Talented females shunned

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has been saying some profound stuff on the subject of talented females failing to break into senior management roles or onto company boards.

Its recently released Corporate Gender Gap report was the result of surveying 600 human resources professionals across 16 industries in 20 countries.

The US has the highest percentage of female employees at 52% followed closely by Spain then Canada, while India is dragging its heels at only 23%. Shame on you India. This suggests that not many organisations are fully committed to gender equality. The average number of women achieving CEO level across the 600 companies was less than 5%.

Legislation in Norway now ensures 40% of a public company board is female. A major step forward. How many other countries would be game to follow suit? Would male-dominated boards and senior management have something to say on the subject I wonder?



Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
tony@heywood.com.au
www.heywood.com.au

20 key problems that manifest with a disengaged workforce

We meet with many HR professionals at our workshops and in our ‘front line’ activities helping organisations deal with employer branding-related challenges – particularly those that are a direct result of disengaged employees. The challenges faced by these HR professionals are so prevalent that we thought it would be useful to record them. Here they are – challenges from organisations both large and small:

• Employee morale falls across the organisation
• Employee productivity falls
• Employee turnover increases
• Increased absenteeism
• Poor attitude results in dissatisfied customers
• Product defect rate increases
• Lack of focus on business objectives
• Lack of direction – becomes hard to move forward as a team
• Work in silos – become individual and defensive
• Change initiatives don’t gain traction
• High levels of workplace stress, affects relationships and quality of work
• Infighting and point scoring
• Poor brand representation
• Job seeking and inappropriate use of organisation’s time
• Leaders viewed with apathy and skeptism
• Ghost interviews
• Cliques form – long termers v newbies
• Diminishing loyalty to the organisation
• Employees not reliable
• Negative world of mouth and malicious gossip – inside and out

Any of these problems can have a detrimental effect on your organisation’s bottom line and should be identified quickly before they have a chance to take hold.



Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
tony@heywood.com.au
www.heywood.com.au

How attractive an employer will you be in 2010?

Whether you are fishing for talent, positioning yourself to engage an elusive individual, or aiming to retain and nurture the best of your catch, employer brand is the bait, which will tempt potential employees and arouse and retain their interest.

Your employer brand represents your position in the market – the perception of your employment experience in the minds of employees and candidates – it communicates the fullness (or lack thereof) of your offer – what makes you unique and compelling as an employer and why.

It is a hugely undervalued business tool with impact far beyond the placing of a few recruitment adverts, with a reach all the way to your organisation’s bottom line. It removes the risks of poorly performing job ads and lofty recruitment campaigns by focussing your messaging and visualisation around the strongest components of your Employee Value Proposition (EVP).

Employer branding is not about visualising the optimum aspired messaging to get candidates to knock on your door. It is a considered end-to-end process that looks within – it delves into the hearts and minds of the people inside your company (and occasionally outside). It identifies the very reality of your employment experience and markets the most positive, compelling or unique aspects of this experience. It also provides the possibility for very real improvements and alignment of the employment experience with the promises made and the aspired value proposition.

Careful consideration of your EVP will tell you where improvements must be made to more fully engage your employees, or be ultra-competitive on attraction. It will highlight where you are not competitive and cannot hope to win the minds of candidates, and where you are leading the field and need to shout louder.

Changing times can be unsettling for employees. They can quickly lose faith in their employer’s strengths and vision for the future – particularly if communications are scarce and fail to resonate with them.

It is only a matter of time before talent and skill shortages re-ignite the ‘war for talent’ and employers’ priorities once again become focussed on attraction and retention in a candidate tight market place. With many skill sets projected to be once again in high-demand the way for employers to combat this is two fold:

1. Assess your EVP - is it competitive, is it still relevant and engaging post-downturn and will it hold onto and motivate your people in recovery times when they expect to see some reward and payback?
2. Develop a standout employer brand to communicate and differentiate the offer.

Sourcing in 2010 is projected to become increasingly competitive and fraught with complications such as:

• Candidate and skill shortages destined to return
• A significant exodus of employees who have been ‘sitting tight’ during the downturn
• Increasingly disengaged employees undermining the leader’s vision, fragmenting company culture and detracting from operational efficiency
• Short tenures - with 70% of employees looking to change jobs within two years (good news for recruitment firms)
• A growing trend towards demands for flexible work practices
• Ageing workforce and problems associated with mixed demographics, desires and perceptions

Australia presently leads the way in employer branding investment, suggesting that many employers are already aware and on board with the advantages to be derived. Candidate perceptions can be influenced with well crafted messages and images. When they find out however that the promises made in the job adverts were merely ‘ink on paper’, all faith in the integrity of the employer disappears and the search for an honest employer with a ‘real’ opportunity begins anew. For those organisations willing to embrace best practice and change - maximising the EVP and employer brand will bring huge rewards well in excess of the dollar investment made.

Having a well-conceived employer brand will enable you to:

• Inspire and engage with your employees – improving morale and increasing retention
• Develop and communicate your Employee Value Proposition
• Cascade the leader’s vision and the organisation’s values
• Increase referrals and ‘word of mouth’ promotion – underpins successful marketing and advertising activity
• Achieve competitive positioning in the minds of target audiences and candidates
• Deliver measurable returns on marketing and sourcing $ invested
• Facilitate planned workforce and organisational development
• Attract and retain ‘right-fit’ talent, improving business efficiency and reducing staff turnover
• Increase referrals and pro-active candidate applications – less reliance on advertising
• Be positioned as a preferred employment destination – employer of choice status
• Communicate more effectively
• Achieve competitive positioning in the minds of candidates
• Fill ‘hard to fit’ positions – attract specific skill-sets
• Align your present employer brand with your aspired one
• Create high visibility campaigns that engage with candidates and employees

Benefits of a highly engaged and retained workforce:

• Better customer engagement and satisfaction
• Improved morale and heightened loyalty – employees ‘living the brand’ and ‘sharing the vision’
• Facilitates growth and promotion from within – investment in personal development and training provides a $ return
• Leader’s vision is understood and embraced
• Advances skills and knowledge transfer – promotes knowledge sharing within the company
• Retains skills, experience and IP
• Collaborative work environment – improved morale, inspiration, passion
• Generates brand ambassadors – encourages positive word of mouth promotion
• Aligned on behaviours and common sense of purpose – unified identity as an employer
• Reduced employee turnover provides significant cost savings
• Improved efficiency and profitability

Now is the time to oil the employer branding wheels and leave your competitors in the slow lane.



Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
tony@heywood.com.au
www.heywood.com.au

What is worse for your business – an empty chair or a chair with the wrong person sitting in it?

What will the employment marketplace look like in the first half of 2010? As business confidence improves it looks like it will favour the workers. In other words there will be more positions than qualified candidates, with the result that employers will struggle to create and retain the teams they crave for. Often out of desperation it is all too easy to install the wrong person with catastrophic results.

Candidates, especially professionals, increasingly pose a new question of their potential employers … What’s In It For Me?

So what do candidates want? – increasingly, financial return is not the leading priority. You need to offer much more than this.

“I want advancement, mentoring and inspirational leadership”.
“I want interesting work, flexibility and a respectful and relaxed atmosphere”.
“I prefer to work in a results-driven environment”.
“I need to work in an organisation whose morals and ethics match mine”.
“I want variety and challenges”.
“I need to know that my efforts are valued and stand for something”.
“Where will I be in 1, 3, 5 years … will I stay that long?”

Candidates insist on the truth. An employer’s eloquent and persuasive description of their company and employment opportunity must match the experience of the candidate when they start work. An employment experience is viewed as a transaction – productivity and knowledge traded for a promise.

If the position does not live up to their expectations from day one, if promises are not kept, should anticipated objectives not be achieved, then the deal is off. There is little remorse or loyalty, because other options are coming available. In short, employers are in danger of wasting a lot of time and money in the process of recruiting, hiring and training good people, only to see them walk out the door.

If the keystone to any successful business or enterprise is its people and their combined input, productivity and knowledge, then few things can be more destructive than ‘poor fit’ employees – individuals whose core values, visions, standards and objectives (either personal or professional) do not match those of the business and its leaders.

What has this to do with branding?

What is worse for your business – an empty chair or a chair with the wrong person sitting in it? Creating an effective employer brand, marketing it and believing in it can help minimise or remove both from your list of worries.

A canny employer has to think beyond the traditional job advertisement which details a salary, hours and job description or even relying on a recruitment consultant to solve your problems.

A well considered and executed employer brand will attract the right type of candidate rather than a volume response. It will help market and promote your organisation and add value to your marketing and promotional spend and activity.

Tell the truth. Work out what is truly positive and unique about your employment offer. What do you offer other than a salary and a desk? When they get home, how do you think your employees feel and talk about their day at work? How do they express your brand to family, colleagues and friends?

For many organisations employment branding is a brave step. It requires of them to look within, analyse the truth of who and what they are, listen to the positives and negatives and build a promise around the deliverables. Don’t however promise the earth if you can’t deliver it. People will leave – it will cost you time and money and your business will suffer.



Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
tony@heywood.com.au
www.heywood.com.au

Building your employer brand out of your EVP

Put simply, the EVP is the reason people choose to join your organisation and more importantly the reason why they stay.

A compelling EVP is a priority for any organisation looking to attract, engage and retain the cream of talent in their market. Employers known for having an industry beating EVP will become the destination of choice for high performers as we enter the recovering markets in 2010. The employer brand needs to encapsulate and communicate the very essence of the EVP. An employer’s EVP encompasses both functional components (reward and remuneration, hours of work, the physical environment) and emotional ones (“how will I feel about myself working there?”, “how will I be treated?”, “how will the culture manifest?”). Both need to be understood to truly define an organisation’s EVP.

To achieve this clear understanding, our team at Heywood Innovation engages with clients to determine their real EVP and identify areas where they may not be competitive. We achieve this by immersing them in our unique EVP process which divides the reward experience into twelve carefully defined components. When combined, these form the basis of a compelling employment experience for their employees.

Each component is thoroughly probed by a representative selection of employees. We utilise several analysis tools: teleconferencing, online survey, workshops and one-on-one interviews to suit the location and make-up of the participants.

It is this good, bad and ugly, ‘warts and all’, across-the-board insight which allows us to venture deeper. We are able to give the employer a clear view of how employees and candidates perceive their organisation and the employment experience. This provides a platform to create a compelling and effective employer brand, and confidence that all brand promises will be met. This is step one on the road to reduced attrition and positive engagement.



Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
tony@heywood.com.au
www.heywood.com.au

What you don’t know will hurt you the most

Over two thirds of companies survey their employees to measure engagement and identify key employee concerns or issues which may exist. A relevant and well designed survey will not only provide an employer with invaluable insight and a platform for developing HR plans but will illustrate that employee input and concerns are important – this in turn fosters loyalty and engagement.

Keeping your employees engaged in an economic downturn is critical – engaged employees perform better, are more loyal and contribute more to the organisation’s bottom line. In such times you need to work harder to motivate and retain your best people. The best talent remains mobile in spite of economic uncertainty – losing key performers, experience and intellectual property at this time can be very costly.

Getting answers to the following questions is vitally important right now and will largely determine your organisation’s ability to make real headway in 2010.

• Do you know how engaged your people are?
• Do you know who’s generating the most revenue?
• Do you know who’s thinking about leaving?
• Do you know who’s looking after your customers properly?
• Do you know who’s taking best care of delivery and customer service?
• Do you know who’s building your brand, and who’s devaluing it?
• Do you know who’s loyal and engaged?
• Do you know your longest serving employees and why?
• Do you really understand the current mood within the organisation?
• Do you really know your people well and how they perceive you and the organisation for whom they work?

During challenging times it is critical that any new employer branding initiative or change of direction can be justified in terms of ROI. Gaining insight from employees, new hires and leavers clarifies what people really like about working for your organisation. This baseline information will indicate the current state of engagement and appropriate courses of action for employers wishing to optimise productivity.

The online survey is a cost-effective and easy way to gain real insight and data from which to generate a bullet proof activity plan.

“But we only just surveyed our employees 12 months ago” you say. Employee surveys conducted more than 12 months ago are likely to now be meaningless. Markets have changed and you need to understand how the resulting insecurities have affected your employees so you can plan accordingly. Focussed insight will enable you to understand their worst fears and what it will take to win back their confidence and loyalty.

Act now, to re-engage with your workforce and find out what they are thinking. Call Tony Heywood on 02 8256 3999 or email tony@heywood.com.au for further information.



Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
tony@heywood.com.au
www.heywood.com.au

Mass exodus on the cards – or just media hype?

Articles appearing in the mainstream business press and various business websites are claiming that large numbers of employees, restrained and disengaged by the events of 2008/2009, are going to do some walking and head for greener pastures. They’ll do it after they’ve trawled Seek, scanned a few job ads in the paper and visited a few of those recruiting people still suffering from the great drought of 2009. It seems that a whole stream of employees will be giving their bosses the wry smile and pushing the dreaded envelope across the table in their direction. Many employers will be skeptical of the prospect of a mass exodus of employees but some surveys from the past few months suggest the situation is serious.

The ‘Chandler Macleod Post GFC Candidate Study’ suggests that 95% of employees post GFC are looking for work

The Hudson 20:20 Series report Talent Tightrope: Managing the Workplace through the Downturn, which involved 3,000 employees across Australia and New Zealand, came up with these statistics:

• 44 percent of employees indicated that employee morale had plummeted
• 32 percent of employees are genuinely concerned about losing their jobs
• 42 percent of employees said they feel their job is less secure than the same time last year
• 47 percent of employees are seeking a new role
• 56 percent of employees would consider roles they previously would not have looked at

Mark Steyn, CEO of Hudson A/NZ stated that “If employees are disgruntled or unhappy with their current roles, the moment a better opportunity presents itself they will leave. It is this danger of a mass exodus that employers must be aware of and take urgent steps to avoid.”

But wait, there’s more...

Another survey by recruitment firm Aequalis Consulting gleaned the following from 280 job seekers...

• only 22 percent are not planning to move jobs when economic recovery happens

Another survey by global recruitment consultancy Robert Half has found...

• 77 percent of professional workers expect a pay increase once the market recovers

The Corporate Leadership Council believes...

• 25 percent of high potential employees plan to quit their jobs when the upturn happens

So there you have it. Bad news for employers who can’t afford to lose good people, good news for employers wanting to recruit new talent and possibly even better news for recruitment agencies after an ‘annus horribilis’.

What does this mean for employers?

• The potential for skyrocketing recruitment and training costs.
• A need to acquire deep insight to what employees are thinking and planning right now in order to find ways to re-engage them.
• Now is the time to consider new employer brand building activities to reinvigorate positive perceptions of the employment experience and potential.

What are the priorities for employers?

Conduct an online employee survey

• discover what’s going on in employees’ minds with an online employee survey, the sooner the better

Improve internal communication

• communicate more effectively with employees to keep them informed of where the organisation is heading and its future prospects

Create a cut-through awareness and recruitment campaign

• now is the time to be ‘out there’ on candidates’ radar before the rush for talent begins and the market becomes once more highly competitive

Introduce a competent careers section on your website

• careers sections on websites will be under increasing scrutiny and must create a positive impression in the minds of candidates and graduates

Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
tony@heywood.com.au
www.heywood.com.au