The only constant is change

2 comments Career Development, Employee Engagement, Performance Management, Recruitment, Talent Management

Apr 22

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.

  • hrclubnewcastle

    Hi Jess,

    This is so true! Having moved from heavy industry to corporate law and then to Finance (Still PS but Lawyers are veeery different to Accountants!) I can definitely agree!

    Still the same challenges and the same hurdles to overcome – just tends to be different personailities or approaches to these.

    I think it's great that we're able to transfer our skills across industry lines – I think it makes for better capacity to advise.

    Good luck with the new role! No doubt you'll kill it!

    Liv

  • http://www.hrclubsydney.com Admin

    Just reading over these comments again and was thinking about how important it is that we are able to stay flexible and adapt to different industries and different issues in the workplace. Perhaps changing roles every few years is a good thing as opposed to only working in one area… comments/thoughts welcome :)