No8 | Business Impact - HR World Magazine

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Nevena Stanisavljević

EDITOR

Žaklina Teofilović

MANAGING EDITORS

Tamara Jeremić

Aleksandra Fuštić Maša Vlahović

CONTRIBUTORS

Dr. Heike Caspari, Milan Prnjić, Maja Ninković, Prof. Dr. Nebojša Janićijević, Dr. Milica Vukelić, Dr. Milana Milešev, Petar Jelača, Kuniya Tsubota, Joy Clark, Prof. Dr. Miriam Hägerbäumer, Miloš Milisavljević, Stefan Vukajlović, Tanja Mladenović, Dušan Basalo…

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS & STAFF

Marija Todorović, Jovana Kostadinović, Katarina Đorđević, Nataša Timotijević, Katarina Ćirović, Nenad Mijatović, Vlada Ranđelović, Tamara Grbić, Jelena Dušanić, Almira Laličić, Mariana Gajčin, Eleonora Marić, Slađana Trikić

THE ROLE OF HR IN BUSINESS

HR IS THE HEART OF BUSINESS

• HR is a strategic business function

• HR understands business and the business model

• HR is an advisor to the business and reconsiders its decisions

HR BRINGS VALUE

• HR creates direct added value and affects the business result

• HR clearly and authoritatively communicates its results and contribution to the business

• HR directly influences the size and structure of the budget and is its autonomous holder

HR PLANS STRATEGICALLY

• HR plans for the long term, looking at the bigger picture of the business

• HR is a strategic business partner and actively participates in the creation of an umbrella business strategy

• HR has a place at the strategic table, HR is a member of the board and top management

HR PROCESSES ARE A CATALYST OF CHANGE

• HR continuously optimizes, improves, and modernizes HR processes

• HR initiates and implements changes, it is one of the key catalysts of transformation and digitization

• HR has a direct impact on changing the mindset of the entire organization

STOP BUREAUCRACY

• The focus of HR is on people, not on the administration

• HR is making an effort to reduce administrative tasks through digitization

• HR creates processes in which there are lesser operational and bureaucratic jobs

HR IS AN INTERSECTION OF INTERESTS

• HR knows stakeholders greatly and manages their needs

• HR communication is a two-way street, HR encourages interaction and transparently communicates with all interested parties

• HR aligns the goals of all stakeholders - management, employees, candidates, and the wider community

The newest issue of the HR World Magazine is focused on Business Impact – what better way to kick it off than with the Manifesto of HR Potential, jointly created by all the participants of this year’s Executive HR World Summit. Since day one, HR World’s vision was to embolden the HR profession on its strategic journey. HR manifesto empowers us to shift our perspective and strive towards these ambitious goals as individuals, teams and organizations. HR manifesto is a strategic survival guide for the HR profession to navigate the complexities of today’s world.

I invite you to go through this manifesto – keep in mind, this is a living, breathing document. It will continuously expand and develop, growing along with us. It serves to remind the HR profession of its own expectations, goals and future destinations. As you read this newest issue of HR World, you are invited to make a contribution to the HR Manifesto as well. Share your thoughts on how you see our HR profession, its main goals, purpose and identity. We look forward to every one of them. | community@hrworld.org

Nevena Stanisavljević Editor-in-Chief

THE MANIFEST OF HR POTENTIAL

HR IDENTITY

HR IS BRAVE

• HR is not a victim, it takes initiative and responsibility

• HR believes in itself, has self-confidence, and takes risks

• HR is proactive and innovative and is directly involved in decision-making

HR WORKS WITH INTEGRITY

• HR works with integrity and purpose

• HR represents and lives the values it propagates

• HR is influential in the organization, has strong leadership skills, and is recognized as a leader

HR TAKES RESPONSIBILITY

• HR takes responsibility and makes strategic decisions concerning people and business

• HR knows how to say "NO" and does not do other people's work

• HR knows how to present, sell and stand for its ideas and proposals

HR IS EVERYWHERE IN THE ORGANIZATION

• HR has an agile and two-sided approach - internally towards people and externally towards the market and competition

• HR has an individual approach to employees

• HR has a hands-on approach and knows the working conditions and processes that employees perform

HR IS FOCUSED ON PEOPLE

• HR is empathetic, strengthens its humane side, and cares about employees

• HR investigates what is important to employees, measures their satisfaction, and assesses their needs

• HR involves employees in creating concrete activities instead of offering them ready-made solutions, encouraging their empowerment, engagement, and participation

HR BREAKS STEREOTYPES

• HR supports all employees, breaks stereotypes, and creates an affirmative environment for everyone

• HR identifies, directs, and develops organizational culture for the benefit of employees and business

• HR recognizes and encourages the authenticity of employees, is an ambassador of inclusiveness, and creates an environment in which everyone feels accepted

THE FUTURE OF HR

HR IS THE ENGINE OF DEVELOPMENT

• HR is the engine of development: of employees and the organization, it realizes and awakes its own and other people's potential

• HR continuously learns and improves itself, consciously and purposefully strengthening its expertise

• HR explores other areas and learns about them, fostering a muchneeded multidisciplinary approach

HR ACCEPTS TECHNOLOGY AS THE NEXT STEP

• HR follows trends and new directions and applies new methodologies

• HR accepts new technological solutions and digitizes the organization by reducing administrative and operational processes

• HR understands people analytics, makes decisions based on data, and uses them as arguments

HR IS A CREATIVE FUNCTION

• HR has a creative approach to processes and ideas, is flexible and open-minded

• HR thinks "out-of-the-box"

• HR asks questions and cultivates a culture of experimentation

HR DEVELOPS EMPLOYEES, BUT ALSO ITS TEAM

• HR works to strengthen HR teams, sectors, and their function in the organization and beyond

• HR teams are stronger, they delegate, have decision-making freedom, and a strong team spirit

• HR is resilient, it fully adopts the concept of resilience and transfers it to the entire organization

BETTER HR FOR A BETTER WORLD

• HR grows and strengthens through the exchange of good practices in the community where it is connected with other HR professionals

• HR does not view colleagues in the community as competition but as co-creators of a stronger and recognized HR profession

• HR is involved in other business communities where it also develops itself.

Content

06

BUSINESS

WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO PROVE HR’S VALUE CREATION?

ŽAKLINA TEOFILOVIĆ, HUMAN RESOURCES

DIRECTOR, MTU MAINTENANCE SERBIA

12 BUSINESS PERSPECTIVES ON HR VALUE CREATION

MILAN PRNJIĆ, GLOBAL PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATION BP, NOVARTIS PHARMA AG, SWITZERLAND

18 PEOPLE ANALYTICS

ONA ANALYSIS: THE UNBEATABLE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL NETWORKS

MAJA NINKOVIĆ SHAPERA, VP PEOPLE, MITTO, NADA KRSTIĆ, SENIOR MANAGER, PEOPLE & CULTURE, MITTO

26 CULTURE

THE MECHANISM OF IMPACT OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE ON COMPANY’S PERFORMANCE, PROF. DR.NEBOJŠA JANIĆIJEVIĆ, FULL PROFESSOR, FACULTY OF ECONOMICS, BELGRADE UNIVERSITY

30

ENGAGEMENT

“WHEN YOU FIND YOUR SERVANT IS YOUR MASTER”: DO WE UNDERSTAND WORK ENGAGEMENT…IN ORDER TO MEASURE IT?

DR. MILICA VUKELIĆ, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN WORK AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY, FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY, DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF BELGRADE

34

TALENT SOLVING THE TALENT RIDDLE / RECRUITMENT AND L&D, TEAM UP DR. MILANA MALEŠEV, PHD CIPD QUALIFICATIONS

TUTOR, FOUNDER OF LEARNING MAKEOVER, AND AN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF SOCIAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY, FEFA

38

TRENDS

EMPLOYEE BENEFITS: LUXURY OR NECESSITY DUŠAN VUKANOVIĆ, FOUNDER, BENEFITI.RS

40

LEADERSHIP HOW HR CREATES VALUE FOR THE COMPANY THROUGH LEADERSHIP CULTURE DEVELOPMENT? THE CASE FROM MTU AERO ENGINES

DR. HEIKE CASPARI, DIRECTOR LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, BUSINESS CHALLENGE PROJECT MANAGER, MTU AERO ENGINES, ŽAKLINA TEOFILOVIĆ, HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR, MTU MAINTENANCE SERBIA

48

INTERVIEW

PETAR JELAČA VICE PRESIDENT, CUSTOMER CARE EMEA, CLARIVATE 52

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION START BUILDING A RECRUITMENT STRATEGY AROUND DEIHOW SOON IS NOW?

ALEKSANDRA FUŠTIĆ, COMMUNITY MANAGER, HR WORLD

56

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION CULTURE TRANSFORMATION FOCUSING ON INCLUSION & DIVERSITY KUNIYA TSUBOTA, VP HR, MEA & CEE, IBM

58

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION SEE ME: THE CASE FOR DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION AND BELONGING JOY CLARK, CHRO, WORLDWIDE CLINICAL TRIALS

62 PEOPLE ANALYTICS HR-ANALYTICS AND CORPORATE FORESIGHT: HOW DATA-DRIVEN HR CONTRIBUTES TO BUSINESS SUCCESS IN A DYNAMIC WORLD PROF. DR. MIRIAM HÄGERBÄUMER, PROFESSOR OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT & BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY, EUROPÄISCHE

FERNHOCHSCHULE HAMBURG, UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCE

66

CULTURE CULTURE TRANSFORMATION IN MK GROUP MARINA RAKIĆ, HR DIRECTOR, MK GROUP

71

INTERVIEW

MILOŠ MILISAVLJEVIĆ CEO, STRAWBERRY ENERGY

74 PEOPLE ANALYTICS WORKFORCE ANALYTICS – THE TIME TO START IS NOW STEFAN VUKAJLOVIĆ, GROUP HR DIRECTOR FOR C&B, FORTENOVA GROUP

80 COLUMN ALL THE BILLBOARDS AND BEER IN THE WORLD WON’T HELP YOU IF YOUR EMPLOYEES ARE UNHAPPY

TANJA MLADENOVIĆ, CEO AND CO-FOUNDER, UNUSUAL SOUR

86

TRENDS

CREATING A HEALTHY WORKPLACE

IVANA BARBARA TURKALJ, WELLBEING AND GROWTH STRATEGIST, ABOVE ACADEMY

90

CULTURE PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE PRECEDE SUCCESS AND RESULTS SANJA JEVĐENIJEVIĆ, MANAGING PARTNER, HR XCEL

94

DEVELOPMENT

MYTH-BUSTING THE MENTORING DUŠAN BASALO, FOUNDER AND CEO, TALKS AND FOLKS

96 DEVELOPMENT

MIND-SHIFT WHY, HOW AND WHEN TO CHANGE MIND

ĐORĐE MARIČIĆ, FOUNDER/ COMMUNICATION

EXPERT/NBI MASTER TRAINER, MAVERICK CONSULTING, ANA KRSTIĆ, COPYWRITER INTERN, MAVERICK CONSULTING

100

TRENDS

WHAT HR NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS

TIJANA BEJATOVIĆ, INTERNAL COMMUNICATION PROFESSIONAL

105 HR TECH

HR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IS NOT OPTIONAL – YOU CANNOT STAND ASIDE, AGILCON

108

DEVELOPMENT

WHEN IS THE RIGHT TIME FOR A CAREER CHANGE?

PEĐA JOVANOVIĆ, SENIOR PARTNER, ATRIA GROUP

110 HR TECH END INEFFICIENT LEAVE MANAGEMENT

VACATION TRACKER

114

TRENDS

HR PERSPECTIVE, HR WORLD COMMUNITY

WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO PROVE

VALUE

Žaklina Teofilović HR Director, MTU Maintenance Serbia

In 1954, Drucker, the author of “ the PractIce of ManageMent”, hIghlIghteD that “Personnel” Managers are worrIeD about “theIr InabIlIty to Prove that they are MakIng a contrIbutIon to the enterPrIse”. It seeMs that alMost 70 years later we can stIll Debate the questIon: how Do huMan caPItal anD the hr functIon create value for coMPanIes?

Let’s imagine that senior managers, to a substantial degree, now “get it” and do not have to be persuaded that the quality with which they lead their people has a strategic impact. Debate on the “black box”, a useful conceptualization of never-ending discussion on how HR contributes to the

financial performance of the company can be parked. Let’s imagine that deploying financial capital and human capital has the same importance and focus for senior managers. That people allocation is as significant as financial allocation. No acquisition is to be made before financial and human capital is allocated and ensured. Managers are aware that the behavior and performance of people are making a managerially significant contribution to their company’s financial performance and deserve strong focus. Now let’s go further with imagination.

Let’s imagine senior HR professionals also “get it” and don’t have to be persuaded that CEOs are people focused and expectant of a strong impact from the HR function in terms of managing all people and cultural elements that contribute to the success of the company. Let’s imagine senior HR professionals perfectly understand CEOs’ needs and concerns. They know that CEOs are strong on strategy but coming to people matters might have some concerns on how to set a strong, healthy culture and develop people.

They know that CEOs want to make sure to have the right talent on hand before going too deeply into the strategic and financial planning of new projects. CEOs want to be sure they are matching talent with roles that create the most value. Senior HR professionals know that CEOs want to build organizations around empowered teams who are capable of delivering strategic initiatives. They want a top team that can strongly influence a company’s success. They want to ensure their management team performs strongly as a unit. CEOs want healthy and sustainable organizations, with people who are engaged, motivated, creative, innovative, and ready for the future. People who have a collaborative mindset and way of working. Research shows that all of this is true. Top teams that work together toward a common vision are 1.9 times more likely to deliver above-median financial performance (McKinsey). CEOs who insist on rigorously measuring and managing all cultural elements that drive performance more than double the odds that their strategies will be executed. And over the long term, they deliver triple the total return to shareholders that other companies deliver (McKinsey).

If this would be our reality, we might ask ourselves: Do we have within our HR function the right mindset, capabilities, confidence, and processes to add value to the CEO’s efforts to manage a strategic workforce? Do we have all the toolsmethods and techniques to measure and manage all cultural elements that drive organizational performance? Are we, as senior HR professionals ready for the shift towards meeting CEOs’ expectations and wishes?

Part 1: for those senIor hr ProfessIonals who belIeve that hr Is stIll not there: are we reaDy for the shIft ?

DesIgnIng a creDIble

hr functIon that can Manage a strategIc workforce anD be a Partner to ceo anD senIor ManageMent,

Is soMethIng that Must be Done IncreMentally.

Part 2: for those senIor hr ProfessIonals who belIeve that hr Is a value-creatIng functIon: how to Measure IntangIbIlIty?

As one senior manager put it, “I’m absolutely convinced that doing a better job managing the workforce would create considerable wealth in our business. I’m just not convinced that anyone in the HR department can help us get there.” This quote highlights an important distinction between managing a strategic workforce that drives organizational performance and managing the HR function. Too often senior HR professionals are reduced to presenting results from the latest employee survey, or trends for various turnover rates. When the CEO asks, “Why is this important?”, they lack convincing arguments. Traditional HR measures (like cost per hire, and benefits expense as a proportion of revenue) focus on the performance of the HR function and tend to rely on external benchmarks. They are typically used to analyze and benchmark the efficiency of a company’s HR function. As such, they are descriptive but not at all predictive (since the efficiency with which HR transactions are accomplished has a little visible impact on either overall organizational costs or value creation). This approach merely reinforces the view that the HR function is a cost center and does very little to improve the company’s strategy implementation and business results. Therefore, measures are answers to the questions, and most benchmarking measures companies use in HR do not answer a strategic HR question for an organization.

According to the behavioral perspective of Human Resources Management, companies do not perform themselves, but instead, use HR systems to encourage productive behaviors from employees and thus achieve desirable operational and

financial objectives. The question is - do we have enough focus on workforce productive behavior and performance? Is our HR function shaped in the right way to deliver this? How can we measure and manage team and organizational commitment, engagement, organizational citizenship behavior, creative performance, flexibility, and innovation.. all those behavioral elements that lead to high performance and matter the most?

Measures that put more emphasis on results that appropriately capture HR’s strategic contribution are needed. We might ask ourselves: Are we stuck in measuring (managing) performance of HR function and neglect measuring (managing) all cultural elements that drive organizational performance and create value for the company?

the success of a valuecreatIng hr functIon DePenDs also on the ceo’s coMMItMent, attentIon, anD care. It Doesn’ t Just haPPen because the ceo hIres a great senIor hr ProfessIonal . the ceo shoulD elevate the senIor hr ProfessIonal , anD gIve the ManDate that Is broaD enough.

Human capital creates value for the company. Senior HR professionals design HR systems to manage the behavior and performance of the workforce. Consequently, the behavior and performance of the workforce influence meaningful financial outcomes. Is there any objective reason, outside HR, for not being able to justify this?

In the knowledge era, human capital—the productive capacity embedded in people—has become one of the few sustainable sources of competitive advantage, while physical capital is now more or less a cost of doing business. Nonetheless, expenditures on physical capital and equipment are accounted for and reported as investments, while expenditures on human capital are accounted for and reported as a cost. Most companies have much better accountability and control systems for raw materials (roughly 15% of total expenses) than they do for the workforce (65% of total expenses). As a result, a manufacturing company can identify the supplier of a bad bearing with a high degree of accuracy and speed. However, most companies have no clue as to the source or the reason for their defective (or high-quality) managers, if, in fact, they even know who they are. Developed nations are now at least three decades into the knowledge era, but continue to operate under an accounting and reporting system that was designed for the industrial era that preceded the current one. For companies to effectively manage human capital, they must develop a much better understanding of the causes and consequences of workforce performance. They must also do a much better job of holding senior managers accountable for the most expensive resource that has been assigned to them. Apart from this, the measurement of intangibles is a developing area in management and one that is particularly applicable to the field of HR.

Part 3: where Do we go froM here?

Designing a credible HR function that can manage a strategic workforce and be a partner to CEO and senior management, is something that must be done incrementally. Foundational steps might be: building trustful professional relationships with the CEO and senior managers, designing effective HR systems with the right portfolio of services and capabilities within the HR team, and measuring and managing a strategic workforce and all cultural elements that drive organizational performance. Let’s go step by step.

steP 1

Relationship first. CEOs and senior managers want a senior HR professional to be a great business person, not just a great people person. The conversation with HR shouldn’t be, ‘We can’t do it.’ Instead, it’s, ‘Here’s how we can get there.’ What they want is a senior HR professional who is a problem solver, not a deal killer.

ProfessIonals who

But the notion of truth is that the success of a value-creating HR function depends also on the CEO’s commitment, attention, and care. It doesn’t just happen because the CEO hires a great senior HR professional. The CEO should elevate the senior HR professional, and give the mandate that is broad enough. In return, senior HR with professional work, should make the CEO feel safe in terms of all people matters.

Setting this kind of relationship requires time, energy, and effort and is based on competence, professional integrity, and trust. We should ask ourselves: do we have the right relationship with the CEO and senior management? Do we have enough opportunities for informal chats and formal meetings to get the right understanding of their needs and concerns? And if the answer is no, then let’s start thinking about how to get there.

for those senIor hr

belIeve that hr Is stIll not there: are we reaDy for the shIft ?

senIor hr

steP 2

Efficient HR processes. Setting an efficient HR function is important and has to be in place as a base, or rather a foundation for elevating HR to a value-creating function. We should ask ourselves how our HR systems are designed. Do we have the right portfolio of HR products to cover everything business needs? Are HR processes reinforcing one another or do we have a dead combination of HR practices in place that diminish the effects of each other? Do we have the right mindset and capabilities within the team? Look into HR function benchmarks for your

market. Find a way to compare the efficiency of the HR function in your company with other benchmark companies and to fine-tune, reshape, adjust, and improve where needed. This is the second step.

steP 3

Focus on relevant measures to get insight into how successful we manage the behavior and performance of our people that drive business success.

We are aware that most companies measure employee engagement. While employee engagement indeed correlates with financial performance, a typical engagement survey covers less than 20 percent of the elements that are proven to correlate with value creation. A proper assessment of the workforce takes in everything, from alignment on direction and quality of execution to the ability to learn and adapt. How successful are we in measuring and managing all cultural elements that drive performance? Do we measure team and organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, creative performance, flexibility, innovation, intention to quit, health and well-being, and team efficiency? If business results are consequences of people’s behavior and performance, we should go beyond measuring employee engagement and include other relevant measures to get insight into how successful we manage the behavior and performance of our people. We should focus on the measurement of those indicators that can really make a difference and have an impact on business results. That is how we can build a value-creating HR function that drives business performance.

And last but not the least, senior HR professionals should always ask: Is this sustainable? Are we mindful leaders and do we treat our people with care? How sustainable our approach is and what is the impact of this solution on our people, company, environment, and the wider community?

References

Appelbaum, E., Gittell, J. H., & Leana, C. (2011). High-Performance Work Practices and Sustainable Economic Growth Barton, D., Carey, D, Charan, R., 2018, An agenda for the talent-first CEO | McKinsey Bafaro, F., Ellsworth, D., Gandhi, N., 2017, The CEO’s guide to competing through HR | McKinsey Becker, B. E., Huselid, M. A., Pickus, P. S., & Spratt, M. F. (1997). Hr As a Source of Shareholder Value: Research and Recommendations. Human Resource Management, 36(1), 39-47.

Becker, E., Huselid, A., (2006), Strategic Human Resources Management: Where Do We Go From Here? Journal of Management, Vol. 32 No. 6

Bassi, L., McMurrer, D., Developing Measurement Systems for Managing in the Knowledge Era, (2005) Organizational Dynamics 34(2)

Kochan, T. A. (2015). The Leaders’ Choice. MIT Sloan Management Review, 57(1), 69-73. Dewar, C, Hirt, M., Keller, S., 2019, Mindsets and practices of the best CEOs | McKinsey Drucker, P. (1954). The Practice of Management. New York: Harper & Row.

ProfessIonals shoulD always ask : Is thIs sustaInable? are we MInDful leaDers anD Do we treat our PeoPle wIth care? how sustaInable our aPProach Is anD what

Is the IMPact of thIs solutIon on our PeoPle, coMPany, envIronMent, anD the wIDer coMMunIty?

Perspectives on HR Value creation

The question if HR deserves a “seat at the table” or how HR function adds value to the enterprise continues to be a hot topic today, just like in the early days of HR. A wealth of evidence from behavioral science research suggests that companies with strong leadership, high-performance culture, engaged workforce, and diverse leadership outperform their peers. Despite the evidence and practice, despite what Master's and MBA courses teach us, chances are that, if you are an HR professional, you’ve been seriously contemplating this question at one stage in your career. Not surprising because the HR function deals with business in as many intangible as tangible ways, and the value we build is often longer-term value than directly measurable KPI.

Milan Prnjić

Global People and Organization BP, Novartis Pharma AG, Switzerland

Let’s explore this with a little help from our friend Djole who is a newbie who just subscribed to the gym. He finishes his first weight training, comes back home exhausted, stands in front of the mirror, and expects to see some results. He is the same old Djole, no changes visible. The same situation repeats over the next few days, he concludes that going to gym is a waste of time, decides to cancel a subscription, and invests in something that gives him the confidence he needs – a pair of new shoes. The result is immediate, and he feels fantastic about it. Joke aside, obviously nobody questions that consistency in visiting the gym will lead to visible physical change and measurable health benefits over time. It is similar with the investment in Leadership development or Culture initiatives. We have all been in a situation where we have sent that one high-potential individual to a week-long offsite leadership development retreat. When the person returned to the office, neither business leaders nor his/her team observed any measurable behavior change. People costs are among the most significant in today’s knowledge-based industries and the danger of focusing on the short-term is that, unfortunately, in times of financial pressures, we tend to quickly look into cutting on our people investments first.

Not to be understood wrong, HR needs to be data-driven more than ever. At the same time, we need to be advocates with the key ability to communicate the shortterm and long-term value of the impact we deliver through the lens of the business and other stakeholders’ success.

SELF

Our success and difference in the role we play in our business teams will be determined by how effectively we use our whole self and all our resources to drive change and impact the business. One of the

first tools HR professionals have available to bring “to the table” is ourselves - WHO WE ARE, our integrity, our vision, actions, behaviors, dialog, questions, and choices. Our functional expertise and tactical HR processes are secondary.

HR is uniquely positioned as an agent of change and one of the most strategic and future-focused roles in the company. We have a ticket to play in today’s business world, it is up to us to show up when it matters, have a loud voice, and influence others effectively to drive change. “Self as an Instrument” is a concept that originates from OD, and it has many definitions. In my interpretation, it starts with Who We Are, our awareness, our leadership, and personal credibility that will translate all the expertise we have in our toolbox into the influence that will drive real-world business success. We have all we ever need, we have Ourselves.

OUTSIDE

Understanding the major trends and context in which we operate our business is key to shaping and delivering HR strategies that will drive business value. There are many external trends that we need to understand and that will have an impact on how we shape our HR Strategy. Recent pandemics placed pressure on business continuity and ways of working. The HR department played a lead role in helping businesses and leaders adjust to new realities. We are observing many more trends, to name a few:

• Ever stronger need for a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion agenda;

• Activism on social media and in the workplace is rising;

• The Future of Work models;

• How to win the War for Talent in the age of Great Resignation;

• The accelerated pace of change is driven by technology adoption and digitalization etc.

I’d like to provide a few examples of how Novartis, a global healthcare company I work for, has responded to these megatrends and how some of the practices and initiatives do connect to value creation for our stakeholders.

In 2018, Novartis made a public pledge with the Equal Pay International Coalition (EPIC1) to achieve gender balance in management at Novartis and further improve our pay equity/transparency processes by 2023. Commitments through this initiative are to:

1. Monitor and achieve Pay Equity among men and women with global consistency;

2. Remove bias from the system - We will not make salary offers based on historic data or previous candidate salaries but only based on their capabilities;

1 EPIC is the Equal Pay International Coalition. Led by the International Labor Organization, UN Women, and the OECD.

The Coalition’s goal is to achieve equal pay for women and men everywhere

3. Create Pay Transparency – We openly share with our associates how their salary compares to external and internal peer benchmarks;

4. Achieve gender balance in management by 2023.

As a result, introducing pay transparency has had a strong impact on engagement and strengthened Novartis’s Inspired, Curious and Unbossed culture. Since introducing this and several other initiatives, our overall engagement score in the company rose by 5 points over a 2 year span.2 Our managers and associates have a transparent and quality conversation about pay, capabilities, talent development, and impact at work. Along with gender pay equity, this is something our associates request and deserve, and responding to these needs of our internal and future external workforce has positive effects on our ability to attract the best and the most inspired talents in the field.

These commitments are not only the right thing to do but they are directly linked to how we, as an HR function, help create value in the long term and respond to changing realities and needs of our stakeholder environment. A diverse and market-reflective workforce will help make better decisions and help the company better understand and respond to ever-changing customer needs. Lastly, investor groups are also waking up to DEI efforts and demanding a change and progress in the space as HR value also comes in terms of “goodwill” in the company valuation, in addition to being a leading indicator of future success.

FUTURE

According to McKinsey research, companies that can dynamically reallocate

2 According to Novartis internal Our Voice survey data, engagement score increased from 71ppts to 76 ppts between ’19 and ’21.

WHEN ASKED WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ROLE IN THE AIRLINE COMPANY, THE MAJORITY OF RESPONDENTS TEND TO SAY IT IS A PILOT. HOWEVER, HAVING A BESTIN-THE-WORLD PILOT VERSUS AN AVERAGE PILOT WILL HAVE LITTLE TO NO IMPACT ON THE $ VALUE CREATED AT THE COMPANY. ON ANOTHER HAND, CABIN CREW ROLES COULD HAVE A DISPROPORTIONATELY LARGE IMPACT IF YOUR COMPANY COMPETES ON AN UNMATCHED LEVEL OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND SERVICE.

their best talent to where they need them most are outperforming their competition in terms of shareholder returns by a stunning 2.2x 3. By reading this insight for the first time, I was wondering what is the secret and why every HR professional and every company shouldn’t just double-click their efforts on talent management with this attractive promise of doubling shareholder returns.

Over the years, we developed sophisticated systems to plan, identify, assess, develop and deploy talent in 3 https://www.mckinsey.com/business-func tions/people-and-organizational-performance/ our-insights/the-key-role-of-dynamic-talent-al location-in-shaping-the-future-of-work

organizations. Talent management rose as one of the most strategic HR capabilities and talent supply is often one of the areas CEOs are most worried about.

Traditionally, Talent management efforts are focused on the most senior roles in organizational hierarchy and the whole machine is focused to produce successors and talents ready to succeed our executive leadership. Unlike traditional approaches to talent management, the roles and teams that contribute the most to achieving the long-term business strategy cannot be immediately identified by looking at an organizational chart. They usually are not the most senior leaders in the organization. I happen to play and love basketball and our traditional talent management approach reminds me of that team whose Team Manager invests all efforts into developing new Head Coaches because it is the most senior role, instead of focusing on growing top prospects and signing that Star player that will bring disproportionate value and propel the team to the finals.

Let’s explore another hypothetical situation, this time of an Airline company. When asked what is the most important role in the airline company, the majority of respondents tend to say it is a pilot. Pilots have one of the most exciting and responsible jobs, and an airline company can’t function without pilots. However, having a best-in-theworld pilot versus an average pilot will have little to no impact on the $ value created at the company. On another hand, cabin crew roles could have a disproportionately large impact if your company competes on an unmatched level of customer experience and service. Even more so, your Revenue Management specialist or team that excels in dynamic pricing models can make a huge difference in the value created and maximize the price point

for the right customer, at the right time. Having read this, in which capabilities would you invest disproportionally?

Following many learnings and engagement with many thought leaders, at Novartis, we have developed a new approach we call Precision Talent management, focused on linking Talent to Future Business Value. The approach has 4 steps and starts with the Future in mind and a deep understanding needed to unpack the enterprise Value Creation agenda. You will notice that the

conversation doesn’t start with typical talent/capability questions and doesn’t rush into any tactical interventions.

• Define your North Star (Future Value Creation Agenda) This is HR led conversation “What is the North Star for your organization in 3-5 years? What are sources of future value and how do we capture this value? Will the future value come from new markets, new products, new lines of business? What are Imperatives and what are Jobs to be Done to Capture this Value?”

• Identify Value Roles. These roles have a disproportionate impact on capturing future value. Do these roles exist today or do we need to create NEW role/s that will eventually do what it takes to capture future value? Define 3-5 Jobs To Be Done for these roles.

• Understand Role / Talent Risks. What evidence is required to assess the Role-Talent match? By using very specific Role-Talent risk cards we explore Role Risk categories (Authority, Capacity, Capability, etc.) and Talent Risk categories (Expertise, Capabilities, Behaviors, Retention).

• Define holistic HR Interventions to ensure Value is Mobilized Best Fit talent allocation is only one of the levers we can pull to support future value creation. Based on the identified risks, we define holistic interventions across the Organizational capability model spectrum and this might go in many directions such as Retention awards, Role split into two smaller and more manageable roles, Talent reallocation, and Creation of new roles.

This approach is replicable to any organization and its beauty is in 3 aspects: It is future-focused, clearly linked to value agenda, and utilizes a full HR intervention spectrum beyond talent management lever with a clear measurable feedback loop. It is more than an approach; it is a Mindset that focuses not on what HR does but what business delivers (now and in the future) and how an HR function leads these efforts.

ALIGNMENT

Perhaps the word I’d like to leave the readers with is alignment. By exploring these 3 perspectives on HR value creation it is important to remind ourselves that what we choose to do as HR professionals has to be of value in our given context and help our business win in the marketplace, but also preserve and deliver value for our other stakeholders including customers, shareholders, and communities.

WHAT WE CHOOSE TO DO AS HR PROFESSIONALS HAS TO BE OF VALUE IN OUR GIVEN CONTEXT AND HELP OUR BUSINESS WIN IN THE MARKETPLACE, BUT ALSO PRESERVE AND DELIVER VALUE FOR OUR OTHER STAKEHOLDERS INCLUDING CUSTOMERS, SHAREHOLDERS, AND COMMUNITIES.

COMPANIES THAT CAN DYNAMICALLY REALLOCATE THEIR BEST TALENT TO WHERE THEY NEED THEM MOST ARE OUTPERFORMING THEIR COMPETITION IN TERMS OF SHAREHOLDER RETURNS BY A STUNNING 2.2X.

ONA ANALYSIS: THE UNBEATABLE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL NETWORKS

Despite the unbeatable power of harnessing social networks in organizations, a relatively small number of executive teams think in such terms. This is certainly a gap, but also a huge opportunity for People Teams to reveal an entirely new way to think about managing people in organizations. This article will introduce you to a methodology of capturing relational aspects of organizational life, named Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) and point to some interesting use cases that impact organizational decision-making.

Maja Ninković Shapera, VP People, Mitto Nada Krstić, Senior Manager, People & Culture, Mitto

Every organization consists of many active formal and informal networks where different types of interactions between people take place. People communicate, share information, ask for help, solve problems, devise plans, brainstorm ideas, and make small talk or lasting friendships – in hundreds and often millions of interactions daily. When we think of typical knowledge-based organizations, it’s precisely in these interactions that ‘work’ actually happens – even individual contributions are always and inescapably embedded in the collaborative webs of social interactions accomplished with other people.

Over the past decades, research has shown that well-networked organizations - those with unhindered flows of information, knowledge, and mutual trust have better performance, a higher level of organizational learning, better cross-functional

cooperation, and higher innovative potential. From the perspective of the employees, the quality of their networks directly affects their ability to quickly and effectively receive and transmit information, solve problems, manage projects and successfully realize organizational goals – and generally have a more satisfying employee experience.

Despite the unbeatable power of harnessing social networks in organizations, a relatively small number of executive teams think in such terms. This is certainly a gap, but also a huge opportunity for People Teams to reveal an entirely new way to think about managing people in organizations. This article will introduce you to a methodology of capturing relational aspects of organizational life, named Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) and point to some interesting use cases that impact organizational decision-making.

WHAT EXACTLY IS ONA?

ONA is a data-driven organizational methodology that analyses the existing patterns of relationships and interactions among employees in organizations. Rob Cross, one of the pioneers in this field and founder of the Connected Commons consortium writes: “ONA can provide an x-ray into the inner workings of an organization – a powerful means to making invisible patterns of information flow and collaboration in strategically important groups visible.”

ONA’s origins go back to the 1930s when sociologists drew their first ‘sociograms’ on paper (graphic representations of the social links a person has) and made calculations of the different metrics that illuminate the behavior of the network and key individuals within them, by hand.

Today, network maps are software-generated, capable of presenting ‘ties’ (relationships) among the ‘nodes’ (people) for even the largest organizations, delivering calculated metrics for both individual and network-level analyses with great speed and precision.

ONA INSIGHTS

There are roughly speaking two sets of insights that can be revealed through the analyses of organizational networks. One level deals with individual-level positioning concerning the wider group. These network positions – or roles – describe how individual people function within particular social groupings. For example, individuals with the highest number of social ties (in-degree and out-degree connections) are referred to as central connectors –these are usually employees whose nature of work is to receive and give information to a large number of people. If people are on the edges of networks, they are called isolates – individuals with a very small number of social ties to others. People receiving large numbers of requests by others to solve complex problems are positioned as knowledge or expert hubs within the organization. If they are positioned as main communicators between two departments, they become brokers, as they function as bridges between different parts of the network. Pretty quickly, you can see how ONA analysis can identify critical people within the organization who hold important organizational knowledge or control the spread and speed of information sharing, or alternatively, those people who are in some way excluded and disconnected from the organizational flows.

The second group of ONA insights falls into the domain of network structures. Taking a bird’s-eye view of the whole organization, network maps can quickly reveal which parts of the network

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“ONA CAN PROVIDE AN X-RAY INTO THE INNER WORKINGS OF AN ORGANIZATION – A POWERFUL MEANS TO MAKING INVISIBLE PATTERNS OF INFORMATION FLOW AND COLLABORATION IN STRATEGICALLY IMPORTANT GROUPS VISIBLE.”

are isolated from other parts – namely, point to the existence of departmental silos. It can also inform us of the existence of organizational cliques – small pockets of close-knit people who form communities based on similar interests or attitudes. The overall connectivity within the organization is referred to as network density – the degree to which all actors in the network are interacting with each other and whether those interactions are mutual (degree of reciprocity). Network metrics can also reveal the degree of crossfunctional communication among departments, revealing gaps in collaboration and knowledge and information exchange.

ONA data1 can be combined with many different organizational data sources: gender, performance, compa-ratios, position levels, and tenure – making it possible to reveal both individual-level and structure-level patterns and dynamics in a way that other people analytics approaches are not always equipped to do.

HOW DO WE COLLECT ONA DATA?

In our decade-long experience with running ONAs, this is the most frequent stumbling block for the in-house People Teams. But collecting ONA data can be a rather straightforward and painless process. Before clarifying how it’s done, let’s talk about some

1 Compa ratio, also called compa-ratio, is short for compensation ratio and is a formula (Current salary/market average * 100) used to assess the competitiveness of an employee’s pay. A compa ratio of 100 indicates you’re paying an employee their full market value.

initial decisions you need to make. There are two data collection methods in ONA: passive and active. Passive data collection involves generating data without the active participation of the employees. This includes metadata – or logs – collected from phone calls / conversations over the phone, email, or text activity. This data already exists in the organization but obtaining access to it is often difficult and ethically questionable (if done without the explicit consent of the employees). Second, there are important issues with the quality of passive data: while being able to capture all digital communication, the logs are not capable of classifying the content or the context of exchanges. For instance, we don’t know if two employees are exchanging messages to solve a problem, brainstorm an idea, complain about a procedure, or chit-chat about the weather. This lack of content/context makes it difficult to generate insightful recommendations regarding the meaning of relationships observed.

Active data collection involves using direct input from employees through a series of questions in a survey. These questions allow us to target our inquiries to specific flows - of expertise, trust, problem-solving, energizing exchanges, innovation, and ideas and other chosen domains. Think of these questions as a process of ‘nomination’ – each employee in the organization lists or selects people with whom they usually exchange some form of communication. Examples of questions include:

1Who do you most often contact to solve a difficult workrelated problem? (expertise flows)

PEOPLE ANALYTICS

2Which people do you usually go to when you want to discuss a new idea? (innovation flows)

3Which people do you usually contact to obtain information necessary for your everyday work? (information flows)

4Exchanges with these people in my organization leave me energized (energizing relationships) and many other questions, depending on the specific domains of interest.

Each ‘pair’ in this crowdsourced process represents a connection (‘edge’) in the resulting network map. The number of participating employees will equal the number of ‘nodes’ or actors in the map, with each node receiving a certain number of ‘in-degree’ (incoming) and ‘out-degree’ (outgoing) connections. Mathematically speaking, there are n*(n-1) possible connections in every (directional) network. Quick calculation for an organization size of 100 people yields an astonishing 9900 possible connections.

ACTIVE VS. PASSIVE ONA

ACTIVE

EXAMPLE DATA SOURCES: Self-reported e.g. Surveys

KEY CHARACTERISTICS:

• Point-in-time,

• Can be labour intensive

• Response rates critical,

• Enables a deep-dive on a specific topic

• Understand how employees feel

PASSIVE

EXAMPLE DATA SOURCES: Email, calendar & phone metadata, social media (in/ external), collaboration platforms e.g. Slack, wearables and sensors e.g. digital badges

KEY CHARACTERISTICS:

• Real-time and continuous

• Provides scale,

• Privacy is a key consideration

N * (N-1) O(N 2)

possible connections within a network

These in-degree and out-degree connections are the foundation for further analyses - this is why it’s critical to the validity of ONA analysis that the participation rate of employees remains high (95-99%, depending on the size of the organization).

Considering that anonymous surveys have at best 75% response rates, securing high participation can be a tall order for any People Team. Before attempting to run ONA, People Teams should establish a high level of ‘data trust’ – employee confidence that their (personal) data will never be used to their detriment, but rather as a powerful tool to improve ways of working together

One advantage of ONA surveys is that they are relatively painless for the participants – a well-designed survey will take your employee no more than 10-15 minutes of attention to complete. See below for David Green’s nifty overview of active vs. passive ONA differences.

• Clear communication on the 'why' nd benefit to employees required,

• Understand what employees do

USE CASE FOR ORGANIZATIONAL NETWORK ANALYSIS

Use cases for ONA are practically limitless, especially when the basic ONA data is cross-analyzed with other sources of organizational data. Here we’ll address a recent case:

THE WHY

Whether a start-up is in hyper-growth mode or a more stable business, organizations often encounter serious problems with departmental silos and a lack of adequate cross-functional collaboration and alignment. These risks have only intensified during the pandemic.

While companies increasingly turn to remote-first work policies (significantly boosting employee morale!), remote work can, unfortunately, act as a destabilizing factor in the creation of wellfunctioning organizational networks.

In our case, during the pandemic, we’ve enjoyed tremendous growth, and the team nearly doubled in size. All the new joiners were onboarded in a fully remote setup at 19+ locations worldwide. Making connections and building networks, once an organic process, especially for our co-located teams, now had to become very intentional because the teams were growing so fast and were dispersed all around the world. We knew we were facing challenges in maintaining cross-functional alignment but were not sure how to best target our resources to mitigate these growing pains.

THE HOW

We applied the Organizational Network Analysis in 3 domains we identified as the most important in the context of hyper scaling. We conducted:

1 COMMUNICATION/INFORMATION FLOW network analysis to tell us...

a.) What does the overall organizational connectivity look like, after nearly 2 years of the pandemic and remote work? Which departments have low levels of information sharing with others, i.e., are siloed?

a.) Which people are key connectors and/or bottlenecks in the organizational information flow?

b.) Which employees needed more help to integrate into the organizational network and make meaningful connections?

2 EXPERTISE network analysis to tell us...

a.) Which employees represent central knowledge hubs and where are the retention threats in the company?

b.) Where are the organization's hidden talents? (highly soughtafter experts, who were not necessarily sufficiently recognized to reflect their importance within the company)

3 TRUST network to tell us...

h.) What is the overall level of interpersonal trust in the organization?

i.) Where are critical points in the organization where trust needed to be improved?

Data collection efforts took us 3 weeks – 199 employees from 24 global teams filled out the survey (95% of our employee base).

Because of the strong focus on cross-functional collaboration, our survey also included one qualitative open-ended question, asking employees for their suggestions on how to improve this aspect. We were very careful to explain the fundamentals of the analysis openly and transparently - why we are conducting it, how employee answers will be used in it, and how it will improve the way we work together.

All the data was collected using a survey platform (alchemer.com in our case), exported into an Excel file, and transformed to fit the format required by the visualization software (kumu.io in our case). Many other analysis software options are available on the market: Panalyt, Polinode, and Trustsphere, to name just a few.

SOME OF THE KEY ONA TAKEAWAYS AND ACTIONS

ONA provided us with many powerful insights into the internal workings of our organization.

Network level insights:

#1

Our overall communication network density was 13%, with reciprocity of 40% and an average network size of 26. Our trust network density was 7%, with reciprocity of 23% and an average network size of 12. Our expertise network was 6%, with reciprocity of 15% and an average links-per-node of 14. These collaboration patterns revealed high inter-departmental silo effects with linkages and trusted relationships mostly residing within, not across different teams. Average network sizes were relatively small, clustering according to departmental and to a smaller degree, geographical (co-location) lines.

ONE IMPORTANT ACTION POINT THAT EMERGES FROM ONA ANALYSIS IS THE IMPORTANCE OF CREATING THOSE INITIAL PATTERNS OF CONNECTIVITY AS A PART OF PEOPLE’S ONBOARDING. INTRODUCTION OF NEW HIRES TO KEY PEOPLE

EARLY ON – THROUGH BOTH FORMAL AND INFORMAL MEANS – INCREASES THEIR CHANCES OF SUCCESS BY PLACING THEM FURTHER TOWARDS THE CENTER OF INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE FLOWS.

#2

On a network structure level, there were very few strong communication ties between the business and technology (blue) parts of the organization. To some degree, this is considered a usual finding in the tech start-up world. What our maps and metrics showed us, however, is that those linkages were dependent on only several, disproportionately burdened individuals (bridges – dark blue circles). This presents a risk for the network functioning for several reasons: one, the bridges with this much collaborative overload can easily burn out and become flight risks; second, they slow down communication and decision-making processes as they can easily bottleneck; third, their departure would temporarily fracture the network until new or back-up linkages were formed, threatening the stability and efficiency of the entire network.

#3

We then took a closer look at the collaboration patterns between each of our departments by calculating the communication density between every two departments. The resulting matrix showed us where the biggest cross-functional collaboration gaps were, but also which teams were overburdened with information requests from the rest of the organization.

Given these results, our initial focus was on increasing overall cross-functional connectivity and stability of the network. We’ve created a #mittoconnections program that doubled down on both the formal and informal relationship-building within the company.

Illustration 6. A simplified cross-functional collaboration matrix that shows how many connections (out of 100% possible) are realized between every two departments

Illustration 4. Communication Network Map, color-coded by departments, node size scaled by in-degree connections

Illustration 5. Two clusters of the communication map indicate siloed departments

PEOPLE ANALYTICS

This included:

a.) focused in-person strategy alignment sessions for departments lowest on collaboration density,

b.) internal mentorship program (“Power of Two”) to connect experts with mentees, allowing for a much more dynamic flow of expertise and knowledge within the organization,

c.) creation of project groups/task forces requiring crossfunctional representation from affected departments,

d.) random social buddy initiative to allow people to create social ties with ‘distant’ parts of the organization,

e.) activation of the ‘social team budgets’ for informal gatherings

f.) an internal requirement for teams to organize company-wide Lunch & Learns after every conference and/or training.

INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL ONA INSIGHTS

Looking at the individual-level metrics, insights get much more specific.

#1

Identification of key people (information, knowledge, and trust hubs) across the company

Looking at the in-degree and out-degree metrics, ONA allows individual ranking of the highest sought-after and the most connected individuals in the organization, for each type of map generated. Due to the size of their networks and their positioning, these ‘hubs’ and ‘connectors’ exhibit a high degree of influence in the organization, holding on to critical knowledge and controlling the speed and spread of information.

This part of network analysis always yields surprises, allowing executive teams not just to validate some prior assumptions and/ or assessments of top performers, but also to spot hidden talents – people whose organizational importance is not always formally recognized through pay and hierarchy. Cross-analysing ONA data with the compa-ratios and performance data allowed us to intervene at these critical spots and prevent knowledge loss. It also allowed us to reduce the collaborative overload of affected individuals by activating their ‘deputies’ (people who hold the next-in-line network status) in the organizational knowledge-sharing processes.

Individuals who are high on both expertise and trust often represent key influencers in the network (thought to be both credible and likable). These employees are natural change ambassadors, and it’s wise to include them in various cross-functional projects where the need for obtaining buy-in is high, ensuring projects’ acceptance and success across the departmental lines. The high connectors in the network also impact the “emotional climate” of the company – due to their strategic position, they can influence the opinions of many people they come in contact with on a daily basis.

#2

Identification of isolates (people on the network periphery)

We used the low in-degree and out-degree metrics to identify peripheral people – employees who are for some reason at the very edges of networks relatively disconnected from the rest of their colleagues. Cross-analyzing low connectivity with tenure and performance data, we came to some interesting conclusions. One, peripheral nodes are often juniors or new joiners who are still being onboarded and therefore not yet well integrated within the information flows. One important action point that emerges from ONA analysis is the importance of creating those initial patterns of connectivity as a part of people’s onboarding. Introduction of new hires to key people early on – through both formal and informal means – increases their chances of success by placing them further towards the center of information and knowledge flows.

The second finding was also interesting and actionable: when looking at people with longer tenure and low connectivity, the top 5 isolates with lower performance scores had an 80% chance of leaving the company 6 months after the analysis. This illustrates the predictive power of ONA to spot flight and performance risks just by virtue of employees’ social embeddedness in organizational networks (discussed at more length in organizational literature elsewhere).

Social Isolates in Communication networks

#3

Identification of ‘bottlenecks’ and individuals with collaborative overload risk

Taking into account all network requests (communication, expertise, innovation, etc.), ONA can very quickly and with a high degree of reliability identify which employees are at risk of burn-out due to collaborative overload.

THE MECHANISM OF IMPACT OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE ON COMPANY’S PERFORMANCE

Organizational culture as a management concept was for the first time systematically researched and defined in the works of the late 1970s and early 1980s. From then on, an enormous amount of research as well as papers on the nature, content, dynamics, and impact of organizational culture have been published. Since organizational culture is a very complex and multidimensional phenomenon, it is no surprise that different perspectives, approaches, and even paradigms of organizational culture appear in the literature (Martin 2002; Alvesson 2002). However, mainstream thinking concerning organizational culture has adopted certain views regarding its nature, content, and effects.

Prof. Dr. Nebojša Janićijević

Full Professor, Faculty of Economics, Belgrade University

First, organizational culture is thought to involve a set of values and norms that are expressed through symbols shared by the organization members (Hofstede et al. 1990). Second, because organizational culture is a collective rather than an individual construct, its content is created through social interactions among members of particular groups (Schein 2004). Third, the values and norms shared by organization members significantly shape their thoughts and behavior (Schein 2004). Cultural values such as inspirational ideals (Rokeach 1973) and cultural norms as specific social expectations governing behavior (Balthazard, Cooke, & Potter 2006)

guide organization members in understanding and interacting with people, phenomena, and events. The everyday decisions managers and employees make, the actions they take, and the interactions they engage in are in large part determined by the values and norms of the organizational culture. Even if they do not share the predominant values and norms, the organization members cannot ignore them because the organization sanctions behavior that deviates from its values and norms.

In order to understand the impact of organizational culture on an organization’s functioning as well as on organizational

performance, it is necessary to explore the relations between culture and meanings as one of the determinants of thought processes and behavior of organization members. Organizational culture is, in fact, a kind of reservoir for collective meanings in an organization, which determine every collective and individual action and decision (Peterson & Smith, 2000; Smircich, 1983). Organizational culture emerges in the process of social interactions of the organization members in which they construct the reality together (Geertz, 1973). According to Schein (2004), this process occurs during solving the key issues of external adaptation and internal integration which members of every organization face. In the process of the social construction of reality, the organization members together ascribe meanings to occurrences, people, and events within and outside of the organization in order to interpret and understand them. Depending on the meanings that the organization members collectively ascribe to the realities they face, they will also act in a certain way in that reality (Smirchich, 1983). The comprehensiveness of organizational culture’s impact on people’s behavior in organizations emerges from every single action, reaction, or decision of each member of the organization being, to some extent, conditioned by the meanings imposed on people in the organization by the organizational culture (Alvesson, 2002). Due to all of this, organizational culture is a very powerful means for the shaping of organization members’ behavior, and thereby also for all the processes within the organization that generate its performance. The aim of this article is to explain how organizational culture impacts company performance.

THE MECHANISM OF IMPACT OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE ON A COMPANY’S PERFORMANCE

From the very beginnings of research into this concept, researchers were aware that culture can be a management’s tool for achieving high performance.

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE IS A VERY POWERFUL MEANS FOR THE SHAPING OF ORGANIZATION MEMBERS’ BEHAVIOR, AND THEREBY ALSO FOR ALL THE PROCESSES WITHIN THE ORGANIZATION THAT GENERATE ITS PERFORMANCE.

This awareness is based on three implicit assumptions that stand as the foundation of most research dealing with the problem of relations between organizational culture and performance (Wilderom, Glunk, Maslowski 2000). First, there is the assumption that some organizational cultures imply better performance than other organizational cultures. This means that culture is the factor that could explain, at least in some part, the differences in performance of different companies and that, hence, there is indeed a causal relationship between these two concepts. Second, it is possible to identify a particular attribute of organizational culture that leads to better performance. Therefore, through either experience or research, we may come to know what kind of culture leads to better performance. The third assumption is that organizational culture is prone to changes and management, that is, it can be changed and shaped in the direction that leads to better performance. The literature overview shows, however, that despite the “obviousness” of the impact of culture on

organizational performance, the results of research into this impact are not so clear and unambiguous.

In contemporary market conditions, the only permanent source of competitive advantage for a company in the market is its ability to conduct the business processes from the value chain in a way that is superior compared to its competitors (Porter, 1985). Superiority in conducting business processes leads to creating added value for the consumer, which is difficult or impossible to imitate, and thus the company gains a competitive advantage in the market (Hamel, Prahald, 1994). In turbulent conditions of rapid changes, the company gains a competitive advantage in the market not because it has something that other companies do not have, but because it can and knows how to do something better than others. The thing that the company can and knows how to do better than its competitors is its core competence, which represents the source of its competitive advantage

BESIDES THE DIRECT IMPACT ON PERFORMANCE THROUGH THE SHAPING OF BUSINESS PROCESSES, ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE ALSO INDIRECTLY IMPACTS THE SUCCESS OF THE COMPANY.

in the market (Freiling, Fichtner, 2010). How will the company perform business processes, such as purchase, production, sales, but also logistics, information processing, organizational learning, organizational changes, etc., largely depends on organizational culture. Since organizational culture determines the meanings that the members of the organization ascribe to the reality within and outside of the organization, and since they make their decisions, take action, and enter mutual interactions based on these meanings, this means that organizational culture shapes all the processes within the organization. Through its assumptions, values, norms, and attitudes shared by the employees and managers, the culture shapes their everyday behavior, practices, and routines in performing work tasks, and it thus also shape business processes. Thereby, the culture determines if the business processes in the company would be performed in a way that leads to a competitive advantage. We may, therefore, say that organizational culture is one of the key factors in a company’s core competence. What is especially important is that the organizational culture of every company is idiosyncratic because it originated from its own unique experience. From the very beginnings of research, culture has been defined as “the way we do it here”, suggesting that the culture implies a unique way of working and living within the organization. This, in turn, makes culture the source of core competence which is very difficult to imitate by the competition (Heskett, 2022). Thereby, organizational culture becomes “that one thing”, that is, “the secret ingredient” in the formula of a company’s success. This was, indeed, clear from the very beginning of researching organizational culture, so many authors have emphasized organizational culture as the “magic wand” of a company’s success, and it was

regularly classified among the sources of business success (Peters, Waterman, 1982).

Besides the direct impact on performance through the shaping of business processes, organizational culture also indirectly impacts the success of the company. Namely, by determining decisions, actions, and interactions between management and employees, organizational culture not only directly shapes business processes, but also influences many aspects of organization and management that are also determinants of business processes. As previously noted, organizational culture determines company strategy, the way in which its organizational structure is shaped, the system of control and coordination, leadership style, motivation profile, job satisfaction, reward system, employees’ performance appraisal, organizational learning, and knowledge management model, power distribution in the organization, and organizational change management. By impacting all of these hard and soft organizational elements of a company, organizational culture also impacts the business processes, and thereby company performance as well. The elements of management and organization, such as strategy, structure, leadership, and human resources management (HRM) systems, are the framework in which

THE CULTURE DETERMINES IF THE BUSINESS PROCESSES IN THE COMPANY WOULD BE PERFORMED IN A WAY THAT LEADS TO A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE.

business processes that should lead to competitive advantage and company performance unfold (Martinez et al., 2015) As a framework, they certainly, to some extent, determine the way in which business processes will take place, as well as their performance. Since organizational culture determines the stated elements of company organization and management, it thereby also indirectly impacts business processes, and thus also the company performance as well.

Social construction of reality through interaction of individuals and groups in an organization

References

Alvesson, M. (2002). Understanding organizational culture London: Sage

Balthazard P., Cooke R.E. & Porter R.A. (2006). Dysfunctional culture, dysfunctional organization: capturing the behavioral norms that form organizational culture and drive performance. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21 (8), 709–732.

Shared meanings of reality carried by cultural assumptions, values, norms, and attitudes manifested through symbols

Actions, interactions, decisions taken by the members of organization

Freiling J & Fichtner H. (2010). Organizational culture as the glue between people and organization: A competence-based view on learning and competence building. Zeitschrift für Personalforschung, 24(2), 152–172.

Geertz, C., 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Hamel G. & Prahald C. (1994).Competing for the future Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Heskett, J. (2022) Win from Within: Build Organizational Culture for Competitive Advantage. Columbia University Press

Hofstede, G., Neuijen B., Ohayiv D. & Sanders G. (1990). Measuring organizational culture: A qualitative and quantitative study across twenty cases. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35, 286–316

Martin, J. (2002). Organizational culture: Mapping the terrain London: Sage.

Strategy, organizational structure, control system, reward system, motivation profile, leadership style, knowledge management, power distribution, change management

Unique way of doing tasks, routines, and standardized practices in performing business processes Core competence of company

CONCLUSION

The purpose of researching culture in management is its supposed impact on company performance.

Organizational culture, as a system of collective meanings which emerged in the process of social construction of reality, significantly determines the perceptions and interpretations of the organization members, and thereby also their decisions, actions, and interactions. Therefore, organizational culture shapes the behavior of employees and managers in a company, and thereby it also shapes how they perform activities and tasks in the company’s business processes. This is why organizational culture is an important determinant of core competence, whereby it influences the ability of the company to gain competitive advantage on the market, which is the key precondition for good performance. Organizational culture, therefore, represents one of the factors of business performances of companies and other types of organization.

Competitive advantage of company

High performances of company

Martinez,E.A, Beaulieu, N, Gibbons, R., Pronovost, P., & Wang, T. (2015) Organizational Culture and Performance. The American Economic Review, 105( 5), 331-335.

Peters T.J. & Waterman R.H., (1982). In search of excellence New York: Warner Books.

Peterson, M. & Smith P. (2000). Sources of meaning, organizations and culture: making sense of organizational events. In: N.M. Ashkanasy, C. P.M. Wilderom., and M.F. Peterson (eds.) Handbook of organizational culture & climate, Thousand Oaks: Sage,101–117.

Porter, M. E. (1980). Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. The Free Press, New York. Rokeach, M. (1973). The Nature of human values. New York: Free Press

Schein E. (2004). Organizational Culture and Leadership Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Smircich, L. (1983). Organizations as shared meanings. In: L. Pondy, P. Frost, G. Morgan & T. Dandridge (eds). 1983. Organizational symbolism. Greenwich, CT: JAI, 55–65.

Handbook of Organizational Culture

Figure 1. Theoretical framework of organizational culture’s impact on company’s performances

When you find your servant is your master: Do we understand work engagement… in order to measure it?

In recent years, the concept of work engagement has become a buzzword in the HR world. Assessing job satisfaction has almost become history, handing over its absolute throne to work engagement. Everyone talks about work engagement, everyone evaluates and tries to build it within their organizations, but do we really understand work engagement?

Dr. Milica Vukelić

Assistant Professor in Work and Organizational Psychology Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Psychology, University of Belgrade

It still seems that we do not distinguish work engagement from some very similar concepts (e.g. job satisfaction) and that we do not talk enough about the shortcomings that threaten to “dethrone” it and send it into history… It seems that everyone in the HR world wants their employees to be engaged, but, on the other hand, it seems so

hard, or even impossible to catch this “Chesire cat”.

Namely, according to the Gallup survey, published in 2019, only 15% of employees were globally engaged at work while the rest of the employees were “either not engaged or actively disengaged”. Is this really possible, and whose responsibility is it?

And, let’s be honest, is it sustainable to look for and measure something so poorly represented?

First things first - the concept of work engagement is not so fresh. It has been on the work and organizational psychology table for more than 30 years. Starting with William Kahn’s article “Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement”, which was published exactly 32 years ago in the prestigious Academy of Management Journal, this concept could currently be found in 150,000 scientific papers (source: Google scholar). If we take into account that “work engagement” is used interchangeably with “employee engagement”, this number is even higher and climbs to more than 300,000 results. The first question is definitely - what really gave this concept so much popularity and steady growth of interest in the scientific community? Is there something special about it?

It seems that its attractiveness lies in the fact that, unlike job satisfaction, it allows us to evaluate something much more dynamic, respectively, dedication, vigor, and absorption (Bakker & Albrecht, 2018). So, by evaluating work engagement, we get an insight into the level of energy, meaning, enthusiasm, inspiration,

and work devotion. It seems that we have been waiting for this “mojo” all this time. On the other hand, job satisfaction points to a state characterized by peace, perseverance, and relaxation, but not activation (Bakker & Albrecht, 2018). It is not enough to be satisfied and calm, but energetic, creative, and dedicated. Furthermore, work engagement has enabled us to move away from tense, irritable, and unhealthy workaholism. And let’s be honest, workaholics are sometimes the most desirable people in ambitious companies… but we somehow realized that workaholism is unsustainable for both an employee and a company that wants to keep it. New generations have obviously shown us that, in addition to working hard, it is important

In an attempt to create an engaged employee, we begin to close our eyes to the obvious problems, enslaving ourselves to the pursuit of engagement as an unattainable El Dorado.

to enjoy life. Additionally, if we ask ourselves what is the opposite of burnout (and not just its mere absence) - work engagement allows us to assess something more - a sense of meaning and inspiration among our employees. It seems that we are on the threshold of something we actually longed for… But it still seems that we are somehow on the devil’s playground.

First of all, what do we assess when we assess work engagement? Do we really understand what an engaged employee means?

Judging by one of the most influential models in the field of work and organizational psychology, the Job Demands Resources model by Arnold Bakker and

colleagues (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017), work engagement is the result of an interplay between job demands and job resources. Job demands include all those work stressors such as work pressure, work-home conflict, unmanageable work tasks, and negative interpersonal relationships - in a nutshell mental, emotional, and physical demands. On the contrary, job resources include autonomy, support, meaningful work, role clarity, a stimulating atmosphere, developmental opportunities, and warm interpersonal relationships… We know that stress-free work is almost a non-existent concept, but that is why job resources should enable us to restore and keep our energy, enthusiasm, commitment, and sense of

meaning. So the thing is in the work environment. If we say that our employees are engaged or disengaged - that indicates the amount of resources available to them. A large survey of employees from Serbia conducted by Ivana Petrović, Svetlana Čizmić, and Milica Vukelić from the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, showed that work engagement significantly and highly correlates with organizational support (Petrović et al, 2017). Also, it has been shown that employees who are in managerial positions and who are more educated are more engaged than employees who are less educated and in lower position jobs. Back to the basics - Khan’s research on engagement at work included camp counselors and members of an architecture firm which speaks in favor of slightly better working conditions and more inspiring jobs as prerequisites for expressing personal self and being engaged. So, one part of the work engagement equation definitely lies in the employees’ microsystem made from working conditions, type of industry, and type of job… The question remaining iswho else is responsible for engagement?

what does an engaged employee mean in relation to the societal mission of an organization? Is it worthwhile to track the level of employee engagement in a situation when a company operates unethically or when we are faced with very difficult, inhumane working conditions? What does it mean to be engaged when you work for a company that pollutes the environment, endangers human health, and drains the essential resources of this planet?

Professor Matthijs Bal, at the Lincoln International Business School, uses these and similar arguments when questioning measures of productivity and well-being at work (Bal, 2020).

Some of the top five polluting industries in the world like food retail, fashion industry, and energy industry are very attractive employers. As we all know, they are offering very prospective career opportunities and even better working conditions. Being productive in these industries could imply more pollution and damage to our planet. On top of that, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that it is not easy to be a good and dedicated worker when we are in the middle of a global crisis. It is not easy to be engaged in a situation of war, bad social circumstances, or poverty…

As Bal (2020) points out, we often try to remove dissatisfaction, burnout, and

It is within this part that we come to a somewhat deeper implication of this concept. Namely, we can ask ourselves

one part of the work engagement equation definitely lies in the employees’ microsystem made from working conditions, type of industry, and type of job... The question remaining iswho else is responsible for engagement?

We know that stress-free work is almost a non-existent concept, but that is why job resources should enable us to restore and keep our energy, enthusiasm, commitment, and sense of meaning. So, the thing is in the work environment.

depression from our table without asking ourselves, intimately, about their cause. Sometimes, the road to happiness lies in accepting and unders tanding the way things around us are… To talk openly about negative experiences at work and the specificities of our work environment. Here and there, things are not so easily comparable and equal everywhere. In an attempt to create an engaged employee, we begin to close our eyes to the obvious problems, enslaving ourselves to the pursuit of engagement as an unattainable El Dorado. It is definitely a privilege to be engaged at work, and thus a more inclusive concept is needed. Is it the concept of decent work (Bal, 2020) or sustainable work that we should all strive for? Time will tell… For the beginning (and for the end), let’s learn

how not to serve this master, but rather to listen to our employees whether they are (dis)engaged, (dis)satisfied, or (un)attached to their work.

References

Bakker, A.B. & Albrecht, S. (2018). Work engagement: current trends. Career Development International, 23(1), 4-11. https://doi.org/10.1108/CDI-112017-0207

Bakker, A. B., & Demerouti, E. (2017). Job demands–resources theory: Taking stock and looking forward. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 22(3), 273-285. https:// doi.org/10.1037/ocp0000056

Bal, P. M. (2020). Why we should stop measuring performance and well-being. German Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 64(3), 196–200.

Gallup (2019). Gallup’s Perspective on Building a High-Development Culture

Through Your Employee Engagement Strategy Gallup, Inc.

Kahn, W. A. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy of Management Journal, 33(4), 692-724.

Petrović, I. B., Vukelić, M., & Čizmić, S. (2017). Work engagement in Serbia: psychometric properties of the Serbian version of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES). Frontiers in Psychology, 8:1799. doi: 10.3389/ fpsyg.2017.01799

SOLVING THE TALENT RIDDLE / RECRUITMENT AND L&D TEAM UP

Dr. Milana Malešev, PhD, CIPD Qualifications Tutor, Founder of Learning Makeover, and an Associate Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology, FEFA

In recent years, more companies have been facing a challenge in getting enough competent people onboard. The labor market for top talent is getting tight, while we also witness a Great Resignation trend. So, how can HR approach this challenge? The situation is complex and can be viewed from different perspectives. The focus of this article is on how Recruitment and L&D can work together to create a few solutions.

A useful view to start from is Ulrich’s comment that talent management today should be more about work task planning than about workforce planning (Ulrich, From workforce planning to work task planning, 2019). Once the company decides about its strategy, key strategic capabilities, and positions, these can be translated into specific tasks. With tasks defined, we can start thinking about different options to accomplish them (full-time employees, part-time employees, consultants/freelancers, outsourcing, and technology i.e. automation).

So, questioning our assumptions that we need full-time employees for all tasks is a useful starting point.

Another valuable approach is a skillsbased, rather than an experience-based

approach to hiring. After we have identified the tasks, we should identify the skills needed to perform them, as opposed to (guessing) which qualification and experience a person needs. This is another key point where we should question our implicit assumptions about what is really needed for a task to be done. By focusing on skills we want to see in action, we can significantly broaden our talent pools.

In line with this trend, LinkedIn has registered an increase of 21% in US job postings listing the skills and responsibilities, rather than qualifications and requirements. The number of job postings that don’t require a degree has increased by 40% between 2019 and 2020 (Roslansky, You Need a Skills-Based Approach to Hiring and Developing Talent, HBR, 2021).

Building on these two approaches, work task planning and a skills-based approach to hiring, let`s review three basic recruitment strategies – buy, build and borrow.

In the “Buy” strategy, we hire people from outside of the company. But how do we approach this strategy when the pool of available

candidates is shrinking? You spend a lot of organizational resources to identify and then literally court potential candidates. If you are lucky to get them on board, you will probably have to pay them more than your current employees in the same positions. Not an ideal move for the engagement of your people.

One way to address this problem is to go for “near match” candidates, rather than ideal ones. Near match candidates are those who are motivated for the position, have the skills and competencies required, but lack some aspects of technical knowledge and/or professional experience.

For example, a US-based Merit Bank`s team of recruiters is rumored to go to local retail stores in search of employees with great customer service skills. They would return the goods to retail employees to assess how they respond to more difficult interactions with clients. It turned out that these people were a powerful addition to their client-facing positions, after receiving thorough training in banking products and processes.

Going for a “near match” rather than for a “perfect match” candidate requires a more

THE COMPANY DOESN’T HAVE TO WAIT TO HAVE AN OPEN POSITION TO POST IT INTERNALLY. IT CAN ALSO ANNOUNCE THE POSITIONS THAT WILL BE IN NEED IN THE FUTURE.

strategic approach to workforce planning. Internship and apprenticeship schemes are one example of this approach. Cooperation with educational institutions for reskilling and upskilling of employees is the other. A good example of the latter is the case of a US-based Penske Truck Leasing company that was facing the challenge of finding enough skilled employees. Penske

non-participants ( Penske Truck Leasing and Penn Foster: Focused on Delivering Career Pathways for Millennials , Forbes, 2017).

Another great source of “near match“ candidates are the current employees of the company. They know the culture, and how to get the job done and need less time to get up to speed than new joiners. Furthermore, they are more engaged and stay longer when they have the opportunity to develop in the company. According to the LinkedIn Learning Report 2022, “Companies that excel at internal mobility retain employees for an average of 5.4 years, nearly twice as long as companies that struggle with it, where the average retention span is 2.9 years“. And, “Employees who feel that their skills are not being put to good use in their current job are 10 times more likely to be looking for a new job than those who feel that their skills are being put to good use“. Therefore, investing in employees` skills development makes a lot of sense both from the perspective of filling the open vacancies and retaining people.

This “Build“ strategy of hiring also requires a strategic approach and good workforce planning.

development journey towards them. And finally, “Borrow“ strategy can also take different forms.

Some companies create a system for “borrowing“ internal people for specific, short-term projects. Unilever introduced an AI platform called Flex Experiences, to match employees` skills with internal projects. It came to life during Covid 19 lockdown, when the Data science team needed to grow quickly, to respond to the pressing needs for information about evolving customer needs and expectations. They were looking for people with a variety of backgrounds, expertise, and experience, to form a Covid 19 I&A squad. These team members from across the organization agreed with their managers on the number of hours/days per week they would dedicate to this work (An exciting new normal for flexible working, Unilever news, 2020).

partnered with Penn Foster School in 2006 to design an in-house development program that supports employees to upgrade and keep their skills up to date with the technology-driven transportation industry. In a study conducted to evaluate the results of this investment in employees` education, “Penske found that more than 60 percent of its certified associates receive a promotion“. They also learned that employees who got certified through this program are 50% more likely to stay with the company, compared to

Internal talent marketplaces, AI-enabled platforms that help match open roles with internal employees, appeared and started to grow as an exemplar of this strategy. By being transparent about the open positions and identifying employees with the right skills, we decrease the chance of losing good people who feel stuck in their careers. Tailored development solutions help these people move from “near match“ to “perfect match“ candidates.

Of course, the company doesn’t have to wait to have an open position to post it internally. It can also announce the positions that will be in need in the future. For example, HCL takes this approach and invites employees to start tailoring their

By using this approach, Unilever manages to quickly respond to business needs, finding the right people for the projects. At the same time, it provides wonderful opportunities for employees to develop skills and knowledge and stay engaged.

A different form of “borrowing” is using the external network of people, such as freelancers.

According to UpWork`s 2021 Freelance Forward survey, 36% of the US workforce freelance, with the share of non-temporary freelancers rising. Freelancing is growing among the most educated, while shrinking among the least educated. The number of freelancers who earn more than in their traditional jobs continues to grow (from 32% in 2019 to 44% in 2021) and 56% of non-freelancers say they are likely to

EMPLOYEES WHO FEEL THAT THEIR SKILLS ARE NOT BEING PUT TO GOOD USE IN THEIR CURRENT JOB ARE 10 TIMES MORE LIKELY TO BE LOOKING FOR A NEW JOB THAN THOSE WHO FEEL THAT THEIR SKILLS ARE BEING PUT TO GOOD USE.

Dušan Vukanović, Founder, Benefiti.rs

The top three challenges related to employee benefits in companies are:

• Measuring the impact of benefits on other HR metrics (58.2%)

• Real usage - do employees actually use what companies pay (43.4%)

• Personalization – can each employee select benefits of his/her choice (43.4%)

TRENDS

56.6% of companies see attracting highquality talent to apply for open positions as the biggest challenge for their talent strategies

46.1% of employees think that benefits are very important, often a critical factor in choosing an employer

38.2% of employees are not familiar with their company’s offering of benefits

Only 30.2% of employees say that they fully use benefits provided by their employers, and 18.2% of employees say that they do not use benefits at all

Only 19.9% of companies say that they have some sort of systematic approach to measuring the impact of employee benefits on other HR metrics. In most cases, it is an annual employee satisfaction survey

82% of employees say that they cannot participate in benefit selection, and 13.5% of employees say that they can select only some of the benefits

Results of the annual research “State of employee benefits in companies in Serbia 2021“

Companies in Serbia spend on average 8.19% of the gross salary budget on employee benefits

The research was conducted in September and October 2021, and the sample included 122 HR Managers and 510 employees from Serbia across different industries, company sizes and geographies.

Powered by Benefiti.rs (in Partnership with Poslovi Infostud & Manpower Group Serbia). For more information, visit: Benefiti.rs

How HR creates value for the company through leadership culture development

The case from MTU Aero Engines

Dr. Heike Caspari

Director Leadership Development and Change, Business Challenge Project Manager, MTU Aero Engines

Žaklina Teofilović Human Resources Director, MTU Maintenance Serbia

Why are we talking about leadership development?

Global Leadership Forecast 2021 report examines responses from 2,102 human resource professionals and 15,787 leaders, spanning 50 countries and 24 major industry sectors. Published in partnership with HR analyst Josh Bersin, the research summarizes best talent practices and provides key trends to guide the future of leadership. There is no doubt that effective global leadership development is vital to organizational effectiveness and competitive advantage. The shortage of global leaders could be a major threat to the future growth of international companies. We address this gap by presenting a case study of the Leadership Development program at MTU Aero Engines. MTU Aero Engines is a global leader in the design, development, manufacture, and maintenance of commercial and military engines—in all thrust and power categories—and stationary industrial gas turbines. With innovative engines, high-tech solutions, and comprehensive services, MTU Aero Engines make aviation safer, more efficient, and more sustainable. Back in 2018, further development of MTU’s leadership culture was kicked off. But why was it more important than ever to have new leadership values right then, at that successful, but also challenging time? “The modern world we

are working in is seeing a radical change: Globalization and digital transformation allow for previously unimaginable flexibility and, at the same time, change the workspaces we have come to be accustomed to,” explains MTUs Chief Executive Officer Reiner Winkler. “As a result, organizations are faced with new challenges that have a tremendous impact on their leadership culture.” There was consensus among the members of MTU’s Executive Board about what leadership should be like: “It will increasingly become impossible for managers to lead from a position of hierarchical authority; instead, they must stand out for their personality, exemplary character and credibility. What is needed is a coaching type of leadership style, to foster our employees’ self-responsibility and, at the same time, develop their strengths systematically, individually, and effectively. Only then will we be able to jointly manage the ramp-up and the further growth and ensure our capability to perform in the future.” So, managers should see their role as that of “change agents” and should call the existing status quo into question. In doing so, they take the initiative to actively engage their employees, encourage creativity and independence, and listen to their employees’ wishes and ideas. “We want to adopt this approach to leadership behavior and, with the future challenges in mind, have fleshed out our canon of values with

Developing the next generation of leaders is ranked in the top three challenges, along with global recession/slowing economic growth. CEOs acknowledged how critical it is for them to have effective leaders to drive their strategies forward and position their organization for future success.

“The moder n world we are working in is seeing a radical change: Globalization and digital transformation allow for previously unimaginable flexibility and, at the same time, change the workspaces we have come to be accustomed to.”

the details required. Incidentally, we are lucky enough to already have a very positive leadership culture in place on which to build,” according to Winkler.

Leadership Values at MTU

These are the three leadership values introduced by the members of the Executive Board back in 2018 at the Leadership Conference in MTU Aero Engines.

We transform

MTU stands for innovation. Our business is changing – we anticipate future developments and lead into the future.

We empower

MTU stands for performance. With a coaching-based leadership philosophy, we put conditions in place that drive superior performance.

We create trust

MTU stands for appreciation. Our employees give a lot to the job – we appreciate their hard work and treat them as equals. So for the first time ever, MTU has set values in place that create a shared understanding across all of its organization of what modern leadership means for it.

Why have we selected exactly these values?

Internationalization, digital transformation, ramp-up, investments at all locations, the integration of new employees, and new programs both in the commercial and military sectors are just a few of the numerous operational and strategic challenges we have to tackle now and in the years down the road. In joint workshops, the members of

LEADERSHIP

*pictures from Leadership values kickoff event in MTU Serbia, April 2022

MTU LEADERSHIP VALUES

Our focus guidelines

Which principles the site would like to D evelo P further? Leader Team decided on top 3 PRINCIPLES:

We take responsibility to ensure that our teams are set up in a future-oriented way.

We enable our employees to realize their potential and convert valuable ideas no reality.

We establish trust by acting transparently, reliably and by sticking to our agreements.

LEADERSHIP

top 5 of the selected challenges*

the Executive Board and the managers discussed their ideas as to which approach to leadership would best help address these issues and which qualities and behaviors would be needed for the purpose. They jointly defined principles and translated them into values. Finally, they narrowed the values down to three leadership values.

These were then reviewed and there was a consensus that exactly these leadership values, which are tailored to MTU’s specific needs, are suitable for ensuring the company’s longterm success.

Putting new leadership values into practice is an endeavor that cannot be accomplished in a one-day workshop. An active process aimed at implementing the leadership values throughout MTU was conducted.

Step 1: The project kicked off with launch events for all managers to familiarize them with the leadership values. This was done in a playful and experiential way since we cannot rationally explain or discuss the values if we truly want to understand them. Values need to be experienced. We knew that we have strong leaders in the room with many years of leadership experience – we didn’t want to teach them something new and factual. It was about making them think. Think about what we stand for as an MTU leadership team. Why do we lead the way we lead? And what can we adjust and develop to make our leadership profiles well equipped for the future? These events were followed by a joint reflection on the values and their practical application in the centers, with the goal being their implementation in all departments and teams. Implementation started in Germany in 2018 and was spread among all MTU locations worldwide. In 2022 our MTU Serbia site kicked off leadership values implementation.

Given that communication is the key to successful leadership, dialog played a pivotal role during the kick-

How to drive implementation by positive energy? How can we bring the leadership values to life?

There is no doubt that effective global leadership development is vital to organizational effectiveness and competitive advantage. The shortage of global leaders could be a major threat to the future growth of international companies.

off events. Dr. Heike Caspari (APD, director, leadership development and change, and at the same time Business Challenge project manager) and her team had come up with some innovative and exceptional ideas for bringing the leadership values to life and encouraging an active exchange of views and ideas. Thus, for instance, the 600 or so participants who make up the leadership team had to solve a number of different challenges for which they needed teamwork skills and creativity.

Step 2: Working together to bring the new leadership values to life

While the focus of the launch events was on experiencing, understanding, and discussing the leadership values, reflection at the center level was the name of the game in the next phase.

A first assessment of the current situation at the launch events allowed conclusions to be drawn as to how deeply the leadership values are already rooted in the organization. The results were then directly addressed at the workshops and further discussed by the participants. Together with their teams, the center managers took a closer look at the leadership values and selected areas in which they wanted to further improve.

Step 3: Leadership roadmap to anchor the values in the everyday work routine

With the aid of so-called “challenges”, the participants can then try out the application of the leadership values on the job.

Dr. Heike Caspari explains: “We have developed 54 challenge cards with various tasks associated with the leadership values. If a manager wishes to improve in the field of “We empower”, for example, he or she selects one or several of the associated challenges. One possible challenge is that the superior delegates a task carrying responsibilities

that had previously been performed by him or her to an employee. Then, after some time, they will assess the situation to see how well it works.” Each center selects a certain number of challenges to be addressed and reflected on by all managers of a specific area. In addition, managers are free to add their personal challenges in line with the areas in which they want to further develop.“ The challenges are intended to help MTU’s management team bring the leadership values to life and further develop leadership practices step by step,” says Caspari.

The center workshops revolving around the implementation of the leadership values were followed by a series of similar events held in the individual departments during the next six months. Caspari adds: “The center and department managers work with the challenges thus setting an example of how to effectively apply the leadership values in everyday work. Of course, there was a continuous exchange of experience among the managers to ensure that the process will be here to stay.”

“Over the coming months, the focus will be on applying the leadership values to our day-to-day activities as managers and leaders. First workshops have already taken place for the heads of the company centers to take stock of where they stand and to jointly reflect on the leadership values. What’s important next is to integrate these values in the day-to-day work at a departmental level and to live by them,” says Winkler, looking into the future. But it is not only the managers who will have to contribute their bit: “We call on all of our employees to support the further development of our leadership culture, fo r instance, by giving their superiors active feedback and clearly expressing their expectations and ideas,” according to Winkler.

LEADERSHIP

It will increasingly become impossible for managers to lead from a position of hierarchical authority; instead, they must stand out for their personality, exemplary character and credibility. What is needed is a coaching type of leadership style, to foster our employees’ selfresponsibility and, at the same time, develop their strengths systematically, individually, and effectively.

How to evaluate the impact of leadership values implementation?

Conducting impact evaluations is the most neglected aspect of Leadership development programs, but it is also one of the most critical. This is because of the fact that evaluation results yield the data required to assess the impact of the program, and also provide valuable information on how to improve the program being evaluated over time.

Conducting an evaluation was an important component of the leadership values implementation program at MTU. This became evident via the unsolicited feedback provided during the review interviews with managers. Some participants stated that conducting this evaluation was a very good idea, as it assisted them to reflect on the program and reinforced what they had learned and how they had applied it.

Let’s see how were the Experiences with the Challenges?

“The challenges are tracked once a month and we ask what is going well / what not?”

“Leadership values are definitely an issue, e.g. firmly integrated into departmental rounds or as a conversation over lunch.”

“Purpose is good. Values are good and tangible, well discussed, very intense.”

“Positive is the more conscious confrontation with leadership.”

“Even if it’s not labeled a business challenge, the leadership values flow into practice.”

“Further development of leadership in our center has been taking place for 3 years, supported by challenges.”

“The feedback culture has intensified. Feedback is increasing.”

“The subject of appreciation is given more consideration. More mutual appreciation at management level.”

“Managers deal with it - in particular, EMPOWERMENT not in the sense: giving work away, but empowerment is the focus.”

*source review talk s with the Managers, 2020

What were the first Effects on Leadership Behavior

96% of the leaders perceive a change in their leadership behavior themselves in the following way:

• Increased reflection & discussion on the topic of leadership;

• Dealing with employees is more respectful, e.g. through increased feedback, open communication, and compliment cards;

• More coaching-oriented leadership;

• More delegation of responsibilities to employees in the sense of “We empower”.

87% of lower management level also observe changes in the way centers were run in the following way:

• Significantly more discussion on the topic of leadership and “What is good leadership?”;

• Improvement of the feedback culture (frequency, appreciation, and praise);

• Coaching-oriented leadership is increasingly being implemented: More trust and room for decisions for employees.

Leadership culture changed in recent months with regard to the following statements:

We transform - Innovation: 81% of management survey participants stated that they perceived change in leadership focus toward innovation.

We empower - Performance: 88% of management survey participants stated that they perceived change in leadership focus towards performance.

We create trust - Appreciation: 97% of management survey participants stated that they perceived change in leadership focus towards appreciation.

How to measure the overall impact on business?

Traditionally, assessing this type of impact is associated with measuring the ROI to the organization. This is often seen as a contentious and challenging task. There are different ways to demonstrate the value of Leadership development programs, which are not

necessarily expressed in financial returns to the business, nor easily captured on the balance sheet. Considering ROI alone is unreliable, and an insufficient measure of outcomes and success.

Hence, the alternative approach considered for evaluating the impact of Leadership development programs is the more holistic concept of return on expectations (ROE). Initially developed by Kirkpatrick Partners, ROE is a holistic measurement and ultimate indicator of the value of all the benefits (both qualitative and quantitative). From this perspective, we can use wellbeing and engagement as indicators of improvement – outcomes that are not directly quantifiable but are nonetheless real and assessable. A qualitative response, as the example provided above, can be a good indicator of the value delivered by the program.

This may include indirect returns as a result of individuals applying new competencies that result, for example, in positive changes in management/ leadership style, improved quality

of work, engagement, and consequently higher productivity.

Further, we can benefit from identifying the key indicators (from either an ROI or ROE perspective) that will be used to assess the impact of the leadership development program and follow up such outcomes to track resulting business improvements. This is something that MTU intends to do more rigorously in the future.

References

Development Dimensions International, Inc. (2021), DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast (GLF). Retrieved from Global Leadership Forecast 2021 | DDI (ddiworld.com)

Bersin by Deloitte (2015). The What Works Awards 2015: Lessons from the best. Retrieved from https://www.bersin. com/ Practice/Detail.aspx?id=18617

Salicru S., Wassenaar E, Suerz E., Spitte J., (2016), A Case Study of Global Leadership Development Best Practice, OD PRACTITIONER Vol. 48 No. 2

1A BUSINESS ACHIEVEMENT YOU ARE PROUD OF?

A team that I led before I came to Clarivate has been voted “Best customer service” in one of the most challenging industries in Europe during the pandemic. The team has also helped the business make the number 1 spot in the mentioned industry on a leading Consumer feedback platform.

Petar

HOW TO SURVIVE IN A NEW BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT?

Given the absolutely global environment that Clarivate does business in, we are in the middle of a “Global war for talent” and the need to “adapt & overcome” is increasing. The spotlight is on Employee value proposition, across various business functions. “Why should we hire you?” has almost become “Why should you work for us?” in many areas. Many of the prepandemic ways of working are gone, most likely never to return. Coming up with scalable and agile working models that will offer employees the flexibility they need, wherever they may be in the world, is a priority, and, in parallel – growing a culture that will get employees motivated to connect and engage with the business (and each other) within those working models. I believe technology may be one of the crucial enablers of this muchneeded strategic, operational and cultural transformation. But, we don’t need to completely reinvent the wheel, as there are areas and communities that have achieved this and that we can learn from. Online games that have connected people of such different backgrounds across the globe may be one of them.

THE HR FUNCTION IN 2030 IS ...

HR is not a supporting function, but a true business partner, and this is nothing new. In years to come, this trusted partnership will only get stronger. The need to understand the nature of the now global workforce of the digital age (very soon of the AR age) and the everchanging dynamics of the now global, virtual workplace, is on our doorstep. Becoming more seamless and effective in the ways companies and colleagues work together globally is a must. Following that is an inevitable need to empower the employees further and build cultures of trust and transparency. The need to adapt the company cultures and technology, the work processes, the administration, and even the legislation accordingly is immediate. It is not a brief journey, but business functions will fail if they try to overcome this alone. It is HR that can play a pivotal role in this global transformation.

just in the big cities, so, going beyond the major centers, linking multiple locations and even individuals into an integrated connected workplace that can occasionally and quickly “huddle” for a cross-divisional collaboration in a single location when needed – that is where the focus might be. That, along with deepening the partnerships with schools, universities, and local governments could help us be at the forefront of the ongoing transformation and enhance our region further as the market companies want to be in.

THE LAST BOOK YOU READ?

Amin Maalouf – “In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong” (original: Les Identités Meurtrières)

A MESSAGE FOR HR DIRECTORS IN THE REGION.

It is not news that our region is packed with energy, talent, and potential, not just in technical or any other “hard” skill, but also in communication and the ability to collaborate well with people coming from different countries and environments across the globe. I think it is the diversity of our cultural and historical heritage that has made it happen. Clarivate’s Center of Excellence in Belgrade has been at the heart of the company’s rapid and continuous growth and acquisitions over the past few years, and that is a testament to the quality and the potential of the local market. And the potential is not

THE MOST CREATIVE JOINT ACTION WITH EMPLOYEES?

Improving the Customer care organization engaging every single colleague across Clarivate. That and orienteering in a natural environment, an action led by a colleague who is a master of the skill.

A TREND THAT IS CONQUERING THE WORLD?

In Customer care, it is creating a more seamless, effective, enjoyable, and personalized customer experience with the help of AI-powered self-learning technology. This adds value to increasing employee experience too, as it is enabling staff to step away from the repetitive work and focus on more complex and engaging matters.

BEST CONFERENCE YOU’VE BEEN TO?

Zendesk Showcase London, 2019.

New course soon

Ivan Stefanović Organisational Design

People & Culture Digital University

HR DEVELOPS PEOPLE, BUT WHO DEVELOPS HR?

Enhance your learning experience with PCDU through the most diverse courses related to HR! Choose the courses from various experts, according to your expertise and level of seniority, and learn how to apply the most specific HR knowledge in your organization.

Scan me for more information or visit the website!

DIVERSITY INCLUSION BELONGING

START BUILDING A RECRUITMENT STRATEGY AROUND

How soon is NOW?

Aleksandra Fuštić, Community Manager, HR WORLD

We often hear “diversity matters”. But, is it fully integrated into our companies, culture, and processes? There’s more to it than just saying “We hire candidates with different backgrounds.”

DIVERSITY

DIVERSITY&INCLUSION

Have you ever put your hiring process under a magnifying glass to spot if there are any bottlenecks to your recruitment being DEI oriented?

Let’s see why DEI is important:

1. Companies with more than 30 percent of women in their executive teams are significantly more likely to outperform those having between 10 and 30 percent women, and these companies in turn are more likely to outperform those with fewer or no female executives. (Diversity wins, McKinsey & Company, 2020)

2. Companies that reported aboveaverage diversity on their management teams also reported innovation revenue that was 19 percentage points higher than that of companies with belowaverage leadership diversity—45% of total revenue versus just 26%. (BCG Diversity and Innovation survey, 2017)

3. 67% of job seekers consider workplace diversity an important factor when considering employment opportunities, and more than 50% of current employees want their workplace to do more to increase diversity. (Glassdor hiring survey, 2020)

4. 2 in 3 employees and job seekers (66%) trust employers the most when it comes to understanding what diversity & inclusion really look like at a company. (Glassdoor hiring survey, 2020)

Improving diversity in the workplace is not an easy task, but knowing where to start might be.

With companies investing more and more in D&I, great expectations are set upon the recruiters and talent acquisition specialists to include D&I more in their recruitment processes. The aim is to hire top-tier diverse talent while implementing good recruitment practices and minimizing the bad ones.

Hiring a diverse workforce brings numerous different perspectives to the company, enriches the pool of talents, and skills, helps companies understand people of different backgrounds, and gives them an advantage over their competitors, as already proven.

To start with, every phase of the hiring funnel must be thoroughly analyzed to see if it is aligned with the company's D&I goals. It is important to recognize the obstacles that may endanger the recruitment process at the very start.

Here are some suggestions:

ATTRACTING CANDIDATES

- JOB DESCRIPTIONS

Researchers Danielle Gaucher, Justin Friesen, and Aaron C. Kay did a study in 2011 to understand the influence of words on the female to male applicant ratio. The study found that “Job ads using more masculine wording were perceived by women to be less appealing than the same ads using more feminine wording regardless of whether they were male - or female-dominated occupations”. What could be an example of this? A job ad for, let’s say, Sales Manager written like this: “We are looking for a confident, self-driven Sales Manager to achieve company objectives, who is efficient in setting

sales goals and strongly analytical with performance data, with the problemsolving mindset”. Sounds a bit harsh, doesn’t it?

It could also be written in (somewhat) total opposite like: “We are looking for a positive and motivated Sales Manager to attain company goals, who is well-organized when it comes to setting sales goals and with high analytical skills for performance data. Creative approach to problems and optimistic mindset are always welcome”.

A University of Waterloo and Duke University study found that “male-coded words like "ambitious, confident, decision, logic(al) and superior," tend to attract male applicants, while female-coded words like "compassion, emotion(al), interpersonal, sensitive, and warm" tend to attract more female applicants.”

The point is - think about what type of words you use to describe job positions in your adverts and in which percent. Bonus tip: always seek feedback from colleagues/ other employees on the content of the job ad to remove any bias that may appear.

SOURCING PIPELINES

It is the dream of every recruiter and hiring manager to find all the best candidates in one place. But, where’s the fun in that?

IMPROVING DIVERSITY IN THE WORKPLACE IS NOT AN EASY TASK, BUT KNOWING WHERE TO START MIGHT BE.

THERE IS NO PLACE FOR BIAS IN RECRUITMENT. THE ONLY SEAT AVAILABLE SAYS “RESERVED UNDER THE NAMEOBJECTIVITY”.

Sourcing feels like constantly doing research. Even if there was a place where all the best candidates can be found, there’s a question of missing out. What if there are also good candidates out there, but not in this exact place?

Mistake No 1

Never rely solely on referrals

Relying solely on referrals almost shuts the door for diversity. It might seem easier to have candidates referred by other people or employees, however, networks and job boards are there for a reason. Think of how many great candidates are missing an opportunity to apply to a job in your company and how much of new, fresh minds you are missing purely because they are not in the “network” or reach of the people who usually refer the candidates to you.

Mistake No 2

Never have only one source of finding talents

Speaking about inclusion, sourcing should always include more than one way to reach candidates with different backgrounds, experiences, etc. Not all the perfect candidates for your company are out there on Linkedin. Some of the very experienced people are registered at job boards or use no social media so you’ll need to expand the sourcing options. If you recognize yourself here knowing that you have been using only one source to reach talents, ask yourself “What am I missing? How can I enrich our talent pool and expand sourcing options?”

SELECTION - INTERVIEWS

Here I’d like to highlight the following - a diverse interview panel. What does it exactly mean?

It simply means that, during the first interview, the candidates don’t have much opportunity to “peek into” diverse representation in your company. Key mistakes to avoid:

Mistake No 1 - never have only one person conducting the interview Mistake No 2 - avoid homogenous interview panels. Bring in interviewers with different perspectives and backgrounds and from different departments.

About 4 in 5 Black (80%), Hispanic (80%), and LGBTQ (79%) job seekers and employees report a diverse workforce is an important factor when evaluating companies and job offers (Glassdoor's D&I workplace survey, 2020).

The candidates must know that your organization celebrates and cares about diversity and this is one way to show them you do!

PERSONALITY ASSESSMENTS TO REDUCE BIAS

There is no place for bias in recruitment. The only seat available says “Reserved under the name - Objectivity”. Many unconscious biases can occur during interviews, such as forming an opinion about a candidate based solely on first impressions or preferring one candidate over another because they dress similarly as we do or they said that in their free time they read the same type of books we do. It is important to spot these and prevent them in the future. But, the future is now. There is no longer time to sit through numerous meetings to discuss how to reduce bias in recruitment. Companies need to act fast.

To improve the talent assessment process it is recommended to use personality assessments. These can help identify the best talents regardless of any factor (gender, age, background, etc.)

The decision-making process can often be the hardest part of recruitment. Knowing this, personality assessments can help make decisions easier, relying on the

data rather than intuition. All of this is possible provided the proper assessment is used and done right, in combination with the interview and/or other candidate assessment methods or skill-based tests.

HOW SOON IS NOW?

If you’ve heard The Smiths’ song, you’d know they asked the right question. No time to wait.

Think about the ways you can make your recruitment more DEI-oriented.

• Explore the diversity of the candidates you already have in your pipeline

• Explore what does your Employer brand say about being DEI-oriented and how does it affect your recruitment

• Use metrics to measure DEI in hiring

• Think of if you ever tried to proactively find underrepresented candidates

• Educate yourself and your recruiting team more on spotting and reducing unconscious bias.

Each time you think of how you do hiring - think of it as a door. Are they open wide enough to all the candidates regardless of their background, age, gender, and more?

Start as soon as you can. Start now.

HAVE YOU EVER PUT YOUR HIRING PROCESS UNDER A MAGNIFYING GLASS TO SPOT IF THERE ARE ANY BOTTLENECKS TO YOUR RECRUITMENT BEING DEI ORIENTED?

CULTURE TRANSFORMATION FOCUSING ON INCLUSION & DIVERSITY

One of the main questions organizations wonder about is - How can we be as inclusive as we can as an organization, to embrace our diversity and turn that into a huge advantage for us?

Kuniya Tsubota, VP HR, MEA & CEE, IBM

There are three ways of achieving this and promoting diversity:

1. “Be equal” brand eminence - external and internal. To be seen as a leading inclusion and diversity enterprise by society, organizations need to make the “Be equal” brand eminent within themselves.

2. Organizations’ leadership needs to be accountable with regard to having the right leadership posture, embracing that inclusion and diversity, and this can be done through data and practices.

3. Drive Allyship. It must not be only the HR doing it and not only the senior leaders. All the managers and all the employees as allies of inclusion and diversity have to embrace it.

Following are some of the key IBM inclusion & diversity programs/initiatives in 2021:

The inclusive Ally manager recognition program is a program where we are asking all the employees across our territory to come up with the recommendation of which manager they think is the most inclusive. The interesting part is that it’s not only the manager of that particular organization nominating that inclusive Ally manager. We find people nominating managers who are in different business units, even in a different country, but those people demonstrate enough eminence in dealing with diversity and inclusion, and they get recognized by employees across the organization.

Diversity education

Employees and managers need to be able to learn what is essential with regard to being equal, and how they effectively embrace inclusion and diversity, and are able to overcome unconscious bias. To do so, organizations can roll out diversity education programs, as IBM did. The essence is to offer a curriculum that is suitable and valuable to be able to coach, educate, and create more allies across the employee population who embrace diversity, and inclusion.

Can inclusion be measured?

In IBM, there is an engagement survey being done every year. One of the most important indexes tracked across the enterprise is the inclusion index. There are four questions for all the employees to answer:

1. My manager cares about me as a person

2. At IBM, I’m treated with respect

3. IBM culture is inclusive

4. I feel comfortable being myself at work.

We believe that, if we are able to continue to improve our organizational climate, for these four sets of questions that we think are a good way to be able to measure ourselves with regard to our inclusive culture, then we are making great progress to be a leading inclusive enterprise.

The Superwoman series is a periodic newsletter that we feature for all the employees to understand who are the super interesting women having high career aspirations, but also whose career journey embraces work-life balance, and who can become a role model for our territory across the countries.

A lot of women tended to have different careers and have left IBM after marriage or birth. The returnship program is a program where we formed an alumni community with all of the exIBMers and we stay in touch with them and keep track of good opportunities for them to return.

This needs to be done every year. We measure this across each country, each business unit, each function, and even at the organization level. Whenever there are departments with more than six people, we are able to capture this index. And if there are areas of weakness, we do provide the necessary guidance, education, and coaching to be able to continue to improve the culture at each organization level.

DIVERSITY

In IBM, there is an engagement survey being done every year. One of the most important indexes tracked across the enterprise is the inclusion index.

Organizations’ leadership needs to be accountable with regard to having the right leadership posture, embracing that inclusion and diversity, and this can be done through data and practices.

To be seen as a leading inclusion and diversity enterprise by society, organizations need to make the “Be equal” brand eminent within themselves.

See Me: The Case for DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION BELONGING

andJoy Clark, CHRO, Worldwide Clinical Trials

As HR professionals, we gather facts all the time. But we need to look deeper and within ourselves because we can’t see the whole view if we don’t understand our own biases. We all have unconscious biases, and it can be hard to see them. Sometimes it takes others to point them out.

People want four things: to be seen, heard, valued, and safe. If these four things aren’t fulfilled – they give less.

We need to see ourselves. And we need to see our companies.

As HR professionals, we solve problems. We are expected to make things work out, and clear things out of the way for business. We do this authentically, or we don’t sleep at night. This can make it very hard to be objective and to see our companies as our employees do. It takes a lot of humility and courage to look at everything you’ve always done the way you’ve always done it, and ask “Did I build something biased? Did I build something good for business and bad for people?” These are really tough questions.

Even with the best of intentions, we can see what we want to see – informed by our own biases. For this reason, I suggest asking someone else to do it or at least checking your work.

That’s what we did at Worldwide Clinical Trials. We hired an independent DEIB consultant to look at everything we do: policies, procedures, turnover data, exit data, hiring data, pay data, etc. We asked this consultant to tell us what we don’t know –what we can’t see – about our company.

Here is a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging (DEI&B) framework that you might consider in your organization, based on what we learned and what we use:

Phase one: Do a comprehensive summary report

The baseline is to get to the facts through:

• inclusion and belonging surveys

• listening focus groups

• organizational assessment.

Phase two: Do the groundwork

Get to the core and build the infrastructure you are lacking, e.g.:

• create a Code of Conduct

• build a global ethics line

• partner with experts to guide you

• foster executive engagement.

Phase three: Employee engagement

This comes after all the previous phases are in place and this is the part that employees really want.

While the DEIB consultant analyzed our situation at Worldwide Clinical Trials, we worked to cultivate executive engagement. We needed a common language and understanding that our management team is diverse –everyone has their own story. We learned about history and systems that create inequalities. That really humbled the team. It enabled us to be more open and curious. That openness fed a growth mindset – an understanding that, while we will make mistakes and we will be imperfect in this work, we know we all have shared values and commitment.

As we were finalizing the executive engagement, the results came in:

• 92% of our employees across the most vulnerable categories felt that they belonged.

• 96% said we are inclusive regarding race.

• 97% said we are inclusive of sexual orientation.

• 97% said we are inclusive of religious preferences.

We also learned some uncomfortable truths that needed to be addressed. Results told us that employees felt our performance standards are inconsistent, and there is disconnection and lack of unity. We learned from our exit interviews that employees want more career development and that some people’s opinions aren’t valued, and they are afraid to voice them. These results became the top priorities for our leadership team, our People, Strategy, & Culture team, and our Diversity Council – with each team holding the others accountable.

We created a Diversity Council, to build goals, actions, and accountability. Dozens of employees were interviewed to learn what diversity means to them and why they

want to be in the Council. They shared very personal topics related to women’s rights (People comment on my hair and it’s offensive), LGBTIQ+ (I don’t tell people I’m gay), and various other topics. The impact of aloneness when hiding yourself is profound. When that exists, you can’t possibly belong. In this case, belonging is both the risk and the reward.

It’s a delicate balance. When there’s balance, people engage. When there’s no balance, they leave, because all humans need to be seen, heard, valued, and safe. And when they’re not, they give less. Let’s stay really curious about these humans who happen to lend their time and talents and resources to our companies. We’re learning things about them and about work that we’ve never known before.

The social contract with workers is changing. We’re in the midst of a great transformation, a big one, the biggest shift of our careers. There’s a shift in power, priorities, and options for workers. Some are calling it the “great resignation.” I prefer to think of it as a great wake-up call.

2020 was a seismic shift in our policies. We learned a lot about our capacities and limits. Globally, we saw and are still seeing social unrest, protests, health equity disparities, and wealth gaps right in front of our faces. No part of the planet is exempt from people begging to be seen.

Workers have always changed for companies. Now it’s time for companies to change for workers.

DIVERSITY

People want four things: to be seen, heard, valued, and safe. If these four things aren’t fulfilled – they give less. We need to see ourselves. And we need to see our companies.

HR Analytics and Corporate Foresight:

How data-driven HR contributes to business success in a dynamic world

Today, more than ever before, HR managers are faced with the question of how to position themselves strategically and play a significant role in shaping the future of work. Technological innovation, far-reaching, dynamic changes in the world of work, and the increasing shortage of skilled workers create challenges, but also chances for the meaning of HR departments. HR must stand out as a strategic driver and innovator to position itself visibly and futureoriented. How can this succeed? In the following, we have a look at two fields of activity that can unfold and strengthen the impact of human resource management using advanced, databased approaches.

Prof. Dr. Miriam Hägerbäumer Professor of Human Resource Management & Business Psychology, Europäische Fernhochschule Hamburg, University of Applied Science

HR Strategy & Analytics

The importance of human resource management is measured by its contribution to value creation and the achievement of corporate goals. Strategic planning based on well-founded analyses forms the starting point for value-adding and sustainable human resources work. To align HRM strategies with the needs of the company, a careful analysis of environmental factors and internal conditions is essential. Targeted strategies can only be derived on the basis of well-founded analyses, which require specific methodological skills and tools.

In times of labor shortages, ensuring a functioning people supply chain is a central task for HR – which means having the right talents available at the right time. This calls for strategic workforce management in general, and professional talent management

in particular. Both benefit from the use of digital analysis and management tools.

The importance of strategic, data-based human resource management increases with the degree of digitization and flexibilization of the working world. Due to complex and dynamic developments and interdependencies, the use of intelligent, algorithm-based analysis and planning systems is increasingly required for strategic workforce planning. HR analytics (also called people analytics or workforce analytics) is used to make complexity more manageable and to analyze large amounts of data (big data). HR analytics relies on the detection of cause-effect relationships (explanative analyses) and the prediction of future developments (predictive analyses) in order to derive appropriate action strategies and identify starting points for measures. Prerequisites

The importance of strategic, data-based human resource management increases with the degree of digitization and flexibilization of the working world.

for such analyses are an adequate database, and a data analysis system that can uncover patterns in the available data using data mining and/or data analysis experts.

For example, companies use HR analytics for performance management and succession planning, to increase employee engagement and satisfaction, or to prevent absenteeism and turnover.

a global financial services firm with more than 45.000 employees had an extensive database of their employees over their entire life cycle and systematically collected information in exit interviews as to why someone left the company. They, therefore, knew why the employees had resigned. But they wanted to delve deeper and find out who else is at risk to quit and how turnover can be prevented using predictive analysis.

To explore “the specific circumstances prior to the points of departure” the people analytics team identified 40 variables that potentially had an impact on the likelihood of leaving, e.g. performance ratings, team size, time spent in a specific role, or demographic traits.

Extraordinary insights could be generated by the resulting model: based on ten indicators, it was possible to accurately predict the probability of termination within a year. With this information, tailor-made measures for relevant target groups could be derived to reduce the cancellation rate.

Intelligent systems also play an important role in other fields of activity related to the employee life cycle and can relieve HR managers of operational tasks. This allows them to focus on employee-centric activities with greater impact, like talent management: “In the future, HR managers are no longer beholden to spreadsheets or simply managing processes, instead processes can run themselves, and HR teams

can focus on developing and retaining talent.” (Schloßbauer, 2021).

IBM´s artificial intelligence Watson , for example, is a learning system that supports HR professionals in several ways. It combines internally and externally generated data for sophisticated analysis, discovers hidden patterns in talent data, and even answers complex questions about the workforce (see figure 1). It does not

only provide extensive, HR-relevant data and dashboards, but also answers specific questions, warns, gives advice, and supports employees with cognitive assistance in working and learning.

In addition, intelligent HR software solutions enable the complete automation of certain HR processes, such as the management of the entire onboarding process, starting with the application. Of course, when setting strategic goals

Case: Using HR analytics to predict turnover at Credit Suisse (Fox, 2012)

within the framework of sustainable human resources management, more than evidence-based management and economic parameters must be taken into account, alongside ethical, cultural, and valuerelated aspects have to be considered. In particular, the highly sought-after talents increasingly value that their employer is not only well positioned from an economic point of view but also represents values that they can share and that the company acts in an employee-oriented manner. A positive employee experience is the prerequisite for commitment, engagement, and retention and should therefore be a focal point of HR strategy. HR IT can help to monitor and enable this. However, ethical considerations are essential, especially when using employee data and in the context of HR analytics.

Corporate Foresight

Change has long been considered the only constant in life, but recent years have shown

that this is not to be seen as a continuous process, but often occurs in disruptive, unanticipated ways. When analyzing existing data and performing explanatory or predictive analysis, it must be kept in mind that unexpected developments can reduce the validity of the results or even render them unusable. Which approaches can help companies to deal with such uncertain future scenarios? This is where the corporate foresight method comes in.

Corporate foresight refers to “the capability of an organization to interpret changes in the business environment, outline and evaluate a plausible future based on these changes, and to use that information for sustainable competitive advantage.” (Fergnani, Hines, Lanteri & Esposito, 2020, p. 27). Fergnani and colleagues divide the foresight process into three components: scanning, futuring and reconfiguring. Scanning aims at identifying business-relevant

Evidence-based and datadriven human resource management enables viable solutions and business models in the future. It contributes to the measurability and visibility of HR activities, making its influence on business success

transparent. Against the background of the increasing importance of professional talent management, intelligent tools also make a significant contribution to the realization of employeecentric people management.

Abb. 1 IBM Watson Analytics predicts attrition (Cohen, 2019)

to expand their digitization, method, and data skills, but also HR professionals need upskilling in these areas. HR has the opportunity to act as a role model and to be at the forefront of developing skills and implementing forward-thinking approaches, like HR analytics and corporate foresight. HR technologies can give valuable insights in employees’ needs and preferences, can reduce administrative workload, and provide needs-based solutions in domains like learning and development, compensation and benefits, recruiting, and staffing.

Evidence-based and data-driven human resource management enables viable solutions and business models in the future. It contributes to the measurability and visibility of HR activities, making its influence on business success transparent. Against the background of the increasing importance of professional talent management, intelligent tools also make a significant contribution to the realization of employee-centric people management.

References

Cohen, N. (2019). IBM sees the value of putting AI to work in human resources [blog post]. Tech Xplore. Available from https:// techxplore.com/news/2019-04-ibm-ai-human-resources.html

Fergnani, A., Hines, A., Lanteri, A. & Esposito, M. (2020). Corporate foresight in an ever-turbulent era. The European Business Review, September – October 2020.

Fox, A. (2012). How to predict who´s likely to leave. HR Magazine 07/2012. Available from https://www.shrm.org/hrtoday/news/hr-magazine/pages/0712fox2.aspx

Saritas, O. & Smith, J.E. (2011). The big picture—trends, drivers, wild cards, discontinuities and weak signals. Futures 43(3), 292–312. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2010.11.007

Schloßbauer, S. (2021). Future of Work: A New Era Of HR [blog post, 25. January 2021]. Available from https://www.personio. com/blog/future-of-work/

Culture transformation in MK Group

Marina Rakić, HR Director, MK Group

To continue to successfully achieve our ambitious plans in the region in the future, it was necessary to develop a corporate culture and leadership that would support the realization of our vision and encourage each individual to employ their maximum capacity. In support of the development of a winning culture, the “Responsible Leaders” project was launched at the end of 2020, in which the leadership team of our MK Group system participated, including the management teams of all divisions.

The project was launched with the aim of laying a clear strategic foundation for further business development, as well as the affirmation of a winning culture in our system.

THE PROJECT INCLUDED 3 PHASES:

1. Exploring the values of the leadership team;

2. Defining the organizational culture of our system (mission, vision, values), as well as the strategies of MK Group and its divisions;

3. Developing a corporate governance model.

The goal of this project, which represents a new phase in our corporate development, was to lay the foundations for a new era of doing business for the entire MK Group - a winning culture led by our responsible leaders, a clear strategy for the further growth of the holding and divisions, as well as an optimal corporate management model that will enable sustainable system development and achieving further successful results.

The first phase of the “Responsible Leaders” project, that we worked on with our partners HR Xcel using the Barett methodology, involved an examination of the values of the leadership team of the MK Group system. They defined the values we really “live and breathe” within the company, whether the existing ones are sufficiently

MK Group has been operating successfully for more than 35 years. We have become leaders in three key areas of our business: agriculture, tourism, and banking. With the results we achieve, we raise standards in all sectors in which we operate.

CULTURE

recognized, as well as which values need to be developed so that each of us can provide the best version of ourselves within the sustainable and long-term development of the company. The second phase of the project included strategic workshops in which the leaders of the holding company and the MK Group division (responsible leaders) analyzed the results of the previously conducted research and jointly defined the desired corporate culture that we will strive for, which focuses on each employee, their motivation and empowerment to realize their full potential. The next step in the second phase involved defining the business strategy of the holding and individual divisions. Finally, in the last step, we defined a new way of corporate management with a set of procedures and organizational structure. The result of the workshops was adopted strategic postulates that make up the mission, vision, and corporate values of MK Group.

The new corporate values support the company’s mission and vision.

The vision of MK Group confirms our focus on development and the value we create for employees, the entire system, and the social community. Our redefined mission only reflects our longterm ambition and focus on employees and the synergy we achieve through joint action and responsibility. It is precisely from these two strategic postulates that the new corporate values of MK Group emerged, which actually represent the evolution of the previous values. And while the previous values (reliability, team spirit, innovation, and responsibility) represented the attributes of our company, the new values put our employees at the center.

Excellence in every business process carried out by our employees is something that the leadership team recognizes and wants to emphasize in their further work. All of us at MK Group live by high standards and create added value in everything we do. As the winning culture that we want to live together cannot be realized without the contribution of every employee, so the second value of MK Group is based

on empowered people. We are aware that the success of our system is based on our people, therefore the value of “Empowered people” should be the basis for further development of employees.

We will continue to create an environment where every individual in our system can develop their knowledge and realize their full potential. Our innovative way of thinking and efficiency, for which our employees are recognized, now turns into the value of “Constant Development”. Just as we constantly work on improving and optimizing business processes, it is our goal for our system to be recognized as a place that stimulates the constant development of skills and knowledge of its people/ its workforce.

Finally, the team spirit, with which we created togetherness, shared knowledge, experiences, and information grew into “Synergy”. In this way, we want to further emphasize that only together, through mutual support, we can achieve, and contribute more and create greater value.

VALUES OF MK GROUP

EXCELLENCE

We live by high standards and create added value in everything we do.

EMPOWERED PEOPLE

We create an environment where individuals develop knowledge and realize their full potential.

CONTINUOUS DEVELOPMENT

We grow beyond our limits through constant improvements, innovations, and smart decisions.

SYNERGY

We encourage each other and achieve and contribute more together.

After the introduction of new values, we organized more than 10 workshops and lectures throughout the system about the role of leaders in our system in the future and setting new expectations regarding the way of working and behavior. It is from those workshops that behaviors and competencies based on new values, in accordance with the new vision and mission, emerged.

From all of the above, a set of programs and procedures emerged, the goal of which was to further propagate behaviors that encourage our new values to live in the organization:

- We have introduced “Value Ambassadors” and annual awards for employees who stand out and are role models for all our employees.

- At the moment we have about 25% of women in management positions and 50% of women at the level of the Group itself, and we continue with this growth trend, so for this purpose, this year we started with workshops to empower women and their potential.

- Considering that innovation and continuous development

MK GROUP MISSION WE ARE GROWING BY CREATING AN ENVIRONMENT IN WHICH PERSONAL AND TEAM POTENTIAL ARE REALIZED, WITH OPTIMAL MANAGEMENT AND RESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOR.

MK GROUP VISION WE CREATE VALUE THROUGH THE DEVELOPMENT OF PEOPLE, BUSINESS, AND SOCIETY AS A WHOLE.

are at the core of our business, we are very focused on and invest a lot in digitization and automation processes in agriculture, as well as in other segments, which allows our employees to work on the most modern technologies. Last year, we went one step further and organized our Digital Academy internally for 12 of our agronomists, which lasted a year, where participants went through 9 modules and learned about technological progress, project management, and business plan development. At the end of the academy, the participants presented their solutions and business plans, which we now plan to invest in and implement next year.

- In addition, we have been running the “Launch an Idea” project for years, where employees can nominate innovative solutions to improve business. The best ideas receive monetary rewards, but also the realization of projects that sometimes represent serious financial investments.

- Considering that our managers are the backbone of our organization, we launched the MK Management Academy for 200 executives and managers in our system and covered topics such as employee culture and experience, communication, conflict resolution, labor law, HR procedures, finance for non-financiers and others.

- We have created a Sales Academy, as well as an Academy for the Finance Sector and an Academy for

Technologists who are key to our business.

- Two years ago, we introduced, and now redefined the employee performance monitoring program and introduced annual bonuses depending on performance. Despite this, in addition to that, we always have regular incentive and reward systems for employees, especially in the production sectors that are particularly connected with our values.

- Every year for the past few years, we have been doing market research, comparing ourselves with our competitors in terms of salary and benefits. This gives us the basis for the regular salary increases we have at the system level so that all our employees are paid adequately and in line with the market.

- As for benefits, last year we started private health insurance, and next year we plan to introduce private pension insurance. We have about 400 company cars in the fleet, New Year’s packages for children, the number of vacation days above the legal minimum, vacation allowances and a hot meal which is above the market average, preferential prices in our hotels for our employees, canteens in facilities for employees and similar.

- What is important to point out, considering that we are a family company that supports the expansion of the family, every year every employee who becomes a mother or a father receives a valuable gift from the company followed by a big

celebratory event, led by the company’s president and vice president.

What characterizes MK Group employees is a high level of dedication and loyalty to the system. For this reason, we have a huge number of employees who have been working for more than 10 years in MK Group, and some of them have even spent their entire careers with us. Our fluctuation is very low and amounts to about 1% per year at all levels. What is important to point out is that employees see MK Group as a place where they can progress and develop themselves. An excellent example of this is that we recently replaced several key positions with people from the system who were ready to take on greater responsibilities.

Every year, we conduct an employee satisfaction survey, and the latest survey showed that employees believe in the further success and growth of the MK system and that they believe in the company’s strategy and vision. Even 80% of employees said they were proud of the company and would recommend MK

as a place to work at. As MK Group is recognized as a socially responsible company, social responsibility is part of our vision, so we are very proud that 83% of employees appreciate all our activities related to social responsibility.

The result of all these activities led to the fact that the results of the culture survey, and the survey of which percent of the values live in the organization, doubled in 2022 compared to 2021, as well as the employee satisfaction survey, which jumped several points in all divisions and for all areas.

For its efforts in these areas, MK Group was awarded the most valuable recognitions in Serbia, such as the award of the Serbian Association of Managers for the best employer in 2021, the award of the Serbian Association of Managers for the most responsible company in 2020, the Virtus award at the national level for the contribution to the community, as well as the Đorđe Vajfert award of the Serbian Chamber of Commerce and numerous others.

Our redefined mission only reflects our long-term ambition and focus on employees and the synergy we achieve through joint action and responsibility. It is precisely from these two strategic postulates that the new corporate values of MK Group emerged.

C-level spotlight interview

Miloš Milisavljević

Is sustainable development still a new term or has it entered deep into society and business?

In the majority of cases, it is still a new term and hence not a topic of interest in a lot of organizations and communities. Luckily, there are companies and individuals who are paving the way and leading by example toward sustainable development in their businesses, either by investing and adapting their business models to it or by completely changing and reinventing their business around a sustainable development approach (a big-scale example: car industry shifting towards electric vehicles). I believe that, as time passes by, almost all companies in all spheres of life will have to adapt to it and a lot of new companies will be born specifically with sustainable development at their core.

What exactly does sustainable development mean and why should we all address it?

2Sustainable development is a very broad term, but in my view, its essence is a responsible way of doing things that takes into consideration the well-being of people, the environment, and future generations. In order to “help make the world a better place” and make the concept more understandable and easier to track, the United Nations defined 17 Sustainable Development Goals, basically divided into three categories: environment, society, and economy. Although they should always be important, at this moment in time, with the major issues and concerns regarding climate change, sustainable development is a life-saving question, not a nice-to-have one.

Where does business place sustainable development, is it within a business model or CSR activities?

Realistically speaking, it seems like a lot of the companies still do not prioritize sustainable development agenda at the moment. That’s most likely to change in the upcoming years due to the regulatory requirements, changes in market trends (consumer interest in buying more ecologically or socially responsible products), and technological innovations. Currently, there is a trend

that large international companies are taking sustainable development considerations and actions into their plans, due to their large-scale impact on the environment and expectations from the general public and their shareholders, while the majority still consider it as a part of CSR activities which was the dominant view until recently. The best cases are companies (both existing and new ones) that made their whole business around sustainable development opportunities (focusing on one or more SDG) like renewable energy, Electric Vehicle companies, etc.

What should HR know about sustainable development?

Opportunities related to sustainable development will become a major topic and area of innovation in the next decades in every industry from energy and food production, transportation, production of all goods, and all aspects of IT & services. It will be a crucial component of new companies’ cultures that will translate into new visions & missions, new product development, innovations, and changes in business models. All of it will require change and shift in corporate culture, values, talent acquisition, and development, and HR teams will have to prepare for that shift since their role will be crucial in making this change happen.

How can HR contribute to the revolution that has begun?

Since these changes are imminent, HR teams can lead in a few ways both internally and externally. Within the companies, they can already start to promote sustainable development values and education, to foster discussion and thinking of employees towards sustainable development opportunities and innovations relevant to their industry and company. When it comes to the external side, promotion of SD values will be important in talent acquisition quality and volume, since new generations prefer to work for companies that have a strong sustainability agenda.

6How can employees contribute to sustainable development? Give us some ideas.

Although there are lots of ways in which we as individuals can help sustainable development (and they are important!) and there is a lot of information available on that everywhere (reduce water consumption, share a ride with a colleague or ride a bike to the office, don’t print stuff, etc), I think that more important thing to communicate here is that employees can try to promote and influence their colleagues and leaders to consider sustainable development business opportunities relevant for their departments and industries, whether that means changes in the way they do things now (produce, move around, buy/consume) or innovate new product and services that will enable that for their customers.

It seems that the younger generations care more and more about sustainable development and even demand the companies to prove to be “as green” as they claim in order to join it. Are you familiar with such cases? What is the focus of young people when they look at companies in this way?

Yes, a lot of international research suggests that, and we are beginning to see this trend in Serbia as well. New generations, and more and more people of the current employee base want to do work that is meaningful and purposeful, that contributes to a better tomorrow (and we should be happy that is the case!). Every company that intends to retain or grow its relevance will have to seriously rethink its approach towards sustainability if it wants to attract and retain employees of new generations.

Strawberry Energy is a leader in this field and is spreading a new wave around the world. What was your vision and is it changing?

Our mission from day one in Strawberry was to promote the use of clean energy sources and that later grew into focus on helping create Smart Cities, by using clean energy and new technologies (like the Internet of Things) to improve public spaces for the benefit of all people. That helped us a lot with attracting good quality people who are passionate about creating products

that have a positive impact. Although we are more than 10 years in this field, we are just scratching the surface of the amazing opportunities that we see coming in the clean and sustainable future.

Developing a private business and working with people brings great experience and knowledge, especially in such a sophisticated and innovative field. After ten years of experience, what are your strongest lessons learned?

There are really just three important things that are essential and that you need to think hard about: the Value you are providing (the problem you are solving), the Team, and the Timing.

1. Value you are bringing / importance/ scale of the problem you are solving for your customer - you need to know what problem you are helping solve for your customer that they are willing to pay for.

72. Company = people. “People are your biggest potential.” That’s not completely true - not any people. Right people are your biggest potential. It’s important to have the right people.

3. The final crucial factor is Timing. If the timing is wrong, almost anything else will be important. If the timing is right it can help with the lack of other resources.

As the founder of Strawberry Energy, what would you say to HR professionals who are interested in working in startup organizations - how can HR contribute to a startup, and what is it that founders need? What skills and knowledge do they need to have?

Founders (especially young or first-time founders) generally are passionate about the problem they are solving and/or product they are developing and are usually very ignorant about HR in general (or not focused enough on it), until a certain point in the growth of the company. So the first thing the founders might need is an understanding of what value and benefits HR can contribute to the team and how it relates to the overall goal of the company. Then, the usual problem with early-stage startups is a lack of focus on the development of company culture and its communication through the company.

Company culture can be a defining factor in the latter success of the company, and that can usually be overseen in that early period.

10 9 8

WORKFORCE ANALYTICS –THE TIME TO START IS

Stefan Vukajlović Group HR Director for C&B, Fortenova Group

Workforce analytics is one of the most exciting and fastest-growing areas of business and HR that I have ever been involved with. It enables organizations to understand how they work, improve productivity and performance, reduce turnover, and truly make work better for employees. It means moving from using past data to the “what will happen” data concept and from the “I think” to the “I know” approach.

Workforce analytics is the area, usually within HR, that is about collecting the data you have about your workforce, cleaning it up, making sense of it, and putting it into a form that can be used for making business decisions. You can just look at employee retention and turnover, or you can look at organizational performance and sales productivity and all sorts of other things. So, you can start with a little bit of analysis and then build it out over time.

Why is this such an important area of business? For two reasons. First, we are in a very, very talent-constrained economy, and if your employees are unhappy, unproductive, misaligned, and do not know what to work on, you just can’t be a good company. So there‘s a huge demand for information about what drives engagement, why employees leave, and what we can do to improve productivity. The second reason is that the huge amount of data that we are collecting is probably orders of magnitude greater than it‘s ever been. There‘s all this information that companies are collecting about their employees, much like the data we are trying to collect about customers, which companies are now starting to realize. This could be useful in understanding why some business areas are performing worse than others.

One of the biggest challenges and opportunities for

HR managers, I think, is addressing the disconnection between the desire for evidence-based workforce action and the lack of organizational skills and the ability to do it effectively. One of the questions you are probably asking yourself is - how do I get started with workforce analysis and planning? I would say there are several ways to do that. If you are a relatively small company or you do not have a dedicated team or a dedicated person, rather than just sit around and figure out academically what you think is an interesting problem to work on, start with your business leaders, the line managers, the CEO, and ask them, ”What do you think are the two or three biggest problems that we have in our company related to the workforce?”

And then come up with a plan to examine those issues. Now, look at your data available. Do you have any data on this problem? Do you have voluntary/ involuntary turnover data, do you have performance assessment data? Chances are that you have some. If you can do a single project where you can show either your senior executive or your CEO or whoever your business partner is that the data you have is useful in making better decisions, you‘ll be able to ask for more budget, more staff, more tools, more sophisticated analytics. Many of you probably work in larger organizations that

already have a lot of this data. The problem then is usually building an integrated team that can analyze the many data sources you already collect. This is because in larger companies, there is usually an analysis group that only deals with employee surveys. Another analysis group looks only at the return on investment for training. Another analysis group looks at recruiting, advertising spend, and candidate experience. While all of these groups are great and do important work, many of the business issues go beyond these boundaries. So if you are in a larger organization, it‘s best to bring these groups together and start working on projects that you know are essential to the business. Start building the agile teams.

Also, I would say that you will probably find that a lot of the data that you have, as interesting as it may be, is not as accurate, not as clean, and not as complete. So, as you begin your journey to study the data about your company and your people, you need to spend some time internally at HR and with the IT department to make sure that the data is really highquality. Much of the data that is entered into HR is entered by supervisors, HR managers, or department staff HR. They are entered incorrectly or they are out of date. I mean, part of the startup process is to make sure that you have a high-quality data source that you can trust. Again, if

Try to make your human resources investments with laser precision by making evidencebased decisions, and human resources analytics evolves from a "nice to have" function into an essential component of a successful business.

you do not do that and you do all the analysis and you create all kinds of great charts and graphs about what it all means, and then the business people start poking holes and finding out that the data is not accurate, you are going to lose your credibility for a long time. Unfortunately, you have to make a business case to your sponsors, whether they be the head of HR, or the head of the business, that you must do that, and that it will take time and it will cost money before you do the fancy analysis.

The other area of analytics that is actually lacking in many companies is the communication of data visualization. There are many presentations by statisticians and IO psychologists and data analysts that are easy for a mathematician to understand but make no sense to a normal business person. So there‘s a considerable amount of effort that goes into taking the information that you have captured, as obvious as it may be to you, and putting it into a form that people can understand and deal with, and that‘s really the domain of communication, visual representation, storytelling, and consulting. And those are all areas where people are dealing with analytics, so it becomes a really interesting, multifunctional area.

One of the most important questions you should ask yourself about workforce

analytics is - what are you dealing with? The most common and simplest issue is employee retention because most companies have some turnover that they are not happy with and would like to reduce. And the benefits of lower turnover are huge, because not only do you save time and money recruiting employees and getting them back into the organization, but you also lose institutional knowledge, relationships, and expertise with the loss of an employee. It‘s a big deal when you lose people. So the first project or application is to look at employee retention in your organization. Where is it high, where is it low, and what can you do about it? Beyond that, there are issues of performance. Another issue is leadership and so on.

I am sure you‘ll be thinking about how to be successful and how to measure success as you begin this task. And I would say that the most successful people in teams start small and start with a project that really creates value. So instead of spending a lot of time creating fancy reports and sending out data and giving people all kinds of PowerPoint presentations and hoping they like them, which may or may not be successful, I would suggest that you start with a project that you know people need help with. Maybe it‘s about quality recruitment. Maybe it‘s about analyzing advertising spending on candidate advertising. Maybe it‘s

about examining employee retention data and correlating it with employee engagement data. Or maybe it‘s about making more sense of the data you are already collecting in your employee engagement survey. If you can do a project that is well-regarded and well-understood, your company will come back to you and say, „That‘s great, why don‘t you take a look at that too”. Success looks and feels like this: As a team or workforce analytics specialist, you‘ll begin to understand things about your company that others do not, and you‘ll become a trusted advisor that people come back to more often with new ideas. And you will begin to

Best in-class organizations use workforce analytics and planning as input to their talent strategy to make intelligent decisions about the right priorities for HR policies and programs.

PEOPLE

PEOPLE ANALYTICS

develop a perspective on your company‘s organizational performance that others do not have. That, to me, is a success.

Try to make your human resources investments with laser precision by making evidence-based decisions, and human resources analytics evolves from a ”nice to have“ function into an essential component of a successful business.

As for financial analysis, there‘s no question in my mind that the most important analysis you can do are projects that bring a profit to the business. Reduce sales, improve product quality, improve customer retention, and improve profit margins so your financial

analysis groups will also be part of your team.

The world is moving ”from capitalism to talentism.“ With this shift in understanding that labor is an asset, not a liability, comes the need to manage that asset with the same rigor we would apply to any other investment.

Companies can no longer afford to make fundamental changes to the way they manage their workforce without understanding the implications of those changes. Even when changes seem logical and sensible, they must be justified with the same analytical depth that our leaders demand in other areas.

For example, if you are planning a project to analyze the organizational efficiency of your workforce through metrics, you first need to map to the global job catalog to perform a fairly relevant external benchmark. Then you need to refine the data accordingly, for example by region (e.g., Europe), industry, company size, job title, job family, grades/ career streams and levels, etc. Conduct on-demand analytics and industry peer benchmarking for payroll cost, productivity, organizational leverage, and turnover metrics.

Best in-class organizations use workforce analytics and planning as input to their talent strategy to make intelligent decisions about the right priorities for HR

policies and programs. It is important that the focus of measurement is tailored to each company and its specific business context.

However, it is recommended that all organizations achieve some level of understanding of the workforce as a general starting point. Organizations should take a fresh look at their workforce and seek to understand its structure and shape and how the following three interrelated talent streams affect each other: - ATTRACTION.

Who is coming into the organization? What grades/ classifications do they come into the company with? How experienced are these new employees? How successful is the company in attracting the employees it needs to achieve its goals?

- DEVELOPMENT.

How do employees move through the company, through different roles, jobs, tasks, projects, and levels of responsibility? How successful is the company in building and maintaining the human capital it needs to execute its business strategy?

- RETENTION.

Who stays and who goes? How successful is the company in retaining employees who have the right skills and create the most value? To understand these talent flows, we create workforce visualizations or ILM maps. These maps are graphical, quantitative representations that describe key dynamics related to

the flow of employees into, through, and out of an organization over time.

All calculations for an ILM map must be based on a consistent unit of time (e.g., one year) to be meaningful. An ILM map can be created for shorter or longer time periods, depending on the needs of the organization. ILM maps allow us to explore the following questions in a visual representation. ILM maps can also be created for different segments of the workforce to explore different issues, such as gender and diversity, high-performing talent, accelerated careers, international assignments, sources of employee hires/ qualifications, etc. Such maps are an extremely useful visual tool to present to leaders and help them understand what is happening with their workforce. Creating such a map is recommended as a starting point for ongoing reporting.

I believe that long data techniques are more valuable for workforce analysis. The difference between Big Data and long data can be illustrated by the concept of retaining and rewarding high performers. Retention of high performers is a key issue for executives at HR. However, one aspect of this issue is how to find out who the high performers are. For example, employee John

One of the most important questions you should ask yourself about workforce analytics is - what are you dealing with?

Doe was hired in 2018 and identified as a high performer in 2019 and 2020. John was also promoted in November 2020. He then received a medium rating on his next performance review in 2021. Using a point-in-time data approach, John would not be classified as a high performer when looking at metrics conducted in 2021 and 2022 (such as retention rates of high performers). However, in general, a median performance rating is expected in the year following the promotion, so the company may still want to classify this individual as a high performer when looking at the longer term. By using a long-term data approach, we can create an employee segment that considers three or more performance ratings to determine if an employee is considered a sustained high performer. Analyzing data over time, therefore, can provide far more valuable insights than a static study at one point in time. This has many applications in workforce analysis.

Final remarks and recommendations:

- Go beyond traditional headcount and termination reports and instead start with an ILM map to understand the workforce structure and interconnected talent flows into, through, and out of the organization.

- Focus on determining the right questions to answer with data and use that to determine

the metrics and data that should be collected, rather than limiting your initial analysis to the data that is available.

- Using long-data techniques to create a dataset that is more meaningful for workforce analysis and that also creates a data framework that is better suited for statistical correlations, simulations, and forecasting.

Even when changes seem logical and sensible, they must be justified with the same analytical depth that our leaders demand in other areas.

PEOPLE ANALYTICS

“All the billboards and beer in the world won’t help you if your employees are unhappy”

AKA: A story about how employer branding affects your business is a story about employee satisfaction.

Tanja Mladenović, CEO and Co-Founder, Unusual Sour

I have been asked to write an article about how employer branding affects businesses. Now, keep in mind that we’re talking about the IT industry in Serbia specifically. In Serbia, employer branding means taking your employees out for a beer every Friday, while, at the same time, you’re getting the lowest scores from your employees on online platforms for employer reviews. (Yes, I do like extreme examples, and I also like drinking beer on Fridays). Doing employer branding that way won’t affect a business, at least not positively.

Employees who are not satisfied are not motivated to give their best.

This brings us to two possible scenarios:

1. those who are less ready to face the dreaded process of searching for a new job stay where they are, half-ass their work tasks, and contribute, well, nothing,

2. while the more courageous ones leave without looking back.

The company becomes a flow-through pool, which in return makes it difficult to attract the highly-capable people who would take your product or service to the next level. And since the IT industry in Serbia is a very small pond, secrets are hard to keep (especially when it comes to knowing which companies have fired people during Covid, which ones fire women if they get pregnant, etc).

I could stop right here and finish with this – happy employees will directly contribute to the development of your business.

HOWEVER, LET’S GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING…

…because there are as many definitions of a ”happy employee” as there are stars in the sky.

It’s been 5-6 years since the term “employer branding” started popping up at every corner, but it’s still considered something that is “nice to have” but not necessary for the company’s success, even though globally 51% of recruiters claim employer branding is the most important investment

A certain number of employer branding specialists are focused solely on promoting the clients externally, which essentially boils down to a more social version of PR, while internally they do little or nothing at all to improve the working conditions or a company’s culture.

that they will increase in the next year (SaaSworthy).

Those of us who specialize in employer branding are constantly influencing how EB is perceived and working on helping people realize why it’s so important.

Steven Covey once said ”Begin with the end in mind”, and to that point, it really is important to know what your end goals are. However, it seems that some people take this advice a bit too seriously and focus only on the goal while skipping important steps along the way. This causes

them to skip all the steps when it comes to internal strategies, and to implement only one, external strategy – to broadcast an ad that shows how awesome they are and how nothing is rotten in the State of Denmark.

A certain number of employer branding specialists are focused solely on promoting the clients externally, which essentially boils down to a more social version of PR, while internally they do little or nothing at all to improve the working conditions or a company’s culture. So, it is fair to say that some of us have personally contributed to

Inspired by memegenerator.net, source: Paramount Picture

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the low priority that has been assigned to employer branding, especially the kind that should be implemented internally (there are many great articles on the subject, one of them - “Selling the Brand Inside” written exactly 20 years ago by Colin Mitchell).

The fact is, employer branding can make or break your business, whether you’re in IT or another industry, and the influence can be both positive and negative - there is nothing in between. A globally famous shoe manufacturer with production facilities in Serbia is a very good example of a company that has been accused of maltreating its employees on various occasions and is now in the process of liquidation. Similarly, a clothing company from Serbia, got the award for the best online presence on Instagram, only to experience a dramatic drop in sales after their marketing manager shared online her story of miserable working conditions and mobbing at work.

In relation to that, multiple research studies have confirmed and quantified the positive impact that the satisfaction of your employees can have on the satisfaction of your customers. For example, a 1-star increase in your Glassdoor grade translates to a 1.3-star increase in customers’ satisfaction with your product/service. At the same time, 64% of people stop buying a certain product if they hear that the company is mistreating their employees. Add to that the Covid crisis which has shown us that consumers make their decisions based on brand image more than anything, and that leaves no room to question how important employer branding really is for any company.

But, it’s not only the consumers who are important here – we need to think about

potential new employees, and that’s what the focus is on when it comes to EB.

We all know that ever since the bear market started the IT sector has been in a phase of firing people, pausing hiring, or decreasing the salaries of its employees. We are watching the reputations of certain companies melt away and disappear like a snowman in the sun. Will the trend of looking for a culture fit continue? Or will we go back to the old days of chasing the job with the highest payday?

Judging by the results of the research according to which 69% of candidates would reject an offer from a company with a bad employer brand, even if they were unemployed1, no matter what tectonic disturbances occur, the importance of a good brand remains unshaken. Conclusion:

“Even the fear of unemployment isn’t enough to overcome a negative employer brand.”

Let’s look at some numbers from a global study that show how significant the influence of brand image and reputation is to potential future employees:

• 86% of women and 67% of men in the United States wouldn’t join a company if it had a negative reputation as an employer (Glassdoor report)

• 7 out of 10 people indicated they had changed their opinion about a brand after seeing the company reply to a review (Marketing Charts)

• 50% of candidates say they wouldn’t work for a company

1 Source: https://pdfserver.amlaw. com/cc/COMMITForumPowerpointdoc umentSeptember232013Final.pdf

Employer branding can make or break your business, whether you’re in IT or another industry, and the influence can be both positive and negativethere is nothing in between.

with a bad reputation, even for a pay increase (HR Daily Advisor)

• 92% of people would consider changing jobs if offered a role with a company with an excellent corporate reputation (HR Daily Advisor)

• A strong employer brand can reduce the cost per hire by as much as 50% (Business LinkedIn)

• 62% of Glassdoor users agree their perception of a company improves after seeing an employer respond to a review. (Glassdoor)

• A negative reputation costs companies at least 10% more per hire. (Harvard Business Review)

• 40% of passive candidates would accept a new position without an increase in pay if the company had a good employer brand2.

INTERNAL EB STRATEGIES THAT BRING RESULTS

There are some bright examples amidst all this. One value has since surfaced and became the new buzzword in the work market – transparency. The companies which have communicated transparently with their employees, as well as the public, are now among the most desirable employers.

It’s interesting to note that globally “74% of employees feel they are missing out on company information and news” (Trade Press Services). On the other hand “the use of social software by employees” which helps them stay up-to-date with company news “can improve productivity by 20-25%” (McKinsey). In conclusion, not treating your employees as cogs in a machine, or as “just coders”, but by treating them as a

2

Source: Wade Burgess article: Research Shows Exactly How Much Hav ing a Bad Employer Brand Will Cost You

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valuable part of the system and including them in different aspects of your business, you can profit in the long run.

A shining example in our local community is one employer who uses Basecamp to do just that, but also to facilitate all communication. This means they use only Basecamp – no Slack, no Viber, WhatsApp, or Telegram, no email, no asking your employees to be present 24/7 – just one channel that everyone uses, and that contains all the necessary information. Why? Because it has become apparent that increasing the number of channels people have to use to communicate leads to a significant drop in productivity. However, due to the new economic crisis (which has overshadowed the still-present Covid crisis), this has become more important than ever.

“Employees are unhappier than ever before…” This is the first sentence in an article that talks about a “3.5% decline in employee happiness globally from October of 2020 to October of 2021”. During Covid, people have become more aware of their core values and started putting their needs and qualities first, which meant leaving jobs that made them unhappy or changing their professions altogether, in the search of a workplace culture that could fit them better. Even back in 2016, before all this happened, 66% of people wanted to know about a company’s culture and values above all else when considering changing jobs (2016 Talent Trends study).

Once your employees start identifying with your brand, they start living and breathing company culture, and they share this with everyone who’s willing to listen. And most important of all, they do this because they want to, organically, and not in a fake, salesy, forced way.

Now THAT’S what real employee branding is all about Employees are the mirror of your brand. Investing in your employees by encouraging

them to become part of the brand will help your image and likeness. People can’t tell what a company is like based on your ads or your job postings, but if they see that John Doe (who is an expert in his field and with whom they share values and opinions) works for you, they will want to come work with him. Here are some numbers to support this:

• Leads that come from employees’ social media activities have a 7X higher conversion rate than other leads. (SaaSworthy)

• On average, employees have 10X more followers than their ompany’s social media accounts. (SaaSworthy)

• Content that employees share receives 8x more engagement than content shared by brand channels. (SaaSworthy)

• Brand messages reached 561% further when shared by employees vs the same messages shared via official brand social channels. (MSLGroup)

Thanks, Rex Miller.

However, culture IS strategy. To be precise, culture should be strategized. Employee branding should be the heart of your organization.

This brings us back to the beginning. If you have a flow-through pool culture, no EB strategy in the world can help you. What you reap is what you sow, but keep in mind that not everything is about quantity – it’s about the quality of your efforts.

If you invest in beer on Fridays, your employees will for sure have a hangover on Saturday, but they won’t necessarily be more motivated to work on Monday.

So, what’s worth investing in then?

People are – those who work for you as well as with you. And investing in improving communication with them.

How?

By asking questions and understanding their needs.

Taken from his official Youtube channel, adapted with quote.

Creating a Healthy Workplace What does it really mean?

Ivana Barbara Turkalj Wellbeing and Growth Strategist, Above Academy

Fact: most of us spend a third of our life at work. It doesn’t come as a surprise, then, that today’s professionals are seeking employers who include health, well-being, and a positive work environment in their core values. When employees feel well, they work well. Simple as that! The surroundings and daily interactions experienced at work play a major role here, and the responsibility of maintaining well-being and a healthy business environment is shared between employers and employees alike.

WHAT DOES A HEALTHY WORKPLACE MEAN?

The World Health Organization (2009) defines a healthy workplace as one where workers and managers collaborate to continually improve the health, safety, and well-being of all workers and by doing this, sustain the productivity of the business.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that people want to work in companies where they feel truly valued, not just as workers but also as individuals with a life outside of work. People want to work for employers who genuinely care about their physical, mental, emotional, and social health. But this story is far from one-sided: to really build a healthy workplace, employers do need to care for their workers and support their goals, but employees also need to care for themselves, doing their part in staying healthy, resilient, and motivated. It takes two to tango, as the saying goes. And like any other creative endeavor, bringing this new reality of a healthy workplace into existence is an integrative process that takes time, research, smart planning, and dedicated action.

Let’s state the obvious: a healthy workplace reflects a healthy workforce! Strong, positive, successful people will influence colleagues to the benefit of their whole team. So to ensure a healthy workplace setting is maintained, companies first need to find ways of fostering wellness and health among their employees.

HOW HEALTHY IS YOUR WORKPLACE?

We’ve all seen our fair share of HR trends come and go, but every single company has a unique culture with a specific set of needs - even within the same industry. Why? Well, if no two people are the same, how can we expect companies not to be different? They’re made up of people, after all; individual workers with diverse backgrounds, skill sets, and career goals. Two companies that appear similar on the surface may be experiencing issues such as low efficiency and lack of engagement for completely different reasons - to find these root causes, we have to treat each company as a unique entity, giving it the time and attention it deserves.

The best approach for creating a well-being strategy is a proactive and preventative one. Rather than waiting for problems with employees’ health and stress levels to crop up, the current recommendation is to perform a company-wide well-being assessment. This is the most direct method for answering two vital questions for any employer: How do your employees understand health, well-being, and productivity? And are they ready to implement changes brought on by your initiatives?

Through our years of experience with our corporate clients, we found that several companies’ research involves engagement or satisfaction assessments, but none were connecting these studies with personal well-being among employees. We decided to step it up and establish these 5 dimensions of assessment that provide a better understanding of factors that affect employees, to help you create a comprehensive well-being strategy at work.

Once you’ve identified factors that are getting in the way of wellbeing, the next step is understanding how to bring about long-term change. There are thousands of well-being initiatives on offer, but to choose the right ones, you first need to deeply understand the root cause of issues, and what specific solutions and preventive measures are needed in each case. Ensuring that any chosen initiative has a precise focus will save precious time and money. Initiatives need to bring results, and a data-driven approach is a way to ensure this!

A thorough well-being assessment provides data on the company’s needs and the situation at a specific point in time, upon which a bespoke strategy can be built.

Such a strategy depends on

the mission and vision of the company

employee structure

organizational culture.

TRENDS

Let’s look at some case studies from the field:

1One retail company had tried out over 60 well-being initiatives in less than two years, but only 4 of these had provided any results. This is a classic example of how, despite a genuine effort to help employees by providing attractive benefits, resources are wasted due to possibly following trends instead of carrying out proper research on what issues are affecting employees.

2While researching initiatives provided by companies for their employees during the pandemic, we often encountered this interesting example: many companies sought to provide mental health support, offering psychological counseling to their workers through anonymous phone calls. Among all the companies we spoke with, 0 calls were made! The initiative was honestly commendable but results were unfortunately nonexistent. In this case, a lack of research on employees’ needs at that unprecedented point in time led to each company missing a golden opportunity to provide substantial help.

3We worked with one software company that was taken over by new owners. Rebranding, office reorganization, new equipment purchasing, and training processes were carried out; a lot of money was invested along the way. The new leaders conducted an assessment to review the effects of this transition. Their primary goal was to prevent any of the employees from leaving the company. The results were highly intriguing. Although 100% of respondents confirmed that they love their job, as many as 42% of them were considering looking for a new job. Due to a lack of communication between management and the main workforce during the takeover, the mission and vision remained unclear and employees felt disconnected. They simply did not understand what was going on and felt insecure about their job stability. In addition, awareness of their health and well-being was quite low while their stress levels remained high. This only goes to show how crucial it is to carry out quality research proactively, at the right time.

4In the last two years of working with clients in leading positions, we have found that the following consequences of long-term exposure to stress and pressure are most common:

66% have heart issues

% feel tired

have back pain

% suffer from insomnia

% have frequent headaches

% are chronically exhausted.

WHAT AFFECTS THE EMPLOYEE-COMPANY RELATIONSHIP?

What instantly springs to mind here is stress - defined by the World Health Organization as a reaction to demands and pressures that are not matched to one’s knowledge and abilities, and which challenge one’s ability to cope. A certain amount of stress might be a healthy and necessary motivator for employees, but we’ve all witnessed the negative consequences of excess pressure on individuals and even whole companies and teams.

Reactions to continuous stress include:

• Fatigue, exhaustion, sleep problems, and frequent headaches;

• Irritability, nervousness, and tension - reflected in behavior and interactions with colleagues;

• Lack of concentration and motivation.

Consequences at work involve:

• Deteriorated communication;

• Avoidance of responsibility;

• Dissatisfaction spreading among the team and lowering workplace mood;

• Sick leave;

• Decreased efficiency.

Looking deeper into employee-company relationships, one crucial factor usually remains neglected: the personal capacity of individual employees. Capacity refers to an individual's ability to carry out tasks, understand concepts and ideas, analyze situations and effectively cope with problems. The extent of these abilities depends on one’s physical, mental, and emotional state, as well as one’s energy capacity.

Have you ever wondered why some individuals struggle with applying specific knowledge and learning skills? Or why do certain people tolerate workload pressure and strict deadlines better than others? Observing individuals’ reactions to specific challenges reveals their level of capacity.

Have you ever wondered why some individuals struggle with applying specific knowledge and learning skills? Or why do certain people tolerate workload pressure and strict deadlines better than others? We interpret these cases as a result of a lack of capacity, meaning a lack of energy to apply what is already known. Observing individuals’ reactions to specific challenges reveals their level of capacity. The key to achieving this brings us back full circle: to increase employees’ capacity, you need to empower them to be healthy and well.

By investing in the health and well-being of individuals, and employees, you’re indirectly investing in your business, and the results of positive change can be measured over time. Once the causes of chronic stress are reduced, and workplace conditions are improved, you can look forward to higher employee motivation, commitment, efficiency, and general capacity. Of course, this all looks wonderful written down, but when it comes to investing, we know how difficult it can be to budget for well-being initiatives that actually bring substantial results.

This is your HR team’s time to shine! You really need to be braverevolutionary, even - and own the vision to bring these changes to life.

We’re living in a time of redefining our career values, reshaping what it means to be fulfilled at work. Our old ways are being challenged by smarter, more personalized approaches, and the workforce of the future is putting health and happiness first. There’s never been a better time to take the lead and no better place to start than here!

One retail company had tried out over 60 well-being initiatives in less than two years, but only 4 of these had provided any results. This is a classic example of how, despite a genuine effort to help employees by providing attractive benefits, resources are wasted due to possibly following trends instead of carrying out proper research on what issues are affecting employees.

People and organizational culture precede success and results

Sanja Jevđenijević Managing Partner, HR Xcel

Creating and successfully integrating human resource strategies across multiple companies and industry-verticals, alongside more than 20 years of direct experience in the HR field, sparked me to create HR Xcel. HR Xcel is my consultancy firm that brings knowledge, experience, development mentorship (for individuals and organizations) and provides support through unique HR services.

My role, be it as CHRO or VP HR & OD, remains unchanged to this day. It is still founded on developing the capabilities and competencies needed for top business performance and results. Most of all, it is reflected in the transformation and improvement of organizational culture, as well as the setting of excellent HR processes.

I genuinely love what I do, and nothing brings me more joy than seeing my coworkers being successful, the relationships we’ve built, and the many years we have been continuously working together. Being able to see the results of the change process you initiated, the organizational and cultural changes, and, most importantly, when you can see positive changes in people, their careers, and the impact on their lives is what is truly beautiful.

How can we know if we’re an exceptional employer applying HR best practices or what areas we should improve on? Is our organization causing the WOW effect, firstly within our team and then others?

Successful organizations and leaders know that their efforts in people and experience management that they do today will show results in 9-12 months. What you do today for your organization, your team, how you do things, and how you make decisions is as important as the revenue and profits we’ve made.

Every day changes, global pandemics, crises, wars and migrations are our reality. Everything happens so fast. Some changes used to take a couple of months or years to happen, but now, they happen in an instant… Every day we have new ways of working, new needs, new jobs, and transformations of the job market. As organizations manage these changes, or just adapt to them, they become a key issue for long-term success and sustainable development.

Where we are, where our employees and candidates are, what is the culture of our organization, what values live in it, can we attract and retain talent, are

leaders the bearers of change, and the examples we follow - become the key issues and challenges of all, no matter organization’s size or scope.

Colleagues frequently come to me asking “Why can’t I find someone to fill a vacant position and why do I need daily improvisations to solve this matter??” or “What role does HR play in transformation processes? Do we have sufficient knowledge, experience, and capabilities to support the business and its leaders on this journey?”

There’s plenty of talk about managing Human Resources, its role, and responsibility. Many organizations don’t have an established HR structure, or, the one they do have is purely administrative. There is also the strategic side of HR which needs to be a part of creating and executing the overarching business strategy. Strategic HR is a complex task, the one that demonstrates the leader’s commitment to, focus on empowering the people, besides business results!

Are we, from a market perspective, ready to face these new demands?

Share Your Success!

HR processes build strong connections and impact on people, business and the employer's reputation.

Confirm HR excellence through Employer Partner certificate!

With Employer Partner methodology we evaluate HR standards and identify areas for growth. This certificate is proof that only the best practices have been implemented in your organisation.

Together, we build excellent workplaces around the world.

Employer Partner in Numbers:

of awarded companies get 35% more job applications. of top talents are attracted by Employer Partner badge.

of job candidates prefer Employer Partners.

Contact Us: employerpartner.eu www.hr-xcel.com

or via email: poslodavac.partner@hr-plus.rs

How can we know if we’re an exceptional employer applying HR best practices or what areas we should improve on? Is our organization causing the WOW effect, firstly within our team and then others?

Successful organizations and leaders know that their efforts in people and experience management that they do today will show results in 9-12 months. What you do today for your organization, your team, how you do things, and how you make decisions is as important as the revenue and profits you've made.

Are we, as HR professionals, aware, ready, competent, and supported enough to get these changes across? Is our team feeling empowered, and how and who will help us acquire new knowledge while improving our HR team’s skills?

These are some questions you have probably heard before as well as this one sentence - I have a position that is open for a while, with good pay however, there are no candidates…

People working in either Marketing or Public Relations know the brand’s power in attracting and keeping users.

Jeff Bezos, the Founder of Amazon, stated that “Brand is what people talk about you after you leave the room.” A good reputation empowers your brand, whether you invest in it or not.

Companies do not create values - their employees do. If we want to attract talent, if we want to retain them, secure successors, and if we want to achieve strategy and results, we start from ourselves, from leaders, culture, and from within - to build an image of the brand of a desirable employer.

When a company is recognized as one that has excellent HR processes, that means that it has proven to manage Human Resources well. This certainly gives it greater recognition in the job market.

It was not an easy job to answer all these questions and the need of my colleagues to gain insights about where the HR function they lead stands today, to know where they stand in relation to their peers in industry or region in each of the HR processes, and whether their company truly is an employer of choice. They also needed to know if what they were doing was good enough and where their areas of improvement were. It was important that they get these answers from someone knowledgeable, with expertise, experienced, who has a recognized methodology, and who is unbiased.

In my search for solutions and best practices on this topic, I came across the Employer Partner Certificate. The Employer Partner Certificate has existed in the region for the last 17 years, being used to evaluate over 150 organizations, 70+ of which are now certificate holders. What makes this certificate unique is the condensing of long years of practice and experience from outstanding HR professionals. Starting this year, the certificate is accompanied by a digital platform tracking employees’ life cycle from their starting day to the last day in the organization.

Going through the certification process gives the leaders, HR team, and employees a detailed insight into the quality of HR practices, personalized suggestions for improvement, and industry-centric benchmarks. Only organizations continuously demonstrating HR excellence can get past the certification process.

What do the numbers say in Croatia?

• Certificate holders get 35% more inbound job applications

• 90% of talent chooses an Employer Partner badge holder as their employer

• 95% of talent goes for the compa nies that are a part of the Employer Partner family.

In order to know in which direction to develop your HR processes and good prac tice, I highly recommend that you join the family of Employer Partner projects and contribute to the expansion of knowledge and best HR practices.

www.hr-xcel.com

Companies do not create values - their employees do. If we want to attract talent, if we want to retain them, secure successors, and if we want to achieve strategy and results, we start from ourselves, from leaders, culture, and from withinto build an image of the brand of a desirable employer.

Myth-busting The Mentoring

Dušan Basalo Founder and CEO, Talks and Folks

Mentoring is one very commonly used word these days. Wherever you look on social networks, you can find someone offering mentoring support or something similar. Most of it cannot be called mentoring at all, but online word gives us the freedom to say (almost) whatever we like. So, let’s try to bust at least some of the myths about mentoring.

Mentoring is one very commonly used word these days. Wherever you look on social networks, you can find someone offering mentoring support or something similar. Most of it cannot be called mentoring at all, but online word gives us the freedom to say (almost) whatever we like. So, let’s try to bust at least some of the myths about mentoring.

Mentoring is a highly structured process

No, it is not highly structured. Mentoring is one of the most natural habits that a human being has. Starting from our childhood, we always have a mentor – our parents, older sisters, brothers, some cool and wise relatives, teachers, and friends. Mentoring gives freedom to play with different approaches, depending on the personalities of the mentor and mentee. There are no two same mentoring pairs, so there are no two same paths for the mentoring journey.

Mentoring shouldn’t be structured at all

It is very, very important to follow some basic guidelines which exist as best practices in mentoring. For example, defining the mentoring frame at the beginning of the project significantly influences satisfaction from both sides. Or setting goal(s) for the project makes a difference of nearly 70% in terms of achieving the full benefits of the process! Should we also mention the appropriate length of sessions, changing methods during the program, importance of action steps, too high level of storytelling, etc?

94% of employees said they would stay at a company longer if they were offered opportunities to learn and grow. Mentoring is stated as one of the most attractive L&D approaches.

It is better (and cheaper) to have just internal mentors in the organization

Sometimes, internal mentors do the work. They know the organization, and most often they are very motivated. But, there are some aspects that lower the effects of only internal mentoring:

• Fewer people at the top – where there are just not enough potential mentors at the top with the experience gap to offer to your mentees

• Senior mentors can never offer the truly offline space that mentees need as they are too close to the performance and promotion decisions of these individuals.

This is where creating a mentoring program that harnesses the power of external mentors can be the solution. External mentors can still offer the depth of learning and experience that they have gained through their business careers whilst also ensuring that the mentee has a safe and confidential space to explore their personal ambitions.

External mentors are expensive

The average price of a mentoring session with a senior business leader with 10+ years of experience in a CXO position is only 1520% higher than a coaching session with a coach and even lower than consulting hours by a professional consultant. The reason for this is that most of the CXO leaders do the mentoring as something they love, not as part of their work days and regular business activities.

Mentoring project within an organization is very energy and time demanding

Nope. We have implemented projects that last from one month to two years. Most of the work is done by mentors and mentees and us as external partners. The average time needed from an HR person (or someone who is leading the project internally) is about 240 seconds per mentoring session!

Mentor and mentee should have similar personalities so they could have a successful mentorship

This is one of the most common mistakes in the matching process. Sometimes it is good to have similar personalities matched. On the other hand, many topics and goals of mentoring require the mentor’s personality to be much different than the mentee’s. Especially when it is about topics like self-confidence, networking, stakeholder management, influence, business development, etc.

Mentoring is focused primarily on increasing skills level

94% of employees said they would stay at a company longer if they were offered opportunities to learn and grow. Mentoring is stated as one of the most attractive L&D approaches. Retention rates were much higher for mentees (72%) and mentors (69%) than for employees who did not participate in the mentoring programs (49%). So, it is not just about skills, right?

Mentoring is easy

Everyone who thinks that mentoring is easy, should not be a mentor. Usually, it means that a person is focused more on storytelling (not always a good one, I believe) than on real mentoring by combining support (both intellectual and emotional), some networking, information, listening and challenging, etc. A very good indicator of real readiness for mentoring, both by mentor and mentee, is how much they are ready to invest time out of mentoring sessions. For example, filling in the preparation forms for the session is one of the crucial proofs that they are taking their sessions and their roles seriously.

Mentoring is hard

If you take it as just one additional project that you work on, then it can be for sure. But, if you look at all the benefits that it brings to you as a mentor or mentee, you will see this is one of the rare business activities that combine a couple of amazing things: Practical and useful work, human connection, exchange of support and gratitude, trust and sometimes – even friendship.

It is hard to find good mentors

Sometimes it can be if you do it by yourself. You don’t know who has the expertise you need, who is willing to be a mentor, how to approach her/him, and what the process should look like… For this reason, there are management consulting companies (like Talks and Folks) that work every day with mentors and mentees and know all the sweet spots and opportunities for organizing a great mentoring process for you and your company.

There are so many additional myths on mentoring to be busted. But, step in the shoes of myth-busters by yourself and start mentoring!

A very good indicator of real readiness for mentoring, both by mentor and mentee, is how much they are ready to invest time out of mentoring sessions.

MIND-SHIFT WHY, HOW,and WHEN TO CHANGE MIND

Đorđe Maričić

Founder/Communication Expert/NBI Master Trainer, Maverick Consulting Ana Krstić Copywriter Intern, Maverick Consulting

WHAT IS A MIND SHIFT?

“To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often.”

Winston Churchill

A shift in your mindset is caused by creating something out of a fine balance between insights and innovation, leading to a MindShift*.Without mind shift, we wouldn’t have the tools and methodologies for efficient and employee centered-management that more and more companies have today.

The main benefit of implementing the concept of mind shift in an organization is to develop the ability to adapt and change its structure, however, they find it necessary for the benefit of the business, its customers, and employees.

WHY IS MIND SHIFT IMPORTANT?

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” –

Albert Einstein

The truth is, we’ve been doing the mind shift all our lives.

The constant technological development, changing a professor in school or colleague, changing employer, becoming a parent, becoming a pet owner, all this required a mind shift to happen, only it probably wasn’t conscious. What if we were able to experience the mind shift consciously?

Recruitment of new generations would be much easier. We would be able to better understand the troubles and needs (perspectives) of the new generations (the Millennials and Generation Z) and thus learn how to integrate them correctly into an organization.

Now, think about how much you care about the environment.

What needs to be done to live and work in an eco-friendly lifestyle? Who needs to do the mind shift first? How?

Another major mind shift in the vast majority of organizations, especially tech and production ones - having a highly technically skilled worker as a team leader, made many teams break apart or underperform. Experience and much research done over the past 5-10 years argue that soft skills are more important for a team leader to guide its team towards continuous growth, not only them but the whole organization as well.

HOW TO START WITH MIND SHIFT?

What are Lean or Agile other than mindsets? Their common goal is to restructure an organization to make it highly adaptive to its ever-changing environment. For the sake of producing better quality with less time and effort, and at lower cost, the Lean practice points out the importance of experimentation done by both workers and managers. In Agile practice, the focus is on small self-organizing groups and networking, as opposed to the traditional formal organizational mindset. Both practices have shown better results across various industries and organizational sizes with higher adaptability and resilience than the traditional bureaucratic approach.1

1 https://www.forbes.com/sites/ stevedenning/2019/08/13/understandingthe-agile-mindset/?sh=7333e30b5c17

DEVELOPMENT

Mercer’s 2017 Global Talent Trends Study2 found that the companies that decided to flatten their organizational structure experienced greater efficiency, increased agility, greater customer intimacy, reduced costs, and increased innovation.

The implementation of a flat organizational structure has also shown massive improvement in employees’ leadership skills and overall independence. This innovative structure enables employees to take increased ownership of their work while boosting their sense of accountability.

HOW DO WE KNOW IT WORKS?

Creativity and Innovation. These are the keywords of the last decade.

In order to deliver creative and innovative solutions, one needs to be able to shift one’s perspective and that’s where the mind shift comes in.

Some companies are more talking the talking instead of walking it when it comes to mindshift. We have all witnessed the change COVID-19 brought. One of them was remote work.

Before COVID-19, there were barely a “handful” of employees, roughly 6% of the 2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/ forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2019/04/05/ down-with-the-hierarchy-how-flatmanagement-fosters-employeeentrepreneurship/?sh=2d80f096120d

“I not only use all the brains that I have but all I can borrow.”Woodrow Wilson

workforce, who were able to work remotely, at least in the US or many European countries (excluding Danes, Dutch, and Swedes averaging about 20% of the workforce)3. In the US, according to the Pew Research Center, remote work was mostly reserved for a wealthy few or as a part of a benefits package in some companies, such as Dell, Salesforce, SAP, and ADP, to name a few. In 2020, the number of employees working remotely increased significantly in the US (more than 40%) whereas in Europe, according to the World Economic Forum, barely 14% of employees worked from home.

Being exposed to traumatic events usually makes us, as humans, adjust and change our perspective.

Another example of how our perception can change if we want to continue living in a world that’s going through changes is contactless commerce.

For the last two years, contactless commerce and delivery business have reached their peak.

People have turned to online shopping, as they found it more convenient.

At first, there was a certain resistance towards the new norm, but at one point, customers experienced a mind shift, and saw the benefits and overall ease of online shopping. They could do their product research online, as brands were forced to upgrade their websites and make information more accessible etc.

Research4 has shown that customers turned to new brands, when the ones they were loyal to, stopped inspiring them to shop. In other words, these brands didn’t invest in the content they put online.

The ability to change perspective can and will lead to some sort of change in thinking and understanding, thus it will help us come up with new ideas. To be able to change perspectives willingly, one needs to know oneself better. All thinking processes start in our brain. Consequently understanding how our brain works will help us change our own perspective and, when needed, influence people in our environment to embrace mind shift, creativity, innovation, thus embracing a human-friendly work

environment. Get to know how your brain thinks and unleash the power of all brains within your team and organization.

START NOW

Hence, if you have ever experienced a single benefit of mindshift and would like to continue on a more conscious level, try the following:

1. Sit down with a person you disagree with and try to listen and understand their perspective. Ask the WHY questions. Look for the reasons behind their position.

2. Play a guessing game with a child that is 4-7 years old. Observe how their mind works and how they connect ideas and concepts. Try to understand why they see things differently and what you can make out of it.

3. Change the hand you hold your toothbrush with while brushing your teeth for three weeks. Notice what else changed in your life since?

Some of these tips we shared with participants of almost all our programs, especially with those who are participating in the Communication and Sales program that started in 2016. The main purpose of this program was to initiate the mind shift of our clients’ sales team. What we have learned is the importance of continuous work over a long period of time using various tools and methodologies. However, we did manage to harvest the most positive results by using the Neethling Brain Instruments as the source of our ability to apply the Whole Brain Thinking. This empowered all of us to make a mind shift when necessary. To paraphrase one of our participants from the last training session when discussing the delivery time challenges: It is not about the delivery time, it is about us and our lack of ability to focus on what we already have to work with, instead of focusing on what we cannot currently control. Yes, we may lose some customers, but with this way of thinking, we are missing many new ones. We need to change how we think, again.

3 https://www.pewresearch.org/facttank/2020/03/20/before-the-coronavirustelework-was-an-optional-benefit-mostlyfor-the-affluent-few/

4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/ catherineerdly/2022/05/31/shoppingtrends-change-but-pandemic-behaviorsare-here-to-stay/?sh=46ec9a642d58

4. Even when you are confident that you are right, ask people in your team/group about their opinion. You may realize that, although you made the same conclusions, the reasons behind it are very different, so it can lead you to a much more effective and efficient solution for the current situation.

Open mind + open heart = Growth

Get to know how your brain thinks and unleash the power of all brains within your team and organization.

What if we were able to experience the mind shift consciously?

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What HR needs to know about internal communications

Tijana Bejatović, Internal communication professional

For dozens of years, companies have focused their communications primarily on the outside: clients, consumers, partners, and communities. However, no matter how brilliant your external communications are, if your employees are working in silos with no clear vision of the company and feel they are on autopilot for eight hours a day, the business will stagnate, be unable to develop and adjust to the market and will not be successful in the end.

The world has been through tectonic shifts that made most companies, no matter the size, realize how important it is to face the people and communicate with them. Communication means the exact opposite of the example in the first paragraphpeople, who understand what the company stands for, what is expected of them and why they do their job. It is crucial for people to feel like a part of a close-knit team, to understand their contribution to each achievement and success, and to feel heard, respected, and safe.

There is still an ongoing debate on where internal communications belong within the company. There are different models and each of them has a place. We will not

go into this and will instead point out that communications within a company are too important of a process to be left to one person or one team. It is everyone’s responsibility.

The only way to make this happen is to determine what types of communication exist within a system, and set up processes and goals in such a way that these communications really benefit the company.

Let us begin with the simplest aspect –internal communication, singular. Internal communication in this context means the language of your corporate culture, or, basically, how people within the system communicate with each other – in meetings,

in the hallways, in emails and in official statements.

There is a saying that a person will rarely remember what you said, but will always remember how they felt in your company. This is a great explanation of how the way we communicate impacts how we perceive

It is crucial for people to feel like a part of a closeknit team, to understand their contribution to each achievement and success, and to feel heard, respected, and safe.

our work environment. It is important to set the tone of voice you want the company to have. There are many ways to do this, and your colleagues in marketing may be able to help. So, put the top management, HR and corporate communications team in one room and start the conversation. Because, again, this is everyone’s responsibility.

Another familiar term is employee communication, which is the process of providing employees with all the relevant and important information they may need in their work. This includes technical or organizational announcements, from HR, IT or HSE to CxO addresses. Each piece of information has its owner. The piece of information may be communicated either by the owner directly or by the internal communications team. This depends on the organization, but if the owner communicates the information directly, they have to do so with the help of internal communications. Because – you’ve guessed it – this is everyone’s responsibility.

Internal communications as a concept goes far beyond keeping employees informed and determining the language of the corporate culture. This process helps people within the business understand the strategy and the goals of the business, and, on the other hand, helps the business understand employees and their needs. This is the central communication process within the company. It exists to facilitate the relationship between the company and the employees, to establish and maintain open dialogue, and build trust.

One role of internal communications is that of a moderator, as they create the format and infrastructure of the communication channels. Another role is that of independent media that collects and publishes information that is timely and relevant for the business and the people, without any personal PR or ambitions. Finally, the most important role is that of an advocate for employees.

There is a saying that a person will rarely remember what you said, but will always remember how they felt in your company. This is a great explanation of how the way we communicate impacts how we perceive our work environment.

Internal communications team focuses on the employee and views things from the employee’s perspective. The team is there to make sure the employees are not overwhelmed by the information. They will also be the source of important information, publish it in the proper format, in proper time and through the proper channel. They will ask you many questions. First, the same questions any employee could ask, and then the strategic ones: Why is this information relevant for employees? Is it for everyone or for a specific group? What do we want people to think, feel, and do, when they get this information? How do we know this interaction has been successful?

The goal of any communication is to cause change, action, or progress, but this is possible only if the message is good enough. This is why some of the questions above may sound annoying, as they may make you take a step back and rethink what it is you want to communicate. But, again, it is a common responsibility to create an effective message and effectively communicate it.

At the end of the day, communication is a living thing. As individuals, we can study and learn it to build better relationships in all aspects of our lives. Companies can set up communications as a process and manage it. It is much simpler to manage communications than to let them happen and unfold. Because, without proper direction, they may go in ways that could have serious consequences for your business.

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HR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IS NOT OPTIONAL - YOU CANNOT STAND ASIDE

Agilcon

Digital transformation of companies and changes in the market are forcing companies to adapt fast and radically transform their business models. For most companies, these changes have two components: ”digital“ = technology, and ”transformation“ = organization. Consequently, no successful business transformation will happen unless it is supported by significant organizational transformation. And that may mean different things for different companies. For some, it will be breaking down silos, for others adapting to the demands of the new generation of workers, and for most, it is updating the skills of the workforce and providing excellent employee experience.

Since most modern companies have more than one goal to achieve in the organizational domain, such a complex task cannot be achieved without the transformation of operational HR processes in such a way that they become automated and data-driven. In the race to not miss out on opportunities and be overrun by competition, there may be a rush to do something sooner rather than later and a lot of companies feel that they should just copy what others in their industry are doing and “go digital“ without a clear objective in mind. This is never a good idea. It usually ends up with the implementation of expensive technology that is not meeting the business needs and is not scalable for growth. In our recent study among HR professionals in the region, we have tried to find out at what stages of digitalization are our regional companies. As the graph shows, most companies have invested in some digitalization and are moving towards more strategic functions.

Image 2. Stage of the digital readiness of HR organizations in the region, Source: Agilcon survey of HR digital readiness, January 2022

However, most HR managers are unhappy to very unhappy with the HR technology that they are using right now, as they feel it is not supporting their more and more complex needs.

Image 1. Percentage of HR organizations that have some processes digitized, Source: Agilcon survey of HR digital readiness, January 2022

Administrative processes are digitized to a degree, occasionally, so are talent management processes, but what is missing is a holistic approach to digital HR.

Image 3. Satisfaction with existing HR software, Source: Agilcon survey of HR digital readiness, January 2022

Looking at the shortfalls of existing HR solutions, HR managers are missing automatization of HR processes, lack quality analytics

as well as support for more advanced processes such as performance management, training management, etc.

Image 4. Reasons for dissatisfaction with existing HR software, Source: Agilcon survey of HR digital readiness, January 2022

5 STAGES OF HR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

So let’s look at what can be done to successfully digitally transform HR. Needless to say, this is not an overnight process. True transformations take a lot of time and this is a process you will probably go through.

What we see today are companies in 5 stages of digitalization:

1. Simple HR where most data is on paper and the HR department only does the administrative work. These types of organizations are not working on people development.

2. Early digitalization where employee data is digitized but is not centralized in one application. HR is still focused on administration and people development is very rudimentary.

3. Digitized HR where there is a central HR system with complete employee data. Some processes are also digitized (Recruiting, Onboarding, Performance…)

4. Integrated HR with an advanced HR system that includes company OKRs and advanced analytics which supports decision making.

5. Finally, the Strategic HR that supports company culture.

HOW TO GET STARTED WITH HR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

As we have shown, most companies need to move towards a higher level of digitization of HR, but it can be challenging to make that first step. Here is what we think is important for success:

Establish a clear goal

Get everyone on board

Build a strong business case

Choose a trusted partner

Assess performance. Let’s go over them one by one.

1. Establish a clear goal

Before going off on a big transformational HR journey, take a step back and clearly define what your business needs are. When you make that list, take into account all stakeholders (management, peers, employees) and try to think ahead to what your business needs may be tomorrow. New technology is a big investment, both in terms of financial resources, as well as your team’s time and effort. Make sure to make the right decision not just for your needs today, but also for your future.

2. Get everyone on board

This means all stakeholders, from employees to the C-suite and everyone in -between. When it comes to a digital HR transformation – something that will affect the entire organization –you need all the support you can get for it to become a success. The most important aspect here is to get the buy-in and support from the top management.

3. Build a strong business case

You may end up with a long wish list of features and functions for your future HR system. Prioritize them based on impact and effort. When you think about the impact, think about what business results will be achieved from digitalization (cost saving, better performance, employee satisfaction, etc.). The effort, on the other hand, means the time and money it would take to actually go digital. A strong business case will need to be presented to your management and stakeholders in order for them to be on board with a transformational project such as this one.

4. Choose a trusted partner

Investing in a new HR or people system is a major decision. It is very important to choose a vendor who will support your current and future business needs. You have to talk to them, spend a lot of time with them, and see how they have done this for others. They should be able to offer consulting services for business processes as well. Further, they should offer local support.

5. Assess performance

Trying and implementing digital technologies is great, but doesn’t make much business sense if we don’t look at their results. Hence we need to critically assess what works and what doesn’t. After all, the only way for us to advance is to solve actual problems with technological solutions that truly solve these problems.

ON A FINAL NOTE

Without wanting to sound too dramatic, there can no longer be a question of whether you need an HR digital transformation. In a world that’s digitizing at a fast pace, with digital natives entering the workforce, you cannot afford to miss out. The success of any business relies on the strength and adaptability of the organization. Your future depends on it.

When is the right time for a career change?

Peđa Jovanović, Senior Partner, Atria Group

In the rapidly changing world, the most important thing is to be open to changes. Careers are an important part of our lives and a good idea is not to perceive it as fixed or limit ourselves to societal norms.

A few months ago I had a really interesting meeting with a friend, a successful professional in a big international company, who, at the age of 40, became a board member in an international company. From what I know, he is probably one of the top 10 professionals in his field, in our region. Besides all the achievements he made and the benefits he has, he is looking for a career change. He is thinking of starting his own business.

“I’m tired of these inflexible systems. I’m not running away from work, ideally, I should be focused only on work, not on politics and different internal problems that are not under my control or influence.”

To a certain extent, many of us want, more or less, the same thing. I don’t know a person who wakes up in the morning with the idea of making his colleagues’ life miserable or talking behind someone’s back. Unless you are an investor, you have three

possible forms of professional engagement. Each of them has its advantages and disadvantages, and for each of them the old saying works:

“The grass is always greener on the other side”

The employment options we have are:

• To be self-employed or a freelancer;

• To create your own system;

• To be a part of the system.

Self-employed / Freelancer

This form of professional engagement has become a dream job for many people these days. Ideally, living somewhere by the sea, or traveling around the world while working remotely, without strong obligations. Is this possible? Of course, it is. Actually, it is way easier than becoming a senior manager in an international company. However, like the other two options, this form is not ideal.

Advantages:

• Freedom in organizing your time;

• Choosing a place to live and higher mobility;

• Revenues are related to projects, as you earn more money per project;

• Work looks more like a sprint than like a marathon;

• You are your own boss.

Disadvantages:

• Revenues are not constant;

• Everything is on you. You have no right to get sick leave and deadlines are always behind you;

• There is a growing need for personal branding, sales, and marketing skills;

• Most of the time you work alone and sometimes this can be really frustrating.

• You have to perform all key business functions of the system well enough.

Who is it for?

• For individuals with specific, highly valued expertise that can work remotely;

• For individuals who don’t have complex life situations;

• It is often a good form of professional engagement for people in their 30s, as well as people closer to their 60s. The second option is to be a business owner

Business Owner

Advantages:

• You are the key influencer of your business development;

• If the business year goes well, you can pay yourself a dividend;

• From time to time, you have the opportunity to disconnect from the business, the system will continue to work without you;

• You have the opportunity to play a reallife game for the rest of your life.

Disadvantages:

• The results are mandatory;

• Overall responsibility is yours and yours only;

• All financial obligations must be paid on a monthly basis;

• You cannot stop your development;

• Your company will grow only as much as you are ready to grow;

• Forget about work-life balance for 5 to 10 years.

Who is it for?

• Ideally for individuals who already have freelancing experience or experience in an entrepreneurial company and who are ready to take risks;

• If you think of having a family, it’s better to start your own business before having a family or when your kids can take care of themselves.

• If you have a corporate career, it is ideal to start this adventure before you get into the comfort zone that the corporate world offers.

The third way of professional engagement is to be a part of a system

Being part of the system / Employee Advantages:

• Consistency of revenues and benefits that only a system can offer;

• Opportunity to learn and apply knowledge, almost on daily basis;

• Opportunity for career development, which implies new learnings;

• Whatever the pressure is, it is less than being a business owner;

• You can easily change the system.

Disadvantages:

• Some systems have too many procedures and big administration. This can be really frustrating;

• Sometimes you need lots of time and effort to change a simple thing;

• The number of vacation days is limited and you usually need to book them ahead;

• You might get tired of seeing the same people on a daily basis (especially if you don’t fit with them).

Who is this for?

This form of professional engagement is for individuals who:

• do not like risk-taking;

• like the idea of 9-5 work schedule;

• want more power and bigger responsibility;

• like to be intrapreneurs - to use the power of the system but to show their entrepreneurial qualities within it;

Are the transitions from one form of professional engagement to another possible?

Of course, they are and in all directions.

In the rapidly changing world, the most important thing is to be open to changes. Careers are an important part of our lives and a good idea is not to perceive it as fixed or limit ourselves to societal norms.

I was part of a system, I was a freelancer. Now I am a co-owner of a company, and every now and then I am thinking what it would be like if I would be a freelancer or part of the big system again. The right time for me to make a change is when I have a clear idea of what I really want and why.

END INEFFICIENT LEAVE MANAGEMENT BEFORE IT ENDS YOU

Vacation Tracker

Let’s face it: leave management isn’t exactly on top of most people’s priority list. However, the more your company overlooks this vital HR task, the more crucial managing it becomes in the long run.

Just ask us: our company, Cloud Horizon, faced the same problem when we found ourselves growing from a small team of 5 to over 25 people. Using Excel spreadsheets to manage leaves became a source of dread every time we opened them — until using them was no longer an option. It was messy, confusing, and caused more problems than it solved. Here are some of the biggest problems we encountered, and ultimately solved with our leave management solution, Vacation Tracker:

Difficult to manage as your team scales

From managing planned absences, and unexpected ones, to even keeping track of individual leave quotas, there’s a lot of stuff on your HR team’s plates. And when you take into account that employees from various departments are located in different locations, changing leave policies, regional holidays, and more, navigating PTO manually becomes a nearly impossible task.

When using Excel, your employees are left in the dark about who’s going on leave and when. This ultimately leads to vacation overlaps or overbooking — either of which isn’t good for your business. All this

disconnect about everyone’s leave schedules is the main ingredient in a recipe for disaster.

By developing features built to solve these issues into our tool, we were successfully able to offer teams increased visibility into everyone’s leave schedules by offering calendar integration, daily and weekly notifications, reports, and time off overlap information displayed when approving requests - just to name a few.

Human error can result in data loss

Data for a business is like oxygen to a human. We know it sounds dramatic, but losing data can prove to be fatal for departments like HR.

When using Excel, your employees are left in the dark about who’s going on leave and when. This ultimately leads to vacation overlaps or overbooking — either of which isn’t good for your business.

Data for a business is like oxygen to a human. We know it sounds dramatic, but losing data can prove to be fatal for departments like HR.

Making mistakes when manually entering information into Excel is more common than you’d think. Employees are required to merge documents, convert data from multiple files, as well as copy and paste data entries. After all, there’s only so much information Excel spreadsheets can hold before things get complicated.

From keeping track of your employee’s leave data, managing old records as well as updating information for payroll purposes, there is a wealth of crucial information that gets lost in translation between your files. This can often lead to costly mistakes.

Thus, storing this information on an external platform can help relieve your HR department’s stress by ensuring that critical data is accessible, safe, and secure at all times.

As a bonus, most leave management softwares (like ours) can also help you export & schedule important HR leave reports and monthly reporting in just a few clicks. Not only does this save you hours of work each month but also allows you to automate the entire process effortlessly.

Increased burnout & employee turnover

Burnout and employee turnover are two terms that immediately send shivers down the spine of every HR manager out there. After all, a thriving business is solely built on thriving people. And in order to thrive, it’s essential to take a break whenever you can.

However, by making your leave approval process a tedious and timeconsuming ordeal, many employees at your company won’t be able to take PTO when they need it. If employees don’t take breaks, they suffer from burnout and ultimately quit, leading to higher turnover in your company. Therefore, it’s more important than ever to ensure that your leave approval process is as streamlined as it can be.

To sum it up

Yes, the rumors are true: there are tons of issues with maintaining an inefficient leave management system on Excel. There can be data loss, employee burnout, trouble maintaining it as you scale, and much more. At Vacation Tracker, we understand these problems, and also ones you don’t always think about. Don’t fall prey to inefficient leave management - automate it instead and watch your company thrive!

"Which well-being action worked best for you?"

IVANA JANKOVIĆ ĐORĐEVIĆ, HR MANAGER, SMURFIT KAPPA BELGRADE “As a company that continuously encourages and nurtures the well-being of its employees, we have many ideas that our employees are happy to accept. However, one stood out among them- initiative in which we combined several wellbeing factors (mental, physical and social well-being) in a virtual journey across our mills. Well-being journey was the starting point of a new challenge for all of us, not only to improve the sense of belonging, but also to identify and implement new ways to extend our support to families and communities. During 30 days in a virtual trip that “transports us” from U K to Spain, 500 colleagues made 192.461.412 steps and learned something new about each city where our colleagues live and work.”

Maja Stojanović, VP Human Resources, Centili “Every our action is derived from understanding well-being as a core element of HR strategy. Only holistic and integrated approach to employee wellbeing will move us away from buzzwords to finding solutions that can meet needs of employees (physical, psychological, self/ fulfillment, economic…). If I choose some specific action, I will say that recent long-awaited team building that we had after more than 2 years really meant a lot, on many levels (based on feedback from our teammates). We (re)connected with each other, met old and new teammates, had many deep conversations, and laughed a lot.”

Jovana Hadži Tanović, Recruitment Manager, Endava In the previous year in Endava, we noticed that the hybrid model of work combined with flexible working hours is something that had the biggest impact on our employees' overall well-being which is reflected in our KPIs. This model is based on the trust and professionalism of our people - they are autonomous and able to choose between full work from home or working from the development center of their choice (five office locations at disposal). The result: people are more relaxed, don't waste time in traffic, and plan their work day and operating hours without any pressure.”

Ivana Ivić , Head of HR Division and Member of Management Board, UniCredit Bank Serbia “Benefits for everything that really matters are a group of well-being actions that work best for us:

• Day off for birthday - free time for our employees to spend with their loved ones

• One month off paid leave for fathers, for paternity leave

• Support to all our colleagues on their path to parenthood- we are offering reimbursement for one IVF attempt. We will continue to feel the pulse of our employees and what makes our employees more satisfied at work so that in the future we can also offer them benefits in accordance with their needs and win –the right way – together.”

Dejana Stevanović, HR Business ParTner, I&F Group “This year for us in HR and for IF Group is all about LOVE. So we feel it, we live it and we put it in everything we do. After two years of Corona prison and online platforms, we are finally gathered with a beautiful challenge to spread love. We do it by organizing happy hour once a week, by talking to our employees and hearing them, by Heartcount platform where they can express themselves and we can reach them. So we would say that the biggest impact on business and the most important one are happy and smiling employees.”

Marijana Olbina, Employer Branding Specialist, Transcom “In Transcom, supporting mental-health and general well-being is no longer “a perk”. It’s a must-have resource for employees. One of our answers to this burning issue was to design a free online psychological counseling platform. Being anonymous, this benefit doesn’t provide us with detailed metrics, but the number of users and general employee satisfaction numbers show that it is indispensable, not only when it comes to employee well-being, but also for developing and maintaining a healthy work environment. Transcom Care initiatives will continue to focus on further development of mental-health benefits and activities.”

Darija Ugrina, HR Specialist, Vicert “What makes Vicert a special place to work are its people. We care for their progress and development. For us at the HR team is vital to listen to our employees, evaluate and observe. To be able to do that, we organize regular meetings and ensure they understand we want to know how they feel and if there is anything the organization can help them with. We nurture this individual approach at the organizational level, ensuring the essential support for a healthy, happy, productive work environment.”

Nevena Stefanović, Chief Human Resources Officer, Yettel “We’ve noticed that a flexible and hybrid work model suits our employees best as it helps them to achieve balance – balance between work and home, friends and family, having fun and responsibilities. Balance can mean different things for each one of us. That is why we want to hear what helps our employees work better, faster, smarter, so we’ve developed Let’s talk workshops. There we discuss what balance means to us, how to be ourselves and make an impact, and develop ideas that could positively influence us, but also our customers. Our idea is to create our new organizational culture together.”

Jelena Šušilović, Head of People, CBRE SEE “Ensuring the well-being of em ployees is essential when it comes to recruiting and, above all, re taining employees. As our potential lies in our people, well-being is an integral part of CBRE’s corporate culture. Our Be Well program focuses on five areas of well-being: occupational, social, environmental, physical and intellectual. Through the Be Well program we engage and educate employees by sharing information, providing activities and creating a forum for discussions about well-being. Topics range from mental resilience and ergonomics to mindful movement, self-care and best practices for connecting with others.”

Authors

Maja Ninković Shapera

Maja Ninković

Shapera, PhD is a People Analytics expert, the owner of HR research and consulting agency Alathea R&S, founder of the People Analytics Hub and the subject matter editor of the HR WORLD magazine. Currently serving as VP People in a global digital communication scale-up Mitto.

Žaklina Teofilović

Žaklina is HR and people enthusiast. Strongly believes in building environment where people can do their best and business flourish, both in a sustainable manner. For more than 15 years she has been on leading positions in HR, currently Human Resources Director in MTU Maintenance Serbia. Experienced in supporting business expansion and building HR organizations from the scratch. Zaklina is CIPD alumni. She conducts PhD research to explore the impact of the HR systems on the characteristics of the workforce (motivation, knowledge, skills, abilities, opportunities, creative performance and well-being) and consequently on operational and financial results of the companies.

Milan Prnjić

I am a Global HR Business Partner at Global healthcare company Novartis Pharma AG, based in Basel Switzerland. With background in business partnering and talent management, I believe that the most meaningful way to succeed is to help others succeed and thrive - this is when we succeed together. I always stay true to my values of Candour, Impact, Fairness and Generosity. I am lucky and hope to continue to be in the position to be inspired by people, help drive change and achieve positive outcomes for our business, customers and our people.

Nada Krstić

Comp-lit graduate turned HR professional with 5+ years of experience in corporate and start-up/scale-up environments. Currently Senior Manager, People & Culture at Mitto, where she puts a fresh spin on issues such as organizational culture, employee experience, business partnership, and leadership development. Passionate about People Analytics, especially repurposing her qualitative analysis skillset in business contexts.

Nebojša Janićijević

Nebojša Janićijević holds a bachelor's, master's and do ctoral degrees from the Faculty of Eco nomics, University of Belgrade. He has been employed at that faculty since 1985, and in 2004 he was appointed a full professor. The main areas of research are: orga nizational design, organizational behavior, change management, or ganizational cultu re, human resource management. He teaches undergra duate, master's and doctoral studies in subjects in the field of organization and management of human resources. He has published 7 books, over 150 articles in domestic and foreign scientific journals and participated in numerous scien tific conferences in the country and abroad. He has been on study visits to the United States three times as a Fulbright Sc holar. He has been a consultant to a number of compa nies in the areas of organization and human resource management.

Milica Vukelić

Milica is an assistant professor in Work and organizational psychology at the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. Milica has more than 10 years of experience in university teaching, research, and HR consulting. Milica’s research interests center on the broad field of work and organizational psychology, career development, workplace bullying and stress, work engagement and well-being. Milica has published more than 50 research papers and participated in many international and national research projects funded by UNDP, UNICEF, World Bank, ILO, WUS Austria, IFRC, GIZ, and the Ministry of Education and Science, Republic of Serbia.

Milana Malešev

Milana Malešev, PhD A CIPD Qualifications Tutor, Founder of Learning Makeover, and an Associate Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at FEFA.

Milana developed her consulting skills and business acumen working as a PwC clientfacing professional for 14 years. In 2020 she obtained a PhD in Psychology, in learning in the workplace. Years of simultaneous professional and academic work brought great enrichment in both fields.

Milana enjoys sharing her insights with clients and students, helping them rethink their approach to people development.

Petar Jelača

I have 10+ years of leadership experience in services organizations and customer care.

I am a certified Six Sigma Lean green belt. I have a degree in philosophy from the University of Belgrade. I joined Clarivate in 2021 as Head of Customer Care in the EMEA Center of Excellence and have worked on setting up and scaling the Customer care organization in Belgrade. In September 2021, I became VP Customer care for the EMEA region focusing on building a scalable and standardized Customer care operating model and organizational design enabling seamless integration of acquisitions and high standards of customer and employee experience.

Heike Marie-Luise Caspari

Dr. Heike MarieLuise Caspari, Director Leadership Development and Change Management at MTU Aero Engines AG, Germany, is a highly professional senior manager in the field of Human Resource Development. She has expert level skills in executive coaching and development, team development, change management and organizational development in various industries. In addition to that, she has been a lecturer in many universities in Austria and Germany and works as a Management Consultant & Executive Coach for international organizations and companies.

Aleksandra Fuštić

Aleksandra

Fuštić works at HR World as Community Manager of Montenegro HR Community. Before that, she worked as Manager and then CEO of the most famous job board in MontenegroPrekoveze.me for four years. At HR WORLD she found a great and innovative place to contribute to the development of HR, work on youth education and manage content for the HR community. Her topics of interest are Human Resources, Marketing, Content writing, literature, psychology, history of art and science.

Kuniya Tsubota

Kuniya Tsubota is a graduate of Franklin and Marshall College, Pennsylvania, USA with B.A. in Economics and History. Between 1998 and 2019, he held a variety of HR roles with IBM in Japan and Asia Pacific headquarters, primarily in the areas of Workforce Strategies and Planning, Compensation and Benefits. In September 2014, he was appointed as Vice President, HR at IBM Asia Pacific, covering 14 countries with over 120,000 employees. From October 2020, he is leading HR for IBM MEA and CEE.

Joy Clark

Joy Clark, Chief People Officer at Worldwide Clinical Trials, is passionate about enriching the “human experience” and engaging the best global talent by creating valuesdriven corporate cultures where all employees can do their best work. She has built her career at highgrowth and hightech companies such as Penske, QVC, Sony Ericsson, Cree and Valassis Digital. In organizations where transformation is needed, she is an accomplished and strategic change agent. At WCT, Joy leads global human resources. She also has degrees in political science and Spanish.

AUTHORS

Ivana Barbara Turkalj

Wellbeing and Growth Strategist at Above Academy

Ivana Barbara has nearly 12 years of work experience in the corporate wellbeing industry. Having helped hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals learn how to improve their performance, and sustain it naturally, she is an expert on increasing personal energy, capacity and stress resilience. Her mission is to create healthy workplaces by spreading awareness about the importance of investing in workplace wellbeing and people. She pours her heart and soul into

shifting mindsets and firmly believes that taking care of people is the hallmark of successful companies.

Marina Rakić

Marina Rakić joined MK Group as the HR Director of MK Group in January 2021. Together with the HR team, she creates and implements the HR strategy for the entire MK Group. Marina came from one of the largest IT companies in the world - IBM, from the position of HR manager for the Sales Department for the EMEA. Before that, she worked as HR manager for the sales sector for the Central-Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. She also worked as an HR manager for Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Albania, where she was responsible for the design and implementation of the HR strategy for the local market.

Miloš is the leading IoT Smart Cities tech innovator and entrepreneur, combining broad technical expertise (IoT, software & hardware), business development experience and detailed understanding of local government / urban planning regulations. Through Strawberry energy, Miloš pioneered the development of Outdoor Smart City infrastructure, creating smart street furniture that brings Internet of Things to outdoor places. Miloš is an internationally awarded and recognised speaker and thought leader in the areas of IoT, Smart cities and sustainability.

Stefan Vukajlović

Stefan Vukajlović is the Group HR Director for C&B at Fortenova Group (5 countries, 27 companies, 50.000+ employees). Before joining Fortenova Gro up team, Stefan gathered experience as Mercer Business Leader – Country Manager for Serbia and Croatia as well as in two other international HR rewarding consulting companies and in an international premium automobile manufacturer at the beginning of his career. His specializations lie in establishment and implementation of C&B strategy, Job Evaluations & Grading structuring, Performance & Talent Management, bonus policy, benefit policy etc., linked to corporate culture and corporate values. Stefan has broad expertise in data analysis, functional skills design and compensation ben chmarking, as well as workforce analytics and organizational effectiveness –review and redesign roles in support to business goals and expectations.

Tanja Mladenović

Tanja Mladenović is a go-to person when you need answers on “who, what, where, when, and why” from the Serbian IT landscape. After graduating from the Faculty of Political Science, she immersed herself in the tech industry. Tanja forged her experience as an employer branding expert working for tech giants like Nutanix and Bosch. After a corporate career, she co-founded Unusual Sour — “a sophisticated web3-first marketing machine” that helps tech companies such as Decenter, FishingBooker, Alchemy, and many more overcome their communication nightmares.

Miriam Hägerbäumer

Prof. Dr. Miriam Hägerbäumer is psychologist and full Professor of Human Resource Management and Business Psychology at Europäische Fernhochschule Hamburg (University of Applied Sciences) in Germany. She has completed various professional positions in the HR sector and in science. Miriam examines and develops futureoriented study and training formats, particularly in the context of human resource management. As a consultant and systemic coach, she also supports companies and executives in the areas of people development, occupational health management and leadership.

AUTHORS

Miloš Milisavljević

Sanja Jevđenijević

She is a senior HR professional with the longstanding experience in designing and executing high-impact HR management strategies. After she had been working in a number of different industries, she founded her own consulting agency - HR Xcel – and continued to support developing individuals, teams, and organizations. Her true love is people and her mission is to empower individuals in building their own successful careers, and to empower organizations to go a step ahead in creating the work environment in which extra mile results are delivered by engaged people, acting upon the best HR practices.

Dušan Basalo

Dušan Basalo is the founder and CEO of Talks and Folks company. He is also the founder of several companies in the field of consulting and professional development (Atria Group, Generation Zeal, beside Talks and Folks).

Dušan is a member of the managing board of the Serbian Association of Managers (SAM) for the last 5 years and the creator of the SAM Mentoring program and SAM Leadership academy. Today, Dušan works exclusively with individuals and teams who are on the highest management levels. His activities focus on executive mentoring and connecting business professionals with the most successful mentors and experts from various business areas.

Ana Krstić

As an intern at Maverick Consulting, Ana has been developing her writing skills in Serbian and in English. Her focus is mainly on topics related to personal and organizational development. In these seven months, Ana witnessed a change in the way she perceives things by practicing the habit of always observing from different perspectives. She graduated in Italian language and literature and is fluent in English.

Ana enjoys reading, travelling and learning about different cultures. She believes in being a lifelong learner and is open to learn something new every day.

Peđa Jovanović

Peđa Jovanović is a senior partner at Atria Group. He is a consultant, men tor, trainer and coach with exten sive international experience. He is actively working in more than 20 countries around the world (China, Italy, Czech Republic, Portugal, Germany, Poland, India, Singapore, Brazil, Qatar, Austria, Bulgaria etc.). His areas of expertise are organizational, team and personal development. In his career, Pedja had the opportu nity to lead many large projects in the area of organi zational transfor mation, leadership development and change in corpora te culture, as well as hundreds of different training and coaching programs. The structure, dynamics and flexibility are the most important characteristics of his work. Some of his titles are NLP Master Trainer, Master Certified Coach (MCC), ICF Mentor Coa ch, PCM Certified Trainer, Persona Global Master Consultant etc.

Tijana Bejatović

Tijana Bejatović –internal communi cation professional, founder of topIC_ community. In over 15 years of experience in both service and corporate work environment, I've contributed to different business successes through roles in internal communications, PR, marketing, employee engage ment and strategic planning. I am a passionate lover of internal communications. How we com municate at work has the power to transform our lives by making us feel engaged and purposeful. I have dedicated my last 10 years only to internal commu nications, creating a bond between management and people, giving business strategies and goals mass understanding. My manifesto is to contribute in building IC profes sion and making it stronger on Balkan market, to help organizations and all working with IC to unleash the potential of great internal communi cation.

Đorđe Maričić

Đorđe is a highly motivated entrepreneur and coach with experience in training small and big groups in various industries.

Đorđe considers his training session a success, if all participants leave with at least one new discovery about themselves. He created and held over dozens of development programs in EMEA and the US, working with profesionals, teams and leaders with special focus on communication.

Đorđe is a firm believer that ability to change perspectives is the key to forming better connections, and thus creating a better society to live in.

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