Human Resources Director 12.02

SPECIAL REPORT RETENTION

HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR HCAMAG.COM ISSUE 12.2

EXECUTIVE EDUCATION WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO GET AHEAD TODAY CEOS ON HR HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CHIEF

SEEKING PERFECTION

Global fitness brand Fitness First rebuilds its image with the help of HR

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EDITOR’S LETTER / HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

SPECIAL REPORT

IS TECHNOLOGY THE SOLUTION?

RETENTION

HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR HCAMAG.COM ISSUE 12.2

EXECUTIVE EDUCATION WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO GET AHEAD TODAY CEO'S ON HR HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CHIEF

SEEKING PERFECTION

In recent issues of HRD we’ve heard about technology as an essential tool for HR directors and their departments. Big data is supposed to change the way we recruit and assist in the ongoing performance management of staff. The cloud offers answers for new-age intranets (see page 12), while mobility is the solution for increasing productivity for all workers, whether they’re in-house or on the road.

However, as a long-standing tech writer, I’ve come to realise technology is simply a tool. Yes, it can be pretty cool (and expensive), and it certainly drives productivity – at least most of the time. Yet technology can simply be a mask for the human component behind it. Technology isn’t the interesting part – it’s the magic (to steal a phrase from Steve Jobs) it enables us to do as part of our jobs and also as part of our daily lives. Sometimes too much emphasis is put on the tool, and not the outcome or the human story behind it.

At HRD it’s the outcomes and the human stories we’re interested in. How are you improving the outlook and performance of your employees? What were the results of an innovative initiative? How are you using tools to maximise business outcomes? Those are the stories we want to hear, and the stories we want you to be telling us.

Global fitness brand Fitness First rebuilds its image with the help of HR

HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR: THE NEW NAME FOR HC MAGAZINE

COPY & FEATURES EDITOR Josh Gliddon JOURNALIST Cameron Edmond PRODUCTION EDITORS Roslyn Meredith, Moira Daniels

ART & PRODUCTION DESIGN MANAGER Daniel Williams DESIGNER Marla Morelos TRAFFIC MANAGER Abby Cayanan

CONTRIBUTORS Kenexa, Frontier Software

SALES & MARKETING MARKETING EXECUTIVE Anna Farah COMMUNICATIONS EXECUTIVE Lisa Narroway NATIONAL COMMERCIAL MANAGER Sophie Knight ONLINE COMMERCIAL MANAGER Sarah Wiseman

CORPORATE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Mike Shipley CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER George Walmsley MANAGING DIRECTOR Justin Kennedy CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER Colin Chan HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER Julia Bookallil

Sometimes too much emphasis is put on the tool, and not the outcome or the human story behind it

Editorial enquiries Iain Hopkins tel: +61 2 8437 4703 iain.hopkins@keymedia.com.au

If you’re doing something interesting, don’t keep it to yourself!

Get in touch, and tell your story. Our phone, email and our online forums at hcamag.com are always open and ready to hear from you.

Don’t be a stranger – drop me an email at josh.gliddon@keymedia. com.au and let me know what you’re up to.

Key Media keymedia.com.au Key Media Pty Ltd, regional head office, Level 10, 1–9 Chandos St, St Leonards, NSW 2065, Australia tel: +61 2 8437 4700 • fax: +61 2 9439 4599 Offices in Auckland, Toronto, Denver, Manila hcamag.com

Josh Gliddon, editor, HRD

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Advertising enquiries National commercial manager, HR products Sophie Knight tel: +61 2 8437 4733 sophie.knight@keymedia.com.au Subscriptions tel: +61 2 8005 6674 • fax: +61 2 8437 4753 subscriptions@keymedia.com.au

HRD wants to hear from you.

Email us: editor@hcamag.com

Copyright is reserved throughout. No part of this publication can be reproduced in whole or part without the express permission of the editor. Contributions are invited, but copies of work should be kept as HRD can accept no responsibility for loss.

EXPRESS YOURSELF! Got a burning issue to get off your chest? Check out the readers’ forums at hcamag.com

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CONTENTS / HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

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COVER STORY

CEOs speak on HR What does it take for an HRD to have a close working relationship with the CEO? What do CEOs prize about HR, and do they believe HR has a seat at the boardroom table? Joshua Gliddon talks to four leading chief executives to find out

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Special Report: Retention Holding onto good staff is a key element of the HRD’s job. This special report looks into the various ways a business can make sure the best people are happy – and productive

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Cover Profile: Anne Jaakke, HRD at Fitness First Health and fitness giant Fitness First is undergoing a major transformation of its brand, people and programs. At the centre of the process is the company’s HRD Anne Jaakke, a veteran of the hospitality industry, who offers insights into the process of turning a company around

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Book: Dr Tim Baker takes a look at whether the traditional performance review is dead and buried – and comments on what might replace it

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In Person: Optus’ HR director Vaughan Paul Optus’ Vaughan Paul speaks on the challenges and rewards associated with working at a large telecommunications company

CHECK OUT THE HRD ARCHIVES ONLINE: hcamag.com

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INSIGHT / NEW MANAGEMENT STRUCTURES

Rebuild it and they will come:

RETHINKING MANAGEMENT IN 2014

The world of work is changing.

More organisations are adopting flatter structures and even doing away with job titles altogether. Cameron Edmond examines the forces that are toppling the corporate hierarchy Traditional top-down corporate structures remain prominent in many organisations. However, more organisations are shifting to a flatter structure, and some are even doing away with the concept of management completely.

Flatter management is now a concept that HR directors are familiar with. Terri Kelly, CEO of W.L. Gore, has given the nod to the concept, stating: “It’s far better to rely upon a broad base of individuals and leaders who share a common set of values and feel personal ownership for the overall success of the organisation. These responsible and empowered individuals will serve as much better watchdogs than any single dominant leader or bureaucratic structure”.

But how does a flat structure manifest? Are bosses completely eradicated, or does their role

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simply evolve? How is employee performance boosted? Two organisations have stood out for their shift to flatter structures: online retailer Zappos and video game industry innovator Valve.

ZAPPOS AND HOLACRACY Featuring prominently in the media lately is the management approach known as ‘Holacracy’, touted by HolacracyOne and picked up by a number of organisations – most publicly by online shoe retailer Zappos.

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh explains the style as allowing employees to self-direct their work and become more entrepreneurial, as opposed to reporting to management.

“Research shows that every time the size of a city doubles, innovation or productivity per

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resident increases by 15%. But when companies get bigger, innovation or productivity per employee generally goes down,” he explains.

“We’re trying to figure out how to structure Zappos more like a city, and less like a bureaucratic corporation.”

HR should not confuse Holacracy with ‘Anarchy’. While employees are able to chart a personal course and organise themselves, Zappos will maintain a group of people charged with leading the company as a unit and a business.

Zappos describes Holacracy as decoupling the technical and people-focused aspects of management. While traditionally a manager would be responsible for both elements, Holacracy allows the various responsibilities of management to be disseminated among employees best suited to them. In effect, the role of a manager is made obsolete, and self-direction is brought to the forefront.

Zappos hopes that productivity can be bolstered this way, as politics and bureaucracy become limited. Individuals are able to evolve the organisation’s structure to respond quickly to market conditions, creating a flexible structure as they go.

The complete overhaul that adopting Holacracy often involves comes with its own set of trials and tribulations.

“Holacracy is super difficult,” Christa Foley, senior HR manager at Zappos, tells HRD. “It is such a dramatic shift from traditional structures that it really takes at least six months for employees to get it and begin to see the value in it … you really need to understand this and make sure your employees understand this so they can rally with you.”

THE STEAM SOLUTION While management across the board is getting flatter and Holacracy is on the rise, US-based video game company Valve has taken the next step and adopted a purely flat, job-title-barren approach to work.

“A fearless adventure in knowing what to do when no one’s there telling you what to do” prefaces the company’s employee handbook.

The organisation’s structure is described as one in which employees are able to pick and choose which projects they work on. When someone has an idea, they begin work on it and mention it to others. If other employees are interested, they too

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will contribute, resulting in the project getting off the ground and developing.

It is here that Valve’s structure begins to resemble circles or silos of management. Instead, these are referred to as ‘cabals’.

Cabals are also referred to as ‘multidisciplinary project teams’ and are self-organised. The groups are temporary and are generated to help ensure a project is shipped, forming organically around the people who work on it.

The temporary structures will often mean that team leaders emerge, but their role is not of traditional management. Instead they act as a resource: other team members can rely on them to be aware of all details of the project at hand. Other temporary internal structures may also develop.

A fluid, flexible structure is the true aim of Valve’s ‘flatland’ approach: codified or persisting structures can become self-serving and result in the projects themselves becoming devalued.

“If you’re thinking to yourself, ‘Wow that sounds like a lot of responsibility’ you’re right,” the handbook reads. “Any time you interview a potential hire, you need to ask yourself not only if they’re talented or collaborative but also if they’re capable of literally running this company, because they will be.”

However, Valve’s structure has its critics. A former employee, Jeri Elsworth, spoke out against the structure last year in an interview with the Grey Area Podcast.

Elsworth described the structure as “pseudoflat”, adding that a hidden layer of powerful management had manifested in the company, making it “a lot like high school”.

“There are popular kids that have acquired power in the company, then there’s the trouble makers, and everyone in between.”

All the young dudes While Zappos and game software maker Valve are making headlines for their strides, many other organisations are doing away with traditional corporate hierarchies for flatter or otherwise alternative structures, including: • Google

• KPMG

• Facebook

• Apple

• 37signals

• SoftwareMill

Source: tibbr.com, inc.com, softwaremill.com

LEADERS OF FLATLAND Roma Gaster, director at The Leadership Circle Asia Pacific, feels that traditional management structures will be forced to adjust to meet today’s complex business environment, with collaboration, shared accountability and collective decisionmaking becoming the norm as adaptive and flatter organisational structures emerge.

Gaster’s primary takeaway for HR directors embarking on a flatter management initiative is an understanding of leadership in a less hierarchydriven organisation.

“It means more than one person is responsible

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INSIGHT / NEW MANAGEMENT STRUCTURES

DAMAGE REPORT Coming to grips with the ins and outs of Holacracy isn’t easy. HRD chatted to senior HR manager Christa Foley, of US-based online shoe retailer Zappos, about the switch Does the Holacracy approach affect all parts of the organisation?

We started a pilot group with our HR group and a few others in 2013. We’re on track to launch it across the whole organisation by the end of 2014.

How has it affected your specific role?

It’s been a whirlwind as we were part of the pilot group.

Much of my time has been learning about Holacracy and assisting the implementation team in preparing to facilitate for other circles. This is a temporary issue, as each circle will eventually be self-sufficient. It’s clear to me that the extra work put in now to get this rocking and rolling is going to be hugely beneficial to the company down the road.

I am a lead link in some circles, and hold roles in others.

For the circle in which I fill the lead link role, Holacracy has been excellent for helping both me and the other role holders get clarity on the work we need to accomplish, our purpose, and who is responsible for each piece of work. I know there has been a ton of buzz around ‘#nomanagers’, but I am still responsible for this circle. The difference is the liberation for both me and the other role holders in the

circle to really run with clearly defined work via roles and accountabilities, versus a ‘manager’ directing the work.

Compared to other management styles, how much does Holacracy deviate?

It’s totally different. It’s a complete shift in the concept of leadership, and distributes authority across the organisation to every role, as well as giving all your role holders a voice and a fast and effective way to process tensions.

It seems Holacracy most readily functions within the creative part of the organisation. How does it carry over to other functions, such as finance? Do these parts of the organisation still have a traditional approach?

No, everyone will be on Holacracy. It doesn’t give specifics on how to unpack the work in your organisation; you simply use the structure to figure out the best way to do so.

Would you recommend the approach to all organisations, or will it vary?

It’s a bit early to tell. My hesitation would be for organisations that have areas where multiple folks are doing the same work, for example in a call centre. We have close to 500 people in the call centre and haven’t rolled out Holacracy there yet as we have lots to figure out in regard to the best way for Holacracy to work with that type of group. I think there may be similar challenges in a warehouse environment. Not saying it can’t be done, just more to figure out.

Describe what isn’t there The Valve employee handbook includes a number of drawings by employees that help describe the organisation’s structure:

VALVE ORGANISATIONAL CHARTS (as envisioned by employees) Diag. 1 gabe

Diag. 3

Diag. 4

Diag. 5

*

everyone

Diag. 2 everyone

chet

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*”I’m the noob, coffee anyone? Hello?”

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for taking on the role of developing a culture where people can show up every day and really shine and contribute their best,” she tells HRD. “We need teams in organisations that really understand why this is important. People will always want somebody to take the lead, even if just for a short time.”

Gaster lists five areas the HR team should look to foster in the organisation to ensure that when the hierarchy transforms, so do the leaders: zz Recognise leadership potential in all Defining leadership as “the ability to create and/or influence outcomes” allows the possibility for all to assume leadership at some point. By spreading this view throughout the organisation, the leadership skills that exist within all employees will flourish. zz Make leadership a part of your organisation’s identity The loss of leadership during a switch to a

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flatter structure is due to an organisation’s culture not incorporating leadership into its ‘common language’. Leadership needs to be embedded in the values and purpose of the organisation to help generate a leadership culture. zz Focus on learning and development To grow leadership, it must be nurtured. A solid L&D strategy can make the difference between a smooth transition in which many leaders emerge and a bumpy road where they start to drop off. zz Encourage collective decision-making Giving others a role in decision-making communicates to them that there is faith and trust in the flatter structure working. This will help boost morale, as well as allowing new approaches and perspectives to come to the forefront, a primary goal of any organisation adopting a flatter structure.

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INSIGHT / SOCIAL MEDIA

SOCIAL MEDIA IN FOCUS

Social media has become the breakout media form of the 21st century. Twenty-three per cent of marketers are investing in social media* and the number of social media jobs has jumped 25 times since 2008.^ So where to from here?

HOW MANY PEOPLE DOES YOUR BUSINESS HAVE WORKING ON SOCIAL MEDIA?*

70%

6%

13%

6%

have between 11 and 20

have between 1 and 5

have between 6 and 10

have more than 20 people

SOCIAL MEDIA SKILLS IN LARGE BUSINESSES – DO YOU HAVE THE RIGHT SKILLS?*

Have a social media policy

18%

said they did not have the right mix

Have invested in social media training

76% 45%

said they partly had the right mix

16%

PROPORTION OF LARGE BUSINESSES THAT*:

66% said they had the right mix of skills

USE SOCIAL MEDIA AS A CUSTOMER SERVICE CHANNEL*: Receiving complaints

Using it as a response channel

66% 96% Sources: * Yellow Pages social media survey 2013 ^ LinkedIn social media survey 2013

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FRONTLINE INTELLIGENCE / TECHNOLOGY CLOUD

Four best practices for HCM in the cloud Avoiding tunnel vision in the cloud requires an understanding of HCM business processes and their larger impact on your underlying infrastructure Human capital management (HCM) cloud offerings can radically lower costs and increase functionality.

Based on Oracle’s customer experiences, as much as 30–60% of HR’s IT costs can be shed by leveraging cloud solutions. These solutions provide business users with improved user interfaces and provide HCM business functionality 95% sooner than previously possible. In addition, delivering HR analytics and HCM process automation to iPads and other mobile devices can start to revolutionise HCM and other core HR processes.

But in addition to these benefits, there are real business dangers as companies move into the cloud.

Business users often push into the cloud focused only on their own siloed business need or because they are anxious to cash in on the latest cloud buzz.

Creating a hodgepodge of disconnected HCM applications in the cloud and the data centre can end up being worse than your current IT environment.

And if you are not careful, it can also provide hackers with new doorways into your company’s missioncritical business processes.

Avoiding tunnel vision in the cloud requires an understanding of HCM business processes and their larger impact on your underlying infrastructure.

Here are four best practices you can utilise to increase your ROI and lower your risk: For global companies, scalability means going beyond hosting capabilities to include factors such as international localisations and service level agreements (SLAs) that provide for availability, redundancy, and performance at all global locations.

Determine which HCM capabilities are required and how they interact to maximise business. For example, if strategic imperatives of the business are to reduce employee attrition and new employee onboarding cycle times, a solution

1

Written and provided by Christopher Sowa Oracle Corporation

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focused mostly on talent management or recruiting will quickly become inadequate. One company I recently worked with was struggling because it had separate cloud recruiting systems for professional employees and for college students, a separate talent management system, and a separate core HCM transaction system. The result was that managers lacked a clear view of their new hire efforts. They needed to know not just if a position was filled quickly, but also how well that employee was performing and how long top employees were staying with the company. The key here is to understand the interplay of these related processes and select an HCM solution that allows you to deliver a complete solution without starting a new IT project at every turn.

Plan for integration with non-HCM solutions before selecting a service provider. As you consider a cloud solution, it is important to consider any required integrations. At one organisation I worked with, getting integration right meant getting the value not only from the HCM solution, but also from other solutions that leveraged employee data and employee hierarchies. Without shared employee hierarchies and role information, manually updated tables that did not properly capture information on employees’ roles would have limited their procureto-pay workflow approval processes. By integrating the solutions, procurement managers could ensure that the people making purchases were managers, and that they had the authority to make the types of purchases they were making. The same HCM employee data and hierarchies are also often required in core systems and customer experience systems. Considering the need for these important integrations will reduce ongoing technical costs and enable greater automated workflow from the solutions implemented.

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Ensure that your HCM solutions can scale internationally. For global companies, scalability means going beyond hosting capabilities to include factors such as international localisations and SLAs that provide for availability, redundancy, and performance at all global locations. HR executives need the ability to look at employee skills and costs globally so that they can make the right decisions about where to locate operations to maximise business results. One organisation I was working with was struggling with expansion in Asia since its HCM solution lacked the required software localisations and bi-directional support for languages. This meant managers needed to maintain separate systems and struggled to bring together key processes and data. For this reason, an HCM solution should consider not only today’s requirements, but also future international scalability.

3

4

Ensure secure ownership of HCM data.

Co-mingling of data in the cloud can pose a

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security risk and raise data ownership questions. For these reasons, it is important that the long-term control of data be maintained. Data privacy laws, which often differ by country, also need to be considered. For example, some European companies are required by law to have employee data domiciled in their home countries. Due to recent revelations about government surveillance, these types of demands are likely to increase as certain organisations and governments try to increase their control of data.

As HR executives continue to shift their focus from core HR transactions to strategic human capital management, the cloud offers them a great way to rapidly add new HCM capabilities. In choosing a solution that meets their needs, it is important that these executives look at desired HCM outcomes to understand how HCM processes are interrelated. It is also critical that HR executives partner with senior IT management to ensure that their solutions are secure and scalable.

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INTRANETS / TECHNOLOGY

TRANSFORMING TRADITIONAL INTRANETS Mobility has changed the traditional corporate intranet, and also changed what employees expect of it. What should a new-age intranet look like?

Many of today’s intranets can be frustrating. Frustrating for employees to use, for content owners to govern, and for IT to integrate, maintain, and support. It’s time to modernise and mobilise. But what should a modern, mobile intranet do and look like? It boils down to three fundamental focal areas:

DELIVERING INFORMATION AND EXPERTISE SEAMLESSLY AND SECURELY

About the author Paul Conroy Technology specialist, Jive Software

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For starters, you need a communications hub that provides the basics to inform and engage your workforce. A modern intranet should include the latest communication and collaboration tools that people are familiar with: blogs, wikis, videos, polls, ideas, files, status updates, announcements, activity streams, and more.

In addition, there are other aspects to consider in delivering timely information and making sure all departments are as well informed as possible: yy Modern portals should be managed by the business, not IT. They should be much more engaging, with two-way interaction, intuitive navigation and easy administration. yy Instead of going through IT every time you need to publish a communication, the modern intranet should be simple for non-technical people to manage. This also helps ensure content is kept up to date and relevant. yy Social graph search and intelligent recommendations make it easier to find what you need.

Most knowledge and document repositories

are designed for individual searching and can’t recommend content or people. Modern intranets know you. They recommend people and content from multiple repositories based on your activities and employee network graph. yy A modern employee directory should give employees profiles with personality and peer endorsements to make it easier to find experts. yy Impact and alignment metrics should display how your messages and content impact on the organisation. Think about crafting that perfect email from leadership, and hitting ‘Send’. A modern intranet should tell you how far your message has reached, what the collective sentiment is, who has read it or referred others to it, and bookmarked/liked/shared it.

GIVING PEOPLE THE TOOLS TO WORK FASTER AND BETTER Today’s enterprises maintain complex application and system ecosystems, and with many adding social features, such as status updates and streams, it’s ridiculous to think a knowledge worker would be able to make sense of it all. A modern intranet should make it simple to plug all those streams into a single dashboard, and give the user control over how to view them by creating custom streams from systems, people, workspaces, content repositories, RSS feeds, inboxes, and more.

Modern intranets can get people to work smarter by offering actionable tools to drive measurable outcomes. Imagine a modern intranet that makes it

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simple to mark email replies, documents, blogs, discussions, comments and more for action, or as a decision. Imagine marking content as official or final, or outdated, to improve or diminish its search ranking. A modern intranet should also tell you who is viewing information at the same time you are, so you can start a real-time chat about it, save your transcript, and take action on what was discussed in that backchannel.

OFFERING AN OPEN PLATFORM THAT INTEGRATES WITH A VARIETY OF SYSTEMS PEOPLE USE ACROSS THE COMPANY The promise of portal technologies over the last decade has fallen short when it comes to providing context. Enter the modern intranet, where back-end systems are integrated in the context of a specific business activity, for specific roles, and leverage the social graph to enable greater insight and understanding of information and the people involved in sharing it. This can be achieved a couple of different ways:

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yy Create a holistic view of activities through stream aggregation and federation across multiple internal and external systems. yy Create use case-specific applications that users can easily integrate with systems of record and productivity apps. Templates should evolve to meet the business requirement du jour. A modern intranet should deliver ‘101’ customisa-tion requirements out of the box, freeing up developers to create templates focused on an organisation’s core business processes. yy Bind multiple storage providers into the intranet, either globally or at the workgroup or departmental-portal level. There will never be one content storage provider that rules them all.

So it’s time to modernise your intranet, integrate it with applications and systems that make sense to keep, and replace those that don’t. Give employees, content owners, and IT professionals the intranet they always hoped to have.

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MANAGEMENT / CEO S ON HR

In defence of

HR Defence Bank chief Jon Linehan is an ardent advocate of HR. He speaks to Joshua Gliddon about what HR brings to the table, and how HR can work closely with the chief executive

Linehan’s top tips for working with the CEO 1. Ensure the culture is open and willing to learn new things.

2. Work to have HR as a direct report to the CEO. 3. Provide honest, timely feedback to the chief, even when the news isn’t always good.

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One of the key areas in which Jon Linehan, chief executive of Defence Bank for the last six years, looks to HR for assistance is to make sure he is open and approachable to all staff at all times.

“We have made major changes to the organisation over the last few years,” reflects Linehan. “We have worked hard to make sure there is clear and transparent communication through the business, and that I am available and approachable to all our staff.”

Defence Bank has been on a growth tear for the last few years, reflecting its transition from being a credit union to a fully fledged bank. And Linehan says HR has played a key role.

“Human resources, and the human resources director, are key parts of our leadership team,” he says. “They have the best practice when it comes to

recruiting, engaging and retaining our people.”

At a practical level, the bank has introduced several programs to help all staff understand how a branch operates. According to Linehan, over 60% of staff are engaged in some sort of continuous professional development, while 42% have achieved a retail banking diploma.

“We also have a 13-module e-learning program to upskill all our people,” he says. “This enables us to continually change functions, automate some jobs, and then have those people move into fresh roles.

“I see HR as a great listening post for engaging our people,” he adds. “I often say I know what I know, but I don’t know what they know, and so I have to spend a lot of time listening. I rely on HR to give me honest feedback.”

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The chief executive and the HR director must work together to get the best from the organisation’s people, says Simon Gipson, head of school at St Michaels in Victoria

Taking

HR to school

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Simon Gipson took up the role of head of school at St Michaels nearly 14 years ago. When he arrived, he already had strong ideas about how HR, the board and the head of school were going to work together.

“When I started teaching in 1984 it struck me that teachers were not always valued for making a difference,” he says. “As I rose through the profession, I always kept that in mind, and so HR is something of great importance to me.”

Gipson says HR has a seat at the management table for the school, which has 1,326 students from K-12, as well as 300 full-time staff and a further 50 casuals.

“The HR director has the opportunity to work with the board and provide their input,” he says.

Gipson says he is something of a rarity among the teaching profession because of his focus on HR above almost everything else.

“I think anyone in my position would value teachers,” he observes, “but few value [HR] in the strategic way we do. Our director of people and strategy is part of the leadership team, and for a school that is quite unusual.”

Gipson’s tips for HR working with the CEO 1. Realise people are at the centre of what you do, regardless of the business you’re in.

2. Make HR a central function of the leadership team.

3. Invest time and money in boosting the HR function – it will pay dividends.

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MANAGEMENT / CEO S ON HR

SUPER CHARGING

HR

With over 1,000 employees in Queensland, QSuper and its chief, Rosemary Vilgan, are razor focused on the importance of HR to the business Rosemary Vilgan, chief executive of QSuper, pauses before answering the question of what HR brings to the table at the business. When she responds, it’s to say that people are both the biggest cost and the biggest resource for any organisation, and so the relationship between the HR director and the chief executive is absolutely vital to ensuring the business is heading in the right direction.

“The human resources director has to understand where the business is going,” Vilgan says, “and they need to understand the CEO, because as the leader I can only achieve what I need to achieve through the people in the organisation.”

It’s vital the HRD is a member of the management team, to the point where HR has a seat at the boardroom table and can offer advice to the other leaders of the business.

“In our business the director of human resources has access to the board and direct access to the chair, as well as to me – as you would expect,” she says.

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Vilgan says it’s important for the HRD to be able to read the style of the CEO, and develop a deep understanding of what the chief executive wants to achieve – their initiatives, desires and goals for the organisation.

“There has to be a deep alignment with what the CEO is trying to achieve and their desires for the direction of the organisation,” Vilgan adds.

Vilgan’s tips for HR working with the CEO 1. You need to be able to read the style of the CEO and respond to that.

2. You need to be able to provide the CEO with a good read of what is happening in the organisation.

3. You need to understand what the CEO is aiming for and help facilitate the business alignment around that.

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HR’s clear vision Beer’s tips for HR working with the CEO 1. There has to be a common value about what culture and performance is. If there is a common philosophy [about] what the objectives are, you feel comfortable aligning with that.

2. Can you make strategy happen? We have a culture that is very caring, but has an edge to it. We want to grow future talent. We invest in leadership development, but you have to perform.

3. Be clear what value you add.

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Chris Beer, chief executive of eyewear and eye care company Luxottica, says his management philosophy is a little different to that of his peers. That’s because he’s adamant the HR director and HR department make an indelible contribution to the overall running of the business.

“Culture drives performance,” he says. “I also believe that for every person you employ, you have an impact on 10 other people.”

For a company like Luxottica, which employs 8,500 people, the overall impact of the business has to be measured across 85,000 people, including family, friends and other stakeholders.

“Our goal is to be better every day as leaders, and to look after everybody,” he says. “Based on that philosophy, if I was to pick my team, I always start with HR. Most CEOs go the other way.”

Beer adds that he values HRDs who can align the strategy to the culture initiatives and enable the key pillars of the strategy to drive culture and performance.

“An effective HRD needs to be somebody that is intuitive and can partner with me. [They need to] have the big picture and the fundamental building blocks in place and not worry about transactional things,” he says. “In the end, for me and for Luxottica, it’s about strategy through culture.”

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FRONTLINE INTELLIGENCE / SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media and business change Can emerging technologies enable us to deliver change better and faster than ever before? Faith Forster investigates THE COMPLEXITY OF CHANGE The pace of market-driven change has increased substantially since the financial crisis, and will only continue to increase as technology revolutionises and democratises how ideas and information are shared.

Ten to 15 years ago, the change agenda was about cost reduction and efficiency; doing more with less. However, today the change agenda is about innovation and agility. Where once a business strategy used to have a five-year plan, organisations now need to be able to respond and adapt much more quickly to remain competitive.

Consequently, an organisation’s ability to leverage the expertise and insights of its people, to execute change, is paramount.

EMPLOYEE EXPECTATIONS MUST CHANGE

About the author Faith Forster, a senior change consultant based in the UK, was a guest speaker at the Inaugural 2013 Global Change Management Institute (CMI) Conference.

The CMI has six regional chapters in Australia and has established international country chapters in the UK, NZ, China, India and, most recently, Brazil

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Many of our business practices were developed during the industrial age when processes and productivity could be optimised in predictable, stable environments. In a technological age, those established systems and procedures can become an impediment to business and barriers to change.

Consumers have embraced new technologies a lot faster than organisations have. Old mantras like ‘knowledge is power’ and ‘there is no I in team’, which served to maintain the status quo, are being challenged by informal social media networks.

Today’s employees are better connected and so they are beginning to demand a greater say and want to contribute to the conversation about change – which begs the question, what will organisations look like in the future? What tools will they adopt to drive and reinforce change?

COMMUNICATING CHANGE The evolution of business communications has been dramatic over the last few years. From the introduction of email and the internet, to instant messaging, voice and video conferencing, smartphones and now social media, the ability to connect with colleagues anywhere, at any time, is greater than ever.

Change no longer has to be ‘pushed’ from the top down – leaders are able to share new ideas or ‘crowd source’ initiatives. Rather than being limited to the odd meeting and workshop to engage stakeholders, social media is able to communicate through a many-to-many channel: people can be found and mobilised quickly behind a common purpose.

Social media also provides a powerful platform to gather instant feedback and have a two-way conversation. The introduction of social media tools and analytics provides measurable and more accurate data on how people respond to change, rather than relying on selected anecdotes and limited surveys.

It is important to note that introducing ‘social business’ or social media into the workplace requires more than just switching on an enterprise social tool. It is a significant culture change in itself, which requires reciprocal trust between employees and leaders.

MANAGING CHANGE The change agenda still requires the need to ‘sell’ the change initiative, address resistance and gain ‘buy-in’ from managers. However, change management programs often fail because not all stakeholders or business impacts are being anticipated. To make the situation more complex, there are often multiple change initiatives running concurrently.

While the change profession has become better at articulating the skills and processes (methodologies) for managing change, the tools we use, mainly Microsoft Office, limit our ability to deliver change quickly and effectively.

Social media offers another powerful toolset but still requires a structured approach to realise new data, insights and conditions.

For more information on the Change Management Institute, visit the website: www.change-management-institute.com

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BUSINESS THINKING / MANAGEMENT

Engagement for the long haul If workplace engagement can be defined as ‘a persistent state of work fulfilment’, how to continue to engage employees beyond that first flush of enthusiasm is a perennial issue for employers There are well-researched links between the level of employee engagement and their organisational performance, as well as whole industries devoted to helping you sort this out.

And yet the models, the statistical analysis and the new research continue to repeat the same message time and time again.

So my question, then, is why aren’t organisations doing better at this?

They need line managers who ‘get’ it and who understand that all the knowledge in the world is meaningless without implementation. Those line managers need to understand their teams and the individual motivations that drive each employee, and to adapt each element of engagement to the

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specific employee. For example, while recognition is key to engagement, for some this means a splashy morning tea and public acknowledgement, for others a quiet thank you. As an aside, organisations also need systems that support and enable rather than hinder line managers.

Positive employee engagement doesn’t have to be about ostentatious new initiatives. It doesn’t have to be about consultants leading workshops and telling you how to run your business. It is like any other change that you want to make work over the long term. You need to: yy do it every day yy make it everyone’s job yy keep it simple

About the author Tammy Tansley is the principal of Tammy Tansley Consulting, a boutique firm specialising in culture change and workforce performance (www.tammytansley.com.au)

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EXECUTIVE EDUCATION

TAKING IT TO THE TOP: How to get the best executive education for your people Whether it’s a basic certificate or a full-house MBA program, there are literally dozens of Australian schools offering to take your money and educate your executives. As an HR director, how do you choose the right qualification and the right place of education for your staff?

Joshua Gliddon investigates

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Every business school will say they are different from their competitors – and they are. Some schools are pure MBA factories. Others focus on different forms of executive and graduate education. Some offer online learning; others emphasise the classroom and the possibilities of networking with like-minded peers.

Yet others offer a hybrid of online and offline.

The challenge for HRDs, given the job of deciding where to send high-performing executives for further education, is in choosing the right school and the best qualification for the individual – and for the business. They also need to decide whether it’s worth investing in executive education at all.

“Organisations that do not embrace executive education can fall into a ‘group think’ mentality where the only options and possibilities are those that have been tried before in ways that everyone is comfortable with,” says associate professor Jane Summers, from the University of Southern Queensland’s School of Management and Enterprise.

AUSTRALIAN MBA RANKINGS 2014* 1) Australian Graduate School of Management 2) Melbourne Business School 3) Macquarie Graduate School of Management 4) Brisbane Graduate School of Business 5) University of Queensland 6) University of Adelaide 7) Curtin University of Technology 8) University of Technology Sydney 9) University of South Australia 10) RMIT University *Source: MBA Guide Australia

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AFR BOSS BEST BUSINESS SCHOOLS 1. University of Queensland Business School 2. Melbourne Business School 3. QUT Graduate School of Business 4. University of South Australia 5. Bond University 6. Macquarie Graduate School of Management 7. Australian Graduate School of Management 8. University of Southern Queensland 9. Griffith University Business School 10. University of Adelaide Business School

“Exposing the management team to new ideas, new knowledge, new methods and systems keeps the organisation competitive and adaptable,” she adds.

One of the key areas in which education is growing is in bringing ideas of sustainability to the organisation, notes Dr Nick Barter, MBA director at Griffith Business School. “There are three areas where MBAs and executive education has had to expand,” he says. “That is in the areas of sustainability as a philosophic endeavour for the enterprise, the digital revolution, and how the research done in academia can benefit the business community.”

Barter reflects that while the focus of any business has to be profit and growth, the philosophy of sustainability in the context of providing opportunities for as many people as possible will tax even the best and brightest managers – hence the need for executive education in the areas of growth and sustainability.

“We provide education with a purpose,” says Barter. “Simply saying a business has to make money; well, that is a bit vacuous. We are saying make money, but do it with a purpose for the advancement of society.”

COURSE COSTS yyAverage cost for an MBA in 2014: $40,671 yyAverage cost in 2013: $40,223 yyMost expensive: Melbourne Business School – $75,000 yyCheapest: Central Queensland University – $18,652

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EXECUTIVE EDUCATION

AUSTRALIAN EXECUTIVE EDUCATION LANDSCAPE yyThe Australian MBA market is worth around $500m p.a. yyMore than 30 universities offer an MBA degree yy20,000 students are currently enrolled in an MBA in Australia yyThere are 60 different MBA courses available in Australia yyUp to 80% of students are from overseas yyThe top five countries for overseas students studying in Australia are China, India, South Korea, Vietnam and Malaysia

yyThe only Australian school to appear in the Forbes list of best business schools was the Australian Graduate School of Management yyThe Economist ranked the University of Queensland at number 14 on its list of top 100 international business schools yyThe Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago was ranked by The Economist as the world’s number one

DIGITAL, FACE-TO-FACE OR BOTH? Richard Hall, associate dean in management education at the University of Sydney Business School, is a firm advocate of the need for a solid face-to-face education due to the connections students will make with one another. Not that he rules out digital alternatives – the use of Skype and online meeting rooms means students can also form bonds electronically, as they would if they were in a classroom together.

“The quality and depth of the connections students make … is a key attraction and a major benefit of the stronger [business school] programs,” Hall says. “We know that students, especially in learning environments where team projects are important, can often learn as much from the students around them as from the faculty.”

Sydney University also provides other developmental opportunities along with the formal program, adds Hall, including networking events, ‘meet the CEO’ lunches and panel sessions.

However, digital can also work well for certain students, says Barter. He says the provision of LinkedIn groups, video sessions and cloud tutorials allows students to have greater flexibility in the way they learn, yet still make those allimportant networking connections with other students.

“We have them all make a ‘this is me’ video, and although courses are delivered online, we still see each other,” he says.

HRD NEED TO KNOW The most important thing about executive education and MBA programs is that there’s a program for just about every executive, at every stage of their career, from middle management upwards.

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“The trick for HR directors is to look at the curriculum being offered, look at any assessment tasks and also the types of students participating in the program,” concludes Summers. “This information will assist them to make decisions about which program is best for which student and what sort of skills and knowledge are being developed.”

GRADUATE MANAGEMENT ADMISSION COUNCIL SURVEY yy92% of full-time two-year MBA alumni were employed at the time of the follow-up alumni poll – the highest level reported since the class of 2009. yyThe technology sector is drawing 15% of the class of 2013 graduates, up from 12% in 2009. yyMBAs and other business Master’s degree holders continue to find opportunities in a variety of industries, with a total of 57% employed in the products and services, finance and accounting, and consulting sectors. yy58% of alumni from Asia-Pacific countries work for multinational organisations. A quarter of citizens of Asia-Pacific countries work outside their country of citizenship, and the majority (80%) work outside the Asia-Pacific region. yy5% of the class of 2013 alumni reported themselves as entrepreneurs/self-employed. A majority (78%) of self-employed alumni expect to hire a median of three employees in the next 12 months. yyThe majority of 2013 alumni feel their education developed their quantitative (95%) and qualitative (92%) skills, expanded their network (90%) and prepared them for the job market (90%).

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LEADERSHIP / BUSINESS THINKING

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14/02/2014 10:17:26 AM

LEADERSHIP / BUSINESS THINKING

The role of

BUSINESS THINKING

in leadership

An unwillingness to engage in deep business thinking can have a negative effect on the organisation THE PROBLEM Martin Luther King once wrote: Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions.

Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

Some 50 years after Martin Luther King made his statement, nothing much has changed.

We often come into contact with managers and leaders who prefer to rely on obvious solutions or past experience as a platform for business thinking and decision-making, rather than undertaking deeper, more insightful thinking exercises.

Often a manager’s lack of desire to or incapacity to engage in deep, hard thinking – to in effect change the way they think – significantly limits their ability to function in our complex business world of 2013. This becomes a real constraint to their effectiveness and capacity to deal with the dynamic and changing business environment.

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Leaders’ and managers’ business thinking must be challenged, and their capacity to undertake ‘hard, solid thinking’ developed as a platform for achieving high-impact business leadership and decisionmaking as well as changing and enhancing people leadership behaviours.

THE LINK WITH LEADERSHIP Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer was a British military commander who fought in both World Wars. He was the youngest ever field marshall and is best known for his defeat of the guerrilla rebels in Malaya between 1952 and 1954.

Templer, despite coming from the command and control environment of the military and an era that predates many of our modern leadership theories, saw the leadership imperative as: y y y y y y

Get the priorities right Get the instructions right Get the organisation right Get the right people into the organisation Get the right spirit into the people Leave them to get on with it

This formula for leadership resonates because of its simplicity, but also because of its balance between seeing the future, planning to achieve it, and engaging others to deliver on it.

Templer’s leadership imperative, which covers both business leadership and people leadership, can also be looked at as ‘the what’, ‘the why’ and ‘the

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how’. The effectiveness of the what and the why are directly linked to a leader’s business-thinking capabilities.

The what can be separated into two distinct parts. The what requires having an appropriate breadth and depth of perspective of the business and the world it operates in, and then having the business-thinking tools to leverage this perspective.

Having business-thinking tools means having the analytical skills to handle the sheer amounts of data presented to us, and being able to absorb and make sense of the ever-increasing complexities of our world – what used to be one tree is now a forest! Having business-thinking tools, and ultimately the what, means being able to make objective, often non-experiential decisions that are rational and justifiable as well as those bold and innovative decisions that define the future.

The why involves the rationality of the what, given all of the inputs to the business-thinking and decision-making process. Also, and most critically for leaders, the why means being able to communicate a coherent and cogent view of the world that informs stakeholders, shares with them a vision of what could be, and creates a sense of ownership and urgency.

The how involves engaging and leading others in the fulfilment of the vision for the future. If the what and the why won’t achieve what really needs to be done, it does not matter how engaging and charismatic a leader is or how effective their people leadership skills are!

We applaud the amount of work being done in organisations to assist leaders in engaging their staff in the way ahead – in the how – but we also consider that more can be done to help leaders have the capacity and desire to undertake the hard, solid thinking required to deal with the challenges of the world we live in.

We suggest that organisations need to arm leaders so that they can:

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yy investigate and understand the competitive external market yy understand and articulate key organisational drivers yy describe the drivers of business success for their area of responsibility and for the broader organisation yy build a vision of what the future could look like, and the steps to achieving this yy build commercial and financial acumen – hard business-thinking skills yy develop strong, non-experiential decisionmaking tools using appropriate systems and linear and non-linear thinking techniques yy make bold and innovative decisions yy communicate the vision, the rationale and the way forward (the what, the why and the how) in a compelling way that drives rational engagement and lays a platform for people leadership that also drives emotional engagement and buy-in Ultimately, these tools are needed to help leaders and managers deliver high-performing teams and businesses each and every day through refined business acumen, financial acumen and decisionmaking tools, and by coaching their teams on business-focused behaviours.

We believe, and our clients confirm, that placing a major emphasis on business thinking and having the appropriate business perspective does facilitate leaders in driving high levels of performance and achievement of business goals across all areas.

A WORD OF WARNING We have concentrated on the capacity to undertake deep and solid business thinking; however, this presumes the desire to undertake robust thinking and then the organisational capacity to embrace it.

We believe that if you desire to change your business culture and ways of thinking and working, you need to overcome the inertia King wrote about and work on the system of beliefs, values and behaviours of your leaders.

Importantly, you must ensure that the organisational system is sufficiently understood and ‘disrupted’ to allow for the new ways of working to take hold rather than eventually be submerged and drowned beneath existing cultural paradigms and traditional ways of thinking.

About the author Adrian Smith is a principal of Talent Mondial Australia and can be contacted at adriansmith@ talentmondial.com.au

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COVER STORY / FITNESS FIRST

SAVE THE DATE

Friday 5th September, 2014 Doltone House, Darling Island Wharf

Nominations Opening soon

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REINVENTING THE BUSINESS Fitness First is transforming its business with a renewed focus on the wellbeing of its members. Joshua Gliddon talks to HR director Anne Jaakke about leading through change

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COVER STORY / FITNESS FIRST

FITNESS FIRST AUSTRALIA AT A GLANCE •• 78 clubs •• 3,800 full-time employees •• 1,100 franchised personal trainers •• 1,800 group fitness instructors •• 50 million guest visits per year

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Just over two years ago the global fitness group Fitness First came to the realisation that it needed not only to reorganise but also to rebrand. The company went out and asked current and former members what they liked – and didn’t like – about its fitness clubs, and the result was sobering. There was a strong perception among its customers, both past and present, that the company was more about sales than fitness, and its clubs were just rooms full of machines.

“Finance First” was the common customer perception, something not helped by pushy sales staff, along with restrictive contracts and fitness instructors who never seemed to be available when they were needed on the floor. Being owned by private equity, Fitness First’s finances are opaque, however it’s also understood the company was bleeding money, and membership numbers were falling.

Coupled with those negative perceptions was the rise of rivals like Anytime Fitness, which are simply rooms full of machines, with few or no staff.

How could Fitness First maintain its premium when it was being undercut by budget rivals offering, on the surface, exactly the same product at a significantly lower price?

The key was the decision to invest in its people.

In Australia, Fitness First directly employs 3,800 people, along with 1,100 franchised personal trainers and a further 1,800 group fitness instructors across its 78 clubs. According to group HR director Anne Jaakke, all these people needed to be taken on a journey to reinvent Fitness First as a premium fitness destination, not just a box with machines.

“It’s the team that makes or breaks it,” reflects Jaakke at the relaunch of the brand, held on an overcast day at the company’s flagship operation on Sydney’s Market Street. Movie and fitness star Jane Fonda has been flown in to glamourise proceedings, the new branding (predominantly red, to emphasise passion) is highly visible, and the staff on hand are universally chirpy. Everyone, it seems, is happy to see you and eager to make a connection.

“We needed to change people, give them new behaviours and skills to move both them and the club to the next level,” she says.

One of the key realisations the HR team came to was the need to attract people from outside the

“It’s the team that makes it or breaks it” Anne Jaakke fitness industry. They also needed to re-evaluate the leadership teams at each club, ensuring that not only did they have an appetite for change but they were also willing to put in the effort to come on the change journey.

A PERSONAL JOURNEY Jaakke’s background qualified her to undertake the change journey Fitness First was embarking on.

Born into a hotel family, her father ran a hotel for Accor in Holland. “We lived in the hotel, as was common at that time,” she says, “and from when I was three or four years old my father would drill into me that I had to greet every guest I came across on the premises.”

The hospitality gene ran in her blood, and so Jaakke went to hospitality school to study HR, and followed this with stints in Beijing and then Tibet.

More recently she was HR director for Fitness First in Europe, looking after the Benelux countries, and then three years ago she transferred to the

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Australian Fitness First operation. Her experience in hospitality meant that when the company decided 18 months ago to reinvent itself, she instinctively knew that not only was service the key to success, but also forming deep connections with each and every member of every club.

“We realised that the emotional intelligence of each staff member was key to these member interactions,” she says. “And importantly, emotional intelligence is something people can learn; it is something that can be taught.”

EMBARKING ON A JOURNEY If Fitness First was going to realise its goal of putting members first, then it had to ensure the staff were willing to come along and be part of the journey. Jaakke and her team undertook psychometric and behavioural tests of all of the company’s 100 managers and 400 heads of departments, and the results were startling. Thirty per cent of those managers left the business because the testing, and subsequent interviews, found that they were not willing, or able, to head in the new direction the business was taking.

But it wasn’t just a matter of showing them the door. Those leaving the company were offered what Jaakke describes as ‘generous’ redundancies, and the roles were filled by people from outside the fitness business.

Filling those roles was also challenging, notes Jaakke, because the wage disparity between the fitness industry (which, Michelle Bridges aside, is generally a place to get fit, not rich) and the retail and hospitality industries the company was recruiting from was quite dramatic. Wage increases in the order of 25% were undertaken to ensure parity between what the candidates could get outside Fitness First, and what they could earn within the company.

Jaakke says she learned some solid lessons from having to wave goodbye to a significant chunk of the company’s management team.

“As human resources directors we are sometimes fearful of making those tough decisions, but they had to be made, and the results were positive for the business as a whole,” she says. “I learned not to fear making those tough decisions.”

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rest on getting rid of underperforming employees, getting a new logo and mustering in a range of new membership options and classes. Jaakke said the transformation also hinged on ensuring members were engaged, and in order to do that employees (and the significant number of contractors used by the company) also had to be engaged. And to achieve that, she says, the staff needed to trust the leadership, and the leadership had to be open and transparent.

“Leadership has to be open and approachable.

We can’t be locked off from the staff,” she observes.

“Change needs to be seen, and it needs to be driven from the very top.

“We are ultimately investing in our people, because our people are our product,” she adds.

Jaakke has three tips for HRDs undertaking a business reinvention journey:

1) Work inclusively. Involve people from all levels of the business, and not just the ones who are the most on board. Include those who are doubters, too.

2) Be transparent and open about the journey and the goals, and then get straight to it.

3) Engender trust. Without trust it’s just a job. With trust it’s so much more.

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SPECIAL REPORT

SPECIAL REPORT RETENTION Staff retention is one of the most challenging issues facing HR directors and their staff. In this special report, we look into salary, learning and development and other techniques as ways of keeping great staff happy and on board

Fresh learning philosophies p31 Playing the game p36 Benefiting the employee p38 Keeping them aboard p40

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Fresh learning philosophies Changing the face (and delivery) of L&D New trends are emerging around both the content and delivery of L&D that are proving effective for boosting retention levels – and ultimately, your company’s bottom line It’s frustrating to lose a decent employee. But it’s downright maddening when a person you had earmarked for long-term growth and acceleration up the company’s ranks walks out the door, taking with them years or possibly decades of valuable organisation-specific skills, knowledge and intelligence.

Rosie Cairnes, regional director Australia & New Zealand at Skillsoft APAC, believes retention tops the list as the most expensive issue plaguing organisations when managing their human capital.

“There’s always talk about staff turnover and what that costs businesses, but retention can also play a vital role in helping organisations keep customers,” she explains. >> HCAMAG.COM

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SPECIAL REPORT

CULTIVATING CULTURAL FIT

Tip 3. B e genuine. Recognition isn’t a daily task to tick off. Be sincere, specific and

In years gone past, organisations have attempted to encourage staff loyalty by rolling out learning and professional development programs that are tied directly to workplace performance.

But as workplaces evolve, it’s becoming less about formal education and more about addressing individual needs, explains David Hunter, former director of HR at Siemens Canada. A specialist in business improvement and corporate performance management, Hunter is also the brain behind D-CYDE, an app designed to help organisations make better, smarter, more strategic recruitment decisions. When it comes to learning and training programs, Hunter knows what works – and importantly, what doesn’t.

“What organisations are learning now is that the incentives they offer don’t necessarily need to be related to their employees’ job skill,” he says.

“You see on the walls of different businesses, ‘Our values are our customers and our happy employees’, but what’s missing is some concrete ways of showing that,” Hunter says.

“To attract and retain good-quality people you need to show how unique you are, and you need to demonstrate that somehow. Eighty per cent of a person’s day is spent at work, and bringing training in-house that benefits both family and work is a much more culturally sensitive approach.”

Tip 4. C onsider the individual. Some employees prefer 1:1 over public recognition.

TRADITIONAL LEARNING, NON-TRADITIONAL DELIVERY

TOP 10 TIPS: FOR EFFECTIVE RECOGNITION AND REWARD Tip 1. D on’t miss an opportunity to show gratitude. Find time each day to express thanks to prompt desired behaviours.

Tip 2. C onnect recognition to something specific. Ensure your company mission and values drive the daily activities and exchanges that result in recognition.

reinforce the behaviours that have led to success.

Recognise each person in the way that works best for them.

Tip 5. M ake it immediate. Allowing time to pass between great work and praise will only weaken its effect.

Tip 6. C elebrate publicly. Consider ways to motivate others by amplifying stories of great work via your intranet, social channels, company-wide or team meetings, and email.

Tip 7. D on’t play favourites. Ensure recognition is attainable, fair and consistent for every employee.

Tip 8. G et leadership buy-in. Your employees’ perception of the value of

recognition will increase when their manager supports it. Ensure your leaders make recognition a priority.

Tip 9. M ake it fun. Find different, surprising and creative ways to show your thanks. Recognition shouldn’t become a monotonous expectation.

Tip 10. L et them choose. Non-monetary rewards are proven to be a great

motivator, but only when relevant to the individual - provide enough choice that all employees can set their own preferences.

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While ‘out of the box’ initiatives are certainly gaining traction, there is still very much a place for traditional learning and education in the workplace. These days, however, the success rates of these programs are as much linked to the delivery of the coursework as it is to the content being made available, says Rosie Cairnes from Skillsoft APAC. “Sometimes, an employee wants to do a deep dive and do a course from start to finish, which means sitting at a computer to learn and go though each module,” Cairnes explains. “But sometimes it is a little less formal and more spontaneous. The best ecosystem of learning is when you can learn it when and where you can use it. That is the biggest trend we are seeing, a shift towards mobile learning, because most people – 74% in our most recent study – prefer to learn on the go.”

The study Cairnes refers to, which tapped into the experiences of 6,000 customers globally,

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representing 19 million learners, found that employee expectations are shifting.

“It’s a transformation in expectations of how L&D delivers learning to individuals on the job.

They expect to be able to learn via their smartphone on the go, to grab the information when they need it. We know that if there’s a disconnect between the moment of learning and when it’s applied, it’s proven to be less effective, so this is a natural evolution,” she says.

Employees also want to engage in more social learning structures where they’re connected with a community of some sort. For instance, in a customer service environment, this could involve learning modules that are accessible on a smartphone and that can be reached in the moment of need, ie when interacting with customers.

“It could mean connecting with a mentor or peer for advice, or brushing up on some information that will help to serve the customer in that moment,” Cairnes says.

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TOP 3 REASONS PEOPLE STAY WITH THEIR EMPLOYERS: 1 Good opportunity for growth and advancement 2 Good work-life balance 3 Being well matched to their jobs

Source: Randstad World of Work Report 2012/13

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SPECIAL REPORT

“A lot of people are looking for blended learning delivery.

When an organisation is inflexible, you can run into brick walls” Terry Reynolds, rogenSi

“What ‘learning’ is, by definition, is changing. It’s not just that formal end-to-end course anymore.

Everybody knows something and everybody is a contributor to learning, so those organisations who are embracing informal, social, collaborative learning are ahead of the game.”

What’s more, those organisations that remain inflexible to these evolving learning methods may struggle to engage younger staff, adds Terry Reynolds, regional managing director, Asia Pacific, for rogenSi. “A lot of people are looking for blended learning delivery. When an organisation is inflexible, you can run into brick walls,” he says.

THE IMPACT OF L&D • 61% of employees believe that learning programs directly impact on their job performance.

• Half of all surveyed organisations spend A$1,000 or more per employee on L&D annually.

• 9 out of 10 surveyed employees access learning programs in their office.

• 24% access learning programs when they are commuting.

• Over half (54%) of all respondents say they feel a constant pressure to set aside time for learning and development.

• 74% want access to mobile learning via smartphone, tablet or laptop.

• 41% of surveyed organisations provide access to mobile learning, citing technological barriers or security issues as the main barrier.

Source: Learning and Development Trends in Australia and New Zealand, Skillsoft White Paper, 2013

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DESIGNING FOR SUCCESS A successful employee benefits program requires four key elements, says API’s national business development manager, Kylie Green: 1. Breadth of choice to ensure the program has benefits relevant to employees regardless of their demographics (industry, locations, sex, income, interest) 2. Right communication mix, including quality and frequent communications via different media (online, hard copy, in workplace, to home) to ensure the message reaches all employees and their families 3. High levels of servicing. Employees want fast and tangible benefits, so tools such as instant e-services, immediate in-store redemptions, benefits apps, same-day despatch, local state offices and the convenience of in-workplace servicing are important to achieve high utility

ALL THE BENEFITS: EMPLOYEE BENEFITS PROGRAMS

Employee benefits programs are a management tool used to strengthen a company’s EVP in order to retain, attract and engage quality employees.

Employee benefits programs are highly utilised in the UK and US and have been growing in popularity over the past 10 years in Australia.

Employee benefits programs are used by market leaders and innovative companies to gain a competitive advantage when attracting and retaining key talent. API Leisure & Lifestyle has been providing employee benefits programs for over 90 years. They work with over 160,000 employees across Australia via leading companies including BHP, J.P. Morgan, State Street, Citibank, Volvo, Ericsson, IKEA, ABB and more.

An employee benefits program provides employees with an extensive range of lifestyle and financial benefits as part of their EVP. Typical benefits include entertainment, dining, shopping, home and garden, travel, motoring, well-being and financial services.

“An extensive, relevant and local benefits range is essential,” says API’s Kylie Green. “API’s program offers employees access to thousands of benefits available at over 90,000 locations nationally. Employees can save up to $4,700 per year through discounts on their groceries, major retailers, gym memberships, movie tickets, fuel and more. What’s more, their benefits program gives them access to preferential treatment including pre-release and preferential seating at major concerts through to sporting events such as the AFL finals.”

Employee benefits programs have an added bonus. While effective as an attraction, retention and engagement tool, they have also proved to be a tool for regular positive reinforcement of your employment brand to both employees and their key influencers – their families.

Content supplied by API Leisure and Lifestyle.

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

“Gen Ys may want an app, while the older guys want face-to-face. Go for a blended approach that suits the learner, not the organisation.”

THE PERCEPTION OF FAIRNESS Regardless of the type and delivery of learning you offer, there is one constant: the perception of fairness.

When employees feel like a particular individual or group is being favoured, it can create resentment, mistrust and a whole host of other issues. Avoid this happening with a clear three-step strategy for clarity in communication:

>> 1. SET INCENTIVE CRITERIA Be clear about the reasons for providing professional development opportunities, and set up a process for evaluating employee requests. “What criteria are you using to pick whether someone gets to go to a conference or not?” says David Hunter, CEO of the D-CYDE Group.

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>> 2. COMMUNICATE CLEARLY WITH ALL STAFF Say the marketing department wants to send five people to a conference, but in IT no one ever gets to attend conferences. This could breed resentment because, in the IT group’s view, they’re not being treated fairly. “If the marketing department gets to go because they’re trying to get more business and the conference will help with new business development, then that should be communicated to all staff,” Hunter says. “When it’s communicated and people have input, it can help create a dialogue that shows your staff the intent behind the initiative.” >> 3. ARRANGE FOR SHARED LEARNING When a staff member goes through some sort of training module, what happens afterwards? Is there shared learning? Do they give a presentation? Are their findings delivered down the chain to other employees? Set up metrics to measure the outcome of the learning and ensure as many staff as possible benefit from the experience.

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SPECIAL REPORT

Games vs gamification How to truly drive employee engagement and motivation Sometimes employee engagement comes down to incentives and having fun. The new trend towards gamification presses both those buttons The word ‘games’ often gets one of two reactions from HR professionals: a. Games are a problem because they distract your employees in the workplace and you wish mobile devices were never invented, or b. Your mind instantly jumps to ‘gamification’ and you start mulling over how to implement this to boost employee engagement and motivation.

Perhaps the biggest buzzword of 2013, gamification is abundant in today’s HR strategies. Employees receive points for referring new business or customers, and earn badges for their accomplishments. Leader-board systems give staff extra incentives to meet KPIs. However, in this explosion of gamification, many companies overlook another powerful tool in the workplace that can help attract and retain talent, drive employee engagement and understanding, and truly change staff behaviour.

The missing tool? Educational games. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/ definition/english/gamification 2 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ j.1744-6570.2011.01190.x/abstract 3 http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/ id/1844115 4 http://www.slideshare.net/wandameloni/ gamification-in-2012-trends-inconsumer-and-enterprisemarkets-13453048 1

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AREN’T THESE THE SAME THING? Contrary to how it sounds, an educational game is not the same as gamification. Although there is some overlap between the two, they serve different purposes and provide different outcomes in the HR industry.

Gamification: The application of typical elements of game playing (eg point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity 1 Educational games: Games designed for education purposes, either as a primary goal or a by-product of playing

HOW EDUCATIONAL GAMES CAN BENEFIT YOUR HR STRATEGY At its core, gamification simply makes content fun for employees and can be used to make goals and outcomes feel more enticing. Educational games, however, deliver information in a way that is not only fun but also fosters a deeper understanding of and engagement with the subject matter, as well as changing employee behaviour. Often used for compliance and building skill sets, educational games give employees a powerful experience through active learning, which delivers true understanding and alters beliefs and behaviours.

Research conducted in 2011 by Dr Traci Sitzmann2 showed that employees who used video games during training had a 14% higher skillbased knowledge level and an 11% higher factual knowledge level than those who didn’t use games.

Employee self-motivation and belief was also 20% higher, and their retention rate was 9% higher.

Simply put: educational games can make staff more knowledgeable and motivated, assist in keeping great employees, and ultimately make your job easier.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE OF WORKPLACE LEARNING It is expected that by the end of 2014 more than 70% of the world’s largest companies will have implemented a gamified application,3 and the overall market for gamification apps, services and tools is expected to reach $5.5bn by 2018.4 Companies and boards are becoming more accepting of games as a tool in the workforce, and you can use this to your advantage in a different way.

Gamification most certainly has its place in motivating employees, but HR professionals should also take advantage of this increased company spend and push for educational games in the workplace as well. In the end, training and learning build employee connections with employers, and that’s what truly motivates, engages and retains staff.

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SPECIAL REPORT

Why companies are considering employee benefits in an ever-changing market Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z have entered the workforce and you better believe they’ve changed it. That change does bring with it a knock-on effect for anyone too long in the tooth to know a tweet from a twerk, what Snapchat is, or how to Instagram. It means the rest of us have to adapt to and embrace the exciting, instant new world.

Top employers evolve with the times. They recognise the opportunity to be first to compliment changing preferences and habits, and to mould their culture around success and how their employees want to feel. Happy, engaged employees build stronger, more successful organisations because they make insightful decisions, they care more, and they are more productive. They innovate more, they build better products and services, and they search for better solutions to problems.

WHY BOTHER WITH COMPETITIVE BENEFITS? Today’s workforce has new demands and far higher expectations than that of yesteryear. Jobseekers are less concerned by ‘what job might I get’ and more determined to find out what they must have from an employer. And if they don’t get it, they’ll move on. Fast.

This gives us a great opportunity to build amazing cultures invigorated by teams of energised superstars willing to drive our business and markets forward.

There are many ways of building a strong culture and getting the most out of individual skills, talents

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and strengths. Not all require significant capital investment, and there are some very quick, low-cost wins to be had.

While a major focus for many businesses is the happiness of their people, it’s vital that, as a leadership function, HR can prove the ROI of benefits that they do implement, and ‘champion’ benefits need to be at the forefront of this for maximum impact.

Here are just three key reasons an employee benefit offering is now a necessity:

1. To amplify employees’ money: salaries increase cost to business many times more than the value they give to the employee.

Employers need to find alternative avenues to make employee salaries stretch further.

2. To modify or encourage behaviour: giving employees the ability to progress with their chosen lifestyle choices while continuing to add value to the business, whether via gym memberships, travel discounts or well-being programs.

3. To make a cultural statement: it’s the one element of a working environment that sets a business apart in the battle to attract talent. Aligning benefits with company values and engagement motivators will grow performance and behaviours.

DO BENEFITS HAVE TO BE EXPENSIVE? The challenge is there for HR professionals to build a meaningful suite of benefits that not only cater to different budget allocations but also make HR’s life easier and offer quality of choice to all employee demographics. Beginning with small incentives like a day off for your birthday can be the starting point to creating a culture of trusted, well looked after, passionate people who feel rewarded for their hard work.

Going beyond small beginnings and looking to be an employer of choice, sourcing a benefits provider who can integrate all your offerings in one place, is a good place to start. One supplier who can understand your people’s needs and desires with the ability to proactively engage them with numerous tools, both on and offline, is crucial to getting it right.

To learn more about the employee journey with Reward Gateway, visit http://RewardGateway.com/

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SPECIAL REPORT

Why people stay How to keep your best employees Retention of high-performing employees is critical to maintaining and enhancing an organisation’s competitive advantage in difficult economic times. Insync Surveys’ latest research paper, Why People Stay: How to Keep Your Best Employees, looks at what makes employees more likely to stay with their employers Nicholas Barnett, Insync Surveys’ CEO, warns that “to sustain your organisation, great employees really want fulfilling jobs, inspiring leadership, a performance focus, values driven culture, and to feel proud”.

Long-serving employees retain corporate memory, continue nurturing long-standing customer relationships, and are generally more productive and stronger advocates for the organisation. Higher employee retention also limits the high costs associated with employee turnover, including reduced sales, lower productivity, and recruitment fees.

Insync Surveys’ research draws on some of its employee survey data from 85 organisations with over 60,000 employee responses. Insync Surveys correlated 90 statements that examined employee alignment and engagement with the statement “I can envisage a future for myself in this organisation”.

This statement is a good indicator of an employee’s propensity to stay with their employer. Insync Surveys’ analysis identified 20 statements with very high correlations of 0.7 and above. These 20 statements have been grouped into five themes that indicate how organisations can go about increasing the retention of their high-performing employees.

1. JOB FULFILMENT AND GROWTH The report suggests that employers seeking to improve retention must offer meaningful work via

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mechanisms such as job fit, mission alignment, role clarity, job enrichment, personal development and career progression. Barnett says: “Not surprisingly, items relating to job fulfilment and growth are very strongly related to retention. Our correlation analysis fully validates the common sense notion that employees are more likely to stay when they enjoy their work, are satisfied with their jobs, are able to fully use their skills and talents and perceive that their organisation has effective plans for developing and retaining its people.”

2. INSPIRING LEADERSHIP One of the more surprising findings from this study was the critical role of executive leadership in influencing employee retention.

“While the employee’s immediate line manager certainly plays an important role, long term retention is impacted much more by senior leadership,” says Barnett.

Insync Surveys’ research highlights that employees are more likely stay when the senior leadership team has an inspiring vision, encourage innovation, are good role models, act with integrity, and get the maximum from people’s individual talents and knowledge. Senior leaders set the tone for the whole organisation, and employees form a view about whether the organisation is right for them in the long term from what they see from the senior leadership team.

3. PERFORMANCE FOCUS Employees are more likely to stay when they consider their organisation to be high performing and well run, according to the research. Items highly related to retention include the perception that their organisation is committed to best practice; being able to link everyday actions and performance to the organisation’s goals; and the belief that the organisation is committed to high standards of performance. Barnett says: “Working in a high performing organisation has many benefits for employees that enhance retention. These include job security, greater role clarity, personal development, career opportunities, and greater reward and recognition.”

4. VALUES DRIVEN The research tells us that employees are more likely to stay when the organisation has clear values that are demonstrated in practice, and when they’re treated with consideration and respect. Items

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

highly correlated with retention include equity in resource allocation, being advised about organisational changes that will impact the employee, belief that the organisation cares about and is committed to the employee, and seeing the organisation’s values and behaviours being demonstrated every day in the employee’s work group. “Long term retention is much more likely when employees can see that their values align with their employer’s and that the employer not only talks about its values but demonstrates them every day,” says Barnett.

5. PRIDE AND ADVOCACY Insync Surveys’ final theme is that employees who can envisage a future for themselves in the organisation have a strong sense of connection with, and pride in, their organisation. Items highly correlated with retention include being willing to recommend the organisation as a workplace to others, being proud of working for the organisation, and having a strong sense of belonging. These items emphasise the reciprocity inherent in the employeremployee relationship.

Barnett says: “When the employer provides the employee with a fulfilling job within a positive organisational context, the employee typically reciprocates by performing to the best of their ability and being an advocate for the organisation to others.”

HOW TO INCREASE EMPLOYEE RETENTION “We encourage organisations to have strategies to increase employee retention that are linked to the organisation’s Employee Value Proposition (EVP),” Barnett says. The EVP refers to the balance of the rewards and benefits that are received by employees in return for their performance in the workplace.

It is the sum of everything that people in an organisation experience and receive, from the intrinsic satisfaction of the work, to the environment, leadership, colleagues and remuneration. An EVP answers the question ‘What’s in it for me?’ and formalises an employer’s preemployment promises to employees, both explicit and implicit.

Barnett says: “An EVP should be constructed with the same care as a customer value proposition as it also has a very significant impact on the organisation’s performance.” Insync Surveys has developed a five-step process for doing this,

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starting with a careful analysis of what employees value, designing the EVP in consultation with employees, developing an effective communication process, implementing the EVP with senior leadership advocacy, and continuing to measure and improve the EVP as part of an ongoing strategic cycle.

The findings from this Insync Surveys study make it clear that the EVP should be considered in a broad context, to include job satisfaction as well as the impact of senior leadership, organisational performance and organisational values on retention.

“A key implication of the study is that there are no quick fixes for increasing employee retention.

Employee retention is heavily dependent on meaningful work, inspiring leadership and the overall health of the organisation. Long term retention can only be addressed in a meaningful way by ensuring that employees have fulfilling and stimulating roles within a sound organisational context,” says Barnett.

Nicholas Barnett, CEO, BEc, CA, FAICO, has been a director, business leader and consultant for over 30 years. He is CEO of Insync Surveys, a former partner of KPMG, non-executive chairman of Ansvar Insurance, and a non-executive director of Mission Australia.

For a free copy of the Insync Surveys study, visit www. insyncsurveys.com.au

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SPONSORS

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LEGAL SPONSOR PEOPLE + CULTURE STRATEGIES

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People + Culture Strategies (PCS) is an Australian workplace and HR law firm that services Australian and international employers in all aspects of workplace relations.

PCS offers a unique value proposition: we focus on partnering with clients through approachable and pragmatic advice, provide flexible pricing models to suit organisations large and small (including monthly retainer arrangements) and deliver a comprehensive program of education events, webinars and other value-add activities. In addition, our expertise extends to non-traditional services to our clients’ HR/Legal functions including investigations, coaching and mentoring programs, strategic planning, industry-leading training and facilitation.

PCS’ legal team includes some of Australia’s foremost workplace law advisers, trainers and litigators with experience in every Australian jurisdiction and across all industries.

Contact: Joydeep Hor, managing principal P: 02 8094 3101 E: joydeep.hor@peopleculture.com.au W: www.peopleculture.com.au

DIAMOND SPONSOR TRANSFIRMATION PARTNERS Transfirmation Partners are specialists in leadership and organisational transformation.

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Once this foundation is in place, our approach to leadership and human systems enables our clients to develop an enduring set of leadership principles and practices that create a sense of purpose, trust, accountability and employee engagement.

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DIRECTORS FORUM SPONSOR CORNERSTONE

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VIEW FROM THE TOP: HR LEADERSHIP In this inspirational session, Australian HR Awards 2013 HR Director of the Year Simone Carroll will share insight into the trajectory of her career.

Simone Carroll, General Manager HR, REA Group, Winner, HR Director of the Year, Australian HR Awards 2013 CHANGE MANAGEMENT – THE ART AND SCIENCE OF LEADING CHANGE Change within an organisation comes in many forms, be it through a merger, new leadership, new products or even though implementing new policies and procedures.

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Australia’s number-one independent HR event DIRECTORS FORUM SPEAKERS VIEW FROM THE TOP: INSIGHTS FROM FAIR WORK AUSTRALIA Natalie James is Australia’s Fair Work Ombudsman. She was appointed to the position by the GovernorGeneral for a 5-year term starting on 15 July 2013.

Under the Fair Work Act 2009, the Fair Work Ombudsman is responsible for promoting harmonious, productive and cooperative EXPO RT PASSP1O4 workplace relations and ensuring compliance 20 with Commonwealth workplace laws.

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BERLITZ Berlitz has been educating the world for over 130 years with over 500 locations in 70 countries. Our success is built on intensive quality learning customised to suit different needs. With innovative products, flexibility and multiple delivery platforms, Berlitz is the first choice for 400 of the world’s Fortune 500 companies for their executives and employees. Berlitz specialises in L&D solutions for Global Mobility/Relocation needs worldwide, leadership training, cross-cultural skills and language training.

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Contact: Bernadette Azizi, Business Development Executive

THE BENEFITS OF CREATING A MENTALLY HEALTHY WORKPLACE Research has consistently demonstrated a strong ‘business case’ for organisations creating mentally healthy workplaces. Organisations that promote mental health in the workplace have increased productivity, performance, creativity, and staff retention, and are more likely to be perceived as an employer of choice. In spite of this, many organisations are not fully realising the return on investment of creating a mentally healthy workplace.

Kate Carnell AO, CEO, beyondblue WORKPLACE BULLYING: NAVIGATING THE NEW LANDSCAPE • Overview of the new laws: Coverage and new powers of FWC • Policies, procedures and systems that effectively protect against bullying claims • Best-practice bullying investigation process • Where do the Courts draw the line between bullying and performance management?

• When does “interpersonal conflict” become bullying?

Joydeep Hor, Managing Principal, People + Culture Strategies CULTIVATING ORGANISATIONAL CREATIVITY IN AN AGE OF COMPLEXITY Building an organisation with flexibility and agility requires leadership with the creativity to adapt to a constantly changing environment. Physical and functional boundaries will need to be addressed to make the most of an increasingly dispersed and diverse workforce that stretches across traditional institutional lines.

Susan Henry, HR Director, The Starlight Foundation Finalist, HR Director of the Year, Australian HR Awards 2013 BECOMING A CHANGE AGENT: DRIVING CHANGE LEADERSHIP Values-based leadership as a successful management tool to increase engagement levels and organisational performance is gaining traction in organisations worldwide. The interconnectedness of leaders and followers in the 21st century requires a transformation from a transactional approach towards situational leadership methods. Mel Tunbridge from SBS will present an insightful case study about values-based leadership principles, its practical application and the resulting improvements of leadership and engagement levels at SBS as well as the personal journey that has enabled her to drive this momentous change within a change-resistant institution.

Mel Tunbridge, HR Director, SBS

Finalist, HR Director of the Year, Australian HR Awards 2013 BREAKING BAD [WORKPLACE BEHAVIOUR] - THE SECRET TO MAKING COMPLIANCE TRAINING RELEVANT AND ENJOYABLE 10.3 million people watched the finale of TV series Breaking Bad in the US alone, a record number of viewers and a testament to the compelling nature of story. Imagine if the same interest and viewership could be garnered for compliance training within your organisation, not only reducing employer liability and workplace incidents, but also fostering participation in positive behaviours and broader cultural activities. This session will examine the key factors that make mass media addictive, discuss their implementation in the context of digital compliance education, and look at learner results and reactions to the delivery model.

Cam Hodkinson, Head of Product and Strategy, Learning Seat Georgia Edge, Manager Content and Partnerships, Learning Seat

P: 9017 4300 E: bernadette.azizi@FADV.com.au W: http://www.fadv.com/

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FRAZER JONES C-SUITE SELECTION AND SUCCESSION PLANNING Far too often organisations find themselves unprepared for various C-suite succession scenarios.

• Navigating the political contest and ideological struggle among the powers within the organisation and the Board • Defining the situational challenges of the incumbent (start-up, turnaround, accelerated growth, realignment and sustaining success) • Selecting from within: Identifying strengths internally, common challenges encountered when moving from a functional role • Measuring readiness of internal executives with C-suite potential - How to accelerate the development of internal executives being groomed for the CEO role Kellie Egan, HR Director, Atlassian HR IN THE ERA OF DIGITAL DISRUPTION We are told that data is a game-changer, that social technology is the future and that digital disruption is having profound effects across virtually all sectors. But what does all this this really mean for the HR function?

In this session you will hear about the implications of digital disruption for the HR function and gain insights into the new opportunities, challenges and imperatives it presents for HR. Professor Richard Hall, Associate Dean Management Education, The University of Sydney Business School CREATIVE THINKING AND IDEA GENERATION Budgets are cut, resources are low and output is on the increase. So we are asked to be ‘more creative’ and come up with ‘new and exciting ideas’, but how exactly can we help our brains with this process and encourage new ideas to emerge?

Patrick Medd, Learning & Development Leader, Asia Pacific Advisory, Ernst & Young CREATING THE STRATEGIC ORGANISATION Creating value by fully aligning the organisation to strategy is the work of the human capital strategist. True strategic alignment begins when strategy informs the optimal organisational design. Strategy then becomes the foundation for growth plans and provides clarity and accountability for all leaders. As this session will demonstrate, a strategically aligned organisation ensures leadership accountability and staff engagement become a reality.

Steve Johnson, Managing Director, Transfirmation Partners CASE STUDY: ON-BOARDING AT THE TOP: HELPING NEWLY HIRED EXECUTIVES TO ADAPT QUICKLY The main reason why newly hired outside executives have such an abysmal failure rate (40%, according to Harvard Business Review) is poor acculturation: They don’t adapt well to the new company’s ways of doing things.

Neil Baker, Director People & Culture, Cooper Grace Lawyers

REGISTER NOW! www.hrsummit.com.au

Frazer Jones is a niche, highly specialised, boutique Human Resources (HR) recruitment firm with well established offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, Düsseldorf, and London. Our brand is synonymous with excellence - in our people, our candidates and our global leadership team.

We recruit at all levels of seniority from HR administration through to HR Director on both a permanent and interim basis. Our expertise covers the whole spectrum of the HR job family and includes roles in learning and development, talent, reward, OHS and recruitment.In addition to traditional contingent HR recruitment we also offer a retained search methodology and can map specific backgrounds and skills to produce a shortlist of “hard to find” candidates both in Australia and offshore.

Contact: Ciaran Foley, Manager (Sydney) P: +61 (0) 2 9236 9090 or +61 (0) 2 9236 9090 E: ciaranfoley@frazerjones.com.au Contact: Peter Barber, Manager (Melbourne) P: +61 (0)3 8610 8450 or +61 (0)3 8610 8450 E: peterbarber@frazerjones.com.au W: www.frazerjones.com

FRONTIER SOFTWARE Founded in Melbourne, Australia in 1983, Frontier Software is a global leader in Human Resource, Talent Management and Payroll Solutions. Their flagship solution chris21 sets the benchmark functionality and useability. With support offices in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide, Perth and key global locations, Frontier Software is well placed to service their 1,600 clients.

Contact: Nick Southcombe, general manager P: 03 9639 0777 E: sales@frontiersoftware.com.au W: www.frontiersoftware.com

ITC LEARNING ITC Learning is a recognised leader in providing leading edge eLearning technology and services. By collaborating with our clients we enable them to implement customised solutions that respond to business objectives. We have the tools to assist your enterprise implement a complete eLearning solution – Lectora Authoring Software, Lectora Mobile, CourseMill Learning Management System, Business Skills Courseware Libraries, Content Development Services.

Drop by our booth to see how we can help you with your eLearning endeavours.

Contact: Keely Jones, Business Development Manager P: 02 9438 2500 E: keely.jones@itclearning.com.au W: www.itclearning.com.au

SG FLEET With over 25 years’ experience in the Fleet Management and Leasing industry, sgfleet is a leading provider of vehicle Salary Packaging solutions in the Australian marketplace.

With operations in Australia, New Zealand and United Kingdom, sgfleet’s Novated Leases and Salary Packaging make it easy for organisations to provide a great workplace benefit for employees.

Contact: Phil Clump, National Manager - novated sales P: 1300 138 235 or 1300 138 235 E: newbusiness@sgfleet.com W: www.sgfleet.com

STIRLING HENRY GLOBAL MIGRATION Stirling Henry is a specialist migration firm that for over 20 years has been helping companies and individuals navigate the complex and ever changing Australian immigration laws.

Our primary area of work is the support of subclass 457 visa applications and employer sponsored permanent residence visas.

Contact: Lisa Williams P: 02 9233 1805 E: Lisa.williams@stirlinghenry.com W: www.stirlinghenry.com

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RESILIENCE

TRUE GRIT: How you can build resilience to thrive in the most challenging of times

Across industry, the constant and rapid pace of change, economic uncertainty, restructures, redundancies, doing more with less, demanding performance targets and competing priorities, cost pressures, increased competition, commuting, and being constantly connected or wired in - are just some of the pressures and challenges facing the leaders and employees in the modern workplace and industry today

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

The result of this high pressure environment is rising stress levels in the workplace. The impact of this workplace stress is increasingly psychologically unhealthy and unhappy employees. In fact, it is estimated to cost Australian business approximately $30bn each year in lost productivity and stress/psychological injury claims.

The challenge to business today is what to do about it. The answer is to build resilience.

Resilience is an individual’s capacity to respond constructively to change, challenge and other stressors and to learn from that adversity to be even stronger and more capable than before. In other words – it’s our ability to withstand stress and recover quickly from life’s challenges. Building resilience, together with organisational level strategy such as effective change management practices, realistic job design, and providing role autonomy and flexibility, are fundamental parts to lowering workplace stress.

Building resilience is becoming increasingly important to businesses in the industry because of the direct commercial benefits of having employees who deal effectively with change and other challenges and stress. Individuals who are resilient are happier, less stressed, and report higher overall wellbeing than those who are not.

The improved performance outcomes of increased employee resilience and overall wellbeing are increased engagement, improved productivity and decreased stress/psychological injury claims. In essence, investing in employees’ capacity to be resilient is good for the individual and good for business.

Importantly, what we know is that resilience is a skill. The most recent advances in applied psychological science tell us that whilst some of us are naturally more resilient than others, resilience is a defined set of characteristics and behaviours which can be learnt. If we can understand and embrace these qualities we will deal with change more effectively and respond to change and stress in our lives in ways that are helpful.

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“Whilst some of us are naturally more resilient than others, resilience is a defined set of characteristics and behaviours which can be learnt”

BUILDING RESILIENCE There are three key dimensions to resilience. They are what we call Active Self-Management, Taking Control and Meaning & Purpose. These dimensions form the foundation of the qualities and characteristics of resilience. They empower us when facing challenges and allow us to feel happier and healthier in life to perform at our best.

ACTIVE SELF-MANAGEMENT Active Self-Management refers to managing our initial response to stress and how we can proactively establish helpful choices around what we call the Big Four Lifestyle Factors of resilience – Sleep, Nutrition, Exercise and Positive Relationships.

1. One of the most scientifically established and simple ways to manage your initial reaction to a stressful situation is conscious and

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RESILIENCE

controlled breathing. There are a number of ways this can be done. One tool is called 5 x 5. It allows us to take control of our automatic and biological stress response and minimise the many unhelpful stress responses we can sometimes display. Try this: a. Take a deep breath. Check that your abdomen is moving, not your shoulders. b. Count slowly to 5. Hold for a count of 5.

Breathe out for a count of 5. Hold for a count of 5. c. Repeat this cycle 5 times and then return to breathing normally.

2. Getting enough sleep, eating well, exercising daily, and investing in building and maintaining supportive relationships all help us deal with life’s ups and downs more effectively. It’s not easy in today’s busy world and it takes discipline. It is also one of the cornerstones of resilience. Ask yourself – “What is just one thing I can do to improve one thing in the Big Four Lifestyle Factors?”

TAKING CONTROL Taking Control focuses on consciously choosing our thoughts, feelings and behaviours in response to any situation by taking control of our thinking and the results that we get in life. Individuals who believe they are in control of their lives are more resilient, and no matter what happens it is our choice how to think, feel and behave.

One of the ways we can do this is reframing – a very powerful way to look at difficulties in a fresh and positive way.

To help us reframe a challenge we can ask ourselves: 1. What is the outcome I am trying to achieve?

2. What is my current response to this situation?

What am I currently thinking, feeling and doing? Is this getting me the result that I want?

3. What is a more helpful response to this situation? How do I need to be thinking, feeling and behaving? Will this get me the outcome I want to achieve?

MEANING AND PURPOSE Finding meaning and purpose is about the need to explore the value and opportunity in a situation to be able to embrace it positively so we can learn and grow. This is not a process for pretending everything is rosy. It is about acknowledging a

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situation is not easy and experiencing the emotions associated with this whilst knowing the circumstances can be overcome. It is a process of consciously thinking to help us consider what opportunities a change or challenge presents and searching for where we can find meaning – wherever that meaning and purpose lies for us.

One of the most powerful tools we have to help us search for that meaning and purpose in a situation are questions. The brain has an automatic response to search for the answers to questions it receives. This means that strategic use of questions can be a powerful tool to influence both our own thinking and others. Questions we ask ourselves determine what our brain focuses on and strongly influence how we approach a challenge. Consider the individual who asks themselves “Why does this always happen to me?” compared to the individual who asks “What do I need to do to meet this challenge?” We would suggest the second individual is going to achieve a better result and show greater resilience in facing the challenge.

When feeling stressed about a situation we can ask ourselves: “How am I going to constructively overcome this challenge/respond to this change/ deal with this situation?”

While some people seem to naturally display more resilience than others, all of us can improve our resilience by investing energy in the three dimensions of the Resilience Model. And in the simple, yet deeply insightful words of Khalil Gibran: “Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.”

Kellie Lewis, BSc(Psych&Human Biology), BPsych(Hons), MPsych, MBA GM – Wellbeing, Sentis With over 15 years’ experience working with individuals and organisations, Kellie applies her extensive knowledge of applied neuroscience, psychology and business to helping clients achieve their individual and organisational change goals and high performance targets.

Kellie is a member of the executive leadership team at Sentis and has been part of the team responsible for providing clients with results-driven solutions in safety and organisational excellence and growing a highly successful and award winning global business.

This has included being part of the team leading Sentis to being named one of Australia’s best places to work for four consecutive years in a row (2010-2013), winning an Australian innovation award and multiple international innovation and service awards (2012).

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

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HR STRATEGY / LEADERSHIP

Better leadership through strength-based coaching Interest in positive forms of leadership development, including strength-based leadership coaching, is growing, but what exactly is it, does it work, and how do leaders utilise this approach?

Strength-based approaches have evolved from the positive psychology movement that reshaped applied psychology at the beginning of the millennium. Historically, psychology was accused of spending too much time and focus on what was broken and dysfunctional rather than on what made people flourish and excel.

Consequently, a whole new research paradigm developed to address exactly those questions.

Positive psychology has been slow to infiltrate the world of work, but that is changing now as many executive and leadership coaches are identifying with a strength-based approach and applying this in their practices.

So does strength-based leadership coaching actually work? We know from several meta-analytic studies that leadership development programs do provide positive outcomes, but there is a significant variation in their effectiveness, depending on which models, theories and approaches are used. Equally,

FIVE KEY THEMES OF STRENGTH-BASED COACHING 1. LEADERSHIP COACHING WORKS. Leaders showed a highly significant increase in transformational leadership behaviours following the coaching intervention when compared to the control group.

Their peers, direct reports and, in particular, their line managers all saw a significant improvement in their transformational leadership behaviours and leadership outcomes (effectiveness, satisfaction and extra effort).

Dr Doug MacKie is an organisational psychologist and executive coach and runs a successful business psychology practice, CSA Consulting, specialising in the development of senior leaders, teams and organisations

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2. METHODOLOGY MATTERS. Adherence to the strength-based protocol was significantly correlated with increases in transformational leadership behaviour, suggesting the protocol was a significant factor in their improvement.

3. LEADERSHIP COACHING IMPACTS BEYOND THE INDIVIDUAL COACHEE. This is one of the first studies to show convincing evidence of significant

the evidence for the effectiveness of executive coaching at work is growing (and coaching often utilises constructs from positive psychology and strength-based approaches, with its focus on the affirmative bias, goal attainment and individualised professional development). However, there are no published studies yet that have combined an explicit strength-based methodology with a coaching format and evaluated its impact using objective and leadership-orientated outcome criteria. Consequently, I set up my own research project to address this question.

So how does the high-potential leader access this approach? Identifying strengths is not enough to fully benefit from this approach and in some cases can lead to complacency or overuse. The art of strength-based coaching is in the debrief and subsequent development of the strengths identified.

Working with the coachee on how to titrate their strengths, align them with organisational goals and pair them with complementary strengths in themselves or others is likely to lead to a much more balanced, nuanced and productive process that builds positive leadership capability in the leader and their organisation. changes in leadership behaviour beyond selfreport in an organisational context after leadership coaching using a structured methodology. This is an exciting finding indicating that six sessions of strength-based coaching over a relatively short period of time, in what was already a high-performing cohort, significantly increased transformational leadership behaviour even in a challenging and highly complex environment.

4. THE EVIDENCE FOR EFFECTIVENESS IS TANGIBLE AND OBJECTIVE. We used reliable and valid leadership questionnaires as outcome variables in a 360 methodology. Bosses, peers and reports all saw significant positive change in leadership behaviour over the three-month period.

5. THE ORGANISATION’S ROI WAS SIGNIFICANT, at 825%, and this is likely to be an underestimate as it did not include the subsequent impact on peers and other team members.

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FIVE POINTS / TIM BAKER

IS THIS THE END OF THE PERFORMANCE REVIEW? Are performance reviews all they are stacked up to be? In his new book, The End of the Performance Review, author Dr Tim Baker explores the five conversations you need to have to get the most out of your staff reviews 10 TAKEAWAYS FOR HR PROFESSIONALS

1 2 3

Traditional performance reviews have eight shortcomings. These include cost, formality and infrequency. There is also the perception they are nothing but form-filling, and the notion they are rarely followed up.

The Five Conversations Framework can help.

This divides the performance review process over five months, with each discussion focusing on different agendas.

Month one would be a climate review, focusing on job satisfaction and morale.

Month two emphasises strength and talents, while the following month looks at opportunities for growth.

4

Employee performance is made up of job and non-job tasks. Non-job tasks often make the difference. How can HR help develop these non-job roles?

5

Climate reviews can replace online surveys.

Online surveys are costly and employees are increasingly cynical about them.

6

Job descriptions can do more harm than good. How do you turn job descriptions into role descriptions?

7

HR needs to create a culture of developing people’s strengths rather than overcoming weaknesses.

8

HR needs to elevate learning and development, and make it more effective.

9

Building a continuous improvement culture is about asking the right questions.

10

HR needs to work to have maximum leverage across the organisation.

Baker, TB (2013). The End of the Performance Review: A New Approach to Appraising Employee Performance. London: Palgrave Macmillan To receive a signed copy, go to http://www.winnersatwork.com.au

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IN PERSON / VAUGHAN PAUL

IN PERSON:

VAUGHAN PAUL, OPTUS A background in finance might not be the most common for HR pros, but Optus HR vice president Vaughan Paul feels knowing the numbers is a crucial asset. He chats with Cameron Edmond VAUGHAN PAUL CAREER TIMELINE Qualifications ● University of WA Bachelor of Commerce ● Securities Institute of Australia Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment

Work history 1989–2000

● Westpac - Head of HR, business banking - Manager HR IT, systems development - Manager HR, business banking and finance - Manager HR, commercial banking group - Manager’s assistant, Dianella branch

2000–2005

● CSC Australia - HR director of global infrastructure services - Director of HR, new business

Current

● Optus - Vice president, HR, group consumer (current) - HR director, Optus - General manager, HR, Optus business

HR Director: How did you first get into HR and what attracted you to it?

Vaughan Paul: I first got into HR – those days it was called personnel – early in my career to cover a role supporting workers’ compensation, and I also worked on a remuneration project. I then moved in and out of the function a few times until landing a permanent role in 1993. I suppose the HR bug grabbed me at that point, so rather than becoming a lending manager in a bank, I moved to Sydney from Perth and jumped into an HR career.

HRD: You work in HR, but you have a background in finance. How has your experience in this field helped you in HR? VP: I chose commerce because I thought I may want to go into law, but then decided against that.

I got my first job as a graduate with Westpac so then chose to further my studies in financial investment through the Securities Institute.

HR has a strong metrics focus so those courses have been very helpful in looking at things through a business lens (ROI, productivity, etc).

But broader than that, an HR leader must be able to demonstrate a deep understanding of the business, and that covers all functions including sales, marketing, technology and finance.

So I believe the broader the background you can get as you are developing your HR career, the better. Overall, it’s important HR speak the language of the business and use a fact base for our decisions.

HRD: You were head of HR, business banking, at Westpac. How did the role differ at Optus?

VP: I have had a number of different roles in HR but always in large companies, so I haven’t found

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huge differences in the way HR is done, or the focus areas of the role. Sure, the pace of the business will be different depending on the industry you are in, but the HR model and agenda tend to be similar – at least in the companies I have worked at. Leadership, culture, capability and productivity tend to be key focus areas of most HR teams in today’s business climate.

HRD: You’ve been at Optus since 2005. How has the HR function evolved in that time?

VP: The HR function is one that continually evolves, and we have changed the HR model here. Originally it was quite decentralised and over time it has become more centralised, particularly the learning function.

In terms of support functions such as recruitment, L&D, payroll and OH&S, we still have them largely in-house to ensure we run the most cost-effective delivery model that supports the employment brand we want.

As we moved to new headquarters in 2007, the HR team had to take on broader functions at this site to make sure the experience was great. Today we run bus services to and from the campus, we have market days onsite, there are childcare services and a gym, and we leverage a range of options for health and well-being. So to do this, the team has broadened its services and learnt to build strong supplier relationships while leveraging off the business partnerships we have.

We are currently automating more of our processes and moving to a higher percentage of e-learning in training delivery. We are trialling new ways of connecting with our people and using web chat where our employees can get online support on policy questions.

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FRONTLINE INTELLIGENCE / EMPLOYEE SURVEY

The strategic employee survey The most commonly used workplace tool that provides leaders with a window into the employees’ views of the workplace – their perspective of ‘what it is really like to work here’ – is the employee workplace survey. Over time, the focus of these surveys and the methodologies used have changed.

However, the one constant that has held true over time is that most effective employee surveys are those that have clear objectives which align with the goals of the organisation.

Organisations conduct employee surveys for any number of specific business reasons. However, research by IBM has shown the main objectives of employee surveys are to: • identify ‘warning signs’ of trouble • evaluate the effectiveness of programs, policies or initiatives • measure organisational climate (or ‘employer of choice’) • predict and drive organisational performance As illustrated below, these main survey objectives range from defensive strategies (identifying and defusing issue) to offensive strategies (use of leading indicators to drive performance).

DRIVE HIGH PERFORMANCE Leading indicators

Offe nce

THE STRATEGIC SURVEY MODEL

EMPLOYER OF CHOICE Engagement & retention

PROGRAM EVALUATION WARNING INDICATORS Ethics & safety

Defe nce

Policy & initiatives

EMPLOYEE SURVEYS AS WARNING INDICATORS Surveys used for this objective tend to come about through incidents that have occurred in the workplace. Or they are used as a preventative measure to ensure such incidents do not arise in the first place. Warning indicators can cover an array of issues, which tend to include the likes of workplace safety, corporate responsibility, ethics and values.

EMPLOYEE SURVEYS AS PROGRAM EVALUATION Employee surveys are often used to measure the effectiveness of practices, policies and initiatives that have been implemented. Diversity-related initiatives are an example where employee survey responses are heavily relied on to measure effectiveness, as well as inform future practices. Recruitment and onboarding practices are another example.

EMPLOYEE SURVEYS AS MEASURES OF ‘EMPLOYER OF CHOICE’ These are perhaps most commonly seen as traditional satisfaction surveys, a way for organisations to get a measure of their organisational climate, or their attractiveness as a place to work. They have also evolved to measure employee engagement, and understand the factors that drive engagement levels.

Here we see the beginnings of employee surveys as a way for organisations to predict and drive performance, based on the premise that highly engaged workforces perform better than those that aren’t.

EMPLOYEE SURVEYS AS LEADING INDICATORS Rather than an employee-centric survey seeking feedback on personal experiences, this ‘offensive’ approach positions the employee as an ‘observer’, seeking feedback from them about the organisation and key leadership practices that are known to be leading indicators of organisational performance.

This approach strikes to the heart of the IBM Smarter Workforce ‘High Performance-Engagement Model’, designed to focus surveys on the things that really matter in terms of driving performance, such as employee engagement (and its drivers), and those critical leadership practices that drive performance (customer orientation, quality emphasis, employee training and involvement/collaboration).

WHICH APPROACH IS BEST? In practice it is common for employee surveys to have a mix of the objectives described above. But the approach your organisation should take comes down to its strategy. Having clear goals and objectives is critical, for the real value of employee surveys lies in the extent to which management use them in achieving business outcomes.

Stuart Havill Senior consultant, IBM 348 Edward St, Brisbane Phone 132 426 or email shavill@au1.ibm.com

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SALARY WATCH

Customer service salary guide Role HOT

HOT

Hays

Robert Walters

HRD median

Project manager/coordinator

$125,000

$80,000

$90,000

$98,000

Training coordinator

$80,000

$75,000

-

$72,500

Training manager

$100,000

$75,000

-

$87,500

Outbound contact centre team leader

$90,000

$70,000

-

$80,000

Outbound contact centre manager

$120,000

$45,000

$50,000

$71,000

Customer service team leader/manager

$80,000

$75,000

$65,000

$71,000

Customer service manager

$115,000

$100,000

$115,000

$110,000

Workforce planner

$95,000

$75,000

-

$85,000

-

$55,000

$50,000

$52,500

-

$45,000

$50,000

$47,500

$132,500

$120,000

$98,500

$117,000

Customer service representative Inbound service HOT

Page Personnel

Call centre/contact centre manager

Hays: Salaries are based on Sydney roles, exclude superannuation and are based on a median of a lower and upper range.

Robert Walters: Figures are based on permanent roles across Australian states, and are taken from the median of a lower and upper range. They are inclusive of superannuation but exclusive of beneďŹ ts/bonuses.

Page Personnel: Figures are a median of an upper and lower range based on large-sized companies. Figures are for NSW and Vic and are inclusive of superannuation but exclusive of bonus/incentive schemes.

KEY TRENDS Recruitment of solution providers has been high, due to the continued adoption of locally based outsourced solutions by the Australian market.

Technical customer service professionals are expected to remain in strong demand over the coming year.

Demand in WA is starting to stabilise following year-on-year increases over the last four years. NSW and Vic are expected to remain steady or experience a slight increase over the coming year.

Due to a focus on flexible working arrangements by employers, an increased requirement for temporary customer service professionals has been observed over the last year, which is expected to continue.

An increased focus on strong referral programs is shaping into a critical element of talent attraction strategies.

Flexible rosters are expected to increase in the industry due to demand from employees.

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COMBINATION OF BENEFITS OFFERED TO CUSTOMER SERVICE EMPLOYEES*

52%

Mobile phone

31%

Higher superannuation contribution

19%

Income protection insurance

48% Parking 29%

Personal laptop

14%

Health care/ health insurance

38%

Company car

28% Other 13%

Travel pass

*More than one could be selected

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

CUSTOMER SERVICE SALARY INCREASES OVER THE NEXT 12 MONTHS AVERAGE PERCENTAGE BONUS OF GROSS SALARY

All my employees will receive the same percentage increase

14% All my employees will receive an increase, but it will vary according to performance

67% Only my best-performing employees will receive an increase

39%

5% No one in my team will receive an increase

1–5%

61%

14%

6–10%

AVERAGE PERCENTAGE SALARY INCREASES

AVERAGE WEEKLY WORKING HOURS

10% less than

4% 51 hours

0-2%

17%

3-5%

72%

6-8%

11%

37.5 hours

or more

5%

COMBINATION OF FACTORS LIKELY TO IMPACT ON SALARY LEVELS IN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS

41–45 hours

Domestic economic conditions

5%

62%

46–50 hours

Global economic conditions

76% 37.5–40 hours

38% Competition with other companies

33% Other

14% KEY REASONS EMPLOYEES ARE LIKELY TO LEAVE

Not sure

8% achieve better work-life balance

17%

better training and support

8% other

34%

BASIS FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE BONUSES OVER THE NEXT 12 MONTHS Company performance

44%

improve salary Individual performance

22%

25%

broaden experience/ opportunity

10%

Team performance

1%

8% gain more seniority

Combination of all Other

11% 22%

Source: Page Personnel Salary & Employment Forecast Australia 2013/14

HCAMAG.COM

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THE LIGHTER SIDE

JOB TITLES THAT BARELY EXISTED FIVE YEARS AGO If you needed any more convincing that the world of work is constantly evolving, look no further than LinkedIn’s 10 jobs that barely existed five years ago. Examining over 259 million profiles, LinkedIn found the top 10 jobs that have grown the most in the last five years: Digital marketing specialist 2008: 166 2013: 2,886 Growth: 17x

Data scientist 2008: 142 2013: 4,326 Growth: 30x

Android developer 2008: 53 2013: 10,554 Growth: 199x

Cloud services specialist 2008: 195 2013: 3,314 Growth: 17x

iOS developer 2008: 89 2013: 12,634 Growth: 142x

Zumba instructor 2008: 16 2013: 6,331 Growth: 396x

UI/UX designer 2008: 159 2013: 3,509 Growth: 22x

Social media intern 2008: 25 2013: 4,350 Growth: 174x

Beachbody coach 2008: 0 2013: 3,360 Growth: 3,360x

WILL YOUR JOB BE TAKEN BY A ROBOT? A report from last year, The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerisation?, has been doing the rounds lately in the media. The Economist broke down which jobs are likely to be lost to computerisation in the next two decades, and the probabilities are: • • • • • •

Telemarketers: 99% Accountants and auditors: 94% Retail salesperson: 92% Technical writers: 89% Real estate sales agents: 86% Word processors and typists: 81%

• • • • • • • • • • • •

Machinists: 65% Commercial pilots: 55% Economists: 43% Health technologists: 40% Actors: 37% Firefighters: 17% Editors: 6% Chemical engineers: 2% Clergy 0.8% Athletic trainers: 0.7% Dentists: 0.4% Recreational therapists: 0.3%

BOOZY BONUSES A Chinese employer from the Zhejiang Province surprised his workers at the end of last year by announcing they would receive bonuses based on how much they were able to drink.

“Men were given 500 yuan for a shot of liquor, 200 yuan for a glass of red wine and 100 yuan for a beer. Women were given twice as much money for consuming the same amounts,” an employee told the Global Times, upset by the fact that bonuses would be based on alcohol tolerance, which he deemed as unfair and unhealthy.

OUT-THERE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS Getting imaginative with interview questions can be tough, but some organisations seem to have no trouble. Glassdoor examined thousands of interview questions shared by job candidates over the last year, bringing you the top 25 oddball interview questions. Have you got answers for them all?

• “If you could throw a parade of any calibre through the Zappos office, what type of parade would it be?” – The Zappos Family • “How lucky are you and why?” – Airbnb • “If you were a pizza deliveryman, how would you benefit from scissors?” – Apple • “If you could sing one song on American Idol, what would it be?” – Red Frog Events • “Are you more of a hunter or a gatherer?” – Dell • “If you were on an island and could only bring three things, what would you bring?” – Yahoo • “If you were a box of cereal, what would you be and why?” – Bed Bath & Beyond

• • • • • • • • • • •

“Do you believe in Big Foot?” – Norwegian Cruise Line “Why is a tennis ball fuzzy?” – Xerox “What is your least favourite thing about humanity?” – ZocDoc “How would you use Yelp to find the number of businesses in the US?” – Factual “How honest are you?” – Allied Telesis “How many square feet of pizza is eaten in the US each year?”

– Goldman Sachs “Can you instruct someone how to make an origami ‘cootie catcher’ with just words?” – LivingSocial “If you were 80 years old, what would you tell your children?”

– McKinsey & Company “You’re a new addition to the crayon box, what colour would you be and why?” – Urban Outfitters “How does the internet work?” – Akamai “If there was a movie produced about your life, who would play you and why?” – SinglePlatform

56 | FEBRUARY 2014

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