8.1 Developing your workforce
As we came out of the pandemic there was a focus on the ‘great resignation’ and the impact this has for organisations, such as considering how you retain existing staff or attract new staff when the demand is greater than supply.
Where competitive salaries, which can be challenging for public sector HEIs, cannot be offered, the focus on the employee experience, the culture and opportunities within the organisation become more important. How these are communicated and implemented requires a commitment to change, not just in the way an organisation operates, but also in its polices and processes. In the video contributors Jessica Leigh Jones, Elise Lockyer and Jacob Morgan provide insights into developing your workforce and the employee experience.
Download this video clip.Video player: hyb_1_2022_sept128_creating_a_good_employee_experience_compressed.mp4
Transcript
JESSICA LEIGH JONES MBE
At iungo, we work with organisations to help them embed immersive learning, flexible working, and remote working, and digital practices into their strategy and into their employee value proposition to help them really prepare a future-fit workplace.
And I think the critical thing there is around employee value proposition and how you utilise some of these technologies in your onboarding processes, in your learning, and development processes, and how you use them to really optimise the value that your employees can create for your organisation.
Since the pandemic, companies have really got to grip with how onboarding needs to change. It needs to become much more personalized to the individual. I think we've got a much better awareness of mental health, of wellbeing, of the need and the importance of work life balance, but also harnessing people's individual skills.
They're not just a number in the workplace. They're there to create value. And so onboarding now, should be, at least, a much more personal process for an employee to go through. If we think about an employee value proposition, there are three levels to it.
So you've got your transactional layer of an employee value proposition, which is all about salary, and holidays, and those contractual benefits that you get. The middle tier is really about well-being and the employee experience.
And that really comes through now in the onboarding process, so the different types of benefits that you might offer an individual. But the top layer, possibly the most important layer, is about purpose. It's about the emotional connection between the employee and the organisation.
And I think most organisations that have really come out of the pandemic doing well and growing their workforce, rather than struggling to recruit and retain staff, have really managed to tap into that purpose and find something that links those employees to that overall mission. So, in some ways, the skills that managers and leaders need in a digital environment are actually not that different to the skills that we needed in a traditional environment.
The difference is there is a greater need. And the gap, if you like, is exacerbated, if we don't have those skills. So the core skills would be communication and how you embed communication channels throughout your organisation, how you make sure the right information is getting to the right people at the right time, but also how that network of communication happens within the organisation, rather than in those vertical channels.
I think that is a big change in a digital workplace. We've got a really good opportunity to have that network of relationships and connections. Managing expectations, it's always been important. We used to refer to it as the psychological contract.
When am I expected to turn up for work? When would I be expected to leave the workplace? Can I go offsite for my lunch break? It's turning that now into what are the expectations in a digital workplace?
Is it OK to start work at 10:00? Well, maybe it is, maybe it depends on your job. Is it OK to work at 2 o'clock in the morning? Some of my guys certainly do. So it's really understanding and bringing it back to bare bones on what are the key success factors for your organisation?
And how do you translate that into some guidelines and some expectations that employees can follow?
ELISE LOCKYER
Employee experience, quite simply, is the experience that you, as an employee, you get at any point within the employee life cycle. So the employee life cycle, for me and my team, when we're talking about it, is the first interaction that you have with Sonovate.
And that might be a job description or any piece of information that you might read on Sonovate, on a website, to the first conversation you have with us, when you're coming to discuss a potential opportunity. It will go right the way throughout the recruitment process, through to your offer process, onboarding, how we train, develop, engage you into the role, how we support you in learning new skills, how we discuss your individual values, your drivers, your motivations, and how we carry out what we call a best self-review.
Which, in old language, would be an appraisal. How do we enable you to bring, be, become your best selves within Sonovate. And by your best selves, it means your individual best self, you. Every single person within the business is different.
Every single person is driven by different things, motivated by different things. And we want to understand each and every person's individual motivations, drivers, desires, skills to be able to enable them to come on their individual journey with Sonovate.
But as part of a wider, more understanding team that will enable them to join their career and grow. And it goes right the way through then to the stage where they may decide to leave us and we part ways. So it's making sure that we really think about every step of that process and how we enable and support our people to come and be exceptional within the roles that they fulfil.
In terms of employee experience and the impact that has on culture, they sit absolutely hand in hand. If you're driven to provide your employees the best experience that they can have along the whole employ life cycle with you, then culture is going to be pretty important to you.
Is going to be at the top of your priorities. And a culture is really something that's created by tying together all of the experiences of all the individuals and what they bring to the business. Now when we talk about an employee experience, an exceptional employee experience, where you can bring, be, and become your best selves, and the individualisation within that, we're talking about celebrating the differences that people bring.
We're talking about how do we use people's superpowers. Whatever that may be, it could be a newer diverse individual, who is exceptional at a certain part of their job. And they could come on board and bring that.
And as part of the team, you have people that work together collaboratively to deliver something completely different and exceptional. It could be that you have somebody from a different background or somebody from a different ethnicity. It could be anything.
It's really about embracing all the differences that we have within people-- within Sonovate and external to Sonovate to ensure that, as a team, we work really well, collaboratively. We're a well-rounded team. That can drive success full of outcomes strategically, commercially, and collectively.
So organisations need to consider how it comes down to the employee lifecycle. It comes down to every single point that an employee will travel on throughout their journey within a business. So you need to think about how you want to operate, as a business.
What are your values? What are your behaviors? What's really important for you? What's the strategic vision of the business?
What's the vision? What's the short-term plan versus what's the long-term plan? And if you understand they're your foundation. They're your base line. And moving on from that, is then, how do you talk to people?
How do you support people? How do you bring people on the journey, right the way from your recruitment process, to onboarding, to developing, to providing feedback and growing, to training, to compensation and rewards, to, at some point, potentially leaving the business?
It's making sure that you go through every single step of it and ensuring that you are really clear as to what's important to you and how you operate the processes throughout all of those steps. Meaningful connections are only meaningful, if they are truly authentic.
And I think the most important thing to note that, historically, you would have had a very-- if you think of push and pull style of communication, you would have historically had a very push style of communication, potentially within organisations, where the senior leadership team or the executive team would have pushed information down to their employees, and not necessarily had the opportunity to have two-way conversations for them to ask questions to really gain an understanding. And even if they did, they may not have fully listened to what was truly being said.
JACOB MORGAN
To create great employee experiences, I think, there are a few things that organisations need to understand. And they can focus on. Number one, is to understand what I call the employee experience equation, which is culture times technology times physical space equals employee experience.
Meaning, that every leader, every organisation needs to understand that there are three environments that they can control, and shape, and design for - culture, technology, and space.
There are 10 things for culture. There are three things for technology. And there are four things for space. But broadly speaking, those are the three environments. And organisations-- leaders just need to understand that, hey, these are the three things that we can design and create for.
That's number one. Number two is I think leaders need to understand the moments that matter in the lives of their employees. We traditionally have this concept of the employee life cycle, which a lot of people know. It's the circular image.
And it's attract, hire, nurture, retain, transition, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The problem with that is that that's not how employees view their time with you. If you were to go to any one of your employees and say, hey, what stage are you in? They're going to look at you like you're nuts.
Like, what do you mean what stage am I in? Who are you? But instead, if you go to one of your employees and say, hey, how is it going at the company? They're going to respond to you in terms of moments.
Oh, you know, I'm working on this really big project. I just got promoted. I'm having a really hard time with this client. It's moments. And so leaders need to understand the moments that matter in the lives of their employees.
These could be personal moments, or these could be work-related moments. Buying my first house. I'm going through a divorce. We had our first child.
What are these moments, whether personal or professional, that matter in the lives of your employees and how do you design experiences around them. A classic one that a lot of employees, a lot of organisations get wrong is an employee's first day on the job.
How many times do you hear stories, an employee's first day on the job? And it's like, you know, nobody greets them. They get to their desk. They have a laptop that's folded down with a post note on it that says welcome.
They try to log in to things. They can't access anything. They've got to go to IT. They eat lunch by themselves.
It's a terrible experience on day one. And then they get home, and their spouse or a significant other says, hey, honey. How was your day? You say, man, it sucked. Nobody even knew I was there.
I felt like a cog. I had lunch by myself, like it was terrible. And immediately, from day one, you're kind of like, no, I don't know if this is the right choice for me. So moments that matter in the lives of your employees are crucial.
Another thing that organisations can do, you put people in positions of power who care. I can talk to you about employee experience all day long. But if you have leaders in your company, who are like, no, command and control.
I'm going to tell you what to do. You shut up and do your job. It doesn't matter how much I tell you. It doesn't matter what books I recommend.
Like, that's how it's going to be. And I've actually talked to a lot of CEOs, a lot of leaders in organisations who are making changes to their leadership team. And they're being very upfront and saying, look. If you're not on board with this new direction, then either these leaders are going to end up leaving the company.
They're going to transition. We're going to try to coach them and mentor them. If they're not able to get on board, they can't be part of this company. And we're going to see more and more of that going forward. So put people in positions of power who care about employee experience and putting people first.
And the last thing that I can recommend is to treat your organisation much more like a laboratory and less like a factory. Factories are linear. They're process-centric. They're all about the status quo.
It's the pyramid hierarchy, right? That's how the factories operate. Laboratories, on the other hand, they test. They experiment. They innovate.
They embrace failure. There's coaching. There's data. That's how we need to think about this stuff.
You're not going to get everything right the first time, when it comes to employee experience. You're going to make mistakes. People might get angry. People might get frustrated. That's OK.
It's part of the process of learning what your employees care about and what they value. Because, really, what we're doing, we're creating experiences with our employees, not for them. But I think those are four places, where organisations can start to create better experiences for their employees.
No, I mean, when I think about the evolution of employee experience image, I think everything is still just as relevant now. In fact, I think we are now just barely getting started with that employee experience environment. We've talked about it for years.
But organisations, kind of, are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's nice to have. We'll get to it one day. Then the pandemic happened, and now it's kind of like front and centre. So now, more and more, we're seeing companies really focus on that. Nothing has changed, except, I think, the emphasis and the focus on employee experience now has never been greater.
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Activity 24: What are workers hopes and fears for new ways of working?
Timing: 10 minutes
Read the following article from the Guardian, and the PwC summary of their Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2022 and think about the video above. Consider why people leave an organisation, whether generational expectations are different, and how might your organisation be better equipped to retain staff?
Turns out the Great Resignation may be followed by the Great Regret [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]
While retaining staff is important, organisations also need to consider how to attract staff, and what skills and experience they want to bring into an organisation. The workforce is continually evolving as new opportunities open, so organisations have the dual challenges of retention and skills gaps. Often it is the most valuable employees who will seek new opportunities.
Ensuring that strategies for recruitment consider the new environments and needs of the organisations allows for more effective planning and efficient recruitment. Those involved in recruitment need to develop the skills to not only attract the right people, but where salary expectations cannot be met, have innovative strategies around reward, reputation and opportunities to ensure their organisation is an attractive offer. The recruitment process should be a positive one for all involved, and recruiters need to ensure that the capabilities and competencies are met by designing clear and effective job descriptions, selling the organisation and considering new approaches for assessing potential candidates.
Internal recruiters who may not be specialist in certain fields need to work collaboratively with specialist units within their organisation to understand the needs and requirements, and to consider their competitors, especially where salaries are not as attractive as other organisations.
Continual workforce planning and strategy needs to become a priority; the CIPD workforce planning process, shown in the diagram below, provides the steps that should be taken. Collating the right data and information to understand the organisation and its environment is critical. Data will ensure that you can effectively analyse your organisation’s workforce to determine what your actual needs are.
Activity 25: Understand your workforce planning
Timing: 20 minutes
How your organisation approaches work planning will differ. In the video below contributors share insights about approaching recruitment and retention of the workforce.
Download this video clip.Video player: hyb_1_2022_sept129_approach_to_recruitment_compressed.mp4
Transcript
ELISE LOCKYER:
So recruiting for hybrid working now, some of the practices have remained the same. And some of them have changed. What I would say is, previously, we'd have probably wanted to meet individuals much sooner along the recruitment process than we would do today.
The fantastic thing about adapting to change and using technology is that, immediately, you can meet face to face via Zoom, build a rapport, and start to really have that first-- at least, first line of recruitment processes carried out in a way where we can really get to know the individual, have visuals on them.
They get to know us. And then we enhance it with a second stage of meeting face-to-face, where possible. We do carry out technical tests. We always have done that, certainly, within our technology roles.
And now, it's an opportunity where we would have held those in-house, previously. People can take those away. Do those at home. Complete them for us in their own time, and return them to us. But what I would say that's really changed with our recruitment processes and practices throughout the change pre-pandemic to where we are today, is our real focus on understanding and assessing behavioural qualities of our candidates and making sure that they have the alignment to our values and our behaviours as a business to ensure that they are bought in to who we are, how we operate, and what we do.
So when they join us, their behaviours, how they work from home, how they work when they are in the office, how they communicate, all align to what we're doing because they are skills that you cannot necessarily train and evolve. They're skills that need to be innate within individuals.
And we really look for those to enhance our employee experience, client experience here at Sonovate. In terms of wider businesses and how they are now operating their recruitment processes, you do notice that a lot of them are looking to speed up their recruitment process to ensure that they are moving the candidate through the process from initially discussing the role to closing them, and offering the opportunity much more quickly than they probably would have done historically.
Now in part, that's because they can use the technology solutions to move through that process much, much quicker. But also will have been because there is such a huge demand on skill and talented candidates today.
That if you don't move quickly, you do potentially-- you may potentially lose them to other companies.
SPEAKER 2:
Thank you.
ELISE LOCKYER:
Our goal as a people team over the last 12 months has been focused on retaining and attracting new talent. So it is hugely important that we do both. Our first line of defence against attracting new talent is to retain the talent that we've got.
And I've already alluded to, but the cost of finding, acquiring, onboarding, getting people bought into your values, and behaviours is huge not only in time, but the actual financial cost of doing so.
So it is really important that we are proactive in the way that we look after our staff, understand where their development needs are, understand their own desires in their career and where they want to get to, and how we can support them in doing that, both on the job, learning from their colleagues around them, but also then in more formal and structured training.
Of course, there are times where we can't build those skills internally. And we do have to look externally. So I think about this year, alone, we've had more than 25 internal promotions. We really value the people that have been on the journey with us.
And as we are looking to expand the business and grow the skills that they've had along that journey with us are, in some cases, absolutely irreplaceable. Of course, where there are specific skills, where we just don't have within the business, then we will absolutely look to attract those externally.
And that's where the behavioural and values interview elements come in to make sure that we have the absolute technical skills that we need, but they also buy in and live our values and behaviours, too. There are so many unknowns. And all of that is a huge opportunity for change, evolution, growth.
And I'm excited to be at the forefront of forming and understanding what that looks like moving forward. And I think we should be really looking at how do we tap into a range of different recruitment solutions to enable us to really find people that come from diverse backgrounds, that have different skill sets, that have different drivers and motivations to come in and embrace the world of work, as it is today.
I think the brilliance of hybrid working and the change in the world of work that we have is that we will have, and I've mentioned it throughout. But we'll be able to tap into many different recruitment sources.
And that would be people who are changing career later on in life, that live in Timbuktu. It doesn't matter where they live because we can tap into their skills, their experience, their resources. We can open up and break down the barriers of having to employ people in and around the location of your office.
MATT WINTLE:
When focusing on the skills that we require to run our business, there's so many different facets that we need to consider. And particularly, in our sector, where the technology has really accelerated over the last 10 years, and its exponential accelerates, accelerates, accelerates, so it's very difficult to grow that type of talent within your business.
But the risk you run, if you always bring that talent from external, especially at a senior level, is that you start to water down some of the culture that you've grown in that business over the years. And that balance is a really difficult one to strike.
Bringing external people in is not the wrong thing to do, in the right circumstances. So if you need that injection of knowledge, you just don't have it in your business, then that's fine. But I think you need to be very aware of the balance because some of these jobs are trainable, that people can learn how to do them.
And, for example, at Admiral, we've got 10,000 employees. There are people within that employee pool who will have the skills already maybe. But certainly, the aptitude to be able to do some of these jobs that are available in the business.
So the way that we deal with that is we have schemes that allow people to be mobile across the different roles in the business and offer people the training and education from maybe a call centre role into a digital role, or a data role. And that can be really successful. And it means that people who've been at Admiral for a long time, bring with them all the things that they know about the business.
It's interesting in the last five to 10 years the balance did shift a little bit more towards looking external for some of these key roles and knowledge. And I think that's OK. Because as I said, the industry is catching up in terms of technology.
But we're looking to redress that balance now and make sure that we give our internal staff the opportunity to go for some of these roles. Because these roles are where the future is. The future is data, and digital. It's inevitable that that's where we're heading.
So you want your people to develop those skills and move into those areas. So that's what we do. We offer people opportunity, but we acknowledge that, sometimes, that's not always going to be the answer.
And we try and strike that balance the best we can. In terms of having a senior team in the business that understands the business well, but also can understand the new technologies that are in the market that are going to help drive the business forward, I think there are a number of solutions to that.
The first thing I'd say is don't underestimate what people are capable of. I've seen people move from very different roles. I'm a good example. I was CIO at Admiral. And now, I run talent.
It is doable. And I've seen people move from investor relations, into claims into ops, into all the different areas of the business. So people at a very senior level, probably, do have the capacity to be able to pick these things up.
So my view is explore inside, first, because there's quite often an opportunity that you didn't realise was there. And a good model that we're starting to test now is how-- if you look at the bottom line of the cost of this to the business, it's actually more cost effective to say. Well, actually, I'm going to bring a consultant in for 12 months.
They might cost me a bit of money for that 12 months. But they're going to help educate you on the gaps that you've got. They'll stay. You'll get that knowledge, and then they'll go.
Well, if you balance that out versus bringing somebody in on a full time salary, OK, over the first year, you might lose out. But over 10 years, you definitely don't. Plus, you've got someone who's in the business already, who gets that new injection of knowledge, which is great for the continuity of the business.
And it's great for motivation of staff because other people see that happening. And think there's great opportunity here for me, too. So I'm a firm believer that if you've got a medium to large organisation, unless you're consciously looking around the organisation for what talent you've got and the opportunities that are available, you will miss opportunity.
When bringing new people into the business, especially at either senior level, managerial, or senior level with technology or specialists, I think it's really important to have the right type of person, somebody who's there to help your staff be the best they can be.
And you want your employees to know that that's why they're there. And there is reason for that. And I think the way that you set that up is really important. Because, if you don't do it that way, there is a risk that you bring somebody in, and the team feel a bit disenfranchised.
They feel like somebody is coming in because they don't know what they're doing. That balance is really important. So I would always advocate bringing somebody in who's going to fit culturally, and who has a clear mission to educate the people that they're working with.
And the same goes for digital. And some of the other things that we're talking about as the 2.0 employee of the future. So, it, definitely, isn't a one size fits all. And you need to do the work to understand how that map looks and who needs what in terms of knowledge.
A great way of understanding what skills and knowledge that your employees are going to need for the future is to draw out a heatmap. So, if you look at the different roles that you've got and understand the capability that they require now, and then map out the capability they're going to require into the future, you can then start to understand the types of skills that they're going to need.
And when you've got that matrix, then you can start thinking about, do they have it? Do they not? How much focus do I need to put into each of these areas? And you can prioritise it by business need.
So I think that picture that you draw, even though, it takes time to get to, is very powerful. And it allows you to do a bit of planning. And it allows you to prioritise the learning and knowledge that your business needs.
Recruiting into the business has changed. And it's changed quite drastically over the last few years because employees are looking or prospective employees are looking for particular things. Now you'll never take salary off the table.
Salary will always be important. There are certain type of people who are looking for a job, and that's the most important thing, and rightly so. People need to put bread on the table.
But what we're also seeing is people want more than that. And actually, the competition for talent because of the gig economy, is very different to what it used to be. Somebody can earn an hourly rate that's very similar in delivering food as they can working in a call centre.
So that's changed the dynamic quite fundamentally. So you need to do something on your package. If you stand still, you're going to be in trouble. So let's not park that. That is something to deal with.
However, what we see is that's not everything that people are looking for. So let me talk about what the candidates are looking for, first, then I'll talk about what we're looking for. So what we see is a candidate wants to know that they're going to be looked after.
They'd like to know that they're going to be better, after they've been with you than they were before. So you're going to invest in them being better than they were, at whatever it is that they want to do.
They'd like to know that there's a career there for them. And they'd like to know that they have some flexibility in the way that they arrange their lives around work. So there's a lot of power now in prospective employees. And I think you have to-- as a recruiter, you have to acknowledge that is the case.
You have to refresh all your adverts. You have to sell the dream to these people. But you have to sell the dream that's real because the worst-case scenario is you sell a dream. And then people come into the business. And that's not what they get. And they leave. That's a very expensive way to do it.
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Reviewing your recruitment process and who is involved is important for ensuring that you have the capability and skills in order to be successful for the future.
Research your organisation’s approach to workforce planning, and if you have been involved in recruitment, reflect on your own experience. Reflecting on the video and your research consider what you might do different in the future.