually in a previous role, we sort of were first hiring some, some college folks straight out of college in America. We had sort of a, you know, a work from home sort of remote working policy. It was either someone the first Friday or something, and someone tuned into like a midday call and they were just sat kind of in their local bar, you know, having a couple of drinks, music in the background. And we're like, okay, just so you know, this isn't really appropriate and not how we do things, but in, in my contract, it says that I can work remotely. And we're like, okay, yeah, there's still, you know, some, some level of clarity that maybe is needed that we thought was obvious, but actually not being afraid to spell out the obvious is really important. And to, to your other point as well. And I think maybe just to kind of tie in to, to a final question, I think understanding that this isn't just sort of a specific generational thing to my point earlier, it's, you know, regardless of who you are as an individual, everyone, you know, even if you're the same age background as someone else, might just have that different communication style, that different communication preference. There has to be that level of adaptability there, but also you still want that consistency within the organization too. So I guess more, more broadly, are there any other best practices that you would offer for similar CHROS looking to drive really sort of healthy workplace communications where there's that balance between the adaptability, but also that structure that's needed for some level of consistency as well?
Guest: Yeah, I think the best advice I can give is, is to listen and be curious because, you know, there's, there was no playbook here, right? Like when this stuff like when, when I finally found out that, you know, using grammar was made, people feel like they were being yelled at, right? Like I was like, you know, my instinct, like the back of my brain before, like my HR brain kicked in, right? Was like, gotta be kidding me. Right? Like, like, that's ridiculous. Right? But then when I took a minute and I said, you know what? They communicate differently, right? Like they like we are with a generation who during Covid, they weren't communicating in person and they weren't using the phone. They were texting each other, right? Like they were communicating on a computer the whole time. Right. So it's a different world. They came up in a different space than I did. And you know that if that's what that means to them, it's important that we understand that. And so I think, you know, the more I stop making assumptions and start to be curious and understand how things are landing and understand where the pain points are, the more seamless and the better I can react or the better I can prepare people both on the manager side and the employee side. You know, I can tell you when I first did my little memo on, you know, punctuation to, to the managers that I said, hey, listen, you guys need to know this is a thing. And like, I know every single one of you just went, you've got to be kidding me. But it's a thing. And if you are, employees think you're yelling at them all the time. Like, that's not I know that's not the communication you want to give them, right? Like you want them to feel like that they are heard and that you know that you're just asking them to do something by five o'clock, right? Like, and so, you know, I had more managers call me being like, is this is this real? And I was like, this is real and it's going to happen. I said, talk to your employees. And they did. And they were like, so many of them thought I'd been yelling at them. And they had I had no idea. Right. And I was like, I know. So yeah, so be curious. Listen. And, you know, look for ways to, to compromise and bridge those places.
Host: Definitely. And I think the one, one maybe huge takeaway is to always be cautious with the punctuation that you're putting.
Guest: Be cautious. Always be cautious with your punctuation. Make sure you know what it means.
Host: Yeah, well, Katie, a really, really fascinating episode. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us, giving some of those really practical tips as well. I'm sure this is going to be a challenge universally that that employers are looking to deal with at the minute. So wonderful to talk through it. And thank you for sharing your advice. Much appreciated.
Guest: Oh, thank you so much for your time. It was lovely being here.
