Changes to the demographic make-up of your organisation can have profound impacts on organisational culture – both in a positive and negative way, depending on whether you create the conditions that allow for cohesion.

A high-performing, multi-generational workforce requires a selection of specific behaviours and cultural elements, namely inclusive learning cultures that “celebrate differences and embrace mistakes” and encourage different communication styles, according to a research team from the Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing at Griffith University.

Boards and senior HR management teams need to ensure they understand how changes in demographic trends might require a refresh of certain organisational practices, says demographer and social commentator Bernard Salt AM.

For example, we’ve seen a rise in Australian life expectancies, which jumped from 69 in 1950 to a current 83 for men and 85 for women, he says.

“Before, people worked up to the age of 65, got a gold watch and retired,” says Salt, who is speaking at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition in August. 

But the nature of work has changed. 

“In the 1950s or 1960s, many of the jobs were in manufacturing, or labouring in areas like building and construction,” says Salt.

“If you were a blue-collar worker and made it to 65, you usually couldn’t work anymore because of the physical consequences of having worked with your body from the age of 15. You needed to take the pension and retire.

“Today, a greater proportion of the workforce is involved in knowledge work. Medical advancements are also improving our quality of life and life expectancies, providing people with more opportunities to continue work beyond the age of 65.”

On top of this, the current cost-of-living crisis means many people are less prepared for their retirement years and have had to go back to work, he adds. This is a concept known as ‘The Great Unretirement’.

“By default, we’ll end up with a greater proportion of our workforce over the age of 50 and, proportionately, around the age of 70,” says Salt.

Hear more about the future team member of 2030 from Bernard Salt AM at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition on 20-22 August. Secure your spot today.

The Bunnings approach

A company that is already preparing for this demographic shift is Bunnings, which claims age is never a barrier at any of its stores. 

Around 30 per cent of its store team members are aged 50+ while around 14 per cent are aged 60+. Its oldest employee is 93 years old.

“We learnt a long time ago that older and more experienced team members are an integral part of creating a great place to work and providing our customers with the best experience. They have significant life and industry experience, making them a wealth of knowledge for our customers and wider team,” says Damian Zahra, Bunnings’ Chief People Officer. 

“Every organisation is different and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to engaging older people in the workplace.”

Having said that, he adds that Bunnings believes creating a supportive environment for older workers starts with flexibility. 

“We do this by first and foremost offering casual, part-time and full-time working options because we know it’s an important way to keep your team engaged and supported in their wellbeing and performance. 

“Fewer people aged 15 through to 25 are funnelling into the workplace. A shallower pool of youth coming through means there will be a skills shortage for decades.” – Bernard Salt AM, demographer and social commentator

“Then there’s the extras like our popular ‘Travelling Team Member’ program where people can pick up casual shifts at different Bunnings stores while they travel across Australia and New Zealand.

“A team member can map out their desired travel journey and proactively contact stores in the areas they’re visiting to see if any casual shifts are available. They have the flexibility to work as much as they like based on their travel schedules and preferences.”

Zahra says Bunnings’ ‘Retiring Well’ program helps older employees implement a tailored pathway to their retirement. It includes the option of reducing their hours over time to support a gradual transition into retirement, and a dedicated program that provides advice on how they can enjoy financial, emotional and physical wellbeing in their retirement.

Safety is also a priority. 

“We have extensive training and guidelines in place to make sure all our team return home safely each day and feel equipped to perform their roles. 

“This includes ongoing professional development so our team members always feel confident and engaged at work, regardless of their age. 

“We often find our older team value training just as much as our younger cohort.”

Not only is Bunnings creating environments to support its current older workforce to thrive, it’s also actively looking to bring more age diversity into its business.

“We maintain a really flexible recruitment process and use as many channels as possible to reach the communities we serve,” says Zahra. “For example, we place posters around our stores that highlight the great careers of some of our older team members to demonstrate the value mature-aged people can bring to our business.

“We always try to use neutral language in all our recruitment materials, and avoid specific words or phrases that target younger generations. We also accept walk-in resumes to ensure we consider applicants who may not be tech-savvy.”

Read HRM’s article on how to create an age-inclusive culture for the multi-stage career. 

Counting the benefits 

Demographic diversity is a key component of a thriving workplace culture, but when there are no intentional processes around leveraging a multigenerational workforce, it can cause friction points to surface. 

For example, communication barriers can form or differing work styles could lead to conflict within a team. To remedy this, specific programs that cultivate empathy and understanding can help. 

For instance, you could consider:

• Storytelling sessions to give employees the chance to share their career stories with each other, including what they’ve learned, their challenges and their greatest successes.
• Keeping age diversity in mind when building project teams.
• Setting up shadowing programs allowing employees to shadow colleagues from different generations to gain a better understanding of their roles and expertise.

Companies that employ older workers benefit from their corporate knowledge, networks and ability to train and mentor younger workers, says Salt. 

This is an approach that Bunnings has embraced.

“By sharing their knowledge, skills and life experiences, our older team members often become mentors to their younger teammates, which goes a really long way in helping form strong connections and creating a positive working environment,” says Zahra.

“Mentoring can work both ways, and our younger team members can support older workers too.”

There are also opportunities to promote shared learning via reverse mentoring programs whereby junior employees train seasoned employees in relevant areas, such as how to reach a younger audience on social media. 

You could also consider facilitating a skills-sharing workshop where employees of all ages come together to share their knowledge in specific areas.

Griffith University’s research found that valuing co-creation, a strong focus on job satisfaction and tailored HR programs were key characteristics of a thriving multigenerational workforce.

For example, a specific HR program focused on retaining older workers in critical skill areas could help solve Australia’s skills shortages, which Salt believes will be a long-term challenge for employers. 

“Fewer people aged 15 through to 25 are funnelling into the workplace. A shallower pool of youth coming through means there will be a skills shortage for decades.”

If your workforce isn’t yet set up to support employees in the latter portion of their careers, now is a great time to learn from those who already have robust strategies in place. 

This article first appeared in the June-July 2024 edition of HRM Magazine.

The post How Bunnings is creating an age-inclusive organisational culture appeared first on HRM online.

When organisations are faced with crippling, complex and seemingly unsolvable culture challenges, they often put sole responsibility on the HR team to ‘fix’ the problem. But this rarely works because you can’t outsource culture to a single function in the business – it needs to be deeply embedded into all of your business practices.HR practitioners aren’t the keepers of culture – they are the culture leaders and enablers. They set the scene and provide leaders and managers with the tools they’ll need to help their teams live out the organisational values in an authentic and impactful way.

In this episode of Let’s Take This Offline, Siobhan McHale, Executive General Manager of People, Culture and Change at Dulux and speaker at this year’s AHRI National Convention and Exhibition, offers a range of practical frameworks to help HR practitioners reframe their role from ‘business partner’ to ‘business leader’ and offers advice to help HR have a greater impact at an executive level when it comes to driving culture transformation projects.

Skip to the section that interests you most:

• 5:37 minutes: How to get buy-in for culture change without having to take ownership of it
• 8:00 minutes: McHale explains the difference between a culture disruptor and a culture leader.
• 15:15 minutes: Tips to help identify patterns in your culture.
• 20:17 minutes: Advice on how to look at culture from a commercial perspective.
• 30:00 minutes: The difference between emotional intelligence and group intelligence.
• 35:33 minutes: How to get change resistant people over the line.
• 40:55 minutes: McHale responds to a made-up scenario about a CEO whose too focussed on short-term results to focus on long-term culture impacts.

Check out the episode transcript here.

Extra resources:

For more conversations to inspire HR, listen to season one of Let’s Take This Offline here.

If you’d like further information and resources to help put McHale’s insights into action, check out the links below:

Learning opportunities

• Sign up to AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition⁠ in Melbourne on 20-22 August to hear more from Siobhan McHale.

Further reading

• Learn more about Siobhan’s books here.
• Read this article where Siobhan shares more details about how to become a culture transformer.

Member-exclusive content

• AHRI members can Join the ⁠AHRI LinkedIn Lounge⁠ to connect with your peers and for access to a member-exclusive bonus episode.

Connect with us

• ⁠Connect with AHRI on LinkedIn⁠.
• ⁠Connect with Beth Hall CPHR on LinkedIn⁠
• Connect with Siobhan McHale on LinkedIn.
• Visit Siobhan’s website.

Subscribe so you never miss an episode. You can follow the podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud or Apple Podcasts. AHRI members receive exclusive bonus content via the LinkedIn AHRI Lounge.

The post Podcast: How HR practitioners can become cultural leaders appeared first on HRM online.

With our ways of working changing rapidly, relying on traditional leadership approaches could put organisations at risk of falling behind in the future of work.

Some aspects of the traditional leadership model, such as command-and-control structures and rigid roles, are slowly losing relevance as organisations traverse the rapidly evolving technological and economic landscape, says Ravin Jesuthasan, Senior Partner and Global Leader for Transformation Services at Mercer and upcoming speaker at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition in August.

Below, Jesuthasan unpacks four key capabilities leaders of the future will need in order to navigate emerging disruptions and harness the opportunities presented by technological advancement.

1. Shift from hierarchical authority to empowerment and alignment 

There are several forces at play in the current business environment which make the traditional hierarchical model of leadership difficult to sustain, according to Jesuthasan.

One example is the shift towards hybrid and remote work models, which challenges traditional dynamics of control and requires a more trust-based approach to management.

Another is the emerging shift towards more agile ways of working. 

With skills shortages continuing to impact employers, many are recognising the value of a skills-based approach to work, where work is allocated to employees and non-employees based on their capabilities rather than whether it’s part of their job description. The rapid shifts in the skills landscape mean this strategy is likely to become more prevalent in the coming years.

While this approach allows employers to allocate resources more efficiently, effectively and with greater impact, the move away from rigid roles requires a significant mindset shift on the part of leaders.

“As we move towards these more agile, skills-based ways of working, leaders’ ability to empower teams and align them to a mission becomes increasingly important,” says Jesuthasan.

“And leading through empowerment and alignment has one prerequisite, which the hierarchical model doesn’t. And that’s trust – trust in your people that they are motivated to accomplish the same things you are and their trust that you have their best interests at heart.”

HR should keep in mind that this transition might be uncomfortable for leaders who might be used to functioning under a command-and-control model, he says.

“All of this is a reversal of about 140 years of learned behaviour on the part of leaders. So it’s really important that they have the space to experiment, practice and fail.”

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2. The ability to redesign work

With the shift away from rigid roles and towards skills-based ways of working, leaders will need to hone their ability to redesign work so talent (and AI and automation) can flow to it, says Jesuthasan.

“[Leaders need] that skill of being able to take an emerging body of work, deconstruct it into its elemental tasks, understand the skills required and the work options available, and figure out how to deploy that work,” he says. 

“For example, where should I use automation versus using the skills of an employee? Where should I use a gig worker or shared services? And then continuously reconstructing new ways of working that optimise speed, profitability and the workforce skills.” 

With work being resourced based on skills and capability rather than roles, leaders will need to adapt to having fewer dedicated teams, he adds.

“[There needs to be] a pivot from leaders who are really good at process execution to leaders who are increasingly exceptional at project guidance.”

3. Humanistic automation

With technological advancement moving at an unprecedented rate, it’s no surprise that digital literacy is projected to be a critical leadership skill of the future. To remain competitive, leaders need to constantly ask themselves if they are going far enough in understanding and leveraging emerging technologies, says Jesuthasan.

“What the past two years have taught us is that just being digitally savvy is too low a bar. We need business leaders who really understand AI in all its forms, understand the tools available and understand how it’s going to reshape their operating models.”

In the future, it will become increasingly important for leaders to strike the right balance between harnessing the capabilities of AI alongside the capabilities of their workforces.

“[Ask yourself], ‘How do I automate in a way that ensures that I’m not compromising ingenuity and innovation in my business? How do I automate in a way that makes the most of the human skills I’ve invested in for decades?’,” says Jesuthasan.

As AI takes on more and more of our repetitive, rules-based work, leaders should be placing more focus on cultivating human skills such as communication, problem-solving and critical thinking in both themselves and their people.

According to research from the World Economic Forum, the half-life of a technical skill is currently about five years. While it remains crucial to develop technical skills to navigate emerging technologies, employers should remember that the so-called ‘soft’ skills will always be necessary for success.

“What the past two years have taught us is that just being digitally savvy is such a low bar. We need business leaders who really understand generative AI.” – Ravin Jesuthasan, Senior Partner and Global Leader for Transformation Services, Mercer

4. Cultivating diversity of thought, experience and perspective

The most effective leaders in the future of work will be those who can leverage the benefits of diverse workforces, says Jesuthasan.

“A key skill is managing diversity, equity and inclusion – not episodically like we typically do when we hire someone or promote them, but continuously by opening the aperture to having different skills, different perspectives and different experiences being deployed to work,” he says. 

“Because that’s the only way any business stays ahead of the competition – that diversity of thought, experience and perspective.”

Inclusive hiring practices are essential not only to innovation, but also to business stability, he says. He offers the example of a US airline that set up its own flight school as its traditional talent pool of ex-military pilots began to dry up. 

“Because of who was accepted to fly in the military [in the past], most of their pilots, unsurprisingly, were older white men. But with their own flight school, their first class was 80 per cent female and minorities. 

“By opening the aperture and creating their own school, they know that in less than two years, they’ll have a flight crew that is exponentially more diverse than the talent that they’re going to be replacing. It’s a win-win – we secure our supply, and we ensure that the supply is more diverse than the legacy supply chain.”

This strategic approach to diversity ensures that organisations are not just keeping pace with change, but are actively shaping the future of work.

As we move into the next iteration of work, HR plays a critical role in cultivating this next phase of leadership. As the champions of human-centred ways of working, HR practitioners are in a unique position to support leaders as they develop the skills to lead through empowerment, implement humanistic automation and enhance their approach to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Ravin Jesuthasan will be speaking on the deconstruction of jobs and the reconstruction of work at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition in August. Sign up today to hear from Ravin and other experts, including Seth Godin, Dr Pippa Grange and more.

The post 4 skills leaders need to thrive in the future of work appeared first on HRM online.

In an increasingly divided world, fostering inclusive workplaces is more challenging and more crucial than ever before. 

According to Edelman’s 2023 Trust Barometer, which surveyed more than 1150 Australians, Australia is currently considered “moderately polarised” and on the brink of “severe polarisation”. Nearly half of Australians (45 per cent) feel the nation is more divided now than at any other time in history.

When this polarisation creeps into our workplaces, it can create a plethora of psychosocial risks, including interpersonal conflict, negative stereotyping and poor communication. 

“The risk is that people form themselves into these binary oppositional groups, and there’s this mentality of, ‘If you’re if you’re not with me, then you’re against me,’” says Dr. Juliet Bourke, Professor of Practice at UNSW Business School and upcoming speaker at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition in August.

“But that’s not what the world is really like. There’s a broad spectrum of views. And part of the skill is not getting sucked into that narrative, but to stand back and understand the individuals on a broader spectrum.”

Bourke, who has researched and written extensively on inclusive leadership practices, spoke with HRM to discuss the most effective strategies for leaders to foster inclusive workplaces within a seemingly polarised society.

1. Recognise the spectrum of attitudes towards DEI

An essential step in ensuring that polarisation does not damage organisational culture is engaging employees in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts. However, Bourke stresses that there is no one right way to engage employees in these conversations, given that employees can hold vastly different attitudes and opinions on the subject. 

To help leaders decide the right way to communicate with employees about DEI, Bourke has broken down employees’ typical attitudes towards DEI into a spectrum of six archetypes.

“At one end, there is an oppositional response. That person brings a level of anger or negative emotion to the topic. At the other end is the person who’s really passionate and positively disruptive,” she says.

The archetypes she has formulated are as follows:

• Oppositional: These employees are strongly against DEI, often expressing anger or negative emotions towards it. They might feel that they are losing privilege or being left behind.
• Disengaged: This archetype is indifferent to DEI. Their eyes may glaze over when DEI is discussed, and they’re unlikely to attend events or workshops. They may say DEI is not “their thing”.
• Ambivalent (two types): In Bourke’s view, there are two forms of ambivalence to DEI. The first type is somewhat supportive of DEI, but fears making a misstep and therefore remains silent. The other is fatigued – while they may once have been committed, they now lack the energy to engage.
• Supportive, but not leading: These employees have a fairly positive attitude to DEI and are willing to follow others in their efforts, but don’t take the initiative themselves.
• Champions: This archetype is passionate about DEI, actively contributes to the organisation’s inclusion efforts and pushes boundaries in a positive way.

The goal for leaders, says Bourke, is to meet people where they’re at and move them up the engagement curve. Understanding the spectrum above is crucial to matching the message to the person, since different archetypes will require a different approach. 

She also notes that while employees on the champion side of the spectrum are already fully engaged in DEI efforts, this does not mean leaders can ‘set and forget’ this cohort; they still need to ensure the efforts of these employees are in fact contributing to a more inclusive workplace.

“Sometimes when people are champions, they can also be tone deaf. And they can be like bulldozers. I don’t think that that’s helpful either,” she says. “So leaders have a role to play in keeping champions connected and curious.”

On an individual level, employees are also influenced in different ways by different means of communication. 

Bourke suggests thinking of information in terms of content that engages the head, heart or hands. For example, some employees will be more affected by hard facts and data, while others will be swayed by heartfelt stories with real emotions. Others learn from doing and want to be guided on the actions they should take. The trick to influencing others to be more engaged in DEI is understanding the person’s archetype and the type of information that is most suited to the person.

She also says that leaders should ask themselves whether they are the best person to deliver that message, or if there is another person who is more suited, perhaps because they have a closer, stronger and more trusted relationship.

“I would say to leaders, step back from the black and white and see [your people] through a lens of colour,” says Bourke. “See the person in front of you with a bit more nuance, think about who influences them and [the way] you’re trying to influence them, and experiment with that.”

2. Facilitate open dialogue

Once leaders have established the most effective ways to communicate with their teams about DEI, a crucial next step is to ensure employees feel safe to express their perspectives at work.

Of course, facilitating open dialogue in a workplace where employees have polarised views creates the potential for conflict, meaning leaders may be reluctant to initiate these difficult conversations. However, allowing polarisation to simmer unaddressed is not conducive to a psychosocially safe work environment.

“I would say to leaders, step back from the black and white and see [your people] through a lens of colour.” – Dr. Juliet Bourke, Professor of Practice at UNSW Business School

In facilitating conversations between employees with differing views, one strategy Bourke has found particularly effective is to try and establish common ground between the parties involved to help them understand each other’s perspectives.

“This strategy is about bringing together those two people who are opposed and saying, ‘Well, what do we agree upon?’ And it is unlikely that you won’t find some commonality.”

For example, she says, while there may be polarised views on current geopolitical issues when it comes to religion or political ideology, employees on both sides are likely to agree that family is important and that peace is the end goal. 

Finding this common ground not only helps prevent conflict, but can also help bust misconceptions employees might hold about their colleagues.

“If we have an open conversation and get an empathetic understanding of the other person, it’s harder to hold onto the stereotypical view you went into the conversation with because you realise that person is a person, a whole person, not a cardboard cutout picture.” 

3. Demonstrate curiosity

When facilitating open dialogue among their teams, it’s important for leaders to model the curious mindset that will help employees understand each other’s points of view.

To demonstrate this curiosity, Bourke suggests leaders take part in regular ‘perspective taking’. Within the workplace, this might look like talking directly with employees about their unique experiences, showing genuine interest in their perspectives and asking thoughtful questions to gain insight and build stronger connections.

Leaders can also immerse themselves in other cultures and communities outside of the workplace to gain a better understanding of a particular cohort’s perspective, she adds. This could be as simple as exploring books and films from other cultures or attending community events.

It’s also important for leaders to demonstrate healthy curiosity about themselves.

“The skill of self-reflection [is important],” says Bourke. “As a starting point, [ask yourself], ‘How am I coming across? How am I influencing this conversation, [maybe] in ways that I didn’t intend?’”

Given that it can be hard for anyone to view their strengths and weaknesses objectively, Bourke suggests leaders get input from trusted people in their circles on where their communication styles might show room for improvement.

“You can also look at other people whom you admire,” she says. “If you look at someone and think, ‘I want to be like that person,’ then ask, ‘What is it they are doing that I want [to mimic]?’”

4. Prioritise self-care

Dealing with a polarised workforce in a turbulent business environment can take its toll on HR’s, managers’ and leaders’ wellbeing. 

These difficulties are reflected in multiple research reports from the past two years showing that managers and leaders are experiencing higher levels of burnout than their junior counterparts.

This is an important issue to address since, according to Bourke, inclusive leadership is only possible when leaders have the space and balance in their own lives to approach this complex issue with energy and curiosity.

“For me, when I come across those challenges, I make sure I balance it in my life with situations and people who give me energy because sometimes dealing with entrenched resistance is very draining.

“Giving yourself time to regenerate and [participating in] positive activities is a way to support yourself to be an inclusive leader.”

Dr. Juliet Bourke will be speaking on inclusive coworker behaviours at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition in August. Sign up today to hear from Juliet and other experts, including Seth Godin, Dr Pippa Grange and more.

The post 4 leadership strategies to foster inclusive workplaces in polarised times appeared first on HRM online.

“Good luck with the culture change.”

The Chief Financial Officer of an infrastructure company said this to Siobhan McHale when she had been with the company for less than a week and was given the task of ‘fixing’ its broken culture. 

It was the sentence that made McHale realise that many organisations have a flawed understanding of what it takes to bring about cultural change. 

“Project managers weren’t managing their budgets, shareholders were furious and the organisation urgently needed to develop a high-performing culture to survive in a more competitive world,” says McHale, who is now the Executive General Manager of People, Culture and Change at Dulux.

While the leaders and managers of the company “sat on the sidelines”, the HR team who had preceded her desperately tried to solve the company’s culture issues. But without widespread support, it was a classic high-effort, low-return exercise that left HR going around in circles.

The CFO’s words rang in McHale’s head. 

It was clear that this organisation (and many others) saw culture as something to handball to HR. While the executives knew it was important, they struggled to see how they all could play a part in its success.

“I knew my efforts would also fail if the business placed total responsibility for change on HR’s shoulders,” says McHale.

To help the business achieve its desired results, she had to roll up her sleeves and do the hard work of helping people truly understand what culture means and reframe their role within it.

The first hurdle McHale had to overcome at the infrastructure company was repositioning HR’s role in the culture journey, she says. “Every part of the organisational ecosystem needs to take up a different role when it comes to culture change, and HR needs to examine its part in that.”

McHale says some HR practitioners default to the role of ‘order taker’, but in a culture transformation project, HR’s overarching role might instead be as ‘lead enabler’.

“That lead enabler role may come in the form of being a diagnostician at the beginning, revealing the patterns in the culture. At another point, it might mean being a designer, building the interventions that allow the system to start or shift. Or it may come in the form of being an interventionist, standing side by side with leaders and making change happen.”

“The famous quote attributed to Peter Drucker is: ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast.’ I would contend that culture and strategy are not competitors, but rather, culture enables strategy.” – Siobhan McHale, Executive General Manager of People, Culture and Change, Dulux

Reframing HR’s role in culture transformation

To effectively engage in this kind of role shifting, HR professionals first need to have accumulated a significant level of trust, influence and social capital with key decision-makers in the business. Part of that comes from how they position the HR function not only in a culture transformation, but in the entire business operation.

“Sometimes HR is positioned as the ‘business partner,’” says McHale. “This positioning may have served us well in the past and allowed HR to get a seat at the table, but the role of ‘business partner’ places HR on the sidelines, rather than as a business leader with specific people, culture and change expertise. 

“As a business leader, you behave in a very different way than you would if you were a partner. You’re not an external consultant; you’re sitting within the business with your functional colleagues, leveraging your expertise to help the business adapt and grow.”

Reframing culture itself

Once HR’s role in a culture transformation is clear, the next step is to ensure everyone involved is 100 per cent clear on what they are trying to achieve, because, although culture is one of the most talked-about aspects of work, it’s also one of the least understood, she says.

“For some time now, culture has been positioned in many parts purely as employee engagement. Of course, engagement is a very important aspect of culture, but HR professionals need to have commercial conversations around culture.

“Culture is an enabler of strategy. It impacts every aspect of your business, from how you develop ideas to how you make your product or sell your services.”

There’s also a variety of cultures you can build in your organisation.

“Depending on your strategy, you may need a culture that’s customer-focused, quality-driven, high-performing, safety-conscious, agile, collaborative, growth-oriented, entrepreneurial – the list goes on.”

Culture is more than skin-deep, and in order to comprehend it in its entirety, you need to understand it in its parts. To help HR and leaders do this, McHale created the Culture MAPP, which breaks culture down into four key elements: mental maps, actions, patterns and processes.

“Mental maps are like the GPS in your car in that they help you navigate your way in the world. They contain information about the roles you step into throughout the day. 

“The mental maps people hold may not be visible to anyone else, but they strongly influence how people think and feel about their work. During culture change, help people redraw the mental maps that shape their role, so they can navigate the change.”

The actions section speaks to employees’ behaviours and conduct.

“These are the important behaviours, decisions and stories that are told within the organisation,” says McHale.

You also need tangible elements to help a culture come to life. That’s where processes come in.

“These are your reinforcing mechanisms. They might be your training courses or your remuneration or performance management systems. They reinforce or strengthen the culture that’s in place.”

Patterns, the final element of the MAPP, is when culture becomes more systemic and collectively held. 

“People can come and go from your business, but the patterns tend to remain.”

To demonstrate a seemingly innocent yet impactful pattern in action, she refers to the infrastructure company she used to work for.

“The CEO was fed up because the Head of Marketing promised to organise a billboard advertisement for months and still hadn’t done it. I asked, ‘Have you talked to him about it?’ It turned out he’d talked to everyone except the Head of Marketing. The pattern in that system was avoiding tough conversations because people would rather be liked.

“The CEO was co-creating the pattern by stepping into the role of ‘nice guy’, and marketing were the ‘non-delivers’. As soon as the CEO saw his role in the pattern, he had the hard conversation, and, by the end of the week, the billboard was installed.”

Culture transformation in action

Once the relevant reframing work has been done, it’s time to jump into the doing.

The culture change program McHale is most known for is the seven-year radical transformation she co-led at the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) in the early 2000s, which saw it go from the worst-performing financial institution in Australia to the number-one bank globally on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. 

“When I came aboard, ANZ’s culture was in disarray. Its customers were dissatisfied, employees dreaded coming to work, and sagging revenues and profits had demoralised leaders. While ANZ’s executives knew they needed to instigate a turnaround, everything they tried seemed to make matters worse.”

McHale and her team worked with business leaders to identify and shift the hidden patterns that were blocking progress.

“Head office had stepped into the role of order giver – they were handing down orders to the branches and telling them what to do. The branch staff had stepped into the role of order taker. They were in a victim role and were feeling demoralised.

“This pattern of being told what to do was essentially leaking the organisational energy.”

The development of a new operating model called ‘Restoring Customer Faith’ reframed people’s roles, putting the head office into the role of ‘supporters’ and the branches into the role of ‘business leaders’.

“The role of ‘business partner’ places HR on the sidelines, rather than as a business leader with specific people, culture and change expertise.” – Siobhan McHale, Executive General Manager of People, Culture and Change, Dulux

It was such a massive undertaking that the executives decided to start with a pilot program aimed at the bank branches in the Dandenong region in Victoria.

“Beginning with a pilot is almost essential when working on complex adaptive change. I often call these ‘lighthouse projects’ because when they work, they shine a light for others to follow.”

A local CEO was appointed in the region, rather than having leadership directives stem from HQ.

“We said, ‘All the decisions in relation to how you serve your customers, manage your people and manage the branches within this area are yours.’ Then we stepped back and allowed the reframe to take hold. Over a four-month period we saw customer satisfaction increase by 30 per cent, we gained 30 per cent more customers, we saw a 40 per cent drop in defections and we saw a spike in employee engagement. 

“Once we saw the impact on that region, we rolled out the initiative across ANZ.”

Within seven years of change at ANZ, the executives were happy to report that profits had more than doubled and the share price had nearly tripled, she says.

“ANZ was winning awards for leadership, employee engagement and customer service. The firm had also become a magnet for talent, receiving more than 10,000 applications annually for its 250 graduate positions.”

It’s projects like this that prove culture has little to do with pizza parties, ping-pong tables and game rooms. Viewing it this way is the reason so many HR leaders lament the fact that their culture strategies often don’t get the executive support required, or fall flat when rolled out to a cohort that’s less than excited to embrace them.

Culture always needs to be viewed through a commercial lens, which is why McHale’s ANZ project was a wild success, going on to form the basis of her best-selling book, The Insider’s Guide to Culture Change, and be used as a Harvard Business School case study. 

Not only did McHale and her team remove the kinks from a poorly performing culture, they also delivered tremendous results. 

In other words, culture transformation is not just about creating a new system or process to correct the issues, but leaving the culture better than you found it.

A longer version of this article was first published in the June edition of HRM Magazine.

Siobhan McHale will be speaking on culture transformation and group intelligence at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition in August. Sign up today to hear from Siobhan and other experts, including Seth Godin, Dr Pippa Grange and more.

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Work is no longer about just turning up and getting paid, says Jess Roberson MAHRI, General Manager, Organisational Development and People Performance at Kestrel Coal Resources, a Queensland-based coal mining company with 700 employees.  

“People want a sense of purpose. They want to buy into the ‘why’ and what the company’s trying to do,” says Roberson.

Traditional leadership styles that depend solely on knowledge, technical prowess and instructing employees to perform specified tasks are becoming less effective. Instead, employees want to work with their leaders – to collaborate on initiatives, so they feel their ideas, questions and contributions are highly valued.  

Consequently, the leaders of the future will be those who can inspire employees with the ‘why’ – by demonstrating the company’s values, ensuring their teams work with purpose and influencing rather than merely managing.

To equip Kestrel’s leaders with the skills they needed, Roberson and her team developed UNLEASHED, a leadership program which won AHRI’s Best Leadership Development Strategy award last year. 

A three-pillar program to nurture leadership capabilities

UNLEASHED is based on three pillars: safety leadership, people skills and business skills. 

“Safety leadership is around giving [leaders] a deep understanding of the day-to-day challenges our people face, giving them the mindset and skills to role-model safety, and supporting them to build trust in their teams,” says Roberson. 

The people skills pillar focuses on expanding awareness of purpose, improving communication and building better relationships, and the business skills pillar covers planning and prioritising while empowering others, and collaborating to drive continuous business improvement. 

The three pillars form the basis of nine leadership modules, which, in the first roll-out, ran over 12 months. Eight were face-to-face and one was run online. 

Rather than being delivered in a traditional manner, they comprised a series of experimental initiatives. For example, under the people skills pillar, all participants completed a DISC (Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness) profile, which assessed their workplace personality, then ‘speed-dated’ employees with contrasting profiles. 

“We had feedback from leaders who later used this tool in their teams,” says Roberson. 

“They’d been struggling to work with a particular individual, but, once they understood themselves and the other person better – their drivers and motivators – they could tailor their approach and get a totally different outcome.”

Another example was a Shark Tank-style pitch session, run under the business skills pillar.  

“Each group had to come up with an initiative to improve the business, and convince the audience it was a great idea. It wasn’t about the validity of the idea, it was about allowing people the space to pitch their idea, using the influence, engagement and communication skills learnt through the modules.” 

“We had some excellent ideas, like ‘Thank God it’s Thursday’, pitching the benefits of a four-day week, and a new design for our underground conveyor system.”

“We don’t see leadership as your job title – it’s far bigger than that.” – Jess Roberson MAHRI, General Manager, Organisational Development and People Performance, Kestrel Coal

Leadership development is more than a title 

In inviting participants to join UNLEASHED, Roberson and her team adopted a broad definition of leadership. 

Rather than limiting participation to official people leaders, Roberson and her team invited 220 of Kestrel’s most influential employees to participate.

“We don’t see leadership as your job title – it’s far bigger than that,” she says. “There are people in our organisation, such as HR or finance business partners, who don’t have a team under them, but influence others at all different levels in the business.”

In addition, they saw an opportunity to break down silos. 

“We purposely arranged groups so you’d be with around 15 people you may never have worked with or even met. You might have an executive in the room with an operational supervisor and a superintendent. It was really, really mixed.

“This approach allowed our people to gain an appreciation of the work of other teams they’re not ordinarily exposed to. Some participants said it opened up new relationships and improved communication between our wash plant and underground operations.”

Furthermore, the HR team, in presenting the program, collaborated with others. 

For example, members of the executive helped deliver a module on leadership beliefs, while a hand-picked group of five participants co-facilitated a module on apathy, sympathy and empathy in their own language. 

Impressive results 

At the end of each module, each participant completed a leadership diagnostic, which enabled the HR team to track progress. 

By its conclusion, UNLEASHED delivered impressive results. Participants reported a:

• 33 per cent uplift in developing and executing innovative business improvements with their team.
• 22 per cent increase in committing to a plan to improve their team’s engagement and performance.
• 24 per cent increase in taking time to coach and mentor others. 
• 29 per cent uplift in participants’ understanding of the things that make their leadership style unique.
• 25 per cent uplift in participants’ understanding of their purpose beyond their job.
• 21 per cent increase in participants’ knowledge of their future goals and how to achieve them.

UNLEASHED is now an ongoing two-day program that Kestrel runs for new starters and new leaders.   

“Overall, the program has lifted the capability of all of our people,” says Roberson. 

“It has provided a unified purpose and common language that all levels in our business are aligned to.” 

A version of this article was originally published in the June edition of HRM Magazine.

Know someone who has made award-worthy contributions to their organisation or the HR profession? Applications are now open for the 2024 AHRI Awards. Read more and apply here.

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Calling the wrong candidate for an interview. Missing a decimal point in the budget. Accidentally hitting ‘reply-all’ on an email. Small actions can have big consequences.

In the same way, subtle behaviours can significantly impact the culture in your team or organisation. According to a culture study I conducted in partnership with McCrindle Research, which surveyed over 1000 frontline managers, 95 per cent agreed that culture is the outcome of lots of little decisions made over time.

While small decisions can help build great culture, it’s important to also recognise how small, negative behaviours that are left unchecked could potentially undermine it.

Here are ten micro-behaviours that can quietly kill a great culture and some practical strategies you can use to address them early.

1. Evidence-gathering or score-keeping behaviours

When employees feel the need to gather evidence of how they have been wronged or keep score against fellow team members, this is an indicator that trust is fractured.

This behaviour is more focused on defence than support. In these low-trust environments, people are less likely to assume positive intent in the actions of their teammates, and mistakes can quickly become weaponised.

In our research, a lack of trust was identified as the number-one culture killer by managers. When trust is present, team members feel comfortable to admit mistakes, ask for help or acknowledge their weaknesses without fear.

HR action point: Ensure that leaders model and promote timely feedback through ongoing conversations rather than waiting until annual reviews. Encouraging people to give in-the-moment feedback helps prevent people from accumulating their grievances for later.

2. Increasing ‘us and them’ language

In our research, fifty-three per cent of managers said that collaboration and teamwork are the most important ingredients for building a healthy culture at work.

However, when team members start to use divisive rather than inclusive language, it can be an early indicator that lines are being drawn between people and/or departments.

For example, changes initiated by leadership might be communicated as, ‘They told us we have to,’ rather than, ‘We agreed this was the best decision moving forward.’ Or, it could be subtle comments from team members such as, ‘That’s their project,’ rather than, ‘That’s our project.’

When team members begin to place themselves on either side of a line, instead of the same side, it won’t be long before silos and disconnected teams emerge.

Left unchecked, these silos can lead to breakdowns in communication, information sharing and collaboration, and can erode trust in your culture.

HR action point: Emphasise the use of ‘us’ and ‘we’ instead of ‘they’ and ‘them’ language when discussing work, challenges or desired outcomes.

3. The absence of ‘bad ideas’ in team meetings

The strength of a team lies in its diverse views, ideas and opinions. The freedom to share ideas that could be considered ‘good’ or ‘bad’ by the group is an important part of fostering a creative and innovative culture.

Healthy dissent or feeling comfortable to share a potentially ‘bad’ idea in team discussions are indicators that team members feel safe to challenge the norms without fear of punishment.

The absence of these ideas in team meetings can be an indicator that the team is drifting towards conformity/groupthink, or lacks the psychological safety necessary for people to contribute to the discussion or challenge a viewpoint.

HR action point: When brainstorming, introduce the idea of ‘plussing’ – that is, when an idea is shared, find ways to have others in the room build on the idea rather than immediately shooting it down or dismissing it.

4. Teams becoming less likely to push back on leaders’ Ideas

Tim Duggan’s book ‘Killer Thinking: How to turn good ideas into brilliant ones’ warns of the potential for the ‘Highest-Paid Person’s Opinion’ (HIPPO) to kill an idea before it has the chance to evolve into a killer idea.

If team members rarely challenge the leader’s ideas, it might be an indicator that there is an unspoken power imbalance affecting how team members contribute, which could be stifling creativity and critical thinking. This is also known as ‘authority bias’.

This could show up as a lack of feedback on a leader’s ideas (even when it’s invited), silence in meetings or passive agreement.

HR action point: Take time to call out the power imbalance that exists when a leader is in the room and help your team by inviting them to share their ideas first. When the leader’s ideas are shared, intentionally invite team members to challenge them and ensure that different opinions are both acknowledged and appreciated.

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5. Less direct feedback and more ‘second-hand’ feedback

In our research, over half the managers agreed open communication and feedback is important for creating a healthy culture at work.

Direct feedback, when delivered appropriately, deepens trust and strengthens working relationships. But, when people receive feedback through a third party rather than directly, it can be an early warning sign that there’s a breakdown in communication channels, safety and trust. It’s also possible that these behaviours indicate a lack of necessary skills to deliver tough feedback.

HR action point: Train team members in a clear and common feedback model. This could be something like Anna Carroll’s COIN (Context, Observation, Impact, Next Steps) model. Look for ways to enhance skills through a shared framework and then encourage people to put this into practice by addressing challenges directly.

“When team members begin to place themselves on either side of a line, instead of the same side, it won’t be long before silos and disconnected teams emerge.” – Shane Hatton, author, speaker and culture expert.

6. Closed cliques

It’s virtually impossible to have an organisation where cliques don’t exist. Whether by personality or proximity, certain relationships will be stronger than others.

One in two managers believe that trusting relationships at work are important for building a healthy culture. However, as these relationships form and deepen, they can become closed or exclusive, meaning they refuse to welcome outsiders, external input or challenge. This could lead to potential alienation of other team members, lack of collaboration and even favouritism. 

HR action point: Look for opportunities to introduce ‘outsiders’ into established groups when delegating work. This could be cross-departmental team projects or one-to-one peer mentoring.

Frans Johansson, author of The Medici Effect, suggests an exercise he calls ‘The Usual Suspects’. When a challenge arises, a team member is encouraged to write a list of the top five people they would typically go to for an answer, and then to intentionally seek out people who are not on that list to encourage outside intervention. 

7. Overemphasis on title and territory

More than a third of the managers in our study believe that territorial attitudes contribute to an unhealthy culture in an organisation.

When titles and territory are over-emphasised, organisations are more likely to see power struggles and conflict arise among teams. ‘Information hoarding’ can be a way that departments or leaders maintain power through withholding critical information that may benefit other employees.

There’s also a risk of people becoming ‘gatekeepers’ and preventing access to platforms or resources that enable people to do their job independently as a way of exerting power. Where this emphasis on territory and title exists, it’s also likely that external feedback will be met with hostility as people seek to defend their patch.

Over time, these behaviours can lead to a more hostile and much less collaborative culture.

HR action point: Introduce recognition programs that reward group effort and individual achievement, ensuring that all team members know that both types of contribution are equally valued.

8. Inability to make decisions without meetings

Our research showed 45 per cent of managers believe a lack of accountability is a culture killer. This can often show up in the form of ‘blame diffusion’.

‘Blame diffusion’ is a term used to describe a culture where teams struggle to make important decisions outside of a group meeting, the rationale being that if a group made the decision, no one individual could be blamed if things went wrong.

This behaviour protects individuals at the expense of accountability and slows down the decision-making process.

HR action point: Examine your leadership responses to failure. Are the mistakes of leaders hidden from the broader organisation or talked about openly? Is failure or learning emphasised in the language when mistakes are made? What processes are in place to dissect mistakes that are made and share the learning?

Encourage people to be transparent in their communication about failures and adopt a “fail fast, learn faster” mindset.

“When a challenge arises, a team member is encouraged to write a list of the top five people they would typically go to for an answer, and then to intentionally seek out people who are not on that list to encourage outside intervention.” – Shane Hatton, author, speaker and culture expert.

9. Only celebrating the big wins

A focus only on major achievements can not only demotivate a team, but it also overlooks the importance of daily efforts that contribute to the long-term success of a business.

In our research, nearly half of leaders told us they believe a lack of reward and recognition contributes to an unhealthy culture in an organisation. By taking time to stop and celebrate the small wins along the way, team members are much less likely to feel as though their consistent hard work is going unnoticed.

HR action point: Ensure your reward and recognition programs and team feedback sessions celebrate progress as well as significant outcomes.

10. A constant state of urgency

The pressure to be in a constant state of heightened alertness to respond to immediate needs can lead to more mistakes, lower quality of work and chronic stress, which, in turn, adversely impacts both physical and mental health.

Unclear or unrealistic workload expectations were listed as one of the top-five culture killers by managers in our research. Clear and achievable workload expectations, along with realistic deadlines, are crucial aspects of a healthy work culture.

HR action point: When delegating work, ensure expectations and priorities are communicated clearly upfront and set realistic deadlines which take into account availability of resources.

Long before you find yourself broken down on the side of the road, your car’s ‘check engine’ light warns of potential trouble ahead. In the same way, subtle unproductive workplace behaviours can be a signal of much deeper cultural issues.

By paying close attention to these subtle signals, you can address these issues before they escalate, ensuring you create an environment for your team to truly thrive.

Shane Hatton will be speaking about how to become a trusted leadership voice at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition in August. Sign up today to hear from Shane and other experts, including Seth Godin, Dr Pippa Grange and more.

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“I’ve got so much work to do.”

“I haven’t had a break since I got here.”

“I can’t remember the last time I left on time!”

If you’ve been on the receiving end of complaints like this, you’ll know how damaging ‘busy culture’ can be to morale, productivity and teamwork.

When a culture of chronic busyness creeps into the workplace, some employees can feel pressure to be somewhat performative about their workload to assure their peers and managers that they’re doing their part. 

However, employees constantly talking about how much they have on their plates can have a number of negative knock-on effects. Besides its impact on morale, busy culture can hamper productivity by creating a situation where employees spend more time talking about their workload than getting work done. 

The prevalence of this behaviour was recently laid bare by global research conducted by Slack, which found that employees spend around 32 per cent of their time on performative work that gives the appearance of productivity.

Taking proactive steps to keep busy culture to a minimum can help employers not only boost productivity, but also create more balanced, genuine and supportive work cultures.

The rise of the ‘loud labourer’

Employees who perpetuate busy culture have been dubbed ‘loud labourers’, with many pointing out the harmful impact they can have on workplace culture.

“Loud labourers are focusing on looking, acting or being perceived as being productive rather than what they’re actually accomplishing,” says Sally McKibbin, Career Expert at Indeed.

In many ways, the loud labour trend is the antithesis of ‘quiet quitting‘, which gained widespread popularity about two years ago. While quiet quitting is a way for employees to push back against busy culture by putting in the minimum amount of effort required to do their job, loud labour is a way for employees to avoid being seen as slacking off or not pulling their weight.

One of the drivers of this trend has been the shift towards hybrid and remote work. When employees are working away from the workplace, they can sometimes feel that their work and achievements are invisible unless they actively draw attention to them. 

Moreover, increasing fears over job security could be driving employees to emphasise their achievements in order to safeguard their employment.

In fact, recent research from Gartner shows that the number of employees choosing to work more than their minimum job requirements has risen to a four-year high, as workers look to protect themselves from redundancy.

While discretionary efforts are welcome in a challenging talent landscape, an environment where employees feel the need to broadcast their workloads in order to feel secure is not conducive to productivity or psychosocial safety. When employees don’t feel the need to work performatively, meaningful tasks are likely to get done faster and to a higher quality.

“The more we learn about multitasking, [the more we learn] we’re not good at it. We don’t do any one task well when we’re trying to do too many tasks.” – Sally McKibbin, Career Expert at Indeed

3 tips to keep busy culture to a minimum

In order to keep busy culture from hampering productivity and mental health, McKibbin suggests a number of steps employers can take to address these negative behaviours and prevent them from arising. 

1. Reward output rather than visibility

Since the rise of hybrid and remote work, the pressure to be constantly visible and reachable during work hours has significantly increased, says McKibbin. 

Remote employees are sometimes concerned that, if they don’t respond to a message immediately, their employers may assume they’re offline or slacking off. However, this attitude can be incredibly counterproductive, she says.

“The more we learn about multitasking, [the more we learn] we’re not good at it. We don’t do any one task well when we’re trying to do too many tasks.”

Slack’s research shows 27 per cent of global executives rely on visibility and activity metrics to measure productivity, which can contribute to this dynamic developing among dispersed teams. 

Instead, McKibbin suggests employers focus on rewarding output. If employees are rewarded for being productive without working late or stretching themselves too thin, this will develop the understanding that constant busyness is not the goal.

2. Model good behaviour

Given that loud labour can be prevalent among managers as well as more junior employees, it’s imperative that strategies to manage it are led from the very top, says McKibbin.

“As a manager, as a senior leader or as the CEO, it’s about modelling that good behaviour – [for example], maybe you leave at 4.30 one day because you want to go get a facial or massage, or you’re going to pick up the kids. Encourage people to see that that’s okay,” she says.

Actions like this send a clear message that success and productivity are not measured by the number of hours worked but by the quality and efficiency of the work done. 

3. Learn to distinguish between loud labour and genuine workload pressures

If an employee is being vocal about their workload and the pressure they’re under, employers should not immediately slap the ‘loud labourer’ label on them, says McKibbin. 

The employee may be genuinely reaching out for help about an unmanageable workload rather than projecting the illusion of busyness.

“I think really clear and open communication is the key to deciding which person is the loud labourer and which person actually needs some help,” she says.

“But with either of those people, making sure that you’re constantly having check-ins and helping them understand what their priorities are [is really important].”

If managers are regularly supporting their people with time and workload management, this will contribute to a healthier work culture where busyness is not worn as a badge of honour, McKibbin explains. In a culture like this, loud labour is less likely to arise in the first place, meaning that workload complaints are more likely to be genuine and resolvable.

Develop the necessary skills to build and sustain a high performing work team and tap into the full potential of team members with this short course from AHRI.

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What does it take to run an effective coaching session? Does the coach need to have undergone a comprehensive training program in order to provide value to their mentee? Do they need to develop a 12-step action plan following the session to help put their mentee on the right path?

According to coaching expert Michael Bungay Stanier, often it’s just about learning how to ask better questions.

“If you can coach somebody in five minutes or less, everybody wins. And sometimes that’s having the discipline to ask them good questions, and then [staying quiet] and listening to their answer,” he said in a recent episode of AHRI’s podcast Let’s Take This Offline.

His book The Coaching Habit has sold over a million copies worldwide because, in his words, it “unweirds coaching”.

“I didn’t write the book for coaches because they already love coaching. What I was trying to do was [write something] for all the people who are like, ‘My organisation is making the coach. I don’t really want to do it, but I have to. Where do I start?'”

He wanted to help them see that coaching can be baked into your everyday interactions without a huge amount of extra effort and time, which is exactly what time-poor managers need.

7 questions for an effective coaching session

Often, what trips managers up when running a coaching session with their team members is adding structure to their line of questioning. They might go into the conversation with the goal of learning about the employee’s learning and development ambitions or to understand more about how they want to progress in the organisation.

However, Bungay Stanier thinks it’s often best to just let the conversation unfold naturally and learn what’s on their mind.

Following decades’ worth of experimenting, he landed on what he believes are the seven most important questions to ask in a coaching session:

1. “What’s on your mind?”
2. “And what else?”
3. “What’s the real challenge here for you?”
4. “What do you need?”
5. “How can I help?”
6. “If you’re saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?”
7. “What was most useful for you?”

They might seem overly simple, but that’s the point. And he says that, time and time again, they prove to be fruitful questions.

One that he often gets positive feedback on is: ‘What’s the real challenge for you here?’. Because we’re prone to trying to solve other people’s problems, we often jump at the opportunity to impart our hard-earned wisdom and advice, but that’s not always useful.

“We’re all so wired to get on with stuff. Our advice monster shows up and we start trying to solve the first thing that has come up,” he says. “But the first thing that shows up is never the real challenge. It’s just the first challenge.”

“If you can coach somebody in five minutes or less, everybody wins. And sometimes that’s having the discipline to ask them good questions.” – Michael Bungay Stanier, author and coaching expert.

People are testing the waters, assessing how safe it might be to disclose the actual challenge they are facing, he explains. 

For example, they might mask their deep dissatisfaction with their manager by instead talking about frustrations they’ve experienced during a recent project.

“Curiosity takes you closer to figuring out what’s really [concerning] the person that you’re working with. So it works both at a strategy and a cultural level.”

For HR professionals, being the person who can figure out the root of an issue will make you “immensely more valuable to your organisation”, he says.

“And you have far more impact because you’re willing to say, ‘My job is to figure out what the real challenges are.’ That is a strategic act.”

The way the question is structured also helps, he adds.

“It’s not just, ‘What’s the challenge?’. Because, if you ask somebody [that], you’re going to get a bit of a restatement from what you’ve already heard, when you asked them, ‘What’s on your mind?’. When you add the word ‘real’, what you’re saying is, the first thing you told me isn’t the real challenge. So immediately, you’ve got them thinking. 

“You can feel the difference. What’s the challenge, what’s the real challenge? It’s like a different question, even though there’s only one word added. 

“But then I think the magic happens when you add ‘for you’ at the end of that question: What’s the real challenge here for you? Now they’re not talking about the problem out there. They’re talking about, ‘Here’s why I am wrestling with this. This is what’s hard for me around this.'”

Download a one-page guide to Bungay Stanier’s 7 questions for an effective coaching session.

Coaching the coaches

A lot of what Bungay Stanier talks about will relate directly to HR practitioners, who themselves need to be effective coaches to leaders, managers and employees. However, often they’ll be the ones teaching managers to level up their approach to coaching employees.

Sometimes that means being willing to tell managers that they’re prone to giving too much advice, rather than listening deeply to what their mentee is saying to them (or what they’re not saying).

 “You could say, ‘There’s a really important place for advice, just not as fast or as omnipresent as you’re currently delivering it. So let me introduce curiosity as an element of leadership that is underdeveloped in you right now,”’ he says.

But what about those leaders who don’t want to be coached?

“For most leaders, if you come up to them and say, ‘Hey, I’m from HR. I’m here to coach you.’ The typical reaction is [to resist that]. So I usually don’t make a grand announcement that the coaching has begun. 

“When you push into a system, it pushes back. It’s a survival mechanism driven by your lizard brain – your amygdala. So don’t make a big deal about it. Just be curious.

“So if I’m starting to work with a leader, I’ll go, ‘How can I help? So what’s the challenge here for you? And then I go, what else? So what’s the real challenge? So what do you need?’.

“You can call that coaching, or you can call it having a conversation where you’re trying to be as helpful as possible.” 

This is an excerpt of a conversation from AHRI’s new podcast, ‘Let’s Take This Offline‘. Listen to the full episode here.

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Head of Culture and Inclusion at Coles Group Katie Wyatt says it’s a fascinating time to work in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). In some ways, it’s getting easier, but in other ways harder.

The proud Noongar Yamatji woman, from Whadjuk Noongar country around Perth, found the failure of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum “incredibly tough”.

“It really made me stop and think about the challenge we have as a business in balancing the nuances of social pressures, customer expectations and investor demands.”

It’s a balance she’s managed remarkably well. Wyatt is the recent recipient of AHRI’s 2023 DEI Champion of the Year Award, which she describes as a welcome recognition of the DEI commitments she and her team have helped to achieve over the past four years.

“Winning has been a real high, almost like the certificate to say, ‘You did it.’ Of course there is nothing individual about DEI achievements, and this is a reflection of collective effort across our business.”

She’s immensely passionate about DEI, which is just as well because it can be “an uphill battle” at times.

“DEI practitioners often don’t own big teams or budgets, so they have to strategise, influence, convince and persuade, which comes with highs and lows. So it’s absolutely awesome to have that recognised with this award,” she says.

Wyatt believes her fierce drive for social justice “has been there from birth”.

“My dad was a stolen child; he was taken from his mum as a baby. And my mum was a teacher and librarian. It was bred into me to be progressive and socially conscious.

“Whether it was my volunteer work, or my time in the not-for-profit and social enterprise sector, it was always there.”

Wyatt has more than 17 years’ experience as a senior leader across private, public and for-purpose sectors. Her corporate work includes seven years in professional services and a stint at Australia Post. After her years in the not-for-profit social enterprise space, she was elated to join Coles in 2019.

“This role has brought me back to large corporate life, which I really love.”

Now based in Melbourne, she’s relishing the chance to “create meaningful impact in a huge business that employs and serves so many Australians”.

Big corporates, big thinking

The expectations on organisations to support social change have never been higher, says Wyatt, especially those that employ a huge part of the community.

These expectations arise from the public, investors passionate about environmental, social and governance (ESG) and diversity, and employees keen to connect with their employer’s purpose, whether that be caring for the environment or profiling diverse women in senior leadership roles. 

These are expectations she upholds and believes are intrinsically linked to business success. 

“Every business, especially large businesses that operate nationally like we do, is going to struggle in a modern world without diversity of thinking and new ideas.

“People often say it’s the right thing to do. But actually, it’s also very much the smart thing to do. And as a business that serves most of Australia, the more diverse we are, the better we’re able to serve our customers. For example, we can think about what our customers might want in particular locations, such as in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne where customers [require] a wider range of foods, including Kosher, Middle Eastern, Asian, Indian and so on. 

“It’s the best of both worlds. I’m working with great people, getting great opportunities, and I feel like I’m making an impact.”

“If people feel like they can be themselves, that drives engagement, which drives performance, and therefore revenue and profit. Diversity is absolutely a smart business decision.” – Katie Wyatt, Head of Culture and Inclusion, Coles Group

Strategies to boost women’s representation in leadership  

Some of Wyatt’s most important work at Coles has been in the gender space. 

In 2019, women accounted for 33 per cent of leadership roles, which jumped to 41.5 per cent by 2023. 

She played a pivotal role in launching the Store Manager Accelerator Program in 2022, which brings women with diverse backgrounds into store leadership roles, supported by development, which focuses on the skills needed in the role over experience.

Since then, 20 women have come through the program, with applications open for the next cohort. There are now 800 women who are store managers around Australia. The women are of all diversity groups, including First Nations and culturally diverse women.

To create positive change, Wyatt looks to research and evidence-based systems for guidance. To inspire her gender inclusion strategies at Coles, she used the Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s Employer of Choice for Gender Equality framework, as it’s based on global best-practice research.

“We know that offering flexibility, making sure your talent management processes are as free from bias as they can be, and putting targets on senior leadership roles, all makes a difference,” she says. “You can say, ‘We want more women at the table.’ But unless you are actually creating change in your organisation to make it more appealing and accessible for women, nothing’s going to stick. We now have a really healthy leadership population and pipeline [for women].”

The organisation is also making life easier for transgender people among its 100,000 store workers who have to log on to a roster that displays the legal name they were assigned at birth.

“If they’ve affirmed their gender and now go by a different name, this can be incredibly impactful, and not in a good way. It’s also unnecessary,” says Wyatt. “So we’re reconfiguring our systems to build a solution that shows someone’s name of choice on the roster. While most people won’t notice, for some individuals, it’s going to be massive.”

Owning and driving diversity and inclusion

While it can be hard to quantify the impact of diversity strategies on an organisation’s bottom line, Wyatt measures Coles’ success in terms of engagement and representation.

Impressively, engagement of all diverse groups has increased, largely thanks to Coles’ five key diversity pillars: Gender Equity, Pride, Accessibility, Belonging and Indigenous Engagement. 

Each pillar is led by business leaders with cross-business representation, which Wyatt’s team supports by driving conversation, planning initiatives and helping those in each pillar to think more strategically.

LGBTQI+ engagement, for example, has jumped from 61 per cent in 2021 to 66 per cent in 2023. 

To promote LGBTIQ+ inclusion, Wyatt found another “evidence-based roadmap” to follow: the Australian Workplace Equality Index for LGBTQ+ inclusion, which has since awarded Coles with Gold Employer status. 

It shows that rather than having one champion in the business, all the systems, processes and training must also be inclusive. 

“If the business doesn’t own and drive DEI, then it’s never going to sustain itself.”

And she does mean the entire business – DEI is not just an HR responsibility.

“If people feel like they can be themselves, that drives engagement, which drives performance, and therefore revenue and profit. Diversity is absolutely a smart business decision,” she says. 

“Watching people get involved in these diversity teams and witnessing their individual transformations is what keeps me going.”

“I’m working with great people, getting great opportunities, and I feel like I’m making an impact.” – Katie Wyatt, Head of Culture and Inclusion, Coles Group

Setbacks and catalysts on the path to inclusion

Over the past four years, Coles has been on a “maturity journey”, says Wyatt.

“We’ve gone from being passionate about our DEI cause, perhaps because of people we know, to integrating it into how we do business. Now it’s the way we hire people and the way we develop people. Our leadership population is much more diverse, and that’s not just gender. That’s cultural diversity, First Nations, LGBTIQ+ and people with disability. 

“And that’s not just because my team is running around making things happen. It’s because we’ve hardwired it into who we are as a business.”

Over the coming years, Wyatt plans to continue her work in DEI, “learning and adapting along the way”.

As an Australian company with a huge profile, determining how much to wade into public discourse around social issues remains a “tricky” subject for Coles, she says. The company is strongly committed to reconciliation, but didn’t feel it was its role to tell the public or its team how they should vote in the Voice to Parliament referendum.

“While I personally was hoping to see a Yes vote, organisations don’t vote and it wasn’t our role to tell anyone how to do so.

“It’s a tricky line to walk, but businesses need to make those decisions for themselves, in line with their values and with the information they have at the time. And those decisions have to make sense, both for your people strategy and for your business commercially.”

While promoting the inclusion agenda is certainly getting easier, the road can feel “bendy and jolty”, she says. But that only fuels her passion and drive.

“In the uncertain economy and global world we’re operating in, DEI feels even more important, but even less predictable.

“Sometimes there are moments that can feel like a real setback in the work we do. But in other ways, they can also feel like a catalyst to do more.”

A version of this article was originally published in the April/May 2024 edition of HRM Magazine.

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