Human Resources Director 12.09

2014 SALARY & JOBS GUIDE BURIED IN BUREAUCRACY TIME FOR PAYROLL REFORM

HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR HCAMAG.COM ISSUE 12.9

DEMOCRACY DOES IT HAVE A PLACE AT WORK? CSR SUPPLY CHAIN ETHICS

FLYING HIGH HR at Sydney Airport

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EDITOR’S LETTER / HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

2014 SALARY & JOBS GUIDE

OVERBURDENED AND OVERLOADED HR professionals often bemoan the growth of specialist consultants. They are frequently damned as ‘weeds’ that spring up to cater to areas that have either become too complicated and costly to handle effectively in-house, or are too new for anyone inhouse to have the requisite skills. There’s no doubt that recruiters often bear the brunt of this disgruntlement. Born of the simple need to connect candidates to employers, global recruiters became a force to be reckoned with during the 1970s and ’80s – and indeed subsequently at any point in history during which hiring activity has been high.

While sales pitches can be annoying for busy HR professionals, a good consultant – whatever the field – is worth their weight in gold, especially if they are adding value and offering services above and beyond in-house capabilities.

Of course, in some instances, third-party consultants are simply needed. The areas they consult on – such as workplace law – are so complicated and everchanging that HR relies on these people to be up to speed and so that they themselves do not have to be across every detail. They become trusted advisers. While the buck of course stops with the HRD, it pays to have a reliable team of consultants to hand. In our Global HR Survey (see issue 12.8), ‘identifying risks, regulating and ensuring compliance’ was tagged as the second biggest priority for HR professionals in 2014 (second only to ‘managing people’).

This fact comes through clearly in our payroll feature on page 32.

Payroll is one area that has become so overburdened with regulation that handling the payroll process entirely in-house needs to be done with the utmost care. Getting payroll wrong, or getting workplace law issues wrong, can result in financial penalties and threaten employer brands.

Perhaps related to the above, another clear message came through in our global survey: HR professionals feel so overloaded and are under so much time pressure that they simply do not have the time to do everything that is asked of them. Is it any wonder that consultants to such workplace lawyers find themselves busier than ever before?

Iain Hopkins, editor, HRD

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BURIED IN BUREAUCRACY TIME FOR PAYROLL REFORM

HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR HCAMAG.COM ISSUE 12.9

DEMOCRACY DOES IT HAVE A PLACE AT WORK? CSR SUPPLY CHAIN ETHICS

FLYING HIGH HR at Sydney Airport

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CONTENTS / HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

HOT JOBS, HOT PAY

18

Hot jobs, hot pay: 2014 HR salary and jobs review Treading water or moving on up? Find out what’s in store for you and your team in HRD’s annual salary and jobs review

12

Ready for take-off: HR at Sydney Airport Ensuring travellers get to and from their destinations as smoothly as possible takes a huge effort – and ultimately comes down to the deft management of a vast array of employees.

Iain Hopkins steps behind the scenes to see how HR operates at Australia’s busiest airport

36

Are we ready for workplace democracy?

Does democracy have a place in the workplace? Or is some degree of autocratic rule still required? Les Hayman weighs the pros and cons

50

28

The art and science behind Google office design Every week there’s a new story about the cool facilities at a Google office. From music rooms and mini-golf to free meals, the internet giant is a leader in office design. So what planning goes into each space and what can other HR leaders learn from their approach?

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Supply chain ethics Mark Fogel was shocked to learn that his multinational company was unknowingly engaged in unethical practices overseas.

Here’s what he did to fix it

REGULARS 04 | News analysis: Workplace collaboration 10 | In brief: Employee benefits 56 | Last word: Industrial relations

CHECK OUT THE HRD ARCHIVES ONLINE: hcamag.com

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

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NEWS ANALYSIS / COLLABORATION

THE POWER OF COLLABORATION

A recent report has indicated the ‘collaborative economy’ is worth $46bn to Australia. How can employers tap into the power of collaboration?

Australia’s productivity has been falling at an average of 0.6% per year since 2007–8. According to Productivity Commission chairman Peter Harris, our performance has been significantly worse than that of most other developed economies for more than a decade.

While there are no easy fixes, unlocking the power of the collaborative crowd has emerged as a possible solution to Australia’s productivity and innovation challenges. That’s the key finding of new Deloitte research commissioned by Google Australia.

In its Collaborative Economy report, Deloitte Access Economics has put a value on collaboration in

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the Australian economy, and it is big: • $46bn per year: the value of faster-growing, profitable businesses with collaboration at their core. That’s around 3% of the value of the Australian economy each year, or the equivalent of a large sector such as agriculture or utilities • $9.3bn per year: the value if companies make the most of opportunities to collaborate more “Collaboration between employees can lift labour productivity by saving them time in completing tasks, by sharing solutions to problems or more efficient ways of working,” says John O’Mahony, Deloitte Access Economics director.

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

BENEFITS FOR INDIVIDUALS, ORGANISATIONS AND THE ECONOMY It’s intuitive to see what this means in the context of a typical work day for an Australia worker.

DIVISION OF TYPICAL WORK DAY FOR AUSTRALIAN WORKERS

WHY COLLABORATION?

10%

39%

Deloitte has found a strong correlation between collaboration and the performance of Australian companies. Those that actively encourage collaboration do better. And not by a little, but by a lot.

“Collaboration, driven by a clear strategy, brings revenue growth, more profit, greater employee satisfaction, higher productivity, improved product quality and innovation,” says O’Mahony.

There is something of a ‘perfect storm’ approaching, which will force organisations to

Personal tasks or non-work activities

Individual work

46%

5%

Working or interacting with people (colleagues, customers, suppliers, staff)

Other tasks

16.8%

Routine communication

9.9%

Collaboration

12.6%

Routine tasks

So what exactly is the definition of collaboration?

According to the study: “Collaboration is employees communicating and working together, building on each other’s ideas to produce something new or do something differently. A collaborative organisation unlocks the potential, capacity and knowledge of employees generating value and innovation and improving productivity in its workplace.”

6.5%

Socialising

From there it’s possible to calculate the value of Australia’s collaboration economy:

“Collaboration between employees can lift labour productivity by saving them time in completing tasks, by sharing solutions to problems or more efficient ways of working”

VALUE OF AUSTRALIA’S COLLABORATION ECONOMY

9.9%

24.4%

29.2%

6.2%

$57,400

54 min/wk

64 min/wk

16 min/wk

p.a.

$22.6bn

$29.2bn

-$5.4bn

Productivity and time saving

Quality improvement

Costs

Value of time

(-25% to 100%)

(0 to 100%) (eg customer satisfaction)

(wasting time, distracting others, mins/week)

(wages $)

3.7 hrs/wk

$72bn

11.6m workers

$46bn

Time spent collaborating

Australia’s collaboration economy

$72bn is the gross value of time Australian employees and managers spend collaborating each year. It is based on a survey of 1,000 Australian employees and managers conducted in June 2014 by Stancombe Research and Planning. The calculation is the amount of time multiplied by wage levels. The value of the collaboration economy is the net value of collaboration, recognising that the alternative for most employees and managers would be individual work.

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NEWS ANALYSIS / COLLABORATION

COLLABORATION DRIVERS 36% of people said their organisation had become more collaborative in the last three years, versus 6% who claimed this had declined.

The main drivers of this change include: Workplace culture or management structure

45.8% People in your team

38.5% Technology available

28.1% Customer driven

Workplace design

20.4% Economy or market

19%

reconsider how they expect workers to work with each other.

• Digital disruption. A recent Deloitte report, Digital Disruption: Sort Fuse, Big Bang? found that two-thirds of the Australian economy faces a ‘big bang’ scenario, meaning a dramatic change in revenue sources within the next five years • War for talent. Australian businesses face additional employee costs because of staff turnover. Every year, about 11% of employees change their employer and for more than one in five, it is because of unsatisfactory working conditions • Changing business model. In a competitive marketplace, firms must be collaborative to grow and to profit, whether to become more efficient in the way it operates, or to become more innovative in its products and/or processes • Falling productivity. Australia’s productivity has been falling at an average of 0.6% per year since 2007-08.

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For all these impending challenges, it’s surprising that half of businesses have no collaboration strategy – or perhaps even worse, their people don’t know if they do.

“Our research shows that collaboration strategy – having one and taking it seriously – was linked to higher growth and profitability. It shows senior leadership takes it seriously and endorses it as a way of working better, ” says O’Mahony.

BETTER WAYS OF WORKING

22%

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• Less innovative. Only 36.6% of Australian businesses were innovative in 2012-13; that is, they introduced new or significantly improved goods, services, operational/organisational/ managerial processes, or marketing methods.

This was down from 41.3% the year before (ABS 8166 0)

Collaboration – and its close cousin innovation – is closely tied to technology. Deloitte’s research shows that technology tools are critical for facilitating collaboration, including across geographies where face-to-face collaboration is not possible.

“Compared with the rapid take-up in technology by individuals, such as for smartphones, business use of digital technology in general has lagged,” says O’Mahony.

‘DOES COLLABORATION FORM PART OF YOUR HR OR BUSINESS STRATEGY? IF SO, HOW IMPORTANT IS IT?’

24%

25%

Collaboration is important part of strategy

Collaboration is middling/least important in strategy

25%

26%

Don’t know

No strategy

Internal social media drives collaboration by allowing communication in a business that cuts across traditional reporting lines, with people from different areas and at different seniorities able to

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NEWS ANALYSIS / COLLABORATION

COLLABORATION TOOLS Shared electronic resources

69% Common areas for staff to socialise

66% More meeting rooms

49% Open-plan office

HR’S ROLE

46% More collaborative software

43% Video conferencing software

43% Social media

36% share notes. Deloitte has found Yammer effective in terms of encouraging collaboration. Deloitte’s research found video conferencing facilities and electronic document management to be particularly strongly linked to higher levels of collaboration.

It’s worth noting that some 60% of survey respondents believed that collaboration had changed their way of thinking and doing things. Of these people, 27% said they had experienced considerable change or complete transformation in the way they did their job.

“Collaboration shifts us away from a workplace of narrowly defined responsibilities, individual roles, and tightly controlled processes and information flows,” says O’Mahony. “While some time is ‘wasted’ communicating and socialising, that’s an investment in building networks. Overall, there are greater efficiencies in work. According to online retailer Kogan, collaborative working is how they speed up the process of getting goods to market, for example.”

At Kogan, collaboration is about the accuracy and efficiency of work. Employees use Google docs to work on documents together. This creates a tractable

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trail of work. Employees are able to evaluate work more efficiently, and catch up faster.

Kogan’s business model is about identifying areas in high demand, delivering the product at the lowest price, and having the shortest possible time to market. Effective collaboration between different business units inside the organisation makes this possible. Indeed, good collaborators are so highly sought after that Kogan has built this into their recruitment strategy. The company looks for candidates who are active on the cloud and are comfortable using collaboration technology.

Aside from overall corporate strategy, Deloitte’s research found that HR was the most important business policy lever for driving collaboration.

“If a business provides the right incentives for collaboration – hiring, paying and promoting people based on their collaboration activities – it sends all the right signals. And, according to a major supermarket chain analysed for our project, one of the big dividends of greater collaboration was higher employee satisfaction – that’s important for winning the war for talent in the digital age,” says O’Mahony.

Progressive leadership and culture, workplace champions and positioning technology as an enabler (not a hindrance), including the ongoing increase in high-bandwidth connectivity, coupled with the huge and continuing expansion of highly effective social media technologies, are all critical to increasing collaboration capabilities and delivering very clear benefits.

NEXT STEPS

1 2 3 4

Convince key decision-makers that collaboration should be an important part of corporate strategy Invest in the right technology and tools for collaboration

Drive collaboration through HR policies, culture and governance Support transformation through a tailored approach: ‘flick the switch’, voluntary use, involving employees

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IN BRIEF / EMPLOYEE BENEFITS

EMPLOYEE BENEFITS IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Not educating your employees about what benefits are available to them is equal to providing no benefits at all. Benefits specialists Accumulate show how to do it better...

A proven relationship exists between the awareness of benefits and positive opinions of benefits on offer.

>75% More than 75% of employees say the benefits package that an employer offers is extremely or very important in their decision to take a job.

74% 74% of employees would be more inclined to stay with an employer if they provided good benefits.

100% 100% of HR managers surveyed say that benefits drive retention and 65% of employers believe perks help attract employees.

But how can your employees value something they don’t know exists?

46% of employees at small companies say their HR departments communicate too little about employee benefits.

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About 50% of organisations don’t communicate their employee benefits programs to their employees.

Only 1 in 4 employers actively market their benefits programs to employees.

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Underutilising opportunities to communicate is a wasted investment.

Organisations spend more than a 1/3 of their revenues on people-related investments such as remuneration and benefits.

Yet the greatest factor for employee attrition is insufficient compensation and benefits.

Employees’ most common complaint is that they don’t know where to find information about how to best use their benefits.

Educate your employees at every touchpoint: Recruiter brand

That’s why effective communication can speak volumes.

2 out of 5 employees agree

that a well-communicated benefits program would make them less likely to leave their job.

Employees who say their company has effective benefits communications are more than 2x as likely to say they are loyal to their employer.

43% of employers believe a well-communicated benefits program leads to reduced turnover – and they are right.

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Interview Onboarding

Company updates

1:1 meetings

And utilise multiple channels to get the message across: Website Print Video Podcasts Social Email Mobile Intranet

The provision of benefitsrelated information boosts overall employee satisfaction with the benefits package, and benefits satisfaction is positively correlated with employee engagement.

Sources: Based on an original infographic from Accumulate: blog.accumulate.com.au.

“Aligning your total rewards strategy with your business goals” – Ken Gilbert, Mercer Human Resource Consulting; Sally Cornish, Mercer Human Resource Consulting, The AchieveGlobal Study – achieveglobal.com/resources/files/ Worldwide_Trends_Employee_Retention_Report.pdf.

“Inside Employees’ Minds, Navigating the New Rules of Engagement” – Research on broader drivers of engagement 2011, The Glassdoor Quarterly Employment Confidence Survey – workforce.com/articles/four-creative-low-cost-ways-toeducate-employees-about-benefits.

Watson Wyatt WorkAsia™, MetLife’s 2011 Study of Employee Benefit Trends, 2011 Aflac WorkForces Report, AON Hewitt – aon.com/human-capital-consulting/ thought-leadership/communication/article_employees_engaged.jsp.

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PROFILE / HR AT SYDNEY AIRPORT

READY FOR

TAKE-OFF Ensuring travellers get to and from their destinations as smoothly as possible takes a huge effort – and ultimately comes down to the deft management of a vast array of employees. Iain Hopkins steps behind the scenes to see how HR operates at Australia’s busiest airport There’s something about an airport that gets people excited. Perhaps it’s the promise of flying off to distant shores and leaving behind our humdrum everyday lives. When I arrive to meet Sarah Rodgers, general manager, people & performance, at Sydney Airport, I get that same feeling – even though my feet will remain steadfastly on the ground. I ponder whether that perception of an airport as being an exciting place to be, day in day out, is accurate.

“People want to work here,” says Rodgers. “Sydney Airport is such an icon – when we recruit we get an overwhelming number of applicants. The average tenure in our operational areas is over 14 years, so people obviously love working here. Basically, people just love being at an airport; it’s exciting, it’s dynamic, and there’s always something happening.”

It could also be said that Rodgers herself has had an exciting, dynamic career. Prior to her current role she had a long career in a separate corporate sphere and also spent a number of years running her own consultancy business. Both experiences have shaped and influenced her subsequent view of HR.

ROAD TO NOW Somewhat unusually for an HR professional, Rodgers spent the early part of her career in an unrelated field: finance. She held a number of senior finance roles

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in companies such as KPMG, Telstra, IBM, Lend Lease, Citibank, and, finally, Westpac.

It was Westpac that gave Rodgers the support she needed to make a career switch. “They made it very easy for me to move across. The one thing I discovered was that when you hold a senior role – whether it’s finance, HR, marketing or sales – there are transferable skills. Management capability, understanding the business you support, commercial acumen, communications, engagement – all of those skills are essential in any senior role.”

While she concedes that there are highly technical aspects of HR, Rodgers says if one has a willingness to understand and learn about the processes behind the technical areas, as well as a passion for people, a career switch is not as difficult as it might first appear.

“I’m not afraid to stick my hand up and try something new,” she says. “If someone said to me six years ago, before I moved into HR, that I’d be responsible for negotiating an enterprise agreement, I’d say, ‘Don’t be ridiculous’. And yet I have; and yes it was daunting, but I surrounded myself with people who were technical experts, brought myself up the curve on what was required, and worked with those people to deliver an outcome.”

When Rodgers later moved into a consulting role and set up her own business, Sarah Rodgers Coaching,

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PROFILE / HR AT SYDNEY AIRPORT

IN HER OWN WORDS...

Where do you see the HR profession heading in the future?

“Most HR roles are all about change.

No matter what company you join ... what stage of maturity the company is in, in order to continue to drive revenue, grow a business, meet customer expectations, and please stakeholders, change is a necessary ingredient.

You might go into an HR role thinking there’s no change agenda – there is.

It’s just a matter of whether it’s a clearly articulated change agenda or whether it’s more subtle. HR professionals need to continue to be relevant, and that’s about understanding the business drivers and creating people strategies and initiatives that support business growth.”

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she was again stepping into the unknown. She struggled initially with selling and promoting herself and working as a team of one, but quickly built a client base who were keen to benefit from her skills as a coach. In time, her practice expanded into leadership development, team building and change management.

Rodgers took two key lessons from her consulting experience. Firstly, she says the most important quality a consultant can have is to listen to what the client needs. Rather than trying to pitch a solution off the shelf, she took time to understand the problem and develop customised approaches to resolving it.

Rodgers applies the same approach in her in-house HR role. “It’s helped my ability to understand and get to the heart of an issue quickly,” she says.

Secondly, she treats all decisions about financial investments as if her own money is involved: “Am I happy with the ROI of a particular initiative? Am I comfortable it’s a good invest­ment or good use of company funds? As an accountant and senior finance professional I took my fiduciary responsibilities very seriously. That’s carried over to my HR roles,” she says.

HR AT SYDNEY AIRPORT The people & performance team at Sydney Airport consists of six people, including Rodgers. While that may seem like a small team for such a large entity, in reality they are servicing just 370 employees. The remaining 28,000 people who work at the airport are employed across 800 different businesses.

A FOCUS ON – AND PASSION FOR – L&D Prior to Rodgers’ appointment, there was little in the way of structured L&D programs at the organisation.

The leadership team spent time analysing the types of skills required across the organisation, and the L&D program was borne out of those discussions.

The program is multifaceted. Firstly, an in-house manage­ment training program was created. This is mandatory for anyone who manages staff.

Secondly, a robust safety essentials program was developed to continue the airport’s exceptional safety record and keep on top of changes to WHS legislation.

Then a range of tailored programs were developed to improve communication and presentation skills.

Sydney Airport partnered with external service providers, including NIDA, to deliver these. “The program is run by actors; they spend time working on voice and pitch and engagement. They also help build

confidence and provide techniques to soothe nerves.”

Finally, short training sessions called ‘People Bites’ were introduced in partnership with an external provider, covering areas like managing conflict, working in a team, managing up, how to communicate more effectively, how to give feedback – “practical things that help people feel more confident in going about their jobs”, Rodgers says.

L&D AND CHANGE The L&D program has had a more far-reaching impact than merely keeping employee skills sharp: it has also formed a central pillar of Sydney Airport’s change management strategy.

When Sydney Airport CEO Kerrie Mather started in her role several weeks before Rodgers in 2011, she identified that a cultural shift needed to occur.

“Kerrie’s vision was to create a more customerfocused organisation and one that was closely engaged with our stakeholders,” says Rodgers.

In Rodgers’ experience, change comes down to two essentials: communicating and articulating a vision of where you want to be; and training people to get to where you want to be.

“We’ve made some pretty bold statements around how we want to be perceived and where we want to go,” she says. “The leadership team developed a vision statement for Sydney Airport, which we launched internally and externally in September of 2011. We supplemented that with a refresh of the company’s values. I had the opportunity to run 38 workshops over a period of four weeks. Every staff member attended one of these sessions, and it enabled me to articulate the vision for Sydney Airport and say, ‘This is our stake in the ground; this is how we want people to experience working with us, and this is how we want people to view us’.”

From there, the L&D program was designed to equip employees with the skills to drive the change.

“We want to see people being more customerfocused ... more aligned to stakeholders and better able to manage their interactions with a wide range of stakeholders,” Rodgers says.

Three years into the change journey, results are encouraging. There’s been an uptick in customer orientation and a significant improvement in stake­ holder engagement. Communication and cross-team collaboration has also improved. “It’s easy when you sit at leadership level to know what’s going on and

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

what the intentions are, but I think it’s challenging when you’re at the coal face, to keep in touch with what the company’s agenda is,” concedes Rodgers.

To stress the importance of the culture change, a new performance measurement system was implemented earlier this year, which for the first time includes a qualitative assessment of performance that measures ‘how’ people do their jobs rather than just the outcomes they generate.

“When I ran my own business I wasn’t part of a team; I wasn’t part of something bigger. Here I am part of something bigger and I love it”

TOP PRIORITIES

“I’m looking at where we’re at, taking stock of what we’ve done, speaking to the leadership team, listening to the feedback from staff and working out what skills we need going forward to ensure we continue to be successful,” she says.

“There’s still plenty more to do, but we’ve achieved a lot in a short space of time. And my team is up to the challenge. When I ran my own business I wasn’t part of a team; I wasn’t part of something bigger. Here I am part of something bigger and I love it.”

Rodgers says the challenges she faces are no different to those of countless other organisations – with a focus on ensuring the right people are in the right roles and equipped with the right skills – but this is made doubly difficult by the complex nature of the Sydney Airport business.

To ensure staff are equipped to meet the changing needs of a dynamic business, Rodgers will soon be commencing work on the 2015 L&D calendar.

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Sarah Rodgers

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HR STRATEGY / HUMANISING HR

Swinging the pendulum back:

HUMANISING HUMAN RESOURCES

At a time when big data and financial analytics seem to be overtaking every operation in the corporate world, many HR executives are feeling removed from what attracted them to their chosen profession in the first place. How can they put the ‘human’ back into ‘human resources’?

For years, the best way to obtain a job at Google was to receive a degree from a top-tier university, earn a 4.0 GPA, and gain several years of highly esteemed, relevant experience.

This is because the internet giant used a series of quant-based formulae to determine whether a candidate was a good fit for their organisation.

What they found, though, was that these analytics were ineffective. While data-driven processes were able to identify remarkably intelligent candidates, they failed to capture those with other important attributes, such as learning capacity, humility and curiosity.

“GPAs are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless,” Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google, told the New York Times. “We found that they don’t predict anything.”

Google now seeks candidates the old-fashioned way, using behavioural interviews to evaluate whether potential employees can think outside of

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a traditional mindset while also working in a collaborative setting. This reversion is an important lesson for HR leaders everywhere: although new methodologies can be advantageous, when HR executives lose sight of the ‘human’ element inherent in their job duties, business suffers.

SEPARATING HR FROM THE REST It is a popular refrain that HR professionals need to develop ancillary business acumen in order to establish themselves as leaders in the boardroom.

“Working with finance is so critical. I think our team has to continue to develop skills so they understand how the organisation makes money and how they lose money,” Helena Gottschling, SVP leadership and organisational development at RBC, said at an HRD roundtable in 2013.

While a robust understanding of numbers and data proves helpful to many HR professionals, when isolated from overarching values and goals, accompanying outcomes are often fruitless.

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“The best path to prosperity is one that includes the fulfilment of people, as well as making money,” says Mikael Meir, an instructor at Schulich School of Business and adviser to many of North America’s top CEOs. Meir is well versed in business ethics, having co-founded Portus Alternative Asset Management, which erupted in scandal and caused him to serve six months in jail on fraud charges. While this was certainly a setback, the experience taught him the consequences of placing profit before people – a cautionary tale he now extends to business executives throughout the world.

“In my previous life, I was your typical command and control leader. I was driven by fear and greed, and wanted to make as much money as I could,” says Meir. “I did care about people and was told I had a good heart, but I think that was clouded by the fear and greed that operates in a lot of businesses today in the Capitalism 1.0 model.”

A CONSCIOUS CULTURE Meir worries that in attempting to fulfil the executive board’s thirst for “cleverness and metrics”, HR frequently sidesteps the people part of business. Although he recognises the need for operations and procedural work, Meir cites the Peter Drucker idiom, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”.

To attain this, he first suggests that HR leaders carry out an organisational assessment of values, or happiness index. Then, if unsatisfied with the results, HR should set explicit goals and engage solely in strategies that align with them.

“Come up with specific processes to put values into action. Hire against them, onboard against them, evaluate performance against them, and award against them,” he says.

HR will know if it has succeeded in implementing a purposeful culture if it is distinct, widely subscribed to, and possibly even viewed as divisive.

If a company’s virtues make up its structural backbone, employees who come on board either understand it and live up to it, or think, ‘These people are weird; they are freaks’.

“Polarisation is good; it shows you have a defined culture,” says Meir.

Further, employees who struggle with demonstrating the core traits inherent in a company’s mission should be guided and coached to work in

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line with the company mission, otherwise they can become toxic to the rest of the workplace. If, after a span of time, they still demonstrate behaviours antithetical to organisational values, “they’re a bad cultural fit, and need to be let go”.

CREATING A CULTURE In addition to workplace culture, HR professionals should be accessible to workers and maintain a human connection with them.

“Employee engagement is not simply finding ways for your employees to connect to the company; it is also about finding ways for the company to connect to the employee,” says Symbolist VP of solution design Paul Hebert. “If all we do is reward behaviours that benefit the company without the reciprocal effort of creating things that benefit the individual, we’ve created a very one-sided relationship.”

Even small efforts put forth by managers, such as personalised holiday gifts or enquiring about an employee’s marathon training, can provide significant validation among workers, which leads to increased satisfaction and engagement.

“Every company needs to adopt an attitude of giving back and understanding that employees are not Pavlov’s pets who only work for scraps,” he says.

KEY TAKEAWAYS Here are five ways that HR can help ‘humanise’ the workplace:  Make clear that empathy is a company-wide priority by rewarding employees for contributions that supported other workers or departments  Set up a system that encourages employees to show gratitude for one another, and reward altruistic behaviour  Encourage employees to think outside their immediate teams and lend help or support to other divisions and departments as needed  Model ethical behaviours by admitting to mistakes and establishing trust through mutual respect  Develop training programs that teach employees how to deal with conflict at work and build emotional intelligence

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HOT JOBS, HOT PAY 2014 HR SALARY & JOBS REVIEW

Treading water or moving on up? Find out what’s in store for you and your team in HRD’s annual salary and jobs review If the HR function could be defined in one word post-GFC, it would be ‘lean’. While headcounts have remained tight across the board, HR teams in particular are operating, and delivering their services, with a lithe-like grace. While that sounds poetic, the reality is the ‘do more with less’ motto now reigns supreme in HR teams across Australia.

And this trend is set to continue.

“HR teams are operating lean; it’s not skin and bone, but it’s lean,” confirms John Maclean, director, Michael Page Legal and Human Resources.

“Although the market is getting better, there’s still a focus on consolidating costs and maximising efficiency, which I don’t think will go away.”

Although budgets remain tight and there are still restraints on headcount, Maclean has noticed more jobs being posted since the start of the new financial year, indicating a reinvestment in HR teams after a particularly fallow period.

“The demand has been steady. If I look at the first six months of this year versus the last six months of last year, job volume has increased across the board,” he says.

Perhaps more importantly, given the ‘patchwork economy’ of the past five years, confidence has returned to most states. Candidates are changing

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jobs and organisations appear to be willing to expand where necessary.

A key feature of the labour market in the past few years has been a rise in contracting roles. This is not surprising given the reluctance of most companies to expand full-time headcount. However, it has also allowed for greater flexibility.

“Companies are required to have a more flexible workforce to ensure they can react quickly to any market moves. Given the permanent market has been slower, more candidates are open to performing contract work,” suggests Ciaran Foley, manager of the Sydney office of Frazer Jones.

However, this trend may be waning. Lisa Morris, senior regional director at Hays Human Resources, says there is a distinct shift occurring right now, away from recruiting on a temporary or contract basis to securing people in permanent positions.

THE GENERALIST MARKET For generalist HR roles, vacancies are evident across all industries and sectors. There is significant activity in the permanent market, with a number of mid-level opportunities available across the HR adviser or HR business partner category.

An increase in vacancy activity within the not-

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HIGH ROLLERS: TOP-EARNING HR PROS IN AUSTRALIA for-profit and health sectors is also expected to continue.

Indeed, Maclean says there is always a demand for strong generalists, and more than ever organisations are looking for strong business partners, with the emphasis being on commercial knowledge and commercial ability rather than transactional HR managers.

“When we’re getting briefs from clients it’s becoming more and more important that we find commercial HR business partners who have experience working with a leadership team. That’s almost a prerequisite now rather than a nice-tohave,” he says.

In addition, with the ongoing caution around expanding permanent headcounts, it stands to reason that employers are leaning more towards taking on generalists (as opposed to specialists) who can assist the organisation on a range of fronts.

“If you’re an HR professional it certainly pays to have a broad skill set,” Maclean says. “One of the other areas that have been in demand this year has been reward. Strong commercial generalists who have some reward experience have been in high demand.”

THE TOP END The year 2014 has seen an increase in senior HR opportunities; however, this is coming off a very low base.

Maclean says that, since the start of the new financial year, “we’re just now starting to see people stick their head over the parapet and show an interest in moving”. However, the number of jobs on offer might not quite match the demand. He expects that supply-demand mismatch to continue through the rest of 2014 and into 2015.

Morris echoes this: “Due to the slow pace of recruitment within the HR director space over previous years there has been no shortage of talent, as many HR directors who have remained in their jobs for several years have taken advantage of the opportunity to embark on their next challenge.”

For Hays, most of these vacancies have been newly created roles in multinational organisations, requiring strategic HRDs to harmonise Australian HR operations in line with global frameworks. In

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Ever wondered just how high your salary could go? Here are the top earning HR professionals in Australia.

Anne Rein: $328,374 Group general manager of people and business improvement at Cabcharge Australia Michelle Williams: $484,667 HR executive at Fairfax Media

Paula Bauchinger: $705,596 Group executive of HR services at David Jones Sam J. Toppenberg: $774,411 Executive general manager of HR at Adelaide Brighton Dharma Chandran: $1,058,495 Chief HR officer at Leighton Holdings Debra Jane Stirling: $1,163,000 Executive general manager of people and communications at Newcrest Mining Nicholas Peter Smith: $1,466,000 Group senior vice president of HR at Brambles Limited Michaela J. Healey: $1,845,964 Group executive of people, communications and governance at NAB Hugo Bagué: $3,362,000 Group executive of organisational resources at Rio Tinto Karen Wood: $4,716,000 President of corporate affairs at BHP Billiton Source: Businessweek

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ANNUAL REVIEW / HR SALARY AND JOBS GUIDE

addition, candidates who can develop and embed new HR strategy into growing organisations have been in demand.

At the next level down, a large number of HR managers are now also looking for their next challenge. This natural turnover is fuelling vacancy activity and a need to replace departing staff.

However, Morris suggests that employers may find it difficult to identify candidates with relevant industry experience who are also the right fit.

“High-calibre candidates are in demand at the HR manager level, but salaries are not necessarily reaching their expectations,” she adds.

Hays reports that HR advisers/HR business partners are sought after. Vacancies exist in new organisations as well as in companies that have not had any internal HR support. Morris is seeing a need for senior HR advisers with an emphasis on employee relations and performance management skills.

HOT SPECIALIST ROLES As always, there are specialist roles in high demand and others in low demand. Frazer Jones, for example, has seen a high demand in the L&D area.

Many L&D teams have shrunk over the last few years. With increased focus on retention, and specifically on training and development, L&D specialists have been in higher demand.

Specifically, demand for L&D managers and e-learning experts is strong, as there are many new HR strategies, training programs and projects being rolled out this year. Hays reports that L&D managers and sales trainers are in particularly high demand in the pharmaceutical sector, but in Australia there is a shortage of suitable candidates.

The introduction of new policies, legislation and programs has fuelled demand for experienced change managers to ensure there is a positive impact on a company’s people and culture. Also, many EBAs are up for negotiation, which is fuelling a need for industrial relations advisers.

Frazer Jones notes that in Melbourne in particular there has been stronger demand than usual for workplace relations practitioners over the last six months.

As previously mentioned, reward roles are in demand as organisations switch their focus to retention and to luring top-quality talent. Yet this is not across the board. Frazer Jones has been surprised at the relative lack of reward roles in Sydney,

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particularly as this is an area that is often under the spotlight from shareholders and regulators.

“Usually the second quarter would see a spike in demand for reward roles,” says Foley. “We attribute the lack of opportunities to many people deciding to remain in their current role this year.”

Peter Barber, manager of the Melbourne office of Frazer Jones, says this has been somewhat different in Melbourne recently, where his team has worked on a number of roles in remuneration and benefits.

“Both offices have seen increased activity in the reward practices of some of the major consulting firms this calendar year,” he adds.

Michael Page also reports an uptick in demand for internal recruitment roles. “That’s another sign that the market is getting better – a lot of the large corporates plan to do more recruitment so they are investing in those internal recruitment teams,” says Maclean.

Elsewhere, demand is sector specific. In the public sector, OD and L&D professionals are needed as departments have been restructured and require staff to be as productive and effective as possible. In the same sector, high demand continues for change managers as business process improvements and transformation programs are rolled out.

SLIGHTLY OFF THE BOIL Demand for some professionals has eased. Hays reports that experienced fly-in fly-out (FIFO) candidates were previously required to fill positions onsite in the resources and mining states, specifically within the oil and gas sector. However, FIFO roles are decreasing.

Maclean suggests that HRIS capabilities and experience are still in demand, but less so than last

How do you rate your current hiring activity compared to 12 months ago?

Stronger

8% Slightly stronger

31% Steady

41% Slightly weaker

3% Weaker

17%

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year, when many organisations worked to upgrade or improve their systems and processes.

HR generalists with good employee relations skills were previously sought, particularly in bluecollar industries. Employers were looking for candidates with strong performance management skills and award knowledge. However, as some businesses are now growing they are looking for more specialised HR expertise.

Temporary HR coordinators appear to be in less demand as there has been less emphasis on temporary roles to support HR teams in busy periods, and a return to more permanent roles.

HR REMUNERATION Wage growth in Australia is now at its lowest since the GFC hit in 2009. Hay Group’s latest forecasts show a 3% increase across all Australian organi­ sations, down almost 0.5% from what was seen last year. Among those hardest hit has been the resources sector, which although still higher than

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DID YOU KNOW? A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers report, What Are You Really Paying For? Improving Return on Reward Investment, revealed that incentive pay such as bonuses only works if it is simply structured, has an element of certainty, and is closely tied to individual performance, or small-team performance.

The PwC report revealed: yy Employees require up to 18% higher pay if pay is uncertain or ambiguous yy Employees are not motivated by team bonuses if the team size exceeds five, or if team members are unfamiliar to them yy 41% of employees would stop working at or around a bonus cap yy 29% would work beyond bonus caps to get the job done, knowing they would not get extra reward The report concluded: “Rather than tinkering with last year’s bonus plan or throwing more money at employees, getting the design right will deliver greater return on investment.”

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HR salary increases over the next 12 months

HOT ROLES

All my employees will receive the same percentage increase

33% All my employees will receive an increase, but it will vary according to performance

45% Only my best-performing employees will receive an increase

10% No one in my team will receive an increase

12%

the national average, has now forecast growth of just 3.5%, compared to 6.4% only two years ago. It is also worth noting that wage growth in Australia is lower than in many emerging economies, especially those within the Asia-Pacific region.

That said, last year Australian pay increases were higher than in many other parts of the world, and while Trevor Warden, reward strategies practice head, Hay Group, says this is still the case, Aussie workers shouldn’t get too excited.

“We are definitely seeing a stronger alignment between Australia and markets where cost of living tends to be higher, such as the UK (3%) and US (2.5%). However, the benefit of Australian remuneration increases is impacted by an annual inflation rate of 2.8%, which is almost double that of New Zealand, which has similar level of wage growth,” says Warden.

Where do HR roles sit in the mix? Overall, the HR job family sits pretty close to the ‘all families’ average in the Hay Group database. At one end of the spectrum, positions in health and environment were most likely to outperform in wage growth,

Average HR salary increases over the next 12 months 70

65%

60 50 40 30

27%

20 10 0

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12%

5% 0–2%

2–3%

3–4%

4–6%

HR managers – High-calibre candidates are in demand at the HR manager level, but salaries are not necessarily reaching their expectations.

Exposure to the Fair Work Act and local employment legislation is also valued.

HOT

HR advisers/HR business partners – Vacancies are on offer in both new organisations and in companies that have not had any internal HR support. Hays is also seeing a need for senior HR advisers, with an emphasis on employee relations and performance management skills.

HOT

L&D managers – Demand for L&D and e-learning experts is strong as there are many new HR strategies, training programs and projects being rolled out in 2014. L&D and sales trainers are in particularly high demand in the pharmaceutical sector, but in Australia there is a shortage of suitable candidates. Further adding to demand is the need to engage current employees and retain them in a recovering market, which is a feature of just about every HR plan.

HOT

Change managers – The introduction of new policies, legislation and programs has fuelled demand for experienced change managers to ensure there is a positive impact on a company’s people and culture.

HOT

Industrial relations advisors – Many EBAs are up for negotiation, which is fuelling a need for industrial relations advisers.

HOT

while sales positions tended to fare the worst.

“We’re not hearing about pay freezes from the HR market, whereas last year in some organisations that was the case,” confirms Maclean.

Some roles will fare better than others, but supply and demand is just one factor in overall salary trends. Salaries will creep up this year in response to increased talent demand and turnover.

As a result, salaries will rise in most areas, in particular for specialist disciplines as teams grow and organisations go through a cycle of change.

However, Morris quickly points out that geographic and industry-specific differences also impact on the salary range. For example, according to the 2014 Hays Salary Guide, HR advisers in Perth

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SALARY COMPARISONS FOR PERMANENT ROLES Role

Robert Walters ($)

Hays ($)

Michael Page ($)

Frazer Jones ($)

HR director (large employer)

300,000

250,000

210,000+

HOT

HR manager (large employer)

200,000

145,000

HOT

HR business partner

110,000

135,000

HOT

Senior HR adviser/consultant

85,000

HR officer/adviser HR coordinator/administrator

HOT

2013 HRD median ($)

2014 HRD median ($)

% change

475,000+

271,300

308,800

▲ 9.6%

157,500

162,850

177,500

166,000

▼7.9%

131,500

^^199,000

131,300

144,000

▲7.7%

^85,000

92,000

87,000

99,200

87,300

▼16.6%

65,000

~~70,000

-

78,500

80,600

71,200

▼7.0%

55,000

70,000

68,500

66,125

59,400

64,900

▲7.2%

L&D head

220,000

-

175,000+

300,000

225,000

231,900

▲13.5%

L&D manager

140,000

-

142,000

145,000

143,100

142,300

▼2.2%

95,000

147,500

87,000

97,500

91,700

106,800

▲13.2%

L&D specialist/consultant L&D coordinator

65,000

-

68,500

63,650

65,000

65,800

▲0.8%

L&D instructional designer

130,000

-

97,000

97,500

119,200

108,200

▼11.7%

Trainer

80,000

-

76,000

74,150

-

76,700

-

Rem & ben head

200,000

200,000

195,000+

470,000

220,000

266,300

▲14.1%

Rem & ben consultant/specialist

100,000

97,500

118,000

117,250

113,100

108,100

▼5.9%

-

-

-

111,950

125,000

118,500

▼0.03%

140,000

135,000

184,000

250,000

155,000

177,300

▲11.4%

Payroll manager HOT

IR/ER manager

HOT

IR/ER specialist/consultant

90,000

97,500

94,500

127,250

99,400

102,500

▲1.7%

Recruitment manager/head of talent

130,000

145,000

157,500

150,000

145,000

145,600

▲0.41%

85,000

80,000

94,500

137,400

86,400

99,100

▲11.8%

WHS/OHS head

190,000

175,000

156,500

^^^218,000

172,500

184,900

▲5.9%

WHS/OHS manager/consultant

130,000

115,000

89,500

125,600

103,800

114,900

▲8.8%

WHS/OHS coordinator

60,000

90,000

-

109,250

70,800

86,300

▲18%

OD manager

140,000

165,000

-

185,000

150,000

163,300

▲8%

OD specialist

110,000

105,000

-

107,000

106,700

107,300

▲0.28%

-

185,000

-

246,500

165,000

215,800

▲23.6%

100,000

-

-

142,000

96,300

112,800

▲20.4%

-

52,500

53,000

-

49,800

51,800

▲2.4%

85,000

-

173,000

142,000

165,000

133,300

▼26%

-

-

100,000

99,500

90,000

99,800

▲7.5%

Average

127,760

135,200

▲5.54%

Recruitment specialist/officer

HOT

Change manager Injury/RTW manager HR graduate HRIS manager/consultant HRIS specialist/analyst

Notes Hays: Figures are the median from a lower and upper range (eg $160–170K); all figures are Sydney-based for companies with >1,000 employees; all salaries exclude superannuation.

Robert Walters: Figures are for Sydney permanent roles, taken from the median of a lower and upper range; figures are basic salaries inclusive of superannuation, but exclusive of benefits/bonuses unless otherwise specified. ^5+ years’ experience; ~~ HR adviser with 1–4 years’ experience.

Michael Page: Figures are the median from a lower and upper range (eg $160–170K); salaries indicated are based on annual basic salary, including superannuation at 9.25%, excluding bonus/incentive schemes; figures are for NSW and apply for large organisations only (defined as having a turnover of more than $100m).

Frazer Jones: Figures are inclusive of superannuation and exclusive of incentives and other benefits. Figures are for ‘large’ organisations. ^^taken from senior manager/senior business partner figure; ^^^taken from national manager, health & safety.

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ANNUAL REVIEW / HR SALARY AND JOBS GUIDE

can expect to earn $90,000, while the equivalent role in Adelaide has a salary of around $75,000.

Meanwhile, HR business partners in Canberra can earn $120,000, whereas the same professionals in Darwin earn $100,000.

Basis for HR bonuses over the next 12 months

100%

PERFORMANCE-BASED PAY While base salaries haven’t moved much, bonuses have trended upwards slightly companies have reported better profits.

Combination of individual, team and company performance

Average HR bonus as % of gross salary THE ROAD AHEAD

80 70

75%

60 50 40 30 20

22%

10 0

1–5%

1%

1%

6–10%

11–15%

1% 16–20% 21–30%

“In some instances, small bonus payments may be offered when the base salary is a little lower than what the candidate is seeking; however, in general, salaries and bonuses are tracking relative to company performance,” says Barber.

The trend towards organisations taking performance pay more seriously seems to be continuing. “Depending on the nature of role, but noticeably for senior roles, is the direct linkage to organisational performance for incentives to be paid,” says Warden.

Companies providing bonuses as part of the remuneration package

While forecasting anything in the HR market is tricky at the best of times, Foley suggests that the increase in the number of L&D roles will lead to an increase in OD roles. He also forecasts increased demand for skills in talent management and HR data/analytics.

All companies will likely be interested in how they can maximise their remuneration budgets.

Warden says that, fortunately, more organisations realise how important it is to have a mix of financial and non-financial rewards.

“We’ve moved to a realisation that the nonfinancials, and specific intangibles such as culture and leadership, have a huge impact on employer brand/EVP. Organisations are making more effort to sell their brand to both employees and prospective employees,” he says.

BENEFITS OFFERED TO HR EMPLOYEES Mobile phones 77% Parking 56% Personal laptop 54%

Yes

14%

Company car 38% Other* 23%

No

86%

Maclean sees this as a good fit with HR’s enhanced standing in most organisations: HR now plays a key part in the commercial success of an organisation, so “it’s quite right” that they should be rewarded depending on how well the organisation does.

Higher superannuation contribution 21% Income protection insurance 15% Healthcare/health insurance 13% Travel pass 8% *iPads, salary packaging, salary sacrifice, on-site canteen, etc

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

What will likely impact HR salary levels in the next 12 months?

Individual, team or company performance

26% Domestic economic conditions

23% Competition with other companies

17% Inflation

9% Other*

9% Not sure

7%

One thing is clear. For HRDs looking to make a move, it’s important to look at your own personal brand, and the value your skill sets and experience can bring to an organisation.

“It depends on the role and what the organisation is doing,” says Maclean. “If the organisation is looking to grow into new markets, or to rationalise, that’s what an HRD needs to bring to the party. They need to be able to quantify what they did that helped the organisation to grow. If they’ve downsized or restructured, they’ve got to be able to justify what they did as an HR function to support the business through that change.”

All graphs unless otherwise stated sourced from Michael Page HR Salary and Employment Forecast Australia 2014/15.

Don’t expect any factors to impact salaries

7% Global economic conditions

2% *EBA negotiations, mergers & acquisitions, etc

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29/08/2014 10:14:49 AM

LEADERSHIP / PSYCHOMETRIC ASSESSMENT

DERAILERS: THE DARK SIDE OF LEADERSHIP Brought to you by

The personality characteristics that help launch promising careers can turn into crippling derailers down the line, but this need not be the case. HRD explores why self-aware leaders are effective – and popular – leaders It’s true that few people like to admit to their weaknesses, especially in a job interview situation.

When pressed, candidates might present their weakness in the form of an exaggerated truth: “I’m too hard-working”; “I care too much about my clients”.

Yet even if that’s a roundabout way of admitting “I’m not very good at this”, there is much to be gleaned from the underlying message: the idea that strengths can become weaknesses when overused, or when circumstances change. This is particularly the case for executives as they progress through their careers and the consequences of their actions for themselves and their organisations escalate.

When under stress, the strengths they leveraged off so effectively in the early stages of their careers can become weaknesses.

Shayne Nealon, managing partner at Peter Berry Consultancy, provides the example of a senior manager with a cautious and considered approach, who was promoted to partner. People respected his strength in making cautious decisions and being careful and meticulous. However, as a partner, they required timely decision-making from him.

They expected him to be able to delegate tasks freely.

“What we saw was him derailing, which resulted in an unwillingness to take risks or offer opinions, particularly in a senior forum with his colleagues,”

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Nealon explains. “He had a fear of failure. His careful and meticulous manner became perfectionistic, micromanaging and hypercritical, which resulted in him having strained relationships with his direct reports. This particular pattern is quite common within professional services. What got them there is not necessarily going to get them to the next stage as successful partners.”

TAKING STOCK: IDENTITY AND REPUTATION So what can be done about derailers? First, it is necessary to shine a light on personalities.

Personality is best defined from two perspectives: personality from the inside and personality from the outside.

Personality from the inside, or identity, is the person you think you are. It’s like your ‘personality DNA’. Because you create your own identity, it tends to change over time.

Personality from the outside, or reputation, has to do with the way others perceive us. Reputation tends to be stable over time, and is an excellent predictor of future performance.

Hogan measures reputation along two dimensions: ‘bright side personality’ (or ‘normal personality’) and ‘dark side personality’ (or derailers).

The ‘bright side’ personality is displayed at a job

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HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

interview or even on a first date when we’re aiming to put on a good front. The ‘dark side’ personality is witnessed when a person is under stress and pressure, is complacent or over-relaxed. It is most relevant for executives and individuals working in safety critical roles.

There are 11 ‘derailers’: everyday strengths that become weaknesses when overplayed and not self-regulated.

Overused strengths capable of impeding your performance Everyday strengths

Stress-induced derailers

Excitable

Intense and energetic

Moody and prone to overreacting

Sceptical

Perceptive and shrewd

Cynical and mistrustful

Cautious

Careful and thorough

Extremely reluctant to take risks

Reserved

Independent and businesslike

Stoic and disconnected

Leisurely

Cooperative and agreeable

Covertly resistant and insincere

Bold

Confident and assertive

Stubborn, arrogant and smug

Mischievous

Charming and assertive

Irreverent and untrustworthy

Colourful

Charming and jocular

‘Showboating’ and overwhelming

Imaginative

Innovative and creative

Off-the-wall and unrealistic

Diligent

Detail-oriented and hard-working

Perfectionistic and demanding

Dutiful

Supportive and loyal

Ingratiating & deferential

BECOMING SELF-AWARE Although the name might imply otherwise, ‘dark side’ personality characteristics are not automatically problematic. Most people have some combination of derailing tendencies and some are remarkably selfaware and able to mitigate their tendencies.

As always, self-awareness is key. Nealon recommends combining two Hogan personality assessments: the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) and the Hogan Development Survey (HDS).

The HPI measures normal personality and is designed for use across the employee lifecycle, from selection through to development and organisational analysis. The HPI provides information regarding personality characteristics that facilitate or inhibit a person’s ability to get along with others and achieve his or her occupational goals.

The HDS is designed to measure career-derailing tendencies, including the above-outlined 11 patterns of behaviour that impede work relations, hinder productivity and limit overall career potential.

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The HDS is the only business-related personality assessment that identifies performance risks and promotes strategic self-awareness to prevent career derailment. It is used for executive selection, development, talent identification, coaching, team dysfunction and organisational analysis. It can also be used in safety critical roles.

Finally, the Hogan Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory provides insight regarding a person’s core values, goals and interests – information that relates to: • the environment in which the person will perform best and derive the most motivation; and • the kind of culture the person will create as a leader.

It will also identify any leadership biases based on what the leader values the most. The addition of a 360 as part of development will assist in providing real-time feedback from the manager, direct reports and peers to ensure the derailers are being managed.

A LINK IN THE DEVELOPMENT CHAIN It’s important to note that personality is not fate.

With self-awareness and coaching, executives and teams who have derailing tendencies can mitigate derailment.

“We’ve assessed tens of thousands of executives,” says Nealon. “This has occurred for individuals and teams as part of structured executive development programs. They draw on their strategic selfawareness and the insights they gain. At the highest level of engagement, leaders use their under­standing of personality and their own results to help their employees develop. They use their tendencies as a filter to try to recognise these behaviours in others and understand the reasons behind why their employees and peers do the things they do.”

Peter Berry Consultancy (PBC) represents Hogan Assessment Systems in Australia. Hogan is an international test publisher that delivers personality and cognitive ability assessment solutions based on 25 years of research. These assessments help organisations select the best people and develop high-performing leaders. The Hogan 360 complements the Hogan assessments for executive development.

PBC provides customised solutions in profiling and consulting services.

We apply evidence-based practices across a wide range of private and public sector organisations. We conduct extensive research ensuring superior results for our clients. For further information, visit www.peterberry.com.au.

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OFFICE INSIGHT / GOOGLE

The art and science behind

OFFICE DESIGN

Every week there’s a new story about the cool facilities at a Google office. From music rooms and mini-golf to free meals, the internet giant is a leader in office design. So what planning goes into each space and what can other HR leaders learn from their approach?

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Nap chairs, slides, giant hammocks and more – Google is well known for its interesting and extravagant offices. But there’s more to their designs than just adding fun to a space. Each space is carefully designed to suit the people using it, so they feel comfortable and can be as productive as possible.

“Whenever we commence any design project, we start with the users first. We’re trying to design a space that allows them to be healthy, productive and have meaningful interactions with their colleagues,” Google Canada facilities manager Andrea Janus tells HRD. “We really get to know who’s going to use the space.”

Google has specific standards for how many meeting rooms a space should have, and strict policies on using healthy and sustainable materials in its interior design – but each office’s special features are driven by those who work there.

The company’s Sydney operations take a ‘small enough but big enough’ approach. The Sydney office is a major engineering and sales support centre, so employees work on major products, but the office is small enough that it’s easy for staff to push a good idea forward.

All Google workers globally have a lot of input into the look and feel of their offices. Each office ends up reflecting the people who work there and the place where they live. The names of conference rooms in the Sydney office reflect a random but suitably Aussie sense of fun: Lovelace, Howzat, Fat Yak. “We have a lot of visioning sessions with the architects, where we invite all the Googlers in the office and talk about different aspects such as workspace, collaboration, community involvement, and really gather feedback from everyone,” Janus says. “If you start with the user first and create a space that they like to work in, then it becomes a successful project.”

Google’s Sydney office, for example, is based at a waterfront location in Pyrmont, with views of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, The Rocks and Darling

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Harbour. The building has been branded “the greenest in Sydney”. Inside, there is a ‘living wall’ made of plants; a tyre swing; and a library with a nap pod. Googlers taking a break from the office can check out a kayak or one of the office’s two electric cars.

WORK-LIFE BALANCE Health and wellness is another focus for Google, from providing adjustable sit/stand desks to those who need them, to having exercise facilities on site as well as initiatives like office bikes that employees can borrow.

Work-life balance is a key area of concentration.

Sarah Robb, Google’s head of people operations in Asia-Pacific, says employees feel so invested in the company that they have a tendency to overwork themselves.

“We’re finding from the employment survey that well-being continues to be a source of concern,

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Google’s Sydney office

TOP TIPS FROM GOOGLE

1

Focus on the end user Not all employees or teams have the same needs or wants. By focusing on their individuality, you can create a specific environment to suit each one.

2

Enable work-life balance Helping employees complete personal goals or tasks in or near the office means they don’t have to worry about when they’ll fit that into their day, so they can be more focused when they’re at their desks.

3

Find the fun Creative, fun spaces can encourage people to meet informally with co-workers from all parts of the organisation, which drives collaboration and a feeling of community.

4

Provide healthy choices for the individual and the organisation Healthy employees are more productive, take fewer sick days and are less likely to need disability support. By supporting exercise and nutrition, employers can ensure that their employees improve and maintain their own health and well-being.

5

Be flexible You won’t get it right every time. If something isn’t working, talk to employees about why they are not using a space and what might improve it so you can adjust accordingly.

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but, interestingly, managers are supportive of wellbeing,” she says.

Robb adds that employees feel like they are company owners, which is part of the reason for Google’s success; however, “these people don’t want to take their feet off the gas pedal, because they feel like owners. We haven’t found the balance yet”.

Still, the company is working on this, with a number of initiatives in place to bolster both mental and physical health.

“Health and well-being are such a big part of our lives, and you want to have a healthy workforce,” Janus says. “Food at Google plays a huge part; we promote health and wellness through the food program we offer, and we educate Googlers on nutrition so they’re not just healthy now but healthy 20 years from now as well.”

CLEVER IDEAS FOR ALL Not every company has the resources that Google has, but some core principles can be applied without a huge budget.

“Building collaboration areas doesn’t need to be expensive; it just needs to be comfortable,” Janus

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says. “It’s paying attention to what’s working and what’s not, and reacting to that. You don’t always get it 100% right. You need to figure it out as you go. Once people are using the space you can make some inexpensive changes that help people use the space better.”

One tip Janus offers is to use what is already available but rearrange it to be more effective. If you have multiple offices, what works in one might not work in another, so exchanging furniture between two sites could improve both.

“We had this really cool tent in Toronto that people could crawl into and work by themselves, but people in the sales office weren’t using it because they wanted to collaborate with co-workers,” Janus says. “We swapped furniture with Waterloo [in Ontario] and put a more comfortable sofa there.

Right away people were using that a lot more, whereas in Waterloo the engineers really like to go

“Whenever we commence any design project, we start with the users first” Andrea Janus hide and work by themselves in a quieter area, and they’re using the tent all the time.

“If other employers were to really focus on getting to know who their employees are and what they enjoy doing and how they enjoy working, it would be beneficial to their organisation,” Janus says. “We’re designing spaces that allow them to be creative and happy and productive.”

SPEAKING CONFIDENCE AND PRESENTATION After 35 years as a radio and television broadcaster, John Henry now consults to companies who have an interest in improving or polishing the speaking confidence and speech presentation skills of their employees.

John also works with individual professional clients and executives in a one on one environment, to rehearse and boost confidence for speaking or presentation preparation.

Working with people talented in their chosen fields but who lack just a little confidence to speak in public or make a sales presentation, John helps them identify where they can improve and then coaches them with friendly constructive direction.

Travelling to your premises John will conduct training on site for half or full days depending on numbers.

Please call John to further discuss any of his services on 0422 095 716 or by email at jhmedia@iprimus.com.au www.jhmedia.com.au

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PEOPLE MANAGEMENT / PAYROLL

DROWNING IN PAPERWORK

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In 2013, payroll administration cost Australian businesses $2.16bn. The nation’s payroll system is one of the most complicated in the world; it’s costly to administer and seemingly too difficult to reform.

It’s telling that in HRD’s Global HR Survey (see issue 12.08), ‘identifying risks, regulating and ensuring compliance’ was the second biggest priority for HR professionals, behind ‘managing people’. Not only must HR professionals contend with complicated IR issues and ever-changing employment laws, but on the payroll front they must also cope with different regulatory require­ ments, corporate compliance issues, and laws for each state.

It’s no wonder companies don’t have time to devote to enhancing engagement or increasing productivity: too much time is focused on getting payroll right.

TIME FOR CHANGE

Getting people paid correctly, on time, should be Good Management 101.

Yet the task is made infinitely more difficult by Australia’s myriad regulatory requirements, legislation and corporate compliance issues. Is it time for a rethink on our approach to payroll?

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Dean Morelli, managing director of Employgroup, says it’s time for change.

“Every aspect of regulation adds to the cost.

Sometimes the regulation is a result of a conscious determination by the community because of a perceived community benefit. Superannuation might be one such example.

“On other occasions the regulation is overly complex and of little perceived benefit. Examples of the former include the calculation of fringe benefits tax, payroll tax, long service leave and workers’ compensation, where each state has its own different system of calculating, reporting, reconciling and paying.”

Annual leave is yet another example of excessive bureaucracy. Annual leave accruals are governed at federal level under the Fair Work Act, but long service leave is covered at state level. Add in the complexities of parental leave, part-time work, sick leave, redundancy, and various tax and superannuation requirements, and payroll can turn into a very difficult, time-consuming and expensive task to administer.

“Simplifying payroll will have significant impacts on the bottom line of many businesses across Australia,” says Morelli.

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“Our conservative estimate is that unnecessary regulation costs $300m plus per year in additional administrative costs” Dean Morelli “Our conservative estimate is that unnecessary regulation costs $300m plus per year in additional administrative costs. While it constitutes around 0.25% of the economy, it is nevertheless unnecessary and a cost for businesses having to compete in a global marketplace.”

While the business community has already expressed its desire for reform via the Business Council of Australia’s July report, Building Australia’s Competitive Advantage, the Federal Government has been slow to act. Yet Morelli says the government must show leadership in this critical area of microeconomic reform.

“It needs to avoid the soft option of remaining jinxed by the Howard Government’s experience in industrial relations reform, and propagate the case for reform,” he says.

AUSTRALIA ON THE GLOBAL STAGE

DID YOU KNOW? There are no less than 34 different compliance obligations involved in employing a national workforce.

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Unfortunately, Australia’s business complexity is being noted by multinational entities. ADP, a global player in the payroll solutions and technology space, offers both full outsourcing and software-as-a-service payroll, so they can offer a unique perspective from both sides of the fence.

“The complexity in Australia is well known, especially when we compare with our ADP operations elsewhere in the world,” says Dean Clark, marketing communications manager, ADP Australia/New Zealand.

“At one level, we legislate nationally across many aspects – pay, leave, termination, hiring, superannuation and the like. At another level, we then have 122 industry-based awards that legislate unique requirements across all of those aspects and more.

I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a business that wasn’t found lacking in some way or another, even with the best resources and intentions.”

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS What can be done about the situation? In some ways, businesses are at the mercy of the government.

Morelli says it’s not simply a process of removing bureaucracy but of eliminating unnecessary compliance obligations. Rather than just looking at payroll in isolation, there are increasing calls for reform to the red tape associated with IR legislation and Australia’s overly complex tax systems for business.

In addition to examining the inefficiencies inherent in the Fair Work framework, Morelli suggests three key steps to reform: 1. Have the ATO act as an agent to collect payroll tax for each state and distribute it to each Office of State Revenue. The benefit would be one payment, reporting and reconciliation system as well as improving compliance. “There would be thousands of jobs that could be eliminated by state government’s Offices of State Revenue, as well as simpler and unified obligations for employers. Compliance would most likely reduce cost but raise revenue,” he says.

2. Turn Comcare into a National Workers’ Compensation scheme with a simplified premium and rehabilitation scheme. “This would have to result in better governance in this important field and remove it from the realm of deals between unions and governments,” Morelli says.

3. Have the Commonwealth use its corporation powers in the Constitution to have one long service regime, or better still get rid of it. “The multiple systems for entitlement are complicated, and given that there are so few who benefit, its value must be open to question,” Morelli says.

CLEANING UP YOUR OWN BACKYARD There is an unfortunate perception among business leaders that simply outsourcing the payroll function to a third party will resolve the complexity.

Morelli says that while there should be the ability for outsource providers to fully manage all these obligations, the simple reality is that there are a number of areas where the information is not easily available to outsource service providers.

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simple task. And calculating fringe benefits tax for motor vehicles would involve having records for the number of total costs per vehicle and actual distance travelled on business. This information naturally resides in the accounting system rather than payroll per se.

While ‘passing the parcel’ might be appealing for some, there are also steps business leaders can take in-house to ensure their payroll systems are as efficient as possible. Clark says a payroll audit, conducted by an independent consultant or industry body (the Australian Payroll Association) is a great first step. Doing the audit internally, without knowing the full breadth and depth of exactly what to look for, could be risky.

Even examining the way a business collects and stores employee data from when they commence employment with the company can help. “If the data collected is incomplete – for example, SuperStream reforms require additional information to be collected from employees – or incorrect, the best systems in the world won’t be able to fix it,” Clark says.

For internal payroll operations, Morelli suggests starting with the people running the payroll function. Make sure they are properly trained and guided. “If an employer doesn’t subscribe to a quality payroll advisory service like Payroll Matters and ensure that payroll staff are thoroughly trained and updated on a regular basis, you should assume that you are not compliant,” he says.

Processes should be audited on a biannual basis for governance and compliance by an organisation that is knowledgeable. “Not all accounting firms have such skills, so pick someone who can deliver the goods,” Morelli says.

Once compliance is addressed, work out what can be done for the efficiency of the payroll process. This should include super remittances, year-end processes and payroll taxes, as well as the cost of software, hardware, etc. “The rule of thumb is that if it is costing an employer more than $180 per employee per year, then they are paying too much,” Morelli concludes.

KEY TAKEAWAYS ADP’s three tips on how to enhance the efficiency of in-house payroll systems: 1. Reduce (or, ideally, eliminate) paper-based forms. Good payroll and time and attendance systems will provide online-based solutions for recording time, and requesting and approving leave. This can save a lot of manual data entry as well as reduce the risk of errors.

2. Even if your core payroll must remain in-house, consider the other services and functions that touch payroll and see whether there is another solution available. Employee payments such as superannuation, time and attendance, rostering and the like can all be improved with new cloud-based solutions or outsourcing.

3. Do an employee data update – people move home, change mailing addresses, bank accounts, etc, especially when you have long-term staff.

Doing a clean-up of your core employee data can be useful and pays dividends in the future, especially around EOFY time.

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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP / WORKPLACE DEMOCRACY

Are we ready for

WORKPLACE DEMOCRACY? Does democracy have a place in the workplace?

Or is some degree of autocratic rule still required?

Les Hayman weighs the pros and cons

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“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried” – Sir Winston Churchill (1874–1965) I am seeing an increasing amount of discussion about the concept of workplace democracy. In an outstanding example of that trend, the software company Haufe-umantis in Switzerland recently invited all staff members to vote ‘yea or nay’ on the appointment of a new CEO, when the current founder and CEO felt it was time for him to step aside. The outgoing CEO chose his successor and then asked all staff to vote on whether they agreed with his choice. Luckily they did (although it was not unanimous). This was fortunate, as I feel that this particular partial attempt at the democratic process may have been somewhat short-lived had it been a resounding ‘nay’ vote.

I have also had the privilege in the last year to meet, and hear talks by, Heiko Fischer of Resourceful Humans, who believes that the greater the level of democracy and the less management that exists in a company, the more people will drive themselves and therefore the more they will drive the success of the company.

HAMBURGER OR BURRITO? Heiko likes to compare traditional hierarchical management structures to a hamburger where the patty (employees) needs a large bun (management) to hold it together, while what he feels is needed today is more like a burrito, which has a thin unobtrusive layer (management) holding all the ingredients (employees) together.

In addition, a hamburger needs considerable structure within the bun, whereas structure is less important in a burrito. Not a bad analogy if you are a supporter of his premise.

GENERATIONAL PRESSURE? I feel that one of the drivers of this flirtation with workplace democracy is the current belief by some that this is exactly what the new generation wants; that young people today have a significantly different set of work expectations than my generation did, particularly in terms of company loyalty (now more

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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP / WORKPLACE DEMOCRACY

to a role), flexibility of working times (less based on four weeks’ annual leave and more on long breaks as needed), and significantly less management control (less direction from above and a greater say in what they do and how they do it).

But are they really demanding democratic-style freedoms, and just how much structure is too much structure? Are we really ready to do away with traditional management structures and build more democratically based organisations?

DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP

Les Hayman has extensive senior HR management experience and is co-founder and co-CEO of Chief Executive Organisation Ltd, a UK-based company that focuses on business improvement and global competitiveness strategies. Additionally, he is a regular lecturer at universities and business schools, and a sought-after speaker across the globe.

A democratic manager involves employees in the decision process, and consensus on decisions is sought from the majority, with extensive bidirectional communications. This is supportive of high job satisfaction and quality of work because it tends to drive high engagement, but it can be an incredible barrier to speed of decision-making and execution as there are always many ‘chefs in the broth’. It can work well in complex projects that require many different subject matter experts for varied inputs to ensure a workable solution.

I have long been against overmanagement, and matrix management in particular. A complex multi­ faceted matrix creates confusion in employees as to where their loyalties lie amid ongoing turf wars as to who has the strongest line to the employee. It also generally increases the number of managers, particularly when compared to a well-managed and flat-line organisation. This has the effect not only of driving up costs by increasing the number of expensive non-revenue-generating heads, but also of driving up the number of meetings to ensure alignment, and slowing down the decision-making processes.

Despite its potential benefits for vocational career development, matrix management is mainly the creation of people who know that change is needed, and who have decided that added complexity is the answer. I have always believed that complexity is never the answer, and that when it is, then it must have been a pretty stupid question to start with.

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) nailed it when he said, “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself. Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

A MIDDLE GROUND? I have no doubt that the traditional ‘command and control’ management style is totally passé, but I am of the belief that some structure is still needed, not just

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for the sake of management control but also more importantly for the benefit of the employees.

When I retired I had a final session with my boss, who asked me for some feedback (the first time this had happened in nearly 15 years). Among other things, I told him he had been a great boss because he had left me entirely alone to do the job in my own way, but that he was also an awful boss because he had left me entirely alone to do the job in my own way.

It was not that I was a needy person who wanted continuous advice, feedback and recognition, but I disagreed with him that being left totally alone, all the time, was something senior people wanted. He believed that as we had monthly board meetings this should have been enough to set the context for all of us to act accordingly. The problem was that apart from the one annual two-day session to discuss strategy, management meetings were nearly always about content rather than context. As a result, crossdivisional alignment tended to be difficult.

BACK TO BASICS I believe we cannot expect people to have any ability to define what they will do and to know what is expected of them if we do not clearly articulate the reasons ‘why we are here’ in the first place, as a company, as a division, as a team; and if we do not give them enough direction and understanding to help them to be an integral part of the strategy.

People should definitely be given the ability to define how they will handle the content of the role assigned to them, within guidelines for quality and standards that apply. But I also strongly believe that this can work only if the context has been well defined beforehand, and that this context must also include the appointment of those who have been asked to lead the organisation.

Structure is less important in a burrito, but it is still necessary. And besides the thin unobtrusive layer (the management), it needs a proper technique for rolling it up and holding all the ingredients (the employees) together.

The HRM Expo (Zukunft Personal) is Europe’s largest exhibition for all matters HR in companies and organisations. The 15th annual event takes place on 14–16 October 2014.

Are you ready for workplace democracy?

Les Hayman will be giving the keynote speech at the HRM Expo (Zukunft Personal) 2014, on 16 October, 9.30–11.00 am, and will also give a public interview, Keynote Forum, Hall 2.1, Cologne Expo Centre.

More information: hrm-expo.com

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INTERNATIONAL PROFILE / SAN DIEGO ZOO

IT’S A ZOO IN HERE

Tim Mulligan left the hospitality industry to run the world’s largest zoological membership association.

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When Tim Mulligan began law school at the prestigious Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, he had no idea he would one day use his Juris Doctor to work alongside elephants, mountain lions, flamingos, and rhinoceroses. Now that he serves as CHRO of San Diego Zoo Global, though, he can’t picture himself anywhere else.

His path to the zoo, however, was an unusual one.

After obtaining his law degree, he practised labour and employment law at Starwood Hotels and Resorts in Seattle. In this role, he became an expert in union negotiations, hearings, and internal employee issues. Working on both sides

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of the negotiating table and having to balance legal matters with employee relations provided him with a multidimensional understanding of the human resources discipline.

Thus, when San Diego Zoo Global needed an HR executive to spearhead a massive organisational reform movement for the 3,000 employees that comprise its zoo, safari park, and Institute for Conservation Research, they looked to Mulligan to be its agent of change.

“That’s what they were looking for,” explains Mulligan. “They wanted someone to come in, take what was at the time a 90-year-old organisation, and bring it into the modern world of HR. We were treating our employees well, but we weren’t cutting-edge or known for our HR practices.”

STARTING FROM SCRATCH Mulligan began this massive undertaking by crafting a comprehensive business plan called Lynx. A play on words, he designed Lynx to connect, or link, employees to organisational goals through a three- to five-year strategic plan.

A major part of this forward-looking initiative centred on raising accountability and setting higher standards based on performance and merit. The park’s world-renowned reputation meant every job was in extremely high demand, and as a result the organisation only had a 5% turnover rate.

Mulligan needed to implement a number of processes to reinvigorate workers who had been part of the zoo’s staff for decades. He started by partnering with Halogen Software’s online talent management system, which he re­branded as Z-Max, an abbreviation for Maximising Zoological Performance. Since many workers had never once been given a performance review or received recognition based on merit, he knew the overhaul had to be accessible, formalised, and easy to use.

“We are a zoo; we are a nonprofit – so I wanted us to ease into it,” Mulligan says. “It represents a big culture shift for us; not just pay for performance and having goals, reviews, and deadlines, but driving folks to the computers more, as more and more processes are automated, cloud-based, and digitised.”

So far, supervisors and employees appreciate the ongoing dialogue focused on reaching longterm, structured goals. “It’s now a huge part of

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the culture here. When folks say, ‘It’s time for reviews, recognition, or employee counselling meetings’, they know they need to log into Z-Max,” Mulligan says.

ANIMAL PLANET Mulligan also faced the challenge of employee engagement. Since many of the park’s trainers and researchers spend their entire careers with San Diego Zoo Global, he knew he had to take extra strides to keep them activated, productive, and current.

“I think for many years we rested on our laurels and knew folks would come here because we’re the San Diego Zoo,” says Mulligan. “My goal is to be looked at for best practices, and not merely be out there seeking best practices.”

Similar to Z-Max, he created a number of programs in-house to boost morale and address inefficiency in a manner that fit the culture and ethos of the zoo.

First off, to make sure employees’ skills were up to date, he instituted a variety of educational policies, including tuition reimbursement, an online academy with over 1,000 courses, learning labs at every campus, and ‘Zoo U’, an on-site education program featuring leadership develop­ ment, classroom training, and roundtables for knowledge exchange.

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“We don’t have a large budget. We had to ask ourselves, how can we become leaders in HR without a significant budget? And that’s where we’ve had the most fun”

In addition, since so many of the younger workers were interested in animal care, he started ‘Roar Core’. This program allows workers from any part of the organisation to receive training by zookeepers and become pre-approved by supervisors for positions involving the handling of animals.

“When we have keeper openings, we pull from that group. It helps us focus on internal talent and bringing people up from within the ranks, and that’s been very successful.”

FUN AT THE ZOO While Mulligan has created a goal-oriented and performance-driven culture, he hasn’t forgotten

HR LINGO FOR AN ANIMAL WORLD Lynx: Strategic plan Zooper Market: An online shopping centre where high performers can spend money as allotted by managers Zooper Heroes: Well-recognised managers Zooper Troopers: Long-term employees Zooper Bowl: Awards ceremony

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to reward employees and have fun in the process.

“We put many programs in place for this exact reason. If employees are going to stay a long time, we want them engaged, we want them to learn and grow, and we want them to be satisfied,” he says.

Since the zoo previously had no formal recognition programs, he introduced a broad, multiyear initiative called Rolling Rewards.

One of the most unique features of Rolling Rewards is the online ‘Zooper Market’. Managers are given a set amount of money to spend on highperforming employees, who can then use that money to buy zoo-related items.

In addition, every quarter, exceptional employees are named Zooper Stars, top managers are named Zooper Heroes, and long-term employees are recognised as Zooper Troopers. There’s also a regular Zooper Bowl, where awards such as ‘Most Green’ are handed out to deserving staff.

While all these accomplishments are note­ worthy, they are even more impressive given that Mulligan and his team of 20 have done it all on limited funds, given the zoo’s status as a non-profit organisation.

“We don’t have a large budget,” says Mulligan.

“We had to ask ourselves, how can we become leaders in HR without a significant budget? And that’s where we’ve had the most fun – being innovative and creative in creating core programs that will be around for a long time.”

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L&D / EXECUTIVE EDUCATION

LEARNING SNAPSHOTS

Companies spend more than $130bn annually on training and development worldwide. HRD presents a number of options for enhancing the skill sets of your front-line managers With traditional employee training being dragged into the 21st century by flipped classrooms, learning-centric models, and an explosion of content delivered over a variety of new online and mobile platforms, there has never been a more critical time to take stock and review what’s in place in your organisation. Over the following pages, HRD presents snapshots of what’s on offer, from classroom training with a twist, to short courses and online learning.

OPTION 1: TAILORED AND CUSTOMISED COURSES The executive education departments of most business schools typically have three key focus areas. The first, and most widely known, are open enrolment or ‘public programs’ run throughout the calendar year. Such courses are typically of short duration – one or two days. These are particularly useful for people looking to mix and mingle with professionals from a range of backgrounds, industries and professions.

Increasingly, however, corporates recognise that,

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while public program courses might be useful to plug the skills gaps of one or two employees in one go, for larger numbers different solutions are required. Enter customised and tailored courses, the two other focus areas for business schools in 2014.

Tailored programs, as the name suggests, take their cue from tailoring a suit. The learning vendor will work with a client to tailor an existing open program to the needs of that client. In some instances, this might mean taking subjects of, say, an MBA course, and tailoring them to suit the client situation. Definitions, terms and concepts used can be tailored, and the content can be skewed to better match what’s happening within the company.

Company executives (such as the CFO) can talk to the cohort, and ultimately the course is geared to what the company is trying to do strategically.

While tailoring might be limited in some instances due to content restrictions, Professor Paul Kirkbride, executive director, executive education, at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management, says a good rule of thumb is that

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80% of course content is standard and 20% can be tailored to the client’s needs.

Custom, on the other hand, is where the business school essentially starts with a blank sheet of paper.

“A client will come and say, ‘We have an issue’.

It could be ramping up high potentials. It could be about a group of state managers that have a particular development need. We work hand in hand to design something to meet those particular needs. You’re not taking anything off the shelf,” says Kirkbride.

The process for building custom courses has the following steps: 1. Diagnose – to determine what people need.

2. Design. In conjunction with the client, MGSM will design an intervention that will suit the particular needs of the client.

3. Deliver a particular intervention.

4. Review and evaluate.

“The key phases are the early diagnostic ones,” says Kirkbride. “What we’d be doing there would be spending quite a bit of time speaking to various stakeholders within the client business.”

Michelle Kershaw, director custom programs, executive education, at MGSM, adds that stakeholder engagement is critical. “For HR, it helps the CEO and leadership team buy into the solutions you are providing. You can also determine the expected ROI that you’re looking for from this program. You may have some naysayers, but if the CEO and his team are supportive you will have a much better outcome.”

In the design phase, MGSM works on the 70/20/10 principle. That is, about 70% of development comes from on-the-job experiences and working on tasks and problems; about 20% comes from feedback from colleagues, peers and managers; and 10% from courses and reading.

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“Everything we design is 70/20/10,” says Kershaw.

Kirkbride adds: “We will sit down with the client and ask which bits have to be delivered didactically, whether that’s a classroom-based face-to-face program or through e-learning or some other format. How about learning from others? Are we going to do 360-degree feedback? Will we have coaching; an internal mentoring program? And then experientially, how will we have people experiencing different things?”

As an example, Kirkbride refers to a recent client – a cold storage distribution company – that had not undertaken any executive education programs for some time. It was clear, using 70/20/10, that any intervention had to be practical and experiential.

After consultation with the client, MGSM designed a program based on real business projects identified by the CEO. “These were very much around cost saving, cost reduction, Six Sigma process improvement projects,” says Kirkbride.

“We built a three-module structure to be delivered over several months [other customised courses can have shorter timeframes]. They come to do a module here at MGSM; we introduce them to some key concepts, and introduce them to the projects. Then they go off and work on the projects between modules. We support them – each project team has a project facilitator. Then students return for a second module halfway through the project lifespan. They share their progress. We do a peer review. Finally, students come back to a third module and they present the project to the senior management.

“The great thing about this was the CEO identified real process improvement projects. I would estimate the ROI on that was over 10 to one.”

This particular example had 15 participants, and Kershaw says that number is usually a reliable

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“tipping point” for making it truly cost-effective for clients. “It depends on the partnership with the client, how much they’re willing to do as an organisation, and what sort of delivery we’re talking about,” she says.

Duration: Tailored courses range from one or two days to several weeks; customised course lengths vary widely depending on course content and structure Cost: For customised, this will vary depending on course content and duration. Kershaw says a good ‘rule of thumb’ tipping point for cost-effectiveness is around 15 participants (although as many as 25 have previously attended, and as few as seven) information: mgsm.edu.au Further information

OPTION 2: SHORT COURSES There are hundreds of short-course providers offering a huge array of content. HRD selects two that might strike a chord with HR directors on the lookout for ways to bolster the skills of their teams. » GALLUP’S ACCELERATED STRENGTHS COACHING COURSE Coaching and mentoring are often grouped together, but there are subtle differences between the two. Dean Jones, curriculum and talent development architect at Gallup, sees them as different endeavours requiring different skill sets.

“Mentors help people see the pathway ahead and overcome hurdles by drawing on their direct experience and resources in that area,” he says.

“In essence, mentors say, ‘I’ve been there, accomplished that, and you can learn from my experience and leverage my resources’.”

Coaches are there to help people understand and empower themselves. “They help people identify, appreciate and develop their own talent, and then apply it to the outcomes and commitments that mean the most to that person. Coaches help people navigate hurdles, maximise opportunities, and fulfil goals and objectives,” Jones says.

Gallup’s Accelerated Strengths Coaching Course is suited to anyone who can benefit from using a strengths-based approach to help others – including independent coaches, corporate coaches, managers and leaders, as well as organisational development and HR professionals.

The coaching in this course is referred to as ‘coaching 2.0’. It’s a fresh approach to coaching.

Gallup starts with the Clifton StrengthFinder,

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which assesses a person’s dominant talents.

Drawing on several decades of experience in coaching leaders and managers in organisations around the world, the Gallup team have learned how to help people develop those talents into strengths they can apply towards productive, tangible outcomes.

Participants will gain tools, techniques and invaluable experience to help others understand how they filter their world, how they respond to work situations, how they work with others, and what their biases and vulnerabilities are. In addition, two coaching kits are included in the price of the program: the Strengths Coaching Starter Kit and the Coaching Managers and Teams Kit. The tools in these kits, coupled with the educational experiences in the course, are designed to help participants help their clients harness their strengths to achieve success.

Duration: 4.5 days Cost: $7,920 Further information: For locations and course dates, visit gallupstrengthscenter.com

» SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY’S REDUNDANCY RECOVERY PROGRAM The Redundancy Recovery Program recently launched by Swinburne University was born out of research which suggested that services offered during redundancies and outplacement were not meeting the needs of redundant workers.

The program caters for all employees (via its Redundancy Recovery Program) and for HR professionals specifically (via its condensed Masterclass in Redundancy Recovery & Managing Organisational Transition Support).

Swinburne’s research found that if redundancy support was offered by employers or agencies, much of what was provided consisted of skills retraining for the same industry, or résumé workshops, with some interview skills. It was found that these limited services, even if provided, did not address the need for career changes into new jobs and industries, particularly where industries were in a decline and were shrinking.

“Upskilling managers is critical to the success of downsizing,” says Redundancy Recovery Program facilitator and consulting director of Swinburne Industry Solutions, Chris Pascuzzi.

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particularly if the employer is not closing down, and is continuing to maintain their brand in the market. Having those ‘crucial conversations’ is an important skill for all managers to have and develop.”

The Redundancy Recovery Program can be tailored to organisational requirements or to different sectors, and is also offered as a public program in which all topics are covered and practitioners can choose elements that are most suited to their people, eg blue/white collar, etc.

HR professionals and other managers undertaking the course will gain a far greater awareness of the real challenges of managing redundancies.

Areas covered include: • Tools – instruments that managers can use or call on • Coaching skills • Elements of a good career transition program • Building resiliency; maintaining engagement • Communication strategy • Legal and compliance issues, and industrial considerations Duration: Redundancy Recovery is a 12-week program using a mix of face-to-face and online.

The Masterclass in Redundancy Recovery & Managing Organisational Transition Support is a 1-day program, including a 45-minute coaching follow-up session Cost: The Redundancy Recovery cost is given on application and commensurate with the elements chosen to work best for the target group. As a guide: approx. $2,000 per person. The Masterclass in Redundancy Recovery & Managing Organisational Transition Support is $745 per person Further information: For session times and locations, visit swinburne.edu.au

OPTION 3: ONLINE LEARNING – WORKPLACE BULLYING VIA EELO It’s impossible to talk about corporate learning without touching on online learning.

One small start-up based in Sydney, Executive Learning Solutions Group (eelo), has launched an online course focused on workplace bullying.

“Our product development methodology involves researching topics that are important, right now, for senior executives and their organisations,” says eelo marketing manager Niki Glastras.

“We analyse market trends, interview market leaders and consult with industry experts to develop comprehensive learning solutions that address current enterprise needs.”

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“Upskilling managers is critical to the success of downsizing” Chris Pascuzzi

statistics about the prevalence of bullying in Australia and the risks posed to businesses by new regulations that allow the Fair Work Commission to issue stop-bullying orders directly to employers after receiving a complaint from a worker.

Eelo is built to be accessed on demand by users.

The site is responsive, which means it works flexibly across desktop, tablet and mobile devices.

“Our goal with these features is to support a learning concept known as distributed practice.

This concept posits that students learn more when they engage knowledge on their own terms and at their own speed. We support this approach by building a learning experience that is accessible anywhere, anytime the user wants it,” says Glastras.

The content of the course itself is a series of articles, videos and interactive features such as quizzes – part of the concept known as ‘practice testing’ which states that testing is an effective method of reinforcing, not just measuring, knowledge.

Glastras says that following the conclusion of the course, participants should be able to: • Ensure their organisation has a preventative culture • Demonstrate reasonable management action • Internally respond to and resolve workplace bullying complaints “For Workplace Bullying, we are targeting organisational leaders because we believe that shaping leaders’ understanding of the issues is in fact the most effective way to see widespread change across an organisation.”

Duration: Approx. six hours Cost: An introductory rate of $1,295 is currently on offer Further information: geteelo.com

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EXPERT INSIGHT / RECRUITMENT

How ‘candidatecentric’ are you?

Candidate testing is increasingly tapping into the latest developments in science and technology to present realistic job previews and situational judgment tests on the go. Matt Chaplin sees this as part of the natural evolution towards putting the candidate first

Matt Chaplin is a Talent Consultant for Hay Group.

Matt works with senior talent acquisition and organisational development leaders to design fit-forpurpose assessment programs.

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As a recruiter or HR professional, regardless of your organisation’s size or industry, you reject more candidates than you hire. Fact. So, how do you properly engage candidates enough to encourage them to apply for that critical role in the first place, have them spend an appropriate amount of time applying (only for you to subsequently reject them) and then ensure that their experience was still positive and that their perception of your organisation is not negatively impacted… but actually improved? They’re highly likely to be a customer or potential customer in most cases.

So how do I think a candidate-centric assessment experience can be delivered? In a word: mobile. Back in May at the Australasian Talent Conference in Sydney, Wal-Mart’s Antoine Jenkins said it best: “(Wal-Mart’s vision) is to be wherever our candidates are”. Sounds easy enough, and while many leading organisations have begun embracing and championing this mega-trend, traditional psychometric assessments have not yet caught up to mobile technology and devices. This has led to a rethink. It’s also offered up some exciting developments in ‘candidate-friendly assessment’.

Assessments are now becoming a far richer and more engaging experience for candidates: solutions like realistic job previews (RJPs) and situational judgment tests (SJTs) can now use a variety of media to convey messages and test items, making ‘smart’ use of the technology that we now have available today – even taking ‘adaptive*’ testing technology to

a point that essentially ‘gamifies’ SJTs. As newer generations of job seekers continue to flood the market, capturing their interest early and ‘assessing’ them efficiently is precisely where science and technology are meeting to offer that ‘candidatecentric’ assessment experience.

I do acknowledge that this sort of methodology is not appropriate for all roles, as the level of insight gained from more traditional (personality plus ability) assessments is still immensely valuable to recruitment and selection decision making, especially when the stakes are high. But I stand by my point around the candidate experience and how it can be radically transformed for everyone’s benefit.

In today’s ultra-connected world, where globalisation has completely shifted how people work and interact, for organisations to continue to compete and be successful they are going to need to look at different and more diverse candidate pools.

Where competition for roles is only going to increase, finding the right candidate is going to require a serious rethink for a lot of organisations, and I genuinely believe putting candidates first is step one in that change. *Developed using sophisticated, psychometrically robust adaptive testing methodology, adaptive testing represents a new generation of online testing. It displays test questions to the candidate taking into account their previous responses and whether they were correct or incorrect. Adaptive testing enables modern ability tests to be significantly shorter than others because a candidate is only answering questions that have been specifically chosen to challenge their individual ability level. Please contact Hay Group/ Talent Q for further information.

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HRA20

HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

www.hrawards.com.au

Congratulations to All Winners & Thank You to Our Sponsors AWARD SPONSORS

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CSR / ETHICS

SUPPLY CHAIN ETHICS Mark Fogel was shocked to learn that his multinational company was unknowingly engaged in unethical practices overseas. Here’s what he did to fix it

During his time serving as CHRO of a major manufacturing organisation, Mark Fogel always believed his employees were provided with safe, healthy, and well-regulated working conditions, no matter their role or location. That all changed during one revealing trip to Southeast China.

“When I was at Leviton, the first two times we went to China our operations team led us on tours through the factories, but we only saw what they wanted to show us,” Fogel says. “On a subsequent visit, I declined the tour and said I wanted to tour on my own. That’s when the curtain came down and I saw what was really going on – they were

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presenting an image that wasn’t truthful of what was happening in the factories and dormitories.”

Some of the major issues Fogel came across included faulty plumbing and insufficient hot water for showers.

“I found a lot of issues affecting people’s hygiene and living conditions that were unacceptable to me,” he says.

ENFORCING VALUES Fogel demanded immediate change. “The first thing I did was have a meeting with senior management at the factory. I didn’t ask; I told them that they

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were going to remediate these issues within 24 hours,” Fogel says. “Before I left, those conditions had to be fixed.”

He also reached out to Leviton’s executives in the US, and informed them of his findings. Although the factories may have passed compliance measures in China, Fogel insisted on a higher threshold.

“When I found those substandard conditions, I acted upon them regardless of cultural norms.

For HR folks, one of the key elements of working in other countries is understanding what living conditions and cultural norms are there, but also calibrating them to an adequate level of acceptability.”

In both manufacturing firms where Fogel has served as HR chief, his roles have moved beyond merely ticking off legal requirements and instead they have transformed into ‘humane leadership’ positions.

“At Leviton and Marcum, we had a very high standard for working outside of our borders. We didn’t accept ‘Well, this is just the way we do it in our country’,” he says. “I think the litmus test is if you had your own teenager working in that situation, would it be acceptable to you?”

HOLISTIC HR ROLE The “dog and pony show” concealing the secondrate, if not hazardous, working conditions that Fogel saw reflects a larger worldwide trend of reducing costs by limiting the resources made available to labour. He hopes HR leaders and senior managers remain aware of the realities their employees face at each level of their organisation.

“Human resources sits at the epicentre because there’s nowhere else to put that responsibility. I want HR to oversee employee living, employee eating, and every aspect of having people 24/7 at one facility,” he says. “Most HR people globally are not skilled in that.”

In particular, it’s important that HR provide instruction when needed on topics such as sex education and health awareness. Also, since many medical conditions are treated in-house, HR executives should be prepared to work with factories’ healthcare practitioners and be able to guide each facility’s medical staff.

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“The litmus test is if you had your own teenager working in that situation, would it be acceptable to you?”

Mark Fogel BRAND BENEFIT Fogel brought into effect a wide range of other improvements too. He made sure pregnant women wore coloured vests to indicate that they should not be exposed to chemicals or high-risk areas, and that buildings passed regular maintenance inspections in regions where factories are often neglected because it’s so easy to construct new facilities.

Outside of the moral imperative dictating these efforts, it’s also clearly necessary for the business brand to be well regarded in the global community.

“The last thing you want,” says Fogel, “is to be Apple computers dealing with Foxconn, and waking up to find that your subcontracted factory was on the front page of every newspaper and news service around the world for a hygiene or human rights violation.”

THE FAIR LABOR ASSOCIATION Following Apple’s Foxconn controversy the company joined the Fair Labor Association (FLA) and, in doing so, it agreed to abide by the FLA’s Workplace Code of Conduct throughout its supply chain. Launched in 1999 by a coalition of industry (including Nike), labour and non-profit advocacy groups, the FLA assesses working conditions and monitors attempts to remedy violations in factories, farms and facilities used by its affiliated companies. Independent assessors schedule random visits to facilities supplying participating companies.

Further information: fairlabor.org

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IN PERSON / ANNE HEYES

IN PERSON:

ANNE HEYES

From studying Shakespeare to driving significant change initiatives in some of Australia’s most iconic organisations, Anne Heyes has drawn on her rich career and life experience to guide the Australian Red Cross Blood Service and its 3,800 employees through a complex transformation project.

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

Anne Heyes: It was totally accidental. I was planning to be a professor of English literature at Oxford University. That was my career goal. I was doing my master’s in English lit and studying the complete works of Shakespeare, but I needed money to support my study. I applied for a job with the public sector and was placed into the payroll area of Telecom. My boss thought I was a bit wasted there and talked to the training and development team who ran the graduate program. I was accepted into the program and that exposed me to the operations of the whole organisation. I quickly realised that I could always pursue my love of English lit as a hobby.

I switched to a master’s of commerce and kept climbing the ladder in HR.

HRD: You’ve been involved in large-scale change initiatives, including the mergers of Myer/Grace Bros and Westpac/Bank of Melbourne. What would be your number one tip for other HR professionals undertaking a change assignment?

AH: The best way to approach major organisational change is to separate out the business-as-usual functioning from the transition planning. I think it’s very hard for people when they’re distracted by the urgent, reactive stuff to lift their head out of the dayto-day to think creatively and innovatively about what’s possible for the future. By separate out, I mean having your business-as-usual people doing what they’re doing, and then having a transition planning team. That team needs to comprise some people who have deep knowledge of the business, as well as those with limited knowledge but who may bring their experience from other organisations to bear – but it always needs to be rooted in the reality of deep expertise around the business and how it works.

I think that way you get a quicker transition because you can ensure that everything is ready to switch over on your planned cut-over date, without having any detrimental impact on either the day-today functioning of the organisation or compromising the planning you’re doing for the future.

HRD: You’ve been at the Australian Red Cross Blood Service for 10 years in your current capacity as executive director, human resources. The organisation is also undergoing change – what’s happening?

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AH: In the post-HIV era and following a period of greater understanding of the importance of protecting the nation’s blood supply, the government decided we needed a national organisation. Eight different entities needed to merge. All of them were a bit different in terms of the level of investment they had previously had, their technology, the processes, the employment arrangements, the training, even the products that were offered.

We’ve had to implement national systems to drive efficiency through standardisation. We’ve reviewed all the work and roles of almost everyone in the organisation and redefined them so we can drive efficiency, putting in place national systems and frameworks. We found there were a lot of savings to be gained by examining the differences between the eight entities, identifying best practice, and replicating that best practice across the nation.

HRD: What’s been the biggest challenge for HR in terms of this change?

AH: A few things. We went through everything in the organisation, from clarifying definitions of roles, to re-engineering processes and redesigning organisational structures. Each of those areas has had significant ripple effects. Once we standardised job roles, for example, it was easier to implement standardised recruitment processes.

When we looked at training, we found that in different states they might take 30 days to train someone compared to 10 days in another state – but when we examined the quality and effectiveness of that training, the cheaper, quicker training was better. Why waste time and money when we don’t need to?

I started off with over 50 industrial agreements, and we’ve been rationalising that to get commonality and standard clauses to simplify and drive equity across the organisation, but also make it easier for payroll to process. That’s been complicated and time-consuming.

It’s been a huge project, but we’re now very close to having completed all the major surgery on the organisation.

HRD: Can you outline why people join your organisation, and secondly, how you have emphasised this as a ‘hook’ in your employment branding?

AH: People are attracted to our organisation and stay because of our mission. It’s a compelling

ANNE HEYES CAREER TIMELINE Qualifications 1986–1988

University of New South Wales Master’s of Commerce, UNSW (Psychology, Industrial Relations, Marketing, Organisational Behaviour)

1986–1988

University of Sydney BA Hons, English Literature, Psychology

Work summary 1982–1985

Telecommunications Australia Training & development manager

1987–1989

Overseas Telecommunications Commission GM, employee development

1989–1995

Myer Grace Bros GM, HR planning

1998–2002

Bank of Melbourne HR director

2002–2004

Victorian Workcover Authority HR director

2004–present

The Australian Red Cross Blood Service Executive director human resources

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IN PERSON / ANNE HEYES

“People are attracted to our organisation and stay because of our mission. It’s a compelling mission because we contribute to saving lives” Anne Heyes

DID YOU KNOW? The Australian Red Cross Blood Service is owned by the Australian Red Cross.

While the two are different organisations, one is an aid-based humanitarian organisation and the other is involved in the collection, testing, manufacture and distribution of blood – they both share common DNA. Both entities share a common mission and shared values reflecting the power of humanity to make positive change.

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mission because we contribute to saving lives. Often people are motivated because they’ve had an incident with family or friends where a loved one has been saved because of the generosity of our amazing donors who come in and donate their blood. We then test it, manufacture it and distribute it. People find that a very compelling proposition – it gives a lot of meaning to their day-to-day work.

However, it’s a two-edged sword. We’ve had some past employees who may have joined because they were attracted to the mission, who identified with a not-for-profit organisation and embraced our humanitarian values. However, they might not necessarily have understood our need to operate along the same lines as a for-profit organisation. We actually think it’s even more important that we be efficient and use every dollar well to improve the supply of safe, high-quality blood at the lowest cost.

Our product is bought by government, and there are scarce dollars in the health system. Every dollar we save can go back into that health system. We need to use the same disciplines as any commercial organisation, and sometimes we need to make difficult decisions, including downsizing and, unfortunately, redundancies.

It’s been a sensitive message to get across in our employment branding, but we don’t want people to join our organisation and misunderstand what we’re offering. We offer a meaningful career which will present continuous challenges and ongoing professional development, but our commitment to humanitarianism does not mean we shy away from constantly driving continuous improvement.

We have our Employee Value Proposition on our website and it has attracted increasing interest from prospective employees as well as current staff.

[Take a look at donateblood.com.au/careers.]

HRD: What is the biggest HR-related challenge you are currently facing, and how are you navigating this challenge?

AH: In every organisation I’ve worked in, it’s been similar: convincing line managers that it is their responsibility to manage people. HR does not manage the people for them. We obviously try to support them in that by giving them as much guidance as possible, developing good strategies, good tools and systems, and developing them to increase their capabilities to manage people. But it’s a continual challenge, particularly in organisations like ours with a lot of technical experts, including doctors, nurses and scientists, where people management skills have not been their primary training.

HRD: What are you most proud of in your career?

AH: The change I’ve contributed to here at the Red Cross Blood Service, which I believe is a truly sustainable change that will have a lasting impact on the organisation. I feel as if I’ve been very fortunate in the trajectory of my career. I’ve now worked at all levels of government – local, state and federal – and in a number of large corporate commercial organisations. Now I’ve arrived at the right time in my career to help an organisation with such a compelling mission, and I’m fortunately in a position where I can use all that experience in a meaningful way.

HRD: Finish this sentence: What I love most about HR is...

AH: …the whole-of-organisation impact you can have.

HRD: And the flipside to that: What I dislike most about HR is...

AH: …line managers trying to avoid their responsibility to manage their own people.

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

AH: I attended the retirement function of a colleague who had been a people manager responsible for 20,000 people. At that event, he said something that really resonated with me. He said his job was to make hard decisions but to implement them kindly. In my experience, when undertaking organisational change, people do understand the need for change.

Even though they might not like it or agree with those decisions, they can at least understand and accept it. What they can’t understand or accept, and nor should they, is when organisations do it with a lack of respect.

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LAST WORD / INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

THE LAST WORD

Cheque book IR

Paying to make a problem go away has its appeal – but as Gary Taylor explains, it’s prudent to weigh the pros and cons

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

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“Do you believe in cheque-book IR?” I was once asked this question at an interview. To be honest, I had not heard such a loaded question before, and had not considered the implications, but it did get me thinking.

The question revolves around the issue of individual settlements, the kind of dilemma which all HR executives face, namely: are we prepared to pay what is necessary to make the problem (person) go away? There are only few of us who would want to admit to cheque-book IR, and yet the more experienced HR directors (when pushed) will admit to having recommended some pretty hefty settlements in their time.

The offering of a ‘full and final’ settlement can arise from a whole plethora of circumstances, and is agreed to for a whole bunch of reasons. As a matter of principle, some employers prefer not to settle for the following reasons: »» The fear of creating a precedent is in reality the greatest obstacle. There is some substance to the employer belief that (despite signed confidentiality clauses) settlements get leaked by vindictive ex-employees, as it is almost impossible to trace the source of the leak. »» From an internal PR point of view, it may appear that the employer has had to settle, ie they have a weak case, and are paying to assuage their conscience for having made the wrong call, or having failed on procedural fairness. »» HR departments preach that internal processes can legitimately be challenged by lawful external routes. Therefore, it is almost flying in the face of due process to opt out by paying for the problem to go away. We like to say that ‘it’s a matter of principle’ when we most often mean that it’s a matter of pride… corporate or individual pride.

On the other hand, if there is one thing that good IR people have learned over the years, it is pragmatism.

Labour jurisprudence is liberally sprinkled with cases

which have been drawn on for years, and IR people do not relish old cases.

So, what are the reasons in favour of so-called cheque-book IR? »» Primarily, it stops a long process, which is likely to involve important company resources trapped in an aggravating dispute-mindset, rather than focusing on the core business of the organisation. »» The mature employer realises that the end of an employment relationship is not really about ‘fault’. It is preferable to pay out a lump sum rather than have a disgruntled and possibly subversive person on the payroll while you grind through the technicalities of due process, appeals, and the cost of so many internal people in addition to the legal fees. »» An amicable ‘divorce’ from a senior person probably does the corporate image better service than crushing him in court (let alone losing). If it has not worked out for a top person, try to find common ground, and let both parties walk away.

Of course, there is no rule or guideline as to what constitutes the point of no return in a settlement. The US seems to be very generous in paying people to leave, but most cases have a figure which can work for both parties. An astute settlement negotiator also looks for some of the unspoken issues which are really important to the individual, such as preserving reputation, the public announcement, etc, which can be deal-makers.

Perhaps we can learn from the animal kingdom, where disputes get rough, but mostly not with the intent of ‘taking out’ the opponent. Most times, the parties just walk away and settle for an outcome which ends the conflict and allows both parties to get on with the important things of life.

Desiderata.

Gary Taylor

HCAMAG.COM

29/08/2014 6:58:36 AM

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