I’ve never worked in specialist recruitment before, but when you sit in the generalist seat you realise just how crucial having the right people in the right place at the right time is. It’s not just about bums on seats; its the start of something big in your talent management process.

Now we all know how to place an ad on seek, and what questions to ask (or not ask) in an interview, but how many of us really know how to source the best candidates for our business?

It gives me great pleasure to provide information to you about the first Australasian Sourcing Summit, on 11th August 2011 at the University of Technology.

Bringing together sourcing innovators from Australia and New Zealand, the Sourcing Summit will highlight the important role of sourcing in the region. The Summit will provide attendees with the opportunity to learn from thought leaders, practitioners and organisations who are deeply involved in the local industry and are at the forefront of sourcing excellence.

Whether you are a sourcer, researcher, recruiter or HR professional there is something for everyone at the summit.

Here’s the exciting part. All HR Club Sydney members (you must be a HR Club Sydney subscriber and a member of our LinkedIn group) have access to a 15% discount off the ticket to the Australasian Sourcing Summit. Simply go to http://sourcingsummit.com.au/register/ and enter the code HRCLUB11 to receive your discount.

If you can’t raise the moolah to go along, or want to contribute to a research study on the sourcing profession please also consider filling out this survey http://sourcingsummit.com.au/sourcing-report/. There is currently a lucky draw for the chance to win a free ticket to the Sourcing Summit- you’ve got to be in it to win it!

Hey there! Apologies for the hiatus. The last few weeks have been busy and full of awesome. You may have noticed I’ve just taken up a contract at Lion Nathan National Foods and I am having the best time working there. I intend to chat a bit about why it is so awesome a bit later, but it is fitting that today’s post is about ‘Dream Employers’.

A little while back you may remember a post asking you to participate in the Dream Employers Survey. Well kiddies, the results are in. Get your copy here.

To be honest, there weren’t too many surprises there. No matter what sort of engagement model you follow, they usually involve one of two of the following components; having your people say great things about you as an employer to family and friends, allowing people to be empowered to do their jobs, and engaging people to do something that has an impact on other people or a purpose.

For instance, the report states that “word of mouth is an extremely powerful tool to promote positive messages to the market (Reichheld, 2003)” and Coca Cola Amatil is cited as an example where people learn about the culture through word of mouth because people are so passionate about the brands and the company. This is why their employee referral program is so successful.

Google says that “talented people are attracted to Google because we empower them to change the world” and Disney says that what they do for a living makes people happy and that has a huge impact of their employees. People also want to work for a brand or culture they can be proud of, or that is fun and makes them happy. There’s no doubt Virgin does this well as Branson says “Our people need to be 100% proud of where they work and believe in what they do everyday”.

I’d argue that ‘generous pay and trendy products or services’ hasn’t been enough to make an employer stand out as a desirable place to work for a little while now. Herzberg’s hygiene factors taught us about that a number of years ago. Perhaps employers still aren’t getting the message.

I guess one thing that is highlighted in the report is the benefit in having AND delivering upon an employee value proposition (EVP). Now while this may sound fluffy to the business, if held accountable an EVP can hold a vital key in talent attraction and retention.

So I guess my Friday question to you is- do you have an employee value proposition and if yes, what is it and how do you ensure that you deliver upon that promise to your people?

In creating HR Club Sydney, I’ve been very fortunate to be able to meet a number of very amazing and passionate individuals. I also regularly get invited to events that are happening in Sydney, and am free to write my thoughts on these topics. After all, I don’t make any money from HR Club Sydney, I’m not reliant on boosting traffic to my site and I don’t get paid to say certain things. It’s great because I feel that gives me the ok to say when I think something or someone has done or is doing something cool.

With that said, the week before last I was invited to the Proteus Leadership Networking Breakfast where HR Club Sydney was fortunate enough to be given a table.

I got the opportunity to sit with some of my favourite HR Club Sydney people and it was fantastic to see so many cards being swapped and potential career opportunities being discussed.

I also wanted to write about the presentation because well I thought it was fantastic, and apologies it’s a wee bit later than I would have liked but I wanted to do it justice.

I attended this seminar at a time where I was thinking very much about leadership and what it means to be one. Within HR we know the difference between leadership and management, but it’s important to remember our friends in the business don’t always see it our way. This presentation hit the nail right on the head and I’m hoping many of us can use some of these ideas to create change in our organisations.

These are some of my key take outs (and you’ll probably be nodding your head or shouting hallelujah with me lol!).

Richard started off by talking about how people normally fall into management roles, rather than being selected for their people management skills. Familiar story particularly in areas of technical skills or ability. What happens then is that people with bad managers either leave or try to wait for them to leave. We all know about how employee engagement impacts upon people and the business- so why is it still happening?

I love the Peter Drucker quote that was used, “The only definition of a leader, is someone who has followers”.

It’s so true. Being Gen Y, I have often got the attitude from Managers that I should do exactly what they say because they are the Manager/Senior Executive/Partner/Director/Been here a really long time etc. And that’s not to say that being young means you can walk around doing what you like or thinking you know everything- but it begs the question: without people actually wholeheartedly following what you are doing, how effective are you as a leader anyway?

Richard also mentioned the work of Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones who are Europe’s leading experts on organisational culture, leadership and change.

They are past winners of the prestigious McKinsey Award for the best article in the Harvard Business Review, entitled, “Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?” The huge interest the article generated led to a five-year journey exploring authentic leadership and their book is the culmination of that research.

Just because you have the title or “authority” it doesn’t mean you will have people onboard. It’s not an entitlement- it’s a privilege to be a manager or a leader but some people these days just don’t get it. Some even believe that that is the way people should be treated because “they were treated that way” or “that’s how it is in X industry”.

4 words.

Doesn’t make it right.

Source

Richard talked about how autocratic leadership may have worked in the past, but that Gen Y just simply won’t put up with it. Will they complain? Probably not. They’ll just vote with their feet.

In looking at a definition of an autocratic leader, the wikipedia machine says that:

Under the autocratic leadership style, all decision-making powers are centralized in the leader, as with dictator leaders.
They do not entertain any suggestions or initiatives from subordinates. The autocratic management has been successful as it provides strong motivation to the manager. It permits quick decision-making, as only one person decides for the whole group and keeps each decision to himself until he feels it is needed to be shared with the rest of the group.

In the great words of Dr Phil “How’s that workin for ya?”

So now that we are all nodding our heads in unison, the real challenge is to get this message across to the decision makers of the business. Would love to get some discussion happening in this, and let’s keep it on topic. It’s not Gen Y versus Baby Boomers/Gen X etc.

It’s about leadership and what’s going to be effective.

Also- Richard was a fantastic speaker so check out his presentation here
Breakfast Followrship NSW

If you follow me on twitter you might have noticed that I’ve been doing Dry July. This means that I have had much more time in the day over the weekend so I thought I might spend some time catching up on some reading and one I have been meaning to spend some time on is the AHRI people@work 2020 White Paper.

It come’s as no surprise that the report articulates that “the issue of talent attraction, development and retention remains the number one priority in Australia, and projections of skills shortages through to 2020 by Skills Australia (2010) confirms this is still likely to be the top issue for HR professionals in business and government over the next decade”.

Later it then states that “Skills Australia reports that by 2025, 45% of the workforce will change employer every three years”.

In a HR generalist role there is often the competing pressures around what you should focus your time on, because lord knows there certainly is not enough time in the day for the average HR Generalist/Business Partner/Manager etc.

Do you do all the small, urgent requests or requests made by senior management/partners in the business? Or do you put these behind the more strategic things, knowing that things like talent attraction, development and retention will continue to be a high priority for the better part of the next decade?

Do you commit to long term planning because you think it will pay off for the business overall, or do you jump in and get the quick wins under your belt knowing that you’ll probably only stay 2-3 years and move onto a better opportunity if it comes your way?

It’s a delicate balancing act, and a debate in which many in the profession would probably argue differently.

Something to consider in terms of where to focus your efforts to be as effective as you can be, is the CLC research which talks about the four roles of the HR business partner:

The Strategic Partner collaborates with the line leader to create HR solutions for business unit needs. In this role, you might need to help your business leader surface talent gaps or identify important HR metrics.

The Emergency Responder fixes acute problems when they arise and, finally, the Employee Mediator helps to manage through conflicts and politics that arise in the organization.

They all seem important right? Which ones do you normally place as your first responsibility though?

The interesting thing about the research is that although most of us probably find ourselves in the Emergency Responder and Employee Mediator a great deal of the time and while we may be able to get quick wins or impress senior management in the short term, it’s actually not the place that we can be the most beneficial.

The CLC research proves that the Strategic Role provides the greatest impact to HR-Line support effectiveness. In fact, strategic partner activities, such as developing the next generation of leaders, understanding your business unit’s talent needs, and identifying HR metrics, have an average impact of 33%. This is three times higher than the next largest category, the Operations Manager.

Click to enlarge image

What this means is that while you can’t completely ignore any one of these four parts of your role, it does put things into perspective when you think about where most of your time and effort should go in order to maximize your effectiveness.

Which roles do you mostly work in and does the fact that you might be moving on in 2-3 years impact your thinking around this?

For those of you who might not know (get on LinkedIn already!), I’ve just started a new job in a law firm in Sydney, and yes it is a big change. I’ve worked at Sara Lee, then Vodafone, BOC and most recently CSIRO- and the cultures couldn’t be more different. Sara Lee (and yes we did eat cakes while we were there) was relatively young and passionate about what they did. For me it was a mixture between talking to office staff about performance management, and then going on a road trip up the coast to talk to factory workers about the same thing. Good learning experience.

Then I moved to Vodafone which was very fast paced, passionate and full on. There was a race car in reception, everything was red (even filing cabinets) and the values images were plastered across everything you can think of. Things moved so fast sometimes you felt like you didn’t have time to breathe. The culture there was very young, trendy and fun (most of the time). I remember when I was there and hearing them talk about how the internet was going to go mobile- so I’m glad that it did

BOC produces most of the gas that you encounter in your life. Its the gases that bubble your beer or your softdrink, the gas that fill up the tyres on your Qantas plane and even the oxygen you might receive in an ambulance or hospital. Here I worked in the Contact Services part of the business so again it was a different challenge talking to call centre staff about performance management and career development.

Then came CSIRO. Wow, working with scientists and in the public sector. I was in for a challenge. It took me some time to understand the way they work (yes, scientists and academics can be a little different) and what was important to them, but I got there and managed to get over 90% participation in the Annual Performance Agreement which was big news.

Now I find myself in Professional Services, and working in the city. How will these challenges be different? What will the staff be like here?

Well at the moment obviously I’m doing a lot of research into the firm (what they do and who they work with), but also about how HR works in the legal industry.

Here are some of the key takeouts for me from a report produced by Beaton Consulting called “Improving attraction and retention of talent in PSFs“.

• Attraction and retention is still one of the biggest challenges and ‘our research indicates that the direct cost of replacing a senior professional is about $130,000′.
• Over the last five years, firms believe they have achieved greater acceptance by senior practitioners of the role that they play in retaining and attracting staff. But there has been more limited success in actually translating this into behaviour change.
• The top features that candidates are looking for is challenging and engaging work, career development, learning and development, and sweetners (think gym memberships, childcare etc).

And finally,

Our research last year into 1000 professionals in Australia PSFs showed that the main reasons why people stayed were that:

• The firm’s leadership was effective
• They were excited about where the firm was going
• There were opportunities to learn and develop
• They had a good relationship with their supervisor
• Their values matched the firms

Hmm.. sounds like this could apply to almost any organisation. I agree there are different challenges depending on what industry you work in, but its important that the same core things are important to people no matter where they work.

Recently I came across the HR Tech Report (you can download for free) which was collected, analysed and compiled by Navigo (who is an Australian HR IT company). The research was conducted by phone and email in 164 Australian organisations with over 500 employees, representing over 730,000 employees and the respondents were HR Managers (26%) or HR Technologists.

Here are a few of my key take-outs from the report:

Over 70% of enterprise-level (over 500 employees) in Australia use a Human Resources Information System (HRIS)

Wow. So there are 30% of Australian companies out there with more than 500 employees who don’t have a HRIS to easily measure how HR metrics are impacting the business, to assist with workforce planning or talent management?

HRIS adoption is diverse with 23 different HRIS cited. SAP HR and Chris21 are the most popular

HR Executives believe that strategic initiatives suffer through the time-intensive demands of transactional HR- the drive for efficiency is really a drive to free time and resources for strategy

This is a big one. HR professionals are constantly trying to get out of the transactional, everyday stuff and work on the more strategic, bigger picture stuff.  CLC research argues that this ‘inherent tension’ is why the HR Business Partner role is so difficult.  The strategic partner role requires HRBPs to focus on chronic challenges, while the emergency responder role requires the exact opposite—immediate responses to acute challenges. Similarly, the strategic partner role also requires organization-wide solutions, while the employee mediator role is focused on small groups or individuals.

Despite the efficiency-led cost saving potential of HR systems, the ROI is often quantifiable. Business cases for systems should strive to put a dollar figure on ROI, plus identify the opportunity-cost of pursuing more strategic actions

This is a tough one. Yes these systems will make things easier for you, you’ll be able to do more, and get into that strategic space, but I think this is a case of how much the business wants that too. It’s your job to sell the benefits in terms of impact on the bottom line i.e. if given the opportunity to be more strategic- how does that help your organisation achieve its goals?

Performance management, cited by other sources as a key differentiator, is very poorly represented in Australia with 52% of organisations employing manual systems or no systems for the task. Only 30% of Australian enterprises employ any succession planning technology

Again this one makes me cringe. Performance Management on paper is just terrible given all the online collaboration and sharing tools we have now. If you don’t have the technology at least put it online somehow- avoid the paper shuffle at all costs.

Obviously I’m a fan of technology because to me it makes me more efficient. I know I can do more in a shorter amount of time. I think the hard part is convincing the business that this is a priority and they should invest in it.

Last week I went along to my very first career’s fair at Macquarie University and for a HR person who loves employer branding stuff and glossy brochures, I would liken it to the Easter Show for HR people.

Yes and after a day at the show, here are the contents of my showbag.

Honorable Mentions

Ernst and Young- I am a big fan of their work. Inside their ‘Make it Happen’ brochure is all the right things. Talks about their high performance culture that recognises and rewards talent. Highlights all the different ways to get work experience or a foot in the door at Ernst and Young including vacation programs, cadet programs and the career compass program. It describes different parts of the business that you can work in, and all the various ways that they reward their people. Everything they do is seamlessly integrated with the online work they do as well. Beautifully branded.

NAB produced a very nice little notebook for students to write in, although not before clearly outlining their EVP. Branded with a space theme, it’s called ‘NAB launching exciting opportunities for success’ featuring space shuttles and stars etc. It looks really nice with plenty of photos and quotes from staff, a message from the Group CEO and outlines the specific benefits of their graduate program. I was excited by reading through it.

Deloitte. Just love everything written in this. Starting with their values, this isn’t just the usual trust and respect stuff you normally hear. The ‘Seven signals’ are pretty awesome and something people can really live by. It’s simple, but very well presented. I love the way they have presented their rewards. Get this, they give graduates $500 when they start to spend on a corporate wardrobe. Very cool, yet practical idea.

Coolest Gadgety/ Promotional Things

I personally thought this was awesome. It’s called a ‘Skoona Moova’. It’s a pocket sized, foldaway reusuable drinks carrier. Whilst everyone loves a yo-yo (and they had them too) this was something a uni student would find cool; particularly those who are regulars at the footy or cricket. Hill Rogers Chartered Accountants had these ‘Skoona Moovas’ branded and were accompanied a card which talked about how ‘Hill Rogers people are forward thinking and thrive in a friendly and flexible work place’. Nicely done.

I’m a sucker for these types of things, but I just loved this ‘D’ clip that says ‘Find a career you’ll want to hold onto’. Commonwealth Bank also had a small passport sized book called ‘Field Notes’ which looked just like some sort of travel diary including maps, photos and scribbles. Using the mountain climbing analogy (from the D Clip, and right through the field notes) they talk about the quality of the graduate program, the different areas that you can work in, and feature testimonials from CBA grads. Excellent job.

KPMG is bright and colourful, outlining what kind of people they look for, what kind of work you can do at KMPG, how they value their people and how the selection process works. Their brochure comes with a cool notebook and here comes the gadget part. I actually initially thought it was a small pen or laser, but when you project this little baby onto a wall it says ‘Live. Learn. Discover. Achieve’. Pretty cool.

Finally I’m not sure I totally fell in love with the ‘do you have an Aldi Brain?’ idea, but it leads you to their ‘think smarter’ website which is pretty cool. It has a brain challenge and its a very interactive website.

So what are your thoughts? Do you like this gimicky kinda stuff at fairs or do you think it’s a bit of a waste of money?

Here’s some more photos from the day:

Another fantastic piece of work from Chris Ferdinandi in the United States- I just had to share this. Subscribe to his blog today for fresh ideas about HR.

In case you haven’t heard of Destination Talent by Phillip Tusing, it’s a blog which professes to cover “Musings, riffs, rants and insights on everything talent”.

Phillip is an experienced Australian Recruiter, but has worked in a number of different roles over the last nine year including analyst and marketing manager. Currently he consults to recruitment firms, job boards and talent solutions providers.

On his site you’ll find Job Board reports, reports on understanding the source of talent in Australia and hot off the press today: Understanding the behaviour and intention of executives in Australia.

Destination Talent is well worth subscribing to so you get the latest in the area of talent sourcing delivered straight to your inbox or reader. If you don’t have the time to go through the report, at least check out a few of the key findings.

Happy Monday Reading!

The other day I went to my second North Ryde HR Network (NRHRN) breakfast seminar, which was on Talent Management. In 2008 at the very first NRHRN event, Ronan Carolan, HR Director with Sanofi Aventis spoke about their Talent Management strategy that they had adopted in order to address performance, engagement and succession planning issues within their organisation. The strategy was called “People, Performance, Potential”.

Since 2008 a lot has happened as I’m sure you are aware and like many HR strategies, these are a work in progress. As such, the purpose of last week’s seminar was for Suzanne McCord (Peformance and Capability Manager ANZ) to give us an update on their progress and issues they have faced along the way.

Interestingly enough, the APAC region for Suzanne also includes Russia!
Suzanne spent most of last year based in Singapore focusing on talent identification and development across the region. In her role at Sanofi Aventis, she is part of a global talent development project which aims to develop a simplified and consistent approach to talent globally.

Photo Source

One of the first things I remember about Suzanne’s talk is that she started by saying that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to talent management which is a good reminder. She said that it needed to be customised to the organisational structure, and culture of the organisation. It is also imperative that it integrates into all your other HR practices, particularly performance appraisals. It should touch on every aspect of HR. Sounds simple enough, but how many of us can say we have a smooth integration between our performance appraisals and talent management? We should. It only makes talent management harder for us if we don’t!

Essentially Sanofi Aventis looked at the way they were structured and the way in which they wanted to do business to set themselves up for success in the future. Suzanne mentioned that they were going through loads of change locally, regionally and globally. They also appointed a new CEO around 15 months ago and a new Head of HR around 5 months ago.

Change is pretty much a constant in the organisation at the moment.

Globally speaking, there are a number of initiatives happening under the broad “Transforming Sanofi Aventis” strategy, including strategies around remuneration and benefits, rewards and performance management. The specific component around talent is called “Transforming Talent”.

So how do they define talent management? Basically Suzanne says it’s about identifying, developing and managing talent in such a way to ensure that they have the best possible people, in the right positions to enable them to achieve strategic outcomes. In order to be successful, it must comes from the top (i.e. they need leadership buy-in) and it must link back to the business strategy.

The issue at the moment for Sanofi Aventis is that, although they have the buy-in and all the processes in place, the real challenge is to get things consistent across the different countries i.e. correct calibration of talent. There needs to be one company with one process.

But if you think about all the different countries in the mix there such as China, Philippines, Australia and Russia- that’s quite a challenge and a work in progress as Suzanne mentions. One of the first steps was to ensure that they were all using the same definitions of talent in each country, however with the differences in languages and meanings; these definitions can be interpreted differently.

Have you ever encountered this issue in global talent management and how have you overcome it? It would be great to get some conversation happening on this topic.

I’ll post the full presentation when I can get my hands on it