54 minute read
‘Great Resignation’ or Great Dismissal?
The pandemic has brought about dramatic changes in the professional world, and numerous studies show that a large number of employees intend to leave their current employers and even switch industries to do so. A study by Monster.com put the figure at over 90% - the so-called, “Great Resignation.”
Given the recent high levels of unemployment; given that employers rapidly implemented remote working; why are so many considering leaving? Questions arise on the factors driving mass resignation despite the flexibility offered by remote and hybrid work structure that has been in place since last year.
What an employer perceives of its employees is revealed during a crisis period. Employees may not remember what a company may have offered in the contract when they joined, but their future plans with the company get affected by the behaviour of the employer during a crisis. Despite leveraging the flexible hours of remote work and using new collaborative tools, many employees did not feel valued, but isolated.
There was a lack of clarity about what was expected of them, they did not feel trusted, and were anxious about their functions. The employee-employer relationship of trust and loyalty shattered into pieces.
This ‘emotional distance’ is still being provoked and amplified by the virtual platforms – ironically, what enabled remote working. Through diminution of body language and facial expressions, and the replacement of one-to-one casual conversations with more formal one-to-many virtual meetings, relationships are rapidly weakening and cognitive disconnect is increasing. Organisations must work hard and fast to recover the lost faith. While fair pay is still one of the key considerations, employees’ needs and demands are now more complex and volatile. Climate change, pandemic, the DI&E agenda, and other global issues have broadened their expectations. Today, individuals seek to work with organisations that prioritise mutual respect. As me and Dr Marciano revealed in our book, ‘Super Teams’ ‘employees want to feel respected’.
The ‘Great Resignation’ issue does not lie solely with the employees.
Too many organisations have dismissed the need to invest seriously in ensuring management excellence –such as frequent one-to-one interactions, disciplined risk identification and management, and rigorous and continuous reviews of the working process. HR departments of such organisations deserve the credit, along with those who have stepped up and provided tactical solutions for circumstances, that the line management had not prepared for.
It’s time organisations take a more strategic approach to the future, to ensure management excellence and create talent pipelines to maintain it by Clinton Wingrove
Can HR fix the ’Great Dismissal’ error?
Prior to the pandemic, over 2/3rd of the resigning employees cited some or the other issue with the managers, that triggered their resignation. That factor continues to exist. Three decades ago, we started realising that managerial behaviour has a causal relationship with employee engagement and disengagement! Just those two facts equipped excellent managers to foresee the edge of the talent attrition cliff - with or without a pandemic to shove them towards it.
Those organisations which understand that “the significant differentiator of sustainably successful organisations is the calibre of its management and leadership,” will continue to invest in the strategic imperatives - the “IMPORTANT not yet URGENT,” as described by the Eisenhower Model of prioritisation.
So, we are all now faced with a choice of where we focus e.g., Necessities, Strategic Imperatives, Distractions or Waste. What choice will your organisation make? Perhaps:
Just the NECESSITIES - the “IMPORTANT and URGENT” • e.g., doing everything to retain as many employees as possible and attract new ones to replace those who leave
Those that focus exclusively here will battle it out against their competitors with tactical solutions such as hybrid working, adjustments to pay and benefits, new collaboration and employee support tools and services, employer branding campaigns involving social and global responsibility, and global recruiting into roles that can be exclusively virtual.
A STRATEGIC IMPERATIVE - IMPORTANT not yet URGENT • e.g., designing and implementing a robust ‘attraction to exiting’ talent pipeline
Organisations choosing to focus here will grapple with complex issues and make extensive use of data to produce robust solutions. They will ask tough questions such as but not limited to:
- What does it mean to
be employed here? Could we have flexible resourcing? For example, some organisations are creating talent pools of individuals who bid for assignments in any or multiple parts of the business rather than filling one ongoing role? They thus have highly developmental, challenging, and exciting work experiences and bring expertise right to where it is needed.
- How do we measure
talent? Recently, in a conversation with an executive, he told me, “I have to review our talent in October. But, with staff changes, I have never met half of my team. I have no idea how some go about their work or what they are capable of.” Some organisations are realising that ‘talent measurement’ is complex and that many attempts to simplify have merely produced trivialisations. So, they are now defining all the elements very precisely and training managers on how to assess them remotely.
- What is the shelf-life of any talent assessment
method? Roles and working methods change quickly but people change less frequently. The concept of ‘A job for life.’ is almost outdated and now, it is not surprising to see people changing jobs every 18 months to 3 years! Almost every organisation relies on technology to create databases of live talent metrics, and even equipping employees to maintain their own portfolios of evidence to support changes to their talent profile.
Managers are expected to maintain the assessments up-to-date perpetually so that the data can be queried at any time.
Assessment is a daily activity and, annual reviews are no longer significant today. AI will further advance such approaches by updating assessments as well as computing rolling risk assessments for recruitment and deployment to address.
- From where do we
source talent? Fully remote working enables recruitment from a wider pool and geography. But, as employees view employment as a series of experiences, and not a single experience, some organisations will realise targeting selected prior employees is also of interest. Many outgoing employees believe that the grass is greener on the other side. It often isn’t and, after experiences elsewhere, former employees or boomerang employees can prove to be valuable recruits - bringing back market intelligence, a broader skillset, and a new perspective.
Perhaps, another STRATEGIC IMPERATIVE - IMPORTANT not yet URGENT • e.g., ensuring management excellence
We have experienced decades of flattening structures, widening spans of control, shortening decision lines, empowerment, collaboration technology, communications technology. Yet, in most organisations, real productivity has plateaued, engagement has stagnated, and attrition is rising! Even then many, if not all, organisations still promote individuals into management for excelling at something quite different! So, they pay a premium for sub-optimal capability and have managers who then view unleashing the potential and transforming the performance of their team as a bolt-on to their roles.
But, over the past few years, we have learned so much about how the human mind works and the immense importance of great people management. More and more organisations are now enlightened and, for example: - Assessing new recruits for management potential right from day zero; the Quaternion Profile which encompasses 52 skills categorised into four domains - Leadership, Management, Business Acumen, and Personal Effectiveness; - Only promoting into management those who have already been suitably trained, assessed, and validated against a comprehensive competency profile; - Providing active mentoring, buddying, and oversight during each new manager’s first 120 days to ensure early success; - Placing most value on the development and performance of the staff, not merely on their own outputs, in each manager’s performance reviews.
In short, many organisations are being faced not with a “Great Resignation” but the realisation that they have inadvertently executed a “Great Dismissal.” A large section of their staff believes that their feelings have been dismissed. And, no amount of evidence will shift those feelings. But organisations have the opportunity to take a more strategic approach to the future, to ensure management excellence, and to create talent pipelines to maintain it.
By so doing, they will equip their organisations to predict, manage, and even capitalise on the next crisis.
- Ensuring that any individual considering management is trained and given experiences that enable them to make a reasoned judgement as to whether it is really for them; - Designing ways to recognise, challenge, and reward top individual contributors who are not suited to or interested in managing others, without encumbering them with responsibility for staff; - Enabling individuals to self-nominate for assessment of managerial capability and development against comprehensive skill profiles. One such profile is
Clinton WinGrovE is the Principal Consultant, Clinton HR Ltd.www. clintonhr.com
ViVEK TiWARi
Have you equipped yourself to survive if you are lost in a jungle?
Employees excel within the comfort zone, but their agility is tested by a changing ambience. adopting agility and facing new challenges under such circumstances becomes a lifetime experience for them
Iasked this question to one of my ex-colleagues to open up the possibility of having a discussion in an interesting and challenging area. The background to this discussion was the decision of his organisation to go ahead with a certain number of job cuts. Considering the volatile world that we live in and the uncertainties created by the pandemic, a large number of professionals must ask themselves this question honestly and initiate actions to prepare themselves for today and tomorrow.
Business cycles are an acceptable phenomenon and with the integrated nature of global work order, any impact usually gets cascaded and at times amplified. In the 2000s, the comforting idea that growth is going to continue in its current form and therefore there is a certain degree of certainty linked to jobs, careers, salaries, was harboured by a generation of professionals working in India. This certainty which provides a sense of comfort and safety, at times clouds our judgment and therefore acts as an obstruction to accept and act when circumstances start to change.
My profession as a coach and a consultant allows me to be in the company of amazing professionals. I realized that some are great working in a small organisation, some do really well in a large set-up, some in certain global corporates and some in Indian companies, each one has a sweet spot and certain a degree of flexibility which creates a range in which they operate very well. Then there is the other category of professionals like entrepreneurs, founders, people who work in boutique firms, freelancers etc, this category is distinct with respect to not only skills but also mindset.
There are a growing number of professionals who can easily and successfully toggle between these two arenas but in my experience, that’s still a rela-
tively small percentage. So, if I have to create categories at an extremely broad level, I would say there are professionals who would enjoy, contribute and grow in what we term as organisations in a traditional sense and then there are others who are in rhythm when they are a part of a working set up that is relatively more flexible, open, extremely dynamic and highly and quickly susceptible to environmental influences. Psychologically the second category is highly aware of the uncertainties as they have to deal with it frequently and in areas that can be termed as hygiene factors in a corporate set up e.g., the uncertainty of income even for a shorter duration of timeframe.
When I talk to these two categories of professionals the visualization that it generates in the case of the first category is of folks who are adept and wants to be a part of a big growing (or stable) megacity with adequate (at times more than adequate) resources, governance, scale and a set of rules and roles that are agreed upon and followed by most of the citizens of that city, which gives it a sense of stability and order to a certain degree. The second category gives their best when they are on an adventure trip in a jungle with limited resources, unfamiliar terrain, unaccounted dangers that can emerge from anywhere, rules and roles are fuzzy, dynamic.
Considering the volatility in the world in general and business in specific, the psychological job security associated with big corporates is now questionable. Situations, where folks working in mid to large organisations facing retrenchment are and quite likely, will continue to be a reality. Usually, job cuts first impact folks who are at senior to mid-level and the challenge is that if one has devoted his/her life for a long duration in a certain kind of setup, then most likely one has built skills and acquired mindset that is required to be successful in that particular set up.
Imagine you have always lived in a megacity and one fine day you go out trekking in a dense forest with your friends and you lose track, you have no clue how to handle yourself and fend for your survival. God forbid if the rescue party takes a long time and you have to spend a night or a few nights, what do you do? That’s the question that all professionals who prefer to stay and grow in a certainly organ-
ized set-up, must deal with, proactively. Else when the HR team calls and shares the news, it may result in long periods of denial, grief, shock etc which in most cases then results in frantic job search applying on all job sites, connecting with executive search firms, creating a powerful resume, connecting with old and new friends, colleagues, well-wishers etc calculating and readjusting the finances
(all the right steps) and if it does not result in any tangible progress then what next? Mostly, professionals do more of the same.
If in your career journey as a corporate professional, you have been able to acquire entrepreneurial skills and mindset to launch yourself in the other arena (entrepreneurship, free-lancer etc) it opens up a whole new world of possibilities and can act as an interim arrangement (which in some cases becomes the next career journey- that’s when you start thriving in a jungle!), keeps you meaningfully occupied with certain financial inflows. So just to take our jungle analogy forward, when you realize you are separated from your group and you don’t know your way back, you are not petrified as time elapses, night sets in and there is no clue of any rescue mission.
You know how to safely perch on a branch, create a shade using natural cover, pluck a few edible fruits etc.
If I take the liberty of generalizing the professionals falling in the above mentioned two categories, few things are worth highlighting: Category one folks are accustomed to certain money coming into their account on a fixed date, they usually have strong association and identification with a brand (organisation name and designation), they leverage and rely and at times even depend on a whole set of infrastructures, resources that are available, they usually have experience and exposure in certain function(s), quite often manage programs and people or teams, at times quite far away from the end consumer and the market. A lot of times the middle layer in big setups is managing the processes and also the visibility with the right folks who at the end of the year are responsible for major decisions linked to themselves and their team’s success.
Category two folks are usually comfortable in multiple areas that are required to run or be a part of an independent and relatively smaller setup. They are skilled in reaching out to a wider network, doing soft or hard business development in their own ways, they definitely have expertise in one or two areas. They are relatively more independent and if required, can do a variety of work on their own, which a manager in a large setup may have quit doing years back e.g., writing a code or making ppts etc, they are persistent and usually do not over-index on an organisational brand with respect to their professional worth. They are relatively more
comfortable with uncertainties at every level micro and macro e.g., markets, clients, pay-outs, cash flows.
The above two categories don’t exist in isolated compartments, the idea of presenting them as two distinct categories is to highlight certain fundamental points (even the analogy of jungle and megacity is to create a visualization and not to categories or rate professions and professionals). The big question is are we ready to accept the new emerging realities, are we comfortable in owning our professional development from a wider perspective (not just career paths and career lattice within a company), are organisations ready to develop folks to brace up for the challenge in case of an eventuality, are professionals ready to re-calibrate their needs and wants, when they consider switching from one professional orbit to another? Providing severance, outplacement services are all great initiatives but as organisations, are we teaching professionals how to employ oneself in case there is downsizing and permanent jobs with other organisations aren’t available for a longer duration? this becomes relevant as no organisation in today’s world can guarantee job security and at the same time alternate work models are gaining prominence. This may also be in some way a step towards becoming Atmanirbhar at an individual level. Also, not all sectors in an economy get
There are professionals who would enjoy, contribute and grow in what we term as organisations in a traditional sense and then there are others who are in rhythm when they are a part of a working setup that is relatively more flexible, open, extremely dynamic and highly and quickly susceptible to environmental influences
adversely impacted at one point in time, so there are always opportunity areas that can be leveraged, even if the organisations in safe or growth zone do not want to immediately add fulltime employees.
I think building basic entrepreneurial skills and mindset is the need of the hour irrespective of whether we prefer or not to become an entrepreneur in a classical sense. Professionals and organisations need to be candid and honest and not become comfortable by simply communicating ideas like intrapreneurship which at times are nothing more than old wine in a new bottle (though there are a few exceptions). In my view, the working professionals must prepare themselves and demand from their organisations to equip them to navigate in choppy waters. The need to discover one’s purpose, core/differentiated capabilities and build basic entrepreneurial skills is critical. Otherwise, when one finds oneself lost in a jungle, unprepared, one feels lost, demoralized and incapacitated and that must change.
vivEk tiWAri is the founder of Pragyan advisory, a boutique advisory firm. He has earlier worked with organisations like amazon, PwC, american Express and HCL
EVP becomes the talent EVP becomes the talent magnet for the kind of magnet for the kind of talent you want to attract: talent you want to attract: Nimisha Das, Director Nimisha Das, Director HR, Kellogg South Asia HR, Kellogg South Asia
Flexibility was more forced than organic last year; it is now time to put a structure around it so that it’s sustainable, believes Nimisha Das, Director HR, Kellogg South asia
by Shweta Modgil
As we continue to wage a war on the virus, another war is creeping upon us. The war for talent. Best talents remain elusive irrespective of the market dynamic. After the great round of layoffs led by the pandemic, organisations are scuffling to win the war for talent. Salaries, benefits, flexibility, and perks don’t hold water anymore to attract young workers today. Given the extraordinary pace of change, the hastening shelf life of skills, and changing business priorities, managing talent has become a critical issue for leadership.
Given that pre-pandemic ways of working aren’t something workers are ready to go back to, how
can fix the new talent management equation to win this war?
In an exclusive interaction with us, Nimisha Das, Director HR, Kellogg South Asia, sheds light on the critical imperatives for employers seeking to attract, retain and engage top talent and strategies that organisations can bank upon to win the war for talent.
Workers are quitting or switching jobs in droves which some economists have dubbed the ‘Great Resignation’. In such a scenario, what are the critical imperatives for employers seeking to attract, retain and engage top talent?
The way I look at this, the experience is not uniform across organisations and industries as certain industries are more insulated than others. Up till May this year, most organisations had put a stop on talent hiring. And this was equally true from the side of the candidates, where people were a little more cautious to switch as they were probably seeing comfort over growth. So there has been a sort of pent-up demand from both sides. Much of the change is on account of that, which is also validated by the attrition numbers as well, which flattened out last year.
In all this, companies that stepped up as progressive employers showing concern about their employees’ wellbeing and financial health, are still insulated from this flux and have low attrition. So for attracting and retaining top talent, the basics remain the same as earlier. The piece that has started mattering more to employees is how companies can offer more flexibility. They are looking at how many organisations are weaving the temporary flexibility that came into effect due to COVID in the work policies and are making choices based on that.
In addition, the last four-five months have been really tough where people have been hit by the escalation of the medical cost. So the cost of medical, access to healthcare is impacting the whole piece around benefits that organisations are offering. So these things have started to matter more above and beyond the basics of growth, learning, and career.
Lastly, is the piece around organisational culture which supports empowerment, flexibility and if it supports hybrid work.
What as per are those broken links in the current work structure that need to be fixed by organisations in order to create sustainable work cultures?
I think the pandemic and the way things have moved have given the industry an opportunity to rethink ways of working. The
entire expectation of getting out of your home for work, making it through traffic, reaching your office- was established much before technology systems were not there to support hybrid work. The uptake of how technology can enable work has been seen in the context of the pandemic where many companies who did not think remote work was feasible, came around. If we waste this opportunity, it would be a shame. These are the broken structures.
The pandemic, though devastating, has offered an opportunity to reexamine the entire setup for flexible working. The rules of the game have changed because earlier technology was not involved enough to support remote collaboration.
Hence it will have implications for how do you design for diversity for a team, half of whom are sitting in a room and half are working remote. It will have an impact on the pay structure, policies, and the kind of office spaces that we would have. Hybrid working is a huge piece that needs to be explored because you will have different strokes for different folks. For instance, our supply chain teams were working throughout the lockdown period. Similarly, the sales team went back into the field as things opened. Then you have the backend office supporting them, who have a little more flexibility when it comes to where they can work from. So when we are looking at devising a policy, it has to be fair, empowering, and has to suit different employees. Flexibility was more forced than organic last year; it is now time to put a structure around it so that it’s sustainable.
What should be strategies to elevate employee value proposition to mirror what employees seek in the changing work environment?
We just launched our EVP last month ‘NOURISH YOUR GRRREAT’ to help employees realize true potential by providing opportunities to thrive. What I strongly believe is that EVP should be rooted in authenticity and not just be a creative communication exercise. Because people would see through it. It has to be based upon what people experience within the organisation and that’s the process we followed-by taking feedback from employees from different locations.
Organisations need to be very vocal about what talent needs and speak to your prospective talent about it. There is a lot of clutter and noise out there-hence the strategy should be to use authen-
tic voices, build a proposition which is based on actual experiences and what differentiates the organisations versus it just being a creative exercise. If you do it authentically, you will also understand what really matters to people.
What do you think would be the top big differentiators for companies to win the talent war?
I have a different take on war for talent. I don’t think I want to win a war for common talent. For me, winning the war for talent is ensuring that the talent we are aiming for, we are able to convert them. I think EVP becomes the filter or the talent magnet for the kind of people we want to attract to Kellogg. Kellogg stands for being the real you, making your mark and doing a world of good, and we are vocal about it. So for me, it is less of a war for talent but actually being able to target the kind of talent we see will be relevant for Kellogg. Ultimately, the package that you offer to a person is the entire piece on the culture that you have, the growth path, and the kind of careers you can develop.
What is your take on how organisations should approach rethinking location strategy and remodeling roles for flexibility to retain top talent?
The easiest answer for that is asking the people. The strategies that really work for consumers work for internal employees as well. We are part of an organisation globally which understands the fact that different people will For attracting and retaining top talent, the basics remain the same as earlier. The piece that has started mattering more to employees is how companies can offer more flexibility
have different priorities. You need to design a system which addresses this versus one size fits all. So you have to build personalization of experiences where employees can choose to come to the office as they want.
Technology enablement to design for flexibility is the key; reaching out to your own employees to capture their likes and preferences very frequently is important; and then assessing how that flexibility will come into effect for different pools of employees is where the focus needs to be. It will translate into different things for different people, but the starting point for me is insight and listening to your employees.
ViSTy BANAJi
The unforgiving minute
Worthwhile creation demands concentrated work carried out in substantial chunks of interruption-free time. How can corporates cultivate deep thinking in the age of instant communication and other attention-fragmenting distractions?
Ihave scheduled my work-morning perfectly. A couple of to-dos from yesterday should get the dwindling greys in fettle for a sustained stretch of thinking to create a radically different leadership development model for an emergent sector. But, "Hello, hello, what’s this?" Some unread WhatsApp messages are screaming silent siren-calls at me. As soon as I turn to them, I am struck by the most virulent pandemic known to modern man: Instantisis. There is no known vaccine or cure for this STD (Smartphone Transmitted Distraction). That is, of course, till this column appears.
Instant messaging access is only the first symptom. Now that the device lies open, glancing at the attractively AI-arranged news snippets is the most natural next step. Oops. That took a lot longer than anticipated. Boy, am I lucky to have seen these email alerts! There are a couple of midnight messages from s/he-whomust-be-obeyed. S/he will be pleased with my EMPATHY (Early Morning Promptness And Tactfully Humble Yesmanship). Might as well also reply to a clutch of plaintively pleading colleagues in distress and swat down a couple of others who have snapped the last straw. And how can one refuse to give warehouses full of wisdom to youngsters (who have only sought advice to butter their job reference requests)?
How the time I had set aside for focused thought has flown! It’s already time for the major time-sink of the day: the monthly review meeting. Fortunately, remote working makes it possible to continue checking my emails and replying to instant messaging while pretending to look at the zoom screen. Multi-tasking, as we all (should) know, is a myth.1 So it’s really the quick-responding WhatsApp friends’ group that monopolizes most of my attention. Today promises to be a regular day full of the new SNAFU (Situation Normal – All Frittered Uselessly). If we cannot understand and reverse the insidious (if pleasurable) drain on the productivity of
the modern workplace, we also stand to lose the benefits of serious reading, deep contemplation and those cultural pursuits that make us civilized.
To be everywhere is to be Nowhere2
Archimedes, who (according to one version) was murdered by an impatient Roman soldier whom he ignored while lost in solving a problem,3 is perhaps not the happiest example of the popularity concentration commands but he can surely be a poster boy for how much can be achieved by focus.4 Intense thought, in continuous chunks of time, without distractions, is the prerequisite for learning, problem-solving, substantive contribution and creative endeavour. Despite its universally admired value both for creating value and realizing our own potential, most us are losing this ability to stretch our minds to their limits. Technology has played a major part in this debility but, as we shall see, it has been aided by the way our workplaces function and our growing dependence on dopamine delivering distractors.5
In the thousands of years that have elapsed since protohumans split off from the proto-chimp line, there have been just five major revolutions in the media we use to communicate with each other – and we are living through the last of them. According to Marshall Poe these five are: Speech, Manuscripts, Print, Audiovisual Media and the Internet.6 . Each revolution has had major implications for the way we interact, love, work, fight, organize and think. Our plastic brain7 has itself changed markedly after each such upheaval, with implications for our literature, science, politics, productivity and even happiness.
Marshall McLuhan, in his uniquely gnomic fashion, was among the first to debunk the comforting notion that media are
The internet and the ubiquitous hand-held devices through which we can now access it delivers a particularly potent potion to modify neural pathways and keep us hungering for more of the same. Gary Small, who has spent years studying such brain changes, explains: "The current explosion of digital technology not only is changing the way we live and communicate but is rapidly and profoundly altering our brains. Daily exposure to high technology – computers, smartphones, video games, search engines… – stimu-
neutral and just slaves to our bidding. "Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. For the 'content' of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind."8 Since then, of course, we have a much clearer understanding of the material malleability of the mind and the extent to which it is shaped by the media we use and the methods we adopt for doing so. lates brain cell alteration and neurotransmitter release, gradually strengthening new neural pathways in our brains while weakening old ones… As the brain evolves and shifts its focus toward new technological skills, it drifts away from fundamental social skills, such as reading facial expressions during conversation or grasping the emotional context of a subtle gesture…"9 While we struggle to concentrate, the masters of the net universe are out to maximize just one parameter – the amount of
our time they can monopolize. The business models of all such platforms are supported by "a thousand people on the other side of the screen whose job it is to break down the self-regulation you have."10 What generates revenue for them, unfortunately, spells disaster for our mental health, productivity and ability to innovate. Even those who had worked out individual regimens for distancing themselves from these platforms periodically
have had their islands of tranquility submerged by the Work From Home wave. Remote work deprives people of visual and other cues of individual busyness that are available when people work in sight of each other and thus invites much higher than normal volumes of electronic communication with far lower than usual levels of usefulness.11
Our spontaneous tendency to respond to emails as soon as we spot them is not helping in the battle for our minds. When e-communications first freed us from the tyranny of 'trays' we were all delighted with the freedom to respond when and from where we liked. The initial rebellion against the regimentation of traditional working styles was justified. Like all revolutions, however, this one threatens to eat its children and bring the entire edifice of effective organisational working crashing
down. There is no gainsaying that the Taylorean template, prescribing a single best way of doing a job and organizing a work-day, stultified initiative and engagement. We are now grappling with the other extreme – particularly in those non-manufacturing organisations where scientific management had really made no inroads and where, therefore, the counter-movement met no resistance – becoming an orthodoxy of the disorder itself. Since those are also the sectors where the new technologies have made their greatest inroads, they suffer most from the de-protocolization of work while being least aware of it. Ironically, while we have sometimes excised even the retainable principles of Taylorism from much of knowledge work, we lap it up with unnatural eagerness when it is guised behind our favourite platforms and tech aids. "After Taylor, the laborer began following a script written by someone else… Conscious craft turned into unconscious routine. When we go online, we, too, are following scripts written by others – algorithmic instructions that few of us would be able to understand even if the hidden codes were revealed to us… These scripts … mechanize the messy processes of intellectual exploration and even social attachment…. Rather than acting according to our own knowledge and intuition, we go through the motions."12 Small wonder then that true breakthroughs emerge most often in garages and start-ups where the t-shirt culture conceals a fanatic focus. Such disruptive innovations are themselves rudely disrupted once idea-factories are ingested in large mega-corporations that have incessant, insistent and imbecilic demands for responses, reports and reviews, with little concern
for leaving thinking time intact.
Having pilloried technology and the declining discipline and method in organizing work, let’s turn our gaze inward at our attenuated attention ability. Half a century back, long before the juiciest apples from the tree of IT were in our garden, Herbert Simon spoke presciently: "In an informationrich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention."13 Thus the third nail in the coffin of getting real value from our time is distraction.14 Flitting from task to task (with surreptitious social media glances in between) hugely impairs productivity and sustained thought. Edward Hallowell calls this the Attention Deficit Trait (ADT) and vividly describes what it can do to a manager. "He is robbed of his flexibility, his sense of humor, his ability to deal with the unknown. He forgets the big picture and the goals and values he stands for. He loses his creativity and his ability to change plans… [H]e is prone to melting down, to throwing a tantrum, to blaming others, and to sabotaging himself. Or he may go in the opposite direction, falling into denial and total avoidance of the problems attacking him..."15 Surely this cannot be an acceptable future face of work.
Time Regained
To regain mastery of our time, we need to counterattack the same trio of technology, flawed work organisation and distraction. Here are some ideas for doing so. can they continue sucking in the virtually effortless returns that have been flowing to them. This is where the combined might and paying power of large corporates, worried about a failing tech model, needs to step in. Large employers, who wish to make a dramatic difference in their people productivity, need to demand or commission three new (or heavily modified) platforms for commercial use:
• Templatized E-communication Administration
(TEA): Organisation-wide and level/function-specific scheduling and prioritizing 'wizards' that, while permitting some degree of customization, force all employees to specify slots for asynchronous e-mail access. Naturally there would be immediate notifications of messages from a limited number of IQs (Important Queue-breakers) like the boss or critical customers. After all, we did run organisations without constant e-chatter interruptions and were, consequently, far more focused on each activity when we turned to it. We can use technology to become more effective than we were without becoming its
Skinnerian rats!
• Synchronous Execu-
tive Access (SEA): What
TEA does for e-mails,
SEA would do for bunching real-time communica-
Technology is far too useful and integral a part of our work and home lives to excise from them totally. However, we can modify it to negate its addictiveness and run it to our advantage. We should expect the tech giants to be as cooperative in this endeavour as Superman would be to a request for binding himself in Kryptonite chains. Only by maximizing the amount of time we spend on our devices
tion demands. Phone and other platforms would be automatically video/voicemailed for response in blocks of time set aside for the purpose (see section on protocols below). Once again there would be a few
IQ exceptions.
• Programmable Executive Assistance (PEA):
An Executive Assistant, that once was the signature accessory signalling very senior executives, was also a wonderful device for guarding their time and a reliever from time-consuming tasks that didn’t require personal attention but couldn’t be delegated down the line. AI can make this remarkable position available virtually to every manager.
• Technology-based focussing and distractioncutting tools can only
be enablers. For them to yield any time capitalization, organisations have to reshape their ways of working radically. Telenor has made tremendous progress in this direction and their guidebook on
Workfulness16 would be a wonderful starting point for any firm embarking on the journey. These three changes will require the most effort:
• Protocols and Processes
Facilitating Flow: To maximize the "… moments … when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile"17 organisations need to guide several systems that have been left to impulse and individual whim. Training and getting people accustomed to focussing and using just certain, limited (off
Circadian peak18) parts of each day for meetings or getting e-mail responses are a few examples of what each firm needs to recast.
Ideally, TEA and SEA times should be the same for each geography.
• Culture Conducive to
Concentration and
Craftsmanship: This is not a plea to make work less demanding but to value quality over quantity, craftsmanship19 over 'turbo-fan work' (highvolume bypass ratio) and relationships over ruth-
lessness. Each of the latter choices is fatal to concentration.
• Skilling Instead of Will-
ing: If we recognize that people’s impulses cannot be ordered or willed away, the kind of training we impart will be quite different. "[T]he question is how to limit the harmful behavior caused by impulses situated primarily in the limbic system...
Besides encouraging the use of technical solutions for managing and sorting incoming calls and messages, the training consists of learning how to resist the temptations from the phones. We replace unpreferred behaviors with preferred behaviors that we repeatedly practice until we automatically behave in the preferred way. They become automated, and we do not have
to actively think about them."20
Once our organisational and technology enablers are in place for doing the heavy lifting, the demands on selfregulation and discipline should be entirely manageable (though not easy) for most employees. There are several attention-fixit books that can aid the process. For instance, 'Deep Work', by Cal Newport, has several sensible suggestions and the Rhythmic Philosophy of Scheduling that he describes meshes well with the technological and organisational changes we have considered above.21
The Devil finds Work for Busy Hands to fail
To make this transformation work, one more vital element is needed: the respect we have for the time of our fellow employees. Isn’t it curious how the most courteous of people behave like infants, unable to defer gratification for another minute when an electronic device for initiating communication is in front of them? But timing is not the worst of it. It is the sheer casualness or craftiness that lies behind such requests. Particularly in group e-mails or messages, you can be ambushed by people who write (or speak) to create an image of being foresighted and perspicacious while simultaneously showing you up as lacking these. In the process, your target achievement is blocked till you respond with a hugely disproportionate expenditure of time compared to that which went into the seemingly innocent query or comment. In the new world of efficient, excellent and enjoyable work that we are contemplating, people need to be aware of, measured on (a vital 360º feedback parameter, going forward) and penalized for making pointless encroachments on the time of colleagues or rewarded for making their communications limited, purposeful and constructive.
After all: you ARE your brother’s (and sister’s time-) keeper!
Notes:
1. Eyal Ophir, Clifford Nass and Anthony
D Wagner, Cognitive control in media multitaskers, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 106(37):15583-7, September 2009. 2. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a
Stoic, Penguin Classics, 1969. 3. Plutarch, The Complete Works of Plutarch,
Delphi Classics, 2013. 4. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is quoted as writing: "He who understands Archimedes and Apollonius will admire less the achievements of the foremost men of later times." in
Uta Merzbach and Carl Boyer, A History of
Mathematics (third edition), John Wiley &
Sons, 2010. 5. Simon Parkin, Has dopamine got us hooked on tech?, The Guardian, 4 March 2018. 6. Marshall T Poe, A History of Communications: Media and Society from the Evolution of Speech to the Internet, Cambridge
University Press, 2012. 7. P Voss, M E Thomas, J M Cisneros-Franco, and É de Villers-Sidani, Dynamic Brains and the Changing Rules of Neuroplasticity:
Implications for Learning and Recovery,
Frontiers in psychology, 8, 1657, 2017. Once our organisational and technology enablers are in place for doing the heavy lifting, the demands on self-regulation and discipline should be entirely manageable for most employees
visty bAnAJi is the Founder and CEO of Banner Global Consulting (BGC)
8. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media:
The Extensions of Man, Routledge, 20001. 9. Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan, iBrain:
Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind, William Morrow, 2009. 10. Tristan Harris, quoted by Adam Alter,
Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive
Technology and the Business of Keeping Us
Hooked, Penguin, 2017. 11. Visty Banaji, 'Working from Home is NOT a piece of cake', 25 January 2021, (https:// www.peoplematters.in/blog/life-at-work/ working-from-home-is-not-a-piece-ofcake-28247). 12. Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the
Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, W W
Norton & Company, 2011. 13. Herbert Simon, Designing Organisations for an Information-Rich World, in
Martin Greenberger (ed.), Computers,
Communications, and the Public Interest,
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971. 14. Maggie Jackson, Distracted: Reclaiming
Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention,
Prometheus Books, 2018. 15. Edward Hallowell, Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Underperform, Harvard
Business Review, January 2005. 16. Telenor and Katarina Gospic, Workfulness: a guidebook for companies aimed to create a healthy digital working environment, 2015. 17. Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, Flow: The
Psychology of Optimal Experience, Harper
Perennial Modern Classics, 2008. 18. Visty Banaji, India Eagerly Awaits a Sixer,
People Matters, 15 April 2021, (https:// www.peoplematters.in/blog/employee-relations/india-eagerly-awaits-a-sixer-29028). 19. Visty Banaji, In Praise of Craftsmanship:
Past Perfect – Present Imperfect – Future Tense, 8 June 2018, (https://www. peoplematters.in/article/technology/ in-praise-of-craftsmanship-past-perfectpresent-imperfect-future-tense-18481). 20. Carina Guyard and Anne Kaun, Workfulness: governing the disobedient brain,
Journal of Cultural Economy, 11:6, 535-548, 2018. 21. Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused
Success in a Distracted World, Little,
Brown Book Group, 2016. september 2021 |
Empathy is the starting point to build trust: Virendra Shelar, OMRON
Virendra Shelar, Executive Officer, President, OMRON Management Centre of asia Pacific, and General Manager, Global Human Resources Strategy Department, spoke to People Matters about how OMRON is enabling empathy, inclusion and digitization in a postCOVID workplace
by Bhavna Sarin
Virendra Shelar is the Executive Officer, President, of OMRON Management Centre of Asia Pacific, and General Manager, Global Human Resources Strategy Department at OMRON. Shelar joined OMRON in 2014, as General Manager – HR with 20 years of experience in leadership development, talent management, competency assessment and business performance management. Earlier, he led learning & organisational development initiatives for companies like International Rectifiers, Schneider Electric and Sony Electronics across Asia.
Here are excerpts from the interaction.
Several focus areas including experience, empathy, wellbeing, inclusion and belonging came to the fore post the shift to remote work. How did OMRON adapt to this?
Driven by ORMON’s Value – “Respect for All”, we put in our best efforts to adapt to the shift by deploying a “3R” (REVIEW, RENEW & REFRESH) approach last year. • Reviewing our existing practices – whether they are in sync with the changing times • Renewing the initiatives that we must continue irrespective of what the world or business environment looks like, and • Refreshing the practices & policies via bringing in changes in the form of optimization and value-addition.
This helped us develop new agility for the organisation. Health & safety of our employees became the topmost priority. We did everything to ensure all our employees stay safe. For some aspects, like hybrid work arrangement, there were no defined policies and we made quick decisions driven by what is right for the employees and their families. Alongside, we continued to implement various virtual initiatives for development of Human Capital which included project assignments, job rotations, training, coaching, employee engagement surveys and most importantly two-way, more frequent communication & wellness orientations with all of them to take care of their mental wellbeing. As the pandemic
situation still remains uncertain, this year also our team embraced the “3C” (COMMUNICATE, COLLABORATE & CHALLENGE) approach.
“Communicate more” is our direction to the entire team as we have been working remotely for a long time. It could make employees feel disconnected and lonelier than we think. The best way is to initiate more casual conversations than before.
Collaboration on projects helps them interact with each other and keeps the mind engaged. It also helps to create more value for the business. Our team has done complex project implementations this year, all done through virtual collaboration.
Challenging ourselves is one of the values of OMRON. We continue to challenge the status quo by asking what is important for our employees & business. This year, we are challenging ourselves to create a new “Workstyle” for everyone, and investing in a new office that would create more opportunities to communicate and collaborate as employees start returning to the office. Work from home may become the default and we will have a CoCo Office (Communication and Collaboration). With no dedicated seats even for senior management, we are challenging ourselves to prepare for the future.
What are some microaggressions that leaders must
Prepare for the future with available resources and continue to move forward
address in the virtual working environment?
We do observe that employees start feeling more isolated and lonelier after prolonged work-from-home. It creates stress and fatigue leading to miscommunication & perceived aggression. Companies start observing that once a sense of connection and team spirit is lost,the employees start feeling more disengaged. Their quality of work suffers and they start looking for change. Hence, keeping employees fully engaged is going to be one of the next key challenges for management.
We have started the conversation about “Psychologically Safety” in the workplace to create a safe environment for everyone. This helps employees raise their concerns openly without any fear and let management know their feelings. We have also started having virtual sessions on managing stress and working effectively in a virtual environment to support our employees.
How crucial is it for leaders to focus on workplace empathy today?
Leaders must follow workplace empathy in order to foster employees who further drive management and business. Business leaders need people with future-oriented perspective. which can happen only when the leader empathizes & resonates with them. By using empathy and understanding the mindset of your team members, a leader is able to determine their weaknesses and encourage them in raising their capabilities and improvement. It is one of the most desirable traits for successful teamwork.
Leaders must understand that this work environment is different from that of an office. Being away on a virtual chat does not mean the employee is not working. It could be that they are talking to a key customer on the phone, preparing for the next call or taking time to strategize. Leaders need to trust their teams now than ever before and empathy is the starting point to build that trust.
If you could offer one piece of advice for leaders in the new world of work, to enhance experience, accelerate inclusion and scale capabilities, what would that be?
The future is uncertain and we may not have past experience for references . So, prepare for the future with available resources Please don’t wait for things to become normal, just continue to move forward.
Past Month's events
LinkedIn Live - Adapting EX for the Now & Next of Work Virtual Event | APAC Transform 2021
People Matters 25th August, 2021 Online The last 18 months have forced organisations to seriously relook at employee experience, to tune up and listen empathetically to employees and act fast. The changed work realities mean old ways are passé and organisations need to pay attention to the culture they are building and the experience they are going to deliver in the second year of the pandemic. What is next for employee experience? How can we redefine it and adapt it for our new world of work, a big part of which has transitioned to hybrid work? People Matters & Workplace from Facebook 25th August, 2021 Online Hybrid workplace. Distributed workforce. Rapidly changing business expectations. Enhancing employee experience. And more. HR & Business leaders have too many milestones to cross. As you all work on transforming your workplace for the now & next of work, there are a lot of opportunities to learn from each other. Our esteemed partner, Workplace from Facebook has one such learning opportunity for all the HR and business leaders.
Unlocking business value through skilling
People Matters &
Coursera 12th August, 2021 Online As the new world of work awaits to unleash new challenges, opportunities, and innovations, ensuring companies have the right skills mix to thrive in this new world of work has become a priority. Upskilling is emerging as a core to many firms’ talent strategies. Hence, in the coming years, the speed and scale of upskilling and reskilling human capital. In this virtual session by People Matters & Coursera, we will look at what has been the major skills gap in organisations that they are looking to solve? People Matters TechHR India 2021: The Great Emergence
People Matters 4th - 6th August, 2021 Online With everything disrupted, considering going back to the old ways of working is not at all a winning strategy. Companies have accelerated their business agility & speed by adopting new ways of working. People Matters TechHR 2021’s theme, The Great Emergence answered the question that stares us in the face - WHAT NEXT? It was a perfect opportunity for all the leaders to network with 3200+ delegates and discuss how HR continues its quest to become more digital, data-centric, and businessdriven than ever before, with execution being at the core. What’s the next curve for a hybrid workplace?
People Matters 19th August, 2021; 3:00 PM AEDT Online As organisations look ahead to “what’s next” after the pandemic, many have landed on the hybrid approach as the way forward. Business leaders who take steps to ensure that they’re making hybrid arrangements as effective and fair as possible will be well-positioned to succeed in the post-COVID era. And the sooner employers devise a hybrid plan that works for everyone, the sooner we can all begin a smooth transition into this “new normal”.
People Matters TechHR India 2021: The Great Emergence
Disprz People Matters &
29th July, 2021 Online To Win in the 20s, organisations need to keep pace with today’s environment. One in which we are expected to pivot repeatedly toward new ways of working, and hence, there is a clear mandate for organisations to reinvent themselves to be agile, flexible, and aligned to customer needs. Reinventing as a next-generation learning organisation. As a part of this webcast series under People Matters and Disprz, “Winning in the 20s” this first session discussed how the role of frontline workers evolved to deliver on business when business models have changed.
Upcoming events
People Matters Are you in the List Awards People Matters EX APAC Virtual Conference Skillsoft Perspectives 2021
People Matters 3rd September 021 Online As HR leaders played a pivotal role in spearheading their organisations through the uncertainty, stress, and change, they developed and defined a new core set of skills which is going to be a prerequisite of emerging HR leaders in the second year of the pandemic and beyond. It is these very visionary and talented HR leaders that the People Matters Are you in the List 2021 Awards which is in its 10th year of running aims to recognize- the new generation of HR leaders who rose to the challenge of 2020 and became the answer to the challenges in the People and Workspace and have redefined HR for the future HR leaders. The People Matters Are You in the List 2021 awards in association with DDI is the right stage for you-as it has been for the last 10 years, identifying the emerging HR leaders of tomorrow who can rise to the challenges of the future. People Matters 9th September 2021 Online People Matters EX APAC Virtual conference is a full-day event that will feature four virtual tracks and will take a deep dive into different aspects of the EX with keynotes, case study sessions, panel discussions, and dedicated virtual exhibition space for service providers to showcase their latest offerings. It will cover the foundations of EX to maximize business success, accelerating the development of a consumer mindset to solving people & work challenges to attract and retain future talent, bolster productivity and ultimately build happier workplaces, which makes more business sense in the long run. So come, learn, interact, and network virtually with over 1000+ delegates and explore how EX translates in every decision in the talent strategy. Skillsoft 22-23 September 2021 Online If we’ve learned anything in the past year, it’s that change is the only thing we can count on. And — more importantly — that learning is the single best way to make sure that you and your workforce are ready. Ready to adapt. Ready to grow. Ready for whatever comes next. Join us at Perspectives Unleashed 2021 for an array of sessions all focused on the following topics and themes: From Skills Gap to Skills Revolution: Transforming Today’s Workforce for Tomorrow’s Economy | Who Owns the Skilling Agenda? | If the Future of Work is Now -- What Now -- is the Future?
Blogosphere >> sArAH GAlloWAy
Sustainability and the C-Suite: The 5Ps of sustainability
Corporate purpose and the relationship between a company and its stakeholders has quickly risen to the fore of many leaders’ agendas, driven by the disruptive events of the last 18 months and the realization that companies must do more to earn the trust of their employees, customers and investors. While many companies have set bold targets for their sustainability transformation, far fewer have delivered on these ambitions to date.
In our work with many of the world’s largest and most complex companies, we see firsthand the challenges and opportunities that such transformation can present. Many wrestle with questions around where to focus, who to involve and how ambitious to be in setting their sustainability strategy. Companies that have effectively embedded sustainability across their strategy and operations – those that go beyond the empty promises of “greenwashing” to truly transform their operating model – apply a sustainability lens across five dimensions of their business to identify both risks and opportunities for creating social and financial value:
People: The skillsets, organ-
isation structures and leadership culture required to support a sustainable, diverse and inclusive business
Biosciences company Chr. Hansen embeds sustainability into its hiring processes by asking hiring managers to assess whether candidates “uphold ethics and values, encourage organisational
Companies that have effectively embedded sustainability across their strategy and operations to truly transform their operating model apply a sustainability lens across five dimensions of their business
and individual responsibility towards the community and environment.” The change in hiring practices has been instrumental in the company generating more than 80% of revenue from products that have a direct, positive contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Products: Creating new prod-
ucts or redesigning existing ones to make them more sustainable or to address previously unmet market needs
After witnessing elderly cotton farmers in China laboring to work with heavy pesticide tanks strapped to their backs, XAG CEO Peng Bin decided to reorient the company’s focus from consumer drone technology to AgTech, to increase the quantity and quality of crops produced while lessening the strain on smallholder farmers. Rebranding from Xaircraft to XAG, the company’s products enable farmers to use less pesticide, reduce carbon emissions and physical strain on workers, and farm previously inaccessible or unprofitable land.
Process: Reconfiguring opera-
tional practices and processes to reduce waste, promote transparency and include stakeholders
IT equipment manufacturer TES has invested in circular solutions to its manufacturing processes in order to increase the recovery rate of raw inputs such as cobalt and lithium. Their facilities employ innovative recycling processes and equipment such as auto-punching machines, shredders, separators and chemical treatments to recover commodity elements safely with no harmful emissions. Recycling capabilities are vertically integrated with reuse and re-purposing to build "2nd life" battery energy storage systems that extend product life and achieve even higher environmental outcomes with improved, more sustainable economics.
Partners: Building relationships with suppliers, clients
and other collaborators that share sustainable values
As part of its commitment to reuse and recycle 1 million metric tons of plastic by 2030, chemical company Dow has partnered with Indian startup company Lucro to “close the loop” by creating new products and packaging with the recycled inputs. Dow provides material science, application development expertise and testing capabilities at its Indian facilities, enabling Lucro to develop and manufacture new products using post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastics. The partnership enables mance, including energy use and GHG emissions, and its contribution to the company’s efforts to achieve its climate goal.
Yet simply identifying the myriad ways that a company can embed sustainability is not enough – companies must also possess the talent and expertise to deliver on these opportunities. To better understand what differentiates business leaders who have driven successful sustainability transformations, we partnered with the United Nations Global Compact to study pioneering sustainability leaders for our joint whitepaper, Leadership for the Decade of Action. The research identified four unique attributes of sustainable leaders:
• Multi-level systems think-
ing: Sustainable leaders recognize the interconnectivity of the ecosystem in which the business operates. They are naturally curious, with high levels of ambition and result orientation.
• Stakeholder inclusion:
Sustainable leaders do not just manage stakeholders, they include them. These leaders consider a wide range of viewpoints to drive decision-making and value creation and demonstrate high levels of empathy and authenticity. • Disruptive innovation: With the courage to challenge traditional approaches, sustainable leaders seek out the best available science but are comfortable not having all the answers. They identify novel solutions that do away with the tradeoff between profitability and sustainability.
Dow to reduce its environmental footprint through a revenue generating joint venture.
Profits: Embedding a sustaina-
bility lens into decisions around capital allocation, investments and corporate strategy
PepsiCo incorporates environmental sustainability criteria into its Capital Expenditure Filter, which is applied to all capital expenditure requests over $5 million. Each request is reviewed not only against business financial metrics and value to advance the business strategy but also for the impact (positive or negative) that it will have on environmental perfor-
• Long-term activation:
Sustainable leaders set audacious goals and rigorously drive concerted action and investment. They possess the courage and resilience to stay the course in the face of setbacks or internal resistance.
Importantly, these attributes must be combined with a sustainable mindset: the purpose-driven belief that business is not a commercial activity divorced from the wider societal and environmental context in which it operates, and that to be successful in the long term, leaders must innovate and manage across commercial, societal and environmental outcomes. Many leaders possess one or more of the four attributes above, but it is only when activated by a sustainable mindset that these competencies can be channeled towards outcomes that drive both social and financial value creation.
Despite their bold commitments towards change, companies are not yet delivering on their sustainability promises. We believe that the growing gap between what companies say they want to achieve when it comes to their sustainability agenda and what is actually being achieved is a result of the fact that sustainable leadership is rarely a selection requirement in senior leadership positions. In a recent analysis of nearly 4000 executive placements, we found that only 4 percent included sustainability experience or mindset as a candidate requirement.
It is clear that—despite genuine commitments towards sustainable practices—companies have not yet integrated these priorities into how they identify, assess and select their senior leaders. While roles such as chief sustainability officer are becoming more common, the scale of change required necessitates that senior leaders across the organisation bring a sustainability lens to their decision-making, not just those with a dedicated remit. Without intentional effort to embed sustainability into the C-suite, companies’ sustainability initiatives will remain stalled, no matter the authenticity of their commitments.
about the author
sArAH GAlloWAy is a Consultant at Russell Reynolds associates.
