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?

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.

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:

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

You know I’m a romantic. I like sending gifts, surprising people and seeing others happy. Over the last 10 years boys have sent me flowers, moet and surprised me with gifts. My better half these days doesn’t believe in Valentines Day, although I suppose that’s ok given my birthday falls on February 15th.

But every now and again he does manage to surprise me, and in a way that tugs at my heart strings.
Yep my man came home with a package and I was excited as I opened it up. Inside I found… a card? A poem? jewellery?

Nope.

He ordered me a book called Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em by Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans. “It’s an international bestseller” he tells me, with excitement. Naww… what a cutie.

The book includes 26 research-based strategies on engaging and retaining talent. I’m just starting it now so I’ll give you a run down when I can.

In the meantime you can check out their website, www.keepem.com

We’re coming up to Mid Year Performance review time at my work and as per usual, it’s like pulling teeth.

I’m resilient to this though, because deep down I believe in how important it is to have goals and talk about your performance with you manager. I encourage talking about WHAT you’ve achieved, but also HOW you’ve achieved it.

Kris Dunn’s HR Capitalist has a great post on the values section in the performance review that’s a great reminder about the importance of discussion on the ‘soft stuff’.

Source

Well this list is the Top 25 Talent Management Blogs as determined by Fistful of Talent. Again, lists are an advantageous point in the right direction for who to check out online (but not always gospel. Some are just a popularity contest).

Have a look at the list and let me know what you think. I think is lacking some aussies personally

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.

My better half actually spotted this article for me in the Business Spectator and there were a couple of things that I loved about it.

1) The fact that I have now trained my better half how to spot articles that include terms like ‘talent management’.

2) That flexibility in the workplace is no longer a luxury or for those who have ‘done their time’. I have experienced this. We allow more senior workers to come and go as they please but place pressure on the younger generation if they aren’t there sweating it out from 8:30am to 5:30pm. Unless there is a reason for these time mandates- lose them!

This is particularly important because Dianne Jacobs (The Talent Advisors) says that “Three dominant demographic groups – women and the two ‘Bookend Generations’ (Gen Y and Baby Boomers) – are redefining what is expected from an employer of choice”.

get with the times!

Photo Source: Stock Expert

3) No longer are we thinking that we can be the career woman or man OR be the perfect wife/husband/mum/dad. These generations are full of talented people who are challenging previous notions of what you could or couldn’t have. People aren’t forced to make a choice and many are making both work because a healthy balance of both is what they seek to be happy.

4) Career development/management is now the responsibility of the employee. To be honest, being in my twenties these whole concept seems completely normal. Actually… to charge someone else with my own career seems insane!

5) Performance will be based on results not how much time you spend in the office. I love this concept and ROWE principles. Mainly because I like to stay long in the office when I’m really onto something or just call it a day and take a break if I know I’m not being productive.

All positives- bring it on now I say!