During the Covid-19 pandemic, many office-based workforces across the globe switched to working from home. Six months in, we are seeing a range of cities being impacted by the pandemic in different ways – some are still in lock down, while others are seemingly well on the way to the “new normal” as they attempt to bring employees back into the office. However, it seems likely that, even if/when the pandemic passes, there will be a permanent shift towards a greater number of employees working fully or partly from home. Employee surveys generally report that there is a desire to continue some of the remote working practices, at least for part of the working week. So what will this mean for the workplace, and will this have an impact on office locations, housing and pay?

The direction of travel
There is no doubt that many employers are reluctant to encourage their employees to recommence travelling to work in offices, due to the continuing circulation of the virus, despite it now being possible for them to do so in some locations.

For example, in the UK employers have discretion (providing the workplace is “COVID-secure”) to determine which of their employees they could bring back to work in the office. However, it is reported that half of the UK’s office workers are still working from home. In Asia Pacific, employers are adopting a cautious, phased approach to transitioning back to the workplace guided by jurisdiction specific government policies as well as their business continuity plans. More specifically, Australia has seen the pandemic impact different locations to varying degrees with Victoria currently in differing levels of lockdown whilst Western Australia is moving towards a “new normal”. In Singapore, employers are required to implement work-from-home arrangements except where it is not reasonably practicable to do so.

What remains consistent across most of the globe is that employers must adopt relatively stringent precautions to continue to manage the potential of community transmission and the risk that this poses to their employees who have returned to work in the office. Such precautions requires that social distancing is permissible in the office space and may include strategies such as staggering work and break hours, implementing shift or split team arrangements, ensuring regular cleaning of workplace premises and appointing safe management officers to assist in the implementation, coordination and monitoring of the system of safe management measures in the workplace. In certain jurisdictions, employers found in breach of the requirements risk having stop work orders or fines imposed against them.

Home advantage?
When the pandemic eventually passes, will employers want to – or be able to – return to the office-based working arrangements of the pre-pandemic world? This seems unlikely. One could argue that the pandemic has brought forward the inevitable permanent shift towards flexible and agile working. Even before the pandemic, there were prevailing winds pointing towards a greater degree of workforce empowerment. For example, in 2019, the Telecommuting Act was implemented in the Philippines to regulate working from home arrangements. Employees who are working from home must be accorded the same treatment (including rate of pay, rest periods, workload and performance standards, training and collective rights) as employees working at the office. More recently in the UK, a Government minister has publicly backed the idea that employees in the UK should have a legal right to work from home (although messaging from the UK’s Prime Minister seems to suggest that this is not Government policy) and in Australia, public health orders in various locations continue to provide employees with this right, at least for the time being.

Irrespective of any actual changes to the law, it is going to be more difficult for employers to use the same arguments as previously used to justify the need for employees to attend the office on a full-time basis. This will be particularly hard to justify where working from home during lockdown has had little impact on, or in fact increased, productivity. Indeed, the lockdown may flip the convention about working from home on its head. The “new normal” for some might mean that working from home is the default, and face-to-face meetings the exception. This added flexibility could generate a number of benefits such as;

• assisting in the much-needed (and keenly in focus) rebalancing of gender diversity in the workplace;
• little to zero commuting time; and
• the flexibility for employees to focus on their health and wellbeing through exercise or time with family and friends.

What will happen to the office?
Ultimately, these changes could be a win-win outcome, in circumstances where employers may no longer need to maintain the cost of large city-centre offices which accommodate the entirety of their staff. So, is the office dead? Probably not.

Employees still want and need to meet colleagues face-to-face, even if not every day. Many employers will want at least a partial return to the office on the basis that they can show some clear benefits from interaction in person.

One possibility is that some employers will move away from large city headquarters to having a smaller city-centre office (for meetings) and a number of satellite offices in suburban areas (the so called “hub and spoke” model). IWG, a flexible workspace provider, has reportedly seen a surge in demand for use of their suburban office space and anticipates a rise in the hub-and-spoke model following the pandemic.

In Australia there has also been discussion of the potential re-purposing of existing facilities – will the reduction of foot traffic in shopping centres and suburban retail precincts result in the creation of work hubs providing suburban offices for many large corporates? Only time will tell.

Where will the workforce live?
Even if a greater degree of emphasis is placed on working from home going forward, employees may still want to live within relatively easy reach of city-centre offices. Commuter towns are likely to remain popular places to live (albeit the concept of what might count as being “commutable” where it may only be for a journey once or twice a week, may change). This is certainly on the agenda for both employees and employers alike; when Google recently announced that employees should work from home for the next 12 months, one of the reasons for this was reportedly to enable employees to sign a year-long tenancy in less expensive locations (although, interestingly, Google has also confirmed that it will still build its London headquarters, colloquially known as the “landscraper”).

It also seems likely that employers who offer flexible and agile working will continue to be attractive to job candidates, and they may be able to increasingly tap into the talent pool of workers who are not willing or able to travel into city centres (eg for health, childcare or lifestyle reasons).

Will there be an impact on pay?
Will a migration out of large cities impact employees’ pay? The idea of salary-by-location has been popularised by headlines about Facebook’s plans to align salaries in the USA with the cost of living in an employee’s home location. Whether this idea takes off will ultimately be determined by the market. As always, there will be competing factors. The war for the best talent (wherever they may reside), does not look likely to slow down any time soon in certain sectors. Perhaps the cash that businesses save as they possibly downsize to smaller city-centre offices, will simply be channelled towards paying for talent?

Then again, we are likely heading into a global recession. There are likely to be more job-seekers than there will be jobs, at least temporarily, which may result in lower average pay because there is high supply but low demand for labour.

A more interesting and potentially controversial issue will arise if remote working becomes the new norm, and the talent pool potentially becomes national, if not global, including people in countries (or areas of a country) with much lower wage expectations.

If the late twentieth century saw many blue-collar jobs outsourced to less costly locations, perhaps the logical extension (hastened by the changes brought about by the pandemic) is that more white-collar jobs can be outsourced in the tech-driven twenty-first century? Perhaps, but the outsourcing of white-collar jobs to areas with cheaper labour costs is not something that is new. Where it has been possible, many employers have already done so, taking advantage of remote working technology. Of course, the issue for the immediate future is that most of the talent pool for skilled jobs is still clustered locally, living around or within commuting distance of the world’s major cities, with corresponding pay expectations. That seems unlikely to change until the magnet-like pull of living and working around cities is weakened and skilled labour migrates.

Preparing for the post-pandemic workplace
What is clear is that the case for innovation has been made. Early signs indicate that employers should assume that their office-workers will operate in an increasingly flexible and agile manner post-pandemic. For employers who wish to be on the front foot, this shift may give rise to strategic opportunities to reduce the costs of maintaining large city-centre office space, and there may be scope to better retain and attract talent. To successfully navigate these issues, employers should consider early workforce engagement, and involving stakeholders from across all areas of the business with regards to shaping post-pandemic workplace strategy.

Despite complex industrial frameworks, we have seen a period during which employees have dramatically altered when and how they work and many examples of improved efficiency and productivity. The drive for additional flexibilities will mean that regulation needs to catch up with a dispersed workforce. Government support through schemes such as the Australian JobKeeper payment and the UK Job Retention Scheme have provided employers with the ability to maintain the employment of employees whose roles have been most impacted by the pandemic. However, employers are now looking to the future of how teams will be able to collaborate and move forward.

“The workplace of a post-pandemic world” was co-written by David Palmer, Tim Leaver, Natalie Gaspar, Drew Pearson, Fatim Jumabhoy and Rebecca Lim of Herbert Smith Freehills.

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Before the coronavirus pandemic began up-ending economies and societies around the world, the campus-style workplace had been strongly positioned as a preferred benefit for the younger generation. Since the 1990s, major organisations have vied with each other to offer more and fancier facilities to their employees.

Managers will need to invest time in understanding what motivates each team member and then look for opportunities to align the individual’s interests with the work that needs to be done.

Google’s Silicon Valley Googleplex, for example, features free laundry rooms, swimming pools, multiple volleyball courts, eighteen cafeterias and a fleet of bicycles to enable employees based at a nearby development facility to shuttle between the two sites.

Facebook’s headquarters boast ball-pit meeting rooms, acres of rooftop gardens, complete with walking trails and tepee swings, a coffee shop, burrito bar, pizza window and a sit-down restaurant.

Here in Australia, we also have our share of organisations which present their workplaces as homes-away-from-home, with video games, free food and permission to bring pets in for the day.

Although presented as a benefit to employees, these facilities and perks have invariably been designed with a couple of purposes: to attract the best and brightest young talent and to make being on campus a preference to being at home. In the main, they succeeded in both aims.

Motivating young employees in a post-COVID climate
And then along came COVID-19. The shutdown restrictions put in place to slow the spread of the virus back in March meant remote working became the norm overnight. Signs increasingly suggest it may remain that way indefinitely, even as the economy continues to reopen. Many companies, particularly those in the high-tech space, have already stated employees can now work from home permanently, should they choose to do so.

On July 1, NAB announced its headquarters in Melbourne’s Docklands would be mothballed indefinitely, to save on utilities and running costs, while employees continued to work remotely. The bank has flagged the fact that its future real estate requirements are likely to be more modest than they were in pre-pandemic times.

That’s a shift that’s likely to be replicated across Australia and around the globe and it begs the question: what will organisations use to create an environment and a benefit program that keeps employees wanting to be a part of it?

It can’t be flexible hours and work life balance because, just like that, the virus has made them a reality for millions of knowledge workers who’ve been asked to carry on from home for the foreseeable future. Many are likely to continue to work remotely, some or all of the time, after the risk posed by COVID-19 recedes.

Providing the workforce of tomorrow with purposeful employment
Given research suggests Gen Z is strongly motivated by personal convictions and what management consultancy McKinsey & Company has dubbed ‘the search for truth’, the answer may lie in providing them with opportunities to undertake work for which they are able to feel a sense of passion and purpose.

As part of that process, companies need to get better at communicating their purposes; using internal marketing and communications to articulate the value they deliver to customers and the community, to existing employees and potential new hires. Every employee needs to know what their company does and how it gives value to its customer.

It can’t be flexible hours and work life balance because, just like that, the virus has made them a reality for millions of knowledge workers who’ve been asked to carry on from home for the foreseeable future.

Managers will need to invest time in understanding what motivates each team member and then look for opportunities to align the individual’s interests with the work that needs to be done. This will have not only the benefit of retention but will also lead to a more engaged workforce.

Those which fail to do so may risk losing top talent to organisations which are able to feed their intrinsic motivation more effectively.

Time to think differently
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the way organisations operate and altered the way employees think about work and workplaces. As businesses rebuild their operations in the wake of the virus, the challenge will be on to find new ways to engage with and motivate the next generation of Australian workers.

Image Source: Pexels

The post How to engage with and motivate young workers in a post-pandemic world appeared first on Inside HR.

Gender diversity programs. Love them or loathe them, it’s no secret that the security industry is male-dominated and diversity programs are becoming more common across Australian organisations to tackle this problem. ISACA’s 2020 State of Cybersecurity Report indicates that there has been a strong increase of organisations implementing diversity initiatives, with 56 per cent of businesses in ANZ now having a program in place to recruit and retain female cyber professionals, an increase of 11 percentage points since last year.

The question is, do they work? As a recruiter, I witness a lot of opinions from both candidates and clients on whether gender diversity programs are effective. While some have strong beliefs that they are the way forward in improving diversity, others believe they can actually create more bias.

From what I’ve seen, gender quotas can cause resentment among managers who can feel as though such programs interfere with their decision-making process, and team members can be made to feel as though hiring decisions are being made based on gender, as opposed to talent and accomplishments.

Whatever your thoughts on gender quotas, it’s still important for every security team to have diversity targets – particularly when it comes to women in leadership roles.

However, perhaps we should be looking at the bigger picture here. Women still only make up 24 per cent of the security industry in Australia (11 per cent globally) according to (ISC)², and much fewer are sitting in leadership positions. Without action, things will not change. We will not have enough female role models in the security industry, boards will remain non-diverse, and decisions will be made by the same demographic. And as we transition to the ‘new normal’, I think we all agree that there are some changes that need to be made rather than just following the old status quo.

So, how can the cybersecurity industry get diversity right? The key to change is to implement gender diversity policies that work, and this starts with recruitment. The aim should be to hire equal numbers of men and women, and yes, recruitment targets need to be set. Having quotas doesn’t mean hiring men or women without merit, it means that hiring managers, HR, and recruiters just need to look harder to find them.

One Australian organisation which is leading the way in building diverse security teams is Origin Energy. Around 40 per cent of its core security team is female, which is almost twice the national average and nearly four times the global average for the security industry. What’s more, the turnover rate in its security team is only 5 per cent, compared to an industry average of 20 per cent. Origin’s Chief Information Security Officer, Christoph Strizik, puts this success down to broadening talent pools, offering more flexibility to staff, and implementing good internal mentoring and leadership programs.

Don’t just rely on applications
A common complaint I hear is ‘no women applied for the role.’ Hiring managers should look outside the usual channels of Seek and LinkedIn applications. Women are generally more risk-averse than men and are 16 per cent less likely to apply for roles online, according to LinkedIn research. This means, if hiring managers are solely relying on applications when recruiting security roles, they are unlikely to have a diverse shortlist to choose from. Hiring managers and talent specialists should widen their horizons and seek out the best diverse talent in other ways, such as growing personal networks, scouring meetup groups, asking industry contacts for referrals and attending industry association and professional development workshops.

Hiring managers should also be looking at candidates outside of the IT industry with non-technical skillsets and non-conventional backgrounds. Strizik said: “Diversity is very important to us whether that means gender diversity or diversity of thought. To us, diversity leads to creativity. So, we tapped into a broader talent pool. We brought on people from different fields, such as engineering or consulting, and provided them with the right training in technical aspects.

“We also promoted people internally with strong leadership skills but limited security skills to run our security teams. This is perhaps unusual; however, it has actually worked out really well for us.”

Vanessa Gale, Head of IAM for Origin, was brought in with a background in Environmental Engineering. Her team recently won the Saviynt Innovation Award for their work in Identity Access Management, showing a clear example of how this method of recruitment has worked for them.

The aim should be to hire equal numbers of men and women, and yes, recruitment targets need to be set. Having quotas doesn’t mean hiring men or women without merit, it means that hiring managers, HR, and recruiters just need to look harder to find them.

Flexibility means more than just working from home
Now, more than ever, Australians are going to be working remotely, but flexible working is more than staying at home with a sick child. Australian businesses need to consider parental and carer’s leave, but also realise some employees may prefer to be at home rather than commute.

This means offering the right level of flexibility to suit a diverse workforce and their personal commitments. It’s not a one policy fits all, but an agreement that is tailored per employee. It’s a value add to the job seeker when recruiting and can also be successful in retaining the best staff.

Strizik added: “Flexibility has been a game-changer. Origin has an “all roles flex” policy where our starting premise is every role can be performed flexibly, and this goes above and beyond just working from home on a Friday. We have employees who work on the Gold Coast who just travel into the office once or twice a week. We have employees who finish at 3:00pm so they can pick up their kids every day. On top of this, we also increased our parental leave in 2019 to an industry-leading 20 weeks for primary carers, regardless of gender. We also removed the 12-month qualifying period for taking parental leave, so planning a family or expecting a new arrival would not be a barrier to starting a great new career at Origin.”

“When you offer your employees this level of flexibility, you are paid back for it 10x over. When you make their lives simpler, they enjoy their job more, feel appreciation for management, and work harder.”

Hopefully, the old mentality and distrust about workers skiving off when working from home will truly be dead now after senior executives have seen how productive staff can be working remotely.

Gender quotas can cause resentment among managers who can feel as though such programs interfere with their decision-making process, and team members can be made to feel as though hiring decisions are being made based on gender, as opposed to talent and accomplishments.

Provide detailed, structured mentoring programs
Mentoring programs have been touted far and wide as a solution to assist with the gender gap. However, outside of the external mentorship programs and networks set up for women in security, including ISACA’s SheLeadsTech and the Australian Women in Security Network Cadets that connects, supports and inspires female-identifying tertiary students and early career professionals, organisations need to have an internal leadership and mentorship program.

The structure should be set by the HR department with specific KPIs for mentors to ensure the mentee is getting the support they need. Managers should also be having one-on-one discussions with all staff to discuss training, development, and understand where their team members want to go in their careers, so they can do everything possible to get them there.

Furthermore, in a male-dominated industry, such as IT security, it can be difficult for females to get their voices heard, and women often don’t back themselves to apply for leadership positions. Businesses need to have a program to encourage and support more women to be leaders, so we can have diverse decision-makers and inspire the next generation of females in security. AWSN Cadets provides a fantastic external mentoring program to inspire female students and early-career professionals. However, we need more programs like this run internally.

Whatever your thoughts on gender quotas, it’s still important for every security team to have diversity targets – particularly when it comes to women in leadership roles. Strizik said: “No company has nailed this. There are still not enough women in leadership roles in security. Our FY 20 goal is to have 32 per cent of senior roles filled by females across the organisation. We are currently on 31 per cent.”

It’s fantastic that we are seeing more and more Australian organisations embracing gender diversity programs in cybersecurity. A diverse workforce not only means that this industry has more likelihood of successfully connecting with diverse end-users, but having people from different walks of life as part of your organisation means we are able to tackle diverse problems and cybercriminals.

With ISACA’s report also finding that nearly half (48 per cent) of security professionals in ANZ believe that there has been real progress made in women taking cybersecurity roles, these programs are clearly making some progress in closing the gender gap in this industry.

Image Source: Pexels

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Let’s face it. The employee onboarding process is anything but simple, and has become even more complex as Australians work remotely due to COVID-19. There are forms to fill out, contracts to sign, security cards to allocate – all items that need to be scanned over. All this paper-pushing can become incredibly cumbersome and inefficient and creates a pretty bad experience for your nervous new employee. Streamlining your onboarding process can pay off in spades, as we will discuss below.

Streamlining your onboarding process to make it as smooth and stress-free as possible is guaranteed to leave a better taste in your new employees’ mouths.

First impressions really count
Aside from initial interviews – where candidates are more focused on leaving a good impression than forming an impression – the onboarding process is likely the first time that a new employee gets a sense of what it will be like to work for you. It’s during these early days of filling out forms, reading through policy manuals and setting up work devices that your new employee will either think, “Wow, this place makes everything so easy!” or “Yikes, what have I got myself into?”

Obviously, you’ll want to fall into the former camp. In fact, these first impressions can positively impact the bottom line, helping you avoid costly attrition as well as getting your new employee up to speed faster. Research from Glassdoor shows that a positive onboarding experience improves new-hire retention rates by 82 per cent and boosts productivity. What’s more, as cited by Digitate, employees who have had a negative onboarding experience are twice as likely to look for new opportunities in the near future. Ouch.

Onboarding meets automation
So, what can you do about it? As a first step, you’ll want to eliminate as much of the painful, paper-based form-filling as you can. Streamlining your onboarding process to make it as smooth and stress-free as possible is guaranteed to leave a better taste in your new employees’ mouths. Throw in some gifts like a t-shirt with your company logo, or an inspirational book in their welcome kit, and you’re onto a winner.

Next, it’s key to invest in digital HR programs to help streamline the document-heavy process and eliminate some of the bottlenecks that might frustrate new employees. Did you know that three out of five (59 per cent) employees think automation may benefit a company when it comes to HR? By automating workflows, enabling eSignatures, and keeping everything in one central place, you can eliminate stacks of paperwork and instead get forms filled out in a few simple clicks. Those digital forms can then land with IT, security and whoever else needs to know about the new hire, so they can set the wheels in motion for a laptop, phone, security pass, and whatever else the employee needs. It all happens swiftly and seamlessly.

Using ID Verification to take things one step further
As our world has become increasingly remote and heavily regulated, you may find yourself needing to verify your new employee’s identity before they receive a bunch of onboarding forms. To simplify this process, digital identification tools like DocuSign Identify are key. Through these tools, you can simply ask an employee to show their Australian driver’s license and the smart system knows exactly what to look for to ensure the document is not fraudulent.

From an employee’s perspective, the benefit of using tools such as these is the ease with which they can upload a picture of their driver’s license to have it verified. No messy photocopying, scanning, and emailing – in most cases, they can simply do it all from their phone. It really is that easy and gives your company a professional edge.

As cited by Digitate, employees who have had a negative onboarding experience are twice as likely to look for new opportunities in the near future. Ouch.

Managing the process electronically is a win all-round
Implementing contract management technology can be done in incremental, easily manageable steps. For example, you might want to start with candidate offer letters – digitising this one step at the outset (because, after all, it’s all about that first impression, right?) could help you get offers out faster and win the top talent.

Then, you might want to think about integrations at the back end, so your HR staff can complete the entire onboarding process within a single platform to save time and reduce errors.

With the help of a digitised solution, it won’t be long before you are managing all candidate applications and onboarding documents electronically, which is guaranteed to be a win all around.

The post Remote onboarding woes? How to simplify the process using digital tools appeared first on Inside HR.

Like many of you, I’m already over the thousands of articles about Covid-19 and ‘How to work from home’ or the ‘Five things you need to do in a pandemic.’

Many of us as CHROs have been through this type of crisis planning during the GFC which was the Black Swan moment for all companies globally. The work and planning done then got many organisations and the CEO/CHROs through that period and the smart ones continued to have a continuously updated their crisis management plan. They have done a far better job looking after their people & business through Covid-19 than others who left this on the shelf.

It’s time to make work easier, bring people together in a digital way, and refocus our priorities on trust, compassion, and action. It’s time for HR to shine.

Our current pandemic has seen lots of employees stood down or laid off and research shows that when these periods occur, companies that go through deep layoffs always underperform in the future (many go out of business).

Why? Well, Josh Bersin in his research suggests that there are many things that work against you. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, you lose valued skills, and next you lose customer relationships. But he also suggests that worst of all, the people who remain go through “survivor syndrome,” asking themselves “am I going to be next?”

“These are the kinds of times that define the character of a company,” Microsoft President Brad Smith said in an interview. “People want to work for an employer that cares about the bottom line and the well-being of its employees.”

Now there are two key strategies that CHROs and HR functions should be doing at the moment. Firstly, planning, communication, and managing the issues associated with Covid-19 and the impact on their employees for today.

However, the second strategy in my observations seems to be missing for many companies and that is ‘developing strategy of how we will work’ when we come out of the pandemic. Diane Gherson the Global CHRO for IBM, in a recent webinar, talked about splitting her teams into two groups; one looking after today’s Covid-19 impacts on employees and the other looking and planning of how IBM will work post the pandemic. To date, I haven’t heard too many other organisations thinking along the same lines.

So, what are the five key things HR needs to be looking at as they move towards life post the pandemic?

1. Change the way we work & make it digital

One of the major learnings for many Execs and CEOs has been the fact that remote working ‘does actually work’ and this will now become the new norm in the way we will work moving forward. It will also cause a reset by CEOs in re-examining why they actually need so much office space and create a new problem for their real estate leaders ie: reducing the physical property footprint.

Over the last decade, all of us have been through various digital transformations – but somehow, they didn’t make work life better. Employees spend the day wrestling with emails, meetings, conference calls, and projects yet many organisations have failed to de-clutter their work environment so employee productivity, health, and wellbeing has suffered.

Again, through this pandemic, many digital transformation projects have been fast-forwarded including comms tools like Slack, e-learning platforms and programs, etc. So, we have no choice – we will have to make digital work thrive. New tools, rules, and norms will be established, and these will be with us for decades.

HR needs to build a set of rules, practices, and cultural norms that let people work remotely. When people are interrupted at home can they skip a meeting? When are cameras on and when are they off? What should people wear? How long in the day are we expected to be ‘on’?

The key question HR needs to ask itself is ‘are we planning for the new world of work post Covid-19 and if not, then why not? You don’t want to be hit by a bus when your leaders come to you as HR and ask, ‘how will we now do this differently’ and you are left to scramble for answers let alone present a strategy.

2. Simplify & make work easier.

You don’t have to be Einstein to know that the fact that economies around the world are taking a nosedive. Therefore HR, amongst many other functions, will have their budgets cut and this may mean a smaller HR team, but it definitely means redefining what you do

But there is a much bigger opportunity here and that is one of simplification. We now have an opportunity to clean up our mess. Again, Josh Bersin talks about the fact that during the last ten years of growth, we have created bureaucracy, complexity, and lots of overhead. Every time you hire a new manager, launch a new product, or grow into a new geography you layer on more “stuff.” Nobody ever takes anything away.

In Bersin’s research on employee experience, he found companies with 52 steps to order a credit card, $24 million a year wasted on talent reviews, and dozens of leaders telling him “It’s just too hard to get things done.”

HR now has the right (and mandate) to fix this. We call it “doing better with less.”

3. Leadership refocus

The third opportunity in our new world of work is a radical shift in management culture. A shift toward empathy, compassion, and understanding.

High performing leaders of today are clearly different to the Jack Welch GE approaches in the 70s and 80s.. They’re empathetic, they think about people and society, and they really listen. There will always be financially driven executives but in today’s world and tomorrow they won’t be effective (Boeing and Wells Fargo are prime examples).

Why? This crisis is teaching us an important human lesson. It’s a health and safety crisis first, and economic and business problems second.

Right now, the CEO is the Chief Empathy Officer along with the focused direction from the CHRO. If your CEO doesn’t think “people first” your company is going to have a tough time responding to this crisis.

4. Trust: What does this mean in the new world of work.

Edelman’s research shows we don’t trust politics, we don’t trust the media, and we barely trust capitalism (56% of people think capitalism does not solve the world’s problem).

Our companies are the “most trusted institutions” in people’s lives. So we have to live up to this trust especially right now.  Trust is a complicated thing Bersin suggests it is made of three fundamental things: ethics, competence, and voice

Ethics: Tell the truth. Give people the good and the bad news. Make decisions that feel good for everyone. Take care of people, customers, society, and the environment. Don’t lie.

Competence: Do not accept mediocrity. Fix every problem as it comes up. Learn to be “great” at what you do. Hold yourself accountable for excellence. Give people a sense that “this company really cares.”

Voice: Listen to everyone. Pour money into your employee listening strategy. Create teams that search for stories. Share what you learn. And take action on every single piece of advice.

As we enter a new world of trust-centric business these three things will need to organisations through change and trust will be the measure.

HR needs to build a set of rules, practices, and cultural norms that let people work remotely.

5. Re-invention of HR.

It has already been said but HR really are the heroes now. HR is the front-line leaders in our organisations and we need to come together, get aligned and excited, and reprioritise

Josh Bersin states that really the long-term programs (reskilling, employee experience, HCM platforms, etc.) have not gone away. In fact, they are more important than ever. But right now, HR have to reprioritize these programs, make them simpler and more relevant, and make sure you use them to help people immediately.

Almost every HR department I have talked to in the past 6-8 weeks is in the process of transforming. But they tell me there is a real sense of urgency “get on with it – and fast.” We have to get rid of our administrative focus and automate ourselves faster; reskill our own internal teams; and reorganize ourselves into an agile set of experts – and this will in fact be our new world of work in HR.

So, the key question HR needs to ask itself is ‘are we planning for the new world of work post Covid-19 and if not, then why not? You don’t want to be hit by a bus when your leaders come to you as HR and ask, ‘how will we now do this differently’ and you are left to scramble for answers let alone present a strategy. It’s time to make work easier, bring people together in a digital way, and refocus our priorities on trust, compassion, and action. It’s time for HR to shine.

The post Focusing on tomorrow – Is HR planning for what the world will look like post Covid-19? appeared first on Inside HR.

In the face of a rapidly changing and uncertain future, the ability to quickly access and interpret data in the workplace is more important than ever. With so many businesses forced to innovate their offerings, implement remote working, and make significant operational decisions, a data-driven approach to HR has never been more important.

When ‘data’ isn’t part of your role title, data-driven planning and decision-making as it applies to the management and development of an organisation’s workforce can seem daunting. But without realising it, much of what HR professionals already do requires them to flex their data literacy muscles daily. In fact, data is used in almost every aspect of recruitment, retention, development, innovation and monitoring workforce productivity.

HR responsibilities are also likely to extend to supporting and managing a remote workforce in changed working conditions, so the data transferred via various platforms for staff communications and collaboration will also be a useful guide for HR when designing workflow systems to ensure privacy, security and integrity of data outside of the organisation’s regular channels.

Entering and monitoring individuals’ details through talent management systems during the recruitment process, capturing and coordinating workforce availability, tracking employee absences and monitoring staff levels, as well as updating employee records with professional and personal details, are just a few of the ways that HR professionals engage with data in their daily workflow.

But HR professionals have an even bigger role to play in making their organisations truly data-driven. As HR’s role spans all across all departments, they can interpret and articulate HR data to help paint a more fulsome picture of the current state of the organisation, and drive informed decision-making across other departments.

Here are some of the ways that HR professionals can leverage their data expertise to strengthen and sustain their organisation in rapidly changing times:

1. Make sure your workforce systems and employee records are up to date
   As HR are the custodians of employee welfare, it’s imperative that workforce systems and employee records are kept up to date. In a time like this, such data needs to be readily accessible and will be relied upon to predict staffing levels, movements and potential impacts to the business. This information includes contact details, availability, location, reporting lines, upcoming and available leave. All these details help to paint a clear picture of the workforce’s capabilities and capacity at a moment’s notice.

2. Share the importance of keeping systems and records current with the entire workforce
   It’s HR’s responsibility to champion the importance of keeping systems and records up to date across all departments. Often HR procedures such as leave management and personnel records receive less attention from employees than their direct responsibilities, however if HR can’t rely upon current records to be accurate, they’re unable to reach people who need are needed and cannot plan appropriately for future workforce requirements. HR professionals will need to ramp up their campaign to promote database rigour as they face considerable employee absences and changed working conditions in coming months.

3. Get ahead of the questions
   Prepare and monitor your key people metrics such as the number of employees in different locations, number of employees who are sick or unable to work, and employees on leave or with upcoming leave scheduled. This will mean you have helpful information on hand for reporting, in making necessary adjustments to business operations and most importantly, when it comes time to make critical decisions about the future of the business. HR responsibilities are also likely to extend to supporting and managing a remote workforce in changed working conditions, so the data transferred via various platforms for staff communications and collaboration will also be a useful guide for HR when designing workflow systems to ensure privacy, security and integrity of data outside of the organisation’s regular channels.

4. Find the silver lining
   The saying rings true that every cloud has a silver lining, so do your best to find it! If people are reallocated from specific projects or initiatives during this time of flux, or perhaps unable to fulfil their existing duties – use this time to build their learning and development through online training, webinars, electronic toolkits and resources. This is also a great time to consider online assessments to measure where skills gaps are and creating learning pathways to keep your employees engaged and productive. There’s no time like the present to learn a new skill and prepare for the future.

Data is used in almost every aspect of recruitment, retention, development, innovation and monitoring workforce productivity.

A long-term, data-driven approach to HR will help businesses to understand the factors that make effective people management programs work, identify skills gaps, and make informed personnel decisions for the greater good of the business. All of this provides HR with expanded capability to design new talent programs and processes that will measurably increase productivity, innovation, and revenue of their organisation.

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As the COVID-19 crisis unfolds the old adage of adapt or die has never rung truer.

For the business world, each day sees new limitations enforced and different challenges rolled out to leaders trying to keep staff in jobs and to continue to support customers’ needs. Each choice and decision made during these difficult days will have serious implications for their staff, customers, corporate reputation and even financial survival.

Organisations must be open-minded during this unprecedented experience and adapt to a new normal of challenge and opportunity.

According to a recent Gartner survey, CHROs have been implementing arrange of cost-management measures to survive COVID-19:

• Seventy per cent report plan to cut costs by making the most of the technology available to them
• Nearly half of organisations plan to freeze new hiring
• Most are prioritising work for internal staff; with one-fifth of organisations planning to stop or limit spending on consultants and contract workers
• Encouragingly, only 10 per cent of employers’ plan to reduce working hours and just six per cent report asking employees to take unpaid leave

While some cost-cutting will be inevitable, those who protect and invest in critical talent will win in the long term. Now is the time to innovate and explore new thinking.

Upcycle skilled workers via internal exchanges and redeployments
As companies implement hiring freezes, the next action will be to select and deploy internal talent from areas of low demand to support work critical to business continuity.

For example, an organisation might redeploy customer service representatives to support an overwhelmed IT or customer helpline.

When companies redeploy workers with specific skills around the business, they maximise the skills and capabilities already available to them whilst simultaneously expanding employee skills.

Each choice and decision made during these difficult days will have serious implications for their staff, customers, corporate reputation and even financial survival.

Commit to upskilling the workforce
Before COVID-19, 46 per cent of HR leaders had reported to Gartner that their employees lacked the skills necessary to drive future performance.

For most organisations, face-to-face training currently isn’t an option with over 80 per cent of organisations have cancelled, or planning to cancel, in-person training.

Maintaining access to learning and development in this challenging environment will be crucial to surviving the pandemic. More so, organisations will never have a better opportunity to leverage flexible work arrangements and employee downtime to reskill.

Organisations must prioritise the virtual delivery of learning and development opportunities to maintain staff engagement and develop essential skills that will see the business excel in these difficult times and into the future.

For example, Melbourne based Learn2Learn is offering free access to their evidenced based continuous learning app for organisations and individuals who wish to use this crisis as an opportunity to relearn and reskill.

Seek new business partners and opportunities to collaborate
As a result of the spread of COVID-19, many organisations have had to think outside of the box to address the spike in demand for front-line staff including those in healthcare, supermarkets, call centres, cleaning and delivery services.

For example, when QANTAS was forced to stand down 30,000 of its staff members as the COVID-19 pandemic brought travel to a halt, discussions took place to offer temporary employment at Woolworths; where there is an immediate need for staff.

Looking at different organisations a business can partner with is an innovative way to extend resources through other expanding networks, keep business going and open new avenues of opportunity that can exist for years to come.

• Fratelli Fresh recently took this approach and utilised existing services to grow business during a period of little activity. The Italian restaurant is delivering ready-made meals and pasta sauces as well as grocery items and household essentials such as toilet paper, hand soap & alcohol.
• Newcastle-based Earp has repurposed their gin distillery to produce hand sanitizer.
• Stagekings Australia, a concert and festival stage production company are now building and supplying inexpensive and easy to assemble desks to support the huge spike in remote working.
• Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association chief executive Alison Verhoeven said many workers stood down by airlines and gyms due to travel bans and social distancing shutdowns had basic first aid training and could be upskilled and re-deployed in the health sector.

While some cost-cutting will be inevitable, those who protect and invest in critical talent will win in the long term. Now is the time to innovate and explore new thinking.

The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to take months to resolve and the world will certainly be changed by it. Organisations must be open-minded during this unprecedented experience and adapt to a new normal of challenge and opportunity.

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Performance management is the starting point of much of talent management.  It serves as the basis for goal setting, measurement, feedback, financial rewards, non-financial recognition, promotions, leadership development, on-the-job development, and outplacement.  The purpose of this essay is to discuss three of the major decision points and trade-offs which must be addressed to have measurement and reward systems that are accurate and credible.  Given that rewards should be based on robust measurements, the essay focuses on measurement while suggesting some of the reward implications.

Weighing Output against Behavior
For certain types of work, it is easy to measure output but is difficult to accurately assess behavior.  Such is the case in B2B sales.  At the end of a week, either the salesperson met a sales target or did not.  For other types of work, it is difficult to measurer output but is relatively easy to assess behavior.  Such might be the case for a cabin crew attendant in Singapore Airlines.  On the other hand, for some work it is relatively easy to accurately evaluate both output and behavior.  Such might be the case for an assembly line worker.  For still other types of work, it is difficult to accurately assess either behavior or output results, at least in the short run.  Such might be the case for a research scientist.  Results might not be known for years.  At the same time observing the individual at work is not likely to provide much insight to value creation.  The classic example is the individual who was to meet Albert Einstein on a bridge and apologised for being late while Einstein waited alone on the bridge.  Einstein’s purported response was, “Not to worry. I have been working.”  Different companies even in the same industry must weigh output results versus behavior differently in assessing and rewarding performance.

For certain types of work, it is easy to measure output but is difficult to accurately assess behavior.  At the end of a week, either the salesperson met a sales target or did not.  For other types of work, it is difficult to measurer output but is relatively easy to assess behavior.

Unit of Analysis.
The driving question for this aspect of performance management is, “At what unit of analysis does the company create the greatest value?”  (Please excuse the sports metaphor.)  Is value created through individual effort as in tennis?  Is it through team effort as in ice hockey? Or is it through institutional effort as in baseball’s Money Ball?  Allocating a hundred points across these three units helps HR to know on which units to focus measurements, how to divide bonus money and how to allocate public recognition.  Are individuals rewarded for their individual effort?  Are teams reward for integrated teamwork that creates value?  Or are people rewarded for total organisational performance?  HR should focus its measurements and rewards on the unit through which the greatest value is created.  Focusing the measurement and reward systems on the wrong unit of analysis can demotivate, create confusion and make the whole less than the sum of the parts.

The driving question for this aspect of performance management is, “At what unit of analysis does the company create the greatest value?”

Power Curve or Normal Distribution
A currently hotly debated topic in the academic literature is whether to rely on the logic of power curve or the logic of the normal distribution.  Some argue that in most cases, a very small number of individuals create the overwhelming greatest amount of value.  Therefore, the great preponderance of financial rewards should be allocated to a small number of people.  Those supporting the normal distribution argue that in most cases there are a number of high performers, a roughly equivalent number of low performers and a large number in the middle.  Therefore, the bonus pool should be divided up on the basis whether an individual is an A player, a B player or a C player.  One way to assess which approach is best for your company is to ask the question, “What percent of your people create 90% of the value?  Is it a large number or a small number?” This question will frequently provoke a heated discussion.  The heat is provoked by a lack of consensus about how the company actually creates value.

One way to assess which approach is best for your company is to ask the question, “What percent of your people create 90% of the value?”

In order to design and implement an accurate, credible and performance inducing performance management system, HR professionals must bring their intellectual prowess and their deep knowledge of the business to address these issues.

Action Steps:
HR professionals need to determine the extent to which the measurement and reward systems will focus on the following:

• The balance between output measure and behavioral measures;
• The balance among individual, team and organisational measurements and rewards’
• The balance between power curve versus normal distribution assumptions in measurements and rewards

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I often think of the emerging digital work environment like a pristine Alpine ski slope. It looks pretty and inviting but at the same time a dangerous place to be if you are unskilled and even then, for the experienced skiers, there are uncontrollable elements like poor visibility and avalanches which can result in disastrous outcomes.

Advanced Technologies are becoming a necessity for effective Digital Environments, however choosing the right technologies is an important buying decision.

From an analogy point of view, modern people technology platforms are in many ways like the pristine ski-slope. From a distance, they can look exciting and inviting to use, especially with the emerging advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and blockchain that are on offer. These new technologies have significant muscle and capability to power your people agenda, catapult you to new levels of insight using data analytics and give you productivity improvements that will impress any ski coach.

But for the inexperienced people software buyer, the pitfalls may not be obvious. And once you start down the slippery icy slope, the question is will you stay in control or land up with your skis wrapped around your head?

Because these advanced technologies are relatively new, there is a fair amount of research, exploring, and experimenting taking place. Rather than buying HR software for a specific advanced technology feature, it would be wise to look at the underlying direction the vendors are heading towards to ensure it aligns with the longer-term direction your own company is headed in.

Be aware of the terminology used by vendors. Terms like ‘Automation’ do not necessarily mean its powered by an ‘Advanced Technology’.

Say for example you are a leading-edge company, wanting to be ahead of the curve in people technologies – would you want to invest in an HR software vendor focused on Machine Learning or Blockchain? The answer is not always obvious, but it would be helpful if you could understand the outputs or impact areas of these technologies, that would allow you to understand the vendor’s key motives and it would provide some indication of how fundamentally they are changing the underlying software.

Knowing that your organisation is shifting towards e.g.  ‘Personalisation’ and ‘Analytics’ you could then focus on vendors who are more focused on Machine Learning, as it would be this Advanced Technology that will help you achieve your goal, rather than Blockchain in this example.

I’ve recently developed an Advanced Technology Index (ATX) for 19 Global and some Australian vendors which includes a visualisation of where vendors are putting their Advanced Technology efforts. There are several interesting observations:

• Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Advanced Automation (AA) are the big focus for vendors
• Machine Learning is having significant impacts in ‘Personalisation”, “Analytics” and broader Talent Management
• Advanced Automation, things like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Advanced Workflow engines are heavily focused on Process Enhancement activity as well as User Interface (UI). What this really means is the technologies are positioned to improve typical HR process management. However, we are seeing AI technologies also being applied to the Process space by some vendors – these advanced tools will drive fundamental change in the way Processes are dynamically modified based on individual and team behaviour.
• The large Global vendors such as SAP SuccessFactors, Oracle HCM and Workday are well ahead of the other players. This is because investment in Advanced Technologies is high in terms of financial capital as well as human skill and time. Many of the smaller vendors are partnering with specialised vendors to plug-in advanced technology features.
• Blockchain is still being researched extensively, which would imply that this is a potential future growth area, but there is still a high level of uncertainty in its application for HR software.

Advanced Technologies by their very nature can change the fundamental design of software. Understand how this impacts software deployment and other data sets that may be required for it to operate as promised.

The bottom line is to ensure you do enough investigation into a potential vendor’s advanced technology direction before buying into their products. There is a lot of marketing hype and ‘smoke n mirror’ messaging regarding these tools. But, armed with a clear people strategy and vision you will be able to seek out those vendors better aligned to achieve your goals.

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Almost every HR department is focused on the employee experience these days. LinkedIn’s 2020 Global Talent Trends research cites experience design as one of the fastest growing areas in HR, with 2.4 times more job titles related to “employee experience” than existed five years ago.

Employees are now in charge and they are your customers. You work for them; they don’t work for you.

Employee experiences are complex. Experiences encompass the physical work environment, the pay and rewards system, a company’s management and leadership, and of course, the job, opportunities to grow, and culture. So, when companies jump into this area, those involved often begin by scratching their heads and wondering just where to start and stop an experience initiative.

What I’ve found works best is to focus. Look at the variety of survey and exit data on hand and find the areas with the most pain. It may be related to new hires and difficulty in onboarding; it may be senior salespeople who feel their pay has fallen behind, or it may be simply a lack of clarity around roles and a need to an improved approach to job design.

What most do realize is that bureaucracy, driven by a twelve-year economic growth cycle, is part of the problem. There are too many meetings, programs, strategies, and tools. We need to simplify, clarify, and rationalize all the factors involved.

To address the huge interest in employee experience, a new wave of HR tech tools has emerged. Vendors ranging from ServiceNow to Qualtrics to Medallia, as well as Workday, SuccessFactors, and LinkedIn, have all started to jump into this space. In fact, almost every tool for employee feedback, wellbeing, recognition, and rewards now feels like an EX tool, making it harder than ever to make sense the available options.

• Think about the employee experience problem as one of diagnostics (listening), action planning (focus), design (solving), and instrumentation (monitoring).  In other words, you really must:
• Listen to determine what the actual problems are (surveys and feedback data),
• Develop action plans to give managers specific guidance on what to do (action plans and dashboards), Design new experiences (redesign how work gets done, often without changing back-end systems),
• Continually monitor results.

Employee experiences are complex. Experiences encompass the physical work environment, the pay and rewards system, a company’s management and leadership, and of course, the job, opportunities to grow, and culture.

Just as your marketing department is always looking at customer experience, market perception, and customer satisfaction with your product – you need to take the same customer first view in HR.  Employees are now in charge and they are your customers. You work for them; they don’t work for you.

The new world of EX is here to stay – let’s learn to focus well and we can really make work better.

Five tips for designing an improved employee experience

1. Use feedback and surveys to listen and understand where employee experience, turnover, and other employee-related issues are problematic.
2. Develop action plans that go directly to line leaders so they can resolve problems locally.
3. Co-design new solutions with your business counterparts and build them in an iterative and agile way.
4. Monitor how the EX changes over time, so you can see what works and what doesn’t; be ready to revise.
5. Remember that you work for your employees and not the other way around.

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