Episode 32 | Being Happy in a Blended Workforce with Mine Dedekoca

Mine Dedekoca  00:00

The well being part. So people were not paying enough attention to well being. That’s what changed with the pandemic, and the reason was because pandemic was like a hard time when we were questioning our priorities in our lives. People all of a sudden realized that there are more things and that there, you know, more important things in life than work

Karan Rhodes  00:03

Blended workforces are one of the hottest talent strategies today, where employers are using a mix of traditional employees with external resources like independent contractors, coaches, consultants, vendors, and technology solutions, all in order to enhance competitiveness, ensure cost flexibility, and expedite business goals. But how are the successful companies infusing blended workforces into their business strategy? And what are the critical success factors and pitfalls to avoid during implementation? And on the flip side, what does it really take for suppliers to improve their chances of finding and landing contract opportunities? The devil is in the details, my friends! I’m your host, Karan Ferrell Rhodes, and it’s time to get smarter about Blended Workforces at Work!Hello, my superstars. This is Karan, and welcome to another episode of the blended workforces at work podcast. Boy, do we have a show for you today. We’re absolutely thrilled to feature as our guest, and I’m gonna murder her name, but I do my best. Her name is Mine Dedekoca. I believe. I tried. I tried, and we are so honored. As you know, we have a lot of global guests, and she is currently based in Turkey, so we’ll have a little bit of a global aspect to our podcast episode today, but she is the founder and chief happiness officer at Happy Work Studio. And Happy Work Studio is a firm that empowers companies to build agile workforces and workplaces by adopting strategies such as remote work culture redesign and employee well being, and I just knew I needed to have her on the show, because I thought she would be awesome to talk to us about how companies are thinking about flexible work models and how to best use them in order to foster, you know, work environments where employees feel very fulfilled and happy. And as you know, a lot of employees are feeling overwhelmed disengaged. There’s tons of surveys and studies out there regarding that, and the most that we can do to build really conducive workforces that allow people to show up as their best selves, I think the better the employees are and the companies are as well. So welcome to the show Mine. Hello.

Mine Dedekoca  02:27

It’s amazing to be here. Thank you for hosting me.

Karan Rhodes  02:30

Oh, absolutely. I can’t wait to delve in, because you have, as I mentioned, a unique global perspective, as well as a share of my love for blended workforces. As you know, we think about that as having ideal, full time employees or normal employees inside of work environment with a mix of external talents that help supplement as well as technology, having to merge all those in ways that creates, I say, workforces that benefit all is very hard and very you need to tackle, and so I can’t wait to delve into a lot of the conversations, but before we do so, we always love to learn just a little bit about our guests. So for just as much as you feel comfortable, would you mind giving us a sneak peek into your life outside of work?

Mine Dedekoca  03:19

Sure, I am a mother of two, two boys. I’m living with three men in the house, but I have one more female and I have a cat, and that was my The only condition that I would have another living species at home was like to have a female energy.

Karan Rhodes  03:40

Good for you, and a cat’s name?

Mine Dedekoca  03:44

Pom Pom

Karan Rhodes  03:45

Pom pom

Mine Dedekoca  03:47

And she’s so sweet. She’s sweetheart. So I’m spending most of my time with family, because, like, with the kids, you have to just, like, manage the logistics really well, yeah. And also, I’m a social person. I keep socializing. I love spending time with family and also friends. I love going out for dinners, for social gatherings. I’m always like busy with socializing as well. And I am running every day, taking walks, usually in the nature, sometimes on the walking path, and I’m also sometimes going in the morning or in the morning to rowing. So I love rowing, and also travels. And because of what I do, I keep traveling to events, and also do some digital nomadism when school is off. So travel is also another passion. I sometimes travel alone. Love traveling alone as well. So I’m kind of like the personal balance. Like, like to be alone for some time, like to be in company. So that’s pretty much it outside of work.

Karan Rhodes  04:51

Oh, I love that. I think we share many traits in common. I’m a over the chart, extrovert, you know? I love getting energy from people. You know? I love traveling. As well. But then I do like every now and then my own me time for a down time. And I also love to to walk as well and enjoy nature. So So I think we’re sisters from different mothers in that regard.

Mine Dedekoca  05:14

Maybe we’ll meet sometime face to face. I mean, it’s always like, you know, sometimes I get to meet remote work people, I mean, who I know for like, years, and when we’re like in person, is total different kind of vibe.

Karan Rhodes  05:28

It is. It definitely is. So we’ll put that into the universe. So maybe someday we’ll be able to do so. Well. Let’s start out, if you don’t mind our session today, by you sharing a bit more about your work at Happy work studio and what you all do and some of the services that you provide.

Speaker 1  05:48

I founded Happy Work Studio back in 2020 so it was during the pandemic before that I had another brand, Stardust. So Happy work studio got born out of stardust because I was in the gig workforce, the future of work, the remote work space. Since 2012 I was the country representative for Upwork, and it was like Elance back then. Yeah, I was one of the pioneers talking about freelancing gig economy, how blended workforces would help companies to manage their cash flow so but it was more focusing on the remote work, the processes, how side of it during the pandemic, I just realized that people wanted to work, but in a happy way, and well being was more of a priority for people as well, and that’s how I decided to create another brand named Happy Work Studio, with the goal of creating happy work culture so that everyone is waking up with full energy in the morning, not dreading the Mondays, and just like you know, living the best of their best selves, Best versions of their themselves, and helping also the companies to create their purpose statements. Because all of the companies also have to have their purpose statements, not in only individuals, and to just like, you know, have the values turn into behavior, doing happiness workshops and focusing more on the well being side. So that’s what we do with happy work studio. We first help our clients to just manage the work right. So they don’t necessarily have to be working fully distributed or like remote, but even if they’re doing it in hybrid, or even if they’re in the office, we help them to make it right, so that they are adapting it to the needs of their employees and to this new way of working. Because now everyone’s so much talking about the location and like the offices coming back to the offices, that’s not it. So at Happy work studio, we underline the fact that this is beyond that. So we help them to do it right, to improve the culture. Let’s say, I mean, as you mentioned, everyone’s burned out. Everyone. How would they not be burned out? Because, like, when you look at their calendars, it’s like, full the whole day, like back to back meetings, not even having those buffers, like in between the meetings. So we are teaching them how to do less meetings, how to have, you know, me times turn, you know, kind of like down times, focusing more on their well being and harmonizing, not balancing work on life, but harmonizing the work and life so that they are just like, you know, blended together and how to keep their well being as a top priority, and that’s those are the things that we are focusing with our clients.

Karan Rhodes  08:50

I love that. Now, when you say clients is your target market individuals, or is your target market companies, that you’re trying to help them create a better work environment, or a mix of both.

Mine Dedekoca  09:05

So it’s a mix of both. We are majorly focusing on the companies, but companies are made of people too, so sometimes the people in the companies become our clients too, or sometimes it’s vice versa. So because I’m a professional coach, I’m also a happy certified happiness coach. I’m a chief well being officer program facilitator. I’m also a workplace happiness specialist. I’m also like certifying people, the individuals on those so sometimes the employees come and attend to those, you know, the certificate programs to be certified individually, but sometimes companies want, like, you know, close groups, so that they have their employees get those certifications, like the happiness coach. They we worked with one company, and it was an engineering company. We had 1110, men and. One woman, and they came to be happiness coaches, so we got them certified as happiness coaches. So it was kind of like our client was a company, but the end user was they were the individual, so we were teaching the individuals, and we’re also doing the same for the workplace happiness Specialist program so we can work with companies, or we are just having a select group of people. They come together. And because I’m a coach, I’m also doing personal coaching. Most of my coaches, they are from this C level, or just like, you know, middle managers want to change the course of their life, or who want to find their path, find their purpose, do something that is aligned with their purpose.

Karan Rhodes  10:49

I love that. And you know what? I did not know you can get certified as a happiness coach. So that was my aha moment for today on this episode, but it is so needed because, you know, my I have a human capital firm, and we do a lot of work in the culture realm. And as you know, the pandemic, not most people for a loop. I will be honest and say it didn’t, not, not me for a loop, because I had, mostly in corporate America, been in global roles. So I did remote war movie. I was one of the rare people that did remote work. But then when the pandemic happened, then we had that huge shift. You know, it knocked you know, the world that those who weren’t comfortable for a loop and so good in a good way. I know they’re trying to get a lot of folks back into the office, but it opened up the conversations amongst companies of, how is it best to get the work done, and what can we do to make a win win for our employees. So I’m just curious to see if post pandemic, did you see companies raising the priority employee Well, being productive and agile workplaces? Were those more of conversations post pandemic or pre pandemic in your in your expertise. So when

Mine Dedekoca  12:05

I was a country representative for Upwork, in my presentations, we were showing people that, you know this change is coming and it’s going to happen. But I remember that we were using by year 2023 so this was back in 2012 like almost even eight years before the pandemic, but we were showing graphs, and, you know, the expectations about 2023 when the pen so we were already discussing it, and the change was already happening. But what pandemic did is, and contrary to what everyone’s belief is, about it, it did not happen because of the pandemic, but it got accelerated, so it happened before the expected time, and that’s what the pandemic had effect on. So but the well being part, so people were not paying enough attention to well being. That’s what changed with the pandemic, and the reason was because pandemic was like a hard time when we were questioning our priorities in our lives. People all of a sudden realize that there are more things and that there, you know, more important things in life than work, and they realize that, yeah, world can stop, like world can stop for days, and companies would just go on. Because people were just like thinking if they did not work for a day, or even if they missed a meeting, or if they were not like working for an hour, the world would collapse. The company would collapse. We just all witnessed that Nothing as such would happen. So that was an awakening for people. I mean, remember those days everyone started baking things.

Karan Rhodes  13:41

They Did! A new hobby.

Mine Dedekoca  13:46

Exactly because they started enjoying doing things with their hands. They remembered what it was about. Like, you know, being a human at home. I mean, just like they realized that, you know, there’s a life at home, they realized that, you know, they can be in meetings while their kids were playing in the background, right? It suddenly became okay. Because in the first days, I mean, remember in the first days, people were like, you know, shy about their family members making that scene. Or like, you know, their pets, just like, do not join it. But in time, it just became so normal. And people even started inviting their family members or like, you know, the police started saying hi. They all of a sudden realized that this person is not someone only like working in that company, but this person has a life beyond work. That’s right. So it kind of humanized the way we interact, even at work. So that was the first I would say, that the change, like, you know, how it tweaked how we were, like, kind of seeing each other, or seeing the work or the importance over or like the priorities in our lives, yeah. But now. The reason. And I just shared a video last week about my predictions about 2025 what would be the focus of the employers. Now, everyone’s talking about well being, because now everyone’s burned out, because we have so many distractions, and the change is happening so rapidly because that the technology that the speed of everything happening is so high now people are trying to keep up with things. Yeah, that’s what’s happening right now.

Karan Rhodes  15:27

Yeah, I agree. I don’t know where what the employment levels are in your area of the world, but in the US, unemployment is very low, and so it’s still very hard to find really skilled talent. You know, when you’re a company and they’re focusing are more prioritizing well being now than in the past, because an employee’s perspective and sense of well being is critical to their tenure with the company, and so that has made it critical area of focus to ensure that they, you know, retain some of the best and brightest that they have. Are you seeing that as well, or are there, are there different drivers that are really pushing up the priority of well being

Mine Dedekoca  16:11

Well that is happening in the same way we have an economic crisis. So people are just a bit reluctant to leave the jobs because of that, the financial constraints and financial concerns that they have, but on the other hand, the companies that one of the biggest problems for companies retaining the employees that they have right but that’s another thing, not only attracting the right talent, but retaining The ones that they have, and that’s where they started focusing more on making them happier and just improving their well being. And they also realized that the higher the well being and the company, the more productive the people are. Absolutely, yeah, it’s not something like, nice to have, or it’s not something like, you know, soft thing, or like, you know, flour rosy thing to have in the company, but it’s an actual strategy that they have to adopt so that the performance, the outcome, even the profitability. I mean, now this is packed. This is by fact, this is by research. This is by service. This shows that in the happier the employees are. But there are the performances of these companies. And this is now has become something like this is like a fundamental thing that the companies need to do.

Karan Rhodes  17:29

I so agree. You know, it depends upon which research case study you read. You know, there’s tons out there by like Gartner and all that, you know, the big boy research firms, but there is a prediction, and by the way, I’ll have to send to you the link we did have on the show, on the podcast, Tony duffham, who is the VP of Corporate Development for Upwork. He was one of our first guests, and he was he was sharing how the data shows that there’s going to be more and more of a mix of a full time or traditional employees, as well as leveraging, you know, gig workers or freelancers or external talent to help supplement an employee’s workforce. Do you have any perspectives on how a mix of the you know, internal and external workforces, how that can work best for a culture, or what, what kinds of things should companies look out for to make sure that there’s not tension between the two entities and that they’re working collaboratively together? Any thoughts by chance?

Mine Dedekoca  18:35

First of all, since you mentioned Upwork, I wish they had more of those roles. I always keep an eye. I really enjoyed being part of Upwork when I was their counter representative. And I keep checking their contract roles, because they’re not many, and I wish they had more. I mean, they didn’t have those as many of those, they started having some. But the only something that I really want to highlight, and because, like, You’re from the States, and people from the states don’t realize this, but most of these remote jobs, they seem like remote jobs, but they are geo specific, and they have, like, geo restrictions, so it says us only, and the big portion of those Remote roles are like, you know, with those geo restrictions. So what I predict to happen in the near future is to have fully distributed teams. That’s one thing that I’m expecting to happen. And the boundaries are going to be less and because at the moment, we’re still having those limits and those, you know, constraints that are keeping the people from this side of the world not be eligible to apply to those jobs. So that’s one thing, as I really want to highlight that I keep mentioning this you cannot be providing a fully distributed Democratized remote work if you have geo restrictions. So that’s one thing. The second one, yeah, the second one is, there’s a perfect blend in that structure, as we are also seeing. And this is not only going to happen at mid or entry level, but now we started seeing more fractional roles at the C level,

Karan Rhodes  20:21

Yes. I see more and more of those.

Mine Dedekoca  20:23

Yeah, and that’s an amazing thing, because think about it, you have the experience and you still have the energy. I mean, you may not be eligible to apply for a full time C level role, but you have the expertise, and you can use that expertise, not only for one company, but for several companies, I mean, think about the beauty of this, so much productivity, so much efficiency, and one person’s ideas, the capabilities, all that expertise, the background, the know, how is being like this person among all these companies? That’s right. This is an amazing thing this is make, this is like making the expertise more accessible.

Karan Rhodes  21:07

That’s right. And what I think is so amazing about it too is that it also creates cost agility for companies, so they may not have to pay for, you know, a full time. I’m just thinking I CFO, which can be especially one that has, you know, really valuable skills. It’s going to cost you a bit to have them full time on your payroll, but this allows you to use them for what they’re bringing to the table. And then, because you may not need them full time, you might can get away from part time, so you’ll have a little bit less cost. And then for them, they get the enjoyment of showing their expertise in different companies and environments and sharing their their skills.

Mine Dedekoca  21:50

Exactly. And for the employee as well, for that C level, I’m also working as a in fractional roles, like I’m working for a company as a US based company. It’s a cloud consultancy company named vertisant. I am a advisor, and I am managing their partnership program, and like I’m spending some fractional of my time to that company, because I have the expertise, I have the know how. I’m also working now with global startup awards to manage their community of alumni, because I’m a community person, so I have the expertise. So if someone would step into that role, it would take them maybe, let’s say, like two months to get things rolling. But for me, because I have that expertise, is maybe going to take me like a week or two. And my ideas, like my the things that I bring on the table from my expertise is even going to make things accelerate in the company. Going to provide even more to the existing employees. And on the culture side, is going to give diversity so that blended workforce is going to give them flexibility diversity, as long as they have a concrete culture. So this is where culture becomes really important. Companies need to draft their culture in a way that is like embracing all of the employees, not only like the employees, but like the contract based ones, or like the flexible ones, the fractional ones, freelancers. So that’s the importance of crafting that culture, and how to, just like, you know, make sure that everyone is feeling included, and just everyone has that, the sense of accountability towards being a part of that culture.

Karan Rhodes  23:34

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I can’t let you get away from here without talking just a tad more about culture, because having done work in that space as well myself, I always try to level set with companies that culture change doesn’t happen overnight. It is an ongoing effort. I mean, there’s always some things we can do to help infuse things, to make things better immediately, within a culture, but then it has to be taken the heart by the company and reinforced and and you have to teach what you mean and live what you mean. So I’m curious, because you you work in this space, how do you advise companies on continuously improving and evolving their culture and what it takes to do so?

Mine Dedekoca  24:18

So how we see culture is the behavior. So this is how you see if the culture is being lived or not, right? And sometimes we’re working with, like big companies, where they have been and the space for, let’s say, for 40 years, 30 years. And so they have a set of values, but the behavior is not as they wish, would like, with or aligned with the values. So I would strongly advise that they do pulse checks to understand if the behavior that the company wants to have that like, what kind of behavior you want to be prevalent in the company. What are the. Do’s and don’ts. This is really important because, like, the values usually, and as you said, like sometimes things written on the wall or, like on the website, right, but they are not living it. I mean, it is the behavior. I mean, are we really making it right? And I like one of the best example. I was working for Best Buy, and back in 2008 and even back then, they had an amazing culture. And every one of us, even the blue shirts, they all knew the values by heart, because we had these tag shaped value cards. And we were just like, you know, living the values. Because whatever we were doing, we were making sure that the things that we were doing were aligned with the values, and we would be getting those like we would be awarded with those value cards by another department if we were to just, you know, live that value being significant, you know, A paper like a cardboard but that meant a lot. So it is like how we are rewarding people for the things, for the behavior that needs to be prevalent in the company, that is aligned with the values you have to show them what is like the right way in this company, and sometimes with the companies that we work, we create these infographics where we have the behaviors written on it, like, what are the do’s and what are the don’ts, right? And sometimes even introduce nudges where they are, just like, giving those nudges to people when they are not living the behavior, just like, you know, maybe tapping on the shoulder is, like, you know, creating those cues, we are designing those nudges in the company, making sure that that there’s a change in the behavior, in the in the improved way,

Karan Rhodes  26:49

And encouraging the entire workforce to own it and own helping

Mine Dedekoca  26:53

Exactly,

Karan Rhodes  26:53

Each other versus, you know, one person trying to drive it. I love it.

Mine Dedekoca  26:57

This is really important, because usually these projects are, seem to be part of the HR strategy. No, this is a company strategy,

Karan Rhodes  27:06

Exactly. I always say people initiatives. Are business initiatives.

Mine Dedekoca  27:11

Exactly.

Karan Rhodes  27:11

It is a full business strategy. I just looked up at the time. Boy, we have I cannot believe I could talk to you for about five more hours. Literally, but before we wrap up, you know, we’d love to ask you our signature question. And as you know, I wrote a book on leadership execution and tactics that leaders at all levels should do to make sure that they’re successful. And the one that you shared that really resonated with you, it was leading with courageous agility. And for my new listeners out there, courageous agility is all about having the fortitude to take calculated risk, stand up for what you believe in and still move forward, even if the future is uncertain or unclear. So curious minds want to nominate. Why did courageous agility really resonate with you?

Mine Dedekoca  28:03

It’s defining how I live my life, even beyond work, because you never know what you’re going to wake up to the next morning. So you have to be agile, and you have to take that courage and because even the next step, as much as you plan for it is going to happen in the way that is the life is designed for, always taking that courage, always being in the action, and just like, you know, being agile. If you’re agile, you’ll just like, you know, be adapting, and you’ll be just like surfing, over the change, over all the obstacles. And I like that knowledge of surfing because it’s so liberating, and it’s just like making things more easier and effortless,

Karan Rhodes  28:47

That’s right? And even if you in the surfing terms, even if you crash, you know, you pick yourself up and you keep going and you get your rhythm back again and get to the end and be successful. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for sharing. Well, we do appreciate the gift of your time on the podcast. We are going to, of course, have all information about your bio and links to where to find you in our show notes, but we’d love to give you air time to also share as well. So where can people find you in the company to find more information?

Mine Dedekoca  29:20

I am really active on LinkedIn, and we have a active LinkedIn company pages as well. The company name is happy, Work Studio, and Mine Dedekoca is how they can find me on LinkedIn. And the website is happywork.studio, and you can find all the services there. And if you’re interested, you can just like, send a DM to our company page, or send an email, or like, direct message me on LinkedIn, and I’ll be right back and with the services catalogs, with anything and just listening to you, maybe individually, what your challenges are. Because I’m also like a business coach as well. So love listening to people and helping shed light on their path, on their career path.

Karan Rhodes  30:08

Fantastic. Well, listeners, please take up offer, because, as you can tell, she’s very approachable. She has a heart to serve and help you get better and your companies get better, and I think you’ll be better for it. So thank you so much meaning for being on the show today.

Mine Dedekoca  30:23

Thank you for having me.

Karan Rhodes  30:25

Awesome. And thank you to listeners for the gift of your time. We know there are literally millions of other podcasts out there you could be listening to, and we don’t take your patronage lightly at all. You know, all we ask is that you like or subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcast platform of choice and share our podcast with just one friend, because by doing so, we can all get smarter about blended workforces at work. Thanks a ton. And see you next week. Well, that’s our show for today. Thank you again for listening to the Blended Workforces at Work podcast. You can check out the show notes, additional episodes, bonus resources, and also submit guest recommendations on our website at blendedworkforces@work.com. You can also follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram or YouTube by searching for the name Karan Rhodes with Karan being spelled K a r a n. And if you like the show, the greatest gift you can give would be to subscribe and leave a rating on your favorite podcast platform of choice. This podcast has been a production of Shockingly Different Leadership, a global consultancy which helps organizations execute their people, talent development, and organizational effectiveness initiatives on an on-demand, contract, fractional, or project basis. Huge thanks to the SDL production and editing team for a job well done. Bye for now.