Mastercard invests in its current and future workforce by providing employees with opportunities to develop skills that will help them succeed, not just in their current job, but throughout their career, Joscelyne explained.

“It’s our responsibility to support people’s transition between the skills required to succeed today and the ones they’ll need to thrive tomorrow,” she said.

“We cultivate a culture of continuous learning to provide employees a variety of experiences to develop current capabilities and acquire new skills to sustain their marketability.

“For us in talent development and management, this is the triple crown for acquisition and retention of top talent: job satisfaction, social purpose and increase of skills.”

Some of the elements of Mastercard’s talent management strategy include:

1. Fostering an environment of flexibility and learning: Mastercard provides employees flexible work options, comprehensive benefits and support programs to help make best use of their time and get answers and assistance for common work/life/family concerns.

“We’re focusing on development as a critical part of employee-manager relations,” said Joscelyne.

“We also have a culture of learning, where each employee has a development card that isn’t about ratings or results but about a path to a fulfilling and productive career at the company.”

The firm offers progressive workplace programs, benefits and services to support working parents and their families throughout life’s journey – regardless of gender or sexual orientation.

“We’re focusing on development as a critical part of employee-manager relations”

Benefits reinforce the firm’s commitment to balance, inclusion and equity, and it is moving to equal parental leave for men and women to set expectations that family care is a shared responsibility

2. Future-ready: Joscelyne said that Mastercard believes in a future where people are still relevant – and will still be the difference-maker in the success of most organisations.

“As a tech innovator, we think about the skillsets needed to power the digital economy – now and in the future,” she said.

“In our technology-enabled world, where every company has a digital and data focus, talent management is being redefined by the rapid changes and maturation of emerging technologies.”

For example, Mastercard built an AI Garage engine that helped analyse the development needs of more than 17,000 employees and this information will now be used to inform learning and development investments for 2020.

“AI has significantly enhanced our capability in this regard,” said Joscelyne.

The firm has also invested in “learning lounges” in major office locations across the world. These lounges are digital environments where technology connects employees across geographies in real-time, and serve as multi-purpose collaborative environments which offer an informal and intimate experience.

“These foster our vision of creating the most enviable learning environment possible and also support our culture of decency by sharing experiences and innovative ideas among our diverse employee population,” said Joscelyne.

“As a tech innovator, we think about the skillsets needed to power the digital economy – now and in the future”

3. Community engagement: Employees’ efforts create social impact, according to Joscelyne, who explained that a recent internal survey about community engagement and skill-building found that 87 percent of employees equate volunteerism with their job satisfaction.

Mastercard also runs a program encouraging young women and girls to explore possibilities and careers in technology through its STEM education program Girls4Tech

Now in its fifth year, this program has reached more than 400,000 girls, with a goal of reaching 1 million girls by 2025.

The firm is also building a global talent philanthropy program to apply the skills and expertise of employees to giving back and creating social impact, Joscelyne added.

Improving leadership development
Joscelyne explained that it is important to set the vision and strategy for meeting any internal and external talent needs across the global organisation, from talent attraction, acquisition and leadership development, through to succession planning, employee engagement and change management.

Leadership development is strongly prioritised within different areas of the business and also across all levels in the organisation, she said.

“A few key aspects covered in our leadership programs are personal awareness: understanding ‘self’, future of leadership, being next generation leaders, ethical and moral leadership: leading with purpose; dilemma reconciliation, decision making in ambiguity and learning from failures, and the power of diverse teams,” said Joscelyne.

Mastercard also offers a Management Associate Program to develop leaders in the early to mid-stages of their careers.

This program is an 18-month rotational leadership development one for graduates with a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree focused on building general management skills.

“We thrive on innovation so we can change the way the world pays and gets paid,” said Joscelyne.

“This commitment has allowed us to attract and retain employees who like to work in a creative, challenging environment [and] we believe strongly in learning and career development, by treating the workplace as a learning lab.”

Joscelyne also said it is important to ensure all employees receive ongoing feedback to make the most of their talents in order for them to succeed.

Mastercard also provides financial assistance to eligible employees who want to take their education and professional development to the next level.

“We thrive on innovation so we can change the way the world pays and gets paid”

Reskilling and upskilling existing talent
It is important to understand the revolution of reskilling and the importance of thriving in the future of work, Joscelyne said.

“We’re applying AI tools to help our operations & technology teams with skills assessment and skill-building to support their career development and goals,” she said.

“For the past year, we’ve been working with an on-demand learning content provider to help this highly technical organisation get a better understanding of their skills inventory and gaps and promote a continuous learning culture within their function.”

Using a variety of learning content (from web-based courses and videos to exercises developed by industry experts) an AI-scored knowledge assessment engine lets employees measure their proficiency in a particular skill, with an assessment algorithm benchmarking their skill level compared to other users.

As more users’ complete assessments, this provides insights into technical skillsets across the teams assist with and also assists with diagnosis of development areas and training needs.

This technology has helped support the “two hours per week” learning commitment that the operations & technology business unit set for its people.

“So human leadership still plays an important role – even with the tech supporting the transaction,” she said.

“Employees discovered the platform – and shared word of it with their colleagues taking over 750 skills IQ assessments, and logging over 17,000 total viewing hours.”

All of these results were achieved without the tool ever being formally announced or promoted internally.

The engagement grew from the initial exploration to a formal pilot (1,500 licences) in early 2018 and ultimately an enterprise engagement of 4,000 licences by mid-2019.

“Human leadership still plays an important role – even with the tech supporting the transaction”

“As more users complete skill IQ assessments over time, we’ll be able to gain better insights into the technical skills across teams and better diagnose organisational development areas and training needs,” said Joscelyne.

“We’re also working closely with the Pluralsight team to continue enhancing the platform based on our organisational needs.”

Results and outcomes
“The outcomes of our talent management program and efforts haven’t gone unnoticed,” said Joscelyne.

“We have set a standard and will continue to empower and take thoughtful action to hold ourselves accountable for delivering meaningful results.

“By supporting employees’ efforts to give back to their communities and providing opportunities for them to build skills though volunteering and assignments, we’ve seen a definite benefit in terms of engagement.”

Its most recent employee engagement survey found that 89 per cent of employees responded positively that the company supports their volunteer efforts.

Its Girls4Tech STEM education program for young girls also found that:

• 87 percent of employee participants learned something new about the foundational elements of the business
• 83 percent increased communication skills by delivering the curriculum in a simple, engaging manner
• And 73 percent felt more confident to use the skills and knowledge learned from G4T to be more effective in their job (particularly women)

“Organisations and influencers in the world at large have also recognised our efforts,” said Joscelyne.

“We’re a destination for some of the most highly sought after – and sometimes elusive – employee demographics.”

Mastercard has been acknowledged as a best workplace for diversity, for women, for technologists, innovators, working parents, LGBTQ equality and countless other distinctions, including Great Place to Work’s 2019 Best Multinational Workplaces in Asia.

“At the end of the day, the awards are nice, but it all stems from the world-class culture we’re committed to delivering and the kind of workplace experiences people have at Mastercard,” said Joscelyne.

Image source: Depositphotos

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“You never get a second chance to make a first impression – Will Rogers”

We think of the drivers of an organisation through these five frames – purpose; strategy; culture and capability; alignment and, finally, execution. People tend to get most exercised about the first four of these, each of which answer fundamental questions of competitive advantage:

• Purpose: what do you stand for? What are you here to do?
• Strategy: is yours differentiated, fluid, reflective of your unique attributes?
• Culture: what are the enduring beliefs that make you who you are?
• Alignment: is every single employee aligned around the many small decisions, not just the few big ones

But all of this – your purpose, your culture, your strategy – only come to life through the actual experience that people have of working in your organisation. From their day to day interactions and experience your people infer the rest – to answer for themselves the questions of whether your purpose is really what you stand for, if the culture is how it was sold, if people believe in the strategy? This is the fifth frame, execution, and the first experience your people have of it is likely to be the onboarding process.

Onboarding is your new employee’s vital first experience. Sadly, turnover in the first year of employment in many organisations continues to be higher than in subsequent years, and most organisations see engagement decline for individuals during their first year – because the reality does not match the promise. Which tells us that onboarding is not being done well.

While there are many software products currently in or entering the market that claim to “fix” your onboarding experience, this is only a small part of the answer. There is a role to be played by a seamless execution of the mechanical aspects of joining a new employer – laptop ready, log-ins clear, compliance training ready to go … but unless your purpose is to deliver a seamless technical process there is more human work to be done.

“Give your people a buddy and time to reflect on the personal match between what they value and what the organisation does”

So, what are the basics of an exceptional onboarding experience?

1. Be clear on what you stand for, and what you want a new employee’s experience to be
If it is true that your culture is not what you claim on your website, but what you truly believe: then make sure you design an onboarding experience that provides a lived experience of those beliefs. For example, if innovation and creativity are core organisational beliefs – ensure your onboarding processes are not cumbersome, traditional or overly bureaucratic. Give someone the task of examining every key onboarding interaction and asking “what does this experience say about us”?

The onboarding experience shouldn’t be thought of as one-way either. Just as new employees need to understand what drives the organisation, the organisation needs to create space for the new employee to explore their own beliefs and how they match the new workplace. Give your people a buddy and time to reflect on the personal match between what they value and what the organisation does.

2. Deliver a consistent experience
Strategy creation is about the few big decisions an executive team needs to take, to set an organisational direction. Strategy execution, on the other hand, comes through the hundreds of small decisions made by others in the organisation that bring the strategy to life. Consistency and coherence are key. New employees are no different – they need to be clear on what’s important and have the information they need to be able to make decisions that line up from day one. Creating a consistent experience for all new employees that equips them with an understanding of your strategy will accelerate their time to adding value and supporting execution through their day to day actions. Ask your new starters, as early as the end of their first month, if they have all the tools, relationships and information they need to bring the strategy to life. Keep asking them until they say yes.

Our brains are wired to respond as strongly to observing others having a bad experience as they are if are feeling poorly treated ourselves. Just as one of the key reasons seasoned employees leave is because they see underperformers not being managed, so new people will look for what you walk past in the onboarding and treatment of others and judge you accordingly. Focus on ensuring your process is delivered consistently across efficiency, quality and fairness irrespective of the department or hiring manager.

“Consider how you can most quickly build personal connections at the individual and team level to give new starters a clear sense of team and relatedness right from the start”

3. Think about the human involved
Your relationship with a new employee starts way before they actually join your organisation: even before they first see a job ad or contact your recruiters, future employees are forming an idea of what they should expect from you – and what you might expect from them. Irrespective of what you do these perceptions or implicit assumptions form foundations of their psychological contract with you as an employer. Often formal on-boarding processes fail to recognise this – and don’t take the time to explore these implicit assumptions. Don’t just tell new starters what to expect and what their responsibilities are, take the time to understand their needs and expectations and the match with what you are expecting.

Belonging: humans are pack animals; we thrive when we are part of a herd. Mental wellbeing is a key focus for businesses in Australia, and much research points to social isolation and a lack of connection as key causes of this. From our cozy position in an organisation we know it is easy to overlook the level of challenge or stress the new starter is facing. Consider how you can most quickly build personal connections at the individual and team level to give new starters a clear sense of team and relatedness right from the start.

The onboarding process often falls foul of the familiarity bias. Because our experience has allowed us to make sense of the complexity of our own organisation we overestimate the ability of others, without that experience, to do the same. This leaves people – no matter the nobleness of your purpose, brilliance of your strategy or strength of your culture – feeling isolated, confused and ill-equipped to contribute. Unless keep putting yourself in their shoes and asking “if what we say about ourselves is true, is this the experience a new person should be having?”

Image source: Depositphotos

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Many companies have recognised that embracing neurodiversity is an incredibly powerful way of enabling real diversity of thought and perspective in your organisation, said Alex Linley, co-founder of Cappfinity, which is a global leader in strengths-based talent acquisition, assessment and development.

“Employing people who genuinely ‘think differently’ is guaranteed to bring new perspectives and insights,” he said.

“It allows companies to be more innovative, to spot value and solutions others may have missed, and make better decisions as a result.”

However, there is still room for improvement and Linley predicted that there will be more interesting developments in this space especially with new technology in the future.

Linley’s comments come off the back of recent CIPD research which found that just 10 per cent of HR professionals say consideration of neurodiversity is included in their organisation’s people management practices.

Neurodiversity refers to the natural range of differences in human brain function, and among employers, it’s become the term used to describe alternative thinking styles including dyslexia, autism, ADHD and dyspraxia as they relate to diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

These can have unique strengths, ranging from data-driven thinking to sustained focus over long periods, an ability to spot patterns and trends, and the capacity to process information at extraordinary speeds.

However, due to a lack of awareness within organisations and the way that most organisations are physically and structurally set up for ‘neurotypicals’, many workplaces do not enable neurodiverse individuals to perform to their full potential.

“There are real opportunities for forward-thinking employers which want to embrace and celebrate the value that people who ‘think differently’ can bring”

For example, the CIPD research found that 72 per cent of HR professionals said that consideration of neurodiversity wasn’t included in their people management practices, and 17 per cent said that they didn’t know.

Neurodiverse candidate challenges
Linley, who has a PhD in Psychology, observed that the number one challenge for organisations and neurodiverse candidates is always going to be a lack of resources.

“Oftentimes, those people who are neurodiverse tend to need extra care and attention during the interview stages and even into onboarding and beyond,” he said.

“That isn’t to say that there’s not a plethora of solutions to overcome this; it’s just that companies need to take the time to educate themselves and become more aware of best practices when it comes to people who are neurodiverse, which in turn will benefit culture across the board.”

As neurodiversity becomes more widely recognised and understood, Linley said there is no excuse for being left behind.

“Instead, there are real opportunities for forward-thinking employers which want to embrace and celebrate the value that people who ‘think differently’ can bring,” he said.

Neurodiversity and improving recruitment
To embrace neurodiversity, organisations need to consider both their recruitment practices and how they enable neurodiverse people to perform at their best once they are in the role.

A starting point for HR is to use multiple ways of assessment to find candidates, so that people who are neurodiverse have an opportunity to showcase their strengths.

At the interview stage, for example, it is important to account for neurodiverse candidates by giving candidates the option of a one-on-one interview rather than a panel, avoiding hypothetical ‘what if’ questions and allowing reasonable adjustments and extra time.

“It’s important to accommodate neurodiverse employees through strengths-based practices to allow them to focus on what they are best at”

“Moving forward, it’s important to accommodate neurodiverse employees through strengths-based practices to allow them to focus on what they are best at and what they enjoy most while aligning with these abilities to company goals,” said Linley.

“This might incorporate a mixture of flexible working arrangements like varied hours or working from home days.”

Linley said it’s also a good idea is to develop a neurodiversity policy which sets out the company’s position in relation to neurodiversity, how people who are neurodiverse are supported, and how this plays through into recruitment, performance management and progression practices – and why this is important.

Neurodiversity trends and advice
There are a number of important trends on the horizon for HR, and Linley explained that the biggest shift will be in relation to awareness, acceptance and active embracing of neurodiversity in the workplace.

“We are increasingly aware and accepting today in 2019, and more and more companies are moving to actively embracing the benefits that neurodiverse employees can bring to their business,” he said.

“As this active embrace of neurodiversity progresses, we are likely to see a shift in what becomes standard policy and practice for managing neurodiversity and enabling neurodiverse team members to use their talents to best effect.”

Linley also said that HR can take a more strategic approach to hiring neurodiverse candidates in three key ways – the first of which is building awareness and acceptance for neurodiversity right across the business.

The second step involves actively embracing neurodiversity as a talent priority for making the most of people who ‘think differently’ – in order to bring different value to the business.

A third step is to design HR systems, policies and procedures to account for these potential differences.

“This is often best done by talking to people who are affected, understanding what would make a difference for them, and then implementing this across the HR lifecycle,” he said.

“We are likely to see a shift in what becomes standard policy and practice for managing neurodiversity and enabling neurodiverse team members to use their talents to best effect”

Guidelines for employers
The CIPD has released a guide for employers to help improve neurodiversity within organisations, and said there are four areas organisations need to focus on:

Recruitment

• Ensure job descriptions are jargon-free and clearly signal that your organisation welcomes neurodivergent individuals
• Many recruitment practices often rely on competency frameworks where people are filtered out if they don’t meet minimum standards on a set of wide-ranging capabilities – review your recruitment approach to ensure you’re not screening out talented individuals
• Ensure interviewers are informed about neurodiversity so they are fair and empathetic in the interview process (such as by choosing a quiet interview space, avoiding rapid-fire questions and understanding why some people might not make direct eye contact)

Workplaces

• Avoid really bright lights in your office that can be distracting or lead to sensory overload
• Consider how noisy open-plan environments can be distracting or lead to individuals feeling overwhelmed
• Complete a desk assessment for any new joiners, helping them make sure their computer screen isn’t too bright and they have everything they need to aid personal organisation (such as trays and filing drawers)

Management

• Train line managers so that they feel confident and able to assist neurodiverse employees at work and help them make the most of their skills
• Encourage regular one-to-ones and feedback between line managers and their reports to keep communication channels open and help motivate and support all employees
• Make sure neurodiversity is welcomed and championed by senior leaders and that a culture of celebrating difference is encouraged throughout the organisation

HR

• Highlight employee support networks and similar resources clearly in the on-boarding process and on the company intranet for anyone who needs them
• Ensure individualised support is available to all, from access to mentoring, coaching and counselling – make sure that support is clearly signposted
• Address comfort at work on a regular basis through workspace preference questionnaires and broader employee satisfaction surveys

Image source: Depositphotos

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While the focus on gender diversity continues in Australia particularly at the Board and C-Suite level, the underlying challenge that is perhaps having a great effect on future leadership opportunities – is one of cultural diversity.

Also, just as important are the views of our Millennial generation which is increasingly occupying large portions of our workforce and is set to increase to a staggering 50 per cent by 2021.

We also know from the Diversity Council of Australia Cracking the Glass-Cultural Ceiling: Future Proofing Your Business in the 21st Century report that in Australia and overseas, culturally diverse women experience a ‘double jeopardy’ when accessing leadership roles due to their gender and cultural background. This double jeopardy results in a ‘glass-cultural ceiling’ in which invisible organisational barriers lock out culturally diverse women from accessing leadership positions in their workplaces.

The rise of Millennials and Asia
The Asian region is without doubt the fastest-growing part of the global economy and Millennials are also the fastest growing talent sector in the world and these factors will see a severe impact on current and future talent pools across Asia.

“Culturally diverse women experience a ‘double jeopardy’ when accessing leadership roles due to their gender and cultural background”

However, it should be noted that millennials are an extremely diverse group in terms of social expenditure, cultural background, religion and educational background. This generational category encompasses a broad age group (24 to 38 years) who may be at a range of very different stages in their life.

New research has shown that young men, in particular, are actually averse to gender equality, and this has important implications for workplace and culture. The recent study by the 50/50 by 2030 Foundation explored the generational attitudes of men and women to issues of gender equality. The resulting report, From Girls to Men, questions the assumption that men’s views towards gender equality have been getting more progressive over time. Despite having a high level of knowledge and understanding about the nature of gender inequality in Australia, a growing number of men, feel alienated from the process of change and are backsliding into traditional value systems.

To add to this research, Weber Shandwick and KRC Research partnered with the Institute for Public Relations (IPR) to examine three different generations’ experiences with and attitudes toward diversity and inclusion in the workplace. This research, Millennials@Work: Perspectives on Diversity & Inclusion, finds that one-third of all employees report there is more diversity in their workplace than in their personal lives.

“Senior executives and HR need to be educated and embrace on the importance of hiring and developing culturally diverse talent”

When it comes to generational differences among employees, Millennials are more comfortable discussing diversity and inclusion at work than their older colleagues, Gen Xers and Boomers. Millennials think of diversity at work differently than prior generations. “Diversity and inclusion are more than age, religion, gender, race, physical ability,” according to Marta Steele, a career and workplace expert and partner at PeopleResults. “It’s also about how different point of views are accepted and valued.”

This younger generation is also significantly more likely than Gen Xers and Boomers to consider diversity and inclusion an important factor in considering a new job (47 per cent versus 33 per cent and 37 per cent, respectively).

Cultural diversity at the top
However, while Millennials are more accepting of cultural diversity and its importance to different thinking and ideas, this appears not to be the same with organisational leaders who are still focused on gender.

Our ability to grow our Australian businesses is diminished by the lack of culturally diverse leaders in our Australian organisations and this leads to many culturally diverse employees leaving their employers when they see no role modelling nor culturally diverse leadership at the top of their organisations.

The increasing percentage of culturally diverse talent attending high school along with the increasing large culturally diverse university population graduating across Australia will only see this problem exacerbated. Senior executives and HR need to embrace cultural diversity and be educated on the importance of hiring and developing culturally diverse talent otherwise they could find their organisation at the bottom of the talent pool queue for this emerging talent.

Image source: Depositphotos

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While the process of recruiting the right people is far from a perfect science, many companies would do well to rethink their approach to talent acquisition, said Banks.

“I’ve always found it amazing that we can send probes to Mars and land people on the moon,” he said.

“But something that is so intrinsically important to people – finding a career that is best suited to them so they can earn a good living and feel safe and secure – seems to elude us.

“The lack of frameworks and frankly science around how people look for and find the right jobs for themselves, and how companies go about recruiting, has always stunned me,” he said.

Banks, who has spent decades building successful businesses in the recruiting profession, said he followed a “100-point check” approach to assessing and recruiting the right candidates for roles.

The first 20 points comprise a thorough and well-rounded interview, Banks explained: “A good interview means dialogue both ways, so the candidate asks the right questions, and the interviewer asks the right questions,” he said.

“This is not simply asking questions about what the candidate has done; it’s more about ‘What are you really looking for?’, ‘Why are you looking at this moment?’, ‘What gets the best out of you?’, What kind of boss makes you successful?’, What kind of culture works best for you?’ – and then ask about strengths and weaknesses.”

Reference checking is worth another 40 points, and Banks said this needs to be correlated to past performance and drill down into key insights gathered about the candidate during the interview process.

“This is not simply asking the questions ‘Would you re-employ them?’, but rather asking ‘What are they really good at?’, ‘What are their weaknesses?’, and ‘Where do you think they could have done better?’ for example,” he said.

“Something that is so intrinsically important to people – finding a career that is best suited to them so they can earn a good living and feel safe and secure – seems to elude us”

A strong behavioural assessment is worth an additional 20 points, Banks said.

“This needs to go deeper than just asking ‘What’s your IQ?’; it should be a sensible and well-rounded behavioural assessment about how the candidate thinks and how they critically problem solve,” he said.

The final 20 points comes down to cultural fit for the organisation, which Banks said is typically harder to assess.

“Every candidate is different; you can take someone who is successful in one environment and put them into a different one, but if that environment isn’t suited to them it is very hard to get a good match and the high performance that comes with this,” said Banks, who observed that this last 20 per cent factor has historically been very elusive.

“Now, on a good day, if you get all of this right and the candidate is being honest about their own thoughts and the employer is really in the moment and not just rushing doing an interview in-between two business appointments, if the reference checking is thorough, if the behavioural assessment is honest and open, and if you get a cultural match – then that is 100/100,” he said.

“We both know that that is probably idealistic in the real world, but the aim of the game is to get 70-80/100 most of the time, and hope that this starts to work for the organisation and for the individual as they start to grow into the role,” said Banks.

The role of technology in recruiting
Banks also said technology is playing an increasingly important role in recruiting, and observed that it can help enormously in the recruitment process – however, it can also be a two-edged sword.

“Technology can amplify, speed up and make accessible clever tools, but like anything else, in the hands of a good practitioner it can add value, but in the hands of a bad practitioner, it can be awful,” he said.

“For example, I’m wary of technology that tends to label people and paint them into a corner and label them as X.

“Technology can amplify, speed up and make accessible clever tools, but like anything else, in the hands of a good practitioner it can add value, but in the hands of a bad practitioner, it can be awful”

“I’ll use Myers Briggs as an example, which I think is a very useful teambuilding tool, but I don’t accept that it is a very good recruiting tool because being an ENTJ (or whatever type you are) doesn’t tell you exactly how you will work,” he said.

Technology can assist at both ends of the recruitment process, from screening and shortlisting, through to assessing culture fit, according to Banks, who has recently invested in a new platform called Shortlyster, which is a hiring optimisation platform that matches and ranks candidates and businesses together through smart data.

“This comes back to the point about the 20 per cent out of 100 on the cultural mix; it’s not about judging candidates or employers but rather objectively assessing the likely real cultural fit between the two,” said Banks, who explained that the platform requires employers to answer 15-20 questions about what it’s really like to work in their company from a values and culture perspective (such as how they like to manage and delegate, or how decision making is carried out).

“It forces the company to think about these things and for all the line managers – presumably signed off by the HR and potentially the CEO – to agree what those cultural factors look like.

“We aren’t telling them what it looks like, but they decide what it looks like for company X or Y.

“And then on the applicant side – whether they be a seasoned professional or an inexperienced job hunter, we simply ask them to look at the same questions but from the other side of that coin, to see which cultural factors they relate to best.”

“So now we have an inexpensive, online filter that I couldn’t have possibly offered to my clients in the 90s, because the technology wasn’t there.

“So this technology is able to help identify culture matches on top of all the other moving parts of skills, competence, passion and personality – and it simply improves the chances that candidates will do well in your company if everything else works out,” said Banks.

Banks observed that there is a general scepticism about online psychometric testing and said it can be hard to convince everyone about which test is going to be right or wrong, but for companies looking to establish a benchmark around culture fit then Shortlyster can be helpful as it is unique to the company.

“If you and I were sitting in a room with 20 people and we wanted to agree on 15 labels that we all agree on with regards to makes this company tick in terms of culture, teamwork and management, for example, then that’s how we get agreement on real and consistent insights into a company’s culture,” he said.

“This is a much better approach than a rambling conversation with a line manager who might be describing their company’s culture versus another manager in a different part of the company who might be describing it slightly differently; the candidate would not be hearing it in the same way.”

“It’s always important to remember that size does matter, because different approaches are required based on company size and also geographic dispersion”

The future of recruitment for HR
From a global perspective, Banks also said there was room for improvement in how most Australian organisations go about recruiting the right candidates.

“Recruitment is a challenge,” he said.

“I spend a lot of time in the US, and not many Australian CEOs have to cope with employing 100,000-300,000 people which they do in the States.

“When comparing ourselves to the States or to Europe it’s always important to remember that size does matter, because different approaches are required based on company size and also geographic dispersion.”

Australians companies are generally “quite sophisticated” being part a smaller society with a workforce of only 12-14 million people, though Banks said Australia is an expensive workforce and it is important for companies to keep up with the latest recruiting and HR trends in order to remain competitive.

“I think the one thing that companies need to take more seriously – and this is including Australia, Europe and the US, from Board and executive team levels down – is thinking deeply about the frameworks they use for matching talent against what they need as a business,” said Banks.

“They throw different bits at it, like talent pooling and outsourcing, and they understand churn and the issues associated with that, but rarely do I hear that CEOs have got their finger on the pulse across the whole range of issues that need to have if you’re going to get that right.”

Workforce models are also changing, with the permanent jobs market fading and the rise of the gig economy and other employment models, he added.

“Five to ten years from now, particularly with AI coming into play, we need to stop thinking about work from a traditional jobs and careers perspective, but more about types of work in terms of things that we are passionate about,” said Banks, who predicted employment models will become more and more fragmented.

“Companies will start to isolate work to be done, and not necessarily jobs and careers. That’s the first thing,” he said.

“That might sound awful because people want security in a job, but on the other hand it will offer remote work and flexibility on scales not seen before – far more than my parents had and we had.

“If you told my grandmother, who was born in 1901, that you would take your intellectual property and load it into this digital document that goes into the thing called the World Wide Web – and then jobs can find you, she would have laughed. We now take that for granted.”

“We need to stop thinking about work from a traditional jobs and careers perspective, but more about types of work in terms of things that we are passionate about”

Banks also said that the traditional resume will change, with individuals piecing together their career history and interests to look more like a “digital Rubik’s Cube” with multifaceted sides detailing different kinds of career experience and other interests including social media.

This digital information would then be indexed by systems which specialise in matching the right talent with open opportunities – and the process of reaching out to people would be automated and ask individuals: “Have you thought about doing an assignment for us, or a piece of work? We have a job here that is perfect for you,” he predicted.

“So, technology will continue to play an important role in matching supply and demand.”

In the process, Banks advised HR leaders to remain current and open-minded about what technology can do for them.

“It’s not going away, so be part of it,” he said.

“I think I’d like HR practitioners can be both quantitative than qualitative; it’s always great to know your net promoter score and to have digital platforms for talent pooling – but we need to get better at assessing soft skills, aspirations and passion, and not just skills, experience and knowledge.

“In my experience, people are getting hired because of their skills or knowledge, and are failing because they are a bad match on their culture and attributes – and that’s where technology can now play a role in helping to improve fit in a meaningful and objective way,” he said.

The post Andrew Banks’ 100-point check process for recruiting the best candidates appeared first on Inside HR.

There are multiple layers and steps to hiring the right candidate, and Wolfe said that talent matching algorithms, AI and machine learning could play a particularly important role in screening out unsuitable applicants and identifying the best candidates for a job.

“Instead of HR getting 300 applications for a job, the technology can help sift through these candidates and present the top 15 matches for what they are looking for, from both an objective and a subjective perspective,” he said.

“There are many inefficiencies in recruiting today, such as scheduling candidates and screening resumes, and this is where technology can help.”

Wolfe, who recently spoke at the Indeed Interactive conference, previously served as the head of HR for dating website match.com and explained that there are a lot of similarities between online matching of couples for dating and matching candidates with employers.

“The steps you go through in dating to find your soulmate to are a strong parallel to the steps you go through in recruiting to find the right job or to find the right candidate,” he said.

“It’s just a different relationship at the end of the cycle, but it is about kind of looking for the same things.”

Perfecting the recruitment process
Rethinking job descriptions is also important in improving the talent matching process, and Wolfe said that job descriptions need to really talk to the right candidate – almost like writing them a letter.

“Rather than being a static document, job descriptions need to be written in a way that candidates can visualise themselves in the role,” said Wolfe, who gave the recent example of hiring for a chief of staff for HR role.

Rather than copying and pasting from a template or other job descriptions, he started with a blank Word document and wrote the description from the second person, using the “you” perspective instead of saying “the candidate” – hoping they could see themselves in the role.

A passive candidate saw the job description and applied for the job, and about 20 minutes into the interview Wolfe said he knew he wanted to hire her.

However, she was overqualified for the role – but ideal for an upcoming VP HR role that Indeed had not yet commenced recruiting for.

“The steps you go through in dating to find your soulmate to are a strong parallel to the steps you go through in recruiting to find the right job or to find the right candidate”

Wolfe was transparent with her and asked if she would like to learn more about this role, and after a few more weeks of additional interviews, the candidate accepted the VP HR role.

She told me: “The reason I applied for the job is because of the job description; because you were describing me as a person, and not this candidate that seems tangentially related to that,” said Wolfe.

“The job description is what initially drew the candidate to the position and to Indeed, and then the recruitment connection with her was crucial to moving the process forward and finding the right place for her.

“As recruiters, we have to use our intuition and relationships to find the right match, without letting candidates slip through the cracks.”

This is where understanding the subjective aspects of a role and company are particularly important in talent matching, according to Wolfe.

“So, what type of culture does the company have, what kind of company culture is the candidate looking for, and what type of leader are they looking for?” he asked.

“People want to know what it’s like to work at a company from somebody who already works there, to get a feel for what it’s really like, and this might be an existing employee or a recruiter who is well connected to the company.”

To assist in this process, Indeed hosts a number of open houses and hiring events at different locations around the world with a focus mostly on sales and client success, in addition to other functions including engineering, technical operations, IT support, marketing and HR.

“Creating these environments where candidates can come in and learn about a company is important,” he said.

The next step in the process is setting the stage for what the interview process is like, followed by salary negotiations.

“We’ve not seen a technology that’s been able to do all of those things yet, but I think technology will continue to evolve and automate different parts to make things more efficient,” he said.

For the foreseeable future, Wolfe said good recruiters are still required to help identify candidates that would be a good fit for companies and perfect the talent matching process.

“I still believe, at least for the foreseeable future, that there is a human side of hiring that’s going to require a recruiter, and this is really important,” he said.

“Intuition plays a big role in being a good recruiter, and it’s this subjective understanding layered on top of technology that can help in finding placing the right candidate in the right role.”

“We have to use our intuition and relationships to find the right match, without letting candidates slip through the cracks”

The evolving role of HR
The role of HR is evolving rapidly as well, and Wolfe said it is important to think differently about the employee population and their changing needs.

“We’ve got to continue to evolve with how people think about work,” said Wolfe, who observed that the gig economy is pushing HR and organisations to think differently about employment.

Another challenge for HR is generational, with five generations coming together in the workplace – and this requires a different kind of thinking on the part of HR.

“People like to absorb information differently and people like to learn differently,” said Wolfe.

“There’s a lot written about Gen Z and Millennials, which is true to an extent – but they tend to get labeled as a result.”

HR leaders can’t do the same thing they’ve been doing historically, but should understand the business strategy and keep up with business challenges, he said.

For example, the HR team within Indeed is consistently trying and testing different approaches, which are supported by metrics and data from within the company.

“From an HR perspective, we just adopted this product development mentality where we’ll come up with a minimum viable product, call it a program and put it out there and test it with a small group of Indeedians – then get feedback, iterate and let it evolve,” he said.

“Now if I dialed back my career 10 years ago in my career, the expectation would be that HR is going to work on a program, wrap it up with a nice little bow and then implement – but that way of thinking doesn’t work any longer.

“And the approach used to be that ‘one-size-fits-all, but now I think it’s ‘one-size-breaks-all’ and I need the ability to be flexible – especially as a global company across different regions, and even in different states or cities in the US.

“So there still has to be a foundation, but the nuances actually make for better programs and certainly make for a better employee experience,” he said.

The post Indeed’s SVP HR on how to get talent matching right & the future of HR appeared first on Inside HR.

Creating a superior candidate experience starts from the top of an organisation and needs to be sustained through putting in enough time, effort, training and consistency in order to deliver for both candidates and the business, said Dr Matthew Neale, chief psychology officer for Revelian.

“Most organisations don’t fare very well in doing this,” said Dr Neale, who explained that the most common issue in providing a great candidate experience is not communicating effectively with candidates.

“Candidates want to know right from the beginning what is going to be involved in the recruitment and selection process, how long it will take, what sort of things they need to do and when they need to do them,” said Dr Neale.

“Some organisations are quite poor at anything other than acknowledging receipt of the application, so effective communication is a key gap in terms of managing and improving the candidate experience.”

Lack of communication is possibly the most common complaint from candidates, who want clear and timely information about the process and their progress, according to Revelian’s new eBook, Enhancing the Candidate Experience for Better Business Results.

It cited a study from Phenom People which found that only 2 per cent of Fortune 500 companies are communicating the status of a candidate’s application throughout the entire duration of the hiring process.

“The problem exists in all stages of the candidate journey, from learning more about a company to accepting a job or not being considered any further,” the eBook said.

“It can have serious repercussions for your organisation, from having top candidates drop out to wasting recruitment team time as they answer questions that could have been proactively addressed in communications to the candidate.”

Pros (and cons) of candidate engagement
Dr Neale observed that another common issue for organisations is making sure that candidates who are unsuccessful in their application feel like they have had adequate opportunity to make their case for employment.

“Candidates need to feel like their case has been heard and their skills and capabilities recognised”

“Candidates need to feel like their case has been heard and their skills and capabilities recognised,” said Dr Neale.

“This goes back to the organisation and its ability to provide a feeling of respect for candidates as part of the selection process, recognising and acknowledging that candidates put a lot of time and effort into the process.”

A related issue for candidates is that questions asked or processes in the application are fair or actually relevant to the job they are applying for.

“If questions are not clearly linked to the job, or application forms or assessments can’t be linked back to the job, this can have quite a negative impact as well,” he added.

The eBook cited a flagship study of Virgin Media, which found they were losing approximately 7500 customers per year: people who had applied for jobs with them and were unhappy about their experience, including how they were rejected.

Once they improved their application process, they began to claw back some of the estimated £4.4 million ($8.1 million) per year they were losing due to poor candidate experiences.

Steps for improvement
There are a number of steps organisations can take to improve the candidate experience, according to Dr Neale – the first of which is having the right guidelines and systems in place for recruiters and hiring managers to communicate effectively.

“Most applications are conducted online these days, and there are some relatively easy ways to communicate with candidates through messaging services, e-mail and other processes, so deploying the right kind of systems and providing the right kind of training around effective communication with candidates is critical,” he said.

Part of this process can be automated as well, with organisations increasingly using chatbots to provide basic information to candidates about the recruitment process and the status of their application.

“Communication doesn’t always need to come from a human,” said Dr Neale, “so there are a lot of organisations which are starting to invest in this kind of technology to improve the quality of communication.”

“Make that entry point into your assessment process as short, simple and brief as possible, with just enough information to commence a conversation”

Another important consideration for HR is to think about candidates as customers and as people who they want to develop a positive relationship with.

The eBook cited an IBM WorkTrends survey, which found that people who had a good candidate experience had a stronger desire to become a customer of the recruiting organisation than those who had a poor experience.

And while 31 per cent didn’t want to become a customer despite being satisfied with the process, this increased to 60 per cent when people were dissatisfied with their treatment.

Furthermore, Dr Neale said it is important to ensure the right questions are asked and all the steps in the hiring process are necessary.

“Are you asking the right questions and avoiding time-wasting material? Are you getting the most out of the candidate and providing an experience that reflects well on your organisation?” asked Dr Neale, who explained that The eBook are one engaging way that can help assess candidates’ abilities around problem-solving, working effectively with data, good communication as well as understanding emotions.

He explained that game-based assessments provide short, effective and reliable tests which are interesting, engaging and more enjoyable to complete.

Another important step for HR is to get feedback from candidates on the recruitment process, in order to understand areas for improvement and what can be done to provide a better experience for future candidates.

The eBook pointed to a study by Future Workplace, which found that 78 per cent of jobseekers said they’d never been asked for feedback on their experience, and only 25 per cent of employers said they regularly asked for feedback.

Candidate experience advice for HR
As HR is front and centre of the candidate management process, Dr Neale suggested that a starting point for HR is to look very carefully at what is on their application form.

“When people design an application form, they think that every possible bit of information they might need to employ this person should be on there,” said Dr Neale.

“It’s worth looking very carefully at your process and whether you are doing something that is new, interesting and different, which help candidates think positive things about the organisation”

“Sometimes this list is quite extensive, with documents to upload, full details of all the different names a candidate might have held and so on – but you actually need very little information to get that communication going.”

“My key advice would be to make that entry point into your assessment process as short, simple and brief as possible, with just enough information to commence a conversation.”

It is a good idea to think about how the organisation is differentiating itself from others, and whether it is providing a typical application/resume/interview/reference check process – or an experience which provides a genuine sense of interest and engagement from candidates, he added.

“So, it’s worth looking very carefully at your process and whether you are doing something that is new, interesting and different, which help candidates think positive things about the organisation,” said Dr Neale.

6 quick wins for creating a better candidate experience
The eBook said there are a few things HR can do to quickly improve the way their organisation interacts with candidates through six quick wins:

1. Start collecting candidate feedback: Begin their collecting feedback easily by setting up a simple survey and including the link in all of the comms you send to your candidates.

2. Add a bot to your careers site: Adding a bot that answers FAQs can free up their time and reduce candidate frustration by offering them timely and accurate responses to their questions.
3. Record some employee testimonials: They don’t have to be a top-quality production; in fact, more candid, less polished videos have an authentic edge.
4. Give candidates a timeline: As a first step, ensure that all applicants have a timeline of your recruitment process, so they know what to expect and when the important dates are.
5. Send rejections, offer closure: While it might be more appropriate to phone candidates who have made it to the interview stage, an email to candidates who haven’t progressed that far is a quick win that closes the loop for candidates and demonstrates that you appreciate their time and effort in applying.
6. Find some champions: If your senior leaders understand the (extensive) business implications of improving the candidate experience, they’ll be more likely to embrace projects that improve it and likely to promote it across the organisation.

For more information on how to create a great candidate experience and specific steps HR can take to improve talent attraction, selection and acquisition strategies and outcomes, Revelian’s Enhancing the Candidate Experience for Better Business Results is available for download here.

Image source: Depositphotos

The post Want to create a great candidate experience? 6 quick wins for HR appeared first on Inside HR.

What is the basis for your company’s rewards offerings? For too many companies, it is purely benchmarks – that is, they make rewards decisions based on the rewards being offered by other companies with whom they believe they compete for talent. The problem: companies that follow this approach are left guessing about the desires and stressors of their actual workforce rather than knowing definitively what they want or need. In fact, based on Deloitte’s 2019 Global Human Capital Trends report, nearly one-quarter (23 percent) of organisations do not feel they know what rewards their employees value.

There’s nothing wrong with benchmarking per se: You should know what rewards your competitors are offering their employees. But that’s only one piece of the rewards puzzle. To optimise a rewards offering, you need to know a lot more about your rewards customers, that is, your company’s employees. Our research at Bersin finds that companies with mature, high-performing rewards functions achieve this by adopting some version of the following 4-step process, which uses the same kinds of surveys that marketers use to understand customers.

Step 1. Evaluate the current rewards context
Before you can optimise a rewards offering, you need to understand its current components, including their costs, the extent to which they appeal to and are utilised by employees, and how they measure up against the offerings of other employers with whom you are competing for talent. This may seem like basic data, but most rewards professionals do not have all of it at their fingertips – nor do most rewards practitioners know how employees perceive the specific rewards they are offered. This data is essential to not only understanding the current rewards context, but also establishing a baseline for modeling other potential rewards scenarios.

Step 2: Understand employee stressors and identify rewards that address them
Before you can identify rewards options that will truly appeal to employees, you must understand their concerns. Think about it: consumer companies would not release an update on their latest product without analysing if their current customers find the features useful. So why do organisations roll out new rewards programs without asking for employee input first? Aside from potentially enabling more optimised rewards offerings, the act of collecting this information can build goodwill with employees – provided that there is honest and transparent communication coming from the employer about why the information is collected and how it will be used. Sensing is another important part of rewards optimisation. Benchmarking provides what’s happening today, but being able to sense the external market for shifts that haven’t happened yet are just as important.

“Employees are not a homogeneous monolith – and your rewards program shouldn’t be either”

Deloitte has developed such a survey based on a set of 19 life stressors – conditions that originate from both inside and outside the workplace and cause anxiety or erode quality of life for employees. When we administered this survey to more than 18,000 employees in the US, it revealed that their top stressors were debt, the ability to retire, and job security. But stressors vary by age, gender, and job status so personalisation by “persona” is key to having your rewards offerings meet the varied needs of your employee population. Employees are not a homogeneous monolith – and your rewards program shouldn’t be either.

Once you know the stressors present in the lives of your employees, you can identify rewards options that could alleviate them. If your research finds that workers are very concerned about their personal debt, for example, you might consider financial wellbeing offerings. If there are pervasive concerns about the quality or reliability of childcare, you might consider backup care programs or on-site care.

Step 3: Determine the reward preferences of employees
This is the heart of a rewards optimisation initiative and, like the previous step, it begins with an employee survey. A rewards preference survey offers employees various combinations of rewards and asks them to choose the ones they prefer. The choices offered in the survey should include the existing rewards offered at the current level, as well as at increased and reduced levels, and new rewards options too, in order to better understand the relative preferences of employees.

A rigorously-designed rewards preferences survey enables rewards professionals to analyse its results, using statistical approaches such as conjoint analysis, and identify which specific offerings are driving employee preferences and to what degree. Bersin’s high-impact rewards research has found that high-performing organisations are six times more likely to use data and analytics to understand employee preferences than their low-performing counterparts.

While preference surveys can be a great tool to help employers sync with their workforce’s preferences at a given point in time, the truth is that alone they are not enough. Organisations should assess the behaviors and mindset of their workforce on an ongoing basis and strive to sense impending changes in sentiment through engagement and pulse surveys, focus groups, solicited and unsolicited feedback, utilisation statistics, vendor outreach, and other methods and channels on an ongoing basis. In order to meet employees’ needs, organisations need to stay connected, knowing how their employees think and feel and paying attention as these preferences invariably shift over time.

“Make sure that your rewards optimisation efforts are employee-focused, evidence-based, thoughtfully and strategically communicated”

Step 4: Allocate your company’s rewards resources based on employee preferences
The final step of the rewards optimisation process is simple: allocate the rewards resources of the company according to the preferences of employees. If no one cares about the pet insurance benefit your company offers, take the money being spent on it and invest it wherever employees care more.

Modeling can help you make more effective allocation decisions. Test different rewards offerings and scenarios and analyse the returns they are likely to generate based on the baseline information you gathered in step one and the preference information you gathered in step three. Then, adjust allocations and offerings to create a win/win rewards offering that best serves both the company and its employees by optimising the return on rewards investments.

Bersin’s High-Impact Rewards research found that only 3 per cent of organisations rate themselves as “very effective” at optimising the return on their total rewards spend/investment and only 20 per cent report being “effective” at same, leaving more than three quarters of organisations globally only slightly effective or worse. Rewards optimisation, informed by employee surveys, holds great promise to improve these statistics by offering employers the opportunity to truly sync their offerings and efforts with the preferences of employees at a point in time. But an employer’s work is not done at this point – monitoring these preferences over time and sensing shifts in sentiment is equally important to help ensure ongoing relevance of rewards offerings.

While some companies undertake rewards optimisation programs to identify cost-savings opportunities, others want more bang for today’s buck; and still others want to increase investments in the most efficient and impactful manner.

No matter what your company’s goal, make sure that your rewards optimisation efforts are employee-focused, evidence-based, thoughtfully and strategically communicated, and supported by well-designed surveys that reveal employee stressors as well as their needs and preferences. There is no better way to enable optimal rewards decisions.

The post Does your rewards strategy identify and address employee stressors? appeared first on Inside HR.

It found that the rapid adoption of technology by business is leading to the rise of roles that leverage significant productivity and efficiency gains that can arise when people work with technology, using it to both augment and broaden the scope of the work performed.

A vast majority of organisations globally expect to increase or significantly increase their use of AI, cognitive technologies, robotic process automation, and robotics over the next three years – collectively giving rise to a number of key trends including “super-jobs”.

Australia is a fast adopter compared to the global average, with 74 per cent of Australian businesses hiring people with different skills due to the rise of automation in the past three years, while a further 52 per cent are using automation extensively or across multiple functions (compared to 41 per cent globally).

Deloitte’s 2019 Global Human Capital Trends report also found that 80 per cent of Australian respondents (64 per cent globally) indicate they expect the use of robotics to increase or increase significantly in the next three years.

Half of Australian businesses are exploring the use of AI, with 35 per cent already using it in selected functions and 95 per cent say they expect their use of cognitive and AI technology to increase or increase significantly over the next three years.

As organisations adopt these technologies, they’re finding that virtually every job must change, and that the jobs of the future are more digital, more multidisciplinary, and more data- and information-driven.

“Even though the workplace is being transformed by AI, robotics, and automation faster than many people expected, our research found that organisations are adapting along with the change,” said Deloitte human capital lead partner, David Brown.

“The concept of a job is fundamentally changing.

“Paradoxically, to be able to take full advantage of technology, organisations must redesign jobs to focus on finding the human dimension of work.

“As machines take over repeatable tasks, jobs will become less routine.

“Super-jobs will combine work and skill sets across multiple business domains, opening up opportunities for mobility, advancement and the rapid adoption of new skills desperately needed today”

“This will create new roles that we call ‘super-jobs’: jobs that combine parts of different traditional jobs into integrated roles that leverage the significant productivity and efficiency gains that can arise when people work with technology.”

For example, a controller working for a mining operations centre in Perth and remotely managing the logistics for a fleet of autonomous mining trucks in the Pilbara has a super-job; or a doctor in Melbourne operating via telemedicine on a patient in Bendigo – both are enhancing human skills with technology.

“Super-jobs are machine-powered, data-driven and require human skills in problem-solving, communication, interpretation, and design,” he said.

“Super-jobs will combine work and skill sets across multiple business domains, opening up opportunities for mobility, advancement and the rapid adoption of new skills desperately needed today.”

In a super-job, technology has not only changed the nature of the skills the job requires but has changed the nature of the work and the job itself.

Super-jobs require technical and soft skills, but also leverage the significant productivity and efficiency gains that can arise when people work with smart machines, data, and algorithms.

A need for continuous learning
Deloitte’s 2019 Global Human Capital Trends report, which took in nearly 10,000 respondents across 119 countries – making it the largest longitudinal survey of its kind – found that adapting to the rise of super-jobs is also forcing organisations to change the way their people learn.

Reinventing the way people learn was seen as important or very important by 91 per cent of survey respondents in Australia (86 per cent globally) – making this the number one trend for 2019.

Three quarters (74 per cent) of Australian businesses are hiring people with different skills due to the rise of automation in the past three years, while 80 per cent (v 62 per cent globally) are eliminating transactional work and replacing repetitive tasks and 68 per cent are reskilling current employees.

“Leading organisations are empowering individuals’ need to continuously develop skills by investing in new tools to embed learning not only into the flow of work, but the flow of life,” said Brown.

“With the need to sustain 50 to 60-year careers as part of a 100-year life, lifelong learning has evolved from a matter of career advancement to workplace survival.”

Within this context, the report identifies three broader trends in how learning is evolving: it is becoming more integrated with work; it is becoming more personal; and it is shifting – slowly – toward lifelong models.

“With the need to sustain 50 to 60-year careers as part of a 100-year life, lifelong learning has evolved from a matter of career advancement to workplace survival”

Effective reinvention along these lines requires a workplace culture that supports continuous learning, incentives that motivate people to take advantage of learning opportunities, and a focus on helping individuals identify and develop new, needed skills.

Talent is everywhere
As well as reshaping the nature of job design through super jobs, the report also noted that organisations needed to rewire their approach to engaging with the ‘alternative workforce’ – freelancers, gig workers, and outsourced/managed service providers.

Sixty per cent of Australian respondents (v 33 per cent globally) reported extensively using alternative workforce arrangements for IT and 26 per cent for their operations (25 per cent globally).

Yet 56 per cent said they either managed alternative workers inconsistently or had few or no processes for managing them at all.

These organisations are using alternative workers tactically as a way to fill immediate requirements, not strategically as a long-term solution for the future.

Only 12 per cent of Australian respondents (8 per cent globally) said that they have best in class processes to manage and develop alternative workforce sources.

“For years, many considered contract, freelance, and gig employment to be ‘alternative work,’ options supplementary to full-time jobs,” said Brown.

“Today, this segment of the workforce is mainstream and leading organisations are looking strategically at all types of work arrangements in their plans for growth.

“Best practices to access and deploy alternative workers are only now being invented.

“Organisations should look strategically at all types of work arrangements – traditional and alternative – to redesign jobs to properly leverage strengths across all workforce segments, from gig workers to those with super-jobs.”

From employee experience to human experience
Another top future of work trend in the report revolved around the need to improve what is often called the “employee experience.”

But the concept of employee experience falls short in that it fails to capture the need for meaning in work that people are looking for, according to the report.

“To create the human experience at work warrants an end-to-end focus similar to the way organisations think about their customer experience”

“We see an opportunity for employers to refresh and expand the concept of employee experience to address the ‘human experience’ at work – building on an understanding of worker aspirations to connect work back to the impact it has on not only the organisation, but society as a whole,” said Brown.

The report found that 84 per cent of survey respondents (in Australia and globally) rated the issue of employee experience as important, and 50 per cent of Australian respondents believed their organisations’ workers were satisfied or very satisfied with their job design.

Furthermore, 42 per cent (in Australia and globally) thought that workers were satisfied or very satisfied with day-to-day work practices, however, only 33 per cent of respondents in Australia (38 per cent globally) said that they were satisfied or very satisfied with the current work-related tools and technology available.

An additional 26 per cent in Australia (38 per cent globally) thought that they have enough autonomy within their jobs to make good decisions while 60 per cent of Australian respondents believe that taking a public stance on social issues can positively impact the recruitment and retention of staff.

“To create the human experience at work warrants an end-to-end focus similar to the way organisations think about their customer experience,” the report said.

Traditional HR responsibilities such as hiring, onboarding, job design, rewards, and development don’t fully address issues with the work itself, which means a multifunctional focus is needed – and HR organisations must partner closely with the business, IT, facilities, finance, and even marketing to make an impact in this area.

“While the employee experience journey may start with a focus on the workplace, perks, and rewards, in time it must focus on the more human elements of the work itself to truly create meaning,” the report said.

“A true human experience is one that embeds meaning into work and enables every employee to contribute in the most positive, supportive, and personal way.”

The post Super-jobs, continuous learning & talent mobility: the top future of work trends appeared first on Inside HR.

Successful innovations are rarely the result of just one individual’s work. Instead, they come from innovative teams. However, the methods, or lack thereof, that many organisations use to assemble teams often don’t align with what has actually been scientifically proven to enhance a team’s creative performance. Teams that produce breakthrough innovations have several things in common.

Innovative teams tip #1: they are full of T-shaped people
Organisations are full of “I-shaped” people – those who have a depth of experience in one area. However, the most innovative teams are full of “T-shaped” people. These are people who have a good amount of depth in one area, but complement that with a breadth of experience, skills and knowledge in several other areas too. T-shaped people tend to be more well-rounded and can often bring more robust debate to projects as they have a greater variety of skills and viewpoints to draw from.

Innovative teams tip #2: They embrace functional diversity
In a meta-analysis of what drives creativity in teams, Dr Ute Hülsheger, an associate professor of work and organisational psychology at Maastricht University, found that job-relevant diversity was one of the biggest factors – even greater than demographic diversity. A team that demonstrates good job-relevant diversity is typically cross-functional, and has a good spread of different educational backgrounds and expertise.

“Creating top performing innovative teams needs to start in the recruitment process”

Innovative teams tip #3: They insist on having debates
Most people shy away from conflict and disagreement, but having the courage to debate ideas is one of the most important factors that differentiates creative teams from their non-creative counterparts. IT consulting firm Infosys, where the average employee age is 26, realised that these younger employees generally they kept their opinions to themselves.

In response, the executive leadership team launched a program called Voice of Youth, whereby employees in their twenties were hand-picked on the basis of their being high performers, and invited to have a seat on Infosys’ management council. They were actively encouraged to put forward their views, disagree with the views being expressed by the management team, and debate and critique any and all aspects of the organisation.

Innovative teams tip #4: They don’t just recruit people like themselves
Creating top performing innovative teams needs to start in the recruitment process. Often, recruitment processes are structured to find clones of ourselves. Lauren Rivera, an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, conducted research into 120 hiring managers and the factors influencing their hiring decisions. She found that rather than hiring the most qualified applicants for the job, hiring managers were significantly more likely to recruit people they thought they could be friends with—people like them.

Avoid the temptation to be blinded by similarities when selecting new hires – instead, ask yourself whether you are bringing someone into the team who is different from the other members, especially in terms of their skill set, knowledge and experiences.

The post The 4 secrets behind top-performing innovative teams (and how to build them) appeared first on Inside HR.