Human Resources Director 13.06

THE LEADERSHIP ISSUE 2015 WHEN THINGS GO WRONG CEO succession in focus

HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR HCAMAG.COM ISSUE 13.6

WHO’S GOT THE RIGHT STUFF? Manager-to-leader transitions ONE-ON-ONE Trevor Clayton, CEO, Nestlé Oceania

WHERE TO NEXT? HOW HR IS STEERING GM HOLDEN'S MASSIVE TRANSFORMATION

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EDITORIAL www.hcamag.com JUNE 2015 EDITORIAL

SALES & MARKETING

Editor Iain Hopkins

Marketing & Communications Manager Lisa Narroway

Journalist Chloe Taylor Production Editors Roslyn Meredith Carolin Wun

ART & PRODUCTION

Business Development Managers James Francis Steven McDonald Gareth Scott

CORPORATE

Design Manager Daniel Williams

Chief Executive Officer Mike Shipley

Designer Marla Morelos

Chief Operating Officer George Walmsley

Traffic Coordinator Lou Gonzales

Managing Director Justin Kennedy Chief Information Officer Colin Chan Human Resources Manager Julia Bookallil

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Human Resources Director is part of an international family of B2B publications and websites for the human resources industry HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR MAGAZINE CANADA iain.hopkins@keymedia.com.au T +61 2 8437 4703

Generation next AS HUMAN beings we like to put people or groups of people into neat boxes. So it is with generational stereotypes. We’ve all read plenty about millennials (those born 1981–1997) before: They are used to being told they are good all the time from a young age. They are not ready for real-world setbacks. All they want is instant gratification. They lack loyalty. The list goes on.

While there may be some truth to some of these stereotypes, a millennial is in fact a digital version of what 20-year-olds have been like since the industrial revolution.

In other words, they are not all that different to previous generations.

Yet they do have different expectations of both their employers and those who lead those organisations. They also expect to be developed in new ways. For one thing, they learn through experience. The ‘PlayStation generation’ has been granted that moniker for a reason. They grew up playing a lot of video games without using instructions. They learned to make it to the next levels of these games by dying over and over again. They can be like that in their professional careers too. They throw themselves into new experiences without a lot of planning, and learn by failing.

They will have non-linear career trajectories and they know it. A lot

The stereotype of a millennial is a digital version of what 20-year-olds have been like since the industrial revolution of them will go back and forth between traditional employment and entrepreneurship.

They also expect boundaries and roles to be more fluid and permeable.

While the business leaders of today may struggle with this notion, especially if the idea of taking one step at a time up a corporate ladder is jettisoned, by not submitting to antiquated hierarchical structures millennials can think creatively and find business opportunities where others might not imagine there are any.

Importantly, they are also the leaders of the future. By 2025, millennials will represent 75% of the workforce. Leaders today are less confident of their own ability to connect with this generation, with only 54% feeling they are ‘highly effective’ at leading across generations.

Bridging this capability – and expectation – gap will be critical for HR and other business leaders now and in the future.

Iain Hopkins, editor

HRD SINGAPORE hrdmag.com.sg HC AUSTRALIA ONLINE hcamag.com HRM NEW ZEALAND hrmonline.co.nz Copyright is reserved throughout. No part of this publication can be reproduced in whole or part without the express permission of the editor. Contributions are invited, but copies of work should be kept, as HRD Magazine can accept no responsibility for loss

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Correction HRD Magazine would like to correct an error that occurred in the table on page 7 of HRD13.5 (‘CSR scorecard’).

Sportsgirl’s grade for ‘slavery/labour rights’ shown in the table should have been B, and for ‘living wage guarantee’ a green P, for ‘partial’. HRD apologises for the error.

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JUNE 2015

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CONTENTS

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UPFRONT 01 Editorial

How can today’s leaders better connect with millennials – the future of the workplace?

04 Things you should know

The latest research on leadership development FEATURES

EARNING YOUR RIGHT TO LEAD

There are three straightforward steps required to ensure you earn the ‘right to lead’ in Australia

10 COVER STORY

AN AUSTRALIAN ICON REMODELLED

As GM Holden transitions from a manufacturing company to a national sales company, Chloe Taylor chats to its HR director about how the iconic brand is remodelling for the future

FEATURES

38

BIG, BETTER, BEST?

Adam Hall explains why, when it comes to employee data, more is not necessarily better

FEATURES

14

FUTURE LEADERS: WHO HAS THE RIGHT STUFF? Making the leap from manager to leader has always been challenging, but what will the leaders of tomorrow be up against, and how can employers groom them for an uncertain future?

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IA TRAL AUS

06 News analysis

There are countless ways that CEO succession can fail. What is best practice in 2015, and how can HR assist?

PEOPLE IN PERSON HRD chats to Donna Price, general manager people & culture at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Club

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N

FEATURES

56 Head to head

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AUSTRALIAN HR AWARDS

Find out who the finalists are in the 2015 HR Awards

How important is your graduate or apprentice program to bringing fresh talent into your organisation?

HCAMAG.COM CHECK IT OUT ONLINE

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JUNE 2015

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW

The leadership development roadmap In the latest research from DDI/The Conference Board, leaders globally have responded to key questions which will shape the path to their organisation’s success

WHAT’S KEEPING CEOS UP AT NIGHT? (% of leaders who are very prepared to meet top CEO challenges) 26% Innovation 27% Human capital 33% Operational excellence 45% Customer relationships

ARE LEADERS READY TO DELIVER?

25% of HR professionals view their organisation’s leaders as high quality 40% of leaders say the overall quality of their organisation’s leadership is high 15% of organisations have a strong bench 46% of critical positions can be filled immediately by internal candidates

WHO DO LEADERS SAY IS NOT INVOLVED ENOUGH IN THEIR DEVELOPMENT? 48% HR 46% Senior management 33% Manager 22% Employees

WHAT ARE THEY STRUGGLING WITH? (% of leaders considering themselves highly effective)

HOW DO THEY IMPROVE? Leadership development methods most effective (according to leaders) 70% Developmental assignments 60% Formal workshops, training courses, seminars 52% Coaching you receive from your current manager 43% Coaching you receive from external coaches/mentors 40% Coaching you receive from internal coaches/mentors (other than your manager)

34% Leading across countries and cultures 39% Inter-cultural communication within international business environments 45% Integrating oneself into inter-cultural or foreign environments 54% Leading across generations 56% Fostering employee creativity and innovation candidates

Source: The Global Leadership Forecast 2014/15, DDI and The Conference Board – data based on responses from 13,124 leaders and 1,528 HR professionals

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UPFRONT

CEO SUCCESSION

Aiming for the top spot It’s one of the more critical factors for ensuring business sustainability, yet there are countless ways that CEO succession can fail. What is best practice in 2015, and how can HR assist?

RECENT AUSTRALIAN corporate history is littered with both good and bad examples of CEO succession. Of the former, the transition from Gail Kelly to Brian Hartzer as Westpac’s CEO was lauded as being seamless. However, at the other end of the spectrum, the unexpected departure of Myer’s Bernie Brookes shook investor confidence.

While CEO succession is undeniably one of the most important processes an organisation can go through, it can potentially be a minefield.

Just doing business?

While the reasons for CEO succession failure are many and varied, Geoff Campbell, managing principal at executive mentoring experts the Adelante Group, suggests there are three primary risk factors to be wary of.

1. Delays in starting the development of the key candidates: Commonly, CEO successors have already been promoted beyond the middle management leadership programs, into an area where there is nothing significant happening for their further development. The work involved in the succession ‘process’ often actually delays the start of the real work to get the successors ready. “It is important to start the active development program early to give internal candidates

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an opportunity and the time to improve on any capability gaps, which inevitably they all have,” suggests Campbell.

2. Not being open, direct and transparent with internal candidates.

The board should have a process for regular direct interaction with internal successor candidates. Relying too much on the CEO and their perspective is high risk.

Candidates should have clear feedback on development areas and be encouraged to be the best executive they can be. “We suggest annual discussion between one or two board members and each candidate, so that issues can be addressed, with more frequent feedback as the succession date nears,” says Campbell. “Skip-level meetings are common at other levels, but like development programs, they often disappear for those in the C-Suite.”

3. Lack of clarity about who is responsible to ensure development of internal successors – so little actually happens. “Our view is the board must ensure it happens, and be directly involved in the process of developing the candidate pool,” Campbell says.

It is perhaps point three above which is most critical. The board generally relies

on the CEO and his/her team to get things done on a regular basis, so that when it comes to CEO succession, some boards rely on the current CEO or HRD to manage the process. “We see examples of directors assuming candidates are being developed and getting clear development feedback, but in reality, candidates have been promoted beyond these normal company processes,” Campbell says.

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and want to see ‘their’ business continue to develop in good hands after they leave, and hence they care about who replaces them, other CEOs are less interested – perhaps holding the opinion that no one is good enough to replace them.

Hence there’s a perception from many that it’s easier to leave it alone or work on just the frameworks and process, suggests Campbell, who adds that in his experience, it should be a board responsibility, usually through the Nom & Rem committee, with the HR executive playing a key role.

A better process What is best practice for CEO succession in 2015?

There are several key steps to follow:

There can also be a temptation to ‘walk on eggshells’ when it comes to CEO succession.

People are loathe to upset the incumbent CEO, candidates tend to think they are ready now, and the board fears their involvement will indicate lack of confidence in the CEO. As for direct CEO involvement in choosing and grooming their successor, this too has some pitfalls. While many great CEOs spend quality time in developing good successors

1. Make sure the board is very clear that it is their responsibility to ensure they are developing their internal candidates as an ongoing process. This is a very different mindset to treating CEO succession as an event.

2. Develop an annual process of direct board and candidate interaction to ensure candidate aspirations are understood and development areas clarified for the candidates to work on.

3. Separate the successor development program from current CEO timing. Make development of C-Suite executives part of the norm (with succession just one benefit) – that is, ‘it’s the way we do things around here’.

4. Keep the focus on encouraging candidates to be the best that they can be, rather than focusing on winning the CEO race. Combined with a fair and transparent process, this helps with retention for the unsuccessful candidates.

5. Allow time for the successor candidates to make behavioural changes and to develop further, with supporting input if possible.

6. Ensure that the process is fair and proactive. Use separate service providers for development, assessment

FROM THE FRONTLINE Ahmed Fahour, managing director and group CEO, Australia Post, talks CEO sucession Q: You’ve been on many sides of the CEO succession process. What have you observed?

A: I’ve seen CEO succession from five different angles and each feels different. The one thing that is consistent, however, is how important CEO succession is. The CEO role is critical – because of its links to the board, to shareholders, the community, and to employees – so it’s a big deal when the CEO changes.

Q: Where does most of the risk lie?

A: I would worry about a board that has had little experience in doing CEO succession. It can make or break a company, and there are so many criteria for selection. Appointing a CEO is probably the most important thing a board will do, and the chairman takes the lead on the process.

Other risk factors relate to how the team reacts, either during the process or when the outcome is known and the unsuccessful internal candidate leaves. I think the highest risk factor is that the process becomes a distraction for the senior executive team. If it is taking a long time and people are jockeying and positioning for the role, that is disruptive to the orderly running of the company.

Q: What role, if any, do you think the incumbent CEO should have in a planned succession process?

A: Departing CEOs need to be listened to very carefully because they want nothing other than success for the company. If companies fail when they leave, that reflects badly on them.

The departing CEO is one voice, and although he or she is definitely not the decision maker, it’s an important voice nonetheless. Any chairman who doesn’t listen will do so at their peril.

Source: A selection taken from the Korn Ferry Institute’s research paper, ‘The risky business of CEO succession’. For the full report visit: kornferryinstitute.com/reports-insights/risky-business-ceo-succession

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UPFRONT

CEO SUCCESSION CEO SUCCESSION RISK FACTORS Commencing before agreeing strategy

72%

Starting too late

66%

CEO involvement

35% 28%

Unsuccessful internal candidates leave Choices made without professional advice

24% 21% 21%

Distracted senior executive team Lack of coordination of the Chairman’s succession Considering only external candidates

17% 14% 14%

Board has little succession experience Lack of clarity between emergency and planned 10% 3% 3%

Considering only internal candidates Successors who aren’t ready HR not involved 0%

Intervention of investors

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Source: Korn Ferry Institute: The risky business of CEO succession – cumulative responses from 29 people, among them 12 chairmen, 12 NEDs, 3 current CEOs, 1 investor, 1 journalist

and search so that there are no perceived conflicts of interest favouring internals versus externals.

Developing the next in line It’s ironic that in many companies, direct reports to the CEO often have less performance feedback and development programs than more junior leaders.

However, they still need development programs to enable them to grow as leaders.

Campbell likens it to elite athletes who get more intensive coaching as they compete at higher levels.

“Our experience is that the more progressive companies identify their potential CEO successors and then seek ways to help them develop key capabilities and improve their shortcomings, often by providing them with a mentor to work with. This, in our experience, really helps individuals to broaden their thinking, get and respond to feedback, and hone their behaviours and style. They perform better and are more prepared for the next step,” he says.

HR does have a critical role to play in CEO succession, although Campbell concedes

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it’s unusual for HR to drive the process by themselves. “We see this is a board-driven process, using the Nom & Rem committee, with whom the HRD works,” he says. “The HR leader can play a key role ensuring the board knows what is/is not happening to develop successors, and by offering options the board can request action on.”

board will decide they need a different type of individual because the strategy they’re going to follow for the next few years is going to be different to previous years – and they may need someone from outside the organisation with the relevant experience.

However, this comes back to having a bigger pool of candidates in Australia. “If all

“The HR leader can play a key role ensuring the board knows what is/is not happening to develop successors” Geoff Campbell A broader perspective Evidence from Adelante Group suggests that external candidates have twice the failure rate, shorter tenures and deliver just half the shareholder returns of internal candidates. The firm strongly supports the development of internal candidates, which also means they perform better in the roles that they have today.

Peter Boyden, principal at Adelante Group, says that in some instances, the

companies are taking this more holistic development approach, they might have created someone who can go and become a CEO in another organisation.

“The critical thing is, if we get this program working across enough organisations, and we do create this pool, then everyone benefits. It’s about increasing the quality of as many people as we can in the C-Suite so that we’ve got good senior teams,” Boyden says.

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Fundamentally, experts like Campbell suggest there needs to be a subtle shift from succession being seen as a process to being engrained in ‘how things are done’, with a particular emphasis on the ‘action phase’, or concentrating on successor development.

“That has to happen, especially given that internal candidates have known development areas – much more so than you know about with external candidates – but there are several steps in the process,” he says. “The gaps need to be identified, they have to be actively worked on, and then the board needs to be convinced that the gaps have been addressed. That’s quite a long process, which companies must be aware of.”

FIVE DO’S AND DON’TS FOR A SMOOTH CEO SUCCESSION Don’t

Do

…dust off the old CEO’s job description. It contains attributes that were required in the past that may not be relevant in the future.

…start with a blank page and discuss the experiences and attributes a leader will need to drive the future strategy.

…allow discussions about succession planning between the chairman and the CEO to be confused with discussions on tenure.

…have conversations on succession planning early and frequently in a CEO’s tenure.

…have a CEO and chairman depart at the same time.

…stagger their retirements at least 12 months apart.

…be caught out by an unplanned CEO succession.

…have a ‘safe pair of hands’ identified who can take over in an emergency.

…underestimate the impact of a CEO’s departure on an executive team.

…communicate frequently and respectfully to internal candidates and their C-level colleagues.

Source: Korn Ferry Institute’s research paper, ‘The risky business of CEO succession

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PROFILE

ASHLEY WINNETT

AN AUSTRALIAN ICON REMODELLED As GM Holden transitions from a manufacturing company to a national sales company, Chloe Taylor chats to its HR director about how the iconic brand is remodelling for the future GM HOLDEN is one of the nation’s most treasured brands, dating back to 1856 when the company was established as a saddlery business in South Australia.

Headquartered in Port Melbourne, Victoria, Holden Vehicle Operations currently produces 45 vehicle models. For the Australian market, this includes the iconic Commodore range. In 2013, Holden continued to vie for the top spot in the Aussie market when it commenced production of the most advanced car ever built in Australia: the VF Commodore.

And it certainly paid off – in 2014, the Holden Commodore was recorded by drive.com.au as the fifth bestselling car model in Australia, while Holden itself was the second biggest manufacturer.

Holden’s success hasn’t been limited to Australia. Since 2003, Holden has had a global plant in Victoria, from which engines are exported to South Korea, China and

DID YOU KNOW? The 1960s was the peak of manufacturing in Australia, when a quarter of the workforce was employed in the sector. Today, just under 10% of total Australian employment hails from the sector.

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Mexico for a number of GM brands. Holden is also one of GM’s nine global design centres responsible for a range of vehicles and global concept cars for several GM brands.

Of course, maintaining such a huge presence in the national market has required the efforts of a large workforce – one consisting of approximately 3,000 people.

Driving change However, there was trouble brewing. At the end of December 2013, Holden announced

manufacturing operation. According to Holden, economic factors have been detrimental to the local vehicle manufacturing industry.

Among these negative influences were the strength of the Australian dollar, the high cost of production, the relatively small domestic market and the extremity of the market’s competitiveness.

It is clear that these influences are having an effect industry-wide – Toyota is also due to cease operations in its Victorian

“You have to be respectful of the past, mindful of the present and aim for the future” Ashley Winnett that it would be transitioning from a production and manufacturing company to a national sales company and full-line importer in Australia and New Zealand. This transition is set to be completed by the end of 2017, when vehicle and engine manufacturing will be discontinued and engineering operations will be significantly reduced.

A combination of factors influenced Holden’s decision to scale back its

manufacturing plant by 2017, while Ford will be closing its plant in Victoria next year. The withdrawal sparked national debate about the future of manufacturing in Australia.

Although Holden has vowed to maintain its significant presence in Australia beyond 2017, the strategic change has obviously come at the cost of conducting a huge workforce overhaul; namely, the loss of jobs for manufacturers and engineers.

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PROFILE Name: Ashley Winnett Company: GM Holden Title: Executive director, human resources Years in the industry: Five Previous roles: - HRD for GM Holden’s manufacturing plants - A member of the National Employee Industrial Relations Council’s legal team - Partner at Norton Rose law firm in the IR and diversity space

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PROFILE

ASHLEY WINNETT ECONOMIC MODELLING: ONE PROPOSITION BY THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRY RESEARCH National impact of GM shutting down production in Australia (projected job losses) 15,280

NSW

23,850

VIC

8,284

QLD

11,688

SA

3,967

WA

TAS

916 349

NT

ACT

1,022

TOTAL 65,357 jobs

As many as 65,000 workers could lose their jobs and up to $4bn could be lost from the economy as a result of GM pulling the plug on Holden manufacturing in Australia, under one scenario put forward by economic modellers. The modelling, from the National Institute for Economic and Industry Research, includes estimated job losses at companies within the GM supply chain and the flow-through effects of the change on spending by all the workers involved. It assumes that the GM closure will be offset by growth in other sectors, but does not consider what benefits would have arisen from the redirection of government subsidies, or what it would take to keep GM manufacturing in Australia.

Research: Edmund Tadros | Graphic: Les Hewitt

“While our business model will change significantly, we and our dealers will remain an integral part of communities across Australia and New Zealand, and will remain an important employer both directly and through our dealers,” the company says.

This is easier said than done – Holden estimates that it will cut 2,900 jobs by 2017.

One study, commissioned by researchers at the University of Adelaide, estimated that the number of job cuts could actually reach 65,400 within the GM supply chain.

Change management at GM Holden “We look at change management from our employees’ perspectives,” Ashley Winnett, executive director of human resources at GM Holden tells HRD. “We’re currently on a threeand-half-year journey to achieve a big change.

Our people are at the front and centre of that.”

GM Holden’s leaders are keeping employees involved in the change through “reaction, interaction, and internal and external communications”.

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Primarily, though, this is achieved through the company’s leadership behaviours: transparency, honesty, timeliness and empathy.

According to Winnett, it’s especially critical for the change at GM Holden to succeed, as the company is an iconic brand, a brand many Australians have an emotional connection with. He tells HRD that there are three key aspects to managing this particular change.

“You have to be respectful of the past, mindful of the present and aim for the future,” he says. “There are three different messages ongoing simultaneously.”

Avoiding communicative siloes “Talk often and avoid layers,” Winnett advises.

“By this, I mean don’t get all of your feedback from direct reports. Real power comes from cutting through all levels of the organisation; you need to establish a deep understanding of what you’re trying to do and why.”

He elaborates: “You can’t manage a business that’s undergoing significant change

from a tower. Leaders have to be out there pounding the floor.”

At GM Holden, leaders put in extra time on the shopfloor when they are travelling across a site to stop and have conversations with employees.

HR has to play a key role in change management in order for it to be a success, Winnett says.

“You can be the canary in the mine, but one of the key learnings for me is that if you’re going to implement change, making no decision – even if it’s well intentioned – is far worse than making a quicker decision.

“With the benefit of hindsight, I would always go with a quick and purposeful decision that’s mindful of people’s emotions over a slow and tortured one, which I personally think does more damage,” he adds.

A long-term commitment to the workforce When asked about the most challenging projects he’s worked on in his role, Winnett refers to several examples, including changes where employees were asked to reduce their wages by 25%, and another where staff members were asked to undergo a shift in their enterprise agreements.

“All of those were technically challenging, but the one task I think has been the most challenging has been the emotional task of guiding a group of leaders from their current state to becoming a national sales company,” he says. “We have passionate, prideful people who do amazing things every day because they love their product and customers. Taking them on this three-year journey has probably been the most challenging thing.”

But Winnett does not credit his own skills for the successes of GM Holden’s change initiatives; rather, he sings the praises of his staff.

“Our people are amazing,” he adds. “They are resilient and genuinely care for each other. The best car and engine we will ever build will be the last car and last engine we ever build, and that speaks to the skill and professionalism of our people – they are truly remarkable.”

Holden acknowledges that the transition phase has been challenging for its staff –

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See Ashley Winnett talk about change management and becoming a change leader at HR Summit Melbourne, 29-30 July. More details at hcamag.com/hr-summit-melbourne/

particularly those employed in its manufacturing and engineering sectors.

“We know this decision is extremely disappointing to our teams in South Australia and Victoria,” Holden states on its website.

“We will be working with our teams, unions and the local communities, along with the federal and state governments, to support our people.”

Support is being provided to employees through meetings with employees, both local and federal governments, unions and suppliers to develop transition plans for employees affected by the change.

Preparing for change Fortunately for Winnett, he has had ample experience to prepare him to deal with change.

Prior to commencing his HR career, Winnett worked as a lawyer specialising in IR, giving him an insight into tricky

employer/employee relations. This career background, perhaps, is the reasoning behind Winnett’s unconventional view that HR is the only profession that doesn’t know what its purpose is.

“Lawyers don’t talk about law’s purpose, doctors don’t talk about the purpose of medicine, and salespeople don’t need to discuss the need for sales,” he says.

“HR professionals have a need to talk about the value of their work – but only the HR professionals who never have that conversation with their customers – and vice versa – are the ones that do remarkably well.”

“It’s one of those very odd challenges for our profession,” he continues.

It was a passion for people development that ultimately led Winnett to GM Holden, where he took a role working in-house.

“I worked closely with my customer, and enjoyed getting involved with leadership

development,” he says when discussing how he ended up in his current role.

“I enjoy this profession as it can actually be very business focused,” Winnett adds. “If you understand how people play a core role in the success of the business, it can be an extremely rewarding career path where you can make a real difference to the bottom line.”

He says that early on in his HR career, when he “inherited the team”, he was advised to ensure that they were present at the executive table. “I was lucky in that I had a business that values HR, leadership development and the contribution of its employees.”

Winnett has worked to maintain his organisation’s ongoing human capital objectives.

“The business wanted our HR people front and centre in the operations side of the organisation – and that’s where they are today.”

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LEADERSHIP

FUTURE LEADERS

FUTURE LEADERS: WHO HAS THE RIGHT STUFF? Making the leap from manager to leader has always been challenging, but what will the leaders of tomorrow be up against, and how can employers groom them for an uncertain future?

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or ‘very confident’ in their ability to meet the four VUCA challenges. The result for Australian leaders was in line with their global counterparts.

To succeed, leaders of today and tomorrow will need a diverse mix of soft skills and technical business skills. In Development Beyond Learning’s latest book, The Leader’s Edge, these skills are summarised under the acronym, SMART: ITUATIONAL UNDERSTANDING. A leader begins by assessing where they are as an organisation and then where they need to move to in three main areas: people, purpose and performance.

“It’s understanding the current situation and where you personally fit into that, and how the rest of your team sits in relation to those elements,” explains Gary Lear, chairman and co-founder, L &D consultants Development Beyond Learning (DBL).

S

OTIVATING. “With all the challenges

M that are placed on a leader’s head, one

of the most important factors is the ability to motivate themselves and then motivating others to create a high performing team,” Lear explains.

DVANCING GOALS. “Taking a business forwards is not just about behavioural leadership but how you set a great strategy. Setting a great strategy and vision is important for the organisation, and advancing goals is based on that strategy and vision,” says Lear.

A

LEADERS TODAY are faced with challenges that have not been witnessed before, and these challenges will only escalate in the next 10-20 years.

Leadership consultants DDI groups these challenges into four key categories: VUCA. • Volatility – anticipating and reacting to the nature and speed of change • Uncertainty – acting decisively without 100% clear direction and certainty • Complexity – navigating through complexity, chaos, and confusion • Ambiguity – maintaining effectiveness despite constant surprises and a lack of predictability.

Less than two-thirds of leaders around the globe said they were either ‘highly confident’

R

EVIEWING ACTIONS. “The leader must be able to place things in context in their organisation and within their global focus. They must then be able to move people

and their people structures forwards to adapt to any upcoming changes,” says Lear.

T

RACKING PROGRESS. “This means consistently reviewing your own leadership and your organisation’s progress,” says Lear. “One of the biggest problems we get into is almost like a treadmill of doing the same thing every day and expecting a different result. Leaders need to start looking at tracking progress so they can bring about change quickly within their organisation.”

Are we prepared?

If these external challenges are daunting, it’s nothing compared to what organisations are up against internally. Over the last five years, Lear has seen a contraction of focus on leadership development within organisations.

This, he notes, is a ripple effect of the GFC, which focused most CEOs on the bottom line rather than people development.

“The challenge we’ve got right now is getting the CEO’s eyes off the bottom line and onto their people. One of the problems is they don’t realise that their people are their organisation. They are creating a leadership capability gap which is going to be hard to fill,” he says.

Part of the problem is a failure to map out explicit career opportunities and paths to upcoming leaders. In the past, individuals could enter an organisation and comfortably spend the next 20 years working their way through a relatively static and defined career path. In today’s VUCA world, this doesn’t work.

Organisations are constantly changing and reshaping their structures. This can make it challenging to map out well-defined career paths over a long period of time.

PREPARING FOR VUCA CHALLENGES Percentage of HR professionals who report that leaders are incapable of meeting the challenges of…

40%

32%

36%

31%

Volatility

Uncertainty

Complexity

Ambiguity

Source: The Global Leadership Forecast, 2014/15, DDI/The Conference Board

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LEADERSHIP

FUTURE LEADERS However, research shows that career paths remain important and contribute to employee engagement and retention. So what can organisations and leaders do to manage this need in a very different business context?

Dan Musson, chief executive of the Australian Institute of Management, suggests some of this comes down to changes to organisational hierarchies. Where once there were deep hierarchical structures, with a career path seemingly for each individual, this no longer applies in 2015. At the same time, career development has been handed over to the individuals themselves to manage.

“Managers are out of practice in looking for and developing the capability within their company. They’re focused on their job and developing future leaders is kind of a secondary thing, or an HR thing,” he says.

This concept of the ‘free agent’ has taken flight amongst younger workers. Employees are free to move between companies and industries, and they have capabilities that extend across multiple areas. Yet this does not mean employers can take a hands-off stance.

Employees still need clarity or direction, even in a flat organisation. “You can’t just say, ‘let us know what development you want to do and we’ll let you know if we’ll fund it’, ” Musson

PREFERRED TRAINING/ DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR MILLENNIALS Working with strong coaches and mentors 28% Changes/rotations of role to gain experience

“Programs need to be directed by the CEO and assisted by the HR director – because the HRD often has a broader perspective of the potential within the organisation than the CEO” Gary Lear says. “That’s too ad-hoc. People get lost in that.

They will understand that lateral movements are just as valuable as moves up the hierarchy because there are fewer opportunities upwards – but they need a very deliberate direction.”

He suggests that managers must take an active role, either as a mentor or coach. “That has to be part of the leader’s job now. How much am I spending developing capability as part of my day?” he says.

“One of the first things leaders can do is to ensure that individuals (right across the leadership pipeline) have development plans in place,” suggests Mark Busine, managing director, DDI. “In the absence of clearly defined career paths, leaders need to work with their team members to ensure they are receiving the opportunities that facilitate growth and development. This includes looking out for the roles, experiences and opportunities that will facilitate growth and support engagement.”

Sadly, only 36% of a sample of more than 13,000 leaders reported having an up-to-date development plan.

21%

Leadership development for Millennials

Support for further academic training 19% Collaborating with inspiring colleagues on key projects 18% Formal classroom training 6% E-learning 5% Source: Millennials at Work, PwC

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By 2025, Millennials (those born 1981-1997) will represent 75% of the workforce. DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast research found the engagement level of this group can be raised by providing them with a greater understanding of their career path as a leader.

The challenge is how you do this in a business context that is frequently changing.

“Providing Millennials with an awareness of a

range of possible paths that may be ahead of them – not a single route from point A to point B as on a map – is the key, and managers need to know how to tap into these motivators and opportunities,” suggests Busine. He adds that this can be achieved by having career conversations: what do Millennials want and what do they expect?

Importantly, Millennials want leadership modelling right now.

“They want to have leadership that they can see and use as a model for the future,” says Lear. “They’re asking for leadership.” The most successful organisations, he adds, already have managers who model leadership for their Millennials. These managers are also clear on the purpose of an organisation (‘why are we doing this?’), which is a critical element for Millennial engagement.

“We’re working closely with the managers of Millennials, to engage them in developing their teams,” says Lear, who adds that ‘engagement dynamics’ is one way to build this bond. Engagement dynamics brings together both parties in scenario-based learning to develop both the manager and the young professional.

DBL also offers ‘action learning periods’.

“Our programs are not just two days face-toface and then out of the room. We carry that through a period of six months, which brings about a change in behaviour. You learn a behaviour over a long period of time; you won’t bring about change in that behaviour in a period of two days,” Lear says.

And of course, for this always-connected generation, 24-7 access to learning is critical.

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LEADERSHIP

FUTURE LEADERS

IDENTIFYING FUTURE LEADERS Although there are countless assessments on the market to assess personality and aptitude for leadership roles, Gary Lear of Development Beyond Learning suggests there are 10 questions to ask in order to identify potential future leaders: 1. Have they got a proven track record of accomplishing impressive results?

2. Do they take charge and make things happen?

3. Do they inspire with confidence?

4. Can they lead with persuasion and influence?

5. Do other people trust them?

6. Does this person have an understanding of how to separate the ‘what’ from the ‘how’?

7. Do they have a global perspective?

8. Do obstacles stop this person or are they able to push through?

9. How does this person deal with multitasking?

10. Do unexpected changes affect this person’s performance?

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LEADERS THIRST FOR MORE STRUCTURED DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING FROM OTHERS

100%

Gamified apps and integrating social learning into development programs – via virtual learning platforms – are also important.

Musson suggests that not only have Millennials been exposed to learning and generally want more of it, there has been growth in what he calls ‘just-in-time learning’.

Facilitated by technology, just-in-time learning will occur when an individual wants to undertake just a small chunk of learning, just-in-time for a new career step – whether that’s from manager to leader – or just-in-time for a change of industry or job. “We’re no longer seeing education and learning as something where you tick off three courses and as soon as that’s done you’ve got the foundation and you can move on. Today it’s more fluid. It’s up to us as a supplier to say, ‘ok, which short courses are people going to want?

How will they get it delivered?’

For example, AIM has just rolled out its MBA program in an online format because Musson says, even with formal education, people are looking for the flexibility that technology provides.

“The challenge for us is not just how we take a face-to-face environment and put it online, but it’s about how do we compete with

70% 20% 10%

The theory The 70:20:10 model suggests that 70% of a leaner’s time should be spent with on-the-job learning, 20% learning from others and 10% in formal learning.

On-the-job training

55%

52%

25%

27%

20%

21%

The actual time spent Survey respondents indicated that in fact 55% of time is spent with on-the-job learning, 25% learning from others and 20% in formal learning.

Learning from others

What’s best for leader development?

Survey respondents had their own views on what learning mode produces the highest quality leadership development, as seen above.

Formal learning Source: DDI/The Conference Board’s Global Leadership Forecast 2014/15

the latest movie or latest game,” Musson says.

“This generation is referred to as the digital natives for a reason. It’s how they communicate with each other, how they seek and gather information.”

One thing is clear: leadership development is not solved by a single solution or one-sizefits-all approach. The concept of the 70:20:10 development model suggests that a good development experience will involve a variety of different learning and development methods and approaches – yet Busine suggests that too much emphasis has been placed on the ratio, and this was never the intention of the original developers of the concept.

“Most people can readily identify people who have been great coaches or mentors throughout their careers. Unfortunately, they can’t always identify multiple people and more often than not their examples don’t include their own managers from across their career,” Busine says.

Musson agrees, and says that it’s only through the application of theory that the student and the company will get a return on the investment of training. “I’m also a fan of the coaching component that sits in and around that model,” he says. “It embeds the learning. It’s not now HR’s job or it’s not AIM’s job to deliver it. It’s embedded in the company.”

A first step is to turn leaders and managers into better coaches and ensuring they have the

skills to effectively coach their team members (formally and informally). Secondly (and driven by a particular need and/or development goal), provide individuals with access to other coaches and mentors both inside and outside the organisation.

Echoing Lear’s view that Millennials want to learn from their own managers, DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast indicates that 71% of leaders surveyed would like to spend more time learning from others. This compares with just 26% who indicated they would like to spend more time learning on the job.

Interestingly, 76% indicated they would like to spend more time in formal learning.

“It’s amazing to watch how people develop using their own learning style, their own processes, and doing it themselves with the support of some good books, some online assessments, some videos and audios. They can choose which way they want to learn.

Some people learn through watching; others learn through doing,” says Lear.

The role of HR The most important message for HR professionals is to understand that the senior executive team must be involved in the process of grooming upcoming leaders; they shouldn’t feel obliged to ‘do it all’ themselves. Secondly, they need to make it clear to other executives how critical leadership development is, and be

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LEADERSHIP TRAITS Gary Lear believes there are eight characteristics that a person with leadership potential should have.

1. Self-understanding and the ability to modify their behaviours to the situation.

5. A focus on results.

2. Strategic direction and clarity on three areas: people, purpose and profit.

6. The ability to collaborate with other individuals and team works.

3. The ability to inspire and motivate others (and themselves) to high performance.

7. Being a champion of change.

4. The ability to identify problems but also develop solutions.

8. Being a powerful communicator.

able to target the areas where the company is most vulnerable if it loses leadership. “The HRD’s job is to bring to the notice of the CEO where these vulnerabilities exist in the organisation and then work with the CEO to put in place an open, transparent and measurable development program that can develop new leaders from within,” says Lear.

He also suggests that HR can be critical for spotting potential in unexpected places.

“What I’ve found is that leadership comes from some strange places. You can have someone sitting quietly in an organisation and not appearing to be a great leader. But when they are put under pressure or when they get the opportunity they naturally take up the leadership mantle. Programs need to be directed by the CEO and assisted by the HR director – because the HRD often has a broader perspective of the potential within the organisation than the CEO.”

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LEADERSHIP

ONE-ON-ONE

Leader of the pack With operations in 197 countries and a presence in every nation on the globe, Nestlé is the world’s largest food and beverage company. HRD chats to Trevor Clayton, CEO of Nestlé Oceania, about leading 5,500 Australian employees HRD: What do you believe your number one leadership challenge is?

Trevor Clayton: When you are leading a business as large as Nestlé, you must always ensure that it is growing and evolving to be one step ahead. You need to know what the consumer wants before they do. But it’s how you face this evolution that defines you as a leader.

Nestlé will be 150 years old in 2016, and in that time the company has operated through two world wars, the Great Depression, and civil unrest. In the 21st century we are now embracing the digital age along with cutting-edge technology and research to help us make products that are tastier and healthier for our consumers. But in order to do this we must be flexible, agile, fast to market, and be listening to our consumer – and that means constantly changing and realigning our business in the societies in which we operate.

I like to work in high-performance teams and believe that through alignment and close collaboration we can achieve great things together. Part of my management philosophy is to encourage teams to be creative and think outside the box to find the most innovative solution or the next big idea. This allows us to stay one step ahead and provide the tastiest and healthiest products for our consumer – which is our top priority.

I’d say I’m also a leader who is very visible within the business. Instead of always sending emails or making telephone calls, I make a point of regularly getting out of my office to go and speak to people at their desk or in their offices. As a leader you are only as good as your team, and at Nestlé I have a great one.

“You need to know what the consumer wants before they do”

HRD: How would you describe your style of leadership, and do you believe that your style has evolved over time?

TC: Working at Nestlé is something that has kept me motivated over many years – 26, in fact. What I appreciate about it is that I get to work with wonderful people from many different cultures and backgrounds and across many different countries. I’ve worked in diverse markets such as Pakistan, Turkey and Indochina, so my leadership style has adapted to the different cultures. But there is one thing that has remained constant and consistent, and that’s my collaborative style as a leader. If you ask employees, I think they’d say I like teamwork, I’m inclusive, and I encourage people to move out of their silos and work as one unified team – this is what we call ‘One Nestlé’.

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HRD: What sort of professional development do you personally undertake?

TC: At Nestlé we have a comprehensive global training program with a strong emphasis on leadership development, and I have been fortunate to go on a number of the courses. I read a lot – a diverse range of publications from the Harvard Business Review, financial and news magazines, leadership articles, as well as popular culture websites.

To be a successful leader you have to know what your consumers like, buy and read. I keep abreast of the latest health and wellness trends and research – an interest for me that’s both professional and personal.

HRD: Nestlé was voted the most attractive employer in the FMCG category at Randstad’s recent employer awards. What do you put that result down to?

TC: I’m really proud of our employees and the company

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TREVOR CLAYTON’S TOP TIPS FOR UPCOMING LEADERS

1 2

Be able to delegate and trust your team to execute the vision and strategy of the business.

Adjust your style to different teams. My role covers Oceania, which includes countries such as New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Pacific Island nations. It’s important that as a leader I can be flexible and understand the nuances and complexities of such a diverse region.

3 4 5

Remove obstacles. It’s important to streamline bureaucracy to encourage innovation and creativity.

Get out of your office and talk to employees. This helps to build engagement and brings us all closer together as a team. Don’t be too internally focused.

Encourage people to think outside the square – no matter how crazy an idea is, always encourage people to share their ideas, from the factory floor up to senior management.

Constant improvement is something we should continuously strive for. Make sure you deliver in the short term but spend enough time looking to the future, because this is where leaders can have the greatest impact.

and culture we have built together to win this award, including the fact that we came first in the FMCG category. Nestlé is an attractive place to work and there are many reasons for that. We care for our employees through a range of initiatives, from health and wellness programs such as meditation, to help with financial planning, walking clubs and volunteer opportunities.

At Nestlé we are very clear about how we can contribute to society while still meeting the expectations of our shareholders. Our Creating Shared Value program runs many global programs, from addressing child labour in cocoa-growing communities, helping farmers grow sustainable coffee in Papua New Guinea, to sourcing sustainable and traceable palm oil.

HRD: What do you look for from your HR head?

TC: It’s imperative that the HR director is part of the decision-making process at senior management level – as part of the evolution of an idea, not at the final stages.

I also believe your HR director needs to be a trusted adviser to the business, and open communication is a must. They also must stay ahead of the game in terms of sourcing, developing and retaining the best talent in order for the organisation to continue to grow and innovate. It doesn’t matter where you are working in the world, people are your business.

www.hcamag.com

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LEADERSHIP

BEST PRACTICE

Earning your right to lead There are three straightforward steps to ensure you not only earn the right to lead in Australia but do so successfully. Jim Kouzes, Barry Posner and Michael Bunting outline what needs to be done RESEARCH FROM our new book, Extraordinary Leadership in Australia and New Zealand: The Five Practices That Create Great Workplaces, reveals that the best leaders get more than three times the amount of people’s talent, commitment, energy and motivation than do poorly regarded leaders.

The research shows time and time again that great leadership matters. However, expecting people to follow you simply because of your position, title or rank is wishful thinking – leadership has to be earned and cannot simply be granted in today’s turbulent economy.

What are the leadership challenges in Australia? Are they unique to Australian leaders? How do you go about earning the right to lead others? Our studies of thousands of Australian leaders, their colleagues and direct reports, along with scores of case studies and personal interviews, offers

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convincing evidence. There are three critical elements you need to be aware of if you want to be an effective leader in this country: being sensitive to the continuing ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’; finding ways to inspire a shared vision; and transforming your people into leaders themselves by enabling others to act.

1. Tall Poppy Syndrome Australians are fiercely egalitarian, but it isn’t a new-age rebellion or a newly instituted approach to ‘stick-it-to-the-man’; rather it’s a deep-seated cultural history with roots dating back to the late 1800s.

Peter Hartcher of the Sydney Morning Herald writes, “Australian citizens know that some among them will have more power and money than others ... But according to the unspoken national ethos, no Australian is permitted to assume that he or she is better than any other Australian. How is

this enforced? By the prompt corrective of leveling derision. It has a name: The ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’. The tallest flowers in the field will be cut down to the same size as all the others. This is sometimes misunderstood ... It isn’t success that offends Australians. It’s the affront committed by anyone who starts to put on superior airs.”

Consequently, the worst thing that Australasian leaders can do is to ‘pull rank’, to assert authority based on title or position.

It’s counterproductive and will guarantee a loss of engagement on the part of your people.

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Source: PwC

Avoid even a hint of hypocrisy Understanding and knowing how to deal with the Tall Poppy Syndrome can help you to be a more effective leader in Australia. Here are few things you can do immediately. First, you will want to be very careful of outward displays of privilege. It is okay to drive a nice car and enjoy other perks you are afforded as a leader, but be sensitive to the culture and how easily situations can be seen as hypocrisy and ‘I’ve earned it because I am the tallest flower’.

For example, one of our clients held an offsite meeting for their entire business. The whole company had to catch buses from

Source: PwC

their offices to the venue and back. At the end of the day, however, the entire executive team booked taxis just for themselves. This was a disastrous mistake that sent ripples throughout the organisation along with much bitterness and disengagement.

In other words, if you make the rules, you better respect them and follow them. If you ignore them due to the privilege of your position, don’t count on being viewed as an effective leader.

Understand mateship The second key to dealing with the Tall Poppy

Syndrome is understanding and learning how to adapt to the behavioural style of Australasian people. Research from Human Synergistics shows that organisations in Australia exhibit a dominant tendency to passive-defensive and aggressive-defensive behavioural styles.

Michael recalls how he found the passivedefensive part a real surprise when he first arrived in Australia 12 years ago. As an English-speaking foreigner looking at the Australian culture from afar, he sincerely believed it was a ‘fair dinkum’ (meaning true or genuine), tell it like it is, culture. He was right, and wrong.

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LEADERSHIP

BEST PRACTICE

The worst thing Australasian leaders can do is to ‘pull rank’, to assert authority based on title or position. It’s counterproductive and will guarantee a loss of engagement on the part of your people Australians are honest and seriously value trust, but what he did not realise, until after several years of living in Australia, is that keeping the peace and being nice will trump honesty and accountability more often than you realise. In other words, don’t be fooled by the appearance of total honesty. Australians will often avoid honest, tough conversations in favour of harmony and peace. Its history lies in the idea of mateship.

Being a good mate In almost every organisation, there is a fine line between being friends with those you lead and being their leader. Given the choice, most of the people you are leading would prefer you be their leader. In Australia, while this holds true, there is a slight twist. Being a ‘mate’ means you’ve established a level of trust that is critical for exercising great leadership: • Relationships matter: If you don’t have a good relationship with your people, don’t delude yourself that they are being honest with you or giving you their best efforts. If you are not relationshipcentric, you are going to need to get out of your comfort zone when leading and work on building strong relationships.

• Be human: Australians cannot stand formality and distance. You also need to show you are a person, with fears, hopes, challenges, fears, etc. It may be counterintuitive, but the more real you can be the less likely you will be regarded as a

24

tall poppy, and the more likely people will follow you.

• Become a member of the team: It takes a calculated effort for a leader to walk the fine line between being ‘one of the mates’, and a strong leader. As Nathalie McNeil, the HR director for Novartis Australia, explained: “Here you’ve got to be humble. You have to become part of the team. You know you’ve arrived here when people ‘take the piss out of you’ – when they start teasing you. You win people over when you admit mistakes and show your humanity.” Make sure you don’t ask others on the team to do anything that you wouldn’t be willing to do yourself.

2. Inspire a shared vision The empirical evidence is quite clear: Australian leaders get greater engagement levels from their workforce when they have a clear vision, share that vision, and stay the course with that vision. Any wavering will be recognised immediately and that leader will lose support and lower people’s levels of motivation and productivity.

Australians are well educated and can usually see through any ‘BS’ the leader may be feeding them. An honest, straightforward approach is the best strategy to employ. It means you have to be real, and your vision has to be realistic even while looking into a misty future. You also better back your vision up with pragmatic strategies and clear KPIs.

That will cut through the hype that Australians don’t appreciate. People expect their leaders to be forward-looking, even if they don’t know in advance how to get to that place in the future.

As part of the research for our book, we asked people in Australia how effective they felt their leader was, and we found that their assessments were clearly related to how frequently they observed them inspiring a shared vision. The most ineffective leaders used this leadership practice nearly one-third less often than those leaders seen as moderately effective. The most effective leaders were reported to inspire a shared vision 17% more often than their moderately effective counterparts and about 54% more than those evaluated as least effective by their people. Our findings are consistent with research by Towers Watson, which showed that Australian organisations generally score close to the bottom in global rankings on the statement ‘My company has a clear vision for the future’.

How can you ensure that your vision will be ‘shared’? Take these three steps: • Consult, then consult some more. Find out the aspirations of your people and get to know the team. Take time to understand their hopes, dreams, and aspirations about the future.

• Ensure that everyone knows their role.

When you share the vision, make sure that each individual can see how he or she fits into the larger scheme of the organisation.

• Ask others in the organisation to share their experiences and perspectives on how the vision can be achieved; that is, don’t make this a monologue.

3. Enable others to act The real work of organisations is not done by leaders but by the people who are both inspired to apply time and energy beyond

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LEADERSHIP

BEST PRACTICE

Australian leaders get greater engagement levels from their workforce when they have a clear vision, share that vision, and stay the course with that vision what is minimally required, and provided the tools and latitude to do what needs to be done without asking for anyone’s permission.

Indeed, leadership is not so much about the leader as it is about the relationship between leaders and their people. Leaders make it possible for others to do their best in Australia when they foster collaboration by building trust and facilitating relationships, and strengthen others by increasing selfdetermination and developing competence.

In other words, leaders ultimately turn their followers into leaders.

A recent Towers Watson study found that while empowerment is among the top five global workplace engagement factors it is the second most important factor for workplace engagement in Australia. Why is empowerment and enabling others to act so critical in Australia, and what do you need to do about it?

Our data showed that people’s evaluations of their leader’s effectiveness was strongly related to how often they observed them enabling others to act. Ineffective leaders used this leadership practice about 25% less than those evaluated as moderately effective. The most effective leaders enabled others to act more than 38% more than

26

those evaluated by their people as not very effective. The impact that empowering others had on employee engagement was equally dramatic. This leadership practice boosted engagement levels by nearly 30%.

What steps can you take to ensure that your people act like leaders themselves? Here are four strategies: 1. Never, never, never micromanage. When tempted, just walk away. Any micromanaging will kill your attempts to empower others.

2. Make sure that your standards are clear and understood. In Australia, just telling people the standards without real consensus and agreement won’t work.

Explain and get buy-in. That gives you the right to hold others to account, maximise performance and maintain your credibility.

3. Give people support in achieving results.

Coach them, don’t tell them. Become a champion supporter on their behalf.

4. Don’t ever bark at people or show any signs of disrespect. It is perfectly fine to hold low performers accountable, and that will be expected and respected. Australians really value excellence and understand

that non-performing has its consequences, but always show respect in the way you handle difficult performance issues.

Earning the right to lead in Australia You can earn the right to lead in Australia.

It requires being a leader who takes the time to understand the culture and establish relationships. The most effective leaders in Australia are sensitive to the Tall Poppy Syndrome. They learn about the visions and aspirations of others and find ways to integrate these with their own in order to create ‘shared’ visions which inspire others to do more than they imagined possible. And they realise that the extra-ordinary comes from ordinary people who are empowered to act like leaders themselves, taking personal responsibility and holding themselves accountable to objectives and goals. These leadership practices have produced greatness in Australia in the past, and will continue to do so into the future.

W

Y

T p a

I

I b

Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner are co-authors of the bestselling book, The Leadership Challenge. Michael Bunting is a co-author of Extraordinary Leadership in Australia and New Zealand: The Five Practices That Create Great Workplaces, from which portions of this article are excerpted. Michael is also the founder of leadership development consultancy WorkSmart Australia (worksmart.net.au).

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HRD13.

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4/06/2015 8:01:46 3:10:22 AM PM 12/02/2015

LEADERSHIP

RETURN TO STUDY

Back to school You’ve decided to boost your chances of career advancement by returning to university to undertake postgraduate study. Great! Just be sure you know what you’re getting yourself into THE DECISION to undertake postgraduate study is not to be taken lightly, especially if you last set foot in a university several decades ago. As always, knowledge is strength. Just like the world of business, the world of postgraduate education has undergone immense change. Technology, content delivery, even some aspects of the psychology of learning and the physical space in which learning occurs, have all evolved.

Here’s what to expect on your return to study.

Education content “What we’re very focused on at the moment is the way we deliver education, which has changed over a period of time,” says Chris Burton, associate dean postgraduate programs, UTS Business School. “Some of the content and knowledge that forms the content of our various disciplines has shifted to some extent, in so far as new knowledge has come on board and new areas become prioritised – and often this is because of technology.”

Burton cites areas like big data as becoming more important for business, not so much in terms of students needing to understand the finer detail of the technology involved in big data, but how they actually use that information to gain some kind of competitive advantage or to co-create a product or service with a customer. She also cites market design – how does a student, in a mature capitalist environment, find new markets? How do they start to understand how to commoditise things that may not have been commoditised before?

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One of the brand-new UTS oval rooms

Burton explains: “Fundamentally what we’re trying to do is understand customers and markets. So the content in that sense hasn’t changed much.”

Greater student-centricity In 2014, Dan Musson, CEO of the Australian Institute of Management, was quoted in BOSS Magazine as saying: “Education is one of the last bastions where the product has been the major focus, not the consumer”.

Is education in 2015 more about the student than the institution? Burton largely agrees there has been a shift. “I think we’ve become increasingly aware of the needs of our students and the experience we deliver to our students,” she says. “The way people want to learn is much more varied now than the

Photo credit: Andrew Worssam

way it might have been in the past.”

There has also been greater focus on prioritising different bodies of knowledge.

For example, Burton suggests developing people with entrepreneurial mindsets has become more important. “A lot of the students undertaking an entrepreneurial course already run their own business, but they still need knowledge: business planning, understanding capital, or knowing the mind of the venture capitalist or the equity partner that’s likely to invest in their company. But again, we need to be able to deliver to that particular segment of consumers in a way that makes sense to them.”

In this instance, the result has been the MBA in entrepreneurship, consisting of “bitable chunks” so that students can dip in

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and dip out of the MBA, and still acquire accredited certificates as they come through.

“What they need and when they need it is the key – it’s almost like just-in-time learning.

We’re very prepared to be flexible about that and as agile as we can be, meeting the demands of those people,” Burton says.

Technology Technology will always be a facilitator rather than a silver bullet, but it has unquestionably changed the way we learn. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) mean we can learn how we want, and when and where we want. Videoconferencing has opened up collaboration with students overseas. Virtual internships are possibly just around the corner. iPads and tablets are now de rigueur.

However, Burton suggests that some fundamentals of learning cannot be easily replicated by technology, for example networking among students, the ability to engage with industry in real time, and undertaking real-life consultancies or internships.

“At the end of the day most people are going to get real jobs in the real economy,” she says. “With more options it becomes very important when deciding which mode to deliver education in – face-to-face or online or whatever. But the application of that knowledge in real-time to a real client is the edge we have over many of the other disruptive technologies that may have come onto the horizon in the last 10 years or so.”

The impact of neuroscience Educators have been aware for some time that people prefer to learn in different ways and that a one-size-fits-all approach to learning is not effective – although Burton says that in the past it was easier to assume that people would sit down, learn a theory and then try to understand how it worked in practice. Now, with better understanding of how the human brain functions, there’s greater awareness that many people like to tinker in the practice phase and then

TOUGH – BUT WORTH IT Chris Burton of UTS offers a word of advice for those looking to return to study…

“A return to study after time spent in the workforce is a serious undertaking. I don’t sugar-coat it. It’s a big financial investment, which students need to maximise by getting the best they can out of the course. It’s also a big-time investment. It’s not just the students who are doing it; it’s the family as well. We do come across students halfway through first semester and they are in shock because the y didn’t realise there was so much work. At that postgrad level you have lots of competing demands with your job and with family. However, if you don’t make that commitment and investment, you won’t get what you need out of it. Plus it’s a short period of time; it’s not forever – but the return is forever.”

understand the theory later on, when they get the ‘aha moment’.

“We’ve understood the cycles of learning for a long time,” Burton says. “Whether we’ve put that in practice in a way that makes sense to different types of learners is another story, and I don’t think we’ve done that as well as we could.”

However, strides are being made. MOOCs and experiential learning are challenging traditional notions. “We can start asking, ‘How does what I just practised challenge parts of those principles or that concept I just learnt?’ It really is about the interrelationship between concept, theory and practice,” Burton says.

Physical environment It’s that last point which is impacted on by the physical environment. Burton says experiential learning cannot be easily replicated through technology or online learning. It has to be done in a social environment.

The newly opened Frank Gehry-designed UTS building has been built in ways that facilitate that. “People come together in

different ways, for different purposes, to understand the inter-relationship between theory, practice, and the social engagement of learning,” Burton says.

Examples of design innovation at UTS include two ‘oval classrooms’, which have been constructed from large laminated timber beams. These high-tech spaces, each seating 54, are designed to facilitate interaction and dialogue between teacher and students. Technology in each classroom includes six-screen projection, touchscreen audiovisuals, microphones and speakers.

The collaborative theatre meanwhile is a flexible teaching space with seating arranged in two rows per tier. This enables students in the front row of each tier to turn and face the row behind for discussion and group work.

Maintaining the standard Amidst all this change, some things remain the same. “We’re accountable for maintaining education standards and we’re also accountable for our students to ensure they leave our university with the requisite knowledge to be fully equipped to do the best they can in the economy,” Burton concludes.

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FEATURE

PSYCHOMETRIC PROFILING

A laser-like approach to L&D L&D departments can now access tools that provide a laser-targeted focus on specific training aimed certain competencies, or to empower them to help leaders specialise and play to their strengths YOU CAN picture the scene. You, as the sole member of the L&D department, are charged with researching and finding appropriate L&D options for the leaders within your organisation.

The heat is on. You know you need to deliver something relevant and impactful. You don’t want participants returning from a course and responding with a lukewarm, ‘it was ok’.

Once upon a time, you may have hoped a ‘spray and pray’ approach to leadership development would suffice: that is, provide a wide array of options and hope that some might stick.

be well across which training would match with which competencies, but they often don’t know,” says Paul Findlay, managing director of pd training.

Is there a better way to match L&D offerings to individual learner needs?

Enter psychological profiling. Although insights gleaned from psychometric assessment have been used extensively in recruitment and selection, its use in L&D is rare. “If you look at psychometrics in the recruitment and selection context, these are very specific tools and we’re very

We gravitate towards what we naturally enjoy and are naturally good at. This is where we tend to have our most creativity With tight budgets and greater demands on leaders’ time, that approach is not good enough in 2015.

“We’re asked with some regularity by L&D departments in large organisations to map our courses to their organisational competency framework, from entry level up to management level. You’d imagine they’d

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clear on what we can take away from that information. In the L&D space, no one has made that leap. People generally aren’t sure how to use the insights to make training more effective,” says Findlay.

Help is at hand pd training aims to close this gap with its

Leadership Development Companion (LDC).

The tool was designed specifically for mapping suggested training for new and existing leaders based on their personality profiles. The LDC is a collaborative effort from pd training, psychometric publishing firm Leading Dimensions Consulting (US) and industry partners such as ArcTree Consulting in Brisbane, and AlignHR in Singapore.

A leadership team completes a 96-question psychometric assessment, which takes around 12 minutes to complete. The tool generates reports detailing skills that come naturally to the leader (or leadership team), and skills that require extra effort to be good at them. It then maps the training required to fix or improve to specific courses in pd training’s course schedule.

Intriguingly, the LDC takes a leaf out of Marcus Buckingham’s book (Go Put your Strengths to Work) by providing L&D professionals with the option to work on a person’s strengths as opposed to their weaknesses – the traditional approach takes the opposite tack by concentrating on improving weaknesses. This is a “paradigm shift”, says Findlay.

“The general principle is that we gravitate towards what we naturally enjoy and are naturally good at. This is where we tend to have our most creativity and longest term concentration. It’s where we do our highest quality work. Conversely, in areas that don’t come naturally to us, we feel a bit drained, a bit tired. We tend to avoid them or do the minimum on them.

The learning world says, ‘ok that’s what you’re bad at, let’s put all of our money and resources into that place, where you don’t excel’. Where’s the logic in that?”

The LDC has been created in such a way that the development opportunities can focus on either end of the spectrum. Clients can focus on what they’re good at, or what they are not so good at, based on five clusters of primary leadership functions and accompanying competencies:

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BROUGHT TO YOU BY

REPORT SAMPLE: MANAGING INTERACTIONS Natural strengths and development opportunities are visually graphed for each cluster and each competency.

100

80

60

40

20

0 Approaching complex issues

Controlling processes

A.H.

Susan M.

Enforcing operational norms Requires a stretch

Forming interactions

• • • •

Finding opportunities for synergy Gaining consensus Drawing out others’ viewpoints Easing tension among members

Managing interactions

• • • • • • •

Approaching complex issues Controlling processes Enforcing operational norms Evaluating individual performance Maintaining focus on objectives Rallying others around a cause Maintaining group cohesion

Growing interactions

• Setting clear expectations • Mentoring followers • Recognising others’ efforts

Navigating interactions

• Adapting to changing circumstances • Navigating uncertain conditions • Maintaining optimism

Connecting interactions

• Assimilating team members • Building rapport • Cultivating team spirit

“You may be a leader who doesn’t get around to doing quarterly reviews because you don’t feel comfortable giving the feedback, so you

Comes naturally

Evaluating individual performance

Maintaining focus on objectives

Rallying others around a cause

Maintaining group cohesion

Average

tend to drop the ball on it,” Findlay explains.

“The same applies to every competency. It’s not that you can’t do it, you just don’t feel comfortable, and you tend to avoid doing it.”

From a strengths perspective, it’s important to look at which of the leadership functions could be delegated to a 2IC or different job role, and which need to come from the leader, Findlay adds. If it does need to be performed by the leader, that’s where further development comes in.

It’s not just learners who can benefit from these insights. The Trainer’s Companion is a supplementary tool for trainers, which provides them with a report that suggests, based on the profiles of people in the course, how the content should be delivered. For example, it might suggest introducing the course in a certain way, or using a particular case study. It can also suggest who to ask in the class for input or opinion. “It helps to connect the trainer to the students,” Findlay says. “It also takes the stress out of

not knowing anything about your students.”

Removing the guesswork Findlay believes this specialisation approach to leadership will get best results by focusing training and development or coaching on those areas in which the leader is naturally strong. It will also take the guesswork out of the process – for both time-sensitive senior executives and the trainers themselves.

“There can be uncertainty from the L&D professional – ‘I hope I get good feedback from sending my leader off to do this course’.

There can also be vagueness in terms of whether or not the training will have any impact. These tools can give greater certainty that what is being provided is a rewarding, satisfying learning experience.”

pd training is an Australian-owned, international training and professional development services provider, with over 400 specialist trainers delivering thousands of courses each year

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GRADUATE RECRUITMENT

TOP EMPLOYERS

THE MIND OF A GRADUATE What do graduates expect from the workplace and who are their favoured employers? An extensive new survey reveals all

WHILE THE technology might not quite be there yet, it would be fascinating – if not slightly scary – to one day explore the inner workings of the average business student’s brain. As businesses around the world continue to grapple with how to engage with this upcoming generation of workers, it would be invaluable to obtain insights into what they think about work, what attracts them to certain employers, and what their expectations are from employers.

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Employer branding experts Universum has aimed to fill this knowledge gap with one of the most comprehensive surveys of university graduates globally. This year, some 14,800 students from Australian universities took part in the survey, which explores the preferences for 40 key employer attributes grouped into four sets covering: ‘employer reputation and image’, ‘people and culture’, ‘job characteristics’ and ‘remuneration and advancement’.

DID YOU KNOW? The median starting salary for a Bachelor Degree holder aged under 25 has decreased over the years, with 2014 being the lowest at $52,500. Graduates predictably have higher expectations, with the 2015 average expected annual salary being $58,625.

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The result is Australia’s Top 100 IDEAL Employers List, which recognises the most coveted employers based solely on the responses collected.

In 2015, among business students, Google retained the top spot as the most ideal employer. For engineering students, CSIRO is the ideal employer.

Julie Duncan, director at PwC, says the survey results provide the firm with valuable insights into students’ perceptions and preferences that enable the firm to tailor its marketing and engagement efforts to attract diverse students.

“We’re inspired by potential for individuals, clients and communities – that’s why we need to attract students from broad degree disciplines with the passion to learn and the ability to adapt as the complex business environment evolves. Universum helps us understand where and how to attract people with the curiosity to ask questions, to have bold ideas and to explore their own potential,” she says.

2015 TOP 20 IDEAL EMPLOYERS FOR: BUSINESS/COMMERCE STUDENTS Employer Google Apple L'Oréal Group Commonwealth Bank Government – Federal/Commonwealth Qantas EY (Ernst & Young) Myer United Nations PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) Deloitte Reserve Bank of Australia Virgin Australia David Jones Coca-Cola Amatil Government – State KPMG Microsoft Samsung ANZ

2015 rank

2014 rank

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

1 2 9 5 6 3 8 11 7 4 18 12 14 10 17 13 15 20

Difference (2014-2015) 0 0 6 1 1 -3 1 3 -3 -7 6 -1 0 -5 1 -4 -3 0

Priority # 1 When asked about their most important career goal upon graduation, over half (59.75%) of the students surveyed consider ‘to have work-life balance’ as one of their top priorities. With work-life balance having held the top spot in Australia for the second year running, it sends a clear message to employers who really want to attract Australia’s best talent.

A common problem employers have, however, is that work-life balance can be difficult to quantify and define. In this study, respondents were asked detailed questions about what they consider worklife balance to really mean for them, and the findings are interesting. The characteristics young Australian talent most associate with work-life balance are: ‘having a career that’s aligned with my personal interests’; ‘flexible working hours’; and ‘valuing and respecting employees’. These characteristics are in line with findings of previous years.

The most significant difference from previous studies was ‘offering arrangements that enable me to accommodate my work and the needs of my family/private life’,

2015 TOP 20 IDEAL EMPLOYERS FOR: ENGINEERING STUDENTS Employer CSIRO Google Government – Federal/Commonwealth United Nations Government – State BHP Billiton Apple Rio Tinto Microsoft Qantas Origin Energy Samsung Shell Chevron Toyota Sydney Water ABC GHD Virgin Australia IBM

2015 rank

2014 rank

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

1 2 3 5 4 7 6 9 8 19 10 11 16 23 24 15 28 21

Difference (2014-2015) 0 0 0 0 -2 0 -2 0 -2 8 -3 -3 1 7 7 -3 9 1 www.hcamag.com

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GRADUATE RECRUITMENT

TOP EMPLOYERS which, in the case of engineering talent, rose three places to fourth on the list. This includes perks such as childcare and parental leave.

Rachele Focardi, senior vice president of employer branding and talent strategy – APAC, Universum, says the results from Australia’s Generation Y data this year reinforces that Millennial trends are intrinsic. Students no longer want to join an industry, brand or opportunity; they want to join an environment.

“Finding the perfect employer or employee has become more like finding the perfect partner; the more you’re able to share about yourself and what you’re really like, the better the match is likely to be.

This is why organisations in Australia who are serious about attracting the very best talent need to change the way they communicate with their target talent.

Companies that understand that people and culture are the most important drivers for employer choice will gain a true competitive business advantage.”

Students no longer want to join an industry, brand or opportunity; they want to join an environment Priority #2 After work-life balance the next most desired career goal amongst Australia’s emerging workforce is ‘to be secure or stable in my job’ (50.79%). Along with work-life balance, these top two career goals are commonly ranked highly in other regional and global markets, suggesting they’re endemic of today’s Millennial generation. It’s after these two most coveted

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WHAT GRADS WANT: TOP 10 WEIGHTED EMPLOYMENT ATTRIBUTES (BUSINESS/COMMERCE STUDENTS) 2015

2014

Difference

A creative and dynamic work environment

1

6

5

Professional training and development

2

1

-1

Leaders who will support my development

3

3

0

A friendly work environment

4

2

-2

Opportunities for international travel/relocation

5

5

0

Leadership opportunities

6

8

2

Secure employment

7

7

0

High future earnings

8

4

-4

Clear path for advancement

9

9

0

Good reference for future career

10

11

1

Code for categories: People & culture Employer reputation & image Remuneration & advancement opportunities Job characteristics

WHAT GRADS WANT: TOP 10 WEIGHTED EMPLOYMENT ATTRIBUTES (ENGINEERING STUDENTS) 2015

2014

Difference

A friendly work environment

1

3

2

A creative and dynamic work environment

2

2

0

Secure employment

3

1

-2

Professional training and development

4

4

0

Innovation

5

14

9

Clear path for advancement

6

11

5

High future earnings

7

10

3

Leaders who will support my development

8

5

-3

Respect for its people

9

6

-3

Good reference for future career

10

9

-1

Code for categories: People & culture Employer reputation & image Remuneration & advancement opportunities Job characteristics

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GRADUATE RECRUITMENT

TOP EMPLOYERS career goals that country and student type have an effect.

PERSONALITY SKILLS BY GENDER

Priority #3

How do students rate their own skills? More male than female students see themselves as a ‘leader’ and being ‘persuasive’, linking to the higher percentage of male students having experience being student leaders.

Among Australian business talent, the third most desired career goal is ‘to have an international career’, showing there is still a strong desire among some young Australians to experience working abroad. Among engineering talent, having an international career is several places further down the list and less important to them. Engineering students instead want ‘to be dedicated to a cause or to feel that they’re serving the greater good’, suggesting they’re a more altruistic bunch than the business cohort, who don’t value this career goal highly.

100 80 60 40 20 0

2015 CAREER GOALS: BUSINESS/COMMERCE STUDENTS 1. To have work-life balance 2. To be secure or stable in my job 3. To have an international career 4. To be a leader or manager of people 5. To be entrepreneurial or creative/innovative 6. To be competitively or intellectually challenged 7. To be dedicated to a cause or to feel that I am serving a greater good 8. To be autonomous or independent 9. To be a technical or functional expert

Responsible and committed

Flexible Team-oriented Throrough

Analytical

when assessing ideal employers is ‘professional training and development’, which is highly valued by both business (2nd) and engineering (4th) students.

Least important, however, is the reputation and image of the employer. Factors like prestige and financial strength, which historically have had a big impact on talent attraction, are becoming less of a pull factor among the younger generations.

Kit Foong, regional director at Universum, says that looking at the overall market trends

Female

Leader

Challenger Persuasive Networker

Male

should prompt employers to further understand the subtle differences in their target talent pool and also to question how uniquely positioned they are versus their competitors. “Savvy employers need to consider a lot more factors when crafting their employer value propositions nowadays, top talent can see through generic, diluted messaging. While Australian Millennials clearly place a priority on soft, intrinsic drivers, it is crucial for employers to find their own distinct value proposition.”

*Note: 2014 goals were the same

The attractors When evaluating employer attractiveness, young Australians studying business appear to be very focused on the people and culture of a prospective employer, deeming ‘A creative and dynamic working environment’ (1st), ‘Leaders who will support my development’ (3rd) and ‘a friendly work environment (4th) among their most desired employer attributes.

It’s a similar case for engineering talent, who desire ‘a friendly work environment’ (1st) and ‘a creative and dynamic working environment’ (2nd) as top of their wish lists.

Also of strong interest to Australian talent

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About the survey The Universum Top 100 Ideal Employers student survey, conducted online, takes place annually in over 55 countries globally. It collects the views and preferences of over one million students and is currently run in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Universum Top 100 Ideal Employer Rankings – Australian Edition results are based on the answers of 14,874 students studying for degrees in business/commerce, engineering, natural sciences, IT, humanities/liberal arts/education, law and health/medicine, with 49,114 individual evaluations of 120 employers. Each respondent is asked questions about their career preferences, expectations and employment related drivers and then presented with a list of 120 national and international employers, nominated by the target group through an independent and structured nomination and assessment process, which prevents companies unfairly influencing their positions. Respondents acknowledge those companies they would consider working for.

Of the companies selected as ‘considered employers’, the respondents then select their five ‘IDEAL Employers’ and answer questions about their perceived brand based on Universum’s Drivers of Employer Attractiveness global framework. The rankings measure the level of employer attractiveness of companies or organisations on the recruitment market.

– To see the global rankings, visit: universumglobal.com/rankings/ – To see the full Australian rankings, visit: universumglobal.com/rankings/australia/ – Country specific snapshot reports can be found here: universumglobal.com/2015-snapshots-talent-insights-trends/

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Cherie Cur tis Cherie Curtis

Chief Executive Officer

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3/06/2015 4:36 pm 4/06/2015 3:12:07 PM

HR STRATEGY

BIG DATA

BIG, BETTER, BEST? Adam Hall explains why – when it comes to employee data – more is not necessarily better EVERY HR practitioner is aware of the increasing importance that collecting data has for workforce planning – what’s less clear is working out what to do with it.

You’re already sitting on piles of data – you collect it at onboarding, during performance reviews, 360 feedback, during development programs, as well as employee engagement surveys. Frankly, it can be overwhelming, so how can you harness it?

Is there a framework that provides a complete picture of the employee experience you are trying to create? Are you using this framework to help you integrate your data

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sources? Our experience says that’s probably not the case.

A lot of companies haven’t developed a clear understanding and strategy to use the data they already have, let alone identified what they need to collect in the future. While the buzz is around big data and real-time feedback technologies, HR needs to ensure that the insights derived are truly going to add value to leaders in their business.

The questions to ask The challenge is to know what questions to ask.

These will be the questions that are crucial to

the organisation’s success. Then it’s about analysing them and being able to tell a compelling story to the business leaders.

Without the right question, the answer gained through data analytics is not likely to have any strategic benefit or solve a business issue. The questions HR should be asking are those that uncover the roles and conditions that deliver most value to the business.

To make sense of data, organisations can bring in statisticians to build the analytic capability but if they fail to identify what business issue or problem they want to gain insights on, then they won’t see the benefit.

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THERE ARE TWO MAIN TYPES OF ANALYTICS: Descriptive analytics allow you to look at facts, answering several questions: What has happened? What was turnover? Who is eligible to retire? What was the first year performance separation rate of new hires? Descriptive analytics also incorporates the ability to better ‘describe’ those facts through trending, filtering, cascading, benchmarking, and more. Most importantly, descriptive analytics leads to ‘hypotheses discovery’ and helps to lay down the platform for predictive solutions.

Predictive analytics does not describe ‘facts’ but rather describes the probability that something will happen in the future. What is the likelihood that a key employee will leave? Or a leader will retire? Or a new hire will succeed? By understanding characteristics that lead to a high probability of a given outcome, HR can hope to influence and/or prepare for the outcome, whether through individually oriented action plans or through programmatic and policy changes.

A lot of companies haven’t developed a clear understanding and strategy to use the data they already have, let alone identified what they need to collect in the future Frameworks and segmentation Other business functions have long made use of big data – such as finance and sales – and there is definitely something HR can learn from them. Importantly, in these functions there are agreed definitions and logical frameworks within which advanced analysis can take place. Sales data, for example, broken down into micro-segmented groups and factors which increase likelihood to purchase

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can be identified to enable better targeting of products and services. Until recently, however, HR has treated the workforce as a fairly homogenous group.

There is potentially an enormous amount of data already collected that organisations can use to segment its workforce: demographics, employee preferences, performance ratings, or pivotal roles. By better using already existing data, companies

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HR STRATEGY

BIG DATA could generate much more personalised interactions with their employees and we have evidence that personalisation directly influences employee engagement, retention and productivity, just to name but a few measures.

Focus on what matters most So how can HR focus on the data that is most valuable?

We have to start by asking: ‘What are the roles, skills or behaviours that are most valuable to the business?’ The answer should come from an understanding of the organisation’s strategic priorities, essentially how it competes in the market, its value chain, and how its people need to perform for it to succeed.

In an airline, for example, an HR business partner needs to understand the relative importance of the performance of the ground crew, inflight customer service staff and pilots in creating value for the company. In this case, value for the company could be a customer’s decision to use the airline again. While all airlines have the same roles, what differs is how the strategic context determines performance of which role, task, or behaviour is most important.

Consider the relative importance of inflight service in a premium versus budget airline.

Volume and other qualifiers Once we have a question to solve and framework or model within which to analyse, the next step is to look at the available data, how it is organised and whether there is enough data of sufficient quality to understand the key elements in the model. Only then should companies ask themselves whether holes need to be filled with new data collection or look to alternative ways to measure the factors at issue.

Any big data set will yield signifi cant correlations. Some may be interesting and some may be spurious. To be able to bring real insight to the analysis, there must be a genuine rigour around asking the right

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TO CREATE DESCRIPTIVE AND PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS, THERE ARE THREE INTERRELATED STEPS: • Managing and accessing information. Involves gathering, extracting, and modifying data from multiple sources, both internal (HRIS, talent acquisition, payroll, learning, etc) and external (survey vendors, macroeconomic data, etc).

• Analysing and deriving insight from it. Involves the most significant value-add by the analytics workforce. Power users slice and dice data along multiple dimensions to recognise patterns, develop hypotheses, and use predictive analytics to forecast. These frequently involve advanced multivariate statistical techniques, which help to prove and disprove hypotheses and derive algorithms to predict future behaviours such as attrition risk, performance, and leadership potential.

• Visualising to enable data-informed reporting and planning. Involves taking insights and data captured from descriptive and predictive analysis and presenting them through reports, dashboards, presentations, or online tools. In addition to these outputs being stand-alone tools, advanced uses of these results will include integration with core enterprise business intelligence, talent, and ERP solutions.

Source: HR Innovation, Summer 2013, PwC

questions to begin with, implementing a considered methodology and only then is it possible to interpret relationships with confidence.

In the quest to answer business questions, we see a temptation to use easily available survey technologies to collect more data. In our experience of organisations, there is plenty of data available, so we contend that companies need to adopt frameworks that make effective use of that before they collect more.

Many organisations are over-surveyed already so there’s a need to think and act carefully and creatively about how and when to tap employees for their views.

Before you hit ‘send’ on a new survey, have you brought together your data from recruitment, onboarding, development programs, employee survey data and comments, online jams or threads, performance reviews, social recognition platforms, 360 feedback, stay and exit interviews as well as turnover, sick-leave, injuries, near misses, stress claims and so on, and then analysed its interrelationships to find an answer?

Big or small – it’s about quality Data and analytics can provide valuable insights into how your organisation can solve the people-performance equation. The quality of the insights will be determined not by how ‘big’ the data is, but by how well the questions are formulated, the quality of the models you use, and by having the right data to solve the questions.

HR is uniquely positioned to help solve critical challenges in a changing business environment, by using logic-based models and borrowing profiling and analytic techniques from consumer research and other industries.

Through the combination of logic and data analysis you will be much better placed to find answers to truly critical problems and deliver a compelling employment deal, based on what your own employees tell you and what you’ve learned about your organisation as a result.

Adam Hall is the head of employee surveys and insights at Towers Watson

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ENGAGEMENT

REWARD & RECOGNITION

Square pegs, round holes Employers are constantly bombarded with statistics demonstrating the cost of disengaged workers, but it might be time for employees to meet them halfway. Are they disengaged because they are simply in the wrong job? What responsibilities do employees and employers share in building engagement?

“I SIMPLY fell into it”. That’s a phrase too commonly heard from young graduates (and even senior professionals on occasion), when asked how they ended up in their profession.

Simply ‘falling into’ something implies there’s a lack of real passion for what they do and perhaps even a lack of direction on where they want to go in life. This laissez-faire attitude to work and careers can have serious repercussions for employers.

“When I ask new graduates, ‘What did you think you would be doing when you started

there,” says Trevor Barkway, managing director, Synchro Marketing Australia, a company that designs and manages incentive marketing and enterprise-wide motivation programs.

“By Year 9 students should be learning about how the ‘world of work’ fits into their future lives. They should be asking: ‘What do I like doing? What are my natural aptitudes? Where do my strengths lie?’ ” says Barkway. “The attitude seems to be, ‘Let’s just get through the final high school exams’. And then it’s ‘Where have I been accepted [to study]?’ ”

“If a person doesn’t like accounting or selling – but that happens to be the course of study they have embarked on – they are likely to displace their dissatisfaction onto their employer” Trevor Barkway studying?’, the answer is often, ‘Not sure’ or ‘Don’t know – it was recommended I do a business degree because it would give me wider choice of jobs’. So we find people studying engineering who have no intrinsic desire to be an engineer.

The flow-on effect of that is we’re hiring people that can do the work, but they don’t actually enjoy it. There’s no real interest or passion

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It’s wrong to always think about engagement in terms of what the employer can do for the employee. “If a person doesn’t like accounting or doesn’t like selling, doesn’t like people – but that happens to be the course of study they have embarked on – they are likely to displace their own sense of dissatisfaction and unhappiness onto their employer. You’ll only

get them going the extra mile, giving their best work, on an intermittent basis, but never on a sustained level. They simply do not enjoy the work,” says Barkway.

While the more self-aware person might recognise they are a ‘square peg in a round hole’, often there’s a perception that it’s solely up to employers to miraculously ‘fix’ the poor fit. In truth, employers can and do make a huge effort to ignite the fire. However, to ensure their engagement efforts are optimised, a fresh approach is needed.

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Take a holistic view

There is no ‘magic bullet’ for creating an engaged workforce. However, by definition an engaged workforce is underpinned by people who want to be there. When combined with employer-sponsored extrinsic recognition and reward to drive the employee’s intrinsic interest and competencies, “you’ll get the ‘one plus one equals three’, the result of discretionary effort”, says Barkway. “Then you’ll start to achieve optimum results.”

With customer centricity such a major driver of organisational success today, it means researching the way an organisation takes its product or service to market and engaging the workforce in that process. Then it’s about knowing and communicating how each person

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can directly influence that service or product delivery.

Priority number one is therefore putting the right people in the right roles and having recruitment and selection processes in place to ensure this occurs. From a motivational perspective, the right ‘fit’ ultimately comes from the intrinsic satisfaction derived from the work itself. Study after study shows that while a good salary and engaging work conditions are important, they are not enough to keep people motivated and productive. The second critical step is for the employer to create an allencompassing performance management and recognition culture. This means recognising employees within a context of goal-setting and achievement, open communication, trust and accountability.

Look at the tangible and intangible ROI of engaged workers

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To get the business proposition understood by the board or executive team, Barkway urges HR directors to focus on the tangible results of an engaged workforce.

“A lot of what’s investigated and documented says, ‘We see there’s been a reduction in turnover; we see we’ve got higher productivity – yes, we can readily measure that’. These are the results that need to be presented to the executive team and board. The less tangible benefits of a ‘happier’ or ‘healthier’ workplace are not necessarily measured day in, day out, but these can be just as important for reducing turnover, increasing engagement and sustaining high productivity,” Barkway says.

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Have the infrastructure in place

While many companies talk about measuring and driving engagement, not many have the infrastructure in place to do so effectively. Enterprise infrastructure can be used to drive a holistic engagement program, including recognition and reward, the metrics to enable leaders to respond to organisational ‘soft spots’, and performance data on which to recruit better-fit people.

Synchro builds enterprise program websites, which includes mapping the internal hierarchy of each client’s business – that is, who reports to who. This creates the required level of segmented reporting across the business on employee engagement, participation and results. It also enables recognition programs to be introduced, for example, providing a platform for peer-topeer performance nominations with appropriate manager review and endorsement.

Importantly, this form of enterprise-wide infrastructure ensures consistency, integrates performance reports and benchmarks data – a critical factor when assessing individual and team performance.

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Ensure employees know how they can be recognised

While targeted quantitative performance goals matter, so do work behaviours. Synchro works with clients to identify key behavioural KPIs by analysing the position description for each role and prioritising those activities that are responsible for achieving the desired results for that role. This translates to employees delivering on those behaviours that make a real difference.

It’s also critical to define success. “You can’t just say, ‘We want to measure customer centricity’. You must provide examples of what

we’re looking for,” says Barkway. “What customer centricity means to someone in retail would be quite different to someone in an internal role, liaising with departments or segments within the business.”

An online ‘wall of fame’ can also be an effective way to highlight exceptional performance or the results of those who have met or exceeded their KPIs. This can be as simple as putting a ‘performance profile’ on the enterprise website. Every employee can read it, see what that person did to go the extra mile, and consider how they can make an equally ‘above and beyond’ contribution to the organisation.

“It’s not just about communicating the KPIs of the program,” Barkway explains. “It’s the constant visible reinforcement of actions and behaviours, coupled with relevant recognition and reward, which helps and encourages others to replicate those actions and behaviours.”

Since 1994, Synchro has worked with blue-chip organisations across Australia and New Zealand, optimising the way its workforce takes its products and services to market. Synchro achieves this by designing and managing incentive marketing and enterprise engagement programs. It uses sales force incentives, channel development campaigns, recognition and reward and customer loyalty programs to drive the desired workforce behaviours, ROI and business profitability. Further information at synchro.com.au.

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FEATURE

GAMIFICATION

Turning corporate wellbeing upside down Is 2015 the year that gamification will move beyond hype towards being a business tool that produces tangible results for all to see?

EXPERTS LIKE veteran game designer Tony Ventrice have predicted that 2015 will be the year that gamification comes of age, passing from hype to productivity and finally gaining meaningful traction in the business world. But with so many areas of business – from performance through to compliance – possibly standing to benefit from gamification, where should HR leaders focus their efforts?

The answer may surprise some: it’s corporate health.

Georgie Drury, founder and CEO of Springday, a company that sits at the intersection of HR, technology and wellbeing, explains: “Historically, businesses look at how many sickies are taken by staff. My argument is, if you are proactively looking after your employees’ health and helping them with preventative healthcare and their own wellbeing, then the people that aren’t sick should be rewarded. They should get a day off for doing all the positive stuff.”

This concept, which Drury calls ‘well-thies’, switches from a deficit model by rewarding people for being proactive about their health.

Dentist visits, health checks, mental health and

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resilience training, bowel cancer screening, and mammograms can all be tied together with gamification acting as the bow.

“It forms the basis of gamification,” Drury says. “When people ask, ‘how does this tie in with reward & recognition?’ the answer is obvious: you reward people with time off.

Who wouldn’t want extra holidays? While you could buy employees gifts, or vouchers to be redeemed, my argument is why not offer time off with friends and family?”

Alternatively, employee actions can be linked to more traditional notions of reward & recognition. “Blood donation is an obvious area,” says Drury. “Employees can get points for doing it, and it can be linked to a reward & recognition program. Let’s reward employees for being healthy.”

In his Fast Company article, ‘What the future of gamification in the workplace looks like’, Ventrice suggested four ways in which gamification will shift to become a key component of business operations.

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The holistic organisation

Ventrice wrote: “It is impossible to gamify a business operation without first discussing the company values. The things you choose to recognise in a gamification program are implicitly the things that your company values most.

“Company values persist through every layer of the organisation, from onboarding up to leadership. Gamification may start small, but the full potential is only realised with a comprehensive program.”

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Drury concedes that this holistic, valuesbased approach is “huge”. Making gamification enterprise-wide ties directly with Springday’s own offering, which offers support across five ‘pillars’ of wellbeing: physical, social, emotional, financial and career. Each pillar interlocks and builds upon each other.

“When working with clients, we’re looking at the culture, and we’re tapping into the position and mission of the business. That’s when you see the integration of all the areas of HR into the one game. Don’t just have L&D sitting on the left and safety sitting on the right. Create a holistic game looking at all the interactions the business has with its employees.”

It’s also possible to create ‘games within games’, games for different areas of the business; or the rewards can be different for different areas of the business.

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Employee focus

Ventrice explained: “Corporate employment at all levels is experiencing a crisis of engagement. And most importantly, the workplace provides compelling material for a story. It’s a story of cooperation, competition, advancement, failure and success.

“Most of the time these stories are told over the dinner table and then forgotten.

Gamification provides a means to remember, and people – employees – want to remember.”

Drury suggests that, from a leader’s perspective, it’s possible to identify the one thing they want all their employees to work towards, and then ‘gamify’ it.

“We can build a platform that gives you the flexibility to say, ‘the most important success factor for our business is X, and that’s where we want to give you, the employee, the most points’. It’s only by understanding the business that you work out those priorities.

You can then tap into the other HR issues you have – is it attraction or retention of great staff? Is it developing a safety culture?

Remember, managers can be rewarded for going through the performance appraisal on time and everyone can get rewarded for doing the compliance-based education, because

guess what? It’s still a part of that holistic view of wellbeing.”

3

Self-serve solutions

“Gamification is complicated,” Ventrice wrote. “It involves deconstructing the employee’s motivations through each stage in their career. It surfaces the tiniest, yet most critically important details in a company’s processes. Thus, simple, one-size-fits-all solutions don’t work. Gamification must be tailored for each case.

It is impossible to gamify a business operation without first discussing the company values “As a business model, it’s vastly inferior to self-service.”

The key, Drury says, is to make game-play almost like second nature. “Apps like Candy Crush do this very well. You want everyone to be on a level playing field; it has to be easy to use and you participate without realising it.”

From there it’s important to provide an option to unlock future potential. “That’s where you have your base level, which is extremely easy to use, and then we start designing extra features or extra, more challenging games on top of that – hence the games within games.”

‘Games within games’ work particularly well for business managers or leaders, who have their own goals and targets and need to motivate their teams to work towards group goals or targets. Do they want the healthiest – and therefore the most productive – team? If so, gamified targets can be set for themselves to reach with their team.

4

Integrated analytics

“Analytics have always been part of the gamification pitch,” wrote Ventrice. “Setting up

a system that tracks your employees’ behaviours should be able to provide some interesting insight about top performers, weaknesses in the organisation, and the relative impact of various motivational techniques. But in all honesty, so far the utilisation of analytics has been weak.”

Springday has a strong commitment to reporting. The next era of gamification, she believes, will be driven by employers understanding the employee as an asset – and then using multiple employee touchpoints to create a seamless user experience.

“Springday can integrate with any API [application processing interface] you give us, and that’s the future of tech,” she says. “Think of it as Google: you come into your business, you type in anything you need into Google and seamlessly you’re going to get your answers, using a whole range of third party programs.

You’ll have one beautiful front-end interface, and then all the back ends are talking.”

Springday, for example, is integrating with as many third party apps as possible to provide a holistic health experience. The company has just worked with one developer that has produced a sun visor app. Designed for workers who are constantly outdoors, the app will come up on their phone and a game will be initiated – all with the intention of lowering the risk of skin cancer.

Similarly, Springday is keen to tap into all the government and preventative health care initiatives currently on the radar, such as Movember and bowl cancer screening through the Jodi Lee Foundation.

Spreading the game far and wide Gamification is also infectious. ‘A type’ players will already be doing a lot of this off their own bat; they don’t need their employer to offer it to them. “When employers say ‘it’s the same 30% of people doing the pedometer challenge’, I say ‘great – now you want those 30% of people to share what motivates them so well into other areas of the business’,” Drury says. “They become champions. And if you are a success story, and you are a wellbeing champion, you’re getting badges, rewards and recognition for that – it taps into that competitive human drive.”

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FEATURE

RECRUITMENT

Just hit rec.

Video may have killed the radio star, but it has saved recruiters from time draining face-to-face interviews.

Welcome to the age of the video interview YOU SETTLE into your chair. You are nervous but quietly confident. This could be the next vital step in your career and you don’t want to mess it up. You open up the screen in front of you and start the process. Looking at the questions before you, eventually you gain the confidence to hit ‘record’. This is recruitment in 2015: the era of the video interview.

Close to two-thirds of hiring managers are already using video interviews to locate and hire talent, according to a study by US-based

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recruiter OfficeTeam. This figure is likely to increase as Australia finally gets its longawaited national broadband network.

For time-poor candidates and recruitment professionals, video interviews can be a lifeline.

While the concept has been around for several years, it’s only now that the technology has caught up with the vision.

Pre-hiring experts like Revelian have invested significantly in this space, always with the end goal of providing exceptional candidate

experience and ease of use for the recruiting company. “Revelian has always been in the HR analytics space,” says Daniel Harrison, CTO, Revelian. “This means that we’ve got a slightly different focus from straight-ahead technology companies who have entered this space. We’re interested in HR processes and good prescreening capability.”

While video will always be subjective, Revelian is integrating this step into a battery of other objective pre-employment screening methods, such as cognitive ability tests, cultural fit tests, and values alignment tests.

“Candidates might present themselves particularly well in an interview, yet might not have the technical ability required to do the job, or they might not have the right personality fit. Being able to link a candidate across all these facets for the role they are applying for is the future of hiring,” Harrison says.

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Live vs recorded To this point, video interviewing has traditionally been conducted ‘live’. Most people have used Skype at one point or another. As such, they might be wary of the constant quality issues: sound drop-outs, fuzzy connections, or calls that appear to be made from the Moon.

However, there are obvious benefits to live videos. Firstly, of course, they can closely replicate face-to-face interviews. Verbal and non-verbal communication cues can be witnessed, hesitations picked up on, and areas of confidence noted. The candidate can make the same mistakes in a live video format as they might make in a face-toface setting. Yet there can also be variations and inconsistencies in the questions asked.

Environmental factors (it’s raining outside; you take that disgruntlement into the interview) – not to mention technology factors (videos losing audio or visual) – can also play a critical role in our bias towards one candidate over another.

A recorded video is another matter.

“A recorded video allows you to get consistency across a wide candidate pool,” says Harrison. “The questions are the same, which means you can take something that’s very subjective and start applying objective measures to that.”

Recorded videos also allow employers to compare candidates and obtain the necessary ‘buy-in’ from recruitment stakeholders (HR, direct manager, senior leader, etc). “Recorded videos allow you to rate and review them at any time, and also distribute them. If you’ve got good questions and good criteria for evaluating those responses, especially for a large pool of candidates, you can get through them more effectively,” Harrison notes.

There is also scope for interview question flexibility. Harrison notes that employers will usually build in two types of questions to the process: pressure questions where candidates only get one go at responding; and pitch questions, for which candidates can record and respond as many times as they like. For example, a pressure question might relate to something technical or

requiring a yes or no response: ‘can you apply this widget over there and do this particular task?’ A pitch question might be along the lines of, ‘tell us why you want to work for us’.

Importantly, pre-recorded videos save time.

Without the need for face-to-face meetings, and the scheduling required to do that, it’s possible to watch videos wherever and whenever the employer wants.

Most employers, he adds, are conducting these video interviews after initial assessment. Candidates will undertake a standard psychometric assessment or interactive game to rank certain psychometric properties. From there a shortlist will be created, and those on the shortlist will be asked to do a video interview.

Is the technology up to it?

It sounds great, but how about the technology?

Revelian provides the technology on both sides, for the employer and the candidate. For candidates, the requirements are simple: a standard web browser and a webcam.

Nonetheless, technical support is close at hand, if required.

Employers require the reviewing or management platform, which can be integrated with existing ATS (applicant tracking systems).

This can be taken as an individual module, or combined with other candidate assessment technology offered by Revelian.

If Harrison has one word of warning on both sides, it’s to be aware of bandwidth. “For candidates – and this often happens with young candidates who are in share houses with a flatmate watching Netflix in another room – they must be wary of bandwidth limits.

But as long as they are prepared for that, and treat it like a real interview, dress appropriately, research the company, and so on, it should be almost like a face-to-face interview.”

On the employer side, bandwidth is also a consideration. “Because of security issues or mixed use, some companies are really locked down around multimedia. You just need to ensure your corporate bandwidth can handle that kind of multiple video load,” says Harrison, who adds that for employers operating with

THE FUTURE IS NOW What does the future hold for the role of video in recruitment? Here are three possibilities: 1. Video job posts You’ve seen it before, and possibly been guilty of it, too: poorly written job postings. Imagine if this was a thing of the past. It’s possible that job boards will transform into a video platform where job seekers can view video job postings and reply directly with a video application.

2. Screening candidates through smartwatch interviews On the go connectivity is here already and there’s no reason to think this can’t be extended to video interviews. Interviewing apps on smartwatches will potentially allow recruiters to watch videos – live or recorded – wherever they are.

3. Announcing job offers through video There have already been cases of employers offering candidates jobs by sharing photos on social media platforms. The next frontier might be using videos to make job offers. This might be done via a quick clip using Instagram or publishing a longer ‘welcome video’ on YouTube. Who knows, it might even go viral, spreading a positive message about your employer brand. an up-to-date IT infrastructure environment, video interviewing can work flawlessly.

One tool of many Harrison is quick to emphasise that although video technology has finally ‘come of age’, it will only ever be a facilitator. Nothing beats insightful question selection and clear evaluation processes.

“What criteria are you judging the interview on? Get it known upfront, otherwise you’ll get widely ranging results based on the inherent bias of whoever has reviewed it.”

Revelian is an Australian-based high-innovation company at the forefront of providing unique psychometric tests, surveys, games and communications analytics. Visit us at revelian.com

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ALIA R T S AU

N

THE LEADING independent awards event for the HR profession returns in 2015 for what is set to be another standout date on the industry calendar.

The Australian HR Awards recognises outstanding individuals, teams and organisations who have achieved great results from their people management initiatives over the past year. From a pool of nominees of outstanding calibre, the finalists for 2015 have been

determined through in-depth research to identify the most deserving in the industry. Over the following pages you will discover who have made the grade as this year’s finalists.

The Australian HR Awards will be held as a black-tie event on Friday 7 August at the exciting new venue The Star, Sydney. For more information about the event and to book your table, visit hrawards.com.au

EVENT PARTNER

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TRA AUS

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ACCUMULATE Employer of Choice (>1000)       

American Express Inchcape Australia Johnson & Johnson Mercy Health QBE Australia Sanitarium Specsavers

This award recognises the best large organisation to work for in Australia.

AWARD SPONSOR Accumulate is a leading employee loyalty and engagement business, working closely with some of Australia’s most iconic brands to improve levels of employee retention, productivity, customer service and business profitability. Our innovative, large-scale, full-service solutions play a significant role in shaping our clients’ employee engagement strategies. Drawing on our years of industry experience in the design and delivery of recognition, non-cash reward and benefits solutions, we have helped many organisations connect with their people on a more meaningful level. Talk to accumulate to understand what impact an improvement in employee loyalty could have within your organisation.

CONTACT: Richard Wilkins, head of sales and marketing P: 1300 733 725 E: info@accumulate.com.au W: www.accumulate.com.au

AUSTRALIANSUPER Employer of Choice (<1000)  Atlassian  AutoNexus  Carter Newell     

Lawyers Hyder Consulting NSW Business Chamber Rockend Stryker Youi

This award recognises the best small to mid-sized organisation to work for in Australia.

AWARD SPONSOR AustralianSuper is one of Australia’s largest superannuation funds with more than 2 million members and over $90 billion in assets. We work with over 200,000 businesses to deliver high-quality low cost superannuation options to their employees.

Call us on 1300 697 873 to benefit from • Easy, flexible administration • Free clearing house services • A dedicated account manager if you have more than 10 employees • No joining fees • Education and free seminars for your employees Or visit australiansuper.com/employer to find out more.

CONTACT: P: 1300 697 873 W: www.australiansuper.com/employer

FRAZER JONES Australian HR Team of the Year       

American Express Atlassian CUA Dexus Property Group FKG Group Qantas TNT

This award recognises the most outstanding HR team in Australia.

AWARD SPONSOR Frazer Jones is a niche, highly specialised, boutique HR recruitment firm with well-established offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, Düsseldorf, Munich and London.

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

CONTACT: Ciaran Foley, manager (Sydney) P: (02) 9236 9090 E: ciaranfoley@frazerjones.com.au W: www.frazerjones.com/australia

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FUTURE KNOWLEDGE Best Use of Technology      

Cisco Dymocks Mercy Health MSD NAB Samsung Australia

This award recognises excellence in human capital technology use by an in-house HR team.

AWARD SPONSOR Future Knowledge is a specialist management consultancy which partners with companies undertaking technology-led business transformation programs in Australia and New Zealand.

Our expertise lies in helping clients more quickly achieve their future state of ‘business as usual’, following adoption of technologies including Cloud-based Business Software, Mobile Technologies, ERP and HR Systems.

CONTACT: David Guazzarotto P: 0414 415 645 E: dguazzarotto@futureknowledge.com.au W: www.futureknowledge.com.au

SOLTERBECK Best Reward & Recognition Program  American Express  Commonwealth Bank

This award recognises excellence and innovation in employee reward and recognition programs and incentives.

of Australia  Think Education/    

Laureate Australia Origin Energy Seven West Media SingTel Optus The Langham Melbourne

AWARD SPONSOR Solterbeck specialises in engaging and motivating employees and channel partners. Whether you’re looking to develop a new program or reinvigorate your current one, we’ll work with you to achieve best practice in sales and channel incentives, employee recognition and referral programs, internal communication, incentive travel, conferences and events. If you’d like to increase the engagement and discretionary performance of your team, we’d love to help.

CONTACT: Dave Jackson, executive director P: 0419 358 188 E: davidj@solterbeck.com W: www.solterbeck.com

UTS BUSINESS SCHOOL Best Workplace Diversity & Inclusion Strategy  Australian

     

Government Shared Services Centre Australian Red Cross Blood Service BP Global Business Services Canon Australia Ernst & Young QBE Australia Vodafone Hutchison Australia

This award recognises excellence and innovation in diversity and inclusion programs and initiatives.

AWARD SPONSOR UTS Business School, part of the University of Technology, Sydney, delivers a broad range of degree programs at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and through its executive development programs. Its practical and integrative approach to business education prepares students for a world that demands more than specialist expertise in a particular discipline.

CONTACT: E: business@uts.edu.au W: www.business.uts.edu.au

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Australian HR Champion (CEO) of the Year This award recognises the CEO who has driven successful people strategies from the top by putting people first and championing innovative HR values.

yy Matthew Stewart, Bankstown City Council yy Brendan Gough, Brisbane Motorway Services yy Lynne Jordan, Family Planning Victoria

yy Graham Turner, Flight Centre yy Adjunct Professor Stephen Cornelissen, Mercy Health yy Pip Marlow, Microsoft

yy David Bowie, SAS

Australian HR Director of the Year This award recognises the individual who has demonstrated outstanding leadership at the executive level over the past 12 months.

� Wayne Gobert, Assetlink � Lee Norman, Beca � Deborah Lowe, ClearView Wealth

� May Yuan, Eli Lilly � Amanda Towe, Johnson & Johnson � Rob Phipps, KFC Australia

� Cindy Reid, Konica Minolta � Alex Diab, NSW Business Chamber

Australian HR Manager of the Year This award recognises the individual who has displayed excellence at the management level over the past 12 months.

yy Clive Holt, Bega Garnbirringu Health Services yy Zoe Campbell, Brisbane Motorway Services yy Selina Hicks, Deloitte

yy Sandra Cinar, Mercy Health yy Callum Morrison, State Trustees yy Bianca Azzopardi, The Sam Prince Group

Australian HR Rising Star of the Year This award recognises the individual who has achieved impressive results with less than five years of commercial experience.

� � � �

� Melinda Votano, KFC Australia � Emma Anderson, Minor DKL Food Group � Holly Johnson, Sofitel Melbourne on Collins

Joshua Cass, AECOM Australia Elise Miller, Beca Hannah Perry, Deloitte Shenuka Munasinghe, Endeavour College of Natural Health

Best Change Management Strategy This award recognises excellence and innovation in shaping, managing and influencing organisational change.

� � � �

y Seven West Media y Suncorp Group y Westpac Group

AutoNexus Beca CUA Foxtel

Best Graduate Development Program This award recognises excellence and innovation in graduate development programs and initiatives.

� � � �

� Coles � Department of Social Services (DSS) � Orica

Accenture Atlassian Australian Taxation Office Cisco

Best Health & Wellbeing Program This award recognises excellence and innovation in corporate health and wellbeing programs and initiatives.

� American Express � Brisbane Airport Corporation Pty Ltd � HRA EastLink ad third resized version.pdf 1 1/06/2015 � House with No Steps

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8:07:25 AM

� Rockend � RoZetta Technology � Youi

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Best HR Strategic Plan This award recognises the HR team that has driven and implemented the most innovative and successful strategic plan.

yy AutoNexus yy CBH Group yy CUA

yy Foxtel yy Glen Eira City Council yy Westpac Group

Best Leadership Development Program This award recognises excellence and innovation in leadership development programs and initiatives.

� � � �

� Johnson & Johnson � SingTel Optus � Woolworths

Accenture Asciano Dan Murphy’s Deloitte

Best Learning & Development Program This award recognises excellence and innovation in training and development programs and initiatives.

� Assetlink � Brisbane Motorway Services � FedEx

� MYOB � Pumpkin Patch � The Coffee Club

Best Recruitment Campaign This award recognises excellence and innovation in recruitment campaigns and initiatives.

� � � �

� Office of Environment & Heritage NSW � Think Education/Laureate Australia � Woolworths

Atlassian Beca Deloitte Department of Education & Training Queensland

Best Workplace Flexibility Program This award recognises excellence and innovation in workplace flexibility programs and initiatives.

� � � �

Mercy Health Peoplecare Health Insurance Port Stephens Council Suncorp Group

� The Greater Building Society � Telstra � Westpac

Employer of Choice (Not-For-Profit & Public Sector) This award recognises the best public sector or not-for-profit employer to work for in Australia.

� � � �

Bankstown City Council BUSY at Work Disability Services Australia Family Planning Victoria

� Mercy Health � Peoplecare Health Insurance � Port Stephens Council

BOOK YOUR TABLE NOW

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PEOPLE

IN PERSON

DONNA PRICE Donna Price, general manager people & culture at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Club, chats to HRD about balancing a rich history with forward-thinking HR initiatives, launching a leadership framework, and why the MCC is a special place to work 54

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HRD: How did you first enter the HR profession and what was it that initially drew you to it?

Donna Price: I first entered the HR profession after starting out as a graduate, and as part of the rotation program I was fortunate enough to spend 10 weeks in HR. I really enjoyed the project and the experience and was fortunate enough to be placed in the HR team at the end of my program. I was drawn to it because I’d studied psychology at university and found a good connection between the two topics, given they are both focused on people.

HRD: You’ve worked in HR in the banking and finance sector (ANZ), and media and entertainment (Foxtel). How have these roles prepared you for your role at MCC? DP: These roles have all been great experiences along the way, and whilst there have been some differences in the product offering and types of industry, they are universal in the importance of people, culture, customer service, employee engagement and leadership to organisational success.

HRD: Is the MCC a popular employment choice for the general public?

DP: We are very fortunate in that we do typically attract a lot of interest when we advertise for positions at the MCC. When we are recruiting for roles in our organisation, we obviously focus on the specific job requirements and equally we focus on the ability to work as a team, collaborate with others and live our values. In short, I would describe our culture as collegiate, professional and collaborative, which is underpinned by a strong and palpable sense of passion and pride.

Culturally, I believe we strike a lovely balance between preserving and respecting our heritage and history, whilst also ensuring we remain focused on our future. The MCC genuinely is a very special place to work.

HRD: You’re talking about cascading leadership development down through an organisation at the HR Summit Melbourne.

What does the MCC do in this space?

DP: At the MCC we recently launched our Leading at the ‘G’ leadership framework for our permanent staff, which essentially outlines what is critical for success as a leader at the ‘G’.

It has been developed in consultation with our

people and really tells a story about the leadership capabilities that are important to our organisation. We workshopped the topic of leadership with our executive as well as a cross section of our staff across all teams, and really asked them about what it was that they valued and needed from their leaders.

This was instrumental in shaping our Leading at the ‘G’ framework. We are now in the process of developing programs linked to these capabilities, and our Leading at the ‘G’ framework will underpin a number of our people initiatives in the future.

HRD: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

DP: If you build trust, show respect and establish positive working relationships, the rest will take care of itself. Another personal favourite of mine is ‘Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves’.

HRD: Finish this sentence: ‘What I enjoy most about HR is …’

DP: … being provided with the opportunity to help shape and create a great place to work, and, at a personal level, the opportunity to work across all teams and get to know everyone. One of the great things about working in HR is that it enables you to look at the whole of the business rather than just a certain part of the organisation, and that’s what makes it particularly interesting.

HRD: Finish this sentence: ‘What I enjoy least about HR is …’

DP: … at times some discussion/s can be challenging, and that can be difficult, but I genuinely believe if you treat people with dignity, respect and genuine care, then these guiding principles can help you navigate through some of the more challenging parts of the role.

HRD: What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

DP: Spending time with my family, supporting my football team – who aren’t travelling too well of late – and really just having some down time to relax and connect with my family, two busy children and friends!

TIMELINE 1986 – 1988 Bachelor of Arts, Psychology Swinburne University of Technology

May 1999 – 2002 Head of HR Service Centre (Australia & New Zealand) ANZ Banking Group

March 2005 – April 2008 Head of organisational development & talent FOXTEL

April 2011 – February 2013 General manager people & culture Melbourne & Olympic Parks Trust November 2013 Present General manager people & culture Melbourne Cricket Club

1996 Graduate Diploma, Human Resources Management Monash University

February 2002 – March 2005 Head of Professional HR services & customer engagement ANZ Banking Group

April 2008 – December 2010 Executive general manager HR Victoria Racing Club

March 2013 – November 2013 HR manager Melbourne Stadiums Ltd

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PEOPLE

HEAD TO HEAD

GOT AN OPINION THAT COUNTS? Email hrd_editor@keymedia.com.au

Views from the front line

How important is your graduate or apprentice program to bringing fresh talent into your organisation? How do you connect with fresh graduates?

Jason Ricketts Managing partner Australia, Herbert Smith Freehills Recruiting the best and brightest graduates to join us is incredibly important to bringing new talent and fresh ideas into the firm.

When recruiting, we focus on individuals who have a broad range of skills because being an exceptional lawyer takes more than just sheer technical ability; it requires diversity of thought and, often, a fresh perspective.

During the campus season we spend a lot of time connecting with students directly, and recently we’ve launched a series of in-house, commercially focused events which have received very positive feedback.

We offer graduates unparalleled training and development, access to the most interesting work for the top clients, as well as the opportunity to work alongside some of the world’s best legal minds.

This, combined with our team-focused and collaborative culture, is what we believe attracts graduates and keeps them engaged to continue their careers with the firm.

Siobhan Savage Group talent acquisition executive, WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff There’s nothing like having fresh talent in an organisation, and we are active in the internship space, with 40 placements available this year. This year’s program was designed to be fun and a little quirky – prospective candidates submitted selfies, and our interviews followed a speed-style-dating format.

Internship placements will show us what our selected candidates are made of and will expose our undergraduates to real-time clients and projects, with all the issues, complexities, challenges and rewards that go with that.

Our core values promote empowerment and accountability, collaboration and sharing. We also celebrate technical excellence.

We feel we’ve a lot to offer as an organisation, and we’re keen to tap into the creative energy and talent of undergraduates who, we hope, will be our graduate intake in the future.

Christian Campanella Global HRD, Pernod Ricard Winemakers Graduate programs are important for two reasons. Firstly, they generate a talent pipeline for the business. We can bring people into our organisation fresh from university and equip them with the skills that we need as a company. Secondly, you’re bringing in a younger generation, which brings a different mindset.

There are two programs we’re running under the banner of the graduate program.

The first is a graduate wine ambassador program. We provide experience in Australia, New Zealand and Spain, across all divisions in the business, so that ultimately they can be placed in roles in our key markets.

The second program is a winemaker graduate program. What we’re trying to do is bring in the new breed of winemakers.

It’s a two-year structured program designed to expose these grads to different countries of origin across Australia-NZ and also different winemaking styles.

GRADUATE RECRUITMENT According to Graduate Careers Australia, 92.4% of new postgraduates were in some form of employment shortly after completing their degrees. Of that total, 9.7% were working part-time while continuing to seek full-time employment, and 82.7% were in full-time employment. We ask the experts what they are doing to bring fresh blood into their organisations.

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