Do you want to negotiate flexible and remote working into the future? Have you wondered what it’s really like going out on your own – and then Covid-19 hits?

My guest today is Liam Pietzka, the founder and director of Brightbox Consulting, a recruitment agency with a focus on the Digital space, specifically Digital Creative, Digital Marketing and Digital Technology. After 6 years as General Manager of Aquent he took the leap to start his own business, quickly followed by the onset of Covid-19 lockdown here in Sydney. 

In this episode learn Liam’s tricks for negotiating flexible working arrangements with your current or future employers, Liam’s mantra to manage his mindset and how he believes empathy and human connection is what will keep driving success. 

• [4.18] Originally an actor in the West End, after missing Cardiff and “falling into” recruitment he moving across the world to Sydney.

• [8.00] Liam always wanted to start his own business and its because he craved being his own manager and do things on his own terms. 

• [8.40] “Champagne and razor blades”: that’s what some people describe the recruitment industry. Liam’s doing it different, moving from transactional conversations to real consultation.

• [11.00] Work life integration and being able to design work life to spend more time with family is driving Liam’s choices.

• [12.00] Conversations between candidates and employers are changing. Flexibility used to be number four or five on most people’s lists of desires. Now it’s number one.

• [13.35] Cultural elements such as collaboration are being discussed and businesses realise, they need to manage people by outputs if they are not already.

• [16.00] Flexibility policies are now one of the first things asked about in the recruitment process. But flexibility should not be a policy, the approach itself needs flexibility as it’s different for everyone. For Liam flexibility and mental health is about separating home from work.

• [17.30] Liam’s tips to negotiate on-going or more flexibility: focus on output and delivery. It’s a negotiation not a dictation. Aim for an open conversation.

• [19.50] Things change: you open a business, build a strategy, stick to your guns, be consistent. And then out of nowhere the world changes. How Liam has pivoted his conversations, because the problem he is solving has changed.

• [23.13] Running a company at the start of Covid-19 lockdown: it makes you learn about yourself, including your resilience and creativity.

• [23.45] Liam meditates more now than he ever has before! Mindset management: understand the triggers, recognise it and change the situation to change his perspective. It’s confronting, but we choose our experience.

• [25.52] Liam’s mantra: “You can’t try to manage the things you can’t control and if you can’t control it you need to let it go.”

• [26.40] The ideas Liam loves from Dr. Brené Brown: we have a history of making up our own stories, our own internal dialogue. That reflects how we see each ourselves as a person. We need to recognise the story to change its path. You’re the only person who can change the direction.

• [27.27] Liam’s tips for creating a work life you love:

  • Ask yourself: what do you need to be doing on a weekly basis to create balance?

  • You can build work around that, as long as you’re producing a high degree of output

  • Balance and mental health, until now we have put them on the back burner

  • Work can be built around your lifestyle

• [29.42] We all have an individual impact. More people are solving some of the problems that have cropped up from the Covid-19 outbreak. What can you to do have a long lasting impact? Human centred designers are building products on their own to solve specific problems linked to Covid-19. 

• [31.29] As we look to the future, employers are going to have to listen to employees more and empathy and human connection are the most important things we need. Vulnerability is one of the most powerful tools we have.

Want to follow Liam’s adventures. Connect with him on LinkedIn.