Human Capital magazine issue 10.08

COMPETENCY FRAMEWORKS

An outmoded concept? P.38 ISSUE 10.8

STRETCHING THE TRUTH

Pre-employment screening P.42 PROFILE

HR at the ABC P.50 HUMAN CAPITAL MAGAZINE HCAMAG.COM

HR GETS SOCIAL YOUR GUIDE TO RECRUITMENT

SOCIAL MEDIA

LEARNING

ENTERPRISE SOCIAL NETWORKS

PERSONAL BRANDING

COLLABORATION

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

TOP TIPS: NAVIGATING EMPLOYEE MIDLIFE TRANSITION P.48

editor’s letter

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

Move with the times When Facebook swept through my office around five or six years ago it was met with a straightforward ‘yes, please’ or ‘no, thanks’ response from employees: either you joined up and made friends with colleagues (even though you might see them face-to-face on a daily basis); or you sat it out and continued the age-old rituals that friends do: coffee catch-ups, water cooler gossip sessions, and so on. Now it’s less clear cut. There’s a sense that if one does try to ‘sit out’ the social revolution, you are missing out. Of course, for HR professionals it’s a fine balancing act between keeping your distance and being approachable, akin to the older question of whether it’s appropriate to make friends with people at work; and if you do, where does the line get drawn?

The various features that make up our cover story this month take a look at all aspects of social media in the workplace, from internal communications through to L&D and on to recruitment and even performance management.

Which brand would a candidate choose? The one that is raising awareness or the one that remains silent?

COPY & FEATURES EDITOR Iain Hopkins JOURNALIST Stephanie Zillman EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Patrick Durrant, Tom Goodwin PRODUCTION EDITORS Carolin Wun, Moira Daniels

ART & PRODUCTION SENIOR DESIGNER Rebecca Downing DESIGNER Ginni Leonard TRAFFIC MANAGER Abby Cayanan

CONTRIBUTORS People + Culture Strategies, The Next Step, EmployeeConnect, 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

For most employers, the idea of ‘sitting out’ the social revolution is not viable. Take just one HR area, recruitment. While there is not yet necessarily an expectation that the potential employer has a social media presence, if there is no presence at all, and your main competitor has one and is conveying their employer value proposition well, which brand would a candidate choose? The one that is educating and raising awareness or the one that remains silent? Candidates will assess what it’s like to work at the company via YouTube videos, or visit blogs written by current (or former) employees, or (if they’re extra dedicated) will follow either the company or its leaders on Twitter and Facebook. And it’s not just young upstart tech companies embracing social media: professional services firms like Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers, and law firms like Clayton Utz are increasingly turning to social media campaigns to recruit talent.

As one quoted expert says, “Adapt or die... it’s up to you!”

Iain Hopkins, editor, HC Magazine

Winner!

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, Auckland, 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.

Congratulations to Allyson Urquhart, the winner of Human Capital’s personal brand makeover courtesy of Brand New You (see issue 10.5 for details).

HCAMAG.COM

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HC MAGAZINE 10.8

contents

Check out the HC archive online:

hcamag.com

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Cover story: HR gets social Human Capital provides insights and tips on all aspects of social media’s impact on the day-to-day working lives of HR professionals, from social recruitment to social learning

14 | My Brilliant Career McDonald’s is becoming as well known for its fast food as it is for its long-term career prospects. Carolin Wun talks to Joanne Taylor, vice president/ director of HR and corporate communications at McDonald’s

42 | Wolf in sheep’s clothing According to which report you read, everyone from graduates to CEOs are trying to ‘get one past’ hiring managers. How can we be sure who we’re hiring is who they say they are? Iain Hopkins talks to the experts

38 | Has evolution moved past competency frameworks?

The next time someone comes to you trying to sell the benefits of implementing a competency framework tell them not to waste their time. Adrian Smith explains why

48 | Navigating midlife transition How much effort are you putting into engaging your mature workforce? Robyn Vickers-Willis provides some insights into the engagement and motivational drivers for people entering ‘midlife transition’ 50 | Profile: HR at the ABC A recent award has confirmed what many in the general public always suspected: the ABC is a great place to work.

Rachel Zerr profiles the company’s director of people & learning, Ursula Groves

14 REGULARS

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

FRONTLINE INTELLIGENCE

08 | In Step – HR career experts 10 | Legal 12 | HR consulting 25 | HR technology

48 WWW.HCAMAG.COM HCAMAG.COM

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IN BRIEF

news

The month in numbers

87% –

PRODUCTIVITY

INDUSTRY CALLS FOR MORE PRODUCTIVE WORKERS

n The Prime Minister attended a two-day economic forum in June, with the overarching aim of establishing a more productive workforce.

One factor that both government and industry could agree on was that Australia’s prosperity hinges upon lifting productivity. “The choices we make in tackling this challenge will largely determine what type of workforce, indeed what type of economy we have in the future,” Innes Willox from Australian Industry Group (Ai Group) said in a statement.

So what’s currently standing in the way? The results of a recent workplace survey found that two major causes of time lost during the average workday are usually due to tech problems and waiting for approval from a higher authority.

The survey by Ernst & Young drew together a picture of productivity on the average working day based on responses from more than 2,500 workers from seven different industries. It discovered that a whopping 23% of the average work day is wasted. Just two-thirds of the country’s workforce was considered “productive” while more than 3.5 million workers fell below the average at a cost of more than $40bn.

Despite many Australians now working more than eight hours each day, the report also showed productivity had not grown over the past decade.

A worker’s average day 58%

58% work that added real value to my organisation 18% work that wasted time and effort 3% other activities that added value to my organisation

9% time networking with colleagues that added value to me and my work

12% activities that added to my personal development

Impact on productivity 54%

54% people management issues 23% organisation structure, design and operating model 8% technology 15% innovation Source: ‘Wastage adds up despite motivated workers’, The Ernst & Young Australian Productivity Pulse

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percentage of employers that have had a candidate turn down an offer of employment due to receiving a better one from another employer*

93% –

percentage of workers who continue to work once they have left the office, for a total of three hours and 31 minutes each week. That’s a total of 15 hours a month or 183 hours a year – or 23 extra working days a year.**

$5,700 –

amount paid to employers by the federal government’s wage subsidy, Wage Connect, to help offset the costs of wages and training for new employees for the first six months they are in the job.^ Sources: *Robert Walters – Managing the offer process to ensure you recruit the best professional **UK research by OnePoll and Good Technology ^further information: deewr.gov.au

GENDER EQUALITY

JOB TITLES MAY CAUSE GENDER HIRING BIAS

n A new report has identified how certain job titles perpetuate unbalanced hiring practices, and favour a preconceived gender for the role.

The peak standard-setting body, Standards Australia, has published a new set of Australian guidelines on gender inclusive job evaluation and grading.

The not-for-profit body conducted an empirical study of job titles and role descriptions, and found that not only are some job titles gender-exclusive, but some pre-establish remuneration and act to perpetuate the wage gap.

“Although job evaluation does not directly determine the rates of pay, it has a significant role in establishing job and career structures and in remuneration setting,” Colin Blair from Standards Australia said.

According to the guidelines, employers should ensure that the sex of potential employees should not be identified in job descriptions. It highlighted the importance of avoiding personal pronouns such as his/her or he/ she. Caution should be taken to ensure aspects of jobs stereotypically done by women were not omitted or underdescribed, and features typically characterising men’s jobs were not over-emphasised.

To mitigate gender bias risks, the report recommended employers become aware of the risks and formulate ways to manage them.

WORKPLACE POLICIES

CHANGES TO UNFAIR DISMISSAL THRESHOLD

n The high income threshold for the unfair dismissal provisions in the Fair Work Act has increased from $118,100 to $123,300, effective from 1 July 2012. Alongside these changes, the compensation limit for unfair dismissal has also increased to $61,650.

Employment law experts at Clayton Utz said the workplace arbitrator considers an employee’s earnings as including wages, money that is paid on their behalf (such as superannuation top-ups or salary sacrifice), and the agreed value of non-monetary benefits (such as laptops and mobile phones).

Importantly, Fair Work does not include payments that can’t be set in advance (such as commissions, bonuses or overtime), reimbursements, or compulsory superannuation contributions as ‘earnings.’

Employees who earn above this amount (not including SGC superannuation) and who are not covered by an award or enterprise agreement are excluded from the unfair dismissal regime.

The increase will enable more employees to access the unfair dismissal provisions, and will have implications for how HR manages these employees.

WORK-LIFE BALANCE

BURNOUT IS BACK

n A recent study found people are more likely to experience burnout when they are exposed to continuous stress and feel they have no other work alternative.

According to one consulting organisational and industrial psychologist, Dr Tim Hill, those with high ambition but a lack of stress management skills are also at risk of burnout.

To limit the impact on home life, Dr Adam Fraser has introduced the concept of transitions. The ‘Third Space’ is the transitional space between work and home. To embrace the concept of the Third Space, workers are encouraged to: • Reflect: This is where people reflect on and analyse the day. They are encouraged to only focus on

what they had achieved and what had gone well for them. This activity increases their level of positive emotion and puts them in a growth mindset.

• Rest: In this step, people relax and unwind. Being calm and present allows their physiology to recover from the day. This phase also allows brain chemistry to support more constructive behaviours.

• Reset: This is where people articulate the behaviours they want to exhibit in the home space. That is, how they want to ‘show up’ when they come home. Fraser says the most important step that determines if people have a good interaction in the home is how they enter the home environment. If they walk in happy, calm and relaxed, they have a positive interaction. In contrast, if they are angry or frustrated, they have a negative one.

Win!

Here's your chance to win a free coaching session provided by Dr Adam Fraser. The best response will be judged by Dr Fraser, and the next five best responses will receive a free copy of his book, 'The Third Space'.

To enter, email editor@hcamag.com your name and response to this question in less than 200 words:

WHAT DO YOU DO IN THE TRANSITION BETWEEN WORK AND HOME? Entries close 31 August 2012

PRE-EMPLOYMENT SCREENING

CV FRAUD ON THE RISE DID YOU KNOW?

Imposter syndrome is not an officially recognised psychological disorder, but is an affliction felt by many successful professional women.

Despite numerous successes and examples of competence, those with the syndrome are convinced they are frauds; they do not deserve the success they have achieved and fear exposure at any moment.

n A combination of rising university fees and tight jobs markets in some sectors means false education claims are likely to increase.

The opinions of more than 1,300 students and graduates were canvassed by careers advice provider Graduate Prospects and the results were alarming. Some 43% said rises in tuition fees would make them more likely to inflate their credentials on CVs. Only a third disagreed outright that they would lie. Two-thirds (68%) reported that buying a fake degree was becoming an attractive option while less than a quarter disagreed.

One statistic which is likely to add impetus to checking qualifications is that in cases where employers are known for checking CV details, 89% of students and graduates said they would be less likely to lie.

Two-thirds of students and graduates recognised that it is illegal to give misinformation on CVs, but a third knew someone who either lied or exaggerated their qualifications on their CV. The top four things graduates are most likely to falsify related to: 1. Grades – 47% cite a higher grade than they actually achieved 2. Course completion – 29% say they completed a course when they only finished part of it 3. Subject – 13% give a different course subject to suit a job’s requirements 4. Qualification – 11% say they have a degree when they don’t

IN BRIEF

hr insight

Global workers Employers have been quick to tap into the global workforce – and with good reason According to the 2010 UN Human Development Report, migrants account for approximately 3.1% of the world population (as of 2010). The number of people living outside their country of origin has risen from 120 million in 1990 to approximately 214 million in 2011.

A Manpower survey of more than 40,000 employers across 41 countries found that the hardest jobs to fill globally are skilled trades workers, engineers and sales representatives. Employers in Japan have the most difficulty finding staff, followed by those in Brazil, Bulgaria, Australia and the US. Several European countries, including Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain, ranked at the bottom of the list, with fewer than one in 10 employers struggling to find the right workers.

ASIA TO WESTERN CANADA Canada – particularly Vancouver – has become a very attractive destination for professional emigrants from Asia. Canada's immigration target is 1% of its population, or 300,000 pa; in recent years, 225,000–250,000 worldwide immigrants have arrived.

TO AUSTRALIA FROM THE UK Australia has a large British contingent.

Of the 4.8 million foreign-born in 2005, 23% came from the UK.

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OTHER EUROPEANS TO THE UK

INDIAN PROFESSIONALS HEAD FOR THE US

FROM THE UK TO NEW ZEALAND

KIWI EXODUS

Around half the immigrants in the UK come from the EU, though the most significant sending country is still Ireland, whose citizens have unrestricted rights of entry.

India has become a major source of computer talent for the US. Around two-thirds of the ‘H-1B’ visas issued to professionals in 2006 were to Indians.

Until 1986, New Zealand gave migration preference to the ‘traditional source countries’, primarily the UK. In the census of 1996, 75% of the population identified themselves with a European ethnic group.

MINEWORKERS TO SOUTH AFRICA

In recent years, more people have been leaving New Zealand than arriving. Most go to Australia, since New Zealanders and Australians are free to live and work in either country. Australia has 355,762 NZborn residents, of whom 116,500 have become Australian citizens.

Apartheid South Africa systemically recruited workers for its mines, many from Lesotho, Botswana, and Swaziland. In 2005, up to one-third of South African miners were foreigners.

KEY Arrivals and departures Arrivals Departures

WANDERING FILIPINOS Nurses from the Philippines who have migrated to the US provide a prime example of the positive and negative economic effects on both sending and receiving countries.

US positives

✔ Facing severe nursing shortages, US hospitals have found a deep pool of experienced nurses

Philippine positives

✔ The nurses can earn as much as 20 times what they were making back home. They send part of this home to support their families. This money helps boost the Philippine economy and supports the local population. ✔ If and when the migrant nurses return

to the Philippines they will bring with them greater amounts of training and experience contributing to social capital.

✔ Offering higher salaries and better living

standards, US hospitals have been easily able to lure Philippine nurses

US negatives

Philippine negatives

Asian migration to Australia comes primarily from China, Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia.

FROM EGYPT TO THE GULF

Egypt was one of the first suppliers of labour to the oil rich Gulf states following the 1970s oil boom, and Kuwait is still heavily reliant on them.

✘ The benefits of government expenditures on education are not coming to bear fruit in the Philippines but rather in the US.

✘ While the jobs taken by Philippine workers would not necessarily have been filled by domestic labourers, American nurses see their salaries decrease as Philippine nurses arrive and are willing to work for lower wages.

AUSTRALIA DIVERSIFIES

✘

Furthermore, turnover at Philippine hospitals is so high that even operating rooms are staffed with novice nurses.

FROM INDONESIA TO MALAYSIA

Indonesia has lost around one million illegal workers to Malaysia, with most of the men working on plantations, and most women working as maids.

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FRONTLINE INTELLIGENCE

recruitment

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

“All Around” Benefits in HR HR practitioners are responsible for designing aligned and cost effective benefits programmes in their organisations to enhance retention and performance.

This month, we dig down to look at which benefits are the most sought-after by HR practitioners themselves.

The Next Step coordinated a survey of 3,000 HR professionals from Australia/NZ, Asia and the UK – The 2012 HR Viewpoint Survey. The survey results provide some interesting insights into the benefits that are most coveted by HR practitioners after direct fixed base pay.

IT’S THE BONUS…

In total reward design, undeniably the clearest link to performance and the most appealing benefit is the annual Short Term Incentive bonus (STI). The HR Viewpoint results indicated that when lined up against all other benefits, an STI bonus was the clear winner and the most desired benefit to HR professionals (no surprises there really!)

22.7% of all HR practitioners in Australia/NZ indicated that an STI was the most appealing benefit to them. This result was paralleled in the UK with 24.5% of HR professionals saying that an STI was the first ‘cab off the rank’ in terms of benefits.

In Asia, an even more emphatic result was achieved with 26.2% placing an STI first.

So the clear message is that an STI is the number one benefit, but The HR Viewpoint Survey found that: • 31.6% of HR professionals in Australia/ NZ earn no STI. This compares with 37.8% in the UK but only 11.1% in Asia; • Unsurprisingly, only 3.2% of HR practitioners surveyed in Australia/NZ thought that no STI was acceptable. This figure in the UK was 5.9% and in Asia only 2.3%; • In all, 55.9% of HR Practitioners in Australia/NZ receive a paltry 10% or less STI. In the UK, 58.1% of HR 8

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Professionals receive 10% or less STI but in Asia this was only 26.9%.

So whilst an STI is important with a global average of 25.5% HR professionals saying an STI is their preferred benefit, there are obviously a large number of HR professionals missing out completely or not achieving a significant benefit from their STI payment.

If HR professionals are missing out on an STI, is there a range of other benefits on the shopping list?

BENEFITS…ALL AROUND IN AUSTRALIA/NZ

When the subject of benefits is considered, most organisations realise that an overall package offering is required. This approach seems to be confirmed as the right approach by the results of the Viewpoint Survey. No one benefit dominates – an ‘all around’ benefits approach seems to be preferred.

So what are the all around benefits that are important to HR professionals after an STI? In Australia/NZ, the next most appealing benefits are: • Extra Leave – 14.7%; • Career Opportunities – 13%; • Flexible Work Arrangements – 11.1%; • Private Health Care – 6.7% All the other benefits covered in the survey, which included Recognition Programmes, Staff Discounts, Study Assistance, Childcare, Salary Continuance and access to Social Responsibility Programmes, registered 5% or less preference.

So how does the UK and Asia compare with the Australia/NZ results? There were some clear differences.

As seen above, the second most important benefit for Australia/NZ HR professionals was Extra Leave. In the UK, this was Flexible Work Arrangements and in Asia it was Career Opportunities.

Career Opportunities is the second most important benefit available for HR

Reward can mean many things to many people. It can be as simple as a pat on the back... professionals in Asia with 20.9%, compared to only 12.9% and 13% in the UK and Australia/NZ respectively. Does this reinforce some clichés?

The data indicates that Australians want more time off, people in the UK have such a hard time to get to work they want to work from home, and in Asia it’s all about their careers!

Are HR Professionals in Asia significantly more career minded? If so, Regional HRDs should be aware that development is highly regarded as a career benefit and a good retention device in Asia.

THE FINAL WORD

Reward can mean many things to many people. It can be as simple as a pat on the back for a job well done or even organisation-wide commendation through structured recognition programs.

So whilst there are some differences in the benefits that HR Practitioners look for when regions are compared with each other, overall, there is a reasonably balanced approach and desire in terms of the Benefits that HR professionals aspire to achieve.

Socially, people may muse that they would be grateful for additional annual leave, flexible working arrangements or companyfunded learning. However, our anonymously collected data indicates that money talks.

An STI Bonus ranks as a clear first as HR practitioners’ preferred benefit.

MARKET MOVES

radar

Recent HR Market Moves The Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees has appointed Meegan George to the role of Executive Manager Education and Performance . Meegan brings extensive experience in the development space having worked with a number of organisations in the banking and financial services sectors.

Marissa Black has joined dairy producer Murray Goulburn Co-operative in the role of Corporate Human Resources Manager.

Marissa joins Murray Goulburn after a five-year stint with Bankwest, most recently holding the role of Lead HR Business Partner for the bank nationally.

Ainsley Gilkes has been appointed to the newly created role of Head of Talent at Coca-Cola Amatil. Ainsley was previously with mining and materials company OneSteel for four years, most recently as Resourcing and Talent Manager. She is also a Director of the Australian Association of Graduate Employers.

McDonald’s Australia has appointed Bill Andrews as their National Employee Relations Manager. Prior to joining McDonald’s, Bill enjoyed four years with DP World as their HR Manager and originally commenced his HR career with Coles Supermarkets.

Helen Smirniotis has joined the Audit Office of NSW as their Executive Manager Human Resources. Helen brings extensive HR generalist and Organisational Development experience from a range of industry sectors including property, energy, financial services and insurance. She was previously the Head of HR with ING Real Estate Investment Management.

Evolution Mining has welcomed Paul Eagle as their Head of Workforce Effectiveness.

Prior to joining Evolution Mining, Paul held the role of Head of Human Resources at

Kennard’s Hire. Paul previously enjoyed seven years with British American Tobacco, most recently as the Head of Organisational Development for Australasia.

Victoria Kubert has been appointed the Human Resources Manager Australasia for Weatherford International. Victoria joins from Visy Industries, where she was the Human Resources Business Partner for Queensland. Prior to Visy, Victoria spent almost six years with Tomago Aluminium in a variety of HR roles.

Graincorp Operations Limited has welcomed Julian Santangelo as their Group Manager Performance and Reward.

Julian has extensive remuneration, talent and global mobility experience obtained working with PricewaterhouseCoopers, SingTel Optus, Hay Group and Mercer.

Gayle Philpotts has joined Aristocrat as their Global Human Resources Director.

Gayle has amassed a wealth of experience working at the Human Resources Director level having previously worked with leading organisations such as iNova, Wyeth/Pfizer, George Weston Foods, Uncle Toby’s and Sunrice.

QBE Australia has appointed Geoff Martin to the role of National Human Resources Manager for Intermediary Distribution.

Geoff’s prior experience includes working as the Human Resources lead on a large outsourcing project at Westpac and the Head of Human Resources for several divisions within Westpac Institutional Bank.

Warwick Mills has joined Calvary Aged Care & Retirement Services as their Director Human Resources. Prior to this role, Warwick held the position of Senior Human Resources Manager Asia Pacific with Kronos, and was previously the National Human Resources Manager at DMS Pty Ltd. Fuji Xerox has welcomed Anne Das Gupta as their Head of Organisation Development.

Anne’s remit includes Leadership, Employee Engagement, Culture, Capability, Talent and Change Management. Anne previously held the role of Organisation Enablement Manager at Singtel Optus.

Ashley Richards has joined News Limited in the role of Human Resources Transformation Manager. Ashley’s prior experience includes working as the National Human Resources Operations Training Lead with BP subsidiary Reliance Petroleum and as a Senior Consultant with Accenture.

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

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FRONTLINE INTELLIGENCE

legal

Kathryn Dent, Director P: 02 8094 3107 M: 0412 126 366 E: kathryn.dent@peopleculture.com.au. Dimi Baramili, Associate P: 02 8094 3100 E: dimi.baramili@peopleculture.com.au

Issues in Executive Employment –

managing those who manage Negotiating terms and conditions of employment for senior executives will often involve lengthy negotiations as their employment contracts will require additional terms related to remuneration and postemployment restraints to maximise performance and to also minimise any potential liability. Additionally, the impact of certain provisions in the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) (“Corporations Act”) and the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) (“Competition and Consumer Act”), which will generally be relevant in the context of termination of employment, will need to be borne in mind at this early stage.

REMUNERATION ARRANGEMENTS

Executives will often demand and be recruited to a role on the basis of remuneration arrangements not common to all employed within an organisation such as: share options, sign-on bonus payments, bonus payments, commissions, and salary sacrifice arrangements. It is critical to draft clearly how these arrangements operate not only during employment but upon termination and in a way which incentivises and retains highly valued executives. For example, if an executive holds equity in the company, what impact will termination have on the company’s financial position and the company’s ability to get shareholder approval (if the ex-employee remains a shareholder)?

Does the bonus scheme require pro-rata payments on termination if the termination date does not coincide with the payment period for the bonus? Do unvested options lapse on termination? What happens on termination to options which have vested?

Once the contract commences shareholder approval provisions in the Corporations Act 10

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Executives will often demand and be recruited to a role on the basis of remuneration will impact on increases to remuneration and termination payments so it is important to also consider these at the time negotiations are taking place.

MISLEADING OR DECEPTIVE CONDUCT

During recruitment, caution must be exercised by both employers and representatives such as executive search firms and recruitment consultants, in describing the nature of the role and conditions of employment including remuneration, benefits and tenure or security of employment and especially so if the employee is being “head hunted”. Employers may be subject to claims of misleading or deceptive conduct by the executive if these claims are not met or if their employment is terminated.

BOARD MEMBER REQUIREMENTS

If an executive is going to be appointed to the board of directors the employer should stipulate the connection between employment and appointment (for example, what happens to the board position on termination? Does ceasing to hold a board position affect employment?). Next, the

employer might want to make their employment conditional upon holding certain qualifications or rights to be a director or manage a company under the Corporations Act. Finally, the employer should ensure it has an operative policy in relation to conflicts of interest.

RESTRAINTS OF TRADE

As restraints are commonly held to be void if they are not reasonably necessary for the protection of the employer’s legitimate business interests, it is important they are drafted appropriately and this requires that any post-employment restriction be reasonable especially in terms of prohibited activity, length and geography.

TIPS IN NEGOTIATING WITH EXECUTIVES

• Ensure that all pre-contractual negotiations and representations (which are agreed between the parties) are embodied in the contract • Ensure that the interaction between employment and a board position is covered • Consider impact of termination on the payments that may be required • Consider what is reasonably necessary to protect the business in restricting the executive should employment cease • Remember the legislative impact of the Corporations Act and Competition and Consumer Act. Negotiating executive employment contracts requires consideration of a vast array of complex issues, therefore it is important this is done with care to ensure that employers do not face any adverse consequences in the future in the event of a breach or upon termination.

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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

Rewarding performance – the ticking bomb Since the onset of the GFC, pay increases have been very modest as companies tighten their belts. On the whole, people so far have been relatively accepting of this as an inevitable result of tough times.

But what are the long-term consequences?

What effect will there be on how people feel about their jobs/employers? Do they think it has been handled fairly? What can we expect employees to do when the global economy finally grows in confidence? Are we going to find a latent reserve of resentment and disloyalty emerging – something that has been hidden by employees’ lack of options? In short, is there a ticking time bomb waiting to go off, in which talented people fly the nest and solid performers lack motivation, largely because of how we have handled the tough times?

There are indications that this is the case – and we would do well to address this situation now.

The issue is not necessarily about how much people are paid per se. People’s views and reactions are primarily affected by the extent to which they see a clear and reasonable link between their performance and their pay. Even when they are not paid as much as they would like, if they experience a culture where performance is rewarded fairly and equitably (i.e. the best people get the most reward), they tend to feel much more positively.

In the 2011 WorkTrendsTM report, published by the Kenexa High Performance Institute, the views of over 31,000 employees across the world from a wide range of industries and organisations are shared. The sad fact is that across that large sample, only 29% saw a clear link between their pay and their performance (with 52% actively saying that there is no link and 19% unsure). This represents a massive problem – it indicates that the overwhelming bulk of people feel 12

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that performance is not what companies value. The impact of this feeling on motivation, meritocracy, perceptions of fairness, loyalty and performance itself is absolutely colossal.

FIGURE 1. L INK BETWEEN PAY

AND PERFORMANCE

29%

52%

19%

Don’t See the Link See the Link Uncertain

Not everyone feels this problem equally.

People in sales and senior management positions tend to think their pay is linked to their performance. But those in supervisory roles, service positions and professional/ technical jobs are much less likely to see these links. The fact that supervisors don’t see the link is particularly telling – if they don’t see it, what hope do they have of making their teams feel it?

FIGURE 2. E MPLOYEES WHO ARE SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING LEAVING THEIR ORGANIZATION

36% 18%

Pay Unrelated to Performance

Pay Related to Performance

In such a situation, we can hardly expect people to work hard, feel loyal or stick around once they have options.

And that is precisely what emerges from the research. If people see a link between pay and performance, their Employee Engagement is (on average) 80% favourable.

Those who see no such link come in at a paltry 45% (and more than a third of these

people are thinking of leaving their employers). Given the solid link between engagement, motivation, tenure and business performance, this is extremely concerning. If this does indeed translate to increased staff turnover, the true cost of hiring new people will certainly exceed any savings made in pay.

So, what can we do about it? The key thing is to promote a clear link between reward and performance.

First of all, make sure that the link actually exists in the first place with robust performance management and reward processes (including upskilling the managers running the process) – you need to be sure you know who your best people are in the first place before you can reward them. Secondly, promote transparency: many organisations keep their reward model/data/philosophy opaque, but this has a very negative impact on perceptions of fairness. A strong communication plan in this area can make a tremendous difference.

The other thing we can do is to proactively share information on total reward outcomes – not just basic pay. Most of all, make it clear what it is that people need to do to be seen as successful and to be rewarded accordingly.

Asking people how they feel about this in your employee survey is also vital – not asking if people are paid enough (we can guess the answer to that question!) but whether they see links between their performance and their reward outcomes.

In the end, people respond with performance, motivation and loyalty if they experience fairness around them. But the data suggests that at present, most organisations have a long way to go. The companies that grow most successfully out of the GFC will be the ones that lay the strongest foundations now.

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PROFILE JOANNE TAYLOR

my brilliant career

A SUPERSIZED CAREER Starting with its first restaurant over 40 years ago in the Sydney suburb of Yagoona, the golden arches of McDonald’s now has a presence in over 780 locations across Australia. While its food may be fast, the iconic hamburger brand prides itself on providing a work environment conducive to long-term tenure, as vice president/director of HR and corporate communications Joanne Taylor explains to Carolin Wun Human Capital: What drew you to an HR role initially?

Joanne Taylor: I was initially drawn to industrial relations, starting my career with the Australian Industry Group. This was a great foundation and one which I encourage many young graduates to consider as a good grounding in the management of people as well as in the delivery of training, which is critical for an HR professional. I also have a passion for mentoring and training – I have contributed my time as a TAFE lecturer teaching IR operation procedures. So an HR role at McDonald’s combines my passion for training as well as my interest in IR. HC: What does the corporate communications aspect of your role involve? Is it about how HR engages with employees?

JT: I’m responsible for the corporate communications team, which does include internal communications for the organisation but also extends more broadly to include media relations and public affairs.

HC: What role does Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC) play in engaging your employees?

JT: Giving back to the community is a fundamental part of our business philosophy. McDonald’s is passionate about contributing to the community within which it operates – at the heart of this is RMHC. RMHC is one of Australia’s major children’s charities and helps thousands of families across Australia every year. One of the biggest 14

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events on the calendar is McHappy Day, where crew and corporate staff lend their time to help fund raise on the day. There is a fantastic atmosphere across our restaurants on this day and it’s great to see crew, corporate staff and the community enjoying the events.

Last year, we had Joel and Benji Madden from [the band] Good Charlotte participate in the festivities.

HC: How do you build career paths with employees so they feel they can have successful careers at McDonald’s?

JT: Our employees are individuals with talent and ambition and we’re committed to helping them develop their careers.

We understand that the company’s success is ultimately determined by the skills of our franchisees,

Career timeline: Joanne Taylor Pre-McDonald’s

Various HR and IR positions for businesses such as Star City Hotel and Casino and The Australian Industry Group.

2004

First job at McDonald’s Director of employee relations.

Responsibilities

JOANNE TAYLOR ROLL OF HONOUR Bachelor of Commerce (MERIT), Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management, University of NSW; Financial studies at the Graduate School of Management, Sydney

included: providing senior management with strategic counsel for people-related issues across the business; developing and driving national change management strategies; and negotiating employee awards agreements.

2006

Onwards: Director of franchising NSW and ACT. Main responsibility was managing the franchising strategy for McDonald’s biggest market (NSW and ACT) in conjunction with her employee relations role.

2008

Upwards: Vice president, regional manager for NSW and ACT. Primary responsibility included driving the strategy for 291 franchised and companyowned McDonald’s restaurants.

2010

Current: VP director of human resources and corporate communications. Leads the HR department, and manages internal and external communications for McDonald’s, and the wellbeing and development

of over 90,000 McDonald’s Australia restaurant and corporate employees.

2011

Appointed to the Board of McDonald’s Australia.

Responsible for the overall growth and development of the McDonald’s brand.

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PROFILE JOANNE TAYLOR

my brilliant career We will continue to see increasing accountability across the HR profession, with a clear focus on driving improved business outcomes – JOANNE TAYLOR corporate employees, restaurant managers and crew. To achieve our objective to be the employer of choice in our restaurants and in our corporate offices, we have placed a strong emphasis on offering training and development programs that our employees will find valuable.

As a Registered Training Organisation (RTO), McDonald’s offers tremendous opportunities for our people to forge a career within the McDonald’s System.

Each year we invest more than $40m in training our crew, restaurant management and corporate staff. We also pride ourselves on equipping team members with essential skills that will serve them well wherever their future career takes them.

McDonald’s has been a RTO for over 15 years and as such we recognise talent and potential by offering nationally-recognised traineeships and qualifications.

Our crew has the opportunity to gain skills and qualifications to move into roles with more responsibility.

For example, a common path is Crew–Crew Trainer– Shift Supervisor–Assistant Manager–Restaurant Manager, with various training and qualifications along the way such as national retail traineeships and management development programs. Many crew tie in these courses with high school and university. Our talent management process helps us create future leaders and enables our restaurant employees to achieve long-term career goals both within our restaurants and in our corporate offices.

For corporate employees, we provide a host of development initiatives. These include: training activities, interaction, coaching and mentoring with experienced members of the team, and application of learning activities in day-to-day responsibilities. We also have an education assistance program to enable our employees to strive towards achieving their academic potential.

HC: McDonald’s has been named twice as an employer of choice for women by the EOWA. How does McDonald’s support its female employees?

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Did you know?

• McDonald’s is Australia’s largest employer of youth • As part of July’s Careers Week, which included several public youth employment forums, plans were announced for McDonald's to create 3,000 new positions nationally, with 1,000 of those in Queensland.

• The current CEO of McDonald’s Australia, Catriona Noble, started her career in a McDonald’s restaurant kitchen as a casual worker. Now, 20odd years on, she is one of Australia’s most senior businesswomen, overseeing a company with annual revenues in excess of $1.2bn.

JT: McDonald’s prides itself on being an employer of choice for women. This is not something that we have achieved overnight – it has been a result of our CEO and her predecessors truly driving a gender-blind approach when recruiting/promoting people. It has always been about the best person for the position and then looking at what we may need to do to make it work.

We offer many family-friendly benefits. These include complementing the government paid parental scheme by topping up their payment to an employee’s actual weekly wage for the 18-week period. We apply this irrespective of the government income cap.

We also have additional benefits such as summer working hours, and a fifth week of annual leave incentive.

Importantly, these apply to both men and women, as we believe it is about creating a flexible workplace for all – keeping in mind that an increasing number of men have child care responsibilities.

We offer an array of development opportunities for all employees, but through our Women’s Leadership Network, we also offer courses that are tailored to the needs of women eg, Women Presenting Powerfully.

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

JT: Getting to where I am today. In my eight years with the company, my responsibilities have extended to other business areas, with leadership positions across franchising, operations and communications.

HC: Describe yourself in a few key words JT: I’m firm, but fair. I’m also guided by a strong set of values and pride myself on having a steely determination.

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

JT: There is no doubt that the economy has changed and, in turn, the behaviour of consumers. This is leading all companies to change the way in which they do business and in turn, we will continue to see increasing accountability across the HR profession, with a clear focus on driving improved business outcomes, not just the touchy, feely elements.

HC: What do you think it takes to succeed in HR? JT: Commercial acumen, strong ethics and, of course, a genuine interest in people and improving outcomes.

More industry profiles at:

hcamag.com

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HR & SOCIAL MEDIA

social HR

Easy as 1, 2, 3?

Six steps to integrate social communications A new integrated approach to business communication requires combining traditional tools like telephony and video with social networking and social media tools. Mike Handes looks at how these new elements can be integrated successfully

About the author Mike Handes is IBM’s social business innovation lead for Australia/New Zealand

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Just a few years ago, businesses found it standard practice to communicate solely through telephone calls and face-to-face meetings. But with the evolving nature of business and expanding global reach of companies, tools for communication need to equally progress to enable companies to stay competitive in today’s marketplace.

Interactions with colleagues, customers and partners are now much more complex and fluid. Competitive pressures, combined with easy access to information online, especially from smart mobile devices, have set the expectation that collaboration occurs instantaneously.

Questions are answered in seconds rather than minutes or days, as people from all around the world come together as if they’re in the same room.

It’s clear that the way employees interact is fundamentally changing. To drive greater success, organisations need to unify their traditional communications infrastructure and channels with a broader mix of collaboration tools, including social networking and social media.

Enter social communications.

Social communications involves the marriage of traditional communications tools such as telephony and video with newer social networking and social media tools.

This integrated approach is helping to take enterprise collaboration to the next level, and revolutionising the ways that people and businesses communicate.

Social communications makes it possible for geographically distributed employees to work together seamlessly, and is efficiently changing the way businesses operate and ultimately respond to their markets.

Here are six steps to easily integrate social communications into business strategy:

1

DETERMINE WHICH SOCIAL TOOLS ARE BEING USED

Are people in your organisation tweeting? Are they on Facebook? If so, then good news – you’ve already taken the first step. Look around and you’ll see people travelling with their tablets, taking sales calls on their Blackberries and tweeting with colleagues and friends.

2

DETERMINE HOW TO BEST MANAGE THIS INTERACTION

Ask yourself, “how can I help people actually get work done – better and more efficiently – across their social networks?” The key is real-time communication.

Helping to conduct an expertise search based upon people in your social networks allows work to be done more quickly. The analytics tools in the social network helps identify people who should connect and work together on a particular project based upon their knowledge of a certain subject, whether it be legal matters or pricing issues.

The real-time aspect allows users to see who’s available right now. It eliminates the need for sharing conference call information and coordinating schedules. This can also be useful for bringing in external counsel. If you connect with someone via a social network, you can invite them to a meeting and use a tool with co-editing features to collaborate on a document – a contract, for example. Something that would have taken hours, perhaps even days, is now completed in a matter of minutes.

3

ENSURE THE SOCIAL TOOLS YOUR ORGANISATION USES PROVIDE SEAMLESS INTEGRATION FEATURES When deciding which social tools to use, keep in mind that the most important factors are seamlessness and integration. Make sure you choose social tools that will work with your telephony systems. Do you have video investments? It should integrate with those, too.

Since the mobile workforce is expected to reach more than 1.19 billion people by 2013, mobile support is especially critical. The operating systems that support today’s smartphones, tablets, and other devices need to integrate with your social communications strategy.

4

BE AWARE OF SECURITY AND PRIVACY OF INFORMATION

Email and instant messaging come with their own risks – such as viruses, spam and phishing attacks.

Similarly, social networking opens up its own risk of information leakage risks. Encourage adoption by educating people on how to properly use their social network. Not everything should be posted publicly, and employees must be shown what is and isn’t okay to share in the public domain. Many products offer control mechanisms that assist in

compliance by allowing some posts to be blocked. And be sure you have archives so there is a historic record of what’s been said.

5

HONE IN ON THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL

If you want to measure the benefits, look at overall productivity and efficiency. If someone can more easily find another person via social connections, then they are more likely to ask for information. The net result is that the task at hand takes less time, but also that important materials are subject to additional review. A proposal, for example, can go out the door having undergone scrutiny by more sets of eyes.

6

UNDERSTAND THE COST SAVINGS

There are additional cost savings around managing communications cost. Everything adds up: desktop phones can sit unused if an employee is remote or travels often. The cost of international calls can get sky high. So can data plans for mobile devices. Eliminating these costs produces tangible savings that can be easily quantified.

It’s clear why social communications is critical for today’s always open, always connected, organisation. No longer are communications challenges just about connecting people for a one-on-one conversation, but rather using the wide variety of social networking and analytics tools to determine the best way to reach a person and ensure faster access to information.

With seamless access to new social tools that make it even simpler to connect, it’s now easier than ever to assemble a group, regardless of location, and make a decision almost immediately.

Overall, organisations that realise the value of social communications as they evolve into a social business will outperform their peers.

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HR & SOCIAL MEDIA

enterprise social networks

When employees companies thrive Don’t know your Yammer from your Yackstar? The question is no longer whether or not you should deploy an ESN, but how and when. David Croston reports

About the author David Croston is the principal of Inside Communication, an employee research and communication consultancy.

He helps companies select and launch their ESNs. For further information contact insidecommunication.com.au

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If social networking through platforms such as Facebook and Twitter is the way we like to connect and communicate at home, why can’t we do the same at work?

Now we can. Enterprise Social Networks, or ESNs, are set to radically change the way we connect, communicate and collaborate in the workplace. And companies using these platforms are achieving significant return on their investments.

At their core, these platforms offer a new way of working, providing employees with the information, connections and support they need through an interface that is as intuitive to use as Facebook’s.

Employees can create a profile, post updates, pose questions, provide answers, form groups and share documents. These user-friendly network solutions are what intranets should have been but never were; a place you want to visit because it helps you get your work done.

However, it seems Australian businesses are laggards when it comes to harnessing the benefits of social business software. Recent research by KPMG shows we are falling behind our global competitors when it comes to integrating social media into business channels.

Organisations in China, the US and India are adopting social media for business purposes at twice the rate of their Australian counterparts.

This disappointing trend requires rectifying. Part of the problem is that too many senior executives look at ESNs as a new way of communicating rather than a new way of working. If HR leaders are to contribute to the discussion on whether or not to deploy this technology, they need to understand a whole lot more about it.

WHO ARE THE MAJOR PLAYERS?

There are many different ESN platforms on the market.

Yammer is the one most people have heard of, although there are many more including: Jive, Chatter, tibbr, Socialtext, Socialcast, ThoughtFarmer, Clearvale, MangoApps, IBM Connections, Cisco’s WebEx Social and Australia’s very own Yackstar.

The main difference between the platforms rests with their operating architecture. The first ESNs were micro-blogging networks that enabled quick and open communication, but fell short of offering a true alternative to the company intranet. Newer ESNs offer a broader solution enabling employees to truly collaborate across an extended network that stimulates idea generation and problem solving. The presence of giants IBM, Microsoft, VMware and Cisco brings brand reputation to the decision-making table, and highlights the importance of integration with legacy systems.

There are other meaningful differentiators. Is the product free or do you need to pay a licence fee per user?

Where is the network hosted — in the cloud, by the ESN vendor, or inside the firewall? Is the network solely internal, or can it provide an effective interface for managing the fire hose of information emerging from external social media such as Facebook and Twitter?

WHAT ARE THE BUSINESS BENEFITS? The potential benefits that come with using ESNs are impressive. For ease of reference they can be classified under seven major headings: innovation, efficiency, operations, knowledge sharing, collaboration, talent and communication.

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HR & SOCIAL MEDIA

enterprise social networks

The numbers underpinning these positive outcomes are startling. Jive’s research shows a 32% jump in the number of ideas generated. Chatter’s study reveals people are finding the information they need 52% faster.

And Yammer’s analysis shows customer service resolution times are 66% faster.

The more cynical among us may look at these figures and wonder if the ESN vendors are manipulating the research findings. This doesn’t appear to be the case.

McKinsey & Company undertook independent research that delivered strikingly similar results.

Of the 4,261 executives who took part in McKinsey’s Business and Web 2.0 study, 70% saw faster access to knowledge, 55% reduced their communication costs, 49% accessed internal experts faster and 38% saw an increase in employee satisfaction. Of course, the executives in this study weren’t measuring every aspect of their network’s performance, which makes the results all the more impressive.

WHICH COMPANIES ARE ENJOYING SUCCESS?

Telecoms giant Alcatel-Lucent was one of the early movers in the ESN space. It deployed Jive back in 2009, with a full launch occurring in 2010. It now has 50,000 employees around the world connecting and collaborating on the platform. A recent staff survey revealed that 71% of employees felt it was easier to connect, 55% found it easier to collaborate and 60% believed it was easier to contribute.

The global luxury brand Burberry has a vision of becoming a truly social enterprise. More than 6,000 of Burberry’s 9,500 staff are on its network of choice, Salesforce’s Chatter, with plans to have all staff on the platform by year’s end. Wall Street analysts credit management’s end-to-end social strategy for the company’s 21% surge in profits.

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At a recent Enterprise 2.0 conference, Virgin Media, the UK cable operator, reported on a trial it undertook using Cisco’s WebEx Social. Interestingly, the company’s engagement survey results revealed that the 1,000 employees in the pilot experienced a seven-point bump in employee engagement compared to workers outside the pilot.

Closer to home, Murray Elliott, salesforce specialist at Vodafone Australia, spearheaded his organisation’s introduction of Salesforce’s Chatter platform.

“The key driver for deploying Chatter was the risk of staff using unsecure social networks such as Facebook and Yammer to discuss work-related topics,” says Elliott.

“The launch of Chatter Free removed any concerns we had about investing in a social platform and technically it was very easy for us to launch, too.

“The platform went live in November last year,” says Elliott. “The response and uptake since then has been huge. We now have 4,500 users and over 200 live groups, with activity across the network continuing to accelerate.”

Although still early days, there is strong anecdotal evidence that Chatter is helping to drive an improvement in sales and service across the business. “Our sales staff can now view the latest discount offers, review product features, as well as ask questions and get almost instant feedback,” says Elliott. “It’s also starting to flatten the organisation, giving our people on the frontline the opportunity to connect and communicate with senior leadership, and of course vice versa.”

On a personal note, Elliott appreciates the way the platform allows him to keep across everything that’s happening. “With email you are bombarded with bits of information. With Chatter it’s so much easier to play catch up if you’ve been away from the office.”

“It’s been a game-changer for us,” states Elliott. “We now use Chatter to collaborate on projects, post questions

and answers and share information. It’s becoming integral to the way we work and operate at Vodafone.”

WHAT’S THE BEST IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY?

The key to success it seems is treating the introduction of this technology as a people-centred change management task. A four-step process of advocacy, preparation, adoption and acceleration is recommended.

The advocacy phase is primarily about gaining executive level sponsorship and support. The key is to demonstrate how these platforms can help the business achieve its goals. The development of relevant ‘use cases’ allows the senior team to grasp and understand the improvements in performance that can emerge. Once the leadership team is onboard, there is a need to consult with senior and mid-level managers. It is critical these key stakeholders support and lead the organisation’s social business journey.

The preparation phase focuses on laying the foundations for a successful launch. A clear vision along with a coherent strategy is mandatory. The strategy will need to address issues such as user training, communication, IT integration, community management,

These user-friendly network solutions are what intranets should have been but never were measurement and governance. It is advisable to commence a communication campaign during this phase, to whet the organisation’s appetite for the upcoming launch.

The adoption phase occurs around the time of the ESN’s deployment. Training is critical. A blend of face-to-face and online training will ensure people can use the platform on day one. A comprehensive communication plan will create buzz around the new platform and ramp up adoption rates.

Lastly, it is advisable to have a small support team available during the first week, to answer questions and provide assistance.

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HR & SOCIAL MEDIA

enterprise social networks The acceleration phase occurs during the three months following launch. This stage of work involves seeding the platform with conversations and success stories to increase participation levels and activity rates.

Using senior leaders to drive this effort will deliver superior results. The role of the community manager is critical. They act as a hub; pointing people in the right direction, facilitating connections, and assisting digital immigrants to make the leap into – what is for them – the great unknown.

to remain connected to the mother ship is a massive benefit. It means they are never more than a click away from the information and support they need.

The final noteworthy innovation is the introduction of apps by third party software developers. These apps perform tasks that enable employees to adroitly run surveys, manage projects or host meetings, without leaving the network. They come at an additional fee, but their utility adds significantly to the ESN’s overall value proposition.

WHERE’S THE MARKET HEADING?

A FINAL WORD

The ESN vendors are rapidly evolving their product offerings to better meet their customers’ needs. The three main areas of innovation are integration, mobility and third party apps.

The integration of ESNs with other IT systems, such as Microsoft Office and Outlook, is a major step. Seamlessly integrating legacy systems greatly increases the value of the network, as employees stay on the platform over the course of their working day.

A number of ESN platforms now work faultlessly across mobile technology such as laptops, tablets and smart phones. For mobile and remote workers, the ability

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At the time of writing, Microsoft was in the process of acquiring Yammer for $1.2bn. This transaction signals the ESN market’s coming of age.

The key driver of interest in ESNs is the significant ROI that companies are achieving through deploying these platforms. An independent study by Forrester Research found Yammer users achieving payback on their investment within four months and seeing a three-year risk-adjusted return of 365%.

No organisation can afford to ignore these sorts of numbers. The question is no longer whether or not you should deploy an ESN, but how and when?

EXPERT INSIGHT Ari Kopoulos is the national sales & marketing manager at EmployeeConnect. For further information visit employeeconnect.com.au

technology

Social media’s value proposition It’s very easy to be distracted by shiny new objects, especially if they are accompanied with the promise to radically change the way we work, play and love. But make no mistake; social media is facilitating one of the biggest mind shifts since the industrial revolution and it’s here to stay. It is also becoming the hottest topic in the corporate conversation as companies look for ways to innovate, motivate and drive competitive advantage.

As a result, HR professionals are being pressured to assess, evaluate and implement social media strategies. But before we can fully leverage the promise of this new technology, we need to embrace an entirely new value proposition.

THE VALUE PROPOSITION

Technology has always been considered a tool to improve efficiency and productivity.

But the value proposition of social media extends beyond productivity and into interactivity. In short it provides two-way access to the collective stream of knowledge, wisdom and consciousness, empowering humans to engage as sources of truth, collaboration and creativity. Most organisations, and in particular their IT and Marketing departments, have quickly realised social media as a way of building thought leadership, extending the brand and maintaining customer engagement, through conversations. The key things here are the words ‘conversation’ and ‘customer’. In many ways your employee can also be considered your customer worthy of conversation.

A ROADMAP FOR SUCCESS

To build a truly collaborative and valuedriven social experience, you need to weave social media into the very fabric of employee interactions. This means integrating with policy & process, performance &

productivity, recognition & reward and, of course, learning & development.

Start by looking at your employer brand.

There’s probably a conversation taking place somewhere that will affect your reputation as an employer. At a minimum, you should be listening to this and mitigating any brand risk. Ideally, you should be adding value and offering insight into your corporate culture.

These conversations can be grouped into talent pools connecting you to potential job seekers. When interactivity is introduced, these transform into communities rather than just a list of names. Also, consider enlisting existing employees. They make the best brand advocates with a high level of trust and by tapping into their social network, you organically extend your current employee referral program into their social and professional connections.

You can also implement social media strategies that breathe life into policies & processes by offering employees real time feedback. Establish a forum or wiki where employees can add user experiences or answer a question and allow new employees to mix with established employees contributing and exchanging knowledge. By saving and analysing keywords and search criteria, you will identify position & location specific learning gaps.

Personally, the greatest opportunity for social media lies in L&D. Depending on the platform, you can deliver sustained, discrete chunks of information that can be absorbed in a relatively short time. In fact, research shows that tacit knowledge requires interaction.

Social media connections provide that environment for dialogue, understanding and context. Furthermore, the next generation of employees will intuitively use social media to accomplish their work, often without consciously thinking about it. You can also extend virtual classrooms beyond teaching time allowing employees to connect before and after the course. This effectively creates a stronger support system and transforms traditional learning into an intelligent, autonomous and self-directed strategy.

Like any new technology, a successful outcome requires planning, policy and – in some cases – a shift from the traditional command and control mindset. Social technology is a “disruptive” technology, an innovation that creates new business value and potentially replaces other technologies in use. Companies must think strategically, plan deliberately, and implement thoroughly, if they expect social technology to deliver on the promise of innovation and employee engagement. And that means organisational involvement in social media, at every level.

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HR & SOCIAL MEDIA

performance management

Watch this

SPACE Will social media mean the end of the traditional performance review and the processes that feed into that? Tom Goodwin outlines how the game is changing for this much-maligned management task

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Gamification A great deal of emphasis has been placed on the benefits that companies may accrue from utilising social media – speedier access to information, greater collaboration between different departments, reduced costs – but one effect that has been neglected thus far is the impact on traditional performance reviews. Products are now available which aid companies in incorporating social media within their own performance reviews.

CHANGE IS DUE

While companies traditionally hold performance reviews every six to 12 months, a younger generation of workers who are highly familiar with social media are now entering the workforce – and they have quite different expectations of performance feedback and the tools used to give it.

Mike Carden, CEO of tech company Sonar6, believes the increased presence of social media such as Facebook has conditioned people to seek instantaneous feedback – a phenomenon at odds with the traditional manner of conducting performance reviews. Grant Mason, co-founder of workplace social media toolset Yackstar, also feels that the traditional approach is growing outmoded, describing annual feedback as similar to a family Christmas lunch: “Familiar and full of awkward conversation but all about getting through the day for another year.”

The social media outlets available for workplaces typically borrow quite heavily from more familiar social media formats such as Facebook. Users create a profile, which they can then use to interact with other users.

Differentiating features may include items like ‘badges’ which can be used to show employee or co-worker recognition, or indicate completion of a project. Both experts believe that social media will gradually impact on the way performance reviews are held – but they warn it may already be happening.

“If you’ve been trained [by social media] to think that’s the way the world works, but you build a performance culture in your business which says ‘I’m going to give you some objectives and then in six months’ time, I’m going to give you some feedback’, it’s just counter to the way that people work,” says Carden.

COMBINING OLD AND NEW

The onus to provide feedback has traditionally been on the employer, rather than the employee. However, employers are not always aware that staff want or require direct feedback on specific areas. Social media tools could prove to be a substantial aid in staff asking for feedback, rather than simply waiting for it. If the relevant social tools are in place, staff are able to request feedback at times when they may feel they specifically require it.

The traditional implementation of 360-degree performance reviews also attracts some criticism from Mason. While the process itself can be very effective, its relative infrequency means that employees are (potentially) opened up to a wave of criticism for which they are usually not prepared. As an alternative, Mason suggests that daily feedback is a preferable approach – “it is in the moment, just in time, casual, regular and informal”. In turn, an employee accustomed to daily feedback should benefit more effectively from a 360-degree performance review.

In a similar vein, Carden feels that while social media tools are impacting performance reviews, he does not feel that the concept will be banished altogether. “You still need to be able to put a mark in the sand and say: ‘This is how you performed last year’,” he says Carden envisions a scenario where feedback provided by workplace social media is combined with the traditional performance review to provide a more complete picture of a staff member’s work over the year.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE At present, a social media approach to performance review is still not fully realised. While there are a variety of products for HR managers to use, it seems that there are still barriers to cross. Social media, as Carden points out, is an experience that is essentially backwards looking (eg, what I did on the weekend, what I have accomplished) as opposed to forwards-looking (eg, what I am working towards). This is one obstacle that presents itself when considering adopting such new technology for HR purposes. Even so, while the full effects of social media on performance reviews remain to be seen, it seems unlikely that it can be ignored.

Put simply, ‘gamification’ is the process of using gameplay mechanics in non-game tasks. You may have already experienced the phenomenon without having realised it; certainly some (though not all) educational software would fall under this spectrum.

With the increasing influence of social media on employee feedback, it seems a logical progression for the principles of gamification to be put into use for employee performance reviews. Such processes could help turn what can often be a tedious procedure into an enjoyable and possibly entertaining one.

To provide an example from the main article, some existing workplace social networks allow employees to be awarded ‘badges’ or similar items.

Accomplishments such as these, earned in the digital world, could conceivably be used to provide an indication of an employee’s real-world achievements or skills, or to create ‘leader boards’ for all to see. Likewise, progress/ timeline bars could indicate the status of particular projects, or perhaps the time waiting before a deadline elapses.

Numerous casual social media platforms have already capitalised on such ideas, providing incentives for users to keep utilising their services.

How successfully the transition is made to the workplace, like much of social media, currently remains uncertain.

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personal branding

Making meaning in 140 characters Confused about who to follow and what to say?

Patrick Durrant provides some insights into how HR professionals can get the most from Twitter There is certainly a level of fear in the HR community about using Twitter professionally – nearly every week a corporate or celebrity social media blunder hits the headlines. Tweeting something that was ill-thought or could be misconstrued is a frontline concern. Yet when social media is used properly, it can promote your personal brand and foster innovative ideas.

It comes as little surprise that tech companies and Gen Y tech-savvy employees have been quick to recognise the benefits of social media. One such company is Atlassian, a fast-growing Australian software company which is quickly making a name for itself in the tech world, and also becoming known for innovative HR practices. Talent and HR head at Atlassian Joris Luijke says that using Twitter is an integral aspect of his social media presence.

Luijke has amassed a following during his four years on the social media platform, and refrains from tweeting details related to his personal life. “Mostly, what I do on Twitter is research… I follow people who have a lot of great ideas, they are my gateway to new ideas,” he says. Luijke follows HR people at ‘forwardthinking organisations’ and those who write about HR management, leadership, and coaching. He attributes many of the policies and initiatives that he has implemented at Atlassian to leads “borne from the ideas from the community knowledge that lives on Twitter”.

Harvard Business Review (@harvardbiz), the Management Innovation eXchange (MIX - @ hackmanagement), HR Tech blogger Steve Boese (@ steveboese) and Q & A site Quora (@quora), all rate on Luijke’s ‘follow’ list.

From an organisational perspective, other advantages of Twitter are easy to see. Atlassian has doubled its headcount in the last two years, and with it the recruitment challenge of finding world-class software

What’s your Klout score?

What’s your influence in social media circles? The Klout score is just one of several means by which this can now be assessed. It amalgamates information from people’s social media involvement, looking not at the number of connections people have, but rather the quality of those connections and how often posts get repeated (or retweeted).

Ratings offered by Klout, Kred and PeerIndex are not just a concept on the horizon, but have already attracted real world value. For example, earlier this year Hong Kong airline Cathay Pacific was offering any customer with a Klout score above 40 (considered the minimum score to demonstrate online influence) free entry to its business and first class lounge at San Francisco International Airport.

developers from across the globe. “Recruitment is not just limited to the HR department – we get the entire organisation involved,” Luijke says. When a campaign is being initiated, as most of the staff at Atlassian have Twitter accounts or blogs, those who wish to participate are asked to “spread the message as far and as wide as they possibly can”. Atlassian encourages referrals by offering incentives such as free flights and holidays.

The company encourages staff to be creative in the way they spread the word, and Luijke says the interesting, quirky messages are always more likely to go viral on social media.

Another avid HR tech expert, blogger and tweeter, Steve Boese (almost 10,000 followers) sees Twitter as an important tool for HR managers. “Twitter is fast becoming an important resource for recruiters, particularly those recruiting in technical and graphical design fields”, he wrote on his blog, Steve Boese’s HR Technology. However, he does caution that ‘tweeting’ does take some getting used to. “After about a month or 100 updates (Tweets), the student starts to ‘get it’. It becomes obvious the value of these conversations and connections, and many become firmly entrenched in the fabric of their Twitter community,” he states.

The Harvard Business Review has some top tips on what not to do include: Me now. If a tweet answers the question, “What are you doing right now?” don’t send it. Unless you’re a celebrity, people don’t care about your every move.

Whining. Don’t complain about something unless you’re also giving useful advice. Just like in person, people on Twitter don’t like to listen to moaning.

Presence maintenance. Don’t send a tweet for the sake of making your presence known. Instead of typing “Good morning, world” wait until you have something insightful or useful to share.

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HR & SOCIAL MEDIA

learning

INVISIBLE LEARNING TAKES

CENTRE STAGE With informal learning now accounting for up to 90% of learning in the workplace, and with social media now making inroads into this area of corporate life, it may be time to ensure your L&D practices are keeping up

Employers continue to invest heavily in all forms of L&D in the workplace – sending employees off on short courses, pumping out vast quantities of online courses – so it’s easy to forget that a large percentage (some estimate as high as 80–90%) of learning happens informally.

Informal learning is often referred to as ‘invisible learning’. This type of learning occurs when it is not centred on a structured curriculum – for example, it might be casual gossip around the water cooler, chatting to colleagues, observing situations, and so on.

Instead of waiting to be sent off on a formal course or trawling through company intranets for answers, employees are increasingly turning to online tools like Wikipedia or posting questions to their Twitter followers.

And while the standard of response might vary, the result is instant feedback.

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Ruth McElhone, e-learning manager, B Online Learning Group, says it’s time employers supported this type of informal learning and appreciated the impact it has on employee performance – especially in this new age of social media.

“We focus so much of our efforts on creating formal learning but are we creating an environment where informal learning can occur?” she says.

McElhone is often queried about how employers can measure or control informal learning. She doesn’t believe it can really be fully measured or controlled; it happens spontaneously – it’s organic. It is possible, however, to facilitate it, to nurture it – and this is where social media plays an important role.

“Social media allows people to search and access all kinds of information through blogs, wikis, podcasts and

websites,” McElhone says. “We are now both consumers and producers of information. Online communities are formed where people meet like-minded people. They can communicate, share ideas and experiences. People are using these tools to collaborate, create content and work together.”

The tools themselves are certainly important in the process because it is within them that the informal learning takes place. However, by themselves, they don’t add value to an organisation. When tied to a clear vision, strategic approaches and ongoing assessment, organisations can see a strong ROI – and in this sense there are strong similarities to traditional L&D initiatives.

Through collaboration and sharing, users transfer massive amounts of expertise and information in very informal ways, offering corporate environments a tremendous opportunity to plug into that elusive repository of knowledge. Being within a Learning Management System (LMS) that offers those same sorts of interactive tools facilitates similar collaboration and sharing safely behind the firewall of the organisation.

Yet Duy Huynh, executive producer of e-learning specialists Beyondedge, believes that employers have been slow on the uptake. He notes that many organisations still insist on blocking out social media tools but he believes the opposite approach is required.

“Staff who need to get up to speed with something quickly are going to post a status or post a question, or search a web forum,” he says. “Their peer response is very important and puts them on the right track. They are immediately productive to the benefit of the organisation.”

Huynh adds that there needs to be a degree of trust that people will use the tools available for the right reasons. “The key is to establish a good working policy and also to teach staff critical thinking so they can make their own judgment about what’s a good source of information. HR and learning managers need to be looking for ways to make it work rather than blocking it out.”

ALL THE BELLS AND WHISTLES

If employers have been slow to react, content providers and education specialists have been more attuned to what’s going on. Most education specialists are implementing some form of social media or online collaboration into their product offerings.

There are two broad categories of e-learning: synchronous communications, which include activities where all participants join in at once (eg, online chat sessions or virtual classrooms); and asynchronous communications, whereby participants may engage in exchange of ideas or information without depending on the simultaneous involvement of others (eg, blogs or discussion boards).

It reminds me of the mantra I used to hear during my days as a schoolteacher: ‘put the pedagogy first, not the technology!

– RUTH MCELHONE To cite one example, B Online Learning uses an online collaboration platform called LearnFlex Connect. This platform includes the following: a ‘wall’ to post thoughts/messages (similar to Facebook); blogs; wikis; forums which have facilitated real-time content, comments and discussion threads; video sharing; and people and content articles.

Some tools are better for collaboration, some for sharing, some for listening to others, and some for building a community.

Choosing the right tool and how you will govern and promote it is important to do early on, and the development of a matrix to show you where your knowledge lies and how it needs to move around will help you determine what the best tool is at the right time.

As B Online Learning’s course offerings are all online, the company is using these new tools to overcome the challenge of geographically dispersed students, and to keep the promise of online learning as a self-paced task. “The majority of our students are completing the courses

Top social networks and community platforms 2011 #1 T witter –

microsharing site

#14 F acebook – social network

#21 L inkedIn –

prof social network

#22 E dmodo –

edu social networking site

#26 G oogle+ – social network

#31 Yammer –

private microsharing platform

#57 N ing – private social networking platform

#90 B uddyPress – social networking software

Source: Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies

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HR & SOCIAL MEDIA

Learning tools: Emerging trends Jane Hart of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies has been compiling a list of the Top Tools for Learning since 2007. The 5th Annual Survey of Learning Tools was finalised in November 2011, compiled from the Top 10 Tools lists of 531 learning professionals worldwide – from education, training and workplace learning backgrounds. Respondents were asked to list their best learning tools. This could be a tool used to create or deliver learning content/solutions for others, or a tool used for personal learning.

The full list and more information on learning tools can be found here: http://c4lpt.co.uk/top-100-tools-forlearning-2011/

RANK 2011/2007

TOOL

DESCRIPTION

COST

PLATFORM

1/43=

Twitter

Microsharing site

F

O

2/22=

YouTube

Video sharing tool

F

O

3/14

Google Docs

Collaboration suite (incl Google Forms)

F

O

4/3=

Skype

Instant messaging/VoIP tool

F/P

D

5/6=

WordPress

Blogging tool

F

O/D

6/-

Dropbox

File synching software

F/P

O/D

7/-

Prezi

Presentation software

F

O

8/12=

Moodle

Course management system

F

D

9/31

SlideShare

Presentation sharing site

F

O

10/-

Glogster EDU

Interactive poster tool

F

O

11/26=

Wikipedia

Collaborative encyclopedia

F

O

12/9

Blogger/Blogsport Blogging tool

F

O

13/72=

Diigo

Social annotation tool

F

O

14/17=

Facebook

Social network

F

O

15/3

Google Search

Search engine

F

O

16/7=

Google Reader

RSS reader

F

O

17/16=

Evernote

Note-taking tool

F

D

18/26=

Jing

Screen capture tool

F

D

19/5

PowerPoint

Presentation software

F

D

20/7=

Gmail

Web-based email service

F

O

21/31=

LinkedIn

Professional social network

F

O

F = free, P = paid for, D = download, O = online

in different parts of Australia and don’t get a chance to meet their fellow students face-to-face,” McElhone explains. “We needed a space where students could collaborate, network, get access to up-to-date information, etc. We implemented LearnFlex Connect about two years ago and we haven’t looked back since!”

Other organisations are setting the benchmark for social media through creation of YouTube channels, 36

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Yammer, etc. Pinterest and Instagram are also proving to be popular. These approaches may not suit everyone, and McElhone warns that whatever the tools, it’s imperative that they cater for some form of meaningful learning experience; any good learning experience must remain learner centred.

“It reminds me of the mantra I used to hear during my days as a schoolteacher: ‘put the pedagogy first, not the technology!’ We can

sometimes get blinded by all the bells and whistles or even the latest technological trends but not all these trends will work for all learners. One of the things I love about e-learning is that there isn’t an ‘exact’ approach.

It’s not a case of one-size-fits-all.

This also applies to the use of social media,” says McElhone.

SUSTAINABLE UPTAKE

A challenge with any L&D offering is getting buy-in and continued engagement from learners. E-learning in this social media age is no different.

Indeed, research shows that only one to two per cent of users are sharing, generating and creating content daily, with 90% rarely sharing any content at all and the rest in between both poles. However, that’s not to say they aren’t participating passively – they do report finding value in having that information available to them, but opt not to go further than that. The inactive 99% have plenty of knowledge and expertise to share, and the challenge then is identifying ways to encourage participation.

For example, LearnFlex Connect users receive points for contributions. If a user replies to a discussion forum they receive 50 points. One of the requirements to pass the course is to reach Contributor status, which is 500 points. Point collection acts as a springboard to motivate some students who may be passive users.

Unfortunately, it’s not a case of ‘if you build it, they will come’.

McElhone warns that many online collaboration platforms are slow to take off and some never take off at all. There are reasons for this.

“We are being bombarded with multimedia on a daily basis,” she says. “So we need to examine whether we are just giving our users another website to navigate or whether it really enhances or has an impact on what they do. It really comes back to the old ‘WITFM’ [what’s in this for me].”

When designing effective e-learning platforms, Huynh suggests that employers utilise a range of media – from text through to multimedia and interactive forums. He adds that it’s not ideal when clients approach him and ask to simply copy and paste large swathes of text from a corporate handbook into an online reading environment.

“The core of it is spending time on the instructional design – the way that information is presented. People are starting to realise they may need to spend a little more money but they’ll get a better return because of that,” he says.

McElhone’s tips for implementing these new approaches include: 1. Ensuring learners are aware that your space/site exists and what its purpose is.

2. Educating users: Show people how to navigate the space; make them feel comfortable using it. A lot of users may be new to this type of approach, many others may be used to socialising in these technologies. We need to identify that they are social tools for learning.

3. Motivating users: Sometimes it may be necessary to motivate/encourage users to start using the space.

4. eModerating: For the majority of social media technologies there needs to be some form of

moderating in order to keep information current and up to date, and also to ensure that the space is being used correctly.

“One of the biggest concerns I see is that there is a lot of skepticism about social media,” McElhone adds. “This can be related to security, misuse, procrastination. It can also be hard to get middle managers on board because sometimes we hear the word ‘social media’ and we get a few raised eyebrows.”

McElhone says it can be as simple as revising the terminology used. She prefers the terms ‘online collaboration space’ or ‘online collaboration platform’ when using social media in an L&D setting.

“A lot of people also assume when you talk about social media you mean Facebook and Twitter. There is a wide world of social technologies out there with amazing capabilities.”

One thing is certain: social media is not going away, and it’s changing on a weekly basis. “We need to keep up with the pace but we also need to be able to critique these technologies to evaluate their educational potential. Can we see past the ‘bells and whistles’ and use these technologies to create a meaningful and memorable learning experience? Adapt or die – it’s up to you!”

McElhone concludes.

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FEATURE

talent management

Has evolution moved past competency frameworks?

The next time someone comes to you trying to sell the benefits of implementing a competency framework tell them not to waste their time. Adrian Smith explains why

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

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Competencies are the behaviours that leaders, managers and staff must demonstrate to perform effectively at work; however, as organisations grow and mature it is questionable if the competency frameworks that were bread and butter to HR professionals for so long are still valid as a standalone tool in leadership development, talent and succession management, and workforce planning.

One hundred and fifty years ago and 100 years before the evolution of modern HR practices Charles Darwin recognised …the labour, the experience, the reason, and even the blunders… as drivers of invention.

Competencies fall short of Darwin’s expectations for growth and innovation. Yes, they capture the behaviours

and classify them in a way that allows measurement and skills development, but not the essential experience, business knowledge and technical skills that make those behaviours so highly impactful.

Competencies may well be the ‘Can Do’, but they need to leverage the ‘Know How’ that comes from rounded business experience and business knowledge, the personal attributes and motivation, the ‘Want To’ to really define the drivers of personal and therefore organisational success.

COMPETENCIES ALONE DON’T…

…assist people in developing skills and achieving crucial career steps!

Competencies alone do not allow people to be automatically and instantly successful in their roles.

People often are promoted on the basis of their capabilities at more junior levels, but they need significant support until they gain the relevant experience and business knowledge to give their behaviours or competencies traction in these new challenging roles.

There are four crucial plateau steps in most leaders’

and managers’ careers. These steps are significantly different from their previous roles and require a whole new skills set and, most importantly, a totally different perspective to their duties. These plateau steps are: • when a person moves from being an individual contributor to a people manager role • when they take on cross functional management responsibilities • when they take on more strategic, and less operational responsibilities • when they are involved in emerging work environments such as virtual teams, long distance management and globalisation.

Competencies alone do not prepare people to take these plateau career steps! …drive effective workforce planning, talent management and succession management strategies!

It is self evident that HR professionals best serve their client base, which includes the board, the executive team, leaders and staff, by ensuring all their actions are aligned to organisational needs and best practice activities.

Alignment of people strategies to meet strategic capability requirements involves general workforce planning, in particular current and future skills and resources needs, but also in the leadership context critical aspects of longer-term talent management and succession planning.

This means identifying key knowledge, experience and capabilities requirements across the organisation to deliver on the vision, support the organisational values, meet anticipated challenges and deliver on the strategic (or transformational) agenda set by the board and senior executives. It is not just the ‘Can Do’ – it’s also the ‘Know How’, particularly at more senior levels where, for example, deep industry and market knowledge and experience are critical to success. …facilitate an integrated learning environment!

Traditionally, business learning and education has been driven by annual performance reviews, sometimes using competencies and measurement of performance against these as a trigger for development – normally attendance at a formal, classroom-based training program. With low learning retention rates of between five and 20%, the benefit of these is questionable, as is the fact they often do not provide experiential learning opportunities or provide relevant ‘use it straight away’ skills.

Moving towards a structure that also concentrates on the ‘Know How’ allows for a more rounded, vibrant and personalised approach to learning and unleashes a range of opportunities including, for example, blended learning, on the job training & development, learning through social media, learning by doing, and situational coaching.

Not only is this a highly impactful way of spending on

training, it also has great appeal to participants and can be an important part of the organisation’s attraction and retention strategies.

SO WHAT IS THE ANSWER?

Let’s first look at integrated people strategies. An example of an approach to people management appears in the flowchart below, which shows how critical organisational aspects such as recruitment, performance management, workforce management and learning & development can be integrated into a structure that also supports personal career management and individualised L&D. Integrated people strategies revolve around Career Maps which help people identify the range of career options available to enable them to build careers in the organisation and focus on their long-term capability development in line with their aspirations and to assist organisations in career pathing and talent management.

They help identify the job experiences, business challenges, and special projects that facilitate the gaining of knowledge and rounded business experience that assists in progressing a career journey.

It is also beneficial to consider development of Success Profiles at key points on the career journey. These are future focused views of the experience, knowledge, personal attributes, and competencies required for high performance in individual roles.

Amongst the many benefits of this integrated people approach our observations are that organisations can: • Drive higher retention levels of high potential and talented staff and managers • Ensure higher engagement from staff through

Personal Career Planning

Career Planning

Learning Relevance Operating Efficiencies

Ind iv nee idual ds

Evaluation & Assessment Organisational needs

SUCCESS PROFILES AND CAREER MAPS

Workforce, Talent & Succession Mge

▼ Success Profiles and Career Maps

Learning & Dev’t

ts ep nc Co

Induction & Orientation

Recruit & Induct

Performance Managem’t Reward & Renumeration

Identified ROI

Employment & Branding

Search & Selection Attraction & Retention

HCAMAG.COM 39

FEATURE

talent management recognition of the value of their skills and improved career pathing • Ensure they have the capability and skills available to meet future needs • Facilitate development of more focused and impactful skills statements, leading to better skills gaps identification therefore facilitating the development of strategies to develop or recruit to fill the gaps • Facilitate focused training courses on real rather than perceived development needs An integrated people strategy addresses critical issues around attraction and retention requirements. Career pathways and success profiles which are central to the integrated model facilitate these, and can become a major differentiator to current and potential staff as they create a great environment for personal and career development.

So whilst competency frameworks (the Can Do) are an integral part of an organisation’s psyche, the advent of career maps and success profiles which incorporate business experience and knowledge (the Know How) and personal attributes and motivators (the Want To) adds another dimension to them. A dimension that provides rich information for staff and business leaders; that challenges the staff and organisation to be the best they can; that provides the HR professionals with a range of sophisticated tools to ensure people strategies facilitate the achievement of the organisational vision and strategic imperatives, and personal and organisational growth. ▼ Career Maps and Global Capabilities (Figure 1)

Career Planning

Existing Leadership Programs

Personal Career Planning

In di ne vidu ed al s

Self Evaluation Tool Organisational

Workforce, Talent & Succession Mg’t

CAREER MAPS & GLOBAL CAPABILITIES

Reward & Renumeration

Identified ROI

Self-paced Development Guides

Induction & Orientation

Recruit & Induct

Performance Managem’t Enhanced Organisational Performance

Learning & Dev’t

Co nc ep ts

Needs

Drotter’s 9 Box Matrix

Operating Efficiencies

Employment Branding

Search & Selection

Attraction & Retention

CASE STUDY

Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM) is a professional services firm with global capability in strategic consulting, engineering and project delivery. To be successful in its strategic objectives, it was imperative to align its people actions. SKM wished to develop a robust career structure for all disciplines. It aspired to a global way of working, whilst reinforcing the positive elements of its existing culture (eg, strong sense of family) within a new line of business global structure. It wished to create an environment that encouraged a performance-based culture, and it aspired to be an employer of choice.

Talent Mondial has developed an integrated people strategy for SKM which leverages the strengths of existing HR documentation, systems and processes, for example, Leadership L&D programs, Role Profiles and talent management activities. The integrated approach appears in Figure 1 on this page.

Critically, the Career Maps identify the skills required at each level of the major disciplines in the group. The skills are defined in their Global Competency Framework which incorporates into each competency the traditional behavioural definitions and examples of positive behaviours, but also the business knowledge and experience, and the personal attributes that support this capability.

Response to this approach from HR leaders and line managers in SKM has been overwhelmingly positive, with a strong desire to see it take life in practical applications that assist career discussions and performance discussions. The next phase of this program is to take these building blocks and develop self-managed online evaluation tools to assist in career planning and personal development.

This is an exciting initiative which, in conjunction with the development of integrated recruitment tools and development guides, is an important part of SKM’s attraction, retention and organisational development strategies.

DOWNSIDES OF CAREER MAPS AND SUCCESS PROFILES

In establishing career maps and success profiles, HR leaders and people leaders must ensure that they don’t short cut the education and integration process. The concept of an integrated people strategy must be actively sold into the organisation. To do this, the concepts and tools must resonate with end users, and have strong and clearly articulated benefits to them. They must be simple and transparent whilst remaining aspirational and forward looking, and they must genuinely help people on their career journey.

A final note: Be prepared to constantly refresh these tools as your organisation grows and the marketplace evolves in our dynamic world.

RECRUITMENT

pre-employment screening

Wolf in SHEEP’S clothing Depending on which report you read, everyone from graduates to CEOs are trying to ‘get one past’ hiring managers. How can we be sure who we’re hiring is who they say they are? Iain Hopkins talks to the experts

When Yahoo! CEO Scott Thomson resigned in May this year following the revelation that a qualification listed on his CV was not actually held, it rammed home to hiring managers the importance of preemployment screening – no matter the position being filled.

Thomson stepped down after it came to light that the computer science degree listed in his official company biography had never been awarded.

Adding the odd qualification to a CV is more common than one might think, but there are other reasons to be thorough. ‘Office psychopaths’, bullies and those with other undesirable traits often only come to light once a person has settled into a job. By then the damage is already done.

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THE FUNDAMENTALS

Greg Newton, general manager at screening company Verify, says it is important to remember that a candidate’s resume is their marketing tool to gain employment and hence they use it to portray themselves in the best light possible. Typically the team at Verify will find errors or embellishments in around 75% of resumes – some of a minor nature and others clearly designed to tailor the resume to the specific job for which the candidate is applying or to mask less favourable aspects of their background. Typical omissions or embellishments include: • Leaving out positions which are less flattering to a person’s ‘on paper’ career profile • Modifying job titles to lead observers to believe a higher level position was occupied – eg, HR executive

when they were an HR officer • Listing qualifications that were only commenced and not yet completed It’s essential that the recruiter dig deep into the resume to confirm that it is an accurate portrayal of the candidate’s skills and experiences or utilise an experienced candidate background verifier who has access to the data sources to validate the information.

MODERN AGE SCAMMERS

Interestingly, Verify finds that profiles on sites such as LinkedIn tend to be highly tailored, more so than a person’s own paper resume. Again, the online profile often has positions omitted, titles altered and qualifications ‘alluded to’ in the brief space that candidates have to sell themselves. It is further embellished indirectly by tailored testimonials or recommendations designed to heighten perceived competence.

“It’s amazing how some executives that we have come across have literally hundreds of connections and many recommendations, yet it’s well known that they are not regarded as a high performer in their profession,” says Newton. “On the other hand, many highly regarded executives avoid the online space entirely due to the lack of privacy that it ultimately creates.”

The proliferation of online scammers such as ‘degree mills’ (facades for educational institutions set up to dupe employers) and websites set up to provide fake job references has added to the complexity of conducting background checks.

Qualification checks are paramount, especially when today it is so easy to Photoshop a qualification to make it look legitimately issued to another person or to obtain a qualification that has no credibility yet has been officially issued by a ‘degree mill’ organisation (for a large fee).

“Some organisations have a policy of sighting these as their only form of background checking, and take these at face value. In addition to confirming whether or not the individual obtained the degree, Verify is able to confirm whether or not it has been obtained from a reputable institution and not a degree mill,” Newton comments.

As this is an area of candidate verification that is fraught with challenges for the unwary, the following are areas that are typically manipulated when a qualification is listed as having been obtained: • The course was never enrolled in • The course was never satisfactorily completed • The award was issued but it was from a degree mill and hence has no validity If it’s not duping via dodgy qualifications, it’s duping via dodgy referees. There are now dedicated websites that provide fake references. While there is an art to effective reference checking, Newton finds that time and time again employers fall into the old trap of using references as the key determinant in deciding to employ or

otherwise. Classic lines such as ‘I’m currently employed so you can’t talk to my employer’ are common tactics to steer a prospective employer to a peer or friend who has been briefed to provide exemplary feedback, he notes.

There are some very basic ‘must dos’ including: • Wherever possible ask to talk to the candidate’s previous manager. Peers are notoriously great referees, hiding a candidate’s real performance • Always ring the referee at their supposed place of employment, and through the switchboard, and ask for their correct job title before being put through • Never ring a referee on a mobile as you don’t know who is on the other end

MASTERING THE ART OF INTERVIEWS

Psychometric assessment is frequently used to delve deeper, ‘beneath the surface of the iceberg’ as some experts put it, yet the most effective tool for eliciting information is actually the interview. That’s according to Steve van Aperen, commonly referred to as ‘the human lie detector’.

“In psychometric testing some respondents can and often do use answers or responses they think the interviewer is looking for,” van Aperen says. “In interviews, however, you’re dealing with a person who should be trained at looking for conflict and contradiction in answers and whether the person is answering the question or being evasive and deflective. I often say that good interviewers are more than simple ‘question askers’ but are analysts of human behaviour.”

Van Aperen should know. He is a certified polygraph examiner and has received training from the world’s leading investigative authorities. He has worked on some of Australia’s most high profile criminal cases, including involvement in the Schapelle Corby drug smuggling case and the Lindy Chamberlain baby snatching case.

Woulda, shoulda, coulda: The power of language The ‘human lie detector’ Steve van Aperen has heard many doozies in his time. He relays a typical example: “I remember being asked to sit in on some interviews being conducted by senior recruiters of a large and respected recruiting firm where I was asked to provide constructive feedback on their interviewing techniques. One senior recruiter asked a candidate the question: “Give me an example of where you had an underperforming sales team or manager and what you did to rectify the situation.”

The candidate responded, “I would look at the reason for the underperformance and then would need to readdress the situation as to why they weren’t meeting objectives or goals”. The recruiter told me that she was satisfied with his answer. I told her later that he had no previous experience in dealing with such a situation as he used the word “would”.

“What someone ‘would’ do is not an example of what they ‘have’ done but their opinion on how they would tackle the issue. I would expect the candidate to give me examples of previous situations and what he did, not what he ‘would’ do.”

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RECRUITMENT

pre-employment screening Interview tips Steve van Aperen lists the most important areas to look at: Q: Is the person answering your question or sidestepping the issue altogether?

Q: Is the person answering the question with another question or deflecting?

Q: Is the person omissive, defensive, dismissive or evasive (behaviours that are often associated with avoidance)?

Q: Is there conflict or contradiction between what a person is saying and what their body language is doing? eg, nodding their head in the affirmative while denying something.

Q: Is the person using concealment, blocking or masking gestures such as a hand covering the mouth or face whilst talking?

Q: Are verbal statements accompanied by contradictory non-verbal cues of doubt? eg, shrugging of shoulders.

Q: Is the person slow to respond to a straightforward question (buying time in order to configure a response), changing their tone, ‘uhmming’ and ‘ahhing’?

Q: Is the person creating distance, disassociation or separation in their story? eg, no use of pronouns denoting ownership.

Q: Is the person exhibiting micro expressions or distress signals such as anger, happiness, sadness, disgust, contempt or surprise that are out of context or incongruent with what they are saying?

Q: Do your questions induce a change in the behaviour of the person you are interviewing?

Q: Is the person blaming their poor memory by making statements such as “I don’t remember”, “I’m not sure” or “I can’t recall”?

Q: Is the person making succinct and clear denials or making objections? eg. “Did you steal that money?” and the response is “No, I didn’t” as opposed to “Why would I do that?” or “I don’t need to steal money” or “I’m not that kind of person” or “It’s wrong to steal”. The last statement is a view or opinion but not a denial.

For further information on how to read people and detect deception one-day courses, visit thehumanliedetector.tv

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“When I interview candidates I want to see if they are answering the question and whether my questions become the threatening stimulus which induces changes in their behaviour,” van Aperen says. “If this is the case I want to know why the question has created stress and tension and why the candidate may have deflected or not answered the question at all.”

Research shows that humans are not very accurate at deciphering between truth and fiction. In fact, most research shows that we are accurate at differentiating between the two only around 50% of the time, which is at chance level. Van Aperen believes the reason for this low level of accuracy is due to the fact that we are often influenced by the person telling us the story. We look for fault in the content but we pay very little attention to the most crucial areas such as micro expressions, conflict between body language and the spoken word, paralinguistic delivery, changes in tenses and distancing language which is often used by deceptive respondents.

A competent interviewer should also be able to differentiate a person who is nervous (a normal reaction when people are uncomfortable, fearful, doubtful or uncertain) from a person who is deceptive. “An interviewer needs to determine the reasons for that nervousness,” van Aperen says. “Are they nervous about the interview itself or are they nervous about being exposed in a lie they are fabricating? Usually nervous people will answer your questions whereas deceptive people will sidestep the question, answer with another question, be evasive, dismissive or deflective altogether.”

Good interviewers need to be first and foremost good observers and good listeners; they need to be an analyst of human behaviour. It’s crucial to be able to differentiate between avoidance, evasion and concealment in a person’s answers. Ask yourself, does the question make the person feel uncomfortable, and if so, why? More importantly, are they answering your questions? If you observe these ‘tells’ then further follow up and probing questions may be required.

“When running training courses for recruiters and interviewers I often see them using pro forma questionnaire templates,” van Aperen says. “The interviewer can easily be distracted by filling out a questionnaire and can also miss important behavioural cues such as masking, concealing or blocking behaviours.

In fact, I often see people interviewing a piece of paper, not the person sitting opposite them! I don’t have a problem with pro formas per se, but when you ask a question look at the candidate and see how they react. If your head is buried in a questionnaire, you are going to miss valuable responses, feedback and information.”

Apart from body language and words used, what else can interviewers look for? The key is to look at various behaviours and understanding how human beings communicate. Often we listen to the person conveying

the story and try to find fault with the content. “We need to analyse much more than simply listening to the words spoken. We need to analyse the process of communication. We need to analyse content, structure and delivery. In addition, we need to look for conflict or contradiction between what a person is saying and what their body language is telling us. We also need to scrutinise verbal, non-verbal and paralinguistic styles of delivery,” van Aperen reveals.

A deceptive person needs to convince us that what they are saying is in fact true. It is here that we will often see changes in tenses, changes in the use of pronouns, changes in body language, micro expressions, distress signals, musculature changes, hand to face gestures and a host of other behaviours associated with fear of being caught in a lie.

“Often we don’t look for these changes let alone pay attention to them,” van Aperen says. “There is no one tell-tale sign that is indicative of deception alone. I teach people to baseline a person’s behaviour and then look for deviations from their normative behaviour/s. If you haven’t benchmarked a person’s behaviour from the start you won’t see any changes when they may be fabricating or embellishing a story later.” (See box for tips.)

Usually nervous people will answer your questions whereas deceptive people will sidestep the question, answer with another question, be evasive, dismissive or deflective altogether – STEVE VAN APEREN

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EXPERT INSIGHT

communication

Communication

BREAKDOWN In an age of instant communication, why is it that business leaders still often fail to get the message through to those who most need to hear it?

“We weren’t told anything”, “I was the last to know…” How often are those phrases heard when it comes to significant events at work? Human Capital asks Rachel Friend, founder of media training and coaching company Media Friendly, about how to do it better.

Friend, a 20-year veteran of the media industry, has worked as a reporter, producer, host and journalist (and an actor prior to that). In that time she has gained some valuable insights into how great leaders communicate, the tools they use, and how they’ve crafted unique but effective personal brands.

Hot tip It’s a cliché but communication needs to be ongoing and consistent. There’s a big difference between “we’re not considering layoffs” and “we’re not considering layoffs at this time.” Have one executive do all the communicating to avoid misunderstandings from different wording and ensure that the message is consistent.

In these days of instant and frequent communication, one announcement is insufficient.

Two-way, ongoing communication will reassure your staff that you are listening and care.

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Human Capital: The key word in so many business situations – from mergers and change management to downsizing – is communication. Yet it seems many business leaders struggle with effective communication. What’s your experience?

Rachel Friend: There are endless studies to show the value and importance of effective communication in the workplace but in the end I think it’s just common sense.

Most of us find any kind of change unsettling. Who enjoys being kept in the dark when there are whispers of redundancies, mergers, takeovers or downsizing? While these conversations might be difficult I’d argue that failing to communicate puts the business at much greater risk. In troubled times people look for a ‘captain’ to steady the ship. Great business leaders will keep their staff’s trust by sharing information. Great business leaders will also listen, empathise and where appropriate act on information they receive in return. Autocratic leadership generally leads to low staff morale, poor efficiencies and high staff turnover. It’s hardly rocket science so I’m always puzzled when I hear of business leaders who fail to prioritise good communication.

HC: What does effective communication mean in 2012? With so many communication channels now available is the autocratic communication style of the past no longer suitable?

RF: I don’t think the essence of really good, effective communication has changed. While today’s business leaders can use tools like Skype and even social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to communicate, in the end effective communication isn’t about ‘telling’.

Effective communication is about delivering a message, making sure it’s received and then listening for feedback and a response.

A business leader can have all the tools this modern world provides and yet still communicate in a very autocratic way. It’s disappointing, but how many employees continue to learn about job losses, redundancies, M&As from journalists?

HC: In your consulting, what areas do you work most on when it comes to workplace communication? Is it the tools used? Or the way in which information is conveyed?

RF: It sounds really simple but often it’s just helping a client think about the objective or the point of the communication. What are they trying to communicate? If it’s a presentation then how would they like their audience to feel or think or act? If they’re presenting or responding to a hostile audience then how do they best engage that audience? How do they answer questions without appearing defensive? The tools – PowerPoint, visual aids or even learning how to tweet or blog – come later. The message and the sentiment with which it’s delivered needs to be right first.

HC: Often HR professionals have ‘communications manager’ tagged onto their job title. Are they a conduit between management and employees?

RF: From an ‘outsider’s perspective’, given I’ve never worked as an HR professional, I think HR executives now have a bigger role to play than ever in corporate communications. It would seem to me that a big part of their job is ensuring information is shared both ways between management and employees. But now it would

appear that HR is also expected to play ‘gate keeper and referee’ across outgoing communication in the form of complaints, conversations and commentary made by staff on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, tumblr, etc. They are an important piece of the communication puzzle.

HC: You advise on building and enhancing personal brands. What does a personal brand consist of?

RF: To me personal brand means having a really distinct identity. It’s about taking some time to think about your values, your goals, your likes and dislikes so that the people around you understand what you’re about.

I think having a strong personal brand helps us stand out from the crowd. It’s about a strength of conviction and a self-confidence – but please understand it doesn’t mean you need to be the loudest person in the office or the funniest person in the bar. You may love needle point, or ancient history or aspire to sail around the world. It doesn’t matter, so long as you are authentic and genuine.

“Effective communication is about delivering a message, making sure it’s received and then listening for feedback and a response” – RACHEL FRIEND

HC: Why do personal brands matter in the corporate world? Does this link back to how we communicate, how we convey ourselves?

RF: I think having a strong sense of personal brand helps us to build new relationships. It’s what will differentiate you from the next person. It can also go a long way to helping our colleagues understand us and relate to us.

How much easier is it to communicate with a colleague or business associate if you know a little bit about them – their interests, their goals, their business style? Think about all the time and money sporting teams invest in boot camps and bonding sessions which are designed to help team members understand each other better. The best teams are made up of individuals who respect each other’s differences and yet unite and work together for that common goal.

HC: How do you advise people around their brand?

Can you give me an example of where someone might need a ‘brand overhaul’?

RF: I think it’s important for anyone, no matter where they sit on the corporate ladder, to spend some time developing their own personal brand. It really forces you to look in the mirror and think about exactly who you are, where you are going and what you’d like to be.

More specifically I’ve coached clients who’ve wanted to improve their interpersonal skills and make a stronger impression when meeting new people. These clients recognised that they needed to work on building a stronger identity. Another example was a client who had been given a big promotion but was having trouble convincing his colleagues he was no longer a university graduate and was worthy of being included on the leadership team. In his case he needed to look, feel and act like a leader. Yes, I guess he needed a rebrand!

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RETENTION

mature age workforce

NAVIGATING MIDLIFE

transition

Are you engaging your mature workforce?

Robyn Vickers-Willis provides insights into the engagement and motivational drivers for people entering ‘midlife transition’

Mention the term ‘midlife crisis’ and it is likely to instigate jokes and stories about flashy sports cars, young blondes and endless hours in front of the mirror. To use the word ‘crisis’ to describe a man’s experience at this time of life can be destructive to his own growth, for by doing so a mindset can be created that this is a thing to fear, to avoid, to repress. This stereotypical way of viewing men’s midlife change as a ‘crisis’ adds even further to men’s anxiety as they feel from within a need to make significant changes in their life. For between the ages of 35 and 50 their psyche is pushing them to do the significant inner psychological work of midlife transition.

It is not only Australian men who are misled about the importance of psychological growth at midlife. For Australian women at midlife there has been such a focus on their physiology and biological functioning, and at midlife on hormonal changes in particular, their psychological development at this stage of life has been completely overlooked.

What’s midlife change about anyway and why are understandings about this stage of life important to individuals and organisations?

BENEFITS FOR ALL

Carl Jung, the renowned Swiss psychologist, coined the 48

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term ‘midlife transition’ to describe the midlife experience for psychological and spiritual development that ideally occurs over an extended period of time of up to seven to 10 years in the middle of life. If navigated, it leads us to a natural and necessary passage to become a more complete human being. It is a time of the emergence of our shadow or our ‘unlived selves’.

For healthy development in the first half of life we create a life and an understanding of ourself based on what parents, other significant adults, our peers, partners and society in general expect of us. As we learn that parts of us are not acceptable we repress them in our unconscious.

For healthy development in the second half of life we create a life based on who we truly are and to do this we complete two main developmental tasks during a period of midlife transition. First, we find ways to look within to reclaim these repressed parts of ourselves as well as others we have never known. And second, we create a personal and professional life based on this fuller understanding of our true nature.

Despite the necessity and frequency of psychological and spiritual growth in the middle years including midlife transition (roughly from 35 to 50 years) and middle adulthood (roughly from 50 to 65 years) the significance of supporting the workforce at midlife remains one for which leaders and organisations are, on the whole, lamentably ill prepared. Because of this, organisations may lose what they most need to retain.

It is vital that organisations accommodate midlife change if they are to make the most of an ageing workforce. Some midlife change is triggered by external events: an executive faces an irresolvable values conflict

Robyn Vickers-Willis is an organisational consultant, counselling psychologist, researcher and public speaker. She is the author of ‘Navigating Midlife: women becoming themselves’, ‘Men Navigating Midlife’ and ‘Navigating the Empty Nest: re-creating relationships’. Visit navigatingmidlife.com

with his boss; a manager is passed over for promotion and now wonders if her chances of ever reaching the next level are slim. Other midlife change is internally driven. As they reclaim previously repressed parts of themselves, some yearn to express them through work. For example, those working in technical areas in the first half of life can yearn to be involved in people-focused work, such as mentoring, in the second half of life.

If involved in work that is personally meaningful, those who have navigated midlife transition have a commitment and passion for work way beyond the lure of a pay packet or status. In contrast if work is not personally meaningful they will leave, or find meaning outside work and just do enough to get by. If organisations acknowledge and accommodate midlife change, however, they retain their ageing workforce and the unique attributes that come from those who have embraced midlife development.

Through navigating midlife transition, a person acknowledges and integrates opposite attitudes and behaviours to those developed in the first half of life. They learn to accept and understand different aspects of themselves, warts and all.

As a result, they show empathy and compassion to others’ vulnerabilities and perplexities which supports them towards self understanding and self acceptance.

Through navigating midlife transition a person also develops greater flexibility. For example, it is widely recognised that the ability to successfully attend to and manage the two sets of opposites – mind and heart – is essential to effective leadership.

For healthy development, in the first half of life an individual will tend to develop one of these opposites as they relate to others. At midlife this same person’s psyche will encourage them to develop the opposite attitude. If they are able to integrate these two opposite attitudes at

Quick stats ● The average

retirement age has hovered around 50 for women and 60 for men. These ages will have to shift upwards to maintain a functioning workplace and economy. ● In the year to

June 2010, 71% of Australians aged 55-59 years were participating in the labour market. This drops to 51% for those aged 60–64 and to 24% for people aged 65–69.

Only 2.7–4.5% work beyond the age of 70. ● In 2011, the

average age of intended retirement was 62.9 years. Yet many leave the workforce earlier than intended.

Source: Australian Human Rights Commission (HREOC)

midlife, their leadership style becomes more flexible as they learn to solve problems using both their head and their heart.

Many Baby Boomers were conditioned to repress feelings in the first half of life. As they navigate midlife transition they become more skilled dealing with emotional issues and as a result can act as models of how to deal with emotions in an intelligent way. That is, they support the development of an emotionally intelligent organisation.

ORGANISATIONAL SUPPORT

Given there are direct benefits to the work culture if people embrace midlife development, how can organisations encourage the process?

1. An organisation can provide its leaders and managers with basic information about midlife transition.

Individuals find it helpful, and often feel it is a great relief just to have this stage of life named and outlined.

2. When an organisation is creating a work-related discussion where midlife issues are involved, it is vital to have an experienced facilitator well informed about midlife. At midlife, people can feel very vulnerable and it is important that any process is facilitated sensitively.

3. Finally, it needs to be recognised by the organisation that midlife transition is a process and one needs to start with and accept where a person is at, and then find ways to support them without being intrusive, prescriptive or judgmental.

Retaining their ageing workforce is a key issue for organisations today. If an organisation is not just to maintain its ageing workforce, but also to harness its unique potential, it is vital that it integrates understandings about midlife development into its work practices.

Otherwise an organisation may lose what it most needs to retain.

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PROFILE URSULA GROVES

HR at the ABC

The ABC of great HR practice A recent award has confirmed what many in the general public always suspected: the ABC is a great place to work. Rachel Zerr profiles the company’s director of people & learning It’s not often that a government organisation is seen as a pioneer in forward-thinking management ideas and HR best practice. But when the ABC won the Randstad award as Australia’s most desirable employer for work-life balance the secret was officially out: the innovative strategies that the ABC and its HR team had been laying the groundwork for were finally common knowledge.

The Randstad awards are unique, and act like the ‘people’s choice’ of employers. Employers are unable to nominate themselves, and over 7,000 workers in the general population are surveyed to reveal which companies are the most attractive by perception alone.

Although consumer brands and employer brands are often perceived as separate entities, the Randstad awards provide one instance where the two go hand-in-hand. In addition to winning second place in overall attractiveness, the ABC was voted as the favourite employer for its policy around work-life balance. But does public perception meet reality in this case?

Ursula Groves and her people and learning team certainly think so. Groves is the ABC’s director of people and learning. Since joining the ABC in 2008, she has been a key contributor in quietly establishing the ABC as an employer of choice. No easy feat for an organisation that has been around since 1932.

Groves sees flexible working arrangements for employees as critical for her industry: “Broadcasting is a creative endeavour. We have highly articulate, educated, knowledge-workers, and they need to be managed flexibly. Otherwise, they are not going to make the best content. Management practices have evolved because of the nature of the work and the workforce,” she says simply.

It’s this organisational self-awareness that has seen the ABC adapt to its highly diverse workforce. With over 4,500 permanent and 1,000 contingent workers across all of Australia, Groves recognises that a one-size policy is 50

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not going to work. There are other reasons as well: “Because we can’t grow the company through acquisitions and have set revenue from the government, we have to attract the best through other methods.

Offering flexible working and interesting work is one of the ways that has assisted us in attracting people who may not have come to us if they were just seeking the best remuneration.”

THE PATH TO THE ABC

Like many in HR, Groves’ career has followed an unconventional but refreshingly diverse path. She started her working life as a science teacher before transitioning to adult learning with TAFE. She followed that with 10 years in manufacturing.

She joined Goodman Fielder in a L&D role in the baking division. While such a role might have others fending off hunger pangs, she laughs, “I have a gluten allergy so could never even sample the merchandise. It was torture!”

Groves then spent five years at Toyota, an organisation she praises for its commitment to global best practice HR. “They are long-term strategic planners,” she says.

“They have a problem-solving and continuous improvement mindset – a very deep and a lifelong learning process. I only had five years of it, but it was a stunning learning experience and it stays with you.”

Thirsty for a new challenge, she came across the role at the ABC unexpectedly. A testimony to the ABC’s strong brand is how it spoke to her the same way it speaks to many job-seekers. “There was an ad in the paper for the ABC and I thought, ‘that’s the organisation I want to work for’ – it was a real light bulb moment.”

Groves saw the ABC as a good combination of her private and public sector background. “What attracted me was the fact that I was a dedicated audience member and loved the ABC. Secondly, I thought it would be a really interesting industry to apply my skills.”

IN HER OWN WORDS...

What achievement are you most proud of in your career?

“My proudest moments have been when I’m in a high performing team – you can just feel the buzz.

One example is when I was working at TAFE as part of a highly innovative and creative team engaged in organisational development in our own college as well as with client companies. We were working with supervisors in food processing plants and developing them and accrediting them on the job – a very creative piece of learning. Though it’s common now, at the time it was a breakthrough and a good example of value adding. It gave me a lot of confidence to be able to come up with innovative solutions. It really inspired me and was a key point in my career.”

PROFILE URSULA GROVES

Personal file: Ursula Groves

Family: I’ve got a husband, Russell, and two brothers.

Favourite sports: I’m not a big follower of competitive sport but I’ve got a passion for the Australian bush. I do bushwalking and camping, it’s my style of relaxation.

Favourite movie or tv show: I really enjoy Q&A, it’s fantastic. And I love Australian films and French films. I love music as well – the blues – Mavis Staples and Leonard Cohen are favourites.

Best advice ever received: One of my bosses once said to me, “what interests my boss fascinates me.” It makes me laugh every time.

Self-described: Many people see me as serious, but I’m also pretty easy-going.

I’m goal-focused, direct, honest and humane.

Hobbies: Music, bushwalking, cinema.

I’m also learning French with my husband. The goal of being fluent in another language is very appealing.

First job and/or worst job: One of my first jobs was packing Easter eggs. Not good as a pimpled teenager!

If not in HR: I would like to be a full-time French student!

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WORKING IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR

HR at the ABC is surprisingly lean. It has adopted a Business Partner model for increased face-time with the business. A team of generalists support managers and staff on the ground, and there are centralised specialists for learning, employee relations, and planning and performance. Recruitment for the workforce is a tidy team of five. Further acknowledgement of the ABC’s overall attractiveness is the stacks of applicants for each available role, resulting in low recruitment spend. Overall, there is an HR team of 65 servicing over 5,000 employees.

Groves doesn’t view being a public company as a limitation to attracting and retaining talent; in fact, she sees just the opposite. “I think it’s about the brand – the trusted brand,” she says. She credits the ABC’s managing director Mark Scott in shaping the culture and the message it sends to the public.

“He has taken the best of what was already there and turned it into something more vibrant and real for staff.

He has told the story of the ABC very effectively. A lot of this is about innovation. People are seeing the ABC as being at the front and that’s where people want to be: following a successful story.”

MAKING WORK-LIFE BALANCE A REALITY

Groves is delighted the ABC is recognised as an attractive employer. However, she understands that winning such an award comes with expectations on delivery.

“The award is about perception – and the perception that we have flexible working practices is largely true.

This spans part-time, job sharing, teleworking, purchased leave, flexi-time, and various working times. Essentially, it’s about flexibility and skills in managing a flexible workforce. We’ve invested in the provision of tools for managers and have policies for support.”

She remains pragmatic that it is easier for some functions to adopt such practices. “The front end of our business is the creative end, but some of our support roles present more of a challenge. However, because the organisation has a culture of support when possible, I think the challenge that we always push back to managers now is to ‘tell us why not’. It’s not ‘employees ask and they get’; it has to be a negotiated arrangement.”

Groves is also proud that the survey revealed that the ABC was particularly attractive for workers in the 25–39 year old age bracket. “That’s something we’ve been targeting, for two reasons. One, because we want to get audiences in the next generation – we can’t afford to be ageing with our audience. Secondly, we want to make great content and need to have all generations represented. So we have to attract young workers but keep investing in many of the older ones.”

“There was an ad in the paper for the ABC and I thought, ‘that’s the organisation I want to work for’ – it was a real light bulb moment” – URSULA GROVES

HR IN A CHANGING LANDSCAPE

The idea that traditional media is an endangered species has been widely reported. And like any business, the ABC has had to adapt to these structural changes, both in its business model, but also in its HR practices.

The HR challenge, Groves notes, comes with the pace of change. “We’ve offered a pretty stable environment, but how do we keep the right mix of staff with the right skills? How do we keep ahead of a rapidly changing industry?” she asks. “We have a stable workforce, so convincing people of the need for change is a challenge.

It’s also a challenge internally with my own team. How rapidly can we take up social media, take up new learning technologies, and reallocate scarce resources? How can we keep ahead?”

L&D IN A RAPID PACE INDUSTRY

The answer, of course, is through continuous upskilling.

Even after 20 years in the industry, Groves’ passion for L&D hasn’t relaxed. Groves and her team have identified three strategic priorities in L&D: agile leadership development, editorial quality, and digital skills.

Implementing these for a regional employee base across some 60 remote locations is no easy task.

“We don’t have many resources. We have a small training team and a small budget – so to get learning in those environments we’ve had to upskill our team and ensure learning is available 24/7. We have some runs on the board but there is still a lot more work to do.”

Added challenge comes with the dizzying pace of the media industry. “A development need can be identified within a matter of weeks,” she says. She cites recent examples of introducing training for using smartphones to collect audio for broadcasting, and offering Twitter training and social media policies for editorial staff.

Her early career in adult learning has been a great grounding. “It gave me confidence to be able to come up with solutions and develop people,” she says. “L&D made me realise that you can change things. HR professionals need to have that belief – that we can change things.”

An organisation approaching its 80th birthday could be forgiven for resting on its laurels. But the ABC is proof that a healthy attitude to change and an open-minded approach to trying new things can contribute to becoming an award-winning employer.

More industry profiles at:

hcamag.com

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SIGN OFF

the lighter side written by Stephanie Zillman

OFFICE TANKS, SNIPERS AND GRENADES

‘Near Utopia’, circa 1852

EMPLOYED FOR A NOSE JOB, LITERALLY

In China, announcing that you’ve got a nose job is quite an ambiguous statement and by no means only refers to cosmetic surgery. People are being recruited as ‘human sniffers’ to detect potentially unhealthy gases.

Employing a number of human smell detectors is Beijing’s response to the country’s rapid urbanisation in recent decades.

According to a report by Channel NewsAsia, these ‘human sniffers’ are required to exercise highly specialised skills. Some are trained to detect hazardous smells that emerge from sewage treatment plants, others from farms or stockyards or municipal dumps. Technicians collect air samples from these places and present them for scrutiny. They each have to sniff from three bags: one filled with the sample and two with normal clean air. They sniff each bag, the bag with the offending gas is then diluted, and they sniff all three again.

This process is repeated until the olfactory experts cannot discern which bag contains the hazardous sample. From the number of necessary dilutions, the technicians can find out the extent of the problem.

Humans make better detectors than machines because the physiology of the human nose means it can pick up offending odours at low densities where machines cannot. Regardless, this stinks of being a rather hard sell.

DITCH THE TO-DO LISTS

New survey results have shed light on whether Mum was right in her advice – that when you’ve got a lot to do, one should write a list.

Yet the responses from Aussie professionals paint a fairly dire picture for the future of list-making. A paltry 8% of lists are ever completed.

The likelihood of completing your daily to-do list varies by industry, and women are more likely to keep ‘to-do’ lists than men, the survey from LinkedIn also revealed.

Key findings: • Just 8% complete their ‘to-do’ list every day • Legal professionals are the least likely to have checked everything off their to-do list by close of business • Those working in agriculture claim to be the most productive: 83% stated they regularly fulfil most or all of their planned tasks • 56% of respondents noted that they write out their to-do lists by hand and 40% make their to-do lists on electronic devices • 71% of women say they frequently keep to-do lists, compared to 60% of men

Workers feeling overworked and over-regulated may take heart in reading this – workplace conditions have certainly improved since 1852. Here are HC’s favourite items found on a date-stamped notice, discovered in the ruins of a London building: 1. This firm has reduced the hours of work, and staff will now only have to be present between 6am and 7pm weekdays.

2. Clothing must be of sober nature. The clerical staff will not disport themselves in raiment of bright colours, nor wear hose unless in good repair.

3. A stove is provided for the benefit of the clerical staff. It is recommended that each member of the clerical staff bring four pounds of coal each day during the cold weather.

4. No member of the clerical staff may leave the room without permission from the supervisor.

5. No talking is allowed during business hours.

6. The craving for tobacco, wine or spirits is a human weakness, and is forbidden to all members of the clerical staff.

According to Rick Brinkman and Rick Kirschner, authors of Dealing With People You Can’t Stand, despite HR’s best efforts to stamp out toxic personalities at work, some remain a fixture. Do any of these characters pervade your workplace?

THE TANK is overbearing, confrontational, aggressive and angry, bulldozing anyone in their path. With no time for two-way conversation, they unleash verbal blastings, accusations and scorn. But as suddenly as their attack unfolds, the whirlwind assault is over and they’ve moved past you.

THE SNIPER hits with snide comments, biting sarcasm, or a well-timed roll of the eyes. Making you look foolish is their specialty, and they have a knack for pouncing on even the slightest weakness.

THE GRENADE. After a brief period of calm, the grenade explodes into unfocused ranting and raving about things that have nothing to do with the present circumstances.

THE KNOW-IT-ALL. They have a low tolerance for correction and contradiction. If something goes wrong, however, the Know-It-All will speak with the same authority about who’s to blame – you!

THE YES PERSON. In an effort to please people and avoid confrontation, Yes People say yes without thinking things through.

They forget prior commitments, and they overcommit themselves.

Then they become resentful.

THE NO PERSON. More deadly to morale than a speeding bullet, more powerful than hope, able to defeat big ideas with a single syllable.

Disguised as a mild-mannered normal person, the No Person fights a never ending battle for futility, hopelessness, and despair.

7. The owners will expect a great rise in output of work to compensate for these near Utopian conditions.

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