Ok so just one last thing after the Digital Citizens Event earlier this week.

I posted the question below:

and here are some of the responses:

Part of me wonders if these responses were just a knee-jerk reaction to someone questioning personal freedom on social media (hey guys you are preaching to the converted here! I’m all for social). I was asking the question because I think it poses some serious issues about what you would from both a HR and employer branding perspective.

The person that immediately comes to mind is Scott Monty.

For those who don’t know, he’s the head of Social Media for Ford Motor Company.

He has a blog and twitter account in his own name.

On his blog the following statement appears:

This is my personal blog, where I share my perspectives on social media – the convergence of marketing, advertising and PR on the Web – for marketers, agencies, the enterprise and the individual. This blog contains my personal views.

If you have a quick look at both those sites, it’s very much about Ford isn’t it.

I don’t know if anyone is a V8 fan, but there is a big rivalry between the two manufacturer’s Ford and Holden. My brother has been a mad V8 fan I’m pretty sure since he was born and I’ve watched Bathurst more times than I care to remember.

My point is about the fans. They buy t-shirts, hat, flags, quilt covers, watches- everything. They usually have a favourite driver too. So what happens when your poster boy switches lanes?

Well Craig Lowdnes is no stranger to this going from Holden, to Ford and then back to Holden again (for V8′s).

Me with Craig and Jamie

Yes drivers change team, people change jobs- but it doesn’t go unnoticed.

This article starts with “It is the sight Ford fans did not want to see – the V8 Supercar champion’s team now racing a Holden Commodore”.

So how do you as a business “get over it” when your high-profile star player changes teams? From an IP point of view, would you allow Scott Monty to keep his blog and twitter account? I think these are grey areas so I’m keen to hear your thoughts.

I’m very excited this morning to publish this guest post from AER Head.

Aer Head is a Sydney-based blogger, analyst and commentator on trends in the attraction, engagement and retention space in Australia. He is currently GAD at TMP Worldwide, Sydney, (and takes no credit for any of the work mentioned below which was managed from Adelaide- but read on, it’s great stuff).

It seems everyone is predicting 2010 as another year of change.

Kevin Wheeler is foreseeing a greater movement to non-traditional employment (temp, contract, consulting, etc). Michael Specht is advising employers to focus on workforce planning and increasing metrics. John Sullivan is imploring employers to act swiftly to plan and prepare for the changes ahead.

But in reality, the trends that our industry has been banding about for the past year or so have been evolving for decades. The GFC has merely been the catalyst for an explosive change of pace and investment of resources.

One thing I’m seeing right now at my place is the more advanced organisations planning long-term in determining the talent and skills they’ll need to be competitive, and then assessing and choosing the tools and strategies to develop, engage and/or attract them.

While today’s financial climate means much HR work is focusing on existing talent, it did remind me of a piece of work that readers in Sydney will have missed unless they were travelling through South Australia last year. It was significant to these trends because:

1. The organisation was acting now to respond to future needs.
2. The organisation was willing to conduct research to establish what the problem to be solved actually was.
3. The organisation had determined what success meant and how to measure it.

The organisation in question was the Department of Trade and Economic Development (DTED). For those unfamiliar with them, this is the South Australian Government’s partner agency, responsible for – no surprises for guessing here – economic development.

DTED had some research that demonstrated an alarming trend: so significant was the decline in students undertaking school math and science, technical degrees and apprenticeships, the future viability of South Australia’s Mining, Defence, Advanced Manufacturing, and IT/Communications sectors was under threat.

We couldn’t have that.

So, without taking you through every detail of the campaign, our brief was to close the skills gap in these industries. We needed to compete for the attention of 14-17 year olds – closing the gap between school subject choices, and the career options ahead.

As teenagers generally don’t like being told what to do, we decided to promote the idea that they could turn the interests and passions they have now (skateboarding, computer games, camping), into a satisfying career in the future. And the thinking and planning stage starts now.

We used a range of approaches including TV, online, print, DM, radio, outdoor, competitions, speakers, and PR some of which you can view here.

And we drove people to a bespoke online environment that you can find here.

Some readers may be interested to hear that in the first two months of the campaign we drove some 16,700 unique visitors to the web portal (representing 24% of the entire SA 14-17 population). But at the end of the day, you could easily claim, volume is a very limited measure of success.

After all, so what if we get visitors? If there is no real change in beliefs and – ultimately – decision-making behaviour, then surely we’ve failed?

And that’s where it gets even more interesting. Because DTED engaged independent market research agency Square Holes to research and analyse the effect of the campaign. This demonstrated a number of things:

Recall of the campaign was high among students (92%), teachers (70%) and parents (86%).

And:

“[S]cience, maths, physics, chemistry and computing are more interesting [to students] since 2008”. (Chemistry up 10%; Maths and Physics up 6%.)

And:

“Two in five students [40%] were encouraged to find out more about subject choice, study and careers as a result of the advertising.”

However:

The “likelihood to consider work in defence, electronics and mining and resources has remained fairly consistent among students since 2008. A quarter would consider work in defence [24%, 2009], or electronics [23%, 2009] whilst few would consider the mining and resources industries [12%, 2009].”

So patting ourselves on the back will have to wait. While this campaign won a number of industry awards, the goal was to increase employment in the sectors above and there is clearly work to be done. So it’s time to revise our strategy and move forward from there.

But the lesson for all HR plans is clear: plan ahead, measure diligently, and refine and rework your goals religiously.

And, if all else fails, make like a 15 year-old and go skateboarding instead.

A few weeks ago, I came across this e-book called ‘Only wet babies like change; Workplace Wisdom for Baby Boomers’ by Mary-Frances Winters. The title caught my eye and made me laugh. Was this the bible I had been looking for?

Working in the public sector in Australia often means in HR that you are working with a group of people who have long tenure, and at this point in time we have a large proportion of baby boomers (those born between 1946 to 1965 or aged 45-64 in 2010).

According to ABS Data in 2006, the first of Australia’s baby boomers turned 60 years old- this is around 218,000 people. The remaining boomers will turn 60 in the next twenty years with the largest of the group (born in 1963) turning 60 in 2023.

In terms of the public sector by the early 1990s, there were over 60,000 people born between 1945 and 1960 in the Australian Public Service, nearly half the total (ABC online).

With the GFC, many would argue that the mass evacuation of baby boomers has been delayed. However the irrefutable fact is that they are here. So what does that mean for HR?

Given the pace of change in the world of business, the demand on employees now is that they be ready, willing and able to adapt and be flexible to these changes. Stereotypically speaking, older employees such as boomers are said to be less likely to be able to adapt to change or be in the group of people who resist change.

So what does ‘Only wet babies like change’ add to the mix?

Well I like the way it presents boomers with reality of how things have been, what the present situation is and then challenges their thinking.

For instance:

Today, your ideas measure your value. In interviews with executives, they readily agree that they can train people to perform the tasks related to a job—what they need are people who are creative, willing to experiment, “think outside the box,” take risks and, in essence, be pioneers. The “just let me do my job” mindset is dead and can be deadly to your career.

The New Economy requires a whole new mindset for everyone, especially us baby boomers. The dependence on an employer for our sense of security and well being is a well-entrenched expectation. We must totally shift our assumptions and turn the responsibility from an external to an internal locus of control. Your destiny is controlled by you, not others.

She talks about readjusting attitudes towards employment, money and then encourages boomers to take a journey of self-reflection and introspection (including how they deal with change). She talks about unleashing talents and knowing your preferences using Myer-Briggs. There’s even a whole chapter titles ‘know your natural response to change’ because she says that ‘understanding your natural way of handling change is the first step in taking responsibility for managing change’.

It is a well grounded book written by a baby boomer for a baby boomer, so I think this might be a better approach than say me standing out in front of a group of them telling them what they are like and how they should cope. Although it’s from an American perspective, I think its one I may pass on to my clients (or a few chapters at least).

You can purchase a copy of the e-book online. Let me know what you think, or if you’d like to know more.

Last Friday I attended my first North Ryde HR Network seminar at the Stamford Hotel. They had organised for David Byrum and Chris Geraghty from Kepner-Tregoe to present to HR professionals on their approach to project management, and this was something I haven’t learned a lot about, so I was keen to hear what they had to say.

Many of us in the room hadn’t heard of Kepner-Tregoe so I’ll tell you a little bit about them first.

Kepner-Tregoe  was founded in 1958 by Charles Kepner and Benjamin Tregoe. They provide consulting and training services to organizations throughout the world (actually they mentioned they service 44 countries in over 14 different languages!). There people are engineers and science grads who have held line management positions. Some of their clients include Cadbury, BlueScope Steel, BHP Billiton, CSR and Goodman Fielder.

Essentially they help organisations to actually implement their strategies by developing individuals and teams to use more effective problem-solving, decision-making and project execution methods. They told us they are known as ‘the process guys’.

Before I take you through their approach to project management, I’ll share a few of their insights into why we actually need project management.

One of the first things they talked about was the burning need for change. They argued that if the need wasn’t made explicitly clear, the organization would not be ready to move into solutions mode. This is illustrated in their ‘Needs Solution Cycle’ below.

A few key things I found interesting:

• Their definition of what a project was. They define it as ‘the vehicle to implement a decision that has already been made’, which again implies the need to identify the need, complete a thorough analysis and decide what needs to be done before launching the project.
• They say that projects typically fail at the definition point in the initial stages.
• Projects should come from the strategic plan not to drive strategy.

Kepner-Tregoe’s approach to Project Management

Based on three phases.

1)     Project definition

2)     Project Planning

3)     Project Implementation

View the presentation with further explanations on each component.

Finally I’ll leave you with their 10 project success factors- something to think about in terms of your own projects.

• Project team commitment

• Accurate initial cost estimates

• Project team capabilities

• Funding throughout the project

• Effectiveness of planning and control

• Minimum start-up difficulties

• Task Vs Social orientation of the team

• Absence of bureaucracy

• Project manager on site

• Clear criteria for success

If you are interested in joining this network, please email Zaklina Pecenpetelovska. The calendar of events for next year should be coming out in mid December.

I’ve spoken a lot about change recently, and perhaps that’s because the last few years has meant huge changes for me in terms of my working life and also my personal life.

We know that everyone is impacted differently by change, and we can even point to models where people talk about the various stages people go through; like denial, resistance, exploration and then finally commitment (Scott and Jaffe. 1998).

One of the most important strategies with change is effective communication. However in some organisations this may not be considered your ‘domain’ or ‘area of expertise’.

Again it’s that mentality that HR does the hiring and firing and shouldn’t get involved in other areas of the business. But it’s the silo way of thinking that gets the organisation into trouble i.e. “I look after my area and you look after yours”.

If we in HR are going to work on strategic projects like lifting employee engagement, talent management, recruitment campaigns and cultural change don’t you think we should get involved with how it is going to be communicated?

In terms of employer branding I believe we need to be involved and actually even lead this discussion. It’s no good letting the comms team choose your images or look and feel of your recruitment adverts if they contradict with the message that HR is putting out there about the brand. It’s imperative that the two functions actually work together.

I mean I haven’t got a communications degree, but I have studied communication management at a Masters level and have some appreciation of what it’s all about. I also place my ‘HR hat’ on, and realise the detrimental impact poor internal communication can have on our people. Working on recruitment and selection campaigns also gives me insight into our brand perception, and how we attract staff.

I guess I’m talking about a real collaboration between these two functions. And in saying that, ‘collaboration’ is a bit of a buzz word that people like to throw around, particularly since the GFC where resources have become scarce.

The free dictionary interestingly defines ‘collaboration’ as

1. the act of working with another or others on a joint project
2. something created by working jointly with another or others
3. the act of cooperating as a traitor, esp with an enemy occupying one’s own country

Hmm so perhaps HR working with Comms is more like cooperating as a traitor?? (only kidding!).

Harvard Business argues that ” Many people, we suspect, would define collaboration as any situation where people work together in a coordinated way to achieve common objectives and would include highly specified and synchronized coordination, such as traditional assembly line operations”.

They go as far as to talk about different types of collaboration:
Transactional versus Relational Collaboration
Loosely versus Tightly Coupled
Static versus Dynamic

So how do you get this collaboration to get started when it appears that you have a power struggle on your hands or that you have to prove you know what you are talking about?

At his stage, I’m being polite, persistent and keeping myself grounded in research. At the same time, things like this generally need to come from the top so it’s important that the Senior leaders in HR get the ball rolling. I try to keep an open mind, and also to keep focussed on how I can change my approach to better influence them.

I’ll keep you posted with this, but in the meantime drop me a line if you’ve ever had this experience before and want to pass on some tips!

Recently, HR Daily featured an article on workplace harassment where claimant Christina Rich received an undisclosed multi-million dollar settlement from Pricewaterhouse Coopers. This was as a result of sexual harassment and victimisation in PwC’s ‘boys club’ environment.

I myself have heard my fair share of poor behaviour in the workplace, from my own experiences to those of friends, colleagues and family members. When I was younger and working at a supermarket I had a manager who used to throw things, yell and swear at staff. When we approached the Store Manager she said that we should be understanding because that’s the way his manager treated him and he didn’t know any better.

Whilst working at another retail store, some team members were involved in an altercation with my brother that resulted in him being hospitalised, a fractured eye socket and having a metal plate put in his face. When I requested not to work with the alleged person as the case was going to court, I was told to get over it by the Store Manager and staff in Head Office. More recently, a friend was told by her employer that they could not afford to pay her anymore due to the GFC. She is currently being underpaid quite a few dollars per hour according to the award wage.

Perhaps these experiences are what led me to work in HR. To look after people, but also to make things more effective.

If we think about cultural change in an organisation, it relates back to what I was talking about yesterday- it starts with changing the way an individual thinks. Now we’ve established that this is a difficult task and one which comes down to the old story about leading a horse to water. Sometimes you get to the point where you’d rather drown the horse than trying to get it to drink water!

Then this morning I came across the Change Blog and felt a little inspired reading a few of the articles. I’m hoping it might give me a few ideas and encourage others along to make personal change.

Here is an excerpt from the blog if you are interested:
Can we change? Yes we can.
Hi, my name is Peter and welcome to my corner of cyberspace.
I started blogging in 2007 to share my personal story of change. To cut a long story short, I know what it is like to be depressed and drifting through life without purpose. My wake up call came in 2006 when I received the unexpected news I was to be a father. This news was the catalyst for me getting my life in order, and these days I am happy to report that life is great.

He doesn’t profess to know all the answers, but it is refreshing to hear someone speak of their personal experiences and he has some pretty good guest posts as well. He talks about why self-awareness is so important to personal growth, health and fitness, career and life- so it’s a holistic approach. If you have some spare time, check it out or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Although the blog has been quiet for a few days, I can assure you that there has been a lot of movement for me behind the scenes in my personal life and in the world of work.

I’ve spoken about change quite a bit before, but I’ve somewhat hit a wall in being able to influence personal change on others. Even when I write that down, I know it doesn’t make sense.

You can’t make someone else change, but what if you just want to help them out of a dark place they are in that doesn’t make any sense.

Do you persist or let them go?

We see this in our workplaces all the time. These are people who believe:

* It’s okay to behave badly because that’s the way their boss treated them
* That the environment/company makes them so stressed that their reaction (no matter how poor) is natural, and therefore ok
* That if someone else provokes them or attacks them first- this gives them the right to attack back. It’s all justified if someone else starts it.

We also see it in our personal lives.

With depression and other mental illnesses becoming more publicized, we all know someone who isn’t seeing things as they really are, or are seeing things in a much more negative light.

In thinking about all of this, I often try to remember some basic cognitive behavioural therapy in that there is the event, our thoughts and then our reaction.

There are some things we can control, and other things we can’t. We can’t control the event or the situation but we can control the way we think about it and that impacts on our behaviour and how we choose to respond or react.

What I’m really struggling with is how to convince people of this idea. Have you ever needed to convince people that they can change their behaviour by changing the way they think?

If you have I would love to hear your story- feel free to change individual or organizational names. I think these sorts of stories will be inspiring to others so please share your success story.

This morning I was reading an article by Towers Perrin called ‘Ten Tips to Help Your Employees Manage Change in Uncertain Times’ and they had a couple of great ideas that I really loved.

Of course there are the commonly articulated tips like for example, make sure you clarify your strategy and vision for dealing with the economic uncertainty as this will help you communicate the goals and priorities to employees. Communication during times of change is talked about a lot but often not done very well (see an earlier post on this).

I love the idea of setting up a web site where employees can learn what your company is doing — and what your competitors are doing — to manage the crisis. It shows huge transparency and can help employees to feel a lot less angst and even paranoia, during these change periods. In order to build trust, you need to ensure that staff have access to the knowledge it needs to deal with the current situation.

They also suggest sending a weekly e-mail update with successes and challenges. They say that employees respect when leadership is candid, and by communicating with your people, you’ll help them gain confidence in the organization’s future. What a great idea- although I’ve always been a fan of leaders who touch base with their people even if its to say ‘there is no news’.

Another good idea is to meet with groups of employees to listen to their concerns and take onboard their solutions. Some of the best ideas come from the frontline, and this is also true with organisational change. Embrace their opinions and participation, and they will feel valued by the organisation and more committed to seeing out the changes required to ensure future success.

Each individual is different and deals with change differently and this is largely due to the way in which people perceive or view the change. When an individual experiences a change, ‘it is filtered through their preferences and appreciated and accepted, or resisted accordingly’ (Dibella. 2007). Unsurprisingly changes that are beneficial to the employee or that align with one’s own personal values are more readily accepted than those that are perceived to be negative.

Scott and Jaffe (1998) propose a model for change which identifies that employees move through four phases; namely denial (a feeling of numbness where the change doesn’t appear to sink in), resistance (feelings of anger, depression, anxiety and frustration), exploration (release of energy and shift in focus to the future which can be exciting and exhilarating) and finally, commitment (when employees are ready to refocus and move ahead). They say that people move through these phases at different rates due to factors such as personal experience or current personal circumstances.

Could emotional intelligence be a way of getting people to the commitment stage quickly?

Emotional intelligence may be described as the ability to utilize your own emotions, and the emotions of others in order to achieve a desired result or action (Chrusciel. 2006) and the level of emotional intelligence in an individual can be measured by tools such as Emotional Intelligence Quotient and the Multifactorial Emotional Intelligence Scale (MEIS) based on the research efforts of Mayer and Salovey (1997).

In the case of employees experiencing organisational change, these individuals would be intensely aware of how they were feeling and reacting to the changes, hence being better able to use this knowledge to guide future feelings and actions. These individuals are also more adaptable to stressful events (Nikolaou and Tsaousis. 2002; Slaski and Cartwright, 2002) and have better coping strategies (Bar-On et al, 2000).

In contrast, those who do not possess high levels of emotional intelligence may let the fear, anxiety and angst of the changes control their behaviour and without an awareness of this, the employees will remain negative and defensive about the changes and resist it at all costs. This point is particularly poignant when you consider research by Fiol and O’Connor (2002) established that ‘emotional energy is essential to mobilise and sustain radical change in combination with cognitive interpretations’; and that being able to use emotions in order to develop positive attitudes towards change and increase ability to cope with change (Huy 1999) is a critical success factor in the change process (Higgs and Rowland. 2002).

Therefore, as emotional intelligence is a skill that can be developed and enhanced with appropriate training, building a workforce of emotionally intelligent employees would be extremely beneficial to the organisation.

Overall, “emotionally intelligent employees will be more likely to be adaptable in emotional reactions to discrepancies signalling the need for change, since these people are more adaptive and responsive to their emotions and moods with better knowledge and understanding of the feelings they are experiencing.” George and Jones (2001).

Something to think about given the amount of change we are currently experiencing…

Change management may be defined as ‘the process of continually renewing an organization’s direction, structure, and capabilities to serve the ever-changing needs of external and internal customers’ (Moran and Brightman. 2001).

However, from an employee perspective it usually just means one thing- job losses. In the middle of a recession from the global financial crisis, that’s all people are hearing about each and every day. Everyone knows someone who has lost their jobs and companies are under scrutiny for how much they pay their execs and what they are spending money on. One of the worst examples was that of CEO’s in the US who chartered private jets to ask for bailout money.

The worst case scenario at the moment for an individual is if they are made redundant and must start the search for a new job. The labour market is already saturated with people out of work and baby boomers are feeling vulnerable being close to retirement age, but not close enough to retire. There are also many who had intended to retire, but can’t because their superannuation savings have dwindled. Being out of work is an extremely stressful situation, particularly when it places people under financial pressure.

I’ve been made redundant before and I have to admit that one of the hardest hits is to your self esteem. Sure, everyone worries about money but internally you analyse the situation and wonder why it happened to you, you question if you did anything wrong and sometimes you even feel embarrassed. Western society places a great emphasis on what one does for a living- it’s like your identity. To have that taken away from you on someone else’s terms feels like you’ve lost a part of yourself. I’m glad I’ve been through that experience because hopefully that will make me a better HR professional knowing exactly what it feels like.

However, organizational change doesn’t only affect those who have lost their jobs- take a moment to consider the ‘survivors’ of the event. Change means a different way of doing things and this can cause disruption, concern and angst amongst employees who usually are also saddened by the loss of their colleagues. Its not easy sailing being left behind and many experience some form of ‘role stress’ which is when employees become stressed by ‘role overload (too many tasks given), role ambiguity (not knowing what the job expectations are), and role boundary (caught between conflicting job demands), because the company is pretty much in a state of chaos (Tiong. 2005). There is so much confusion over what is happening whilst also trying to operate ‘business as usual’.

It’s so important to be aware of this for your employees and provide support wherever possible. Remember, everyone is human and will react in different ways. The corporate/scripted speech won’t be the right response in every case so go with your instincts and think how you would like to be treated.