By Kara Atkinson

In the digital era, fast-paced, competitive business environments reward those who are quick to respond to new opportunities and market challenges. Trust plays a vital role in the success of these initiatives, providing a cornerstone for building strategic partnerships, establishing a reputation, embracing digital transformation, and more.

Today, this once-stable foundation is crumbling under the pressure of royal commissions, and large-scale data breaches faced en-masse by organisations in every industry, and we’re quickly losing our footing. This sobering trend is made apparent in a new survey conducted by Harvard Business Review, in which nearly two-thirds (63%) of senior executives at large enterprises throughout the world stated that trust among people, businesses, and institutions has declined over the past two years. Further, after 20 years of research, the Great Places to Work Institute found that experiencing a high level of trust, between leaders and employees, is the primary defining characteristic of the very best workplaces.

The challenges

When looking at recruitment, if the process for joining a workplace is engineered through a broken vehicle, then trust is difficult to establish.

Leaders deal with subjective candidate vetting; their recruitment firm only shortlists the people on the market at that time rather than a shortlist of the best people.

On the other side, the candidate deals with unreturned calls, the black hole of resume submissions, and last-minute internal candidate competition and an emotional minefield of career guidance from short term relationships with inexperienced recruitment consultants.

The recruiter deals with outdated, generic job descriptions, usually supplied by their clients. The market is corrupted by over promotion of the same roles. Also, everyone competes in a time-stamped environment where speed wins over quality.

The environment

Hiring is never easy. According to a study by Leadership IQ, 46% of newly-hired employees will fail within 18 months, while only 19% will achieve unequivocal success. This lack of vision keeps companies from achieving the holy grail of business outcomes: Trust. This is what keeps teams drowning in a sea of mediocrity and what derails once-promising leadership careers. And this stops trust from developing.

Career ladders are long gone – where once a person signed onto an organisation at 21, followed the rules, were incrementally promoted along the way and retired with a gold watch. As companies have thinned out, leadership positions have disappeared, not to be seen again.

Career pyramids have replaced the ladders. The further up the pyramid people move, the hotter the competition for the top spot and the failure rates are staggering. Harvard Business Review puts the failure rate among management hires at 60% and the consequences of failure derail a once-promising career and cost the organisation time, money and trust.

The way forward

It is time for the recruitment industry to rewrite the rules of recruitment. Not just improve it, but, just as Uber did to the taxi industry, they need to transform and disrupt it. Every recruiter is an ‘expert non-transactional specialist with a proprietary search methodology who has access to deep global networks.’ Where is the recruiter who builds their business, and yours, on a foundation of competence, bespoke communication and trust?

Leaders must understand that a true employee value proposition is not only written in the first line of a job ad but is permeated through every touchpoint their prospective employee has.

Kara Atkinson is an executive recruitment expert with 18 years’ experience in helping people continue to build and transform themselves throughout their careers.

By Michelle Sales

Think of the last time you had to deal with some kind of performance issue. Maybe an individual had stopped working cooperatively or seems less engaged in their work.

We think these individuals are being uncooperative or unreasonable, which leads to performance management to try and fix the issue.

This then spirals out of control: employee engagement continues to decline, performance issues become more challenging and the divide gets even larger, often leading to employee resignation or, worse, firing of potential talent.

The real issue here is not the individual themselves. It is the lack of connection that individual feels.

Studies show there is a connection deficit in workplaces today. For example, employee research completed by the Pew Research Center and the Ken Blanchard Companies reports 81% of people say their leaders don’t listen, and 36% rarely or never receive performance feedback, while 67% wish they did.

Most people, however, would rather leave a job than have a conversation to address a workplace issue. That’s a real shame – not to mention a real problem!

So what to do?

Digital detox

The ability to connect in our selfie-obsessed society has never been easier – at least online – so often organisations see the solution to strengthening connection as a technology issue.

Online tools like Yammer are implemented to try to make people converse and share more. Online conferences and ‘catch-up’ meetings are held across different time zones. Sure, many technology enablers are helping us to collaborate more effectively and connect differently.

In reality, though, these one-on-one meetings with people are really just a mechanism for managing work performance rather than getting to really know each other. For example, we prefer to use email to communicate rather than talking face-to-face or even by phone.

Technology is an enabler, but it is never the solution to a human issue. We must learn the art of cultivating real connections in our organisation to truly thrive.

Cultivate connection

Prolific author and researcher Brené Brown describes connection as ‘the energy that is created between people when they feel seen, heard and valued – when they can give and receive without judgment’.

When we feel a real sense of connection we trigger neurochemicals that make us feel good. Dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins give us a sense of wellbeing; they make us want to engage and work with others; collaboration happens and performance thrives.

On the flipside, when we experience disconnection, the reaction is as real as physical pain. Cortisol and adrenaline increase in our body, triggering the ‘fight’ stress response. This makes us respond to our environment as if it is hostile, like we’re out of place – which results in the behaviours and impact previously mentioned.

It’s a fact that companies that are voted ‘best place to work’ or an ‘employer of choice’ value and foster connection among their teams and organisations. As Sylvia Vorhauser-Smith, senior vice president of research at PageUp People, puts it, these companies are ‘meeting the more altruistic and basic human needs of feeling connected and being an important part in something bigger’.

Trust us

Hence, feeling connected and trusted to be and do our best is the ultimate human condition.

Employees are able to be their best possible self and feel valued and rewarded for this. They feel understood at an individual level and they are clear on the contribution they are making to the performance of the organisation. They love what they do and they connect to each other, their customers, leaders and the organisation in a very human way.

This is when you start to bring out the very best in people. This feeling of connection builds a critical foundation of trust in which your employees feel they can have a voice and can make a difference.

When employees are encouraged to connect, communicate and collaborate better, this leads to an increase in productivity, not to mention happiness. This, in turn, has a positive impact on performance, company loyalty, and of course, retention.

Michelle Sales is a highly sought-after speaker, trainer, coach and author who helps senior leaders and their teams to build confidence and maximise their leadership and performance by consciously connecting with others. She is the author of the new whitepaper The Connection Deficit: Why leaders must bring both head and heart to work to build trust, lift engagement and accelerate organisational results.

By Clare Edwards FIML

When it comes to making decisions about people, we all like to think that we’re objective, fair and impartial. The reality though is very different because, if we have a brain, we are biased.

Unconscious bias (UB), also known as implicit bias, happens automatically, is outside of our control and is triggered by our brain making quick assessments of people and situations, influenced by our background, culture and personal experiences. The clue is in the word ‘unconscious’. When we are being biased, we aren’t aware of it as the brain can’t reflect at the same time as it’s making a mental shortcut decision.

UB impacts every area of decision-making in organisations including who gets hired, fired, promoted and demoted. It impacts leadership and team effectiveness, the treatment of stakeholders and ultimately, culture.

One of the most common unconscious biases in recruitment is affinity or similarity bias.  This leads us to gravitate towards people who are like ourselves in appearance, beliefs, and background.  We have an unconscious belief – “I prefer people like me over those who are different”.  

When we were roaming the African savannah plains, out looking for lunch (or becoming lunch if we weren’t vigilant), different equalled dangerous, so we are programmed to consider people who are different to us as ‘foe’ before friend.

Unconsciously, when we first meet someone who appears different, (even for microseconds), our brain’s master error detector fires off subtle signals checking for safety, while consciously we are openly welcoming, curious and respectful.

Because most of our biases are unconscious, putting systems and processes in place can help to mitigate them.  Awareness training can also work, but it is most effective when supported by a conscious effort to have a culture of diversity and inclusion where bias is challenged.

Here are four practical strategies for mitigating unconscious bias:

1. Challenge existing processes

When crafting job advertisements, apps like Textio can help managers avoid gender-biased language and ensure the vocabulary they use is inclusive, gender-neutral and not influencing candidates subjectively.

Software company Atlassian put Textio’s software to the test by reworking the way in which it worded its job advertisements. In just one year, the company increased the number of women being hired for technical positions by 80 per cent!

2. Minimise our ability to revert to affinity bias

In first-round selections, consider removing a candidate’s name, tertiary education experience and all other factors that don’t directly relate to the attributes you are seeking in a successful applicant.

In auditions for symphony orchestras, screens were put in place between the musicians and the interviewing panel (and female candidates were asked to remove noisy heels). This increased the likelihood that a female musician would advance to the next round by 11 percentage points. During the final round, ‘blind’ auditions increased the likelihood of female musicians being selected by 30%.

3. Re-think decision making

When we make a conscious effort to slow down and reflect on the drivers behind our decisions, we can uncover hidden biases. This is even more effective when executed in a group environment because we don’t challenge our own biases because we’re not aware of them!

Actively welcome differing perspectives in recruitment decisions; the people don’t have to be from the same department to help shine a light you might not see.

Being open to having our decisions respectfully challenged requires a culture of psychological safety.  This supports us in becoming more open-minded, less judgemental and more flexible to changing our decisions based on the feedback we get.

4. Proactively drive inclusion

Having a diverse workforce brings benefits – and investing in, and focusing on, inclusion brings even greater success. It makes sense to want your employee base to culturally, racially and ethnically reflect that of your customers/ stakeholders and to have these people feel fully included.

• Encourage people to interact more with those traditionally outside of their ‘in-group’ to expand their awareness and appreciation of difference
• Team-based psychometric profiling tools such as Team Management Systems (TMS) and DiSC are extremely helpful. These provide an objective insight into preferences of self and others, our key differences and how we can harness differing strengths to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts.

Recruiting people is the most important and potentially costly decision that organisations will make. It makes sense therefore to invest energy, focus and time in ensuring that the people we hire feel valued and included members of our community from the outset and for the duration of their career with us.

Clare Edwards is the Principal of BrainSmart Consulting. She is also a speaker, facilitator and author. She studied the Neuroscience of Leadership – how knowledge of our brains can help us to be more emotionally intelligent and effective leaders and managers. Clare now helps people effectively manage and lead themselves and others in complex and uncertain business environments. 

Doing more to beat unconscious bias
Keep an eye out for the next edition of IML ANZ’s quarterly print magazine, Leadership Matters, where Clare Edwards joins a panel of experts to delve deeper into unconscious bias and how to overcome it.