📋 5-3-1 — 5 Culture Plays from 5 People Leaders, 3 Playbooks, 1 Follow the Five
Last week we dropped the guest and went looking for five people leaders worth knowing. This week we're doing it again, with one change. Two of the five are people you may already know from our live show: Helen Dighton of Paragraf in the UK and Jeremy Reeves of Creative Consortium in Colorado Springs. The other three are new to us: Patrick Henley in Georgia, and Cylee Wagner-Gasmo and Melaina Slater in Calgary.
One initiative each, and no two alike. A UK graphene company that trains apprentices for jobs that barely existed five years ago. A Colorado company that spends ten minutes, three mornings a week, talking about its culture. A Georgia water authority where, according to a nomination for a SHRM-Atlanta award, more than 90% of management roles are filled from inside. A Calgary real estate firm that built a learning programme in the year it grew from 86 to just under 200 people. A Calgary animal shelter that gives its staff peer support, mental health first aid and a quiet room.
A few things to know before you read. For Helen and Jeremy we've used public pages and, for Jeremy, his own words from his episode. We haven't spoken to the other three. Most of the results here are reported by the organisations themselves or by the people who nominated them for awards, so read them as what each one says and not as independent proof. Where a source gives no results, we say so.
Welcome to the twentieth issue of The Work Life Reporter. This week you get:
5x Culture Plays from five people leaders in the UK, the US and Canada, two of them past guests
3x Micro-Playbooks on planning who steps up, saying the culture out loud, and building support into hard work
1x Follow the Five: who they are and where to find them on LinkedIn
1x Reader poll: last week's result and one new question
Let’s get into it.
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THE FIVE CULTURE PLAYS
Play 01
Helen Dighton's Paragraf Grows Its Own Talent Through Apprenticeships, in an Industry With No Ready Made Pipeline
Paragraf makes graphene electronic devices in Somersham, Cambridgeshire, with a second site in San Diego. Helen Dighton, its HR Director, joined The Work Life Reporter Live in September with Rob Baker, the company's Talent Development Lead, to talk about hiring for jobs that don't exist yet. Part of the answer is on Paragraf's own website. The company says it developed apprenticeship and internship programmes both to meet its need for employees and to give young people who don't yet have the credentials of their more experienced colleagues a way into deep tech.
The company is open about what that looks like. In 2021 one apprentice wrote on Paragraf's blog that he had joined that January straight from sixth form and was completing a laboratory technician apprenticeship with Cambridge Regional College. "I was considering my options, including university, but felt that an apprenticeship would be a better opportunity to develop useful skills and to help me identify my ideal career path," he wrote. People who came through the schemes were also interviewed for a careers show recorded at the Somersham site. The pages we read give no retention or conversion figures, so we can't tell you how well it works. What we can say is that it sits inside the people function Helen leads.
If your industry has no pipeline, build one at the bottom of it. Take people on before they have the credentials, and let them tell the story in their own words.
TEMPLATE: THE HOME GROWN PIPELINE PLAN
| The Home Grown Pipeline Plan 1. List the three roles you find hardest to fill. For each, write down what someone needs to know on day one and what they could learn on the job. 2. Pick one of those roles and design an entry route for someone without the usual credentials, with a training partner such as a local college. 3. Give each starter a named person in the team and a manager who has agreed their learning plan. 4. Ask each starter to write down what surprised them in their first three months, and publish whatever they're happy to share. 5. Once a year, count starters, leavers and people who moved into permanent roles, and share the numbers with managers. |
Play 02
Jeremy Reeves Wrote the Culture Down at Creative Consortium, Then Gave It Ten Minutes Three Mornings a Week
Creative Consortium is a creative and production company in Colorado Springs, and LinkedIn lists it at 11 to 50 employees. Before he joined, Jeremy Reeves ran a brand studio that redesigned the company's brand culture. He told us on The Work Life Reporter Live that he and the owners spent something like seven months in meetings working out the company's true north, and wrote it up in a book that has become its internal bible. Reeves is now Chief Creative and Culture Officer. "It can't go on a shelf like most consultancies' binders do. It has to stay a living document right there out front of everybody," he said.
So it stays out front. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8.05 the whole company meets for ten minutes to talk about brand culture. "We've done it for three years, three times a week for three years," Reeves said, and people now speak the language. He also wants room for others to shape it: "I want to be open to what other people have to say. I want to understand the cultural rhythms that are already in place." We have no survey or turnover figures from the company, so this is his account of how it works and not a measured result.
A culture statement only works if people hear it often. Keep it short, keep it regular, and let the people it describes help rewrite it.
TEMPLATE: THE TEN MINUTE CULTURE STAND UP
| The Ten Minute Culture Stand Up 1. Write your culture in a few plain lines, then ask the team whether it matches what they hear you say. Change the lines until they say yes. 2. Book ten minutes at the same time, three days a week, for the whole team. One topic per meeting. 3. Open each one with a real example from the last two days of someone acting on the culture, or missing it. 4. Leave the last two minutes for anyone to say what doesn't fit, and write it down. 5. Every six months, review the written version and change the lines people say no longer fit. |
Play 03
The Cobb County-Marietta Water Authority is a regional public utility in Georgia that supplies drinking water wholesale to eight municipal retail suppliers and one industrial customer. Patrick Henley has been its Director of Human Resources and Risk Management since 2017, and he was named a finalist for HR Executive of the Year (small or mid-sized organisation) at SHRM-Atlanta's 2026 HR Excellence Awards. His nomination says employee turnover has stayed below 5%, with earlier years below 3%, and that more than 90% of management roles have been filled internally. It credits his succession planning framework, career conversation programmes and leadership development.
He also led listening sessions in every department and division in the past year, according to the same nomination. In a profile from the Public Sector HR Association he said he cares about "creating intentional pathways for people to grow and thrive in public service." Two things to bear in mind. The figures come from an award nomination, not an independent audit, and we couldn't find a published headcount for the authority.
Promoting from inside is a system, not luck. Write down who could step up, talk to them about it, and train them before the role opens.
TEMPLATE: THE SUCCESSION CONVERSATION
| The Succession Conversation 1. List your management roles and, next to each, name one or two people who could step into it within two years. 2. Hold a career conversation with each of them: what do they want, and what is in the way? 3. Agree one development step each, such as a course, a stretch project or a placement in another team, with a date. 4. When a role opens, check the internal list first and tell internal candidates before the advert goes out. 5. Once a year, count how many management roles you filled from inside and what leavers told you on the way out. |
Play 04
Cylee Wagner-Gasmo Built a Learning Programme From Scratch While Strategic Group Grew From 86 to Just Under 200 People
Strategic Group is a privately owned real estate development and leasing company in Calgary. Cylee Wagner-Gasmo, its People and Culture Manager, received the ADP Canada Award for Excellence in Emerging HR Leadership at the 2026 Canadian HR Awards. She described a year in which the company grew from 86 to just under 200 employees through acquisitions. In the same year she brought in three new HR system modules, built a learning and development programme from scratch and helped overhaul the company's technology and AI infrastructure.
"People are what run a company, you can have all the strategy you want, but people are the ones who make it happen," she said. The write-up doesn't say what the learning programme covers, who it reaches or what changed, so we can't tell you how it works. What stands out is the timing. A company that more than doubles through acquisitions has a lot of people who arrive from other employers with their own habits, and she built the learning programme in the same year instead of waiting for things to settle.
Growth by acquisition brings in people who have never seen your way of working. Give them one place to learn it, early.
TEMPLATE: THE FIRST YEAR LEARNING PROGRAMME
| The First Year Learning Programme 1. List the skills every new starter needs in their first 90 days and the ones every manager needs in their first year. 2. Choose three and build one short session for each, using your own people to teach them. 3. Run each session with new starters and acquired teams together, so they meet each other. 4. Ask for one line of feedback after every session and change the next one based on it. 5. After six months, list which sessions people used and which they skipped, and drop the second group. |
Play 05
Melaina Slater's Calgary Humane Society Gives Staff Peer Support, Mental Health First Aid Training for Leaders and a Zen Den
Calgary Humane Society, founded in 1922, was the city's first animal shelter, and its staff deal with animals in distress and owners in hard situations every day. Melaina Slater, its Director of Human Resources, has been there since 2006. She told HRD Canada in December 2024, "This is a line of work where people can quickly burn out." So the society offers counselling, a peer support network and mental health first aid training for leaders, plus a quiet room called the Zen Den and monthly pet loss gatherings run by a psychotherapist. "It's important that we don't add to the stigma of having those conversations," she said.
It starts before the job does. Slater said she asks candidates in interviews about their support systems and hobbies, to check they have healthy ways to recover. After hiring, staff are encouraged to move between departments, with job shadowing and development courses, and many senior leaders, Slater included, started in entry level roles. The article gives no turnover, absence or survey figures. The society's 2024 charity filings list 87 full time staff, and it has part time staff we couldn't count. So this one is about structure, not results.
If the work is emotionally heavy, support has to be part of the job from the first interview, not something added once someone is struggling.
TEMPLATE: THE SUPPORT LADDER
| The Support Ladder 1. Write down the hardest moments of the job, such as a difficult case, a loss or a conflict with the public. 2. Next to each, write what support exists today and who offers it. Wherever the second column is empty, start there. 3. Add one peer option, such as trained colleagues who volunteer to listen, and train your leaders in mental health first aid. 4. Set aside a quiet space and a regular, facilitated session for the moments you named. 5. At each interview, ask candidates how they recover after a hard day, and show them what you offer. |
THREE MICRO-PLAYBOOKS
Playbook 01
Plan Who Steps Up Before the Role Opens
Patrick Henley's succession planning and career conversations are, in his nomination, the reason more than 90% of management roles at the water authority go to people already there. Paragraf's apprenticeships are the same idea at the other end: people start before they have the credentials and learn the job on the job. LinkedIn research reported by HR Dive in February 2024 found internal mobility up 30% since 2021. It also found that managers and senior staff were twice as likely to make an internal move as the people working under them, and that organisations that personalise career development had a 15% higher internal mobility rate than those where employees lacked training. It's LinkedIn's own member data and a couple of years old, so read it as a pattern and not a benchmark.
That gap at the bottom is the place to look. If you only ask who is ready to be a manager, you'll miss the people one level below. List your hardest to fill roles. For each, name two people who could grow into it, and make sure at least one of them isn't a manager yet. Hold the career conversation with each of them this quarter.
Don't claim more than you can show. The water authority figures come from an award nomination, and nothing we read says how many managers there are in total. Count your own: how many management roles did you fill from inside last year?
Playbook 02
Say the Culture Out Loud, on a Schedule
Two of this week's leaders started by listening. Patrick Henley's nomination says he led listening sessions in every department and division. Jeremy Reeves spent about seven months with the owners of Creative Consortium working out what the company stands for, then wrote it down so people could point to it. Neither source gives results, so treat this as a practice to test and not a proven fix.
You can run a small version in a month. Pick one team and hold one listening session. Write down, in plain words, what you heard, and read it back to them. If they say "yes, that's it", you have something to build on. If they say no, you've learned something cheaply.
Then keep it in front of people. Reeves's ten minutes, three mornings a week, is the part we'd copy first. It's short enough that nobody can say they're too busy and regular enough to become a habit. Run it for four weeks and ask the team at the end whether they'd keep it.
Playbook 03
Build Support Into the Hardest Moments of the Job
Calgary Humane Society's list of counselling, peer support, mental health first aid for leaders, a quiet room and monthly pet loss gatherings reads like a map of the hardest moments in its work, with a response next to each. In Canada, the National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace sets out 13 workplace factors that can affect employees' mental health. The Mental Health Commission of Canada says hundreds of Canadian companies have implemented it and that many report better productivity, financial performance, risk management, recruitment and retention. Those are the Commission's own account of what implementers report, so read them as claims and not proof.
You can run the same exercise in an hour. Write the five hardest moments in your teams' work. Next to each, write what help exists today and who offers it. Wherever the second column is empty, you've found where to start.
Then check it reaches people. A quiet room only helps if people feel allowed to use it. Add a question to your next survey: do you know where to go when a day goes badly, and would you feel comfortable using it?
FOLLOW THE FIVE
NO GUEST THIS WEEK, FIVE PEOPLE LEADERS INSTEAD
Five people leaders in the UK, the US and Canada, two of them past guests, and where to find them.
We picked each of these five for one initiative we think is worth your attention. Two of them, Helen Dighton and Jeremy Reeves, were guests on The Work Life Reporter Live in September. The other three we haven't spoken to. We aimed for organisations of 100 to 200 people and didn't hit that every time. Strategic Group grew to just under 200, according to its award write-up, and we put Paragraf at roughly 150 from a third party estimate. Calgary Humane Society reports 87 full time staff in its 2024 charity filings, plus part time staff we couldn't count. The water authority doesn't publish a headcount where we looked, and LinkedIn lists Creative Consortium at 11 to 50 employees.
If you know one of them, say hello for us. We'll tag all five when we post about this issue on LinkedIn.
How to read this. Everything here comes from public sources, plus Jeremy's own words from his episode. Most of the results are reported by the organisations themselves or by the people who nominated them for awards, which rely on the nominator's account. Read them as what each one says, not as independent proof. If we've got something wrong, reply and we'll fix it.
THE FIVE, AND WHERE TO FIND THEM
Helen Dighton, HR Director, Paragraf
UK. Follow for growing talent through apprenticeships in an industry with no ready made pipeline. Find Helen on LinkedIn →
Jeremy Reeves, Chief Creative and Culture Officer, Creative Consortium
US, Colorado. Follow for a written culture and ten minutes about it, three mornings a week. Find Jeremy on LinkedIn →
Patrick Henley, Director of Human Resources and Risk Management, Cobb County-Marietta Water Authority
US, Georgia. Follow for succession planning, career conversations and listening sessions in every department. Find Patrick on LinkedIn →
Cylee Wagner-Gasmo, People and Culture Manager, Strategic Group
Canada. Follow for people work through fast growth by acquisition. Find Cylee on LinkedIn →
Melaina Slater, Director of Human Resources, Calgary Humane Society
Canada. Follow for peer support and mental health first aid in emotionally heavy work. Find Melaina on LinkedIn →
Sources: Paragraf, The Work Life Reporter Live Episode 12, SHRM-Atlanta, the Cobb County-Marietta Water Authority, HRD Canada, the Mental Health Commission of Canada and HR Dive. Reply if you'd like the links.
READER POLL
Last Week's Result, and This Week's Question
Last week we asked: how big is the people team in your organisation? 45% said just me, 27.5% said two to five of us and 27.5% said six or more. Totals only, no names and no companies.
Close to half of you are a people team of one, and the rest are split evenly between teams of two to five and teams of six or more.
Jeremy Reeves's team meets for ten minutes, three mornings a week, to talk about culture. We're curious how that compares with what you do. One click is all it takes.
How often does your whole organisation meet to talk about culture?
Your answer is confidential, not anonymous: it is linked to your subscriber profile, which only the TWLR team can see. We publish only totals, never names or companies. You can ask us to delete your answers at any time.
Next Monday we'll share the result, including how many of you answered and no names, and ask the next question. You can read how we handle your answers on our privacy page. theworklifereporter.com/privacy
THE WORK LIFE REPORTER LIVE
A weekly LinkedIn live series where we take the most interesting conversation from the newsletter into a real room, with guests, debate, and the questions the newsletter doesn't have space to answer.
This Week
No Episode This Week. We Spent the Slot on Five People Leaders Instead of a Guest
Back to a normal live conversation soon.
If there's an episode you missed the first time, this is a good week to catch up on it. Two of this week's five, Helen Dighton and Jeremy Reeves, have both been guests.
And that's a wrap for Issue 020. No live episode again this week, so five more people leaders instead, two of them from our own stage. Hit reply and tell us who else we should look at. If you lead people at an organisation of a few hundred or fewer, we read every reply.
Follow The Work Life Reporter on LinkedIn for what we share between issues, and look out for our post tagging all five leaders. TWL Live returns with a guest soon. New here? Subscribe free at theworklifereporter.com.
PS. Know someone who leads people and would find this useful? Forward it on. Ten seconds to share, a lot longer to write.
PPS. Haven't answered the poll yet? It's one click, up above. We'll share the result next Monday.