A Better World of Work

Building employee experience through internal communications with Natasha Wahap, former Head of Employee Engagement and DEI at Grab

October 10, 2022 Veldhoen + Company Season 1 Episode 6
Building employee experience through internal communications with Natasha Wahap, former Head of Employee Engagement and DEI at Grab
A Better World of Work
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A Better World of Work
Building employee experience through internal communications with Natasha Wahap, former Head of Employee Engagement and DEI at Grab
Oct 10, 2022 Season 1 Episode 6
Veldhoen + Company

Companies around the globe are placing increasing importance on shaping a strong and positive employee experience to strengthen organisational culture and team connections. How does internal communications contribute to becoming a key player in employee experience, and what are the nuances to observe in order to adopt a human-centric approach to communicating within the organisation?

Listen now to our podcast chat with Natasha Wahap, former Head of Employee Engagement  and DEI at Southeast Asia's first tech decacorn, Grab, as she shares her insights and experience on building employee experiences through internal communications.

Subscribe and follow us on our LinkedIn page to be the first to listen to our latest episodes!

Curious to find out how we can help you create a better world of work? Find us on www.veldhoencompany.com


Show Notes Transcript

Companies around the globe are placing increasing importance on shaping a strong and positive employee experience to strengthen organisational culture and team connections. How does internal communications contribute to becoming a key player in employee experience, and what are the nuances to observe in order to adopt a human-centric approach to communicating within the organisation?

Listen now to our podcast chat with Natasha Wahap, former Head of Employee Engagement  and DEI at Southeast Asia's first tech decacorn, Grab, as she shares her insights and experience on building employee experiences through internal communications.

Subscribe and follow us on our LinkedIn page to be the first to listen to our latest episodes!

Curious to find out how we can help you create a better world of work? Find us on www.veldhoencompany.com


Hardeep Matharu 
Hello, welcome everyone to A Better World of Work podcast by Veldhoen + Company. Thank you so much for joining us today. Today's topic is on building employee experience through internal communications and our lovely guest today is Natasha Wahap. She is a radio DJ now and was the ex-Head of Employee Engagement and DE&I at Grab Singapore. Before her role as a radio DJ at Class 95, we work together at Grab Singapore on the move to the one North office. It was a long project that we worked on together but we got to know Natasha here at Veldhoen + Company very well. So Natasha, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being here.

Natasha Wahap 
Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here and yes, we did work a long, long time together because of COVID.

Hardeep Matharu 
Indeed. I just said a little bit there about you but I don't think I'm doing you justice. So Natasha, if you would not mind, could you tell us a little bit about yourself.

Natasha Wahap 
Okay, so let me start. I was born in Malaysia,  grew up in New Zealand and obviously met a boy while I was there. I moved to Australia for a little bit to be with him. Now I'm living in Singapore for the last 10 years. I have two beautiful boys, aged seven and six. I am a huge tennis person and I'm also obsessed with baking the perfect sourdough bread, which Hardeep, you know. I seem to not be able to get that gluten in there. Professionally, I have about 11 years of experience. I come from an unconventional background as well. I am accountancy trained but was always drawn to people behind the numbers. I was always interested in why people started businesses and things like that which brought me to recruitment. 

I did a stint in recruitment and when I was in Grab, I moved four different roles over a short period of time because I was always super excited about learning. I started in the sourcing team with the talent acquisition, then I moved on to the employer branding team to get the word out that Grab is a great company to join. Then I thought we should be convincing people inside to join us so they can convince their friends and family to come in. Then I moved to employee engagement. Last but not least, I moved to the D&I role which brings me till today, I have taken a little bit of a break. As Hardeep has mentioned just now, I’m also a radio presenter on Class 95 so you can catch me sometimes.

Hardeep Matharu 
I don't know Natasha, if you know this, but I am also accountancy trained as well. Fun fact, there you go.

Natasha Wahap 
Wow, look at us, we are going to have a house on fire here. Well done!

Hardeep Matharu 
That explains it. As you have said, there has been quite a variety in what you have done. Of course, the work that we did with you in Grab, what was a big focus was about the experience. A huge part that we had noticed was you were the superstar for internal communication in Grab. So with internal communication, could you let us know why you felt that internal communication is important in the context of a large organisation like Grab, and how you perceive the parameters of employee communication to be?

Natasha Wahap 
That is a great question. We as human beings nowadays are completely bombarded by information. Right now, I have my WhatsApp going on my phone, I've emails coming through, I've social media that just completely overwhelms me. We are downloading a lot of information. Where it gets a little bit harder, especially in a bigger organisation is we have a lot of different geographical and generational gaps in the organisation so we have to be mindful of these things. Clean and crisp communication builds a lot of transparency within an organisation and obviously, it builds a lot of trust. 

Parameters that I use are simple mechanism which consists of three C's. I make sure that for each communication, I think about where it is going to go so Commmunication - which platform to use. Is it going to be an email, workplace post, a tweet, anything along those lines or a Slack message? How and where your communication is going to be coming out is super important because you are going to tailor it to that platform. Emojis work by the way. People love it as it is so self-expressive. 

The second C that I love to always go through is the Connection piece. Every communication that I write, I always think about it as I'm doing this for you. I want to be crystal clear for you. I'm trying to build a connection with every communication I write. It's about you and it's not about me telling you what to do. It's about me trying to connect with you and engage with you. So that is the second C that I always go through. 

The third C that I always make sure and I think people forget to do this, is make sure that all your communication is infused with your culture message as well. So things along the lines of like what is your mission? Why are we doing this communication? How is it going to make sure that we drive our purpose together as an organisation? 

So having these three C's and understanding what platforms you use, what communication platforms you use and making sure that every communication is not about what I am telling you what to do but trying to make sure that you are engaging with this, and making sure your culture is completely infused. People get it. People want to hear from you. So we've done a lot of testing with different people sending out different messages, which platforms we use, which one's the best, and we fine tune it as we go. I don't have the silver bullet but we did try to experiment as much as possible to see who gets more views and more engagement.

Hardeep Matharu 
Yeah. So much of what you mentioned there sort of rings true. Again, not being an expert in it, but I can see the markers that you mentioned such as the consistency in message and the culture messages that came through within Grab. They were always infused there. Sometimes, it would be the main driver of the whole communication piece and sometimes, it's how it links to the rest of it as well. I love that. Maybe for those twho are tuning and are not familiar, Grab has grown significantly over the past seven or eight years. It's a ten-year-old start-up now but it has been massively growing. I think being able to touch all the people in the organisation has been tricky because it's been growing kind of leaps and bounds all the time. 

This leads me to a topic that I wanted to ask and this question is not limited to Grab. What would you say are some of the usual challenges of managing communications for an organisation?

Natasha Wahap 
Yeah, we have touched a little bit on that before when we talk about generational gaps and also geographical gaps. When we think about how we communicate to our US Grabbers versus our Myanmar grabbers, for example, we have to be mindful of a different tone of voice and how we are communicating. I have been reading Netflix's book, No Rules, and they talk about the culture map and the need to be really sensitive to that. If you come in thinking that one type of communications fits all, you are setting yourself up for failure and there will be gaps coming through.

I will give you an example, especially during COVID. I remembered Hardeep, you were there with us. We would send out emails saying don't come to the office, it's close, do not come in, and people still turned up! It was mind boggling because didn't you read your emails? It turned out that no one was reading emails. Some people were and some people weren't. Then, we sat down and think okay, how do we best then communicate to grabbers? 

That was when we started our radio show. It was something that we thought is going to be fun. We can put announcements in there such as performance management seasons that are coming to remind Grabbers not to forget to get it done by due date. We had a leader come in and talk about their struggles to humanise the leader. or even talk about the pasta they cooked last night which was super fun. We even had a dedication session whereby Grabbers could dedicate songs to each other which is super cool and obviously, we had a tip of the day for wellbeing as well. We took in all the good stuff of trying to build a culture that is experimental, building connections with one another and making sure that we are communicating efficiently. 

The radio show was a huge hit. People were excited to hear every single day and it was a feel good thing. They could hear music and dedicate songs to each other. So, just by understanding that, as simple as like don't turn up to the office today, Singapore, it was great fun. Plus the fact that we were experimental was good so I would suggest that is probably what you can do.

Hardeep Matharu 
Yeah, I recall that the radio channel was really awesome because both yourself and your co-presenter were extremely professional. I think it helps having a lot of competency because at the end of the day, it also comes down to communication. You might be an expert in writing emails and what not but communication is much broader than that. So being able to be do a show there, Grab was very lucky to have you have you there. 

One thing that I remember really well from the radio show was there was a leader who was asked some questions and gave so many funny answers because they did not know a lot of things about the organisation. It was hilarious and makes it clear that they are humans too. It really helps to humanise the experience as well. I remember that very well.

Natasha Wahap 
Yeah, absolutely and I think that a part of communication is making sure everyone feels connected right to the common mission. It's so cool to see a leader say I don't know what that acronym stands for. Someone who is newly on boarded would feel oh my gosh, I'm not the only one who’s lost. We'll figure this out together. So it was quite an opportunity. COVID has opened up all these opportunities for communication because gone are the days of printing out something and putting it in the lifts or behind the toilet door. Those days were gone and it created this moment of how are we going to communicate, we are now digital by default and how do we do it efficiently. 

Grab is a great place because we are super experimental. We have bots that communicate, an internal communications team, people like myself that do certain kinds of communications and certain people that do different kind of communications. Different people know if somebody sends his email, it felt like oh, like, stuff is getting real but if Tash sends an email, it's like ah, it's fun time. okay.

Hardeep Matharu 
Mapping out the purpose, I suppose.

Natasha Wahap 
Mapping out the purpose, mapping out the tone of voice is really, really important. Having those levers to pull and identifying those levers are also really important too.

Hardeep Matharu 
For anybody out there who is listening and has struggled during the COVID period in the communications role or anything to do with getting messages out to their own communities, what advice would you give them in terms of how they might be able to throw messages out that might touch people in ways. Maybe it's ideas or things that you've tried and that you could offer to them that might help?

Natasha Wahap 
Yeah, there is one thing you do not want to do which is outsource your tone of voice. You cannot get someone else to do it for you.  That's the first main thing because I think the identity comes from within. It comes from the type of people whom you have hired, your leadership team, your mission, your vision, and all that. I think first of all, you've got to make sure that that is concrete - knowing what your mission is and what your values are. With that as a foundation, communications is going to be super easy for you after that. Then if you follow the perimeters of like hey, what is this communication, which platform is it going to be? How am I building connection with this particular communication and also infusing your culture? These are really the fundamental things for you to do. 

One of the things you can do in a smaller company is to definitely experiment as much as possible. For instance, what we did at Grab was to try to get different people to do different kinds of communications and different lengths of communications. The most important thing is to track those communication and we track it in a way whereby if this person sends out an email, how many open emails are we going to get? Not so many and this person is off the list now. No, I'm kidding. But it really sets the tone and expectations of an employee. If this is being sent for performance management season, I have to read it because everything is coming out. If a newsletter that is spamming us, okay. I'm going to read it maybe plus two days.

 There is a sense of urgency and a hierarchy when it comes to prioritising even as an employee on where you're going to read those communications. So as a smaller organisation, the best thing is making sure that all your mission and vision are super concrete, how you write the communication, and who is going to it out. Really think about these three things. 

Hardeep Matharu 
Yeah, thanks. For sure, that will be super helpful for some people out there who might be struggling with it. I know one of the real common messages and again, it might be topical to people that we speak to. One real common element for people is being able to get the message across to employees, for example, things like return to the office. I don't know if it is something that you have had a lot of people struggle with but for organisations to explain and help people understand why it's important has been very tricky. Employees might hear it as I'm just being told to come back in without knowing why. So again, it's maybe just a common issue that people have spoken to me about. Would you have any sort of views on how people might be able to make that message land for people?

Natasha Wahap 
Yeah, I mean, look, we had a very hard task and the time that we are talking about is pre-Omicron, if I am not mistaken. So it was sort of like between when the Delta variant settling down and Omicron was hanging around. There was this period that I think we are good and in the clear. We had a hard task between the both of us to get Grabbers excited about our One North building. With a new building, people will super excited about it, but not during COVID. At the end of the day, we had to come up with a framework, not only from a communication standpoint, but also from an engagement standpoint. You need to always think of these two things as going hand in hand because the ultimate goal is to make sure that your employees are engaged and communication is just a lever. 

We came up with a framework of the three 'I's. I remembered we wanted all the communication and engagement plans to be inclusive, informative and inspiring. We wanted to make sure that Grabbers had a voice to what they expected. For example, the cafeteria that we were building - Makan@Grab, we made sure people felt included in the process of picking which merchants could come in. We made sure people felt included when we talked about the meeting rooms. I have goosebumps just talking about it today, we had Grabbers voting what meeting rooms names should be. It got them excited and interested in the building. Oh, this is how the building looks like, I really can't wait to go there and check it out.  We went so much further to the extent of asking Grabbers what gym equipment do you guys want? I think that plays a big role in trying to drive that traffic, curiosity and the element of surprise that we're getting them in there.

The other 'I' which was Inform was that we wanted Grabbers to have as much information as possible. We created a Google site, the One North Google site and it had everything in there. It had the ground breaking video to how it looked like now. We had a time lapse video of how it was coming out. It was so exciting. We had renderings of how the place was going to look like. We had surveys and a feedback form. This is for when Grabbers were curious about certain things, I mean, this is how we came up with the Zen room. We didn't know that people wanted it but it was through feedback we collected. That was amazing. Thank you so much for giving us that. We wouldn't have thought about it.  I think, that, to us is making sure people are super included in the space, making sure that they are completely informed from front to back. They know everything from the bus shuttle schedules, everything about the place, to get them super excited about that building and coming back to work. 

One of the other 'I' is around inspiration. We always need to articulate the why. I don't know if you know this but Grab used to be in five different buildings in the whole of Singapore. When I first joined, I used to have meetings in like Guocco Tower, Marina One and Cecil Court. I used to take Grab Wheels back then when we had the little scooters and just zip across the different offices. It was hard. I'm like oh, I'm going to be like 10 minutes late. I'm taking the call on the go. We always have to articulate the why. We have to inspire. We are together finally in one building. We don't have to go to any other buildings. We can just move up floors and we are all here together. We all have a common mission. Every day you turn up is another opportunity for us to solve another problem in Southeast Asia. So you have to keep articulating that out and when you do, people get inspired and people want to come to work and get excited. Gone are the days of free lunches at work and people will come in. Those days are gone. People are not going to turn up for a free bagel. People want to turn up because they want to connect with other human beings. They want to know the others, want to connect with them and they want to solve problems for Southeast Asia. So that is what we did, which is hard but we got them in.

Hardeep Matharu 
A lot of what you say, if I piece it together, is by having a consistent set of messaging and always keeping people in the loop and feel included, can make a big difference to how people receive the communication, rather than oh, management is telling us to come in and having a certain level of resistance. Because no one really wants to be told what to do and you bought into the process too. 

Natasha Wahap 
Absolutely and you know, there is still some concerns around COVID. That's something we have to appreciate, understand, have empathy and create assurance around it and say, it's fine if you still want to do remote but we miss you and we want to give you a hug. I think you have to come from a point of empathy. You have to come from a point of I totally understand this, I was there too. I think it's better if we hung out a little bit closer together.

Hardeep Matharu 
I love that. Again, it sounds like a common thread, just hearing it again from my side as we are going through this conversation. You need to have a level of empathy and vulnerability to be able to admit we don't have all the answers, but we are trying.

Natasha Wahap 
Yeah, we are. I think it's so fluid. I think now we are kind of coming out of it but I remembered when we first opened the doors at One North, things like the WiFi didn't work in some levels and I remembered the communications team were told to tell Grabbers why. I was like I'm so sorry and sad emoji, WiFi is not working. If anything, communications, it humbles you because it puts you in the position of the recipient. How will this person absorb my words? How would they absorb what I'm trying to say? Would it be taken in the wrong way? I'm so privileged in my organisation to have a team I call my happiness partners. People coin me at Grab as the Chief Happiness Officer, which is basically, again, I’m just a ball of energy and I'm walking around like hi, everyone!  I'm super thankful to have a happiness partner in each of the countries that we operate in and they tell me what's up. They'll tell me if my communications would not be understood and I'll go okay, so how do I make it better? How do I make it simpler? They help me out! Having that constant feedback loop and having the humility to try different kinds of communications and different ways of doing things, that is when you'll thrive within your communication Your employee experience will be richer and there is also more transparency. Obviously, again, as I said, always build trust.

Hardeep Matharu 
Yeah, and thanks for sharing. I wanted to move on to another topic which I thought might be interesting. In terms of how we measure the success of a campaign or communication, I heard you mentioned a couple of things like read rate of emails and having your people as a test bed. How do you track the measures of successful communication campaigns?

 Natasha Wahap 
So we do it in different ways and technology is going to be a best friend here. When we think about emails and things like that, I have worked with HubSpot tracking tools. This is a trick by the way. I used to do this in talent acquisition when I send offer emails out. When the email has been clicked open, I was wondering why he/she hasn't accepted the offer?' I knew open rates is a thing but open rate is one thing, understanding the effectiveness of the communication is another thing. We always have like a bit.ly that sits in there that says click here to find out more. If it's like three people that went in there then your communication is crap because you didn't keep them excited all the way. So open rate is one of it. We work a lot with Workplace. We look at the engagement numbers in terms of how many people engage with comments or likes. We have worked on Google Sites and used Google Analytics, we look at how long Grabbers have been on it and which pages are they are on the longest. This is super interesting because it is usually around performance management. Sometimes I am like what's that date? How do I give feedback? It always comes down to understanding. We always do a survey towards the end of the campaign to have a full feedback of how people felt, to understand what was clear or not clear and how to go from there. So we did a lot of different tracking things but as I've said, we are experimental all the time so we will figure itself out.

Hardeep Matharu 
Indeed, yeah, I am curious from your perspective, what would you say was the campaign that you are most proud of?

Natasha Wahap 
So many!

 Hardeep Matharu 
I know. I was going to say it's going to be a hard question for you to answer. 

Natasha Wahap 
It is so hard, Hardeep. I communicated a lot when I was a Grab. Some was good and some was not so good. If we were to talk about things that I am most proud of, obviously, it was getting everybody into the One North office safely, excited, and really gunning to go. That communication piece was holistic and rich. It poses some challenges from time to time, and we have to figure it out as we go. So that was keeping me on my toes because COVID was not a good friend at the time. It was like oh, Natasha, we're going to open on this date but we were not sure whether we were going to open, and there were comments that came through. It was not so fun but I am proud of it for sure. The framework was there, the fact that we all work as a team, there was a lot of movements and the words that we use was a lot more, I wouldn't want to say poetic, but I was definitely going to say it was rich. Like, come in, we want to hug you and calling One North home. Yes, finally a home we can call our own. Yes, you're right. Symbolic was the word I'm looking for. We're using a lot of those kinds of words which was so much fun. It was all the way to when we went IPO, just the celebratory excitement! Those words were great, because it was a momentous occasion for us. That was something that I love because the energy was so exciting. 

I can tell you something I'm not proud of. I think it is easier to learn from failures. This took me a long time to reconcile with myself. You weren't around at the time but we wanted to push inclusive languages. We noticed a lot of bro talk, a lot of like hey babe. I don't know whether if this is inclusive, we just wanted to be that person. We use the communication platform in a way that I don't think it's ever been used that way before. But again, we're being experimental, we wanted to push the boundaries. What we did was we use a platform and I would not name which  platform it is because I don't want to get them in trouble -  every time you use a certain word, a little bot would come out to say hi, this is diversity inclusion month. For us to promote inclusive languages, instead of using the word babe, you should be dah, dah. To play around with it, that's a cool idea, but it completely crashed. 

I remember on my first day, I was thinking, it’s going to be cool, and people are going to get it,  and the feedback came in because you can't use a communication platform which people used every day and pushed your message like that. That was a hard lesson for us. We pulled it out within the first 48 hours. It was meant to stay on for the whole month. 

During the 48 hours, I was roped into a lot of conversations and it was even talked about at all hands. I publicly apologised. I would talk our intentions and it just fell flat. If you think about communication and how you want to do that through your company - yes you want to experiment, you want to make sure that people get the message and the culture of the company but you have to also understand that sometimes you don't mess around with people's platforms especially when it is a working platform. Pushing your agenda does not necessary work. It would be good to take a step back, breathe it in, ask a couple of people for if it's alright and when they don't, I'll probably tell you not to do it. I was thinking I would love to share with you my achievement but I think it's also interesting to share a big failure that I had when it came to communications. 

Hardeep Matharu 
Like you said, it is part of the journey, isn't it? That probably gave a good hint of what we don't want to take a heavy handed approach with people and their work. You take that as a learning point and move on. Thanks for sharing and it's nice to hear the flip side of it. As you have said, it might help because people who might have tried other things that have not worked. It's okay, you can take a lesson learned and and build from there essentially. I am going to ask a question that I know is a very important topic for people, how do you feel that internal communications can contribute to the employee experience? 

Natasha Wahap 
Internal communications is a lever. What is the outcome you are looking for and whether you are looking for a higher engagement or for your organisation to have a shared purpose? My role at Grab is whatever that I do, I must ensure that Grabbers are extremely excited to come to work every day and be immensely proud of the work that they do. So I use communication as an anchor to reach out to Grabbers. How do I make sure that people get excited about their work every single day? How do I make sure that they're proud? Having that framework helps make sure that our employee experience is a complete journey. I knew that our communication is extremely important in every facet of our Grabbers' journey, from the time they get up in the morning, they check their platforms and emails till the time that they got onto our One North shuttle bus.  

We even got Grabbers to vote on how the bus will look like. That is a piece of communication. When they look at the side of the bus, and it says 'I'm driving Southeast Asia forward' and then in brackets it says 'grabbers too'. It is a sense of pride when you walk into the shuttle bus, people are watching you got onto that shuttle bus. You're sending them a signal and that is a piece of communication. It continues on when you get into the building. How the receptionist talks to you? That's a piece of communication. Just mapping that out and you'll know that you have so many opportunities to have really strong and effective communications. It doesn't have to be a written communication. It could just be on the wall, it could just be a body movement. I was always trying to get Anthony to do a handshake that only Grabbers would know how to do. Something like that, something cool. That to me is an opportunity to communicate all the time. With that, you can instill excitement, you can instill pride for all employees. That is why I felt that internal communication as a whole is super important in employee experience.

Hardeep Matharu 
I think a lot of what you mentioned about togetherness and working for something that is bigger than either for yourself or your team, but it is about the organisation and how that connects to the purpose. I still remember the choice of language on the shuttle bus, it was about Driving Southeast Asia forward and Grabbers too.  I remember it as part of the change management journey. I always thought that was a nice touch. It’s so nice because it connects so much to the brand. Thanks for sharing on that one, Natasha. 

There is one thing some people might be listening to and thinking from their perspective, because it's completely understandable that for some smaller organisations, they might not have a dedicated team for communications or employee communications, or whatever function they call it, it might be a mish mash of people contributing to it. What advice would you be able to give or even some simple steps that a small organisation could do to get a handle on communications? 

Natasha Wahap 
In all honesty, it's okay. You don't need a dedicated internal communications team because each individual is a vessel. How you think about communicating to your organisation - you hit the nail on the head - it's consistency. It's making sure that there is a cadence in which you communicate consistently with the right tone of voice and to the right number of people. I remembered on how we worked through it. 

As I said before, it was making sure that different people held different kinds of communications. So we worked with the brand team and of course, not a lot of people have a brand team, but you can do this yourself, was to understand the different kinds of communications that comes out from different parts of your company. It was a cool project to do because we were able to finally put names to certain communications. Anything that has to do with employee relations has to come from this person, because that is when serious stuff happens. Anything fun, Tash can do it. Anything semi-fun and but also a little bit sad,  this person can that. Identify those people and understanding the breadth of that departments communication is important. I have to admit, even in People Operations, the breadth is significant. We were organising fun days, gratitude days to we had to fire someone because they were leaking stuff. It is like POPs has a range of communication. It was the same with the CEO office. We were working with Anthony a lot. He was talking about organisation changes to promotions to the day off - we had a Grab-wide day off. We had to really understand his tone of voice and elevate it a little bit where it needs to be elevated, because he has got his own style. Just knowing that does help as well. 

 

So for a small organisation, I think start small by getting one person to be that voice or that Chief Happiness Partner in your organisation to get everybody riled up. Obviously, you have your leadership and you need to understand their brand persona. Is this leader equipped to talk about learning and development as an example. In Grab, we have many leaders and I remembered one of them, he was a pilot and has a plumbing  certificate. He was learning Korean at some point. He was our L&D guy. If we were going to do anything on Grab Learn, we will get that guy in involved because there legitimacy when it comes from someone that can talk about how excited they are about work and learning. You've got to make sure that you know what your leadership brand persona is. If your company is to say, for example, pushing for sustainability, find someone in your leadership team who loves to talk about being green and have that messaging come through that person because that creates legitimacy. That's kind of how I would start. 

It's really using people as a vessel and identifying their brand personas being. Then, build that network of internal communicators so it doesn't have to come out from you all the time. Sometimes it feels tiring to be that guy. If we talk about the communications, I had to do Hardeep, the breadth was there. I was the fun person at IPO night emceeing to I was there when the layoffs happened. People didn't know that I could do it, I didn't even know I could that. I wasn't strong enough, I cried on that day. I think just knowing the different individual, that really helps.

Hardeep Matharu 
Yeah, that is a really good advice. Like what you said, if you are a small organisation that doesn't have the benefit of centralising, identify people's passion projects or personal interest. It's so much less of a burden to communicate about something that you are very passionate about. When somebody asks you to write a comms piece about something you love, it'll take you a fraction of the time versus someone that has to start from scratch and learn it or think of the right language. In some ways, you are making the process efficient and playing to the strengths and interests of people within the team. Finding the hidden strengths and passion projects with people is part of the journey which might be fun for teams out there to do as well. That is a nice bit of advice there. 

Okay, looking at time, we are going to start to wrap up now. I have one question I would like to ask. We ask all of our guests. I could ask you many more questions but I am sure people listening would know. The question is what does a better world of work mean to you? 

Natasha Wahap 
Um, this is a great question. I always fall back to my tagline, which is a better place of work is where people are excited to get to work every day and proud of the work that they do. That encompasses it for me and that builds out to having a shared sense of belonging, making sure that you have a purpose, a shared purpose with the organisation, and all the fun stuff. In all honesty, is if you come to work every day and you are so, so excited to get to your computer or get to problem solving or meeting your team, your work is almost done. All you have to do is pepper in a bit of pride in there and make sure that you have the sense of ownership with that company too. Like I add value to this company, I'm also going to add value to their purpose and their mission. I'm here, I'm seen. Let's do this together. I think that is extremely important. So yeah, just going back to your question, the answer is definitely when you are excited about the work that you do and are proud of it. 

Hardeep Matharu 
I love it. Yeah, I agree with a lot of the sentiments you mentioned. In fact, many of our guests have similar answers, but the focus is different. In your case, it's is very personable, which is you. I've worked with you and that's what it has always been about. Natasha, it's been so nice having you on the podcast. Of course it was always nice to connect with people that we know well. In my case, having worked with you for a while, this is back to familiar territory. I really enjoyed this conversation and thank you so much for making the time today, Natasha.

Natasha Wahap 
Thanks, Hardeep, for having me. I really enjoyed our conversation.