Human Capital magazine issue 9.05

HC

WHY GENDER DIVERSITY MATTERS P.26 » Q&A WITH ELIZABETH BRODERICK P.30 » INSIDE HR AT OPTUS P.46 »

HUMAN CAPITAL MAGAZINE | www.hcamag.com

ISSUE 9.05

Remake, remodel, rebuild

Top change management tips

IN EVERY ISSUE:

Profile case studies

Best practice examples

The forum

Expert opinion columns

Topical news briefs

EDITORIAL

Constant evolution

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ne of the most interesting aspects of this month’s cover story on change management was debunking the myth of ‘change fatigue’. Traditionally it’s been said that constant change, no matter how well handled, can result in exhaustion from participants; it happens when change is being made for the sake of change. Lisa Barry of Deloitte believes this is incorrect. Although she concedes that when handled poorly it’s human nature to grow tired of change, she said that more likely people get more tired of stupidity, of things not changing. However, she urged organisational leaders to be more desensitised to the call for action – for the simple reason that we are constantly being called on to ‘act with haste’ because ‘everything is urgent’. She termed this “acute shorttermism”. She also urged leaders to be more discriminating on where change is required. “It may have just been a bad idea in the first place,” she says. “And if it was a good idea you didn’t sell it to them – that’s not change fatigue.”

This month’s Human Capital takes an in-depth look at why so many change initiatives fail, including a case study on PMP, Australia’s biggest printing company, which had to undertake drastic changes to stay in business three years ago. Also included is a feature on a fairly new arrival on the corporate landscape: the change manager. Who are they, what are their skill sets, and where should they be located in the business?

Talking about change, there’s one area where businesses are finally being forced to rethink not just their policies but also their cultures, and it centres on gender equality. In this issue you will find several articles relating to best practice in gender diversity, in addition to a one-on-one interview with Elizabeth Broderick, Australia’s sex discrimination commissioner.

Iain Hopkins, editor

EDITOR Iain Hopkins

SALES & MARKETING NATIONAL COMMERCIAL MANAGER Sophie Knight

COPY & FEATURES

SALES MANAGER Sarah Wiseman

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Charlotte Mortlock

SENIOR MARKETING EXECUTIVE Kerry Corben MARKETING EXECUTIVE Anna Keane

PRODUCTION EDITORS Moira Daniels, Jacqui Stone, Carolin Wun

TRAFFIC MANAGER Jessica Jazic

ART & PRODUCTION

MANAGING DIRECTOR Mike Shipley

DESIGN PRODUCTION MANAGER Angie Gillies

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER George Walmsley

CORPORATE

CHIEF DESIGNER Lucila Lamas

SALES DIRECTOR Justin Kennedy CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER Colin Chan

CONTRIBUTORS Carroll & O’Dea Lawyers, The Next Step, Frontier Software, Kenexa Australasia

HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER Julia Bookallil

Editorial enquiries Iain Hopkins tel: +61 2 8437 4703 iain.hopkins@keymedia.com.au Advertising enquiries National commercial manager, HR products Sophie Knight tel: +61 2 8437 4733 sophie.knight@keymedia.com.au Sales manager, HR Products Sarah Wiseman tel: +61 2 8437 4745 sarah.wiseman@keymedia.com.au Subscriptions tel: +61 2 8437 4731 • fax: +61 2 8437 4753 subscriptions@keymedia.com.au Key Media www.keymedia.com.au Key Media Pty Ltd, regional head office, Level 10, 1 Chandos St, St Leonards, NSW 2065, Australia tel: +61 2 8437 4700 fax: +61 2 9439 4599 Offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, Toronto www.hcamag.com Copyright is reserved throughout. No part of this publication can be reproduced in whole or part without the express permission of the editor. Contributions are invited, but copies of work should be kept as HC can accept no responsibility for loss.

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CONTENTS

Inside this issue

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14 Cover story: Remake, remodel, rebuild While change management consultants claim to be “as busy as we’ve ever been” the fact remains: only one in three change initiatives succeed in business today. Iain Hopkins reports

26 Heading towards a glass cliff?

Promoting women to roles for which they are insufficiently experienced, and therefore destined to fail, is a major criticism of gender quotas. So what is best practice in gender diversity? Human Capital investigates

34 Boosting female talent

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Qualified, skilled and ambitious women are ready to join your organisation now – but are you ready? Britt Jacobsen provides some tips for a female-friendly recruitment strategy

38 Driving employee benefits Can novated leasing produce results that reward both employee and the business? Danny Wilson investigates

Regulars 4 In Step – HR career experts 6 Legal 8 HR Technology 9 HR Consulting

Letters to the editor

Do you have a burning HR or people management issue you would like to share with others? If so, Human Capital would like to hear from you. Send through your comments to editor@hcamag.com. Alternatively, express your thoughts on the readers’ forums at www.hcamag.com

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HR Career Experts

HOW TO GET THAT ELUSIVE ‘FOOT IN THE DOOR’…

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n my line of work I frequently meet a range of candidates seeking to get a foot in the door – that is, somewhere where they can start their career in HR. Frustratingly the options are often too few and far between. The old notion of attending university and being recruited into a graduate program are somewhat antiquated. A recent survey The Next Step conducted showed that nearly 88% of practitioners surveyed were degree qualified, yet only 9.5% had commenced their careers in a graduate role. By contrast, almost 50% had started their careers in either an administrative or payroll capacity, and even more alarming is that only 0.5% of practitioners surveyed described their current role as that of HR graduate. We cannot ignore that with an ageing population there will be capability gaps across the profession in the next 5–10 years.

However, it’s not all bad news for the next generation as the tide seems to be turning and options such as industry-based learning and cooperative programs are becoming a more viable and popular option for employers to recruit talent into their organisaton. In this month’s Instep, we look at what the options are and the benefits that industry-based work experience can offer to both employees and employers.

What’s in it for me?

From an employer perspective, it gives organisations an opportunity to obtain valuable insight, and many often see their IBL or co-op students as potential future employees. Whilst the return on investment may not be immediate, the benefits of growing your own talent will be far more valuable in the long term. Non-tangible benefits such as a sense of pride and loyalty cannot be measured and serve to create a strong EVP with students whether they are recruited or not.

From a student’s perspective, it offers a real sense of what it’s like to work in an HR function; theory is wonderful but it’s often the practical reality of working in an office that helps to develop a student’s confidence and relationship-building skills. In many cases, organisations offer part-time work experience post placement and some even end up recruiting their IBL or co-op students on a

permanent basis. In addition it makes candidates an extremely attractive proposition in the highly competitive world of entry level roles.

How does it work?

Some universities incorporate IBL into their courses, for example Swinburne and Monash in Melbourne. Other degrees such as the Masters of Organisational Psychology require students to undertake a certain amount of unpaid work experience to complement their studies. Universities will usually have dedicated IBL coordinators who have relationships with industry, however, students are encouraged to actively network to create their own opportunities.

Alternatively, employers can contact their local university and speak to the careers centre that would be able to assist.

Doing our bit As a specialist HR recruitment firm, The Next Step feels it is in not only ours but the profession’s interest to assist in creating opportunities for the next generation of HR talent. As such, The Next Step has been running a career readiness program in NSW since 2008. By partnering with the University of Western Sydney and some of our valued clients we have structured a 12-month program that sees graduates able to enter the workforce with the skills and confidence to stand out ahead of the competition with the ability to add value from the get go. In keeping with our approach, a similar program will be launched in Victoria this year.

Food for thought Many organisations talk about growing their own talent but in reality many often don’t, be it due to the structure of their HR function, time constraints or little HR turnover. Developing early career professionals does take time and effort, however, the rewards are infinitely measureable.

With the market showing positive signs of job growth, the war for talent will no doubt be on again.

So the question remains, what are you and your organisation doing to develop and secure the talent of the future?

Sarah Brown is a Consultant in our permanent recruitment team in the Melbourne office. For more information call (03) 9664 0900 or email sbrown@thenextstep.com.au, website: www.thenextstep.com.au

Recent HR Market Moves supplied by The Next Step

Lorelle Cooney has been appointed the General Manager, People & Performance at Breville. Lorelle previously held HR management roles with National Australia Bank and Qantas.

ING Direct has appointed Denise Hanlon as Head of Learning & Organisational Development. After enjoying senior HR management roles with businesses such as MBF and ACON, Denise has spent the last two years consulting to blue chip organisations.

Belinda Castine has been appointed the General Manager of Human Resources for the Residential business of Stockland. She brings a wealth of experience from senior HR management roles within the finance, insurance, aviation and consulting industries.

Arlene Graham has been appointed Senior Human Resources Manager for Moët Hennessy Australia & New Zealand. Arlene previously held the role of Senior HR Manager with Luxottica Retail.

Leading global engineering firm WorleyParsons has appointed Barry Bloch as the Group Managing Director – People. Barry was previously a Partner at Heidrick & Struggles and before that the Global Practice Leader of Leadership & People Development with Rio Tinto for over five years.

Also joining WorleyParsons as their ANZ Strategic Resourcing Manager is Rebecca Montague. Rebecca was previously

employed as the National Recruitment Manager – Asset Services with United Group.

Bianca Witkin has accepted the role of HR Manager with Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). Bianca was previously in the role of HR Manager ACPAC with Drake International.

Incitec Pivot has appointed Louise Kaye-Smith as their Group HR Manager – Corporate & Talent. Louise was previously with JBWere as a People & Culture Business Partner.

Clara Cooney has accepted the role of Manager, Recruitment – People Strategy with Victoria Police. Clara was previously employed

by HBOS Australia as their Talent Acquisition Manager.

Optus has appointed Kelly Segat as their National Recruitment Manager. Kelly previously held the role of National Solutions Manager with Futurestep and brings a wealth of recruitment experience from senior roles within Michael Page, Suncorp and Morgan & Banks.

Mark Kelly has been appointed the General Manager – Health, Safety & Human Resources Management for Lend Lease’s infrastructure business. Mark previously held HR Director level roles with the NSW Fire Brigades and Tyco International.

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

Legal Experts

ANNUAL LEAVE UNDER THE FAIR WORK ACT 2009

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he enormous value of Australian workers’ accumulated annual leave entitlements was the subject of research undertaken by Tourism Australia in the wake of the global financial crisis. In 2009, Australians had accumulated 123 million days of annual leave, which equated to wages in excess of $33 billion. Research revealed that approximately 25% of full-time employees in Australia accrue their annual leave, by having over five weeks’ leave owing at any one time.

It is important that employers address the reasons why some employees allow their leave to accrue, and ensure that they are aware of the circumstances in which employees may be directed to take leave or may cash out their leave. Provisions concerning annual leave are contained in the National Employment Standards (NES) within Part 2 of the Fair Work Act 2009 (the ‘FW Act’). The NES apply to all national system employers and employees.

While there is a range of reasons for the accrual of leave, employees who ‘stockpile’ their leave seem to fall within three categories: • employees who wish to keep accumulated leave as insurance against unemployment, illness or emergency; • workers who accumulate their leave in order to take substantial holidays (which may generate the need for temporary cover); and • employees who feel that their workload and/or managerial responsibilities make it very difficult for them to take leave.

Employees falling within this last category should be offered sufficient support to enable them to take the leave that they are legitimately entitled to take.

It goes without saying that employers need to keep accurate records of employees’ leave entitlements, amongst other records. This is mandatory under both the FW Act and the Fair Work Regulations 2009. The FW Act provides for paid annual leave to be taken for a period agreed between the employer and employee, and to be paid at the employee’s ordinary rate of pay (unless a Modern Award or enterprise agreement provide for leave loading). The employer cannot unreasonably refuse an employee’s request to take paid leave.

Section 94(1) of the FW Act permits an employer and an award/agreement-free employee to come to an agreement, permitting the employee to cash out www.hcamag.com

annual leave. That agreement must be in writing and specify both the rate of payment of the cashed out leave and when the payment was made, with a copy retained by the employer. An employee cannot cash out paid annual leave if the employee’s remaining annual leave entitlement falls below four weeks’ accrual.

Section 129(a) of the FW Act permits employers and award/agreement-free employees to also reach agreement for the provision of extra annual leave in exchange for the worker foregoing the equivalent amount of pay and/or for extra personal/carer’s leave to be provided in exchange for the equivalent amount of pay. These agreements should also be confirmed in writing and copies retained by the employer.

In relation to an award/agreement-free employee who has accrued an excessive amount of annual leave, an employer may require the employee to take a period of annual leave if the requirement is reasonable (eg during an annual shutdown or where the employee’s leave entitlement exceeds, for example, eight weeks). Modern Awards and enterprise agreements may include specific terms providing for the cashing out of paid leave and/or the requirement for an employee to take paid annual leave in particular circumstances. Employers should have regard to these specific provisions before taking action.

On termination of employment, the Fair Work Act provides that an employee’s accrued annual leave is paid at the same rate as though the leave had been taken. For award-free employees, this means their base rate of pay. However, some Modern Awards require payment of leave loading on termination. Accordingly, payment of accrued leave on termination should be examined on a caseby-case basis, depending on the instrument that governs the employee’s conditions of employment.

For a number of reasons, including the health of employees, it is undesirable for employers to permit the accumulation of excessive annual leave entitlements. Provided that accurate records are maintained in relation to the taking, cashing-out or purchasing of leave, employers have several mechanisms available to them to contain the accrual of excessive annual leave. www.codea.com.au

Janine Smith, Senior Associate Carroll & O’Dea Lawyers Level 18 St James Centre 111 Elizabeth Street Sydney NSW 2000 Phone 02 9291 7100

HR Technology

USING TECHNOLOGY TO HARNESS WORKFORCE ASSETS QUESTION: Now that the economic outlook has

brightened, staff turnover has become an issue within the business. How can technology help HR to manage staff turnover and maximise workforce value?

ANSWER: Your workforce is one of your

greatest assets. Without talented employees your organisation will struggle to develop new initiatives and remain competitive. Your Human Capital Solution (HCS) is the ideal tool to manage your workforce assets. It will also allow you to leverage your human capital and ensure you are maximising their value. By utilising your online Talent Management/HR Solution you are able to streamline processes and be in a much better position to identify flight risks and develop succession plans.

My top 10 tips for leveraging your Human Capital Solution for Talent Management are: Move recruitment online: If you are not already using an online tool to manage recruitment, talk to your vendor today. Online tools will capture vital candidate information, such as skills and competencies, and eliminate unsuitable candidates before they reach the hiring manager’s inbox. These tools highlight those applicants who are the best fit, enabling you to focus on the cultural fit of shortlisted applicants. Correspondence with candidates and on-boarding are also automated, which reduces the time to hire and ensure applicants remain engaged throughout the process.

Automate on-boarding: Using workflow to automate the on-boarding process will ensure your organisation’s best practice on-boarding procedures are strictly adhered to with each new hire.

Identify key roles: An intimate understanding of the roles that drive business performance will allow the enterprise to manage the risk of them becoming vacant. By categorising key positions within your HCS, you can easily identify the important roles that require detailed succession planning and groom talent accordingly.

Automate where possible: Removing the tactical burden from HR will accelerate the potential to deliver workforce initiatives. Introducing efficiency into HR practices such as leave and performance management will not only improve the process but also open up many Talent Management opportunities within the enterprise.

Manage skills gaps: Maintaining an understanding of available workforce skills and business demand is crucial in order for HR to www.hcamag.com

impact bottom-line performance. Once HR has an understanding of the anticipated business demand for talent, it can leverage online data to determine if the current talent supply will meet the need or if additional resources are required.

Manage performance: Regular performance reviews are an opportune time to align employee goals with enterprise strategy and to update development plans. Utilising online Performance Management tools will deliver efficiencies to this process and ensure nothing is overlooked. A key strategy for HR is to develop a culture within the organisation where Performance Reviews are considered a key business tool.

Keep your skills framework current: Regular performance reviews give management a thorough understanding of workforce assets and where they are placed. The review meeting is an ideal time to update skills profiles that should feed into the corporate skills framework.

Promote ongoing learning: Experts agree that providing employees with opportunities for ongoing learning will keep them engaged.

Encourage internal mobility: Manage the looming skills shortage by encouraging employees to move roles within the organisation. This strategy means employees remain engaged and do not take valuable IP to your competitors. Executing this strategy will be almost effortless if you are keeping talent management initiatives online. Online skills frameworks will identify possible candidates within your talent pool for vacancies and your online internal job boards will display open vacancies.

Invest in reporting tools: Provide management with the workforce data that underpins informed decision making. Invest in reporting tools that allow HR to analyse workforce metrics and better utilise data.

Most organisations recognise their Human Capital as a competitive differentiator. HR can remove the tactical burden which will free up resources by leveraging its Human Capital Solution to help manage talent management processes. It is an exciting time for HR practitioners - they now have the tools available to drive workforce alignment within the enterprise and a desire from management for this to occur.

Nick Southcombe General Manager Frontier Software Pty Ltd (03) 9639 0777 www.frontiersoftware.com

HR Consulting

SURVEYING THE LANDSCAPE OR DRIVING FORWARDS?

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any organisations conduct surveys to find out what their people think and feel.

Whilst such initiatives ostensibly exist to improve performance, the truth is that lip service is often paid to them. They are regarded in some quarters as merely ‘box ticking’ exercises rather than a source of business-critical information carried out to deliver tangible and targeted results. At Kenexa, we saw this unspoken belief expressed once again during the GFC as some companies expressed the view that the investment involved in conducting surveys was unjustifiable in times of financial stress.

This scepticism is, in fact, not restricted to times of crisis. Critics often doubt that employees’ feelings really drive performance; they question how some companies with less engaged workforces can outperform others with higher engagement, or point out instances where an increase in engagement wasn’t matched by a similar increment in business results. These are perfectly legitimate concerns, but ones that can readily be answered – the evidence linking employee engagement (and other factors tapped into by opinion surveys) to performance is overwhelming. Of course other important factors exist – and that explains why employee surveys don’t predict business performance with 100% accuracy.

But the fact remains that ‘the employee experience’ is one of the key factors underpinning company performance – and understanding this is more important during difficult times.

Surveys used to focus on ‘satisfaction’ – a generalised, positive feeling about work. Whilst undoubtedly desirable, this rather undirected concept did not always pinpoint the key issues.

These days, surveys generally measure the much more focused concept of ‘employee engagement’.

Numerous definitions exist but they do converge on similar themes; Kenexa’s is: “The extent to which employees are motivated to contribute to organisational success and are willing to apply discretionary effort to accomplishing tasks important to the achievement of organisational goals.”

The vital elements of motivation, ‘discretionary effort’ and ‘the achievement of organisational goals’ are what distinguish this from mere satisfaction. It is possible for someone to feel ‘satisfied’ without being ‘engaged’ and is why the concept is so important to performance.

However, even the concept of engagement has come to be regarded as only part of the story. The

efforts of engaged employees can lack efficacy if organisations do not operate effectively. Shining light into this ‘blind spot’ lies at the heart of the concept of ‘Performance Enablement’ (PE), which we define as: “The extent to which an organisation is strongly committed to high levels of customer service and product quality and relies upon continuous improvement practices to achieve superior organisational results.”

If your employees doubt the quality of your products, customer service or continuous improvement, can you afford to ignore that?

Kenexa’s surveys now routinely ask employees to assess PE just as much as factors related to engagement. The graph below, based on Kenexa research, shows that organisations with higher PE and engagement scores strongly outperform their lower-scoring counterparts: High enablement + high engagement

Low enablement + low engagement

2 1.5 1 0.5 0 -0.5 -1 -1.5 -2 -2.5

Diluted earnings per share

We know from our clients that focusing on PE and engagement together consistently leads to much bigger increments in customer satisfaction ratings, ‘diluted earnings per share’ and ‘Total Shareholder Return’ than focusing on engagement alone.

Of course surveys do not achieve much in isolation; they only allow us to drive performance if they lead to focused and effective action. This is why PE opens up new possibilities; clearly the appropriate responses to concern about product or service quality are very different from what you should do if engagement is impacted by poor leadership or a lack of interesting work. In short, taking a wide-ranging view of what to include in employee opinion surveys, together with a commitment to taking appropriate action, enables organisations to perform much more effectively.

Ed Hurst, Managing Director Kenexa Australasia Level 2 451 Little Bourke Street Melbourne, VIC 3000 03 9602 3899 ed.hurst@kenexa.com

THE FORUM L&D

Older and wiser?

Do longertenured employees have the same training needs as entry-level staff and new arrivals?

Human Capital asks three experts for their top tips

Tip 1 – Late career training should typically be more focused on specific areas of learning, to augment what has been learnt to date

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By Cliff Taylor, HR director, Eli Lilly Asian Operations

believe that development comes from a blend of experiences, relationships and structured learning, such as training programs. The proportions should be about 70–20–10 respectively.

This is true across a total career or lifetime.

It stands to reason that most training will come early on in a career, when content and skills need to be learnt and developed. However, this does not mean that the need for training stops.

Rather it changes over time, particularly as people progress through different levels of leadership, when some skills need to be further developed, and sometimes new skills need to be learnt. Hence, later in a career, the training would typically be more focused on specific areas of learning, to augment what has been learnt to date.

At Lilly, we attempt to tailor training to each individual. We sometimes use external training programs for more experienced employees to help address their specific developmental needs.

For new hires and junior employees, our in-house training programs allow senior leaders to mentor them using their real-life examples, something that will be easier for participants to relate to.

Tip 2 – Treat all learning opportunities as a key component of success

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By Scott Drach, senior HR director, Boeing International

n our global marketplace, and in a dynamic industry like aviation, investing in education and training for all employees is not a luxury, but a key component of success. Our customers are counting on us for high-quality, innovative and affordable solutions. Without investing in our employees, we would not have been able to yield the

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type of groundbreaking solutions that led to the 787 Dreamliner and the Airborne Laser.

At Boeing, we believe in lifelong learning and apply training and educational opportunities consistently across our workforce. We’ve found that our company grows as our employees grow. We do not differentiate between the amount of training provided to longer-tenured employees and newer employees. Whether they have been with us one year or 41 years, all are encouraged to learn continuously.

So in that respect, we find that a proportionate number of longer-tenured employees and newer employees attend and grow via training.

Tip 3 – Longer-tenured employees are valuable assets only if they are equipped to deal with the future

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By Vinoth Govindarajan, executive VP – HR, Religare Capital Markets

was once speaking to my college professor while pursuing my Masters in HR and he told me that he expected me to be back in a school in 10 years to ‘re-skill’ myself. I was shocked but now I realise how true his words were.

In today’s dynamic business environment, capability building is an ongoing feature.

Longer-tenured employees are valuable assets only if they are equipped to deal with the future.

One also derives career satisfaction when one sees their organisation investing in them. Long-tenured employees therefore continue to evolve via training as they rise in an organisation. Their need for training also increases as they learn to deal with the Facebook generation or marketing via the use of digital media.

Newer employees handle largely operational roles when they enter an organisation. If they are taken at a senior level as an experienced professional they bring with them the skill set required for the job.

Organisations make these kinds of hiring decisions very carefully, as no organisation would take a novice at that level. HC

IN BRIEF australian news

HC Online TV launches!

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uman Capital is pleased to announce an exciting development in the HR space.

From the start of April, the Human Capital website has had a new look and new content. New additions include multimedia content – HC Online TV – incorporating filmed panel discussions featuring corporate heavyweights, video news stories covering all the issues that matter, and in-depth one-on-one interviews with some of the biggest names in HR. These photos provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse into our first filmed panel discussion.

Human Capital editor Iain Hopkins facilitated a

discussion with Diana Cross, HR director at Arup, Lucinda Gemmell, Australia/New Zealand HR director at Diageo, Lynne Salmon, senior marketing manager at Taleo, and Sharyn Schultz, senior vice president of HR at Luxottica. Topics covered included gender diversity, employee engagement, recruitment, and the future of HR. Check out all our multimedia content at www. hcamag.com We hope Human Capital Online continues to be your one-stop destination for everything relating to your profession. If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it. Send an email to editor@hcamag.com

Simon Kerslake

Diana Cross, Lucinda Gemmell, Iain Hopkins, Lynne Salmon, Sharyn Schultz

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TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER Opinion

Pia Lee says the cult of visionary leadership flatters those who have the chutzpah to reach out and pull success from the air, but failure eventually and inevitably follows for all but a very few

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s Apple CEO Steve Jobs again takes leave of absence from the company for health reasons, Tim Cook is stepping up to take on his responsibilities. The problem for Cook is that he is destined to fail, at least in the eyes of some observers, because he isn’t Steve Jobs.

He isn’t a ‘rock star’ CEO, a role played by Jobs to perfection. He isn’t a visionary tech-head either, another role that Jobs filled admirably, and that will be Cook’s undoing if Jobs stays away too long.

Apple, like so many other corporations basking in the glory of a visionary CEO, has done little to shore up its leadership structure should Jobs part ways with the company. As he must inevitably do – nobody, not even Jobs, is immortal, which may come as a shock to some Apple devotees.

The careful leak of Jobs’ departure on a public holiday shows that Apple is fully aware of Jobs’ profile as a corporate deity. It also reveals the company has done little in the last two years to build a clear succession plan, and seems actively disinclined to build the next line of leadership to assist their leader.

Apple’s approach demonstrates how the leadership theories of last century – individual heroes, hierarchical structures, top down communication – are now placing 21st century organisations at risk in an increasingly complex and challenging business environment.

In his article ‘The Misguided Mix-up of Celebrity and Leadership’, Jim Collins put his finger on it when he wrote, “... our problem lies in the fact that our culture has fallen in love with the idea of the celebrity CEO. Charismatic egotists who swoop in to save companies grace the covers of major magazines because they are much more interesting to read and write about than people like Darwin Smith [of Kimberly Clark] and David Maxwell [of Fannie Mae].

This fuels the mistaken belief held by many directors that a high-profile, larger-than-life leader is required to make a company great”.

The risk is that organisations rest their company’s success solely in the ‘chosen’. But leaders are necessarily transient: they get other jobs, get sick, get tired and inevitably move on.

This risk materialises in two key ways.

The first problem is that the ‘rock star’ approach

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sets up successors, and the companies themselves, to fail. Comparisons with a larger-than-life Jack Welch at GE, for example, were very difficult for an equally capable, but differently styled, Jeff Immelt to overcome.

The second problem is neatly summed up by the Country and Western song, How can I miss you if you won’t go away? Very often these ‘rock star’ CEOs cannot quite leave. Even Jobs, in his absence, will “continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company”. Where does that leave Tim Cook? It is important to note that Jobs has not said he will “support Cook and continue to help him to build his considerable leadership capability”. No, he will continue to make important decisions.

This 19th century thinking on leadership is, thankfully, beginning to change. In his article ‘The CEO’s Real Legacy’, in Harvard Business Review, November 2004, Kenneth W Freeman proposes a non-egoistic effort by CEOs to initiate and manage the selection and grooming of successors with effective board involvement.

Sounds simple, but there is a huge gulf between theory and reality, especially when egos are involved.

How can organisations manage this risk and build a depth of leadership capacity that ensures ongoing growth and performance? The sophisticated needs of today’s businesses require a contemporary approach.

A CEO’s role is to guide the business to success in the long term, which means beyond their term in the role. Some organisations now ‘ensure’ for this outcome by delaying payment of bonuses to outgoing CEOs. Part of this role also has to include building an enduring architecture of leadership, with successors strategically placed in the corporate hierarchy, and with a legacy of shared guiding principles and language that lead naturally to success.

The egotistical leadership of ‘a genius showman’ should give way to the somewhat more prosaic, but more reliable, culture of contribution and collaboration. HC About the author Pia Lee is CEO of LIW, a global leadership consultancy headquartered in Sydney

CASE STUDY PMP

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COVER STORY change management

Remake, remodel, rebuild

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COVER STORY change management

While change management consultants claim to be “as busy as we’ve ever been”, the fact remains: only one in three change initiatives succeed in business today. Iain Hopkins reports

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t’s been 15 years since John Kotter published Leading Change, the book many consider to be the seminal work in the field of change management. Back in 1996, Kotter’s research revealed that only 30% of change management programs succeed. In 2008 these results were confirmed by a McKinsey survey of 3,199 executives around the world which found, as Kotter did, that only one transformation in three succeeds. Other studies over the past 10 years reveal remarkably similar results.

Despite the hundreds of book titles, journal articles and seminar topics devoted to the subject, how is it possible that business leaders are still getting it so wrong? Lisa Barry, partner, human capital consulting at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, says there is a whiff of Groundhog Day about the same mistakes being made over and over again, despite the fact that many business leaders of today have significant change leadership experience. “If you look at the economic landscape in the last 20 years there have been huge changes, and most leaders aged 40–50 have had a fair schooling in this stuff; they’ve probably had 15 years of unrelenting change leadership in their line roles,” she says.

“Leaders know this is part of their job. It’s not like one day they wake up and say, ‘I’m going to do my change leadership jobs today’. In the top three layers of an organisation it’s about 40% of what they do every day, if not more,” she adds.

So what usually topples a change initiative?

Barry suggests two common themes: employee resistance and leadership failure. The two are closely entwined. “We tend to not talk about it as employee resistance these days because it gives it a negative slant,” she says. “ ‘It’s the people that have stopped me doing this!’ But they resist because they often aren’t clear on what they’re supposed to be doing. It’s not like they’re resisting it like some sort of militant group; as leaders we’re just appalling at making things clear. We’re also no good at getting input from others. We make the classic mistake of saying, ‘Here, www.hcamag.com

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COVER STORY change management

it’s all made, I hope you like it, I didn’t disturb you for your design input but I hope you like it.’ It lacks genuine engagement from the absolute get-go.”

However, it’s still the leaders that are the most pervasive element of that failure probability rate.

“The tricky part is that people will put a positive spin on a disaster by saying ‘we had to be agile’, ‘we had to change for the right reasons’, etc. These are excuses to mask what has been a bog standard failure,” Barry says.

What change?

When the words ‘organisational change’ are thrown together, two common scenarios spring to mind: one is the major strategic or cultural change wrought by an event like a merger or acquisition; the other is change on a large scale, perhaps a new IT system roll out (these change programs are now known as SET: Systems Enabled Transformation). SET projects can be large, they can take time, they usually will not simply ‘sort themselves out’, and there’s a lot of tactical readiness an organisation will need to undertake to facilitate it.

However, Barry notes that SET projects tend to be very predictable – one often knows how to get from A to B, and B just is a matter of time and effort.

But for a truly strategic change, A is already known – that’s where the organisation currently sits – but B is not clear. And if B is clear, something is probably missing from the equation, Barry suggests.

“Executive leaders need to step out of their own comfort zones and think about where this asset they’ve got could be going, where it should be going, and it’s like every decision you’re taking is an opportunity cost. You’re trying to place bets in the strongest possible markets using the strongest possible strategies – that’s really big thinking, to make fundamental change for the better. Not incremental change – in our economy, incrementalising your way to glory doesn’t get you there,” Barry explains.

“SET projects are valuable projects but they’re not there to sell strategic change, and they don’t require the same people to play. You need all of the [executive] table wanting something very badly from a strategic change – it’s a different sort of energy to something they just need to manage from a governance perspective and to ensure things get done and that resources are allocated correctly.”

Hearts and minds In the accompanying case study on PMP over the following pages it was apparent that capturing the

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“Change leadership can’t be done via email, you’ve got to be there and you’ve got to get out in front of your people and take them with you” – Lisa Barry

hearts and minds was really the only element that mattered in that organisation’s turnaround. This, of course, is easier said than done.

McKinsey research suggests that four basic conditions are necessary before employees will change their behaviour: 1. a compelling story, because employees must see the point of the change and agree with it 2. role modelling, because they must also see the CEO and colleagues they admire behaving in the new way 3. reinforcing mechanisms, because systems, processes and incentives must be in line with the new behaviour 4. capability building, because employees must have the skills required to make the desired changes Many managers feel that, once revealed, this recipe for change success is simply good common sense.

However, as Carolyn Aiken and Scott Keller reveal in their white paper, ‘The Irrational Side of Change Management’, this is where things start to go wrong. By applying ‘common sense’, managers are misdirecting time and energy, creating messages that miss the mark, and experience frustrating unintended consequences from their efforts to influence change. Why? Because when they implement the prescription, they disregard certain, sometimes irrational – but predictable – elements of human nature.

Create a compelling story – and get involvement!

Change management thinking extols the virtues of creating a compelling change story with input from all stakeholders, communicating it to employees, and following it up with ongoing communications and involvement.

Schiavello’s workplace research psychologist, Keti Malkoski, says employees are not always averse to change, and research shows that employees will welcome change if it will improve their working lives.

“Schiavello’s collaborative work with Dr Jacqueline Vischer has highlighted that if there is a structured change management process with thoughtful planning and sensitive implementation this should ultimately demonstrate this improvement in working lives. Dr Vischer states that for everything taken away, something must be given back; any loss of that which is familiar is immediate, whereas gains sometimes need time to be felt.”

Further, the success of many workplace developments is dependent on the users’ perceptions

COVER STORY change management

of control. “Workplace change can be problematic if it is forced onto employees; therefore employee involvement is crucial for fostering buy-in from users. Control and choice are very powerful motivating tools for work and indeed, control of the workplace can positively influence individual job satisfaction and team cohesiveness,” Malkoski adds.

Misunderstanding by way of inadequate communication and information is a prevalent reason as to why employees may be resistant to the change. Therefore, it is crucial that organisations educate and communicate the reasons and requirements for complete change.

An effective communication strategy should create awareness, understanding, acceptance, alignment and commitment.

Barry notes that something to avoid is the ageold notion that people only change when they’re in pain. She cites the real-life story behind the term ‘burning platform’: a worker on an oil rig that caught on fire literally had to make a life or death decision about whether to jump from the burning platform.

In business life the same mentality is applied, but it’s a difficult ground to tread. “If you try and create a burning platform and push people off the edge they will see that for what it is in time – change won’t be embedded, it won’t be accepted, it won’t mean enough for enough people for it to stick.

So we need to use more pull factors and genuine grass roots involvement rather than push factors.

But realistically if you have 10,000 people in your organisation, not all 10,000 people can or will want to be designers. Figuring out how and why people like to contribute is important.”

Peter Acheson, CEO of Peoplebank, Australia’s largest IT recruitment company, has steered his organisation through a challenging change process, a shift in organisational culture to one of customercentricity. Known as the Peoplebank Promise, it defines the way Peoplebank works with key stakeholder groups, including clients, contractors and candidates, and also the firm’s own employees.

Acheson firmly believes the psychological side of change is crucial to change success. He recommends distilling the change program at its earliest essence down to a one-on-one conversation with everybody in the organisation. “People need to understand why it’s important, they need to understand the urgency behind it, their role in it, the organisation’s commitment to it, and also why it will be better for them in the future. Quite often leadership defines the change, defines the importance and outlines the means for the change, but they don’t demonstrate or

show employees why the post-change world will be better for employees. It must also be remembered that what’s ‘better’ for one employee could be very different for someone else,” he says.

In summary, Acheson pursued the following path for his organisation: • Starting with the business case for a customercentric culture (including CSIA research showing that superior service delivers cost savings/revenue increases of up to 30%), Peoplebank built a program – rolled out over several months in 2009 – featuring: »» Two six-week training programs (the first for senior managers, the second for broader staff) around core essentials in a customer service program – international benchmarks, key elements in the recruitment process, etc »» Inviting staff input into establishing a set of customer service KPIs. There are KPIs around dealing with job applicants and clients – eg, commitments to return calls on the same day, and check in with contractors on the first day/end of first month/six weeks before projects end »» Launching these KPIs – as ‘The Peoplebank Promise’ – late in 2009 •

Getting engagement. Peoplebank built in factors including involving staff in creating the KPIs as well as ensuring that senior staff, from the CEO down, were seen to be engaged in and measurable against the KPIs

•

Measuring and incentivising. Staff KPIs (against which staff bonuses are calculated) were changed to reflect the customer service priorities. From mid-2010, Peoplebank started measuring the interaction between each of the stakeholder groups, and feeding that into reward systems.

The quarterly awards have a Peoplebank Promise Champion award and there are ongoing awards for people giving outstanding service to customers. “Unless you give people the right incentives for the change, it just won’t happen,” says Acheson.

As demonstrated above, Peoplebank’s change initiative was carefully pre-planned, and included employee involvement before, during and after the change process. “We knew that if our employees were involved in it their uptake and commitment to it was likely to be higher than if it was seen as an initiative that was invented in head office,” Acheson says. www.hcamag.com

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COVER STORY change management

Acheson says there will be continual, ongoing reinforcement; in fact, he does not believe he will come to a point in the next 12 months where he claims the program has been a success. “Change programs often fail because people celebrate success too early – they think it’s been achieved, they have the celebration, and then they stop reinforcing and stop driving its focus and stop rewarding the people.”

However, he can point to success already. In May last year, Peoplebank ran an annual contractor satisfaction survey, which saw an 11% improvement in customer satisfaction over 2009. Client satisfaction surveys and employee engagement surveys over the same period have shown similar upward trends.

“The clearest and most tangible change that would account for these improvements is the Peoplebank Promise,” says Acheson.

Weigh the good with the bad In ‘The Irrational Side of Change Management’, Aiken and Keller claim that the ‘deficit based’ approach to change – which identifies the problem, analyses what’s wrong and how to fix it, plans, and then takes action – has become the model predominantly taught in business schools and is presumably the default change model in most organisations. However, the authors also claim that research has shown that a story focused on what’s wrong invokes blame and creates fatigue and resistance, doing little to engage people’s passion and experience.

This has led to the rise of the ‘constructionist based’ approach to change, where the change process is based on discovery (discovering the best of what is), dreaming (imagining what might be), designing (talking about what should be) and destiny (creating what will be). “The problem with this approach is that an over-emphasis on the positive can lead to watereddown aspirations and impact,” the white paper states.

In short, best practice is to suggest stories with both a positive and a negative in order to create real energy behind a change initiative.

A classic example is Jack Welch, former CEO at GE, who took questions of ‘what’s wrong here?’ (poorly performing businesses, silo-driven behaviour, and so forth) head-on, as well as ‘imagining what might be’ (number one or two in every market, to be more open and accountable).

Although his mission was perhaps not as business-critical as GE’s dire situation, Acheson also did this at Peoplebank, and he concedes that some of the Peoplebank Promise statements were aspirational – in other words, they weren’t being

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“Leaders are often preventing the things they’re trying to achieve” – Lisa Barry

embodied at the time. “We took the view that this was part of the liberation – it was better to state upfront the behaviour we expected and the behaviour we desired – even though it was somewhat aspirational and would require continuous reinforcement. As recently as February this year, we’ve reviewed the promise, identified the gaps in areas we still don’t think we’re achieving, re-communicated the importance, implemented the measurements and made sure they’ve been linked to the incentive plans,” Acheson says.

“We also realised that because we published externally, we would get people commenting publicly on our customer service, about whether we’d lived up to the program, so we knew there would be some negatives there – and we were open about that.”

Barry agrees with that approach but cautions leaders not to be “too Pollyanna about it”. The grass is not always greener, and she believes that by not giving people the whole picture, leaders set themselves up for lack of buy-in. She also believes that leaders burden themselves with all the responsibility – they try to control communication, control the moment in time when people will opt in – but many hands make light work. “Leaders are often preventing the things they’re trying to achieve,” she says. “Plain speaking is fantastic but you shouldn’t have all the answers. People will have the answers, so start the conversation with them. You need to be clear about where you’re going to land.”

Collective action If the role of the leader is to listen more than speak, what can be gleaned from the collective wisdom of people? Barry notes that today people are bound by a common need to have purpose in work; people need to know their work is contributing to something bigger than just the task they can see. When it comes to change, Barry suggests one tip is to ‘socialise’ some of the options looking forward, and see which ones connect the most strongly to what people think they’re at work for anyway, and to start viewing it as an extension of their purpose.

“Then people don’t resist change, and it’s making it easier for them to make their contribution to what they’re doing anyway,” she says.

“This idea of collective action – together we can get something done – it sounds so simple when you say it like that, so why don’t we do it that way?

There are lots of political and emotional agendas that get in the way of this kind of leadership. It’s not even conscious – it can be subconscious.” In terms of measuring the success (or otherwise) of a

COVER STORY change management

change program, Barry says most organisations will go to some trouble to find out what their benefits realisation schedule is – a list of benefits that they expect to get from the change. Then they’ll do a before/after comparison of that list at a point in time, perhaps three months after going live. However, even this has changed, and the very concept of ‘going live’ perhaps needs to be relegated to the history books. Many projects don’t work like that anymore, because there’s a higher level of experimentation and innovation in how issues are being resolved or how opportunities are being grabbed.

“There’s a much more rapid prototyping of ideas – give it a try, does it work? – rather than the old static versions, one massive project, putting all eggs in one basket and hoping like hell it works. The way the market is changing so fast, we’re seeing preferences for more dynamic testing of ideas and seeing if it’s going to make a difference. Smaller pilots, prototypes, testing to see if an idea will fly, and then unrolling it more aggressively,” says Barry.

“When it comes to measuring it, there are a lot of different ways to do it, but the easiest way is to ask, ‘What is it that we set out to achieve? What are the three measures of that goal?’, and then go and test them. Again, less can be more. I’m wary of people with their checklists. Most people know there’s a sense of commitment to it if it’s set as a goal versus just another project.”

Regrets… I’ve had a few Regret is a real driver of change, Barry says, yet when there is constant pressure to produce daily/weekly/

monthly results, often it’s not possible to find the time to feel the way through something. “Leaders can’t act on those regrets that they haven’t done something or they should have done it another way, because time goes on and before they know it they’re onto the next big thing. They can’t do anything with that learning – that’s why we end up with this Groundhog Day stuff.”

The aggressive demands on the executive to produce ever better balance sheets is not helping.

“There’s no long-termism anymore. Long-term these days is five years, and most of the executives I deal with are desperately trying to fight for the next month’s results. They land their financial results for a year and then collapse in a heap and then two days later go again. And of course that regret drives stress levels high.”

“Change leadership can’t be done via email, you’ve got to be there and you’ve got to get out in front of your people and take them with you. You can’t ignore the fact that it takes time to do. People who don’t make time for it don’t make change.”

As a final tip, Barry advises leaders to be wary of buying into the concept of change fatigue. Talking frankly, she says that people get more fatigued by “stupidity” and things that don’t change, than an actual change process. “It’s more being desensitised to the call for action because we’re asked to do things all the time, and everything is really, really important.

But it’s not, it’s just urgent. I don’t think we’re discriminating enough. It may have just been a bad idea in the first place! And if it was a good idea you didn’t sell it to them – that’s not change fatigue.” HC

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CASE STUDY PMP

Road to recovery

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CASE STUDY PMP

Iain Hopkins talks to one leader whose business faced almost insurmountable internal and external pressure to change, and the dramatic but necessary steps he took to ensure the business went from the red back to the black

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ichard Allely, CEO of PMP, has one thing to make clear upfront: he wants to define the word ‘transformation’. “When I talk about transformation I’m talking about something which is fundamentally different from where we are to where we want to be. I’m not talking about incremental changes. I’m talking about moving something dramatically from where it is, to where it needs to be,” he says.

It’s that philosophy that has halted the downward spiral which three years ago threatened to consign PMP, Australasia’s largest printing company, to the corporate wastebin. A combination of a rapidly-changing external business environment overtaken by ‘disruptive technologies’, as well as an internal loss of focus at the core, meant the business was in freefall.

“Like many organisations over time, in the pursuit of growth, we lost focus on the core. These are the things that define who you are – and these are the things that go to the core of what enables you to be successful,” Allely says. “If you take your eye off that ball, if you de-focus from what you’re good at and start to focus all your attention on those things that are new and different, you do so at your peril.”

As a consequence of that strategy the people who were comfortable with driving from the core left the company, and the relationship with employees and clients deteriorated. “The outcome of the business, the performance, is really just an outcome of how things are within the business,” Allely says, and things didn’t look good within the business. Disruptive technology has changed the way consumers want to receive and view content – having a major impact on the printing of books, magazines, catalogues; in short, the backbone of the PMP business.

“Over time things will change, but the real question is what does the timeline look like? Are we in structural decline, or will we be like every other media – will we co-exist with all the other media forms? I guess I’d be excused for saying that actually I think we will co-exist. The real challenge for us is to find our relevance, just like radio found its relevance when TV came out, just like TV found

its relevance when pay TV came out, etc. Traditional media doesn’t just roll over and die, rather it establishes its point of relevance,” Allely says.

Capturing hearts and minds Allely, who had spent seven years at PMP in other roles before taking on the CEO role, realised quickly that the business needed to move towards different outcomes. “The outcomes that were driving the business quite frankly weren’t going to deliver the results or the outcomes that shareholders and other stakeholders required of the business,” he says. “The role of leadership is not just about delivering those outcomes; it’s about creating the environment, or what I call the operating conditions, that ultimately deliver those outcomes.”

At a glance »» Richard Allely joined PMP in 2002 as CFO »» Following a number of performance and customer service/reporting issues Allely was made acting CEO. In April 2009 he was appointed CEO »» PMP had lost 80% of its market value over the preceding two years »» Allely conducted a root and branch review of the business, staffing levels, operating sites and overall structure »» The transformation program – titled PMP Re-Energised – attacked costs and brought the business back in tune with its customers to restore confidence among shareholders »» Activity included: a full strategic review of the business, involving the executive management team of each business unit, reduction in staff numbers and the closure of underperforming sites, a significant internal and external communications project to communicate the positive steps taken by the business »» Phase I was a success, delivering $27m of annual cost reductions »» Phase II was launched in 2010 and involved building on the process of continuous improvement implemented in Phase I. This focuses mainly on New Zealand, as PMP plans to restructure and rationalise its NZ operations, reduce its cost base, improve efficiency and enhance its customer service »» Phase II is expected to see annualised benefits from the New Zealand and Australian restructure of $28m, with approximately 80% of this to be realised in fiscal 2012, with the full benefits in fiscal 2013 »» The business is now more cost competitive than ever because the business has both the agility and flexibility to address any market movement that may emerge in the years ahead

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CASE STUDY PMP

Change partner Human Capital asks Penny Mabbutt, group general manager, people & culture, PMP, for her views on business transformation Human Capital: In your experience, why do you think so many change initiatives fail?

Penny Mabbutt: Without question the reason why it doesn’t work most of the time is because business leaders underestimate the impact that changes have on people and the amount they need to be engaged in order for it to be successful. Sometimes executive leaders conclude that they have all the knowledge, all the talent and experience so they know what to do – but the reality is the best knowledge of the business is on the shop floor. It’s the people who are meeting the customers day in day out, the sales force, the people in operations.

HC: What sort of pre-planning did PMP do prior to its transformation?

PM: One of the things the CEO did was personally engage with staff. Richard [Allely] was previously the CFO, so he had a different perspective as he came to the role as CEO, and engaging with the people gave him a much broader view of the organisation. He also became very familiar with customer expectations, so he spoke with customers and suppliers. He first armed himself with a better understanding of the business and what our people were saying we needed. The next step was to get the right leaders onboard. He managed to attract back to the business some highly talented people who had left. That was quite a pivotal time for the organisation because employees respect leaders who understand the business. From there we went through a very detailed planning session, looking at what the organisation should look like in the future, and with staff engagement we determined what the values should be.

The leaders then took their piece of the

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plan and very detailed implementation was put through the business to take the transformation forward.

HC: Human beings as a general rule don’t like change. Did you consider the psychological impact of change in your process?

PM: Part of the appointment of the right leaders was to appoint leaders that actually cared about their people.

Because they had been in the business before, they knew their people, and they knew the types of reactions or likely responses they were going to get once the changes were implemented. So they engaged HR to assist them, to make sure that as the plans were put in place, that we had very good fundamentals – what we could do was help people move through that transition. There was a whole range of HR tools implemented. Through the changing of roles and restructuring, if redundancies were necessary we always went into voluntary redundancies first, and then we made it very clear and transparent where people needed to compete for roles.

What often happens with change is fear of uncertainty. The CEO tried to roll out the changes as quickly as possible, and he kept people informed the whole time.

A CEO portal was set up so the CEO could communicate directly to employees, and they could communicate their concerns to him.

HC: How important was it to outline the changes as part of a sustainable future for the company?

PM: Part of gaining people’s trust was letting them know that we were working towards a sustainable future and that we would be trying to address the needs of all stakeholders. So we gave them a commitment – and that commitment was to build an organisation where their safety was paramount, and that they worked in a culture where their talents and their efforts were rewarded and recognised.

HC: People must have gone above and beyond during this process – was there anything put in place to reward those people?

PM: We introduced a values award program. A lot of the time, recognition is given at local level, on an informal basis, and we encourage that as much as possible. But we also introduced two CEO awards – one is for ‘one team’, and one is for safety. They are the two areas we know culturally are really important to our people.

HC: What is the next step?

PM: The next phase is building on what we’ve done. We’ve introduced a number of cultural programs in the in last 12 months and they’ve taken well – which has been to our pleasant surprise. And I think they’ve been taken up because employees actually could see that the executive team was genuine. So a range of values along with a performance management system is now in place so that people understand what is expected of them, along with career framework levels to help with role clarifications. We’ve also completely reviewed our policies on how we talk to each other and how we engage each other. The next phase is about celebrating and really valuing the diversity that we have, and how we can tap into that diversity even more across functions.

HC: What are your top tips for people leaders preparing to undertake a significant change initiative?

PM: The unity of the top leadership team – if you don’t have the right people round the table, you’ve got a hard job ahead of you. Secondly, make sure the change plan is holistic. I’ll be frank: HR needs to talk straight. Businesses, particularly in our industry, don’t like jargon, and they don’t need to hear the psychological basis about why you’ve put a program in place, particularly when you’re starting to communicate it – it needs to be kept very real.

CASE STUDY PMP

While Allely knew that he could change some conditions very quickly, he knew that others would take time. Fortunately, he was also acutely aware that the one organisational condition that truly drives a sustainable competitive advantage is its people. So to hasten the process, he changed the people.

Apart from Allely, there is now only one person at the executive level who was present when the transformation started. Allely successfully lured back former executives to help transform the business. Yet while he was aware of the role they would play in influencing and directing operations, he knew that creating and delivering sustainable change would come down to capturing the hearts and minds of the people within the organisation.

Capturing the hearts and minds of employees would only happen through a series of programs aimed at changing culture. To that end he also hired Penny Mabbutt as group general manager, people & culture. “Penny’s primary role in PMP is to help me drive cultural change. We’ve done that with a number of programs, but it’s not one of those programs on their own that actually delivers the change. It’s the combination of all those things working together that ultimately delivers a shift in culture,” Allely says.

He’s also aware that in business, products and services are competing for market share with a whole host of other businesses. A new piece of equipment or investment in new technology can be replicated by competitors very quickly. The one thing they can’t replicate is the agility, flexibility and sustainability of culture.

“If I’ve got the best people in my company, people who are aligned with what I’m trying to do, and who are committed to delivering business outcomes for the benefit of all stakeholders, the bottom line is you don’t want to compete with a company that harnesses that.”

Making it work A few key ingredients underpinned Allely’s initiatives. The first was treating people with respect. “The only way I know how to do these things is to be very open, very honest and upfront and transparent about them. Communicate with your own staff well ahead of the curve. So if I know that there’s going to be a structural change which is going to cause someone to lose their job, they hear it from me first, and they hear it well clear of the event itself. There’s nothing worse than saying to someone on a Friday night, ‘guess what, you don’t have a job on Monday’. That’s appalling; in fact, I think that’s tantamount to terrible leadership.”

“Like many organisations over time, in the pursuit of growth, you can lose focus on the core. These are the things that define who you are – and these are the things that go to the core of what enables you to be successful” – Richard Allely

Allely also stepped up communication, both face to face and via a CEO portal, which provided an opportunity to provide weekly feedback and updates. “Internally I received very positive feedback from people, and often from people who were adversely affected by change. They said, ‘I wasn’t happy with the outcome but I was engaged and I felt valued by how you treated me’,” he says.

From the outset, rather than “drip feeding it or doing it down the line”, Allely was committed to delivering all the negatives upfront, in terms of what the business was doing, how they were doing it, and why it affected each individual. Then he worked to marry that up to all the positives.

“You’ve got to have some sort of banner or mantle to put everything up on – we called it the Reenergising of PMP. It meant we had to undo some of the things done in recent years, to remove them.

They were mostly the negatives – and we did that very quickly. Over the last 18 months all the positives have emerged.”

If Allely has one message to convey to other business leaders undertaking significant change, it’s to get a fact-based position at the start, in order to really understand where you are positioned. “It took me a number of months. I had my own views and opinions, but I spent a couple of months to get the facts where there had been only opinions, views and assumptions.”

Once a fact-based position is obtained, develop a series of strategies in the direction you want to go – don’t just kneejerk into one direction due to short-term pressures. “Have a look at what all the alternatives are. Evaluate and risk rate each one,” Allely says. “Take it in bite-sized pieces. Don’t try the big bang or the one silver bullet approach – because generally it doesn’t work. There’s a lot of program management, at the very detailed level, that needs to be employed, but you’ve got to do the right thing with the right initiatives and be focused on the right change, otherwise you could end up doing some wonderful things that take you in a direction that, quite frankly, you shouldn’t be in.”

For now, Allely can take some satisfaction from the company’s lowest debt levels in a decade, the best gearing in a decade, and employee engagement and customer service surveys the best they’ve ever been.

“I could pull up stumps now and say ‘job well done’. But there is so much more to do in delivering what we set out to do that I’m passionately engaged.

As disruptive technology impacts on many of our clients, we have both a responsibility and also a suite of products and services to help them continue to be successful.” HC www.hcamag.com

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FEATURE change managers

Rise of the change manager Catherine Smithson outlines the history of change management, including the rise of the change manager

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he increased volume, pace and complexity of change has produced a new profession: the Change Manager. This new role is a variable mixture of HR professional, L&D and Communications specialist, combined with a dash of Facilitator and Executive Coach – sometimes with Project Manager added in.

We’ve also seen the emergence of new professional bodies like the Change Management Institute (founded in Australia and now established internationally), the Association of Change Management Professionals, accreditation programs, international and local conferences, as well as university degrees and diplomas.

Despite the fact that the change management function and roles are becoming well accepted in organisations, there’s still a lot of confusion about what change managers do and don’t do, how they interact with other teams like HR and project management and where to locate them.

If you’ve tried to hire a change manager lately, you’ve probably also noticed that recruiters and candidates are also perplexed about the capabilities and experience required to be an effective change manager, which can create roadblocks to recruiting the right people in a hot skills area.

So let’s start at the beginning: what is change management and what does a change manager do?

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Where did change management come from?

‘Change management’ itself was originally an IT term, which meant change control or the process involved in moving from one IT system to another.

It still has this meaning in IT-land, so take note: you may be at cross-purposes when you’re talking to IT professionals!

In the 1990s, change management meant ‘communications and training’. These two activities were included as deliverables in project management methodologies like PRINCE2, and still are.

‘Warm and fuzzy’, ‘soft stuff’ and ‘group hugs’ were also some of the terms used for change management. These labels were often used in fun of course, but they indicated a lack of understanding by business leaders and project managers of how the people-side of change contributes to successful change and benefit realisation.

Most of the time, change management was used as ‘firefighting’ when resistance to change became a burning issue and so it was reactive and ad hoc. Every change manager, it seemed, used different models, tools and tactics. Finally, change management wasn’t something an organisation could build capability in – it had to be brought in each time with consultants. Or an internal OD or HR professional handled change management.

FEATURE change managers

In 2011, change management has expanded beyond communications and training. These tactics are still important and will always be part of change management, but in today’s complex environment, they are simply not enough to drive successful change.

Prosci, the world’s leading change management research and publishing company, gives this definition of change management: “The processes, tools and techniques to manage the people-side of change to achieve the required business outcome.”

This definition is a useful one, firstly because it focuses change management on the peopleside of change – getting people ready, willing and able to work successfully in the future state. By contrast, project management and business process improvement concentrate on the solution or the technical side of the change.

It’s true that many project managers and BPI specialists, including Lean Six Sigma practitioners, view change management as part of their role. But I think it is fair to say change management usually doesn’t get the resourcing or focus required when it’s one of many deliverables from a busy project manager.

The other key part of this definition is the emphasis on achieving the required business outcomes. It isn’t enough to create a great communications plan, or to engage people or enthuse them – change management needs to play its role in achieving the goals of the change. Change managers, like HR professionals, need to have business acumen and an outcome; not activity, but focus.

Beyond comms and training Modern change management uses a range of tactics to create change-ready people. Communications and training are useful tools, but they can’t address all the people challenges of a change. In the Prosci methodology, for example, there are five change management plans, blended into an overall change management plan, which is integrated with the project plan. Each of the five plans is targeted at a different people challenge: • Communications – to build awareness of change • Sponsor roadmap – to build effective leadership among the sponsor and key executives • Coaching plan – to develop managers’ capability in leading change with their teams • Resistance management plan – to anticipate and pro-actively address resistance • Training plan – to develop the knowledge and skills to work in the future state

What does a change manager do?

I often say that the last person you should ask to manage change is the change manager! In the same way, we wouldn’t expect the HR manager to manage all the people in the organisation. In the work we do, we promote the idea that the change manager is a ‘back stage’ person – developing the change management strategy and plans, and coaching the key players to fulfil their role. Those key players are the change leaders of the organisation – the sponsor/ CEO, senior executives, middle managers and team leaders, who make the change a reality in their teams.

The approach my company takes is very different to what some change managers have become used to.

Change managers are planners, facilitators, coaches, enablers – but I don’t believe they are effective as the ‘face and voice’ of the change. Decades of research, by Prosci, TJ and Sandar Larkin and many others, tell us that employees prefer to hear about change from their direct manager and from senior executives. Leadership is the number one success factor for change, according to Prosci’s most recent Best Practices in Change Management Benchmarking Report, as well as studies by IBM and many others.

About the author Catherine Smithson is managing director, Being Human, a specialist change management training and consulting firm founded in 1993. Visit www. beinghuman.com.au

Finding a home for change management Five years ago I predicted that HR would be the most natural home for change management. I thought that the skillset of the change manager – internal consulting, facilitating, coaching leaders, using HR systems to align goals and behaviours – made HR an obvious choice. I was proved spectacularly wrong!

According to Prosci’s most recent Best Practices in Change Management Benchmarking Report, 62% of survey participants have located their change managers in the project teams. The reason? Projects have the funding – and the urgent need – for change management. Project managers have been quick to realise the benefits of a dedicated resource and structured approach to the people-side of change.

I still believe HR has a key role to play in change management and in building change-capable organsiations. HR owns the leadership development curriculum and the performance management system, both of which are key levers in driving successful change. Plus HR owns the data on employee engagement and culture, which are critical in making the business case for change management and for equipping change managers with an understanding of the organisation, its history, values and people. HC www.hcamag.com

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FEATURE gender diversity

Promoting women to roles for which they are insufficiently experienced, and therefore destined to fail is a major criticism of gender quotas. So what is best practice in gender diversity?

Iain Hopkins investigates

I

n February this year the mainstream and social media gave the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day a huge boost. But why? In 2011, why are such awareness days required?

One look at the business world – particularly large corporates – provides the answer. Although women make up 52% of the population of Australia, 46% of the workforce, and in recent years, 56% of university graduates, women hold only 2% of CEO and 10.7% of senior management positions in ASX200 companies.

Perhaps more disturbingly, according to research

by Mercer, despite growing interest in workforce diversity among organisations in Australia and New Zealand, only one in four companies (26%) have a clearly defined strategy to attract and retain women long enough to reach senior leadership positions.

On the one hand, greater representation of women is now widely viewed no longer as a moral imperative, but a business one. McKinsey released a study in 2007 that showed companies with three or more women in senior management functions performed better than companies that had no women in these roles.

Megan Dalla-Camina, director of strategy for IBM Australia and New Zealand, says these companies outperform their sectors in terms of return on equity, operating results and stock price growth.

However, she adds that Australia has lagged behind the rest of the world for too long in most aspects of gender equity, whether that be paid parental leave, numbers of female employees/ managers/executives, and women on boards. While there are some marginal improvements, much more needs to be done.

“For Australia, this is an economic imperative, especially in light of the ageing workforce and skills shortages,” says Dalla-Camina.

Quotas While there seems little debate that organisations can do more, there is less clarity on the government’s role. At the big end of town there has been pressure put on ASX-listed companies since January this year to disclose in their annual reports the company’s performance in achieving gender objectives set out by the board, in senior management and employed throughout the organisation. While this is a step in the right direction, critics say it does not go far enough. They are asking for quotas to be introduced.

While an extreme measure, quotas have had some success in Spain, France and most impressively Norway, which moved from 7% to 40% women on boards in just five years.

Rosemary Howard, executive director and conjoint professor of AGSM Executive Programs,

From glass ceiling

to glass cliff?

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FEATURE gender diversity

says a less extreme option is for the Australian government to set a three-year deadline in which to see a substantial improvement in gender equality on boards – before it considers introducing strict European-style quotas. Howard believes quotas should only be considered if non-compulsory measures fail. She says the preferred path is accurate measurement of gender ratios, and making chairs and CEOs responsible for putting measures in place to lift the gender ratio of boards and the ranks of senior management, coupled with an accountability to report publicly on the progress.

“My first preference would be that we voluntarily choose to manage this well, at individual corporation level and at the country-wide level, because if you force something with quotas you may get the right numeric outcome but you won’t have solved anything, because you won’t have changed those cultural dynamics, those underlying unconscious biases which will continue to set people up for failure, even if they don’t mean to,” says Howard.

The controversial quota idea poses an ethical and moral dilemma for organisations: it’s placing women in these roles and giving them career paths to make up the numbers, yet it can also potentially be setting both the individuals and the organisation up for failure. Howard likens it to a “glass cliff”, where the women are put in positions that are untenable. “You have a very high chance of setting individuals up for failure if you don’t do this right,” she says. “It’s about peeling back the onion, understanding what a deep cultural change this is, and enabling the women, and enabling the men, and therefore enabling the organisation, to provide

a different context for gender diversity to really flourish.” Wendy Montague, director of leadership and talent at Hay Group, also believes initiating a quota-based system is not the answer: “Though some leaders see gender quotas as the last hope for improving board gender balance, this approach may cause resentment and reverse discrimination,” she says. “Hay Group believes that organisations do not need to be pushed along by a big stick to do the right thing when it comes to fostering diversity.

There are business benefits for organisations to embrace diversity.”

Mindset shift

All the experts HC spoke to agreed that sex inequality goes much deeper than board representation. The Australian Census of Women in Leadership 2010 showed that only 4.1% of line management positions (from which managers are promoted to executive ranks) were held by women, hinting that much of Australian business suffers from ‘mono-culture’ and ‘groupthink’, and also much deeper discrimination. Howard believes a cultural shift is required within Australian business, and among women.

“I think it’s not just a shift in mindset, it’s a shift in the capability of women. Even for Gen Y coming into the workplace, many of them have assumed that the workplace will have moved on in terms of its acceptance for gender diversity. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. There is still this propensity for women to think, ‘If I work hard, if I do really well in the job I’m in, someone will come along and tap me on the shoulder and give me that promotion that I

Table 1 Ranking (Top 3 responses)

Programs organisations currently offer or plan to offer in future

Programs ranked most effective

Factors preventing women from advancing

Aspects of most concern regarding women in leadership

1

Flexible work

Flexible work arrangements/ options

Work–life balance

Retaining women so that they reach leadership levels

2

Coaching and mentoring

Coaching and mentoring

Lack of executive sponsor

Having work–life programs that attract and retain women

3

Diversity sourcing and recruiting

Diversity sourcing and recruiting

Insufficient breadth of Women in leadership experience not advancing at the same rate as men

Source: Mercer Australia, ‘Women’s Leadership Development Survey’, March 2011

STATS n The majority of women who make it into executive management roles in ASX 200 companies are still clustered in roles that support the main business functions – HR, legal, public relations, etc n Women chair only 2% of ASX 200 companies and hold only 8.3% of board director roles n While 54.5% of ASX 200 companies have at least one woman in an executive management position, that is poor by international standards. In the US, 85.2% of companies have at least one woman in a senior executive position and the rates are in excess of 60% for both the UK and Canada Sources: KPMG, Office of Women, Department of Families, Housing and Communities and EOWA www.hcamag.com

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FEATURE gender diversity

always wanted’. That isn’t the way it works. Women must learn to be responsible for their own careers, not just be excellent in the job they’re currently in, but actually plotting their pathway across different levels,” she says.

Authenticity in leadership is also crucial. Howard says that women often model themselves on other leaders, usually men, and while that is usually done with the best of intentions, it often does not lead to authentic leadership. “I need to work out who I really am in order to be authentic and in order to influence people,” says Howard.

Best practice Like any business problem, solving it starts with measurement; if you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it. At IBM, for example, metrics are collated on areas of gender equity – hiring, pay, retention and representation at all levels. Hay Group also recommends undertaking a comprehensive gender diversity audit. This doesn’t just mean looking at numbers of women, but rather getting to the heart within a specific organisation about the underlying issues preventing the strong representation of women in leadership roles.

Howard says a vital initial step is to ask women about what they need, and then ask the same question of men, in order to match up what’s happening for both. Common practice, she says, is that women will say there’s a problem, while the men will say there is not. “Until you can get those two perceptions to align and make sure you’re addressing the issues for the men as well as the women, you probably won’t shift it,” she notes.

The next step is to identify which processes or cultural archetypes are preventing women

from moving up into the executive suite, suggests Montague. This can be achieved by talking to current women executives and/or connecting with senior women who have left the organisation. For example, a global technology company asked the Hay Group to interview a globally-dispersed sample of women and minorities to understand how they were or were not successful and particularly: • What personal traits helped and what hindered their leadership effectiveness?

• What organisational factors helped or hindered their success?

• What insights might be helpful to other members of their constituency in the future?

Once the barriers to promoting women are understood, best-practice companies identify and remove the established barriers, starting with the top team and taking hold of the organisational culture that the organisation wants to create. Many global ‘Best Companies for Leaders’ place identifying and developing top talent from a diverse gender and cultural range of backgrounds as a key priority.

From there, organisations can identify inconsistencies and areas that do not align or discourage women from moving up the career ladder.

To address that paucity of women at middle management level, retaining female talent is obviously an issue for many businesses. Two-fifths (40%) of Australian and New Zealand organisations surveyed in Mercer’s Women’s Leadership Development Survey indicated they do not offer any activities or programs targeted to the development needs of women leaders. Twenty-eight per cent of Australian and New Zealand organisations said they offer some activities or programs, and only 8% said they are planning to add programs and activities

Table 2 Strategies to address the top 3 barriers to women advancing within leadership pipelines include Work–life balance

Lack of executive sponsorship

Insufficient breadth of experience

»» Internal and external networks »» Gender balance on recruitment panels »» Culture that values women’s advancement »» Increased number of diverse executive leaders

»» »» »» »» »»

»» Targeted leadership development programs »» Stretch assignments offered early in career for women »» Graduate programs that broaden experience – internationally where appropriate

Leadership role models Connection to senior leaders Gender equitable pay Accessible mentors and coaches Talent process in place and decisions tracked »» Internal and external talent assessment methods »» Gender data included in senior executive dashboards

Source: Mercer Australia, ‘Women’s Leadership Development Survey’, March 2011

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FEATURE gender diversity

in the future, which is slightly ahead of the survey’s global average of 6%.

According to Mercer’s survey, the top programs currently offered by Australian and New Zealand organisations that target the needs of women leaders were flexible work arrangements, mentoring, coaching, and diversity sourcing and recruiting.

Notably, the same four programs listed by survey respondents were also identified as the most effective in developing women leaders.

“In addition to flexible work arrangements, women need stronger networks and coaching and mentoring as well as senior level support,” says Marianne Roux, leader of Mercer’s human capital talent management segment. “In Australia and New Zealand, there is still a strong belief that you have to be anointed – not appointed – meaning that you need a senior leader who can sponsor your career transition into the top ranks of the organisation. One of the main obstacles specific to women who aspire to be leaders is the lack of access to informal networks and senior executive mentors.”

Dalla-Camina says it’s crucial to invest in career development and mentoring so that female talent is not lost at the mid-point of their careers.

“Dr Sylvia Ann Hewlett talks about on-ramps and off-ramps, building flexibility and options into women’s careers that enable them to manage changing circumstances, such as raising small children or looking after ageing parents,” she says. “For me personally, IBM has supported me completing two Masters degrees over the past eight years, enabling me to further my professional development and contribution I make to the business, whilst supporting me to take on roles that play to my strengths. It’s important to note that increasingly, this is not just a female issue, with more men and Generation Ys of both genders wanting more career options that allow for further study and inclusion of additional personal interest. It’s now about inclusiveness, not just diversity.”

IBM has also introduced a number of flexible options including working from home, compressed work weeks, job sharing and self-funded leave.

Reinforcing the message Based on Hay Group research conducted in conjunction with Richard Hackman at MIT and Ruth Wageman at Harvard into what makes great top teams work, it’s now possible to help top teams to visualise the future, set goals and role model the behaviours that will reinforce their diversity

“If you force something with quotas you may get the right numeric outcome but you won’t have solved anything, because you won’t have changed the cultural dynamics” – Rosemary Howard

message. Hay Group works with clients to increase their awareness of the psychological drivers of prejudice and develop strategies to overcome structural biases that block the progress of diversity.

One example is Unilever, which went through a systematic process and now over 30% of their managers worldwide are women, with over 30 nationalities represented in their top 200 positions.

“Culture is all-important in setting the tone for people’s behaviour in organisations, and culture always begins at the top,” says Montague. “Many organisations let their culture ‘happen’ rather than seriously understand and address the dysfunctional attributes of their culture which may have a demoralising effect on both males and females in their organisation. However, opportunities exist for organisations that choose to act quickly and decisively, to build an organisational culture which will enable them to thrive in the new world of diversity.”

Some keys to cultural change: • Understand precisely what needs to change: Without articulating and measuring culture, any culture change efforts will be costly, unguided and unpredictable.

• Stating the goal is not enough: People need concrete directions as to what needs to change; from where, to where and how. Organisations need to communicate continuously; not just where they are going culturally, but how they are going to get there.

• Culture change requires strong, versatile and decisive leadership and particularly the ability to manage people’s performance in relation to behaviours. Leaders need to strongly encourage ‘new’ behaviours and sanction unacceptable ‘old’ behaviours through their performance management process and ongoing dialogues.

As a final tip, Howard suggests looking at the leading – rather than the lagging – indicators. “How much are we investing in women to give them the leadership capabilities that they need to be successful? How much are we helping men understand unconscious bias? Often people don’t mean to be discriminatory, but they may not understand the way in which they are. We’re talking about deep cultural change here,” she concludes. HC Check out HC Online TV for our panel discussion on gender equality – www.hcamag.com

www.hcamag.com

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HR INSIGHTS elizabeth broderick

Gender equality

champion No one has been more at the forefront of driving gender equality in the workplace than federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick.

At the HR Summit Sydney, Broderick sat down for a one-on-one interview with Jane Seymour, partner, workplace relations, Gadens Lawyers

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Jane Seymour: Liz, you have been quoted saying: “the status of women’s leadership in corporate Australia is dire”. How dire is the current situation?

Elizabeth Broderick: If we look at women at senior executive levels today, the situation is pretty dire.

Here in Australia, we are leading the world in women’s education. The World Economic Forum’s gender gap analysis over the last couple of years shows that Australia sits in a group of countries, with Finland and others, that are educating their women better than most countries. However, there are some exceptions to that, such as Indigenous women and marginalised groups. When I look at women’s workforce participants and I compare globally, we have dropped 10 places in the last year and we are down around 24th in terms of women’s workplace participation. There is a huge leakage of female talent in Australia. If I look at how we are doing in leadership levels, if I compare us to any of our OECD counterparts, with the exception of Japan, we are at the bottom of the list.

protected attributes. The second change is around family responsibility. There has always been limited protection surrounding family responsibilities, particularly for men. What these changes to the Act will mean is that men will have the same level of protection as women for family responsibilities.

That is very important because when we look at promoting gender equality in Australia, part of that picture is encouraging, allowing, enhancing and promoting men’s ability to be involved in caring.

The third thing we did is cleaned up some of the Act around sexual harassment. There were some provisions there relating to schools. If you were a child at a school and you were sexually harassed, and you were aged 15 and 9 months you could not do anything about it; if you were 16, you could. It just seemed to be bizarre to actually have an age limit on the victim. We can absolutely understand that there needs to be a limit on the age of the person who is being alleged to carry out the sexual harassment, but not on the victim. We are particularly looking at new forms of sexual harassment, such as ‘sexting,’ issues around social media, emails and that type of thing. And finally, the object of the Act, the international conventions on which the Act relies, have been expanded to include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICPRR), which we needed to strengthen for men. Let’s face it, if we are to change cultural norms in organisations, it is men that are going to help us change that, it is men that will push the attitudinal barriers.

JS: What was your rationale in seeking the reforms to the Sex Discrimination Act and when will we see them?

EB: Hopefully, we’ll see them in the first sitting when parliament resumes, which will be at the end of May. There are really four changes to the existing Sex Discrimination Act and these are things I have been aiming for over the last three years. One is to have breastfeeding as a protected attribute, in the same way as pregnancy, sex and marital status are

JS: The ASX guidelines on gender are not compulsory. How long do you think we should wait for them to actually deliver some change? Or should we be moving more quickly to what you have called the ‘Q word’, or quotas?

EB: I think they are an excellent first step because the fact is, different businesses are coming from different starting points, particularly around gender diversity.

If I look at businesses that are in engineering, mining or construction, they are finding it harder to attract

HR INSIGHTS elizabeth broderick

Elizabeth Broderick is at the forefront of driving gender equality in Australian workplaces

www.hcamag.com

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HR INSIGHTS elizabeth broderick

“I think we need to ask, ‘how can these jobs be done in different way?’

This is a human construct we have put together that has never worked for women” – Elizabeth Broderick

female talent. I think having the business set its own target, publicly announcing that target and then being required to report against it in what they call an ‘if not, why not?’ accountability framework is a really positive first step. It is so interesting to see the global community looking at what Australia is doing in the minute. Will it be enough? I’m just not sure. If you look at the data now, we are trending in the right direction. But we are aiming for 40% by 2015. Sitting at 11.5% today is just not getting us there. Once we get to a critical mass, possibly around 30%, then it will start to tip over.

JS: This increase of 2 or 3%, has that been related to the guidelines that are now commencing?

EB: Absolutely, when I go into boardrooms the fact that there is this requirement now has, I think, encouraged those people who always thought it may have been a good idea but were not compelled to do it. I think it has had a major impact. Interesting to see there was a 600% increase in the number of women appointed to ASX companies.

JS: What does a diversity policy look like? What are the elements of that policy? What resonates in terms of influencing stakeholders?

EB: Sometimes we think that everyone clearly understands the business case and I am not sure that that is exactly the case. When I go into business, I can go either three ways. I can state the human rights case, as a human rights commissioner, that is clearly the gender equalities of birth right. Why would we accept less? That does not run with many people unless you’re a human rights advocate. The second one is the market power case, and that is that women are major consumers of goods and services and therefore, it makes sense to have their voices represented at the decision making table of what goods and services should be presenting. The third and most compelling case is around the business case. There is research from Goldman Sachs and McKinsey which shows a greater level of gender diversity at the most senior levels of a business is correlated with stronger corporate performance.

When you look at board level, the research also shows that you need three female board directors.

One is a novelty, two you are beginning to get a female voice; however, it is three the research shows that you will have a change in the way the board and the business runs.

JS: Have you seen any innovative measures to bring women into recruitment and promotion?

EB: I have set up this group called the male

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champions of change; male CEOs taking the message of gender equality out there. One of them decided to run a strategy, in every half page advertisement, advertising for staff with a banner down the bottom which said, “any female candidate applying for a role where females are under-represented will be guaranteed an interview.” I thought this was an innovative strategy. Unfortunately, it crashed and burnt as a whole lot of men rang the organisation and the CEO and complained and some of the women in the management team felt belittled. The point is we have to try a whole range of bold and innovative strategies to start to address this issue. It is clear that what we are doing today has not worked and it is important that we start to think a bit differently about these things. In recruitment and promotion strategies, research would show there is a great deal of unconscious bias that is often built into those strategies. Some companies are requiring 50% candidates to be female and 50% to be male, working with their intermediaries such as the recruitment houses to put some of those requirements out.

JS: Are skills development programs encouraging women to be like men?

EB: There is a body of research around adaptive preferences: as a women you are looking up at the CEO and you think, ‘I could do that job but I would have to be away from the family. I will not do that because of my family obligations’. It is about women self-selecting out. Instead of saying, what do we need to do to fix women, I think we need to ask, ‘how can these jobs be done in different way?’ This is a human construct we have put together that has never worked for women. We need to ensure that jobs come in all shapes and sizes. That is about job redesign.

I’m not sure if there are many companies invested in job redesign.

JS: Is there still the belief women should be the primary carers?

EB: There is ‘the good mother’ belief. We all grow up believing that a good mother is someone that is always with their children. Then you put that strong cultural belief with a belief of what the ideal worker looks like. The research shows the ideal worker is someone that is available 24/7, preferably male, with no visible responsibilities. When you put those deep cultural beliefs together, they are a barrier to women’s progression. There is work being done about unconscious biases; they are part of our gender conditioning that we are given from the moment we are born. HC

COVER STORY employer EXPERTbranding INSIGHT

Gender Diversity – not just a female issue

T

here can be no denying that currently one of the most topical issues in society and the realm of Diversity and Inclusion is gender.

After 26 years of legislation to stop discrimination, pressure is mounting from both government and corporate Australia to create real equality. For a society that prides itself on being ‘egalitarian’ and giving someone a ‘fair go’ the playing field is still uneven.

Organisations now value how they can leverage diversity to build their business. There have been many inroads made with other aspects of diversity and inclusion. Many workplaces have developed detailed strategies recognising the economic and social benefits of actively including people with disabilities through ‘Disability Action Plans’.

Similarly, Reconciliation Action Plans have been developed to address Indigenous Australian inclusion. Each recognises that cultural change comes from challenging the dominant cultural values and attitudes of the workplace. When it comes to the issue of gender equality however, much of the discussion has been in the form of motherhood statements and ‘aspirational’ targets.

The emphasis has been on ‘empowerment’ or ‘personal development’ programs designed specifically for women. The intention is to assist women to progress onwards and upwards through the organisation. But while many women benefit and grow through participating in these programs, the barriers still remain. The glass ceiling still exists despite the business case: • 2008 McKinsey & Company study stated US women on executive teams contributed to a 48 per cent higher EBIT result than the industry norm.

Women on boards: addressing the gender imbalance, Julianne Dowling, 2009 • Goldman Sachs recently identified that narrowing the gap between male and female employment rates would have huge implications for the

global economy – in Australia, it would boost our GDP by 11%.

Australia’s Hidden Resource: The Economic Case for Increasing Female Participation, Goldman Sachs JB Were, 2009 The biggest challenges that need to be addressed to create real change must be cultural and systemic.

For organisations to focus on this effectively, they must first communicate to their senior leaders that gender diversity is not just a female issue. Just as it is everyone’s responsibility to create an inclusive environment for those with a disability, so it is for gender equality. One of the more controversial strategies that has been adopted in recent times is the introduction of quotas in addressing the gender imbalance. In both government and corporate sectors, mandatory measures are now being used as key elements in the performance evaluation process of senior leaders. It is worth noting that successful implementation of this strategy is vitally dependent on ensuring quotas are merit-based opportunities. Women do not want to be handed the poisoned chalice of resentment for perceived inadequacy. What diversity calls for is the lifting of blinkers which have culturally prescribed the role of women as ‘other’ and ‘inferior’. Women are highly-educated and talented and want recognition and reward. Targets and quotas are simply a means of ‘widening the net’ in the recruitment process to obtain the best possible candidates.

It is vital that women make inroads at every level to create long-lasting systemic change.

Change begins from the top and then needs to be filtered down the line. Like the highly-visible figureheads at the bow of a ship cutting through the waves of change, our current heads of state Quentin Bryce and Julia Gillard, and champions such as Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick, risk remaining lone and symbolic if only men man the ship and women remain in the hold.

About the authors Co-authored by Donna de Zwart, General Manager, Diversity@Work and Fiona Jewell, Lead Consultant – Culture and Gender, Diversity@Work. For more information on solutions, strategies and programs in Diversity and Inclusion, please visit our website www.diversityatwork.com.au where you will also find information on the Diversity@ Work 2011 Employment and Inclusion Awards. www.hcamag.com

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RECRUITMENT gender diversity

Boosting female talent Qualified, skilled and ambitious women are ready to join your organisation now – but are you ready?

Britt Jacobsen provides some tips for a female-friendly recruitment strategy

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A

ll the major banks have done it. Most of the professional services firms have done it. I’m talking about setting targets for greater female representation, specifically at senior management levels. These companies aren’t the only ones setting goals; many large organisations now have aggressive targets to get more women into management roles and on boards by a given date. ANZ, for example, has set a target to have women making up 40% of management roles by September 2011. To achieve this, they have had to reform how they recruit and promote women.

Whether your organisation has set gender targets or not, the business case for increasing your company’s female talent is clear. Not only does it make sense to see women, who represent almost half of the Australian workforce, equally represented at all levels, but companies that do have greater gender balance have higher productivity than those that do not. However, using the same old recruitment methods is not going to bring more women to your door. So what are these companies doing differently to attract more women to their workforces?

One of the biggest misconceptions we hear at Optimiss is ‘but there aren’t any women out there’.

That’s a myth. There are plenty. We speak to them every day and they are often stuck in roles they were ready to move out of long ago, having been overlooked by their current employer for further

opportunities. Qualified, skilled and ambitious women are ready to join your organisation now. But these savvy women are not going to jump ship to just any employer, which is why you need to change your recruiting tactics.

Changing your approach Firstly, what message are you sending potential female recruits? As any job candidate will do, women will be visiting your website, looking at your promotional materials and talking to their connections about experiences with your company.

What does your employer branding say about your commitment to women? A careers page on your website showing only pictures of men and with no mention of women isn’t going to cut it. What sort of language are you using in your jobs ads and other public material? Women will be looking for signs to show them that they will fit in with your company’s culture, so you need to ensure those prompts are there. Women want to relate to the brand you promote and the vision you espouse.

You will also need to consider the job design of your positions. Elizabeth Broderick, Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner, often talks of the traditional view of what an ‘ideal worker’ looks like. Usually this is a person who is available 24/7, with no visible caring responsibilities. How realistic is this image for women, particularly those who are mothers? Regardless of whether a woman is a

RECRUITMENT gender diversity

parent or not, a selection criteria that just describes the last person who held that role (and let’s face it, it was probably a man) is going to rule out a whole cast of potential women. Take another look at those job descriptions; are they really portraying what is necessary in the role? Could you be ruling out women just because they’ve had a parental break in their working history or took a side-step to gain experience in another industry?

So how about sourcing these women? Some companies have already put in place mandates to include at least one woman on every shortlist, but will this help? One of our clients told us that, despite requesting that women be included on every CV shortlist, all of their recruiters still failed to bring them any female candidates. If you work with recruitment agencies, make it clear what your expectations are in relation to women on shortlists and in interviews. If they fail to bring qualified and experienced women your way, swap to a specialist recruitment service that already has talented women who are ready for a new role.

If you handle most of your recruitment inhouse, and are struggling with getting more women into roles, it’s possible that an unconscious bias is occurring. One simple way to target these biases is to use blind CVs – all names and gender-identifying information are removed from CVs before they go to a panel to shortlist. By doing this, you will ensure that the shortlist is determined on merit alone.

You may also want to consider having both male and female representation on your selection panels, as this will assist in tackling any biases that might exist.

Now we’ve got them, how do we keep them?

It doesn’t matter how great your recruitment campaign is, if you can’t retain your female talent, the recruitment will have been a wasted exercise.

These women are not going to stick around while you fumble with their careers. This is especially true of those at the $200K+ package level, which is where we have seen the most women drop off.

This is where you need to look at what’s currently going on inside your organisation. Who are the female role models at senior levels that other women can look to? It is important that there are forerunners so that women can see that this is not just another company where their careers will be stifled after so many years. If you have few women in leadership positions, or none at all, think about how crucial that next senior appointment will be.

In fact, your entire female talent pipeline needs to be considered if you want to see sustainable growth of female-held positions across the company.

It needs to be ingrained in your workforce planning and professional development activities. This will have more than one positive effect: women will see opportunities for advancement and want to stay with the organisation, and seeing these great initiatives, more women will want to leave your competitors and join your workforce.

Building a pipeline of female talent will take time but it can be achieved. Ensure that you have the right networks in place. Talk to a specialist who has seen success stories, and can bring this knowledge to your organisation. When you do have successes, talk about them, and others will follow. HC

About the author Britt Jacobsen, manager at Optimiss Consulting, works with firms to increase the number of women in senior positions through the recruitment of female talent and targeted retention strategies. For further information please contact Optimiss Consulting on (02) 9091 8001 or visit www. optimiss.com

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35

VIEWPOINT gary taylor

Lessons from For many HR professionals, benchmarking best practices is something we do with similar organisations, so that we can copy what they do in similar circumstances. A bolder move is to benchmark with dissimilar organisations, such as universities, writes Gary Taylor

A

lthough HR professionals may get their degrees from universities, there are few of us who would look to the higher education sector for lessons in succession planning.

Universities are often seen as quasi-government institutions with management practices out of step with the commercial world, and concepts like ‘tenure’ which scare most of us away from benchmarking with them.

Having worked for two universities in HR, I think there are indeed some lessons we could learn in the private sector and adapt from the university model.

Institutionalised demotion IR practitioners are already cringing at the thought, but at universities it works like this. An academic’s job is teaching and research, and they will start as a lecturer, rising to full professor in their respective disciplines. For many, this is all they want, but there are those who would then rise to Head of Department, assuming some administrative duties (they generally despise the word ‘management’), the next step being to contemplate applying for a Head of School or Deanship.

Most professors will only apply if there is a guarantee of returning to their professorship post after a stint in management. Promotions are normally by means of five-year contracts, possibly renewable for a second term. The key element is that a returning Head or Dean is welcomed back into their former department with dignity and respect by proud colleagues (former subordinates), where they can spend the rest of their career (to well past retirement age) teaching and publishing. Without this right-of-return, few academics would venture into senior management positions.

Nice for the academic, but would it work in the private sector?

• Firstly, this system greatly facilitates succession planning, as everyone knows

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VIEWPOINT gary taylor

professors •

•

•

•

when the contract term finishes. This career certainty fosters security for the talented individual, who now does not start looking around for other opportunities a year before the contract ends.

It also minimises the frustrations for tomorrow’s leaders who do not have to sit and wait for ‘dead men’s shoes’. Even for the second contract term, it is an open race, so a new star might depose an incumbent who applies for a second term, but you needn’t lose either of them.

It overcomes the flawed reality of the private sector that career progression in management is either ‘up or out’. The academic system actively encourages yesterday’s executive to pursue several years back in the discipline which was their passion. Wouldn’t it be great to have our former high fliers back in software development, product design, actuarial or investment specialist roles after they have done their time in management.

It is a practical way to allow for work–life balance for those who have possibly passed 50 and want to scale back those crazy hours, even if it means a reduced salary and grade, without all the politics and stress of the executive role, but still working for their employer – rather than ‘consulting’.

If we could re-energise and harness the experience of yesterday’s leaders into individual contributor roles, possibly mentoring tomorrow’s bright sparks, we would not see so many top performers having to leave the employer to ensure a change of pace.

Sabbatical The private sector often believes that a sabbatical is just a long holiday every five years, but not so in academia. This is when academics get to ‘re-tool’ for a period of time – writing books, conducting research overseas – but getting away from the workplace

completely. They are replaced by someone who assumes full responsibility for their duties. It is not beach-leave, but even if it were…

The private sector talks ‘work–life balance’, but practises and rewards workaholism. Hard work and long hours are not evil, but prolonged 60+ hour weeks have their consequences, as those employee wellbeing people have been saying, but we were too busy to attend the wellness day! So, why should we consider the sabbatical in the private sector?

• Despite our naïve assumptions, key people can be away for more than a week, and organisations will survive, as they do when these people leave for good, or get transferred. Saying that we can’t afford to have good people off on sabbatical is not good enough.

• Getting good people out on a planned basis allows a promising subordinate the chance to step up to the plate and show their mettle, frequently with surprising results. Think how many sporting heroes got their ‘break’ when the incumbent, ‘irreplaceable’ star was injured.

• The sabbatical is a great opportunity for your key players to benchmark practices among competitors, especially overseas. A cutting edge business school program is another great investment during this time, as part of the retooling process.

• The cost is minor. If you want, you can put in place a claw-back relating to repayment, but consider the cost–benefit proposition.

About the author Gary Taylor has worked in HR for 25 years, at National Mutual of Australasia and Unilever, then as HR director at South Africa’s largest health insurer Medscheme for 14 years, followed by three years at Wits University, Johannesburg.

Two years ago, he was appointed to start up HR for a new university in Saudi Arabia, where he is now director of the policy office.

For many HR professionals, benchmarking best practices is something we do with similar organisations, so that we can copy what they do in similar circumstances. A bolder move is to benchmark with dissimilar organisations, such as universities, to see what we can learn from practices that are not endemic to our particular industry.

Perhaps we can learn again from the professors. HC www.hcamag.com

37

EMPLOYEE BENEFITS novated leasing

Driving

employee benefits Can novated leasing produce results that reward both the employee and the business?

Danny Wilson investigates

A

ttracting and retaining a positive workforce remains a critical and well discussed topic in the HR sector, particularly as generational changes shift the focus away from salary-specific employee advantages and move further towards tax savings and overall job satisfaction.

For HR managers of medium to large scale businesses, knowing the competitive employee benefit landscape is key to winning and keeping educated and loyal workers.

There isn’t just one solution to being a preferred employer but rather a combination of benefits that appeal to employees. Attracting and retaining employees used to be purely about what employers were offering in terms of take-home money. While the base conversation is still the same, the money talk is far more sophisticated and employees want to see tangible benefits.

As wage pressures grow in 2011, employers need to focus on providing a combination of more flexible working conditions and offering salary packaging arrangements that maximise ‘wage value’ for the employee while minimising cost for the employer.

Bonuses, accrued leave and flexible working conditions can all be very appealing but if you can also offer employees a benefit that saves them time and tax, suddenly as a business you are a lot more attractive to the kind of people you want to work for you.

Novated car leasing is one option that is now offered by a growing number of employers as an employee benefit and the results reward both

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employee and business, even if your employees don’t use the car for business purposes. Employees also don’t need to be high income earners or drive high kilometres for a novated lease to be beneficial.

Novated leases today challenge the old school thought of company cars. Today it’s all about choice and flexibility, which makes the lease beneficial to employees right across the board, from the receptionist to the managing director.

The growth in this benefit type over the last decade has been staggering, with Australian Fleet Lessors Association (AFLA) figures indicating a 35% annually compounding growth rate in lease funding.

The growth isn’t really surprising when you look at the real benefits of a novated lease for both the employee and the business.

For employees: • Pay less income tax • Save the GST on the purchase price of the car and all the running costs (including fuel) • Less stress – a specialist oversees the vehicle purchase and ongoing maintenance • Ability to package your choice of car; new, used or even the car you currently own!

For businesses that outsource a novated lease program: • Hand over management and administration of employee benefits program • Remove responsibility of FBT compliance and associated reporting • Reduce employment on-costs • Gain access to specialised employee training and communication tools Essentially, a novated lease means that a portion of the car is simply paid for pre-tax, which can save an average employee $1,600–$2,000 annually. A novated lease also offers the benefit of bundling and budgeting registration, insurance,

EMPLOYEE BENEFITS novated leasing

petrol, maintenance and repairs – reducing GST payments, paperwork and stress for both employers and employees.

The 2009 Mercer’s Auatralian Benefits Review found that over 80% of participating employers include novated leasing as an employee benefit and it has now also attained ‘best practice’ status for all significant employers.

Novated leasing has become standard practice with employers who have 250+ staff, while it’s becoming more common in businesses with 50+ staff.

The growth can be attributed to the awareness and demand from employees as well as a better administration and management system being available to employers.

Typical concerns from employers and HR professionals about novated leasing focus around resource-heavy administration and not being able to deliver informed communication to their employees.

Outsourcing novated leasing to a specialist means you and your employees will have access to a high level of informed communication, transparency and simple administration.

When choosing a company to handle your leases, it pays to understand the nature of novated leasing because while you want a good business-to-business solution, the end user is your employee so it helps to appoint a company that offers a great business-toconsumer service.

There’s awareness and an expectation now of what a great employer can offer. Novated leases are becoming part of the new landscape so you need to assess if, by not offering the option, you’re risking the loss of your greatest assets – your people. HC About the author Danny Wilson is director of novated leasing consultancy nlc.

For further information visit www.nlc.com.au

Case study: Chris vs Jenny Chris and Jenny earn the same amount, drive the same kilometres and both want to buy a new car. Let’s compare the difference a Novated Lease makes on their tax savings and disposable income.

Chris’ employer doesn’t offer salary packaging meaning he can’t novate a car, which means he pays for the car with his after tax money.

CHRIS (no novated lease) Annual wages RRP of car Kilometres pa

JENNY (with novated lease)

$65,000

Annual wages

$35,000

RRP of car

18,000 (approx 350km per week)

Use

$65,000 $35,000

Kilometres pa

Private

Use

GST on car

$3,086

GST on car

Purchase price

$35,000

Purchase price

18,000 (approx 350km per week) Private

Annual costs

$0 $31,914

Annual costs

Annual finance

$8,239

Annual finance

$7,578

Insurance

$1,353

Insurance

$1,230

Registration Fuel

$770 $2,970

Maintenance Total annual costs

$842 $14,174

Disposable income

Registration

$770

Fuel

$2,700

Maintenance

$1,065

Total annual costs

$13,343 (ex-GST)

Disposable income Pre-tax deduction

$7,171

PAYG income tax

$14,025

PAYG income tax

$11,766

Net income

$50,975

Net income

$46,063

Car expenses

$14,174

Post-tax deduction

$6,790

$36,801

Total disposable income

$39,273

Total disposable income

Jenny’s bottom line saving is $2,472

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39

FEATURE workplace investigations

The punishment must fit the crime In part two of a two-part series, Stuart King outlines how to implement the outcomes of a workplace investigation

I

n my article late last year (issue 8.11) about the important first day and subsequent process of a workplace behaviour investigation, I discussed the importance of laying the foundation for success: scoping the work and the issues; drafting concise particulars of complaint; managing expectations about the process; mapping out what will likely occur and the methodology to be used; building trust in the process; and gathering evidence ready for the all-important analysis phase.

The analysis is key to ensuring a quality outcome that may identify serious misconduct behaviour and result in someone losing their job or being the subject of disciplinary action. The outcome may also vindicate the person complained about and find the complaint unsubstantiated.

Either way, the potential impact on the parties affected must be considered.

Analysis requires patience, careful thought and the ability to think on a number of levels at once, linking key aspects of relevant material to the particulars of complaint, legislation and workplace policies. When completed to the investigator’s satisfaction, the report write-up phase begins and typically takes many hours to complete. Initial analysis is checked. Anybody reading the report should understand the issues, however complex, and comprehend and be able to trace material relied

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on for findings and recommendations. Brevity, clarity and clinical accuracy are the requisite skills.

Some employers require only that the investigator makes a finding of fact, in other words offers no value-add discussion, advice or comment beyond whether what was complained of did or did not occur on the balance of probabilities. These investigations are objective and concise and inform the client’s own consideration of where the findings sit in terms of policy and law, and indeed, what to do thereafter.

The majority of our clients, however, do seek comments and recommendations that add value to the potential outcome of a finding; if it is such that a person’s employment situation may be affected, the client will probably seek legal advice for a planned response. But at KWS we aim to provide sustainable solutions that go beyond the technical and legal positions. Termination, for example, is an easy out but the workplace behaviour in question might result from a negative culture. So while dealing with the immediate issue, we also identify causes and recommend remedies such as trainee education programs, policy changes, management workshops, individual coaching or access to our confidential telephone employee help line service.

By the time of an investigation an organisation knows it is in big trouble and that it must listen and change. Implementing the investigator’s findings and recommendations is the employer’s responsibility. Experience shows that if matters are found proven then an organisation can be expected to act through its duty of care to provide a safe work environment and to support its values and policy position.

RECRUITMENT gender diversity

making money easy Whether a complaint is substantiated or not, strategies must be devised for repairing or continuing the working relationship between the parties (unless of course, one party is to be terminated through serious misconduct provisions). This will involve skilled communication processes and practical tools.

Performance management plans, for example, may be used to articulate to both parties what is expected of them and to provide management with a tool to monitor the relationship. I recall a case in which an employee, found to have acted inappropriately, was subjected to onerous performance outcomes for two years rather than having his position terminated. To his credit he responded and met the requirements of that plan, demonstrating his acceptance of change and a new way of behaving at work.

Termination does not usually result from minor breaches of legislation or policy and formal warnings along with development plans are sufficient. In other cases mediation may be required and may be beneficial, but of course, both parties must agree to it.

Rebuilding trust and effective, professional relationships after a workplace complaint and investigation is challenging. It takes time, and patience. Sometimes the environment is irretrievably damaged leading to managed and careful discussion about alternative working arrangements for those involved.

The spectre of a workplace complaint investigation looms large when people are faced with a complaint about them. If they have acted wrongly then part of being an adult is accepting responsibility for one’s actions and moving forward. Often, people who are complained about develop a victim mentality without accepting they were wrong. Equally, many complainants struggle to let things go. The outcome may be that both parties end up leaving the organisation.

As I said at the outset of this series, prevention is better than cure. We advocate systems that detect behavioural risk and treat it through our programs and services. Investigations are time consuming, invasive (which they need to be) and expensive; specialist skills come with a value. HC

By the time of an investigation an organisation knows it is in big trouble and that it must listen and change

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About the author Stuart King is the CEO of Kings Workplace Solutions. For further information visit www.kingsworkplacesolutions. com.au

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FEATURE workplace investigations

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RECRUITMENT gender diversity

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43

IN BRIEF australian news

Australia’s ‘most attractive’ employer announced

Virgin Blue has been named Australia’s most attractive employer at the inaugural 2011 Randstad Awards, edging out rival airline Qantas and BHP Billiton.

Randstad announced three awards during a gala evening, with Macquarie Bank winning the banking/financial award and BHP Billiton receiving top honours in the mining category.

First launched in Belgium in 2000, the Awards have since been embraced by France, Spain and the Netherlands. This year, for the first time in a decade, the Awards shifted outside of Europe to 11 countries around the world including Australia and New Zealand.

Recently appointed Randstad CEO Fred van der Tang commended the winning companies on their victories, paying a special tribute to Virgin Blue for setting the standard in the Award’s inaugural year.

Van der Tang said the Randstad Awards are totally unique in this market, with the winner decided entirely on the feedback of the Australian public – providing companies with a valuable snapshot of their employer attractiveness.

Employers should be cautious when providing references Although providing employment references is a normal step in the recruitment process, previous employers should exercise caution when disclosing information about former employees, warns Harmers Workplace Lawyers.

Peter Ferraro, senior associate for Harmers, said providing references could lead to a number of issues, such as misrepresentation and defamation claims as well as invasion of privacy.

Ferraro recommended that sticking to the basic facts is sometimes the safer option. “Former employees are under no legal obligation to provide a reference; simply confirming the details of a person’s employment is perfectly acceptable.

“If you do want to provide a character reference, do this cautiously as you don’t want to run the risk of being held liable for defamation.

“In addition, intentionally providing inaccurate information or withholding critical information could land you in trouble with a claim for misrepresentation from the new employer with the potential to seek compensation for damages.”

Pressure on staff retention in professional services firms Professional services firms need to ramp up their R&D programs to engage and retain talent, according to the latest research from Towers Watson.

The study found that retention levels in this sector are now falling back to levels seen before the global downturn.

Lesley Brown, head of employee surveys and insights for Towers Watson in Australia, said the research shows there is an expectation among employees that their efforts during the GFC should now be recognised.

“Having now emerged from the GFC, which saw many professional service firms introduce a range of cost-cutting measures, the research shows that their employees are now looking towards how their firms can help them.”

Key findings from the research include: 1. It’s not all about the money 2. Strong leadership plays a pivotal role to engender trust and inspire 3. Development-oriented performance management is highly regarded 4. Non-monetary rewards are crucial during times of limited pay increases

Productivity a ‘top business priority’ for 76% of private sector

Fast fact

According to research by JobStreet.com and Aon Hewitt, more job seekers in Asia prefer to work for Western organisations. In fact, 78% of respondents taking part in their joint survey ranked American companies as their preferred choice, followed by British and Australian companies 44

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A majority of large Australian organisations are still not reaping productivity rewards, according to research launched by Telstra.

The Telstra Productivity Indicator 2011 continues to show a ‘Productivity Improvement Deficit’ among half of the nation’s largest industry and government organisations, representing a decline of 7% since Telstra began the annual productivity report in 2009.

Paul Geason, Telstra enterprise and government group managing director, said a major disparity continues to exist between management expectations and real improvements in productivity.

“Three quarters of organisations say improving productivity is a key priority, yet only one quarter are achieving and tracking significant productivity gains,” Geason said.

“The research indicates organisations are not ‘walking the talk’ with only a fraction actually setting targets, measuring and actually achieving productivity improvements.”

The Productivity Improvement Deficit is higher among government organisations with only 14% measuring productivity and achieving improvements compared to 25% in the private sector, Geason added.

IN BRIEF international news

Hong Kong: Employers battle over lunch pay

Some employers in Hong Kong are refusing to consider lunch breaks as part of work hours, hence, not paying for the period of time they spend at lunch.

Executive Council member Cheng Yiu-tong has condemned “miserly” bosses for lunch tactics. Cheng, who heads the Federation of Trade Unions, said that besides the minimum wage legislation, additional laws should be passed to ensure workers are paid for lunch breaks. Under the new law, it is up to employers to decide whether to pay for workers’ meal breaks and rest days.

The issue is controversial, as paying for lunch breaks and rest days may mean paying thousands of dollars more for each employee.

For example, the wage for an employee who works for nine hours – including a one-hour lunch break – will be HK$7,560 for a 30-day month, including lunch breaks and rest days.

However, if lunch breaks and four days off are excluded, the monthly wage would be only HK$5,824.

The difference in wages will be greater if a worker works for longer hours each day.

The minimum wage legislation in Hong Kong takes effect on 1 May.

UK: Default retirement age scrapped

RUSSIA: Ready to provide Japanese employment

The UK government will be scrapping the default retirement age (DRA) from 1 October 2011.

The move will prevent employers from forcing staff out when they reach the age of 65. Despite protests from employer groups, the government will go ahead with the plan, stating that it would give people “more freedom of choice” and employers will be able to utilise older workers’ skills for a longer time.

In a government statement, Employment Relations Minister Edward Davey said: “Older workers can play an incredibly important role in the workplace and it is high time we ended this outdated form of age discrimination.”

According to Legalbrief Today, business lobby group CBI stated that the policy change will not clear the air for businesses on how older employees can leave their organisations.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced that Russia is ready to provide employment in Siberia and Russia’s Far East for Japanese who were affected by the tsunami and earthquake.

According to online news site RIA Novosti, President Medvedev said that Russia could “consider using part of the labour potential of our neighbour” in Siberia and the Far East.

Currently, 165 Russian specialists are involved in rescue efforts in Japan and the President has pledged to provide more aid and accommodate victims in Russian sanatoriums.

The 9.0 magnitude earthquake followed by a 10-metre high tsunami has left more than 10,000 people dead or missing.

Fast fact Companies are turning to versatile electronic devices such as iPads and tablets for office use. Apple has sold nearly 15 million iPads worldwide in the first nine months of release, although it has not officially revealed the number of businesses using the device. According to The New York Times, more than 80% of Fortune 100 companies are using or testing the iPad

US: Unemployed job applicants rejected

MALAYSIA: Women leaders wanted

Worker advocates in the US are raising concerns over recruitment practices by some employers.

The advocates state that employers are screening out unemployed applicants, which could lead to discrimination against women and minorities.

Speaking to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the advocates said that some organisations might not have a specific policy but they could be rejecting candidates based on their employment status.

Christine Owens, executive director of National Employment Law Project, highlighted that this practice leads to difficulty in unemployed workers getting hired.

The Society for Human Resource Management, which represents more than 250,000 personnel managers, said they were unaware of this practice.

The government is aiming to have women in 30% of top government and private sector positions in the future.

According to a 2009 study by the UK government, Women on Boards: A Statistical Review

by Country, Region, Sector and Market Index, women make up just 4.2% of boardrooms in Malaysia.

“Women make up 45% of the workforce in the country but this figure does not compare with their enormous contribution to the country’s economic development,” Prime Minister Najib Razak said. “If more women are willing to build their career, be it in the government or private sector, I am confident they can fill high positions offered in these sectors.”

Najib was quoted as saying that women in Malaysia faced no discrimination in the workplace and are able to hold high-ranking positions.

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45

PROFILE vaughan paul

Me + We

= Us Transforming an organisation of great complexity and some 10,000 employees into a high-performing powerhouse is no mean feat. Human Capital talks to Optus’ director of human resources, Vaughan Paul

V

aughan Paul, director of HR at Optus, has a connection to HR (or personnel as it was previously known) that stretches back to his time in a Perth-based bank’s graduate program.

During the course of that program his time was split between roles lending money in the branches and undertaking various other finance-related tasks, and spending time in the HR department. It was HR that won out. In the early 1990s, while he was considering either a rural branch management role or something different in the corporate space, he was offered a better HR opportunity which necessitated a move with his wife to Sydney. Although he’s made Sydney home, he’s still “a Perth boy and passionate ex-West Coast Eagles fan”, and he concedes he gets some stick from family whenever his former team meets his new team, Sydney Swans.

He left the bank in 2000 and moved to another HR role in a computer sciences corporation, where he worked primarily on the people element of a number of M&A projects.

He joined Optus in 2005 as general manager HR for Optus Business, and was promoted in April 2009 to his current role. His responsibilities run the full gamut of HR – employee relations, workers comp, OHS, remuneration and benefits, as well as decentralised

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HR consulting and L&D functions. Approximately 220 staff operate Optus’ HR function, which includes subsidiaries Virgin Mobile, Uecomm and Alphawest.

L&D Not surprisingly, given the focus on sales and marketing roles at Optus, a large percentage of Paul’s team is devoted to L&D. “Any time you amend a product or develop a new product you’ve got to design training to support that, to build awareness and education for the frontline staff,” he says.

Paul talks about an “employee corridor and lifecycle”, so from the minute someone is hired to the minute they get promoted, have a career discussion or they leave, there’s a learning orientation and intervention along that corridor.

The base level corridor might involve a platform of training around systems, process, product and the core role. That is then overlaid with a “lifecycle element”, which focuses on when that employee is next ready for a move and outlining what that move looks like; so if it’s a move into leadership, have they got the right level of skillsets, do they know the difference between leadership and management?

For a project manager, do they have skillsets around project management methodology, etc?

PROFILE vaughan paul

PERSONAL FILE

Vaughan Paul Age: 43

Family: Twins aged 9, and wife Cara Favourite sports: Aussie Rules Football, surfing, and I coach my son’s footy team Favourite movie or tv: I’m a big music fan, so I love Spicks and Specks Self-described: Pragmatic, driven, down to earth, good sense of humour, loud Hobbies: I’m a guitarist, I like to run and to read a good book every now and then First job and/or worst job: First job when I was studying was a trolley pusher. A number of jobs in the bank I didn’t like – they were very clerical, push this piece of paper from one side to the other-type roles, and I just didn’t feel challenged by them If not in HR: Probably in a band www.hcamag.com

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PROFILE vaughan paul

“We also train call centres that are outsourced and do a lot of training for our franchisees and sales channels,” says Paul. “A lot of my L&D complement is not just for the staff base but also for the ecosystem we support, which is so important to make sure the customer experience touchpoints with Optus are consistent whether you’re dealing with an Optus employee or someone associated with Optus.”

There is also a focus on providing L&D for the skills of today and skills for the future. “We know that we need to do more about skills for the future, pre-empting the technology and the changes that are coming, so we’ve got people ahead of new revenue streams. It’s around predicting what are the future skills that the business needs and trying to upskill into core pockets of that. There’s a challenge in making sure that what you’re investing in is real and will get you a return,” he says.

“That battle between productivity and efficiency versus the discretionary effort across your staff base is quite challenging” – Vaughan Paul

In his own words…

What are your thoughts on the future of HR as a profession?

I think HR spends a lot of time debating this: are we sitting at the table, are we not, etc. It’s a bit naff. I think that HR is in a fantastic place at the moment. The transformational nature of industry and the rate of change just needs HR right on the map. The challenge is to balance the operational and the strategic. We all face that – you can’t talk strategically unless your operational platform is healthy and it moves like clockwork. You’ve got to do both. But while the business continues to worry about sustainability and performance, and long-term performance trends rather than short term, HR has a really big mandate. I think most HR directors are pretty excited by what they see. I do worry about where our future HR people are being grown. With functional specialisation, we’re becoming a bit siloed in how we’re growing the next generation of HR people.

One challenge we face as a discipline is how we continue to invest to ensure we’ve got talent coming through that gets broad HR exposure.

What is the HR initiative that you are most proud of in your career?

I’m quite proud of my career path. I’ve done a whole range of things in HR and I’m really fortunate to be doing the job I’m doing now. To pick a project, I did a large facility move with another company, which moved about 1,400 people from a range of different buildings to one. It was a two-year project. I’d done change and change management, but this was quite a long tail change project. It taught me a lot about enterprise-wide change and how something might work for one person and not for others. You’re sitting in a project planning room and you have no idea that someone might say, ‘I refuse to move unless I can move my chair’.

You don’t experience it until you’re in it. Also, I moved a bit too hard on that project and lost sight of the balance you need to maintain. I got a lot of things wrong but actually the result was pretty good.

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Culture change In 2009 Optus launched a culture transformation program with the overarching aim of creating a truly customer-centric culture. Known as ME WE, the program encourages individuals to be accountable for their actions, for teams to collaborate and for staff to be empowered to deliver exceptional customer experience.

“A few years ago we started to do some process re-engineering across the company to fix some of the root cause problems that impact our customer base.

At the same time we started to create a program internally about how to help the organisation become more customer centric, to bring the customer into the company rather than keep them on the edge. We’re all customers so it’s not a huge jump but you can get so into your job day to day that you forget how your job adds value to the state of the customer,” Paul explains.

Direct efforts were made, particularly at senior leadership level, to “feel the customer directly”.

Some of the programs included back to the floor: sitting in on call centres, hearing customer conversations. An employee empowerment program called Family & Friends was launched whereby if an employee’s family or friend was having an Optus-related problem, rather than the employee sitting there feeling helpless, the details are taken, the problem is referred to a central area, and the person having the problem is contacted directly.

“The conversation might start with something like, ‘Vaughan said you were having a problem, how can we help you?’ That helps people become advocates of the brand.”

ME WE is ultimately about improving crossfunction collaboration in the company, to get back that alignment to the customer. “Often when things fall over it’s because one department hasn’t spoken to another and it’s been dropped in the middle.

The ME WE program is centred around what can the company do for me, around my development, growth, learning, performance, reward, and then what do I do for the company and the broader team – how can I help the team deliver to the customer, how can I help another part of the business understand the customer impact of my area, how can I make sure that we don’t drop the ball? It’s designed to shift the focus from me and my team to more of the collective,” Paul says.

Accolades Paul and his team have seen their efforts in other areas recognised as industry benchmarks. In 2009

PROFILE vaughan paul

the Optus HR team received an AHRI award for the feedback tool called Upward Feedback, as part of the Optus Leadership Capability Framework. This is now a core measure of a leader’s effectiveness.

“Most organisations will tell you that what you put focus on and what you measure you get a shift in. We had a view that we wanted to get a bit more serious about leadership, specifically leadership in order to execute strategy. We talked a lot about constructive styles and constructive cultures but we didn’t really have a core metric around leadership.

We wanted to get some consistent language and a measure of the leadership capability at Optus to know we’re on the right path,” Paul explains.

Upward Feedback is a 180-degree feedback tool, which means that all of a manager’s direct reports provide feedback twice a year, in line with the appraisal cycle. Areas addressed include how goals are being set, how frequently team members are getting feedback, whether relevant development and recognition are being carried out – “all the things that are good hygiene for the employer–employee relationship”, Paul says.

The tool is built into the appraisal cycle, so the score actually forms part of the manager’s performance appraisal. “What it’s enabled me to do is get the business talking about leadership and the language of leadership,” says Paul. “Now I have three lead measures for the HR function around staff engagement, customer experience and leadership, and I use this score to inform the community how we’re tracking from a leadership perspective.”

Looking more broadly at talent, Paul believes that while succession depth and future skills analysis are important elements of the Capability Framework, of greater importance will be determining how robust the employment brand is, and whether an organisation is attracting the right segments of the market from the employment brand.

“As social networking becomes more and more important you can almost sense a shift happening where the power now is going back to the job hunter, because they can leverage a lot more data around the company. They used to be able to check a website – now they’re actually asking people online about what it’s like to work there.

“The power of the brand is now going to have to be much more compelling to actually get into the attraction piece. It’s changing the HR proposition around how strong your brand is. I think it’s good – you don’t correct your strategy because of a bit of feedback but you have to be aware what your brand is like in the marketplace.”

Corporate health At last year’s AHRI awards the team picked up another award for health and wellbeing. Paul admits that health and wellbeing often get wrapped up in the employee deal, as “another box to check” but it has undeniable power to engage.

“The health and wellbeing of our employees is so important in terms of productivity but it also involves simply looking after our people and making our workplace a decent place to work. I think we have an obligation to ensure our health and safety responsibilities are carried out as per legislation – but it’s the other stuff that makes it more compelling,” he says.

Regular health checks, a broad range of benefits around the health space and all the stuff that engages, like family days, courses on transitioning to retirement, how to eat healthily, how to manage work–life balance, are all part of the Optus strategy.

“Ultimately people choose what they want to do,” says Paul. “We shouldn’t be telling them what way to go, but often the issue is companies not providing options and not helping to educate around right and wrong. If you think back years ago HR spent a lot of time doing stress management training. Well, that’s a symptom, not a cause. Helping staff get educated around how to manage it [work–life balance] will avoid having to do that stress training. That’s what I like about our program on health and wellbeing; it’s much more about looking after yourself and then you’ll have a much better work and family life.”

Future challenges Paul believes the biggest HR issue his organisation faces in the next 12 months is not unique to Optus: on one hand it’s the trade-off between productivity and efficiency, with competitive forces, margins coming down and global markets entering local markets, and on the other hand, attempting to drive engagement. “That battle between productivity and efficiency versus the discretionary effort across your staff base is quite a challenging one. It’s not mutually exclusive but it’s a fairly narrow board to tread between what you invest to get people excited about the company and trying to keep costs down, to get good ways of leveraging suppliers, and so on. And staff engagement is so important: we refer to it as the ‘dry stickiness’ to the company – stickiness being retention. If we can get that balance right we’ll be in an excellent position,” he concludes. HC www.hcamag.com

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HR NETWORKING world café

The sky is the limit

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n 10 March, HR networking facilitators TalkPoint organised a World Café, which is a means of bringing people together to have conversations that matter. The World Café process is based on living systems theory – it allows people to begin conversations by responding to questions in small groups, and then move around between groups and crosspollinate ideas and deepen the conversations.

Some 80 senior HR and other senior business leaders participated.

TalkPoint’s purpose was “to create forward movement in the HR profession”. There is so much that the HR profession is doing and can do. There is also a sense, among some, that sometimes HR does not make as much impact or the type of impact that we would like, that HR’s role is not valued and that the profession is not respected. TalkPoint’s intention was to open up this conversation, ask some questions about whether this is true, and, if so, why this is the case. What could or should we be doing more of? Differently? How else can we think about these issues?

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How did we do it?

Three questions were asked: 1. What assumptions do we need in order to challenge the HR function and who should own it in our organisations?

2. What’s taking shape here? What are we hearing underneath the variety of opinions being expressed?

3. Leading with guts and courage, how can we fully realise the unlimited potential of our people?

What next? »» We (HR professionals) cannot change others; we can only change ourselves. We cannot ask organisations to take us more seriously, value us more, give us space and time and investment – we need to make our endeavours compelling and relevant. »» We need to ask ourselves what we are doing to contribute to the status quo – the perception of HR and the profession. If we are happy with the way things are, let’s notice what we are doing that is working and replicate our behaviours. If we are not happy with the status quo, let’s identify what we are doing that is reinforcing it, and change those behaviours.

HR NETWORKING world café

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TEAMBUILDER david bowsher

What happens when you take a well established corporate entity and put it into unfamiliar surroundings? This month’s teambuilder looks at HR operations at BBC Worldwide Australia

There’s a Dalek in my office…

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alk about getting up close and personal with the brands you offer. The BBC Worldwide Australia office in Sydney’s Macquarie Park comes complete with themed rooms based on TV shows like Top Gear, Dancing With The Stars and Doctor Who. Toys and memorabilia litter filing cabinets and funky breakout areas, flatscreen televisions display BBC content, and of course, life-sized Daleks, made famous from Doctor Who, stand guard.

If a physical environment can sum up a corporate culture, it must apply to BBC. David Bowsher, head of HR, Australia, BBC Worldwide, says the people who want to work at BBC have a close affinity not just to the products the company produces, but more importantly to the values the organisation fosters.

“If you attract people into the business who have an affinity to your values then they’re more likely to perform better, work for you longer and produce a better result,” he says. “Generally we have a fairly laid back and relaxed culture but similarly it’s fairly professional and driven at the same time.”

Indeed, while Bowsher is proud of “the best products in the world” and the sense of trust that the BBC name conjures, he would ideally like to broaden the employer brand perception in the local market.

“In the media industry, BBC and BBC Worldwide are known, but when I talk to people on the street, when I say I work for BBC Worldwide they immediately assume I’m a reporter and I work for BBC World News. I think there’s a lot more that can be done to tell people that programs like Top Gear and Doctor Who are actually our programs regardless of what channel they are shown on. Also our own channels like UKTV are strong brands.”

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Although effectively in a greenfields role, with HR having only previously operated as a generalist, administrative function in one half of the Australian operation (prior to 2010, the company sat in different offices, split between sales & distribution and channels), Bowsher has plans to bolster the Australian branding presence. “We have the BBC Australia website, but when you go into Google and type in BBC Worldwide you go straight into London. In Australia, we want people to go straight to the BBC Australia website. We’re also developing the careers page, and are looking to increase our presence on YouTube and Twitter, interviewing people so they can talk about their experiences in the office and put those on the website as well.”

Media veteran A veteran of BBC in the UK, having worked in HR roles in many business divisions – including dealing with a multitude of media people, and everything from scene shifters to floor managers to news resources – Bowsher was brought out to Australia to head BBC’s local operations six months ago. The local operation has 100 employees and ambitious plans for future growth. “Australia is a key territory for BBC Worldwide; it’s done very well in the past and has generated good revenues. It’s now considered a Tier 1 country along with the US and UK. Bearing that in mind, the decision has been made at senior level that a more senior HR resource was required to pull everything together and look at an overarching people strategy to help the business grow and deliver targets,” he says.

In between roles at BBC, Bowsher spent time in HR roles at EMI Music in the UK, including the

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Thilo Pulch, www.pulchphotography.com

TEAMBUILDER david bowsher

“It was really throwing the organisation up into the air and seeing where the pieces were landing; we would have to fit those pieces in” – David Bowsher

legendary Abbey Road studio. While this obviously ticked the box of a career in media crossed with a career in HR (Bowsher’s original dream), it coincided with the takeover of EMI Music by Terra Firma. Within a short period of time, Terra Firma announced plans for a massive organisational restructure, to be carried out in an extremely tight timeframe. Globally, EMI lost a third of its workforce. Assisting in the design of a completely new organisational structure, as well as working out selection criteria for people to stay, including hundreds who had been with the company for many years, Bowsher concedes it was an extremely tough period. To make matters more complex, the HR team itself was included in the restructure plans.

“It was emotional to a certain degree, but we had to be professional going through it, being supportive to individuals as well as managers, and coach them through an exercise they hadn’t been through before – that was difficult. I think we were all learning at the same time. It was really throwing the organisation up into the air and seeing where the pieces were landing; we would have to fit those pieces in.”

Everything from the tight timeframe, to the legalities, to the difficult conversations, to the general uncertainty made a mark on Bowsher. “HR is not always the fun end of the business, and you always have to remain professional. You have to remember it’s not all about you,” he says.

HR priorities Bowsher is determined to add initiatives and interventions to BBC Australia that are “really aligned to the business and not just something we need to do”. Priorities will include renewing the training and development opportunities, which in the past have been haphazard due to the nature of how the business was structured, and succession planning for critical roles in the organisation. He will also be reviewing and benchmarking the pay and reward programs and how they fit in the market.

He concedes there’s still work to be done in building team cohesion. “Having two different offices move together means there’s quite a bit to do in terms of working closer together and getting that one team culture. It’s happening, but I still think there’s more we could do there,” he says.

Asked for comparisons between HR operations in the UK and in Australia, Bowsher says one key difference he’s noted has been that diversity agendas in Australia are in their infancy when compared to the UK, which he puts down to many of the large industries in Australia being traditionally male-

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dominated. “I think the UK is probably a bit further ahead in terms of work policies and bodies that represent various groups of people in the wider workforce,” he says. “Here, it’s more at the beginning of that journey.”

Bowsher also says UK employment law is very legislative with a lot of red tape and procedures for everything, but especially for restructures. “You have to follow a very prescribed route. It can mean that the process is quite slow, which sometimes hinders the business. Here, it’s not so procedural, and the concentration is on making sure you treat people fairly – for instance in a restructuring. It’s good for business but also for the individual,” he says.

One aspect of work life in a foreign land that Bowsher appreciates now as never before is communication with head office. Video conferences, albeit late at night, have been important for making sure Australia as a region is kept at the forefront of everybody’s mind in the UK, to ensure the local voice is heard, and also to ensure corporate initiatives from the UK are adapted appropriately to the local market.

Future challenges Bowsher is also starting to realise just how tight talent is in the Australian media industry, which has traditionally been a small and tightly connected field of professionals. “The talent is scarcer or harder to attract here, and I think that comes back to looking at how we develop people. You have wage inflation in any industry but I think it’s driven at a different pace here because it’s so small and there’s a higher premium on certain skills. If we want to attract people we need to look at the pay and reward strategy – have we got that right, are the benefits right? We need to work out what people want and need, and it’s not always going to be around the whole financial package – it will be around other things like training, how you work with people, the culture.”

Being part of a growing operation is exciting, and from Bowsher’s perspective, a key part of his acceptance of his role was the acknowledgement that he would have the great mix of working for a well established company in a new environment. “There’s a lot of scope to show the value of HR to the business and the senior team, and to make sure we do things that support the business,” he says. HC Check out HC Online TV for further insights into HR at BBC Worldwide Australia on www.hcamag.com

THE LAST WORD compiled by Suzanne Mercier

n Jennifer Aaker, Stanford marketing professor, is overrun with students wanting to attend her graduate-level course ‘Designing happiness’.

Corporate America is now asking her to help them figure out how to use happiness to increase employee productivity and woo customers.

Source: Fast Company, February 2011

n Research has found that leaders and managers can spend up to 80% of their time at work in meetings. Almost all those surveyed said that this is frustrating, wasteful and not beneficial to them, the people attending them or the company as a whole.

Source: Dr Ken Hudson, author of the series ‘The Idea Generator’, ‘The Idea Accelerator’ and ‘Speed Thinking’

n Dejan, an SEO company in Brisbane, is helping job seekers bury unfavourable online references and distance themselves from regretful incidents. While they can’t remove the Google references altogether, they reduce the likelihood they will be found by promoting what the candidate wants people to hear about.

Source: Smart Company 11/4/2011

5 minutes with...

Nicole Johnson

Moore Stephens Sydney West, head of HR What’s the greatest HR lesson you’ve learned so far?

HR is a balancing act every day. We have to take care of the people – nurture, performance manage and develop them – in the context of what the business is seeking to achieve and what it needs from its people in order to do so.

How does the HR function in a professional services firm differ from the same function within corporates?

The influence of shareholders is more obvious in a professional services firm because they run the practice. They may be making policy for the practice without necessarily being experts in that area and because they are directly impacted by the outcome, their decisions may be influenced by short-term factors.

What is your view on diversity, and specifically the current hot issue of gender diversity?

In accounting, we’re fortunate to have a culturally rich talent pool to draw from. As a result, we have a diverse workforce with all the benefits and challenges that entails. In relation to gender diversity, progress through a professional services firm is fairly structured and dependent upon technical expertise. We

Quote of the month “The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary” – American football coach Vince Lombardi

recognise the value of supporting women to move up through the levels to partnership.

What is your favourite peoplemanagement tip?

In HR, we touch everyone in the organisation so you’ve got to love what you do and share that passion with others.

You need to be inspired so you can inspire others, and lead by example.

What career advice would you give ambitious HR professionals?

Be sure HR is what you really want to do.

It’s not all about the ‘love’. There can be some tough calls you need to make – for example, during restructuring – and you need to be able to make those tough calls and live with them. HR serves both the people and the needs of the business.

What is the main challenge facing the HR industry right now and how can it be overcome?

In professional services, it’s about making sure we develop the leadership capabilities of our people as well as their technical expertise. We need to be paying as much attention to the softer skills as well as professional development as our accountants progress through the career ladder.

Can you believe it?

A report by the Industry Skills Council reveals that around 53% of working age Australians have difficulty with numeracy skills while 46% of Australian adults have difficulty with reading skills and 13% are classified in the lowest literacy category.

Source: Industry Skills Council

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