I would like to welcome members to the fourth meeting in 2018 of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. We have apologies this morning from Elaine Smith MSP. Agenda item 1 is business in private. Can the committee agree to take agenda item 4 in private? This is an item on the budget process. Agenda item 2 is sexual harassment and inappropriate conduct and the committee's inquiry into this area. Joining us today are Maurice Golden, business manager for the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, Rhoda Grant, business manager for the Scottish Labour Party, Patrick Harvey, business manager for the Scottish Green Party, Bill Kidd, chief whip for the Scottish National Party and Willie Rennie, business manager for the Scottish Liberal Democrats. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. I am going to start off the committee's questioning and looking at the area of the Parliament's survey results, which were published last week. They revealed that, among those who experienced sexual harassment, 45 per cent of those said that the perpetrator was an MSP. MSPs make up fewer than 8 per cent of those who were issued with the survey. I would like to ask the panel why it was the case. What were the reasons for that? I think that it is a salutary lesson for everyone in the Scottish Parliament to hear those figures. We really need to look at the processes of each of the parties and of the Parliament on how best we can address such significant figures. I think that it is incumbent on all MSPs who are the people elected here, the trust put in them by the people of their constituencies and the people of Scotland, to ensure that we set a high benchmark for society in general. We are letting people down to some extent with those figures. We need to ensure that, in the near future, we can turn those figures around and make people feel safe and comfortable coming to their work. Whoever they happen to be employed by is going to have duty of care to them. I think that those figures let us all down. It is a salutary lesson for us. I think that we should be deeply concerned, but probably unsurprised by some of the findings of the survey. We have seen in many walks of life, whether in the public eye or out of the public eye, that the abuse of power is part of that dynamic. I do not think that we should be surprised that power is abused in a workplace, in show business, in religious organisations, in any of the other organisations where we have seen scandals come out and a growing recognition of a problem that is intolerable. I do not think that we should be surprised that it is the case in politics. All of us need to take a collective responsibility, not just for the scale of the problem but for the power dynamics involved. That obviously has a relevance to political life where elected office and in particular those who are protected from the kind of consequences that might come to bear in other workplaces. That is an unavoidable reality at the moment of political life, but it is something that we need to take responsibility for in designing the processes and systems that we use to respond to the problem. I find the findings deeply disappointing. I think that we all had a higher degree of expectation from our colleagues and I think that those figures are quite stark. I suppose that what we have to do is try to drill down into those figures, because it does not mean that 8 per cent of MSPs are doing this. It means that they are responsible for 8 per cent—sorry—45 per cent of MSPs are doing this, because it means that it could be one person. I think that if you drill down into the report, you will see that it was seldom one incident that was being reported. It was quite often a number of incidents and sometimes almost a perpetual bad behaviour. What we find quite often is that one person is abusing their power, and maybe two people are abusing their power. I suppose that we are no different than any other walk of life in that, but we need to make sure that people have the comfort to come forward and report that, because the chances are that we are speaking about a minority of people who are abusing the power and the position that they have been put in, and that they need to be dealt with to stop that behaviour recurring. I think that what we need to do as a Parliament is to create the right circumstances for people to feel empowered to come forward and get the right support. I was shocked and surprised by the results. I think that Rhoda makes a very good point in the sense that, if it is indeed a small number and a tiny proportion of individuals perpetrating those acts, that is quite a different issue than having a culture that is the problem. My sense in Parliament overall, although I appreciate that that culture could vary in individual parties, but my impression of Parliament coming in as a new Parliamentarian is that the culture in that institution is similar to other public bodies. For example, those that I have experienced are people such as Scottish Enterprise or Scottish Natural Heritage. That culture does not mean that there could not be issues but that there is not a cultural issue to address. That would be my sense from my experience in Parliament. Therefore, in terms of how you then look to deal with those issues and what processes that we can put in place as parties and indeed as Parliament, the steps that have been taken over the past few months are something to be welcomed in terms of making sure that everybody is aware and actively helping people where there is an issue to look to address that in an appropriate manner. I suspect that it might shake us from our complacency a little bit because we did believe that we were better. We thought that Westminster was the place where it all happened and up here somehow because we had a different culture and a different approach. We are a new institution and we weren't subject to that. I think that, hopefully, it might have just shaken everybody up a little bit to test the procedures and make sure that we are understanding what kind of culture we have established here. I accept all the points that have been made. It might be one person who has made me a number of people, but the fact is that there is 45 per cent of experience that shows that it is quite a widespread issue. We need to try to review procedures and make sure that we have it right. However, the response rate to the survey was quite high. The Westminster survey response rate was quite low and, therefore, I think that the authenticity of it was probably less. However, it was quite high here, so perhaps it is even more reflective of what is happening. I was in Westminster before and I was there for four years, so I experienced both cultures. The late night voting culture of having to be there until 10 o'clock. I am not saying that everybody goes to drink, but everybody goes for a meal and there is an awful lot more socialising than perhaps there is here. You would think that there was more propensity for it to happen down there, but the fact that those figures are so high should give us a bit of a wake-up call to look again at our procedures. Going back to the survey again, the most common response among those who had experienced inappropriate behaviour was to take no action. Why do you believe that people are so reluctant to come forward when they have experienced that type of behaviour? I had a think about that because I have spoken to quite a number of members of staff over the past few months about the issue. Some people might feel, because, previously, as was just said by Willie Rennie earlier, that the culture's mindset is different here, that they might have experienced something that they were on their own or alone and they did not know that there were other people in a similar circumstance. That makes it much more difficult for them to come forward and say something. Maybe, hopefully, the survey has uncovered some figures that are higher than, obviously, I would have hoped, but they are certainly higher than I thought. That might open people's ideas up about the right thing to do, to come and make representation about it, to make a complaint if necessary, but to let people know that that is happening. Those horrible things happen in recesses away from the public eye, and if we can bring it into the public eye, I think that that can help to address it and reduce it significantly. I feel really bad about people keeping this to themselves and being afraid of actually seeing anything. I suppose that I would mention three factors, one that is relevant to the whole of our society, is that there has been simply putting up with the endemic nature of sexual harassment and sexist and sexually entitled behaviour. Part of the reason why this inquiry is happening is that there is a mood, a foot, that time is up on this, and there is a need for change and a refusal to tolerate it, but that has been the case throughout our society, not just in this country but around the world, a sense of women in particular simply feeling that they have to live their lives with the expectation that this is normal. If we are saying now that this is not normal, we need to recognise that that is a moment for change in our culture. The two particular factors that I would mention that are relevant to this Parliament as an institution that might be additional inhibiting factors to people reporting. One is around loyalty. Most people working in the political part of Parliament—I am not necessarily talking about SPCB staff or officials or what have you—but in the political part of Parliament, most people have a sense of loyalty and commitment to the party group or to the politicians that they are working with. There will be a sense of feeling that there is a reluctance to do something that would damage an organisation that people are hearing because of a personal and a sincere commitment to. For me, that is an additional reason why Parliament has its own procedures for reporting neutrally that do not rely on people raising an issue inside a political party. They should be able to do that absolutely if they wish to, but they need to have the additional option of a neutral, non-party political route to raise those matters. The second factor that is particular here, of course, is around scrutiny. If an issue, as we have seen recently, becomes high profile and becomes the subject of public comment, that may be an additional inhibiting factor. People may simply not want a face going through that and having it potentially drag on for months and affect their lives and prevent them from being able to get on with their lives. There is probably not a simple solution to that, but I think that having quick resolution to complaints that are raised will help rather than allowing the perception that, if you raise an issue, it is going to dominate your life for months and months. I think that it is down to power dynamics because people use and abuse their power to harass other people. They are picking on people that they hope are not going to come forward because they are senior to them. I think that that happens in most walks of life. There is also another issue that really impacts on the Parliament and that MSPs are the employer of their own staff. We have a grievance procedure written in our contracts of employment for our staff, but we are the employer. If you have a grievance about your employer, there is very little place to go.  The Parliament or the party does not have any locus over that.  Are you going to be able to continue to work for that person if that relationship totally breaks down? I would argue that that relationship has already broken down if you are being harassed and treated that way by your employer. As a Parliament, we need to look at that dynamic and see what protections we can build into the way in which we employ staff that protect people from having to make the choice of reporting or losing the roof over their head, which is pretty stark. People also need to know that they are being believed. If it is a power dynamic again, the person is senior to them, they are probably well respected, so people are concerned that they will not be heard. Just picking up on the point that Patrick made about loyalty to the party, and maybe I am a bit afraid to raise that, because it is going to cause bad headlines for the party that you are committed to as a member of staff. I suggest a difference. If that person is harassing you, they will probably be harassing a number of other people, and that is more reputationally damaging to the political party that you are loyal to. If you are loyal to that party, it is almost incumbent on you to weed out that really bad behaviour to protect your party, so I would put that as another option. However, I know that if you are talking about your employer, then it becomes very difficult because people need to have a roof over their head, they need to eat, and most of the time I would imagine that people will seek alternative employment to get themselves out of that situation and maybe never report it. I think that that is the crux of the matter, especially with MSPs, that we need to wrestle with and deal with. I think that an additional point to add is that the vast majority of people in Parliament have not chosen to work in public life. That is an obvious and clear barrier in terms of the confidentiality of reporting an incident, because, given that the vast majority of people have not chosen to be in the newspapers, to report and to have journalists wanting to hear your story, well, to be fair to lots of people, they might not want to put themselves in that position, and I completely understand that. That almost links to the second point, which is confidence in the process in terms of how that is dealt with. From my perspective, that has to be dealt with with confidentiality for both individuals as much to protect the individual as anything else. I think that ensuring that the process is robust is absolutely critical to ensuring that the incidents are reported separate to that, but prior to the revelations coming out, I proactively contacted all the Conservative members of staff to say that if there was any issue at all, I was available to speak to them. Again, not specifically on this topic, but just on any topic, including other grievance procedures and anything else. I think that that is something that can be helpful in terms of ensuring that individuals will report because they have confidence in the system and the process that will follow. I do not think that I have much more to add, but reflecting on when the Me Too initiative broke, it was like a dam bursting where people felt that all of a sudden they could speak and be heard, and they were respected for it. Perhaps through that process we may get a bit of a dam bursting in the Parliament where the balance between damage limitation, which is often a focus of a political party when there is negative publicity around, is tilted more in favour of doing the right thing rather than just damage limitation, which inevitably is what an awful lot of political parties are focused on. I agree with all the points that have been made, particularly Maurice's last point, about not a lot of people who work in here did not really come in to come into the spotlight. Therefore, dealing with a sexual harassment case is bad enough, but I have to tell the newspapers at the same time when your air, your washing, your dirty linen in public is quite a difficult thing to do. I completely agree with Maurice's last point, and that is why I think that we need to provide easier paths for people to make the complaint and be dealt with in a sensitive way. Of the fact that so few people who have experienced harassment actually take action, two of the themes that we have heard over the last few weeks is that it can be because they do not know what the procedures are or when they know what the procedures are, they do not have confidence in them. Moving on to your party's procedures, what might stop people currently from coming forward in light of what your procedures are right now and what action have you taken of any over the last few weeks as parties to raise awareness of the procedures or to actually change the procedures? In particular, if I could turn the focus on one area, that is who their first port of call is. If their first port of call is an MSP, that strikes me as a bit of a problem. There are a variety of different channels that members of staff can choose. The business manager, me, is one of them, but the ethical standards commission is another. The party, because of our experience in recent years, has set up a pastoral care officer who is a UK-wide person. Although he is employed by the party, he has clearly been seen by people in the party and has been separate from the management structure, so he is respected as such. We did that two or three years ago and it seems to have been bedded in reasonably well. Of course, we are prepared to review that because some people have suggested that you could have an independent person outside of the party who would conduct that role. We are wanting to stay with this procedure, which is relatively new for now to see how it settles in, but we have set up a number of different channels. Business manager, ethical standards, but also through to the pastoral care officer. The pastoral care officer gets regular correspondence about a number of different issues, so there seems to be a major part of the party structure. How has that been circulated? How are all members of the party aware of that? Everybody has received a letter that was from Mike Rumbles when he was a business manager at the time, but they have received it with it and it all sets out very clearly in a short letter. How do you define bullying and harassment? It is pretty transparent for members of staff. That is what was described by Willie Rennie, which is a logical approach in the SNP. I am the chief whip in the SNP group in the Scottish Parliament, but we have a team of whips and they are not all men. On that basis, I am hopeful that, if people feel uncomfortable and it may be going and speaking to someone who is a man, if it is a woman who has got the issue, it might find it easier to find someone to speak to. I am not trying to say something more about how the party operates things in the Scottish Parliament, but there should be a camaraderie element where people do not feel as if they are isolated and have no one to talk to because they are sitting in their own wee box in an office or something. There is a mixing that goes on. I know for a fact that, when people have had issues with an MSP or someone else, I have heard about it not directly from that person in the first instance, but from others who have spoken on their behalf because the person, as was mentioned earlier, might find it something that they are embarrassed about or worried about, whether because of their job or because of the focus of attention that might shift on to them. That does happen, but that is anecdotal to some extent. In terms of party, all SNP staff and all of the parliaments where we have SNP representation and at the SNP's headquarters received a letter from Nicola Sturgeon as party leader. Within that was outlined the duties of care, which we all have to each other, but also a named person who is a solicitor with the firm of lawyers used by the SNP, who people can go to and report things. There is also a point of contact at the SNP headquarters, which is the party clerk. There are people out with the group of MSPs where SNP members are allowed to go and encouraged to go if they feel that there is any issue. If I could start on the party side first of all from the Scottish Green Party's perspective, you will be aware that we have gone through a huge amount of change over recent years since 2014. Our membership is much bigger than it used to be, so we have been trying to review and reform a great deal about how we organise the party. The number of elections and referendums that have come along since then has delayed some of that, but on the conducting complaints side of things, we have made more progress than on other things. We used to have a system where what I would describe as a slightly arcane process took too long to resolve issues. That refers to the first part of your question. One of the reasons that people would be unhappy to take part in a process or to raise an issue internally within the party is around the length of time that it can take. The process also involved not just some elected members of the party but random selection of party members in the sense of a jury, if you like, for certain circumstances. Again, that gave rise to lots of problems around people having access to the right amount of support or understanding of issues and timescales. Recently, we have done away with that system and set up a new process whereby each local branch appoints a welfare and conduct officer. That has to be somebody who does not have any other position within the party, whether as an officer or a candidate or anything like that. That group then, across all those branches, works together. Our national conduct and complaints committee is developing new processes. The policy that was to be put in place was to go to our party council meeting, which was cancelled because of the bad weather the other week, but that was the meeting at which we were supposed to put in place new procedures for the interim period between the old system going out and the new one coming in. Basically, we are in the middle of an extensive redesign of how we deal with all matters to do with complaints, conduct and the welfare of our party members. Once that is in place, our parliamentary group will more than likely apply that in the same way that a branch would by having one person who does not hold another office, so it would not be an MSP acting as a welfare and conduct officer and tying into the rest of the party. If a complaint goes through that process, that would involve our operations manager, that is our senior staff member, working with two of the elected committees, our standing orders committee and our operations committee to develop processes that were right for each circumstance. For a small political group, you will be aware that we do not have a big team of whips, as might be relevant in the SNP group, for example, so we would be very keen that an issue could be resolved without relying on somebody who is either involved in or a close colleague of the person who is being complained about, so we would be keen to make sure that that tapped into the party's external processes. I would add one final caveat, which is that one of the themes that I know the committee has discussed is around the lack of an ultimate backstop of an MSP not being able to be dismissed from their job. If complaints like that all go through political parties, I fear that we may still be in a position where that backstop is not possible. The outcome of an investigation needs to be available to a body that has the authority to make a decision about disciplining a member to the point of expulsion or removal from office. A political party would not be in that position. That, again, leaves me asking, should we be expecting people to go through party procedures in those circumstances? For the most serious issues where you would want a serious disciplinary option to be available, it seems to me that that needs to be tapped into an independent and official process for disciplining MSPs, not necessarily a party, because that may not have the option of taking that kind of disciplinary measure. We have a formal process, which the committee has a copy of. In recognition and I think that everyone recognises that a formal process is probably not the first port of call for somebody experiencing this, we also have a contract with rape crisis for a confidential helpline for people to contact. We are also clear that we need to do as much as we can to support people and encourage them to come forward. We have reminded staff that they can contact our leader or our group exec members. That is a range of five different people that they can contact within the party group. I know that people might be reluctant to contact someone whom they see as a friend of the person that they are complaining about, but to give them enough variety of people that they can contact and raise the issue with is really important. They can also raise the issue with the general secretary of our party. There are a number of routes in. There is also the police. Sexual assault is a crime, and if people are facing that, they do not necessarily have to go through a party procedure. They can report that to the police, and, indeed, if anyone is disclosing behaviour that falls into that category, I would suggest that they should be encouraging them to do that. However, what is most important is to get beside the person and support them, because it is quite a frightening place, especially if you feel your life or your work is being affected by that. It is really important that people beside them help in supporting them through the process, but also allowing them to be in charge of the steps that they take. I think that that is really important as well. I think that within the Conservative group, there is widespread knowledge of how to report an incident. There are a number of channels in which any individual could do that. There is a confidential phone line, a confidential email address, and there are, if you like, slightly more informal mechanisms via myself, as chief weapon business manager, the director of the party, or indeed—this is not specifically on this topic, but we have staff reps in Holyrood that individuals can go to, and we also have trained mental health members of staff as well. There are a number of routes that people could choose to follow in terms of this particular topic, but there are a whole range of other issues that could be raised. I certainly have confidence in that code of conduct and the system in terms of how it would work. I think that we would need to be very careful about how a, if you like, non-party system was put in place and how that would work. An example that I would use on that front would be—this would be my concern—on this topic if we put in another system that was not from the parties. At the Scottish parliamentary elections, once everyone was elected, members from another party put in a claim to the police that there had been a dispute over irregular election expenses, and then immediately phoned the journalists, who then managed to confirm that the individual was being investigated on a breach of election rules. That story ran for six months until the police dropped the case. If you are in a situation like this for MSPs and where it is a vexatius claim, they would need to be protected from that where they were deemed not guilty. If individual parties were choosing to make vexatius claims about individual MSPs, that would do two things. One, it is very inappropriate for the individual MSPs, but if we remember why we are all here, it is to make sure that individuals have confidence in the system, that they can be kept confidential if they want it. We deal with the issues around sexual harassment and bullying, and I am not convinced that another system would necessarily solve that. That needs to be the focus of any recommendations on behalf of the parties or, indeed, from this committee. A brief supplementary and perhaps just one or two could answer. If there was a situation involving individuals from two or more parties, what is the solution? I think that, for instance, if someone were accusing an MSP of my own party and maybe a member of staff from your own party, I would believe that both parties would work together. I would expect your party to be supporting your member of staff and giving them that. I would expect our party to be taking that very seriously and dealing with the perpetrator of that abuse. I do not think that that is party political. I do not think that anyone would use that. It is much too serious to be used as a party political kind of game playing. I think that it is in all our interests to weed it out and make sure that that happens. If that means that we are all working together, I think that we certainly will. I would have no problem whatsoever in working with another party if I thought that one of my members was causing that or perpetrating that kind of abuse to anybody, certainly within the Parliament or another party. It is an important question. I agree entirely with Rhoda. I am absolutely definite that between parties or across the parties, we would work together in order to address such a challenge. However, I believe that the parliamentary authorities are very helpful when it comes to issues such as that as well, in helping to bring us together in order to resolve such an issue. I know for a fact that the chief executive's office, the HR department, would be very willing to provide support should those situations happen. I am just going to move on to Mr Arthur. Can I ask the panel members if they could keep their answers slightly shorter? I know that we all like to talk. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the panel. I would like to pick up on a point at Patrick Harvie's race. That is the issue of an ultimate sanction. Clearly, this has a significant bearing on the confidence of any complaints process. Given the unique nature of an MSP's employment, it can only ultimately be disqualified for acts in which it is a threshold of criminality, whereas in other occupations where dismissive could occur for acts of gross misconduct, it does not necessarily apply for MSPs. I would like to hear the views of the panel on the issue of an ultimate sanction, potentially how that could be administered, and any specific thoughts on the power of recall in relation to those matters. I have been a long-term advocate of having a system of recall. You need to be careful that it is not being used for political motives, that it is based on disciplinary issues, but I think that the Westminster system that they come up with, which is a combination of different thresholds that have to be met, including a public threshold, would be an appropriate one to do. The Westminster recall system is based on if you have received a prison sentence of less than 12 months, because if you are over 12 months, you are automatically excluded. If it is less than 12 months, if you have had a suspension from the standards committee in Westminster or through Ipsa, the expenses body at Westminster, if you have been found to put in misleading or fraudulent expense claims, those are the three triggers. Then the speaker would issue a notice for a petition and would have to raise the support of 10 per cent of the electorate in that constituency. Because we have a different electoral system with a regional list, obviously we need to take that into account, but we would also need to consider whether those with the right thresholds internally. It is not a free-for-all, it is not something that a politically motivated group of people could go out there to try and oust an MSP that they happen to disagree with politically. It would have to have met a number of different thresholds. I think that that would in some way help us to police ourselves in certain circumstances. We have had a number of individual cases that I will not mention in the Parliament, going back a number of years and we have felt helpless to be able to do anything about it. I would support a system of recall being introduced here. We need to look at the Westminster system, we need to understand whether those with the right hurdles, the right thresholds to be met, but I think that it is worthy of consideration. I would have serious concerns about that. I can see a case for a system of recall in relation to political matters, if, for example, the constituents of an MSP were so angry at a political decision that the MSP had made, perhaps conflicting with their manifesto commitments or their stated policy. I can see that the constituents in that case might say that they have a democratic right to change their decision about the election of that MSP. Having that kind of recall process in relation specifically to issues like sexual harassment does seem to me inevitably to turn the matter into a public campaign, even if the threshold that has been reached is around disciplinary matters that have been properly investigated and even where the intention has nothing to do with the political matters or the political identity or affiliation of the MSP. Even where it is not being used for that vexatious motivation but being used for the right motivation, we would still ultimately be turning what should be a disciplinary matter into a public campaign at the ballot box. I am not suggesting for a moment that the Scottish political landscape should be compared directly to that of the US, but we have seen elsewhere that the situation in which someone bragging about committing sexual assault can win high office. It would exacerbate two existing problems that may inhibit people from raising a complaint, one being turning the issue that they are complaining about into something that dominates their life and makes this very high profile, and a lack of consistency in what the actual disciplinary consequences of the action being complained about are. People need to have confidence that unacceptable behaviour will be dealt with properly and consistently, and I would have concerns that a recall mechanism would not achieve that. I think that there is a far stronger case for reviewing the disqualification criteria that currently exists and ensuring that where, like in any other workplace, certain standards of behaviour have been failed, there is a disciplinary process that can result in somebody being dismissed on grounds of gross misconduct or something similar. I think that that should be taken outside of the political process. There has to be a process to deal with people who have committed what will be crimes and abuse their power. I do not think that on political issues people are elected and they go to the ballot. They are re-elected again every five years and that is when people make a judgment about their political ideals. However, there has to be a process to deal with somebody whose behaviour has fallen short. It should not be a political process, it should not be a public process. We have standards commissioners on the like that look at people's behaviour. We should be looking at that system to see if there are ways when a case is proved against a person and their behaviour has fallen way short of what we would expect from an elected representative that there are steps that can be taken. Just more generally on recall, I think that with the list system it does not lend itself to that particularly well, given that in many regions irrespective of what any individual MSP has done, there will be enough voters of the other party to ensure that a number of petitioners would be reached. We need to make the distinction between matters that are subject for disciplinary action and matters that are subject for criminal and ultimately criminal convictions, because they are quite different. There could be cases where criminality is seen in a political sense to be justified. For example, with the campaigns against Trident, where people felt that they were doing the consciously objecting to something, and as a result of that, political consciousness ended up with a criminal conviction. We need to concern ourselves with that. I think that where it is a disciplinary matter, it needs to be dealt with by the party itself and that should be proportionate to the act as well. Thank you very much for the question. It is important, as has been said by everyone so far, that what we are doing now is looking at the perpetrator rather than the victim, should I put it that way. It is important that we do not just say that that was a bad thing to do, do not do it again. That does not fill anybody with much confidence. We have to take some direction in terms of disciplinary matters seriously. Perhaps that is something that requires the parties all working together, maybe through the SPCB, to try and look at how we can take that forward and what would work best in our Parliament borrowing from other parliaments' experience and maybe even coming up with some new ideas as to how we handle the future prospects of those who have either committed gross misconduct or criminal acts. We need to figure a hierarchical system of response from the Parliament and from the parties for that. I think that it is something that we really have not looked deeply enough into as yet, and maybe that could be the first stepping stone to doing so. Thank you. Confidentiality was identified as one of the big issues when we took evidence and also the survey has touched on that. There is a lack of confidence in victims about how it would be treated and the support that it would receive, and that has come through already. What are your parties doing to manage that, and are you giving external support from the party to try and bridge that gap of the confidentiality? People believe that it is being managed by the party and that they do not have the confidence in dealing with that. What support mechanisms have you put in place to ensure that outside sources can support you and support the victim to have more confidence in the process? As far as the SNP group is concerned, the decent and caring approach that everyone would like to see is that we hope that we are taking forward in terms of support for complete confidentiality for those who are complainants of misdemeanours against them. We have, in practice, ensured that names are removed from any documents. There are redactions if the person could be identified through a statement, and support in terms of any needed outside interventions that can be brought to bear in support of someone who has suffered such behaviour towards them. That is very important. It is a really good question from that point of view, because, as we were talking about earlier, a lot of people are frightened of reporting anything because they do not know whether that is going to leave them and nor do they actually know whether or not they will be left to deal with things on their own. It is particularly important that we ensure that those who have had a misdemeanor committee against them can have a full apology for a start. That might not be enough, but a full apology is certainly a beginning. I think that that apology should come from the person who has committed the conduct, but also from the political party whom that person has represented. I think that that is important. The individual receives support from whichever body might be the most appropriate. As was mentioned, it could be by road. It could be a rape crisis or it could be some other counselling office that can help people. The person who has committed the misdemeanor committee should be offered some kind of support to change their behaviour patterns. We are not a court.  That cause is not to provide for a criminal style of approach to people who are not imprisoning. What we are doing is to try to bring that type of behaviour to an end and to also change the type of behaviour that some people have been indulging in. Our formal complaints procedure is anonymised, as is our confidential helpline, so that is totally anonymous for people to use. It is important when people make informal complaints that they are in the driving seat of that complaint. It is up to them if they do not want their name known or what action they want taken on their behalf. Given that this is an abusive power, I think that it is very important that the victim is empowered in the steps that they can take to put the situation right. Just to say that the interim policy that I mentioned earlier, which is being put in place during the redesign of our party's internal processes, does go into issues around confidentiality and data protection in relation to sensitive information. The welfare and conduct officers currently being appointed have access to external training, which will support them to understand their responsibilities in that regard. However, as I said, we are still at the process of implementing this newly designed system. I would say that the one area that we are not yet being clear about is communicating how all of this works to our members, whether in the parliamentary group here or wider party members, once the system is fully up and running. That is obviously the next point of action, to communicate how people access it, how people can use it and the confidence that they should have in doing so confidentially. I just wanted to ask how you balance the duty of care to the person who is making the accusation with the duty of care to the person who is being accused, particularly in relation to if they work in the same building or in the same office environment. How do you balance that duty of care to both? That is a particularly important question, because, as we have talked about, people going forward were not, hopefully, in the vast majority of cases. In some cases it may be that someone will leave the Scottish Parliament on the basis that they no longer can or wish to work there. However, what we need to have, as we were talking about earlier, is support for those people who have had unfortunate and bad behaviour committed towards them, and some kind of counselling behaviour for those who have committed that. In every day basis, the place is a certain size and shape, and it is difficult to isolate people away from each other on a permanent basis. It is important that we co-operate with the parliamentary authority to try to ensure that people are not cheek by jill as they go forward, so that they have some degree of separation in order to allow for them to particularly feel comfortable coming into work in the future. As I said, no party can do all that by themselves. It is required that we will have to co-operate with the chief executive's office, presiding officer, etc., in order to try to make sure that we can have a decent working environment for anyone who has suffered such behaviour against them. I know that the Scottish Parliament is willing to co-operate and do so. I think that, in general terms, the principle duty of care has to be to the person making the complaint in the first instance, but beyond that it would be a mistake to be too prescriptive. Different circumstances will apply if it is a complaint being raised informally and where the expectation is that unacceptable behaviour is to be constructively challenged and changed and learn from and understood. That is very different from a situation in which there is a much more serious action being complained about and a disciplinary process at a formal level being put into practice. Again, it would be different if somebody was working here in this building, as opposed to a small number of people working together in a local office, for example. The important thing would be to judge the situation on its own terms and to listen to the needs and wishes of the person who is making the complaint in the first instance. We would be guided by our pastoral care officer as to what would be appropriate for those circumstances, because Patrick Stewart is right that every case will be different. I think that to have a professional adviser who can say what would be appropriate in the circumstances that we would find ourselves in, we all work very closely together and we all perhaps want that to continue in as easy a way as possible. Having somebody professional who is slightly removed from it is perhaps the way to achieve that approach, but we should also make sure that we treat everybody appropriately and fairly and do not automatically assume that, because somebody has been complained about, they are automatically guilty. Likewise, we should not dismiss those who have complained, so keeping the balance right is pretty difficult in many environments, but that is what we have to try and achieve. It takes me back to the issue that I raised very early on in the questioning, if you are talking about an MSP and harassment of their own staff, you are in a really difficult position, because the structures in the Parliament do not really allow you to put things in place there, because that is their employer. You cannot say that you do not have any contact with that person because you have no locus over their employment. There are things that you could obviously do if there were other MSPs in your group that had a staff vacancy, so that you would protect their employment and move them on to work with somebody else, but you have no ability to do that other than appealing to good will. That is the real issue, and until we sort that out and find a way of dealing with that, people will not come forward because they will be worried about their job, because they know that there are no formal steps that a business manager can take to give them alternative employment and remove them from that situation. He followed the process all the way through to dismissing the MSP if we had a way of doing that for gross misconduct. We have a really difficult problem ahead of us, and we need to give it serious thought, and I hope that the committee will do that to find a way around that so that we can provide that safety and confidence to people so that they can report in confidence and know that their future, their livelihood, is not at stake. That is a kind of speedy, effective, confidential and commensurate process, and that ultimately helps to deliver for the duty of care for both individuals concerned. As some of my colleagues have highlighted, there are opportunities based on each individual case to ensure that that process is carried out effectively, whether it is through the individual working for the group or a different office or a different floor. There are ways and means in which we can make sure that every instance is treated with the utmost care for both individuals concerned. I thank the witnesses for coming along this morning and providing us with some very important evidence on how the committee will consider its inquiry, and I will suspend briefly to allow the witnesses to leave. Agenda item 3 is for the committee to consider the correspondence that we have received from the Equalities and Human Rights Committee. Are we content to note the letter? Thank you, and now, as previously agreed, we will move into private session.


Hi, usually when I do these, I try to make them a little funny, kick them up some, but today I actually want to talk about something really important. Anybody who does antitrust will tell you that from a legal perspective, the Department of Justice case against AT&T is one of the most important antitrust enforcement actions in a decade. It's going to set the tone for antitrust enforcement going forward and it will be a real test as to whether the Department of Justice's theories about how to do antitrust in the 21st century are right or whether those who like AT&T have argued for different standards of enforcement are right and a court will decide. That's how it should be. But there's another battle that's important here and that is the future of antitrust enforcement and the soul of antitrust enforcement. Since Teddy Roosevelt stood up to standard oil, we've had a tradition in this country that real antitrust only works when we keep politics out of enforcement. I'm not so naive and no one is so believed to think that politics has never mattered. But the fact is that we have had a very proud and strong tradition in this country from the break up of standard oil to the break up of AT&T in 1984 in keeping enforcement apolitical. That's how it is, that's how it should be. The political branch sets the priorities but when the Department of Justice says no, as the White House said yesterday, this is an enforcement matter. It's not a matter for the White House or the political branch. That's essential for the rule of law. That's essential for the respect for law. It's essential so that everyone in this country can believe the promise of this country that we are all treated fairly under the law. AT&T has the right to make its legal case in court. Its supporters certainly have the right to make supporting arguments for AT&T and many of the arguments that have been made in support of this merger about jobs, about expanding wireless broadband, if you believe that they're true, are completely and totally appropriate at the Federal Communications Commission. The Federal Communications Commission approves these mergers under the public interest standard where it is entirely appropriate to think about whether it will add jobs, whether it will bring more broadband, whether it will serve the public interest, convenience and necessity. But those factors have no place in an enforcement action. The Department of Justice determined after long and detailed consideration that AT&T's proposed takeover of T-Mobile violated the antitrust laws. They did what was appropriate. As soon as they made that determination, they did not hesitate. They went to a court and AT&T will have its day in court. For the system to work, for the soul of antitrust, that day in court needs to come without political interference. For all of those who are urging that the antitrust complaint should go away, not because you think that the antitrust argument is wrong, but because we should trade off antitrust for jobs, because we should trade off antitrust for wireless broadband, I ask you, is that the future that we want, where you buy your way out of law enforcement?


Hi, I'm Susan Keefe from Rhubarb and Cod and today I'm making carrot miso pappardelle. Carrots and onions often find themselves in supporting roles. Think about it, what soup doesn't begin with carrots, onions, and celery? But carrots and onions are capable of far more than a simple mirepoix. So today I'm giving them some much deserved time in the spotlight. This rich and creamy carrot miso pappardelle puts carrots in particular front and center. Without the aid of cream, a few boiled Ontario carrots are transformed into a silky sauce that coats each noodle perfectly. A few roasted Ontario-grown chipolini onions and a hefty scoop of white miso paste bring umami to this vegetarian dish. While the carrots, in addition to adding body to the sauce, also give it that perfect hint of sweetness. This dish comes together in roughly 30 minutes and disappears even faster. So let's get started. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Place six to eight good-sized chipolini onions that have been skinned in a large bowl and add a tablespoon of olive oil and half a teaspoon of kosher salt. Give them a good toss. Heat one tablespoon of olive oil in a large oven safe skillet until shimmering. Add the onions and brown on both sides before transferring the skillet to the oven and roasting for 10 minutes before flipping and roasting for an additional five. While the onions are roasting, peel roughly 400 grams of carrots. My carrots were on the petite side, so this was about eight carrots for me. If your carrots are larger, you may only need to use three. Cut the carrots into smaller chunks and place them in a large pot. Add two cloves of peeled garlic and cover the veg with cold water until fully immersed. Place the pot over high heat and cover. Boil the carrots until fork tender. While the carrots are cooking, finely chop a quarter cup of fresh chives and grate about a half a cup of pecorino. Set both aside. By now, your onions should be a deep golden color and quite soft. Transfer them from the skillet and place them on a plate and set them aside. Resist the urge to clean the skillet you roasted the onions in. We're going to make use of all those nice brown bits that have accumulated. Drain the carrots and garlic and place them in a large food processor. Refill the pot with cold water and place it once again over high heat. Cover and bring to a boil. Add the onions and one tablespoon of white miso paste to the carrots. Turn the food processor on and slowly stream in a quarter cup of sake. Blitz until smooth. Transfer the puree to a bowl and set it aside. Your water should be boiling by now. Liberally salt the water and add about 400 grams of pappardale. Cook the pasta according to the package's directions. It should be somewhere in the ballpark of nine minutes. While the pasta is cooking, return the skillet to medium heat. Add two tablespoons of unsalted butter and about a tablespoon of sake. Declase the pan. This is why I wanted you to hold on to all that fond. This will give the finished dish a greater depth of flavor. Once the pasta is done, add it to the skillet. Add the carrot puree and a little bit of the pasta water and work the sauce through the noodles. Add the chives and toss until evenly dispersed. Divide the pasta across four bowls and garnish with the pecorino you shredded earlier. Serve immediately. And there you go, carrot miso pappardale, a tasty vegetarian dish that gives carrots and onions the respect they deserve. I hope you enjoy this one. Thank you for cooking with me. I'll see you all next time.


So, welcome everyone to the session Accepting to Embracing Change, an Unknown Tool to Thrive in Uncertain Times by Parul Bhakava. Parul is an agile coach with ThoughtWorks and she brings a rich experience in the IT industry as she has been a lean agile practitioner for over 14 years. While you would know more about her through her story, through her presentation, I wanted to share that she is a theatre actor and a professional voice over artist and she has also recently won her rising award. So, congratulations Parul on that and we are really excited to hear from you. Thank you Yashasree. Thank you so much for the wonderful introduction. Hello everyone and welcome. So, I want to start today's talk by conducting a small exercise with all of you. So, are you all ready? Okay. So, I want you to take your right hand physically and raise it as high as you can. So, take your right hand and raise it as high as you can. Good.  Just a little higher. Awesome. You can bring it down now. So, I want you to think and I want to ask this question to the audience and you can answer in the chat as yes or no. Did you raise your hand higher the second time? You can answer in the chat. Did you raise your hand higher the second time? I'm seeing a lot of yeses. No. Okay. I see Abhinav is also saying yes. Yes, surprisingly by Tom. Okay. All right. So, I see most of us have said yes that we raised our hand higher the second time. We may want to reflect why that happened. It's because of the human tendency to remain in the comfort zone. Whether it's because of inertia, fear of failure, fear of the unknown, we want to remain in the comfort zone. The world around us is changing drastically and we can see that during the pandemic, digital disruption, technological disruption, digital transformation, the ability to embrace change is a superpower not just for organizations but also for individuals. Charles Darwin once said it is not the strongest of species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. In fact, researchers have shown that individuals who are more open to embracing change are more successful and happy in their careers and lives. And in today's session, I'm going to talk about something that I'm really passionate about embracing change as a tool to thrive in uncertain times. What I'll be discussing today is my story of persistent change. If change is everywhere, let us also understand why do people resist change? I will also share with you a tool which I have used at individual, team, and organizational level for embracing change. And lastly, I will be sharing my secrets. My six-step model of embracing change, which has really worked for me and I would love to share it with all of you. So my life has been a rollercoaster of change at every step. So let me take you to my childhood. My father served the Indian army. I have lived in seven cities, studied in nine schools, and stayed in 15 different addresses during the first 17 years of my life. Change has been the only constant since the beginning. I was born in Jodhpur. After a couple of years, my father was posted in Amritsar. Then we moved to Pune in Maharashtra after two and a half years. At Pune, we were staying at Kadakvasla. The weather was nice and bright. I used to go to school in auto rickshaw and bus. People spoke three languages, Hindi, English, Marathi. I also learned a bit of Marathi that time. We stayed there for two and a half years and life was going great. But one day, suddenly, my father's posting orders came and we were to move from the cosmopolitan city of Pune, 2700 kilometers, to a tiny town in northeast called Tanga Valley. This was the first time I was experiencing change as I was now at an age to experience it. My first reaction to this change was happiness. I was excited about the mountains. It would even snow there. When we reached Tanga, I was shocked. I was even angry. It would rain all the time. It was really cold. There was no television. Electricity came only four hours in a day, two hours in the morning from six to eight and two hours in the night from four to six. The sun would rise at four in the morning and it was pitch dark by five. Imagine three children below the age of 10. There is no electricity. It is pitch dark, no television, no source of entertainment and no vehicles. And at school, all the subjects were in Hindi, including science and social studies. People spoke a different language. They looked different. My mother used to say I would get up in the middle of the night and start crying and saying that I don't like it here. Let's go back. It took me six months to cope with the change. After six months, things got a little better. So since there were no vehicles, we used to walk to school. So talking to people. I made some friends. I even started reading books using the Laltain in the night. I started going outside and playing. And I also started speaking very good Hindi. Things were going good for me now. And again, two and a half years, my father's posting orders came yet again. And this time, we were to move 2000 kilometers to the north of India from the tiny town of Tanga to the biggest city in India, New Delhi. And since I'd already experienced change, this time I wasn't ready. So what did I do? I stopped eating. Yes, I was this kid who said, I like it here now. We are not going anywhere. Let's just stay here. With a lot of efforts, my father sat me down. And he asked me, what is bothering you? What are some of your puzzles? And as a young kid, I had all these fears and these questions that were bothering me. Like, would we have electricity? What about television? What kind of food we'll have? Would we have the mountains? Would I be the only new girl in school? No verbal affirmations were helping. No confirmations were helping. It was also the time of no internet, no cyber cafes and no television. With a lot of effort, and I don't know how my father arranged for it, my father arranged for a brochure of Delhi, which had information about the climate that Delhi has, the food. It also had pictures of the zoo, which got me really excited. The monuments that Delhi has. And he also telephoned an uncle to inquire about the new school. With this new found information, my emotions changed from anxiety, fear to acceptance of this change. I accepted that we are going to Delhi before we left. But was the change easy? Absolutely not. In Tanga, all the subjects were in Hindi. And in Delhi, all the subjects were in English. Since I got mid-term, all the subjects were haphazard. In Tanga, there were only two sections. In Delhi, the school was huge, so you had 10 sections. People spoke English. I could only understand Hindi. Life was difficult. I want to ask this question to the audience and you can answer in one word. So if you were Parul, at that time, how would you deal with this change? You can answer in the chat. Saili saying Rebell, Sandeep Peer. Tom is saying observe within interest. Abhinav saying somehow find a friend. He's facing the same challenges. Ramesh is saying difficult. So let me share what I did. So by this time, I realized one thing. And maybe you also would have realized that every two to three years something was happening. Every two to three years, my father was getting posted. So I accepted that this change is going to be inevitable. And once I accepted that, I started looking at this change as an opportunity to maybe learn a different language, maybe learn about a different subject, to explore and to excel. And how did I do that? So language was a problem. So I joined extra classes. I even joined the Western Music Society thinking that if I sing in English, I will learn better English. I had no friends. So I joined hobby classes and not having any vehicles in Tanga actually worked for me because I was literally running around. So I also got selected in the athletics team. Fast forward to today, in my career spanning more than 14 years, I have worn many hats. I started off my career as a business analyst, moved on to digital consultant, e-commerce consultant, product owner, scrum master, agile coach. I have worked in more than six industry areas, oil and gas, manufacturing, retail, banking, financial services. And I have lived and worked in more than five geographies, US, UK, Australia, Netherlands and India. My ability to embrace change helped me in my diversified career. Some of these changes were planned, but most of these were unplanned. And through my childhood, I understood one thing that change is going to be inevitable. So acceptance of change became hardwired in me. And every time there was a change, I started looking at change as an opportunity, as a gift to learn, explore and to excel. And through my experiences, I observed the emotions I was feeling, the actions I was taking and through that, I devised my six step model of embracing change, which I will be sharing with you today. So change is everywhere. So I want to ask this question to the audience and you can answer in one word. If change is everywhere, why do you think people resist change? You can answer in one word. Why do people resist change? Krishna is saying fear, Usha is saying fear, because of risk, Pallavi, so true. Psyli is saying comfort, uncertainty, anxiety, so true. Why change? Pradeep is saying, interesting. I've been of saying Newton's first law, due to commitments, uncertainty, inertia, all of these are actually true. And when I was doing my research, I identified that in order to understand why people resist change, which is very important to understand the human brain. So even though the world around us has changed drastically, the human brain has remained the same for the past 20,000 years. It weighs the same 1.3 kgs, it has not expanded or shrunk. The human brain actually operates in the hunting and gathering society of the early homo sapiens. Our ancestors could live without food, without water, but if there was a predator's attack, it was came over. The human brain from that time has been hardwired to survive. And I must say our ancestors did a great job at that because that's the reason why all of us are here, we survived. So to enable us to survive, the brain needs two things. It wants to seek reward and it wants to avoid threat. Let me repeat this for you. To enable us to survive, the brain needs two things. It wants to seek reward and it wants to avoid threat. This has also been substantiated scientifically. So let's explore that. So let us take an example that there is a change within our organization. People's energy to this change are usually down, neutral, or up. If people feel that this change is good for them, or actually when people feel negatively about the change, what happens in the brain is that it secretes a chemical called the cortisol, which acts like an avoider, like a blocker, and people want to move away from the change, which is also shown in the three arrows on the left. People treat this change as a threat. So on the flip side, what can we do so that people think positively about the change? When we create certainty, provide information of what kind of change is going to come in. As leaders, we provide information to our teams about the change that is going to come, what changes are going to happen, what structures are going to get implemented. What happens is, people start thinking positively about the change. And what happens in the brain is that it secretes a chemical called the serotonin, which is also the feel good hormone, which creates hope and optimism. And people think of this change as a reward and get into an action oriented space and are more likely to move towards the change. From this, we can actually summarize three things, survival. Number one, the brain is hard wire to survive. It wants to seek reward and it wants to avoid threat.  And three, in case of uncertainty, the brain gets into a threat response and is more likely to have a fight, flight or freeze response. There is a model called the scarf model, which helps us to understand how these threat and rewards are processed in the brain. The scarf model has been used extensively by coaches, by leaders, change practitioners across the globe to understand what motivates and demotivates people through change. Scarf is also an acronym for the five domains which we are going to explore today. So let's explore. S stands for status. It is a relative importance compared to the other. When a change is likely to attack a person's current status, which could be his current role, or a promotion that he is anticipating, what happens in the brain is that it triggers a threat response and people want to resist the change. Conversely, if there is a change which people feel is going to help in their career growth or is going to help in their promotion, what happens is it triggers a reward response and people want to take up that change smoothly. C stands for certainty. The brain loves certainty. When the brain is able to predict the future, the brain is relaxed. But in case it is not able to predict the future, what the brain does is it fill in the blanks with the worst case scenario. So if we want to combat that as leaders, when we don't want our teams to think about the worst case scenario, we should provide them with as much information as possible, communicate with them what the change is going to bring in and what happens is the brain triggers a reward response and people feel more comfortable about the change. A stands for autonomy. Autonomy to be able to take decisions. When people feel that they have autonomy towards this change, they are more likely to be open towards the change. Conversely, when people feel they don't have a choice, they want to resist the change. So let me give you a team tip. So the next time you're in a meeting and deciding on the next steps with your team, give your team a little bit of autonomy. Let them decide on the priority of the next steps. Even a tiny autonomy goes a long way in creating a reward response which otherwise would be treated like a threat. R stands for relatedness. We are social animals. We work best when we work with people. When people feel that they are accepted for who they are, they are more creative, more collaborative and better in their thinking. Conversely, when people feel that they are not accepted for who they are, they are more restricted. They are going to restrict their talents to themselves. An F stands for fairness. The brain fundamentally wants to be equitable. When people feel that this change is not fair for them, what happens is it triggers a threat response and people want to run away, literally run away or resist the change. So the next time you're talking to someone about a change or any situation, ask them intentionally. Do you think it is fair? Even a small statement intentionally like this is going to have a big impact because it will trigger a reward response which otherwise would be looked upon as a threat. So now that we know about the five domains of SCARF and how threats and rewards are processed in the brain, let us look at SCARF model in action. Let us look at a case study, an example. So I would like to share an example with you where I was part of an agile transformation which involved a restructuring where people's role were to change. So there were project managers who had to take up the role of a scrum master and there were also project managers who were asked to take the role of product owner. So the situation that we have right now is the agile transformation which involves restructuring and people's role have to change from project manager to scrum master and for some people project managers to product owner. So what we are going to look at is the emotions that people who are having this role change their experience at an individual level. We will also see what they can do, what is in their control from an action standpoint that will help them to move towards the change. And we'll also explore that what we can do if we are the leaders or the managers of the teams who are going through this role change, what actions can we take so that it triggers a reward response and people move towards the change. So as an individual, I may feel that my responsibilities are completely going to change. And as an individual, what I can do is make a list of the roles and responsibilities that I will continue to do, which means that there is no change, stop doing, which also means that there is no change and start doing which is the delta. And what happens in the brain is that it identifies that it is only a subset of what the brain had actually thought as completely going to change. And what happens is it triggers a reward response and people are more likely to be open to embrace this change. And as leaders, what we can do is share details of the role transition, the training plan, the new archetypes, the new career path, the growth path for those individuals, because providing this information would trigger a reward response, give them clarity, and they are more likely to move towards the change. From a certainty standpoint, a person may feel that they are not sure when this change is going to be implemented and the training needs for the role. A lot of times, and this is for everyone, when we are facing such a situation, we get into denial. We have males which are asking us to sign up for training which is providing us information, but what do we do? We want to resist this change, so we stay away from that. And what happens is it causes a lot of stress for us. But if we want to move towards the change, embrace that change, what we need to do is discuss expectations, have that one-on-one with your manager that we are avoiding, sign up for the trainings which will help to bridge the skill gap. And as leaders, what we need to do is the brain loves certainty. So communicate, communicate, communicate. Communicate a clear vision, roadmap. Even tentative timelines goes a long way in creating a reward response with otherwise no timelines. Similarly, for autonomy, relatedness and fairness. Feel free to take a screenshot of this. We could discuss one of them if you have any questions during Q&A or during our hangout. One actually I want to touch upon is relatedness and I want you to think about it. It is not only this example, but relatedness happens a lot of times whether we are changing a city or a new job, changing our technology, our roles. So think about how relatedness affects us and what we can do at individual level to embrace the change, move towards closer to the change and as leaders, how can we help our teams when they face with such a change? All right. So I want to give you all a tip.  Number one, pause. Identify which of the domains of SCARF are getting affected. Is it status, relatedness or multiple of those? And once you identify that because self-awareness is power, the next step is take action that will help you to mitigate the situation. So do you remember my childhood story? Do you remember the time when I was to move from the tiny town of Tanga to New Delhi when I had stopped eating and I was this kid? I can actually now relate the SCARF model. I can relate the emotions that I was feeling which was making me resist the change and what my father did which helped me to be accepting of that change and eventually embracing it. So I want to ask the audience and you can take a stab at it. So there are three emotional drivers, status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness out of the five. Three of them were affected during that time. Any guesses? You can put it in the chat. Sarah is saying relatedness. All right. I see more of those. Tanuja is saying relatedness and status. All right. So thank you. Spot on for one of that. So the three emotional drivers that I experienced. All right. Yashastri also that's correct, certainty. Was certainty, relatedness, fairness. I wasn't sure about how the new place would be like. The shock that I had got when we moved from Pune to Tanga, I wasn't sure about anything. I could not relate to Delhi. It was just a word for me. I wasn't even sure if I would be the only new person in school and what my father had done to help me move towards the change was to provide that brochure, create that relatedness after looking at the pictures. I could relate to Delhi and speaking to that uncle gave me confidence that yes, it is certain that certain things are going to be in Delhi in a certain way, including the school. What I want to share with you through this example is that the scarf model can not only be used at team and organizational level, but it can also be used at individual level. So the next time you have a situation which makes you uncomfortable, think about the scarf model and maybe try it out. Now moving to my six step model of embracing change. So through my life experience of growing up, working across the globe and my agile journey, I identified that there are these secrets of embracing change. And since they have been my moment of discovery, I call it the aha model. So let us explore the aha model. The first three steps of the aha model refer to what one needs to do to embrace change. And the last three steps talk about the behavior one needs to exhibit on a continuous basis to embrace change. So let us explore. The first step is accept. Accept that all change is inevitable because it just is. And that not all changes are going to be good. There are people who are going to stand up and say, oh, change is good. It's great. But no, not all changes are good, especially when we experience them. But even if some changes are bad, at some point, we'll have to embrace them because only when we embrace them, we can move on and look at other options. The next step is acknowledge. Pause and acknowledge that all changes are emotional. Identify which of the scarf domain is getting impacted. Is it status, relatedness, fairness, or multiple of them? And once you do that, the next step is act. Start moving, take action. Because without taking action, you cannot embrace change. Act stands for action changes things. The book that you wanted to write may be a post that you wanted to try for. Take action because without taking action, we cannot embrace change. The next step is accountable. Be your own change catalyst. The change that you're looking for, the help that you're looking for may not arrive.  You will have to take stock of your own strengths. Look at the options that you have and start taking actions. The next step is actually the opposite of the previous one. Helping others embrace change. Helping others embrace change is not only a wonderful thing to do, it is also therapy. Because when we help others embrace change, we not only learn from their experience, but we reinforce the entire cycle of embracing change where we help people to accept, acknowledge, and act. And the last step is attitude. It is all about the attitude. There is a saying. There is little difference in people. There is little difference in people and that little difference makes the big difference. The little difference is the attitude and the big difference is whether it's positive or negative. We may not have control over how big the change is. We may not have control over when the change happens to us. But what we have control over is how we react to that change. So in the end, it's all about the attitude. With that, I want to leave you with the thought, something that I truly believe in. The only way to make sense of the change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. Feel free to take a screenshot of this because this is something that I truly believe in and look at during times of difficulty. Thank you, everyone. It was a pleasure to present to all of you. We are now open for any questions. Thank you, Parul. Wonderful session. Thank you. Audience, please put the questions that you may have for Parul in the Q&A section. Getting a lot of reactions, Parul. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Tanuj. Thank you, Usha. Hello, Sneha. Thank you. Thank you, Saili. Any thoughts people have? You can put it in the chat. We can discuss that or anything that you want to share. Sandeep has raised his hand. May Shalaya allow him to talk, Parul. Is that okay? Yeah, that's fine. Thank you, guys. Thank you, guys. Yeah. Hello, Sandeep. Hello. Hello. Yes, we can hear you. Yes. So just wanted to check. I mean, you have implemented the scarf in some of your transformations. So is it a part of the agile transformation or it's driven as a separate initiative? And before you implement the complete agile part or the process part or after it? So scarf is intertwined in it as we start because any transformation would involve people at the core. So this has been intertwined in the agile transformation journey. And I have also implemented scarf in executive coaching, leadership coaching as well. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay.  As you can see, it has definitely been a lot of interest and help to people who attended. Thank you.


One thing every website needs are fonts. We can't get away with it. We have to use them. And here's the thing, if we aren't adding them right to our websites, we can actually cause a negative impact on the performance and overall load time. So what we're doing in this video, I'm gonna break it down. I'm gonna show you the right way and best practices to add your fonts to your WordPress websites. That's best for performance. So we're going to get a lot of clarity because there's a lot of ways of adding fonts that makes it quite confusing. And here's the thing. We have all these options, but many of those options are the wrong way of doing it. So I'm gonna show you the right way.  That's like taking a font file size like this and turning it into this. All right, let's get started. For this video, we're using Elementor as an example, but this is not limited to just Elementor. The same is going to be applied to other page builders like Bricks and so on. So I have a brand new website that I just installed, a brand new WordPress website. Everything is blank and bare bones. And I just added this page with these little bits of text here. Now, when I went to go test it here on Pingdom, you can see the page size is almost one megabyte. That's pretty big for a blank page with just a few bits of text. And if we go down here to our font, you can see the reason why is that the font file sizes are close to 800 KB. That is really big. Now, if I go back over here to the test that I did the same exact website, but on the page that has no fonts being loaded, you can see the significant difference. This is only 30 KB right here. We don't have any fonts being loaded. So you can see the impact now that fonts could have on low. It could even get worse in this as well. So the first place to start, let's go over to Google Fonts because I feel that most of you are gonna be using Google Fonts. It's what I used in the very beginning as well. We have three ways to add Google Fonts to our websites. We could go ahead and do it the old school way where you click on the fonts you want to install and then you copy and paste this link right here and throw it inside the header. This is how I did it when I first started building websites years ago. The second way of adding Google Fonts would be right inside our page builder or our theme options. They made it super easy and convenient for us to just go in and choose any font that we want here from Google Fonts. And these are the two methods we need to avoid using. There are two reasons for this. First off, well, they're not GDPR compliant. If you're building websites that are gonna be viewed inside Europe, these we should not be using because well, Google collects data from our websites when we do this. So we need to be very careful for GDPR compliance. But the second one and a big one for me is the performance. When we use these methods, basically our website is calling out to Google, asking Google, hey, install these fonts onto our website. So we got this back and forth going and we cannot control the size of the files that Google installs. And that's gonna make a whole lot more sense in just a moment. Now, the right way to do this is gonna be option number three. And that is gonna be installing our fonts locally. So we're gonna go over here to Elementor and you do the same in Bricks or any other page builder thing that you're using that allows custom fonts to be loaded. We go here to our custom fonts and we load it. We go over here to our Google Fonts. If you are gonna use Google Fonts and just download the family right up over here. Now I already have some downloads here. We can see in this download you have all the font files in here. So this is the next part about optimizing your fonts and making sure that everything goes fast. First, we don't need to install all these. In fact, I would install only four to five tops. And the reason is if we go into them, you can see each one of these has a pretty good size to it. 170 KB, you know, 160 KB, 180. This all starts to add up. So that's the first reason why we would not install all these. The second reason is it's gonna make the design messy. The more font styles that we use, the more font weights that we use on a webpage, the messier the design and typography looks. I find that using three to four different font weights on a webpage is best for design plus is gonna make sure the fonts don't get too big that we don't need to load a bunch of different font files. The next thing is let's take a look at which ones to keep. Now, let me go back over here. We have all these here. So which ones should we use? First off, we don't need thin or we don't need extra light. And it might look okay right here at the dark background but these are really hard to read on websites, especially for somebody using a device that has lower resolution. It's not good for accessibility. So I never use thin or ultra light. Now we could use light, that could work. Definitely we need to use regular. This is gonna be a regular body text. Now back over here to medium and semi-bold. We don't need both, all right? Because they're very similar and they're not gonna be used as much. So I would choose one or the other. We don't need to have both of them. And then we have our bolds. We got bold, we have extra bold, and then we have black. Over here, the same thing. I would choose either one or maybe two. Maybe two. Most of the time though, I go with just one of them. Having a bunch of different bolds, again, it makes the design messy. We don't need to use a bunch of different bolds. So the other ones that we don't need to add to our websites are gonna be these italics. So we do a lot of high level design and I find italic fonts are very, very rare that are needed for designs and projects. And the reason is, well, we could use the browser. We could use CSS.  It's going to look very, very similar. You can't really tell the difference. So there's really no need for the italic. Now there are gonna be some very rare circumstances, some situations and designs that might require an italic font file to be loaded. Those are gonna be done mostly when it comes to serif fonts, I really, really do it with sans serif. Maybe a serif font might need it. And if you do need to add an italic font file, count that towards the number of font files you're using. Try to keep that number well under five. Three to four is a really good sweet spot. The next thing I do is I clear out all the ones I don't need. I just delete them and this is what it usually looks like. I'm using five here but most of the time I would just have four. Now that we got our fonts downloaded and we know which ones to add, well, we need to do a few more things, all right? So let's go back over here to custom fonts and let's break something else down because there are a couple things here working against us for performance. First off, right over here, let me go to edit. We can see we only upload the TTF file and that is because, well, that is what Google gives us. They give us the TTF file but we have all these different options right here. I'm gonna quickly break it down.  For a while I was loading a bunch of different font files when I didn't need to. All right, so first off, EOT. This is for old internet explorer. If somebody's using an internet explorer on an old outdated Windows 7 laptop, is it really gonna matter if they are seeing custom fonts or not? They probably are not gonna be able to tell the difference. So why jeopardize your performance for somebody who really doesn't care how anything looks because they're seeing the worst of every website already. I would just ignore that one. I've already given up on supporting really, really old outdated stuff. Next up is SVG. All right, so SVG, they're not for fonts. This is more for icons and glyphs. This is super, super rare and I've yet to come across a situation where I really needed it. But if I did need it, it would be something, I mean, think of Font Awesome for an example, you know, like a library of icons. You could use it in a situation like that, but super, super rare. Forget about it, you don't need it. And if you were to add an SVG font file for just regular fonts, that could be megabytes big for just one. It's way too big. Now this brings us to these three and this is where you need to make your decision. So TTF, this is the old school original font file right here. This has been used for a long time and it's going to support all the old devices. It's going to have the best support, but it is going to have the largest file size. It's large. In fact, Google knows that it's too large. That's the reason why they came up with Wolf. So Wolf was Google's solution to the large TTF file sizes. Wolf was created for better performance and Wolf is supported with all modern browsers. It supports even a bit of older stuff and it supports now on Android. Wolf is going to support just about most of the devices out there. Wolf 2 isn't even more optimized version of Wolf. Now Wolf 2 is only going to support very modern stuff. There are going to be some older devices that people might use, maybe like an older Android phone, older iPhones or just some older browsers and stuff. Might have some issues with Wolf 2. But Wolf, this is good enough. This right here works across all modern browsers. And I'm going to go back to my argument. Should we be sacrificing performance to support really old browsers where people really don't care about how things look? That is the options we need to weigh. Now, when it comes to choosing between these three right here, my preference and what I suggest is to stick with these two, Wolf and Wolf 2. The modern browsers are going to load the Wolf 2 and then as a fallback, then they could go ahead and revert to Wolf. TTF, I leave this off just about all websites. I would only add TTF is if a project specifically needed it. If a client knew that their website needed to support older browsers, and sometimes it's a lot bigger, like bigger brands that really need to make sure that their brand identity is clear across the board for everyone. Then I will go over to TTF. But right now, Wolf and Wolf 2, this is what I stick with. This is good enough. Now, I hope this all makes sense because look, I went down a big rabbit hole on this one right here because I really wanted to understand these right here because I felt that I was doing it wrong for a while. Now that we know which ones to load, let me show you my trick on reducing the font file sizes massively. So let's go over here. I'm going to go to Font Squirrel. And then in Font Squirrel, I'm going to go to the Web Font Generator.  You can be using custom fonts, you bought some fonts. Whatever you're using, it's all going to work the same. We're going to run it through the generator and it's going to optimize it. I'm going to show you the settings to use to optimize it. Then it's going to spit out a much smaller version. All right, so from here, we want to select on Expert. And this is going to work. Just follow each step because there are some settings here that can't mess up the font, so be real careful. All right, first off, I'm just going to do Wolf and Wolf 2. But for this lesson, just to show you how this optimizes everything, I'll also do the TrueType, which is the TTF. Now, from right here, the TrueType hinting, I'm going to go to Keep Existing. For rendering, I'm going to leave it just as it is. For the vertical metrics, this is really important. Put on no adjustments. I don't want to mess with the kerning or anything like that. Fixed missing glyphs, I'm going to turn both of these off. All right, and then the rest, we just keep it as it is. Now, we got to go back down here, make sure that these fonts, you're able to use them. You're not stealing them or anything like that. That is up to your own conscience and how you sleep at night. All right, cool, so we got it. Let's upload these fonts. I'm going to upload all five of these. And give it about a minute. It looks like nothing is happening, but it is. All right, that took about two minutes. It doesn't look like something's happening. You just got to give it a bit of time. I'm going to go download this. And here are my optimized fonts. Let's check them out. All right, so we got the TTF. Look at this TTF. The TTF alone for the bold font file is 18KB. It was like at 180KB, went down to 18. For the wolf, we're down to 11. And then for the wolf too, we're down all the way to 8KB. Now, I have tested this on lots of different fonts. I love typography, I'm big on it. I've studied it, I've just obsessed over typography for a period of my life. I need to make sure my fonts are good. This flow that I just showed you, I have not found any issues in it yet. So, we are good right here. Now, I'm just going to clean this up right here. I'll just delete the text and the HTML files. Now, I'm going to add the new fonts to the site now. So, let me go ahead and add these. First one, I always like to go in order. So, we're going to start off with three. And I'm just going to add the wolf and wolf files to this. Now, I got all my font files added. I've only used the optimized versions of the wolf and wolf too for the five styles I'm going to use. Now that we got the optimized font and style, let's go ahead and add it to our font styles over here and run a test. This way, we could see the difference right here that this made. I'm going to go over here to my global fonts. That is where I added the original pop-ins file. I'm just going to change this on all my files. Let me change these to optimized font and I'll do it on the rest and come right back. Now, we got the optimized font installed. Everything is good. Let's run a quick test. We're going to go over to Pingdom because it's easy to see the font file sizes with this. Let me go to Web Speed Test and I'm going to test it where I'm at. I'm out in Asia. So, let's run this test. And the results are in and we can see the page size has been reduced to about 250KB, which if we go back over here, you can see it was at almost one megabyte. Now, if we do go down here though and check this out, look at our font size right here. It's only 62KB. That is crazy, crazy small right there. That is awesome. We go back over here. This is what we started with. So, we reduced the font file size by over 700KB. Now, really quick, I did forget one thing and I think it's really important to show you this. So, check this out really quick before we end this tutorial. There's one very important step that we need to take. Go over to your settings, know your Elementor settings. Go over here to Advanced and right here on Google Fonts, make sure to disable this right here. Turn this off. This is a new feature that Elements are added. This helps to protect your website to make sure no Google Fonts are being loaded onto your website. You might build this for a client. They might go in and use that editor which makes it so easy to allow those. But if we go ahead and turn this on right over here and we go back to our builder, let me refresh this. Well, we could see that those Google Font options, we go here. Nope, not there. They're no longer here. It's only system fonts, that's it. Now, I went down a massive rabbit hole on this one because I noticed our fonts were just way too big. On my own personal sites, but also for our client sites. And I was a bit confused about font files for a while. I went down this rabbit hole and I just went down it. And then I did a lot, a lot of testing, a lot of practicing. This was time right here to evolve to get to this point. I hope it helps you out. And if you have any tips on optimizing fonts, maybe you got some tricks like what I do with Font Squirrel, drop them in the comments to help others out. Because all of us, we're all trying to optimize our sites. We want our sites to be fast. And this is something that I know is gonna help out. Well, I hope this helped out. And if it did, make sure to do all that good YouTube stuff. Like, subscribe. It does help to support this channel and I really appreciate it. That's it for this video. Thank you for watching.