Working in HR has always demanded adept multitasking, but the disruptions of the pandemic and the numerous changes to our work dynamics have necessitated expanding HR skill sets even further.

“During COVID, HR got called into really high-level, strategic conversations that they didn’t always get brought into previously,” says Tani Jacobi, HR Standards & Capability Development Manager at AHRI.

“No one else had the skills; no one else had the reach and the capability to be able to navigate these situations because it was so heavily focused on the impact on people. It accelerated the path that HR was already on – that we’re not just focused on policy and compliance, or the ‘fluffy’ stuff. We are business contributors and leaders that enable business performance and growth.”

Since then, HR has become increasingly integral to decision-making conversations, which Jacobi asserts is “exactly what businesses need”. However, this shift has revealed that some HR practitioners were not fully prepared to assume these new responsibilities.

A byproduct of the rapid business changes from the past five years is that the HR practice has changed, says Beth Hall CPHR, General Manager of HR, Standards and Capability at AHRI.

“To stay commercially viable and support business growth goals, there is an increased expectation for sophistication in HR capabilities.” – Beth Hall CPHR,  General Manager of HR, Standards and Capability, AHRI

“HR has had to think differently about how to attract, engage and retain people, and how to navigate employee relations in a landscape that’s become even more complex. 

“When you think about the increase in criminalisation and individual decision-makers being held personally liable for some of the decisions they’re making at work, that’s a lot for HR to manage.”

As the professional body for HR in Australia, AHRI was determined to support its members and the broader HR profession to manage these challenges head-on and to grow their capability and influence.

“To stay commercially viable and support business growth goals, there is an increased expectation for sophistication in HR capabilities,” says Hall. 

The Australian HR Capability Framework

AHRI’s refreshed Australian HR Capability Framework (AHRCF) has been created with this increased sophistication in mind.

Designed to promote universal standards of HR best practice, the AHRCF defines the essential capabilities, skills, knowledge and behaviours required of HR practitioners, enabling career progression and empowering organisations to achieve their goals by nurturing the capabilities of their HR teams. 

It also acts as a clear roadmap for becoming a well-rounded HR practitioner, which requires a big-picture mindset, says Hall.

“For example, if you’re an IR/ER specialist, you can’t think about the legislation criminalising underpayments or the right to disconnect without considering your wellbeing skills, payroll, or your HR generalist skills. Nothing should happen in isolation.”

The new design of the AHRCF (see below) purposefully focuses on capabilities rather than specific roles, says Jacobi.

“We’ve been clear in saying, ‘This isn’t a job description.’ It’s about encompassing the broad practice of HR. 

“We’ve also quite deliberately designed the capabilities to flow from the big-picture, strategic level, then work around in a logical sequence of capabilities,” says Jacobi.

The framework begins at business strategy, says Hall.

“That’s about considering, ‘What’s happening from a business perspective, and what impact does it have on the HR strategy?’ 

“Then you go on to organisational enablement. Consider: how am I enabling the organisation to look after themselves and not be constantly relying on HR – because we’re a cost centre; we don’t generate income. We enable the organisation through data, insights and technology.”

Next, you layer in the foundational elements, such as the wellbeing perspective, to make sure you’re looking after the physical, emotional and mental wellbeing of your people.

“Then it’s about getting us to a culture that we can be proud of. We can look at ethical practices and DEI to make sure it’s aligned with the business strategy,” says Hall.

Workforce effectiveness speaks to the critical industrial relations skills required of the modern HR practitioner, as well as ensuring that you’re “being strategic in the chess moves of your people, structures and your succession planning to enable a future effective workforce”.

Talent management and trusted partnership runs across all elements of the framework.

“Your talent management and trusted partnership is keeping the lights on,” says Hall. “But if you don’t couple them with organisational enablement and workforce effectiveness, you’re going to come unstuck.

“If you think about old HR versus new HR, old HR was all about trusted partnership and talent management – we found people, we hired them, we gave them the skills and knowledge they needed, we managed their performance and then we moved them into their new role. We did that through employee relations, influence and impact.”

That work is still incredibly important, of course, but there is now so much more nuance and complexity to add on top of this foundational HR work.

“The employee experience is now uber-personalised. It’s not one-size-fits-all; sheep-dipping won’t work. Therefore, how do you use your organisational enablement and workforce effectiveness to start building the personalised, curated employee experience of the future?”

Using the AHRCF and Capability Analysis tool

AHRI’s HR Capability Framework is designed to uplift both individual capabilities and that of your entire HR team.

“We are, by nature, a giving group of practitioners, but we sometimes do that at the expense of ourselves,” says Jacobi. “Our performance as HR practitioners is measured on how we can impact business outcomes, not by our own growth. So we tend to neglect investing in our own capability because we’re so busy doing it for everyone else.”

The intent of the AHRCF and the capability assessment tool (exclusive to AHRI members), is that you can build it into your already established talent management cycles (see below).

“We’re also giving you access to development opportunities so you don’t have to go and create your own HR Bootcamp for your HR team. We have a range of options available that are specifically linked back to this framework,” says Jacobi.

The AHRCF is freely available for any HR practitioner to view. However, AHRI members can also access a career-stage breakdown of each capability, as well as the accompanying Capability Analysis Tool, which helps map and benchmark their skills over time.

Here’s how it works:

1. Assess your skills: AHRI members can log in to their membership dashboard and click on ‘Australian HR Capability Framework self-assessment tool’. Next, answer a few short questions to help AHRI benchmark your skills against the AHRCF. This should only take up to 30 minutes to complete.

2. Design your learning journey: You will receive a personalised PDF report of your results in your inbox. This will include specific recommendations for your learning and development from AHRI’s range of capability development programs.

3. Track your progress over time: Your personalised report will include a set of graphics to help you benchmark your results over time, should you choose to use the Capability Assessment Tool again in the future.

“Being able to benchmark capabilities allows us to see where our capabilities are compared to our peers,” says Jacobi. “Tracking growth over time helps to demonstrate return on investment and celebrate the progress we’ve made.”

Sign up for a webinar on 18 July, 12-1pm, to learn more about the revamped AHRCF and how it will benefit you. AHRI members can register for free.

The post Setting the standard for HR capabilities now and into the future appeared first on HRM online.

As we contemplate the role of the modern HR professional, a rich tapestry of terms such as ‘strategic business partner’ and ‘executive influencer’ come to mind. But HR wasn’t always seen this way. 

For years it battled to redefine its role beyond an administrative function confined to the back office. This is because work used to be transactional. Employees came and went, dutifully punching their time cards, and most employers didn’t put much thought into how to motivate or reward them beyond sending out their paycheck on time. But as the decades rolled on, HR evolved.

“I think there have been three dominant phases for HR, and we’re coming up to a fourth,” says Peter Wilson AM FCPHR Life, former AHRI Chair (2006-2020).

“In the first wave [1940s-1960s], the context for HR was command-and-control leadership. Personnel were the bureaucrats and policemen of workplace rules. The theory was that you listened to the alpha dog [the CEO] and did what you were told.

“The second stage [in the late 70s early 80s] was about learning how to get the workforce to be more adaptive – there were lots of courses on innovation and entrepreneurship for HR, but we didn’t quite move all the way out of that ‘workplace policeman’ bubble.”

The third wave occurred in the late 1990s to early 2000s when HR started to become influenced by the thinking of behavioural scientists and positive psychologists, he says. Employers started thinking more holistically about employee wellbeing and motivation.

The fourth phase, which HR is currently navigating, calls for a diverse skill set that spans the financial, technological and strategic sides of a business. But before we talk more about what an effective HR leader looks like in 2023, let’s look back at some of the moments that got us here.

1940s-1950s – Personnel comes on the scene

If the Industrial Revolution is credited with the rise of machinery, then it was the 1940s that elevated the significance of skilled labour.

The outbreak of World War II in 1939 created a new job market in Australia, focused on the mass production of war-related goods such as ammunition. However, with over a million Australians serving overseas, there was a significant shortage of workers. As women around the world entered traditionally male-dominated fields such as engineering and manufacturing for the first time, the employment landscape shifted.

Australia’s job industry boomed with the introduction of female workers, which helped factories resume mass production. 

However, as soldiers returned home, it became clear that the post-war recovery efforts would be significant. Australia lost 34,000 lives during the war, and many of those who survived were not mentally or physically fit to return to the workplace.

It was a time of extreme labour shortages and high turnover.

“[Employers] had to start thinking, ‘What are we going to do besides just giving people a job and paying them? What kind of incentives can we provide to retain staff?’” says Dr Justine Ferrer, Senior Lecturer in HRM in the Department of Management at Deakin Business School.

This period marked the emergence of HR, or an early version of it. While there were industrial and labour relations roles pre-1940, it wasn’t until the post-war period that the concept of personnel management emerged in the Australian context. 

“Recruitment challenges, turnover and incentivisation were really influential [in the 1940s]. It was argued at the time that these were a passing trend and things would soon go back to ‘the way things were’, but they never did. It just kept evolving.

“There are so many parallels we can draw with work and HR today – change management challenges, a push for efficiency, and pay alone no longer cutting it as a motivating factor for employees. It’s all cyclical,” says Ferrer.

1960s-1970s – Women at work

Before and during the 1960s, work was fairly rigid, according to Meryl Stanton PSM, FAHRI, former AHRI Board member, organisational psychologist and Chief Executive of Australian Public Service agencies Comcare and the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Agency.

“When I first started work in the late ‘60s as a sales assistant in a department store, I had a bundy clock where I’d clock on and clock off.

“In the public service, you signed on at 8:30am, and if you weren’t there by 8:35am, your pay would be docked. And you’d finish at 4:51pm because, factoring in lunch, that got you 36 and three quarter hours for the week,” says Stanton, who is also a Fellow of the Institute of Public Administration, Australian Institute of Company Directors, and Centre for Strategy and Governance

“That’s so different to the flexibility that many employees enjoy today.”

The impact of the women’s movement in the 1970s can’t be overstated, she adds. By 1974-75, the equal employment opportunity movement was in full swing.

It was, as Stanton puts it, a period where the “basic hygiene factors” of equality were starting to be taken care of.

“Even though the equal pay legislation was passed in 1969, it wasn’t fully in place until 1971, so my first few pay packets weren’t the same as my male colleagues’ pay packets.” 

It would be quite a few years until larger changes were made to further support and elevate working women.

“I had my son in 1978 and had quite a unique role at the time – I was the Public Service Board’s Chief Psychologist. I said I wanted to take 12 months’ leave [only three of which would be paid] and they said, ‘Well, you can’t keep the job.’ Flex-time wasn’t an option at my level. 

“I even asked if it would be possible to come back at a lower level, but that wasn’t possible either. These were the rules, even in the Commonwealth Public Service’s central HR agency.”

Recruitment was also very different in the ‘70s, she says. 

“It was the era of mass selection testing. Jobs were simply offered in order of merit. There were no interviews, generally speaking. In the public service, there was one selection test for people who had matriculated and a separate test for those who hadn’t.”

Towards the end of the decade, and as part of recommendations from the Royal Commission into Australian Government Administration in 1974-76, there was more devolution and public sector agencies had more say in who they hired. At this stage, job interviews became more common.

“Another thing that started changing at this time was the thinking that you could bring in people at the middle level, and sometimes at the top level, from outside the organisation.

“This was a bit of a revelation for the banks and public sector. You didn’t have to come in at the bottom anymore. That made a huge difference,” says Stanton.

1980s-1990s – Technology speeds work up

The 1980s was a huge time of change in the world of work. Globalisation brought new technologies to our shores; the casualisation of the workforce began; and Australia’s union movement continued gaining traction.

“From the ‘80s to the ‘90s, it was the evolution of personnel to HR in a more proactive function,” says Peter Holland, Professor of HRM at Swinburne University.

It was the time of the dot-com boom, which saw companies ‘fighting’ for the best knowledge workers to join their ranks and drive businesses in new and exciting directions. This meant that attraction and retention strategies became more complex and strategic as employers clambered over each other to be considered an ‘employer of choice’.

Professor Timothy Bartram, Professor of HR Analytics at RMIT University, says this was a point in time when many Asian economies started to rise.

“Particularly in South Korea and Japan, there was a rise in economic domination in terms of total quality management, and the [mass] approach to manufacturing goods and services,” says Bartram. “They were masterful at taking American concepts and adapting them to their unique and rich cultures.

They developed new ways to think about productivity and engagement of the workforce, and that really sparked the Harvard model of HRM in 1984-85.”

Dr Gerry Treuren, Senior Lecturer at the University of South Australia, says organisations started moving towards business-unit HR functions in the 1980s.

“The seminal HR texts from the mid-1980s called for the decentralisation of HR. These texts argued, sensibly, that HR people needed to have local knowledge to be effective and assist line managers to make better decisions on the core HR issues of recruitment, training, performance management, etc.”

“[This was followed by] interest in linking HR activity to better meet organisational needs in operational terms, and a more strategic focus where HR was seen as a tool to orient latent capacity within the workforce towards the organisation’s goals.”

Emotionally intelligent leaders

In Wilson’s opinion, the 1990s was one of the most significant time periods of change for HR, as the function finally began to shake loose the idea that they were simply the hire-and-fire bureaucrats. This is what he refers to as the third wave of HR.

“We started thinking more about strategy and assessing the best options. That led to a big shift in western thinking about HR, which, I think, was [characterised] by the workings of Daniel Goleman on emotional intelligence,” he says.

“I also think neuroscientists and positive psychologists taught us that good leadership is about understanding how people think and react, and that the way to lead them is to understand their expectations and needs to get them to want to contribute. Not telling them what to do.”

2000s-2010s – GFC years and the war for talent

The mid-2000s were dominated by the mining boom and global financial crisis. The GFC saw businesses strip back practices, budgets and resources, and learn how to operate in a lean manner.

“Anecdotally, employers wanted to keep their workforce, presumably after struggling to fill vacancies during the labour and skill shortage prompted by the 2004-07 mining boom,” says Treuren. “After the GFC, there seemed to be a few quiet years, but that disguised a silent redundancy round and skills shortage as organisations reorganised business units.”

This was also a period that saw a “once-in-a-generation” change in employment regulation, says Treuren.

“This legislation had several big effects. First, it added a new level of technicality to the HR practice. Secondly, the longstanding IR/HR divide broke down, with HR people being more actively engaged in IR issues.

During the GFC recovery years, when workplaces were once again faced with skills shortages, employers realised they needed to rethink engagement strategies, says Wilson.

“Platforms like Glassdoor were introduced and employees started sharing their experiences of working for companies and, as a result, staff started voting with their feet.

“A crisis, whether it’s a war, a depression, major job losses, strikes or a pandemic, is often a turning point for the economy and how the workplace functions,” says Wilson.

That workplace shift in the early noughties was an integral aspect of moving HR into a more strategic function. 

The 2022 State of HR report, co-authored by Ferrer, Treuren, Holland and Bartram, shows that 75 per cent of the people interviewed said there was an HR voice sitting at the C-suite in their organisation and 64.4 per cent reported their organisation having a strategic HR agenda.

“Dave Ulrich, in 1996, talked about HR’s roles as a ‘strategic partner’ and ‘change agent,’” says Treuren. “While organisations had been slowly devolving HR functions to business units, the first I heard the term ‘business partner’ as a job title and the focus of HR discussion around 2010, with senior practitioners.”

“We need to shift towards a more neo-pluralist approach whereby there’s more emphasis on mutual gains between employers and employees.” – Professor Timothy Bartram, Professor, HR Analytics, RMIT 

The rise of certified HR professionals

HR’s expanded portfolio and strategic focus started surfacing conversations about giving the function ‘a seat at the table’.  

Of course, when you consider HR’s contributions today, it’s clear the function has moved well beyond this narrative. But, at the time, conversations about the ‘next step’ for HR were common; people wanted to lift the function out of the weeds of work.

AHRI played a huge role in shifting this narrative when it launched the AHRI Practising Certification program in 2016 after two years of groundwork.

“We were essentially telling our members, ‘We want to enhance your career,’” says Wilson. “The top professions in the world have self-regulation of their professional accreditations. HR was a standout because it didn’t have strong standards that other top professions had.”

The sentiment from people was that this was the natural next step for the HR profession, says Stanton.

“If it was expected that your CFO would be certified, why wouldn’t your CHRO be?”

2020s and beyond

Holland says the State of HR report found there was once a perception that HR was “sidelined” as the function between personnel and management to “grease the wheels”.

“But during this [latest] survey, there was an increasing [perception] that HR was extremely important. The pandemic has brought us 10-15 years ahead into the future,” he says. 

The report found that HR professionals deem leadership, change management and strategic workforce planning as top skills to develop over the following five years in order to evolve their roles.

With these skills honed, Treuren expects HR will play an increased role in organisations as we move into a new world of extreme events.

“[That could include] climate change, big changes in work processes and skill requirements, the arrival of generative AI, increasing threats of cyber-hacking, and increasingly virtual and geographically-dispersed workplaces.”

Now it’s time for HR to maintain their hard-fought influence, says Bartram.

“We need to shift towards a more neo-pluralist approach whereby there’s more emphasis on mutual gains between employers and employees. Employees should share in the stake of the business,” he says.

HR can be slightly circumspect when they get a seat at the table, says Bartram, due to the way they’ve been trained.

“They’ve typically shied away from data. The ability to collect, analyse and interpret data is critical to making strategic business decisions. There are plenty of people who are comfortable managing data, but by and large it’s a growing education opportunity for HR.”

Wilson wants to see HR elevated to leadership.

“We eventually want to see a pedigree of CEOs with CVs [including] experience in HR. If we see that, then you could say the profession has progressed in the same way engineering and accounting has. That’s what I hope to see.”

Where do you hope to see the future of the HR profession? Let us know in the comment section. 

A longer version of this article first appeared in the August 2023 edition of HRM Magazine. This article is not an extensive look back on the history of work, but rather a brief recounting of some of the key moments for the HR profession.

The post A brief history of HR: how the profession has evolved over time appeared first on HRM online.

One of the most impactful ways HR can make a difference in an organisation is to transform people’s thinking about teams, says Keith Ferrazzi, author, entrepreneur and Chair of US-based consulting and coaching firm Ferrazzi Greenlight.

“Most HR leaders are working on increasing individual or role-based competencies, but we have squeezed a lot out of that. We need to start working on making teams the format for the transformation of a business,” he says.

That means shifting focus away from individual performance metrics and capabilities, and moving to a team-based view. 

Think of it like a sports team, says Ferrazzi.

“The power of a sports team is that the most important coaching goes on in the locker room among peers. They’re not talking behind each other’s backs. They’re talking in the open, they’re replaying the plays, they’re wrestling over ideas, and they’re pivoting.”

We can’t have a team full of superstar Michael Jordan-types who are hogging the ball to prove how talented they are, he says.

“[The Chicago Bulls] didn’t start winning until Michael Jordan learned to pass the ball. When he was just keeping his own score, he was winning, but his team wasn’t. That’s where we need to shift our attention.”

Ferrazzi gave attendees of AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition in August the tools to make the most of ‘teamship’ as part of his keynote address and hands-on masterclass.

Co-elevation and teamship

When redesigning ways of working to centre around teamwork and team-based goals, it’s important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Leadership is still critical, he says.

“I think we’ve radically under-curated our focus on teamship. I believe you can get a team to go a long way just by awakening them to this new way of working together and winning together.”

Ferrazzi rejects what he describes as “old-school Jack Welch thinking” of leadership – putting the individual on a pedestal, or playing one individual against another to maximise performance. 

“Upgrading teams is one of the most under-leveraged opportunities for accelerating business outcomes today. We’ve over-indexed on leadership and all but ignored how to extract billions of dollars of shareholder value from the interdependency of talent in teams.” 

Research backs up the power of teamship. A 2006 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association, found that groups of three, four or five people outperform an individual on a complex problem-solving task.

A separate study from Stanford University found that working in teams increases energy, engagement and persistence levels. The participants who worked collaboratively were 64 per cent more likely to stick with a task than those who worked alone.

“I think we’ve radically under-curated our focus on teamship.” – Keith Ferrazzi, Chair, Ferrazzi Greenlight

However, Ferrazzi’s own research shows that most organisations aren’t set up to capitalise on these benefits. Over the past two decades, his consultancy has analysed the behaviour of thousands of teams, and found that 71 per cent of team members weren’t committed to elevating their co-workers by offering feedback on their work, and 74 per cent said their teams didn’t have shared goals. An overwhelming majority (81 per cent) felt their teams “weren’t using anywhere near their full potential” operationally.

Enter HR. By coaching managers and employees to adopt a mindset shift, such as redefining what winning looks like, HR leaders can help teams direct their focus to “winning for the enterprise” rather than working with their head down, gunning for their next pay rise or promotion.

“I always say at least 20 per cent of your head has to be on each other’s success.”

This is what he calls co-elevation – the philosophy that teams should be clearly aligned around the commitments and outcomes they need to work towards, and understand the trade-offs that need to happen to help them get there.

That could mean putting a personal priority on the backburner, shining the spotlight on someone else or agreeing, as a team, on the rules you’ll hold each other to in order to complete a project effectively and with psychological safety at the core.

A new social contract

In order to agree on the ways a team should hold each other accountable, and the unhelpful norms you want to move away from – such as conflict avoidance, information hoarding or siloed ways of working – Ferrazzi suggests a process known as ‘recontracting’.

Employees always have a social contract with their teams, he says. For example, say two people report to the same manager and one team member critiques their colleague in front of their mutual boss.

“Under our old social contract, that might mean that [they were] throwing their colleague under the bus – it would be seen as rude and inappropriate. But under your new contact, [which you’ve created and agreed on together], the colleague might say to their peer, ‘I respect you and care about your career. Your outcomes are my outcomes. We’re all trying to get better. If I challenge you, it’s because I care about your outcomes.’”

Each recontracting process will look different, but some things you might consider getting consensus on include how and when you will communicate with each other, how you will invite candour into your conversations, expectations around calling out potential risks/things that could derail your project, how you will help co-workers get back on track if they’re not pulling their weight and expectations about how much time each person will dedicate to the work.

“You become dedicated to holding each other accountable.”

Driving outcomes with high-return practices

Once you’ve agreed on how you’ll work together, you need to implement high-return practices (HRPs) to meet the outcomes you’ve set out to achieve as a group, says Ferrazzi.

HRPs are simple, repeatable behaviours you can adopt as a team that help bring about a positive outcome. 

In an article for Harvard Business Review, Ferrazzi shared some examples of HRPs, including:

• The power of three. If you have an important challenge to resolve as a team, break the meeting up into groups of three for half the session to problem-solve together. People become less inhibited when sharing ideas in smaller groups, he says. Come together for the second half to share ideas and offer each other immediate feedback. This is critical, he says, and leads to…
• Bulletproofing. This is the process of getting honest feedback on an idea from a group of people. You’re essentially bulletproofing an idea by having people point out potential risk areas, missed opportunities, barriers to success or alternative paths you might consider.
• Candour breaks. It’s incredibly important that all members of a team feel safe to speak up if they notice an issue or feel their co-worker is taking the wrong approach. These can be difficult conversations, but they can also save companies from losing money, suffering reputational damage or, in a worst-case scenario, jeopardising the safety of employees or customers.

Ferrazzi says by adding candour breaks into a meeting, you signal to your team that it’s safe to speak up – in fact, it’s expected. Ask, “What’s not being said here?” or “What might we have missed?” Then use the ‘power of three’ approach to give team members a safe environment to share their concerns.

How else can HR shift towards a culture of co-elevation?

“Ask questions like, ‘How would you lead a meeting if you were maximising the interdependencies of a team versus maximising individual performance?’ How you [the leader] show up for the team needs to change. That’s not something we teach people,” says Ferrazzi

“We need to realise that the org structure is not the way we work anymore. Now, we work in networks.” 

This article was originally published in the June 2023 edition of HRM Magazine.

The post Strengthen team cohesion by building a culture of ‘teamship’ appeared first on HRM online.

The majority of Australian employers hope to recruit new staff in the June 2023 quarter, according to a recent report from the Australian HR Institute (AHRI).

Published earlier this month, AHRI’s June 2023 Quarterly Australian Work Outlook is the first in a new research series monitoring the state of the Australian labour market. The report offers a forward view of the work environment facing HR professionals and business leaders, including employers’ pay, recruitment and redundancy intentions.  

As well as providing a snapshot of the labour market, each AHRI Quarterly Australian Work Outlook will explore a topical workplace issue in depth. This report focuses on casual and fixed-term contract workers.

Recruitment trends and challenges

Drawing on responses from over 600 senior HR professionals and decision-makers across Australia, the inaugural report has revealed surprisingly strong short-term employment intentions among organisations of diverse sizes and sectors.

The AHRI Net Employment Intentions Index, which measures the difference between the proportion of employers that expect to increase staff levels and those that expect to decrease staff levels in the June quarter of 2023, is firmly in positive territory (+45). Seven in 10 employers intend to recruit staff in the June quarter, and 46 per cent of organisations plan to increase their overall headcount.

Just one per cent of employers plan to reduce the size of their workforce over the same period, and 16 per cent said they were planning redundancies in the next three months.

“This might be a surprising finding given projections for lower economic growth in 2023 and a pattern of falling job vacancies since mid-2022,” says AHRI’s CEO Sarah McCann-Bartlett. 

“However, job vacancies remain high and it’s possible that the relatively strong employment intentions balance is due to a ‘recruitment catch-up’ – that is, employers are now filling vacancies that they previously struggled to fill.” 

Hiring intentions for the second quarter of 2023 were higher for those in the public sector (82 per cent) compared with private (67 per cent) and not-for-profit (76 per cent) sectors. (See graph below.)

Unsurprisingly, the increased demand for talent has brought with it fresh challenges for employers. Almost half (47 per cent) of employers who are currently hiring report experiencing recruitment difficulties.

The top three roadblocks cited by employers are a lack of suitable candidates, high salary expectations and intense competition from rival organisations. 

Three quarters of employers who are recruiting say they find it challenging to source candidates with the right skills and qualifications. 

“This demonstrates the need for further investment in our nation’s skills and future capabilities,” says McCann-Bartlett. “As the work that we do continues to change, leaders need to help future-proof Australia by making sure we’ve got skilled, resilient talent on board.” 

“It’s possible that the relatively strong employment intentions balance is due to a ‘recruitment catch-up’ – that is, employers are now filling vacancies that they previously struggled to fill.” – Sarah McCann-Bartlett, CEO, AHRI

Wage and redundancy intentions

Interestingly, despite the positive recruitment intentions, the data suggests that there is no substantial upward pressure on wages. On average, employers anticipate a mean basic pay increase (excluding bonuses) of 3.3 per cent within their organisations over the 12 months leading up to April 2024. 

However, the report highlights sector-specific variations, with public sector employers projecting higher pay intentions (4.4 per cent) compared to private (3.2 per cent) and not-for-profit (2.2 per cent) sectors.

“Overall, the data offers mixed signals to employers and policymakers who will be concerned about possible inflationary pressures that strong employment intentions might cause. However, there is no sign of increasing pay inflation in the data,” says McCann-Bartlett.

“It’s also worth noting that one in five employers plan to implement a pay freeze in the next 12 months,” she adds. “While this data paints an interesting picture, it’s important we don’t over-emphasise the results, as almost a third of employers told us they don’t yet know the extent of wage increases over the 12 months to April 2024.”

AHRI also found that 16 per cent of employers are planning redundancies in the June 2023 quarter, the majority of which (29 per cent) are public sector employers. (See graph below.)

The state of casual and fixed-term employment

AHRI’s report suggests that casual employment yields substantial benefits for both employers and individuals. 

The flexibility and potentially higher pay rates associated with this type of employment make it an appealing option for job seekers looking for temporary or part-time work. Almost half of employers who engage casuals do so to manage short-term fluctuations in demand, and 58 per cent of employers pay their casual workers a higher rate, recognising the value of their flexibility and willingness to work on short notice. 

Managing costs is also a substantial motivator for employers who engage casual workers. Three in ten employers say they employ casual employees to provide cost efficiency, 19 per cent say it is to avoid paid entitlements and 18 per cent say that it is to avoid notice of termination or redundancy pay.

The research also suggests that casual employment is not always seen as a temporary or short-term arrangement. Almost a quarter of employers say that the typical length of service of casual employees at their organisation is more than two years. Small employers (2-19 employees) were most likely to report this (38 per cent). 

“Employers are also more likely to perceive casual employees as more engaged than permanent employees,” says McCann-Bartlett. 

Despite being seen as a beneficial addition to the workforce, nearly a fifth of employers do not provide the same training and development opportunities to casual employees as they do to permanent employees. This disparity can hinder the long-term growth and career advancement of casual workers, potentially perpetuating job insecurity and limiting prospects.

Given the recent legislative changes to fixed-term contracts, which will come into effect in December 2023, the survey also asked about the potential impact of new limitations on the engagement of fixed-term employees.

Overall, the new rules have been well-received by employers. Almost half (47 percent) say the rules will have a positive impact on them, compared with a third who say it will have a neutral impact. Eight per cent are unsure of the impacts and 12 per cent predict a negative impact.

As the employment landscape continues to evolve, it is crucial for policymakers and employers to ensure a balanced approach to talent management that addresses recruitment needs, job security and employee development. 

“AHRI’s Quarterly Australian Work Outlook series will empower individuals and organisations with knowledge about the evolving labour market, enabling them to align their aspirations with emerging opportunities,” says McCann-Bartlett. “This is a new research project for us, so we welcome any feedback from our members or the broader business community.”

You can send feedback to gerwyn.davies@ahri.com.au

Learn how to incorporate business strategy into your workforce planning and mitigate future risk with this
short course from AHRI.

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Over eighty per cent of workers say their struggles increased in the months covering the bushfires and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is just one of the findings from The State of Wellbeing in Australia, new research from The Wellbeing Lab and the Australian Human Resources Institute. Only about ten per cent of workers reported they were “constantly thriving”, a nine per cent drop since the 2018 report. 

Published earlier this week, the report’s authors are the first to admit they weren’t surprised to discover more people are finding things difficult. As they were first collating data, in December 2019, Australia suffered the worst bushfires in its history. And just as the recovery from those fires began, the world was plunged into the chaos of a serious pandemic. 

So in mid-March the researchers went back to respondents to see how these events would change workers’ answers. Because of this, the report offers a unique look at how workplace wellbeing has been affected by the onset of COVID-19.

A unique report in unique times

The researchers reached out to the participants and asked them the same questions about their well being in light of the bushfires, the COVID-19 pandemic and the potential economic recession. They also asked a series of additional questions around their anxiety towards COVID-19 and the economy. 

The report’s primary author, Dr Michelle McQuaid, says it was important to capture how workers are feeling.

“What those extra questions allowed us to do was get an overall reading of how people are feeling, but also split that data so we can see how it’s impacting wellbeing.” 

Over ninety per cent of respondents said they were worried about the economy and 82 per cent said they were anxious about coronavirus. 

McQuaid says those numbers will potentially change as the situation continues to unfold. 

You can read the full report from AHRI and the Wellbeing Lab here.

Struggle isn’t a weakness

Surprisingly, participants’ job satisfaction didn’t change too much. It actually increased for people who had reported “not feeling too bad, just getting by”. 

The results show feelings of struggle or stress don’t always undermine work performance. 

“Wellbeing is often thought of as something you have or you don’t, but really it’s an ebb and flow,” she says. “If you say you’re feeling ‘well’ all the time, I’d honestly be worried about you.”

One counterintuitive finding from the report centered about performance levels and anxiety.

It reads: “Interestingly, workers who reported high levels of worry and anxiety about the impact of coronavirus or the economy reported the same performance levels as workers with low levels of worry and anxiety. In contrast, workers who reported medium levels of worry and anxiety about these challenges were significantly more likely to report lower levels of performance.” 

Who do you turn to?

In December 2019, when asked who workers turned to when struggling, only three per cent said they’d go to HR. In fact, workers would rather not speak to anyone about their problems than speak to the HR team. 

“Overwhelmingly people were more likely to speak to someone outside of work, the person they were least likely to ask was their boss and, even less likely than that, their HR representative,” says McQuaid.

“Interestingly though, people who did go to HR were more likely to see an increase in their wellbeing.”

In the March 2020 data collection, there was an increase in the number of people seeking assistance from HR. It still lagged behind speaking to someone outside of work, but overall more people were looking to the people department for clear communication about the actions they should be taking at this distressing time. 

“This is a really interesting moment in time for HR leaders about what role you want to have on workers going forward,” says McQuaid. 

“There is an opportunity here for HR to step up and fully support people’s wellbeing which might change that relationship on the other side of this crisis.”

Then there’s the others

A worrying finding was the number of people who aren’t concerned about the current situation, says McQuaid. Eighteen per cent of respondents reported low or no anxiety about coronavirus. The researchers worry that if this attitude sticks, they might unintentionally contribute to the spread of the disease and respond poorly to workplace changes made in reaction to the crisis.

“People aren’t always immediately connected to their community, they’re not always wanting to limit their behaviour to help a faceless community. However they might be interested in helping their workplace. And if that still doesn’t work, they’ll definitely want to hold on to their job.”

McQuaid says reaching these workers requires communication that makes things personal. They need to be told the stories that really highlight the seriousness of the situation. 

“As with any behaviour, we have to ask the question, why does this matter to me? Unless there is an answer, unless the change is personally meaningful, there is no drive to change behaviour.” 

How to help

“From a workplace perspective,” says McQuaid, “HR can give those answers, and say, ‘This is why it’s important to you, this is why you need to social distance or stay home. If we want to get back into the office and continue working, right now we need to be doing the right thing.’”

It’s clear this is a time for HR to step up. McQuaid says a priority is helping leaders and employees know that it is OK to talk about struggle. 

“There is a trust issue with HR and bosses, people think ‘oh I need to keep it to myself, I don’t want them to know I’m struggling’ or it could be ‘I don’t know who in HR to talk to or how to reach HR’.”

Whatever the reason, says McQuaid, HR needs to open those doors and encourage communication now more than ever. 

“Continue to tell the stories to make it real, highlight the impact of this,” she says. 

Of course, HR professionals themselves might be struggling. McQuaid says it’s also important for  HR to reach out for help when they need it. She encourages speaking to wellness experts and importantly using all the resources at hand.

In this time, perhaps the best people HR can turn to is one another. As we feel our way through this crisis, and more pressure is placed on HR professionals, it’s worthwhile to speak to those in the community so everyone can learn from, and support each other. 

If you are experiencing a personal crisis, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or visit beyondblue’s website for support and helpful information.

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The first month of a new decade is an appropriate time to announce a new beginning. So it’s a fortuitous moment for the board of directors of the Australian HR Institute to announce the appointment of Sarah McCann-Bartlett as its new chief executive officer.  Sarah takes over from CEO Lyn Goodear, who has held the role for the past 7 ½ years. 

McCann-Bartlett was chosen after an extensive national and international executive search and will begin on 3 February 2020. 

McCann-Bartlett joins AHRI after serving as the director general (CEO) of the British Constructional Steelwork Association in London from September 2011 to December 2019. AHRI’s chairman Peter Wilson welcomed the appointment.

“On behalf of the AHRI Board, our State Councils, staff, and all our members, I am extremely pleased to welcome Sarah as AHRI’s new CEO. Sarah has had an outstanding record as a senior executive and CEO during her career to date,” says Wilson.

“Sarah brings advanced business, commercial and marketing skills to this role, developed from senior positions within a very competitive industry, and also global experience as the CEO of a major industry membership body during the last eight years in the United Kingdom. She also has a close understanding of regulatory and public policy issues in Victoria and Australia that will serve us well as the new CEO of this Institute.”

New beginnings

McCann-Bartlett says she is delighted to be taking on the role of CEO.

“I‘m very interested in the influence that the HR profession has on so many aspects of an organisation. It is the driver behind a strong and agile culture that delivers for a company’s people and customers,” she says. 

“As the leading professional HR association in Australia, AHRI plays a key role in advocating for the profession and ensuring it thrives into the future. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to take on the leadership responsibility for such an important body.” 

McCann-Bartlett will be drawing on vast experience. She has held a number of senior executive positions at the Victorian Building and Plumbing Industry Commissions, including as deputy commissioner. She has also held roles representing and supporting the nation’s wool industry with the Australian Wool Corporation and its successor The Woolmark Company in Melbourne, the UK and in New York where she held the role of president and group manager, Americas.

With her start date approaching within the next few weeks, McCann-Bartlett is already thinking of first steps.

“I am very much looking forward to getting my feet under the desk and working with the AHRI team. I’m also excited to meet our members and hear about how AHRI can best meet their needs and help prepare and position the profession for the future.”

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HR is evolving with the world around it, so it’s good to check in and find out what some of HR’s leading lights have to say.

The Future of HR: A collaboration of ideas panel, sponsored by Cisco, was hosted last week by channel 7’s David Koch who spoke with Zach Kitschke, Canva’s head of people and community, Brad Krauskopf, CEO and founder of Hub Australia, and Lyn Goodear, CEO of AHRI.

1. Growing organisations break

Canva is a graphic design website tool company that has grown from 5 employees to 500 since being founded in 2012. And they have plans to double that number by the end of the year.

Kitschke attributes the success of the $1 billion company to its acceptance that a growing company will break, and break regularly.

“[Growing] from five people to 10 people, things start to fall apart, so we would need to put in place more systems.”

The ‘breaks’ get larger as each team grows.

“From 10 to 50 people we would split people into smaller teams so they can work on their own goals. Now with 500 people, we have 80 different teams so we’ve moved to a group model where each group is dedicated to its own big goal.”

Koch linked this way of breaking things down with the gamification younger people now expect. “When an Australian male turns 18 they would have spent 10,000 playing games, which is equal to the amount of time they spend at school.

“They want their gaming reality at work, where it’s up to you to get to different levels. And at every level you get a different power and you get a different reward as you go but it is up to you how you progress.”

Kitschke says Canva tries to implement this kind of progression through internal coaching.

2. The $15,000 question

Up next was Krauskopf who has seen his company, which provides coworking spaces, make tremendous changes in its workforce since it was founded in 2011. “At the beginning it was freelancers and start ups. [Then] in 2016 there were more employees than founders and freelancers,” he says.

“Every day we have 3,000 people coming to the Hub from all over Australia, that’s our workplace.”

It’s clear Krauskopf has tapped into a market that took hold because people were looking for a social connection while working.

“Remote working is great to a point but it is also really isolating. Coworking came off the back of the [global financial crisis]; lots of people become freelancers – i.e. they became unemployed – and they wanted somewhere to congregate because it was too damn isolating working from home.”

According to Krauskopf, HR has a responsibility to create a place where employees want to work.

“People can no longer have an okay place to work, they need an amazing place to work. If you’re going to ask somebody to give their heart and soul to your company then they have a right to ask for something back,” he says.

“HR is there to create a home for the team. If everybody gave their employees $15,000 and told them to go and work wherever they want to, then there’s a challenge. How can I make them want to work with me? Then you’re creating a place where someone wants to be, not where they are paid to be.”

3. HR needs disruption

Lyn Goodear spoke next. Koch pointed out that, as CEO of AHRI, she has a view of HR that includes those who “do it well and the ones who bugger it up; the disruptors and how it’s changing.”

“The biggest disruption that is going to come to this profession is about big missions, big visions and connecting people through culture and values that drive that,” says Goodear.

“That’s an uncomfortable shift for a profession that has perhaps traditionally constrained itself with policies, practices and procedures.

“Organisations are inanimate, it’s the people within the organisations that create value, so we actually have to disrupt HR to some extent,” she says.

Goodear knows from personal experience how important disruption is.

“AHRI in some respects has disrupted ourselves, because as a professional body, you’d think our job is to look after members and keep them happy but the real challenge is, up until now, anyone could call themselves an HR practitioner.”

In relation to the future of HR and technology, Goodear quoted UNSW professor Toby Walsh.

“He says there’s three questions we have to ask when we’re looking at our workplaces in relation to technology; number one, can the technology do it? Number two, is there an economic value or productivity dividend? The third question we must ask as a society is, do consumers trust this opportunity?”

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At just 22-years-old Madeline Stuart has racked up an impressive amount of ‘world firsts’. She was the first person with an intellectual disability in history to be granted a working visa in America; the first model with Down syndrome do an editorial shoot in Vogue magazine; named number one Fashion Game Changer in Forbes magazine; the first model with an intellectual disability to walk a Middle Eastern runway in Dubai Fashion Week; and the first to be the face of an American cosmetic company.

On top of all of this, she’s launched a fashion label and handbag line, and started her own dance studio with her mum/manager Rosanne Stuart. She’s walked the runway in many prestigious global fashion shows (she’s a six time returner in New York Fashion Week), high-fiving those in the front row as she passes by.

If you read all of these accomplishments aloud, you’d be out of breath by now. Impressively, most others her age are just finishing university and finding their feet. But Madeline found hers quicker than most and has been using them to strut (and dance) down the runway ever since.

Speaking at AHRI’s International Women’s Day breakfasts in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Canberra, Madeline and Rosanne joined Emmy-award winning journalist Sara James in conversation about Madeline’s quick shot to stardom and why diversity matters, not just in the workplace but in every facet of our lives.

Like mother, like daughter

While Rosanne jokes that she’s just there to hold Madeline’s handbag, it’s obvious she’s poured her heart and soul into ensuring Madeline’s voice is heard and her career aspirations fulfilled.

She won’t let anyone place low expectations on Madeline, or others with a disability, and she demonstrated this by showing the crowd this powerful video. You can imagine she’s recounted the conception of Madeline’s career many, many times before, yet she still beams with genuine pride as she shares her daughter’s success with the crowd of HR professionals.

When Madeline was born, Rosanne admits she had limited knowledge of disability. Her doctor told her Madeline would only mature to have the mental capacity of a seven-year-old and that she was never going to be able to do anything, and Rosanne’s own father said they shouldn’t take baby Madeline home.

It took a few days for Roseanne herself to come to terms with her new daughter’s condition, but then she said, “Let’s do this!” and fearlessly raised Madeline as a single mother.

While she’s never regretted a second with her daughter, it’s not come without its challenges. “[It can be] very isolating and difficult. My family didn’t know how to talk to me [about Madeline] or how to be involved.”

She expressed a fear of Madeline not being accepted, especially if her time in the limelight was to fade. “Everyone knows that when you go viral, you’re likely to disappear shortly after. I didn’t want her to disappear, so I kept sharing things on Facebook and speaking about it,” she says.

Fight back with kindness

One story in particular set the tone for just how incredibly difficult things can get for Madeline and her mother. In December last year Madeline was in hospital for a month, and intensive care for eleven days, due to advanced heart failure.

During this time, Rosanne received an awful letter from someone saying something along the lines of: “I hope your daughter dies”.

“We didn’t think she as going to make it at one stage,” Rosanne says. But true to form, Madeline bounced back from open heart surgery and just a few months later, here she is weaving her way through a crowd of hundreds of HR professionals with a smile on her face, offering up a joyful high-five to everyone she passes.

What happened with that online troll? To her credit, Rosanne responded with strength, grace and integrity. She says when people say awful things like this, it’s clear they’re the ones that need help. She believes most of the discrimination doesn’t come from a malicious place. “Ninety-five per cent of the time people aren’t trying to be mean, they’re just naive”.

In fact, some of Madeline’s biggest supporters started out as online trolls. Rosanne would screen the negative comments and look into the people who had posted them. Then she’d reply to their comment and say something nice about them. Surprisingly, most turned around.

“We all live, we all die. It doesn’t matter how rich you are, or how smart you are. At the end of the day, we’re all equal. Just because someone has a disability doesn’t mean they don’t matter, it just means they have something else to offer,” Rosanne says.

Challenging deeply ingrained stereotypes

Madeline has paved the way for disabled models, and she’s also made significant impacts off the runway. Rosanne recalls a recent trip to Uganda in East Africa, where she says “they don’t understand what a disability is. They think it’s a curse”. She tells the story of one Ugandan girl who had a disability; some of the villagers had tried to kill her, three times.

A pastor invited Rosanne and Madeline to visit their village and educate the locals about disabilities. Rosanne reached out to a Ugandan charity to put the young, disabled girl into a boarding school where she’d be safe and then introduced Madeline to the local community.

“People would come up to me and say “I have a child like that” and when I asked where they were, they would say “They’re at home. They’re not coming outside.” I encouraged them to bring them outside.

“Just because someone has a disability doesn’t mean they don’t matter, it just means they have something else to offer.”

“We were there for ten days and during that time fifty families came out of hiding. Children that had never seen the sun before.”

At the end of their trip, they had a festival with over 3,000 people with disabilities in attendance and local politicians. “Now, they understand there’s a word for Down syndrome”.

If Madeline can shift the perspective of an entire village, imagine what kind of differences we can make in our workplaces.

Incite change

At the breakfast AHRI’s CEO Lyn Goodear said Rosanne, “Gives incredible substance to the word ‘champion’.” And this quality is one HR leaders can take back to their offices to better support their diverse workforce.

“What is it that we can be doing individually to drive change?” asks Goodear. “There’s no shortage of statistics telling us we’re some way from the destination that we’re collectively seeking.

“I think this breakfast is a great way for us to think about how we, as individuals and collectively, can make sure our voices are louder in pursuing [conversations around diversity and gender equity].”

In the workplace, an important factor that underpins the success of such conversations is having good HR on deck. A lot of business don’t have the privilege of a strong HR team, says Goodear, and AHRI’s certification program is positioned to change that.

“There’s a perception that anyone can be in HR, so AHRI is using our certification program to shift that perception. We want to help business leaders to see those who have the right skills… to make sustainable change in their organisations,” says Goodear.

Rosanne encouraged the HR professionals in the room to not only make space for diverse talent but to remember to use their privilege to their advantage.

“To the people without disabilities: go out there and help someone else. Being someone’s champion is a great way to feel good about yourself.” And it’s a necessary way to incite change. Madeline may be the trailblazer, but Rosanne is the one clearing the path ahead.

There’s still more to come from Madeline. Rosanne says there are a few glass ceilings they’re yet to smash through. Next on their agenda is to get signed by a modelling agency and attract some more top-tier brands, like Chanel.

There’s no stopping this dynamic duo. The Stuarts are inspirations to women and disabled people, both together and in their own right.  

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This year, 2018, commemorates AHRI’s 75th year. The year of AHRI’s birth, 1943, saw a group of industrial welfare officers in the Victorian and NSW Department of Labour and National Service working against a background of gloom during Hitler’s war. Though the institute has faced some difficult times since, I can happily say that I don’t see our narrative as one punctuated by successive problematic stories.

Even in that tumultuous time during the 1940s, those officers had turned their minds to the question of motivating a largely female workforce to contribute to the war effort when able-bodied men were fighting in far-away places. The same officers were also determined to plan for a workforce that included the return of men when the war ended. They were the beginning of what is now the Australian HR Institute.

In that spirit of national interest and restrained optimism, the AHRI narrative I see most strikingly includes stories that, taken together, amount to measured but steady achievement. After three state-based iterations tracing back to 1943 in an unbroken line, the inaugural national president, Jim Bailey, announced in 1992 the unveiling of a national body signified by a logo suggesting unity, a logo which remained unchanged for 24 years until 2016.

By then the national character of AHRI was well established, but what was not so well established was the call that Jim Bailey’s successor made in 1994. I refer to Graeme Andrewartha’s prompt to members that the institute needed to recognise the larger responsibility “not just to our members, but to the employers in our members’ firms and the wider community”.

Andrewartha was talking about what all occupational groups are expected to do in order to be regarded as reputable professions. They must assure those who employ their services that the profession has in place safeguards that protect the public from people coming in off the street and claiming to act in the name of the profession, but without appropriate indicators of competence in terms of knowledge, skill and professional behaviours.

It took twenty-one years to properly realise Andrewartha’s call. It finally came about at the annual strategy planning sessions for 2015, at which the combined voices of AHRI’s elected state council presidents, board members and executive agreed to draw a line in the sand and do what was required to establish a robust postgraduate-level standard of practice and an independent certifying body to oversee the standard.

If I had to point to the calendar years that signify critical milestones of the HR profession over the 75 years of AHRI serving the profession in Australia, I would name the three years 1943, 1992 and 2015.  

The last of those takes us to where we are now with real momentum happening in HR certification and fulfils the promise of 1994 to regulate ourselves and accept responsibility for supplying business with highly credentialed HR professionals.

If AHRI were a shop we would emblazon the window with a sign that says: “Established 1943”.

We aren’t a shop, of course, but we are privileged to be servicing a vital profession and we look forward to seeing its practitioners prosper and be proud of the legacy they leave to future generations.

This article was originally published in the November 2018 edition of HRM magazine.

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With the current workforce predicted to continue working into their 70s and 80s, professor of management practice at London Business School Lynda Gratton is passionate about helping employers to effectively utilise their multi-generational talent pool by encouraging a new approach to people management. The key, not just for older workers, is lifelong learning.

Future jobs will no doubt be tech-heavy and innovation focussed, but as Gratton pointed out as part of her keynote address, that shouldn’t exclude a talented and experienced chunk of your workforce.

Gratton says that at the London Business School they have banned the use of categorical language when talking about different generations – millennials, baby boomers, gen X etc. – she says there’s no evidence that shows that these generational cohorts need to be divided, “it just leads to age stereotypes”.

From new grads to great grandmothers

Tim Reed, CEO of MYOB, is another speaker who believes that age is no barrier. In fact, he sees a huge amount of potential in his older workforce. “Knowledge is key in our business, and it’s built over time, so people who’ve been with us for a long period are some of our most precious resources,” he says speaking with HRM.

“Strengths and skills change as we mature. We need to ensure we’re offering the right amount of flexibility to enable employers at different stages of life to contribute constructively,” he says.

Reed mentioned a great grandmother working in the MYOB team who he believes has continued to thrive in the organisation because she has never stopped educating herself.

“It’s important for every industry, but you’re dead in tech if you’re not constantly learning.”

Delegate Laura Sayers CPHR, from ANU, says that one of her main focuses at the moment is providing professional development opportunities for her team.

“I make sure they continue doing things. That might be something small or getting a larger qualification; anything that keeps them in the habit of learning. We have a lot of training opportunities available and I really encourage my staff to do as much as possible.”

Skate to where the puck is going to be

Our modern age is often compared with the industrial revolution. Back then there was massive job destruction and workers weren’t able to look into the future to see the plethora of new job opportunities that would soon become available to them – a horse and cart driver couldn’t foresee working with cars, be it making, selling or driving them. Gratton said that the same thing will happen now, the difference being that we have the power of hindsight to recognise the opportunities at our fingertips.

Referring to a hockey game, Reed said it’s about skating to where the puck will be. Business leaders need to harness their foresight to identify the skills-gaps that could occur five years down the track and work on training their existing people now. This way employers can avoid finding themselves in NAB’s position; forced to axe thousands of employees, even as they have to hire 2,000 new staff with different skills.

He touches on the fear surrounding the automation of the workforce saying: “AI isn’t going to replace an accountant, an accountant who uses AI will replace an accountant who doesn’t use it.”

Motivation expert Jason Fox echoed this point in his keynote address. “It won’t be technology disrupting your business, it will be other people using technology better that will disrupt it.”

Think about learning differently

While it’s important to keep your finger on the pulse and ensure you’re always looking into the distance for the next set of challenges, Fox said we should also be cautious about goals. They might be important 80 per cent of the time, but they can stifle true progress.

“[Goals] narrow our focus. If they are incentivised, they can encourage unethical behaviour. It’s not that goal setting doesn’t work, it’s that it doesn’t work well. They should be treated as prescription medicine.”

He believes nurturing a new way of thinking is an incredibly valuable commodity and that we should be looking to each other not just as people, but as resources – what can we learn from one another?

Human emotional intelligence, and our craving to be active learners and think critically, are what make us so valuable, says Gratton. It was something CIPD CEO Peter Cheese echoed in his rousing keynote. “I can’t predict what the jobs of the future are, nobody can. What we need to do is have a stronger focus on what the core and transferable skills are. This I can tell you. Human skills, social skills.”

As the leader of a huge HR association, he called on the profession to invest in itself with lifelong learning and certification. “We worry about the learning of development of others, but we forget about ourselves.

“This is a fantastic time for HR. It’s a huge responsibility we face in the future of work. Putting people at the centre of business thinking – that is what we do. What a purposeful profession we can be.”

What does your organisation do to encourage a culture of continuous learning? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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