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.

“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.

The post Reframing HR’s role in culture transformation appeared first on HRM online.

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.

Enjoying this article? Help HRM create useful resources to enhance your HR practice by completing our reader survey. Share your thoughts for the chance to win one of five $100 shopping vouchers.

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.

The post 10 micro-behaviours that are culture killers appeared first on HRM online.

The Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL) has served and commemorated Australian veterans and their families for over 100 years. 

Many of the communities served by the organisation rely on its support to thrive; last year, the Queensland branch alone welcomed over three thousand new clients, provided $3 million in emergency funding, helped 243 individuals and families into safe, permanent housing and helped 246 veterans and their partners secure new employment.

Despite serving a century-old institution, the people and culture team at RSL Queensland has always been future-focused.

Built around the concept of ‘HR with heart’, the team’s grass-roots approach to designing a positive employee experience has allowed the organisation to continuously achieve better outcomes not only for its workforce, but for people they serve: veterans and their families.

“We have an organisation that connects us to a purpose greater than ourselves. That in itself brings great drive to do things differently and create a culture that supports giving back,” says Amy Cameron, Principal HR Business Partner at RSL Queensland.

The success of its endeavours to create the best-possible workplaces for its people has seen the team nominated for AHRI’s 2023 Best Employee Experience Strategy Award, which will be announced at a ceremony in Sydney later this week. 

Learn more about this year’s AHRI Awards here.

Designing HR with heart

In designing their employee experience strategy, RSL Queensland endeavours to treat its workforce with the same care, compassion and individuality they provide to its clients. 

“They’re not just an employee – that’s one aspect of them,” says Cameron. “They’re actually a person who happens to work for us. And the way we approach it is about thinking of the whole person, and coming from [a place of] kindness, empathy and always maintaining people’s dignity, regardless of what situation that they’re in.”

Over time, this holistic attitude led to the conception of the team’s core mission: to practise ‘HR with heart’.

“People often talk about the art and the science of something. We say the heart, the art and the science,” says Jenny Hanna, Chief HR Officer at RSL Queensland. “And the heart part normally shows up in our culture. 

“[For instance], instead of saying, ‘Our policy says three strikes and you’re out,’ it requires us to say, ‘How did we get here? What is our process, but also, what’s occurring for the person in this process?’”

She offers a recent example of practicing ‘HR with heart’ with an employee who was reported by a colleague for treating others unkindly. Rather than issuing a warning or initiating a disciplinary process, the team paused and took stock of the employee’s unique circumstances. 

“When we inquired to find out what was happening in her world, [we found] she had an injury. So we were able to do an ergonomic assessment to help her out with that. She was also [experiencing] a very complex situation at home, and we were able to get our consultant, who’s a specialist in domestic and family violence, involved. 

“Instead of just treating what might be a symptom, we’ve been able to put in place some really nice support. And that’s HR with heart: you’ve got to step out from behind the rulebook and really think about the person in front of you.”

Maintaining a positive employee experience

As an organisation whose success relies on effective collaboration, it was essential to Hanna and Cameron to get RSL Queensland’s workforce on board with their employee experience strategy, and to ensure they were living and breathing the organisation’s values.

One of the company’s most effective initiatives to achieve this has been the modification of its performance targets to include expectations for how employees treat one another. 

“That’s HR with heart: you’ve got to step out from behind the rulebook and really think about the person in front of you.” – Jenny Hanna, Chief Human Resources Officer, RSL Queensland

The team refers to these targets as ‘what KPIs’, which relate to the responsibilities and actions required of a role, and ‘how KPIs’, which look at how employees are behaving while they work to achieve these goals. 

“It’s received really well across the business, because it really does put money where our words are – we [not only] talk about our values, we’re actually going to incentivise you to live those values,” says Cameron. 

“And it sends a strong message that we’re not just about achieving great things at the expense of people, and at the expense of relationships.”

Protecting culture and wellbeing with peer support

As members of a client-facing organisation, RSL Queensland’s HR team recognises the fact that there are certain factors influencing the employee experience that are largely out of their control. 

In addition to a robust occupational violence program and a zero-tolerance policy for aggressive behaviour, the organisation has created a new peer support initiative to help employees support each other to manage the demands of their professional and personal lives.

“We actually pulled this from the emergency services,” says Cameron. 

Under the initiative, employees are selected as peer support responders who can provide an approachable, confidential pathway for employees to find immediate help and be linked to external support services. These responders are then trained up in mental health first aid and additional training on how to direct their peers to the wellbeing support they need. 

“[Responders] actually have to be nominated,” says Cameron. “We [go] to the business and we say, ‘Tell us who you go to when you’re having a bit of a rough day.’ And they can opt in or opt out.”

The engagement with this initiative has been overwhelming, with over ten per cent of RSL Queensland’s workforce volunteering as peer support responders, all of whom are accredited in mental health first aid. 

Want to become accredited in mental health first aid and enhance your understanding of mental wellbeing? Book your place at AHRI’s mental health first aid course now.

The success of the program and the team’s mission to deliver ‘HR with heart’ is evidenced by positive trends in employee engagement. In 2022, employee feedback showed a satisfaction score of 71 per cent. This result represented a six per cent increase from the 2021 results and was 13 per cent higher than the ANZ not-for-profit benchmark.

Having these achievements recognised with an AHRI Award nomination has reinforced the team’s mission and their commitment to continue championing HR with heart.

“People might think of us as the RSL clubs and pubs – a place to play some pokies,” says Hanna. “Things like [the AHRI nomination] are so helpful for us, when we’re advertising a role, to get people to say, ‘Hold on – maybe I need an extra look. Maybe this organisation isn’t what I thought it was.’

“Lots of hard work goes in. But it’s more than that, too – it helps us sell ourselves.”

“Nothing we do in people in culture or in HR is by accident,” adds Cameron. “We have two very strategic leaders who lead HR with heart, and they are creating really targeted changes to create a beautiful [culture]. And AHRI is our mothership – it’s our professional network of recognition of all of the hard and targeted and purposeful work that we do.”

AHRI will be announcing the winners of its 2023 Awards later this week. Learn more about the Awards program here.

The post How RSL Queensland uses ‘HR with heart’ to build a better employee experience appeared first on HRM online.

If you tell an employee not to work from heights without the proper safety equipment, they will probably listen to you because the rationale makes sense to them. They don’t want to hurt themselves or others. 

But try telling them to come back to work after years of operating remotely, and you might have a tougher time getting their buy-in.

New research from Atlassian, which surveyed 1000 knowledge workers in Australia and the US, shows that 82 per cent of knowledge workers are operating under some form of return-to-work mandate.

Worryingly, one in four aren’t coming into the physical workspace out of a genuine desire to be there, stating that they feel pressured to attend. And 10 per cent are worried they’ll be viewed as less productive or uncommitted to their jobs if they continue working from home, suggesting that even in instances where remote work is allowed, it might not necessarily be normalised.

Some leaders argue that culture and collaboration are severely damaged when work is conducted entirely online, while others believe it’s best to put control in their people’s hands.

This is a debate that’s taking place in real time with many employers across the country, most notably among employees at Australia’s largest bank, CBA, and within Australia’s largest employer, the public service.

The Finance Sector Union (FSU) recently lodged a dispute on behalf of its members following the CBA’s mandate that employees spend 50 per cent of their time in the office. The FSU claims employees were not adequately consulted about the changes, meaning some were unable to arrange adequate childcare arrangements, for example, and that many had accepted their positions under the assumption they could continue working remotely.

In response, a CBA spokesperson said, “Connection, innovation and the ability to build and strengthen relationships is absolutely fundamental to how we continue to work,” a sentiment many leaders would agree with. 

In contrast, the Australian Public Service announced that 174,000 of its employees are could soon be entitled to an unlimited amount of remote work days under a new agreement struck with union groups. 

According to Community and Public Sector Union National Secretary Melissa Donnelly, this deal will allow the public sector to “become increasingly diverse, adaptable and accessible”.

Compliance culture

This article isn’t about unpacking which side is right (it will always depend on individual circumstances), but there are some important things to keep in mind should you want to force people back into the physical workspace. 

“What comes to mind [with these Atlassian insights about feeling pressured] is cultural enforcement versus cultural leadership,” says Shane Hatton, author, trainer, and leadership/culture expert.

When researching for his latest book, Let’s Talk Culture, Hatton concluded that culture has four elements, one of them being collective buy-in.

“If you don’t have collective buy-in, but place behavioural expectations around it, you end up with compliance, rather than a culture,” he says.

An overly compliant culture can result in people executing the expected behaviour, but perhaps doing so without offering discretionary efforts or high morale.

“People come into the office but they say, “I don’t know why I’m here.” There’s a lack of meaning and understanding,” says Hatton.

“Put the pin on the map to show people where they’re going, but let them choose the route to get there. We’re often telling people, ‘turn here,’ ‘go there’ – but you just need to hold them accountable to the outcome.” – Shane Hatton.

He suggests thinking about work in three different ways: collaborative work, solo work and non-work.

“Solo work can be done from home. Collaborative work is a blurred line because some people can work effectively in a collaborative environment online if they have the right tools.”

Hatton believes the strongest case for in-office work lies in the third category: non-work.

“That’s those social interactions that can’t be replicated online. Being able to connect with colleagues on non-work related topics is a component of [hybrid] work that most people aren’t addressing. But even with this in mind, that’s still two thirds of work that can be done online.”

Compliance cultures can also lead to dissent brewing within the ranks.

“You might end up with one conversation happening upwards and another happening across the organisation. They are complying with the rules, but they might not want to speak up to their manager about [issues], so the business assumes everything is going great, but there are heaps of side conversations going on about how much [employees] hate it.

“The level of resistance goes up. The behaviour happens, but it’s a lot slower and is more difficult to maintain without constant supervision.”

This might mean managers have to start checking in on their employees more often, which can breed a culture of micromanagement or surveillance, which we know can be damaging to trust and engagement levels.

“But if you explain why you’re making the change, you won’t need to check in because you’ll know that people are following.”

Importantly, Hatton says you need to explain the ‘why’ from the employees’ perspective. 

“Cultural enforcement looks like saying, “If you don’t come back to the office, this is how we [the employer] are impacted.” You’re guilting people. That’s why they feel pressured. Whereas cultural leadership is saying things like, “If you come back to the office, here’s how you’ll benefit from the experience.”

One of those key employee benefits is tending to our social health.

“Work is not just a place to work. It’s also a place to generate wellbeing. Gallup’s research shows us that we’re more likely to be engaged if we have a best friend at work. That’s a person you show up for each day. I can’t remember the last time I made a friend in a Zoom meeting.”

Atlassian notes that employers often use flexible working as a scapegoat when productivity or performance drops instead of considering some of the productive measures they could take to address this, such as realigning culture and leadership approaches that suit a hybrid work environment.

“We’ve spent a lot of time asking people to come back to the office, but we haven’t really given them a good reason as to why they can’t work from home. [Some employers] don’t have that smoking gun to explain why, after having worked from home for two or three years, that [employees] can’t continue.”

Embracing new ways of working

HR leaders can help leaders drive a mindset shift that prioritises output over outcome and productivity over visibility, he says.

“[We need to ask], ‘Are you getting your job done?’ Rather than, ‘How are you getting your job done’? And that’s a completely different leadership style for people.

“Put the pin on the map to show people where they’re going, but let them choose the route to get there. We’re often telling people, ‘turn here,’ ‘go there’ – but you just need to hold them accountable to the outcome.”

You also need to rely on data where possible, he adds.

“Sometimes, you have to hold up a mirror to the consequences of certain leadership styles. So if we’re going to bring everyone back to the office, and engagement takes a huge dive, this is a really insightful piece of data to go back to leadership with. “

Clear expectations and better questions

Those in the pro-work-from-home camp will point to benefits such as greater autonomy, better work-life balance and similar levels of productivity to in-person work. Atlassian’s own research found that flexible work:

• Increased employees’ happiness (47 per cent)
• Enriched their social lives outside of work (56 per cent)
• Boosted their exercise regime (49 per cent)
• Encouraged them to adopt a new hobby (37 per cent).

Some even cite flexible work as the main reason they were able to achieve larger ‘life moments’, such as moving cities (20 per cent), purchasing a home (16 per cent) and starting a family (12 per cent).

All of these factors have bottom-line benefits for employers. But that’s not to say that remote work is always the answer. Instead, it’s about employers making their performance expectations clear and asking better questions.

“If you’re not making expectations clear, people are interpreting people’s behaviours and trying to learn on the fly, which can lead to making unhelpful assumptions. One of my favourite quotes is from a New York psychologist, Tory Eletto, who said, ‘What’s not communicated is felt, what’s felt is interpreted, what’s interpreted is often inaccurate.’”

In his culture sessions, Hatton likes to give leaders a simple set of questions to help them gather rich insights from their teams.

“I get them to ask their teams, ‘What do you need to hear, from who, how often and in what way?’ So that might look like them saying, ‘I just need a weekly WIP meeting to know what our big priorities are for the week. I need to hear it from my manager and I prefer to get that over the phone or on Teams.’

“Another question I ask is, ‘What is the problem you hope being in the office will solve?’ And instead of trying to get people in the office to solve it, ask yourself, ‘How else could we solve that problem?’”

He refers to an old parable about a village that needed to build a bridge across a river.

“The question they were asking was, ‘How do we build the best bridge to cross the river?’ And one person in the crowd says, ‘What if we ask how we cross the river?’ That opened up solutions like a boat and a channel. So one of the questions you could ask [about where to work] is, ‘What are the fundamental roles we play at work?’”

If the issue is around a lack of connection, instead of bringing people back into the office, ask the question: ‘How can we solve a lack of connection in our workplace?’ and then consider the responses of your employees. People want to feel as if they are contributing to the future of your business, so take them on the journey with you.

You never know – the answer might just be having people return to the workplace. But it’s equally plausible that more intentional remote processes are your answer.

What are your thoughts on return-to-office mandates? AHRI members can join the LinkedIn AHRI Lounge to have interesting discussions with their HR peers. Or grab your ticket to AHRI’s Convention next month for the chance to network with your peers in person.

The post 1 in 4 feel pressured to return to the workplace, resulting in ‘compliance culture’ appeared first on HRM online.

In October 2020, software company Dropbox went entirely virtual. Office seating plans across the US, Europe and in Sydney were removed. Its physical spaces were no longer workplaces in the traditional sense, but ‘studios’ – destinations for occasional in-person collaboration rather than dedicated nine-to-five workspaces. 

Banks of desks were thrown out and movable furniture was rolled in. Water coolers and conference rooms, typical spaces for colleagues to congregate, were traded for cafes and libraries. ‘Touch-down spots’ were created for coworkers to quickly catch up whenever they ventured into the building, which may be only a few times a year. 

Dropbox’s new office spaces reflected its ethos: agile, collaborative and individualised. Its guiding light was to “make work human” – one of the San Francisco-headquartered company’s core values, says Allison Vendt, its Global Head of Virtual First. 

“Virtual first is designed with the whole human in mind, not just the employee,” she says. “It’s a model bringing together the best of both the remote and the in-person experience. ‘Make work human’ translates to building a compassionate culture where employees can do their best work.”

For Dropbox, losing full-time in-person working didn’t end its organisational culture. Instead, transforming a multi-billion dollar business into a remote-first company, where employees could dictate their own schedule and place of work, meant the culture had to be recalibrated. 

Core collaboration hours – four-hour windows for synchronous work such as meetings – have been introduced, with the rest of the workday freed for teams for focus work or personal errands. Dedicated budgets have been allocated for quarterly gatherings at its studios, as well as for home-working perks. A virtual-first guide to distributed work has also been published.

Vendt says these measures have helped to infuse Dropbox with a culture that prioritises the employee’s remote working experience. Instead of copying and pasting its previous set of values, beliefs and actions, the company has redefined what these mean in a new world of work. 

“Our shift to virtual first proved to us that organisational culture isn’t built within the four walls of an office. Rather, it comes from the values and behaviours that are instilled, practised, modelled and mirrored by everyone inside the company. While the physical office was, and still can be, an obvious forum for a company’s culture to manifest itself, it’s not the only way to bring culture to life.” 

As more and more companies adopt hybrid or remote ways of working, culture will be experienced in pockets by teams. As opposed to traditional top-down workplace culture set by a CEO that then permeates through a whole corporation, smaller groups of employees are beginning to set their own standards, norms and communication styles. This is leading to the emergence of microcultures in which teams’ sense of connection is no longer necessarily attached to a workplace or organisation at large, but to the individuals they interact with on a daily basis over Zoom or Slack. 

As a result, the future of workplace culture could become fragmented, transforming the concept of the organisation as we know it. For the employees doing the actual day-to-day work this may not be an issue. However, for employers and HR leaders going forward, it raises questions as to what their role is in communicating a company’s mission, purpose and values to teams.

The emergence of subcultures and microcultures

Culture is often a catch-all phrase to describe a certain atmosphere people experience at work. Even before the pandemic, it was often experienced differently by small groups within the same organisation. 

However, in the same way we’ve seen some leaders fear losing control without teams physically working in front of them, many employers are unsure how to respond to changing workplace culture in hybrid and remote working environments. 

In fact, some leaders are concerned their culture is disappearing altogether. 

“The idea that someone sets the organisational culture from the top, and that it can be controlled, has been proven to be wrong.” – Aaron McEwan Fahri, Vice President, Research Advisory, Gartner

Misha Byrne, Partner at Brisbane-based workplace behavioural strategy firm NeuroPower, says these employers often find themselves in a state of inertia. 

“Leaders are still wanting to pull back the conversation to whether hybrid or remote is actually good, or if the office is really that bad. We need to get past that. Given that the vast majority of us will be having a version of hybrid going forward, we should instead be figuring out which muscles need to be developed to make it work successfully.” 

Aaron McEwan FAHRI, Vice President of Research and Advisory at Gartner, says many employers are confusing the loss of physical office environments with the loss of culture. He adds that leaders in these cases feel a lack of control, leading to frustration and a reluctance to fully embrace hybrid working. 

“Leaders’ jobs are often relational. Their work is focused on meetings and influencing others – work that’s better done in person. If that’s your job and the rest of the office is deserted, it makes sense they may have concerns. We’re seeing some leaders that aren’t in control anymore, with the work often being done by employees away from the office. It leaves them in an uncomfortable position – and they’re conflating that with losing workplace culture.” 

McEwan acknowledges organisational culture can be a vague term, with multiple interpretations; one that can be crudely defined and revised according to an employer’s preferences. 

Typically, it’s also communicated in a nebulous way, with bosses relying upon the office environment for it to be slowly absorbed by employees. 

“The only cultural strategy has been to rely on osmosis,” says McEwan. “‘Let’s dump everyone in the same place and somehow our values and way of doing things around here will seep into everyone.’” 

When the pandemic hit, employers couldn’t lean on this strategy to communicate culture. 

“We began experiencing culture within the teams we worked in and the work we did. Employees effectively began working in their own offices, so business leaders could no longer use physical proximity to share values that used to be on the workplace walls.” 

Conversely, as leaders’ grip on their employees loosened, the connections between teams working remotely strengthened.

Subcultures emerged alongside organic daily working practices that were an off-shoot to company dogma. 

These microcultures have grown over time, says McEwan. 

This disconnect between inflexible organisational culture and everyday microcultures has created friction for HR teams. In a February 2022 Gartner US survey of more than 200 HR leaders, 61 per cent said culture had become more important in hybrid settings than in on-site working. Yet they reported that the most challenging aspect in setting their hybrid strategy was adjusting the current workplace culture to support distributed teams.

“The idea that someone sets the culture from the top, and that it can be controlled, has been proven to be wrong,” says McEwan. “It’s sometimes been used as a means of control. But we’re seeing now that the connection to culture is to coworkers, rather than the four walls.” 

Byrne says that rather than resist the blooming of new workplace microcultures, employers should lean into it even further. 

“The leaders still adopting a top-down approach in setting their policies for teams to follow are struggling to see them stick. Instead, the organisations willing to experiment, relearn and entrust teams are overcoming the friction of hybrid working.” 

Building a stable culture in an unstable environment

Peter Burow, Founding Partner of NeuroPower, says that rather than a topdown approach to setting culture, leaders should think “inside-out”. 

“You set the principles at the top, then those are worked through at the team level, with each individual contributing their own ideas. Each team then has a contract with each other to individualise their way of working, enabling them to get the work done on their own terms.”

McEwan agrees employers still have an obligation to connect employees with the organisation’s goal. However, the journey to get there will look radically different. 

“The speed at which the world is changing, and at which organisations need to move, requires a more distributed style of leadership and decision-making. It’s about setting the big-picture stuff at the top – ‘What we’re about, where we’re going and what we need from you’ – then entrusting teams to make the best decisions on how that will happen.” 

Instead of setting a strict, hierarchical culture in place, leaders should look for a softer approach in the hybrid age of working. 

However, straying too far the other way, and allowing workplace culture to slowly drift away, means remote teams will struggle to have any sense of belonging, says Dr Sean Gallagher, Director at the Centre for the New Workforce, Swinburne University of Technology. If this innate human desire is left unfulfilled, he adds, connections are lost, and employees and organisations suffer.

“Our shift to virtual first proved to us that organisational culture isn’t built within the four walls of an office. Rather, it comes from the values and behaviours that are instilled, practised, modelled and mirrored by everyone inside the company.” – Alisson Vendt, Global Head Of Virtual First, Dropbox

“There becomes little distinction between whether you’re a full-time employee working remotely or a gig worker. Research shows the connections we have across an organisation decay over time if they’re not actively kept up. That’s the challenge of remote working – it can significantly diminish the connections between people.” 

The risk is that work becomes purely transactional. Gallagher says this can lead to an extreme where new starters join a company remotely, only ever interact with teams digitally and leave the company having never met a colleague in person. 

“In-person experiences remain critical to building culture and attracting and retaining talent,” he adds. “It’s important to build meaningful bonds between people and create stickiness to an organisation. That sense of belonging and identity in forming a workplace culture is critical.” 

How can organisations make hybrid work more human?

Without full-time in-person working patterns, forging connections and community through distributed teams and computer screens becomes much harder. 

However, the challenge provides an opportunity to rethink flawed, decades-old practices such as workplace cultures that often required employees to be at their office desks every day, leading to issues like presenteeism and impression management. Recreating workplace culture with a ‘north star’ in mind – a constant guide shining the way through the murkiness of uncertainty – can pay dividends. 

“We’ve been very intentional about ensuring the value of ‘make work human’ transcends the physical office by infusing it into our new work processes, policies and protocols,” says Vendt. “Ultimately, company culture should be something we can experience wherever we are, because it isn’t necessarily rooted in a physical space.” 

HR leaders’ role in this new version of workplace culture is to ensure the microcultures emerging via remote teams align with the organisation’s broader mission and purpose; HR becomes the connective tissue providing structure to disparate networks, helping to form a cohesive whole. 

“HR is increasingly going to have a more embedded role in teams,” says McEwan. “Their function will be to ensure the right resources are distributed to teams in the right ways so they can thrive.” 

In the next version of workplace culture, where teams enjoy greater flexibility, autonomy and a renewed sense of belonging, employers will be able to reap the benefits. 

“Working in remote or hybrid settings, we’ve seen people more able to be their authentic selves at work,” says McEwan. “If you no longer have to put on a suit and smile, step through the office door and leave yourself behind, you have greater authenticity. You’re more recognised as an individual and feel connected to a healthy working culture.” 

The office walls may no longer be visible, but that doesn’t mean organisational culture will disappear. It will simply look different. 

“Culture results from emergent properties arising out of complex systems – it will always exist,” adds McEwan. “You don’t need a head office to create it – organisations can take on many shapes and forms. 

“Employees have a big capacity to self-organise if they’re given clarity of purpose, direction and what the goal looks like.”

This article was first published in the November 2022 edition of HRM magazine.

Need help evolving your culture for a hybrid world? AHRI’s short course on managing a hybrid workforce is designed to equip you with the skills to create collaborative and future-ready teams.

The post How should HR respond to the rise of workplace microcultures? appeared first on HRM online.

In just 17 seconds, a US-based TikTok creator started a viral trend that has the potential to impact employers across the globe. It’s called ‘quiet quitting’ and, contrary to its name, it doesn’t actually have anything to do with quitting your job. Instead, it’s about rejecting the notion of going above and beyond.

“You’re still performing your duties, but you’re no longer subscribing to the hustle culture mentality that work has to be your life,” the TikToker said in his video.

The concept is said to come from China, where, last year, employees embraced what they call the ‘laying flat’ movement in a bid to rebel against arduous work hours.

TikTok, dismantling hustle culture, employees calling the shots – it all sounds very modern, but this silent disengagement from work is nothing new. It’s reminiscent of the concept of work-to-rule, a type of industrial action whereby employees perform only what’s required of them according to their contract in a bid to slow down productivity.

It’s often used in industries such as healthcare and policing as a way to send a message to employers without compromising patient or community care, as it’s less disruptive than an outright strike.

So if quiet quitting is just a modern version of work-to-rule action, should employers be shaking in their boots right now? Aaron McEwan FAHRI, Vice President of Research and Advisory at Gartner, doesn’t think so.

“If your growth strategy is dependent on discretionary effort – on extracting a rare commodity out of stone – that’s a really bad strategy because it’s incredibly difficult to control that,” he says.

Instead, he says we should view this movement as a necessary correction and an opportunity to create more engaging work cultures.

“The pointy end of the Great Resignation has probably passed. A lot of people quit their jobs and changed industries or professions. Now, what you’re seeing is the correction to create a sustainable way of working and living.

“Quiet quitting is just people saying, there’s more to life than work. Do I want to work to live, or live to work?”

Silent disengagement

Gartner’s data shows that quiet quitting is more than just an internet trend. It’s actually playing out. In the second quarter of 2022, employees’ discretionary efforts fell from 17 per cent in the previous quarter to 15 per cent on average.

This drop occurred against an interesting talent backdrop.

“While willingness to go above and beyond is declining, intent to stay with an employer is increasing,” says McEwan.

That’s what you’d expect to see in an economic environment where a recession has been predicted, he says, even if it doesn’t eventuate. When people deem the economy to be rocky, they look for stability at work and they stay put.

“Quiet quitting is just people saying, there’s more to life than work. Do I want to work to live, or live to work?”– Aaron McEwan FAHRI, Gartner

That probably rings alarm bells for employers, as it suggests they could be facing a wave of presenteeism, combined with record-high absenteeism due to COVID-19 infections and general talent shortages. Now more than ever, we need workforces that are switched on, charged up and ready to add value.

This was the only way many businesses were able to stay afloat during the pandemic; employees often had to work outside the bounds of their job descriptions. This isn’t necessarily the employers’ fault. No one could have predicted what it would be like to run a business in 2020-2021.

However, the prolonged period of instability spawned a workaholic culture, says McEwan. And, prior to the pandemic, consumeristic pursuits were already setting the scene for a ‘work hard, play hard’ culture, he adds.

So perhaps we were already on a slippery slope and the pandemic just sped up the quiet quitting movement.

Is ‘quiet quitting’ here to stay?

Unlike other internet trends, this doesn’t appear to be something that will fade into the distance in the next few weeks, says McEwan.

“My personal view, and this is nothing more than informed speculation, is that this is a more robust phenomenon that will outlast the economic cycle.”

This is partly because it aligns with broader themes that have emerged since the pandemic about decoupling from work, and also because it’s representative of the natural bell curve to emerge after years of employees working faster, harder and later to help their organisation’s weather the storm.

“Everybody stepped up to the plate. They dealt with disruption and changes to the way they worked and they learnt new digital skills. Most of the data shows that organisations experienced very significant productivity gains from this.

“Then you look at the real data on working hours through the pandemic. Australians, on average, were working six additional hours every week, and that would be a conservative figure.”

Quiet quitting could simply be a natural recalibration that workers had to bring forth in order to avoid complete burnout. And while we may see discretionary effort rise if a recession comes to fruition, as people fight to stay off the chopping block, McEwan says employers shouldn’t bank on it.

“If we consider the definition of discretionary effort, it’s going above and beyond what you are expected to do and what you’re paid to do. So, as inflationary pressures continue to eat into any wage increase gains we’ve been getting, I think people will start to consider if it’s worth putting in additional effort.

“There’s nothing like an existential crisis, and we’ve been through several of them, to remind you of the fragility of your health and your life.”

The pandemic, the bushfires, the succession of supposedly once-in-a-lifetime floods and ongoing international conflict – there’s a lot going on at once, says McEwan.

“That’s all making people think very deeply about where they invest their limited time, energy and effort. I think work is not as prominent as it used to be.

“Maybe work won’t be the centre of people’s lives moving forward. There might be a lot of executive leaders out there thinking, ‘How do we deal with this?’, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing.”

Hear more from Aaron McEwan at AHRI’s Convention on 15-17 August 2022. Registration closes on Wednesday 10 August, so don’t miss out. Book now.

Responding to the correction

These large-scale, global work movements – the Great Resignation, a rejection of businesses that don’t offer flexible work, and now, quiet quitting – represent opportunities for certain companies to lead the pack in terms of negotiating a new deal with employees. It’s a chance to fundamentally change work for the better and design win-win solutions for workers and business alike.

McEwan shares some food for thought to kick-start your approach to design more engaging and productive work cultures:

1. Reflect on where you can eliminate organisational drag 

Think about the tasks employees were doing during the thick of the pandemic when they were putting in high discretionary effort.

“Was it high-value adding work? Or was it just another report? This isn’t a chance to think about how to extract more from people with less, but rather how to reduce the amount of unnecessary labour.”

McEwan calls this reducing ‘friction points’. At AHRI’s 2020 Convention, he quoted Gartner research which suggested that on top of the 2-3 hours of overtime most people were doing each day, employees wasted another 1.9 hours each day trying to navigate systems to do their jobs.

Assess which processes need to be reconsidered, what can be cut, and where you may need to make investments to reduce the amount of friction points employees face each day, either via technology or extra people power.

2. Don’t underestimate the role of social media

By 2025, 75 per cent of the workforce is expected to be made up of millennials. And by 2030, Gen Z will account for roughly a third of the Australian workforce. 

Even though these two generations have slightly different views about work – for example, research suggests that millennials are the most likely to overwork – this is still a combined demographic that’s less likely to subscribe to the hyper-productive work mentality that many before them have set and adhered to.

“​​If you had a problem with your employer or your job in the past, and you raised that, it would have been dealt with behind closed doors,” says McEwan.

“Today, you can film your boss and put it on TikTok. About 18 months ago, I predicted that we’d see both managers and companies being ‘cancelled’ based on poor behaviours.”

This collectivization that was once only achieved via a union membership can now also be replicated in the social media world. That means this new-found power employees have discovered could very well stay in their hands.

3. Make sure to adequately resource your teams

This is one of the biggest factors in creating an environment where employees can add value and be freed up to think innovatively, says McEwan.

“It’s very hard to do your best work when you’re overworked, when you’re lacking sleep and when you’re unhealthy.”

“We have to treat employees like human beings and give them sustainable workloads.”

4. Make the work more exciting

If employees are disengaging from their work, perhaps it’s not interesting enough. 

Keep job design in mind when creating new roles in your business, and take the time to assess people’s existing roles to ensure you’re giving employees the opportunities to utilise a wide range of skills each day.

(Resources: read HRM’s guides to designing compelling jobs with the SMART work model and keeping engagement high with a remote workforce).

5. Incentivise employees differently

The fact that it’s no longer a given that employees will go above and beyond shouldn’t be considered a repudiation of your agreement with them. It should signal that you need to reconsider what you’re putting on the table.

“The data shows us that people haven’t been getting promoted and they’ve not been getting pay raises. What they’ve been getting is additional responsibilities, as the talent squeeze means that most teams are understaffed and under-resourced. And we’re seeing that wages are not rising in line with inflation. 

“I’m certainly not promoting the idea that people should slack off. But if they’re doing what they’re paid to do, and you want them to do more, you probably have to look at what’s in it for them.”

While pay rises might not be on the cards due to financial pressures, McEwan says there’s myriad other things employers can offer, including: career progression that aligns with their goals, training and development opportunities, having great managers to guide them, time to pursue personal goals or coaching/mentoring opportunities.

(Resources: read HRM’s articles on innovative ways to reward employees beyond offering more money and the research-backed benefits of giving people more time in their days).

“There’s a whole bunch of levers that organisations can pull that have a direct impact on discretionary effort. And I would argue that over the last 20 years, many of those things have been neglected.”

The pandemic has been a reminder that work is a two-way deal between employers and employees. The quiet quitting phenomenon is just a reminder for organisations to hold up their end of the bargain.

The post Employers shouldn’t fear the ‘Quiet Quitting’ trend – it’s an opportunity to do better appeared first on HRM online.

If your recruitment strategy isn’t as fruitful as you’d hope, it might be time to revisit your recruitment strategy. 

Mark Puncher, CEO of Employer Branding Australia, shares how lazy or ill-informed recruitment can have a serious impact on your organisation’s success, and offers some alternative approaches to attract top-notch talent.

1. You’re viewing recruitment as a negative transaction

The problem: If you’re treating recruitment as a distress purchase – an urgent need to tick a box and fill a position – you’ve already lost. 

“If you only think about recruitment when someone resigns, you’re always going to struggle to find great people,” says Puncher. 

And the same goes for ignoring red flags with a candidate, just to fill a role. For example, if the applicant’s values don’t align with yours, or if they aren’t interested in what your company does, there’s a good chance they may not last very long at your company. 

The solution: Listen to your gut.

“The second you resignedly say, ‘I guess we’ll just hire that person,’ – don’t hire that person,” says Puncher. “Start again and find someone who you are excited to have join the team.” 

You need to change your recruitment approach from a box to tick into an opportunity to truly grow and enrich your business. 

“Recruitment is an ongoing conversation. It’s not a hat that you don when someone resigns.

“If you only think about recruitment when someone resigns, you’re always going to struggle to find great people.” – Mark Puncher, CEO of Employer Branding Australia

“You need to do the work upfront so when you do need to fill a role, you are spoiled for choice.” 

2. Your job ads need improvement

The problem: Your job ad may be working against you. Here are some things Puncher says you may be doing wrong.

• Talking too much about your company, but never the candidate
• Not demonstrating how the job could benefit a candidate 
• Having too many bullet points in the ‘what you need’ section
• Succumbing to degree inflation and overloading it with skills the role doesn’t need

The solution: Tailor each ad to the person you hope to attract. 

“If your job ad reads exactly the same as everyone else’s, why would somebody engage?” says Puncher. 

Write to your audience, not at them. Involve them and inspire them to see themselves in the role. Reflect on what you actually need from a successful applicant. If you overload your ‘what you need to have’ section with skills that aren’t necessary, you’ll potentially scare them off.  

Puncher suggests reviewing your ads to determine:

• What skills and qualifications are mandatory?
• What’s nice to have?  
• What can you lose? 

Critically though, make sure your ads use real language – don’t hide behind cliches.

3. You employ external recruiters on a pay-per-hire model

The problem: Outsourcing recruitment can help you widen your net of applicants. And when they’re invested, strategic recruiters can bring a huge amount to the table. 

But if you’re employing multiple recruitment agencies on a pay-per-hire basis, you risk causing yourself real problems  

For example, an agency may be less likely to put in the hard yards to find the right person. They may end up pitching candidates to you who aren’t right in the race to beat out other agencies. 

The solution: Select any external partners carefully, and build a strong relationship with them, says Puncher.

If they intend to represent you and genuinely help you shape your future workforce, they need to truly understand you, your people and your culture. That takes skill, care and time. 

Alternatively, you could ask your employees to help you find great candidates. Very often, your team members have networks of people who could thrive in your company, so an internal referral program could reap benefits.

Puncher also suggests involving employees by featuring them in testimonial videos, getting them to help create job ads and sitting in on interviews to answer questions about the job and culture. They could also be in the room when a hiring decision is made.

4. You’re not displaying your authentic culture 

The problem: Nobody wants to be sold an idealised job and then face a different reality once they start. When you’re starting your recruitment campaign, be upfront about the company, its culture and the role.  

“Your recruitment campaign shouldn’t be a glossy version of your company. It should be real,” says Puncher. 

“Let’s say you’re advertising a role for a telco. Why would you have career videos with satellites and galaxies if their days will be spent in a call centre or a van? Show the vans, the call centres and the people in them!”

 The solution: Share the reality: feature the office they’d be working in and the people they’ll work with, and give them an understanding of what their day-to-day work would look like.

Part of being upfront means articulating the less-than-ideal elements of the job. For example, consider adding a line to your job ad that says “Here’s why we hope you’ll love working for us, and here’s why we fear you may not,” says Puncher. 

“When you do that, candidates are more likely to trust you on the good stuff,” he says. “More importantly, they are more prepared for what they’re getting themselves into. So you can reduce the number of times someone says, ‘This wasn’t what I was sold.’  

5. You haven’t considered your employer brand or employee value proposition

The problem: Your employer brand will shape how people inside and outside of your business perceive your company, and determine whether they think it’s worth applying for positions. 

If you’re not dedicating attention to your company’s brand and EVP, you’ll struggle to capture attention, says Puncher.

Potential applicants want to know about the fundamentals of the job, of course. But they also want to know what it will actually be like to do that job. What will they ‘get’ from a career with you, and how will the experience feel? 

 According to LinkedIn research, the number one obstacle candidates face during the job search process is not knowing what it’s like to work at an organisation. Even more tellingly, 75 per cent of them will turn to your online presence and social media to find out.  So reputation really matters.

The solution: Invest in your company’s employer brand. 

That doesn’t mean jumping into a glossy marketing or PR campaign, or focusing on perks such as free lunches and ping pong tables. 

“If people have a more negative view than positive, it doesn’t matter how good your ads are. It’s going to be a hard slog to get them to apply,” says Puncher.  

Instead, he suggests that you reframe your thinking.

“A positive employer brand is the result of a company’s genuine commitment to connecting with and understanding its people – present and future.  

“What matters to them and why should they choose you? What should they expect from you, and what do you expect of them? Remember, recruitment is the start of a truly important relationship – one that affects people’s lives and a company’s success.” 

Start by involving your people, he adds. Get their insights on what makes your company different, why they love working there and what could be improved. Ask structured, meaningful questions and ensure an environment and conversation whereby people can and will tell you the truth.  

From these insights, you can build a powerful, authentic EVP – one that doesn’t hide behind platitudes, fluff or insincerity. 

“Remember: Your EVP is a promise that can inspire and excite. But it’s also one  that you have to deliver on.”

When creating an EVP, Puncher advises homing in on:

• Who you’re hoping to attract
• The points of intersection of what matters to them, and what you can offer  
• How each pillar of your offer is actually experienced – this can be a great way to differentiate from others
• What it’s like to work there
• What employees expect of you and what you expect of them

Read HRM’s article on how to personalise your EVP. 

6. You’re making candidates jump through hoops during the interview stage

The problem: Expect someone to memorise all 112 pages of your company’s strategic plan? Laying elaborate tricks to catch them out in the interview? If this is your attitude, you’re not doing yourself any favours. 

The solution: If you think interviewers have all the power, you’ve got it all wrong, says Puncher.

“An interview is your opportunity to inspire candidates to join you. More than that, it’s your chance to create a space for a safe and open conversation, whereby the candidate and the employer can truly figure out on both sides whether this could work.”

Oh, and please don’t ask them to list their weaknesses, he adds. That is, unless you want to hear a completely rehearsed answer and learn nothing new about them. 

It’s important to discuss some of this, but you must do it meaningfully, rather than with a generic question that will drive a generic response.

Read HRM’s article on making your job interviews more effective.

7. You treat pre-boarding as an afterthought

The problem:  Just because someone accepted your job offer, that doesn’t mean they’re definitely going to join you, or that they’re inspired and ready, says Puncher. 

“That’s the point when they’re getting other offers or their current company is counter-offering.” 

Pre-boarding and onboarding will be central to them joining and outlasting their probation period.

The solution:  Invest time and money in pre-boarding. 

Puncher suggests sending them a package before they start, which includes company swag and something meaningful – such as a handwritten note from the new manager. And regardless of whether they start remotely or in person, give them an idea of what the first day, week and month will look like in the job. 

It’s also hugely important to prepare for their first day. This includes setting up their computer and the programs they’ll need, explaining home office stipends and helping them with their log-ins. 

First impressions matter, so don’t let yours tell them they’re an afterthought. When it comes to those first days on the job, be as over prepared as you can.

At the end of the day, the biggest factor in achieving your company goals – the revenue, the profit, the impact – is people,” says Puncher.

“It’s about attracting great, diverse people with the right motivations to join, stay and shape the future with you. And when you truly connect, this vital partnership really will change lives.” 

Parts of this article were first featured in the August 2022 edition of HRM Magazine.

Hear from Employer Branding Australia’s COO David Concannon CPHR about effective recruitment strategies at AHRI’s Convention on 15-17 August. Register today.

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We’ve all worked alongside a bad apple at some point. There’s the person who speaks over you in every.single.meeting; there’s the office gossip who stirs up trouble just for the sake of it; and don’t even get me started on the passive aggressive coworker who’s always trying to tear you down.

These negative micro-behaviours may seem innocuous, but when left unchecked the consequences can be dire.

New research from Atlassian found that 26 per cent of 2000 people surveyed across Australia and the US reported working with a bad apple. Worryingly, 14 per cent said that person was their manager. These people were found to poison an otherwise cohesive team culture and made their colleagues more likely to resign.

Obviously, these aren’t the types of employees you want dominating your workplace culture, so how can you filter them out of your organisation? Atlassian Futurist Dom Price has a few ideas.

Are you creating them?

Before learning how to screen out a bad apple, it’s worth assessing if you’re doing anything to perpetuate their behaviour.

In an article for the AFR about this research, Price posed an interesting question: are employers hiring bad apples or are they creating them?

Speaking to HRM, Price suggests traditional work cultures could very well be to blame.

“Many employers have created a recognition system that supports those people. They don’t get punished, they get put on a pedestal,” says Price, who is also a member of AHRI’s Future of Work advisory panel.

This might look like someone being praised for surpassing their KPIs, even though they threw people under the bus in the process. Or it could be awarding an outspoken employee with a promotion because they’re perceived to have better ‘people skills’, but they’ve actively blocked others from having the space to flourish.

“Then [other people] look at them and think, ‘Well, that behaviour led to success, so I’ll just mirror that.’ And it becomes systemic. The person who speaks the loudest or is a little more aggressive, is suddenly called ‘assertive’. And you think, ‘Really? Are those the behaviours we want? Organisations that have a desire for creativity, innovation and adaptation aren’t going to get that in that environment.”

When bad apples are left to their own devices, the good people in your organisation are likely to head for the door, as we know from previous research that many people would rather quit than have an uncomfortable conversation with a colleague.

“Or, even worse, they stay but become totally disengaged. They just toe the party line.”

Add a values test to your hiring

In some instances, however, you may be hiring them. A bad apple is often well-equipped to charm their way through a job interview.

While it’s impossible to completely eliminate the chance of a bad apple slipping through, Atlassian has done its best by introducing a ‘values interview’ into its recruitment processes.

This is a portion of the interview that outlines to prospective hires how they are expected to act while at work. Each interview panel will include a ‘value interviewer’, not to focus on the candidate’s technical know-how but their values and culture alignment alone.

“The values interviewer has veto rights,” says Price. “I was the values interviewer for a role recently. Technically the person was really good. They’d got really good marks in their first two interviews. But I said, “I’m a no” and, after we had a discussion, [the rest of the panel said], “Okay, we’ll let [the candidate] know.

“As the HR community, we need to step up to the fact that if we don’t do anything, we’re complicit. If we don’t do anything, that’s choosing to do something.” – Dom Price, Futurist, Atlassian

“It was about one of our values which is ‘be the change you seek’. That’s a very important value to us because as we scale, we can’t hire people who need to be told how to drive change. We need people who say, “You know what? I don’t like the way that’s working over there. I’m going to work out why and I have the intent to make it better.'”

The candidate was asked how they’d respond to a friction point they might face in the workplace.

“It wasn’t a pass or fail question. We just wanted to learn about their process. And this person’s response was about how they’d complain and it being upper management’s fault.”

After a second and third opportunity was given to the candidate to change their response, it became clear this wasn’t someone who would take ownership or drive change.

“I said to them, ‘I don’t think you’re going to enjoy this environment because that’s a fundamental expectation of how we work. If we’re having an hour-long meeting, I’ll give you five minutes to whinge about a problem and then 55 minutes to solve it.”

These value interviews are two-way, Price adds. He believes it’s important for candidates to get an authentic view of what life at the company would be like.

“The mistake a lot of people make with Atlassian is that they look at our videos and website and think, ‘That would be a really cool place to work’. And it is, but we hold a really high bar for our people to innovate, delight and perform every day. And that’s not an environment for everyone.”

There’s great benefit in being able to present the realities of working at your company, warts and all. It could prevent you from the costly situation of losing talent three or six months into the role because they’re not experiencing the culture they were sold.

It’s inevitable that the odd bad apple will slip through, says Price, but often they’ll change.

“When I was hired by Atlassian, I had some very archaic ways of working. I was a product of my old environment. Thankfully, someone saw some potential in me. Again, it’s not a pass or fail thing. It’s about saying, has this person got the potential to drive improvement and adaptability? When you have that mindset, you get people who will help you sustainably grow.”

Take the individual focus out of performance reviews

If bad apples slip through the values interview, they’re usually picked up in Atlassian’s new take on performance reviews. 

“Like everyone else, it used to be based on individual performance. Say you’re the bad apple. You’ve nailed your sales targets, but you’ve been a complete a***hole in how you got there, you’re going to get an A star in most companies because you made your number. Then you go on to repeat that behaviour.”

At Atlassian, individual performance only accounts for a third of your performance review score. Another third looks at how you perform within your team.

“It asks how you turned up for your team. So all of a sudden your peers and teammates are important stakeholders. That makes things demonstrably different.”

The final third looks into how you lived the company’s values.

“How you got somewhere is just as important as what you got,” says Price. 

“A lot of companies will say that, but then their reward system is like, ‘Just do the number. I don’t care how you get there, or if you burn people out in the process, as long as you make the number, we’ll support that.’

“Flipping that to make outcomes account for a third [of their performance review] has made a massive difference for us because it’s basically eliminated the ‘brilliant jerk’. These are people who deliver, but look at the damage they cause. We said we’ve got no room for them.”

Need to stamp out bad behaviour in your organisation, such as bullying or harassment? AHRI’s short course is designed to arm you with effective resources to effectively manage these situations. Sign up for the next session on 5 July 2022.

Solve at team level

Eliminating the bad apple behaviour doesn’t mean firing the person who’s exhibiting it, says Price.

“That can often be futile. It’s about understanding the dynamics of how a team comes together and thinking about how you can democratise that in a way that every team owns [their values].”

Last year, HRM spoke with Price about the unhealthy state of teams across the globe. Employers were often trying to tackle things such as poor wellbeing or cultural issues at an organisational level, which is where inertia often kicks in.

“So we say to leaders, ‘You own the health of your team. You can’t go to HR for this.’ Then we ask, ‘How can we help you do that?’

“This team-centric approach means that if someone with bad apple tendencies slips through – and we all have our moments – a team can go back to their social contract which dedicates how they communicate and how they deliver feedback, for example. This approach not only helps our teams to succeed, it has helped us to stay nimble. Then it’s not the onus of HR alone to drive performance.”

So what should you do next time you see a bad apple in action? 

“As the HR community, we need to step up to the fact that if we don’t do anything, we’re complicit. If we don’t do anything, that’s choosing to do something.”

If you’re deciding that this behaviour isn’t something you stand for, HR has to start asking questions such as: ‘How can we empower people to uphold these values in the hiring process? How can we make sure our onboarding experience is giving people a really good taste of what it means to work for our company? How do we make sure our performance reviews are more rounded? And how do we democratise team health?

“These are all things that HR are involved in that will reduce the chances of hiring a bad apple, or lessen the impact if one slips through,” says Price.

“The quicker we call out that behaviour, either as peers, as bosses, or, if you feel safe enough, as subordinates, the quicker that person has the chance of changing or self-selecting out.”

The post How to avoid a ‘bad apple’ slipping through the cracks appeared first on HRM online.

The words ‘unprecedented’ and ‘pivot’ might make many wince after two years working and living with COVID-19. However, the mention of hybrid work can still yield rave reviews, impassioned anecdotes and even the odd quizzical look.

As our professional lives have continued to evolve from the learnings of lockdown life and work, HR executives have revolutionised the hybrid work model and how it functions, dispelling myths to show that hybrid work is a driver of commercial success and people goals. 

Read on to learn how Australia’s most innovative HR leaders have implemented hybrid work with, yes, unprecedented results.    

Behind the scenes of Telstra’s hybrid work revolution

At Telstra, there was a desperate demand for technology skills even before COVID-19. Once the pandemic hit, there was no other choice but to drive innovation with a people-first perspective, deep diving into a hybrid work model that has since seen the telco thrive.

Speaking on season two of LinkedIn Talent Streams, Alex Badenoch – Telstra’s Group Executive of Transformation, Communication and People – dissects what makes a hybrid work environment thrive, beginning with frank conversations about mental health and wellbeing. 

From there, it became apparent that despite some calls for a return to the traditional 9 to 5, 5 days per week office model, Telstra saw an opportunity to turn the Great Resignation into the Great Realignment with an approach that emphasises choice and blended experience with maximum flexibility.

While misconceptions surrounding productivity and working from home may be changing, Badenoch outlines that a hybrid work model creates more jobs and increases productivity by over 20 per cent, with the added benefit of growing employee engagement in the process. It also helps in recruiting the best talent, as well as increasing equity for employees with accessibility needs and creating a non-gendered parental leave policy, resulting in a 50:50 gender split of employees on parental leave at Telstra.

Badenoch has a  ‘don’t knock it until you try it’ philosophy, and still  advocates for  the role of the office, believing it to be important in traditional processes such as onboarding However, she says the hybrid work model needs to be rethought holistically for it to be successful.

Removing barriers while hitting commercial KPIs and people goals, Telstra’s all-in approach to hybrid work is clearly here to stay.

Discover how companies can navigate the shifting talent landscape and create a human-centred company culture in LinkedIn’s 2022 Global Talent Trends report.

Fungibility, hybrid work and AI with NAB

At National Australia Bank (NAB), creating a hybrid workforce begins with a strategic vision and values at the top. 

As Susan Ferrier, Group Executive of People and Culture at NAB reveals, the financial institution’s hybrid work model is borne from three key guiding principles: for every employee to have a great leader; for all staff to have meaningful, exciting, and challenging work; and to create a platform for the NAB workforce to experience real investment in their talent and elevate their skills across the board.

Ferrier details the concept of fungibility as the skeleton key to a hybrid work framework. 

With an organisational philosophy focused upon the acquisition of skills to create maximum capacity and capability in one’s portfolio, NAB sees the future of work as being centred upon organisational breadth, correlating with employees’ increased appetite for learning opportunities as a result of COVID-19. 

Noting that hybrid work is not just a balance of office attendance versus work-from-home arrangements, Ferrier emphasises the importance of showing care for staff in an entirely different, holistic manner compared to the pre-pandemic workforce.

Envisioning the role of CHROs in this new era as imperative to challenging the status quo with insight, data and diagnosis, NAB is beginning to explore the full capabilities of AI in recruitment, noting its accuracy in scouring CVs and producing skillset insights that result in faster and more accurate hiring decisions. 

Combining technological innovation with a people-first approach has resulted in hard-earned results for NAB, an approach that Ferrier sees as intrinsic to the financial institution’s success as we learn to live and work alongside COVID-19.   

Click here to find out more about LinkedIn Talent Streams and how people leaders in Australia are reimagining people and culture in the world of work.

The post Why hybrid work is here to stay, for the good of people and culture appeared first on HRM online.