What is HR’s secret to getting talent management right?
One of the biggest issues facing HR now more
than ever is getting the right people on board
and keeping them, while trying to keep them
engaged.
Graham Childs from Mastertek said the key
drivers for people leaving jobs had changed
over recent times. One area he said that HR
could influence is inequity in the workplace,
which leads to disillusionment, by managing
poor performance better. “People say ‘I don’t
mind putting in the effort but for God’s sake fix
up the dead wood here that is dragging us
back’” he said.
Jodi Dickson from FCB Workplace Lawyers
was quick to point out that performance
management tended to be a symptom of
something that isn’t right in the organisation.
“I don’t think anyone actually recruits dead
wood. If you’ve got [that type of employee] in
your organisation it’s something you’re doing
or not doing that is creating the problem,” she
explained.
“I think a completely new view of what
we’re doing as HR practitioners is required
post/mid-GFC. We need to stop focussing on
managing resources and look at the different
kinds of relationships people have with their
employer. You’ve got this legal relationship
which you must get right; you have an
intellectual relationship, trying to stimulate
them, allowing decision making and control;
you have an emotional relationship, and then
you have a physical relationship which is
where you sit them, the kind of tools that you
give them. I think HR managers have to start
understanding those fundamental
relationships better.”
Ari Kopoulos from Employee Connect said
that with the help of technology, HR
professionals can pinpoint potentially
problematic employees at an early stage. “It’s
about profiling the individual, not just in
terms of performance but potential. You need
to have the right data on your employees for
strategic decision making.”
“But there’s a gap,” said Dickson.
“Organisations don’t look at themselves and
ask ‘what do I need to give this person to
bring the potential out?’”
Kopoulos replied: “Technology can help
identify when this goes wrong. If there’s
someone who has gone from being a ‘high
performing’ and ‘high potential’ employee, to
being a poor performer, they’re probably
looking for another job. That’s what we call
flight risk management.”
Dave Burroughs said that at a more basic
level, employers now have less talent to choose
from so employees are rising up to managerial
positions with technical competence rather than
leadership or management skills. “It’s incredibly
important for us to be developing that next
crop of future leaders so that they can step up
with leadership skills that will get the best of
the people sitting around them,” he said.
“The really good companies that came
through the GFC well had really well-defined
values. They didn’t impose them on their
organisation, they developed from within.
They are really attractive to work for.
Certainly a lot more organisations are getting
interested in not just ‘how’ they do things but
‘why’,” he said.
Dickson added: “Leadership for me is about
harnessing the results and using them to push
people towards their purpose. Unless we start to
harness this outcomes-based, purpose-based
leadership, we’re going to have a lot of
disenfranchised CEOs asking ‘why am I pouring
money into this space’. You’ll get a profession
full of counsels and I think HR in this country
has moved away from that. Counselling with a
business purpose is what’s required.”
So are employers being more cautious
when recruiting now in order to get the
right talent on board in the first place?
David Owens from HR Partners said that
while organisations have always been cautious
in hiring decisions, certain areas are under the
spotlight. “There is a lot more attention given
to HR recruitment, particularly by CEOs,” he
said. “CEOs are looking to be personally
involved in interviewing and being involved in
the recruitment process. It has become higher
profile and is getting due diligence from the C-
suite much more now than it used to.”
Childs asked: “Are HR professionals
moving back into specialisms? I’ve noticed a
lot of recruitment targeting specialist roles
such as remuneration and benefits.”
Responding, Owens claimed that the
demands on a HR team have become far more
sophisticated. “The whole idea of compliance
is much more rigorous, we’ve got an industrial
relations revolution going on and fantastic
innovation in technology. So all of a sudden a
senior HR person can’t just be a really good
generalist - they have to recruit and engage
some top level HR expertise.”
He added: “If you’re a bank and you want
to hire and keep the best people, you’ve got to
be paying the best benefits and bonuses, and
the only way you’re going to keep ahead of
your competition is by having the best
remuneration and benefits people running that
function. Without them you’re blind. What’s
really encouraging for the broader HR
community is that the budget is actually
available for HR leaders to acquire these
talented people. It makes that HR capability
much greater within the organisation.”
He added that a two-sided conversation
about return on investment (ROI) is occurring.
“There’s ROI in the sense that ‘this is what
we’re going to get in terms of lift in company
performance’, but there’s also ROI in the risk
management sense that ‘if we don’t have these
remuneration and benefits specialists, we’re
going to lose a lot of people and lose a lot of
money’.”
Childs agreed, saying that risk management
had also become extremely important in the
design the of reward programs. “Reward needs
to be tied to the risk that you’re taking.
Organisations are now asking ‘what is the
length of the risk? When is the reward being
paid? How do we tie it into our business
strategy?”
Dave Adler from Smart Salary said that HR
needed organisation-wide support to achieve
its goals. “A lot of businesses seem to think
that HR is a team of people that sits over
there, and leave the performance and talent
management up to them. But at the end of the
day, every single manager, whether it’s in sales,
accounting, marketing or the CEO, they are
all looking after people every day of the week.
“Some employers thought that with the
unemployment rate going up, they could stop
worrying about a lot of the HR initiatives, and
that it was an employers market. But the
reality is that this moment was an opportunity
for HR to say hold on, we’re really going to
show our employees that when things get
tough we’re going to keep working to make
this a better place to work. The GFC was a
good opportunity to really gel people to the
organisation,” he said.
Are Gen Y too demanding and are Baby
Boomers change resistant?
The question as to whether companies have to
alter their incentive programs to cater for
different generations in the workforce was met
with the general agreement that the needs and
wants of each generation are the same – the
only difference is how they ask for it.
“The things Gen Y are asking for are the
same as what the Baby Boomers are asking
for,” said Childs. “They’re asking for
flexibility, they’re asking for somebody to lead
them, give them fair and honest feedback and
to work for a good company. I don’t see the
difference between Gen Y and Baby Boomers
and what they want from the workplace – the
only difference is Gen Y are more noisy about
it,” said Childs.
Kopoulos however questioned whether
Baby Boomers truly understand the shift
toward real flexibility. Childs said that the
Baby Boomers who are asking for flexibility
today are the deniers of flexibility in the past.
But they are now beginning to see the value in
flexibility. Owens agreed, suggesting Baby
Boomers are turning to flexibility options now
because it’s simply their turn. “If everybody
else is working nine day fortnights – it must be
my turn now!” he said.
While it was agreed that the needs and
desires may be the same across each
generation, the acceptance and willingness to
adapt may be different. Burroughs believes that
baby boomers may be more resistant to
change. “The challenge for the Baby Boomersis
the change – but for the younger generations
change is like breathing. If it doesn’t change
then there is something wrong,” he said.
However Childs said that resistance to
change is not a characteristic specific to a
generation. Instead it is when companies
approach change in the wrong way that the
problem arises. “People of all ages will accept
the outcome, even if they might not like it, as
long as there has been a fair process along the
way,” said Childs. “If people feel they have
been engaged along the way and understand the
reasons behind the decisions they will accept
the outcome. But if a company just applies the
outcome and doesn’t take you on the journey –
it doesn’t matter what the outcome is, Baby
Boomers won’t accept it,” he said.
Burroughs also said that the same
leadership principles apply across all
generations; keep people informed, give them
some autonomy in decision making, make
them feel respected and trusted and feel part
of what they’re doing.
Dickson said that because young people
have access to so much information at their
fingertips, if they want to know something
they no longer have to go to authority to get
it. Workplaces are therefore going to have to
realise this and be engaged with this new kind
of intellectual rigour. Employers will need to
encourage bringing new information to the
organisation and teach employees how to filter
what is relevant and what’s not.
“The more switched on organsiations don’t
ban Facebook or Google because they realise
that information leads to empowerment and
that’s what we want – immediate decision
makers,” she said. “So if management want to
stay relevant they need to be just as committed
to finding out that information as well.”
Social media – is it dangerous or an
essential HR tool?
The whole generation question naturally led to
Gen Y’s forte – social media. According to
Kopoulos any savvy recruiter or HR
professional will keep a close eye on sites like
LinkedIn and how they assist talent
management. “If you did some deep research
and look at what kind of conversations a
candidate is having on LinkedIn, what their
network is like – you can make some
generalist decisions on suitability for
employment,” he said.
Childs, however, questioned the credibility
of social networking, and profiles on the
professional networking sites such as
LinkedIn. “Isn’t it dangerous – isn’t what
people put on their social network actually an
alter ego? Isn’t it something different to what
they really are?” he asked.
Kopoulos responded that if you look purely
at qualifications posted, then you might as
well take a blind resume and address it the
same way. But if you go to the next step and
look at the conversations they are having,
their network and their recommendations then
it tells an entirely different story.
“I think there will be a time when there will
be an application to take competencies from
across LinkedIn and employers will be able to
pick somebody who is competent in a certain
area with a level of authority.”
The whole social networking debate raised
another issue around discrimination.
“What happens to the individual when you
cancel that connection – or ‘defriend’ someone
on Facebook?” asked Kopoulos. “They don’t
get a notification and I think they should!
Also, what happens to the individual in the
workplace that you do not accept as a friend
on Facebook? Is that discrimination?”
Adler said that many employers still don’t
actually check candidates on LinkedIn and
Facebook before they hire them – and are still
only hiring them from their CV and have no
controls in place to check that the information
they are receiving is correct. According to
Owens, they are the employers who should be
using reputable recruitment agencies. “Who’s
going to trust competencies that are verified
online?” he quipped. Kopoulos acknowledged
the point and said that it’s always good to have
a recruiter to go back to if things go wrong.