Human Resources Director 12.08

GENDER EQUITY WORK-LIFE INTEGRATION SQUARE PEG, ROUND HOLE? HR MODELS IN THE SPOTLIGHT

HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR HCAMAG.COM ISSUE 12.8

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT THE SEAL WAY

REMODELLING AN ICON Westfield Group’s transformation

Y E V R U S R H L A B ies: t O i n L u t r G o p p E o d H T Priorities, challenges ahnave their say aders e l 0 0 0 , 4 r e v O

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EDITOR’S LETTER / HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

GENDER EQUITY WORK-LIFE INTEGRATION

FISHING FOR TALENT Chatting to one HR consultant in the employment branding space recently, he got me thinking about how much the recruitment landscape has changed in recent years, and why HR needs to shift its thinking. For one thing, there is still persistent talk about ‘tapping into talent pools’. Yet, as my colleague noted, there is no such thing as a ‘talent pool’ today. There has been a talent drought in so many areas over the last decade, so how can there be talent pools?

He also mentioned the stubborn refusal of many HR leaders to shift their practices to target passive candidates. There is still the belief that posting a job on one of the major generalist job boards will get traction – even when the online job board market has been swamped by smaller, niche boards that specifically target certain professionals.

Employment branding, which I’ve always considered one of the more fascinating aspects of HR – tapping in as it does to marketing and advertising principles – is a way to reach these passive candidates.

Not surprisingly, this field has also been revolutionised by digital capabilities. Media consumption habits have changed, so in all likelihood most employment branding exercises are not reaching the desired audience. My colleague suggested this was a shift from recruitment to ‘recruitment marketing’. It’s getting smarter about how and where talent is found – and rethinking the means by which employers connect with that talent.

Something else has happened with employer branding in recent years: it has shifted away from being seen solely as an attraction tool to having relevance at all points of the employment journey – from attraction through onboarding and employment and on to the postemployment phase via alumni. This means that, even if you’re not in the hiring phase, the employment brand should not be left to wither and die.

Finally, content is king. The content required to engage with audiences via your brand should logically come from the existing examples of similar talent you already employ. My colleague noted: “In fishing terms, we use the right bait for the right fish.”

Stay tuned for a more in-depth look at how you can make better strategic use of your employment branding initiatives in an upcoming issue of HRD.

Iain Hopkins, editor, HRD

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SQUARE PEG, ROUND HOLE? HR MODELS IN THE SPOTLIGHT

HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR HCAMAG.COM ISSUE 12.8

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT THE SEAL WAY

REMODELLING AN ICON Westfield Group’s transformation

RVesEY SUtuniti AL HR oppor THEPriorGLities,OB challenges and their say have rs Over 4,000 leade

COPY & FEATURES EDITOR Iain Hopkins JOURNALISTS Janie Smith, Jill Gregorie PRODUCTION EDITORS Roslyn Meredith, Moira Daniels, Richard Wood

ART & PRODUCTION DESIGNER Marla Morelos DESIGN MANAGER Daniel Williams TRAFFIC MANAGER Maria Katsiotis

SALES & MARKETING MARKETING EXECUTIVE Alex Carr COMMUNICATIONS EXECUTIVE Lisa Narroway BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGERS James Francis, Steven McDonald, Gareth Scott

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 Editorial enquiries Iain Hopkins tel: +61 2 8437 4703 iain.hopkins@keymedia.com.au Advertising enquiries James Francis tel: +61 2 8437 4766 james.francis@keymedia.com.au Steven McDonald tel: +61 2 8437 4757 steven.mcdonald@keymedia.com.au Gareth Scott tel: +61 2 8437 4745 gareth.scott@keymedia.com.au Subscriptions tel: +61 2 8005 6674 • fax: +61 2 8437 4753 subscriptions@keymedia.com.au 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

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CONTENTS / HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

THE GLOBAL HR SURVEY

12

The global HR survey HRD asked over 4,000 HR professionals globally for their opinions about their profession. The results provide a snapshot of the health of the profession, showcasing what’s being done well and what needs to improve

28

Form follows function: HR models in the spotlight In 2014, businesses face unique and unprecedented challenges. Has HR positioned itself in the most effective way within businesses to meet these challenges? Iain Hopkins weighs the pros and cons of the dominant Ulrich model and looks at possible alternatives

48

The way of the SEAL Comparisons between the corporate world and the life and death situations faced by elite military units may seem tenuous – but there are fundamentals common to both. Who better to coach leadership and human performance than an ex-Navy SEAL?

REGULARS 04 | News analysis: Pre-employment screening 10 | In brief: Internal social media 54 | Last word: Generations at work

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Work-life integration The issue of gender inequality in all ranks of the corporate world continues to haunt most organisations, but strides are being made. Jill Gregorie talks to two global HR leaders about the practical steps their organisations are taking to build female leaders

52

In person: Mary Basson With attractions including Madame Tussauds, The Sydney Tower, Falls Creek and Underwater World Mooloolaba under its belt, Mary Basson, HR director at Merlin Entertainments Group ANZ, knows how to have fun at work. She chats to HRD about employer brands, corporate volunteering and how to manage a contingent workforce

CHECK OUT THE HRD ARCHIVES ONLINE: hcamag.com

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

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DECEMBER 2013 | 3

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NEWS ANALYSIS / PRE-EMPLOYMENT SCREENING

THE LYING GAME Myer’s HR team was left red-faced when it was discovered that a recently hired executive was not all he claimed to be. The incident has shone a light on the due diligence required prior to hiring anyone – let alone executives In June the story was splashed across the homepage of The Sydney Morning Herald. In the days following, it spread to other media and social channels. The saying that any publicity is good publicity is evidently a falsehood – something retail giant Myer can now attest to.

What caused the unwanted attention? After landing a job at Myer as general manager strategy and business development, Andrew Flanagan was sacked by the company on his first day when it was revealed he had allegedly concocted his references to land the job.

Myer thought they were getting a highly qualified and experienced executive who had worked at global fashion brand Zara. However, when Zara disclaimed any knowledge of Flanagan or his employment at the company or parent Inditex, his story started to unravel.

Hiring company Quest Personnel told The Herald that it had been duped by Flanagan and he had provided “incorrect and misleading information” before being hired by Myer. It has since emerged that the American native has a long history of tinkering with his name, birth date and countless previous job roles – most of which are dubious at best.

The high profile case has called into question not just Myer’s recruitment processes, but also the value of services provided by the recruitment industry.

The Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC) immediately issued a statement cautioning

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

corporates to avoid using less reputable recruitment firms, who may cut corners.

AESC’s global vice chairman, Jason Johnson, said: “I was horrified to hear of the situation Myer had found itself in and it has now raised concerns about the process conducted by the recruitment firm that introduced Andrew Flanagan to the retailer.”

CANDIDATE SCREENING DISCREPANCY IN ASIA-PACIFIC 2.59%

Discrepancy 11.5%

ABOVE IT ALL? Hosay Mangal, head of background checking company Verify, says the case is one of many incidents – some of which do not get media coverage – where an individual is recruited and does not have the experience or qualifications they claim. Such

CANDIDATE CV DISCREPANCY BY COUNTRY Australia/New Zealand – 12.96%

China – 7.24% Hong Kong – 12.46%

Malaysia – 12.47%

Philippines – 8.16%

Singapore – 12.09% Japan and Korea – 10.97% Source: First Advantage’s Employment Screening Trends Report: Asia Pacific

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23%

49%

4.87% 21%

Employment Financial related check Database Criminal Education

Source: First Advantage’s Employment Screening Trends Report: Asia Pacific

incidents are magnified when they occur at a senior level.

“Many organisations don’t screen at the senior level as they believe – due to the level of experience the individual has – that their background has already been verified and their experience should speak for itself,” Mangal says. “Other reasons for this occurring are due to the competitive job market, resulting in an increase in job candidates misrepresenting their credentials to give themselves a competitive edge.”

Further, Mangal says that too often organisations feel they may ‘insult’ a senior executive candidate by asking them to complete a background check. “We need to change this mentality. There should be no reticence in doing thorough employment screening for candidates at all levels. It should be seen as a mandatory risk mitigating process and not a process that can be omitted if it doesn’t suit the individual.”

HRD has previously written about being ‘blinded by charisma’ when undertaking executive interviews.

This is yet another reason why background screening shouldn’t be considered a ‘nice to have’. It’s a risk mitigation process for organisations to ensure

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NEWS ANALYSIS / PRE-EMPLOYMENT SCREENING

individuals they recruit have the relevant skills, qualifications and experience to perform the role.

“Organisations need to review the experience the candidate purports to have. The consequences of not checking that staff have the proper qualifications exposes them to the risk of financial loss and reputational damage,” Mangal says.

REMAIN VIGILANT – REGARDLESS OF POSITION Background checks for more junior and mid-level employees are now commonplace, but even at those levels, hiring companies can be lax. At this more junior level, Mangal says that too often appointments happen as a result of existing relationships and reputation in the market, so the need for background checks is negated. “The best practice is to perform a thorough screening process post all the interview processes so that there are no surprise adverse findings,” she says.

Not surprisingly, given that executives are charged with giving direction to the company and may also be involved in budgeting and managing assets, it is imperative that organisations step up their background checks a notch when hiring for these roles.

Specifically, areas to probe include companies the applicant is a director of to ensure there are no conflicts of interest, whether they have been declared bankrupt, employment history and whether they are on any banned lists.

First Advantage’s Employment Screening Trends Report: Asia Pacific shed some light on where candidates are likely to stretch the truth, and in what numbers:

Employment details with highest discrepancy rates Employment variance

Discrepancy

Per total applicants

Position held (job title/designation)

9%

One in every 11

Reasons for leaving

7%

One in every 14

Salary package

4%

One in every 25

Date of employment > six months

3%

One in every 33

Date of employment < six months

2%

One in every 50

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LEGALLY SPEAKING...

Background checking companies should be providing full transparency to the candidate in all the checks they are conducting as part of their job application. Prior to performing the checks, applicants are required to provide consent forms for the relevant searches to be performed.

Most employers are subject to the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) in relation to the collection of information from prospective employees. Some employers in government or other specialist jurisdictions may have other or additional obligations.

“While there is an exemption for employee records in the Privacy Act once a person becomes an employee, prior to their employment, employers are actually collecting personal information from candidates in relation to the job application and that process is covered by the Privacy Act provisions,” says Shane Koelmeyer, director, Workplace Law. Specifically, this means the 13 new Australian Privacy Principles should be followed when collecting this personal information. From a practical perspective this means paying attention to matters such as: zznot keeping the information or using it for a purpose other than the application for the specific job zzmaintaining the confidentiality of the information (and destroying it when the process is completed – unless the employee is successful in the application) zzonly contacting referees who are specifically nominated by the candidate in relation to the application to discuss the information provided.

Koelmeyer also recommends that employment contracts or agreements include a clause specifically stating that the information and references provided in the employee’s application must be true and correct and stating that termination of employment will occur in the event that the information is found to be false. This gives the employer the option of relying on a contractual provision to terminate the employment in the event that false information comes to light well after the event.

“You would actually be surprised how often this occurs,” Koelmeyer says. “One of our clients discovered that one of their employees had lied about having a professional qualification after 10

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NEWS ANALYSIS / PRE-EMPLOYMENT SCREENING

BACK TO BASICS In the wake of the Myer debacle, The Recruitment and Consulting Services Association (RCSA) released its top tips for avoiding being duped by creative candidates or dodgy CVs and referees 1. THE RESUME: Keep in mind your obligations under Privacy legislation, however don’t rely solely on a Google search or LinkedIn check to reveal a smelly fish. Go back and look at the previous five positions, and at the website of previous employers which should help to identify early-on any false claims. If the employment history presented by a candidate raises any concerns, call the central HR team at previous employers listed on the resume.

They will always confirm if an applicant was actually employed with their organisation.

2. QUALIFICATIONS AND RECORDS: Ask to sight originals or certified copies of all qualifications and confirm any professional memberships with the association or registration body which will assist in validating the academic and professional experience claimed by a candidate.

Myer’s problems may have been avoided if appropriate questions were asked relating to the absence of the digital presence you would expect to exist from previous senior roles.

Take a deep look at the references of an applicant, particularly in the case of a public or a large private company where they are

proud to list senior executives and their accomplishments. Go back in history and look back five years; it is amazing what you will learn about an applicant and their fit for an organisation.

3. RECRUITMENT 101: Ask the right questions, in the right way. The right behavioural questions will assist the recruiter to identify a lack of knowledge or understanding of areas that may be specific to an industry or sector. Focus these questions on exploring the strategies and successes of the candidate and how they achieved the fantastic things they say they have.

A good recruiter will also look at body language, speech patterns and try to identify any text bridging to hide or skip over important information.

4. TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS: If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is a duck. No matter how much you like the applicant and are prepared to overlook gaps or inconsistencies in their CV or references, trust your instincts and the experience and skills of a trained recruiter.

years. That person’s employment was terminated immediately – even though they tried to argue that they had been doing the professional job for 10 years without an issue so the employment should be permitted to continue!”

While Myer has confirmed to Fairfax media that it will make a complaint to Victoria Police over the allegedly fraudulent behaviour of Flanagan, business leaders might be curious as to whether an employer is entitled to seek damages (for example, to cover recruitment costs).

Koelmeyer says further legal action is unlikely, due primarily to the cost of such litigation exceeding the costs and expenses to be recovered – assuming the individual has the capacity to pay at all.

However, he warns that it is certainly something that all recruiters should be alert to, as employers will rely on the recruiter doing the due diligence about the qualifications before nominating a candidate for consideration. “The more likely prospect is that an employer might pursue a recruiter for recommending a candidate who was not ‘fit for purpose’ or for engaging in misleading or deceptive conduct,” he says.

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THE BLAME GAME The fallout from the Myer debacle remains to be seen, and no doubt the blame game will spark anew.

Who has responsibility in such cases? The employer or the recruitment agency? Should the employer trust that recruitment agencies are conducting the necessary checks?

Ultimately, Mangal says both entities must take responsibility. “Many of Verify’s clients are the organisation directly recruiting the applicant, not recruitment firms,” she says. “We find recruitment firms generally will only add background checks if their client requests them to. The important point here is that the background checks are done in a competent and timely manner.”

Overall, Koelmeyer suggests that both employers and recruiters must be more aware of the due diligence required in employing candidates. “It would certainly be a failure of the due diligence process to not confirm qualifications with the educational institution itself,” he says.

“Of course, reference checks should always be done. If an employer is not satisfied with the referees provided, they can always ask the candidate to provide others.”

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HRA20

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IN BRIEF / INTERNAL SOCIAL MEDIA

BRINGING SOCIAL POWER INHOUSE

Internal social media (ISM) platforms, otherwise known as enterprise collaboration tools, such as Yammer, Jive, Salesforce Chatter and IBM Connections, are gaining traction within large corporates. What potential benefits do they bring to organisations?

51% of employees say their company employs ISM tools

Executive leadership accounts for 75% of an employee’s perception of internal communication Besides the intranet, the most used tools are blogs, wikis and Facebook-like platforms

PROPORTION OF LARGE BUSINESSES THAT...

Have a social media policy

Have invested in social media training

35% 45% USE SOCIAL MEDIA AS A CUSTOMER SERVICE CHANNEL...

To receive complaints

As a response channel

66% 96%

HOW MANY PEOPLE DOES YOUR ORGANISATION HAVE WORKING ON SOCIAL MEDIA?

70% 13% 6% have between 1 and 5

have between 6 and 10

have between 11 and 20

*Yellow Pages social media survey, 2013

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

WHAT EMPLOYEES REALLY WANT Research by Apco Worldwide and Gagen MacDonald identified 21 discrete attributes that characterise the best ISM programs, which in turn combine to form three major factors that employees look for when deciding whether their company has effective social media internally

42%

37%

21%

Social media establishes open dialogue with employees, solicits feedback and criticism, invites interaction, and has a visible, active senior leadership presence

Social media is targeted to particular users, makes use of trend-setting platforms, has a committed group of ambassadors, and takes risks to try new ways to enhance the user experience

quality of content

Social media content is accessible, easy to find, well integrated, visually appealing and valuable to an employee and the work that he or she does

engagement & dialogue

optimisation

MAKING THE CHOICE

THE IMPACT OF EFFECTIVE ISM ON EMPLOYEES Retention and recruitment 58% would prefer to work at a company that uses ISM

86% would refer others for employment

Collaboration 61% feel ISM makes it easier to collaborate

Innovation 60% are likely to

feel their company is innovative

Referrals 39% are more likely to

recommend their company’s products and services

Selection of the best or most suitable ISM tools comes down to viewing each option through two different lenses:

Support in a crisis 60% are more likely to

give their company the benefit of the doubt in a crisis

Policy support 67% are more likely to support government policies their company supports

Employee stock purchase 78% are more likely to purchase the company’s stock

1) A desired set of target features that’s believed to be desired within the organisation, such as document sharing, microblogging, news feeds, file syncing, or mobile knowledge access, along with supporting technical capabilities like application integration, search, administration consoles and governance features.

2) A more abstract set of business requirements selected to address a list of long-standing functional challenges like poor collaboration, better access to knowledge, reducing travel costs, or speeding up business processes.

Source: Except where noted, Apco Worldwide and Gagen MacDonald

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COVER STORY / GLOBAL HR SURVEY

THE GLOBAL HR SURVEY

HRD asked over 4,000 HR professionals globally for their opinions about their profession. The results provide a snapshot of the health of the profession, showcasing what’s being done well and what needs to improve As part of our commitment to keeping you informed of the latest developments, challenges and opportunities you face in corporate life, HR Director has undertaken an unprecedented survey of our readers in order to ‘test the waters’ and gauge how successfully HR professionals are tracking on their journey towards being true business partners.

We’ve asked readers from around the world for a ‘health check’ of the HR profession.

How is HR positioned within organisations to tackle the various issues they currently face? Perhaps more important, what are those issues and are HR professionals receiving the support they need to address them?

What are the top challenges now and into the future, and how are HR professionals upskilling themselves to meet those challenges?

ABOUT THE SURVEY Globally, over 4,423 HR professionals took part in the online survey. Survey respondents came from 33 countries around the world, but for the purposes of this analysis HRD concentrated on the key territories of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. The bulk of respondents (40%) worked in large organisations of 1,000 plus employees, with a further 11% working in companies with 501–1,000 employees.

Although the survey was open to all HR professionals, there was a natural skew towards HR Director’s readership: most respondents held executive-level positions and would be classified as key decision-makers in their companies. Over 30% held the job title of HR director (or similar), and just over 15% held the CHRO position.

Respondents by position/designation

Respondents by company size

15.01%

19.91%

15.78%

39.73% 18.92%

38.83%

30.38%

10.92% 10.52%

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1-100

301-500

101-300

501-1,000

1,000+

CHRO HR director/VP/manager HR assistant/coordinator

HR adviser/ consultant/ executive

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

TODAY’S PRIORITIES

Q

To what degree are you personally involved in the following strategic challenges this year?

1. MANAGING PEOPLE 1

Not involved at all

2

Rarely involved

3

Involved to some degree on some issues

4

Often involved

5

Involved at all times

Average rating by country 4.4 4.3 4.2 4.1 4.0 3.9 3.8 3.7 3.6

Australia

New Zealand

Canada

USA

Average rating by job title 5.0

The number one priority, by a significant margin, is people management. HR’s mandate is still to attract, engage and retain the best people. Australian employers in particular noted how critical ‘managing people’ was to organisational success, rating this category 4.08 (out of 5) – significantly ahead of peers in the US and Canada.

Respondents indicated that although their role had changed and the perception of executive peers was shifting towards viewing HR professionals as business people first, who happened to be HR specialists second, there was still an expectation that HR would take charge and lead the people management agenda in most organisations.

Strategic workforce management and the challenge of managing multiple generations in the workplace were key concerns for a number of respondents.

Here’s a small sample of comments: “HR-related issues are getting more traction with other business leaders, but they still expect HR to do some of their people management for them”

4.5 4.0

“Establishing a robust succession planning process is my number one priority”

3.5 3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0

CHRO

HRD/VP/ manager

HR adviser/ HR consultant/ assistant/ executive coordinator

Average rating by company size

“A key priority is acknowledging generational differences between executive leaders and recent college graduates (Gen X & Y). The amount of flexibility is caught in a time warp and based on tradition rather than adapting to today’s environment”

41% of HR professionals list ‘managing people’ as their top priority

4.3 4.2 4.1 4.0 3.9 3.8 3.7 3.6

1-100

101-300 301-500 501-1,000

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1,000+

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COVER STORY / GLOBAL HR SURVEY

2. IDENTIFYING RISKS, REGULATING AND ENSURING COMPLIANCE Average rating by country 3.8 3.75 3.7 3.65 3.6 3.55 3.5

Australia

New Zealand Canada

USA

Average rating by job title

Not surprisingly, it’s the CHROs and HRDs who are shouldering the burden of these compliance issues. Professionals in these senior roles have been tasked with defining and executing HR policies that comply with local, state, national and international laws. Increasingly, they must also actively manage labour-related risks, regularly auditing HR processes and developing a formal strategy for mitigating workplace-related risks.

In addition, HRDs can play an important role in the larger challenge of building an ethical and informed workplace – managers and employees who know, understand and believe in what they need to do. Yet, as readers emphasised, this is easier said than done: “Overregulation by government, meeting all compliance reporting, having enough time to understand and address changes is a constant struggle”

4.5 4.0 3.5 3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0

CHRO

HRD/VP/ manager

HR adviser/ HR consultant/ assistant/ executive coordinator

“A key challenge is integrating into a global market, learning the legislation of different countries and applying that to our existing policies, procedures and guidelines”

Average rating by company size 3.9 3.8 3.7 3.6 3.5 3.4 3.3

1-100

101-300 301-500 501-1,000

1,000+

Priority number two might surprise some, but with increasingly complicated IR issues and employment laws to contend with, it appears HR professionals are placing greater importance on identifying risks, and regulating and ensuring compliance. This is especially apparent in the more litigious US and Canadian markets – yet Australia and New Zealand also placed this as their second top priority.

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30% of HR professionals are ‘strongly involved’ in identifying risks and ensuring compliance

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

3. REDUCING COSTS Average rating by country 3.8 3.75 3.7 3.65 3.6 3.55 3.5

Australia New Zealand Canada

USA

Average rating by job title

The global economy is only now – some six years on – recovering from the depths of the GFC. It’s no surprise to see that ‘cost reduction’ remains a key priority for cautious businesses. This is particularly apparent in the US and Canada, although it’s telling that Australia and New Zealand employers also placed this as their third biggest priority. Also of note is the importance of cost-cutting seen through the lens of company size. Smaller companies appear to be still in ‘cost containment’ mode.

The overriding feeling from respondents was one of caution. Readers suggested that, in many instances, HR was being called to account not just for its own expenses (‘doing more with reduced HR resources’) but also for overall operating costs, including head­ count, L&D budgets and other discretionary spend.

Readers expressed key concerns:

4.5

“Staff apathy while operating in a downward economic climate with budget constraints”

4.0 3.5 3.0 2.5 2.0

“Coming up with cost-effective HR solutions when there is an extremely conservative approach to spending”

1.5 1.0 0.5 0

CHRO

HRD/ VP/ manager

HR adviser/ consultant/ executive

HR assistant/ coordinator

“Management has an agenda to cut costs, and that equals cutting employees. This is at the expense of work being done”

Average rating by company size 3.9 3.8 3.7 3.6 3.5 3.4 3.3

1-100

101-300 301-500 501-1,000

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1,000+

21% of HR professionals are ‘strongly involved’ in cost-cutting initiatives

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COVER STORY / GLOBAL HR SURVEY

4. HELPING SALES AND MARKETING DEPARTMENTS ACQUIRE, SERVE OR RETAIN CLIENTS Average rating by country

5. EXPANDING TO NEW MARKETS

Average rating by country

3.0

3.5 3.0

2.5

2.5 2.0 2.0 1.5

1.5

1.0

1.0

0.5 0

0.5 Australia New Zealand Canada

USA

Both the fourth and fifth priorities are where the results get interesting. A decade ago, HR involve­ ment in helping sales and marketing departments acquire, serve or retain clients would have been unlikely. The HR function generally would have been viewed as distanced from the impact on customers or clients. This perception has changed in recent years, as the impact that HR can have on building not just the skills and capabilities of its sales and marketing teams but also creating a ‘customer-centric’ culture across organisations has started to be recognised.

“A priority is improving our skills across the organisation around ensuring customer stability for existing customers, and customer growth by attracting new customers”

40% of HR professionals have added ‘expansion to new markets’ to their priority list

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0

Australia New Zealand

Canada

USA

Australian organisations are starting to appreciate the importance of our geographic proximity to Southeast Asia. Surprisingly, our results indicate it’s the SMEs leading the charge.

The Federal Government’s Australia in the Asian Century white paper outlined the projected 21st century dominance of Asian politics and culture, assuming certain demographic and economic trends persist. At four billion people at the beginning of the 21st century, the Asian population is predicted to grow to more than five billion by 2050. That represents ample scope for business expansion in the region. This expansion will, of course, require significant input from HR. Our readers identified key concerns: “Developing the China market – the level of talent is not as developed as other Western countries” “My company is facing repercussions from the political situation in Thailand and strong local market which impacts on HR and staffing, particularly replacements” “Consistency in action. As our business is all across Australia, both city-based and regional-based, there are challenges around setting a consistent message to all staff members”

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

EXECUTIVE BUY-IN

Q

To what extent do you feel that senior management supports your HR initiatives?

1

Not supported at all

2

Rarely supported

3

Supported to some degree on some issues

4

Well supported

5

Exceptionally well supported

Looking at results by country, Australian HR practitioners do not feel as well supported as their global counterparts, indicating there is perhaps more work to be done on influencing and convincing senior leaders of how the function can add value.

The mixed survey responses bear this out: “Senior management values and is aligned with HR initiatives that support the business” “HR has a seat on the senior management team and is a right-hand man to the CEO”

Average rating by country 3.8

“A very hierarchical organisation to the extent that what is done at my level is either not known about or hardly known about unless something goes wrong”

3.75 3.7 3.65 3.6 3.55 3.5

Australia New Zealand Canada

USA

Average rating by job title 4.5 4.0 3.5 3.0 2.5

“HR solutions are difficult to quantify and therefore when it comes to new initiatives which could benefit the company it is a difficult sell because it has more challenging to measure the return on investment” “Given the current economic climate, many organisations (like ours) need to contain costs and as such there is a constant conflict between best practice strategies and financial commitment”

2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0

“We have a very small, cliquey senior leadership team that tend to micro manage over unimportant things.

This hinders growth opportunities, instils a lack of trust and cuts into time allocations for big picture HR initiatives”

CHRO

HRD/VP/ manager

HR adviser/ HR consultant/ assistant/ executive coordinator

HR cannot be successful in a vacuum. Buy-in and support from other senior leaders is critical to ensuring HR initiatives take off within the company.

Fortunately, some 59% of respondents globally feel ‘well supported’ or ‘exceptionally well supported’ in their HR initiatives. Senior HR practitioners in particular feel ‘well supported’, and while this drops to ‘supported’ for more junior HR roles, there was general satisfaction with the support shown for HR initiatives.

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59% of HR professionals globally feel supported in their HR initiatives

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8/08/2014 1:22:47 PM

COVER STORY / GLOBAL HR SURVEY

LEADERSHIP COMPETENCY

Q

Rate the strength of your current leaders in the following areas:

1

Poor

2

Average

3

Good

4

Very good

5

Exceptional

The most surprising result here was staff devel­ opment: 36.5% rated their managers as ‘fair’ in this category, and only 6.7% judged leaders to be excellent. Last month’s News Analysis in HRD indicated that some 40% of line managers were not receiving the tools and support needed to succeed. If they’re not receiving the support, it stands to reason that their team members are also suffering. As this month’s profiled HR director, Janine Frew from Scentre Group, suggests, in her company it’s up to line leaders to manage and cultivate the skills of their staff – yet, as our survey indicates, this is rare.

With change increasingly becoming the new norm in most organisations, the poor rating given to ‘managing change’ indicates work needs to be done on enhancing these capabilities in leaders.

Readers expressed their thoughts:

Focus on client Managing results Solving problems

“Our biggest problem is getting immediate supervisors providing timely, specific and appropriate feedback to team members”

Communication Managing change Staff development 0

1

2

3

4

5

62% of HR professionals feel current leaders have poor to average communication skills

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“Front line manager capability and getting them to understand their impact on engagement” “Getting the line level managers on board with process improvement, starting with everyone being held accountable for their roles” “Helping managers keep up with the speed of change in the business is an ongoing and pressing issue for us”

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

Just about all senior HR practitioners profiled or interviewed by HRD over the years have indicated that CEO acceptance – or otherwise – of the HR role is perhaps the most important factor in the function’s success at a strategic level. Without that support, or if the CEO has ‘old-school’ thinking about the role as a transactional cost centre and does not appreciate the potential ‘value-add’ HR can bring, it’s an uphill battle all the way. Readers agreed:

CEO SUPPORT

Q

How much time do you believe your CEO spends on HR-related issues?

CEO time spent on HR issues

0–10% 11–20%

“My CEO is highly committed to people & culture. Business communications, analysis, development, performance begin with people first, followed by the financials etc”

21–30% 31–40% 41–50%

“My CEO spends time on the wrong HR-related issues” More than 50% 0%

10%

20%

30%

% of votes by HR professionals

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40%

“HR has a voice and a chair in the C-Suite. Recommendations may not always be supported but they are given real consideration, debate and mostly buy-in”

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COVER STORY / GLOBAL HR SURVEY

2. BUILDING INTERNAL CREDIBILITY AND INFLUENCE

TODAY’S CHALLENGES

Q

How would you rate the following challenges?

Average rating by country 3.7

1. EMPLOYEE RETENTION 1

Limited/no challenge

2

Minor challenge

3

Fair challenge

4

Significant challenge

5

Major challenge

3.65

3.6

3.55

3.5

Average rating by country 4.1

3.8

3.9

3.75 3.7

3.8

3.65

3.7

3.6

3.6

3.55

3.5

3.5

3.4

3.45 3.4 Australia New Zealand Canada

USA

3.74 3.72 3.7 3.68 3.66 3.64 3.62 3.6 3.58 1-100

101-300 301-500 501-1,000

1,000+

Retention is back on top of the agenda for most organisations, especially those based in the US and Canada. For many, this may mean a refocus on the Employment Value Proposition. For others it may mean a greater concentration on the creation of career paths and development opportunities for employees.

“Retention of staff in a low-paying industry is a primary focus for me” “Competency planning and aligning this with pay scales and professional development is where I’m focused”

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3.35 3.3

Average rating by company size

3.56

USA

Average rating by job title

4.0

3.3

Australia New Zealand Canada

CHRO

HRD/ VP/ manager

HR adviser/ consultant / executive

HR assistant/ coordinator

HRD has for some time attempted to shift the dialogue away from ‘how can HR get a seat at the executive table?’ to ‘how can I retain my seat at the executive table and continue to add value?’ Not surprisingly, there is still work to be done. Junior to mid-level employees in HR scored this as a higher priority than already-senior HR professionals.

Senior HR practitioners are slowly shifting their status towards ‘trusted adviser’ partners to the CEO. Fortunately, thanks to big data and analytical abilities, they also now have the insights to back up their ‘hunches’.

“I’m trying to build accountability – getting all levels of the organisation to realise they are responsible for HR management to some degree” “HR has a chair at the table; they just don’t know how to sit in that chair. I’ve worked for some of the most advanced HR teams/functions in my career and my current organisation has a HR team that can’t articulate the VALUE they add or bring to the organisation – either as a dollar value or an added-value”

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

3. EMPLOYEE RECRUITMENT

4. DEALING WITH LEGAL CHANGES

Average rating by country

Average rating by job title

3.3

3.8 3.7

3.25

3.6 3.5

3.2

3.4

3.15

3.3 3.2

3.1

3.1 3.0

Australia New Zealand Canada

USA

Average rating by company size

3.05

CHRO

HRD/VP/ manager

HR adviser/ consultant/ executive

HR assistant/ coordinator

Average rating by company size

3.55

3.3

3.5

3.25

3.45

3.2

3.4 3.15

3.35

3.1

3.3

3.05

3.25 3.2

1-100

101-300 301-500 501-1,000

1,000+

3.0

1-100

101-300 301-500 501-1,000

1,000+

If recruitment is an indicator of economic health, it seems employers in the US and Canada are picking up after a prolonged period of hiring freezes and downsizing. Companies hiring the most are those in the mid-size bracket.

HRD notes that the terminology used by the majority of HR professionals has changed: there is no longer talk about ‘tapping into talent pools’, as there is no such thing as a ready and waiting field of applicants to pick and choose from. Employers are realising the old ways of recruitment are no longer working, hence many readers responded by questioning whether traditional recruitment channels were working. Others are concentrating on more effective workforce management.

Looking at the responses with the ‘country’ lens revealed that there is global caution around legal changes, but no significant differences between territories. Interestingly, it appears that smaller companies are struggling the most with this burden, perhaps due to lack of internal resources to stay on top of myriad legislative changes.

It’s insightful to look at Australia. In 2013 alone, Australian HR professionals were expected to be across the long-gestating harmonisation of national Workplace Health & Safety laws, expansion of the Fair Work Commission’s power to intervene in cases of workplace bullying, changes to the minimum wage, and constant tweaking of the Fair Work Act. As one respondent noted:

“I’m trying to create a culture of high performance, and finding new employees who fit into this culture, especially engineers and skilled labour”

“Just having the stamina to stay in this profession and cope with the legislative changes is hard enough”

“Finding the right balance of talent that is suitable for the future of the organisation – that is, strategic workforce management”

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“One of my top priorities is keeping up with the constantly changing external environment, including legislative updates, while managing internal expectations that sometimes are not aligned with departmental goals”

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COVER STORY / GLOBAL HR SURVEY

5. ADAPTING TO NEW TECHNOLOGY Average rating by country 3.6

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

Q

What skills and knowledge do you think will be most critical to your personal success over the next year?

3.5 3.4 3.3 3.2

1

Least critical

3.1

2

Somewhat important

2.9

3

Reasonably important

4

Significantly important

5

Most critical

2.8

Australia New Zealand

Canada

USA

Average rating by job title 3.4

Employment law knowledge

3.35 3.3

Information about...

3.25 3.2

Knowledge about...

3.15 3.1

Leadership capability

3.05 3.0

CHRO

HRD/VP/ manager

HR adviser/ HR consultant/ assistant/ executive coordinator

HR practitioners are early adopters of new technology. But as our results show, it’s CHROs who are focusing the most time and energy on the scope and pace of technological change – tasked as they are with rolling out enterprise-wide HRIS and keeping abreast of big data, the cloud and social/mobile technology.

The advent of cloud-based technology has resulted in organisations being able to store and utilise vast amounts of data at a fraction of the cost and manpower required in the past. The trend has spread to HR, providing businesses with greater insights into talent.

It has also forced a rethink of HR skills: to make purposeful use of the data, HR requires the analytical skills to make informed decisions.

“Updating new technology into the HR processes is what I will be focusing on for the rest of 2014” “HR’s constant struggle is the ability to remain credible, and remain ahead of technology.

A lot of our processes can be seen as ancient, and there seems a reluctance to move away from these manual processes and retaining written confirmation of everything we do”

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Communication skills Understanding of business 0

1

2

3

4

5

How will HR meet the priorities and challenges they face? Tied to that ongoing battle to gain influence over other business leaders, HR professionals are keen to bolster their communi­cation skills. Although there appears to be a willingness on behalf of HR professionals to develop their skills, there are hurdles. Key themes emerged from the responses.

First, dealing with the pace of change is an issue – HR professionals need the skills and competencies to manage all priority items and complete them by given deadlines. Secondly, and possibly related to the first, is simply finding the time to devote to personal development when so much is happening in the business.

“Understanding the commercial side of the HR relationship with senior stakeholders” “Broadening my qualifications and getting back to university. Without the support of my workplace it makes it very hard to keep up with current practices”

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

THE FUTURE

Q

To what degree will you be focusing on the following areas over the next year?

1

No focus

2

Limited focus

3

Reasonable focus

4

High focus

5

Strong focus

Developing your personal leadership management skills Executive education programs for your organisation’s leadership/ management team

Where will HR be focusing its attention over the next 12 months? Responses understandably varied widely on this topic. Common themes revolved around change management – usually tied to downsizing, restructuring and streamlining of operations. There was also concern about costcutting and budgeting – primarily, convincing other executives and line managers of the importance of things like L&D in tight economic conditions. ‘Doing more with less’ was a common theme, for the organisation as a whole and the HR function specifically. On the retention front, holding on to older workers emerged as a key concern, and for recruitment it was finding the right talent, quickly.

Readers were keen to share their challenges:

L&D initiatives across the organisation

“Reducing cost in the business, finding and reducing/eliminating activity in the business that is now obsolete or doesn’t add value and restructuring activities”

Change management initiatives

“Training – having the time and resources to train the managers and staff ”

Working with law firms on legal compliance

“Guiding the organisation to find, motivate and keep talent via earning ‘employer of choice’ status.

Guiding executive leadership to viewing people issues/opportunities through a business case lens”

Working with external parties on recruitment Working with external parties on strategy-focused projects

“Engagement in a declining market is my top priority” “Communication on change is the greatest challenge.

We sometimes feel like change is made and the message isn’t communicated. We find out later and have to quickly learn and adapt. We are told to execute but often don’t know the how or why and have to ‘figure it out’, and fast!”

Incorporating new technology to improve internal processes Implementing new Workplace Health & Safety initiatives Remote workforce management and international recruitment Revamping employee benefits, including pension plans Implementing new engagement/ reward & recognition programs 0

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1

2

3

4

5

“HR practitioners are often young, qualified but inexperienced. This places them at a disadvantage in communicating at the boardroom table. There is confusion in their minds about their role. Is it to ‘serve’ management or support staff ? When difficult situations arise far too often we see HR staff ‘supporting management’ by leaving their poor and ill-informed decisions go unchallenged.

It is about organisational credibility. There has been a ‘dumbing down’ of HR at great cost to organisations who get themselves into trouble”

AUGUST 2014 | 23

8/08/2014 1:23:44 PM

PROFILE / HR AT SCENTRE GROUP

RESHAPING AN

ICON

Rapid overseas growth, corporate restructuring and massive market sector disruption might flummox some change-wearied HR professionals – but not this month’s profiled HRD, who relishes the challenge and is looking ahead to a new era for an iconic brand There’s nothing like a corporate rebranding exercise to help you take stock and reflect on the path that has led to the present time, and ponder the way forward. This is something that Scentre Group – formally known as the Westfield Group in Australia and New Zealand – is undertaking right now.

Essentially, the company has split into two refocused and renamed listed property trusts.

Westfield Corporation will continue to operate 44 shopping centres in the US and UK/Europe, while Scentre Group will focus on growth in Australia and New Zealand, today operating 47 shopping centres.

The rebranding process presents an interesting challenge for Janine Frew, director of HR at Scentre Group, and her fellow executive colleagues. How do you build a ‘story’ for a brand that has not previously existed? Fortunately, there is a rich heritage to draw on. Westfield has a 53-year history, and this transition to Scentre Group is akin to a corporate entity change, rather than an overall brand overhaul. The Westfield brand will continue to live on in Australia and New Zealand in all consumer-facing communications – and of course in the 47 shopping centres in the region.

“The majority of our employees who work in operational or corporate roles specific to the Australian and New Zealand business are largely unaffected by the restructuring,” says Frew.

“In fact, the most notable change will be a new email address and business card. For many it will remain business as usual.

“We do recognise, however, that this time of change can be unsettling or confusing for our

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people, and we have undertaken an internal communication program aimed at providing clarity, inspiration, and creating excitement as we enter this new chapter for our business.”

REPOSITIONING THE BUSINESS Prior to the official roll-out of the Scentre Group entity in July, the leadership team and a crosssection of employees took part in a diagnostic exercise to find out what makes the company great, what they would like to retain in the new entity, and what the ‘blockages’ were that could prevent the organisation from being more agile, innovative and collaborative. It was a timely exercise to take stock of where the company has been, what it is today, and where it might go in the future.

“We’ve essentially identified our DNA,” says Frew. “We’re very aware of our heritage; we’re always pushing the limits; we’re focused and results-oriented; and we have high levels of accountability. We know the areas that we need to continue to focus on include being innovative, imaginative and more collaborative. Our EVP will evolve over time as our business strategy evolves – as it should – and we will continue to build on the strength of the Westfield culture.”

Frew adds that candidates she’s recently interviewed already ‘get it’ – they understand that decoupling the local entity from the global entity is the next phase in the company’s evolution.

Historically, Frew says there was a tendency for local operations to be lost amidst the international developments, and there have been plenty of those

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

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7/08/2014 2:54:55 PM

PROFILE / HR AT SCENTRE GROUP

What’s the biggest HR challenge you are currently facing, and how do you plan to overcome it?

“It’s the ability to fill our talent pipeline. Historically, we’ve been the source of talent for our international business, and in recent years we’ve had a drain on that talent because the UK and US have been ramping up their development activities. Fortunately we have very low turnover and long tenure, especially for executives, which means that we have the time to invest in developing our future leaders from within the business, and, in addition, identifying potential candidates in the external market.

“We have a process of succession planning and identifying talent internally, and we also take an external talent pooling approach. For very senior roles we partner with a number of external agencies who support us to map the market and identify potential talent who we then commence a relationship with, with a view to the longer term.”

leaders – the top 50 – the average tenure is 15 years, and they have grown in our organisation, having full responsibility for managing everything relating to their people.”

Frew adds that the Ulrich model has been “great for the team to work in”, because it has meant that HR has been able to focus on value-add initiatives, such as the culture and leadership development agendas, for the company’s 2,500 employees.

“Our mantra is very much that our role is to be on the business, not in the business. We are not here to solve the problems of managers; HR has a role to coach. We are not here to complete the paperwork or handle performance issues; our role is to provide the tools, resources and the skills to make sure managers can manage their people as best they possibly can.”

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT AND OVERSEAS OPPORTUNITIES in the last two decades. “Without that diversion of effort, we can now be very focused on the local market. We have a clear growth agenda which will mean fantastic opportunities for our people,” she says.

While specifics have not yet been revealed, Frew says Scentre Group will be leveraging off already-existing capabilities within the company, but this does not necessarily mean developing and managing more shopping centres.

THE SHORT HISTORY OF HR AT WESTFIELD Given all that has happened in recent months, it’s surprising to learn that a dedicated HR function has only existed within the company for the last 15 years.

The centralised HR team consists of just 20 people, based primarily at the Sydney corporate headquarters. There is no HR representation in the shopping centres themselves, and instead it is the responsibility of business leaders to drive the HR agenda. Three HR business partners and a number of centres of excellence (OD, Talent, Remuneration, HRIS, Internal Communications) provide support and develop solutions.

“The line has clear responsibility for the manage­ ment of their people agenda,” says Frew. “Our heritage has a lot to do with that. In the early years the focus of the HR team – a very small team of four people – was on the top 50 leaders. We focused strongly on leadership development for that group of people. When you look at the profile of our senior

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Frew herself has enjoyed a rich learning environ­ ment since she joined the company eight years ago.

She played a critical role developing the UK business and leading the HR agenda as the company prepared for the opening of its Stratford Centre and the 2012 Olympics. At the same time, Westfield was exploring opportunities in Europe, which meant Frew was exposed to undertaking due diligence on potential businesses.

“It was a phenomenal experience,” she says. “The UK is an emerging market for Westfield. It is now 13 years old; when I was there it was 11 years old. It was a very different environment to what I was used to.”

In contrast to the well-developed and stable Australian working environment, the UK operations did not yet have a deep operating culture. “We were building the ship as we were sailing it,” Frew says.

The pace of business and the sheer scope of projects undertaken was also an eye-opener.

“The Stratford development was more than just a shopping centre. It was an urban regeneration project,” she says.

NEW CHALLENGES No discussion in the retail space can avoid touching on the massive upheavals the industry has faced recently, primarily due to the emergence of internet shopping. Frew concedes that the burgeoning digital agenda has had the most dramatic impact on Westfield’s business over the past few years.

Rather than positioning digital as a threat, the company is positioning it as an opportunity. To

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

that end, Westfield established R&D Labs in San Francisco to build capability in this space and connect shoppers to Westfield’s retail clients in innovative ways using the latest technology. A recent example is Westfield’s fully searchable online mall.

Shoppers can identify goods and locate them in their local shopping centre or opt to buy them directly from retailers’ own e-commerce sites.

The company’s digital, operating and financial strategies are now given equal focus.

“We need to assist our retailers in connecting with customers any way we can. Bricks and mortar shops are not going anywhere, but we need to adapt to how people are buying products,” Frew says.

THE FUTURE Frew refers to the best part of her job as seeing people grow and develop within the company, and being richer for the experience.

“What I mean is that personally they’ve experienced growth, regardless of how long they’ve been in the business, and they have gained

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“Our EVP will evolve over time as our business strategy evolves – as it should – and we are committed to building on the strength of the Westfield culture” Janine Frew experience, new skills and knowledge. They have built strong relationships and friend­ships, and financially they’re better off too.

She adds that the Scentre Group has a bright future. “We have exciting growth prospects which will benefit our investors and provide wonderful opportunities for our people to develop and achieve their ambitions. It may sound cliché, but working with great people in a great business makes it a joy to come to work each day.”

AUGUST 2014 | 27

8/08/2014 9:45:53 AM

ORGANISATIONAL DESIGN / HR MODELS

Form follows function:

HR MODELS IN THE SPOTLIGHT In 2014, businesses face unique and unprecedented challenges. Has HR positioned itself in the most eďŹ&#x20AC;ective way to meet these challenges? Iain Hopkins weighs the pros and cons of the dominant Ulrich model and looks at possible alternatives

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

Organisational design is usually a strong calling card for senior HR professionals. In conjunction with other business leaders, it is often HR that designs and implements the structures within its organisation.

But what about its own backyard? How has HR structured itself in order to deliver its services to the business? And perhaps more importantly, are those structures working in today’s business world?

ULRICH DOMINATES According to The Next Step’s HR Viewpoint research paper from 2012, 53.9% of HR professionals in Australia and New Zealand work in the Ulrich model, and a significant 81% of HR professionals use that same model in companies of 1,000 plus employees.

Born in the late 1990s, the model that eventually adopted his surname came about when Dave Ulrich and his colleagues Wayne Brockbank and Jon Younger articulated how the modern HR organisation could be organised into shared services, centres of excellence (or expertise), and business partners.

It suited the evolving role of HR in business as the profession moved from transactional tasks to higher-end strategy.

“The Ulrich model probably does the best job of defining roles and responsibilities across those generalist areas and the specialist centres of excellence,” says David Guazzarotto, CEO, Future Knowledge.

Yet, as the word ‘model’ suggests, this is not set in stone. According to Ulrich himself, it was always

“If this function is about people & culture or about talent & development and those types of strategic goals, why don’t we call it that?”

David Guazzarotto intended that this model would evolve over time.

The Ulrich model has been criticised for looking fine in theory but being less effective in reality.

David Grant, director, The Next Step, likens it to the engine of a car: you can have components of it that are humming along well, but if all the interrelated parts are not working properly it can create problems. “In a lot of companies these models are not well embedded, and they are still relatively immature,” he says.

Indeed, Ulrich’s effectiveness depends on a few critical factors. Firstly, there is a challenge around convincing business divisions to utilise HR shared services, and a corresponding risk of ‘doubledipping’. “There’s a history of employees going to shared services, not getting the response or assistance they need, and then going to the business partner for the same response,” says Grant.

There’s also a secondary challenge around whether or not the business partners of old actually

THE CLASSIC ULRICH MODEL: WHO DOES WHAT? Business partners

Shared services

Centres of expertise

Establish relationships with customers – line/business units

Deliver HR services

Create HR frameworks

Contribute to business unit plans

Manage routine processes effectively and efficiently

Develop and introduce strategic HR initiatives

Develop organisational capabilities

Often using a single HRIS, intranets to provide basic information and call centres for specific queries

Specialised areas such as compensation and benefits, employee relations, L&D, talent management, OD, staffing, diversity, and workforce planning

Implement HR practices

May be outsourced

Often depend on the business partners to roll out programs to the business

Represent central HR

Back office

Log needs and coordinate HR services Front office Henley University of Reading: HR Models – Lessons from best practice, 2009

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ORGANISATIONAL DESIGN / HR MODELS

have the motivation and/or capability to be truly strategic business partners.

“Is their toolkit one that is aligned more to the day-to-day operational functions – compliance – or do they have the tools to play in that upstream space?” Grant says. “The feedback we’re hearing is there’s such a strong demand for business partners who are business savvy.”

Guazzarotto echoes this and says the accep­ tance, or otherwise, of HR business partners within business units comes down to perception.

He suggests this is a legacy of HR having a PR problem.

“I think HR is still grappling with operations teams who view HR as administrators. For example, they still see it as part of HR’s remit to change an employee’s personal details and handle those basic tasks. They are reluctant to take that on themselves and still see it as the primary role of HR. So part of this is continuing to educate the broader business and operations folk about the strategic value HR can bring.”

A further challenge is what Grant calls “the old argy-bargy” between the centres of excellence and the business partners. “Is the dog wagging the tail or the tail wagging the dog? Are business partners informing the centres of excellence on what their business needs are, and the centres then designing and delivering services accordingly, or are the centres of excellence saying, ‘Here’s the program for you to roll out across the business’?”

Consultation and communication between business partners and centres of excellence is obviously critical to this model working.

“The whole intent of the model is it achieves some economies of scale and productivity gains, while having as lean a centre as possible. Increasingly, a trend is having fewer initiatives and programs

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being designed in-house within individual business units or centres of excellence and instead leveraging third-party specialists,” Grant says.

“It potentially provides greater visibility, across the whole organisation, of what the requirements are, and then taking the opportunity to use off-theshelf programs and tailoring them to business units,” he adds.

If handled poorly, however, Grant warns that removing authority from business units can create friction and complaints about a loss of control, as well as grumbles of discontent about the new, poorly tailored solutions being delivered to them.

LOOKING AT THE MACRO PICTURE Before considering alternatives to Ulrich, it’s worthwhile placing HR service delivery in a wider context and establishing why change might not be a matter of choice. Demographic changes, advances in technology and the changing demands of business are all major considerations forcing the issue.

The main demographic issue is Workforce 2020.

This will see a multigenerational workforce in place over the next five to 10 years. Guazzarotto says this factor alone will impact on HR quite substantially.

“Being able to get beyond the transactional support and understand what’s driving the different types of workers, being able to look forward, to be future-oriented, rather than just looking to the present and the past, will be very important for HR,” he says.

It’s also important to note that, although retirement was delayed for many older workers following the GFC, the baby boomer exodus will soon pick up. In the US, for example, the average age of a CIO is 57. This means there will need to be

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a generational shift in senior leadership in the next decade or so. Again, HR has a critical role to play.

Increasingly, the CEO is looking to get the same level of trusted advice and support from their HRD as they would from their CFOs on the finance side of the business. To do that, those heads of HR need to be able to get away from just dealing with the operational elements.

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It’s telling that many of the world’s most successful HRDs (GE’s Bill Conaty; Mary Anne Elliott of Marsh) have worked in line operations – such as sales, services, or manufacturing – or in finance.

“CEOs are looking for support on things like: where will we get our talent from in the years to come, how will we address the shortages, and how

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THE ULRICH MODEL: ADDRESSING MAJOR ISSUES Issues

Action plan

Design and implementation » Start with the business. Design the model to follow the logic and structure of the business organisation.

Understanding its challenges will provide insight into what the models need to deliver. When the model connects to the business needs, it is more likely to work. » Differentiate between transactional and transformational HR work. A common mistake is to make administrative HR changes without addressing more strategic issues. » Evaluate your HR practices, processes and policies. Choose some real solutions, and work out exactly who will do what, where the hand-off points will be and how they will take place, not just for HR but also for the line.

Involvement

» Involve the business and all of HR in implementation. It is important that people are involved in any changes that take place, as imposed models have little chance of success. » Think through how the model can support the line. Explore who plays what role and what HR and line managers need to do. Communication to, and training of, line managers in their new roles is critical. » Ensure senior management are seen to be driving the changes. It shouldn’t be just an HR initiative or fad; it needs to be seen as a whole new way to deliver support services to add value in a cost-effective manner.

Leadership

» The quality of the HR leadership team’s dialogue and decision-making regarding what people are working on and how resources are used is integral to the model’s success. To make sure the right discussions happen, the heads of the CofE, the heads of the business partners, and the head of the shared service centre must be peers. » Joint hiring and talent discussions can also help create interdependence and a sense of a shared talent pool that all HR managers have accountability to develop.

Governance

» Creative and thoughtful governance is yet another way to knit the organisation together and ensure that the right perspectives are in the room to balance competing objectives and determine priorities.

In a complex organisation, the leadership team is not always the best vehicle for addressing all issues.

Councils and steering committees that involve second- and third-level managers are a way to govern such decisions as standards, commonality versus customisation, staffing of special project teams, allocation of scarce resources such as OD staff, and HR development and training. » Be very clear on the roles within HR. Ensure everyone is very clear as to their responsibilities. Wherever possible, ensure that it is the HR business partners that drive what is required within HR to meet the needs of the organisation, rather than the more central parts of HR.

Skills

» Be clear about the competencies needed and those you currently have in the HR team. Don’t simply switch job titles. Invest time in assessment so you have the right people in the right roles and then help them develop the right skills.

Reality

» Continually review the effectiveness of the model you have introduced. It is unlikely that you will get the model that suits you straight away. Making the necessary tweaks and changes as required will increase chances of long-term success. Include line managers in your reviews.

Henley University of Reading: HR Models – Lessons from best practice, 2009

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do we engage and retain younger workers who don’t really see themselves as being defined by working for one organisation? These are major strategic challenges that are driving the changes to HR and forcing them to operate more strategically,” he says.

There is also the productivity issue for all employees, including HR. “There’s no question that in the last few years, as productivity has become a focus across businesses, HR has been asked to review its headcount and make a contribution to that productivity. That has typically resulted in a review of HR operating models and a move to greater centralisation,” says Grant.

On the technology front, there is a growing appetite among employees and managers for direct access to self-serve systems. “There is increasing acceptance from middle managers that a big part of their remit is supporting their people and being aware of talent management challenges. They are also saying, ‘We need better tools; I want to be able to directly engage with providing feedback and developing my people and I don’t want to have to outsource that to someone internally’,” says Guazzarotto.

Indeed, the digital revolution is already having a major impact on HR. “Digital equals data, and workforce data will underpin commercial data to allow HR to move away from HR metrics of static post-event data, to measures that have commercial outcomes,” says Marc Havercroft, talent sales leader, Mercer. “This will be the first step towards managing the workforce as an asset. The principles applied to the other main commercial assets on a balance sheet can be used for the workforce,

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enabling better predictive commercial control of the workforce.”

Mercer refers to this as ‘long data’, but Havercroft warns that the real task is to take big data and ask the right questions of it. “Your workforce metrics and analytics are only as good as the questions and resulting data that generated them – otherwise, the metrics and analytics will only produce ‘data smog’,” he says.

Guazzarotto says it’s important to not put the cart before the horse. In other words, while technological change can be overwhelming, it should not be dictating the shape and structure of HR departments. “Too often we’ve led the change with the technology itself rather than looking at the operating models and how the people management functions in organisations can be more effectively handled. What’s tended to happen is the technology has pushed in as the driver of the change, and there’s naturally a lot of resistance.”

ALTERNATIVES So how else can HR deliver its services to the business? With HR transactional elements removed from the equation – or at least placed on the backburner – Guazzarotto suggests it’s time to tether HR back to what its lead function is. He notes a recent reluctance by some organisations to brand their HR teams as HR. “They are looking for better descriptors of what the function does,” he says. “They are starting to say, if this function is about people & culture or about talent & development and those types of strategic goals, why don’t we call it that? It ties back

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with that PR issue HR has with operations folk – they still perceive it as transactional.”

Companies are responding in a couple of ways.

One is to split HR in two and pare off that transactional piece and give it to finance as an adjunct to payroll and other shared services.

“That’s giving a signal to the organisation that what you thought of as HR doesn’t exist anymore.

We are now a people & culture function, which is focused on developing the next generation of leaders, on building a more agile organisation, and providing that deep level of support to the business at strategic level,” says Guazzarotto.

Another approach is to retain HR business partners but, instead of having them as generalists, make them more specialised. Where once business partners would sit in a business unit and be broadly responsible for connecting that unit with specialists when needed, there’s a move towards seeing a business partner as a specialist in recruitment, talent development, or engagement, and that business partner potentially then having direct responsibility for that piece across a whole organisation.

“That’s come with the benefit of now having that Ulrich-style model as the frame of reference, where it’s accepted you’ll have HR people sitting alongside you and dealing with issues hand in hand,” says Guazzarotto.

BECOMING AGILE Two au courant words right now are ‘agility’ and ‘disruption’. The two are interconnected: agility is a response to what has been called ‘the age of disruption’. It means there’s a growing need to be responsive, and to be able to adapt quickly to change.

‘Agile’ was born out of IT teams in the 1980s and

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90s. Inundated with projects, under-resourced, and under immense pressure to provide a return on significant financial outlay, it was quickly evident that a better way of doing business had to be developed.

There are synergies with HR’s current position.

In perhaps the clearest sign yet that the shift to centralisation is spreading, ‘agile’ models are now being deployed in HR departments. Centralised pools of generalists are being created to work on a ‘supply and demand’ model. Rather than being embedded within divisions, the HR generalist sits in a centralised pool. Each business division is required to put forward a business case to use these services: “We have this problem; we have X number of people impacted – can you help?” HR professionals are then assigned to manage the initiative. These might be assignments that would last several years if it was a major change or transformation; other assignments might only last a few months.

“We’re just starting to see the emergence of those structures in a couple of large-scale businesses,” says Grant. “It’s not just HR – it might be across a range of job families, like the finance division, for example. It’s moving more towards a professional services consultancy model built around utilisation.”

This agile model also matches changes in general org design, which is moving away from deep hierarchies towards flatter structures and more cross-team collaboration.

“The ability to form a team around an issue, who may come from different parts of the organisation or may be geographically dispersed, and then collaborating to resolve the issue and then disbanding again, is a large part of agile teaming,” says Guazzarotto.

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MOVING AT THE SPEED OF OPPORTUNITY Agile HR teams will consist of people with multiple skills that can be mobilised quickly to where assistance is needed. They will need to be highly connected and networked so they can deploy the right resources at the right place at the right time. They will have to move from a control mindset to a more collaborative mindset.

At a strategic level, Michael Morgan, CEO of agile specialists Herrmann International Asia, suggests that agile teams should: yyassemble and reassemble as and when needed yystay together only as long as required yymake clear, fast decisions and back them up with support and resources to get things done yyunderstand the value of difference that each person brings to the process/project yyobtain help when required – from freelancers, outsourcing and strategic partners yyfocus on process as much as outcomes and continually learn from what they do On a day-to-day basis, agile teams should: yy focus on process as much as outcomes yy continually review their performance yy understand the demands they are being placed under and respond appropriately yy move quickly, make decisions and analyse risk in real time yy anticipate future trends and have back-up plans

There are obvious benefits for HR teams operating in this model. The broad business exposure it provides to HR practitioners working in diverse business units provides valuable learning experi­ ences. However, it does pose an interesting question around succession. What will succession look like for people working in those models? How will performance management be impacted?

One response, Grant says, might be to put in place a business and/or HR manager wherever the piece of work needs to be done, to provide guidance and post-assignment reviews. That person would contribute to the practitioner’s performance review in terms of how they delivered against that assign­ ment. Secondly, HR practitioners might be assigned mentors to oversee their development.

“It requires moving away from hardline repor­ ting where your direct manager is doing your performance review annually, to several people contributing to your review in more of a matrixed way,” suggests Grant.

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“In a lot of companies these models are not well embedded and they are still relatively immature” David Grant HR also needs to address, both for themselves and for anyone else working in an agile team, the interpersonal and communication challenges associated with working ‘at distance’ from colleagues who may be geographically dispersed.

MAKING THE CHANGE For any HRD considering a shake-up of their model, there are some critical steps to take.

The need for speed in restructuring is often at the cost of robust consultation with employees, suggests Tanya Perry-Iranzadi, director, Company Restructure. “When employees are involved in shaping their destiny they feel empowered and engaged, not ‘done to’, which is too often the case.

The current restructuring practices of companies need to be challenged and the actual employment relations approach examined.”

Secondly, consider undertaking a test prior to implementation.

“Testing structures or models in a defined area of the business, and ironing out the bugs prior to organisation-wide implementation, makes sense and provides credibility to the implementation,” says Perry-Iranzadi. “Often multinationals use Australia as a testing ground for international changes due to our small, mature market. Selecting the right test area is the challenge. I’ve had success in choosing a manager or area that is pro the change and one that is against the change to ensure a range of dynamics are covered.”

Finally, the change initiative needs to be sold to the business. Employees and business leaders alike need to know what’s in it for them and for the future success of the business. People are tired of change for change’s sake.

“The role of the HRD is to channel thought leadership and authentically sell the initiative, which is way beyond an organisation announcement.

How good are you at selling? How convincing are you? Do you naturally come across as authentic and believable?” Perry-Iranzadi concludes.

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FROM REACTIVE TO PROACTIVE:

THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY OF TEAMS Is your team reactive instead of proactive? Is being ‘nimble’ a foreign concept? Do you fear the pace of change is overriding any hope of cut-through with your HR initiatives? Graham Winter suggests it might be time to rethink how your team aligns, collaborates and learns together

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While the majority of Australian organisations are talking about agility and adaptability, the leading edge are doing something about it and disrupting conventional HR thinking along the way.

Jamie McPhee, chief executive of ME Bank – one of the fast movers in the ultra-competitive banking industry – summed it up: “Our business model demands a nimble and collaborative culture, so we’ve created that but not with conventional HR thinking and tools. Things like performance reviews and team bonding just don’t develop the capabilities that we need to continually transform the business.

They are all about control and order, not about travelling on the edge and learning as you go.”

WHERE DOES HR FIT? Research for the book First Be Nimble highlighted five crucial practices that nimble organisations and teams infuse into their culture. And the good news for the HR profession is that each has a strong requirement for HR input, but not in the way that many organisations currently provide that service.

Capability #1 Team leaders co-create Most organisations are designed along functional lines; however, if you ask the leadership team of your business for the top 10 challenges it’s unlikely that any of those can be tackled in anything but a mediocre way without cross-boundary collaboration.

“It’s all about nimble, connected teams,” says McPhee, and to further emphasise the point, “we’ve given every team leader a One Team toolkit and mindset [see boxout] so they have the confidence, capability and empowerment to lead and connect

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their teams. For us, nimble teams mean that people proactively come together from any part of the business to collaborate on our big challenges.”

Lisa Evans, head of HR at Babcock International Group, knows the challenges of a fast growing international business and the benefits of team leaders who know how to lead and connect their teams: “Nimble and adaptive teams assist Babcock in distributing leadership by optimising the right talent mix and enforcing common goals,” she says.

ME Bank, Babcock and other fast movers are putting the spotlight on leadership at the team leader level because these are the people who drive (or block) the co-creation.

It means reinventing the team leader role from

THE ONE TEAM APPROACH Each of the organisations featured in this article have been using the Think One Team approach to develop the mindset, skills and behaviours needed by team leaders to foster a nimble and adaptive culture.

This model was originally developed in Australia and is now widely used because of its engagingly simple model and tools to guide everyone from CEO to frontline. It is based on five core principles: 1. Share the big picture (get above the agendas of the ‘experts in silos’) 2. Share the reality (open, robust conversations where people call it as it is) 3. Share the air (effective performance partnerships between functions) 4. Share the load (plan and prioritise the resource allocations collaboratively) 5. Share the wins and losses (infuse a debrief-learn-adapt cycle) Think One Team focuses on accessible and shared tools for team leaders to use in three core activities:  Aligning their team (within and with other teams)  Collaborating on problems and opportunities  Learning on-the-run

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If there is one thing that is holding back Australian organisations it is the inability of leaders to make the tough call on priorities. People are dashing around at speed but not in a clever way technical expert to genuine leader, coach and facilitator, and through new technologies in blended learning it’s happening fast.

Capability #2 Build to flex Few Australian companies can say they operate a farm in the Adelaide Hills and international retail outlets on the great shopping strips of the world.

One that can is cosmetics manufacturer Jurlique International. A key to their year-on-year growth has been the development of a culture that enables the operations of the business to flex in line with customer demand and new product innovation.

Jon Westover, managing director of Jurlique Global Operations, observed: “We needed to be more agile and responsive and we’ve done that, and

THE ADVANTAGES OF BEING NIMBLE Lisa Evans, head of HR at Babcock International Group, shares her experiences with the One Team approach.

Q

What advantages do nimble and adaptive teams bring to your business?

A

At Babcock we believe that adaptive teams assist the organisation in distributing leadership by optimising the right talent mix and enforcing common goals. They also assist in developing a mutual trust that enables members to openly diverge their views in a trusted environment.

Q

What is HR’s role in helping to develop this capability?

A

HR is involved in developing the organisational capability and culture, aligned to the vision, values and long term strategic objectives. It focuses on the development of people and the implementation of various people, performance & culture strategies which gear the company for future growth and employment stability.

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achieved amazing results through using One Team tools, rather than just traditional team building. Our people and culture team has played a major role by bringing capabilities such as collaborative problem solving and more robust conversations into the business.”

Capability #3 Be brave not busy If there is one thing that is holding back Australian organisations it is the inability of leaders to make the tough call on priorities. People are dashing around at speed but not in a clever way.

Nimble businesses think more about acceleration than speed. They focus on their ‘sweet spot’ and then co-create with other people to get the leverage and acceleration they need to produce great results.

Ron Steiner, group executive customer and public relations for Maxxia, notes: “We regularly bring our HR clients together to discuss trends and issues. One of the often-heard concerns is too much busyness and not enough sharp focus on what’s really important. That’s a learning we’ve applied in our own business and a great reminder that fast and nimble are quite different concepts.”

Capability #4 Leap, learn and adapt Does your business have an ‘approach success’ or an ‘avoid failure’ culture?

Performance psychology research shows that leaders and teams who are willing to fail in order to succeed actually achieve more.

Nothing is more important to being nimble and adaptive than this capability, so use the opportunity to push the boundaries and to learn. This is why leading companies like Bendigo and Adelaide Bank see it as mission critical to create a ‘safe to fail’ culture.

Mark Schultz, head of people and performance, explains: “Agility and adaptability for me are cultural challenges, and HR’s role is to work with the leadership of a business to develop and reward inquisitive behaviours, together with celebrating successful failures. I don’t mean popping champagne corks but celebrating the learning rather than lamenting what went wrong.”

My own experience aligns strongly with this view, which can be seen in the rapid changes in culture and performance when leaders are trained through deliberate practice programs to facilitate real, powerful performance debriefs. The advances in

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blended learning are also playing a key part here.

The 70-20-10 rules of training are finally being addressed through real tools and deliberate practice.

HR has a major role to play here in creating an operating rhythm of relentless and intensive performance management processes and debriefing.

Capability #5 Let go: Welcome the squirm Every one of the previous four capabilities places a level of ‘squirm’ on people to go beyond what feels comfortable and familiar.

‘Co-create’ challenges traditional notions of status and independence, while ‘Build to flex’ runs contrary to the long held management doctrines of control and structure.

‘Be brave, not busy’ and ‘Leap, learn and adapt’ will test even the strongest leaders and teams to be open to visibly failing.

As Schultz stresses, “To drive this openness, HR needs to back up development and reward programs with a multi layered communications strategy that builds the stories and symbols that ultimately change culture.”

Evans highlights how the development of unity amongst senior leaders in Babcock plays such an important role in creating a culture where people discuss and debate even the most difficult of issues.

“The whole process of developing nimble and adaptive teams assists in developing a mutual trust that enables members to openly diverge their views in a trusted environment,” she says.

Trust and nimble are peas in the same pod, which is why generating a One Team ethos is so important to creating the environment in which nimble teams align, collaborate and learn together.

SUMMARY The need for agility and adaptability has never been greater, and HR can be the pivotal player in helping the organisation to define what that really means, and in developing the capabilities.

As an observation from 25 years of consulting across many different organisations, the HR function is usually a good role model for co-creation and building to flex.

On the other hand, rarely does HR take the lead in challenging the business to ‘be brave, not busy’ or to ‘let go and welcome the squirm’.

It takes courage but also a different mindset and range of tools and practices to make that happen.

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Graham Winter is executive director of Think One Team International and author of bestsellers Think One Team and First Be Nimble.

Contact Graham for information on certification in the Think One Team methodology at thinkoneteam.com

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DIVERSITY / FEMALE LEADERSHIP

WORK-LIFE BALANCE INTEGRATION The issue of gender inequality in all ranks of the corporate world continues to haunt most organisations, but strides are being made. Jill Gregorie talks to two global HR leaders about the practical steps their organisations are taking to groom female leaders 40 | AUGUST 2014

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They say that acknowledgement of a problem is the first step towards forming a solution. If that’s true, the ongoing issue of gender inequality starts with acknowledging the simple fact that, despite strides made by the likes of Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, there are still staggering gender disparities in the corporate world.

While it’s a challenging and daunting issue with no easy fixes, two globally acknowledged ‘best employers’, Bain & Company and Sodexo, are tackling the issue head on. Both companies are keen to share the key steps they’ve taken on their journey.

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1. IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM Julie Coffman, a partner at Bain & Company with over two decades of management consulting experience, says the company started paying attention to gender inequality about a decade ago.

“We started paying attention to the fact that we were not having as much success in retaining women through the manager and into the partnership ranks,” she says.

Bain commenced a benchmarking process to identify whether the problem was inherent to their company or something that existed industrywide. The company discovered that not only were gender disparities prevalent among its peer institutions, but the issue actually resembled “a global corporate problem”.

This realisation led to the development of Bain’s Global Women’s Leadership Council (GWLC). Coffman is now chair of the council, and is heavily involved in all gender equality initiatives at the company.

The GWLC consists of 8-10 women partners and there are also three regional operating committees run by these managing directors.

Bain’s chief talent officer oversees all efforts at a global level.

Coffman describes GWLC’s goal: “Our role is to oversee the dialogues, initiatives, programs and metrics to try to generate a higher proportion of women on our leadership team, and as quickly as we can.”

Similarly, food service and facility management provider Sodexo, home to 430,000 employees in over 35,000 locations worldwide, has also recognised a shortage of women in its leadership positions. Dr Rohini Anand, senior vice president and chief diversity officer, set out to make the workforce more representative of the population at large.

“We want to have 25% of our top 300 leadership positions filled by women by 2020,” says Anand.

“We have a vision that it should be 50:50, but we’ll start with 25% in top leadership roles.”

Sodexo has focused on four key areas of gender promotion, including leadership development, allowance of flexible work arrangements that “employees don’t have to cite a reason for requesting”, a commitment to gender neutral HR processes, and leadership pledges to gender balance.

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“Work-life balance seems to suggest there are still boundaries. It’s like a scale, and one has to outweigh the other at certain times of the day or they have to always be in competition” Julie Coffman similar to Bain’s called SWIFt, or Sodexo Women’s International Forum for Talent.

Both of these cultural mandates are making sweeping reforms in their respective organisations, and their businesses are better for it.

2. RECOGNISE THAT FLEXIBILITY IS THE KEY Bain also takes a multifaceted approach to building female leadership capacity – but Coffman acknowledges that the essential ingredient with any gender equality initiative is flexibility. As she has written in Forbes, although women make up 50% of the American workforce, they only hold 3% of chief executive positions in Fortune 500 organisations.

Coffman does not use the term ‘work-life balance’. As a leading advocate of gender parity among executive levels of leadership, she prefers to think of a professional regime constituting ‘work-life integration’.

“Work-life balance seems to suggest there are still boundaries. It’s like a scale, and one has to outweigh the other at certain times of the day or they have to always be in competition.”

Instead of working a straight 9-5, Coffman explains a typical day: “I’m just as likely to leave my office at 3:30pm to go to one of my kid’s baseball games, get on a conference call at 5pm while I’m driving back, and then do email from 9-10:30pm to make up for whatever I missed.”

Bain has introduced “new mum groups” that include online resources and blogs where women can ask such questions ranging from ‘How do you travel with a breast pump?’ to ‘How do I pick a nanny with the right flexibility for me?’

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“We have networking groups where membership is open to anyone; in fact, at least 43% of attendees are men” Dr Rohini Anand In addition, Bain makes a big effort to help women reintegrate back into the office after maternity leave. The company speaks to each employee prior to her return to discuss how much she wishes to travel, and also how she can best pursue her passions and interests.

“If you had asked me three years ago, I might have thought that we should ease women back in and they should come back doing non-client facing work or maybe an internal assignment to get their feet under them and then integrate them back into client-facing work three, six or nine months later. I’ve evolved my own thinking on that and so has the firm. It’s still very individual but I think that one of the best things for women is to remember why they had the job before, or why they liked it, or why it energised them.”

Coffman points out that if women come back to oversimplified job tasks, they could feel disempowered and choose to remain in a domestic role.

“And if we bring them back to too much of a different role or a soft pedalled thing, that choice of leaving the home and not being at home with the child is harder to make – especially if it’s going to be a job that they don’t feel is having much of an impact or if they’re not learning or developing their skillset. So I do think that it’s important to not overly coddle women as they’re coming back.”

Coffman is upfront in saying that Bain &

Company does not do this “because we’re nice people, or because it’s the politically correct thing to do”. Instead, she says the company does it because it recognises that it will advance the business. “If folks don’t start from that point, the rest of it falls apart really quickly. There are always other priorities that will trump it.”

3. LATTICE TRUMPS LADDER Coffman debunks the idea of a career ladder in favour of a lattice – the cross-diagonal fence typically used to support vertically growing plants.

She says that instead of viewing career path as “up or out”, or a mutually exclusive choice between climbing to more senior ranks or falling off a career trajectory, organisations should offer career paths that allow employees to exercise different roles and move sideways as well as vertically.

At Bain there are numerous examples: parttime and full-time; client-facing rotational roles; time off; transfers; and externships, whereby an employee can work outside the Bain environment in another company for a period.

“There’s a variety of things that you can do, to piece together a career that is still moving you towards manager, partner, client facing, and up to the more senior levels of our firm, but I could show you 12 women and 12 very different 10-year pathways. I believe that’s important, and frankly I think this is getting just as important for men,” she says.

Coffman adds that the notion of a career lattice or a set of pathways that can work for advancement is more appealing to a lot of Bain’s current workers than a more rigid structured path. “It’s more appealing than saying, ‘here’s three years in one role, five years in another, two transfers and P&L role. Good luck. Hope it works for the rest of your life’.”

“What do you think is the biggest barrier to career progression/leadership roles for women in Australia?” (prioritised 1-5)

75%

of Australians agree work-life struggle

1

16%

2

of Australians agree lack of qualifications & experience

16%

3

of Australians agree lack of ambition

12%

4

of Australians agree there are no barriers

7%

5

of Australians agree men perform leadership roles better

66% 83% 16% 16% 19% 13% 16% 9% 9% men women men women men women men women men

6% women

Source: ‘The Australian Pulse of Women in Leadership’ by Megan Dalla-Camina and Michelle McQuaid, May 2014: positiveleaders.com.au

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

4. FORMALISE SPONSORSHIP PROGRAMS

5. MEASURE SUCCESS ON ALL FRONTS

A theme that both Coffman and Anand reiterate is that these initiatives do not preclude men from joining in anti-discriminatory efforts or benefiting from their outcomes.

“We have networking groups where membership is open to anyone; in fact, at least 43% of attendees are men,” says Anand.

“We’ve developed courses, including one called I.D. ME, which helps participants learn how to express your brand within the organisation, how to promote yourself, and how to position yourself for advancement.”

One of Bain’s major undertakings involves removing what Sylvia Hewlett, economist and president of Center for Work-Life Policy, calls the ‘Sponsor Effect’. According to this principle, women are far less likely to seek a ‘sponsor’ or professional mentor who is willing to guide them through the informal processes of promotion.

“We wanted to formalise a sponsorship program,” Coffman says. “Each of our women who have achieved the level of manager and above – and we’re cascading it to more junior levels as well – will go through a process, asking ‘who is a more senior person, who I think is truly a sponsor of my work and who might be willing to co-brand their reputation with mine to help me get ahead?’ At the same time, we ask the senior folks, ‘who are you willing to sponsor?’ And we have a matching process.”

Underpinning the sponsorship program is the belief that there will be someone in the firm to go to when there is a challenge or an issue.

“Most of our sponsors, by the way, are men – our partner group is still majority male,” says Coffman.

“I’m not trying to match women managers with women sponsors – it happens occasionally but it’s more helping our male leaders feel equipped to take the women under their wing and sponsor them in a way that they can get to their full potential.”

Anand has found that her company’s gender equality efforts have had a real, meaningful and measurable impact on women in the company.

“The results have been really positive. We currently have women comprising 23% of top management positions, which is up from 16% in 2007,” says Anand. “We’ve definitely made progress. Forty-two per cent of our company’s global executive committee are women – I don’t know of many other companies that can say that.”

In addition, these progressive gender-based reforms have been beneficial for the firm’s bottom line.

“In entities with gender balance management, we’ve actually found higher rates of engagement.

There was a four percentage point difference between the entities with gender management and those without,” she says.

“We’ve also found that retention in those entities was higher than those without gender balance management, and it benefited our brand image because clients viewed the brand better.”

“Women have the same career opportunities as men”

47%

of Australians agree

60%

of Australian men agree

35%

of Australian women agree

WIN-WIN When asked whether she “has it all”, Coffman suggests it may seem that way, but only when viewed from an outside perspective and over a long period of time.

“I’ve been a mum now for almost 15 years, and I think it’s working really well. Would I say that for every three-month period in those 15 years? Absolutely not.

“Part of it is thinking of it as a journey and a long haul thing. I took a six-month sabbatical three years ago and that was a huge rejuvenator for me. It made me appreciate what I have. I’m just thankful that Bain has allowed me to flex my time and help me create the illusion that I have it all.”

Source: ‘The Australian Pulse of Women in Leadership’ by Megan Dalla-Camina and Michelle McQuaid, May 2014: positiveleaders.com.au

“What do women need to be more successful in their careers?” (prioritised 1-5)

56%

1

of Australians agree women need more flexibility

39%

2

of Australians agree women need more opportunities

36%

3

33%

4

24%

5

of Australians agree women of Australians agree women of Australians agree women need more help at home need more support from men need targets and quotas to ensure they get offered roles

51% 61% 34% 44% 33% 38% 28% 37% 23% 25% men women men women men women men women men women Source: ‘The Australian Pulse of Women in Leadership’ by Megan Dalla-Camina and Michelle McQuaid, May 2014: positiveleaders.com.au

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INTERNATIONAL PROFILE / CORNING

THE FUTURE IS CLEAR AS GLASS

Jill Gregorie goes behind the scenes of glass production in the ‘crystal city’, where global behemoth Corning produces products used in the manufacturing of everything from the Hubble Space Telescope to the humble smartphone Corning is such a small city in the Southern Tier region of New York State that the last US census pegged its population at just over 11,000 residents.

Yet this municipality, nicknamed ‘Crystal City’, is home to Corning Incorporated, a Fortune 500 company that produces glass for more than 1.5 billion smartphones and tablets, and produces optical, wireless technologies and connectivity solutions for high-speed communications networks; trusted products that accelerate drug discovery; and emission control products for vehicles. It has also manufactured materials for US Space Shuttle windows, and the Hubble Space Telescope.

Christine ‘Christy’ Pambianchi, Corning’s senior vice president of HR, has been with the company for 14 years, and has experienced many of the highs and lows that come with managing the staff of a

firm subject to volatile and sometimes unpredictable market fluctuations.

She explains that Corning was originally founded more than 160 years ago by the Houghton family, and innovation has been central to the company’s success since then. Some of its notable accomplishments include the production of Thomas Edison’s light-bulb encasements, the invention of the first low-loss, viable optical fibre, and development of ceramic substrates used in catalytic converters that removed smog from the US atmosphere in the 1970s.

“Our business model is one where we’re making big investments in material science programs. We actually invent materials, so we’re hiring mostly engineers and scientists who are experts in their fields,” Pambianchi says. “As a company, we take a very long view of how we use those assets and how

THE HISTORY OF CORNING: A TIMELINE OF INNOVATION

1851

1868

1879

Wood and coal trader Amory Houghton Snr purchases Cate & Phillip, which later becomes Bay State Glass and the Union Glass Works. These two small companies lead to the purchase of Brooklyn Flint Glass Works in Brooklyn, NY

The company moves to Corning, NY, and changes its name to assimilate with the community.

Management decides to focus on items for railroads, as well as scientific and industrial glassware

Corning develops the glass encasement used for Thomas Edison’s lamps

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1915 During World War I, Corning debuts PYREX as an alternative to German-owned Duran

1926 Corning starts making the glass bulbs used in cathode ray tubes, one of the uses of which is experimental TV sets

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

we use talent in the company. We talk to people about their careers being marathons, not sprints.”

ASIAN EXPANSION Of the 34,000 workers that Corning employs worldwide, about 23,000 are located outside of the US. Given the nature of Corning’s production processes, it’s imperative that they have units and staff around the world, close to their purchasers.

“We tend to locate our operations based on where our customers are. We typically manufacture a material that then goes into somebody else’s system,” Pambianchi explains. “For example, the ceramic substrate we make goes into a catalytic converter that is used in an automotive company’s car.”

Although Corning invented a system of liquid crystal display glass prior to the turn of the century, it wasn’t until about 2004 that “it really began to take off, and you saw the mass institution of LCD television screens”. As a result of this upsurge in demand, Corning had to develop a number of facilities in the Asia region to support the panel makers and television manufacturers.

Entering a new region can present an extensive set of challenges, but Pambianchi says keeping her company’s values at the forefront of every initiative helped maintain a cohesive workforce and provided new employees with direction and guidance.

“First you have to begin to build awareness of who your company even is in the country,” Pambianchi says. “We did some branding efforts, particularly in Taiwan back in the 2004–5 timeframe when we were building out there. The way we’ve tried to approach the market is to have the right branding, the right presence with universities, and we sell

1961 Corning manufactures heat-resistant windows for NASA’s Mercury spacecraft.

Corning has also produced windows for Gemini, Apollo, and other manned space vehicles

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1970 Three Corning scientists develop the first fibre optic cable with the capacity to transmit information over long distances without sacrificing signal strength

our story: we’re a values-driven company with a 160-year-old history and commitment to technology and innovation, and we want people to work for us for their whole careers.”

She refers to such endeavours as the China Leadership Development Program, the Regional Emerging Leaders Program, as well as involvement of senior leadership in the region – Pambianchi herself spends about eight weeks a year travelling to 45 factories worldwide – as having a large effect on workers’ professional mindsets.

“What we find, particularly in Asia, is that it’s very, very appealing to folks. And that’s contrary to what you read and hear in a lot of articles.

“Given the high growth, most MNCs in Taiwan or China have 14–25% turnover. We have 7%.”

DEVELOPING TALENT, GROWING LEADERS One of the successes from Corning’s European operations, on which Pambianchi modelled many of her directives in Asia, was the development of leaders to run businesses in their home countries.

“As we were building our business in Asia, we sent in a number of expatriates to build out the organisation and lead the businesses that we had there, but we wanted to accelerate the readiness of having local talent available to run the operations, whether it be plant managers, commercial leaders, and eventually general managers in the region.”

This led Pambianchi’s team to create the China Leadership Development Program and the display business’s Regional Emerging Leaders Program, which consist of a one-year initiative aiming to target high-potential individuals and groom them for eventual leadership positions within the company.

2007 Steve Jobs chooses Corning’s Gorilla Glass to serve as the protective barrier on the iPhone

2010 Corning produces the glass for 20% of the world’s mobile handsets

2013 Forbes reports that Corning glass covers 1.5 billion smartphones and tablets worldwide

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INTERNATIONAL PROFILE / CORNING

“Typically the cohort has anywhere between 20 and 25 candidates in it, and we do a combination of three things: first, there’s in-depth, 360-degree feedback for the individual, so they come into the program with a high level of self-awareness,” says Pambianchi.

“Plus, the 360 comes with a specific, individual coach that’s going to work with the candidate throughout the year of the program.”

After this precursory self-discovery period, employees are assigned a case study or project that reflects an existing problem in the business world.

“It’s not a fictitious, made-up case study; it’s a real business problem, or two, depending on the size of the class, that they’re actually working on solving,” Pambianchi explains.

Finally, this hands-on training is complemented by approximately three weeks of classroom training, featuring outside lecturers, business experts, and discussion with senior executives.

“And after they graduate the program, we obviously track their careers very closely and monitor the movement of their jobs so that we can be planning and putting them in the roles that are going to make sure they achieve the level of leadership we want them to obtain in the region.”

In addition to these region-specific initiatives, employees at Corning have access to a digital tool called ‘My Development’, which allows them to see their role profiles, view suggested career paths, and outline a plan to reach each goal.

MANAGING A CRISIS

CORNING AT A GLANCE »»34,000 employees

worldwide »»HQ in Corning, NY »»Ranked 236 on Fortune 500 »»US$8bn in revenues in 2013 »»Four major business areas:

- Display technologies - Environmental technologies - Life sciences - Telecommunications

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A trying time for Pambianchi, and Corning as a whole, was the market crash that followed the internet and telecom bubble of 1999–2000. This collapse had a marked effect on Corning, which had to deal with the repercussions of a sudden decline in the demand for fibre optic cables. According to USA Today, stocks dropped from $113 a share in 2000 to a mere $1.10 in October 2002.

Pambianchi describes this period, when Corning had to lay off approximately 22,000 employees – half its workforce – as “the most difficult thing I ever had to manage in my 24-year career in HR”.

Very few companies could have survived the blows Corning endured, but Pambianchi and other leaders made it clear they were going to persevere by way of transparency and open communication.

“Every time there was an industry issue, we would get in front of the workforce and tell them, ‘This company just cancelled all their orders and went out

of business; this number of telecommunication companies just went bankrupt, etc.; and as a result we’re going to have to take this much capacity offline or take these very difficult actions’.”

The HR team, in addition to providing as much advance notice of tough decisions as possible, also made sure to provide both departing and remaining employees with as many services as they could.

In addition to aligning severance pay and separation benefits with market forces and the communities in which it operated, Corning also offered extensive career support services, including counselling, résumé workshops, and training.

Moreover, they created a physical job placement centre to help transition departing staff into new positions.

“We took our entire talent acquisition staff and turned them into the outplacement team, and they worked there for two years with all the employees, many of whom they had helped hire. They then worked to help place them with other companies,” Pambianchi says.

While these actions helped mitigate tension between supervisors and those who were leaving, they also proved beneficial to employees who remained at the company but may have struggled with that fortune. Pambianchi calls this feeling “survivor guilt”.

She describes the feeling: “I’m the employee who didn’t get let go, but I just lost three of my closest colleagues, and I know what’s happening to their families – I know they have to sell their house and move, or take their kids out of school. So for the employees who are left, they’re pretty distraught, and sometimes they get overlooked.”

PREDICTING TALENT GAPS IN AN UNPREDICTABLE MARKET Even though many technical-based firms need to innovate to survive, Corning faces a unique challenge as glass products can be easily commoditised and replicated. This requires Pambianchi to think several steps ahead to identify what talent will be needed to make products and materials that may not exist or are yet to be invented.

She has several strategies for remaining ahead of her competitors.

“Internally, we have forums to manage that – like our Growth Execution Council – and I participate as a leader on that council. I’m always aware of what programs are coming down the pipe,” Pambianchi says.

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

“If there’s a bad management situation, or a compromise to values, or any other issue going on, one of the roles in the company that I expect to be flagging that is the HR community” Christy Pambianchi She also notes that it’s important to have field HR leaders in each technical community to monitor developments in every part of the company, to ensure they know what’s happening with each product.

Pambianchi says that most of the time, if the committee does identify a skills gap, Corning will train and educate workers to compensate for the missing talent. Sometimes, though, there isn’t enough time. She points to the recently deployed ONE Wireless Platform as an example.

“We realised RF technology was going to need to be a key element of that, and we didn’t have any radio frequency expertise in-house. That’s a niche area; there was no way we could try to build or grow a capability in that overnight, so we acquired a company named Mobile Access to basically buy their technical expertise in RF technology. We then embedded them in our optical communications and solutions business, and that’s been a great success.”

THE COURAGEOUS LEADER In her talks and interviews on HR leadership, Pambianchi frequently espouses the virtue of courage. She says bravery helps HR managers balance what should be their three main objectives: helping allocate talent; navigating processes and systems; and monitoring the company’s mood and sentiment.

In addition to these responsibilities, however, she also recognises that, in the post-Enron era, HR leaders need to make sure their organisation is ethically and culturally sound.

“If there’s a bad management situation, or a compromise to values, or any other issue going on, one of the roles in the company that I expect to be flagging that is the HR community.”

As she reminds others in her field: “It takes one rogue employee to bring down an enterprise.”

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LEADERSHIP / SEAL TRAINING

Y A W E E H T F TH L

A E S

Comparisons between the corporate world and the life and death situations faced by elite military units may seem tenuous â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but there are fundamentals common to both.

Who better to coach leadership and human performance than an ex-Navy SEAL? 48 | AUGUST 2014

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After a brief career as a CPA for the ďŹ rm that is now PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mark Divine left the corporate world to follow his dream of becoming a Navy SEAL officer. At 26 he graduated as honourman of his SEAL BUD/s (basic underwater demolition school) class 170. He retired as a Commander in 2011 and embarked on his entrepreneurial career, founding a number of courses for business leaders and athletes alike, tapping into his expertise in human performance, mental toughness, leadership and physical readiness. Here, he answers questions about how business leaders can tap into the training and knowledge used by SEALS to better lead their own teams.

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

HRD: How do SEALs commanders gain loyalty and respect from their troops and how can this be translated to the business world?

Mark Divine: SEALs must lead the most dangerous and complex special operations missions in the world. To succeed they must gain the loyalty and respect of their team. This trust starts as SEAL leaders endure the exact same training as their troops. They must perform side by side with the troops, meeting the same physical and mental toughness standards, while exceeding the academic standards.

Assuming the SEAL officer makes it through the arduous 45 weeks of training (and little more than 20% of all SEAL trainees do) then they have proven to their troops that they can walk their talk. This gives them the initial bank account of professional respect. They build upon this respect and further develop the trust and loyalty of their team by continuing to lead from the front during their careers.

Business leaders can use this same approach by getting their hands dirty and by being willing to do everything they ask of their teams. They can show that they are willing to prove their mettle against the standards and share in the bonding experience.

In this manner, respect and loyalty are earned every day in the trenches rather than conveyed by the privilege and power of the position.

“Business leaders can gain respect by getting their hands dirty and by being willing to do everything they ask of their teams. In this manner, respect and loyalty are earned every day in the trenches rather than conveyed by the privilege and power of the position” HRD: I imagine being a SEAL requires a degree of conformity (to be able to constantly obey orders etc). How do you know when to conform and when to be unconventional? Does the ability to choose wisely come from training or intuition/natural ability?

MD: Unconventional methods and conformity are not mutually exclusive. SEALs follow orders but those orders allow for flexibility of thought and action uncommon in other military units (including other special ops units). This way of thinking is trained starting in BUD/s and continues at the team level. The freedom allowed for field level decisions requires that SEALs develop deep intuition to guide their decision-making. Deep

HRD: In your experience, can anyone be a leader?

MD: No, not everyone can be a leader. The most important element of leadership is character. The character to lead is a combination of natural and acquired talent. Natural talents associated with leadership include the ability to accept unusual risk, and a burning desire to learn and grow.

Assuming one has the natural talent to lead, then competence is developed through a willingness to embark upon a daily effort to master the many skills required to lead well: communication, trustworthiness, consensus building, visioning, planning, as well as the tactical skills and knowledge of one’s particular domain of leading. Not everyone is willing to work that hard to be an exceptional leader, which is why it is rare to see it in action.

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Mark Divine (back, centre) with fellow Navy SEALs on active duty

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LEADERSHIP / SEAL TRAINING

Participants at the SEALFIT 50-hour Kokoro Camp

intuition is acquired through repetition and mastery of the requisite skills so that they are done with an unconscious competence. In addition, the level of risk and intensity of the missions that SEALs take on deepens intuition naturally.

to focus on one thing at a time, and do it with excellence. The key to this skill is to learn what things are the right things to focus on. This is the essence of my Front Sight Focus concepts that I teach in my book The Way of the SEAL.

HRD: How can business leaders conquer their fears in business situations, just like SEALs do?

MD: Fear is nothing to fear. SEALs learn that fear

HRD: How do SEALs deal with conflict in the ranks? And can this translate to the business world?

MD: Though conflict can be uncomfortable it is not

can be managed and be used as a focusing energy.

On the other hand, the absence of fear can indicate burn out and lead to hasty decisions that negatively impact mission success (or worse, your life).

Business leaders can learn to control fear and use it to their advantage. They must lean into things they fear and learn from it. The more one takes bold action with those things they fear most, the more they are able to transmute the fear energy into determined, focused action.

Mark Divine is the founder and CEO of SEALFIT and NavySEALs.com, and creator of Unbeatable Mind. After working with thousands of special ops candidates and professionals developing mental toughness, Mark self-published his first book Unbeatable Mind in 2011 and launched the at-home study program unbeatablemind.com. He is also the author of the WSJ bestseller The Way of the SEAL, published by Readers Digest, and the NYT bestseller 8 Weeks to SEALFIT, published by St. Martins Press.

HRD: You’ve previously talked about Front Site Focus, where a SEAL must engage one target at a time. Yet in the business world there is an emphasis on multi-tasking. What’s your view on multi-tasking... is it productive or not?

MD: It is ok to multi-task when conducting simple tasks that one can train to do without much cognitive energy. A healthy example of this includes walking on a treadmill while talking on the phone. However, the way multi-tasking is done in the business world leads to many mistakes and misunderstandings. For instance, holding an important phone call and checking email at the same time will lead to both being done poorly.

So I am not a fan of multi-tasking and believe that we can only do one thing at a time with excellence. Major performance and productivity gains are found when a business leader can learn

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necessarily bad – it is an opportunity to grow and learn. Conflict is feedback that a system is in need of upgrade, or that a person or persons do not share the same view of reality. In both cases it provides an opportunity to come out of the situation stronger and wiser. In the SEALs, conflict is dealt with head on, and immediately. It is not done through secretive back channel communications. Rather, it is dealt with directly, immediately and all team members are expected to have the emotional resilience to deal with the feedback even if it’s about a personal failure.

Perpetual growth accrues to those who constantly challenge their own beliefs and the systems they operate within, by accepting their own limitations and stepping up to make positive changes.

HRD: If business leaders reading this were to choose between honing their minds or their bodies for business success, which should they choose?

MD: Both. When you hone your body you are developing mental control, focus and resilience.

Training your mind without training your body is like tuning your car’s engine daily while letting the body rust and decay. Eventually the mind will be destroyed by the failing body. My students in my online study program, Unbeatable Mind, tell me

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

“Fear is nothing to fear. Business leaders must lean into things they fear and learn from it. The more one takes bold action with those things they fear most, the more they are able to transmute the fear energy into determined, focused action” that they are operating at a much higher level of effectiveness as they train their body, mind and spirit in an integrated fashion.

HRD: How do you think clearly when things go wrong?

MD: By controlling your breathing and then learning to focus your mind under pressure. These are advanced skills learned

by SEALs in training and which I teach in the Unbeatable Mind program. I refer to the core skills for this level of thinking “the big four of mental toughness”.

HRD: When is the risk worth the reward?

MD: A risk is worth the reward when you have trained for victory so that you see it happen in your mind clearly and convincingly before you execute the mission. To achieve this level of confident execution you must train relentlessly at a level of risk near or equal to the risk involved in what you seek to achieve. The chances for success must be high or else you are gambling and the project should be avoided if possible. SEALs train relentlessly for mission success and are able to take on projects with a risk level inconceivable to most. They succeed because their level of competence meets the level of challenge.

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IN PERSON / MARY BASSON

IN PERSON:

MARY BASSON

With attractions including Madame Tussauds, The Sydney Tower, Falls Creek and Underwater World Mooloolaba under its belt, Mary Basson, HR director at Merlin Entertainments Group ANZ, knows how to have fun at work. She chats to HRD about employer brands, corporate volunteering and how to manage a contingent workforce 52 | AUGUST 2014

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

HR Director: How did you first enter the HR profession?

Mary Basson: I did an undergrad placement as an HR assistant in the police service and have loved HR ever since!

HRD: Can you outline how many employees are employed by the company in Aust/NZ? MB: During peak times we have up to 1,800 employees across our 13 attractions. By their very nature many of our businesses welcome a high proportion of tourists and visitors to the cities and the coast, or are seasonal like our two ski fields. So we have a high proportion of seasonal, casual and fixed-term workers.

HRD: What are your top tips for better managing this contingent workforce?

MB: Approaching workforce planning in a proactive way and challenging the status quo is essential to get the right mix. By truly understanding the individual attraction needs and visitor patterns we can suggest where more flexible staffing options could work better from an operational and cost perspective.

Once you’re there, clear and consistent communication with current, potential and alumni employees helps to keep a flexible talent pool at your fingertips.

HRD: Merlin has made corporate volunteering a priority. What do you offer?

MB: We’ve created two different but complementary licensed charitable organisations which operate in our various markets around the world including here in ANZ. These are Merlin’s Magic Wand, which looks both to bring sick and disadvantaged children to our attractions as our guests, and also increasingly to take the Merlin ‘magic’ out to those children who are too sick to visit us through the creation of special play facilities. The second is the SEA LIFE Trust, which raises funding and campaigns for marine conservation projects across the globe. It’s a hugely valuable initiative for our teams and is a tangible commitment to these great causes. We give each permanent employee two paid volunteer days each year to support these passions.

We know many of our employees work for us because of their love for conservation and the community so we wanted to find a way of enabling them to follow these values.

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HRD: Some of the attractions under the Merlin umbrella look like fun places to visit. How do you make work ‘fun’?

MB: Memorable experiences are at the heart of everything we do and this applies just as much to our team as it does to our guests. ‘We make it fun’ is one of our core values and it’s an easy one to show when you work around sharks, celebrities and baby wombats all day! Whether you’re entertaining a school group or helping someone face their fears with a 10m high zipline, you’d struggle not to have fun working here.

HRD: What’s the biggest HR-related challenge you are currently facing, and how are you addressing that?

MB: Merlin Entertainments is the world’s second biggest visitor attraction operator to Disney. We have 104 attractions globally, with new ones opening every year, as well as hotels. But for all that, Merlin is still a relatively new business across Australia and New Zealand so communicating the unique opportunities offered by such a dynamic and fast growing business, and building and promoting a compelling employer brand, is key to attracting the right talent.

HRD: What’s been your best experience in HR? MB: My role within education in the UK allowed me to lead the development of the HR team from a noncredible out-of-touch function to being invited to present our performance-related pay frameworks to a national forum of my peers. That felt pretty special and recognised the immense distance travelled over a four-year period.

HRD: And your worst?

MB: Taking a service-centre style ER role in a public sector environment made me realise just how much I needed to be a partner to the business. Being miles away from the business and its people was probably my worst HR experience, but at least it taught me what I loved!

HRD: What has been the most useful piece of advice you’ve received in your life?

MB: If you’re not part of the solution then you’re part

MARY BASSON CAREER TIMELINE Qualifications 1999–2002

University of Lincoln BA (Hons), Human Resource Management

Work history 2000–2001

Hampshire Constabulary Human resources assistant

2003–2005

De Vere Hotels Human resources advisor

2005–2006

Hampshire County Council Human resources advisor

2006–2012

Highbury College, Portsmouth Head of human resources

2012–2013

Ipsos, Sydney, Australia HR specialist

2013–Present

Merlin Entertainments HR director – ANZ Midway

of the problem. It’s a cliché but so true, especially when you’re dealing with driving cultural change and role modelling behaviours.

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LAST WORD / GENERATIONS AT WORK

THE LAST WORD

Talking about

my generation

With all the fuss over generational differences and the supposed ‘science’ to back this up, Gary Taylor fears we may be building HR foundations on sand An entire industry has developed around the theory that the younger generation of employees has a fundamentally different outlook towards work and the world at large compared to the older generation who are generally managing them. But…what if they are wrong?

I must admit that I was taken with the early articles and inevitable seminars from management consultants unveiling the latest truths about Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y and then (when the industry knew it would run out of letters), the Millennials. The conference presentations by selfappointed generational ‘experts’ were hilarious, and it is easy to recognise yourself as fitting into one of the boxes, because the definitions are carefully crafted to be non-judgmental.

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HR ON SHAKY GROUND The concept seems to make such common sense, and we have all known about the Generation Gap, even in granny’s time, so it must be true. However, when HR departments are building strategies based on this premise, we had better be sure that we are not ‘building on sand’, because now we are shaping remuneration, career development and all kinds of human capital structures on the assumption that this is ‘science’. Our marketing colleagues have learned to be very careful not to segment markets as glibly as they did in the amateur years, so are we in HR quite sure about the validity of generational segmentation?

I have no problem with consultants making money out of new metaphors, but if all the ‘research’ is anecdotal, rather than the result of validated scientific study, there should be a healthy dose of skepticism from the HR fraternity before we start changing our management strategies based on a faulty premise.

Strategic HR with board representation, remember?

SHOW US YOUR RESEARCH Specifically, my academic colleagues point out that the ‘generation theory’ violates the central principle underpinning demographic studies like these – namely to distinguish ‘age effects’ from true ‘cohort’ or ‘generational’ effects. If your research methodology is

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

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LAST WORD / GENERATIONS AT WORK

Gary Taylor is an HR director who has worked for Australian, South African and British multinationals on two continents, including the Middle East. He is registered as a Master HR Practitioner with the South African Board for People Practice, and served as the vice president for the Institute of People Management

a bit rusty, this is what we mean: Today’s 20 year olds seem pretty self-centered, right? Now, is this because they are part of a new ‘me’ generation (which is the ‘cohort’ effect), or is it simply because all young people at 20 are self-centred (the ‘age’ effect)? Perhaps this is because the big responsibilities of adult life are not yet pressing on their shoulders. So, does this characteristic describe the Millennial generation, or would your parents and grandparents admit that this is also how they were as a naïve 20 year old?

And here is why this distinction should matter for HR practitioners: if these differences, which seem so obvious now, are actually the result of age effects, they will pass. Today’s 20 year olds will grow up to be 30 and 40 and 50 year olds, as they acquire the characteristics of each life stage along the way, which will then change the way they behave, and possibly even their values.

However, if our smart HR people are branding people born in a particular decade as Generation Y for life, and managing them in that way throughout their careers, they could be making terribly misinformed (and actually out-of-touch) decisions in a few years.

A CASE IN POINT...

Think of how the global financial boom of the early 2000s affected young people. They could afford to take risks, opt out of retirement funding and flout job security. With the GFC of 2008, a lot of this changed, and that same ‘generation’ has learned painful lessons about debt, job-hopping and other realities. This no doubt caused the smart consultants to change a few of their generational PowerPoint slides promptly! The generation itself hasn’t changed, just the circumstances. But, managing them the same now as then would be naïve.

At the same time, I am not saying that the 30 year olds of 2014 behave exactly the same as 30 year olds did 50 years ago. The evolution of technology alone makes those comparisons impossible. However, there must be caution taken when assuming that popular theories can put people into convenient boxes. We have seen numerous ‘quadrant’ training programs over the years, compartmentalising people into one of four boxes, based on shady ‘science’, which is dangerous and sometimes even harmful.

A WESTERN CONSTRUCT Finally, these generation theories are almost exclusively Western in their culture stereotyping, with no clue as to how young Chinese, Chilean or Chechnyan workers fit into these categories.

Nevertheless, there is fair reason to follow some of the serious researchers who have embarked on studies of workers now, compared to those from earlier periods, to see if there are really any cohort effects.

Now that is something I want to read before implementing generation-based programs.

Just to confuse us all, one such study Generational Difference in Work Values by Twenge, Campbell, et al surveyed school leavers in 1976, 1991 and again in 2006. Interestingly, they found school leavers of 2006 to be less interested in meaningful work than in money, which confounds popular generational theory.

Yet, they also found this group to be more interested in work-life balance than the previous two generations, which does fit in with the generationalists.

Moral of the story? ‘Human Sciences’ is an oxymoron.

Gary Taylor Gary Taylor

FIVE GENERATIONS, FIVE DIFFERENT WORK STYLES

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