Organisations get recruitment right “slightly more times than they get it wrong” said Alex Linley, co-founder of Cappfinity, which is a global leader in strengths-based talent acquisition, assessment and development.

“If you look at all the statistics around retention, engagement and satisfaction at work, for example, the overall average is just over 50 per cent when it comes to successful recruitment,” he said.

Hallmarks of organisations which fail at talent acquisition
“There is quite a wide range in there, because some organisations do a really bad job of finding and recruiting the right people, while others do a really good job.”

The first hallmark of organisations which usually fail at recruitment is failing to understand what talent they require in the first place: “if you don’t know who you are looking for then chances of selecting the right person are not good,” said Linley.

The second most common challenge involves selection processes, which can sometimes be subject to personal biases on the part of agencies and hiring managers.

“Sometimes a hiring manager will make a decision based on whoever they feel is the right fit for the culture of the organisation,” he said.

“But if they get the selection process wrong, this can reinforce a culture of command and control because the hiring manager then needs to work extra hard to try and get the new employee to get the job done.

“This then leads to resentment, low performance and disengagement – and ultimately the employee leaves the organisation,” said Linley.

Hallmarks of organisations which succeed at talent acquisition
However, organisations which have a better handle on talent acquisition basically do the opposite of the above.

They have a solid understanding of who they are looking for, what it will take for someone to succeed in a particular role, and who would be a good fit for the organisation.

“They understand what high performers already do well, what their best people are like and what it is that differentiates them,” he said.

“Knowing this, then they can design for consistent, replicable, objective selection processes that allow them to hire more people who are like that.

“I say consistent, replicable and objective because they are likely to use some sort of assessment, structured interview process or group exercise – so they are able to compare like with like and compare people against a standard, as opposed to organisations in which selection processes are forever shifting based on how the hiring manager feels that day.”

“Some organisations do a really bad job of finding and recruiting the right people, while others do a really good job”

Organisations which are good at talent acquisition are typically very good at bringing new starters on board – not just from a process perspective, but also in terms of giving them work which matches their expectations and what they are interested in and want to perform.

“When people are doing things they want to do, they are more likely to enjoy it more and stay with an organisation that enables them to do that,” said Linley.

Hiring based on strengths
Similarly, organisations which understand this tend to perform much better in terms of recruitment, retention, performance and productivity.

“We certainly see across our client organisations that when are recruiting based on strengths, they consistently get it right around 90 per cent of the time,” said Linley.

“There might be a figure of about 10 per cent of attrition in the first year, because 90 per cent would be a very realistic benchmark we could be aiming to meet and exceed.”

With a strengths-based approach to recruitment, Linley said companies spend time understanding what success in a particular role looks like, who they’re looking for and who would be a good fit on a number of levels.

This allows the organisation to recruit based on a success model or framework, in which candidates are screened against exactly what is required to deliver high performance in a role.

“We are looking for an authentic match with consistency and rigour, and this flow through the recruitment process all the way, so there are no surprises,” he said.

Linley observed that a strengths-based approach to recruitment also delivers improved diversity and inclusion outcomes.

“Because strengths are inherently human, we are helping recruit from a wider pool and find people that might have overlooked through traditional methods of recruitments,” he said.

“Using strengths in recruitment goes beyond the surface and looks to find candidates who are going to shine and be successful with an organisation because of their strengths.”

However, there is no “silver bullet” when it comes to effective recruitment, and he said this simply come back to the hallmarks of organisations which are clear about who they are looking for, and steps and processes to find such candidates.

“There is a lot of hype but not a lot of substance in terms of what is actually being delivered and meaningful results”

Pros and cons of technology in recruitment
Technology is playing an increasingly important role in talent acquisition, and Linley observed that it is a “tremendous accelerator of recruitment – when done well”.

“I think the best results will always be achieved through a combination of authentic human experience and technology, and using the data in a way that can make the process more efficient and effective,” he said.

“It’s about the right balance and combination of technology and the human experience; that’s where the magic happens.”

Linley said technology is playing an important role in reducing the amount of administrative work in the recruitment process.

However, one way that technology can get in the way is where biases are unwittingly built into the algorithms, and this can negatively impact the shortlisting and selection process.

“It’s about finding the right ways to deploy technologies and using data in combination with strengths and that human experience to ensure this delivers the best recruitment experience,” he said.

“It should make it more efficient for the organisation, and more immersive and authentic from a candidate experience as well.”

There is a lot of talk about artificial intelligence and machine learning in the recruitment market, said Linley.

“There is a lot of hype but not a lot of substance in terms of what is actually being delivered and meaningful results,” he said.

Ideally technology has to deliver a faster, better and more cost-effective outcome for organisations, however, this can be limited by existing processes which can hamper the full potential of technology in the recruitment process.

“Some larger organisations which have been around for a while try and reposition themselves as digital, tech-focused and ready for the future, but when you get into their recruitment processes they are quite traditional and there is a lot of scope for improvement,” he said.

Image source: Depositphotos

The post How to increase your recruitment success strike rate from 50% to 90% appeared first on Inside HR.

While it is relatively easy for organisations to maintain a cohesive workplace culture when they are small, businesses often struggle as they grow in size, scale and complexity. Workday, which was founded in 2005, listed in 2012 for US$9.5 billion ($13.9 billion) and today has a market capitalisation of about US$40 billion ($58.5 billion) with around 10,500 people across some 60 offices around the world.

As it has grown rapidly, its HR team and organisational leadership have had to recalibrate internal processes to ensure the company and its culture stay true to its founding values, said Workday’s chief people officer, Ashley Goldsmith and has global responsibility for HR, global impact and workplace facilities.

The company’s founder started with a formula that happy employees’ equal happy customers, with a strong focus on the employee experience from the company’s inception.

“We believe deeply that if employees feel respected, valued and that what they do matters and they can make an impact, then they will do great things for our customers,” said Goldsmith.

“If they’re developing technology, there’ll be more innovative, for example. If they’re providing service, they’ll work even harder to make sure customers are happy.

“So, with this ethos as a backdrop, ensuring we have a strong culture and sticking to our values has been really important,” she said.

However, Workday has faced challenges in maintaining this culture as it has experienced rapid growth.

In 2016, for example, the company had been growing quickly with about 4000 employees on its books.

“We were seeing all these little signals that the culture, values and experience were just not what they used to be,” she recalled.

Internal surveys, as well as external feedback through Glassdoor ratings and LinkedIn, were slightly down from previous highs, and Goldsmith said trendlines in employee feedback were not heading in the right direction.

“We were seeing all these little signals that the culture, values and experience were just not what they used to be”

“That was an important moment for us,” she said.

“We looked in the mirror and asked ourselves whether this was just a symptom of growth and recognition that all companies can’t stay amazing forever and if we were okay with being really good – or if we wanted to be exceptional even through major growth.”

“We decided we wanted to be exceptional, so we implemented a number of measures and steps to refocus on our values and culture in order to improve employee feedback and sentiment.

“We were highly intentional about this at the leadership level and we realised that some of the ways we had been doing things were not working to the standards we wanted, and just hoping that working the culture and values through normal channels was not going to work in the face of high growth.”

Workday’s people leadership summit
Workday started by focusing on its people leaders, as Goldsmith explained that they have the greatest cultural impact on employees’ day-to-day experiences.

“To start, we brought every single one of our people leaders from around the world together for two days to meet with Workday’s co-founders and our senior leadership team, to learn why we need to nurture our culture and how to create positive experiences for employees,” she said.

The executive team taught all our people managers about what it means to lead and manage in alignment with Workday’s values and culture – which was the exclusive focus rather than company goals and results.

“Managers make or break the employee experience, right?

“If our founders could have wonderful views and corporate could be really a great place to work that’s great, but your actual manager stinks and isn’t reinforcing the values, then you’re going to be having a really different experience,” said Goldsmith.

This original get-together in 2016 has now been formalised into an annual program (called the people leadership summit) which is designed for every people manager in the company who has been newly promoted or who is new to Workday within the previous year.

“We continue to hear people come out of it and say it’s one of the most impactful things that they’ve done,” said Goldsmith.

“We’re looking for points of correlation in the data which can assist us with creating our desired employee experience”

Assessing employee experience
Another initiative Workday has adopted is a survey to measure employee sentiment on a weekly basis.

Every Friday, every employee across the globe receives two questions (which take about 15 seconds to answer) via mobile phone, and the questions are part of a set of 34 questions which are broken down over the course of 17 weeks.

Feedback is collated and populates a dashboard which every manager has ongoing access to in order to understand the experience they’re creating for their teams.

The system also pushes managers content on areas for improvement in order to further their development and increase employee engagement

This content is delivered in bite-size format to improve accessibility, according to Goldsmith: “So if listening was one of the three areas I need to improve on, for example, Workday learning would push content to my phone with suggestions on what videos I could watch, what courses I could attend or which articles I could read – all to hone listening skills,” she said.

“The system constantly refreshes content for managers with guidance and advice to help improve the employee experience of their teams.”

This data is also important for Workday’s HR team, with data points that can be leveraged in conjunction with other rich data within the company to help define areas for focus and improvement.

“We’re looking to create a consistent employee experience which is in alignment with our culture and our values, so we’re looking for points of correlation in the data which can assist us with creating our desired employee experience,” said Goldsmith.

For example, female employees in Workday’s Dublin office indicated that they felt they weren’t being treated fairly and that their voices were not being heard.

“This was pretty alarming for the Dublin leadership team and for us to see,” said Goldsmith, who explained that a half-day session was convened to look into the reasons behind this less-than-ideal employee sentiment – followed by actionable steps for implementing change.

With the completion of the next cycle of 17-week survey questions, with feedback indicating dramatically improved results for the Dublin office.

“You need to be willing to try things, understand what the real business issues are, how technology might help solve these”

“This was a good example of something going astray in the face of growth and change, recognising the problem and then taking a targeted approach to fixing it quickly,” says Goldsmith.

Hiring for culture/values fit
With a renewed focus on culture and values, talent acquisition also came under the microscope to ensure the business was hiring the right people at the beginning of the employee experience journey.

All managers (including hiring managers) undergo an “ignite training” program which helps them understand what values to look for in candidates and what kind of questions to ask in order to identify behaviours which fit the culture of the business.

Workday also has a process called “results-based selection” in the talent acquisition process, which focuses on specific examples of achievement to help hiring managers understand how candidates respond in certain situations.

“We want to make sure that their values are going to be consistent with ours at all times,” said Goldsmith, who explained that Workday recently brought together 200 managers from across the US for ignite training.

“If these 200 people are engaged in interviews and hiring people into the company, but they’re not subject matter experts, then how can we ensure we cover off all the areas we need to?”

To assist with this Workday is piloting a “culture ambassador” program to help strengthen the process of effective talent acquisition and culture/values fit across the business.

“If I’m hiring somebody on my HR team, for example, I could have a software engineer who might interview a candidate, and this engineer is somebody who we’ve recognised as a really strong reflection of our values as a company.

“So, they’ve been trained on how to do this and what they should be looking for through a really objective lens – so they can add value to the interview process.

“We’re eager to see how this helps, because as we grow, one of the most important things we can do is make sure we have people who are aligned to our values,” said Goldsmith.

“If employees opt out and leave us, or we opt that they are not right for the business, that certainly indicates we didn’t hire well”

The evolution of HR
As a finance and HR technology company, innovation is an important focus for Workday and Goldsmith explained that this is also reflected in its approach to HR.

While HR professionals don’t have to be technologists or software engineers to extract the most value from technology and data, they do need to possess a deep curiosity about what technology can do for them.

“You need to be willing to try things, understand what the real business issues are, how technology might help solve these – and then engage,” said Goldsmith.

“Historically, I don’t think HR has had a strong ROI mindset and we need this to move forward.

“We need to look at the outcomes that our work is generating and asking ourselves: are we measuring those outcomes? Are they adding business value? Is it delivering the results that we want (or not)?

“And we need to be willing to phase out the things that are not having an impact,” said Goldsmith, who explains that this approach is particularly important in cultivating a good working relationship with the CEO and executive team.

Business strategy should drive the company’s talent strategy and all HR initiatives and programmes, which will provide a clearer line of sight and stronger discipline around tangible outcomes.

“It’s easy for HR to focus on the output rather than the outcome, so our HR team is focused on ensuring that all our people strategies support the business strategy,” she said.

Results and outcomes
Internally, the company measures its HR success in a range of ways – many of which focus on harder business outcomes.

When it comes to training, for example, Goldsmith observed that most companies assess training effectiveness through good faith and smile sheets which ask participants about whether they enjoyed the course, if they liked the instructor and if they feel the training was relevant.

There are correlations between positive business outcomes for people who have higher sentiment levels and a better employee experience, and to this end, Workday assesses the employee experience for people whose managers have attended ignite training, versus those whose managers have not.

“It’s easy for HR to focus on the output rather than the outcome, so our HR team is focused on ensuring that all our people strategies support the business strategy”

The Workday survey encompasses 13 dimensions, and Goldsmith explained that across each dimension there is a statistically significant difference in the employee experience of those people whose managers that attended ignite versus those who had not.

“Knowing this training correlates to legitimate business outcomes such as higher retention, better promotability, stronger intent to stay, better candidate referrals as well as higher performance tells us that we should continue to invest in this training – rather than just hoping that it’s a good programme,” she said.

Workday also measures traditional HR metrics such as 12-months attrition rates, and Goldsmith said this is an important indicator.

“If employees opt out and leave us, or we opt that they are not right for the business, that certainly indicates we didn’t hire well,” said Goldsmith.

“We do track these numbers and we have an internal target for what we should be aiming for, and we also benchmark attrition more broadly as well specifically against our industry.”

Throughout the globe, Workday has never exceeded 10 per cent attrition (whereas the industry benchmark tends to run at 20-plus per cent).

Workday has also been recognised in numerous external surveys including #4 in the Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For 2019, #2 in Fortune’s 40 Best Workplaces in Technology 2018, #3 in Europe’s Best Places to work (Great Place to Work 2019) and #3 in Fortune’s 100 Best Workplaces for Women 2018.

“We’ve very open about what works and what doesn’t,” said Goldsmith.

“There are some things which haven’t worked, but we have stayed focused on good business outcomes and that is a very important success characteristic at Workday.”

Image source: Depositphotos

The post How Workday maintains the employee experience through business growth appeared first on Inside HR.

When you look at your HR process – who do you see it designed for? Has it been crafted for the process, or for the people it serves to look after and delivering on the moments that matter at work?

Within Australia, the workforce is changing, and staff are expecting a very different experience from the companies they work for now, then in previous generations. Employees are no longer just employees; they are consumers and the first receivers of your business’ product or service. If we stop to consider this point for a moment, we begin to think about staff in a completely different light and we start to realise that the traditional company boundaries that have existed for years are no longer fit for purpose.

With the help of insights and a service-oriented model, it’s possible for HR to move from the role of simple ‘call triage’ to that of a trusted advisor. By digging deeper, HR can anticipate what an employee may need. HR also has a critical role in guiding the ‘people asset’, treating employees as an asset and addressing the skills gap in each organisation. Employees can also become trusted advisors that address both the spoken and unspoken intent of the contact from each staff member. This means addressing the core employee issue, and not just the symptoms.

Below are the key ways HR can win the workplace through services designed for people, not process.

Moments that matter
To design great experiences, you need to start with moments that matter. Designing great employee experiences starts with transforming from the transaction and function orientation of HR, to orienting around services and treating employees as consumers.

“In order to focus on the moments that matter, HR needs to simplify and automate transactions”

To anchor the delivery model around employees as the consumers of services, we identified five “moments that matter” for employees and managers. They are:

• Joining the company
• Transferring roles within the company
• Leaving the company
• Having or adopting a child
• Just about anything related to payroll

These “moments that matter” represent a set of commonly occurring scenarios that require coordination across functions within HR and beyond. When you look at your HR process, do you see similar moments that matter? Are there more that are unique to your business?

These “moments” represent significant opportunities for organisations to offer a more satisfying experience, foster positive perceptions of the company and produce meaningful outcomes. For example, health insurance provider Medibank has recognised the changing dynamic of working Australians and the importance of raising a family by offering 14 weeks of paid parental leave to primary and secondary carers within the first 24 months.

By approaching it as “moments that matter”, you can improve employee satisfaction and importantly – reduce repeat calls for the same issue and deliver savings.

When you better understand each moment, you’ll be able to better orient around services.

“It’s important we are leveraging emerging technologies that are available to us to design HR services for people”

Hi-Touch/Hi-Tech
To create a seamless employee service, you require an integrated operating model – one that incorporates multiple processes and systems across digital and physical channels. With the right balance, employees will be able to choose the channel that works best for them – from self-service to high-touch, and mobile to voice.

Even better, this new employee services model balanced between hi-tech and hi-touch will provide an expanded line-of-sight for HR, anchored on delivering against the expectations of the customer – both spoken and unspoken. Expectations such as:

• Personal and relevant: “Make the experience relevant to me”
• Intuitive: “Should be easy to figure out”
• Accessible on demand: “I need this to be available when I have time”

In order to focus on the moments that matter, HR needs to simplify and automate transactions. As part of their recruitment process Rio Tinto has adopted AI-powered recruiting tool Pymetrics that uses gaming style assessments to collect behavioural data. This technology removes bias in the hiring process resulting in a more suitable talent pool and an improved candidate experience, whilst also freeing up HR talent’s time and energy.

Robotic process automation, virtual assistants and artificial intelligence can handle high-volume, otherwise manual transactions with ease. For example, Ava, Accenture Australia and New Zealand’s virtual agent, has changed the employee experience when wanting to ask HR-related questions. Ava can provide immediate assistance for over 15,000 questions, covering topics such as travel, policies, and leave queries.

“Data and analytics are imperative if HR teams want to deliver exceptional experiences in the moments that matter”

Trusted advisor
Data and analytics are imperative if HR teams want to deliver exceptional experiences in the moments that matter. Data and analytics can help with the smallest things – like improving the safety and wellbeing of employees.

Canberra-based company Seeing Machines has developed AI technology backed by 1.3 billion kilometres of driving data, that tracks and analyses drivers’ eye and head movements to spot driver fatigue and improve safety across various transport sectors.

With the right use of data and analytics, the results can be profound and not just in terms of reducing attrition and improving retention. With HR stepping into the role of trusted advisor and gathering intuitive, relevant insights to its workforce – the performance will improve immeasurably. It could also be the difference that’s needed in the new global talent ecosystem that’s proving more and more competitive.

How do you get started?
Moving from a traditional function model to one that looks at employees as consumers and orients around services can be daunting at first. However, it’s not an overwhelming task. It’s best to consider early on how your employee services model will look – especially as you’ll need to incorporate the non-HR activities.

As the Australian workforce continually changes, it’s important we are leveraging emerging technologies that are available to us to design HR services for people. By finding the moments that matter, balancing our integrated operating model, and becoming trusted advisors, we can secure a strong workforce with profound results.

Image source: Depositphotos

The post The 5 most important “moments that matter” for employees & managers appeared first on Inside HR.

It should come as no surprise that employee engagement is a key factor in retaining staff and creating a good workplace culture. It can result in numerous benefits for employees, including increased productivity, improved corporate performance and higher customer satisfaction. Engaged employees also make the lives of the HR teams much easier, as employees who are engaged are more connected and aligned to corporate objectives, more likely to drive innovation and collaboration with others, and are generally happier. They are more likely to go the extra mile, rather than watching the clock all day waiting for knock-off time, or worse, searching for a new job entirely.

Global analytics firm, Gallup, recently found that engaged employees and business units realise a 41 per cent reduction in absenteeism and a 17 per cent increase in productivity. In addition, highly engaged business units achieve a 10 per cent increase in customer ratings. Gallup also found that in organisations that commonly experienced high turnover, business units with engaged workforces achieved 24 per cent less turnover.

It’s important, however, not to focus solely on permanent fulltime staff when it comes to employee engagement. HR also need to ensure their casuals are engaged, as many businesses (particularly those in hospitality and retail) have a number of casuals making up their workforce.

So how can HR leaders ensure they are engaging the casual workforce?

“Organisations that commonly experienced high turnover, business units with engaged workforces achieved 24 per cent less turnover”

A well-defined on-boarding process is crucial
According to Gartner’s Future of HR survey, 51 per cent of HR leaders claim that improving the employee experience is a priority. And the employee experience starts with the on-boarding process. Having a well-defined on-boarding process ensures casuals feel connected with an organisation’s culture and part of the team right from the start. HR teams who put the time into on-boarding new staff will likely find that they retain a significantly higher number of staff, as employees will feel welcomed and valued from the get-go. This is especially important for those hiring casuals, because it is common for casual attrition to be high, and many casuals to not even show up for their very first shift.

Business solutions allowing a mobile on-boarding experience can assist in engaging casuals with a good experience. An on-boarding process that is paperless – such as an app-based solution that allows candidates to receive and accept offers, complete their on-boarding requirements, agree to company policies, upload photos of required documents and accept shifts immediately – can ensure new casuals are brought into the fold straight away.

In addition to the benefits to casuals, an automated on-boarding process also reduces administration time. With high turnover of casuals, there is every chance one person may return to work multiple times for a business, and with a digital record of staff in the system, they can easily and quickly be re-started at any time.

Have the right workforce management solutions in place
Since casuals are paid differently, receive different benefits and operate under different awards and regulations compared with full-time workers, traditional HR platforms are not necessarily geared to support their varying needs and requirements. With growth and advances in technology, as well as savvy end-users, workforce management solutions catering to casuals’ needs and requirements, can help to build engagement between casuals and their employer.

“Technology can play a big role in facilitating communication and feedback, as well as showing how engaged casuals are”

While companies generally need to have separate administrative systems and records for their casuals, having the right workforce management solution in place can make it easier to report and provide metrics for casuals. This enables HR to monitor casuals to ensure high productivity across the business, but also means that praise can be offered to any employees that are excelling or going above and beyond. By having better real-time visibility of worker performance and hours worked, HR can have a stronger understanding of whether their employees are engaged with their roles, and what to do if they are not.

Encourage communication
A key factor in ensuring you are keeping your casuals engaged is encouraging honest and open communication. This allows casuals to share their thoughts and ideas, receive constructive feedback and be recognised for their work. Communication also helps managers recognise disengagement earlier and resolve issues proactively. Without this, employers leave themselves open to the risk that unhappy or disengaged casuals will simply start searching for work elsewhere, leaving HR to cover their shifts.

With casuals often working in different locations and at varied hours, technology can play a big role in facilitating communication and feedback, as well as showing how engaged casuals are. Workforce management solutions offer HR teams the ability for two-way messaging with casuals, statistics on shift uptake and completion and the ability for casuals to ‘rate their shift’.

Engaging casuals is a must
Engaging with your casuals is not a bonus, it’s a requirement. This is because employees who are not engaged will not hesitate to move on elsewhere, seeking out better engagement. More engaged employees, no matter their employment status, will be happier, more productive and this will make HR managers’ lives much easier too.

Image source: Depositphotos

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Most people who know me would probably say I’m a bit of a geek and an early adopter of enterprise technology. I still get calls from friends and relatives when they need help with “computer stuff”.

My fascination with all things tech really took off when I started working for a software development company in the late 1990s. They were building e-commerce websites and cloud-based management software before anyone really knew what to do with them.

On my first day, I was handed an Apple iBook 3G Clamshell. It looked like a lollypop and was unlike anything I’d ever seen. It was fast and sleek and it could do things that I didn’t know were possible on a computer. Most of my friends didn’t even have computers at work. The ones that did were using clunky desktops.

I was certainly the only salesperson I knew that had a laptop and the advantages were amazing.

I could manage leads and opportunities, track my activities, follow-up with clients and send my boss detailed reports on how we were performing. I also worked out that I could use it to produce flyers and posters and design album covers for my band. It was a revelation to me and fundamentally changed my expectations of what work technology could deliver.

Unfortunately, in my next job, it was back to a beige desktop. I hated it. So, I got myself an iMac and brought it into work. It cost me every cent I had. My friends thought I was crazy. Most of them didn’t have personal computers. If they did, they were less powerful than what they had at work. For them, coming to work was an upgrade. Not anymore.

“Outdated mobile phones, ugly laptops, clunky HR systems, complicated CRM platforms and buggy custom-built enterprise apps are the norm in most workplaces”

Today, advanced technology permeates our day-to-day lives. Personal electronic devices such as smart phones, tablets, hybrid laptops, digital assistants and intuitive consumer apps that we use every day to assist us in life have become extensions of our ourselves.

As a result, businesses struggle with enterprise technology to match the speed at which these technologies are adopted at home. Outdated mobile phones, ugly laptops, clunky HR systems, complicated CRM platforms and buggy custom-built enterprise apps are the norm in most workplaces.

How technology drives attrition
At a time when employees have never been under as much pressure to perform, they are being asked to downgrade and use inferior, impersonal tools and tech that frustrate them, slow them down, waste their time and prevent them from delivering value. And it appears, they’ve had enough.

In early Q1 2019, Gartner revealed technology ranked in the top 10 reasons Australian employees would leave their current role. In the data, technology had risen eight places from 3Q 2018 to come in ninth on the list of key attrition drivers for Australian employees

Slow and unproductive enterprise technology doesn’t just frustrate employees. It erodes the employee experience and directly impacts their performance. The tools and tech employees are given to do their job often feel like a representation of an individual’s value or worth to the company. Feeling valued by your employer is intrinsically linked to the employee experience and directly impacts how a person feels about their job.

These factors may have already hit the willingness of Australian to commit to their current employer. Gartner’s most recent Global Talent Monitor data revealed that intent to stay has dropped by more than 8 per cent, in the three months to March 2019.

“Consumer apps and platforms like Facebook, Evernote, Uber, Netflix and Instagram are purposefully designed to be intuitive and enjoyable to use, if not outright addictive”

Businesses can no longer ignore the enterprise technology needs of their employees. They must start thinking of their workers like they do their customers – making it a priority to offer a personalised, seamless and efficient experience.

The consumerisation of enterprise technology
The systems and tools that employees use to do their work is an important part of the broader employee experience. Allowing employees to bring their own devices to work still makes many CIOs nervous, particularly in highly regulated environments.

Cybersecurity threats are real and potentially devastating. However, forcing employees to use badly designed enterprise software just because it’s safe, is unlikely to prove productive or engaging. If employees don’t like the systems, or find them difficult and time-consuming to use, they’ll probably avoid them and/or turn to the many widely available cloud-based alternatives, ironically increasing the organisation’s risks.

Consumer apps and platforms like Facebook, Evernote, Uber, Netflix and Instagram are purposefully designed to be intuitive and enjoyable to use, if not outright addictive. They hide unnecessary complexity from the user and are continuously updated to keep pace with advances in technology and the changing demands of consumers.

If only the same were true for enterprise apps. Launching a new HRIS shouldn’t require extensive training and change management support to drive adoption. It should be like Netflix, or Instagram where the user can work it out on their own.

Organisations that understand what their employees value and make the effort to design and deploy intuitive, effective and compelling enterprise technology and systems will not only reap the rewards of an engaged workforce, they will have a distinct advantage in attracting the most digitally fluent employees in the market.

Image source: Depositphotos

The post The unspoken reality of enterprise technology in the workplace appeared first on Inside HR.

It is the responsibility of HR to address and deliver key elements of digital transformation, as well as transforming the HR function itself.

Key to this process is understanding the steps involved in delivery roadmaps for realising these key transformation objectives, according to IDC, which developed the HR Transformation: Delivery Roadmaps whitepaper in conjunction with SAP SuccessFactors.

This process needs to follow a logical 5-step approach to delivery change:

1. Empowering HR across the business
2. Impactful HR decision making
3. Managing a flexible workforce
4. Continuous employee engagement
5. Social and collaborative learning

The first critical stage in creating a HR transformation delivery roadmap involves empowering HR across the business.

By empowering managers and employees with self-service HR tools, organisations can streamline processes and free up HR resources to focus on transformation.

This first stage requires a 4-phase approach; the first of which involves understanding your company needs.

The most common scenario for companies in terms of their current status often sees line of business managers having to interface with HR to get information on everything: from KPIs to training programs to time off.

This causes an issue as HR departments don’t have time or resources to micromanage the workforce.

However, the ideal scenario would see line of business managers empowered with real-time control and an overview of their workforce.

This would also enable HR to focus on long-term challenges and drive cultural change, while the HR department would help future-proof the business for the C-Suite and employees would have access to self-service and more control over their HR tasks.

The second phase involves the formation of a working group for change, and this comprises a 4-step approach: ensuring C-suite and IT support; creating task groups to lead key elements; explaining and communicate change; and determining investment to meet goals.

“An ideal scenario would see line of business managers empowered with analytics for optimal role assignment and the design of recruitment policy”

The third phase involves defining the HR applications needed to empower HR across the business.

These tools need to provide an easy-to-use interface with social interaction capabilities, be delivered via a browser across all devices and at any time, provide dashboards, team views, data comparisons and analytics, while being easy to export and easy to disseminate with no-hassle reporting and auditing.

The fourth phase involves understanding progress and delivering results, and in this phase HR should collect frequent and consistent feedback, ensuring C-suite and line of business managers, as well as IT, provide constant inputs, while ensuring employees and HR itself are given the opportunity to feedback on progress, on what’s working well and what is not.

Also important in this phase is communicating regularly with stakeholders, and HR should publicise wins and the achievements of the change program and what they are delivering to the business – while setting realistic and continuous goals and showing where and how these were met.

This phase also provides HR with an opportunity to reshape and recalibrate HR metrics, bringing engagement and satisfaction to the top of the measurement pile in the process, while demonstrating productivity as a key outcome of HR transformation.

The second critical stage in creating a HR transformation delivery roadmap involves impactful HR decision-making, and the IDC/SAP SuccessFactors whitepaper observed that this involves the use of analytics throughout the employee life cycle which enables organisations to identify issues and improve productivity and engagement.

The first phase of this stage again involves understanding company needs, and in most organisations, IDC said that line of business managers have limited visibility on KPIs, goals, progress, and team data – while role assignment is often intuitive.

Furthermore, HR departments often do not have data-driven insights into the workforce, performance and objectives, while leadership lacks access to centralised HR data and struggle to make decisions – which results in a limited ability to foster long-term planning.

However, an ideal scenario would see line of business managers empowered with analytics for optimal role assignment and the design of recruitment policy.

“HR can create workforce planning and workforce projection outcomes, to show actionable results to LOB and senior management”

There would also be increased transparency across pockets of disengagement, attrition and performance issues, while senior managers are provided with deep analytics to identify risks associated with succession planning and specific skill retention.

The second phrase of this stage also involves forming a working group for change, and this comprises four steps, including demonstrating the business outcomes of analytics, interfacing with IT to ensure access to data; determining requirements for line of business and HR, and investing in a tool that makes HR more impactful.

The third phase of this stage focuses on defining the HR applications needed, and the whitepaper observed that impactful HR decision making requires HR tools that should interface with existing databases with ease, extract data, and offer fast insights.

They should also deliver easy-to-use analytics tools, with custom views and dashboards, integrate with workforce performance management, compensation and learning and development, and export in different formats while providing smart recommendations based on data insights.

The fourth and final phase of this stage involves understanding progress and delivering results, and in this step, HR should compare and contrast insights with the past.

This involves collecting all insight between line of business and employees, including past data, and these results should both provide insight to HR and also roll up to line of business management and the C-suite.

It is also important to apply analysis-based recommendations in this phase, through focusing on succession planning and attrition as a key starting point and where maximum value can be created early.

As part of this, HR can create workforce planning and workforce projection outcomes, to show actionable results to LOB and senior management.

The final step in this phase involves establishing a common starting point and frame of reference, which requires the preparation, planning and execution of a longer-term HR strategy with greater access to insights and trends.

This stage can also be used to streamline HR resources across departments and divisions and demonstrate efficiency gains to the board.

To learn about the above stages of delivery change in more detail, as well as the remaining 3 stages of successful HR transformation delivery roadmaps, please download the full IDC/SAP SuccessFactors HR Transformation: Delivery Roadmaps whitepaper.

The post What are the 5 key steps in the HR transformation delivery roadmap? appeared first on Inside HR.

As a company of 417,000 employees globally, director and head of human resources for TCS Asia Pacific, Kunnumal Sudeep, said HR has a major stake in TCS’ strategic and operational performance.

“A large percentage of our business partnerships are large scale, some in the billions of revenue per year, and require very advanced technological capabilities.

“Therefore, effective and timely staffing is needed so that top talent is engaged and delivering world-class results at all times,” Sudeep explained.

A part of the Tata group, India’s largest multinational business group, TCS operates across 46 countries and generated consolidated revenues of US$19.09 billion in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2018.

TCS has recently ranked number one in the Top Employer Institute Asia Pacific 2019 rankings as well as the number one top employer in Australia, and Sudeep explained that this was the result of its talent management strategy and a number of other initiatives across the firm.

The criteria in assessing TCS’ employee offerings included talent strategy, workforce planning, onboarding, learning and development, performance management, leadership development, career and succession management, compensation and benefits, and company culture.

Investing in talent
TCS is a company that has largely grown organically, and he said this has required a substantial investment in talent development to ensure employees have the best available digital skillset and are able to work with maximum agility.

To help support this, TCS has one of the world’s largest corporate training programs with hundreds of thousands of employees trained in the latest digital and agile methodologies, he explained.

“Effective and timely staffing is needed so that top talent is engaged and delivering world-class results at all times”

Ajoy Mukherjee, TCS’ executive vice president and global head of human resources, observed that as global business evolves into the ‘post-digital’ era – with the likes of artificial intelligence, cloud and robotics changing the way companies operate and are structured – the nature of work is also changing.

“With this shift well underway, it’s vital that we prepare our employees for life in the next generation workplace and equip them with new, state-of-the-art skills they can use for years to come,” said Mukherjee.

However, for an organisation that relies heavily on recruiting and grooming talent on the latest technology skills, Sudeep said the shortage of STEM-educated young talent in the region continues to remain a challenge.

To address this, TCS has launched several initiatives including a “GoIT Girls program” which assists high-school age girls to better embrace STEM programs.

The GoIT Girls program is a week-long work experience program aimed at female students in years 10 and 11, in which participants meet senior executives from TCS and its clients, who provide insight into the various STEM roles that exist across the business spectrum.

The aim of this specific program is to provide insight into and challenge stereotypes, of the technology industry and challenge gender occupational stereotypes, and every year it provides opportunities for 100 young women in Sydney and Melbourne to participate.

Aligning values and behaviour
Importantly, Sudeep said TCS’s HR function helps implement the Tata Code of Conduct – a set of guidelines that instills the ethos of the Tata group corporate sustainability into its employees.

Employees are signatories of the Tata Code of Conduct, which guides and governs the conduct of Tata companies and their employees in all matters relating to business.

“It’s vital that we prepare our employees for life in the next generation workplace and equip them with new, state-of-the-art skills they can use for years to come”

Introduced in 1998, the code lays down the ethical standards that Tata employees have to observe in their professional lives, and it defines the value system at the heart of the Tata group and its many business entities.

Tata’s values were first set out in 2003 and comprise leading change; integrity; respect for the individual; excellence; and learning and sharing.

The code has been modified down the years to keep it in step with changing regulatory norms in the different parts of the world that Tata companies now do business.

These modifications have reinforced the Code, and enable it to reflect the diverse business, cultural and other factors that have a bearing on the health of the Tata brand, said Sudeep.

Encouraging health and wellbeing
TCS also makes a substantial investment in employee engagement, with fitness and wellbeing being the two key areas that TCS has engaged and motivated employees at scale, according to Sudeep.

TCS encourages employees to regularly participate in sporting and fitness activities to ensure they stay fit, and a range of initiatives are available to employees within TCS campuses, including yoga and aerobics, coaching in tennis and badminton, as well as cricket and football tournaments.

TCS has introduced “Fit4Life” and “Purpose4Life” to motivate employees to take care of their fitness, and in giving back to the society respectively.

The initiatives are designed to create an environment of fun, while maintaining camaraderie in competition, encouraging associates to participate through forming teams, and gamification through portals.

Employees are also encouraged to make an annual commitment of fitness hours on the company’s fitness portal.

Similarly, Purpose4Life is aimed at ensuring mental and social well-being of employees, and is designed to motivate and enable TCS’ associates to contribute towards societal wellbeing by providing a platform that channels efforts and leverages TCS’ extensive geographical reach.

“Our headcount has grown by almost 20 per cent in the past 12 months, with our fresh graduates and interns’ intake rising significantly over the last few years”

TCS is the world’s largest corporate sponsor of marathons, ranging from the TCS NYC Marathon to the Australian Running Festival in Canberra.

The company also has a 300,000+ strong internal program, Fit4Life, which Sudeep said has empowered employees to better embrace a culture of fitness and wellbeing.

“It is perhaps the biggest program of its kind of any company in the world,” he said.

Driving satisfaction and retention
To evidence TCS’ talent management success, Sudeep said its internal employee satisfaction index has been steadily rising over the years – with Asia Pacific ranking the highest employee satisfaction level worldwide in 2018.

Additionally, TCS’ attrition rate is the amongst the best in the industry, remaining around the 10-12 per cent mark over the past several years.

Sudeep said there has also been increased awareness of TCS in the candidate market, with steady growth in job applications.

“In Australia, our headcount has grown by almost 20 per cent in the past 12 months, with our fresh graduates and interns’ intake rising significantly over the last few years,” he said.

Further, other initiatives such as the GoIT Girls STEM program and GOIT Challenge have seen a 30 per cent and 50 per cent rise in participation respectively in the past year.

In addition to the recognition by the Top Employer Institute, TCS has won 11 Stevies at the Great Employers Awards, was ranked number 2 among the top 45 global organisations by Association for Talent Development’s 2018 BEST Award, won 8 Brandon Hall Group awards for its HR initiatives, and was named the Best Company for Diversity and Inclusion at the 2018 Women in Technology and Data Awards by Waters Technology.

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While there is no doubt things are set to change, there are multiple possible scenarios of what the future of work will look like. Importantly, both HR and organisational leaders need to be aware of the changing shape of today’s workforce, how technology is transforming business, and how leaders can successfully steer their businesses through these challenges.

1. Disruption in the workplace is not just about technology
Although technology disruption gets a lot of air time in discussions about the future of work, the ageing workforce and negative population growth in developed economies are among several stable factors altering the composition of the global labour market. This is combined with changing consumer behaviour, globalisation and the rise of virtual work, disrupting a range of dimensions of where and how we work as well as for how long.

2. Organisations need to champion lifelong learning
With the speed of change in work, roles, structures and technology, everyone needs to engage in modular learning to stay relevant with evolving work. Lifelong learning needs to become more than just a catchphrase.

Our institutions and formal education frameworks are slowly changing but they are unlikely to be able to change fast enough to be helpful to the immediate needs of organisations in adapting to the future of work.

So where does that leave employers in relation to learning? Our people need to be self-directed and we need to provide the environment, tools and time to learn. Organisations that do this well will be leaders in the market for critical skills.

“Lifelong learning needs to become more than just a catchphrase”

3. Use tech investments to inform your workforce plan
While the future of work is unpredictable, organisations who plan their technology investment with an aligned workforce plan will be able to provide a decent degree of practical insight for workers trying to figure out which skills will carry a premium in future, and how they should position themselves to capitalise.

Bringing these two plans together will help to highlight which divisions and roles will be impacted. With effective planning, organisations can then deduce the capabilities they have, which workers can make the transition with smarter learning and development programs, and which need to be exited from the organisation through natural attrition or redundancy. Armed with this insight, they can (in theory) transition in the most cost-effective, least disruptive way – reassign, redeploy, up-skill, natural attrition, retrenchment.

4. The rise of robots
Despite the headlines, robots, computers and software are yet to take over entire jobs, and it doesn’t appear that this outcome is just around the corner. Many fear their role will be replaced by a robot that promises faster results while reducing costs, but in reality the impact of technology on jobs is not significant across our workforce. Robotics are replacing tasks and activities – parts of jobs – requiring redesign and re-skilling.

But, (there’s always a but) there is lingering apprehension that once this initial phase of automation is in place – in which mundane tasks of little value are removed from an overworked worker’s plate – the next phase will see technology both augmenting and replacing jobs in large numbers in the future of work. This could see employers trying to bring in new capability, upskill the existing workforce and manage large scale transitions into and out of their organisations.

5. Australia’s gig economy: is the buzz justified?
The rise of the gig economy has touched many sectors and is transforming the way that people work in a number of countries. The proposed gig economy, based on the US experience overlooks fundamental structural and cultural differences in Australia’s industrial relations laws, attitude towards entrepreneurship, and exposure to the global financial crisis which forced US citizens to adopt more innovative ways of working.

“Change is upon us whether we like it or not. Winners will be those who embrace and manage it, not those who defer or resist it”

That said, the gig economy thrives on technology, it will require a re-write of IR laws and what it means to be an employee. Community expectation will ensure governments provide some level of protection for workers’ rights that may not be in place today, covering issues like the minimum wage, superannuation and the need for stability of employment.

Estimates put the size of the gig economy anywhere between 1 to 30 percent of the labour force. There is an awful lot of white space between 1 and 30 percent, but even picking a middle ground of 10 percent points to huge ramifications. With 12 million working adults in the Australian economy, you’re talking about roughly 1 million contingent workers with all the knock-on implications for superannuation savings and capacity to borrow money.

Individuals who embrace change will benefit the most
Change is upon us whether we like it or not. Winners will be those who embrace and manage it, not those who defer or resist it. In many case, individuals that get left behind in the workforce revolution will do so due to their own complacency rather than a lack of clear signals and opportunity.

What leaders can do to prepare for the workforce of the future

• Build a shared vision of the future of your organisation, and use this to ensure alignment. The future is shaped by us it doesn’t just happen to us.
• Integration is key. Develop an integrated technology and people roadmap for the next three years which links IT investment to workforce capacity.
• Take employees on the journey. Engaged employees who understand the future vision and their role in it with a pathway to transition are more likely to embrace change.

The post 5 expert predictions on the future of work (and what leaders can do to prepare) appeared first on Inside HR.

HR is undergoing a fundamental shift. The rigid, policy-driven programs and processes of yesterday, which were primarily focused on compliance, efficiency, and conventional approaches to talent management, are giving way. Leading HR practitioners are replacing top-down programs and processes with more agile, worker-centric offerings – offerings that are personalised for employees and that are informed by a robust understanding of work and workforce segments – and design thinking can play an important role in this process.

Bersin research backs this up, and high-performing HR organisations are 3.5 times more likely to focus relentlessly on user experience when designing HR offerings than lower-performing organisations. This is a significant finding: High-performing HR organisations are also associated with a host of positive business outcomes, such as meeting or exceeding financial targets, improved processes, greater responsiveness to change, and enhanced innovation. It is also why design thinking is becoming an essential HR capability.

A design thinking mindset can drive results
Design thinking is more than a set of rote practices. It requires a mindset composed of three elements:

• User-centered design, which places the employee at the heart of the design;
• Human-centered design, which ensures that the design speaks to the emotions of users;
• Soft systems methodology, which ensures that multiple, divergent perspectives are incorporated into the design process.

When HR practitioners operationalise this mindset, they can achieve impressive results. Witness one of largest companies powering prosperity, use of design thinking to re-engineer its candidate assessment and selection process. The online financial solutions company’s redesign produced a 14-point increase in quality of hire (with almost two-thirds of new hires now receiving the highest quality rating), reduced average time to fill 12 days (or almost 20 per cent), and boosted new-hire net promoter scores by 14 per cent year over year.

A global leader in consumer transaction technologies used design thinking to address high rates of employee attrition, especially among new hires and key worker categories, such as customer engineers. It developed and used its new employee experience model to rebuild its onboarding process. The result: the volume of new hires who left dropped by 22 per cent, resulting in a savings of $7 million. In addition, turnover within the critical customer engineer segment fell from 34 per cent to 10.9 per cent.

Three working principles
Once HR has begun to establish a design thinking mindset, it can turn its attention to implementation. Design thinking is not a set of concrete steps followed in a specific sequence; it’s better understood and approached as a set of working principles.

1. First, seek to understand your employees and the problems they face
A key tenet of design thinking is the ability to empathise with employees, that is, to share their experiences and feelings. Design thinkers use observation and interview techniques to achieve this. Then, they develop personas (representations of the qualities and characteristics of typical users) and journey maps to better understand user populations.

2. Second, generate a variety of options and shape them into potential solutions
One of the pitfalls of problem-solving is rushing to find a single “best” idea. Instead, design thinkers seek to identify a variety of alternative solutions. This can increase the chances of discovering robust and innovative designs, especially when the options are generated by diverse and inclusive teams.

3. Third, test potential solutions with employees and refine them with data and feedback
Design thinkers don’t put all their eggs in one basket. They test solutions in the real world and collect both qualitative and quantitative data on the results. This allows them to deepen their empathic connection with users, define problems more precisely, and refinement solutions before committing to them.

A certain mystique has arisen around the design thinking, but there really isn’t any magic to it. HR professionals who develop the right mindset and put these three principles to work can soon reap the rewards of this essential capability.

The post Why design thinking is now an essential capability for HR (and how to adopt it) appeared first on Inside HR.

There has been an increased focus lately on the need for ‘HR agility’ within progressive organisations that are seeking a profound competitive edge in the digital world. However, there is a lurking concern that HR agility is in danger of becoming the trending buzzword in corporate conversations, rather than, actually delivering on its promise.

Let’s gain an understanding of what HR agility actually is through the discerning lens of a clear and simple definition before proceeding any further. HR agility is the capability of the HR function to respond more quickly and effectively to changing employee expectations, workplace disruptions and business requirements. Therefore, the expectations for the HR function are being elevated to a level where it can keep pace with the evolving demands of the digital world.

A significant number of HR leaders see HR agility as their ticket to the executive table for stamping their justifiable presence as strategic partners in determining/cementing the future direction of the organisation. This has prompted quite a few visible initiatives that have been hastily undertaken to provide ample evidence in the respective context.

However, this also opens the door for committing significant errors, especially, in terms of overestimating the inherent strengths of the HR function and the daunting challenges of maintaining a brisk pace while delivering desired results on multiple fronts.

“HR agility is the capability of the HR function to respond more quickly and effectively to changing employee expectations, workplace disruptions and business requirements”

Consequently, it is prudent to gain a clear understanding of the status-quo in order to ensure that a baseline is firmly established before any measures are taken within the realm of HR agility. This also systemises the approach to ingraining agility within the HR function and lays the foundation for consistently providing a high probability of success in terms of fulfilling desired expectations.

The following HR agility scale can be used for an honest self-reflection:

The result obtained from utilising this HR agility scale can then be used to develop astute strategies/action plans that are designed in congruence with associated goals/objectives.

Another effective way to benefit from the HR agility scale is to use it periodically, for example, annually, for developing a temporal record of the status-quo in order to gauge the improvement level in the agility of the HR function and the lessons learnt in terms of overcoming any impediments/challenges.

This can also be tied to corroborating performance metrics, for example, average time to hire, average cost per hire, average complaint resolution time, performance rating average of HR employees, benchstrength for succession planning, problem employee rate, HR function satisfaction rate, annual training and development cost per employee, annual training and development hours per employee, diversity and inclusion rate, and surveys from ‘client’ functions within the organisation that can provide factual evidence of HR function’s enhanced ability to meet/exceed expectations.

HR agility requires sincere teamwork with client functions and it thrives on constructive feedback that is crucial for refining the approach taken to provide seamless services. The aforementioned scale inevitably creates a robust bond between the role played by the HR function and the organisational imperatives.

Furthermore, it provides the impetus for innovation that is increasingly becoming a lifesaving skill for organisations in an era where the proverbial sun routinely sets on the titans of yesterdays, still caught up in the hangover of past accomplishments and perilously ignoring or being complacent at the rise of ambitious start-ups eager to disrupt the corporate landscape.

Image source: iStock

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