Jason Bloomfield, Global Head of People Change & Experience Design, Ericsson is taking part in one of the most hotly anticipated sessions at this year’s Watercooler event: how to create a thriving workplace culture and survive a toxic one.
You can hear Jason speak at The Watercooler Event, which takes place on 7th and 8th May 2025 at ExCeL in London, which is Europe’s leading trade show, with free-to-attend content, dedicated to creating workplaces that empower both people and business to thrive. He’s speaking on Day 2, in a ‘fireside chat’ interview with Barbara Jeffery, Partner, McKinsey & Company.
You can find out more and register to attend here.
Having started out in finance, he then moved into organisational change, people and culture, so he’s has an extensive career experience to draw his advice from. We caught up with him ahead of his session to find out more….
What’s been your biggest cultural people-related challenge since joining Ericsson?
Bringing in empathy. Of all organisations I’ve worked at, this one is the most tech-oriented and it’s been the most challenging to get empathy into play.
There’s this idea often amongst colleagues – I wouldn’t say all, but certainly many – who feel that there’s nothing that ‘tech’ can’t solve. And unfortunately that’s a sure fire way to fail.
You need to start, not with the solution, but with the question: what’s the problem? And the only way you understand the problem is through empathy.
You’ve got to connect with people and understand what it is they are looking to do, and why.
How do you go about increasing empathy, then?
It’s less fun than playing with new technology, but one way is through feedback loops where you gather qualitative and quantitative data.
Another way is – shock, horror! – communicating before you do something, rather than after it’s done. I’m slightly joking here but there’s a serious point. There was this huge resistance to communicating about what we were doing before it went live. But you can’t show up with jazz hands when you’ve created something and expect others to love it, when you haven’t been creating with them and iteratively testing the concept on them.
You need to co-create with your target audience so when the end product comes out, you’ve de-risked and it lands so much better.
We’ve done a lot of work on this and now colleagues are much more comfortable with the idea of ‘road maps’ instead of ‘contracts’. They are aspirational. They’re not contractual. People understand that things happen and there may have to be a change of direction down the road.
Presumably you can apply this empathic thinking to anything in business – such as launching a Health and Wellbeing strategy?
Yes.
The most important thing is that the people that the product (or campaign) is aimed at need to see the value in it for them.
One of the initiatives I started was a global survey about the employee experience in order to improve it. I got huge pushpack about this idea at the start. But I firmly believe that my job is to be a fixer and, unless you can measure it, you can’t manage it.
I argued to senior management that if we’re serious about employee experience, we need ways to identify how we improve it. And transparency should be a value, so let’s live up to our ideals. Now we’ve got to the point where colleagues are hungry for the latest survey results.
You’re American and have been brought into this ‘fixer’ role. Do you see big cultural differences between the UK and Sweden and the US, when it comes to making mistakes and learning?
I was brought in because Ericsson needed to figure out how to make the employee experience better. I definitely felt some defensiveness around this and looking at what had come before.
Some managers felt furious at this retrospective process because there was a sense of pride and authorship.
Do you think you can teach everyone empathy?
No.
I think it’s one of those things that’s hardwired.
That said, if you don’t have it, you can create awareness and some kind of mitigation steps around it.
It’s the same as other work behaviours, like time management, for example. There are tools or books you can read up on, if you know you have a challenge in this area. But it takes self awareness.
What do you do personally to ensure you remain self aware?
I’ve always been deathly afraid that I’ll get desensitised to a situation, or I’ve got a blind spot. What I do to guard against both of these is I’m always on the hunt for a mentor so that he or she can take a look and say ‘you’re doing this completely wrong’ and be honest about my blindspots.
What about ensuring an organisation as a whole remains receptive to learning and seeing its blindspots?
Every team that I’ve built, I always recruit from outside the industry. Doing this you get those wonderful, blue-sky kind of questions like ‘why do you do it like that?’
We need this diversity of thinking. There’s a gazillion piles of research and white papers that prove diversity helps you be a more performant organisation.
So, we need to embrace these questions.
If someone is reading this article and they’ve got culture change in their remit, what advice would you have?
Start anywhere. Just start. There’s no one perfect answer. There’s no one-size-fits-all.
Use data to underpin what you do and what you’re communicating.
But also be careful about data. When you’re creating feedback loops make sure they are completely anonymous. If you make them anonymous, you take the politics out and people will be honest.
Make sure you have diverse voices. You don’t want an echo chamber.
Sample people who’ve been at your company less than two years as they’re not desensitised along with those more than five years to help counsel you on past organisational ‘traumas’ and ‘wins’ you take context from. Diverse voices, alongside data, is a powerful combo for cultural change that lands and lands with impact.
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