53 minute read
What we want most from HR in 2022: The business leaders speak
Build a culture that enables employees; champion employee voices; be strategically focused. We hear from business leaders on their expectations for how HR can support them in the coming year By Mint Kang
As we wind down 2021 and gear up for 2022, one major strategic question HR leaders may be asking themselves is: how can we better support and collaborate with the business leaders, in order to contribute even more strongly to the broader organisational strategy?
There's nothing like hearing directly from the business leaders themselves, and so People Matters asked three leaders from multinational companies for their thoughts on what they appreciate most from their HR counterparts, and what they hope that the HR function can do more of in the coming year. ENSuRING WE HAVE tHE RIGHt PEoPLE IN tHE RIGHt PLACE HAS ALWAyS BEEN A CoRE oBJECtIVE of ouR HR LEADERS. But tHESE DAyS, tHERE IS MuCH MoRE INVoLVED IN ACHIEVING tHAt GoAL
GORDON waTSON, CHIEf ExECuTIVE OffICER, AxA ASIA AND AfRICA
Create the best kind of working culture Gordon Watson, Chief Executive Officer Asia and Africa at insurance giant AXA, anticipates that AXA's HR team will place strong emphasis on creating a culture that enables and supports hybrid work, in line with the business strategy to roll out opt-in hybrid work worldwide.
“It is important for the HR team to continue collaborating closely with our people across the region – via coaching with empathy, regular and transparent communication and information sharing – to create a working culture that maximises our productivity, collaboration, creativity, and individual wellbeing, while also being inclusive,” he told People Matters. “This can help managers and leaders to nurture empowerment and trust within their teams by coordinating around clear objectives, backed by strong support and greater flexibility, so as to achieve personal and organisational
resilience and meet our customer needs.”
The development and propagation of AXA's organisational culture, in fact, is among the work he has found most helpful so far.
“Ensuring we have the right people in the right place has always been a core objective of our HR leaders,” he said. “But these days, there is much more involved in achieving that goal. A big part of it is to facilitate the spread of the company’s culture by supporting and coaching line managers to deliver people solutions and change, while helping to drive business performance.”
Champion the voices of employees Toby Rakison, Managing Director Asia for global interior design consultancy Unispace, wants his HR team to keep championing the voices of all individuals and groups across the company, and most particularly to look into how arrangements can be made for employees' unique needs – for instance, he pointed out, the overwhelming majority of women have had their lives disrupted by the pandemic, and are concerned about their career progression.
“In the current climate, varying circumstances and backgrounds of employees should also be considered, especially since the pandemic has affected demographic groups differently,” he said. “Issues around childcare, flexible working schedules and the ability to work from home have increasingly emerged as topof-mind for working women. Beyond making these benefits available across the business, employers should also focus on education – which takes the form of career planning, investments in learning and development, as well as customised training for the most lucrative and high-demand roles of the future.”
Be a business-centric, strategic function Alfred Lee, President Industrial Asia Pacific at international automotive and industrial supplier Schaeffler – one of the world's largest family-owned firms – wants his HR team to continue evolving away from an operational focus and take a more strategic approach.
“People play a critical role in any business strategy,” he said. “Hence as a bridge between the organisation and employees, HR forms a crucial part in developing the right talent and capability in enabling business
TOBY RaKISON, MANAGING DIRECTOR ASIA, uNISPACE
strategy. I believe HR leadership is the most effective when they are involved in strategic business decisions.”
This means stepping out of their comfort zone: adopting a business-centric mindset beyond just an HR-centric view of their day-to-day roles.
“It means having a say in evaluating the overall business strategy through the lens of capability and cultural issues and bringing in qualitative data to drive transformative change to meet business challenges and objectives,” he added. “By having a keen understanding of the value and impact they bring towards the organisation's overarching business strategy, the HR function would be better aggregators of talent while facilitating the right approach in engaging people and leaders toward organisational transformation and development.” Most of all, keep bringing employee voices to the leaders' ears All three of the leaders we spoke to said they most want HR to continue identifying and raising employee needs so that the business leaders can make the right decisions around people and the workplace.
“Connecting with employees and listening to their feedback on a regular basis is a key part of maintaining ongoing engagement and creating an inclusive workplace culture,” said AXA's Gordon Watson. Pointing to the regular pulse survey that the AXA HR team conducts to gauge employee thoughts on making AXA a better workplace, he said: “Such findings, complemented by practical, strategic recommendations are useful for leadership teams to better understand our employees and prioritise initiatives that truly cater to their needs.”
It's also critical for talent retention and development, said Schaeffler's Alfred Lee. “HR can facilitate this by being the voice for employees by listening to their challenges and finding a win-win solution to overcome them with the management team,” he noted. “At Schaeffler, there are robust employee engagement frameworks and initiatives in place that encourage dialogues between our employees and leaders from our board – creating a productive twoway direct communication in finding common ground and solutions on critical issues.”
And it helps in personalising the solutions that the business rolls out for individual employees, added Unispace's Toby Rakison. “Across a company’s workforce, there are various worker demographics with differing needs and desires. In catering to these, individual expectations must be considered, and alignment between the people and business agendas should be achieved,” he pointed out. “As employee concerns continually unfold and evolve, HR leaders are in the best position to provide business leaders with insights on their needs and wants, escalate these accordingly, and identify ways for companies to respond.”
Family businesses can bolster economic growth, but the tight labour market is a big challenge: Sally Craig
With more people seeing the benefits and opportunities of working from home and turning their ‘side-hustle’ into a full-time business, family businesses will continue to have an enormous role to play in Australian and New Zealand economies now and well into the future, says Sally Craig, GM People & Culture Kennards Hire
By drishti Pant
In Australia, family businesses represent 67 percent of all operating businesses, whilst in New Zealand, 75 percent of consumers trust family businesses more than nonfamily businesses, according to a recent KPMG report, With more ease of doing business and the rise in remote work culture, family businesses have the potential to further grow and expand. However, the tight recruitment market poses a threat to their growth. To compete in the war for talent, family businesses need to get the basics right and focus on improving their employees’ experience. But where do they start?
“Focusing on the engagement, retention and talent growth of your current workforce is critical, particularly for familyowned businesses,” says Sally Craig, GM People & Culture Kennards Hire, in an interview with People Matters.
Sally Craig has been with Kennards Hire since February 2016. Her experience in human resources and organisational change spans over twenty years, across a wide range of industries, which include telecommunications, travel, government, freight and logistics and, more recently, hire. Prior to joining Kennards Hire, Sally worked at companies such as StarTrack, Lonely Planet and Telstra, taking up leading roles that involve the design, development, and implementation of people and organisational development and change programmes.
Sally believes that connecting all aspects of the business not only results in a more productive and engaging organisation, but also ensures people achieve personal satisfaction and growth from their success.
When asked how she expects Australia and New Zealand's economy to recover, she told us: “We are already seeing high levels of activity in our business as strong investment in infrastructure and the housing market continues. The pandemic proved that as individuals, as a business we are versatile, adaptive, agile, and willing to embrace change quickly.”
Family businesses play a role on the path to recovery
The impact of the pandemic on family businesses has been varied, with some businesses hit hard, whilst others have had the opportunity to grow and evolve through
not only the industry they are in, but also through stabilising their business operations and innovating their product or service offering, whilst simultaneously laying the foundation for their companies’ future.
Sally shared that with more people seeing the benefits and opportunities of working from home and turning their ‘side hustle’ into a full-time business, family businesses will continue to have an enormous role to play in our economy now and well into the future.
However, family businesses across Australia and New Zealand need to prepare for some talent challenges. For instance, the halt on immigration and various government incentives offered during the pandemic has led to a shortage of talent.
“Focusing on the engagement, retention and talent growth of your current workforce is critical, particularly for family-owned businesses,” suggests Sally. “Asking, ‘What can we do to ensure our people want to stay with our business?’ and then acting upon that is key.”
“One thing we have noticed is the increase in employees wanting more flexible working arrangements. Kennards Hire had these opportunities in place before the pandemic. However, we are going to see it become the new normal, rather than the exception,” she added.
Kennards Hire is also aiming to support employees’ career development and engagement through providing additional upskilling opportunities, which will ideally provide impetus for employees to remain committed and loyal. The firm is also focusing on a referral program where current employees are encouraged to refer new people to the business and receive a reward for doing so. “We know our people love working for Kennards Hire and the family culture is well valued, so they are the best people to refer like-minded people to our business,” added Sally.
SouMYASANto SeN
The rise of People Analytics
People analytics is not just a tool for HR, but for all business functions. Here, we look at a few of the uses of people analytics and the challenges involved
In 2022 the postCOVID-19 world will have changed in ways that will intensely affect the workforce environment. A shifting economic landscape, technological innovations, and new work models are all drivers of change today and in the future.
These changes will impact the future for business leaders as they make workforce decisions. Today’s business leaders face the stacked challenges of determining the future trends and drivers, how they will combine to shape the end, the implications for their organisations, and what capabilities are required to meet these challenges.
The role of data and people analytics
Organisations that make data-driven decisions about their people already realise higher performance, better outcomes, and a much better return on results than those that don't. To achieve those better business outcomes and successful organisational transitions, many organisations are moving towards data-driven actions. Specifically, they are looking into the use of people analytics.
People analytics is no longer only at the centre of the HR community; other business functions have also recognised its importance in improving growth, performance, and productivity. They need people data to analyse, plan, and make evidence-based decisions on various people functions such as joining, leaving, performance, pay, retention, engagement, succession, learning, leadership, behaviours, and others. The objective is to solve the real business problems associated with people. In addition, people data also plays a role in delivering the highestquality customer service, bringing innovation, and helping to transform the business.
Challenges for adoption
In many organisations, people analytics is seen as nothing more than reports, dashboards, metrics, and elaborate visualisations. However, the correct use of data and analytics can add massive value to the business. Current digital HR solutions are undoubtedly improving, but challenges exist while integrating this with other business data, finance, or sales. Therefore, more emphasis needs to be placed on digital and ing a checklist for change management, organisations should listen to the employee's voice and adopt this input to identify key drivers of change.
The value of data democratisation is also very high. More people access the data easily and quickly, and more organisations can identify and act on critical business insights. In addition, when organizations allow data access to multiple levels, it empowers individuals at all ownership levels and
analytics solutions that allow for seamless integration and collaboration with other business-related solutions, shifting the focus onto resolving business and workforce-related challenges.
Organisations need data to assess risks, growth, adoption, and usage related to the changes in leadership and culture when considering transformation. It is necessary to recognise changing behaviours, ways of working, and ongoing collaboration among the workforce. Instead of implementgrants them the ability to use the data in their decision-making process. Giving people extended access to information and keeping it all within a single platform is necessary for any business that needs to empower its employees to make informed decisions.
The continuing evolution
Organisational change associated with transformation is not simple as it requires an adaptive strategy by leaders who can foster a culture of adopting change. The demand for an adaptive approach has arisen from the constant changes within the workforce and workplaces and uncertainty. Therefore, capturing the correct data is essential to hypothesise, analyse, measure, and generate insights using exploratory data analysis to make better decisions for these changes.
As the approach to data capture constantly evolves, so too is the sophistication of people analytics with the augmentation of areas like organisational network analysis (ONA), cultural analytics, workplace analytics, and others. With these new applications, organizations can gain new and increasingly in-depth insights from analysing behaviors, values, relationships, workplace habits, and social sentiments of the workforce. All these, in turn, can help them improve employee experience, future learning, and many other business challenges.
Ultimately, though, the greatest evolution is in our ability to identify problems and objectives. Whatever platforms or tools we use; the starting point is always business problems and the end point is reached through developing actionable insights.
about the author
SouMYaSanto SEn is a Digital HR, Transformation & People Analytics leader. Soumya is the founder of the Frankfurt-based advisory firm People Conscience.
Challenge assumptions before reinventing organisations: Riot Games’ Dr. Susan Chen
Organisations cannot blindly follow trends in redesigning themselves, they have to look into what transformation means uniquely to their organisation and their people, advises dr. Susan Chen, Director, Head of People-HK &SG Game Development Studios, Riot Games
By Asmaani Kumar
As we come to embrace a new world of work in 2022, organisations have to invest in well thought out strategies to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves. At the same time, in the face of dominant workplace trends, leaders have to pave the right path for their people and their business to thrive, which calls for a meaningful workplace transformation. In a recent conversation with People Matters, Dr. Susan Chen, Director, Head of People-HK & SG Game Development Studios, Riot Games shares insights on the need to break away from the comfort of best practices and engage in leadership conversations with a data-informed approach to deliver what best serves your organisation and your people.
Susan works with teams and leaders to develop talent strategies and interventions that build capabilities for sustainable growth across a broad range of companies, including a healthcare startup in Indonesia, a fintech MNC in Singapore and a
national energy company in Norway. She is a strong advocate for financial and educational inclusion, and has worked and lived in Taiwan, New Zealand, UK, Norway, Singapore and Indonesia. She received her PhD with a focus on knowledge management from the University of Stavanger, Norway, and is completing further education in the areas of educational psychology and research from Massey University, New Zealand.
Here are some excerpts from the interview.
In the last one year, we have witnessed immense changes in the world of people and work from the rapid digital transformation to the ‘Great Resignation’. From your experience in the HR world, what are some of the trends and changes that will have a significant impact on how businesses will carry themselves forward in the coming year?
There are many different micro-trends ongoing from the distributed workforce to digital transformation as well massive changes in learning and people processes but fundamentally, one of the biggest changes is the mindset shift. This involves building agility into the way organisations are designed, team making and even into the taken for granted, structured HR frameworks with which we approach problems.
One other big trend is about how we can move away from the comfort of best practices, knowing that the way things were done before are no longer going to make meaningful headway into solving problems for tomorrow. This also links to how we can build our teams or employees in a fashion that recognises them as a whole human being rather than a human at work. We have to move beyond thinking about productivity and wellbeing at work and look at the larger picture in terms of mental health for instance. In other words, a holistic approach to taking care of your people.
What are some of the sustainable practices and interventions that talent leaders and recruiters must initiate? What are some of the potential challenges in the field of talent that must be overcome?
From a recruitment perspective, as the world of work becomes more global but at the same time less mobile, our ways of working have to be increasingly agile. This involves bringing about a sustainable change in the relationships of people with their work which has been triggered by the external environment of a global pandemic kicking in. One sustainable practice from a recruitment point of view then is: how do we think about agility and mobility not from a locational point of view but from the way we work? How can we go about building teams that can work as effectively or even more in a distributed approach, which is starkly different from expecting all teams to be in the same location?
From a talent management point of view, this then asks for initiating learn-
ing, people development or any type of initiative that is employee led rather than purely organisational strategy led. There always needs to be a balance but this is critical to shifting the process to enable the employee to be the focus of that experience. A tactical example would be when we think about operations, do you think about where we can find the best talent or strategically try to find them in the same location? That will have an impact on the way you design your teams and the way you work.
The key challenge in this endeavour is that organisational design, embedded HR processes, leadership and its system of values are not designed to keep up with the changes that are going on. A company which worked in one location cannot simply commit to becoming a distributed workforce because that requires strategic thought on organisational culture, the type of leadership, performance management and even goal setting. It is a massive cultural shift which demands strategic insights for it to be sustainable. Redesigning your workforce is critical for it enables you to get the best out of your distributed workforce.
In light of the gaps that continue to exist when delivering on building an inclusive, empathetic work culture, what are some of the values and strategies that will enable leaders to meaningfully transform the employee experience?
The keyword here is meaningful transformation so the fundamental thing is how do we recheck our organisational assumptions about what collaboration looks like or team effectiveness or even talent. Challenging our assumptions is the number one thing we have to do before we reinvent our organisation. This then goes back to inclusivity, empathy, work culture. Finding these answers enables you to rebuild your organisation and transform. This enables a vision and a path towards that future. Our world has gone through a tremendous change in light of the global pandemic and it would be unrealistic for any organisation to say that they won’t change. But organisations cannot blindly follow trends either, they have to look into what transformation means in its unique way to their organisation and their people. This goes back to what I said earlier about the need to break linkages from best practices because strategies have to be designed so that they serve your organisation and teams.
A macro-level strategy would be a deep conversation at the senior leadership level regarding our core organisational assumptions because they will be the catalyst of change in times of crisis. In an ideal world, employees will be a part of the conversation but on a pragmatic level, you want the leadership angle so that there is commitment from the top. The involvement of employees comes from the data so collected about them; it comes full circle because you start at the leadership, move ahead to get their insights through conversation and then come back to the leadership level for final decision making and implementation.
A second practical step delves into the importance of being data informed which is different from data driven. A data driven approach places data at the center of decision making whereas a data informed approach recognises a pattern but your decisions might not necessarily be aligned to your data. I raise this point because data will play a significant role in reinventing your business.
Digital transformation continues to take centre stage in the world of people and work. What role will digital tools play in the year 2022 and how can companies ward off a potential digital disruption?
I don’t think we should try to ward off digital disruption because it is a beautiful way to innovate. What we can do
as organisations and leaders is to prepare ourselves for the disruption. We have to recognise that digital transformation will continue from communication tools to product transformation technologies. What is really important is deriving meaning in the transformation you carry out for your business. Not everyone needs to have the most high end technologies. What is important in this preparation is that the purpose and meaning of the company really needs to be solid for you as a leader and your employees.
One danger in digital transformation is that we assume that digital is going to solve social problems. But the use of digital platforms can at times even destroy the social infrastructure you were trying to build in the first place. Digital transformation has to be backed by a very clear purpose of what the company sets out to do. Digital is only a lever, it is not the only thing you’ll need to bring meaning to your people and customers. If the most innovative technology is not fundamental to building the foundation of your organisation, then it's okay and we should be okay with that.
In the coming year, what are some of the HR initiatives that top your list in innovating the people and business strategy? What are some of the workplace trends and innovations that you are looking forward to?
There are two things that I am really looking forward to. One is how do we truly make a distributed workforce a mainstream approach rather than an exception. I am excited about organisations having the conversation to reimagine their workforce to make it more hybrid and building a truly agile workforce. I am looking forward to having the opportunity to work with teams and organisaactional learning process meant for organisational development only. I also believe there will be a lot of progress in learning technology, immersive and integrated learning experiences will be facilitated through a digital platform.
Finally, what are some words of advice that you would like to share with fellow HR leaders as we get ready to reinvent the world of work in the year 2022.
My first advice is really about focusing on what’s to
tions to build that true agility into your organisational design.
Another aspect that I am really excited about is reinvention of organisational learning. We have to think holistically about developing our employees. One of the major shifts is how do we develop them to become curious learners with an independent and growth mindset. This will bring back an indirect positive impact upon the organisation as opposed to the transcome and not what has been, so don’t rely on best practices. This is so that you derive meaning from your organisation in the strategies so designed. My second advice is at the individual level about activating curiosity, teambuilding and growth mindset. We as HR leaders need to grow ourselves and take the opportunity, the leadership responsibility, to go above and beyond in building our teams and activating their curiosity and growth mindset as well.
dr M MuNeer
Change Agenda: Metrics and targets that drive both performance and behaviour
Anyone can set metrics and targets, but ensuring that these drive the desired outcomes – whether in terms of performance or behaviour – is more complex. Here is some strategic guidance for using metrics to drive the change you want
You get what you measure, not what you expect. I am sure you have all experienced this during annual performance reviews. Subordinates argue on issues that don’t find a match with the expectations of the boss. People pay attention to what is measured and not what is expected. If metrics are to be successful on your change agenda, they should drive behaviour, not just performance.
Nine out of 10 organisations fail to execute their strategy mainly because they don’t spend enough time and effort in fixing the right metrics and appropriate targets, other than for financial objectives. The CEOs I talk to think it is a piece of cake to put measures and targets but when they get involved in the process, they realise it is the most complex thing to do. We have had senior management spending a couple of days on finalising metrics that matter.
Successful organisations use metrics and targets to manage performance and gain insights around the assumptions that form their strategy. For meticulous execution of strategy, senior leadership must capture the drivers or the action items that are needed to achieve the outcomes specified by the strategy, Strategic objectives are linked in such a way that there are causeand-effect relationships between the various parts of the strategy. Metrics of the strategic objectives must reflect these linkages. These are best captured in frameworks such as the balanced scorecard.
Creating the right linkages
Almost always most organisations cannot commit
resources that are required for every objective, which is where metrics come to the rescue. Metrics will reveal areas where performance is below par and enable leadership team to decide on where to allocate resources and from where to redirect it. Leaders can also assess the risks associated with the current performance if other objectives are more important to the success of the strategy.
In many enterprises, subordinate business units will have metrics that are same as the higher level. The idea of cascading metrics is important when it comes to effective execution at lower levels of operations. This will create what I call “metric hierarchy” which results in measuring similar things but at different levels.
While considering the metrics, look for both expected outcome (lag) metrics and outcome driver (lead) metrics. Lag metrics focus on the performance results at the end of the specified period (weekly or monthly) and lead metrics focus on intermediate activities, processes or behaviours that drive the results.
Examine also the assumptions about drivers and outcomes. Do you think that having effective communication links (driver) will deliver prompt customer response (outcome)? Let’s say a metric “number of successful communications incidents” was set for the driver and a target of say 50 per month. Now, you establish a metric for the desired customer-response outcome like “average time to respond” with a target of 2 days. The question is whether completing 50 successful communication incidents leads to enabling prompt response to your customers.
You may find either of the following: The outcome is achieved without the driver delivering its target; or the desired outcome is not achieved despite the driver exceeding its target. In this
Do your metrics link drivers and outcomes in a way that makes sense to your strategic objectives? If metrics are to be successful on your change agenda, they should drive behaviour, not just performance
situation, you may want to reflect on the following: • Are there other drivers that can generate the desired outcomes? • Are the set targets accurately representing the desired outcomes? • Are there other key drivers to be measured in order to get the desired outcomes? • Are the targets set too low?
Typically metrics must serve two purposes – organisational motivation, and evaluation and strategic learning. The desired behaviour is achieved by directing employee energy to what are
most critical to strategy. What many organisations fail at is using their metrics for strategy evaluation and strategic learning. That is because they are not identifying the relationships between strategic objectives.
We will be able to achieve many other benefits by identifying the right metrics: Focused investment in what is most critical, test the causeand-effect linkages among the various objectives, and make strategy a continual process by constantly checking assumptions.
Identifying the right metrics
In our consulting, we typically use a variety of methods to identify the right metrics. From reviewing existing measures and adapting the process control metrics to reviewing the corporate level metrics and developing new ones from scratch. We also encourage organisations to find subject matter experts (SMEs) while identifying the right metrics, such as in the case study below. CASe STudy: uSIng SubjeCT MATTer experTS
How we identified subject matter experts
We started our metric identification process by identifying subject matter experts (SMEs) for each strategic objective we have decided as part of the balanced scorecard. The SMEs were needed to understand what drives the performance achievement of each objective specifically, and to identify the best ways to measure them. We provided the SMEs with metric templates that described the objective and listed the information we needed from them. For example, metric type, the formula for the measurement, and the source of the performance data for the metric. Each SME then identified potential metrics for the objectives they have expertise on.
Evaluating potential metrics
The leaders who owned the objectives met with the SMEs to discuss and identify potential metrics for each of their objectives. While some metrics clearly provided the required information, many of them required additional work to be useful. By combining our knowledge of the scorecard process and the goals with the SMEs’ expertise, we were able to identify areas where the proposed metrics didn’t meet the criteria.
Revising and finalising the metrics
The SMEs went back and worked on the metrics that are most suitable for the objectives. Interestingly, in our case, we found an existing metric for every objective on our scorecard. However, we used existing metrics for about 50% of our objectives. The rest required new ones or significant changes to existing ones.
When reviewing existing metrics in the enterprise, use the following steps: Collect all existing metrics from the numerous reports, discard the majority of them except for a few critical ones that the top leadership monitors for performance, evaluate current performance and decide whether each metric is driving desired performance.
Some metrics can be evolved from process control measures. As every executive knows, a process is a sequence of actions that result in a desired outcome. A process control metric provides end-to-end view of how inputs get converted into outputs. The processes are the ones an organization must do to get the financial performance as planned.
Some of the familiar process control metrics include six sigma, TQM, statistical process control and theory of constraints. All of these provide a set of tools to assess the effectiveness
Many organisations fail at using their metrics for strategy evaluation and strategic learning, because they are not identifying the relationships between strategic objectives. So how can we identify and properly use those relationships?
of your processes. However they don’t tell you the steps that must be taken in a particular process to get your strategy executed. Balanced Scorecards play that role: it identifies which objectives are strategic and must be monitored critically. The process control system oversees how they will be measured. Enterprises can combine these systems to close the gap between strategy and operations well.
In developing process metrics, follow the steps below: • Define what actions must be taken and accomplished to achieve the desired objective. • Find what is most critical to your organisation’s success. For a business it has to be financial goals. • Align steps to results. How do the process steps support the critical objectives? • Finalise the metrics.
Which ones would best represent how well each step is performed?
The right target is equally critical
A desired and quantifiable level of performance within a specified time period is what a target represents. Every strategic objective that has one or two metrics must have a target specified in order for an organisation to know if its strategy is a success. This is not something all organisations are comfortable. A target without a deadline is as bad as no target – you can claim whatever you have achieved as success, and some organisations – including governments – do this.
Specifying targets is most important from a strategy execution point and driving performance since they allow the top leadership to communicate the needed performance levels and get the focus of the entire enterprise on performance improvement by driving behaviour. Typically individual employees decide how to achieve the targets and they want to achieve them too. But some of them may find ways to manipulate the actual results than to change their ways of doing things. The right targets will remove such barriers to performance.
While targets are done for individual objectives, they are all interlinked at the highest level. Since all organisations have limited resources, some targets will not be met for sure. But that should not be a consideration when setting targets. Think of targets as a comprehensive set of performance goals that defines the success of the enterprise strategy.
The targets also play a crucial role in helping leaders to allocate resources. If the target is set too high, leaders might end up allocating more resources to that objective that could have been better used for some other objective. Similarly if huge resources are allocated to small performance improvements, resource efficiency will suffer.
By highlighting performance shortfalls, targets also help leaders decide whether to provide additional resources or accept the risks associated with the shortfall. As someone famously said, a vision without resources is hallucination!
Here are a few techniques we have found most useful to set better targets: • Start deriving targets from higher goals always • Decide required improvement in overall performance • Try benchmarking against other similar enterprises, or as we do, against global best practices • Establish a baseline performance setting, even if it is an assumed level
about the author
M MunEEr is the Co-Founder and Chief Evangelist at the non-profit Medici Institute. Twitter @MuneerMuh
ViStY bANAJi
Diversity delivers dividends
Diversity of gender, caste, race and religion are essential for social justice. There are, however, other diversities that we need to pursue for sheer performance and competitive advantage
Some of our most seemingly advanced techniques for recruitment, health checking and people management may be greatly inimical to what we need to do to exploit the competitive advantages we can gain from diversity. When HR hears of diversity, gender inclusiveness (as sacralized in corporate headquarters ranging from 120ºW to 15ºE or from models in Menlo Park) is usually the sole and almost Pavlovian response. A few gadflies may, at best, prompt a secondary focus on affirmative action for Dalits and tribals.1 Let me insist upfront that all these diversities are vital and much work remains to be done for them (particularly the last two). While they certainly have the potential to yield great business benefits, their central justification is equity and justice.
This column deals with two other forms of diversity whose prime purpose is the competitive advantage they bestow on organisations that take them seriously. Both Educational Diversity (Edudiversity) and Neurological Diversity (Neurodiversity) can certainly also be defended on grounds of fairness but they have a direct and immense business benefit that few organisations have yet exploited.
Edudiversity
A little after 600 CE, Isidore, Bishop of Seville, put together a compendium of much of the essential learning of the ancient Greco-Roman and early Christian worlds. We may be amused at some of the anachronistic concepts and factoids it contains. Our condescending smiles turn to open-mouthed admiration, however, when we take stock of the sheer breadth of topics the 449 chapters (across twenty volumes) the Etymology covers. Agriculture, anatomy, astronomy, biology, chemistry, grammar, law, mathematics, medicine,
religion, shipping, tools and war, all have their place.2 It is an astonishing feat. What is even more amazing is the extent to which, 1,400 years later, corporate recruiters believe narrow focus, specialization and immediately usable competencies are a better substitute than an updated Etymology-equivalent curriculum for facing an uncertain future with a high rate of infant-technology mortality. Granted the accretion of knowledge at an ever-increasing pace makes it difficult to create individuals with such superRenaissance versatility but surely it is feasible to aggregate individuals with Edudiversity into teams that collectively display such multi-faceted sparkle.
There are two ways to justify Edudiversity. The obvious one is to go subject by subject and project the kind of contribution a person proficient in that discipline could make to a commercial enterprise. I eschew this track not only because the number of subjects is so much larger than it was in Isidore’s time, making it practically impossible to recruit from each (or even to write about them all in a single column) but because we stand a very good chance of missing the forest for the firewood in doing so. What we need to identify is a meaningful diversity of mindsets and, for our purposes, grouping them into three mind-frame creators will suffice. Since most current corporate recruitment falls into just the first of these categories, the addition of two more will be a sufficient agenda augmentation to keep us busy over the next few years as we gain acceptance, refine selection techniques and integrate the new flow into teams. The threefold categorization of Edudiversity proposed here is based on the manner in which disciplines acquire knowledge and skills as well their way of using them. Naturally, these groupings and the generalizations about them that follow are rather broad and low on nuance. As Kahneman, Sibony and Sunstein point out, however, subtlety often succeeds only in increasing 'noise'. On the other hand, frugal models that look "ridiculously simplified … can produce surprisingly good predictions."3
The most familiar category consists of the Know How (KHow) disciplines. Almost our entire sourcing for managerial positions comes from a double layer of KHow education. The near-ubiquitous KHow MBA is preceded in 85% of cases (according to some sources) by the KHow BE.4 Similarly, the KHow CA (or equivalent) that is the mainstay of some organisations and functions has the KHow
B Com as its near invariant antecedent. Organisations love people who know how to do things and promptly go ahead and do them (preferably unquestioningly).5 I have no problem if KHows constitute a very major part of the intake – they just shouldn’t be all of it.
The next come the Know Why (KWy) disciplines. These are the ones (best exemplified by the natural and behavioural sciences) that prompt their learners to figure out, from first principles, why things happen the way they do. A few KWy mindset people (including B Techs from some of the IITs) do get recruited into commercial enterprises. Where KWy mind-setters are given free scope, a new level of innovation suffuses the organisation. Two of my first bosses in HR had Masters’ degrees in Physics and what advanced research in Physics lost, both corporate India and I personally, gained from their creativity.6
The category that finds the least representation in India’s corporate firmament is from the disciplines that equip people to Know What is worth doing and What Not to do (KNot). A rather convoluted way of describing what a Liberal Arts education aims to do but it expresses the value KNot mind setters can bring to the corporate world. Apart from a tendency to have a wholistic rather than an analytic view of reality, KNots too display a high degree of creativity but in an intuitive fashion rather than one derived logically from first principles like the KWy. Most importantly, they have the mental ruggedness to play the devil’s advocate and question accepted wisdom (or glib justifications for deviating from core values). A few KHows and KWys acquire an overview of KNot disciplines along their career journeys but this is a matter of happenstance. A more certain way to prevent sliding into noisecaused errors of judgement, stodgy repetitions or moral morasses is to deliberately recruit for these contra mindsets. "Organisations that want to harness the power of diversity must welcome the disagreements that will arise when team members reach their judgements independently. Eliciting and aggregating judgements that are both independent and diverse will often be the easiest, cheapest, and most broadly applicable decision hygiene strategy."
Providing KHows with intense learning opportunities is certainly one way to bring innovation-spurring and value-guarding
diversities into organisations. I owe an immense debt to the National Institute of Advanced Studies, conceived by J R D Tata and designed under the genius of Dr Raja Ramanna, where I was privileged to be in the first batch in 1989. While the programme did provide Edudiversity for budding leaders, it lasted 5-6 weeks and I do not see too many organisations or executives investing that kind into two distinct categories: the normal majority and abnormal sub-groups. Instead, the Neurodiversity movement premises, "… deviations from the standard neurotypical brain that result in differing behavioural patterns are natural variations, not disorders or illnesses… If neurological differences are not disorders or illnesses, but merely variations, neurodiverse people are to be treated equally open ourselves to untapped sources of talent that have fuelled some of the greatest geniuses and entrepreneurs the world has seen. The brilliance is not available without the apparent handicap. "Defects, disorders, diseases, in this sense, can play a paradoxical role, by bringing out latent powers, developments, evolutions, forms of life, that might never be seen, or even be imaginable, in their absence."8 Only when large corporates stop being 'ableist' in their searches will they be able to recruit the neuro-mavericks, some of whom will end up creating new products and business models that are today available to large corporates only after costly acquisition wars. Even where these special-brain individuals do not scale such heights (which is obviously rare) they frequently excel in tasks that neurotypicals struggle with and are free of several foibles to which the latter are prone.9
Thomas Armstrong has written a wonderful book on Neurodiversity that explains the evolutionary benefits these so-called disorders gave to humans.10 He makes an excellent case for mining each of these veins of talent: • Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder • Autism • Dyslexia • Mood Disorders • Anxiety and Obsessive-
Educational Diversity (Edudiversity) and Neurological Diversity (Neurodiversity) have a direct and immense business benefit that few organisations have yet exploited
of time today. Recruitment of KWys and KNots, therefore, remains the most practical and quick way to gain dividends from Edudiversity. I can testify it works – but only if leaders have the vision and patience to try non-conventional sourcing streams.
Neurodiversity
We turn now to the most neglected of diversities with perhaps the greatest potential for transforming corporate capabilities and competitiveness. As studies of the brain have progressed in recent decades, it has become clear that people are not divided to neurotypical individuals."7 There is no gainsaying the fact that along the spectrum of differing behaviour, some fall clearly outside of the minima our society and working cultures demand. That still leaves a substantial number of persons who could be aided to reach minimal work conventions if we could overcome our biases against them. Our reason for the additional effort to prepare such niches and overcome the resistance of the general body of employees, need not solely be benevolence. Once we stop excluding people who behave oddly or are typed with a mental illness label, we
Compulsive Disorders • Atypical Intelligences (a disorder only to the extent performance on typical intelligence tests is subpar) • Schizotypal Personality
Disorder
When these diagnostic labels cause us to veer away from recruiting people to whom they are applied (even if they are above the requisite minimum of daily routine competence), we lose a pool of talent that, with suitable support, can do better than neurotypicals at many jobs. The tech industry, with its chronic attrition problems, should be eager to beat a path to the doors of high-functioning autists. 11 & 12 Ioan James quotes Hans Asperger saying: "To our own amazement, we have seen that autistic individuals, as long as they are intellectually intact, can almost always achieve professional success… often in very high positions, with a preference for abstract content."13 Neurodiverse people have often delivered superior performance in the following roles (that are not always easy to fill): • Inventor, researcher or industrial designer • Entrepreneur • Computer software designer or programmer • Accountant • Life coach or marriage, child, and family counsellor • Writer, musician or painter
Moreover, some of these brain states can equip the Neurodiverse to cope with crises and pressures under which neurotypicals wilt. For instance, they can manage isolated remote working (such as was forced by the Covid crisis) far better and their retention rates are almost invariably higher than those of ’typicals’.
Initial pilots have been extremely encouraging. Among the most advanced, in Europe we have the inspiring tale of Thorkil Sonne and of Specialisterne, the remarkable company he founded.14 A far more familiar name is Google, which "sees the neurodiverse community as a veritable treasure trove of talent largely untapped… Google believes autistic people can be successful doing anything in the organisation.”15 So it is not as if organisations in India that diverge from the path of recruiting neurotypicals will be global pioneers but they will certainly benefit from initial mover advantage within India for years to come.
Group gains
The benefits we have alluded to so far mainly relate to the contributions Edudiverse and Neurodiverse people can bring to individual roles. Perhaps their greatest contribution, however, could lie in transforming group functioning once they have leavened the talent mix. They do so by catalyzing creativity, dismantling the knee-jerk resistance to outside ideas and developing
the diversity delivery capabilities of the leadership and HR.
One of the surest paths to organisational innovation is through the formation of multi-functional task teams focused on solving seemingly intractable problems. Part of the benefit comes from the very different perspectives people from different orientations bring to bear. I have seen the effect replicated within HR when MBAs and behavioural scientists rub shoulders on a daily basis. The phenomenon was described long ago by Arthur Koestler but is even more important in the hyper-specialized and narrowly normalized world of today.16
More than one international expansion, collaboration, merger or acquisition has been sunk on the rocks of incompatibility. The stronger the culture the greater the probability of a debilitating autoimmune response, against the 'outsider', kicking in. Diversity of the recognisably different groups that this column has espoused gets people used to accepting and benefitting from the ideas of others unlike themselves.
These are not the last kinds of diversities the top management and HR will be expected to steward over the years. The time has long gone when HR can stand complacently near the shards of the glass ceiling shattered by women and remain under the illusion that its mission on diversity is accomplished. Subsequent ceilings will be constructed of progressively tougher glass and Edudiversity as well as Neurodiversity with provide excellent practice for shattering the
Notes
1. Visty Banaji, There is an Elephant in the
Room- And the Blind Men of Indostan
Can’t See it, 26 September 2018, (https:// www.peoplematters.in/article/employeerelations/mass-exodus-of-employees-canhr-pre-empt-it-19333). 2. Isidore of Seville (Translated by Stephen
Barney, W J Lewis, J A Beach and Oliver
Berghof), The Etymologies, Cambridge
University Press, 2006. 3. Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and
Cass R. Sunstein, Noise: A flaw in Human
Judgement, William Collins, 2021. 4. Rajen Mehrotra, Gaining Entry into a
Management Institute, Current Labour
Reports, September 2021. 5. Diego Gambetta & Steffen Hertog, Engineers of Jihad: The Curious Connection between Violent Extremism and Education, Princeton University Press, 2016. Google "sees the neurodiverse community as a veritable treasure trove of talent largely untapped… Google believes autistic people can be successful doing anything in the organisation”
6. Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and
Cass R. Sunstein, Noise: A flaw in Human
Judgement, William Collins, 2021. 7. Timo Lorenz, Nomi Reznik and Kathrin
Heinitz, A Different Point of View: The
Neurodiversity Approach to Autism and
Work, from Michael Fitzgerald and Jane
Yip’s (Editors), Autism - Paradigms, Recent
Research and Clinical Applications, InTechOpen, 2017.by 8. Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars:
Seven Paradoxical Tales, Vintage, 1996. 9. Michael Booth, Better, faster... and no office politics: the company with the autistic specialists, The Independent, 23 October 2011. 10. Thomas Armstrong, The Power of Neurodiversity: Unleashing the Advantages of Your Differently Wired Brain, Da Capo
Lifelong Books; 2011. 11. J Slegers, Why the Tech Industry Needs transparent armour of which they are made. I know bringing in people who were considered abnormal and weeded out till now may go against the grain of several CHROs. There can be no better encouragement for them than to be reminded of their success in dealing with the psychopaths at the helm (Think I am joking? Check out the statistics and checklist from a recent Forbes article17). An organisation that has braved those hazards should find the gentler differences of the Neurodiverse a refreshing tonic indeed.
viStY banaJi is the Founder and CEO of Banner Global Consulting (BGC)
More Autism, Hackernoon, 30 October 2015. 12. Robert D Austin and Gary P Pisano, Neurodiversity as a Competitive Advantage,
Harvard Business Review, May-June 2017. 13. Ioan James, Singular scientists, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, January 2003. 96(1): 36–39. 14. Jonathan Wareham and Thorkil Sonne,
Harnessing the Power of Autism Spectrum Disorder (Innovations Case Narrative: Specialisterne). Innovations, MIT
Press, 2008. 15. Steven Aquino, Google Cloud Exec Rob
Enslin Talks Neurodiversity In The
Workforce And How The Autism Career
Program Seeks Top Talent, 26 July 2021. 16. Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation,
Hutchinson & Co, 1964. 17. Jack McCullough, The Psychopathic CEO,
Forbes, 9 December 2019. DECEMBER 2021 |
Past Month's events
Total Rewards & Wellness Conclave 2021
Women in Leadership: Lead, Influence & Transform
People Matters 25th November 2021 Online The phenomenon of employees contemplating quitting, just when economies around the world are poised to rebound strongly following the pandemic, should worry businesses. A standard response to people quitting their jobs has been an increase in monetary compensation. Yet, predictably, that has not stemmed the tide of resignations, underscoring the Great Disconnect between employers and employees. We hosted a day-long conference that brainstormed on the Great Connection, a new rewards template for the new normal that aligns business and employee expectations. Diversity and Inclusion: Overcoming Unconscious Bias (Spanish)
People Matters
BeNext 15th November - 17th December 2021 Online This programme was for leaders invested in creating lasting mindset shifts and creating the foundations of a psychologically safe organisation through the implementation of impactful D&I initiatives. We will overcome unconscious bias at all levels to create a work context where everyone is valued, respected and included.
People Matters
BeNext 4th October - 5th November 2021 Online This programme was designed for women leaders interested in accelerating their career growth within their organisation and learning critical skills for heading a team. The programme also helped overcome obstacles arising from workplace gender imbalance to help them speed up the realisation of their potential as a woman leader. Designing Employee Experience in a Hybrid World
People Matters
BeNext 18th October - 19th November 2021 Online This programme was held for employers looking to reshape EX for their teams in the new remote environment of the working world. We explored key considerations for designing an impactful, outstanding employee experience that aligns with our new hybrid reality.
Design Thinking & Agile for HR Teams
People Matters
BeNext 22nd November - 24th December 2021 Online This programme is for HR leaders committed to finding creative solutions to complex problems facing their teams, moving from a foundational understanding of Design Thinking and Agile methodologies to a whole new mindset of creativity, innovation and people-centred progress. We will uncover creative practices and seek solutions for complex HR problems through the prism of Design Thinking & Agile methodologies.
Upcoming events
Women in Leadership: Lead, Influence & Transform Talent Analytics: Driving Organisational Impact
(Spanish programme available
People Matters
BeNext 06th December - 14th January 2021 Online Overcome obstacles facing workplace gender imbalance and speed up the realisation of your potential as a woman leader. This programme is designed for women leaders interested in accelerating their career growth within their organisation and learning critical skills for women heading a team.
Well-being: the Road to Resilience
People Matters
BeNext 24th January - 25th February 2021 Online The future of HR lies in analytics. Gain solid knowledge and hands-on practical experience of analytical tools to help in making people decisions. This programme is for HR leaders eager to gain practical, hands-on approaches to talent analytics, connecting HR policies and practices to business performance. Prior knowledge of HR management, statistics and basic managerial accounting is preferred, but not indispensable.
People Matters
BeNext 21st February - 25th March 2021 Online This programme is for all HR professionals, organisational leaders, and individuals who recognise the importance of actively investing in themselves and in a workplace where mental health, focus, resilience, stress-management and psychological safety are highly valued, and who want to explore and create opportunities to safeguard the well-being of their employees through the implementation of impactful initiatives. Designing Employee Experience in the New World of Work
People Matters
BeNext 07th March - 08th April
2021
Online This programme is for HR leaders and employers looking to reshape employee experience for their teams in the new hybrid working environment. Explore key considerations for designing an impactful, outstanding employee experience that aligns with our new hybrid reality. HR Business Partner in the New World of Work
(Spanish programme available
People Matters
BeNext 07th February - 11th March 2021 Online Learn how the HRBP can create greater impact and value with a peoplebased approach to leading the transition to the new world of work. This programme is for leaders and practitioners interested in how the HRBP drives cultural shifts that align with the changing needs of teams and organisations in the new world of work.
Blogosphere >> MiCHaEl EnglE
Digital onboarding
blogosphere The onboarding of new hires is one of the last processes to go digital in most enterprises. The same, tired process of scanning and faxing or emailing proof of citizenship (i.e. driver’s license, or national identity documents) is still the norm.
This introduces many security concerns for both parties: • The quality of the documents may be poor due to lighting or other factors. • The image file size may change depending on how it is captured due to compression or low-quality black and white scanners. • The documents are now exposed via the candidate’s email, in the HR rep’s email, or sitting on a server. This puts personal identification information at risk at every step of the journey. • Even after documents are sent, you don’t have a good way to verify the person sending them is truly who you are interacting with.
A typical hiring process goes from talent acquisition (interviewing, background check, etc.) to an offer letter. Once a candidate accepts, it is now time to “get them in” to the system. This is day one of an employee’s journey - let’s discuss how this process can be digitally transformed.
New standards for document and biometric onboarding allow organisations to prove who someone is remotely by leveraging their smartphone’s camera and other security features. The NIST standard called 800-63-3A clearly outlines a path to do this via
a user-directed and streamlined process.
Document-centric identity verification is a growing trend in enterprise cybersecurity. A recent study by Gartner found that by 2022, 80% of companies will be using this method of verification in their organisations, and over 60% of mid-size to global enterprises will implement passwordless authentication methods in the same timeframe. However, deploying this technology effectively requires integration of document-centric verification and passwordless authentication, and careful attention to industry standards that will provide organisations maximum protection.
In 2017, the US federal government introduced the NIST 80063-3a identity proofing standard which is of critical importance for organisational security measures to comply. In short, NIST 800-63-3a gives guidance on how to capture two forms of identity documentation, validate them, and compare them to the images on the documents with the person’s face. For organisations hiring employees, this means they have verifiable proof, backed by a rigorous standard, that everyone signing onto their systems is who they say they are.
Technology has made this process possible by leveraging the smartphone or computer of the new hire. Specifically, biometric ID proofing and digital authentication make this process much easier for companies to verify their employees’ identities without a significant investment in sophisticated systems. They simply scan the documents, take a selfie, and the system does the rest, including guiding the user through the capturing of quality images. The results? A standardsbased identity that an organisation can trust for onboarding and re-authentication.
It’s important to distinguish that this form of biometric enrollment is not the same as TouchID,
FaceID, and other device-based biometrics. Those forms of biometric are not linked to a real identity. The biometric must be a representation of one user and instantly matched to the government documents.
As they embrace an identity proofing solution, companies can issue a digital credential that allows them to access their internal systems, such as an active directory certificate. This is protected the same way the identity documents are. The usage of cryptographic keys is a growing trend in the industry and is backed by another standards body, the FIDO Alliance. The acronym “FIDO” stands for “Fast Identity Online”. FIDO eliminates usernames and passwords. They set the bar on how a company can implement various authentication technologies. However, FIDO alone is not strong enough to entirely protect organisations, because it does not have proof of identity as part of the standard (ie. verifying against governmentissued documents).
When FIDO is combined with strong identity proofing, like NIST 800-63-3, the process provides indisputable proof that employees, contractors, or partners are who they say they are. Why? When they transmit their credentials, they have the same digital signatures that were enrolled with their identity that cannot be used or replicated by a third party.
This experience is truly a gamechanger for organisations and remote workers. When a user needs to access a resource, they provide their biometric (selfie) and they can access the company’s network. There are several ways for a user to connect to a remote resource including the scanning of a QR code or triggering of a push message to their smartphone. Because of this, the organisation now knows with a high degree of certainty that the person sitting at the keyboard is who they say they are - every time they authenticate.
The time is now for organisations to embrace these identity standards - for their sake, and for their users. As hybrid work is likely here to stay and companies assess their hiring and security practices, there has never been a better time to invest in new systems that ensure maximum protection for their most important assets.
about the author
MiCHaEl EnglE is Chief Security Officer at 1Kosmos.
