Jann Gray- Winner of Best HR Strategic Plan speaks at 2Discover event

Yesterday morning I attended a breakfast seminar which was hosted by 2Discover in at Martin Place. They had organised for Jann Gray, HR director for Ecolab and winner of ‘best HR strategic plan’ to speak, and it gave everyone present an opportunity to follow the amazing 4 year journey of a company that needed to implement major change or perish to the competitors.

Ecolab is a leading provider of cleaning, food safety and health protection products and services. They employ over 400 staff in Australia and service over 8000 customers nationally.

Jann explained that Ecolab were in a bad situation. They were turning over more than 1/3 of their staff each year, revenue was decreasing and a Hewitt survey revealed a very low employee engagement score.

Quoting Jim Parker- CEO South West Airlines- Jann explains that

“The outcome of a successful strategy is having the right people in the right jobs focused on the right things that lead to the business outcomes required.”

Essentially, it’s the way I see talent management but coming from a CEO it really ties the HR strategy to the impact it has on the bottom line.

I’ll briefly take you through a few of the different pieces of the Ecolab puzzle.

Revamped recruitment and selection policies

After a review of the types of staff they currently had, and assessing what sort of staff they needed in the future, Ecolab realised they needed to revamp their recruitment and selection processes to ensure they were hiring the right people in the right jobs. Previously they were hiring applicants purely on the basis of the technical ability, industry experience and knowledge of the industry. They then realised that they needed people in the future with leadership potential, not just technical strengths. As a result, psychometric testing was introduced in addition to second interviews with senior management. They then looked to training these hires internally to get their technical ability up to the level required.

Talent management/succession planning

At Ecolab, they conducted a succession planning process using the nine box matrix below to identify leadership potential and leverage this potential to drive performance. While there is nothing ground breaking about this matrix, it was an important part of the strategy that was done well.

Accountability

Another key part of this HR strategy was setting targets and holding people accountable to these targets. Part of this was utilising a scorecard for each business unit and publishing these results to hold people accountable to these newly defined metrics. For most business units, names weren’t published with scores; however for the Sales team publishing names and results was a motivating factor in achieving performance. This scorecard ensured that people were working on the right things.

Rewards and recognition

Additionally, Ecolab reviewed their compensation to ensure that they were rewarding the right behaviours.

I really liked the ‘Making a difference” program that Jann mentioned. Ecolab has six cultural values (and yes Jann was able to name all six!) and they wanted to recognise people that were living the values. In order to celebrate their successes, staff are able to nominate people have demonstrated the values through sharing the story. As a reward, the individual received a wine glass with the particular value printed on it. Funnily enough, this inspired staff to obtain a set of six wine glasses because after that you were given a bottle of wine to go with it!

What an effective and low cost initiative that celebrates the success of your people. In conjunction with an EVP like “the solution is you”, it is a winning strategy.

Finally Jann stated that communication was the key to the whole thing and with out communicating the key messages to people at the time they were happening, the strategy would not have been embedded in the way that it was.

So how do we tie this HR strategy to the impact it has on the bottom line? The results speak for themselves.

Congratulations Jann and the team at Ecolab, and thanks to the team at 2discover for presenting a fantastic seminar.

Lessons from Atlassian- fantastic employer branding and recruitment strategy

I was on the twitter machine this week and happened to come across this:

I checked out Atlassian’s website, and I thought I might blog about them because I think they do a great job in the employment brand space. I will disclose that I know some of the guys from Atlassian off twitter but want to make clear that this is not a shameless plug for the company. I was introduced to Atlassian at a HR Conference ages ago- and was enthralled by what they do- so read on and be prepared to get excited.

I think the toughest thing to convey to potential employees is what it’s REALLY like to work at the company underneath the all the glossy brochures and marketing speak on company websites. Atlassian do a great job at this with this amazing video on their website.

I like this because its real staff talking about what the values mean to them.

You also get a sense of what the working environment is going to be like, which is so important for someone deciding whether this is the place to be for them. Even the little things can be so important like:

• What is the culture really like? (Will I fit the culture here?)
• What do they wear to work? (Will I have to wear a suit or something I’m comfortable in?)
• What will my office space be like? (Do I work better in a closed office or am I comfortable in open plan?)
• What is the vibe at the office like? (Are they heads down and serious all the time or do they like to play games?)
• What are the people like there?
• What are the company values (and do my own values align with these?)
Ultimately a video like this will either make you excited about the prospect of working there, or cringe and think it’s not the place for me. No matter what the response, the individual and organisation get the most beneficial outcome.

Atlassian also have a lot of great incentives such as a ‘holiday before you start’, ‘refer-a-mate bonus’ and even a bounty hunter for recruiters. Which reminds me, they are on the look-out for 32 Engineers! Check their website out for more details.

Stay tuned and I’ll try and get one of the Atlassian crew to do a follow up post on the success of the campaign.

Tickets now available to the first HR Club Sydney Event

I am very pleased to have secured a venue for our very first HR Club Sydney event.

The event will commence at around 6pm on Monday 24th August at the Forrester’s Hotel, which is located on the Corner of Riley and Foveaux Streets in Surry Hills. We’ll be in the Cassata Bar on level Two. Please come along with your business cards and conversation hat; for what is sure to be an exciting night.

Places are limited, so please register early to avoid disappointment.

Grab your ticket here

Has the GFC affected the way you attract talent?

AHRI has recently released “EXECpulse” ;a research report which aims to determine the direct impact within businesses of the global financial crisis. Earlier this year, AHRI conducted an online survey of a limited sample number of executive-level respondents on the ramifications within Australian business. A total of 122 executives responded to the survey.

A key key insights include:

• Approximately six out of 10 respondents (61.48%) report their organisations have downsized or are planning to do so.
• Of the downsizing organisations, more than three quarters (75.67%) report having reduced headcount up to 10%, and 8.11% of respondents more than 20%.
• Two thirds of respondents from downsizing organisations report the decision was made following careful analysis.
• Nearly nine out of 10 respondents (88%) from downsizing organisations believe downsizing was necessary.
• Respondents are evenly divided on whether the GFC will fundamentally change how business is conducted in the future, with a similar response to the question as to whether greater market regulation will prevent another GFC.
• Nearly two thirds of respondents (64.48%) believe that organisations will more actively pursue CSR and ethics policies in the wake of the GFC.

However, one of the most interesting things that I read in this report were the comments from the Execs on whether they thought the GFC would change the HR function. I’ve spoken recently on the ‘war for talent’ that has consumed many HR strategy documents for the last few years. Here is what one Exec had to say regarding the impact of the GFC on talent management:

“Less focus on recruiting scarce talent, more on clear identification of top talent and retention of them. Employee focus to shift from demanding entitlements to being grateful for non-financial benefits which represent the companies care and loyalty to employees”

They make a fantastic point. In the past, much emphasis has been placed on FINDING that talent in the ‘war’, because talent was scarce and individuals were able to freely pick and choose what companies they would like to work for. This normally meant that companies were willing and able to throw the talent great remuneration packages to join the organisation.

With the impact of the GFC, this means that companies have had to cut back and downsize, which means unemployment rates have raised tremendously; meaning there are more people in the labour market. Organisations are less able to offer huge salaries to staff and individuals are in less of a position to demand large salaries. However, it is important to remember that the top talent will always have somewhere to go to and if you can’t offer them a massive salary- what can you offer?

From a HR perspective, this means we really need to promote and sell all the benefits of working at our respective organisation- it’s no longer just about money. Examples of benefits that may be a key factor for prospective employees might include:

• Flexible working hours
• Generous paid maternity leave provisions
• Flex time
• On-site gym or discounts
• Massages or company wellness programs
• Free flu vaccinations
• Study assistance
• Child care facilities
• Subsidised transport
• Ability to work from home
• Increased superannuation payments
• Free onsite parking
• Fresh fruit delivery to work
• Volunteer Day (day of leave for purpose of assisting a charity)
• Staff referral programs
• Corporate rates for private health cover

I’d be really interested to hear from other HR professionals- what benefits are you promoting as a result of the GFC to attract and retain your talent?

One last comment from an Exec in the report:
“HR functions that add value will survive. So HR has to stand up and be counted or perish”

Er… what is Talent Management exactly?

Talent management is a concept that has been around for a while particularly in response to the ‘war for talent’. But what is it exactly?

Talent management is hard to define as the processes and what it involves can vary from organization to organization. For instance, research conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity asserts that more than 75 per cent of the companies they surveyed don’t have an agreed-upon definition of talent management (Galagan. 2008).

They do however go as far to state that ‘talent management concerns competencies- what employees should know and be able to do- and performance processes- how to leverage those competencies by putting them in the right parts of the organization, and then measuring their impact on real goals’ (Galagan. 2008). For this reason it is important to have processes which encapsulate talent management at each touch point for employees from recruitment to employee engagement strategies.

This means talent management strategies should be based around recruitment, leadership development, culture, succession planning, performance management, brand or the employee value proposition, learning, career development, remuneration, and employee engagement (Gilmore, 2008; Galagan, 2008; Ready, Hill, and Conger. 2008).

Linda Sharkey who is the Vice President of people development at HP summarizes talent management as ‘about having people at the top of their game and who are able to drive the performance of the company (Gilmore. 2008). More simply it’s about ‘getting the right people in the right place at the right time for the right cost’ (Galagan. 2008).

How does your organization define talent management and what strategies are you putting in place to retain your talent in the GFC?

HR Blogs to Check Out…

Recently some people have asked me how I get the interesting articles and info that I do, and to be honest I subscribe to blogs and try and do a bit of reading each day to see what is out there. I thought today I might provide some lists of HR blogs that you might like to check out when you have some time.

Fistful of Talent has released its Top 25 Talent Management Blogs

Evan Carmichael released his Top 50 HR blogs to watch in 2009

In Australia, here are a few ones to subscribe to:

http://www.hrbuzz.com.au
http://www.ahri.com.au
Human Capital Magazine
Destination Talent

Otherwise, another good idea is to check out the blog roll when you find a blog you like. You can then click through to that blog and subscribe if you like it.

Happy reading!

How are you assessing your talent this year?

This morning I revisited this article from Great Leadership on using the performance and potential matrix and thought it was worth sharing.

I’ve used the 9 box matrix before and really like it because its simple, and easily explainable to managers. Rather than loads of forms and text, it clearly highlights where your people are and what actions you need to take for each.

Have a read of “Using the performance and potential matrix to assess talent” and also check out the related posts underneath- some great tools here if you are unfamiliar with the process.