On the weekend I was browsing online when I came across this story “Culture key to success” by Glenn McFarlane in the Herald Sun.

No it wasn’t your usual Jessica-reading, so get ready for the sports analogy. I’m actually quite interested in sports having played a lot when I was growing up, however AFL is generally not my thing unless it involves good company, beer and some sunshine.

So here’s how the article went:

CARLTON coach Brett Ratten would refuse to pick a player if he found out they had already committed to another club, even if he could be the difference between a premiership and missing out.

Ratten told SEN yesterday that it all came back to culture, and that was as important as anything else.

“I’d move past (the player) and develop someone in that time and if they want to continue their football somewhere else, that’s fine,” Ratten said.

“But they can’t use our time to benefit themselves.”

“I suppose it’s about your club culture and what you stand for against the window of trying to win finals.

“That’s the big call, what do you stand for?”

“I think it’s really critical about creating that culture to make sure that when people come in, they come in for the right reasons, and it’s not all about money.

“Money is not everything.”

This guy, the Coach (i.e. Leader or Manager) is looking for people who are committed to the organisation and the overall goal/strategy. He’s placing those committed players in front of others, irrespective of whether they are the ‘favourites’ or ‘stars’ that have been pegged to win the match.

He’s openly talking about culture, its importance and asking his players to question what they stand for.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

This Coach knows a thing or two about engagement. He knows that money isn’t the key motivator and it won’t get him or the team the success they are after. He knows the importance of culture and wants his players to explore how their values and goals align with that of the organisation.

Best of all, he’s willing to tell the star to stick it if he’s not going to be a team player. I wish all Leaders felt this way because we’ve all worked in businesses where someone is allowed to get away with murder because they are the leading salesperson, they bring in the big bucks, they are well connected or well known in the industry.

Anyone you might send this article to?

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?

Today we have a guest post from JoelyRighteous (my better half) who works in the media industry. If nothing else, this post shows he has been listening to all the HR crap I talk about when I get home. Alternatively, it does also illustrate again that people are just not going to hang around and put up with sub-par work environments that are disengaging.

It seems to me that businesses have lost a bit of that discerning nature that makes them the long term successes they want to be.

Every decision should be made for the good of the company. This is a fact of business and often the key factor that can make the difference between a mediocre leader and a great one. Where the difficulty lies is that a lot of people only think of the good of the company as ensuring that their monthly/quarterly/yearly profits are as high as possible and that in the public eye there are sweeping positive reviews, but there is so much more to it than that. It is inevitable that there will be some level of negative sentiment about a business, be it from past employees, a negative event that occurred or a current employee that has had a bad day and is having a vent. The issue is with seeing all of this as a completely negative thing that is to be controlled. People expect employees to have bad days, nobody is happy all the time, work is stressful and at times depressing. This is the way things are in even the best of companies.

What we are seeing at the moment is companies rushing to control this output through monitoring of employees online activity and then taking action off the back of it the problem with this is that it is in no way a cost efficient use of anybodies time. If employees are complaining en-mass a standard level of brand monitoring throughout social channels should pick this up, there is no need to monitor employees specifically. Furthermore the way in which businesses are treating employees that do complain is counter-productive, in fact if an employee that is typically happy complains online they are just as likely to promote the business through the same channel when they have a good day. If there are high levels of complaints occurring from employees throughout the business, or even from within particular business teams the issue is not that people are complaining, it is that they are unhappy at work. This, whether businesses like it or not is a management/leadership issue.

If businesses put the same amount of time, effort and money into leadership training, employee reward and recognition programs and talent development that they put into attempting to control their employees online behaviour they would not only see the amount of negative sentiment from employees fade, they would additionally be left with a more engaged and productive workforce. This is the largest issue with businesses rushing to get on board the latest trend, they are not thinking about the long term cost associated with this behaviour. When you lose an employee t it costs the business on average a minimum of 2x their salary to recruit, train and replace the employee. Add to this the damage and cost of having dis-engaged employees to begin with and what you are left with is an extremely detrimental cost to the business, so instead of punishing and restricting the expression of employees who will only feel further unhappy about their situation knowing that work is now encroaching on their personal space, businesses should look internally at employee engagement (there are a multitude of providers who run assessments around this) and figuring out how they can improve the workplace for everyone. Hypothetically speaking you could be looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars saved annually in turnover and productivity.

It’s just smart business.

Joel is an Online Account Manager at PHD Media, who is deeply passionate about developing strategic digital communication solutions that allow brands to connect and trade with consumers. He is currently studying a business degree and his outside interests include music, consumer psychology, technology and single malt scotch. Originally posted here.

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.

Some time ago last year, I blogged about attending the Human Synergistics 11th Australian Conference on Culture and Leadership.

Being fond of the Human Synergistics tools, I love these conferences. They are a half day, they are free and you get to hear real people talk about their personal stories using the tools. Amazing success stories.

One of the main stories I spoke about was that of Mike Shove (former Managing Director and CEO of CSC Australia). You might recall from the post that I said I thought it was possibly the worst circumplex I had ever seen.

Mike was a highly engaging speaker and it’s excellent to be able to share these presentations via Human Synergistics Video Room.

Mike Shove- an honest, funny and descriptive account of the LSI Journey from a CEO's perspective

This is one you really need to watch!

According to Human Synergistics “Culture is the way that things are actually done in an organisation.” It includes shared values and beliefs, ways of thinking and norms or expectations of behaviours in the workplace.

Many of our business leaders would be thinking; that’s great (sounds like a bit of HR fluff) but what we really want is results.

Culture is vital to organisational success because it is the principal driver of performance related behaviours throughout the organisation. By creating a constructive culture, organisations can achieve and sustain high performance.

So how does culture come about?

Organisational cultures can be changed, and they can evolve over time. However the major driving force behind culture is actually leadership.

“Leaders set the agenda for the environment in which others operate, and people behave in a way that reflects the impact of their leader. Organisational culture is transformed through managing organisational structures, systems, technologies and the skills and qualities of leaders.”

So if leadership is going to drive the culture we want, which will then elicit the desired performance from our people- what are you doing to engage your leaders?

**Human Synergistics is hosting the 11th Australian Conference on Culture and Leadership in 2009. Visit the website for further information**

Recently I was reading ‘Make your Values Mean Something’ which talks about organizational values, what they should be and what is needed to really embed them in your culture. It is a frank article as the author says “If you’re not willing to accept the pain real values incur, don’t bother going to the trouble of formulating a values statement”.

It starts out asking you to review the following corporate values.

Communication. Respect. Integrity. Excellence.

These sound pretty solid and quite similar to other values statements you may have read.

These were actually the values of Enron whom Fortune named “America’s Most Innovative Company for six consecutive years. Employing around 22, 000 people and claiming revenue of nearly $101 billion in 200, Enron filed for bankruptcy in 2001 and the “Enron Scandal” rocked the world with their creatively planned accounting fraud. In addition to being the largest bankruptcy reorganization in American history, Enron undoubtedly is the biggest audit failure. Not much integrity or excellence going on there.

It made me think about organizational values and whether most are formed by what execs feel should be what the company represents, rather than what it actually is. Are companies really living and breathing their values? Are the values really guiding every decision that is made?

Could you pass the Enron test?

More locally, anyone recognise ‘the Dude’ below?

This company used this scruffy surfer to demonstrate that anyone could get a mobile phone, even a lazy layabout. The offices were decked out in electric blue, sunflower yellow and lime green walls featuring ‘the dude’, with a different theme for every floor. The walls were also peppered with motivational messages from beliefs and values such as ‘Add and create value in everything you do’, ‘make it better’, ‘Give your opinions’ ‘A happy team means happy players’. These were the values of One Tel.

Despite these values about making it better and creating value, the corporate culture was rife with fraud in trying to artificially inflating customer numbers up in order to secure bonuses from places like Optus. The following is an excerpt from Paul Barry’s Book on the One Tel collapse.

One long-serving member of the One.Tel team swears that at the end of 1997 he was asked to do a special job: “One of Brad Keeling’s deputies explained that One.Tel was falling short of its Optus targets and that there was a $500,000 bonus to be earned if we hit it.” Keeling then found the young man 10,000 to 15,000 existing One.Tel customers and told him to mail each a new SIM card, complete with new mobile number.

The young team member hired an army of casuals to stick SIM cards on to slips of paper and put them into envelopes. For several days on end they worked until midnight. They did not bother to wait for people to ring in and say they wanted their new number. The casuals simply activated the SIM cards on the computer before sending them out, which automatically connected each one to the Optus network, thus counting them all as brand new connections (source Paul Barry).

I think most of you would agree that this is an extreme example of a company where the values are just for show, but there are hundreds more organisations out there that just stick the values up on a poster and expect employees to live by them. It just doesn’t work that way.

Some key tips:
• Leaders at the top MUST lead by example, living and breathing the values in EVERYTHING they do.
• Ensure your company actions reflect the values statements. Base rewards and recognition programs, recruitment and selection and talent management strategies on them, and stick to it even when tough decisions need to be made.
• Provide training on what the values mean, what behaviours demonstrate your values and what people should do if they see someone not living the values.

Does your company live and breathe by its values and are they truly embedded in the culture?

Recommended Reads:
Lindbom, D. (2007), ‘A Culture of Coaching: The Challenge of Managing Performance for Long-Term Results’, Organization Development Journal, Vol. 25, No. 2, p. 101.

In recent times there has been much emphasis placed on coaching in the workplace. Lindbom takes this further, arguing that there needs to be a strong organizational culture of coaching in order to fully support managers and provide regular performance feedback to all employees.

Lindbom says that culture is “the entire organization, its values, strategic goals, and the formal and informal systems in place that guide managers and employees in everyday work life”.

Essentially what we are talking about is a culture where people continuously receive and seek out feedback (formal and informal) in order to improve their performance.

So how do you make this happen?

Lindbom’s article places great emphasis on incorporating performance management and coaching into the core competencies and the strategic plan. This illustrates true top-down commitment and lays the foundation for success in quality people management. Similarly, much of the literature echoes this message insisting that widespread support for performance management from the upper management team is essential (Griffin. 2004) and that gaining consensus and buy-in from senior management early on in the effort can help establish legitimacy and visibility for the process (Fletcher & Williams. 1996).

Additionally, this then has the potential to increase employee commitment to the organization and its goals. Moreover, Ariyachandra & Frolick (2008) go further in articulating the term ‘Business Performance Management’ which facilitates the creation of strategic goals and supports the subsequent management of the performance to those goals. This concept highlights the need for performance management to be strongly interlinked with specific strategic objectives and key performance indicators or core competencies that are meaningful to the organization.

Finally, Lindbom highlights the importance of formal systems and informal networks in effective performance management and also the need to provide managers with the right tools, training and support to effectively coach and improve performance. With these components in place, in addition to the incorporation of performance management and coaching into the core competencies and the strategic plan, Lindbom argues that a strong organizational culture of coaching will be established resulting in supported managers and employees regularly receiving feed back on performance.