The Better Work Australia Podcast
A podcast to look at the experience of Australians in their workplaces. Sounds boring? Well, you'll hear about old mate "the cancer", video producers who make isolation tents in open plan offices, "huddles" and all kinds of names that disguise useless meetings, how you don't get paid doing some of the world's most important work, and more. But the whole aim is also to look at how we, as Aussies, make our work better!
The Better Work Australia Podcast
Doing Pay Transparency in Australia
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Pay transparency sounds like a simple idea until you try to do it and realise it forces every hidden assumption about value, hierarchy, and fairness into the light. We’re joined by Alison Sharp, who’s spent close to a decade building transparent pay systems at both Meld Studios and The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI), and she breaks down why the “end goal” of open salaries only works when you first fix the structure underneath it.
We talk about the practical core of a transparent pay model: starting with the real financial story of the organisation, setting a sustainable pay envelope, and then distributing that across clear salary bands tied to scope of responsibility. Alison shares how this approach helps prevent runaway salary costs, reduces inequities created by negotiation, and makes growth paths visible from day one. We also get into what happens when the numbers challenge the status quo, including compressing the gap between the highest and lowest paid roles and asking the hard question: when is enough actually enough?
Along the way, we unpack why so many workplaces avoid pay transparency, from the fear of exposing pay gaps to the discomfort of talking about money at all. We look at the upside too: fewer drawn-out pay battles, better retention, more trust, and a culture where people can pursue “growth in place” with recognition that isn’t only financial. If you’re trying to design a fair pay system in Australia, whether in a small team or a larger organisation, you’ll walk away with a clearer map of the change process and the conversations you can’t skip.
Subscribe to BetterWork Australia, share this with someone who’s wrestling with pay decisions, and leave us a rating or review so more people can find the show.
Welcome And Why Work Matters
SPEAKER_01Hello and welcome to the Betterwork Australia Podcast. As Aussies, we spend a lot of our time at work, and I've found that at best that life peeks out at average. At its worst, it's horrible and it's damaging. My name is Dean Williamson, and I helped create the next wave of organizations here in Australia with Human Systems Code. This BetterWork Australia podcast aims to explore people's stories at work and uses them to look at how we can make our work better. I record this podcast on what is and what will always be Darwin and pay my respects to the land and its people. Alright, on with today's episode.
Meet Alison And The Goal
SPEAKER_01Hello everyone, welcome to the BetterWork Australia Podcast. I'm joined today by Alison Sharp. Ali, do you want to say hi?
SPEAKER_00Hi. Thanks for having me, Dean.
SPEAKER_01Pleasure. So we do some similar kinds of work in some ways, but do you want to give everyone an introduction to yourself? And maybe in that introduction you can also include why I have you here to talk about pay transparency.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, great. Pay transparency is something I've been working on, working towards for the best part of a decade now, and have implemented in two organizations. So the first one being Meld Studios, which is our service design agency. And the second one being the Australian Centre for Social Innovation or Taxi. That's where I am at now. And pay transparency is kind of an end game that you get, that I've got to, really driven from two main things. One is a kind of a problem-solving tool or a managerial support tool around opening up pay salaries and the whole process around that. And one around kind of getting shared responsibility, shared accountability around the finances
The Messy Pay Problem To Fix
SPEAKER_00in both of those organizations. If I go back to the real kind of reason I started leaning into pay transparency, it was in response to difficult conversations with team members about what pay different people should be on. Requests for exorbitant pay, which was putting the whole business model at risk or was creating huge inequity for other people. Some people asking for it, some people not asking for it, unfair decisions. So there was it was just kind of messy how people were appointed pay and how promotions and pay rises happened. So really I was going into pay transparency as a way of creating a structure and a process and standardizing how pay is set and how pay changes are decided. And so part of the output of that was opening up transparency to what pay is feasible. And then you kind of go into well, what are the roles then? And what are the value, what's the value of those different roles, the skills needed to do those roles, and then what looks fair in terms of pay for those roles. Also, because I've I have done this in a relatively small, you know, 25, 30 people organizations without endless funds. It was also kind of introducing, well, can't pay you that because we don't even earn that much money, kind of thing. So really kind of opening up the financial story, the money story for the organization and go, this is how much we need for everything. This portion is around pay. Of that portion, this is how we can spread it evenly across the different roles that people have to contribute to the purpose of our organizations. So it really was really a mechanism as a team leader or manager to be able to have structured conversations and fair conversations about what pay couldn't couldn't be.
SPEAKER_01I don't know if this is a weirdly personal question, but why did you feel motivated to do that? Because I think when I am in other organizations, when I hear about other organizations, it seems like it's just no one seems to feel like it's a big problem. I see it as a big problem. It's why I think we both probably share this approach to things. But why is it so okay most places? And why did you feel motivated to solve what it doesn't seem like most other people are motivated to solve?
SPEAKER_00It's driven from a deep sense of equity and that equal pay based on merit for people doing the same job. It was also driven by how much money do we really need, and this perpetual need for organizations to grow in terms of their size and their money to be able to afford these increasingly potentially ridiculous salary levels that are just unsustainable. So this kind of chasing more and more money at the detriment of the environment, of communities, of people at the bottom of those ladders. So part of it is around kind of capping how much money people are getting paid and making sure that everyone else below that is getting fair pay and equitable pay. And that gap between the highest pay and the lowest pay is not too ridiculous. So it's really around sustaining and stopping runaway pay salaries just in the market in general, but also for each organization with what's actually feasible in terms of the revenue coming in to be affordable and sustainable as an organization.
Market Pay Without Runaway Salaries
SPEAKER_01What everyone will totally hit me with when I say that is well, didn't you find it hard to find staff members? Because everyone comes at you with the competitive part of it, is it? Weren't you then not competitive in the market?
SPEAKER_00So in both situations, we definitely did salary benchmarking at a national level, and first of all, state by state, but that's increasingly becoming irrelevant and kind of looking at national pay for the job that that people do. It's not necessarily about lowering what you're getting paid. It's more about finding a on-balance pay levels that are sustainable. If it ends up being that sustainable total pay envelope is slightly below market, then you look at non-salary forms of recognition and reward in culture and what's provided within the culture and the flexibility and the hours and the learning opportunities and play around with payrolls. So in a way, it's also a mechanism for kind of, yeah, preventing kind of runaway costs that make the organization so unsustainable that you've got to chase money, money, money, money, and then go, well, but what are other ways of recognizing and rewarding people while being able to manage your salary costs at a sustainable level? And on the most part, all the other benefits that come with the purposeful work and the full package, which includes financial and non-financial, on balance attract the people that we want within the organization anyway. So some of the bigger organizations who don't necessarily have in to cap runaway salaries that just widen the gap between the lowest and the highest in society in general, go work there if that's your driver.
SPEAKER_01I often think that too, which is where actually like this is also a kind of sorting mechanism in a way, which is that if you don't like this kind of thing, you're totally fine to not be here. And we'll probably take the people who are gonna be cultural assets to us in the thing that we're trying to build, who understand why their pay relates to other people's pay and the financial success of the organization and sustainability.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and not necessarily being a total martyr about it, but recognizing that intergenerationally, at some point, we might need to take a bit of a hit to rebalance equity in the system. So, which is interesting because you know, I've I've been putting in pay transparency as a managing director and as a general manager amongst the kind of top pay brackets. And I'm sitting there putting that in, going, how can I justify what we get paid versus what an intern or entry, someone coming straight out of the trades into this work gets paid? How can I justify that potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars difference? But then also going, you know, someone needs to call it and go, this is enough. Surely anyone living in this country can survive on this amount of money. And if we don't try and put these stop gaps in there and role model these stop gaps, it's just gonna keep running away and running away. So really role modeling when enough is enough, and we should be able to make do with what's in this bucket.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, cool. And just confirming, you include yourself in all of that, true?
SPEAKER_00Yep, absolutely. So all uh CEOs, CEOs, executives, the board members, everyone who's receiving pay is in the salary band's patrance model. Because yeah, like when I'm saying like part of the reason for going there is particularly with the younger, newer members of the teams and the workforce are really questioning why do I start on that and the CEO gets paid that? And it's like, okay, I'll we'll lean into that question and open up that question. And at the moment there are stats like CEOs getting paid hundreds, hundreds percentages more than what the the entry-level people are happening.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, we have examples. I can't remember from my book what the average is in Australia at the moment, but I I think it was 55 times, I think is the average.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So the the model we've just been working on at Taxi, it's four times. So the highest pay is four times the lowest pay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's funny. Once you do the work, it gets hard to rationalize many multiples, which I know sucks for someone who wants to earn like a million dollars, but it gets very, very hard to justify the idea of that much value contribution to the system once you start trying to rationalize it.
SPEAKER_00And the system has got to be sustainable at all levels. So the financial stibbut sustainability, and then the not having to grow for the sake of growth just to support those runaway that runaway pay and go, surely this is enough for us to live on as our base salaries. And then we'll create these conditions for an open, transparent, like really healthy workplace as well, and flexibility and life balance because we're not having to chase revenues that are beyond kind of all because it's so needed because we're paying ourselves so much. Yeah, it's about getting that kind of balance.
The Hidden System Behind Pay
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I know that the organizational designer in me is just spinning off into so many parts of the system. You know what I mean? Like, like we know this is tied to a lot of other things, and so all of a sudden it's just like just like this web of like interconnectivity where it's like, oh, and that means this kind of thing, and that means this kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00And that's why I think when we said pay transparency was the end goal or the not even end goal, was the output of challenges and issues around pay requests or or challenging like discrepancies or inequities or big gaps between the highest and lowest. So in order to unpack and address and get equity there, that it just opens up a whole can of worms to even get to pay transparency. Because you've got to look at, well, what's the total financial pot coming in? What portion of that do we put to paying ourselves? What roles do we need to pay ourselves? What's the market pay for those roles? What are the skills and responsibilities needed? But I found that starting with the total money coming in and then the total pay envelope is a very good mechanism of going, well, this is how much we've got to play with in terms of paying ourselves. Here's how we will distribute that across these different roles. But it opens up a whole kettle of worms in terms of role titles and responsibilities and levels of responsibility at different pay brackets and who decides when someone's ready. So you get into these whole philosophical conversations around challenges around what does growth look like and who decides and what skills are you valuing more than others, and you're challenging the kind of Anglo norms around what's a good skill, but how do you then weave in neurodiversity and oppress people from oppressed cultures where you don't ask for money or you don't challenge it. And so you end up, it becomes quite a web of redesigning uh mindsets and philosophies around equity and pay and opening all that up. But it's it's worth it for the outcome you get to in terms of this shared sense of responsibility for the money coming in and therefore the money we pay ourselves and provides clarity around what's feasible and what's not feasible and what the pathway might be here and where the limits are. And if that doesn't fit with your personal drivers, then there's no flex in that for you to be the one person who negotiates something outside of that.
SPEAKER_01So, in some ways, when you come in, you're agreeing to that set of circumstances, and so you know what growth and opportunities here look like from the start, and you opt in or out knowing that's how it works.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And so then the cultural benefits of everyone being on the same page and knowing knowing where the boundaries are, it takes some of the mystery away. It takes the pressure of wanting to ask or needing to ask, because we do annual bumps up to a cap. So you don't need to ask. You can kind of know, okay, this is what I can expect in terms of pay here. And I want to go into a next bracket of pay, that means I take on this extra set of responsibilities or scope of responsibilities. But if I'm all good with this scope of responsibilities, this is as much as we're all going to get paid for doing that, unless we all collectively push to bring in more and then can pay ourselves more. But it's a kind of like it takes the the mystery away and the someone else is deciding into no, we we are deciding what's feasible.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's like a shorter line from say what I get paid to, for example, the revenue that my team brings in. Like it's like that feels like a closer relationship.
SPEAKER_00And and that leads to all sorts of benefits because then you get people going, kind of putting on an entrepreneurial hat and going, oh, well, if we want to achieve this, if we want to have more money to do this, it might not be paying ourselves, but it might be. Then I'm gonna get proactive in thinking about how I might create that revenue stream to be able to enable it. So it kind of demystifies and takes it away from being someone else who controls that for me and puts that, empowers people to have that economy to self-fulfill what you'd actually like. Or if it's not what you want, this is not the environment to be in.
SPEAKER_01So I agree with all of that.
Why Leaders Fear Transparency
SPEAKER_01And I am deeply aware that except for you and a few of our clients, I don't know of a lot of transparent pay systems. Would you say, like, do you know of many outside of what you've done?
SPEAKER_00Well, in government, it's obviously all very transparent.
SPEAKER_01I don't know about that. The idea of it is one thing, I think. When I've been in there, there's all these actual real-world exceptions to what the banding is. So it's like it drifts a long way from what the envelopes are supposed to be. So they'll pay you things like market allowances and all of us, like all of a sudden, total compensation doesn't totally look super good in those bands when you actually like get into the nitty-gritty of it.
SPEAKER_00In those organizations, it doesn't necessarily lead to a conducive productive culture as well. It's more like a limiting culture of that's beyond my pay band. And it's like, oh, okay, no, that's not the intent of why we're trying to open up pay. We're trying to open up pay so that the whole team has skin in the game in terms of our money story.
SPEAKER_01I think skin in the game in government is a little bit of a more complicated line, too. You know, this idea of like relationship to income and sustainability, all of that is more complicated as a story to draw on for like rationalizing pay and all, you know, like and like you said, the cultural benefits of some of that stuff. So, I mean, and so my gut feel is like, I mean, I have very few examples actually of transparent pay systems in Australia. Given what you've talked about about the benefits that it can sort of be, why do you think people are so scared? Because I would say it's a fear. Like, if it seems like a good practice, I would just assume it would just get adopted more. Why the resistance, do you think?
SPEAKER_00I think part of it is fear of exposing inequities and potentially the inability to do anything about it. There could be a personal fear of justifying one's own hierarchy to the rest of the team. So that's an ego thing. And as a culture where it's pretty super awkward talking about money. I think those are probably three of the main reasons exposing equity, awkward conversation, and maybe fear of loss or justification for ego and self.
SPEAKER_01I think about this a little bit because, you know, some of my friends are like comp designers in organizations or that might be in a, you know, some of them are in organizational development teams, which tends to get pigeonholed more as like learning and development and stuff. But I think about this as in, you know, if I'm in, say, a big bank and I think this kind of thing is a big deal, and then I think about going to what the leadership team meeting and being like, you know what we should do? We should put all of your salaries on the table. And I wonder, like it nearly needs to be like the CEO or board members of a larger thing making it happen because you think about that idea of walking into that room where there's probably if you've got an hour meeting, you probably talk about something like $200,000 worth of value, like time spent in that room, you know, for that one hour. And then everyone thinking that that's a good, like that's gonna solve problems when you said, like you said, there's so much of their personal skin in that game because they're the ones who have been the most successful in that particular set.
SPEAKER_00They have something to lose and they're on this train of more money for this lifestyle. So it takes a social equity driver to come in and go. We don't need more money. Let's cap it. Let's cap it. So it's kind of shifting from that individualistic asset wealth building to I'm actually going to be a leader that bucks the system here and uses the power and privilege I have of leading this huge organization to cap it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, cool.
Retention Costs And Sustainable Pace
SPEAKER_01And like I would say the economist in me also says that all the things you're talking about reduce other kinds of costs. So when someone stays for say eight years instead of two years to go and pursue money somewhere else, or you don't have people come in, it all gets chaotic, they don't get the money they want to, they stay disengaged for a while and then finally leave, all of this stuff slows down a lot of internal productivity and creates a lot of dissonance and disengagement and all those kinds of things. And so for me, I look at it in terms of where does the money go? What does it support, but also what costs are you saving in other ways? Because you're talking about organizational sustainability here, which I think in it lots of ways is the same thing as organizational performance, which is like what is this thing? How should it work? What should its outcomes be? Like staff turnover cost costs a lot. A lot of it is intangibles, but when you're turning over staff a lot, there are a lot of costs associated with that system. And so if we're having designing a system where someone can see their growth and development, you know, evidence says that's a really big deal for people staying. So if you bump retention from two years to say six years, I think you probably make a lot of internal cost savings under that kind of model.
SPEAKER_00At a system level, because you're also going, well, if we're capping our salary envelope at this, then our revenue goals only really need to be this. So we don't need to be chasing money and burning. Out and blood, sweat, and tears to get there. You can kind of go, here's a sustainable model. Now, at what pace can we work? And how can we? And I get into the kind of whole well-being and workforce well-being and sustainability angle by kind of capping the runaway money train. You can go, that's enough. And we can work in these more sustainable ways. And go, there's more to it than just the money once at a level, right? And so some of the other factors building into the pay, like the model of pay, then you're looking at, well, not just what's the highest, what are the highest pays, but we've looked at like a higher, higher percentage increase in those early years. So people are getting to a more sustainable or a more affordable salary level quicker. So you kind of your pay rises are bigger in those early years until you get to your kind of plateau, and then it's a little bit inflation and a little bit but kind of universally going. Surely everyone can live on a max of 200 grand. Who needs more than 400 grand? Really? We all kind of that's enough. So yeah. One day we'll get universal pay, um, Dean.
SPEAKER_01Actually, there's some orgs overseas that do that, which is cool too. Yeah.
A Practical Path To Implement It
SPEAKER_01And so I guess if someone was interested in actually trying to do this in whatever scale they have, whether that's a team or whether they have a small org or maybe they're a big org and they want to start playing. Having done this twice now, what are the kinds of I go, I suppose, tips or your little kind of guide you would be giving people out of the practicality of doing it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I think it would start with a a personal commitment and drive. And then that could be quite private and silent, or if you're in a team leadership position, you could commit to that openly with your team. And then you're on a personal mission within your sphere of control. And that might be that you can or the conditions to be able to do that at an organizational wide level, or it might be that you you do it within your team and within the constraints of a bigger organizational system that you can't change the whole system yet, but you have influence of control over your team. Know what the rules are, know where the leverage points are and the break are, and then implement a process, a journey of equitable salary adjustments over a period of time. It will probably take, if you're in a big organization, it will take a couple of years. You will no doubt find that there will be pay inequities, pay gaps. And I would advise addressing those kind of privately before opening it up. I wouldn't open up pay bands and pay levels. So I would then proactively commit to rectifying those inequities and discrepancies and having a sustainable, fair uh set of salaries, salary bands, whether you then just keep that to yourself and within your own team, anyone else you hire and you bring in, you align to those new bands. So you're not adding to the discrepancies and then progressively close the gaps that you need to get to so both organizations I work with are specialize in co-design, co-creation practices. So both situations co-created those bands with people, opened up a can of worms, and both took like a year. And actually, in in Taxi's case, it's been four, five years in the making to get to the iteration we're at now.
SPEAKER_01Because it is a change process where you've got to think about sort of like exposing people to the idea and then starting to take those little bites of how do we practically do it. And you're probably gonna have to start adjusting your thinking a year to two years before this actually starts happening, but you've got to start wrestling with this and whether this is whether you're happy to be here when this comes in and all the rest of the stuff.
SPEAKER_00And this is the hard thing, is that we're if you're committed to it, being some of these pioneering leaders who want to change the system by adopting a progressive model in the system. You're kind of like you're trying to buck the trend, but also within a system that's already kind of set trail. So it's like, but shit, I thought I was supposed to get a house and a mortgage, and I've already got this. I feel like I'm already on the trail of having to need this. But now you're telling me I need to get off that trail and come to this more equitable model. There's a real deep juxtaposition there and need to either get off the train, which can be quite difficult. So I can open up some very difficult conversations, and that can be quite distracting and can take some time to work through. But I have found as a manager, as a leader, the conversations become way easier when you've got a reference point of standardized pay and capped pay linked to your total salary or total compensation. The conversations I now have with team members around pay are more about sense of possibility and collective effort towards making this possible than individual kind of, I need more, I want more, I'm gonna negotiate more, or I'm too scared to ask, so I'm just gonna sit over here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because it's funny, I had a friend who worked in a startup and they wanted to head towards a transparent pay system. And so it's sort of like we could go down a rabbit hole of little practices, oh, like things you have to do internally to make it work. But all of the managers hated it because all of a sudden everyone was coming wanting to talk about when they were going up in pay, like every single week. You know, and so they actually stepped in and stepped out because all of a sudden managers were like, no one wants to do work, everyone just wants to talk about when they're going up in pay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so we then so the process, so like I was saying, pay transparency is like the end outcome. First, you open up all the freaking cans of worms, and then you try to co-create our model that meets all the individual needs and values, and then you get that approval from that with the board. It but I have done that, so there are ways of framing it and getting I've definitely that's probably a whole nother webinar, Dean, around just practical tips and tricks, but there's got to be a process around it. At Taxi Now we go twice a year. We will review our total, like our budget, our money coming in and money going out and how much surplus we need, and then know what the envelope is for how we pay ourselves. Those two times a year, you think about your pathway and your your REM with us, and you put forward, I'm all good here within this scope of responsibilities, but also I know that you've modeled that you'll bump me up two, three every year anyway, so I'm all good. Or if I want to open up a new pay bracket, then I know what those responsibilities are that I need to step into. And so I might go, okay, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna propose for the July period that I'd like to take on those responsibilities. And I consider that that I get more money for that. It's more risk and more responsibility that I'm taking on. And we run the numbers, so we do it twice a year as a whole, and then run what's feasible and sustainable for the org as a whole. So yeah, that really then quietens those just constant. It's kind of like shops open, shops closed.
SPEAKER_01I love that.
SPEAKER_00Have people stepped into those leadership roles and then stepped back to because it is sort of about growth, but I get those extra responsibilities have extra stretch for people and you know, like a couple of couple of key concepts in the the taxi model is around so there's that what's the maximum difference between highest and lowest or higher percentage growth in those early years. Scope of responsibility is where salaries are aligned to different levels and scopes of responsibility rather than particular skills that people bring because diverse skills, we want to recognize and reward diverse skills. The other thing is around growth through increasing your scope of responsibility or growth in place. And so you can grow in place and go, I am all good, being really good at my job. I don't want to lead projects, I don't want to lead people, I don't want to have to build a portfolio or a field of practice or work. I'm all good here for whatever reason. And I can see that there are increases up to a cap, and then I can explore non-financial recognition for my flexibility, my hours, my opportunity for LDs, paid L and D budget, my title, and I'm all good here. And yeah, so growth.
SPEAKER_01I want everyone who's listening to this to acknowledge the wisdom in that of like financial remuneration is not everybody's goal. Like mastery and technical expertise and experience are all worthwhile growth pathways that you should look at rewarding, you know, and that idea of like you're rewarded with flexibility or you're rewarded with these other parts that aren't just more than yeah, and I mean that's really hard stuff for organization.
SPEAKER_00They were just so used to compensating financially fundamentally, rather than looking at people's diverse ways of approaching but it's not sustainable organizationally or societally that we then need more and more and more and more and more at what cost because we're paying ourselves more and more and more. Yeah, hence coming back to that strong sense of equity and sustainability of enough is enough. Here's the envelope, let's make that great.
SPEAKER_01That's so good.
Where To Find Alison And TACSI
SPEAKER_01I'm happy to wrap it up there. I'd we could I'm happy to talk this for like three hours. I have so many more questions about the practicalities, one practitioner to another. But like, no, no, it's like every one of those things is its own little rabbit hole that's so fun to go down. But do you want to just tell everyone where they can find you or how they can contact you if they ever wanted to talk to you about pay transparency or any other cool organizational design stuff?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Because, like I said, you open up a can of worms and then you've got to kind of redesign many elements of your values, your philosophies, your different policies and processes. But yeah, so the the Australian Centre for Social Innovation, Taxi, online. We have some content there already going back nearly 10 years, the story of innovating us, of designing our own organization, networked organization, the non-traditional contemporary organization, but we will look to put out to share some more of these models because we're realizing that we've been on a journey of challenging and trying different things. And it does take an investment of time, and other orgs might not be able to invest that much time. So we will look to share. At the moment, it'll be like, yeah, just come to us and we'll share. And then I don't know, Dean, maybe there is a whole whole content strategy of sharing more practical examples. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01There's a whole nother fun rabbit hole here, which is about Australia and innovation, which we're actually really quite bad at in lots of ways. And I love the idea that, you know, taxi is about innovation. And I I really, really love that you've done that internally, not just externally. I think that's super cool. But even the mechanism of having somebody who is fundamentally an organizational designer and thinks in those systemic ways to curate the system is itself fairly innovative because I don't find the literacy amongst CEOs, COOs, and things about our kinds of work very high. They think about structures, you know, and they think about sort of business units, and but they like they don't think about these more complexity conscious ways of approaching system design. So I love that you guys are there as an example of internal innovation too. And I'd like to see more come out about that.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, when you're looking at the system as a whole, you can't help wanting to tinker with all out levers of the system, the platform we create and operate as to do that work is yeah, it gets pretty, pretty meta, but we're naturally looking at it and challenging it. And I think in the traditional organizations, changing the system feels hard. So why why go there, right?
SPEAKER_01Like you said, that that webinar about even how you would take this to a board. I even think about the boards who would listen to something like that, even as a first instance, is so rare.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. You can have reflections on those conversations at board level.
SPEAKER_01Cool. Well, I think you should be so proud of the work that you do. I think it's exceptional.
SPEAKER_00Oh, thank you.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for being willing to like stop by and tell people about it.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's all right. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01All right, thanks, Allie. Well, that's all, folks.
Final Thanks And Listener Requests
SPEAKER_01Thanks for listening to this episode of the Better Work Australia podcast. If you liked it, please leave us a rating or review. It would mean a lot. Thanks to our podcast producer, Fina Charleston, for being a pro and making me sound good, which is a hard thing to do. And if you want to check out our work, you can also go and visit us at humansystemsco.com.au or just search us on any of the major socials. I'll see you next time.
