Human Capital magazine issue 10.06

FRONTLINE LEADERS

Building their toolkit P.26 ISSUE 10.6

MENTORING

Essential traits? P.42 SUPERANNUATION

Tips for SG increase P.44 HUMAN CAPITAL MAGAZINE HCAMAG.COM

BUSINESS SUSTAINABILITY Strategy, decision-making and long-term horizons P.16

PLUS: VALUES THAT MATTER – GPS FOR YOUR ORGANISATION P.34

editor’s letter

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

Decisions, decisions...

In April 2012 some 300 plant workers at Toyota were made redundant. While redundancies are a necessary reality of restructuring, the car manufacturer came under fire from workers who claimed the method behind the process was needlessly cruel and humiliating. A media flare-up concentrated the attention on all the negative aspects of the situation – the fact that a security force was present, the ‘state of limbo’ many workers felt since redundancies were flagged in January, and the assessment process itself (workers were assessed on behaviour, skills and knowledge, and those with the lowest scores were let go). This occurred despite the fact the company had gone above and beyond in terms of outplacement services.

If the Toyota management team had their time over again, would they have done anything differently? Did they even do anything wrong? There are of course two sides to every story, and who’s to say that this action, as regrettable as it was, was necessary to ensure the sustainability of operations in Australia.

In business, as in life, tough decisions are sometimes necessary. Every day we make decisions. Some are small, domestic and innocuous (chicken or fish for dinner?). Others carry far greater consequences, impacting on people’s lives, livelihoods and well-being.

Perhaps inevitably, mistakes are made along the way. And while few would argue that the CEOs and executive teams behind our top companies are intelligent and, for the most part, responsible people, sometimes they too slip up. Is there a more foolproof way of making decisions? Our feature on p.16 looks at the impact short-termism and short-sighted decision-making is having on business, and how horizons can be broadened by working towards a decision-making process.

Also, throughout this issue of HC are a series of features looking at different aspects of L&D, from short-course training for frontline managers to mentoring for executives.

All, in some capacity, cover the hows and whys of better decision-making. Overarching all this is corporate values – which our feature on p.34 points out are effectively the ‘GPS’ for organisations. Without values that matter and connect with people, poor decision-making is almost a certainty.

Without values that matter and connect with people, poor decision-making is almost a certainty

Iain Hopkins, editor, HC Magazine Letters to the editor

editor@hcamag.com

COPY & FEATURES EDITOR Iain Hopkins JOURNALIST Stephanie Zillman EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Jessica Cooper PRODUCTION EDITOR Sushil Suresh

ART & PRODUCTION SENIOR DESIGNER Rebecca Downing TRAFFIC MANAGER Abby Cayanan

CONTRIBUTORS Carroll & O’Dea Lawyers, The Next Step, Peak Health, Kenexa

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

CORPORATE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Mike Shipley CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER George Walmsley MANAGING DIRECTOR – BUSINESS MEDIA Justin Kennedy CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER Colin Chan HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER Julia Bookallil Editorial enquiries Iain Hopkins tel: +61 2 8437 4703 iain.hopkins@keymedia.com.au Advertising enquiries National commercial manager, HR products Sophie Knight tel: +61 2 8437 4733 sophie.knight@keymedia.com.au Subscriptions tel: +61 2 8437 4731 • fax: +61 2 8437 4753 subscriptions@keymedia.com.au Key Media keymedia.com.au Key Media Pty Ltd, regional head office, Level 10, 1–9 Chandos St, St Leonards, NSW 2065, Australia tel: +61 2 8437 4700 fax: +61 2 9439 4599 Offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, Toronto hcamag.com Copyright is reserved throughout. No part of this publication can be reproduced in whole or part without the express permission of the editor. Contributions are invited, but copies of work should be kept as HC can accept no responsibility for loss.

Got a burning issue to get off your chest? We value your opinions and input.

Human Capital would like to hear from you. Send through your comments to editor@hcamag.com. Alternatively, express your thoughts on the readers’ forums at hcamag.com HCAMAG.COM

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HC MAGAZINE 10.6

contents

30 30 | Leading through tough times – who cares?

Why have some companies succeeded in growing despite a period of global economic uncertainty? Rich Atkinson outlines the key role that a ‘psychological contract’ between organisation and employee can play – and how such a contract can be built 34 | “Turn left now”: GPS for your organisation Are your mission statements meaningless words printed on a wall or guidance and positioning statements (GPS) that provide clarity and sense of purpose for all employees?

Nicholas Barnett investigates

16 Cover story: Looking towards far horizons How do you make decisions in your capacity as a business leader?

Do you get muddled in short-term thinking or act in haste? What impact is this having on your organisation’s sustainability? Iain Hopkins considers a better approach 2

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42 | Two ears, one mouth: The art of mentoring Do you have what it takes to be a mentor?

44 | When tomorrow comes How should HR professionals broach the new 12% guaranteed superannuation contribution rules with employees?

Check out the HC archive online:

28 50 | Profile: HR at Suncorp Group Employees are demanding flexible work options, and forward-thinking organisations are complying. Yet the benefits are not all one way, as this month’s profiled HR professional reveals

REGULARS

04 | In brief: news 06 | In brief: forum

FRONTLINE INTELLIGENCE

10 | In Step – HR career experts 12 | Legal 14 | HR consulting 15 | Corporate health

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IN BRIEF

news WHAT NEGATIVE IMPACT DO YOU THINK THE SKILLS GAP IS HAVING ON YOUR ORGANISATION?

%

80 70

2011/12 (%)

60

2010/11 (%)

2009/10 (%)

50 DIVERSITY

40

WHAT WORKING MUMS REALLY WANT

30 20 10 0

More stress on employees

Lower staff morale

Losing Reduction Impact on Impact on some high in customer strategic profits/ performing service performance planning employees standards goals

Impact

WORKFORCE SKILLS

SKILLS GAP STARTS TO BITE

n The Australian Institute of Management’s 2012 Skills Gap Survey suggests that an overwhelming 77% of the almost 1,700 Australian executives and professionals surveyed now report their organisations have a gap in their workforce skills.

The survey found that leadership is the skill most lacking in Australian organisations. Forty-five per cent of respondents said leadership was the biggest skills gap in their organisations. The next highest ranked skills gaps were ‘process and project management skills’ (39%); ‘technical and industry specific skills’ (35%); ‘communication/interpersonal skills’ (34%); and ‘managerial’ (32%).

Leadership was also named as the number one ‘personal skill priority’ for employees at 39% ahead of ‘teamwork’ (35%) and ‘analytical/ strategic thinking’ at 33%.

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Losing Little to no market impact share to competitors

The month in numbers

800 – number

of individual NAB offices that are Fairtrade certified, making NAB the largest Fairtrade workplace in the world

76 – percentage

of respondents to a Futurestep survey who measured the impact (financial or otherwise) of a hire in the first 12 months, viewing this immediate impact as three times more valuable than longer-term retention

$1,000 – the

amount paid to employers who provide a worker aged 50 or over with a job for at least three months, under the Federal Government’s Jobs Bonuses scheme

n New data has revealed that working Mums who return to work care more about having flexible hours after returning to work than having additional maternity leave.

When asked to prioritise six return-to-work scenarios, working Mums overwhelmingly voted flexible hours into number one. Just 5% of returning mothers said they would opt for longer maternity leave.

Is HR willing to accommodate the post-baby flexibility?

According to Emma Walsh, founder of Mums@Work consultancy, the way organisations tackle the return to work transition has improved but there is still a long way to go. “I think there’s been a significant shift in the last six years, and we’ve seen much more willingness to acknowledge a need for flexibility for people with families.”

Walsh said re-integration is achievable, but employers must sit down with the returning employee and discuss a ‘job redesign’. “So often Mums go in with unrealistic expectations about what they can actually do. The focus needs to shift from what they can’t do, to what they can do.”

In addition to flexible working hours and extensive time off, working mothers ranked the following scenarios as the most important in TheLadders annual working Mums survey: ability to work from home; convenient working hours; on-site day care.

IN BRIEF

news PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

CONSISTENCY ESSENTIAL IN DISCIPLINARY ACTION

n An organisation has been ordered to pay more than $20,000 in compensation after the workplace watchdog ruled a dismissal would have been legitimate, had it not differed from the treatment another employee, who faced no disciplinary action for a nearly identical incident, received.

A youth correctional facility employee pursued an unfair dismissal claim with Fair Work Australia after he was dismissed for misconduct. The worker attended the room of an internee during the prescribed lockdown hours, against workplace policy, to provide toilet paper.

However, the worker was assaulted and six youths escaped the facility (although all were soon recovered by officers).

The investigation by Fair Work found that the worker’s actions constituted misconduct, and would be grounds for dismissal. However, during the investigation, representatives for the employee cited an incident which had occurred just nine days before the assault, where another employee had also entered an internee’s room during lockdown hours and was also assaulted resulting in an unsuccessful escape attempt, yet this employee faced no disciplinary action.

While the employer argued that the two incidents were different because the latter had more adverse outcomes, Commissioner Anna Lee Cribb found that the two incidents were comparable, and because they represented differential treatment, rendered the dismissal unfair.

The Victorian Employers Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VECCI) said this case means employers must ensure that any disciplinary outcomes are considered in the overall context of the business, and that a consistent overall approach to discipline is taken, supported by an appropriate policy on addressing any issues of concern in the workplace as they occur. Outcomes need not be equivalent; however, a perceived ‘free pass’ for one employee contrasted with dismissal for another on similar facts will be hard to justify in a tribunal context.

RETENTION

LEST WE FORGET: MIDDLE MANAGERS

n Middle managers play a crucial role in delivering results, supervising and engaging the bulk of the workforce – yet this integral management group also experiences excessive stress, disengagement and a high degree of attrition as a result.

According to DDI, 49% of mid-level leaders around the world feel their roles have a degree of stagnation. The more stagnant the leaders’ jobs were, the more likely they were to say they would give up their leadership position if they were offered the same compensation or reduced compensation to be an individual contributor elsewhere.

Towers Watson has the following recommendations for improving 6

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middle managers’ engagement and performance: • Refocus managers’ rewards away from personal production and towards team production and team member growth and development goals.

• Reconfigure managers’ jobs to allow more time to focus on people.

• Equip managers better to be more effective at identifying and responding to individual employee differences.

• Inform managers about the employee learning opportunities available (eg, build more and better sources of information into the manager self-service portal, enable them to design projects and assignments to suit individual team members).

• Be more effective at delivering informal rewards (eg, recognition).

• Give managers more control to encourage innovation in how work gets done in their work groups.

ABSENTEEISM

SHOULD ‘FIT NOTES’ REPLACE ‘SICK NOTES’?

DID YOU KNOW?

98% of HR

directors believe that their nonnative English speaking staff can communicate effectively, yet many aren’t taking into account the need for additional vocabulary training (to include industryspecific jargon).

Source: London School of English

n Absenteeism is an ongoing issue in workplaces across Australia – and in the face of a medical certificate, there’s not much employers can say or do. However, the rise of graded sickness absence certificates, or ‘fit notes’, in the UK and Europe, may be about to hit our shores.

In the UK, GPs issue this kind of notice, and are required to respond to specific prompts which address whether the employee could be fit to work with modified duties.

The fit note can still be used as evidence for why an employee cannot work. In the UK, many employers do not require a fit note until after the seventh calendar day of sickness. If the doctor recommends that an employee ‘may be fit for work’, employees can still apply to remain absent.

The requirements for the payment of sick pay did not change – and if a doctor recommends that an employee ‘may be fit for work’, and the employer and employee agree that the worker should remain off work, statutory sick pay will be still be paid.

When the doctor provides a fit note they will advise the employee on one of two options. Either the worker will be ‘not fit for work’ or ‘may be fit for work’. They may also suggest one or more common ways for employers to aid the return to work, such as a ‘phased return’, altered hours or amended duties.

IN BRIEF HC ONLINE

forum

Smokers need not apply: Legitimate

discrimination?

A Melbourne publishing firm has been the latest workplace to fall into the increasing practice of including a disclaimer in job ads that ‘smokers need not apply’ and in doing so has revved up the ongoing debate. While it’s not unlawful, the practice has been labelled discriminatory and could mean missing out on excellent candidates.

Employers have for some time confined smokers to designated areas, moved smoking areas outside buildings, and limited smoking breaks. However, as some companies are now opting to push smokers out of the workplace altogether, acting commissioner of the Queensland Antidiscrimination Commission Neroli Holmes said denying someone a position because they were a smoker was “discriminatory, but not unlawful”. However, the practice could be a slippery slope, and Andrew Tarsy from the US-based Progressive Business Leaders Network questioned whether any such hiring policy is materially different from screening for other lifestyle-related behaviours, including being overweight and drinking alcohol.

According to the Victorian Equal Opportunity Commission, to provide equal opportunities job advertisements must not be discriminatory and employers should not seek to exclude smokers from applying for a position, unless the need not to smoke is an inherent requirement of the role. Acting

Commissioner Karen Toohey warned factors such as weight, height or smoking were not relevant to a person’s ability to do their job.

“Every employer should be looking for the best person for a job,” she said.

Smoking breaks

Some employers are justified in hiring only non-smokers, according to Action on Smoking and Health Australia chief executive Anne Jones. “What is very understandable is that some workplaces are saying they don’t want smokers to apply because they see it as a productivity issue,” Jones told The Herald Sun. She added that every workplace operates differently and some would be better off paying for employees to undergo quit courses.

One workplace lawyer said the practice of taking several 15-minute breaks a day is something many employers see as undermining productivity, and it can be easily banned. “There is nothing stopping an employer asking a candidate if they smoke and how often,” Peter Vitalie said. “You can put into a contract that staff are not to smoke during office hours. You can also fix the time of people’s breaks and request that in their break they do not leave your premises. There is no law that says you can’t discriminate against smokers,” he added.

A representative from the Australian Human Rights Commission told HC that the issue is not covered in any of its legislation.

What do you think? Leave your comments on all HC news and opinion:

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Readers’ comments SATRINA BRANDT on 16 May 2012 03:26 PM Is it unlawful to discriminate on weight and height? Which piece of legislation is that? It could create indirect discrimination, eg a minimum height may exclude races of shorter stature such as Asians and this would be unlawful discrimination. However, weight and height of themselves are not mentioned in the legislation and smoking isn’t either. I think Karen Toohey was indicating that it was irrelevant to their ability to do the job. She didn’t say that it is unlawful. Many smokers take additional breaks, which is unfair and affects productivity. However, this is more of a management issue.

ROBIN POLLOCK on 21 May 2012 02:26 PM Pity the poor co-workers, travellers, etc who have to sit close to a smoker. They reek of cigarettes. I, for one, would not want to work with a smoker, and I would give a non-smoker preference for a job any day. Witness the group of smokers who would have spent, on average, one hour a day taking smoke breaks out on the footpath (smoking not permitted on company premises) at a previous company, where customers and passersby could see them – what a great image for that company. Not to mention non-smoking colleagues who resented, big time, the extra breaks these people took. Employees are not permitted to drink alcohol at work or take breaks to do it elsewhere so why should smokers be permitted to do so?

SDM on 22 May 2012 04:34 PM The reality is that a smoker is at the very least perceived as being less productive than a person who does not.

There are a few people in my business that smoke, and I seem to see them constantly coming in/out of the office for a smoke.

Truth be told, they smell. It’s in their breath, their hair & their clothes. In my own team, I have one person who smokes. I worry about his health and have offered to assist him quitting, if he chooses. Not because I think he is less productive, but because I value him. I then look to the rest of my non-smoking team. I ask myself if they are more productive. Some are. In my view, I want the best possible person for a role. If they smoke, so be it. If they have a hygiene issue as a result or they spend too much time outside smoking, they can be sure there will be a conversation.

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FRONTLINE INTELLIGENCE

recruitment

Andrew Hill is a Consultant within The Next Gen division of The Next Step, a specialist consulting practice in the human resources market. For more information call (03) 9664 0900 or email ahill@thenextstep.com.au. Website: thenextstep.com.au.

Building A Career In HR We all remember the challenge of getting our first job and the impact a great mentor had on our development. With the pressures of building a career in modern HR, good advice from a mentor and a strategic approach to career development is more essential than ever.

At The Next Step we speak to a large number of HR professionals every day and within The Next Gen division we are in constant contact with early and intermediate career professionals. In speaking with our network we are constantly hearing that one of the key factors that motivates a candidate to accept a new role is the opportunity to gain a great mentor and, in turn, future career development.

As part of our efforts to analyse and understand the market we ran the 2012 Global HR Viewpoint Survey of nearly 3,000 HR professionals of all levels from across Australia/NZ, Asia and the UK/Europe. This research provides current insights into the thoughts, opinions and expectations of HR professionals with regards to their career aspirations and the HR function itself, including mentoring and career development.

THE EFFECTS

It was a concern to note that in Australia only 10% of respondents to the HR Viewpoint Survey indicated they entered the profession via an HR Graduate Program.

This percentage is lower still in the early career space. Furthermore, we have seen a continued decline in Graduate Programs offered by the large corporates that traditionally provided structured learning environments that fostered and encouraged many mentoring relationships. Graduate Programs would encourage seeking out mentors from within HR as well as the broader business, which makes for particularly beneficial mentoring relationships. We advise early career professionals to utilise their networks and 10

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establish contacts in order to develop their own relationships with potential mentors.

We recognise that HR candidates are a highly educated group, with 87% of respondents having a tertiary qualification.

Despite this figure, early career HR professionals are finding it harder than ever to land the first role in their HR career. We are seeing extremely intelligent applicants with excellent theoretical knowledge but often without the practical application to relate HR principles to real world business objectives. We are seeing graduates having success by actively seeking out internship opportunities to make this transition easier.

HR STRUCTURES

In addition to the lack of Graduate Programs there has been a seismic shift in the career paths of HR professionals. As the profession has continued to embrace the Ulrich model there has been a decline in the proportion of career development opportunities available in most organisations.

The Ulrich model structures HR with centralised specialist teams and Business Partners embedded within business units.

Our findings from the HR Viewpoint Survey show: • 54% of respondents work in the Ulrich model, and • for respondents within organisations of more than 1,000 plus employees, this increases to 80%.

The key effect of this is an absence of career development opportunities at the HR Advisor level. In many organisations there is a gulf between HR Coordinator and HR Business Partner roles, which is prompting individuals to look outside their current employer to compete for the small number of developmental roles available.

DEVELOPING TALENT

Salaries in the marketplace are generally consistent for job levels and therefore a key attraction and retention strategy is the

employee value proposition (EVP). In this instance,the EVP is specifically around personal and professional development.

Bonus schemes and rewarding high performance are very important, but the value of a chat over a coffee with a great mentor cannot be underestimated in an employee’s engagement with a business and in harnessing an individual’s potential to grow.

Recognising this appetite for development and learning opportunities The Next Gen are partnering with the HR industry and take great pride in running quarterly sessions in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. At these events HR Leaders provide advice and guidance to large audiences of eager early career talent and on occasion we have even seen guest speakers offer additional one-on-one coaching to attendees.

Recognising the lack of mentoring relationships, The Next Step launched the Ivan Wood HR Career Readiness Program in 2008, partnering with the University of Western Sydney. The program has proven a great success by offering talented final year students access to mentors.

We have found a number of HR leaders, aware of the value that great mentors have had in their own career growth, keen to offer their time and advice to early career HR professionals. The program has been so successful that this year it has been extended to Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne and the University of New South Wales.

FINAL WORD

Mentoring and coaching is essential to HR professionals throughout the span of their careers. As HR teams become leaner, career pathways and mentoring become more vital in ensuring our future HR leaders are identified and equipped to succeed.

For more information about the 2012 Global HR Viewpoint Survey, please contact The Next Step.

MARKET MOVES

radar

Recent HR Market Moves Zinfra Group has appointed Leanne Beveridge to the role of General Manager Human Resources. Most recently Leanne was working with Lumo Energy as their Executive General Manager, People & Performance. Leanne has previously held executive roles with a broad range of organisations such as AWB Landmark, Sara Lee and HRL. Origin Energy has appointed Theresa Jory as Program Manager of their Customer Centricity Initiative. Theresa is an experienced Change Manager and most recently held the role of Senior Change Manager with Group Strategy at ANZ. In addition, Theresa has worked across the utilities, retail, government and tertiary sectors.

Linda Heron will be joining Melbourne Water as their General Manager, People and Safety. Linda brings extensive experience with Coles Group Ltd (formerly Coles Myer Ltd) including 14 years in strategic executive roles that included leading large operational teams and the Organisation Development function.

Paul Kiosoglous has joined Tabcorp in the role General Manager Performance & Reward. Paul brings extensive experience in the Remuneration and Reward space having initially commenced his career in Consulting with Mercer before moving on to hold senior roles with ANZ, Fosters, Toyota, Medibank Private.

Marcella Lazarus has been appointed the Director People & Performance with the Royal Institute for Deaf & Blind Children.

She brings extensive experience in Consulting, HR and L&OD spanning a diverse range of industry sectors including banking & finance, medical and professional services.

Caltex Australia Petroleum Limited has appointed Christy McKay as their HR Manager for retail. After spending many years with Coles Group in senior HR management roles, Christy was most recently the Group HR Manager with Easts Group & Sydney Roosters. Prior to this she held the role of HR Business Partner with Village Roadshow Ltd. Sally Kincaid has been appointed the Chief Human Resources Officer at QBE for Australia and New Zealand. Sally is a senior HR executive with significant experience within the financial services, commodities and public sectors. She has held director level roles with ING/ Onepath, Citi, Fonterra and AMP. Joining SNP Security as their General Manager People & Culture is Sharn Chisholm. Sharn was previously employed as the Director Human Resources at Healthways Australia and brings previous senior HR management experience with businesses such as Optus and Phillips.

Kate Mason-Dryden has been appointed to the role of Vice President, Group Human Resources at Amcor. Kate spent over 10 years with Credit Suisse, most recently in the role of Managing Director.

Kate brings global experience working at all levels including board level on business and human capital strategies and change initiatives within Australia, London, Singapore, New York and Zurich.

Ferrero has appointed Angelo Salido as their National HR Manager. Angela brings strong experience gained across a diverse range of industry sectors including transport & logistics, entertainment and retail.

Judith Wagner has been appointed to the role of HR Manager NSW/SA at Superpartners. Judith has held senior HR management roles, including those with Asia Pacific Remit, with businesses such as Telstra, Travelport and NCSI. Joining Komatsu Australia in the role of General Manager, People & Culture is Colin Shaw. Prior to joining Komatsu, Colin spent many years as the Managing Director of Visionary Solutions Australia. Colin previously held the role of General Manager, Human Resources with Coates Hire.

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

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FRONTLINE INTELLIGENCE

legal

Peter Punch, Partner Workplace Solutions Carroll & O’Dea Lawyers

Unfair dismissal claims here to stay!

This is the final article for the Workplace Solutions Group. We appreciate having the opportunities that we have had to share our experiences with Human Capital’s readership.

For this article, the writer is unashamedly “signing off” with an article that is in essence an opinion piece – thus the views expressed are those of the author alone, not his team or his firm Unfair dismissal claims by employees aggrieved by their dismissal are of course a feature of Australia’s industrial relations landscape, and have been a feature of the political debate over Australia’s employment laws for a number of years.

[Note I am talking here about unfair dismissal, not dismissals that are unlawful, such as dismissal on discriminatory grounds or which constitute “adverse action” – that’s a separate problem that there is no room to discuss here.]

However, unfair dismissal claims have only been a “political hot potato” since 1992, when the then Keating Federal Government, after ratifying International Labour Organisation Convention 158 (concerning rights of redress for employees in relation to termination of employment) had laws enacted at the Federal level to give individual employees the right to challenge alleged unfair dismissal in certain circumstances.

There are many issues in the debate, with employers frequently complaining that the ability to make claims deters employers from hiring, and requires employers to pay “go away money” to settle claims. On the other hand, the initiative by the then Howard Government in its 2006 “WorkChoices” legislation to limit unfair dismissal claims to those employers with more than 100 employees is now generally accepted to have been too harsh. It is also generally accepted that those laws contributed at least in part to the unions’ successful “Your Rights at work” Campaign, and the consequent loss by the 12

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Defensive strategies include disciplinary policies, training line supervisors, and ensuring staff are fully aware of them Howard Government of the November 2007 Federal election.

We at the Workplace Solutions Group have certainly seen instances where unmeritorious claims have been made against our clients, and these can be an extremely frustrating and costly experience for employers, particularly where the employer is not large.

But with the benefit now of 20 years of “unfair dismissal” claims in the Federal and State arenas, there seems to me to be some basic “facts of life” that everyone involved in human resources and workplace relations have to accept.

Australia is a signatory to an ILO Convention that creates an expectation internationally that Australia will enact laws that provide employers with remedies against unfair dismissal – so it is too late (and too diplomatically embarrassing) for Australia to “turn back the clock” completely.

The community is very well aware of the existence of unfair dismissal rights, so seriously reducing them or removing them is politically impossible (as the Howard Government found out in the 2007 Federal election campaign).

It is just not credible for any employer, or employers’ association, to contend that “there is no unfair dismissal – employers do not ever sack people unfairly” (because,

sometimes they do). The real question is finding the balance between providing redress against unfair dismissal without unduly burdening business.

What then is my advice to small business operators and those businesses that are large enough to employ Human Resources/ Workplace Relations personnel.

In the case of small business (those with 15 employees or less), it is unlikely that any Government will in future attempt to completely exempt you from unfair dismissal claims. Every such employer has to understand that such claims are part of the “cost of doing business” in Australia and that training on how to deal with disciplinary issues is as important to such businesses as training on the financial side of running the operation. They can lobby for modifications and that may be fruitful, but they already have some concessions already – ie no claim where the employee has not completed a one year “qualifying period”, special consideration of the fact that no specialist HR personnel are employed and access to the “Small Business” code (although this is of limited assistance).

For larger employers with dedicated HR personnel the lessons include these.

Defensive strategies include clear straightforward disciplinary policies, training of line supervisors in how to use them, ensuring that they are always implemented, and ensuring staff are fully aware of them.

HR personnel are to be encouraged to assess disciplinary matters with an independent frame of mind, and supported by senior management when they do it, as in that way the business gets the advice it needs to avoid costly claims against it.

These strategies also have the positive benefit that staff become aware that the business is likely to treat them fairly, thus fostering a culture where staff will want to be involved and supportive.

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FRONTLINE INTELLIGENCE

HR consulting

Ed Hurst, Managing Director at Kenexa Australia Level 2, 451 Little Bourke St, Melbourne Phone (03) 9602 3899 or email ed.hurst@kenexa.com

HR: On the Brink of Transformation?

Human Capital Management stands at a crossroads. After emerging from the older, less impactful field of personnel management and growing up quickly, our profession has to decide what it wants to be.

We have walked, sometimes hesitantly, but always positively, towards the boardroom, knowing that if only we could marshal our ideas, we have something powerful and important to say and do.

So, having got into the room and around the table, what are we going to do next?

In our last column, we discussed the absolute importance that is now attached to ‘people strategy’. Either because it drives growth in the good times, or because it allows us to make better use of scarce resources when things are tough, our work is central to business performance.

Now that the importance of our work is plain for all to see, we will either keep transforming, or we will be swept aside. For many of us, it is time to make sure that we are up to the challenge. People strategies can no longer merely support or help to deliver independently created business strategies – they have to be the business strategy. And we must always demonstrate a clear ROI for all that we do – not just in general terms but in terms of the organisation’s specific goals.

As we discussed last month, the challenge is to establish clear people solutions that are fully part of the business goals, to prove how our work will deliver them, and to be sure what the value chain is – to show and create the causal links. Until we can show, for example, how talent development or an enhanced culture or improved talent sourcing actually delivers increased sales or better margins or higher customer satisfaction, our work will always be underestimated. It sounds tough, but we simply have to rise to this challenge.

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The structure of the HR model is not the point. The key thing is to be close to the business,and to deliver on strategy The fact is we need to hold ourselves to account – not just because the CEO will; all too often, they shy away from doing so, because the perception still is that our work can’t be fully measured or valued that way – but because if we don’t do so ourselves, our efforts will continue to be at the margins.

The answer is not merely to reorganise or refocus HR from within – the needs of the whole organisation need to be our starting point. We need to stop merely supporting (or even ‘partnering’) the business, or thinking about how to transform ourselves, but start creating people strategies that directly drive our organisations’ ability to perform.

Some of our field’s habitual ways of thinking and operating certainly risk limiting our potential. Our starting point is often that we are a service or a function. We think about ‘best practice’ and compliance.

Important though those things are (and I would never wish to devalue the importance of our professional excellence and passionately-held values), we need to start with a full view of the business and how people can deliver its needs.

We bring unique skills, opportunities and

approaches that are critical to business performance, and can certainly deploy these much more powerfully when operating as true business leaders. HR people need to have the potential to understand how people deliver business performance.

All too often, we create a structural model around HR business partnering, and somehow expect that this will lead to true partnership. The fact is, true business partnership does not happen because we create a structure, but instead requires us to challenge others, to bring our unique talents to meet business needs, to demonstrate clarity of thinking about the link between people and the business’s goals – in short, to be business leaders ourselves, not merely part of a partnering structure.

The structure of the HR model is not the point. The key thing is to be close to the business, to be trusted leaders and central to creating the overall strategy, not a separate people strategy, HR service or a supportive ‘function’.

Another key idea is freeing HRDs up from operational concerns; they should be able, as other leaders do, to create teams of people delivering specialised activities so that they can focus on the bigger picture.

Indeed, key functions hitherto central to HR increasingly reside in other parts of the structure (either within business units or in a centralised ‘corporate functions’ unit). Does this free up and empower HR to be strategic, or endanger our survival as a profession? Will you even have an HRD in a decade’s time?

Perhaps once again this is not so much a structural question as one about expertise and influence. The key thing is not whether there is an HR function, but whether there will be people professionals and leaders who can drive business performance. That is the true challenge for us all.

FRONTLINE INTELLIGENCE Chris Rabba is General Manager, Peak Health Management, part of Bupa

corporate health

KPIs for your health: care for your workforce Things to watch out for Here are some health checks to consider at different life stages.

In your 20s and 30s:

• Blood pressure • Cholesterol and glucose levels • BMI, waist and hip measurements • Dental check and cleaning • Skin cancer checks • Testes self-checks (men) • Breast self-checks (women) If sexually active, • Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) screenings • Pap smear every two years (women)

In your 40s:

All of the same checks as in your 20s and 30s plus: • Type 2 Diabetes Risk Assessment • Cardiovascular Risk Assessment • Mammogram (women) • Eye checks for glaucoma

In your 50s and 60s:

All of the same checks as in your 40s plus: • Osteoporosis Risk Assessment • Bowel cancer screening (also called FOBT – faecal occult blood test) • Visual acuity and hearing impairment tests

Every business relies on its people.

Happy and healthy employees can play an important part in a company’s success.

Healthy can mean different things to different people and everyone has their own health goals. However, there’s some truth in the old saying ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’ — choosing healthier lifestyle habits may mean less absenteeism and more presenteeism, and better health outcomes over time.

“Good health begins with prevention and that all starts with the individual,” explains Dr Paul Bates, Chief Medical Officer at Bupa. “Establishing good health habits means people may enjoy longer, healthier,

happier lives. Regular check-ups are an important part of a prevention routine and can help keep people on track with their health goals.”

The aim of a health check is to help find, prevent or lessen the effect of disease. It’s like getting a car serviced before it breaks down — after all, it’s often better to pick up potential problems earlier rather than later.

Health checks can provide health care professionals with an opportunity to look at a person’s lifestyle, medical history and family history to find out if they’re at risk of any preventable health conditions.

“Getting the right checks at the right time throughout life may help people detect

potential health problems early on,” Dr. Bates says. “This may allow for earlier treatment and better outcomes. Health checks can also identify areas where improvements to lifestyle habits can help keep you on the right track” Having regular health checks has several advantages. Health checks can help a person understand their health needs, values and concerns, and help identify some potential health risk factors where they can make healthy improvements. It may also make them more likely to feel comfortable talking openly with their health care team and may give them the confidence to participate in decisions about their health.

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COVER STORY

sustainable leadership

Picture the scenario: your major shareholders want a return of surplus capital but the management team wants to use the funds in the business; your employee unions want a 10% pay rise when the company can’t afford any increase; a loyal senior manager who has been with the company for 20 years is underperforming and there is board pressure to retrench him; a major newspaper has just phoned hinting at a significant environmental story about to break, with your organisation in the frontline; and the design and construction of the new corporate HQ is massively over budget.

Is it any wonder organisational decision-making – supposedly the strategic grunt that sees organisations plotting paths to achieve short, mid and long-term objectives – gets sidetracked while tending to the minutiae of everyday life?

Christopher Luxford, president and country head of Aegis Australia, says the “day to day”, which for senior people in many organisations consists of 14–15 hour days, means that finding the space to think can be a struggle.

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“We think for a living, and most leaders today don’t think,” he says. “They are constantly reacting to the pressures of day-to-day running of the business.

Leadership development takes a back seat to operational excellence and operational improvement.”

Indeed, Luxford notes that despite the popular conception that it’s up to the CEO to provide the vision and plan the steps towards that vision, the complexity in business today makes this untenable. He doesn’t believe any one role in isolation can help an organisation achieve its shared goals; rather it’s about teamwork: “In the past you could have operational aspects of the business operating as silos and still achieving their goals but now you’ve got to be genuinely operating as a team.”

And while Luxford doesn’t believe there’s a “conscious effort” resulting in this short-termism, he concedes that the constant demand to do more with less produces behaviours that drive short-termism.

“One of my favourite sayings, by Dr Robert Miles out of the US, was that we need to be doing less with less.

Smart decisions, smart business

Looking towards far horizons How do you make decisions in your capacity as a business leader? Do you get muddled in short-term thinking or act in haste? What impact is this having on your organisation’s sustainability and ability to handle fresh ideas? Iain Hopkins investigates whether there is a better approach

That will then free up the time to focus on the future,” Luxford says.

A WIDER PROBLEM?

A closer look at this short-termism mentality reveals a wider cultural problem. Ray Markey, professor of employment relations and director of the Workforce Futures Research Centre, Macquarie University, has undertaken research into the issue of productivity around the world, and from there he’s been able to draw some interesting conclusions about what makes for a self-sustaining business.

“I’ve always been attracted to the French, where they’ve got economic problems but productivity is not one of them,” Markey says. “They work relatively short hours compared to us. I say to my students, the French hardly work at all but when they do it counts!”

So why have the French got it so together? On the face of it, Markey says there are many things they don’t do well. Their labour market is regulated to a much higher

degree than Australia, as are other key areas. Clearly that doesn’t impact on productivity, he notes.

Instead, he sees significant differences in the way that countries like Australia, and Anglo-Saxon countries in general, view productivity and what they need to do about it, compared to many of their Asian and European counterparts. “I think the problem we have is shorttermism. We want quick returns, and that’s why we have a cost cutting approach. That’s the quickest way to get returns,” he says.

In contrast, the Europeans and many of the Asian cultures, especially the Japanese and Koreans, for all sorts of historical and cultural reasons, have a longer term approach of investing in their workforce in order to get returns down the track, and making it a selfsustaining system.

“Our organisations aren’t sustainable organisations, because they’re not doing anything to reproduce the labour they need. So we’re always talking about changing immigration, and we’ve always done that, HCAMAG.COM 17

COVER STORY

sustainable leadership Missing the mark

Graph 1

Finding the First Rung, a study of 1,330 frontline managers from DDI, revealed that large numbers of leaders don’t know how to be effective.

Only 56% of new managers (those who have held their role for a year or less) understand what it takes to succeed. Even at six or more years on the job, one in five managers (80%) say they don’t fully understand what it takes to succeed.

This disconnect is reflected in how they spend their time. Thirty per cent of managers spend their time on administrative tasks, compared to considerably less time spent on more critical leadership tasks such as executing strategy.

15%

20%

How is your time allocated?

One-on-one with direct reports – 15% Administrative – 30%

18%

30%

Your own development – 17% Planning – 18%

17%

Executing strategy – 20%

we’ve done it for a couple of hundred years now. It’s not really solving things.”

A better approach is to invest in the current and future workforce, especially through training, Markey says.

However, this does not necessarily need to be through formal training, but also through giving employees a say in how their job is organised and then most importantly making them feel appreciated, and reducing stress and perceptions of stress as much as possible.

“It’s what I’d call the quality of the work environment,” Markey says. “In research I’ve undertaken in relation to quitting behaviour, the greatest impact [on why employees leave] is whether employees feel stressed, have a decent job satisfaction level, feel appreciated, and whether or not they can get information from the boss – which is not necessarily the same as employees having a say – but getting information about plans for the workplace which will affect the workers.”

EYE ON SHORT – AND LONG – HORIZONS

Alan Joyce, CEO of Qantas, came under immense criticism for grounding the Qantas fleet in order to bring to a head long-running industrial issues. Chief among the criticisms was that he had the temerity to sully the name and reputation of an organisation that had been in existence for over 90 years, to resolve an issue that could have been resolved earlier, and far more effectively.

“I find it extraordinary that we would give the keys to the castle to one person and let them do what they want,” 18

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says respected author (Corpus Rios: The How and What of Business Strategy) and contributor to Human Capital, Christopher Tipler. “Since when do you get the right to do what Joyce and the chairman did to Qantas? There’s a 90-year-old business with billions of dollars of assets and thousands of employees, very important to all stakeholders. If the people at the top have got it right they understand what they should do and are obligated to do – and that is tap into the wisdom and knowledge and good habits of the entire organisation.”

Yet making the right decisions is a delicate balancing act between short and long-term considerations – and perhaps the long-term plans of Joyce are yet to be unveiled.

Professor Roy Green, dean of the business school at the University of Technology Sydney, confirms that strategic management and decision-making in successful organisations is about positioning for the future, as well as short-term value creation. Companies that do not understand the trends in their market places or which lack the internal capability to act on that understanding are destined for decline, with adverse effects for their shareholders, workforces and communities. Recent examples are Kodak, Sony and Nokia.

On the other hand, Green notes, “companies that can imagine the future, through the productive interaction of their leaders, workforces and customers, will own it”.

As Tipler suggests, truly successful CEOs know they don’t (and can’t) have all the answers, so they will tap into the wisdom and knowledge of not just their executive team but their entire organisation.

“We expect too much from leaders if that expectation implies not just a comprehensive understanding of the business but also specialist knowledge of all aspects of the business. Few leaders can have this depth of knowledge,” says Green.

The successful leader, he adds, will have developed “boundary-crossing” skills of teambuilding, collaboration and integrative thinking, and by doing so will tap more

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Regrets, I’ve had a few What happens when once-reliable businesses start to unravel? Often the root cause is poor decision making, either by individuals or groups. Here are some examples of classic ‘bad decisions’ or at best ‘questionable decisions’ from corporate history.

ENRON was an energy sector leader that started to dabble in

e-commerce and exotic investment areas, such as weather futures. In 2001, Enron, once valued at $90bn and the seventh largest company in the US, went bankrupt. It took jobs, investor savings, retiree futures and even some lives with it. In following years, it emerged that they shredded documents, started partnerships with their own shell companies, and engaged in massive inside trading. Enron is now synonymous with the business outcomes of galloping greed.

POLAROID, like Kleenex and Hoover, is one of the few

brands where the name is the product. However, while the world got swept up in the possibilities of digital cameras (and later taking photos on phones and PDAs), the once great leader of niche technology – Polaroid – failed to move with the times. The company went bankrupt in 2001, and while the name may emerge again, the brand and impact will always be retro – a failure that many blamed on poor management decisions.

QANTAS grounded its entire fleet in October 2011 and locked out its

staff in response to unions’ industrial action. The move came after a long-running industrial impasse between Qantas and three unions: the Australian and International Pilots Association (AIPA), the Transport Workers Union (TWU) and the Australian Licenced Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA). While some applauded the actions of the board and executive team – in particular CEO Alan Joyce – for standing up to the unions and forcing compulsory arbitration, others questioned the damage done to the company brand and the repercussions of lack of transparent leadership on the employer/ employee relationship.

TOYOTA’S decision to make 262 workers redundant at its

Altona plant was met by many as a sorry confirmation of the dire straits that Australia’s manufacturing sector is in. However, while Toyota went out of its way to check all the boxes in terms of outplacement services, there was criticism over how the process was handled.

The heavy presence of security guards and the use of individually presented ‘score cards’ to rank employees on behaviour, skills and knowledge, even attendance, led some to question whether it was the roles being made redundant or the people themselves. The subsequent media and public backlash over the actions tarnished the Toyota brand.

APPLE, flying high in 1985 after the launch of its Macintosh personal

computer, soon found dissent from within its own ranks. Co-founder Steve Jobs effectively created a splinter group within the company and his personality clashed with newly appointed CEO John Sculley.

Amidst pressure from lagging Mac sales, Apple’s board chose to back the company’s future on experienced manager Sculley rather than its chief visionary, effectively firing Jobs in 1985. That decision would soon send an idea-starved company on a 10-year downward spiral towards the edge of bankruptcy. Only when Jobs retook the helm did the company rebound.

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effectively into domain knowledge across the organisation with a view to combining the elements into a compelling strategic vision that is capable of being implemented.

The most powerful leaders are extremely self-aware of their strengths and weaknesses, adds Michael Hall, CEO of WildWorks. They position themselves to do what they do best and authentically be themselves. Smart leaders surround themselves with a diverse mix of capability and personality, throughout the organisation. They also have people who are willing and able to talk honestly so they can be constantly given different perspectives.

“These leaders are generally very good at stepping back and allowing others to do their work. They don’t micromanage because they understand that’s not the best use of their time,” Hall says.

Knowing when to step back is also crucial to making effective decisions. Decision-making in the 21st century is a highly complicated process that involves analysing and interpreting industrial and political risk, as well as the impact of new technologies, and consideration of ethical and sustainability concerns. How is anything actually achieved in business with all these considerations?

“Clearly there must be a process for making decisions and this will be based on the agreed strategy of the organisation, which takes into account the external environment, including new technologies and ethical and sustainability concerns. Once the strategy is established, markets identified and capabilities within the organisation understood, it becomes possible to undertake decisions based on these broad considerations and challenges and an assessment of risk and opportunity in relation to individual decisions,” Green says.

Hall adds that being comfortable with complexity, diversity and change is critical for business in the 21st century, so he recommends having a flexible process to ensure decisions are able to be made. “Instead of complexity being a hindrance to making decisions, it should be embraced and leveraged for opportunities to create better and more sustained solutions,” he says.

NO BLACK OR WHITE

“Leadership is really about judgment and the most successful leaders are able to make the best decisions amidst the shades of grey,” comments Bruce Watt, managing director, DDI. DDI research clearly indicates that leaders who are selected and developed against an appropriate leadership success profile will have better judgment. The leadership success profile should clarify the skills, experiences, knowledge and personal style that a leader should have to be successful. When successful leaders deploy a process to make decisions it is characterised by: • a recognition of information gaps and questioning to obtain information

COVER STORY

sustainable leadership • literacy in qualitative and quantitative data to identify operational problems, trends, and underlying issues and to understand possible cause-effect relationships • the generation of options for action to address an issue or opportunity • timely action and the involvement of others to obtain information, generate alternatives, make the best decision, and build consensus • the development of decision criteria (see p.22) Tipler says that without some guiding principles to assist in decision making, business leaders risk making hasty, damaging choices, or at the other extreme, fall victim to analysis paralysis.

He notes that the difficulty is compounded by the reality that the truth does not always lie somewhere in the middle. There are right and wrong responses to many situations and trying to achieve consensus, whilst fashionable, does not necessarily result in high quality decisions.

“At this time of such uncertainty in so many arenas, it’s pertinent to ask ‘how do I, or we, acquire a firm persuasion in relation to this decision – whatever it is?

How can we get to a point of conviction where we are sure that our decision is the right one?’ Very good

“One of my favourite sayings,

by Dr Robert Miles out of the US, was that we need to be doing less with less. That will then free up the time to focus on the future” – CHRISTOPHER LUXFORD

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COVER STORY

sustainable leadership “At this time of such uncertainty in so many arenas, it’s pertinent to ask ‘how do I, or we, acquire a firm persuasion in relation to this decision – whatever it is? How can we get to a point of conviction where we are sure that our decision is the right one?’”

– CHRISTOPHER TIPLER managers make this task look effortless, but their mastery normally reflects years of experience. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made dancing look ridiculously easy but they rehearsed until their feet bled.”

MAKING WISE DECISIONS

Drawing on his own 30 years of experience as a management advisor, Tipler has crafted the following principles to help CEOs and business leaders navigate troubled waters: 1. Start with good evidence. It seems almost axiomatic to say that good decisions should be evidence-based, but often they are not. This can be due to haste or arrogance, but it can also result from a mistaken view of what constitutes evidence. Not all facts have equal weight; not all views or opinions are of equal quality and some are often invalid. Thus facts and opinions must be carefully weighed.

This can be easily illustrated by using one (noncorporate) example: the future of the Murray Darling river system. In this case, the scientific evidence and advice should almost certainly carry more weight than the facts and opinions put forward by businesses and communities. Why? Because it is, in the first instance, a problem of natural systems, and we understand the natural world through the lens of science.

In the ‘return of capital’ example cited in the opening paragraph, it would normally make sense for the board to give more weight to the views of senior management 22

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than to institutional shareholders, because management is better placed to see how the capital can be used.

2. Make sure you have the whole story. Good decisions depend on understanding all of the important factors that bear on an issue, not some of them. The analytical net must therefore be cast widely to ensure you are seeing the whole picture.

The American General and former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has an often-quoted technique for doing this. He says “tell me what you know, and then tell me what you don’t know. Only after that should you tell me what you think”. What the quote illustrates is that Powell always tries to get the whole picture – not just what is obvious, known or believed.

3. Trust your instincts (in assessing the evidence).

Some people are very clever at presenting information (particularly consultants) and tools such as PowerPoint can lend believability to incomplete information, immature premises and shabby logic. Good decisions depend on seeing through this. The best starting point is always to assume that what is being presented to you is wrong, irrespective of the source.

If your instincts are not talking to you (when you are receiving information), or if they are talking very strongly (perhaps revealing a predisposition), then you need to be particularly careful. Slow down. Take a break. Ask, ‘what am I not seeing or hearing?’ Or, ‘why do I feel so strongly about this?’

4. Look beyond the likely immediate result. Good decisions are durable. They will only be so if you have thought about second and third round effects, and beyond. Trying to see beyond the immediate and the obvious is hard work, but that is what you are paid for.

5. Find reliable sounding boards. If we want good decisions we must be careful not to stew in our own juice.

Good decision makers bounce ideas, hypotheses and proposals off people around them: people with intelligence and good judgment. The objective is not to gain consensus but to explore and test the options by presenting them to others. So often this provides a perspective that would not be available through introspection alone.

6. Decide slowly. The old adage ‘act in haste, repent at leisure’ is right, particularly when it comes to the bigger things. Something that is entirely obvious at 4pm today may not be at all obvious at 10am tomorrow.

Even small intervals of time – hours or days – seem to create new perspectives. Only when your perspective has settled and there is a sense of quiet assurance, should you act.

7. Listen for the ‘female’ view. The female perspective, whether it is embodied in a woman or in the feminine side of a man, is the view that often encompasses feelings and intuition rather than logic.

These qualities are often in better touch with reality than our logic, perhaps because they are less combative and more inclusive. We get in touch with the feminine by listening in both our inner and outer worlds, not by looking. The question would be ‘what am I not hearing?’ rather than ‘what am I not seeing?’

8. Look for the middle ground. Although the truth does not necessarily lie in the middle, looking for the middle ground position is a useful thing to do. Why? Because the middle is the space of reconciliation, of ‘both/and’ rather than ‘either/or’. Reconciliation often requires some new dimension if it is to work; something creative that wasn’t in the mix before.

In the simple equation 1+1=2, it is the plus sign that does all the work, that makes two a possibility (since one is always one). Looking for the middle ground is like finding the plus sign. You may conclude for good reason that the right decision cannot be found in consensus, but it is always a useful reference point.

STEPPING UP TO THE PLATE: WHO HAS THE SKILLS?

Leadership is sometimes about courage especially when confronting difficult issues, says Watt. Leaders bring varying dispositions, skills and experience to their roles and some of these skills and experiences are definitely more suited to taking a stand on issues when needed.

These factors should be assessed when deciding whether a leader is ready to be successful in meeting the challenges of a role.

However, Watt adds that leaders can also develop the skills, experiences and self-insight to demonstrate high levels of conviction or courage when needed. According to DDI, the following abilities should be included when assessing or preparing a leader to demonstrate courage: challenges popular values, opinions, and decisions to ensure that actions taken are in the organisation’s best interests; diplomatically says what needs to be said even in the face of pressure or conflict; offers direct and candid feedback; takes critical action to achieve results despite the uncertainty of outcomes; confronts difficult problems early; accepts personal risks and/or consequences of failure and persists even in the face of opposition or fear.

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PROFILE JAN PACAS

my brilliant career

NUMERO UNO

Fluent in four languages and the youngest country head for Hilti Group globally, Jan Pacas shares his thoughts about HR, his career achievements and the elements that have made up his brilliant career Human Capital: What is your current role and how did it come about?

Jan Pacas: I’m managing director of Hilti Australia. I started working for Hilti straight after university in their graduate program, so it goes back some 10 years. They told me about the prospects of an international career if I proved to be doing a good job, and it has turned out as they said. I was chief marketing officer for the global business unit power tools, at Hilti’s headquarters in Switzerland, and I managed to build some international experience working on projects in the US, Europe and Asia. The MD role here in Australia was highly regarded because it’s a very attractive place. So it was a mix of hard work and some luck – I was only 33 at the time and now I’m three years older but still the youngest in the group. I said early on in my development that it would be my dream job.

HC: Why should CEOs take an interest in their human resources?

JP: Personally I consider it important and find it a bit of a myth in terms of what HR is responsible for and what line managers are responsible for. You’ve got to be leading by example. The concept where HR says ‘we have strong values, the people are important’ – and then it’s not really being lived and modelled by senior management means you lose credibility. On the one hand you must have strong HR processes and initiatives but you can take any concept and put it in PowerPoint and say you do it, but the real difference comes when you start living it. I’m a big believer in that because it’s something I’ve seen from some of my great bosses – leading by example. I’m involved because I believe it’s the best way to set an example.

HC: How do you view HR’s role at Hilti?

JP: I view HR as being very integrated to the business. I think the HRD must be closely aligned to the CEO and his or her expectations. I always see it as a business enabler: 80% of our costs are people costs so if you can make those assets in your books more productive, you’ll reap the benefits. In a lot of companies it’s treated separately – “this is HR’s job, this performance issue is HR’s job and we’re here to run the business”. That’s fundamentally wrong in my opinion.

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HC: How would you recommend HR professionals learn more about the wider business world?

JP: It’s important for HR professionals to be involved and understand the wider business. It’s also important that they grow their credibility – you don’t want to end up being labelled as “the person from HR who has idealistic opinions”. Prior to your HR role it helps if you’ve had experience in a further business field. I think anyone in HR, whether a business partner or HRD, can sit in the meetings and listen to the challenges of the wider business.

HC: Do you have any role models?

JP: I’ve been lucky to have had really great bosses. And from there it’s really what you make out of it, how open you are to learn from them, to take on the feedback. We all have egos but you must be open to improvements and suggestions. I was also so lucky that these people invested so much of their time into helping me.

HC: Describe yourself in a few key words?

JP: High energy, passionate, people say I’m quite visionary, curious, and sometimes I’m more than honest – too frank. People know where they stand with me.

HC: Last year Hilti was ‘best of the best’ on AON Hewitt’s Best Employer list. Why do these lists matter?

JP: There are two aspects to it. One is the internal aspect.

We had a feeling we were a good place to work but we didn’t know for sure – you really want to benchmark yourself against the likes of Microsoft, Nestle and others.

When we received the result that we were the best of the best I think it made all of our employees extremely proud. They told their friends and posted the photo of everyone in The Australian.

Externally, it makes you an even more attractive employer.

HC: Will you aim to get on the AON Hewitt list again?

JP: We’ve done the Hewitt survey again this year and I’m optimistic we’ll be a best employer again – whether we’ll be best of the best I can’t say but I’m reasonably optimistic we’ll become a best employer again. [Results are released early June].

Pulch Photography, pulchphotography.com

JAN PACAS ROLL OF HONOUR Master of Economics and Business from the University of Economics Prague

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LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT

training What needs to be included in a frontline leader’s toolkit, and will a couple of hours in a classroom suffice in building those skills?

Human Capital asks the experts Despite heightened awareness of the impact line managers have on engagement, and employee perceptions of an employer, companies are still lagging when it comes to appropriate training for first time managers.

Paula Willscroft, head of open programs at the Australian Institute of Management, says it’s not unusual for first time managers to find themselves thrown in the deep end, with little or no L&D support.

“People are promoted before they’re prepared, particularly when there’s an internal move. Often it’s still a case of promoting before they’re provided with what I would call the toolkit – the essentials they will need,” she says.

So what should that toolkit include? Willscroft suggests there are three key areas. The first is selfknowledge. “The individual needs to have a deep understanding of what their capabilities are now, and what the new role will demand of them,” she says. “It’s often that transition from being technically great to being able to manage a team, being able to step back. That’s a big shift for people to make.”

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Self-knowledge includes an understanding of strengths and weaknesses (development opportunities). It’s also about knowing how they best learn and where they can take learning opportunities from. It’s also understanding the ‘helicopter view’ – and knowing that they need time to reflect not only on themselves but also the team dynamics and how their team operates as part of a larger entity.

A second area is getting the job done and delivering on the expectations that are placed on them – that includes skills around planning, project management, continuous improvement. Willscroft notes there’s also increasingly an expectation that frontline managers will have an impact on innovation. Although innovation can be defined in a range of ways, at that frontline level it’s about improving systems and processes, thinking a little more creatively about problem solving, and having a solution orientation as much as accepting the status quo. The best innovation comes from listening to what clients want, and listening to what people at the coal face are doing – because they’re doing the job, and they know how best to improve it.

“These are things that young managers in particular are good at. They are often naturally curious, creative and have a lot of energy about wanting to change things moving forward. A good development program will provide them with a framework, template, process, and tools to be able to do that in a way that positions them to influence outside their team,” says Willscroft.

Thirdly, the skills toolkit must include leadership capability. This includes teambuilding, team performance, individual performance management, a great ability to communicate not only with the team but across the organisation, recognition they (frontline managers) are not operating in a silo, and managing stakeholders and customers at that interpersonal level.

This leadership component is crucial, and again self-knowledge comes to the fore. New managers need to be aware of their impact on other people and appreciate that one behavioural style may

not necessarily fit every situation. It’s also important to know that what worked for them as a team member may not necessarily work for them as a team leader.

Accompanying this are ‘discrete skills’ around influencing and negotiation – particularly on behalf of a team. The practical elements will include what managers need to ask themselves to create their personal approach to leadership.

“If we say a great leader is expected to create a vision and engage the team towards achieving that vision, keeping people on track and focused, ensuring all the activities being undertaken are in line with the company strategy, a good development program will help that individual to do that,” Willscroft says. “What is the process I need to take the team through, what are the questions I need to ask at a meeting, how do I actually manage a meeting, how do I differentiate between a vision and an individual performance plan, how do I create the line of sight between my company strategy and someone’s performance on a day to day basis?”

TRANSFERENCE OF SKILLS

Of course, even if a company does send an employee on a training course before being promoted – they spend several hours a week in a classroom – there’s no guarantee the skills will transfer back into the workplace, into a context where those skills can be practised.

Geoff Rosamond, MD, Human Group, says his clients indicate that over and above general skills and management capabilities, new managers need to develop better business acumen and increase their execution discipline. He’s an advocate of practical on-the-job tasks wherever possible, such as setting the new managers a task to review current people processes or make recommendations on how to streamline to gain greater efficiency. “It’s just like learning anything new – you go on an IT program to learn about an application but if you don’t start using the app it’s a waste of time. It’s exactly

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Google’s Project Oxygen In 2011 Google undertook research called Project Oxygen in order to identify what makes a good frontline manager. The aim of the project was to find out what the best managers at Google do to have teams with individuals that perform better, are retained better, and are happier. The project team gathered more than 10,000 observations about managers – across more than 100 variables, from various performance reviews, feedback surveys and other reports. They then looked for some preliminary patterns in the data and formed hypotheses. Next, they gathered additional data by interviewing managers to test these hypotheses.

BE A GOOD COACH Provide specific, constructive feedback, balancing the negative and the positive.

Have regular one-on-ones, presenting solutions to problems tailored to your employees’ specific strengths.

• •

EMPOWER YOUR TEAM AND DON’T MICROMANAGE Balance giving freedom to your employees, while still being available for advice. Make ‘stretch’ assignments to help the team tackle big problems.

•

EXPRESS INTEREST IN TEAM MEMBERS’ SUCCESS Get to know your employees as people.

Make new members of your team feel welcome and help ease their transition.

• •

BE RESULTS-ORIENTED Focus on what employees want the team to achieve and how they can help achieve it.

Help the team prioritise work and use seniority to remove roadblocks.

• •

BE A GOOD COMMUNICATOR Communication is two-way: you both listen and share information.

Hold all-hands meetings and be straightforward about the messages and goals of the team. Help the team connect the dots.

• •

HELP WITH CAREER DEVELOPMENT Have a clear strategy for the team Even in the midst of turmoil, keep the team focused on goals and strategy.

Involve the team in setting and evolving the team’s vision.

• • •

HAVE KEY TECHNICAL SKILLS Roll up your sleeves and conduct work side-by-side with the team.

Understand the specific challenges of the work.

• •

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the same with leadership and management,” Willscroft adds.

AIM advocates a blended learning approach, and has structured its Certificate IV in Frontline Management around this format.

“We recognise that formal training is important, particularly for newer managers because it gives people an opportunity to come away, reflect and understand the framework in which they operate, and understand the tools, the processes, the skills they will need, but that’s only 10% of the learning experience. A good blended learning program will then allow learners to take that back into the workplace, practise it, and then come away again and reflect – sometimes in a social environment, other times individually.”

The AIM course uses webinars, face-to-face sessions, and also “learning buddies” who will liaise with each other back in the workplace while trailing action learning projects. The group will come together again to discuss progress and findings from their practical applications. Instead of say six three-hour sessions face-to-face in a classroom, the AIM course runs over a period of 60 days, and Willscroft brands it “a learning journey rather than a one-off intervention”.

“It’s quite comprehensive and quite different to how training has been viewed traditionally. It’s very much a joint responsibility between

the learning provider and the participant and the line manager as well – because the activities we’re asking them to do in the workplace are often going to be things they need to share with their line manager and their team.

It’s not isolated from the reality of their job,” she says.

ROI

Most learning interventions now are working from back to front – ie they are working backwards from desired business outcomes and building a curriculum from there.

Willscroft says L&D and HR managers are always keen to hear about creative ways to measure ROI. “The key is to identify early on in the design process what are the performance outcomes you’re looking to achieve as a result of the program, and then we translate that into learning outcomes and learning design.

Throughout the program there might be a number of ways we’re capturing data to produce evidence of ROI. A good example would be in a sales program where you want to see an uplift in sales revenue. We would engineer that back into what the learning intervention should look like.”

In a positive reflection of the HR fraternity, Willscroft has noted that HR professionals are increasingly able to prioritise the key programs that will have the biggest strategic impact on their business – hence the ongoing focus on management training cohorts of top talent – and are well aware of the retention benefits.

However, Rosamond says he often hears from L&D professionals that their budget is limited, yet the service line GMs have their own budgets for people development – meaning that all available assets are not centralised or effectively managed, thus leaving the L&D team frustrated and under resourced.

“We suggest a consolidated shared services approach to budget allocation, enabling the expertise within the L&D function to best service their internal clients,” he says.

Willscroft says that some review of the L&D budget is inevitable, but she remains confident that the core elements will come through largely unscathed.

MARKET OVERVIEW & TRENDS

training & development

Plugging the gaps Does a formalised professional development plan assist in company growth, and if so, what development options work best?

Many employers across Australia are not offering their staff continued professional development, yet this is one strategy to help overcome the skills shortage and retain expertise within an organisation, according to recruiting experts Hays.

“Professional development has many benefits for an organisation; it’s not just about the career progression of individual staff,” says Jane McNeill, director of Hays.

“By providing ongoing professional development, an organisation ensures it has the skills and capabilities needed and that all employees are making the best contribution possible. Development also allows an organisation to advance individual employees’ skills in the direction of existing skills and knowledge gaps.

“If you consider the increasing trend of candidates keeping their eye on the jobs market in response to a lack of career development over recent years, then it’s also a proven strategy to aid in staff retention and motivation.”

Hays provides these five tips for any organisation wishing to implement a professional development program for staff:

appraisals, formal and informal discussions and feedback from colleagues and customers to track and review development needs.

Know what motivates individual staff. For example, one employee may be motivated by a fast-tracked development program to senior management, but a less ambitious employee could be encouraged to take on more or different responsibilities.

1. Identify and track development needs: Sit down with employees individually to discuss and agree their career development and career goals. Use performance

3. Review progress: Having a process to track and review development is critical; it is far better

2. Set clear expectations: Professional development does not solely involve training. It is as much about an employee’s ability to see a path of progress and know exactly what they need to do to achieve it. So clearly set your expectations for each individual’s development pathway.

How do people prefer to be developed?

Top level management (%)

Senior management (%)

Middle management (%)

Front line management (%)

Conference/seminars

58

50

31

14

External training

42

49

39

41

Internal training with external facilitator

18

25

33

35

Coaching

17

17

17

19

Mentoring

16

13

14

13

Formal qualification

10

10

9

4

Internal training with internal facilitator

9

19

28

36

On the job training

8

13

18

31

In-company training

7

7

11

9

Special projects

6

12

10

5

Source: Management Development Practice in Australia, Australian Institute of Management

to invest in development that is actually required rather than perceived to be so.

4. Training that works: Identify the most suitable training.

Set clear objectives so that everyone can be involved in measuring the effectiveness. But remember, training doesn’t always have to be in the classroom. Coaching can be directed to many different scenarios, from correcting poor performance (it is one-to-one that is usually more effective) to improving motivation and encouraging employees to find their own answers.

5. Mentorships: Another common development strategy is the use of mentorships.

Provided you have appropriate mentors within your organisation, mentorships allow development to be tailored to your own needs. Through mentorships, less experienced employees gain the knowledge of their more experienced colleagues on a one-on-one basis. Given the informal nature of information exchange and the relationship-basis of mentoring, mentorships allow a firm to retain such knowledge as lessons that have been previously learnt, right through to implicit awareness such as why reports are written in a particular way or who to contact in the organisation for particular information. Mentorships also allow your business to retain technical knowledge. In terms of overall productivity.

For further information on this topic or to contact your local Hays office, visit hays.com.au HCAMAG.COM 29

LEADERSHIP

psychological contracts

LEADING THROUGH TOUGH TIMES WHO CARES? Why have some companies succeeded in growing despite a period of global economic uncertainty? Rich Atkinson outlines the key role that a ‘psychological contract’ between organisation and employee can play – and how such a contract can be built

Times are tough. Organisations are in crisis.

Who should care?

Successful leaders are able to inspire people to find ways to grow businesses in the toughest of markets – engaging the innovation, dynamism and hearts of their people at times when many employees are concerned for career self-preservation.

With rising costs, low growth and fears of double dip recession in the developed markets, businesses are once again bracing for a challenging year. Even Australia, comparatively unruffled by the GFC, is seeing many business sectors look nervously to Europe while negatively revising their own growth forecasts for 2012. The Australian dollar and the cost of funding debt are high.

Consumer confidence and employee morale are low.

The recent history and experience are very much at front of mind – some leaders succeeded in growing their businesses through crisis and importantly, retaining and engaging talented employees long after the economy, and job markets, had rebounded. One critical lesson is that of connection, a new psychological contract of care between manager and staff, organisation and employee.

FANATIC DISCIPLINE – LEADERS CARE

Much has been written on the corporate strategy requirements of these times, as also on the traits and competencies of leaders. Jim Collins, in his book Great by 30

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Choice, offers fanatic discipline as one critical driver of success. I believe this has as much relevance for leadership practices as business management.

The old adage that ‘people join a business and leave a manager’ appears to hold true alongside the need for connection to the business purpose and relationships with colleagues.

In research conducted in 2009 by Lazlo Bock, VP people operations at Google, his team of statisticians discovered that what employees valued most were consistent bosses who took the time for one-on-one meetings, who coached through good questions and who showed they cared about their employees’ careers and lives.

These ‘management’ tasks are sometimes perceived derogatorily as secondary to displaying true ‘leadership’.

Far from being contrary to leadership, I maintain that these management basics are the primary opportunity to display leadership traits. They are a leader’s route to market, the shop window of leadership. It is at the toughest of times that leaders truly must get back to the basics.

Doing these leadership basics shows that the leader cares. eBay ANZ made a response to the arrival of the GFC down under, kick-starting their growth at a time when many companies were static in shock. Aside from the strategic leadership locally and an early warning from a parent company in the US, eBay demonstrated a number of great traits. Leaders went above and beyond to

demonstrate a caring and human approach to their people (one of eBay’s values is ‘keep it human’) and introducing rigour into a highly informal, non-hierarchical culture.

This was delivered through thoughtful adherence to the leadership basics, team meetings, regular formal and informal 1:1 conversations, that ensured leaders had an acute awareness of their team members’ career goals.

Structure was applied in the approach to regular and engaging conversations aligned to performance, talent management and career direction. Clarity was formalised for each individual’s contribution to BAU and project outcomes – through a RASCI (responsible, accountable, support, consult, information) Index. Leaders made time for their people and ensured that connections within the organisation were truly personal and caring. Focusing on these basics helped ensure employee engagement dramatically increased, as did a customer Net Promoter Score and the underlying business performance.

It’s an unsexy message, but doing the basics brilliantly and with discipline will have a greater impact on a team than all the ‘bells and whistles’ leadership fads. There is room for innovation and flagship programs but they should support and sustain these basics.

Take a moment to think about how brilliantly your leaders apply the basics of leadership including: • Ensuring rigour around team meetings and staff 1:1s (and not rescheduling) HCAMAG.COM 31

LEADERSHIP

psychological contracts • Drawing a link between the purpose and goals of the organisation and the team member’s own work and values • Setting time aside for a well-planned and thoughtful development discussion with your team members and coaching to support their development • Giving their team recognition every day and offering performance feedback clearly and concisely What does brilliant entail? Firstly, brilliant isn’t always about more time. A good development conversation, 1:1 or recognition approach will take just as long as a bad one.

Brilliant isn’t perfect. No leadership intervention is perfect. The investment in carrying out the leadership basics will be recognised and, with practice, will improve to become brilliant. Brilliant is about every day. Brilliant is about discipline – consistently and rigorously applying the leadership basics to the best of your ability.

One business leader from a high performing business unit within a top ASX organisation recently reflected on her achievement of 90% employee engagement. She doesn’t claim to be a natural leader – indeed she is a strong technical expert – but she highlighted that her primary management focus was just doing these leadership basics consistently and rigorously for her people. This had led to minimal attrition of strong performers, an increase in discretionary effort and a virtuous cycle in business, customer and staff metrics.

Her team knew she cared. They responded with innovation and commitment – and results. Aside from the exceptional employee engagement scores, this leader’s business unit achievements were recognised within the organisation as truly high performing.

Doing these leadership basics with fanatic discipline shows people that the leader cares.

FINDING A HIGHER PURPOSE – WHY EMPLOYEES CARE

About the author Rich Atkinson is responsible for HR across the BT Financial Group division, and was formerly HR director of eBay Inc’s businesses in Australia and Southeast Asia. He is also non-executive director of Infullview.com

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Leaders showing care is only half of the equation. Many businesses faced with shifting market conditions panic.

They change their approach annually, restructure routinely and adopt the next big leadership fad. Most of us have probably worked for one. Among the signs are: multiple change programs and headcount reduction exercises but with a growing staff base; little time is invested post organisation change to embed new ways of working – just continuing with the old ways but in a new structure; little clarity of the organisational goal aside from cost reduction.

In an example of a successful response to dramatic business crisis, Energis UK (now part of Cable & Wireless), was in receivership when a new leadership team took the reins. They started, not with the underlying failings of the strategy, but with a dramatic investment in establishing the ‘reason’ for the organisation. This was a wholehearted commitment, far removed from the usual

Many businesses faced with shifting market conditions panic. They change their approach annually, restructure routinely and adopt the next big leadership fad paper exercise, and led to a primary focus on the values, purpose and goals of the organisation. A compulsory weekly team cascade, led by the CEO, identified the highlights and lowlights of the week and was communicated in a structure around the organisation values. This served to reinforce the purpose of the organisation, but importantly ensured a connection to the financial goals, customer experience and values of the business. It highlighted the consistency and rigour of great leadership – and was no surprise given that many of the Energis board became the Cable and Wireless board, only a year later, in a ‘reverse’ takeover. eBay ANZ also invested strongly in sharing the higher purpose of the company. The business ensured regular contact between staff (including functional staff ) and community (buyers and sellers who were the customers of the site); sharing stories from their user base about how eBay had benefitted Australians; promoting each week the media stories about the business (whether good or bad); running internal competitions around staff use of products and only hiring job candidates who were already active users of the site. eBay ANZ saw a truly significant increase in key business metrics, not only against the Australian market, but also relative to other global eBay business units.

Both Energis and eBay ANZ built a strong connection between the purpose, goals and values of the organisation and the personal values of its staff.

Connecting employees to a bigger goal, to a higher purpose, makes them care.

SO, SHOULD WE CARE?

A clear differentiator of successful organisations mentioned, those that have successfully competed and grown in tight markets, is the level of connection that they were able to drive between organisation, leaders and their employees. The leadership basics show your people that you value them and care about their careers. The higher purpose ensures that your people have something to connect to and care about in their work.

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FEATURE

mission statements, values and vision

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“Turn left now”:

GPS for your organisation Are your mission statements meaningless words printed on a wall or guidance and positioning statements (GPS) that provide clarity and sense of purpose for all employees?

Nicholas Barnett investigates Most mission statements – or statements of vision, mission and values or guidance and positioning statements (GPS) – are empty words that simply hang on a wall and have little connection with what employees do each day. Why is that the case? Why is there a disconnect between words and actions? How can it be different?

How can GPS be brought to life? How can GPS be made to come alive so as to energise and focus the efforts of employees? How can your mission statements or GPS be truly regarded as guidance and positioning statements?

That’s what this article will explain.

FABLE OF THE THREE BRICKLAYERS

The fable of the three bricklayers helps set the scene for this article.

William asked Bricklayer 1 what he was doing.

Bricklayer 1 said, “What’s it to you?” to which William replied that he was carrying out a research study of bricklayers. Bricklayer 1 placed another brick on his wall and said, “Can’t you see what I am doing? I am putting one brick on top of another!” and continued with his work.

William, taking notes, then asked “And why are you doing that?” to which Bricklayer 1 replied, “It’s to feed my family. I get $2 per brick,” as he added mortar and placed another brick on the wall.

William moved on to Bricklayer 2. He asked, “Excuse me, sir, please tell me what you are doing?” The bricklayer stood up and stretched his back and said, “Why, my workmates and I are great wall- builders. We are building a wall.”

William said, “Yes, I can see you are building a very good wall. Why are you doing that?” The bricklayer, reaching down with his left hand to pick up another brick, said, “My workmates and I are great wall-builders and we enjoy building walls. We actually earn $2 per brick, which is pretty good pay around here.”

William walked to the third building site and saw a bricklayer who also looked just like the first two bricklayers. William said to Bricklayer 3, “Excuse me sir, what are you doing there?” Bricklayer 3 said, “Why, I am part of a team that builds the best cathedrals in the land.

My workmates and I build the walls for those cathedrals.

The walls are probably the most important part of the cathedral, as they hold up what is a quite complex structure.”

William was somewhat taken aback and said, “Well, congratulations, you are certainly well progressed with what will no doubt be a fabulous cathedral. So why are you doing that?”

Bricklayer 3 pushed out his chest and said, “I am proud to be working for one of the best, if not the single best builder of cathedrals in the country and I enjoy coming to work each day, being with my workmates and working with the other construction workers.” He went on to say, “I am treated and paid well. I earn $2 per brick.”

LEADERSHIP, MESSAGING AND CULTURE

Is the difference between the outlook of Bricklayer 1 and Bricklayer 3 due mainly to a difference in their personalities and their general outlook on life? Or is it HCAMAG.COM 35

FEATURE

mission statements, values and vision due to a difference in their leadership, the messages they receive and the culture of their organisation?

While some might agree that part of the difference may be due to the personality and general outlook of the individual bricklayers, all would agree that the major difference is almost certainly due to the organisation’s leadership, messaging and culture.

Leadership is all about going somewhere and having something worthwhile to serve. If leaders can’t articulate and gain buy-in to a clear and compelling aspiration, purpose, goals and values their leadership is irrelevant; it matters little.

The leader of Bricklayer 3 had articulated and gained buy-in to the inspiring long term direction and purpose of building the best cathedrals in the country.

FOUR STEPS TO DEVELOPING CATHEDRAL BUILDERS (AND BRICKLAYER 3S) If leaders want their employees to take on the perspective of cathedral builders as opposed to those that simply put one brick on top of the other they need to understand, buy into and follow the following four steps: 1. Understand the importance and power of an inspiring GPS and genuinely buy into the process without treating it as a quick fix employee motivational exercise

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2. Ensure that the company’s vision for a compelling future is shared by all employees and it’s not just the leader’s vision 3. Gain an emotional buy-in to the organisation’s GPS that is far more powerful in energising, inspiring and focusing employees than rational reasons alone 4. Embed and integrate the GPS developed with your employees into all the organisation’s plans, projects, decisions, culture and messaging so that it becomes your employee’s way of life.

1 The importance and power of an inspiring GPS Many leaders simply believe the development of GPS is a good, quick fix employee motivational exercise. They have been in organisations where this is what was done before so they repeat the process without understanding the real purpose of an effective GPS. They don’t understand the important connection between the GPS and the organisation’s plans, decisions, culture and messaging.

A small number of leaders, however, understand the importance of an effective GPS, how it should be positioned and what it can achieve.

BHP Billiton includes its GPS in what it calls its Charter, on its website. It’s been there, largely unaltered

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FEATURE

mission statements, values and vision for over 12 years and has outlasted four CEOs. BHP Billiton must have tens of millions of very important documents in dozens of countries. They say their Charter is the “single most important means by which we communicate who we are, what we do, and what we stand for as an organisation, and it is the basis for our decision-making”.

BlueScope Steel refers to its vision and values as its Bond. It’s also on its website for all to see. It says, “Our Bond – the company charter of BlueScope Steel – expresses the principles that serve to guide our decisions and actions”.

Insync Surveys, a company associated with the writer, states on its website that its “vision, mission and values are what we call our Guidance and Positioning Statements (GPS). They describe: • who we are • where we’re going and why • the values that we abide by, and • why we are different Our GPS guides all our plans, decisions and messaging and is the foundation for our strategic and business plans. The core values included in our GPS are our organisation’s way of life. We embrace, reinforce and live

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by them to succeed, to overcome challenges, lead change and evolve. Our values form and shape our organisation’s culture and DNA and make us distinctively Insync Surveys”.

Understanding the importance of an effective GPS, how it should be positioned and what it can achieve is a great foundation upon which to build your cathedral!

2 It’s not just the leader’s vision, mission and values A vision of a compelling future, a meaningful purpose and core values that are developed with the engagement of all employees or a good cross section thereof are meant to die for!

However, it’s much quicker and easier for a leader to come up with their own GPS or create a GPS that has input from only a small number of people. Involving many others takes a whole lot more energy, effort and time of not only the leader but of their employees too.

That involves a significant cost that some will rightly see as a very valuable investment whilst others will see as a big expense in both time and money.

Engaging multiple employees in the process, from different areas of the organisation, requires being open to diverse perspectives. Leaders traditionally are not good at doing this as to do so requires them to give up a level of

control and adds uncertainty to the outcome. Great leaders, however, are still able to hold the reins but genuinely listen and take account of other perspectives.

Their employees are far more likely to be engaged, energised and focused on seeing that vision brought to reality if they were involved in its development. They will be far more able to see the big picture and more likely to work with their colleagues to build great cathedrals.

3 Emotional or just rational buy-in?

Gaining buy-in involves engaging both the head and the heart; the rational and the emotional.

Most leaders have a very strong left-brain orientation.

They are structured and systematic thinkers and often highly intelligent. They are good at arguing and debating the merits of a proposal. They use their head but rarely use their heart.

Great leaders also achieve an emotional connection with their employees. They go much deeper and connect with the heart. They are able to identify those things that will provide meaning and fulfilment for employees that also have a positive flow on to productivity. They are more likely to attract and develop Bricklayer 3s and cathedral builders than leaders that simply engage the rational mind.

Leadership is all about going somewhere and having something worthwhile to serve –NICHOLAS BARNETT

This is particularly important when it comes to expressing the organisation’s core purpose or its reason for being. Too many organisations simply say that their purpose is to make lots of money for their shareholders.

They rarely take the time and effort to discover and articulate the meaningful and nobler purpose that will create a deeper connection and greater fulfilment for

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FEATURE

mission statements, values and vision

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FEATURE About the author: Nicholas Barnett has been a director, business leader and consultant for over 30 years. He is CEO of Insync Surveys, and a former partner of KPMG.

their employees and other stakeholders. Employees that are engaged emotionally will be passionate about building the very best cathedrals. They won’t consider their role as simply to place one brick on top of another.

4 Embedding and integrating your shared GPS The ultimate objective is to embed and integrate the GPS you developed with your employees into your organisation’s culture and DNA. This will make it part of the everyday language and thinking of your employees and will ensure that all your plans, projects, decisions, actions, behaviours and messaging are aligned with and easily linked to your GPS. This takes a significant effort and commitment from your leadership team. Your GPS needs to be even more at the top of their minds than for other employees. Once they get in the rhythm, it will become part of the way they think and act and a normal part of their messaging.

Embedding your GPS will require changes and updates to your organisation’s systems and processes, including your induction, recognition and performance management systems.

Every reasonable opportunity should be taken by management to relate current projects, plans and decisions back to your organisation’s GPS. This will

involve management explaining why the particular projects and plans are essential if the organisation’s Vision is to be achieved. Explanations of progress made over the last two or three years towards your Vision, the main goals and an explanation as to what needs to be done over the next few quarters or year brings a bigger picture perspective to daily actions and achievements.

The real test of whether you have achieved steps one to four and embedded an effective GPS will come when your employees voluntarily and proudly describe themselves as cathedral builders and not simply as bricklayers. Organisations can measure this regularly by conducting an employee alignment and engagement survey to determine whether the organisation has a clear GPS, whether everyday actions of employees are aligned with that GPS and the extent to which employees are engaged.

About GPS for your Organisation “GPS for your Organisation: how to energise your employees and build sustainable high performance” is a practical guide to help company boards, CEOs and leadership teams add clarity and gain ongoing buy-in to their organisation’s long-term direction, purpose and values. It will also add focus and urgency to their strategic and business plans.

“GPS for your Organisation” by Nicholas Barratt is published by Major Street Publishing $29.95 or e-book $19.95

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LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT

mentoring

Two ears, one mouth:

THE ART OF MENTORING Do you have what it takes to be a mentor?

Like it or not, most HR professionals are aware that much of what they hear, see and do is sensitive – but that sensitivity shouldn’t influence a decision not to mentor someone, says Richard Laidlaw, general manager, human resources at Stockland.

“If you are struggling as an HR professional to be a mentor then you are probably struggling as an HR professional,” he says. “To exclude yourself because of your HR role means you miss what is going on in the business and the profession, and it can give you a different perspective of the culture from the user rather than the senior or central point of view.”

DEFINITIONS

It’s not unusual to find coaching and mentoring grouped together, with career counselling often mixed in, but is this definition overlap justified?

“I think that mentoring and career counselling are more aligned with each other, with coaching being a set of skills you could use within a mentoring framework,” Laidlaw says.

Mentoring is usually a relationship between two people for the purposes of developing a career, or skills in a particular workplace or field, with the mentor assisting the mentee in reflecting on, planning and managing their career. Mentors are typically more experienced senior colleagues who share their knowledge and experience with mentees; it’s a longer term arrangement and has a broad focus.

Coaching is support for learning and growth that is provided by another person. Coaches use techniques such as questions and reflection to facilitate the learning, with the coachee setting their own goals or topics for learning. Coaching is one of the sets of strategies that mentors can use to increase their mentees’ skills and success, with coaching being shorter term and more focused on skills and knowledge development.

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“Executive coaching has gained significant currency in the c-suite and board circles,” says Junita Mushenko, a corporate mentor for young executives through Network Central and a 2011 nominee for the Telstra Women’s Business Awards. “The aim of coaching is to increase individual performance through teaching, modelling, supporting and informing. The typical outcome of coaching is behavioural change and KPI attainment.”

She adds that mentoring can do all these things but often outside of defined roles. “A mentoring relationship is usually a volunteer agreement – formal or informal – between mentor and mentee with a desired purpose in mind. The outcomes include goal attainment, skills advancement and often career progression. It is often more intimate and customised than coaching.”

FORMAL VS INFORMAL

Laidlaw, who is himself a participant in AHRI’s mentor program, says that in recent years he has become a stronger advocate of structured mentoring programs. “I have a general concern that the use of electronic social media and the glowing rectangles in the palms of our hands to manage friendships, relationships and networks mean that some of the social skills in taking a risk to approach someone else are not as well practised,” he says.

He adds that formal programs (those set by large corporates but specifically AHRI’s program) often work because there is less reliance on chance for meeting or selecting a suitable mentor. “People who need mentors aren’t always good at asking for them, the end date sometimes means that mentors are more likely to commit, everyone understands what’s expected of them, a contact person can help out with any teething problems and the evaluation process helps us to define our progress,” he says.

Mushenko agrees and notes the mutuality of a formal agreement increases goal clarity and promotes accountability for both parties. “Structure is important as long as there is a flexible approach to the client’s needs.

Sounds like a paradox but getting the balance right is essential!”

She adds that when mentoring someone outside your organisation, advising on sensitive issues is easier.

However, internally HR is forever the coach. “Dabbling in the mentor zone could result in scary compromises between the relationship between line managers and their staff,” she warns.

ESSENTIAL TRAITS

So what character traits make for a successful mentor?

Mushenko says our motivations are shaped by past experiences and can influence our assumptions, but can also block development. As such there is much convergence in the skillsets required for effective consultants. These skills and traits include goal

“If you are struggling as an HR professional to be a mentor then you are probably struggling as an HR professional” – RICHARD LAIDLAW identification, reality checking, listening, empathy, guidance and even correctional instruction. The ability to build trust cannot be underestimated, especially when providing constructive feedback.

“Being client-led is also critical. You don’t want to appear to be the fountain of eternal knowledge seeking discipleship,” she adds.

For Laidlaw the essential attributes are crystallised in a short list: • Most importantly, a genuine interest in others • Two ears and one mouth, so that they spend twice as long listening and half the time talking • Loads of experience • A small or manageable ego “You see a lot of people trying to ‘preach’ or ‘guide’ their young mentee, giving them the wisdom of their experience. It’s good to have the wisdom, but you shouldn’t be reliving your past and creating a mini-me.

Those that have a genuine interest in others with a capacity to listen and ask questions are great mentors,” he says.

TWO-WAY STREET

Given that most mentors do have plenty of experience and are often time poor (the AHRI program is typically a nine-month commitment), what’s in it for them? Laidlaw says that spending any time with a motivated, interested and optimistic person is a wonderful relationship to be part of – regardless of what you call it. “It keeps you in touch with what is going on for people generally, and in every instance I’ve been the beneficiary of some reverse mentoring, especially with some of the excitement they demonstrate and skills that are shared,” he says.

Mushenko also believes such relationships are mutually beneficial. “I’ve gained much insight from the people I’ve mentored in the past,” she says. “The mentee exposes you to organisations, cultures and situations you would only have a peripheral view of otherwise.”

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EMPLOYEE BENEFITS

superannuation

When tomorrow comes The move to a 12% guaranteed superannuation contribution from employers, the majority of which is expected to be offset in wage claims, will increase superannuation savings of some workers by as much as 25%. Yet the lingering question remains: how should HR professionals broach this with employees?

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The passing of the controversial mining tax in March this year had far reaching repercussions for non-mining companies as well – not least of which was the announcement that part of the revenue from the tax will go towards tax concessions to business to offset an increase in the superannuation guarantee levy from nine to 12% of wages in stages starting July 2013 and ending in 2019–20.

Predictably, the announcement was met by divergent views by the business community, which largely remained unconvinced on whether the new range of tax cuts and benefits offered by the government will be adequate to offset the 3% increase. Indeed, one of these, a planned 1% cut in the company tax rate, has already been quashed prior to the Federal Budget.

At the time, Peter Anderson, chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI), said the passage of the mining tax “hides a bitter pill for the nation’s one million employers because there will be more employers paying the levy than incorporated businesses that will qualify for a tax cut”.

“The public think the mining tax is paying for higher superannuation when the truth is one million employers and small businesses are,” he added.

Yet Pauline Vamos of the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) said the mining tax is unequivocally good news for business – small, medium and large. Vamos said the increase to the SG will be wholly absorbed by tax exemptions and, phased in over the next seven years, will have the equivalent effect of just a 0.25% increase.

Vamos added that in wage negotiations, both employers and employees will consider the SG increase part of the wage negotiation. “The SG has been around

for 11 years, and it’s been at 9% for 11 years. So it’s part of the whole structure of wage negotiation,” she said.

Vamos reassured that there is a funding basis for the extra 3% and said employers have no reason to fear the SG increase. “There is no reason at all [to worry]. SG increases have historically been much more dramatic,” she said.

In addition to increasing the level of SG contributions to 12%, the legislation also removes the age limit on SG contributions. At present, SG is not required for an employee who is aged 70 or more.

It will also pay for superannuation tax breaks previously denied to those earning less than around $40,000 a year. They will now be eligible for the 15% rebate, which will be lodged directly into their superannuation account.

WHO FOOTS THE BILL?

Three months on, and with some of the dust settled, what does the SG increase mean for employers?

According to the experts contacted

by HC, essentially one of two things will happen: either the employer takes the change as a direct, and potentially huge, increase in labour

Schedule of increases YEAR STARTING ON

SUPER GUARANTEE

1 July 2013

9.25%

1 July 2014

9.5%

1 July 2015

10%

1 July 2016

10.5%

1 July 2017

11%

1 July 2018

11.5%

1 July 2019 and after

12%

costs; or it convinces its employees to see the increases as part of the normal pay increases they will be expecting over the next seven or so years.

On the former option, Peter Nicol, principal, RSM Bird Cameron, says that realistically it will not be employers who bear the brunt of the increase, thanks to those tax concessions, but rather consumers.

On the latter option, Nicol suggests this will most certainly become part of wage negotiations as employers can only afford so much.

“Employers need to undertake careful planning in the costs of doing business. When not talking award

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EMPLOYEE BENEFITS

superannuation Practical steps Natalie Gullifer from Lander & Rogers Lawyers advises employers to consider the following key points:

• Start thinking

about how the increased level of SG contributions will affect remuneration packages from 1 July 2013.

In time for the commencement date, employers will need to make sure that their payroll systems are configured to remit the increased contributions to each employee’s superannuation fund.

Any implications for employment agreements and remuneration packages will also need to be considered, and this may require employers to review all staff contracts.

Consider any older workers aged 70 or more, as SG contributions will need to be made for them from 1 July 2013.

•

•

wages, as they are legislated, there will certainly be negotiations around super when coming to an agreement on packages. On the other hand, if there is a good business case for giving the employee a higher package, there wouldn’t be any need to worry.”

Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten has always insisted that rather than constituting a ‘tax on business’, the super increase will be covered by ‘deferred wage increases’ worked out between employers and employees during wage negotiations, and that an increase in super means an increase in remuneration or wages by any other name. In other words, over the next seven years employers will be able to present SG increases as another form of pay increase, and employees’ demands for increases in their wage excluding super will be correspondingly lower. If worker X is expecting/demanding a 3% wage increase in 2014–15, for example, her employer can present this in the form of a 2.5% increase to her wage excluding super, plus a 0.5% increase to her super.

Garry Adams, head of reward at Mercer, echoes this approach, and notes that in an environment where the employee is covered by an individual contract with their employer and their remuneration system is one where there’s an annual remuneration review and in most cases a remuneration increase, that’s now done typically at a total fixed rem level, which incorporates superannuation.

“In many cases the employee would have the opportunity to salary sacrifice a greater proportion of their income into super,” Adams explains. “So I think most companies would want to have that conversation with their employees: if the remuneration increase is around 4%, of that 0.5% or 1% is going to be going towards the employer contribution to super, so what do you want to do with the balance of your increase?

Employers should see it in the context of that total fixed remuneration movement.”

Likewise, Adams says employers will want to ensure that when they’re looking to set their remuneration increase budgets and negotiate collective agreements with the unions, that the increase in super contribution is factored into that calculation and not seen as a completely separate item.

PERCEPTIONS

The real challenge for HR departments, then, will be in ensuring employees perceive SG to be part and parcel of their remuneration. The challenge will be greatest in companies or industries where pay is usually expressed and perceived to be net of super.

The attitudes towards superannuation can vary greatly across industries. “People working in finance or accounting fields seem to understand that super is a significant cost to an employer and look at the salary package more holistically. In other industries the tendency is to focus on the cash salary and treat 46

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superannuation as merely an afterthought,” says Tudor Marsden-Huggins from Employment Office.

Indeed, a recent survey by Employment Office revealed that 95% of workers believe that job salaries should not be advertised as a figure inclusive of super and that the fairer way to advertise a salary package was with a base salary figure plus super. More to the point, 31% of respondents did not see superannuation as a legitimate component of their salary package but rather as an ‘obligatory payment’ that is the responsibility of their employer.

These figures would suggest that convincing workers that superannuation is a legitimate part of their remuneration will not be easy – especially younger workers for whom retirement is still a distant concept.

ACTION NEEDED NOW

Nicol suggests that businesses need to be looking closely at their five-year wage forecasts now, as the increase will impact on what the business can afford.

“HR professionals should definitely be looking at staff contracts and preparing their five-year wage budgets to provide a realistic view of what the business can afford,” he says. “The difficulty will be with workers 70 years and over as they will effectively cost the business 9.25% more a year and may be unlikely to agree to a salary cut for that amount. Businesses need to factor this in. HR professionals should also consider that higher income earners may be more willing to have some of their salary moved over to super as it will reduce their taxable income.”

For HR professionals, the best help that can be provided to employees is to direct the individual to seek external advice or contact their super fund directly.

While HR professionals may think they are being helpful they may be inadvertently giving financial product advice, which is not what they should be doing.

HR professionals may find an increase in the level of questions from employees, Nicol warns. The best way to deal with this is to be on the front foot and engage with employees by sending out information via email or newsletters to communicate when and how the changes will come into place, and how it will affect them.

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FEATURE PERKS & BENEFITS

financial literacy

Time to do the maths Is it time your suite of employee perks was expanded to include financial literacy training?

Attend a social weekend BBQ and it quickly emerges that concern about personal finances is high on just about everyone’s agenda: rising interest rates, shrunken superannuation and escalating mortgage commitments are adding to the stress. Unfortunately, given the increasingly grey area between ‘home’ and ‘work’, people are bringing those conversations and worry into the workplace.

In the short-term, this distracts workers and impacts productivity. In the long-term, it’s a heavy hit to morale and engagement when companies are already competing to retain talent – not to mention the strain on health that financial stress can produce.

Organisations like Future Map provide workplace financial literacy programs that focus on life planning and financial literacy skills. Future Map founder Alisdair Barr says there are three key elements to successfully delivering effective financial education in the workplace – the programs must be: 1) fun and personally engaging 2) pro-advice 3) have an educational focus on the broader financial principles and behavioural concepts so that the new knowledge and habits instilled during the program continue to have a positive and lasting impact on employees’ ongoing financial decision-making.

Barr believes the element of fun and personal engagement is a key for a financial literacy program.

“I spent 10 years in executive leadership roles at Commonwealth Bank and Colonial First State and I must have attended a leadership or self development program every six months,” he says. “The single best program I attended that changed me from being a loyal employee to being an advocate and recommending CBA as a place of employment for my family and friends was the program that gave me time out to focus on myself. That really made it clear that my employer cares about me.”

Barr also notes that financial education can only go so far, and at some point, people will want and need professional advice.

Future Map is independent of product and advice; however, the company does have a strong focus on building employee confidence

and enabling participants with knowledge and tools such as a list of good questions to ask, how to best prepare when they approach their corporate super provider, financial planner, accountant, broker or other professionals they may need.

“Employees are armed with tools and knowledge and become part of discussions around credit card debt, what they will need to retire, what insurance they have and need and the difference between managing investments inside and outside of super,” Barr explains. “The program is run over a series of sessions ensuring participants are aware of their spending patterns and are clear on the goals they are working towards, with time to work on and improve their money management system.”

The program aims to be both practical and tailored to individual circumstances, so each employee leaves with a reviewed assessment of their spending, superannuation, insurances and with a 12-month, 3–5 year and long-term plan and money management system.

KEY CONSIDERATIONS

Barr notes that financial wellbeing is a service many employers believe they’re already providing for employees or it’s an area they don’t want to be involved in for fear of being associated with improper advice.

“The issue is many employers believe they have financial education programs through their corporate super providers. This is where crossover occurs between education and product pushing through advice,” he says.

Future Step’s aim is to increase employees’ level of engagement with these existing benefits to encourage people to seek advice earlier in their life.

It seems there are two key things to be aware of when engaging a financial education provider: Independence – the majority of workplace financial literacy offerings have a product or service being sold in the back end. It’s important to ensure you are offering an independent financial literacy program where the sole driver of the program is to deliver independent and accessible information, for education purposes only.

Passion – financial literacy is generally considered ‘boring’ and financial conversations can fly under many people’s radars. Ensure the facilitators you choose are passionate and energetic and the program is built and presented in a simple engaging manner.

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PROFILE NAOMI WHITE

HR at Suncorp Group

HR come rain, hail or shine Employees are demanding flexible work options and forwardthinking organisations are complying. Yet the benefits are not all one way, as this month’s profiled HR professional reveals In one of the more unusual paths to a career in HR that Human Capital has heard, Naomi White, executive general manager for HR, commercial insurance, Suncorp Group, studied film production at university and had intentions of becoming a documentary filmmaker. It was only while on a working holiday in the UK that she “fell into” a HR role, and she hasn’t looked back since.

Although she concedes that she might return to film making one day, for now she’s enjoying the diversity of HR. “Every day feels like an adventure. We have such an enormous influence on the way people work, the culture of the organisation and the way we approach change. We sit at the table in the business and we have input on everything relating to the business, not just HR-related aspects – so it’s incredibly diverse and interesting,” she says.

It’s perhaps this inherent streak of creativity, of thinking outside the box, that has enabled White’s Suncorp business unit to embrace two significant HR initiatives.

FLEXIBLE WORK

If the well publicised multi-million dollar compensation pay out to a Telstra employee who slipped and fell while working from home left employers scrambling to update their risk and OHS policies, it’s made Suncorp more determined than ever to ensure its flexible work options are not only attractive to employees, but also cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s in terms of risk mitigation.

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Suncorp Group, a house of brands split into distinct business units (commercial insurance, personal insurance, Suncorp Bank, Suncorp Life, Vero New Zealand), and supported by corporate and shared services divisions, has around 16,000 employees across Australia and New Zealand. One business unit, commercial insurance, introduced flexible work practices 18 months ago in response to strong employee demand, which became particularly apparent during enterprise agreement renegotiation.

Flexible work practices available include work-fromhome, flexible work hours, job share and part-time/ reduced hours (2-3-4 days a week, during school hours etc). White says a significant 17% of the workforce use the part-time working option, which can be taken up with formal or informal arrangements.

“When employees want regular work-from-home arrangements, we put a formal work-from-home arrangement in place, but a lot of people use it on an ad-hoc basis as well.”

White notes that managing work-from-home workers “is not terribly different to managing other employees” – in that the managers are still responsible for their team’s risk and safety management. “We take that very seriously and we have policies to support it. Employees working from home complete OHS checklists of their workspace if they have a formal work-from-home arrangement, and we have an OHS team to support

IN HER OWN WORDS...

What achievement are you most proud of in your career?

“It’s hard to define just one. Whenever I consider I’ve had an achievement in my career it’s usually around my ability to influence positive change in an organisation and leave a legacy when I go. I would mark an achievement when I’ve seen my direct reports really grow and realise their potential in the time they’ve worked in my team, and seeing the results on the culture of an organisation when we’ve made a change program and delivered a program that worked.”

Personal file: Naomi White

Family: Two beautiful kids who keep me young and remind me every day of the importance of balance and seeing the funny side of everything – which is a good thing to apply in the workplace.

Favourite sport: Tennis.

Favourite movie or TV: TV would be Mad Men, and I’m also pretty addicted to The Voice at the moment – which I’m quite embarrassed to say. Movie, I never tire of watching Good Will Hunting.

Best advice ever received: A toss-up between ‘you can’t please everyone all the time’ – important in HR – and also ‘don’t play politics’.

Self-described: Approachable, achievement-driven, creative – I love coming up with new ways of approaching things.

Hobbies: With two kids and this job I feel I should have more hobbies but I would say at the moment reading and walking my dog with my iPod on – total relaxation.

First job: First job was at 15 years old, Saturday morning shifts at Woolworths Variety – I was terrible at it and was threatened with termination every week for talking to my friends instead of working!

If not in HR: I may have ended up being a film maker – who knows?

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leaders through the process. If it’s a whole team, as we’ve had in some of our business where employees only work from home, then we take it to another level and go out and do site inspections and make sure everything is ergonomically set up and all the right technology is in place. For the ad-hoc arrangement employees complete the checklist and must provide photographs of their workspace.”

Why has the company invested in this ability to work flexibly? A number of reasons, but chief among them is that it acts as a “differentiator” in the market. White says Suncorp views it as a “key attraction and retention tool”, which helps to tap into the most talented people from the widest possible pool.

“We particularly want to ensure we’re including people who for whatever reason don’t want to work a full-time working week. We want to attract that talent irrespective of what their circumstances are.”

Last year, when the flexible work initiative was trialled in the property claims department, it allowed people to be hired on a permanent part-time basis to work around peak operational times and also allowed people to work from home. These were employees such as a former financial planner who wasn’t able to achieve flexible hours in his previous career, near retirees who wished to

“We particularly want to ensure we’re including people who for whatever reason don’t want to work a full-time working week. We want to attract that talent reduce hours and live in sea change locations, and even an Olympian training for London.

“What was really interesting about that trial was that department achieved one of the highest engagement scores in the whole of commercial insurance last year, and also high customer service scores. From there we’ve rolled it out more broadly,” White explains.

There was another, unexpected benefit: business continuity. When the January 2011 floods decimated Brisbane, the Suncorp Milton office was also flooded, but the work-from-home team was able to continue providing service, and the flexible hours allowed the team to boost worker hours to cover the spike in claims

– a massive boon for panicked customers.

“The technology allows people to log straight onto the server, hook into the telecommunications and call customers and manage claims – a great help in times of crises,” White says.

It seems the flexible work initiative is also paying off in terms of employee engagement. White says their latest annual engagement survey revealed that 72% of Suncorp employees feel the company does support them to have work-life balance, which is well above the global financial services average.

“It’s something we work very hard on. We are a financial services organisation and there are pressures on us, as there are on other financial services organisations, but we try to ensure our employees have that work-life balance,” White says.

She adds that the most important lesson for managers leading teams who work away from a traditional work environment is to set very clear expectations in the arrangement as early as possible, with open regular conversations. Suncorp uses technology that enables team members to talk to others with a visual image on their computer, as well as virtual meeting rooms for people to ‘meet’ in. Leaders are equipped with toolkits around managing virtual teams. White also encourages leaders to bring people into the office on a periodic basis so they don’t feel too isolated.

“It’s critical that the leader talk to the individual every single day. You can’t underestimate the power of being in the same room every day or all being in the same space at work – and when you’re not it can be quite isolating.”

L&D

Suncorp has also invested a huge amount of time and money into a revamp of its L&D offerings. L&D at Suncorp is a collaboration between the group L&D function, known as the Suncorp Academy, which sits

PROFILE NAOMI WHITE

HR at Suncorp Group across all lines of business, and separate Business Learning Campuses for each business line.

The CI Learning Campus offers specialist development and learning support to employees for their entire life cycle, from onboarding job readiness through to senior specialist skills development.

The Suncorp Academy focuses on leadership development, which is applicable across the group.

Both options provide blended learning options offered by in-house facilitators and external providers.

Over the past 12–18 months the company has focused heavily on leadership development, firstly identifying what type of leadership was needed for the future success of Suncorp and then what the gap was with the existing leadership population. During what White calls a “huge undertaking”, a significant number of employees were interviewed at all levels of the organisation about their experience of leadership at Suncorp. The gap was mapped on a ‘strategy canvas’, and then each of the three groups of identified leaders had their own ‘leadership canvas’ developed.

Leaders were categorised into three groups: strategic leaders (CEOs and executive GMs); business leaders (executive managers and senior leaders who lead large

teams); and first line leaders. Each group has specific leadership development activities designed to get them operating at the highest level of capability.

FUTURE CHALLENGES

That leadership clarity will be required for the future.

White notes her significant HR challenges include managing, motivating and engaging what is an increasingly diverse workforce, and battling the war for talent for certain specialised roles. However, her biggest ongoing HR challenge is staying on course to deliver on business strategy while continuing the process of significant business transformation. Suncorp has been on a ‘simplification journey’, the result of multiple M&As. “Historically we thought change had a start and end date and then things would go back to normal. That’s not the case now; you need to keep evolving. We need our employees to be change fit and some more readily adapt to that than others. Communication is vital – communicating an honest message about what the future looks like and the impact for employees.”

More industry profiles at:

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SIGN OFF

the lighter side written by Stephanie Zillman

EITHER THE CARPET GOES OR I GO

The Mad Men effect: Real life mirrors art

IT’S OFFICIAL: WE CAN NOW CALL SECRETARIES ‘SECRETARIES’

A professional association says it has detected a two-fold increase in the use of ‘secretary’ as a job title, despite the use of the title having previously been in steep decline.

Since the 1980s the title ‘secretary’ has been tossed aside in favour of more modern-sounding names such as administrative or executive assistant. But new survey results from the International Association of Administration Professionals (IAAP) suggest ‘secretary’ is back in fashion – and 3,300 of its members can’t be wrong.

“This shift marks a reversal of popularity for a job title that has been in decline for at least 20 years,” the IAAP said. The IAAP added that it was unclear as to why there are suddenly more secretaries, but suggested it may be due to a ‘Mad Men effect’. The drama program set in an advertising agency in New York during the 1960s has achieved cult-status, and the IAAP speculated that the program “may stoke nostalgia for the classic image of the corporate secretary”.

The survey found “executive assistant” and “administrative assistant” continue to be the most common job titles, and “administrative secretary” made the top three for the first time in several years, the association said. The number of admins with ‘secretary’ in their titles nearly doubled in two years, from 8% to nearly 15%.

THE ULTIMATE SIGN-OFF

Given Australia’s current focus on productivity in business, a serious example of overseas ‘loafing’ might start HR minds thinking about what’s going on in their own backyards. Heads are sure to have rolled at a German public service department after an explosive email was sent to more than 500 colleagues by a retiring worker claiming to have coasted through the last 14 years “without lifting a finger”.

“Since 1998, I was present but not really there. So I’m going to be well prepared for retirement – Adieu,” the former employee emailed to the department. The 65-year old man informed his colleagues that during the course of his employment he earned ¤600,000 ($917,000).

The man from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia did not think the email would leave the office and was coy to local reporters’ requests for comments, but did say he had worked as a surveyor since 1974 and the situation was the council’s fault because he did not have enough work to do and could leave it all to his colleagues.

The real meaning of job descriptions Are there some sneaky truths behind these recruitment catch phrases?

“Competitive salary” We remain competitive by paying less than our competitors.

“Join our fast-paced company” We have no time to train you.

“Casual work atmosphere” We don’t pay enough to expect that you’ll dress up.

“Must be deadline oriented” You’ll be six months behind schedule on your first day.

“Some overtime required” Some time each night and some time each weekend.

“Requires team leadership skills” You’ll have the responsibilities of a manager, without the pay or respect.

“Good communication skills” Management communicates, you listen, figure out what they want and do it.

According to a survey by US-based consultancy firm OfficeTeam, the following are the wackiest explanations given by employees for handing in their notice, as told by more than 1,500 HR professionals.

Some individuals simply had to follow their true calling: • “One worker left to become an apple farmer.”

• “A staff member quit to climb Mount Everest.”

It may be hard to fault these professionals for their honesty: • “A guy said he was making too much money and didn’t feel he was worth it.”

• “The worker told us he just couldn’t get up in the morning.”

And there were employees who suffered from sensory overload: • “He quit because he didn’t like the way the office smelled.”

• “An individual did not like the sound of file cabinets being slammed.”

These workers gave notice when a day off might have sufficed: • “We had someone leave because he had to feed his dog.”

• “An employee left because he wanted to watch a movie with his girlfriend during work hours.”

Some individuals couldn’t ignore their eye for interior design: • “One worker did not like the colours of the walls.”

• “She hated the lighting.”

There was the worker who gave his employer the silent treatment: • “He just walked out without a peep. We have no idea why he left, and we were not able to contact him.”

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