The EOFY is the ideal time to review policies, procedures and employee record-keeping to ensure everything is up-to-date and accurate. In addition, there are likely to have been compliance, regulatory and employment law changes over the past 12 months, or which will roll out in the new financial year. These also need to be accounted for.

Now is the time to take stock about the year that has passed, review what’s been done well, and identify areas for improvement in the year ahead.

Our handy checklist touches on all areas within HR’s mandate, including:

• Payroll and superannuation obligations
• Employee contracts, entitlements and awards
• Employee files and records
• Recruitment and staffing
• Performance management and professional development
• General HR hygiene (workplace health & safety, employee discipline and termination, leave policy, expenses policy reviews)

With links to relevant government websites and handy tips, our EOFY checklist will ensure your business is in the best possible position to excel in FY25.

The post 2024 end of financial year HR checklist appeared first on HRM online.

Ah, exit interviews. They’re filled with potential but they can also be emotional, difficult to read and sometimes downright surly. They are the teenager of HR functions. Unlike teenagers however, we get to decide whether they are worth the effort.

The research on their effectiveness has been decidedly mixed, with some studies suggesting that they are pretty much useless (at least in some sectors). Other studies land somewhere in the middle. This 2016 publication by researchers from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Exploring the behavioural options of exit and voice in the exit interview process, is one of those.

It neatly describes the perceived benefits of exit interviews. As described by the study, there are two schools of thought regarding their business value. Strategic HR management theory sees it as a practical tool for analysing employee turnover. Organisational behaviorists see something more profound – a method for further understanding staff motivation, turnover, engagement and overall behaviour.

Something the researchers seem to observe, but don’t comment on, is that exit interviews have an objective that is, at best, tangentially related to their stated aim – ending a staff member’s tenure on a note of mutual affection. This is interesting, because while that’s important in the sense that you should encourage boomerang employees and protect your employer brand, an exit interview that aims at emotional validation hamstrings every other outcome it’s supposed to have.

Four reactions to dissatisfaction

If you are going to study exit interviews you need to know what you’re looking for. So the UTS researchers make use of a previously established model for understanding dissatisfied employees called Exit-Voice-Loyalty-Neglect (EVLN) in their analysis. 

Each word describes the four ways employees express their negative feelings about their employer. They either quit (exit), tell you what’s wrong (voice), choose to support you anyway (loyalty), or they do nothing and let their negative feelings spiral to the point of no return (neglect).

The study’s authors chose it because it has an obvious tie-in with exit interviews. Because what are they if not an attempt to turn the completely negative exit into the much more worthwhile voice?

The issue is that an employee who wants to express dissatisfaction and remain in the organisation is someone who believes things can change for the better and is at least somewhat interested in being part of that change. Someone who has decided to quit is much less likely to have either of those qualities.

Nature of the research

It’s important to note that this was a qualitative study of a single organisation. It involved the researchers conducting semi-structured interviews with ten departing employees (five female and five male), observation of the HR professionals as they carried out the actual exit interviews of said employees, semi-structured interviews with the same HR professionals, and a follow-up telephone interview with everyone two weeks after the employees had left.

The way the company handled their exit interviews is typical. A one hour private meeting was set up in the final days of a leaving employee’s tenure and the HR professional prepared by reviewing all relevant information (performance reviews, memos, and so on). The interview itself involved predetermined questions (both open and closed-ended) and follow-up questions.

The researchers also note that the “meetings are almost always finished on a positive and uplifting note”. They don’t comment further on this fact, but it deserves further comment. While it makes perfect sense that humans would seek to say goodbye in a spirit of mutual affection, this is an exit interview and not the company farewell. Its practical purpose is to uncover dissatisfaction. Trying to finish on an “uplifting note” seems like it might harm that purpose.

Why people don’t tell the truth

If you asked a random person why someone being exit interviewed wouldn’t be honest they would most likely answer because they didn’t want to burn any bridges. In the UTS study, 100 per cent of the ex-employees gave the same reason in their follow-up phone conversations. In fact, one interviewee “commented on how he was hoping for his manger to act as his referee and was therefore not about to make any comments that could put this in jeopardy.”

But there were other reasons they weren’t forthcoming:

• They expressed a concern that remaining co-workers would be impacted by what they said. “The value of these relationships seemed to far outweigh the value of providing the organisation with information that may be used, as one female employee put it, to ‘exact retribution’.”
• Two interviewees, one of whom was a supervisor who had been with the company for four years, felt the process was a ‘useless formality’.
• One interviewee hoped to return to the company.
• The researchers also speculated that the employees who are leaving could have low motivation, and instead feel that any changes are the responsibility of their remaining co-workers and/or organisation.

Despite all this, the researchers report that seven out of 10 employees felt the exit interview was “an effective means to voice complaints and offer constructive criticism. The general sentiments were that they (the terminating employee) were able be reveal a lot about the programs and policies that existed, and about the working environment than a remaining employee as they could speak more candidly.” 

The HR professionals “shared this viewpoint” and “the general consensus was that the exit interview process provided HR with a valuable opportunity to not only discuss and clarify an employee’s overall level of satisfaction but to also find out the real reasons behind their decision to terminate.”

Though HR felt this way, the researchers observed that the only data that was being used was the primary and secondary reasons the employee gave for quitting. Also “despite the perceived benefit of the information being collected, actual changes in organisational policies and/or work procedures as a direct result of the information obtained, was negligible.”

Bon voyage

Let’s restate this because it’s really kind of odd. The employees admitted that they were intentionally distorting information, the HR professionals spent an hour interviewing but only made use of two very basic data points, and no actual changes were made. Yet for some reason almost everyone felt it was a worthwhile exercise. Why?

This really does smack of an emotional experience dressed up as a business exercise. How else do you describe something that feels good to most but doesn’t move the needle? 

The researchers seem to feel the same way, even if they don’t come to that exact same conclusion. Here’s the killer line – it’s about as close as academics get to snark (in a research paper anyway): “The reality was that a large amount of time and effort was being put into the administration of the exit interview process rather than analysing the data.”

They’re right when they say that the lesson for HR is that more and better use of the data is crucial. But it might also be important to analyse the motivations behind conducting and engaging interviews – for both the individuals involved and the organisation. Because while it’s a genuinely great thing to end a business relationship on a high note, you don’t need an exit interview to do that. A warm and fuzzy goodbye won’t fix your turnover problem.

Want to get better at analysing your people data? The AHRI short course Workforce analytics will equip you with techniques to undertake deep analysis of measurement outputs and identify patterns and trends across metrics.

The post Exit interviews – are you in it for the data or the good feelings? appeared first on HRM online.

A lot of people are scared automation will make their job redundant. One study even found evidence that fear of automation is causing workers enough anxiety to make them physically ill.

Research from McKinsey looked forward to 2030 and found that while less than five per cent of occupations are fully automatable (predominantly those with a lot of repetitive physical activities, or data processing or entry) 60 per cent of jobs can have 30 per cent of their activities automated.

While this suggests a future where very few of us won’t be affected by automation and just a small number should be truly ‘scared’, it needs to be unpacked.

Organisations treat different roles differently. In some organisations that 30 per cent of activities might be the most valuable contribution you make. Optimistically, removing almost a third of your activities would free you up for other tasks. In reality many companies will simply make a third of the people in your role redundant.

How HR manages staff in this situation will become an evermore important skill. Because while redundancies are never easy, imagine how much more difficult it must be when the  staff who are leaving know they won’t find another role elsewhere.

If done right, redundancies can run so smoothly that the staff leaving actually appreciate the company for how they handled it, and even help with the transition. If done incorrectly, redundancies can hurt the engagement of the remaining workforce. This might be especially true of those who actually conduct the automation.

It’s not just those being automated

A less told side of the automation narrative is the distress felt by those who are tasked with automating the jobs of their colleagues.

This experience is captured in an article from MIT Technology Review titled ‘Confessions of an accidental job destroyer’. It’s the intimate tale of a woman streamlining a company’s mould making process with 3D printing during a summer internship. She quickly discovers that to complete her task a man she calls ‘Gary’ is crucial, as he has over 30 years’ experience in making moulds. She also discovers that when she’s finished Gary will be redundant.

Gary goes along even after she makes him aware of this, though he does complain about the company. After she’s done Gary is moved to another job, but he doesn’t like it (or the company itself anymore) and so he quits.

An article on Gizmodo refers to more employees who have to automate their colleagues’ jobs, and their responses to the situation. Some understand the stakes immediately, others only realise the full implications of what they’re doing later on. One even quits when he realises.

So, given the potential harms, what’s the right way to automate staff out of a job?

Be upfront

In the article on MIT, the writer says they reconnected with Gary. He was happy to talk to her. He says the company took “a very aggressive stance with [him] and some other employees in similar positions… I assumed, wrongly, that I would have an opportunity to follow along with the evolution of the process.

“The ‘official position’ of the company was that there was no attempt to change anything about how things were being done.”

If that’s true, it’s no wonder Gary didn’t stick around. The company lost a long-time worker and made the person who helped them with automation feel so nervous she felt compelled to write about it years later.

The lesson is obvious, if staff are going to have their jobs either partially or fully automated there is no benefit to pretending otherwise. In fact, you give them their best chance to help themselves, and your organisation to succeed, if you tell them immediately. They can have the opportunity to think about retraining, you can plan more openly for the automated future, and you can retain the right staff if the automation process goes awry.

Get them to self-identify

The most intriguing option for an organisation that knows automation is in their future is to follow the example of UK insurance company Aviva. In 2017 it asked 16,000 employees if their job could be automated and offered to train them for alternative jobs if they said ‘yes’. Doing this has multiple benefits.

1. It establishes your organisation’s openness.
2. It makes the conversation around automation less toxic, and staff feel less afraid.
3. It gives your company valuable data to help direct automation funding and fine-tune a workforce strategy.
4. It’s a positive story that plays well to current staff and potential job seekers.

Retrain or reposition them

Everyone in the future will need technology-based skills, but not everybody today has them. At the 2018 ReimagineHR conference in Sydney, a presentation from Gartner looked at the digitalisation of organisations. It quoted the head of talent management at an insurance company saying, “Just because we don’t have the right skills, doesn’t mean we don’t have the right people.”

This is an important point because hiring is quite costly, and for some roles it’s very difficult. As HRM wrote in late 2017, the workforce who can handle AI related roles is very small (Canada has a similar population, but double our talent pool).

If you want someone who has expertise in a specific role with strong technology skills, it might end up being a smaller investment trying to retrain rather than firing and hiring someone else. After all, a world economic forum report found that 51 per cent of Australian workers will need upskilling or retraining before 2022. This will create a shorter supply in the talent market.

A different piece of research by McKinsey looked into the five strategies employers can take when faced with automation of job tasks; retrain, redeploy, hire, contract and release. Not surprisingly, the importance of strategies is decided by the disruption each industry faces.

Retraining and redeployment were rated as relatively important to every industry. Of a release strategy, the report says, “the risk is that knowledge of the company, culture, and operations is lost. Layoffs can also diminish employee productivity and satisfaction, and can be difficult and costly to carry out.”

Still, redundancies are sometimes a business imperative. But there is a right way to do it, and that’s being upfront.

The post There’s a right and wrong way to automate staff out of a job appeared first on HRM online.

Being nice can cost you a promotion and a pay rise, according to various studies. Research by Wiley about personality traits and career success indicates that agreeable people, characterised as those who are compassionate, friendly, polite and empathic, tend to have a lower occupational standing than their less accommodating counterparts.

Another study by Sage found that nice people are paid less.

Why is being nice self-defeating?

The two factors outlined as linking agreeableness to worse professional outcomes were that they are more likely to sacrifice personal success in an effort to please others, and that their desire to be agreeable makes them poor or reluctant negotiators. Agreeable people won’t angle for higher salaries, or push for promotions.

The opposite end of the spectrum, of course, are people who don’t have agreeable traits at all. While narcissistic personality types have their own problems, according to this article in The Conversation they are also linked to higher incomes.

But for HR, are there other reasons why being nice is not such a good idea? Previously a contributor to HRM previous argued that an HR career is not for “nice” people. But what does that actually look like?

Do overly-agreeable people have no place in HR?

Rhonda Brighton-Hall, CEO and Co-Founder of HR consultancy, MWAH (making work absolutely Human) says if HR professionals go overboard with the empathy, they are not actually being helpful.

“Let’s take an HR manager who is super empathetic, for example. It can actually be quite debilitating. If you get too wrapped up in a story you can lose what your role is. What has often transpired in situations like these is that there is a need for affirmation and to be liked rather than actually showing real empathy.”

Brighton-Hall says HR professionals need to listen and show empathy, but there are limits. The most important thing you can offer as an HR professional is to get somebody into a place where they’re most likely to succeed, wherever that place is, she says.

In reality, when it comes to performance HR professionals aren’t there to make friends, or be liked. They are there to empower better results.

The really tough conversations

Things obviously get more tricky the more difficult the situation. But HR professionals can be constructive, relevant and helpful while at the same time show empathy and be agreeable.

If a person has proven incapable of performing in their role despite adequate coaching and support, at the end of the day you can’t have other people continuously covering for them, says Brighton-Hall.

“The most empathetic thing you can do in that situation is to help them find another job more suited to them – either by finding them something else to do in the company or giving them time to source another role, or help them figure out what they are good at or interested in.”

You need to do this because a worse conversation would be imminent in a month’s time, she says.

Another example, what if a staff member has been taking a fair amount of time off work on sick leave? It’s the job of HR to get to the bottom of the problem. The situation should be broached by stating the facts says Brighton-Hall.

“It should be pointed out that this person is not there at work, and everyone is covering for them in their absence. It’s an unhealthy environment for the team,” she says.

If, when confronted, that person comes back with the news that they have a serious illness, measures can be put in place that can be beneficial to both them and the team.

“The vast majority of teams will be open to helping out in some way. They might arrange a different woking agreement or more flexible arrangement for the next couple of month or so while they recuperate,” says Brighton-Hall.

The post Can being a “nice” HR professional cost you career success? appeared first on HRM online.

If you haven’t been following the Facebook scandal, essentially a third-party app created by Cambridge psychology professor Aleksandr Kogan called “thisisyourdigitallife” hoovered up the data from 50 million Facebook profiles without permission.

Violating Facebook’s policies, the data eventually found its way to Cambridge Analytica who apparently combined it with electoral voting roles and used it to influence the 2016 US election.

When your employees turn on you

The scandal has not been good for Facebook. Some consider it the worst crisis the tech giant has faced as it goes to the heart of whether the company’s business model is ethical.

In the aftermath Facebook’s share price dropped precipitously and many people deleted their profiles, including a recent employee – the co-founder of one of WhatsApp, one of Facebook’s biggest acquisitions. Not only that but figures in both the US and UK government are calling for investigations into Facebook, and regulation of its business.

But perhaps the most lasting damage will be to the reputation the company has with current employees and future candidates.

As described in a report by Business Insider, as the scandal broke, employees started losing morale and engaging in gallows humour. “Is this how the downfall of Myspace happened?” one asked. Another posted a message filled with siren and fire emojis then added, “Those are my thoughts”.

But as the story stayed in the headlines a further concern started to crop up. Leadership at the company, specifically Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg weren’t talking – neither to employees nor to the public. It was enough to make one former employee ask “Why are you guys letting us get grilled?”

Speaking out of turn

The lack of leadership was most obvious at the company’s internal brief dealing with the scandal. Employees were encouraged to come and ask questions. However, unlike at previous briefings, the CEO and COO weren’t there. Instead the meeting was lead by Paul Grewal, a Facebook attorney.

The decision to keep quiet internally is baffling. It caused staff to leak all sorts of stories (including about Zuckerberg “ghosting”), and gave space for Facebook’s chief security go on Twitter to defend the company in an unhelpful way.

Making the issue much worse is that there is no more tight – and tightly-knit – labour market in the world than the one in Silicon Valley. The top engineers in the Valley are hard to recruit and equally as hard to retain – the other tech giants are always eager to snap them up. So having your staff negatively react so publicly goes from being a bad look, to a terrible business decision.

When the five days of silence from Facebook was broken, Sandberg acknowledged they made a mistake. “If I could live this past week again, I would have definitely had Mark and myself out speaking earlier, but we were trying to get to the bottom of this,” she told CNBC.

But what can HR do?

Other than try to manage employee complaints as best as they can and advise leadership of what employees need, there’s not much HR can do if leadership refuses to talk.

In this situation, and in others like it, the reason leaders are keeping mum is that there’s a broad strategic shift taking place. So HR can’t even assume holding the company line is appropriate, as they don’t know if the company line will change.

The obvious answer to employees going rogue is to not just have HR on the leadership team, but keep them abreast of all critical issues. That way they can figure out the best way to communicate confidence to employees. HRM has interviewed a CEO who has done that and loved the results. We’ve also talked to an HR leader in the C-Suite about how they negotiate and influence change from the highest levels.

Facebook’s problems are not over, it was only recently revealed that the company took Android users’ call history and SMS data. But on this occasion, the company responded immediately.

Photo credit: TechCrunch  / CC BY

The post Can HR do anything when a leader refuses to speak? appeared first on HRM online.

So you’ve read our article on the right way to handle a workplace investigation. You have serious reason to believe that it was Colonel Mustard with the candlestick in the ballroom, and you have a carefully crafted investigation plan to get to the bottom of it all.

But what if, just as you are about to launch the investigation into allegations of misconduct, the accused employee presents a medical certificate advising that they are unfit for work and will be on stress leave for the next three weeks?

Let’s call this the “absent participant”.

In addition, let’s say this complaint isn’t the first to come across your desk this year. In fact, it’s the fifth time in three months the same employee has lodged a formal grievance. That’s not even counting all the times they have already whinged to you about the inadequacy of the office stationery supplies, and the colour of the boardroom walls. Let’s call this employee the “vexatious complainant”.

Managing a workplace investigation can be challenging at the best of times. Below we consider a couple of the prickly issues that can arise when managing absent participants or vexatious employees in the context of an investigation, and some tips for how to successfully move forward.

The absent participant in a workplace investigation

When dealing with an ill or injured employee in a workplace investigation, you need to balance the need to complete the investigation expeditiously while not exacerbating an employee’s mental or physical condition.  

Not only do employers have work health and safety obligations, an employer should also ensure that you have not taken unlawful adverse action against an employee. To put it bluntly, don’t try to get a response from an employee who is stuck in the surgical ward recovering from open heart surgery.

However, if the circumstances are considerably less severe, or you just need more information to get a better read on the situation, here are a couple of ways you could consider dealing with the absent participant.

1. Are there adjustments you could make to your investigation plan to facilitate the employee’s participation in the investigation? For example, if the employee is unable to attend work due to the medical issues, they may still be in a position to respond in writing or by telephone to any questions the employee is required to answer.
2. If the current medical evidence provided by the employee is insufficient, you could make further inquiries about the employee’s capacity to participate. This could mean asking the employee to provide clarification from their treating doctor, or to provide their consent for you to ask their doctor directly. If these pathways are unsuccessful, you may consider directing the employee to attend an independent medical examination.

In the meantime, there shouldn’t be anything stopping the rest of the investigation. An investigator can still interview other complainants, respondents and/or any witnesses, and continue collecting and if required, reviewing documentary evidence.

The vexatious complainant in a workplace investigation

A frequent complainant may not be your best friend, but their workplace complaints should still be taken seriously.

The Fair Work Act is designed to protect an employee’s right to make complaints and enquiries, even if the complaint is never substantiated. Make sure you do your due diligence before dismissing complaints, or the consequences could be less than ideal.

Take the recent example of Ms Robinson, a Director of Nursing at Cape York Health Service in Queensland. Ms Robinson alleged that she was subject to repeated bullying behaviour by the CEO of her employer, which caused such serious psychiatric damage that she was unable to return to work. By failing to look into the complaints (or at least find out if they were “vexatious”) the employer allowed the issues to linger, which in turn increased the uncertainty, conflict and unease of the whole situation. In this case, the employer’s failure to act cost it approximately $1.5 million .

For low-risk complaints from the vexatious complainant, feel free to get creative about how to handle the situation. A complaint doesn’t always require a formal workplace investigation in response. You could mediate conversations between employees, provide training on workplace conflict resolution, or even facilitate team bonding exercises designed to help resolve some of those niggly interpersonal issues.

Of course, if you are concerned that the complaints are becoming truly vexatious, consult your workplace policies or external adviser on how to counsel or discipline the employee.

Final reminders for employers

If these curly / churlish characters haven’t given you enough to ponder, consider these tips:

1. All workplace investigations should be approached with careful consideration and planning, particularly when absent or vexatious employees are involved. Be sure to bear in mind any specific procedures for enterprise agreement or award-covered employees when planning how to manage the situation.
2. Carefully document and communicate any reasons for delaying the investigation process, and the process taken by the business to manage that delay. Case law shows that where an investigation is brought before the court, the employer should be able to explain any reasons for the delay.

In just a few months the High Court is set to answer the question of whether employers owe a duty of care to employees in the conduct of workplace investigations. This could have significant implications for the approach of employers to these kinds of situations. Keep your eyes peeled for the High Court’s decision in Govier v Unitingcare Community.

The post How to deal with difficult people in a workplace investigation appeared first on HRM online.

The headline of this article is the first sentence of our latest book Victory Through Organisation, and it captures in twelve words the focus of our last twenty years of work since HR Champions was published in 1997. In those twenty years, we have surveyed, observed, coached, facilitated, and consulted with tens of thousands of HR professionals and thousands of organisations to discover how HR can deliver business success by creating more value.

Recently, I had the privilege of speaking to the HR Congress, a gathering of over 600 HR professionals. I was challenged by Mihaly Nagy, the organiser to deliver a closing keynote that would capture the themes of dosens of remarkable speakers and (hopefully) inspire attendees to reimagine their careers.

So, I organised my remarks around a simple question, “On a score of 0 to 10, how much value do I create?” This open-ended, intentionally vague question focused on the value of HR for the business more than the activities of HR. Then I asked, “How can I create more?” With a show of hands, the answer to the first question ranged from 3 to 7. The answers to the second question varied by person; in addition, I offered eight tips for how I believe HR professionals can create more value for the business.

1. Recognise that value is defined by the receiver more than the giver

A thoughtful participant in our HR Learning Partnership (HRLP, a consortium of six to eight companies sending five participants to an eleven-day experience) returned home excited to implement the ideas we taught. He called a few weeks later discouraged and said that our program had not worked. I was very worried and wanted to know what we had done wrong, so I asked him what he did as a result of his experience with us.

He had surveyed his business leaders asking which of about twenty HR innovations they felt were most relevant to their work. But they did not answer with verve and seemed disinterested. It hit me that he had taken the wrong directive away from the consortium, and that we had not delivered our message clearly enough.

Business leaders generally do not care much about which of twenty HR practices matter most; they care about the business. His survey should have been about which of ten business priorities (e.g., cost, innovation, customer share, quality, revenue growth, etc.) mattered most to them. His HR job was then to make HR innovations and practices relevant to these business problems. HR is not about HR but the business!

2. Serve internal and external stakeholders

I like to ask HR professionals: “Who are your customers?” Inevitably a large percentage of any HR audience will say employees or line managers. Right and wrong. When HR focuses on the business more than on HR, its customers are the stakeholders of the business; this does include employees and managers inside the company, but it also encompasses customers, investors, and communities outside. The value of HR is not just what happens inside the company but outside as well.

3. Appreciate and anticipate the business context

The world of business is changing dramatically. For HR professionals to deliver value in the future to all stakeholders, they have to be aware of the context in which they operate. This requires examining the social, technological, economic, political, environmental, and demographic (STEPED) trends that shape a country or industry. HR professionals should do external sensing to bring this contextual information inside the firm, anticipate how those changes will affect the firm, and successfully navigate them.

4. Deliver key outcomes of individual talent and organisation capability

I like to use the following analogy. I have participants hold up their left hand with five fingers. These fingers represent “talent” and the people in their organisations. Next, I have them hold up their right hand with a fist. The fist represents the “organisation” or systems that comprise the organisation. I then ask the question, “To deliver business results, which matters most? Hold up either the right or left hand.”

Generally, about 70 per cent hold up the left hand with five fingers representing talent. Wrong.

We have found in our work that having the right organisation (right hand in a fist—the systems within an organisation which create capabilities) has four times the impact on business results than that of talent (left hand open with five fingers). HR professionals deliver business impact through talent (competencies of people), organisation (capabilities of the organisation), and leadership (the bridge between the two). Capabilities represent what the organisation is known for and good at doing (e.g.,innovation, collaboration, customer anticipation, change, information sensing).

These capabilities are created and sustained by the systems around people and performance.  In each and any business dialogue, HR professionals can ask how and offer to improve talent, leadership, and organisation to deliver value to all stakeholders.

5. Use digital HR

I have been around HR for many years (ahem, decades). We are, as a field and as a species, enamored with shiny new objects.  This might include work on high-performing teams, analytics, demographics (e.g., millennials), service centers, etc. Now digital HR is the topic du jour.

To deliver value, HR professionals have to understand that managing in a digital age will require both efficiency and innovation through technology, but it will also require the ability to choose the right digital solutions and to source information and build connection—the emerging steps of the digital age.

6. Design the right HR department

For HR to deliver business value, the HR department needs to be organised for both efficiency and effectiveness. To be so, HR departments should match the structure of the business where they work. If the business is centralised (about 20 per cent of large businesses), HR should be centralised (e.g., a common set of HR policies and practices throughout the organisation).

If the business is decentralised (about 10 per cent), HR should be decentralised. If the business is a matrix (diversified/allied, multi-divisional firm—about 70 per cent), HR should be organised to be simultaneously efficient and effective. We have also learned that to operate in a multi-divisions firm, HR has to focus less on roles (who does what) and more on relationships (how we work together).

7. Build the right HR competencies

Over the past 30 years, we have empirically studied the competencies that HR professionals must demonstrate. We have found that HR professionals overall have made enormous progress in their competencies.

But we have also discovered that it is not just about having competencies that matters but the impact of those competencies on key outcomes, including personal effectiveness, stakeholder value, and business results. Different outcomes require different competencies (e.g., delivering business results requires the competency of navigating paradoxes).

8. Make line managers owners

Finally, if HR is not about HR but the business, then line managers are ultimately accountable and responsible for HR work around talent, leadership, and organisation. HR’s job is to be the architect and anthropologist to facilitate, coach, design, and deliver innovative solutions to business problems.

These are eight of my ideas for how HR can focus on the business and thus add more value. Rate yourself on a scale of 1–10 how well you feel you are doing in delivering value to your business. Can my suggestions help you? What are your experiences and insights that can aid you in your efforts to improve?

Get ahead in your career with HR certification. Find the best certification pathway for you and start your certification journey today.

Dave Ulrich FAHRILife, Rensis Likert Professor of Business, University of Michigan Partner, The RBL Group.

This is an edited version of his LinkedIn article.

The post HR is not about HR: HR begins and ends with the business appeared first on HRM online.

How many of us would describe our workplaces as “a great place to work”? Isn’t it the case that you have to experience both good and bad to recognise what makes somewhere a place you want to go to each day?

Experts and promoters of ideal workplace cultures, Great Place to Work Australia (GPTW) has established an annual research survey, based on data representing more than 10 million employees in 50 countries from around 6,000 organisations of varying sizes, industries, maturity and structures.

Their latest, published last week, revealed the company rankings for 2017. In the category with the largest number of employees – 1000 or more – arguably the hardest in which to achieve workplace satisfaction, Mars Australia took out the top spot.

(A truncated winner’s list is below. For the rest, go here – signup required.)

The survey benchmarks employers against a series of engagement indicators, the key factor being one much talked about during AHRI’s recent National Convention – trust.

According to GPTW criteria, “Trust is the defining principle of great workplaces — created through management’s credibility, the respect with which employees feel they are treated, and the extent to which employees expect to be treated fairly.”

A case study in trust

So how does Mars Australia, the name behind brands such as Whiskas, Wrigley and M&Ms, match up against these principles?

Jim Brodie, HR divisional director at Mars Petcare, believes the success of the culture has a lot to do with the history and values of what is still a privately-owned company.

“First and foremost ours is a global business that is over 100 years old and the values of the Mars family have remained alive and well throughout its history. It’s a principle driven organisation that isn’t just a plaque on the wall, it’s a way of operating,” says Brodie.

Being a family-run business allows Mars a financial freedom – unbeholden to shareholders – to make decisions for the long-term benefit of the business.

“In one of our sites at Wodonga, we are celebrating 50 years of manufacturing in regional Australia. We are the biggest employer in that area and we are continuing to make investments there to set ourselves up for the next 50 years,” says Brodie. It is an indication of a business deeply rooted in and responsible to its community: a fact that pays off in terms of employees’ loyalty and respect for the company.

Mars’ commitment to sustainability around communities extends to energy, too. Over four years, between 2006 to 2010, the company reduced its energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 25 per cent across its four manufacturing sites. The Asquith site sends zero waste to landfill and at its Wyong site, Mars Food has installed a state-of-the-art co-generation plant that efficiently generates both heat and power, producing 5.3 million kilowatt hours of electricity in its first year.

But this is a global business, and Mars are mindful of the fact that their products rely on sourcing ingredients that can impact communities in far flung places – for good or ill. Mars Chocolate, for example, is committed to sourcing 100 per cent of its cocoa from certified sources by 2020 and introduced Rainforest Alliance certification for the cocoa in its MARS® bars in 2011.

“We see our principles of sustainability, mutuality and freedom as central to Mars. This purpose-driven organisation, whether it is bringing families together or making a better world for pets, is something that our associates [Mars doesn’t call their staff ‘employees’] really relate to in a positive way,” says Brodie.

Beyond the high-minded stuff, the company offers perks that Brodie believes help to add to that “extended family” atmosphere. The sites, for example, are pet-friendly.

“It’s mainly dogs; people are welcome to bring their dogs to work each and every day. We have guidelines for health and safety with leashed areas but there are off leash areas, too,” says Brodie.

Mars snacks are available to staff as well, which might seem like an open invitation to gorge on chocolate. But Brodie insists that the company has been on the front foot in leading the agenda to make sure their products are part of a healthy diet. They run health and wellness programs including fitness assessments and running groups. “We are proactive in terms of finding a healthy balance,” he says.

But we know from countless surveys that while chocolate and dogs on site are nice to have, this isn’t what engages people. Nor is it pay, says Brodie.

“Remuneration doesn’t necessarily retain or attract people. What works here is that we are a highly decentralised organisation, trusting our associates and delegating decision making to the lowest possible level so that people feel empowered,” says Brodie.

“At Mars, we treat people with dignity, respect and care but we also ask them to take personal responsibility for success in their role. The engagement that that brings, I think, is a catalyst for the success of this organisation.”

The rankings

Top five places to work (over 1000 employees)

1. Mars
2. Mecca Brands
3. Hilton
4. Campbell Arnott’s
5. Marriott Hotels and Resorts Australia

Top five places to work (over 100 employees)

1. Stryker (health care)
2. Salesforce
3. Atlassian
4. Birdsnest (retail)
5. Nous Group (professional services, consulting)

Top five places to work (under 100 employees)

1. Avenue Dental (health care)
2. Intuit Australia (IT)
3. Canva (IT)
4. Isentra (IT)
5. Stackla (IT)

The post Australia’s best places to work in 2017 appeared first on HRM online.

When job interviews aren’t done right, their ability to predict future performance is low. The good news is we know the key ingredients that will increase your ability to predict a candidate’s future performance and behavior.

Research has shown consistently that unstructured, non-behavioural interviews have a much lower ability to predict future performance than structured behavioural interviews. The most recent by Schmidt shows that unstructured interviews are able to predict future performance about 10 per cent of the time, whereas structured behavioural interviews get it right about 25 per cent of the time.

The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, which is why these types of questions are the most powerful. For example, questions that begin with something like “tell me about a time when….” are particularly useful. This allows the candidate to provide an example of specific behaviours they have demonstrated in the past that relate to those they will need to show in the future if they are to be successful in this new role.

It’s exactly why hypothetical questions are not as useful – they don’t measure past behaviour even if they appear to test a person’s intelligence, as well as their ability to think on their feet and communicate clearly. A study by Krajewski et al. shows exactly this, with past-based behavioural interview questions significantly predicting future job performance, whereas hypothetical future-based questions did not.

(New to HR? Consolidate your foundational HR skills and knowledge with AHRI’s BSB41015 Certificate IV in Human Resources course.  Enrolments for 12-month course close soon! On 4 August.)

Structured interviews

Structured interviews are also a key ingredient for success (i.e. asking the same questions across different candidates). This enables everyone who is involved in the hiring decision to compare the final few candidates against the same criteria so that when they evaluate each person there is a consistency of data. Each candidate is given the same opportunity to respond to the same questions and this reduces biases the interviewers may have.

Motivation

Sometimes people have the ability to perform well in a given role however, they do not have the necessary motivation or drive to perform. Motivational questions are essential to any good interview to help uncover why a candidate wants to work in this company and in this particular role. In a similar way, questions about a person’s career aspirations are also important. Where does this role and this organisation fit into their career journey and their future career aspirations? Is this just a stepping stone to something else? Is it their dream job? Is it just a job to bring in money because they can’t find any other job? Is it the organisation they have always wanted to work for? Understanding answers to these questions will help the interviewers evaluate the level of motivation the person has for the job.  

Culture

Culture-fit is also a crucial element to consider. For example, our culture at PeopleScape is highly feedback oriented. People get feedback on a daily basis, most of it positive but sometimes about improvement areas. Our staff love this aspect of our culture, but it could be intimidating to some people. So, we ensure we look for people who would fit.

Once you’ve asked all these questions, the interview process can still produce a poor outcome if you don’t have clear evaluation criteria. Good interviews have a simple scale for each question (such as a 1-5 rating scale). In addition, they have a clear definition of what a successful response would look like so that all raters are aligned in terms of what they are looking for and what each rating actually means.  

Finally, the data from the interviews needs to be integrated with all other data collected during the recruitment and selection process (e.g. CVs, reference checking and psychological testing) in order to help make an objective hiring decision. If you are able to create interviews that follow these basics guidelines you will significantly increase your chances of “getting it right”.

Hayden Fricke is Director at PeopleScape

The post What do the best job interviews involve? appeared first on HRM online.

It can be argued that performance reviews are slowly shifting to what is understood as performance management. I’d like to focus on that change and adaptation in performance reviews as well as the ongoing challenges HR and managers experience in designing and conducting performance reviews.

Performance review vs performance management

Over the past 50 plus years, management has drastically changed, from the 1950s where managers got to ‘play god’, through to the 1980s where performance measurements started to become what we think of them as today.

There is a significant difference between performance reviews and performance management.

Performance reviews are regular meetings that allow managers to appraise the performance of employees.

Performance management is the refinement of review, designed to manage individual performance, organisation and company goals and values. It focuses on broader HR initiatives and policies. For example, talent management and training and development. It is a two-way process where individuals and the team are aligned with the company’s overriding strategy.

Why bother with performance reviews?

Performance management is carried out for a number of reasons

• To communicate a shared vision of organisational objectives
• To define expectations
• It allows the employee to monitor their own performances
• It puts all employees on an equal footing
• It helps managers and HR understand developmental needs; it’s not simply blaming people for poor performance
• It’s a negotiated process instead of a hierarchical, top-down process
• It’s forward-looking and encourages people to buy into process-self management. And it gets employees thinking about what they need.

PM should be seen as an empowering process for both employees and employers, allowing both parties to comfortably set and reach goals without belittling one another. If done effectively, labour turnover should decrease.

Reasons why performance reviews fail

Traditionally, ‘reviews’ have been seen as a top-down technique. Performance reviews have produced a host of issues that undermined their intended purpose. Specifically, managers are prone to certain biases that hamper their ability to provide the employee and the organisation with a true picture of performance.

These include:

1. The ‘halo effect’ is where a single attribute, or the general impression of the individual, is used as the basis to rate their entire performance. For example, the employee could be an extrovert who gets along with everybody, and the manager values this so highly they ignore that they have failed to meet several of their KPIs.
2. The ‘horns effect’ is the opposite. This is where the manager’s overall impression of the employee is negative, based on a single piece of evidence or no evidence at all.
3. ‘Recency bias’, usually happens when a manager does not produce detailed/precise notes before reviews. They then have a tendency to rate the employee based on their most recent project, or how they’ve been behaving in the past month or so, rather than getting a full picture of how the employee has performed over a period of time.
4. Cronyism, or the ‘crony effect’, is where the manager is biased towards rewarding the employees they’re closest to on a personal level. It’s different from the halo effect in that it’s more clearly a tit for tat situation. Rather than overvaluing their impression of the employee, they privilege the relationship they have with them – often actively promoting them above employees who don’t have that same relationship.

(Want to find more out about unconscious bias and how to overcome it? Find out about AHRI’s custom learning course, and its managing unconscious bias toolkit.)

Hannah Pryjmachuk is Marketing and HR Coordinator at Precision Sourcing. Her original article can be found on their website.

The post The 4 most common biases that will ruin performance reviews appeared first on HRM online.