Human Capital magazine issue 11.05

THE HIGHS AND LOWS

Performance management P26 ISSUE 11.05

CULTURE CHANGE AGENT?

Psychometric assessment P34 PROFILE

HR at Adobe P50 CELEBRATING 10 YEARS

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EFFECT CSR in an offshore world

PLUS MAKE THE TRANSITION: MANAGER TO LEADER P44

editor’s letter

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Death by performance feedback

THE HIGHS AND LOWS

Performance management P26 ISSUE 11.05

CULTURE CHANGE AGENT?

Psychometric assessment P34 PROFILE

HR at Adobe P50 HUMAN CAPITAL MAGAZINE

CELEBRATING 10 YEARS

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THE

Giving and receiving performance feedback should be mutually beneficial to manager and employee.

Instead, it frequently ends in tears or results in accusations of bullying. The unpleasant experience causes the manager to avoid future attempts, to the detriment of personal growth and performance.

But here’s something you may not know: although performance conversations are normally not life-threatening, they can elicit what’s known by psychologists as an ‘amygdala hijack’, which simulates a similar physical reaction to when our lives are at risk.

Recent neuroscience research explains what is behind this disturbing phenomenon.

Dr Tony van Rensburg, a performance advisor and coach, explains that the condition is called ‘separation distress’, which is caused by our emotional operating system reacting to threat and fear. There is a relationship between a performance conversation and that ancient part of our brain responsible for self-protection, which triggers an involuntary fight, flight or freeze reaction. This often accelerates the heart rate, increases breathing, tightens stomach muscles, and starves the prefrontal cortex (the thinking part of our brain) of oxygen.

He explains: “Human beings greatly value connectedness and affiliation, and when we experience feelings of separation from others the resultant anxiety can feel life-threatening – painful even! Our emotional system employs various tactics to avoid this, and/or to reconnect. We use tools like playfulness or caring for others to maintain connection but, when this doesn’t work, separation distress sometimes takes over and we might feel misunderstood, unappreciated or undervalued.”

While your organisation hopefully treats performance management as an everyday part of ‘doing business’, rather than a dreaded once-yearly chore, the threat of an amygdala hijack might be reason enough to stick with that management fundamental: always put yourself in the shoes of the person being managed. Check out our performance feature on page 26 for further tips.

Iain Hopkins, editor, HC Magazine

Although performance conversations are normally not life-threatening, they can elicit an ‘amygdala hijack’, which simulates a similar physical reaction to when our lives are at risk

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HC MAGAZINE 11.05

contents

Check out the HC archive online:

hcamag.com

REGULARS

04 | In brief: news 06 | In brief: hr insight

FRONTLINE INTELLIGENCE

08 | In Step – HR career experts 10 | Legal 12 | HR consulting 38 | Technology

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Cover story: CSR

Management headquartered in Australia must ensure the supply-chain processes are up to scratch, or the CSR policy is rendered worthless 26 | Cards on the table: Performance management HR is often asked to fix performance issues by providing training, when systemic, deeper issues are at play. Iain Hopkins looks at some root causes of poor performance, and what can be done to improve the situation

34 | Psychometric assessment: Right-hand man to culture change Australian companies have used psychometric assessments in recruitment for some years, but can they be used elsewhere in the employee lifecycle? Rose Sneyd outlines how employers can use these assessments to change culture, improve performance, and develop leaders 40 | Filtering the good from the bad Pre-employment screening, background checking, probity checks, security checks...

Whatever term is used, the objective is clear: risk mitigation

50 | Profile: A passion for making a difference This month Stephanie Zillman sat down with Adobe’s head of ‘people resources’, where HR sits front and centre at the boardroom table

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IN BRIEF

news HR ANALYTICS

HR STRUGGLING TO MAKE SENSE OF EMPLOYEE DATA n Less than half of all organisations use objective talent data to drive business decisions, and less than one in five HR professionals are satisfied with the way their organisation manages talent data (18%), according to survey results from SHL’s annual Global Assessment Trends Report 2013.

In the study, it is suggested that HR is overwhelmed by the volume of data generated on employees and is having trouble deriving meaningful insight from it that will drive their businesses forward.

“Our research shows that even though organisations measure employee performance, they have historically focused on efficiency data, like how well an employee is performing versus data that allows them to make a strategic talent decision,” Ken Lahti from SHL said.

Just last year, around 12 exabytes of data were created every day, which is likely to double every 40 months. The report revealed that the two major challenges HR needs to overcome are data quality and accessibility.

WORKPLACE RELATIONS

IR

LATEST STATS REVEAL ‘GO AWAY’ PAYMENTS STILL RIFE

INTRODUCTION OF WORKPLACE CHANGES DELAYED

n Figures released by the Fair Work Commission (FWC) back up claims that all too often employers are left with no choice but to pay ‘go away’ money to sacked workers rather than endure the expense of arbitration, even if they believe the dismissal is justified.

The FWC data reveals that, during the seven months from July 1 last year, 81% of the 6,077 claims lodged were settled in conciliation. Of these settlements, 75% involved a payment being made. Of the 369 claims that did go to a hearing, 76% were dismissed by the FWC. Upon the release of similar findings last year, Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Peter Anderson commented that there’s no doubt ‘go away’ money has returned and businesses are settling unfair dismissal claims even though they strongly believe a dismissal was for a valid reason.

n The introduction of a number of workplace changes has been delayed following the intervention of business groups.

The changes, which would have allowed for increased scope for arbitration of intractable disputes, were widely condemned, and Workplace Minister Bill Shorten announced that the proposed changes to the Fair Work Act in relation to arbitration of disputes would be delayed until the winter parliamentary session.

“The proposed amendments will put further stress on businesses struggling to adjust to competitiveness pressures, and will do nothing to support jobs, investment and productivity,” the Business Council of Australia said in a statement.

Shorten also outlined proposed changes to the Act including increased rights for employees to request flexible hours, and the right for unions to meet workers in lunchrooms.

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The month in numbers

75

Percentage of US employees who admit to looking at job sites often or at least sometimes while at work*

750

The number of new job opportunities the Qld government has proposed to create for people with disabilities by 2015

29

Percentage of organisations that conduct ‘stay interviews’ in some form~ Sources: *Survey by Right Management ~Data from The Interview Group, based on surveys of 374 organisations across Australia and New Zealand

TECHNOLOGY

IS SOCIAL MEDIA GOOD FOR PRODUCTIVITY?

n Is Facebook really a big distraction in the workplace? It may not be so, given that the results of a recent study show that employees who use social media are more likely to be the most productive workers.

New data on the workplace by Evolv, a start-up that monitors hundreds of metrics from Fortune 500 companies, revealed that social media should not be considered the bane of employee productivity.

Rather, the more social networks an employee uses, the more productive they are.

In the study it was found that employees who regularly used up to four social networks – such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or LinkedIn – made more sales or handled customer service calls faster than those who weren’t on any social networks. Those who used five social networks or more were slightly better at converting sales and handling customer service than employees on four or fewer networks, by 1.5% and 2.8% respectively, Mashable reported.

However, there isn’t likely to be a mad rush towards letting employees use social media networks, Evolv concludes, as the increases in productivity and tenure may also be a reflection of the employee’s computer literacy and sociability, and therefore greater ability to provide better service and handle customers well.

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IN BRIEF

HR insight/mature-age workers The Financial Services Council of Australia reports the over-60s cohort is growing in number at approximately four times the rate of other demographic groups. At current trends, by 2050 there will only be 2.7 working Australians for every citizen over 65. In the 1970s, the ratio was 7.5 workers for each older Australian. What are companies doing to retain these individuals for longer?

WHICH COUNTRIES HAVE THE OLDEST AVERAGE WORKERS?

FIVE GLOBALLY RECOGNISED CEOS OVER AGE 80 • • • • •

Employment rates of older workers by % of populaton aged 55–64 across a range of OECD countries:

Alfred Mann, CEO of MannKind Corp. (88 years) Jim Pattison, CEO of Jim Pattison Group (85 years) Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (83 years) Edward C. “Ned” Johnson III, Fidelity Investments (83 years) Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp. (82 years)

WHICH COUNTRIES HAVE THE OLDEST POPULATIONS? Countries with the highest share of 60+ populations in 2011 and 2050 (%) – among countries with 2011 populations of one million or more: 2011 31

Japan

42

Italy

27

Portugal

40

Germany

26

Bosnia & Herzegovina

40

Finland

25

Cuba

39

Sweden

25

Republic of Korea

39

Bulgaria

25

Italy

38

Greece

25

Spain

38

Portugal

24

Singapore

38

Belgium

24

Germany

38

24

Switzerland

37

Croatia

2000

2009

2010

Australia

46.2

59.0

60.6

Japan

62.8

65.5

65.2

France

29.3

38.8

39.7

UK

50.4

57.5

56.7

US

57.8

60.6

60.3

Italy

27.7

35.7

36.6

Korea

57.8

60.4

60.9

Source: UN, World Population Prospects, the 2010 Revision

2050

Japan

Country

FAST FACT Oldest retirement age (eligible for private or public pension benefits): The oldest retirement age is in Iceland and Norway – 67.

WHAT DO OLDER WORKERS WANT? A friendly environment 94% The chance to use their skills 94% The chance to do something worthwhile 91% To feel respected by coworkers 90% Adequate paid time off 86% Health care and insurance benefits 84% A flexible schedule 76% To do something they’ve always wanted to do 75% The opportunity to learn something new 88%

Source: CareerBuilder/Wharton School

Source: UN, World Population Prospects, the 2010 Revision

HOW ARE EMPLOYERS ENGAGING WITH MATURE-AGE WORKERS? Having some choice in work schedules

Having options to take career leaves

The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory has reported that 70% of its employees who use flexible work schedules are older workers.

13% of those who had planned to retire in the next five years stated that a sabbatical would keep them from retiring.

Having some choice over the number of hours worked

Having options to consider different jobs and different sets of responsibilities

25% of surveyed employers indicated they offer employees options for reduced hours.

29% of the responding companies indicated that they provide such opportunities.

Having options to work on a project basis 33% of employers offer options for project-based work.

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??

?

Did you know?

The average time to CEO appointment for those who rose through the ranks at their company is 16 years, and the average age at the time of appointment is 50.

Source: Forbes

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FRONTLINE INTELLIGENCE

recruitment

Craig Mason is the Managing Director of The Next Step, a specialist consulting practice in the human resources market. For more information, call (02) 8256 2500 or email cmason@thenextstep.com.au. Website: www.thenextstep.com.au.

HR capabilities for the future Everyone knows that there are some key capabilities that HR professionals need to be across to be effective and successful.

These capabilities include the ability to influence, manage relationships, think critically and commercially, and demonstrate resilience.

David Ulrich (probably the most quoted person in HR… and now the richest) has also developed a range of additional capabilities.

These marry with his HR model, which is now the HR structure used in the vast majority of large companies throughout Australia. These Ulrich capabilities include Credible Activist, Capability Builder and Change Champion, to name a few.

But will these existing capabilities be enough to equip HR professionals for the challenges they will face in a radically changing environment? This month, we ponder some of the future capabilities that might be required for HR career success in years to come.

FUTURE CAPABILITIES REQUIRED IN HR…?

As reported in the February edition of Boss Magazine, two researchers from the Institute of the Future in the US, Dean Findler and Marina Gorbis, identified capabilities that will apply to the future. Many of these apply directly to the HR market.

So what are these future capabilities?

COGNITIVE LOAD MANAGEMENT All disciplines deal with an abundance of information. With shrinking teams, increased complexity and higher expectations of performance, HR professionals are often in ‘information overload’.

The first capability identified by Findler and Gorbis is Cognitive Load Management, which is all about the capability to filter information and focus on what’s important. It’s all about absorbing the ‘white noise’ and prioritising the big ticket items.

Some may say that there is nothing new about the challenge of prioritising in HR, but that would massively underestimate the challenges of the future HR Business Partner role. As the key single points of contact acting 8

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The ability to respond easily and quickly to different cultural contexts will be a key future HR capability as business consultants to business groups, the HR Business Partners of the future will be buried unless they can deal with a massive amount of data and information.

VIRTUAL COLLABORATION As HR teams are being more geographically spread, technology improvements are enabling communications to continue, ideas to be shared and productivity to be evaluated.

However, leading and harnessing a distributed HR team’s efforts is a challenge.

The ability to motivate, develop and lead HR communities with a range of local geographic challenges will become a more commonly sought-after capability.

NEW MEDIA LITERACY Creating, presenting and manipulating information visually with credibility for organisations in the forms of video, blogs and podcasts will be a key HR communication strategy in the future. At this point, most HR professionals aren’t thinking beyond LinkedIn in terms of social media.

CROSS-CULTURAL TRANSLATION The ability to respond easily and quickly to different cultural contexts will be a key future HR capability. Findler and Gorbis illustrated that research has shown that different working and thinking styles are truly powerful if harnessed appropriately.

In any conversation with an experienced HRD who has ‘real’ responsibility for large numbers of contributors in different markets, they will say that their key contribution and passport to success is translating and adapting the business drivers across different cultural settings.

COMPUTATIONAL AND ADAPTIVE THINKING Big data and the capability to use analytics (through user-friendly software packages or not) to hone decision-making will be a key capability in the future for HR professionals.

This capability is what Findler and Gorbis described as Computational Thinking.

The importance of Adaptability has also been identified as critical. It’s all about not coming to the game with a prescribed play book and being able to deal with each situation on its merits.

TRANSDISCIPLINARITY As HR Business Partners are expected to build organisational capability through consulting to the business, the capability to confidently communicate in the languages of other disciplines will be a key.

As described by Howard Rheingold in his T-model, it is about having depth in the one discipline (being HR), combined with the ability to communicate across a broad range of other disciplines. He described that there is a requirement to achieve this by being curious and having a willingness to continue to learn.

THE FINAL WORD

As everyone knows in HR, the pace of change and the pressure to perform are constant.

There is a clear focus on HR Operating Models being redesigned to ensure the best HR services are being delivered for the lowest cost available. Some of the capabilities described by Findler and Gorbis could become key success factors for HR professionals and their careers in these new operating models.

Understanding the direction of future trends and staying relevant is really the only option for HR professionals who intend to build a career on being able to build both organisational and leader capabilities.

MARKET MOVES

radar

Recent HR Market Moves Laing O’Rourke is welcoming a new General Manager – Human Capital in Campbell McGlynn. Campbell is moving across from Sparke Helmore, where he held the role of HR Director. Prior to that he held organisation and capability development focused roles at NBNCo, Mallesons Stephen Jaques and Woodside Energy Limited.

Rob Lourey has joined ASX listed, global education services provider Navitas Limited as Group General Manager, Human Resources. Rob is a senior human resources professional with many years’ experience in large international companies across a broad range of industries, including education, media, construction, property, manufacturing and industrial services, and retail and wholesale financial services. His last role was Group HR Director with APN News & Media.

Infrastructure asset manager Silcar has appointed Raquel Casswell as National Human Resources Manager. Raquel has made the move after more than ten years with technology sales, marketing and logistics company Ingram Micro/Tech Pacific, where most recently she held the role of Senior Director, HR. Ingram Micro has appointed David Finch to the role of HR Director.

Damian Byers has joined the Benevolent Society as Director of Human Resources.

Damian has previous experience in the not-for-profit sector at UnitingCare Ageing, where he held the role of Director People, Learning & Culture for NSW and ACT. Damian has held OD and learning management roles at Fuji Xerox and AstraZeneca and has also lectured in philosophy at the University of Sydney and at the Australian National University.

Listed property group Charter Hall has appointed Craig Buller as Organisation

Development Manager.

Craig will be focusing on leadership development, talent management, organisational capability and employee engagement.

Craig’s background includes engagement, culture and organisational development roles at Qantas and NAB. Elizabeth Tosti has recently joined Goodman Fielder as Director, Safety, Health and Risk. She commenced her career as a chemical engineer at BlueScope Steel before transitioning into their safety team. She has since worked in various high-risk industries with multi-site operations, holding safety leadership roles at Unimin, GrainCorp, the Roads and Traffic Authority, Leighton Holdings and Lend Lease. Her approach to impacting on the safety culture is to keep it simple, to continuously improve systems, and to consult key stakeholders throughout the safety journey.

Johanna Saunders is the new National HR Manager for Guardian Childcare Alliance.

Her role will be to set up the HR function for the organisation, supporting 1,000 workers.

Johanna’s experience spans financial services, retail and hospitality in Sydney, London and Hong Kong. Her most recent role was with Thrifty Car Rentals as National HR Manager.

DEXUS Property Group has welcomed Deborah Coakley as Executive General Manager, People & Culture. Deborah has held various lead human resources roles at Qantas over the last six years, most

recently as Head of Group People Capability, Corporate & Loyalty. Prior to Qantas, Deborah was Director, Asia Pacific, at Alexander Mann Solutions and a Partner at Deloitte, specialising in Human Capital Solutions. Deborah’s areas of specialisation include shared services management, recruitment, RPO, P&L management, and HR strategy development.

Craig Moore has recently joined Boral as Regional WHS Manager for 150 sites across NSW within their Construction Materials business. His early career included line management roles for Origin Energy before moving into WHS 11 years ago. He has since worked as National Safety Manager for Fenner Dunlop and Nepean Conveyors before taking the HSEQ Manager role at Nepean Mining. Craig is undertaking his MBA, holds safety qualifications, and has strong commerciality along with a passion for safety leadership and engagement with the business from top down and bottom up.

By supplying Market Moves, The Next Step is not implying placement involvement in any way.

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FRONTLINE INTELLIGENCE

legal

Nichola Constant P: 02 8094 3102 E: nichola.constant@peopleculture.com.au Erin Lynch P: 02 8094 3115 E: erin.lynch@peopleculture.com.au People + Culture Strategies

Walking the fine line between reasonable performance management and bullying On 21 March 2013, the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013 (the Bill) was introduced into Federal Parliament for consideration and debate. While the Bill contains a number of changes to the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (FW Act), one of the most controversial amendments is the introduction of new anti-bullying measures.

The Bill proposes a popular definition of bullying as the “repeated, unreasonable behaviour directed towards a worker or group of workers, that creates a risk to health and safety”. If the Bill is passed it will be the first time Australians will have an accepted definition of bullying.

The question is – will the Government’s proposal to allow individual employees who are bullied at work to complain directly to the Fair Work Commission (FWC) clear up some of the mystery around when performance management becomes bullying, or will it only muddy the waters even further?

Recently, the FWC found that even when performance management is stressful for an employee, this may not necessarily equate to bullying or harassment (although this would come as no surprise to most of us).

In Choi v Country Fire Authority,1 Ms Choi was told by several managers that her work was unsatisfactory and needed to be changed. Believing that she was doing a good job, Ms Choi refused to comply with these instructions, which led to the commencement of a formal performance management program. Following this, Ms Choi made an informal complaint that the “raising of ongoing performance issues by her managers” was bullying.

After an incident involving an outburst directed at a colleague, Ms Choi was dismissed. She subsequently lodged an unfair dismissal claim and argued that the performance management process was 10

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Employers should be cautious, as not all actions purportedly undertaken to discipline or counsel employees will be characterised as performance management “part of a bullying process by her managers”.

In dismissing her application, the FWC found that the stressful performance management process was not inappropriate or unfair and that there was no reason to dispute the outcome of the employer’s investigation (which found that the behaviours engaged in by Ms Choi’s managers were not bullying).

It should be noted that the FWC did not definitively decide that bullying and harassment had not occurred – it merely accepted the investigation outcomes.

It remains to be seen whether a case with similar factual circumstances would be decided differently under the Government’s proposed anti-bullying regime.

Employers should also be cautious, as not all actions purportedly undertaken to discipline or counsel employees will be characterised as performance management, and the conduct of managers during

performance management may make otherwise reasonable performance management unreasonable and/or unfair.

As such, any exception for reasonable management action under workers’ compensation legislation – such as section 11A of the Workers Compensation Act 1987 (NSW) – may not apply.

In South Eastern Sydney and Illawarra Area Health Service v Nikolis,2 it was found that a number of meetings between a manager and an employee about her absenteeism and lack of punctuality could not truly be characterised as performance management. It was held that the “firm” tone of the manager and an incident in which the manager had ended a meeting “with a bit of frustration” were sufficient to uphold a finding that Ms Nikolis would perceive it to be “bullying and intimidating” and therefore she should be entitled to workers’ compensation.

Some things your organisation can do to protect itself from bullying claims arising from performance management: ● Maintain objectivity and focus on the performance issues, not the person, during performance management meetings. ● Ensure that the emphasis of any performance management meetings is on the future – that is short-, medium- and long-term goals – even though discussion of performance issues will necessarily involve discussing the employee’s past performance. ● Document all performance management discussions and meetings (as you may already be doing). ● Pay attention to your oral and written communications and consider the impact these have on the employee.

References: 1. [2013] FWC 469; 2. [2009] NSWWCCPD 74.

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FRONTLINE INTELLIGENCE

HR consulting

Dr Jack Wiley, Founder and President of the Kenexa High Performance Institute, an IBM Company, Level 2, 451 Little Bourke St, Melbourne Phone (03) 9602 3899 or email jack.wiley@us.ibm.com

INSPIRE ME, RESPECT ME, REWARD ME – the advice for CEOs from their employees Leadership advice for CEOs has traditionally taken the ‘how I made it’ approach.

Take a look at the top-selling leadership books on Amazon and you’ll find dozens from CEOs who believe their way is the best way. I’ve purposefully taken a different approach to the discussion of leadership.

This isn’t a story of one person, and it doesn’t offer wisdom from on high. This research into leadership has been ‘crowd-sourced’.

I’m accessing the wisdom of the crowd to get their take on leadership and organisational success. My crowd consists of more than 50,000 employees from 22 countries around the world. These economies account for almost 80% of the world’s gross domestic product, and the participating employees work in every industry and type of job, from truck drivers to tax accountants.

We asked the employee crowd what they most wanted from their organisation’s top leader and then explored how leaders who provide these ‘wants’ become more successful in the process. This research clearly demonstrates that giving employees what they want makes bottom-line business sense.

Our research revealed that employees have nine ‘wants’, which can be grouped into three clusters.

INSPIRE

Employees want leaders who can deal with the challenges the organisation faces and set a 12

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Career growth 10%

Job security 6%

Appropriate & fair compensation 21%

Fair & equal treatment 12%

clear direction, and are credible, honest and truthful when it comes to business.

Globally speaking, the majority of employees agree that their leaders do have the ability to deal with the organisation’s challenges.

The bad news is that it’s a slim majority at just 62%.

RESPECT

Employees want to work for grateful leaders who appreciate the contributions employees make. They want top leaders who are available, considerate of their employees, and willing to listen to their points of view, and who are fair, objective, impartial, and just in their implementation of human resource policies.

Here again, there is room for improvement: just 42% of

Highly Skilled 10% Clear direction 11%

Honest & transparent communication 11%

Recognition & respect 12%

employees around the world agree that their leaders treat them fairly.

REWARD

Employees want to work for leaders who provide ‘proper’ compensation for the efforts they extend, who can help them develop their skills to grow their careers, and who create confidence about a secure future – both for the organisation itself and for individual employees.

Without this, employees are much less likely to be engaged and much more likely to want to leave. We found that 55% of employees globally who could not see opportunities for advancement at their current company had intentions to leave.

While it’s interesting to look at what our crowd of employees wants, does it really provide a

leadership framework for business success? We looked at organisations with leaders who fulfil their employees’ wants and discovered: • Employee engagement levels more than three times higher than for organisations whose leaders don’t provide employees with what they want • Four times the level of employee confidence in the performance of the organisation (which is a valid proxy for actual organisational performance) • Significantly higher customer satisfaction scores (measured via the American Customer Satisfaction Index) • Almost three times higher Return On Assets (ROA) • Significantly better three-year Total Shareholder Return (TSR) This research demonstrates clearly that employees are an amazing resource for insights to help you get it right. The keys to success – the answer to the question of how best to lead your employees and maximise your organisation’s performance – are right there. All you have to do is listen to the crowd.

This research is the subject of Dr Jack Wiley’s next book, due to be published later in 2013. Dr Wiley is also speaking at Kenexa’s Strategies for Success seminar in Sydney on 18 June. Contact jenni.blake@kenexa. com to register your attendance at this complimentary event and hear more from Jack on this topic.

FRONTLINE INTELLIGENCE Nick Southcombe is the General Manager of Frontier Software, an Australian-based global provider of HR and Payroll software and associated services. Nick can be contacted at nick.southcombe@ frontiersoftware.com.au or by phoning (03) 9639 0777. Website: www.frontiersoftware.com

technology

Recruitment – the first impression that matters

Q A

How can HR meet the increasingly challenging recruitment needs of today’s competitive market?

There’s no simple answer to recruitment. Remaining competitive in the market requires constant innovation. Best-in-class organisations are focusing on accessing their internal talent pools, reducing cost and time to hire, and engaging candidates rapidly in communication with enterprise social media and recruitment technology.

The recruitment and on-boarding process is perhaps the most vital step in the HR lifecycle for ensuring employee engagement.

Every day new research emerges that demonstrates the lasting impact your recruitment and on-boarding processes have on your ability to engage and retain talent. So why are so many businesses still getting recruitment wrong? The answer is complacency.

In today’s competitive business environment it’s important to remember that innovation never stops. You might have a comprehensive employer branding strategy, an engaging social media presence and cross-platform job advertising, but it takes constant vigilance in the recruitment space to keep up to pace.

Employers can no longer wait for candidates to come to them; we must be actively positioning brand in front of targeted candidates. Today is the age of the knowledge worker. This means it’s time to get serious about hunting for talent. And we mean hunting.

The recruitment world – and especially the ever-expanding social space – is a jungle of aggressive agencies, colourful peacock-candidates, and even the odd lyrebird. Just as every boy scout knows, when you’re heading into the wilderness

The ability to attract talent can be seriously damaged by indecision, a poorly managed process that runs across several months, or an excessive number of interviews you must ‘be prepared’. Central to this is having a comprehensive system in place that manages every candidate touchpoint, from advertising a position to on-boarding your new recruit.

Your system must accurately forecast the recruitment needs, identify talent within your enterprise, advertise across your platforms, identify top candidates, communicate during the recruitment process, and on-board smoothly. Getting all of this right is a big ask, but it’s vital for business to eliminate ad hoc practices.

ACCESSING THE INTERNAL TALENT POOL

Too often businesses fail to nurture their internal talent pool. While all HR professionals know the benefits of recruiting internally – reduced hiring costs, enhanced engagement, retention – few organisations

stop to search their talent pool once they’ve identified the need for a new position.

This is because most recruitment systems aren’t effectively integrated with learning and development. The key here is not only keeping your talent pipelines full but also keeping them moving. This requires accurate forecasting, succession planning and training that targets talent.

REDUCING COST AND TIME TO HIRE

According to recent research, 79% of candidates are turned off by a position that requires a long recruitment process. The ability to attract talent can be seriously damaged by indecision, a poorly managed process that runs across several months, or an excessive number of interviews.

The rise and rise of psychometric testing has shown a cross-industry trend towards quantitative data and away from face-to-face subjective assessment. Questionnaires that appear early on in the recruitment process have proven to be an effective way to identify talent and reduce the time to hire.

Along with testing, resume screening is a valuable way to cut costs and quickly eliminate incompatible candidates. It’s important to find the right balance between due diligence when analysing candidates, and maintaining their engagement.

ENGAGING CANDIDATES

Recruitment is the most pivotal step in employee engagement. As in all steps in the employee lifecycle, communication is at the heart of engaging your talent.

This means enhancing every candidate touchpoint for a rapid and responsive recruitment process.

It takes the right blend of technology and strategic face-to-face skills to do all that is required of recruitment and on-boarding effectively.

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PROFILE GARETH BENNETT

my brilliant career

HR without

BOUNDARIES Few people have had a career as illustrious as Gareth Bennett’s. The 2012 recipient of the Australian HR Awards accolade for Lifetime Achievement, Gareth talked to Iain Hopkins about the transition to consultancy work, why change should be relished, and why boards need more HR practitioners Human Capital: What drew you to an HR role initially?

Gareth Bennett: The thing that drew me was the fact that if you get into the right kind of HR role you can work across every facet of a business. It’s integral to the business and it’s dealing with the elements of business which are the most complicated: the people. I chose very carefully – Ford Motor Company was my training ground, and it was superb.

HC: You’ve worked in many industries, in many well-known companies, and in many different countries. Which of your HR roles has stood out for you in terms of challenges, and also in terms of the satisfaction you got from the role?

GB: It’s hard to pick any particular role because what I’ve always done is sought out blue-chip companies in challenging environments where the industry was going through a huge change. I went into the motoring industry when there were huge amalgamations and mergers going on. That was fantastic. The excitement for me is in change, whether that’s geography, culture, or sector. I can’t imagine being in a steady-state organisation.

HC: What tip would you pass on to other HR professionals involved in significant change initiatives?

GB: The mergers and acquisitions side of things is an area that can be hugely stimulating and you can make a huge contribution, but only if you push the boundaries of what is defined as HR. Really it’s getting involved, or putting yourself forward to get involved, at the early stage – for example, during an acquisition, being involved in the legal 14

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side, the due diligence side, the financials. All those things will grow you as a person, and it demonstrates you can make a true business contribution. If I look back on the AGL days, for example, with the merger, demerger and so forth with Alinta, with all the legal battles that went on and work with the ACCC, that was an incredible learning process.

HC: Do you think HR professionals have the skills to navigate those legally complex areas?

GB: It’s important to realise what you don’t know. Going in blindly can be very dangerous. Entered into with eyes open and as part of an overall business team it can be a great growth experience, but you can’t go in making legal or financial decisions without the right kind of advice.

HC: You’ve recently started your own HR consultancy company, R&R Consulting. What do you miss about working ‘in-house’, and also what do you enjoy most about consulting work?

GB: In-house has a lot going for it in terms of working with great business and HR teams – that stimulation from colleagues is something you can miss if you’re not careful.

Also, if you like continuity then probably you’ll miss that too. But on the flipside it’s the ability to explore new businesses, understand what makes the people in those businesses tick, and understand new models. It’s the freedom to work with the people I want to work with.

HC: What would your top tip be for other HR professionals considering making that switch?

GARETH BENNETT ROLL OF HONOUR Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Fellow of the Australian Human Resources Institute

Thilo Pulch, www.pulchphotography.com

BA (Hons) First Class Social Studies

PROFILE GARETH BENNETT

my brilliant career The excitement for me is in change, whether that’s geography, culture, or sector.

I can’t imagine being in a steady-state organisation – GARETH BENNETT GB: The first thing I’d ask is what is my motivation for doing this? The second is to develop a business plan. Third would be to market test that with some people who you know well and aren’t just going to say “Yes, great idea – go for it”. Have an advisory board in place so you can test your ideas, and give them permission to say it’s not a good idea.

Without that, it’s easy to get carried away with your own rhetoric. Having the right kind of network is essential ... both to tell you what not to do and to encourage you as well.

HC: What do you consider to be your biggest career achievement to date?

GB: There are so many things I’ve enjoyed. Overall, it would be demonstrating I can adapt and succeed across geographies and cultures.

Gareth Bennett’s international exposure UK: Ford and AMP Western and Eastern Europe: Ford US and South America: Ford and AGL Asia (including India, China, Japan): Ford, AGL, AMP, Freehills Australia and New Zealand: AGL, AMP, Freehills Middle/Far East: Ford, AGL

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HC: What do you think it takes to succeed in HR? GB: You have to be a business person first and an HR person second. I don’t mean HR isn’t important – what I mean is you must understand you are a business person.

If you are purely interested in people, then probably social work is the right place to go. There’s nothing further from social work than a business role in HR. You have to make some very tough calls on very tough issues. You also need a strong sense of integrity, of organisational courage. That’s essential if you’re going to give the right advice to business leaders. You have to understand the business; be able to analyse and cut through incisively. Have empathy, be calm under pressure, and be a good listener with a sense of humour!

HC: Have you seen that ‘business person first’ skillset evolve in HR practitioners?

GB: I think they are evolving because there isn’t time these days for business people to translate things into HR speak, for them to go away and come back with a solution. If you want a seat at the table you have to speak the language of business. So yes, I am seeing adaption among the best HR people, and it’s increasingly a demand from business.

HC: What advice would you give to graduates

Change maestro l

l

l

l

Ford: Acquisition of Jaguar, Aston Martin and AC Cars. Closure of major car plants across Europe AMP: Acquisition of Pearl, Henderson Investors, NPI, GIO, and subsequent divestment of key assets. Demutualisation of AMP AGL: Merger/demerger of AGL and Alinta, including ground-breaking ACCC case law Freehills: People strategy to bring firm through GFC as No. 1 revenue-generating firm. Exploring alliance with UK law firms

considering a career in HR? GB: Development of business acumen is all-important.

Networking is important. And if you look at the way businesses are moving, with a strong sense of values underpinning them, it comes down to the ethical debate around what is morally right as opposed to legally right.

HC: Perhaps this is to help balance other conflicting areas of business interest?

GB: That’s where the HR skillset can come into its own. I’m not saying you’re the moral guardian, but it’s asking those difficult questions. I’ve posed the question to CEOs and leadership teams: Ok, we know that’s legally correct, but how would you feel if that appeared in the newspapers? It’s being able to challenge in a way that’s still team-oriented.

HC: Maybe that’s what CEOs expect of their HRDs? To bring that perspective to the table?

GB: I’d like to think so. Certainly that’s the sort of CEO I’d like to work with and those are the sort of business leaders I like to help develop.

HC: You’ve also had extensive experience on boards.

Do you think more HR professionals should aspire to be on boards? What might need to change to make this more prevalent?

GB: Yes, I do think there’s a role for HR. Boards know they must increase their gene pool so questions of diversity are becoming more important, both to shareholders and the boards themselves. There are different demands on boards, and we’re moving towards the HR skillset being more appreciated at that level. If you look at current issues – CSR, diversity, remuneration, succession issues, organisational strategy, cultural issues – all these are now big topics for boards, ones by which they’re measured. For the right HR people, that role on boards can be very stimulating, providing they’ve done their homework in terms of understanding corporate governance and risk mitigation, compliance and ethics. It’s a world which is not for the faint-hearted. There are huge responsibilities and

liabilities that go with it – but it can be very stimulating and I’d encourage people to head that way.

HC: Where do you see HR as a profession heading in the future?

GB: I’ve alluded to the speed of change ever increasing. For HR it can’t be a purely technical standalone area. I believe in the business first, HR second mantra. There has to be more stimulation from that business team for top-line growth rather than cost-cutting. There will be more focus on truly embracing diversity and inclusiveness. It’s going to call for more organisational courage, especially given that people aspiring to HR roles these days want to do something which does something in society beyond just making money.

How do you truly unlock people’s commitment, get that engagement? That’s all about the culture of the organisation, and where we can make a really big impact. You can’t command engagement in this world. When you look at the demands of CSR, ethics, diversity, risk, all of these areas are where HR can make integral contributions to the business and push the boundaries of HR at the same time.

More industry profiles at:

hcamag.com

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COVER STORY HR IN OFFSHORE MANAGEMENT

corporate social responsibility

Corporate Social

Responsibility in an offshore world

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Stephanie Zillman investigates just how high the stakes are for organisations running an offshore workforce without managing CSR throughout all stages of the supply chain.

Designing the corporate social responsibility strategy is no longer considered solely the domain of HR, and for many organisations not only has the issue of CSR made it to the boardroom table, but it has become engrained in the very fabric of doing business.

Yet despite the prevalence of CSR at the boardroom level, supply-chain related scandals are by no means a thing of the past. The Nike sweatshops and child-labour scandal of the 1990s may at first seem like an antiquated example – something that rocked the corporate world 15 years ago – but it seems corporate Australia has a short memory.

Cut to 2012 and once again reports hit the headlines of child-labour being used in the supply chain of sporting goods manufacturer, Sherrin. The company was forced to close down some of its India-based operations after a young boy in Melbourne was injured by a sewing needle left protruding from a football. The incident led to the discovery that one of its subcontractors in India had been using school-aged children to stitch its synthetic footballs – many of which were destined for use in Auskick, the AFL’s national youth development program.

In a statement to media in September last year, the company said its subcontractor had, unbeknownst to Sherrin, outsourced the stitching of balls to families within the Jalandahar region, and that the company would be responding swiftly. That it did, and the company sacked all four of its subcontractors immediately and made arrangements for the stitching to be done at alternative factories. All balls (some half a million) made by that subcontractor in the previous two years were also recalled at a cost of more than $1 million.

The company was commended for its response, but AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou commented that the revelations were abhorrent and ‘goes against everything that we stand for in this code and this game.’ “You can’t have that in this day and age, and we’ve said that to them.

They know the damage that this could cause to their brand,” Demetriou said in September last year.

Whether or not lasting brand damage will endure, FutureEye managing director Katherine Teh-White says incidents involving child-labour, sweatshops, and unethical supply-chain practices, is a high-cost way to uncover shortcomings that could have been identified through thorough CSR risk assessments. “I think the HCAMAG.COM 19

COVER STORY HR IN OFFSHORE MANAGEMENT

corporate social responsibility When your processes are not properly aligned, the most obvious fallout is major reputational controversies, but there are always a whole lot of earlier indicators than that.

– KATHERINE TEH-WHITE modern-day expectation is really that if you don’t take in the spirit of responsibility of the supply chain, and that includes all of the people that are being employed by you either directly or via your contractors, then you haven’t understood the social responsibility dynamic that has been emerging over the last 15 years. No longer can you devolve responsibility for those to whom you contract out. The Nike example really increased global understanding of the expectations that have emerged over a long period of time, where if you’re indirectly employing someone, that’s no longer an excuse, you can’t hide behind that. Corporations have to take responsibility for the supply chain, and that comes out in lots of different ways,” Teh-White says.

In the wake of these supply-chain scandals and many others, Teh-White says a lot of companies have failed to interrogate their own systems, and investigate what the revelations have meant for their own practices. The fact that major companies are still being caught off guard in today’s environment as a result of not having put in the right structures and processes is shocking and unnecessary, Teh-White says, and poor reputation management planning. “There’s a mixed level of understanding in the world in terms of OH&S, human rights, and reputational risks inside the supply chain – people aren’t necessarily thinking about it from what I would call the ‘duel lens’ perspective, so asking both ‘is it actually happening?’, and ‘are we enabling it to happen’,” Teh-White says.

In the aftermath of the child-labour scandal at Sherrin, the company fully revised its supply chain processes, and the changes have been immense. Managing Director of Sherrin Chris Lambert tells HC that as a result of the revelations, there is now no outsourcing of stitching whatsoever, and that all manufacturing is now undertaken in-house by their supplier. “There is also more independent auditing than before, more visits from our staff to the factory in India and by our supplier to us 20

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in Melbourne, as well as increased quality control measures in metal detecting,” Lambert says. As to how Sherrin can guarantee the integrity of their supply chain, Lambert adds they have installed real time video access to all areas of their main Indian supplier to ensure standards are being met. What’s more, “We use globally accredited third party audit firms and they have conducted multiple reviews since last September,” Lambert says.

The first metric in the risk-management process, addressing whether or not it is happening, comes down to the standards and competencies of supply-chain management in offshore locations. But perhaps the more difficult metric – whether the company culture enables unethical corporate conduct – is where the road becomes windy. Teh-White says to this end, management must be committed to setting up the standards, competencies, and learning and development programs, so that the behaviours and values that are expected to be upheld are done so throughout every single layer of the organisation.

“It shouldn’t take a really significant crisis to realise ‘oh I see, we’re really out of line with society’s expectations’.

Our view is that there’s a much lower cost way of doing that. The lower cost way is looking at lead indicators of what are the social norms of society, and doing a gap analysis of the way you think as an organisation, and the way your leaders think, and the way society thinks, and how that impacts on the behaviours and sorts of issues that you may confront – and plan those out earlier,” Teh-White says.

Key questions to be asking at a boardroom level are the ‘why we exist as an organisation?’, and ‘why should our employees care about our survival?’. Having answers to these is at the very core of the talent strategy, and ensuring the alignment with society is strong and clearly articulated is a key challenge which most organisations must tackle in order to stay relevant, and attract and retain the best employees. On paper, the answers to these questions are articulated through the CSR policy, and Teh-White says that while it’s fundamental to have one, it needs to be anchored into every level of the business operations in order for it to be worth the paper it’s written on.

To determine whether a company’s CSR policy is truly functional and working to minimise risk, Teh-White says it must balance optimum outcomes between the company interests, the community interests, and the personal professional ethics of their staff. “When your processes are not properly aligned, the most obvious fallout is major reputational controversies, but there are always a whole lot of earlier indicators than that,” she says.

“Companies have had CSR as a ‘tack-on’, but to align your organisation so that every function actually understands how their operations must change in order to align with society’s expectations and get a commercial outcome – and to balance all those competing needs, and to do that extremely well; I think that’s very early in its life-cycle as a trend,” Teh-White says.

Case Study: Deloitte setting the tone When it comes to compliance and box ticking vs. CSR being a central part of how an organisation thinks and operates, corporate services firm Deloitte has been a trendsetter. As Vessa Playfair from Deloitte attests – it’s now to a point where those companies without a clear and transparent CSR strategy aren’t taken seriously by their corporate peers.

David Lombe, Chief Ethics Officer at Deloitte Australia, says it’s crucial from their firm’s perspective not to just pay ‘lip service’ to ethics, but to actually engrain ethical standards within the way business is done. Alongside the advent of the internet, younger talent are proactive in investigating the ethical values of an organisation, or the ethical values an organisation might espouse to have, and this can be a key factor in deciding where they want to work. As CSR becomes increasingly linked to the talent strategy, Lombe says the company has designed its response in two key ways.

“Firstly, we have that tone set from the top, which emanates from our global firm and is seen as a very important part of what we do. Our global CEO Barry Salzberg is continually espousing ethical values and is asking our leaders around the world to build ethical values into the way we all do business. We get the tone from the top and then young talent can see that those are the kinds of things being championed,” Lombe says.

Second to this is the leadership framework. There is a chief ethics officer for each region, as well as ethics advocacy officers whose role it is to firsthand receive and respond to ethical issues as they emerge.

Alongside this, Deloitte also has an induction process so that every person who joins the firm undertakes an ethics course at the beginning of their tenure, so that the core ethical values are communicated and understood from day one, as well as how these values fit in with the overarching commitment to CSR at Deloitte. Their skills are refreshed through course work every two years, and workers also receive regular alerts which detail advice and provide examples of ethical dilemmas they may encounter. Through frequent communication of the channels available for reporting, as well as compulsory, independent questionnaires, the company is committed to addressing unethical conduct in the first instance.

“It’s really about communications – for example if our people want to read our policies they’re there (on the internal site), if they want to talk to someone they can talk to me as ethics officer, or if it’s a minor issue they can talk to an advocacy officer, if they want to

“Good corporate citizenship is engrained in everything we do at Deloitte.

Our Responsible Business strategy is not an afterthought; it reflects all aspects make a report they can make a report through the anonymous hotline, and they know things will get done,” Lombe says.

Chief among the response to ethical conduct at Deloitte though, is what Lombe describes as ‘protected channels for reporting’. “One of the important things that we’ve got across to people is that if they report something it’s never a case of ‘shoot the messenger’– because they will be protected. That’s one of the things that I’ve been really careful about as ethics officer, it just strengthens the confidence that people at Deloitte have. If there is something wrong or they think there’s something wrong, then they know exactly what to do, and ultimately that process strengthens the framework of the way we do business.”

of our operations, including client service, employee relations and our supply chain.”

– DELOITTE RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS 2012 REPORT

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COVER STORY HR IN OFFSHORE MANAGEMENT

corporate social responsibility Making a global commitment Market Our people

Government Our people

Regulators

Deloitte’s Responsible Business Agenda

g nA Gree

Our people

Market

Peo ple

en da

Regulators

So cia l Ag enda

Quali ty &

enda Ag isk

da en Ag

R

Clients

y& nit Commu

Local Communites

Our people

Government Suppliers

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited is a founding signatory to the UN Global Compact, and its member firms comply with each of the Compact’s 10 principles, including using goods and services suppliers that comply with global best practice in human rights, international labour laws, environmental impact and ethical purchasing practices.

Signing the Global Compact means companies agree to embrace universal principles and to partner with the United Nations. It has grown to become a critical platform for the UN to engage effectively with enlightened global business, and it is possible for businesses of any size to become a signatory.

As it stands more than 10,000 businesses have signed the Global Compact, and there are a range of resources available to signatories to aid their commitment to the UN’s principles which cover the areas of human rights, labour, the environment and anticorruption. They are: Human Rights 1: Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights; and 2: make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses.

Labour 3: Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining; 4: the elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour; 5: the effective abolition of child labour; and 6: the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.

Environment 7: Businesses should support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges;

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Suppliers

8: undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility; and 9: encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies.

Anti-Corruption 10: Businesses should work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery.

UN Global Compact – commitment to COP Businesses which commit to the UN Global Compact pledge to adhere to the Global Compact ten principles as part of their business strategies and day-to-day operations. In doing so, organisations also commit to submitting an annual Communication on Progress (COP), which is a public disclosure statement to stakeholders, namely their investors, consumers, civil society, governments, etc. The COP details the company’s progress in implementing the ten principles, and may also include ways it has supported the UN’s broader development goals. l The COP requirement is seen as an important reporting mechanism and serves to: l Advance transparency and accountability; l Drive continuous performance improvement; l Safeguard the integrity of the UN Global Compact and the UN; and l Help build a growing repository of corporate practices to promote dialogue and learning.

In the Putting our principles into practice: Responsible Business 2012 report, Deloitte affirmed its commitment to embedding quality throughout its business. Their responsible business chart shows the relationship between its business operations and commitment to CSR.

HCAMAG.COM 23

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

reviews and appraisals

The end of the performance review In this exclusive book extract, Dr Tim Baker argues that the traditional performance review is an outmoded artefact of the 20th century. He advocates a ‘5 conversations’ approach that dispenses with bureaucracy, leading to a more open, constructive and enjoyable experience Most managers are locked into the belief that they need to conduct annual or bi-annual performance appraisals with their staff. Yet they acknowledge, on the other hand, that the system is not working. HR managers are caught in the middle of all this. There is currently a plethora of comments on the value of the performance review.

Performance management is increasingly being spoken of in articles, blogs, and management books, and is the topic of conversation at HR and management conferences all over the world.

Not all this commentary is positive; many people are seeking answers to the perennial challenges of getting the best from people in their roles at work. The ‘5 Conversations’ Framework’ answers some of these questions, particularly in relation to offering an original and comprehensible alternative to the old performance appraisal system. As we increasingly recognise the value of human capital in the modern workplace, fresh insights and new approaches to managing people’s performance are undoubtedly needed.

When it comes to performance reviews, my involvement with organisations, big and small, indicates it’s generally not a positive experience. In fact, I regularly hear the following complaints about performance reviews or appraisals: l They are a costly exercise l Performance reviews can be destructive l They are often a monologue rather than a dialogue l The formality of the appraisal stifles discussion l The infrequency of reviews 24

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l l l

Appraisals are an exercise in form filling Performance reviews are rarely followed up Most people find the appraisal stressful

Please don’t get me wrong – I am not against performance feedback. In fact, I believe it is one of the most important things a manager should be doing.

Organisational psychologists tell us time and time again about the importance of feedback and its link to performance improvement and motivation. You would be hard pressed to find a book on management and leadership that doesn’t extol the virtues of timely, tactful and specific feedback on performance. Performance management is central to the role of manager.

Here is an approach called the ‘5 Conversations’ Framework’ that I think you will find very helpful. It is easy to implement, constructive and not bureaucratic.

Essentially, it is based on five conversations, each lasting about 15 minutes, between the manager and his or her employees.

Let’s look at each conversation briefly.

CLIMATE REVIEW CONVERSATION

A climate review is about determining the current atmosphere in a particular workplace. It is mainly concerned with employees’ job satisfaction, morale and communication. Although people’s opinion about these matters can fluctuate over the course of a year, it is important to take a snapshot of the business occasionally. This assists managers to get a handle on

The 5 Conversations’ Framework DATE

TOPIC

CONTENT

KEY QUESTIONS

January

Climate review

Job satisfaction, morale and communication

How would you rate your current job satisfaction?

How would you rate morale?

How would you rate communication?

February

Strengths and talents

More effectively deploying strengths and interests

What are your strengths and talents?

How can these strengths and talents be used in your current and future roles in the organisation?

March

Opportunity for growth

Improving performance and standards

What are some opportunities for improved performance?

How can I assist you to do this?

April

Learning and development

Support and growth

What are some skills you would like to learn?

What learning opportunities would you like to undertake?

June

Innovation and continuous improvement

Ways and means to improve the efficiencies and effectiveness of the business

What’s one way that you could improve your own working efficiencies?

What’s one way we can improve our team’s operations?

the current state of the business. These conversations can be a rich source of information for planning purposes in the business.

STRENGTHS AND TALENTS CONVERSATION

Most performance appraisals are fixated on what is going wrong; in other words, they focus on the weaknesses and sometimes neglect to discuss particular strengths and talents. Tom Rath in the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Strengths Finder 2.0 states: “Society’s relentless focus on people’s shortcomings has turned into a global obsession. What’s more, we have discovered that people have several times more potential for growth when they invest energy in developing their strengths instead of correcting their deficiencies.”

Apart from being a far more positive place to start discussing performance, as Roth points out in the above quote from his book, building upon strengths has a higher payoff than working on overcoming weaknesses.

This does not mean that we shouldn’t discuss deficiencies.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR GROWTH CONVERSATION

This conversation focuses on strategies for improved performance from the employee’s individual perspective.

It provides the team member with an opportunity to consider how they may improve their own work performance. The manager is able to use this conversation to gain a common perspective on areas for improved performance. From here, the pair can discuss some tangible ways and means of improving individual productivity. This conversation is important to reflect on

the individual’s role in the business and how to improve their contribution. Many of the strategies can be implemented on the spot with the assistance of the manager. Other ideas can be discussed and put in practice later.

LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT CONVERSATION

The learning and development conversation is designed to discuss the learning needs of the employee now and in the future. It may include formal opportunities such as attendance at courses, programs and seminars.

Informal opportunities may include skill development within the business, or further coaching and mentoring.

These discussions are important to establish some short-term goals for personal and technical growth and career development.

INNOVATION AND CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT CONVERSATION

Conversations around innovation and continuous improvement are about practical ways and means of improving both the employee’s own efficiency and effectiveness and the business in general. It focuses on ideas for developing new and improved working arrangements for the individual and organisation.

It is likely that a conversation with all staff during a particular month about this topic will lead to the immediate generation of some practical and cost-effective ideas that can be used to enhance systems and process improvements in the business.

I’d recommend you try this approach if you either have no performance management system in place or the current system you have is not working.

About the author Dr Tim Baker helps managers develop productive workplace cultures. He is the author of several books, including The End of the Performance Review. Contact him at tim@ winnersatwork. com.au HCAMAG.COM 25

TALENT MANAGEMENT

poor performance

Cards on the table HR is frequently asked to fix performance issues by providing training, when systemic, deeper issues are at play. Iain Hopkins looks at some root causes of poor performance, and what can be done to improve the situation

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“So…tell me how you think you are performing in your role.” For what it’s worth, if a conversation about underperformance needs to occur, that’s one of the better ways to open it. It immediately throws the onus on to the employee to reflect on what level they feel they’ve been operating at. And if it’s a deluded self-view, then it’s time for management instincts to kick into gear.

There’s no question that managing poor performance is a tricky area, yet it need not be ‘the event’ loathed by both employee and manager. It must be remembered that, on the whole, most people don’t show up to work to purposely do a bad job. It’s therefore critical for managers to uncover the root cause of poor performance and determine whether an employee can be turned around.

A NEW ERA?

While it’s probably never going to be high on a manager’s list of ‘most desired’ tasks, there are subtle shifts taking place in terms of performance management in recent times. Instead of sweeping poor performance ‘under the carpet’, it’s being confronted more readily than in the past.

Rosemarie Dentesano, practice leader for Right Management in Aus/NZ, notes that in many – not all – organisations, there’s talk of ‘non-negotiable accountabilities’ when it comes to performance. This pressure is coming on two fronts: cost management, and finding productivity improvements.

One way to improve productivity is to improve performance – hence there’s sharper focus on getting the right people for the right roles and setting the bar high to start with. Expectations have also changed. CEOs are being clearer on expectations and about performance being important. And where it was once just the CEO and top brass being raked over the coals for underperformance, now everyone in the organisation is expected to deliver on strategy. “It’s becoming harder to

hide, so to speak, and there’s a need to perform and deliver,” says Dentesano. “We’re seeing changing work models and practices which are requiring people to step up and perform.”

Dentesano does concede that the reluctance of the past to deal with underperformance is still lingering, but this is changing. “There was a hesitancy to deal with it, because it requires a concentrated effort, it requires people to be honest and requires good leadership to set the parameters and then monitor and measure it, and evaluate it. Quite often leaders are good at setting the parameters and not so good at holding people to account.

So there’s a change in the market around accountability

Start at the beginning…

Tammy Tansley provides her tips for determining the root causes of poor performance: • The first step is to work out the ‘why’ of the underperformance.

• Does the employee know what to do? Is there absolute clarity around the expectations of the job and its objectives?

• Does the employee know how to do it? Are there knowledge or skills gaps that could be addressed through some form of development?

• Does the employee want to do it? Possibly the hardest to address – what’s the employee’s motivation and what is impacting on that?

• And finally – are there any internal or external issues that are impacting on the employee’s ability to perform (examples of internal issues include bullying behaviour by another employee, systems that don’t work, dysfunctional team dynamics, or a mismatch with organisational culture or values; examples of external are personal issues such as illness of a family member, divorce, addiction, etc).

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TALENT MANAGEMENT

poor performance It’s a development skill required to actually be able to cite an example and use that example in the moment to provide feedback and look at different ways of achieving a better outcome – ROSEMARIE DENTESANO and people getting serious about managing performance,” she says.

WHAT’S THE ROOT CAUSE?

The causes of poor performance are multifaceted.

Garry Adams, talent business leader at Mercer, says poor performance is fundamentally a systemic issue “where addressing and indeed preventing it relies on the integration of an organisation’s people practices while at the same time making sure they reflect and support what the organisation is trying to achieve”.

It’s like interlocking puzzle pieces: an organisation’s recruitment and hiring practices need to acquire the right people, with the right skills, in the right locations; their capability development programs must be relevant and structured to be delivered in a timely and efficient way; and the employees are effectively managed on a daily basis throughout the year via regular, robust and meaningful conversations backed up by effective consequence management or one-on-one coaching interventions. Repeatedly, research shows that high-performing organisations are the ones that manage and deliver these practices well.

Yet it’s also conducive to look at specific causes of poor performance. Top of the list must be a person’s skill capability and motivational interests not matching the requirements of the role – essentially resulting in a job/person mismatch.

“Through the person being in the wrong job, they struggle to deliver on the accountabilities of the role,” Dentesano tells HC. Another problem can occur when leaders or managers don’t articulate clearly what their expectations are of a role and what they need from it. Therefore they place someone in it, but change may occur and the person doesn’t perform as expected. Essentially, the requirements of the role may have changed, yet “the job has not been realigned to match with the person on the 28

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job – it’s almost about structural/job fit and job design,” Dentesano says.

Another important consideration is that often leaders fail to provide ongoing feedback and development. “You end up with people who are poorly aligned but possibly not due to any fault of their own,” Dentesano says.

Right Management’s outplacement program research indicates that around 47% of people change job type or function after a redeployment activity, giving an indication of mismatch of skills, interests, motivators and/or real job fit. “People change, jobs change, things outside of work change, and we don’t keep up with that with more development or the changing profile we need for the job,” Dentesano says.

Adams adds that required skills and capabilities change, so sometimes people may initially have what’s required to succeed; however, over time, if their skill development does not keep pace with the change, their performance may suffer. This is particularly true when changing market demands and competitive pressures mean business success is dependent on enhanced or new capabilities. “While some employees will readily adapt to the new requirements, others may struggle, and potentially those who were once considered good or solid performers may over time move into the underperformer category,” Adams says.

In other situations, poor performance may have little to do with the skills and expertise required to do the job but instead be more related to the attitude and mindset of the employee. Employee disengagement can strongly contribute to a slide into poor performance, where at best employees may set aside discretionary efforts and additional contributions and at worst may passively or even actively undermine an organisation’s efforts and initiatives.

“While the attitude and mindset of most employees can be improved, there is typically a small percentage of employees where fundamentally very little, if anything, can be done,” Adams notes.

Finally, Adams suggests some that organisations can be ‘blind’ to true poor performance, in part because the organisation’s goal- and target-setting processes have broken down or because the organisation accepts the objective measures of performance on face value alone, or because the manager has hired people who are more like themselves. “This last issue often masks less obvious contributors to poor performance, such as the clashing of egos and styles or a lack of diversity of thought and opinion,” he says.

DELVING DEEPER

To address the first issue that Adams has noted – the breakdown of an organisation’s goal- and target-setting processes – it’s critical to investigate whether the targets

and goals set in some areas may be too ‘soft’ or too ‘hard’ when compared to other areas. “In these instances, some employees may ‘appear’ as poor performers; however, it is their targets, relative to their peers, which may have been set with a higher degree of challenge and stretch,” Adams says.

This issue may be further compounded when poor performance and top performance are not clearly defined and understood.

In the second issue outlined by Adams, organisations viewing performance through measurable performance results alone without effective governance and verification of the facts will likely miss the true details of what has actually occurred. “These details can include strong contributions by the employee in other areas valued by the organisation, or where the employee’s performance has been undermined by fellow employees,” he says.

TAKING ACTION

In many ways, the actions taken to resolve an issue will rely on the accurate diagnosis of the problem. This may also determine how much time and energy should be devoted to the underperformer. An astute manager – or one accustomed to having meaningful conversations with staff – should be aware of external factors. Tammy Tansley, principal at Tammy Tansley Consulting, suggests that if underperformance is related to an external issue such as a family crisis, and that employee has been a valued employee up until that time, then the decision might be that it is worth sticking with the employee and offering them support for a period of time while they are sorting out their situation.

The other consideration is that this process is not a one-way street. The employee isn’t passive in this process. It should be a two-way process and conversation in which both parties are able to honestly reflect on the situation and the impact it is having, and agree to steps to change.

“It’s critical that the employer doesn’t take on all the responsibility here – the employee needs to acknowledge the situation and actively accept that they need to take steps to address the situation,” Tansley says.

“Having an honest dialogue will mean that – within a framework of what is legally acceptable – it’s easier to have a ‘cards on the table’ conversation which can help both parties decide when it’s time to part ways.”

If there is no willingness or acceptance of the issues by the employee, no amount of coaching, support or other interventions will address the situation. Equally, there are times when there is just a mismatch in role, organisation and person, and no development or support is going to change that.

In either of these situations, managing the employee out of the organisation can be an appropriate response.

THE MANAGER

A recent finding in Mercer’s 2013 Global Performance Management survey shows that the one area of manager capability that, if improved, would have the biggest impact on improving performance management is the enhancement of candid dialogue. This is followed by the ability of the manager to link performance to development planning. Unfortunately, these findings point to the current reality that many frontline managers do not possess the skills to handle difficult conversations, nor do they have the ability to identify development needs and put in place a robust plan to manage these.

What’s responsible for this capability gap? Firstly, many organisations still typically promote frontline managers based on the high performance they have delivered in their roles as individual contributors. As research has repeatedly shown, the profile for success as a manager is quite different to the capabilities required to succeed as an individual contributor or technical specialist.

This issue has been exacerbated by the fact that, following the global financial crisis (GFC), a ‘thinning out’ of the talent pool has occurred through forced redundancies and layoffs. This has further increased the probability of the successful individual contributor moving into frontline management ranks. Secondly, in order to protect short-term profits post-GFC, organisations have typically curtailed investment in this area. Adams notes that most of the investment in leadership development, up to and since the GFC, has been directed at top leadership levels, and the momentum to cascade leadership development to frontline managers has more or less been halted.

Yet it’s not all doom and gloom. Dentesano has noticed a change in the “language of leadership”, whereby managers and leaders are being held to account to coach, support and build capability in their teams. As a leader, she says, you have accountability to give people feedback on how they’re going, and most people struggle with telling someone they’re not doing the right thing or not delivering on the standards required. “It’s a development skill required to actually be able to cite an example and use that example in the moment to provide feedback and look at different ways of achieving a better outcome,” she says.

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poor performance THE APPRAISAL

Technology is playing an important role in improving performance management processes, making them more user-friendly and less paper intensive. Mercer’s 2013 study shows that 56% of organisations are using technology that goes beyond Word-enabled forms.

However, Adams says performance-management-related change and improvement initiatives are often too narrow when the focus is just on improving the appraisal system and associated processes. In the end, the change experience and the end result feel more like a compliance-led exercise. Instead, performance management should place less emphasis on the process and more on the conversations between manager and employee that will ultimately move the needle on workforce performance and capability development.

Good performance management happens every day.

That’s the theory. Indeed, Tansley says there are great examples of organisations that have done away with formal appraisal processes because their regular feedback and other organisational processes are so effective that they’re not needed. Yet, for most companies, it’s the execution that lets them down. It’s not unusual for managers to save their grievances with their employees until the annual or bi-annual review. That’s too late, says Dentesano. “There should be no surprises,” she notes.

She adds that there is a cultural element involved, whereby organisations provide performance feedback every day, or once a year. “Where it’s done every day there’s obviously a good communication process; there’s a good coaching mindset and an openness to learning.

Where it’s done once a year and people are briefed on how to do it with a list of steps to follow, I think they’re putting themselves in a difficult position as leaders and not giving their team an opportunity to benefit from real-time learning and development.”

Dentesano also believes there are too many measures and often people can’t see the connection between the measures on their performance scorecard and their job, and what the organisation is trying to achieve. For example, where an organisation is looking for a service

While the attitude and mindset of most employees can be improved, there is typically a small percentage of employees where fundamentally very little, if anything, can be done – GARRY ADAMS 30

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outcome, how is that tied back to the outcomes for an individual? “The alignment piece is critical. Then there’s the problem of too many measures. Once you get past five, I think people start getting blurry-eyed and lose interest,” she says.

A list of out-of-context metrics or numbers to reach doesn’t mean a thing to an employee. Context is critical: if Mary understands why she’s being measured against something and how it impacts on her day-to-day job, as well as how it manifests itself in terms of the company’s achievements, it’s suddenly more relatable.

Dentesano says it’s also crucial to be clear on consequences, especially if formalised performance management is taking place. “Under legislation you can’t just one day show up and say, ‘Sorry, you’re doing a bad job – there’s the door’. You have an obligation to articulate what the requirements are, and an obligation to provide some support and development to get to the point of achievement. You must also have a reasonable timeframe – and that’s very discretionary,” she says.

THE DANGER OF NEGLECT

There is unquestionably a cost to not managing poor performance. When the culture of an organisation is discussed, it’s commonplace to talk about it being defined by the systems, symbols and behaviour that are manifested in the organisation. It follows that when an organisation allows poor performance to continue, it becomes the accepted norm. “Before you know it you could have an organisation of underperformance, because it’s not dealt with,” says Dentesano.

There can be one other damaging repercussion.

If underperformance is not being managed, people will typically start questioning the capability of the leader.

“People start saying, ‘Why does Rosemary continue to let Betty not hit her targets every month? What is it about Betty that makes Rosemary not manage her?’

It undermines the leader,” Dentesano explains.

A GIFT

As a final tip, it’s worthwhile considering and positioning feedback as a gift. It may not seem very ‘gift-like’ at the time but, with time to reflect, an honest, transparent, respectful conversation about performance can be the best thing that ever happened to the recipient. Perhaps the employee has hidden potential that is yet to be uncovered or they are experiencing a personal issue that is significantly affecting them and their performance.

Perhaps they just need someone to point them in another direction or suggest an alternative.

“If treated respectfully and fairly, an organisation may, at best, turn a poor performer around into a productive and positive member of the organisation or, at worst, may avoid or prevent litigious action or damage to the organisation’s brand and reputation,” Adams concludes.

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ASK THE EXPERT

high performance

SHADES of performance Every company aspires to be high performance. Is this a realistic objective? Human Capital talks to Dave Jackson, executive director, Solterbeck, about navigating the performance process for optimum results Human Capital: What does high performance mean to you?

Dave Jackson: In my opinion, the power of high performance is to see it as a process, not a destination. This means each individual is doing the best job they can, within an enabling environment, and then reflecting upon how to do even better. If you say we must be high performance and treat it as an objective, the reality is, not everyone can be high performance – then it becomes meaningless. If the norm becomes high performance, then high performance needs to be some increase above that. I think the helpful thing is to say that high performance is a management approach, a people approach. What we’re looking for is to optimise performance: how can we resource our people so they’re able to be their best, and how can we be a learning organisation both in aggregate and as individuals.

HC: How important is it to set clear benchmarks so employees can clearly see what high performance means?

DJ: I don’t think it’s as much about that historical banding approach – saying to someone your current performance is a three or sits here on the scale, and to be a high performer you need to quantitatively address these areas or increase your score from a 7.2 to a 7.4. It’s more about continual learning, having the dialogue with each employee about where their performance is at, and what they can learn from their experience, what feedback we can give them, how the

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organisation can enable them to improve their performance.

At that level it’s a lot of shades of performance rather than labelling someone as a high performer, average performer, slightly below performer, etc. Putting people into bands does not necessarily lead to a high performance organisation.

If that’s the basis of performance management for everyone, then whether that sits on a curve or whether that’s considered super high or average becomes less important.

The only qualifier is that underperformance needs to be managed deliberately.

HC: What do high performers expect from their employers in terms of stretch assignments, learning and development, reward and recognition, etc?

DJ: It would be a mistake to assume all high performers want the same thing. But it is likely that they will expect work that challenges them, opportunities to develop, engaging relationships, and reward for their contribution.

Also, there’s an interesting aspect to high performance, perhaps related to high potential, where you have high performers who have functional roles, who are very happy with those roles, and that’s what they want to achieve. But the way you manage that person is very different to how you manage someone who’s a high performer in your graduate program who has an ambition to be the CEO of the organisation one day. There’s high performance and high ambition, and not all high performers want a different job.

They want stimulating work and purpose and mastery of

their craft. And enabling those people to do their best in their chosen field is a crucial high performance strategy.

HC: Can we assume a high performer will always be a high performer, even in different companies with different cultures?

DJ: High performance is both internally and externally dependent, thus high performers will often succeed in different companies, but less so and perhaps not at all when values are not aligned.

In terms of moving from one organisation to another, it may be an incredibly entrepreneurial organisation and you are a high performer there, but then you move to another organisation where that’s not the culture and there is a greater likelihood of not succeeding as well in that scenario. Some of your high performers will be incredibly adaptable and will be able to land on their feet; others will be suited to certain kinds of cultures.

For example – the reverse of the other example – they might be terrific in a traditional hierarchical structure with strong political lens, high stakeholder management, yet in a flatter structure, where initiative is a success factor, they might not be as strong.

HC: Goal setting is obviously important, yet stats indicate that just 7% of employees understand their company’s business strategies and what’s expected of them in delivering on those strategies. How can this be improved?

DJ: Aligning individuals to the organisation’s strategy is a constant challenge. Some suggest it’s the number one challenge in business. At the heart of it, it’s about two things: firstly, communicating the organisation’s goals clearly and consistently; and secondly, ensuring goals set at an individual level support the broader goals of the organisation.

Pulch Photography, pulchphotography.com

HC: Do you think managers set too many goals or targets?

DJ: A very rough rule of thumb is to start with three.

There’s enough research indicating people can only focus on a limited number of things at once. One thing getting in the way is perhaps this confusion over the areas to concentrate on when goal setting. People hate shifting goalposts, or to focus on something then find it’s changed 12 months later.

HC: What does ‘empower the employee’ mean in terms of performance management?

DJ: It’s around letting the employee set the agenda.

If we’ve got 500 employees, is it reasonable that all 500 are best suited to the best performance review/planning process? The answer is no; they are from all different backgrounds, so to keep them to a set performance review process is going to work for some and not for

It would be a mistake to assume all high performers want the same thing. But it is likely that they will expect work that challenges them, opportunities to develop, engaging relationships, and reward for their contribution” – DAVE JACKSON others. Is it possible to develop a performance appraisal process and mechanism that offers some flexibility for employees to choose their own way? Is it possible to deliver a process into the organisation which says “this person would like to have high frequent, to the point, immediate feedback from the manager”. But this other person would rather sit down once a month and have a backwards-looking conversation with his/her manager.

Everyone hates performance appraisals, so is the solution to empower people about the way they go about their own performance appraisal? In concept it’s exciting; in practice it’s a big challenge.

HC: Everyone seems to hate performance appraisals as they currently stand (in most companies). How can this process be improved?

DJ: I believe it is certain attributes of performance appraisals that employees hate. They hate surprises.

They hate being disempowered. They hate being treated as data. And they hate spending time going through the motions, rather than hearing genuine feedback about how they could improve. The solution is to eliminate the negative attributes: empower the employee, focus on the future, and discuss regularly would be a great start.

I’d love to ensure I was having a one-on-one in my team to talk specifically about performance once a month, but something comes up, I’m short-staffed, people are off sick; we’ll skip it because it’s seen as a nice-to-have rather than essential conversation. There are organisations doing this well who have entrenched these conversations as part of an ongoing manager/employee dialogue, but many others where it’s not on the agenda.

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TALENT MANAGEMENT

psychometric assessment

Psychometric assessment Right-hand man to culture change Australian companies have used psychometric assessments in recruitment for some years, but can they be used elsewhere in the employee lifecycle? Rose Sneyd outlines how employers can use these assessments to change culture, improve performance and develop leaders While psychometric assessment is often treated as a modern phenomenon, it actually dates back 4,000 years to ancient China when an innovative emperor introduced a form of psychometric tests for promotion within the civil service. The descendants of these pioneers are scientific and standardised tests that are 34

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designed to do what they say: measure the mind.

There are two main groups: the first analyses people’s behavioural traits, using personality questionnaires; and the second measures cognitive ability, using aptitude tests. One key difference between these two categories is the fact that there are no wrong answers in personality questionnaires, whereas there are in aptitude tests.

While aptitude tests examine an individual’s ability in specific areas such as verbal comprehension, mathematics, or abstract reasoning, personality tests are designed to elicit information about how one prefers to work, how one interacts with people, and how one responds to certain situations. Often personality questionnaires involve self-reporting – the subject uses a 2–5 or 7-point scale to describe their feelings in response to certain statements. Because of their reliance on the individual’s honesty and transparency, there is the risk of manipulation, but tests have validity measures built into them (more on this later).

In an employment context, the most obvious use for psychometric assessment is at the recruitment stage, to

reveal aspects of a candidate that are not immediately apparent, even in the interview situation. This is predominantly how they have been used in Australia – to assess a candidate’s suitability for and potential ability in a particular role at an early stage in the recruitment process, thereby reducing costs.

MORE THAN JUST A RECRUITMENT TOOL

Pulch Photography, pulchphotography.com

But the use of psychometric assessment within organisations is expanding. “What we’ve seen in the last five years is it’s now being used for leadership development, it’s being used for team-building, it’s being used for coaching, it’s being used for safety profiling – we’re now getting a bit more sophisticated in tailoring the tools to specific uses,” Peter Berry, managing director of Peter Berry Consultancy, observes.

Generally speaking, personality and ability tests can be deployed as diagnostic tools early on in a process of change. “You can take all the people factors that you’ve got about your current workforce, and look at their assessment results, and then use people analytics techniques to examine the data and see, ‘Okay, here’s where we are’,” Julie Caplinger, who leads the selection and assessment practice in Australia for Aon Hewitt, explains.

In other words, psychometric assessment can give a snapshot of the current state of play in an organisation.

At that point, it becomes easier to identify what problems there might be in an organisation, what objectives it should adopt in order to change, and what sort of interventions it might instigate in order to achieve these.

Psychometric tests can also be used to track the progress of a specific culture change by repeating the assessment after six to 12 months, as Jason Blaik, a psychologist with Onetest, points out.

On an individual employee level, psychometric assessment can facilitate culture change by identifying areas in which certain staff members need to focus on training and development. “Certainly, when you’re doing development assessments, that’s what can feed into larger-scale cultural change or organisational change,” Blaik explains.

IMPROVING HEALTH AND SAFETY

One key culture change that psychometric tests can facilitate is that of improving organisational health and safety. All three psychometric consultants are strong advocates of using personality tests to assess a candidate’s, or a current employee’s, safety risk. “There’s plenty of research to show that there’s a huge correlation between a few specific personality characteristics and then accidents on the job,” Caplinger says.

It is possible, for instance, to identify an individual’s tendency to comply with rules, or their conscientiousness,

There’s plenty of research to show that there’s a huge correlation between a few specific personality characteristics and then accidents on the job – JULIE CAPLINGER and their impulsiveness, using personality questionnaires, according to Berry. One of his clients in the construction industry insists that any supervisor they contract should execute a safety profile to show that they are predisposed towards safe behaviours.

But there is more scope for psychometric assessment to contribute to health and safety than in ensuring that new hires are safety conscious and will contribute to an improved culture. Revealing employees’ risky attitudes to them can also help to stimulate change.

“Often giving the employees the self-awareness to know... ‘Hey, I’m a little bit more extroverted than my co-workers, so when I talk to them a lot it distracts them and it’s not safe’ … is helpful,” Caplinger explains.

“Hopefully, the self-awareness leads to the behaviour change and, ultimately, causes the culture change,” she adds.

Blaik agrees that psychometric tests can help in identifying potential health and safety issues – for example, those employees who take too many risks, who do not manage well under stress, or have lax attitudes towards drugs or violence in the workplace.

“We work with clients in highlighting potentially those particular areas amongst an employee group, and then we look at ways those particular attitudes can be changed through education, through training,” he says.

ENHANCING CUSTOMER SERVICE

Another essential culture change that psychometric assessment can assist with is enhancing customer service. Berry and Blaik work closely with clients who want to build high-performing teams, and they both deploy psychometric tests in the process. “The theory here is that high-performing teams get along to get ahead; they avoid disfunctionality,” Berry comments.

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TALENT MANAGEMENT

psychometric assessment which candidates will perform at similarly high levels.

In another case, involving a large company that employed thousands of call centre employees, Caplinger adopted a different tactic. She used psychometric testing with this client to determine what sort of customer service training each staff member required. People who had difficulty dealing with complaint calls, for example, received one type of training, whereas those who tended to lose patience more quickly would receive another type of training.

Key HR takeaways

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

1. Know what it is that you want to achieve; identify and define the change that you are trying to achieve.

2. Take the time to research the different assessments out there, and the providers. Make sure that the assessment you choose is applicable to the specific change you are trying to foster.

3. Consider doing trial assessments to make sure that you have found the right ones.

4. Get the organisation on board, especially those who are going to be setting the psychometric

assessments and those who will be reading the reports.

5. Ask the provider to come to your organisation and provide the necessary training to those who will be using their assessment tool.

6. Having implemented the psychometric assessment, wait 6–12 months before doing a follow-up/evaluation of the original tests, to make sure that the organisation is on track to achieve what it wanted to. If not, the assessment may not have been implemented well, or you may need a different assessment.

He highlights the importance of ‘self’ and ‘other’ awareness to such teams, and suggests that psychometric assessment, and the sharing of results, can help team members achieve a deeper understanding of each other and the way each individual prefers to work.

Blaik has a similar approach. “If you’re dealing with team dynamics … generally some of those issues might actually be aligned to behavioural differences within the team,” he explains. By conducting psychometric assessments on individual team members, these differences, and similarities, between members’ behavioural traits can be identified. For him, acquiring that awareness is key. “That first step in educating people about these differences goes a long way to actually addressing those problems they’re facing, but you can also look at implementing interventions and such things to help that along the way,” he suggests.

Another couple of approaches, outlined by Caplinger, occur at the recruitment and development stages. In the former, a client can identify who are their highest performers, conduct a study, and design a recruitment process that uses psychometric assessment to predict 36

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As a third example, psychometric assessment might be used in leadership development efforts. While professionals like scientists, engineers and accountants spend their careers developing specific technical skills, they may neglect to develop their personal leadership skills. “They’re pretty smart people, but their whole career has been around sharpening their IQ, not necessarily their EQ [emotional quotient], or their social intelligence,” Berry says. However, by exposing them to psychometrics and facilitating the acquisition of a deeper degree of self-awareness, you can attempt to develop these soft skills.

Otherwise, organisations can separate leadership roles into technical-oriented ones and people-oriented ones, and use psychometrics to determine which employees would suit which positions better. This is what one of Caplinger’s clients – a large mining company – did, and it worked well. Many engineers on staff were pleased to have a new avenue of career progression opened to them.

TREAD CAREFULLY

Psychometric assessments are not, however, without their flaws, and employers and HR managers should use them with care. Sometimes the assessments may not be particularly well designed, and sometimes candidates may try to manipulate their responses. “Unfortunately, there are way more poorly designed, inaccurate assessments on the market than there are good ones,” Caplinger warns.

Fortunately, those psychometric tests that require candidates to self-report, and which are well designed, have tools built into them that identify inconsistency, or even lies. Some assessments have inconsistency measures integrated to identify those candidates who, because they answer the questions in an untruthful manner, end up providing inconsistent answers. Such profiles are flagged as invalid.

“Others have what’s seen as response distortion scales, or lie scales, as well that would indicate someone potentially distorting their responses in a fairly positive way, and would raise some concerns about interpreting their responses,” Blaik adds. An example of this might be a ‘lie detector’ question such as “I have never told a lie in

Even if an assessment is well designed, if you have an unqualified practitioner who makes the mistake of focusing too heavily on a particular profile, rather than aiming for diversity, then it will fail

my life”. If a candidate responds ‘true’ to this, this casts doubt on the sincerity of their answers elsewhere in the test. (Of course, the aptitude tests cannot be faked since there are right answers and wrong answers.)

When profiles come back invalid, the psychometric practitioner can always request that the candidate redo the test, explaining the problem and requesting that they take more care. In such cases a large majority of those candidates will return a valid response the second time, according to Blaik.

Even if an assessment is well designed, if you have an unqualified practitioner who makes the mistake, for example, of focusing too heavily on a particular profile, rather than aiming for diversity, then psychometric assessments will fail.

“You would never want a whole organisation with everybody with this exact same profile – diversity and personality is how good decisions are made,” Caplinger argues.

Because of these potential pitfalls, Blaik suggests that psychometric tests should not be relied upon exclusively.

“Generally what we say is, ‘Use these tools as a piece of the puzzle’,” he says.

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EXPERT INSIGHT

technology

Ari Kopoulos is the National Sales & Marketing Manager at EmployeeConnect. For further information, visit employeeconnect.com.au

Making performance social If there’s one HR process that draws more heated debate than any other, it’s performance management. The existing model has a 75-year history, initially serving as a means to justify one’s salary.

Much has changed and the general consensus today is that it serves as nothing more than a tick and flick exercise of what was, with no direct to strategy and culture. Granted, it still plays a key role in assisting with remuneration decisions, but the current model is not always successful in improving performance. In a few words, it’s broken but this should not be unexpected.

There are a few reasons for this, and I think we can link it all back to technology.

There’s no doubt automation was a blessing; however, in most cases, the paper-based processes were converted to online forms with a myriad of supporting spreadsheets and reports, all disconnected, complex with no real insight. In effect, we have automated processes that needed simplification, improvement or elimination.

Secondly, employee expectations have changed, and it’s not just limited to Gen Y’s and Z’s. Employees expect more involvement, more accountability, and more transparency. They are no longer satisfied with passive, one-way narratives, preferring input into the collection of their data and managing their outcome. Furthermore, the command and control nature of management is no longer accepted; they prefer an environment of a mentor, a guide, and inspirational leader.

Perhaps the biggest reason is culture.

In effect, our relationship with technology has changed dramatically. We now live in a world where mobile and social technology is playing a key role in every decision we make. It’s only natural it will affect the way we engage and retain our workforce.

As employees, we expect information on demand, in real time, and with tools that are engaging and useable. As such, the stage is set for a new model of performance management.

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EVERYTHING IS SOCIAL

Consider a world where you set your own dynamic goals and adjust them in response to change. Your manager, your mentor, will be there to provide real-time recognition and guidance as continuous narrative.

All the knowledge you require to be successful will be available on demand, with game-like platforms to hone and develop your skills. All this data will be captured as part of your workplace biography, with feedback, recognition and reward from peers, managers and customers. Performance will be continual, forming a fluid relationship between you and your actions. As such, you will be in complete control of your career and held accountable for the tasks that drive the business.

In this model, employees have a sense of purpose, value and focus. The social element, with the opportunity for continuous feedback, supports motivation and engagement, and fosters an environment of optimal performance, commonly known as ‘flow’. The online game developers know this very well. This is a psychological state in which cognitive resources are on peak performance as a result of heightened

focus and engagement. Given this real-time aspect of social goal setting, recognition and reward, the annual performance review process will be history. Social performance management will not only disrupt but it will also drive the workplace to new levels of efficiency, productivity and effectiveness.

The industry has already recognised this paradigm shift, and vendors are introducing social elements into their solutions. The next generation of HR software or services will have HR processes redefined, shifting away from transactional, process-based to engagement, people-based. On a holistic level the HRIS will become a tool of community, fostering connections, collaboration and innovation with higher employee enablement and engagement.

Social performance management instills engagement and collaboration into the workplace by allowing employees to connect organically through conversation, recognition and feedback. This natural process offers closer and continuous alignment to organisational goals and objectives. The end result is a cultural transformation with tangible benefits and a happier workforce. Start planning!

PRE-EMPLOYMENT SCREENING

pre-employment screening

FILTERING THE GOOD FROM THE BAD Pre-employment screening, background checking, probity checks, security checks... Whatever term is used, the objective is clear: risk mitigation

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“Honesty is the best policy – when there is money in it”, according to Mark Twain. However, honesty and business are not generally natural bedfellows. Corporate fraud in Australia is reaching epidemic proportions, costing the economy an estimated $6bn pa. Just as disturbing are statistics indicating that up to 25% of people will commit fraud in order to obtain employment.

Companies that do not perform appropriate screening practices may be liable for a legal claim of ‘negligent hiring’, which may lead to civil litigation or insurance policy claims being declined.

It’s a scary prospect, but it can be avoided.

Irrespective of how good the behavioural interview is, there are things you cannot ascertain – GREG NEWTON

RISK MITIGATION TOOL NO. 1

Essentially, every organisation accepts a certain level of risk when hiring employees. But by hiring the wrong worker in the wrong occupation, the organisation imports significant risk directly into its operation and may stand to lose the productivity balance as well as expose itself to workers’ compensation claims, high absenteeism, and a high resource drain on existing personnel (such as those engaged in HR, training and line-of-sight management). This can focus decision-making away from productive avenues.

Mark Cassidy, general manager of risk and innovation at 2CRisk, a company that specialises in health risk management, says the purpose of a pre-employment screen can be broken down into two main mission statements: firstly, to identify risks to the individual that will place them in a position whereby a loss will be experienced, be that a workers’ compensation claim, illness or absenteeism, or indeed forcing the worker to resign and seek employment elsewhere.

“It’s worth remembering the initial cost of employing the individual, including their training and the loss of institutional knowledge,” Cassidy says.

A second purpose is job-matching the individual so that they are afforded the maximum ability and protection to stay at work, gainfully employed, for as long as possible. “If we consider some of the key issues in the media at present: skills shortage, ageing workforce, productivity and workers’ compensation claims, surely our aim must be to get the right person in the right role for as long as possible,” Cassidy notes.

THE BASICS

From full medical and drug/alcohol checks through to qualification checks and online psychological testing, pre-employment screening has become a lot more sophisticated than mere referee checks. There are now over 30 background checks available, and when combined with detailed psychometric profiling (outlined on p34), separating the wheat from the chaff has never been more involved – and with good reason. As tempting

as it is to give people the benefit of the doubt, there are many costly examples of candidates who exaggerate, omit key information, and tell outright lies when applying for jobs.

“Irrespective of how good the behavioural interview is, there are things you cannot ascertain. You cannot ascertain whether or not they missed out on the degree, or fudged that membership, or have the credit rating they specified – that’s where we come in,” Greg Newton, MD of Verify, told HC.

ONE TEST TO RULE THEM ALL?

The list of screening methods is becoming both more expansive and more sophisticated. ‘Screening brokers’ (essentially companies that partner with clients to conduct these various checks) build up relationships with everyone from CrimTrac and the Australian Securities and Investment Commission to the Attorney General’s department. They ensure that candidates are ‘squeaky clean’. For example, identity checks now include 140 points of identity verification (passport, driver’s licence, utility bill). Some may offer fingerprint verification, and iris and DNA checks are just around the corner. This is potentially a dream scenario for those hoping to one day rely on just one check, which could then be analysed by all the requisite bodies and authorities.

“Biometrics will be a factor, and the technology is definitely there, but it’s not quite happening at the moment,” comments Dale Bridger, operations manager at Personnel Risk Management Group. “Down the line it may be that all you’ll need to do is supply a fingerprint in order to have a background check done, but that’s a long way off. There are lots of barriers for biometrics to jump over before we get there, in terms of public perception and current legislation.”

The main issue is one around privacy: who holds the data, where it’s stored, and for how long. Regardless, Bridger believes it will happen in Australia. “In Canada HCAMAG.COM 41

PRE-EMPLOYMENT SCREENING

pre-employment screening you already have to supply fingerprints for police checks no matter what, so they’re a bit ahead there, but I think we’re on the way,” he says.

DUE DILIGENCE

For now, when it comes to due diligence in hiring, Newton notes that every client is different. Some will insist that, as a bare minimum, criminal checks should be undertaken, while other industries, such as financial services, legally require Australian Financial Services (AFS) licence checks.

As another example, in 2008 an amendment to the Aged Care Act 1997 required that all employees and volunteers with unsupervised access to patients under care had a police check.

Some industries are more diligent than others, for obvious reasons. The financial services and insurance

Hitting where career it hurts most my brilliant

sectors need to be vigilant under certain legislation, or else they have separate guidelines for auditing purposes – for example, the Australian standard for employment screening, Australian Prudential Regulation Authority’s (APRA’s) ‘fit and proper persons’ standards for the financial services industry. Increased licensing requirements, especially when it comes to jobs involving the provision of financial advice or loans, means there is thorough probing of APRA records or AFS disqualification checks.

No matter the industry sector, however, the most common areas of resume falsification involve employment and education history. There are companies that assist persons with fraud, going so far as to provide a service that will offer a glowing recommendation of the candidate. Along with this are the false documents that can be prepared and made to look authentic.

Indeed, in an age of internet diplomas, qualification checks are becoming de rigueur. There are two sides to this. Firstly, if the organisation desires a certain qualification in the job, then employees should have it.

Secondly, in order to practice in some jobs employees are mandated to have a qualification.

“It’s essential the organisation protect itself against litigation by ensuring that the individual in that job has the qualification required under the law to practice that job. It’s just like driving a vehicle. You have a rep on the road and you haven’t checked if they have a current driver’s licence and they kill or injure someone – you very well may have substantial liability,” Newton warns.

POLICE AND IDENTITY CHECKS

Whether it’s a crime of opportunity, greed, malice, or a combination of all three, over the past 12 years Aussie workers have ripped off their employers to the tune of $400m – and that’s just the figure of those who were caught.

According to a 2012 report from forensic accounting firm Warfield and Associates, perhaps not surprisingly the banking sector was named as home to the worst offenders, and accountants and bookkeepers topped the list.

Report author Brett Warfield said the research identified evidence of major governance weaknesses in some of Australia’s largest organisations. He added that organisations should learn from the mistakes of others, and ensure there are effective internal controls, appropriate supervision, and regular internal audits in place. The report also noted pre-employment police records/criminal history checks as being successful in minimising fraudulent activity.

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The most common method of theft was through electronic funds transfer, where employees simply transferred cash into their own accounts.

Profile of a thief • 66 of the 93 perpetrators were male and 27 were female.

• The largest amount stolen by an employee was $45.3m.

• The next four largest frauds were $27.3m, $22.4m, $19.3m and $19m.

• The banking sector was the hardest hit, with 30 frauds.

• Gambling addiction was the main motivating factor in over half of the cases.

• Accountants and bookkeepers were the most prevalent job titles of the perpetrators.

• 43 cases involved employees diverting funds to their own bank accounts by electronic funds transfer.

Alongside education/qualification and employment checks, Newton says that police checks are the most common background checks undertaken.

“What we’re looking for are previous crimes that are relevant to the role that the individual is going for,” he says. “For example, in the financial services sector there are particular roles where you can’t have a criminal history. In addition, a candidate applying for a role in the transport industry as a driver could have been convicted of driving offences.”

Newton says it’s not unusual to uncover criminal convictions that should have been disclosed.

“We find an average of 7–8% of candidates will have disclosable outcomes,” he says. “However, the Spent Convictions Scheme says that if you committed a crime longer than 10 years ago and you haven’t committed again, it’s not disclosed to anyone.”

GAINING MOMENTUM: OTHER SCREENING AREAS

Driver’s licence checks are also a growth area.

“It’s not uncommon to find sales reps without driver’s licences. Reps tend to be younger these days – they can get into that environment where they have alcohol or

Pre-employment medicals must relate specifically to the attributes of the role, and if they do not, then it is quite likely the anti-discrimination act has been breached – MARK CASSIDY recreational drugs, and it’s quite common to find a conviction in the past for drink driving or a similar offence,” Newton says.

Medical checks remain popular, especially for operational staff handling machinery, and increasingly for executives and other white-collar workers.

If organisations want to look at the benefits of health screening from purely a cost perspective in workers’ transitioning from normal employment into either poor health or compensation claims, the evidence stacks up and is supported from an academic perspective.

Examples of this are as follows: • Non-screened employees have a 33% higher injury rate of compensation claims than screened employees (Roshenblum & Shankar, 2006).

• Non-screened employees incur 4.3 times higher claims costs (Roshenblum & Shankar, 2006).

• The average cost of return-to-work cases for non-screened employees was 18:1 higher than screened employees (Roshenblum & Shankar, 2006).

“In my opinion, the pre-employment medical presents an opportunity to all parties, the candidate/employee and the organisation, to actively engage in health discussions immediately. This will surely assist both the worker and the organisation in keeping them fit for longer. This, it is worth remembering, is mutually beneficial to both parties,” Cassidy says.

“Pre-employment medicals must relate specifically to the attributes of the role, and if they do not, then it is

quite likely the anti-discrimination act has been breached and the organisation exposed to possible legal action,” he says.

It’s also worth considering the cost to pre-employment, and indeed what components within the assessments are actually going to be used by an organisation. Cassidy has seen a number of organisations that get all manner of radiology, including X-rays, CT scans and even MRIs of applicants, and the cost for all of this does need to be considered in terms of what an organisation is going to achieve by screening.

FURTHER CHECKS

Among the more unusual checks available are: • a media search which looks at the reputation of a candidate • bankruptcy checks for those providing financial advice • directorship or significant holdings search to identify conflicts of interest – for example, government officials or an applicant going for a senior marketing role with Telstra while still holding a large parcel of shares with Optus • anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist finance checks and checks for politically exposed persons – including global watchlists issued by government agencies such as the FBI and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation If all that sounds too daunting, Debbie Lapworth, account manager, pre-employment screening, at PRM Group, recommends a tiered approach, depending on the position being screened for.

“You would do an ID check to start with, and many go just for the academic verification, to verify any diplomas or qualifications. The next level would be personal credit checks and the APRA checks. Beyond that you might use media searches. I’ve got one company now which is a mining recruitment agency, and they’ve introduced the drug testing as well. So it’s quite varied, depending on the company’s requirements,” she says.

Third-party providers must operate with strict adherence to Australian privacy laws and cannot conduct any private domain background investigation without the person’s authorisation.

As a final tip, Newton recommends organisations create guidelines around what is included and what is excluded from background checks before introducing the process.

“There must be a clear reason for doing it and it should all tie back into the inherent requirements of the job.

Be careful about the moral judgments you are making and decide if it [the disclosable outcome] is relevant to the job, what was the context, and how long ago it occurred,” he says.

Why conduct financial background checks?

• Mitigate business risk by understanding the way your candidate manages money.

• Reduce the risk of employee fraud by identifying past negative financial trends.

• Meet mandatory financial licence compliance screening requirements.

• Identify risks associated with individuals due to money laundering or dishonest conduct.

Source: Verify

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LEADERSHIP

manager transitions

TOO BUSY TO LEAD: The diary of a wellintentioned manager

Graham Winter presents the true story of Alex, a manager in a medium- to large-sized Australian company, struggling to make the transition from ‘manager’ to ‘leader’

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Diary note Tuesday These 360 feedback comments are so unfair! yy Spends too much time in her office yy Micromanages yy Always too busy to listen yy Is distracted whenever you try to have a conversation yy Never gives positive feedback For goodness sake! I start work at 7.30am, rarely get home before my youngest is in bed, and haven’t had a work-free weekend in three months.

What am I supposed to do? My boss is worse than I am. Never says “Well done”. Just shuts down any attempt to challenge the workload.

“Have you got a problem with that?” he’ll ask, cynically. His boss is worse again. It’s like working on a production line and I can’t keep up.

Tomorrow is a day I so don’t need. A training course on team resilience.

Resilience! As if that’s going to help. Maybe the trainer’s got three extra hours to give me every day?

That might make a difference.

Sleep. Not much chance of that. I cannot believe that 360 feedback. I do spend time with them, and that’s why I never get home until late!

Diary note Wednesday Two trainers!! I wish I had two people to do my job.

We begin with a question: “Who solves the problems in your team?”

Simple answer: “Me”.

“Well then – you’re screwed,” replied the second trainer, almost dismissively.

“Excuse me?” I ask, gobsmacked.

“You’re not a leader. You’re still the subject matter expert that you were before you got promoted.”

I was about to let fire when she continued around the room, one by one challenging my dozen or so colleagues to see if they were any different.

Same issue, time and time again. Everyone is too busy to lead.

“Perfect,” said the first trainer, confidently. “Let’s get started on the five steps that will get you out of being the subject matter expert and into being a leader.”

She gave us a little mini-workbook with some interesting principles and a planning section to jot down personal actions. I’ve really never made a plan like that before. In fact, I’m going to read the principles again right now.

RESILIENT TEAMS WORKBOOK

THE CHOICE TO LEAD Do you accept that the first and most important role of a leader is to build a resilient and high-performing team?

Take a moment to really think about that before you go on to the five steps below. And even if your answer is a resounding “yes”, this can’t just be something that sounds like a good thing to do – it’s got to be a career choice.

Why a career choice?

Because you’ll let go of being the technical expert who answers all the questions, and become the coach who asks the questions and facilitates people in finding the answers.

Of course this isn’t going to be easy, because you won’t get the same recognition that you are used to, and you’ll also feel out of control and exposed by people who don’t do things as well as you do.

Finally, this is about relationships and emotions.

You might think that’s soft stuff, but it will help to start thinking about emotions as data, and relationships as your new most important tool to get things done.

STEP 1: SELL YOUR TEAM A BIG PROBLEM Ignore the tempting advice that great leaders sell a vision.

Some do, but you’ve got problems to address such as budget, out-of-date systems, a transformation program about to sweep like a tsunami through the department, and more than a few stressed-out colleagues who wouldn’t mind blaming your team for their shortcomings.

Now that’s all a bit negative, so let’s do what pragmatic leaders do in this situation and focus on selling the one problem that everyone will buy into: “How do we build a team that’s got more influence in this enterprise?”

STEP 2: COACH EVERYONE TO SOLVE PROBLEMS You’ve spent your whole career getting rewarded for solving problems. Now it’s time to reward other people, but they’re not as skilled as you are yet, so be patient.

Start by teaching everyone how to use a common problem-solving tool. Don’t worry about it being perfect.

This is what’s called an ‘adaptive’ challenge, which means you are helping people to learn, so a few mistakes are a sign of progress, not a reason to stop.

Look at your meeting agendas. Bring problems, not answers. Bring flip charts and pens, not just reports.

Bring questions – challenging questions – and then coach, encourage, and stay committed to developing a team of problem-solvers. Nothing will liberate you and your team better than having everyone skilled and responsible for solving problems.

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LEADERSHIP

manager transitions You’ve spent your whole career getting rewarded for solving problems. Now it’s time to reward other people, but they’re not as skilled as you are yet, so be patient STEP 3: ALIGN EXPECTATIONS As your team gets better at problem-solving, it’s time for you to get better at establishing expectations. Most teams have lots of expectations, but they don’t share them with each other and then they get annoyed or disappointed when people don’t meet those expectations.

That breaks down trust and confidence, which is poison for any team or organisation.

Always keep in mind that people, not teams, form relationships, which means that good leaders spend one-on-one time with their people and one-on-one time with key stakeholders.

Use that time to share and negotiate (two-way) expectations about what needs to be done and how to do it. With practice you’ll get alignment to happen instead of just being a nice buzzword to discuss at those team leader training sessions. And keep score so you can recognise success and coach people through difficulties.

STEP 4: LEARN AN ACTIVE CALMNESS SKILL As neat and sensible as the first three steps are, the reality is that bosses aren’t always rational, and workloads are not predictable enough to fit snuggly into the resource boundaries. However, that doesn’t mean it has to throw you into an emotional spin that keeps you awake at night and frustrated by day.

Instead, your next task is to choose an active calmness regime. Take your choice: meditation, yoga, rock climbing, prayer, walking, or anything else that calms and disciplines the mind. Social media and TV are not included!

Leaders who do well under pressure don’t absorb the pressure and instead stay slightly detached. This comes from practising calmness in the same way that Olympic athletes do in their training. And maybe add the word ‘perspective’ to the list because it’s a lot easier to handle the upsets when you’ve got a friend, colleague, partner or coach who can help you to keep perspective when the world seems to be arranged specifically to annoy you.

STEP 5: PLAY AS ONE TEAM Businesses always call their work units teams, but many fail just about every test of 46

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teamwork. At the very least, ask yourself and your team these three questions: yy Do we have a clear sense of common purpose? yy Can everyone see how their efforts contribute to that purpose? yy Do we regularly review what’s happened and what we’ve learned?

With clear purpose, meaningful roles and regular learning, a team will emerge. People will be less guarded and more vulnerable with each other because they’ll be more confident in their own roles and comfortable to learn from experiences. They’ll see problems as something to solve, and they’ll dwell less on what might have been. In a word, they’ll be resilient.

Diary note Monday Three months since I did that resilience workshop.

Wow. It’s amazing how things seem so different.

I now look at colleagues in other departments who did the training but didn’t apply the principles, and they’re still stressed to the eyeballs!

My team’s not perfect. And I’m still trying to do too much. But things seem easier, simpler and clearer. Today my team actually solved two problems before they got to me, and my boss now accepts my calm challenging of his deadlines and priorities.

We did a mini-360˚ last week and I got the feedback from HR this afternoon. What a difference: yy She seems to care about us more now yy Good listener yy Makes you feel more valued yy A big improvement but still a long way to go LOL. That last comment would have pressed my button three months ago. Now I can laugh, and that’s what the trainers said at the workshop. “You’ll always have business KPIs, but make sure that you and everyone in the team laughs at least once in the morning and once in the afternoon. That’s a real indicator that success is sustainable.”

That suggestion is gold. This leadership stuff’s a lot easier than I thought. Anyway, time to sleep.

I’ve got a team to lead in the morning. *Based on a true story with details changed About the author Graham Winter is a speaker, consultant and best-selling author of Think One Team and the recently released First Be Nimble: A Story About How to Adapt, Innovate and Perform in a Volatile Business World. He is client solutions leader for Australian-headquartered Think One Team International and can be contacted for bookings and advice at www.thinkoneteam.com or graham@thinkoneteam.com

EXPERT INSIGHT Attributed to Damian Hill, CEO, REST Industry Super

superannuation

The challenge of getting baby boomers ‘retirement ready’ With baby boomers moving closer to retirement, it opens up interesting challenges for them, the staff who follow, and HR professionals As one of the largest industry super funds by membership, REST Industry Super commissioned The Journey Begins white paper (August 2012) to capture the attitudes of 1,200 Australians approaching retirement and to find out more about their financial situation, plans and expectations for the road ahead.

Our research showed there is a sizeable gap between what baby boomers are envisaging for their retirement and what the reality will be. This poses a significant education challenge for employers, the financial services sector and government to help these people, and younger employees, get ready for retirement.

High expectations but low preparations Our research found that despite high expectations about what retirement will bring, there is a distinctly low level of understanding among baby boomers about how much they will require each year to fund a comfortable retirement lifestyle.

On average, the amount nominated by respondents required for a comfortable retirement was well below the $56,236 ‘comfortable lifestyle’ budget for a couple and $41,090 budget for single people, as estimated by the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia.

Our white paper also found that superannuation was nominated as the most common source of retirement income for the majority of surveyed baby boomers.

However, less than half have a good grasp of how much they have saved in super or take an active interest in trying to grow this balance, and a quarter ‘are just closing their eyes and hoping for the best’.

Other key findings of the white paper included: • Many intend to ease into retirement through part-time work – indicating that companies will be able to retain skills and corporate knowledge for longer, but will need to be flexible to take full advantage.

• A third of over-50s have financial dependants whose needs will have to be taken into account when deciding when or whether to retire.

• Almost half of respondents over 65 indicated the global financial crisis and financial market underperformance may have forced some to delay their retirement plans.

Lack of preparation and no sense of urgency Despite the fact that many baby boomers are worried they won’t have enough money to fund their retirement and that they are not prepared for retirement, it is surprising that so few are starting the planning process early and seem to be in no rush to get any formal advice to help them on their journey.

HR professionals can help with targeted education HR professionals can play a critical role in guiding their employees to plan for retirement.

Many super funds, including REST Industry Super, provide access to financial advice as a service for members.

However, education needs to be targeted and delivered in such a way that all employees, whatever their retirement plans, understand the importance of early planning and seeking advice for this important life change.

Talk to REST today REST Industry Super has a team of relationship managers who can provide on-site support for this in two ways.

We can either assist HR professionals in how to prepare their employees for the transition to retirement, or we can speak directly to their employees.

We also run a series of seminars to help staff plan for retirement, with the aim to make retirement more comfortable. These seminars are provided to HR professionals and company employees.

For more information, contact us on 1300 300 778 or visit www.rest.com.au.

This article contains general advice, which has been prepared without taking into account your objectives, financial situation or needs.

Before making any decisions based on this advice, you should consider its appropriateness having regard to your objectives, financial situation and needs. You should read the Product Disclosure Statement, which is available at www.rest.com.au or by calling 1300 300 778, before making any decision about the product.

When you become a member of REST Industry Super, you join the Retail Employees Superannuation Trust, ABN 62 653 671 394.

The trustee is Retail Employees Superannuation Pty Ltd, ABN 39 001 987 739, AFSL 240003. Registered office: Level 7, 50 Carrington Street, Sydney NSW 2000.

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HR STRATEGY

analytics

Diving deep:

HR analytics Without in-depth understanding of the drivers of human capital strategies, business outcomes will always be questionable, writes Andrew Woolf After much discussion and debate, the need to solve Australia’s productivity issue has never been more pressing. Without urgent steps to address declining levels of productivity, input costs will continue to rise faster than output returns, resulting in Australian industries becoming less competitive. Products and services will also continue to become more costly for Australian consumers.

As a result, Australian organisations are seeking new ways to improve productivity, address ongoing skills shortages, and combat challenges in talent sourcing.

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They must also improve the way they use their people through effective human capital solutions, including better use of data and more targeted ‘people orientated’ initiatives.

BRIDGING THE GAP

Despite grasping the need for change, few companies are taking the necessary steps to resolve these issues. Accenture recently surveyed C-Suite executives and HR leaders from Australia’s 500 largest organisations about their human capital strategies, and found a significant gap between the importance they attribute to human capital initiatives and the effectiveness their execution. The fundamental driver of this gap is ineffective use of human capital analytics, with leadership teams remaining overly reliant on qualitative decision-making despite continued moderate returns.

The research examined five key areas: productivity, human capital issues and barriers, leadership, talent management and human capital analytics. Results showed that while nearly 70% of organisations felt their level of

investment to improve productivity was not meeting expected outcomes, only a small number of companies made major decisions about their workforces with adequate data analysis. As a consequence, the link between human capital investments and financial capital returns is often missed.

Organisations that fail to put data at the centre of their decision-making processes are unable to purposefully shape their future, missing opportunities to manage talent and direct initiatives towards longer-term needs of the business.

Without a strong predictive analytics capability, companies struggle to effectively measure employee behaviour, leadership success or workforce capabilities and rob themselves of the ability to forecast not only what decisions need to be taken but also how they will play out over time.

FINDING THE SOLUTION

So what can organisations do to improve their management of human capital? Leadership teams need to make more informed decisions around their present and future human capital needs, and a depth of analytical capabilities will drive this. It will allow them to adapt quickly to changes in external conditions – such as volatility in global financial markets – and provide the insights necessary to match business ambitions with workforce requirements.

Accenture’s research showed that companies think very tactically about their workforces, rather than strategically.

‘Operational initiatives’ dominate policy, while long-term, talent-focused ideas are well down the list. Four simple steps can address this imbalance, altering design and delivery of workforce management strategies. Organisations must:

1) Identify and prioritise critical human capital issues central to business strategy execution.

To begin the process, organisations must identify the most critical human capital issues, with the largest impact on productivity and skills shortages across the business.

Leaders must be disciplined in selecting which human capital objectives they will pursue. It is essential to properly define the business problem to be solved, while balancing short-term and long-term requirements. Defining a problem that is too limited or too large in scope can lead to project delays and overspending. Even worse, attempts to address poorly defined problems are unlikely to fill any workforce gaps, lift productivity, or improve business performance.

2) Establish an enterprise-wide analytics capability that provides leaders with human capital insights based on tactical and strategic analytical techniques.

In most cases, organisational data is housed across many different systems, making it difficult to obtain a useful snapshot of HR operations. Once critical human capital issues are defined, organisations must develop analytic competencies by leveraging the analytic capabilities of other business units (eg customer service, finance, risk or supply chain processes), supported by new tools and applications.

Without a strong predictive analytics capability, companies struggle to effectively measure employee behaviour, leadership success or workforce capabilities and rob themselves of the ability to forecast The power of analytics comes from looking beyond the immediate task to the entire business process, making connections and recognising patterns. By using a talent supply chain analytic model, organisations can forecast workforce demand for up to two years with 95% certainty.

By harnessing the power of analytics, they can produce meaningful business insights that give decision makers the insights and evidence to act decisively and change the way they manage people and plan future workforce needs.

3) Adjust governance processes and leadership behaviour to use analytics as a means of improving human capital decision-making.

To drive organisational change and the adoption of human capital analytics, senior leaders need to be heavily involved – specifically by developing analytic capabilities, redesigning decision-making processes and generating buy-in at all levels.

4) Use analytics-driven insights to design and implement targeted human capital initiatives.

Armed with analytics-driven insights and the support of senior leadership, an organisation can implement targeted human capital initiatives that combine leadership, talent, organisational and culture solutions to achieve better business outcomes. They can deliver solutions with significant benefits, bridging the gap between the importance of these issues and effective execution at an enterprise level.

HR: THE NEED TO LEAD

If HR can gain leadership support for an analytics-focused approach, a company can overcome barriers such as IT deficiencies and a lack of internal analytics capabilities.

Simple, cost-effective remedies include in-house collaborations and partnerships, Software-as-a-Service and outsourcing solutions. To manage workforces in an ever-changing human capital environment, Australian organisations must understand the value of technology and make better use of data. By failing to implement analytics capabilities, human capital improvement initiatives will continue to deliver poor returns, and productivity issues will refuse to go away. The time to act is now.

Andrew Woolf is Accenture Australia’s talent and organisation lead

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PROFILE DONNA MORRIS

HR at Adobe

A passion for making a

difference

This month Stephanie Zillman sat down with Adobe’s head of ‘people resources’, where HR sits front and centre at the boardroom table Many HR professionals gravitate towards the industry for the same reason: it’s a business function with people, not numbers, at the very core. For passionate people wanting to make a difference in the lives of employees as well as a positive impact, HR is an almost tailor-made profession. Donna Morris certainly thinks so, describing herself as a passionate person who was drawn to the profession for the myriad opportunities it offers. “Looking back I always had a passion for making a difference in terms of people and business, and really the function provides both venues – the opportunity to dive deep in terms of the strategy of the company, the structure, the systems, the people – and then it gave me an opportunity

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to actually interact with individuals, and I always found myself gravitating towards building relationships and helping others grow and develop,” she says.

For this seasoned HR professional, who celebrates being in the industry for 25 years, Morris says she knew very early on in her career that she had chosen the right path. Hailing from Ottawa, Canada, the now San Jose, California-based mother-of-one was exposed to HR in the second year of her political science degree. It was upon graduating with her Bachelor’s degree from Carleton University in Ottawa that Morris decided to pursue her Canadian Certified Human Resources Professional (CHRP) designation, and later added a

IN HER OWN WORDS What advice would you give to a young person coming into HR, or to someone considering a career in HR? “First off, I think it’s a phenomenal career path for people to take.

If you’re interested in business, and you really like working with people and want to make an impact in an organisation, I think it’s a great combination – so that’s one. But you can’t get to a senior level position if you don’t know what your overall goals are, so I share with my team my goals on a regular basis, and it all starts with having a plan. My guidance to someone early in their career is to make sure you have a plan to go and explore the different ways to build your expertise. Don’t just assume that if you really like recruitment, you should stay in recruitment, or if you really like compensation, you should stay in compensation. So explore, and experiment within the different areas of the function, because that will provide you with options later as your career evolves.”

PROFILE DONNA MORRIS

HR at Adobe based in the US. Today, that figure has risen to some 11,000 employees, with 50% of the workforce scattered around the globe, including in Australia. “We’ve grown aggressively through organic growth – so through our own hiring over the last number of years – and aggressively through inorganic growth through acquisitions,” Morris says. “If I look at our presence here in Australia, 18 months ago we were half the size that we are today.” Such growth would not have been possible without a clearly defined talent strategy, and Morris says her team invests heavily in ensuring talent is aligned with their corporate values.

Personal file: Donna Morris Family: Married and a mother to a 15-year-old son who is an avid golfer. If I’m not working or I’m not pottering around, I might be following him on the golf course, quietly cheering for him on the sidelines.

Self-described: Passionate, somebody who really wants to make an impact, and I would say strategic. I’m very interested in the big picture and being able to execute the strategy. I like to think I’m fun too.

Hobbies: I do love decorating – everything domestic and to do with home. My husband doesn’t like how I do this, but I love to think about where my next house will be and how I’ll decorate it, and what that will look like.

I’m also really into baking, and I love to entertain and have people over.

Favourite social media: Twitter.

Follow Donna on Twitter: @DonnaCMorris

If not in HR: I’d probably be in marketing. I like marketing because I like the elements of brand, creativity, communications, and I love writing.

Most admired: I’ve been fortunate to work with some great leaders, in particular our current CEO, Shantanu Narayen. I really admire them – and I’d put Oprah on that list too. I recently had a chance to go and see Oprah speak, and I admire individuals who have had a profound impact on either communities or sectors.

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VALUES ALIGNMENT

Senior HR Professional designation to her qualifications.

Working in her first role in benefits and pensions administration at the City of Ottawa, it wasn’t until a later role in 2002 when tech-company Accelio was acquired

by Adobe that Morris migrated to the US. Upon her move to California, Morris was principally responsible for talent, and it was here that the senior vice-president of people resources took full advantage of opportunities to grow and develop her skills. The role focused her towards growing Adobe’s talent capabilities outside of the US, and it was in March 2007 that Morris took on her current role – a role that keeps evolving, with Morris front and centre.

TALENT ACQUISITION

Asked what sets Adobe apart, Morris doesn’t hesitate.

“In our business the number one asset that we really have is the intellectual property that our employees possess, and so our view is that people resources must provide resources for employees at Adobe to do and be their best,” she says. Since coming into the senior vicepresident role, Morris says it has evolved significantly because the company has changed so much. Back in 2007, Adobe had around 5,000 employees, with some 65%

Morris’s team are focused on ensuring their values persist throughout the organisation globally. Hiring individuals who align with the core values, and promoting and developing individuals who exemplify those values, is key to their talent strategy.

Despite such a large workforce, Morris says it has been important to not rely on third parties to find their people. “Our view is that the best advocates for talent are really those that are already wearing and carrying an Adobe badge – you know they’re the best recruiters of our talent.”

A strong advocate for developing talent internally, Morris says this policy has resulted in more than 20% of positions being filled internally.

She is also proud of Adobe’s retention of those employees who come from acquisitions. “We’ve done an incredible job of retaining talent that is actually acquired through M&A [mergers and acquisitions] activities, so that’s a unique capability – I don’t really believe that other companies can do that to the extent that we’ve been able to – and much of that is centred around talent practices. [We ask] do we know we’ve identified the right individuals? Do we know we’re allowing them to grow and develop within the organisation, and do we

reward them competitively to do that? And retaining talent is key because that’s intellectual property, and people can easily go and start working somewhere else if they’re not oriented and driven within the right manner in a company.”

LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT

Morris attributes her own success to the learning and development (L&D) opportunities offered to her throughout her career, and says she considers L&D to be one of the key strategic elements in the HR toolkit.

A diverse workforce, ranging in age from 17 through to nearly 70, means that designing L&D and reward and recognition strategies cannot be answered with any one magic bullet. Instead, Morris says the focus has been on creating an organisation that, as a whole, is a genuine, ‘open’ place to work. “A priceless benefit is to be able to show up to work and say, ‘Hey, what you see is what you get, and I’m able to contribute’,” she says.

STRATEGIC IMPACT

For Morris, the opportunity to contribute to the company’s business strategy is not only a feather in her cap but also one of her favourite aspects of working in

Our view is that the best advocates for talent are really those that are already wearing and carrying an Adobe badge – DONNA MORRIS HR. “I would say contributing to the company’s strategic change is something that I’m most proud of – being part of the team that made the decision to focus on digital marketing as a key growth opportunity, and then helping to execute what that looked like from an organisationaldesign viewpoint, what talent and capabilities are going to be required, what rewards do we have to change…

This is something that I look back at, and hopefully it will be part of my legacy – how I was part of the team that actually changed and transformed the company into the organisation that it is today.”

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SIGN OFF

the lighter side written by Stephanie Zillman

WHAT CAN’T YOU LIVE WITHOUT?

Time to fire men, and people with PhDs?

POWER NAPS ON THE BOARDROOM TABLE

The Australian federal election will be held in September, and the announcement by Prime Minister Julia Gillard of such a long election campaign raised more than a few eyebrows in political circles. But perhaps none more so than those of staffers dedicated to manning the campaign.

In order to counter the long hours and sleepless nights, a so-called “fatigue management” rules list was drafted by the Department of Finance for ministerial advisers and other staff working for federal politicians.

So what’s the official strategy? Why, catch some zzz’s on the boardroom table of course.

Draft guidelines circulated to MPs and senators have warned them of their legal duty to ensure staff do not get too tired, and that the relentless 24-hour news cycle is not an excuse for allowing workers to become fatigued and inevitably ‘‘burn out’’.

“During busy periods which may involve long hours, allow for and encourage ‘power naps’ in unused rooms within the office,” the guidelines state. “Ensure employees take sufficient annual leave each year to recharge (and) ensure employees take adequate and regular meal and rest breaks.”

The rules also remind politicians to ensure workloads are shared so as to not place excessive demands on any one employee.

AMBULANCES TO TRANSPORT BUSY EXECS

Sitting in traffic when you’re late for a meeting is frustrating for anyone, but entrepreneurial ambulance drivers are getting proactive about the problem.

Police in Moscow have started carrying out random checks on ambulances after advertisements appeared online for “ambulance-taxis” charging upwards of 6,000 rubles (AU$180) an hour.

Some emergency vehicles have reportedly been fitted with plush interiors and are being rented out to VIP commuters looking to craftily dodge the city’s appalling traffic jams.

The vehicles are said to use their sirens to scatter traffic and deliver harried businessmen to meetings on time. Moscow’s boulevards and ring roads are often at a standstill because of badly parked cars and a lack of restrictions on driving in the city centre.

The foul-ups are compounded when police block roads for official corteges, such as that of Vladimir Putin, who causes gridlock when travelling to and from the Kremlin in his Mercedes Pullman.

An annual survey on time-wasting at work has revealed that more employees are wasting time on a daily basis this year than last year.

In 2012, 64% of respondents to the Salary.com survey admitted to slacking off a little each day, but in 2013 an additional 5% did.* Chatting with co-workers stole the most time (43%), followed by surfing online (28%), and texting, using social media, or phone calls (4%), but the internet was the most common time-waster.

Those most likely to waste time include men (73%) and people with doctorate degrees (76%); least likely are divorcees (51%), and those with a high school diploma or less (59%).

So what should you do about this?

Fire all your male employees, and those with PhDs? Nothing, actually.

“While every second spent ‘not working’ seems like lost money for the business, the reality is being on, constantly, for eight hours can be draining. Your employees need time to recharge,” wrote Suzanne Lucas, also known as Evil HR Lady, on Inc.com. *Survey recipients

included more than 1,000 American workers

LinkedIn recently asked successful business leaders to describe the items they find indispensable on business trips. The result is a collection of short essays, called “Things I Carry”, and includes contributions from iconic business heavyweights such as Richard Branson, who apparently can’t go anywhere without his personal assistant.

Here are our favourites: Esther Dyson, principal at EDventure: While Dyson carries the typical gadgets with her, she also always has her swimsuit in her carry-on ( just in case her checked luggage doesn’t arrive). The most important function of the swimsuit is to give her time to think. “It’s in the pool that I make decisions about whether to make a trip or an investment, or consider the results of past decisions,” she wrote. Since 18, she’s only missed having a swim one day a year on average.

Deepak Chopra, physician and holistic health guru: Chopra always has his Mybasis – a ‘‘biosensor device and online personal dashboard’’ – strapped to his wrist to collect vital statistics on his heart rate, skin temperature, and perspiration. This helps him to monitor and improve his health continuously. Sounds like a fun guy.

Don Peppers, founding partner of Peppers & Rogers Group at TeleTech: Peppers takes his wife’s love letters with him wherever he goes. When he takes a trip, Peppers’ wife makes sure to hide a card in his luggage for each night he will be away. If he can’t find them, he calls her to find out where she hid them. Sometimes the card will contain a love letter, or sometimes a photograph of a holiday they took together. “Her card is the last thing I read before going to sleep and the first thing I read again after waking up,” Peppers wrote.

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