Rapid growth and a global workforce make a focused HR policy indispensable at Tectura. Craig Donaldson speaks to the business and HR directors behind the company’s ‘Great Place to Work’ initiative
Rapid growth and a global workforce make a focused HR policy indispensable at Tectura. Craig Donaldson speaks to the business and HR directors behind the company’s ‘Great Place to Work’ initiative
Tectura is an integrated business solutions provider, and the world’s largest Microsoft Business Solutions partner. As a privately-owned, $100 million company with 1,400 employees in 60 offices across North America, Europe and Australia, the company had adopted an organic growth strategy and is on target for earnings of $350 million in Australia by 2007.
The talent market is fierce but, during a period of exponential growth, Tectura has maintained a staff retention rate of 95 per cent. In 15 months, the company has expanded by more than 40 per cent, three times the industry average.
“We’re operating in a ferociously competitive and volatile market with employers vying daily for highly skilled technical staff,” said Peter Maggs, Tectura Australia’s managing director. “Every day, at least one of my staff gets tapped on the shoulder [but] our staff retention rate is one of the highest in the IT industry.”
Maggs believes this is testimony to Tectura’s worldwide HR strategy, which is championed by global CEO Terry Petrzelka. His vision is to make Tectura a great place to work, and that name has been given to the company’s HR directive. “A key to Tectura’s success,”Petrzelka says, “is its business model of empowering its team members to be successful and allowing the success of the business to follow, in that order.
“I believe it is sound business to ensure that you create an environment where people thrive and like to be, not just to work. Obviously, any business needs to be profitable. That cannot be your starting point [but] that will be the end result if you understand that it is the team members who drive the business forward. You can create all the greatest strategies of the world but if your team members don’t feel like pulling the wagon in the same direction, you won’t go anywhere.”
The ‘Great Place to Work’ survey
In order for Tectura to fine tune the initiatives designed to achieve that goal, the company implemented a global team member survey based on a model described by Petrzelka. This model reflects an environment based on trust between team members and leaders, according to Lisa Mathias, global head of HR. “The model measures leadership credibility, fairness in the workplace, attitude and respect toward team members, pride in the company and camaraderie among team members,” she says.
The yearly survey is designed to ensure that staff perceptions of what constitutes a great place to work match those of management. The company also conducts a half-yearly pulse survey to measure staff satisfaction levels, which in turn lead to new internal communication strategies.
Maggs did a lot of work communicating the results of the survey to all local team members and involving them in discussing ideas and actions. “I encouraged my managers to talk about the results in their department meetings to understand what the issues were and, at an operational level, what could be done to address those issues. This was especially important in areas like communication and work/life balance,”he says. “The survey is a great tool but once you know what the issues are, you have to get out and talk to people about them.”
When the survey results are released, it’s important to make sure employees understand why the company is doing something, what it means for them and how they can be involved, adds Alison Sweeney, Australian HR manager. “It was very important to manage expectations. You can’t address every issue immediately. It is an ongoing process. So it is important to find out from team members what issues are important to them and prioritise accordingly.”
To support the Great Place to Work survey, Tectura has also rolled out two more initiatives: a value creation model that uses key performance indicators to ensure staff members are achieving their personal goals and aligning these to the company, and recognition programs that award high performing employees and teams.
Business benefits
Building a great place to work is a long-term global strategy, to which Petrzelka attributes the company’s rapid growth. “We have managed to do what nobody has done before – have the best and leading Microsoft Business Solutions partners join us from the US, Canada, Europe, Asia, Latin America, and of course, Australia,”he says. “All of them had other offers, but chose Tectura because they shared our vision and values, not least relative to team members.”
Staff have plenty of offers too but the company has maintained a high retention rate, also by virtue of its HR strategy. The Great Place to Work policy, according to Mathias, will also bolster Tectura’s ability to attract and retain top talent in an increasingly tight market. “As we continue to fine tune our people practices based on our strategy of building a great place to work, we see our team member satisfaction improving which in turn has a positive impact on our ability to attract high quality candidates. We are experiencing lower turnover and improved morale,” she says.
Driving culture change
Tectura’s leadership team travel frequently, to mix with employees from around the world. Petrzelka has visited almost all of Tectura’s 60 offices. “On these vision and values tours, we talk a lot about where the business is going, what our plans are and how the results are and that sort of topic. Team members want to and need to know the state of the company,” he says. “The more people who understand what is going on in the business, the less they mind about change. And the more interaction we see across borders, the less people worry about different cultures.”
Since the company’s inception, it has been running global and national internal newsletters, which are open forums for leaders and team members to share news, ideas, thoughts and successes.
Mathias says Tectura’s global people strategies aren’t about driving culture change, but more about building relationships and leveraging Tectura’s values – integrity, care, and results – as the common thread. “With the many integration initiatives undertaken, we have found leading change and transition starts with yourself and then from there you are better equipped to role model, listen openly, inspire and influence, build bridges and gain adaptability and performance focus,” she says.
Challenges and lessons learned
A perennial challenge in a rapidly growing people business is balancing priorities, according to Petrzelka. “You have to be patient, which that is sometimes difficult, when you are in a hurry. And you have to understand that growth can at times be a little painful and accept that pain as part of growing up.”
Tectura’s leaders can, he says, have a tough time keeping up with their multiple responsibilities towards clients, partners and their team members. “Balancing the priorities in the right way is an ongoing challenge. This is one of those situations that, in order to be good at anything, one must be able to focus on priorities and use this as a means to manage one’s professional and personal life.”
Sweeney, head of the Australian HR team, notes that a key challenge locally has been ensuring the Great Place to Work strategy is not perceived solely as HR’s job. “While I certainly play a key role in driving actions, our management team is learning to take responsibility as well and this is critical for success. Team members also need to play a role, in participating in the survey and the development and implementation of initiatives,” she says.
Tectura’s top HR tips
Tectura's global head of HR, Lisa Mathias, and Tectura Australia's HR manager, Alison Sweeney, offer some tips on making companies great places to work:
Partner for performance. Develop strategic direction by utilising insights, knowledge and experiences of team members, clients and partners and apply that broad knowledge and perspective to foster a strategic collaborative approach that involves leadership in the development and execution of HR strategies. The alignment of global goals and strategy to team goals to individual goals is a powerful thing.
Be a scout. Use your extensive knowledge of the organisation to anticipate. Get ahead by listening openly to your constituency - all team members and leaders - and stir the passion that fuels innovation and results. HR has a role in challenging the status quo and bringing out our people's strengths to deliver results.
Be caring. Demonstrate genuine concern for others. Trust is fostered by taking care of the needs of each and every team member. We believe that to achieve results, one starts by first understanding the human heart. Only by understanding the human heart will one know how to inspire and motivate, to harness others' emotions, hearts and energy, and to create and maintain a trusting environment.
Communicate. We can't overemphasise the importance of communicating a consistent message. In order to build a trusting environment, you must be open in your communication and consistent in your messages. Trust is hard to win and easy to lose and it is through your communication that you either win or lose.
Adapt. We take Darwin's insight seriously. "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the ones who are most responsive to change." Change is a constant in our world and understanding that change is both a logical and an emotional process is key for effective adaptability and performance focus.
