Building & Sustaining a Great Place to Work: Insights from Core

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> In this podcast

Catherine Fitzgibbon

HR Director

Core

Cathal Divilly

CEO 
Great Place to Work Ireland

> About Catherine

Catherine is Human Resources Director at Core, specialising in creating high-performance cultures and driving organisational success. Catherine has been at the helm of Core, Ireland's largest marketing and communications company for nearly 17 years. In that time, she has played a pivotal role in maintaining the company’s high-trust culture and employee engagement. Her leadership has helped shape a thriving progressive work environment that fosters collaboration, innovation, and employee well-being.

Catherine’s empathetic approach and strategic mindset,  has successfully helped lead Core through several large HR transformations, ensuring alignment with business goals while nurturing an inclusive and supportive workplace. Her commitment to continuous improvement and people-centric leadership has helped Core maintain its Great Place to Work Certification for over 15 years. 

Read insights on Core's wellbeing practices in our report 👇

About Great Place to Work®

Great Place to Work® is the global authority on workplace culture. We help organisations quantify their culture and produce better business results by creating a high-trust work experience for all employees. We recognise Great Place to Work-Certified™ companies and the Best Workplaces™ in more than 60 countries. To join the thousands of companies that have committed to building high-trust company cultures that help them attract, contact us today, and click below to find out more about how to get Certified.

>Transcript

Cathal Divilly: Welcome Red Cube listeners. You're all very welcome to our latest podcast. I'm delighted to introduce, from Core, HR Director Catherine Fitzgibbon. Catherine, you're very welcome. 

Catherine Fitzgibbon: Thank you very much for having me. 

Cathal Divilly: Thanks for joining us, Catherine. I know it's a busy day in Core, you’ve a celebration today? 

Catherine Fitzgibbon: We do. We have our celebration night tonight. So just celebrating all the good work everyone’s done over the last number of months and there's been loads of it! So yeah, we're having a party tonight. And the sun is shining so that makes it better. 

Cathal Divilly: Don't need an excuse to have a good party, right? Catherine, you might give our listeners just a brief background on your role, kind of who Core are, just so we set up this conversation well. 

Catherine Fitzgibbon: Absolutely, so Core is Ireland's largest communications company. We've been in operation since 2000, so we’re 24 years – now we’ve have had many lives over that 24 years and been known by a few other different names and we've kind of evolved. So when I first started with Core it was probably 17 years ago now, we were only about 30 people, and we’re now 370+ people. 

In those years we've grown substantially and expanded our business into different areas. We currently have 9 practices, some of which include data, research, creative, media – we’ve 3 media brands and many, many more. So it is, it's a much larger company than when I started Cathal. 

Cathal Divilly: I think it was 2006, 2007, possibly when I was first in with yourself and the leadership team, and you have successfully managed to not just build but sustain a great culture over time. What do you feel is the key to sustaining culture over that length of time? 

Catherine Fitzgibbon: Yeah. I think in that time like we started probably our journey in 2007 and 2008; the recession when it hit – which probably wasn't ideal! But we had realised in that first year very quickly that there was a direct kind of connection between building that high trust culture or starting to build that high trust culture, and growth and flexibility and productivity and innovation and all those wonderful things that come with that.  

So we leaned in to that through the recession. And we really grew within that period, which is quite remarkable, but we did, we grew our business throughout that period. And we very much leant into those things. You learn very quickly when you start this journey that leaning into those, you see the fruition of some of the things that you work on and what they bring to your business. So over the years, we've learned to follow a – it's not a playbook Cathal, but it’s definitely a three-step process, I'm gonna call it. Three areas that you really need to kind of look at, if you want to obviously engage with Great Place to Work, work to build those high trust cultures – but also sustain them, which is a day one mentality every single year and it is relentless, like you can't sit still. You can't just think your job is done and that's fine. It is relentless – you have to keep going to do better. 

Cathal Divilly: I know that continuous improvement mindset is built into Core and what you do. A three-step process, Catherine, talk us through that. 

Catherine Fitzgibbon: Well, it’s not a playbook but it's something that we try to follow. It's about including those beliefs at all elements of what we see as culture and what would lead culture throughout our business. The first one would be strategy, so business planning – like people, if you believe in building high-trust cultures, it’s better for your business in terms of everything – in terms of retention, in terms of productivity, innovation, creativity and ultimately growth and profitability, then you have to believe that it belongs in that very first stage of design. So it has to be included in your business plan, that people piece. People has been the centre of our last five year business plan, and then continuing to be that, which we’re in our three-year one.  

And it’s about relationships. That is really important, it needs to be included, and it makes total sense. Because if it is included in that piece, then everyone owns it. Everyone's working towards the same thing, everyone owns that piece, and particularly if you cascade objectives from that. Then everyone plays their part in it also. So it makes total sense to have a holistic view across the organisation, focused on building your culture. 

Cathal Divilly: And practically then, how do you manage to – and I completely agree, right? It needs to be of one right – but on a practical level, how does that work? How does that happen? 

Catherine Fitzgibbon: So for instance, we’re midway through our current three-year business plan. And as part of that, people is an element of that. So it is about leaning into our relationships to maintain our high trust relationships with employees, both internally, externally, our partners etcetera. And practically what happens is we use an OKR system. So that’s just our key results and that is cascading. So that cascade right down from our senior level right down to our more junior levels, where they have more activations that are part of that. And it literally touches everybody.  

And then the other really important element is our Great Place to Work committee, who are also leading and are part of that piece. So they do lots of engagement focus groups throughout the year. They would also then take all of that feedback at all levels, they would ideate, they would innovate, come up with creative ideas. They would listen to people intently, and come back with suggestions. And that then is presented to our Board of Directors; you’ve been in some of those sessions, they work quite fluidly against each other, they chat out the ideas, what will work, what won't work and eventually we come out with what we're going to move forward with that year. 

Cathal Divilly: So if I'm an employee with Core, I have the opportunity to be part of a committee that gets to listen to people, get ideas around different areas that you're working on, and then those ideas feed up to the leadership team. So it’s a culture built on, you know, effective listening. It's in the people strategies, in the heart of the business strategy, it’s of one, which is great.  

Aiden spoke a number of months ago at an event we had around, you know, progressive practices for females in the workplace and spoke really well. One of the things he shared was that that the core of the people strategy or the strategy is to build a culture that meets people where they’re at. Can you talk into that, Catherine? 

Catherine Fitzgibbon: Yeah. So the second part is those actionable piece and the last part is probably the basics of relationships and those are the three things. What Aiden spoke about was our wellbeing strategy. So that is very much about ensuring that we have supports and needs in place for every life stage, and that allows someone to see their career progress throughout Core but it also lets them see the supports that are in place for down the road, when and if they may need them.  

But they also include the good things and the bad things because in reality, like Paul’s needs today will be very different in ten years' time. You know, and it is really about listening to what people need across that actionable area as we call it, there's all the other things like communication and engagement and benefits and all of those other nice things. You can't communicate enough, you can't engage enough!  

But ultimately, we have built a lot of that centrepiece around listening. Like really listening. We've made mistakes. You can really say you're listening to people and you're not really, but you really need to listen to people to understand that everyone's needs are different. And they're different as they progress through their careers, and it's just ensuring that everyone can see a longevity in those supports and in those practices. 

Even through things like flexibility. A lot of us talk about flexibility, but you probably have to have a number of different things in terms of that flexibility piece. So for instance, you know, I've just arrived in Core from college and COVID hit and I can't take a break, I planned on traveling for a month, can I do that? Yeah. Because it's here. There's suppor – there's life leave; you can take that trip if you want, you can come back. Or I've gone on maternity leave. I'm just coming back and have a baby, like what supports are in place for me there, what supports are in place for me as a parent? So there's huge amounts of supports at every single stage.  

And as well as that, some of the challenging things as well. So, like life doesn't go smoothly – and it doesn't! So you have to put those supports in place as well for those, when life doesn't turn out the way you want it or you have those bumps in the road, which we all have. No one's immune. So ensuring that you have supports in place for when those things happen. One is our cancer support policy, which has been massively ... People are very intrigued by it. 

Cathal Divilly: Let's chat about that Catherine, right. So your approach in that area – co-designed, I believe. So talk us through what you do there. 

Catherine Fitzgibbon: So we actually probably co-design a lot of our supports. So part of our business is owned obviously by Publicis but majority shareholders are still in Ireland. America and Europe are doing very different things when it comes to obviously Cancer Support. But as our profile is aging in Core, and we are, because people are staying which is wonderful! A lot of the challenges around cancer have started to crop up. Like there's not anyone who won't be affected by it. So as we started to see employees become cancer sufferers, cancer survivors, which was amazing - or in fact it can come into other people’s lives through family members, parents, etcetera. We really felt that we needed to do something in this area and really showcase kind of the supports we could put in place. But also, it's a moment in time where somebody really needs everybody, including their employer, to lean in to get them through, whatever that challenge is. 

And in that way we designed it with our workforce, so we designed it with our employees, and then other people who were supporting individuals who have been through cancer or were friends with individuals who supported them. And in that way we co-designed our policy. It’s simple things like just food, cleaning ...  Some of it is really, really simple and then some of it is more financial. Some of it is just support-based as in communication or flexibility initially because people don't want to leave the workforce straight away. It's really a point in time we discover that most people want to decide, but there’s flexibility in that as well. But it's really about just leaning on for that period of time as they go through that challenge in life. 

It looks at the return as well, like cancer is one of the things that will affect most of us at some point – we all know somebody, and it’s just one of those horrible things in life at the moment. But it is also about supporting people when they come back as well. Because they've been through a massive, massive thing and it is about kind of easing that process and continuing to do it. 

Cathal Divilly: What I love is like the reality of life is it has, as you said, it has ups and downs, right? We're all faced with lots of challenges, and this is the real conversation to be having within the workplace, right. There's challenges everywhere that people are facing, and we show up in those moments. Any other challenges, Catherine, that you've experienced? 

Catherine Fitzgibbon: Yeah, yeah. To the last part there, which is really about building those relationships, you know. With hybrid working – probably to most of us we call them water cooler moments, whatever they will be, but you can have all the supports and policies in place, but unless you have a real relationship with people ... And that probably is ultimately – it's back to basics in terms of relationships a lot of the time. 

So it’s really understanding people. It's not about, you know, the work performance. It's not about, you know, well, we know we are in work, I know what your needs and wants are when it comes to your performance in work but it's understanding, leaning into what people actually want. As managers we need to understand that. Every manager does on your team, you know, what does Paul need now? What does Anna need now at this point in time? And if you don't really understand them, then your relationship needs improvement. 

Cathal Divilly: Yeah. And you know the way every workplace has people managers that are dialled in around the importance of relationship and can do it and make connection. Then some might struggle a bit more. Is there supports you have to educate managers around how to do that, how to do connection? Is it how you hire? How do you look at that? 

Catherine Fitzgibbon: It's a combination of lots of different things. I do think though, you canself-check this quite easily as well. Like you need to ask yourself do you know anything about the person that you manage in terms of what their needs are? Like tell me you know, do they do dropoffs? Tell me do they have summer sorted if they have children? Like that's a self-check. If you don't know the answer, you really should! 

But we tend to do a lot of those and we ask people to self-check in a lot of those areas, we ask people like do you really know the people that you manage. It’s something we’re very good at Cathal, we’ve built that into our culture over time. It's the personal touch a lot of times, sometimes it's just, you know, supporting people when they need it. But for us, it's important. It's important celebrating the personal achievements as well as the work achievements. 

We do a team meeting bimonthly, so every two months and a lot of that like I'd say 50% of that is about celebrating individual achievements, so really knowing our people. So whether that's you know, graduations, personal achievements that they’ve achieved themselves, or whether that's getting engaged, getting married ... Or I love a new baby to the Core family! But like they’re the things we celebrate upfront. And we also celebrate those who are starting, and those who are leaving us to say thank you for all you’ve done. 

But again, that's kind of built into who we are. You know, we built that up over the last number of years and our culture has shifted and changed. Our behaviours have shifted and changed over those 15 years. But that basics of relationships, adult to adult relationships are really, really important and sometimes are undervalued. But they are incredibly important. 

Cathal Divilly: Yeah, absolutely. And I know you do a lot from a people practice point of view, right. And some of those things you just see it as something you do, right and this is what we do in Core. But share with us a few more practices you have in place and those challenging moments that your people face, that everyone faces into. 

Catherine Fitzgibbon: Yeah, so we’ve had a few of those. Fertility was another one where we again worked with people to determine what they needed, what they wanted, you know, what was on their mind, what supports could we put in place around them. Like even just helping someone through that process, because fertility is one of the areas that is not really talked about quite enough. Do you know, like there is still a bit of a taboo around it. We held an International Women's Day recently where we literally just talked about any taboo subject and fertility was still there. 

The support around that is really about supporting financially, but as well as that, in terms of time off emotionally – insisting sometimes that people take those times off because a lot of what we found is a lot of people go through the process in secret. And it is an incredible journey on somebody's emotional wellbeing but also physically. So it's to stop and support someone not going through that alone, but also to give them time and space when they’re not trying to be in work, both emotionally and physically trying to deal with that journey, which hopefully would have a happy ending to it. 

But it is a difficult one nonetheless, and again that's increasing as well, that’s a challenge for people, even in the workplace you would see it quite regularly now. So it is important. And again would’ve been one that is co-designed with people who are very open to talking about it, and one that was launched by people sharing their stories. Just to try and eradicate some of the taboos for people not wanting to talk about it or not looking for supports internally. Like you said, we’re in a position where we talk about eye opening more now, where we were not in that position a number of years ago. 

But we’ve always found that sharing those stories, sharing those experiences breaks down a lot of those barriers. That’s kind of what we’ve used quite regularly, whether that's around the areas of mental health or whether that's around the areas of fertility or cancer or men's health even, and we've actually one coming up on the 6th where we talk about minding your mental health and challenges that you can face throughout your lifetime. 

I think if people can see senior leaders sharing stories and you know, being very open about their experiences and the reality is, we're all young, and the reality as well that we all face challenges in our life, it really does make the disclosing or talking openly with ease, a lot easier for people and breaking down a lot of those barriers. 

Cathal Divilly: Because often there's a concern Catherine around, OK, we need to do something in this space, how do we get momentum? How do we build a practice? And if we can start with that internal storytelling, a bit of vulnerability, moving the topic from a taboo to out in the open in terms of the momentum, right? 

Catherine Fitzgibbon: It can. And you know what? It’s allowing people to show up as themselves like, even through the good times and the bad times. But allowing them also to gain those supports in the workplace with their friends and colleagues. Like we’re all young and we spend most of our time in the workforce, like we spend most of our time, 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, that's a lot of time! 

So it is important that, you know there are supports in place when people are in those challenging times. It makes total sense. It's like, I mean, it's a relationship. That's exactly what it is; it's an ecosystem where you need supports, like you do sometimes at home. 

Cathal Divilly: Yeah, so 17 years of Core? Sorry now just going through it, and then if we add up all the time, multiply it – it’s a lot of hours, right, a lot of hours that we work. Where to next for Core around people? Or is there something you have in your sight that you want to focus in on? 

Catherine Fitzgibbon: Yeah, there's definitely two areas, like we're working on a new policy at the moment that's in the area around Women's Health. So we're just working around the whole area of mental health at the moment and resilience, which is another key area for us. Another area is really around men's health. Just participation and just trying to be more inclusive in that area, trying to get more people involved and more people opening up about their stories walk – what can we actually do in that area. You know, how can we help? So we're trying to investigate that area at the moment. So that’s kind of where we’re at the moment anyway, they’re our two that we’re focusing on for the next few months anyway. 

Cathal Divilly: Yeah. And in terms of gender split, what's the split? Is it roughly 50/50? 

Catherine Fitzgibbon: Slightly more females, I think we're mostly 50/50, though there's 1 or 2% in it. We’ve a 50/50 board as well which is a real positive for us. We made a commitment to the business to have that by 2024 and that’s what we did, we made a commitment and we did it. So that’s really important to us. We work with a lot of partners like As I Am etcetera to try and ensure that people show up as themselves and feel supported in those areas too. 

Cathal Divilly: And as busy as you are, Catherine with life and work and work and life and all of that, is there anything on Netflix, TV that you're currently watching? Any interests like that? 

Catherine Fitzgibbon: Oh God. This is gonna sound really stereotypical but I just literally blitzed Bridgerton that was just released. Yeah. Just literally blitzed it, like I think I did it over two nights. Probably not a very work-friendly Netflix series to be watching! Netflix is probably my go-to though, I’ve probably done most of the stuff on Netflix at this point. 

Cathal Divilly: You've completed Netflix. 

Catherine Fitzgibbon: I would say, yeah, yeah. No, I haven't! No, it would tend to be my go-to place for new releases, etc. 

Cathal Divilly: Catherine, any advice to a younger Catherine, 17 years ago starting out in the HR career, like some of the audience are starting out on their HR career, right? And they're wondering how do I get myself into a position where I can build a great culture – any advice for people on that? 

Catherine Fitzgibbon: The advice that would be is like proof points are there when it comes to creating, you know, high trust positive cultures that are supportive. Proof points are there in terms of if you’re trying to convince leadership, etc. And the facts are there so I would use them to your advantage.  

But I'd also learn, like when we first started this journey Cathal I think I reached out to most people that were part of the programme! I just soaked as much as I could from those wonderful people in to try and gain as much knowledge as I could in a very short amount of time. I definitely used the network, both yourself and the guys, but also the connections that you guys have made and the community you guys have built, I definitely used that to my advantage. And that's probably the biggest advice I’d give to someone to use that community, which is amazing, all amazing companies to my advantage to try and get as much out of those people as I could. 

Cathal Divilly: Yeah, building your network is so important. Catherine, we've enjoyed the partnership so much over the years and we're enjoying the friendship as well and like, as I said before, great cultures need great people and Core are very blessed to have you. So thank you very much Catherine, for joining us today. 

Catherine Fitzgibbon: Thank you for all of your help and everyone’s help at Great Place to Work, you’s have been amazing. 

Cathal Divilly: Thanks Catherine. 

Catherine Fitzgibbon: Thanks Cathal.