The competition for acquisition and retention of both customers and talent will be exceptionally intense in 2021. Coupled with relentless market challenges, industry disruptions and the new hybrid workplace models, its mission critical for C-Suite & HR leaders to step up and stand out with personal brands that inspire and influence with integrity.

The business case for personal brands
Consistently, global and national surveys ratify circa 80 per cent of consumers and employees trust organisations whose leadership have an active and engaging social media presence.

The Hootsuite Social Trends 2021 report saw a dramatic increase in social engagement during 2020 and that ‘people want to connect with people’. Their research indicated that 73 per cent of all marketers ranked new customer acquisition as their top priority for 2021, representing a 58 per cent year-over-year increase.

The global Brand Fog report found 93 per cent of people were more likely to purchase from organisations whose leader’s beliefs on social issues aligned with their own. And 75 per cent of employees felt it important their CEO communicated their opinions on social issues publicly.

Business advisory firm Brunswick Connected Leadership research found 60% of candidates would research the CEOs social media. Of significance, over 83 per cent (5:1) of employees prefer to work with organisations whose C-Suite leaders use social media factoring it as an important element for satisfaction and retention.

Standing out is about differentiating yourself in a way that is accurate but inimitable as everyone has a professional narrative that is unique.

Indispensable benefits
Trust and engagement is amplified with transparent personal brand management. Value touchpoints are vast across organisational and EVP brand awareness, talent acquisition, referrals, social proof, sales, marketing, networking, investor relations, product launches and feedback.

HR leaders need to embrace social media as a method to augment other talent attraction strategies and engage on a parity level. Top talent in the new working environments and commercial marketplace have more leverage now and are actively going to be reviewing leaders and people custodians with a steelier gaze.

HR leaders can also take a strong front foot to assuage bias perception of candidates who are reluctant to apply for roles. Diversity, inclusion, ageism and all other biases erode the hiring eco-system and candidate confidence. HR leaders who hold purpose and strong policies to knock these issues have a real opportunity in their personal brand narratives to address these issues and indeed they must.

And for industries which have an inherent degree of market mistrust (for example, finance, recruitment, banking, marketing) the need to ameliorate divisive perceptions via social media and personal brands is essential. This will positively impact new client acquisition and work towards changing reputations.

LinkedIn – the imperative platform
The undisputed professional social media ruler is LinkedIn. With over 722 million global and 11+ million Australian members its value for personal brand and engagement is implicit.

The doyen of recruitment activity from its inception back in 2004, today in 2021, the benefits to marketing, sales and networking are matchless.

However not everyone uses the platform in the same way but as the world’s largest database and Google indexed reference site it is critical to show up on LinkedIn with authority.

Google is the kingpin of searches and LinkedIn profiles show up on the first page. So even if LinkedIn isn’t the first touchpoint for referencing, all roads lead to Rome there.

Top talent in the new working environments and commercial marketplace have more leverage now and are actively going to be reviewing leaders and people custodians with a steelier gaze.

Elements of personal brands
There are five key elements that coalesce how a person is perceived and experienced. Rhetoric (perceived) must meet reality (experienced). Congruency is vital. And whilst the notion of disingenuous PR brand spinning is unacceptable, there are adroit ways to communicate which is accurate, candid and creative. Below are the five elements which follow after self-reflection, reality checking, creative marketing mindset and courage.

1. The why and ‘why below the why’. The drivers below the hyperbole.
2. Goals, values, passions. Your small and bigger goals for your career and organisation. This can and should incorporate the social issues that matter as appropriate. Of course social responsibility endeavours, volunteering, sporting and board activities sit here.NB: Refer research above from Brand Fog aligning social issues and leadership trust.
3. Personality and character. The nuances which are uniquely yours. Your vibe does attract your tribe. It’s pointless crafting a narrative of dissimilar traits to reality.
4. Equity, skills, unique value, education genius which is demonstrated and factual. Some leaders, and dare I add, women can often struggle here. Reality statements are not value judgements’ and there is a thick line between bragging and chest beating to stating actuality with clarity and confidence.
5. Visual, appearance – a photo tells a thousand words. An accurate representation of how you show up in a meeting either in person or via Zoom is essential.

Whilst the above just touches on the elements, it must be said that creativity is not deceit but crafting messages without clichés and banality. Standing out is about differentiating yourself in a way that is accurate but inimitable as everyone has a professional narrative that is unique.

HR leaders need to embrace social media as a method to augment other talent attraction strategies and engage on a parity level.

Summing Up
It is simply vital for all C-Suite, management and HR leaders to take their personal brands seriously to inspire and influence genuinely. It not only maximises success and opportunity but is a barricade to negative market assumptions. The implementation of branding needs consistency across social media, LinkedIn and websites.

In a swirling sea of competition and noise, personal brands which are transparent and trustworthy are pre-eminent pillars of organisational strength and leadership.

Image Source: Unsplash

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Every business, regardless of its size, industry or maturity is exposed to integrity risks such as fraud, corruption, conflicts of interest and employee misconduct. Internal integrity risks remain a persistent threat to businesses as motivated employees look to take advantage of weak internal controls, outdated business practices or lucrative opportunities to commit fraud and engage in misconduct.

To add to the complexity of running a business and managing risk in 2021, there is a global pandemic hanging over the business landscape and the associated security risks. Outside of the organisation’s walls, businesses are coming under increased threat from cyber criminals with issues like business email compromise (BEC), phishing and data breaches.

The risk landscape in 2021
As we enter a new calendar year, businesses and governments are attempting to get back to ‘normal’. The impact of COVID-19 has demonstrated the need for organisations to reassess how they manage and mitigate integrity risks within the business to protect their people, reputation and bottom line.

In times of uncertainty, instances of employee misconduct, fraud and corruption can significantly increase as employees facing mounting financial pressure rationalise behaviour and take advantage of opportunities to enrich themselves. Unfortunately, for businesses, this is bad timing.

As businesses grapple with navigating and surviving a global pandemic, the focus of the organisation shifts to cutting costs, remaining “open for business” and minimising the impact of day-to-day operations. Investment in proactive initiatives is put on the back burner – and rightly so.

However, with signs of economic recovery on the horizon, the time is now to consider how you will look to prevent and mitigate integrity risks from occurring or increasing in your business.

Risks to your organisation can be internal, such as theft, fraud, bullying and employee misconduct. External risks can include corruption and collusion with suppliers, third-party fraud and business email compromise.

How to manage the new risks
Proactive risk management needs to start at the top of the organisation. Most business owners and leaders understand that leading a business involves a degree of risk. The key is to ensure that, as your business matures, you build the capability to identify, assess and manage risks in a prudent manner. There will always be a degree of risk and quantifying this is known as a Risk Appetite Statement. While that might sound like a complicated step for your business, it doesn’t have to be.

It’s important to recognise that integrity risks can take many shapes and forms. Risks can be internal to your organisation, such as theft, fraud, bullying and employee misconduct. Or external to your organisation, such as corruption and collusion with suppliers, third-party fraud and business email compromise. Taking a moment to stop and think about what risks your business faces is a simple but important first step.

For most businesses, the best place to start is to focus on your employees, their roles and the behaviour you expect from them. This is often captured in your organisation’s policies, such as a Code of Conduct,Bullying and Harassment Policy or Conflicts of Interest Policy.

Perhaps one of the biggest areas of opportunity for businesses in 2021 is to review and update your policy suite to ensure employees understand what is expected of them and attest to these policies. When we conduct internal investigations into fraud or employee misconduct, we often encounter employees who are not familiar with the policies, cannot remember the last time they read the policy or where it is located – there is an evident disconnect.

Another area of opportunity is to improve the way conflicts of interest and gift and entertainment is managed. These two areas present the greatest area of risk for an organisation as they affect the greatest number of employees across all roles.

In almost every organisation we work with, we see an inadequate approach to how these risks are managed. Registers for tracking conflicts of interest and gifts are often underutilised, empty and siloed across business units. Importantly, there is a lack of oversight and review at an organisational level.

Every business, regardless of its size, industry or maturity is exposed to integrity risks such as fraud, corruption, conflicts of interest and employee misconduct.

Moving to Centralised Compliance Software
Large organisations often have polices and other integrity initiatives located on an intranet site, however in 2021, this is an outdated way to manage risk.

Cloud-based software now exists for virtually every aspect of running a business and compliance is no different. A cloud-based compliance software, such as the one we use at Core Integrity (www.corethix.com), can dramatically improve your integrity risk and compliance program.

There are several simple initiatives that can be implemented through a cloud-based compliance platform to help proactively manage risk in your business, including:

• Ensure all company policies are located on the one platform to maintain version control of each policy and distribute these to all employees automatically by role, function and location for reading and attestation.
• Move all conflict of interest and gift and entertainment management online so employees can submit declarations in real time for management to review, approve or investigate.
• Migrate incident, issue and safety reporting online so employees can submit issues via mobile devices as they occur rather than waiting to return to the office to submit a paper-based form.
• Leverage technology to integrate your organisation’s whistleblower or ethics hotline into the compliance platform to improve the reporting experience.
• Drive engagement and use by employees by leveraging communications and announcement functionality.

Now is the time to proactively assess and mitigate the potential integrity risks in your business and examine the opportunities to enhance your compliance program to ultimately engage with your employees. Prevention is always the best method to ensure your organisation is protecting its people, reputation, and bottom line.

Key Takeaways

• Most business owners and leaders understand that undertaking a business involves a degree of risk. The key is to ensure that, as your business matures, you build the capability to identify, assess and manage risks in a prudent manner.
• Risks to your organisation can be internal, such as theft, fraud, bullying and employee misconduct. External risks can include corruption and collusion with suppliers, third-party fraud and business email compromise.
• Engage integrity risk experts such as Core Integrity to educate your people about your internal policies such as a Code of Conduct, Bullying and Harassment Policy or Conflicts of Interest Policy.
• Review and update your cyber security systems to ensure your software reflects current risks and protect your organisation’s data, resources, and accounts, such as centralised Compliance Software like Corethix.
• Work from the top down to implement culture and policy that reflects the guidelines for a workplace that encourages integrity.
• Implement reporting systems that support internal and external whistleblowing and at a minimum, discuss potential issues within the workplace.
• Move all conflict of interest and gift and entertainment management online so employees can submit declarations in real time for management to review, approve or investigate.

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When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit early this year, it caused chaos for many organisations with many having to quickly rethink the way they operate and manage employees.

For safety reasons, many organisations were forced to pivot to a work from home model. Despite low COVID case numbers in some parts of the world such as in Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia, the remote work model is set to be the new normal with huge consensus from both employees and employers. According to Deloitte’s Digital Consumer Trends 2020 study, 37 per cent of Australian survey respondents are now working from home – almost five times more than pre-pandemic levels.

2020 has been a year like no other, and has only highlighted the importance of technology and automation. If organisations value a happy employee and one that has access to the right information at their fingertips, anytime, anywhere this will prove a tremendous asset to any organisation in the long term.

As such, organisations need to find innovative and more automated ways that will help businesses rethink the future of work; drive greater efficiency and scale in operations; and relook at customer and employee experiences.

According to Gartner, one of its key 2021 technology trends predicts that the concept of Total Experience (TX), which is a combination of customer, employee and user experiences will be critical amid distributed organisations and those firms that get behind TX will boost satisfaction across the board.

The role of IT in improving employee experience
Despite the seemingly different job functions and roles, IT and HR departments in an organisation are more alike than you think and the two groups do share some important similarities.

Both act as service centres, responding to regular requests from employees, many of which are repetitive and tedious. Through the use of IT service management solutions, IT teams have taken the lead in automating the request and fulfillment process, to help employees serve themselves where possible, while ensuring that tasks requiring assistance are handled quickly and efficiently. The HR department can also benefit from the same streamlining and automating of routine tasks.

Both IT and HR benefit greatly from the automation of systems and processes.

The benefits of automation
Research from Forrester indicates that intelligent automation will advance to support one in four home workers. Three times as many information workers will work from home all or most of the time, while many companies will institute hybrid models.

Below are some areas that we believe automation can help to significantly improve the employee experience:

• Employee empowerment
  Employees are the face of any organisation and more often than not, they’re the ones making decisions about how customers and external stakeholders interact with your organisation. When employees have the ability to do their job quickly and efficiently with access to the right information to solve issues it results in increased customer experience.Automation of manual processes also helps to make employees more efficient and tasks less redundant. A good employee experience will lead to happy employees which equates to happy customers and ultimately repeat business.

• Shared knowledge base
  Today’s digital world means greater communication and collaboration among employees online which has also led to the creation of more digital content. This content is key in connecting and equipping employees with the knowledge, information and expertise they need to be productive in their workplace.Having a real-time automated system within the organisation via a central repository where users can access as needed is a valuable tool that can help eliminate duplication and repetition of information and tasks, thereby increasing efficiency and productivity.

• Ability to access real-time employee information anytime, anywhere
  With more employees working from home in the foreseeable future, a self-service portal that can be used by the employee for a range of things such as requesting time off, changing a mailing address or confirming a super contribution can result in higher employee engagement.It also allows a quicker turnaround from management in responding to these requests.

• Better communication between employees and managers
  Workflow automation can help to improve communication between employees and their managers and help enhance performance reviews and employee updates. These HR functions have become even more important with employees working from home with a strong need for employees and their managers to stay connected and updated.

Organisations need to find innovative and more automated ways that will help businesses rethink the future of work; drive greater efficiency and scale in operations; and relook at customer and employee experiences.

Keeping employees happy
Deloitte’s Digital Consumer Trends 2020 study also found that while over half of Australians who work from home have had an almost seamless experience from a technology perspective, it hasn’t been smooth sailing for all respondents with one in five reporting they lose a productive day a month due to ineffective tech. And without access to the office, technology issues can be hard to remedy.

2020 has been a year like no other, and has only highlighted the importance of technology and automation. If organisations value a happy employee and one that has access to the right information at their fingertips, anytime, anywhere this will prove a tremendous asset to any organisation in the long term. Furthermore, it can immensely help organisations in retaining valuable talent and enhance the workplace environment.

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1. What are the key factors to shaping employee experience in a global company?

Culture, physical space, and technology—which we sometimes call digital space—shape employee experience. Culture is about who we are, how we are known, and how we act and engage with each other. The ways that we demonstrate our values in decisions, behaviours, and interactions greatly affects how employees experience our company. We’re seeing that employees are seeking cultures that are inclusive, support well-being, contribute to their communities, and invite different perspectives. Physical space, whether in an office, at home, or elsewhere, contributes to a positive employee experience when it enables us to be productive by matching our work needs. The impact of technology on employee experience is often underrated. But when it’s neglected, it can be highly disruptive. We rely on technology to connect us and to enable us to work anywhere, at any time, on any device, securely.

2. How does Citrix maintain workplace flexibility for their employees while still navigating the changing time zones of employees across borders?

Our values guide how we collaborate. When working across time zones, we particularly rely on our values of respect, unity, and a bit of curiosity. Out of respect and unity, we have adopted some shared practices. If a recurring meeting has participants in different time zones, we vary the meeting time to share in the inconvenience. We are understanding if colleagues joining in off hours may choose to leave their camera off, need to eat, or may step out for a moment to attend to family. If we need to work outside so-called business hours, we may take personal time during the workday.

We also use collaboration tools to work asynchronously, sharing files, recordings, and chat threads to advance work within each person’s schedule. Activating our curiosity, we experiment with new ways of working together, asking colleagues what they need and trying new tools or approaches. That said, we also look at our team design. We assemble some centers of excellence within adjoining time zones to enable frequent synchronous collaboration. In a collaborative and interdependent company, it’s not yet true that any role can truly be anywhere. We have to be deliberate in where we grow our teams.

3. How does Citrix ensure a sense of community when employees in different countries are connected only remotely? 

We’ve seen that employees who moved to work-from-home models in response to COVID-19 are maintaining their sense of community with their colleagues from their local office. Employees schedule time to connect with each other online, and site leaders still host virtual events and send communications.

Employees who are not associated with one of our sites, which was about 13 per cent of our workforce even before the pandemic, and new hires not yet going to a physical office still find ways to connect. For example, we have ten types of employee resource groups, such as our Women’s Inspirational Network, Pride Alliance, Parents and Caregivers, and Black Professionals Network. These offer a sense of community no matter where you are.

We also have active interest groups, including a group that schedules time to practice meditation together virtually and even an online puppies and pets group.

We’ve been a global company with distributed teams for decades, and one of the strongest drivers of community remains our shared vision and purpose. We come together to solve customer problems and create ways that they can unlock their employees’ potential.

4. How have you utilised the global rebrand as an opportunity to show greater support for employees internationally?

Citrix’s new identity celebrates what’s most important to us as a business – people. As we support our customers in delivering a great employee experience for their employees, our own employees see how committed we are to their experience. Our brand aims to ‘show not tell,’ treating our customers as partners, not as business opportunities.

No matter where we are in the world, we are unified in helping organisations unlock people’s full potential by giving them the space to succeed. This is a vision that every individual in our organisation can now rally behind. It gives our people a structure to make business decisions to ensure we stay true to what is important to us as a people-centric company. And as our organisation finds new ways to integrate remote working and distributed teams, it’s become even more important that our brand identity is relatable and relevant to all our employees around the world.

5. How do companies ensure the personal development of their staff to ensure they are growing skillsets that suit roles for the future of work? 

Companies have to intentionally plan for and invest in developing and growing their employees’ skills. No one magically grows new knowledge. We have a few practices that help us be purposeful about development. Managers and employees have regular touchpoint conversations to talk about growth areas and career interests at the individual level.

At the team level, we have a talent review process in which we identify the skills we need for the work ahead and assess how well our current teams are equipped with those skills. When we see gaps, we look for upskilling and training opportunities. We also encourage employees to seek mentorship, and we help connect them with colleagues who can be a sounding board about their career and coach them.

We also look further out. With research, such as our recent Work 2035 report, we anticipate possible future scenarios, emerging jobs, and work models, and we actively work to both shape and be ready for what’s ahead.

Our core competencies include ‘learn and innovate.’ This regularly reminds employees that we practice a growth mindset and look for continuous improvement.

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While there has been a lot of talk about when things will go back to normal or when we’ll adapt to the new normal, those conversations are fundamentally missing the point. Right now, we have the opportunity to come back better, stronger, and more inclusive than ever.

This view is supported by the World Economic Forum, which stated in April 2020 “building the necessary infrastructure to support a digitised world and stay current in the latest technology will be essential for any business to remain competitive post COVID-19.”

Listening and taking action creates a culture of growth and positive transformation. It means you will not be caught off-guard by issues that have been brewing for some time and can prioritise addressing issues that matter.

And it’s a view echoed by the workforce in Australia, with more than half of workers (55 per cent) in the Qualtrics Work Different study expecting their industry will change for the better due to the changes being implemented in response to the pandemic.

There are early signs businesses in Australia and across the globe are moving in the right direction. The Qualtrics study found the majority of people in Australia say their employer’s response to the pandemic has been above average.

One of the key drivers that this can be attributed to is that during the pandemic leaders instinctively provided visibility and transparency within their organisations. They listened and communicated more frequently, and showed they cared about their people by taking actions that reflected their concerns and feedback.

Despite the strong start, businesses cannot afford to take their foot off the gas. There is more change ahead as people start to trickle back to the workplace. While restrictions will eventually lift, expectations have changed forever as a result of the pandemic.

To ensure businesses continue to move forward, it’s now a critical time for HR leaders to formalise the human-centred approach adopted with employees in the initial response to COVID-19.

The journey to a new better
The first – and most important – step to making the new normal the new better is listening to employees and taking action. It’s essential that leaders listen to their employees to understand what’s working and what’s not.

This point is echoed by Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Leader, who said “listening is incredibly important. Especially in a world of virtual and remote work. If you do not have the ability to listen, you cannot be a leader.”

Listening is also incredibly important to your workforce – especially during times of change. More than three quarters (78 per cent) of workers in the Qualtrics study think it’s very important their employers listen to their feedback during a crisis. However, only half of workers in Australia say their employer has listened and acted on feedback more so during the pandemic.

With situations changing at a rapid rate, organisations need to regularly listen and engage with their workforce – in some cases weekly or even daily – to determine what actions to take. For example, at Qualtrics we discovered early on in the pandemic our global workforce wanted more frequent communications at a time when we thought we were already over-communicating.

The four stages to the new better
Changing the way leaders listen to a workforce and act on their feedback in this new reality presents an opportunity for leaders to build a new better.

In our study, Qualtrics found just under half of employers (49 per cent) have not taken steps to act on feedback more than before the pandemic.

By using modern employee listening platforms, HR leaders can get access to real-time insights outlining employee needs and concerns which can help them determine what actions to take.

As businesses start to plan for the return to the office, four key stages that must be kept in mind are:

• Stage 1: React – This is your immediate response to major change, when you’re listening more and taking action to address evolving situations
• Stage 2: Explore – Many businesses are currently in this stage. At this time you are planning to reopen workplaces, meaning listening is critical to understanding what actions people want to see for them to feel safe
• Stage 3: Reorient – Changes in behaviours begins to settle at this point. As things stabilise you need to understand what changes have remained and how to reposition offerings and messaging
• Stage 4: Normalise – This is your new better, where you will need to realign operations to meet new expectations

Atlassian is one example of a business reaping the rewards for listening regularly to their employees. The company recently gave insight at Qualtrics’ Work Different Event on how it is working differently during the pandemic, discovering its familiarity with working remotely wasn’t an immediate advantage.

“We learnt quickly that our habits were baked in being part of an office. A lot of habits didn’t work in a remote fashion. [Now] we practice stuff, if it works, we do more of it. If it doesn’t, we roll it back,” said Dom Price, Work Futurist.

“If we design this on purpose, we can build environments that are more inclusive than ever before. You get access to a whole new talent base that has amazing ideas, amazing backgrounds, and amazing innovation – we’ve just not tapped into them yet.”

There is more change ahead as people start to trickle back to the workplace. While restrictions will eventually lift, expectations have changed forever as a result of the pandemic.

The new better
It’s one thing to listen, but to really drive positive change leaders need to take action. Think about it like a gym membership or subscription service – you might have it but you get the real rewards when you put it to use.

Listening and taking action creates a culture of growth and positive transformation. It means you will not be caught off-guard by issues that have been brewing for some time and can prioritise addressing issues that matter.

Employees value this behaviour and as we move to an increasingly permanent model of working across locations, it’s clear employees won’t want to see it disappear. Listening and acting is key to ensuring the new normal is the new better.

Image Source: Pexels

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When the global financial crisis struck back in 2008, it quickly became clear that there were two types of companies. The first were quick to act, slashing jobs and putting talent strategies in the bin to save on cash; while the second looked to see if these ‘challenges’ could be converted into opportunities.

According to a Harvard Business Review study of 4,700 publicly listed companies, the 9 per cent of organisations who flourished following the last GFC were the ones that avoided knee-jerk labour reductions. These companies took a strategic approach to identify growth opportunities and invested in workforce planning to ensure they had the skills needed to succeed.

Armed with this knowledge, it has been hard to shake the sense of déjà vu watching hundreds of organisations across Australia implementing hiring freezes or letting employees go as they grapple with the economic impacts of COVID-19.

While some cost-cutting is inevitable, we know organisations that see their people as part of the solution, rather than part of the problem, will be better placed to survive and thrive in a post-COVID world.

Also, with more than 992,000 Aussies unemployed or underemployed, organisations have the opportunity to reshape their approach to people and find the best candidates to help the company grow and evolve.

This isn’t a time to sit back and wait for events to unfold. To be prepared for the future, HR leaders must understand what their workforce needs and how to get there.

Identifying future skills to support the business
With the pandemic accelerating the future of work through digitisation, disruption and automation, many organisations have little foresight into what skills they need to succeed and evolve in a post-COVID world.

According to a new McKinsey Global Survey on future workforce needs, nearly nine in ten executives and managers say their organisations either face skill gaps already or expect gaps to develop within the next five years.

Similarly, in Deloitte’s 2020 Global Human Capital Trends Survey, 53 per cent of respondents said that between half to all their workforce will need to alter skills and capabilities in the next three years.

‘Talent’ no longer means the same as it did ten years ago; many of the roles, skills and job titles of tomorrow are unknown to us today. Today, success increasingly depends on innovation, entrepreneurship, and other forms of creativity. Capabilities such as critical thinking, emotional intelligence and collaboration are key, and organisations who are not thinking about these talent pipeline needs are at risk.

Custom made candidates
With the demand for skills to grow and transform businesses ever-evolving, HR leaders must also be ready to adapt recruitment and hiring processes.

Traditional hiring processes have inbuilt biases that organisations may not be aware of, that can filter candidates out of the recruitment system before they’ve had a genuine opportunity to demonstrate how well-matched they are.

And in a rapidly changing economic and digital environment, it’s crucial for organisations to find the best-fit candidate to drive the business outcomes and transformation needed.

By understanding an employer’s needs, Generation Australia is working with organisations to create their own recruitment programs to train and place candidates. In-depth research is conducted to identify in-demand skills to develop tailored training programs around. Each program is developed in consultation with industry.

For example, it was identified that demand for skills in the software and applications sector were predicted to increase by 23 per cent by 2024, which led Generation Australia to develop its junior web developer program.

The first cohort of the program recently graduated the 12-week course with two more programs scheduled to start before the end of the year.

This demand-led approach ensures the workforce is agile in adapting to the rapid digital changes and ‘skills of the moment’.

Removing bias
Unemployed Australians are also having to pivot their skills into new sectors to find work during COVID-19. For example, thousands of employees in the aviation sector are currently reshaping their skills for new roles in different industries, such as retail and health.

From reskilling for a new role to joining the gig economy, it’s safe to say that the average CV is going to look a little different in a post-COVID world. And the skills and experiences gained during this time should be recognised and valued.

Organisations looking to enhance their hiring practices will need to actively combat unconscious bias from the recruitment process to ensure they find the best person for the job.

For example, if someone hasn’t had a job for a long period of time, there may be an immediate bias that there is an issue with that person.

This bias not only leads to organisations overlooking people that could be well-suited to a position, it creates a self-perpetuating cycle that prevents them from securing permanent work.

Generation Australia is working on a new digital platform in partnership with Hatch, that will match-make candidates of diverse populations with employers who meet their requirements closely.

Through the process, organisations can select candidates who are shortlisted for the role without biases being in existence during the initial filtering process. Employers will receive an immediate short list of people who are brought to life through videos and relevant information about why they’re a good fit for the role.

As we look ahead, there’s one thing of which we are certain; it’s crucial organisations must start adapting to the needs of their future workforce now to build recession resilience and evolve as an organisation.

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Even the best initiatives can succeed or fail at executive level. So how do people and culture leaders ensure their organisation-changing ideas don’t stall or fail at this crucial juncture?

Research by The Standish Group discovered that 31.1 per cent of projects are cancelled before completion — that’s almost a third of all undertakings, and a colossal waste of time, money and resources.

Bringing the conversation back to the original objectives, then showing how the work in its present state supports it, elevates the conversation beyond subjective details.

Many of these initiatives likely had great potential, but fell down simply because stakeholders weren’t bought in. As any leader who has faced a similar situation can attest, stakeholder management can be more challenging than the work itself.

The problem, as it so often is, is communication.

Leaders are increasingly aware of the benefits of good communication, yet may invest more time and effort in communicating down, rather than selling up.

This makes sense, as managers and frontline leaders are focused primarily on the impact an initiative will have on their people. A belief in the work and the benefits to employees seems so self-evident that the importance of communicating the initiative properly to the executive level is often overlooked.

However, leaders can significantly increase the likelihood of their initiatives making it to implementation by incorporating three considerations when communicating with c-suite.

Tailor the communication
The best way to ensure buy-in from any stakeholder group is to present the initiative in a way that’s relevant to, and resonates with, the intended audience.

This is no different when selling an initiative to c-suite.

The problem — either through a lack of time, experience or understanding about what matters at the executive level — arises when leaders default to presenting the same deck or collateral used to get their team onboard, rather than adapting it to suit a very different audience.

For communication to be effective, it requires leaders to look at the initiative through a different lens. It means looking past what it means to them and their people, and considering what it means to c-suite. Then, succinctly outlining the benefits to them, using familiar language and their preferred medium.

Understanding that leaders at executive level have very different communication preferences  compared to the frontline, then adapting messaging accordingly dramatically increases the likelihood of getting c-suite onboard.

Take them on the journey
Good communication campaigns are approached as a cohesive and considered experience rather than sporadic messaging, yet this is often overlooked when it comes to involving c-suite.

The best place to begin is drafting a timeline of the project and mapping the potential touchpoints with c-suite. This involves a delicate balance between too much and too little. It requires involving the right people, delivering the right information, and seeking the right input at the right time.

The journey should start early. This is essential to setting expectations and ensuring everyone has the same objectives for the initiative. The subtlest distinctions can become significant hurdles further down the track when it comes to final approval.

For example, imagine your offices are moving to an iconic new location. This transformation could be approached as a change management campaign or a destination brand. Neither is necessarily wrong. Yet no matter how good the execution, if it’s judged against a different criteria, it can be deemed a failure.

Ideally, after initial buy-in, c-suite involvement during the development process is simply about progress check-ins, rather than input in decision-making. These touchpoints should foster a sense of inclusion without inviting unnecessary contribution, which merely slows down the process. Where important decisions must be made from above, these should be dealt with simply, without fanfare and with as few people as possible.

Once the work is complete, the way it’s presented is crucial to moving into roll-out. There’s often an assumption the work will speak for itself, but as collateral is intended specifically for employees, it’s unlikely to have the same connection with c-suite. This is why a considered presentation addressing how the work achieves the shared objectives is important, rather than focusing directly on the collateral. This is neither the time for indecisiveness nor asking for input.

Finally, following-up after the initiative has been rolled out is an opportunity to present results and celebrate successes, building trust for future projects.

Take a stand for the work
Ideally, having tailored communication specifically for executive level and having taken them on a journey, there shouldn’t be push back. But despite best efforts, it can still occur.

The decision to fight for the work is highly contextual to the culture of the organisation or country. For example, in Australia it’s generally more acceptable to challenge the opinion of one’s leaders. Whereas the more hierarchical nature of organisations based in the United States creates an environment less conducive to questioning those in senior positions.

While negative feedback can feel like a personal affront, given the time and effort that’s gone into the work, empathy is essential to moving forwards. By seeking to understand where the difference of opinion lies, we stand a greater chance of resolving it to everyone’s satisfaction.

Leaders are increasingly aware of the benefits of good communication, yet may invest more time and effort in communicating down, rather than selling up.

Has there been miscommunication around the project objectives? Bringing the conversation back to the original objectives, then showing how the work in its present state supports it, elevates the conversation beyond subjective details.

We can also look for commonality. What are the aspects everyone agrees on? Establishing this baseline fosters trust and rapport that can be built on.

Finally, most work involves compromise. Where are the small concessions that can be made to keep the project moving? The simplest changes can be enough to promote a feeling of ownership.

By considering these three aspects in their communication with c-suite, people and culture professionals stand a greater chance of ensuring their initiatives have the opportunity to make a difference.

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With the realisation that remote working will almost certainly change the landscape of office-based work forever, leaders are now having to think longer-term about how they can help their teams thrive in a remote arrangement.

A recent report by Springfox titled ‘The Australian Workforce Response to COVID-19: A call for courage, connection and compassion’ found that worry and anxiety were the prevailing emotions for 21.7 per cent of professionals in Australia’s COVID workforce. Unsurprisingly, stress levels also increased significantly.

While remote working has certainly presented many challenges for Australia’s workforce, it also presents some exciting opportunities for flexibility and freedom in the way we work.

Interestingly, the main cause of stress for workers was not due to personal or health concerns, but rather as a result of changes to ways of working. In fact, an alarming 55 per cent of those surveyed were experiencing stress mainly due to their new working conditions. In addition, the combined pressures of working with technology, blurred boundaries between home and work, time management issues, operating in an ‘always-on’ culture, and worry about the future also contributed to workers feeling stressed.

It’s, therefore, unsurprising that 32.1 per cent of survey respondents reported lower levels of positivity and optimism compared to pre-COVID-19, and 39.4 per cent of leaders recognised this negative turn in their staffs’ outlook. Interestingly, one of the strongest drivers of positivity and optimism for our survey respondents was having a connection with others, in particular with work colleagues.

As workers were removed from their offices, they were disconnected from the constant stream of social interactions that influenced their well-being and sense of belonging at work. While working from home can bring a sense of freedom and opportunity, it can also feel lonely and isolating.

An individual’s well-being is deeply influenced by their opportunity to engage positively with other people. Remember, isolation isn’t just bad for your employees, it’s bad for business. Employees who feel isolated and disconnected at work have lower motivation, lower performance, and lower productivity.

So, what can HR leaders do to foster connectedness among staff and address some of these overarching concerns felt by workers?

These are some simple and practical steps leaders can take to promote a thriving workplace culture for remote teams and staff facing significant changes to their ways of working.

1. Communicate regularly
So much communication is non-verbal, especially in a remote working environment. It’s therefore important to set up periodic virtual face-to-face meetings to help everyone connect and stay on the same page.

However, be sure to strike the right balance. Our survey revealed many managers and leaders have gone over the top in trying to compensate for the absence of connection by scheduling back-to-back Zoom meetings and constant check-ins – leaving workers feeling hypervigilant and fatigued.

Instead, encourage a healthy mix of face-to-face calls and other platforms for communication. Cloud-based platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams are great for facilitating fuss-free collaboration and communication with co-workers throughout the day.

2. Promote empathy
Teams are made up of people who need to be able to understand one another and feed off each other in order to effectively work together. Therefore, it’s important not to underestimate the ability of staff to directly influence the level of positivity and optimism in the workplace.

Leaders will need to practice empathy as their staff endures increasing uncertainty and more changes to ways of working. Actively facilitate ways for your team to touch base with you to express their concerns or feelings. It goes without saying that showing personal warmth can help to build the trust of your team.

3. Give clarity of purpose
Your staff are already feeling the pressure of uncertainty when it comes to their future work and their workplace setting, so re-establishing a sense of purpose by giving clarity to what that might look like is vital for boosting employee morale and engagement across all levels of the organisation.

Overall, purpose is a powerful driving force of daily behaviour and collaboration amongst staff members. For this reason, make it clear to your team what their shared purpose is, and how they can work together to achieve it.

4. Practice resilience
Connection and resilience go hand in hand, as having a strong support network is imperative for improving overall well-being and positive mental health. This is even more important in the absence of physical presence.

There are a number of ways to build resilience and boost mental well-being including exercising regularly, eating a healthy and well-balanced diet, getting 7-8 hours of sleep a night, taking the time to detox from technology in the evening, and making time for hobbies outside of work.

Leaders can encourage staff to build resilience by leading by example and modeling some of these practices in their own life.

While working from home can bring a sense of freedom and opportunity, it can also feel lonely and isolating.

5. Build leadership trust
Our survey highlighted a huge disconnect in how much staff felt trust levels had dropped compared with leaders’ perceptions of this. One-third of workers reported lower trust levels compared with just 16 per cent of bosses who thought the same.

This blissful delusion has contributed significantly to staff feeling stressed and disconnected while working from home. Therefore, fostering positive connections in the workplace starts with building a culture of trust at a leadership level.

Leaders should aim to build trust with their employees by promoting a sense of shared purpose, connection and openness rather than setting tasks and excessive meetings that can cause fatigue and a sense of micromanagement and isolation. Instead, leaders should demonstrate care for their staff by showing compassion, integrity, and honesty.

While remote working has certainly presented many challenges for Australia’s workforce, it also presents some exciting opportunities for flexibility and freedom in the way we work. As remote working becomes more permanent, HR leaders would do well to consider the potential pitfalls associated with this model and strive to foster environments built on trust and connection.

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The pandemic has forced businesses to rapidly rethink the way they operate — from their business models, to working and hiring. As a result of various physical distancing and safety measures, it’s no surprise job interviews have gone virtual.

Virtual interviews were already on the rise before the pandemic, but recent events have sparked a dramatic surge. On the HireVue platform, we have seen a 653 per cent increase in live virtual interviews, across Australia, between July 6 and July 20, when compared to the weekly average between January 15 and March 10. HireVue’s 15 millionth virtual interview was reached this July, just over a year after its 10 millionth was conducted — pointing to a recent and sharp rise.

This is a unique opportunity for companies and hiring managers to take a hard look at their existing hiring processes, and consider how they can make them more efficient and effective.

When businesses do gradually reopen, leaders need to plan for a surge in rehiring as the economy begins its recovery. Investing in top talent will be crucial for companies as they look to build organisational resilience and drive value and profitability. However, given the current climate, it is likely to be a while before in-person activities return to pre-pandemic levels. This presents employers with a chance to rethink their hiring processes, while taking into account the limited ability for in-person interactions. Virtual interviews are not the ‘new normal’ but the ‘only normal’, and there are a few reasons why virtual interviews are helpful in the current environment to reach ideal candidates.

Going virtual allows for recruitment at speed and scale
Since the pandemic, some industries including call centres and delivery services are hiring workers in large numbers to meet unprecedented demands. Most recently, a leading Australian telco also saw 19,000 candidates applying for 1,000 vacant call centre jobs. As companies look to redeploy pandemic layoffs, organisations now face hundreds of applicants per opening, and need to sort through these applications quickly to get key talent back into the workforce, while on reduced resources.

This is a unique opportunity for companies and hiring managers to take a hard look at their existing hiring processes, and consider how they can make them more efficient and effective. Technology can be a great enabler in the situation, such as platforms like HireVue, which offers video interviews; live, person-to-person online interviews, and online assessments, helping employers find and interview candidates remotely, while social distancing rules are still in place.

HireVue also has the capability to allow for structured interviews to take place on-demand, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from any device. One advantage is the accessibility it affords both the candidates and the hiring managers. Candidates can take the interview from anywhere around the world, at a time that suits them, without needing to travel to physically meet their prospective employers. This is hugely beneficial for those who work full time or serve double duty taking care of children or elderly relatives, to interview for new positions when it’s most convenient for them. It also creates flexibility for the hiring manager to review interviews at a time that also enables them to still accommodate their existing workloads.

In the absence of the physical aspect of job interviews, the use of appropriate functionalities such as introductory videos and branding can still make candidates feel they are part of a personalised interview experience.

Virtual interviews are not the ‘new normal’ but the ‘only normal’, and there are a few reasons why virtual interviews are helpful in the current environment to reach ideal candidates.

Broaden your talent pool with fairer hiring practices
Virtual interviewing is also one way to ensure a level playing field within the talent pool. Using on-demand technology to deliver structured interviews means candidates receive a consistent experience such as being asked the same, competency-based questions during an interview. This way they are not impacted by uncontrollable factors such as the interviewers’ mood or demeanor, immediately improving the fairness of the process for all candidates.

Another way to assess talent is using skills-based pre-hire assessments to narrow down on the ideal candidate. This is done via objective methods of evaluating job-relevant abilities. With skills-based assessments, recruiters rely less on CVs and grades which are rarely predictive of job success and are often where human biases are activated, and instead remain focused on a candidate’s skills that predict success in a specific role.

Investing in top talent will be crucial for companies as they look to build organisational resilience and drive value and profitability.

This in turn breaks down barriers that exist within the current recruitment process. It also helps to uncover talent where employers least expect it — leading to a far more diverse and inclusive talent pool.

Businesses should not view this transition to virtual interviewing as a short-term solution. By taking the first step towards adjusting the recruitment process, companies can take advantage of tools that not only save time, but offer the objectivity and structured interviewing necessary to diversify the way they hire. This has proven to open up the talent pool to candidates that might not have been considered previously, and the benefits of the process will see businesses through the pandemic, and beyond.

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A tired and overused truism among business and technology circles is “change is the only constant.”

Whether you love it or hate it, in 2020 there’s no denying this saying has rang more true than usual for the vast majority of us.

HR leaders that can rapidly configure their listening programs to focus on immediate issues and concerns have a distinct advantage today.

One minute it’s business as usual. The next, a global pandemic is on our doorstep. One minute we’re celebrating the success of our national response and discussing returns to work. The next, state borders are shutting for the first time in a century as we battle a new outbreak. Add to the mix the emergence of a global protest movement and we’ve an environment in which being able to understand how people feel in real-time has never been more important.

Change isn’t just constant. It’s accelerating. And it’s having a profound impact on the expectations employees have of their employers. After the last few months it’s reasonable to assume workers will want more workplace flexibility, they’ll want to see explicit efforts to make all groups feel included, and they’ll want to see businesses ensure their safety and wellbeing is a top concern as they return.

As leaders, we must ensure we’re getting back to business the right way and with confidence.

It means listening to employees, understanding what they want, and then taking action to deliver it is paramount to understand how expectations have changed, and what can be done to address them.

To ensure the entire organisation can create and support a great EX, HR must enable other departments with the ability and structure to identify and understand the impact they have on it.

For HR leaders, insights captured by their annual or bi-annual engagement surveys just won’t cut it. While these platforms remain an important channel, such is the rate of change right now businesses need more regular insights – sometimes weekly – into the issues that matter. This enables them to track how sentiment and expectations change over time and monitor the impact of programs and processes being introduced.

HR leaders that can rapidly configure their listening programs to focus on immediate issues and concerns have a distinct advantage today too. For instance, as people plan returns to the office, there’s huge value in asking how comfortable people feel returning and what measures they want to see you take beforehand. This has the potential to deliver huge cost savings, operational efficiencies, and employee engagement.

Finally, being able to distribute insights at scale and make them easy to understand is important. HR teams are drowning in data – and the truth is few are trained data analysts. Ensuring insights are easy to understand makes them easy to act on to deliver value back to the business.

EX is more than HR
As we become increasingly dependent on technology to do our jobs, if any of these platforms do not perform as expected it impacts the employee experience more than it may have in the past. With working from home likely to become a permanent fixture across most organisations, HR needs real-time insights into how IT systems are performing and the impact it’s having on EX.

Alongside the IT experience, when workers do not feel listened to internally and supported they will find their own channels to be heard. They have various opportunities to vent their frustrations externally. Sites like Glassdoor have become repositories of grievances of employees who felt unheard, mistreated, or unmotivated. Such reviews will also impact an organisations’ ability to attract talent going forward.

EX is intrinsically linked to various parts of the business. This is apparent in the fact organisations with high employee engagement demonstrate revenue growth 2.5x that of those with low engagement. The rewards for equipping your workforce with the right tools to do the job are even higher, with revenue growth jumping to 4.5x when employees are highly enabled. To ensure the entire organisation can create and support a great EX, HR must enable other departments with the ability and structure to identify and understand the impact they have on it. This enables teams to rapidly resolve issues and ensure a seamless and superior EX.

Change isn’t just constant. It’s accelerating. And it’s having a profound impact on the expectations employees have of their employers.

Keeping the seat at the table
HR leaders have at long last been given a seat at the leadership table they’ve long deserved. But to keep it requires action.

We can expect to see greater demand and rising expectations among employees as we move forward. Gathering feedback on what expectations are and then taking action to ensure they are met will set businesses apart in the coming years, becoming a key determinant in employee retention and ongoing ability to entice top talent.

It’s important we don’t let change drown out what matters most. A strategic listening program will allow businesses to tap into how employees are feeling at the various stages of recovery, analyse and share that data with key stakeholders, and proactively adapt.

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