Defusing A Time Bomb

 

It takes more than a spot of maturity to manage workplace conflict, writes JANE CARO

 

You need to be a grown-up before you can effectively and calmly manage conflict. By that I don’t mean you have to have reached chronological maturity. I mean you have to be able to control your own emotions and behave in an adult fashion. One of the reasons businesses (and families, parliaments, schools, clubs, sporting teams, etc) have trouble managing conflict is because few people have fully grown up.

Far too many people in positions of power take conflict personally. I think the essence of being a grown-up is knowing where you stop and other people start. Not everything is about you. I remember taking a conflict-based problem to the HR manager of a company where  I once worked, only to be greeted by a response best summed up as “you think you’ve got problems? Wait until you hear about my problems!”

As you can imagine, this was not helpful. Worse, I got the clear message that next time  I had a problem I should keep it to myself. I did and, of course, eventually I left.

Conflict is an inevitable part of life and relationships, including at work. People who work closely together, particularly if the demands are stressful, will have grievances and aggravate each other from time to time. Small irritations are probably best left to those involved to work out but if the problems become chronic then intervention is required, and quickly.

Obviously it is important to have clear policies on dealing with conflict. It is important the lines of communication are open and non-judgmental (this is crucial). If you are a manager and an employee comes to you with a workplace conflict, it is understandable that your heart might sink, but it is also vital you keep that response to yourself.

Remind yourself that an employee will only risk telling you about this stuff if they trust you and if the conflict has gone beyond a joke. Knowing the real emotional temperature of the workplace you manage is much more of an opportunity than a problem, so look at it that way.

Good, confident (aka grown-up) managers want to know about conflicts before they escalate into full-scale warfare and blow up in your face, so encourage people to come to
you early. Managers who subtly (or not so subtly) indicate they don’t want to know are just storing up big trouble for the future. Managing conflict requires you to be calm, scrupulously fair and open-minded.

Listen to both sides of the story. Try to get those involved to listen to each other. If you can’t manage that, there are professional mediators who are skilled in trying to open communication when it has broken down (that is what most conflict is about). When you decide what you will do, you need to explain not just your actions but also the reasons behind them clearly and calmly.

Make sure you have been fully understood. Allow those affected to express how they feel, even if it is negative. You can listen – you can be compassionate – without changing your decision. Try not to apportion or accept blame. Blame is never helpful and can only escalate tensions. Who is to blame is not the issue, what can be done so that everyone can continue working effectively together is the goal. Don’t seek the sympathy of those you are disciplining – this is not about you, it is about your staff.

If you have a difficult staff member, try to remember that however toxic their behaviour, they are human, too. Don’t bully the bullies. If you have to remove someone from their job, do it as kindly and compassionately as you can. If you suspect they are struggling with emotional or mental health issues try to get them the appropriate help. However they behave, you must remain calm. You are then modeling the right way to behave to the rest of your staff. Do not get hooked into their emotional state.

Dealing with conflict is hard and requires self-control and maturity. That’s why – in high-performing workplaces – often senior managers and HR personnel are responsible for conflict resolution as their experience better equips them for the task. The more open, straightforward and fair-minded your management style, the less problems you will have with workplace conflict. To be honest, toxic workplaces are usually created from the top.

 

Jane Caro runs her own communications consultancy. She worked in the advertising industry for 30 years and is now an author, journalist, lecturer and media commentator.

 

Continue reading

Take Two – Second Sight

Dr Christopher Clarke FIML, manager of corporate safety at Melbourne Water, was inspired to push his career envelope by mentor Ron Skaff FIML, an organisational change practitioner and director at Forma & Associates. They began meeting in Melbourne last year.

 

Why did you join IML’s mentor program?

Christopher Clarke (pictured right): I joined for the opportunity to tap into the knowledge of someone who sits within a senior leadership team and to learn from their experience. Also, I wanted to discuss my long-term goals and how I could reach them. I wanted to have trusted and personal conversations and expand my range of contacts and look at innovative ways of career development.

Ron Skaff (left): I actually saw a tweet the other day where some millennial was saying that mentoring is dead. I didn’t respond but I wanted to. I have been mentoring for a good portion of my adult life. I was coaching CEOs when I first came to Australia [from the US] and I’ve been a Member of IML since 1994. In the last couple of years, I realised that with all my commercial acumen I should be giving back to IML because of all the relationships it has opened up to me.

 

What did you learn from each other?

CC: Within the first five minutes of speaking to Ron, I knew he was the right fit for me. It didn’t take me long to see Ron has a brilliant strategic mind. His was a great mind to tap into. Although we were talking about career development, we’d also dive into life in general.

RS: You need to separate the person from the career. Chris has a strong family values anchor and I believe my family values play the same important role for me. He would tell me the things he was doing with his family and how that made him feel in terms of his personal life and career, and that was helpful for me because my family was following some similar paths. It helped me see where my focus should be, which was with my family.

 

What is the value of a mentoring relationship?

CC: Without the mentoring program I may not have been able to meet someone like Ron. He definitely inspired me to push the envelope in my chosen career field.

RS: Part of my role as a mentor is to develop a roadmap with my mentee about their career. Chris had just finished his PhD in safety and was looking at transformational leadership. I enjoy the personal satisfaction of knowing I played a role in the growth of a protégé.

 

What did you get out of the IML Mentor program?

CC: We workshopped various professional development tools. We did a career SWOT and also looked at my strengths in my personal life, which I hadn’t done before. We were able to correlate the two and I got some great insights. Ron also sent me some reading material to discuss when we caught up.

RS: Sharing my motivation and seeing the motivation of others is enjoyable. Mentoring allows you to see unique perspectives and a diversity of thought.

 

Would you recommend it to others?

CC: If you want to work closely with someone to improve your career and personal progression, absolutely.

RS: Anyone who believes they’d like to mentor should do so. The experience delivers a deeper learning outcome, different than using the internet or reading a book to understand new leadership approaches.

 

Strike Up The Band

Being an evidence-based leader is a double-edged sword. Evidence becomes both a tool in our hand and a rod for our back. It’s how we learn about the true performance of our organisation, so we can manage it and also manage how we’re judged for that performance. We cannot have the former without the latter.

The price for informed decision-making is transparency and accountability, a price that appears too high for many leaders. They keep their heads in the sand and steer by gut feel; they distract with hearsay and anecdote and biased selection of data. But what these leaders don’t realise is that the price of transparency and accountability is much lower than the price of ignorance. Organisations led by such leaders rarely perform well. And if they perform well in something, it’s usually short-lived and at the expense of other important results.

In truth, most of us would like it both ways: to always be right and to have an organisation that is performing well. But we need to decide what’s more important.

One of my earliest teachers in organisational performance was the safety manager in a transport organisation. He invited me to help him improve safety performance reporting, and part of my improvement was to display the safety-performance measures in line charts with about two years of history. This was so we could see how performance changed over time, track the impact of our improvement initiatives and see the potential for further improvement.

This was what I assumed the safety manager was indeed trying to do. But I was wrong. He wanted to know that what he was doing was working. Not if, but that it was working. The graphs I showed him told a different story: they showed nothing had changed over the past two years. Performance was not improving under his leadership. He wanted to be told he was always right, and the price he paid was impotence: the lack of any effect at all on safety performance. And, of course, that was the price his organisation also had to pay.

In contrast, Jon, the CEO of a timber products company and one of my favourite clients, decided to lead his organisation to actually perform well. He was frustrated that he couldn’t see any bottom-line impact from all the investments the company was making in improving processes.

Rather than hiding this from his board, making excuses or looking for data that would paint a positive picture, Jon took ownership of reality. He and his senior leadership team spent the time to learn how to measure the company’s strategic direction, over and above profit. They aligned each operational team with that strategic direction and helped them learn how to measure the operational results that were drivers of the strategic results.

They used the measures as a cornerstone in their evidence-based management. And it became easier to align their process improvement projects to the strategic results, and the bottom line.

Transparency and accountability are demanded of organisations now, and they are needed in order to truly know how an organisation is performing. And, of course, accountability means that the organisation’s leaders will take responsibility for actual performance if it’s below expectation.

Our world needs more courageous leaders who will accept the price of transparency and accountability and pursue high performance. Because that’s really the only way that things get better.

Evidence-based leadership is not about how to lead. It’s about what to give our attention to as we lead. It’s not about how to direct or how to engage. It’s about how to communicate or how to inspire or how to direct or how to engage. It’s about how to apply all these attributes to create a high-performance organisation.

What we give our attention to as we lead is the performance of the organisation. We communicate the results that matter, so everyone understands them. We inspire everyone to reach for higher performance targets, to achieve the results that matter. We set direction and help each team find their contribution to it. We engage everyone so they feel ownership of their contribution. How we lead is important, and what we emphasise through our leadership is just as vital.

To lead an organisation to high performance, a strong emphasis must be given to the role of evidence. Evidence-based leaders pursue high performance by speeding up the cycle of closing performance gaps – those gaps between where performance is right now, and where they want it to be. This is why these leaders give a lot of attention to results-based performance measures.

Without good performance measures, we have no evidence. With no evidence, we can’t know.

 

MAKE IT UNDERSTOOD AND IT WILL BE MEASURABLE

Leading an organisation is much more complex than navigating a ship across vast oceans. There are many more variables and forces interplaying, and we don’t yet have the instruments and charts to detect or predict them all.

But the fundamental principle of direction is the same: if the captain isn’t clear about where to go and how to hold course when the seas get rough and the crew gets worried and confused, the voyage fails. Leaders of organisations need to be clear about the destination, and how to hold course when the pressure is on. This is the habit of articulating a clear direction, which is not about business as usual. It’s about strategy, and strategy is about change, improvement and working on the business and not in it.

A good strategic direction is where evidence-based leadership begins. A good strategic direction is results-based, not action-oriented. Evidence-based leadership makes no sense if there are no results to strive for. If the strategic direction is a simply a list of initiatives or projects or things to get done, then people confuse success with completion. But there is little point in getting stuff done if we’re not aiming that effort at the results we want to achieve.

For example, there’s no point in completing an initiative to set up a customer relationship management system unless everyone is clear that the result is to retain profitable customers. When we know the results we want to achieve, evidence-based leadership has a context. But too often strategy is written as a list of initiatives or projects or things to get done, and there is no result in sight.

 

ALIGNING PROJECTS WITH RESULTS

It isn’t an either/or decision to be project-oriented or results-oriented. We need to be both, but at the right time. We need to be project-oriented when we are managing the activities and initiatives we’ve invested in. And we need to be results-oriented to make sure we choose the right activities and initiatives, and that those investments aren’t a waste of time, effort and money.

There is a clear difference between program management and performance management, which monitors milestones and expenditure to keep projects on track. Performance management monitors performance measures to keep the results on track. Both are part of evidence-based leadership, but the former is only ever going to add value when the latter is defined clearly first.

 

WHEN PEOPLE ARE ONLY PROJECT-ORIENTED, WASTE IS GUARANTEED

Performance does not equate to completing projects on time and on budget. The only reason we invest time and money into projects is to make a needed difference, or have a specific impact, or achieve a particular result. If we don’t know what the objective is then how can we know that we’ve chosen the right project? How can we know if we’ve designed the project in the right way, and implemented it well? If we don’t know, then we’re guessing. And acting on guesses will always cause many times more waste than acting on knowledge.

Of course, not much will change if people are only results-oriented. Being clear about the results we’re striving to achieve is motivating and focusing.

We get everyone’s energy aligned toward the same end goal. Collaboration is easier, and so is decision making when problems or difficult choices arise. But without action, results never become reality. We sit around theorising and visioning and never get anything done. This breeds cynicism and apathy.

We need to marry results-oriented and project-oriented thinking, not choose one over the other, and not mistake one for the other. We’re not focusing on results instead of projects. We’re putting results and projects in the right order. That way, the projects can be celebrated when they successfully get the results that they were intended to create.

 

UNWEASELY WORDS

The easiest way to change a weasel word to something more meaningful and specific is to try to explain it to a 10-year-old. This does not mean dumbing down our goal; it means making it easy to understand, for everyone. For example, in the goal ‘Enhance our protection of our landscape’, almost every word is weasely. It’s too vague to be sure that everyone will share the same understanding of it. A local council in NSW avoided weasel words and wrote this goal in 10-year-old language: “The fragile soils of ridges and escarpments and valuable farming land are protected from unnatural erosion and loss of topsoil.”

Straight away we can visualise what this goal means. We see in our mind’s eye rolling hills and rocky outcrops, the earthy patchwork of crops, vast green pastures with cows or sheep grazing. We see black or red topsoil in some places, and grey and cracked earth in other places. We see what we can measure: the amount of erosion and the amount of topsoil.

In addition to being nearly impossible to measure meaningfully, and hardly ever comprehensible to everyone in the organisation, weasel words also hide another problem: a strategy that is too broad and unfocused.

 

BE RUTHLESS

Peter Drucker is quoted over again for his message that the key to strategy is omission. Good strategy is more about what not to do than what to do. And that’s the product of ruthless prioritisation.

In The 4 Disciplines of Execution, authors Sean Covey, Chris McChesney and Jim Huling suggest the first discipline is to focus on the wildly important.

Achieving goals for change amid the whirlwind of day-to-day work follows the law of diminishing returns.

If we have two or three goals over and above the whirlwind, we can achieve those two or three goals. But if we have four to 10 goals, in addition to our whirlwind, we’ll achieve only one or two of them.

You know how many goals can be achieved when we have 11 or more goals to achieve, as well as our whirlwind? None.

Should, can, will.

To be ruthless, we must only keep goals that can pass the ‘should, can, will’ test.

Before we even consider measuring a goal, we ask three questions of it:

Should the goal be pursued? (Is it important enough, right now?)

Can we pursue it? (Is it inside our circle of influence?)

Will we pursue it? (Do we have the time and resources to improve it?)

 

If we answer yes to all three questions, the goal is measure-worthy. If it’s not, then why is it in the strategy? Why are we aiming to achieve something but not interested in knowing whether it’s achieved or not?

Leaders who take on too much and set many lofty goals should not be held up as the heroes. They won’t achieve those goals and, if they do, the price will be too high.

It’s the leaders who have laser focus and achieve big improvements that can sustain themselves beyond the effort that are the real heroes.

 

Edited extract from Prove It! How to Create a High Performance Culture and Measurable Sucess by Stacey Barr

Take Two – A Firm Guiding Hand

Solicitor Brooke Reardon MIML can’t thank mentor Chris Blair FIML enough for helping her pluck up the courage to start her own business

 

Brooke Reardon MIML, principal practitioner at Your Law Firm Horsham, joined AIM’s mentor program to help steer her through a life-changing career move. She was teamed up with Chris Blair FIML, Enterprise Manager at legal documentation company Topdocs, and credits his guidance with helping her take a leap forward.

 

Why did you join AIM’s mentor program?

BROOKE REARDON: I was at a crossroads in my career. I was working as a solicitor at a law firm and decided to join the mentoring program because I felt like I needed guidance to help make some big decisions. Chris was instrumental in building my confidence to not only start my own business early this year but also to join the Your Law Firm franchise.

CHRIS BLAIR: I’ve been involved in mentoring one way or another for a long time. The first experience was at least 20 years ago when I was working for big global company and they introduced a mentoring program. I loved it. I always had mentors earlier in my career, not that they were probably called mentors in those days!

 

What did you get out of the experience?

BR:  Have you read the book Who Moved My Cheese? It’s an oldie but a goodie. I think Chris was a partner on the journey of looking for the new cheese for me! He helped me explore different options and put me in contact with people who could also help. He never made the choices for me but he helped me uncover different options that may or may not have been suitable for me.

CB: Brooke is a really smart lawyer and a really nice person. I’m a helper by nature and I like coaching and encouraging. Mentoring provides a total support system and it’s the kind of trusted relationship that I thrive on.

 

What did you learn from each other?

BR: Chris was very approachable, very considerate, very knowledgeable and very quickly understood my position and where I was seeking to go. I don’t think I would be where I am now without having Chris’ guidance along the way. He was woven into my career story from the minute he became my mentor, so when I tell people about my journey of how I became a practitioner, the AIM mentoring program and Chris himself are a key part of that story.

CB:  Brooke was really stuck in a difficult position. It was inspiring to see her make a decision for her career that will have life-long positive impacts. It’s not just, “Hey, I got this little promotion”. What Brooke did will change her life forever, and that’s really powerful.

 

Would you recommend the mentor program to others?

BR: Absolutely. Without a mentor, you can live a bit in a vacuum because you’ve got no one to bounce things off. It also increases your confidence when you’ve got someone else giving you feedback on your ideas. The whole experience was exceptionally valuable to me. It was life-changing.

CB:  Definitely. If somebody needs to have an external second opinion, coach, mentor, or whatever you want to call it, so long as they’re matched up well, it can provide a real helping hand. You may also gain a lifelong friend at the end of the day.

 

Millennials in the workplace

A quick Google search of ‘millennials in the workplace’ brings up results such as:

  • How to understand Millennials in the workplace;
  • What Do Millennials Really Want at Work?;
  • 11 tips For Managing Millennials

These results speak to a wider trend throughout the workforce – that many workplaces struggle to lead and retain millennial workers.

There is some debate over exactly what demographic millennials are, but generally the term is understood to mean anyone born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s. They are the first generation to come of age in the new millennium. This same demographic is also referred to as Generation Y.

Unsurprisingly, this generation is more technologically savvy than any of the preceding generations. Broadly speaking, they are more politically liberal than other generations, with a strong focus on social awareness and individual responsibility. And they have brought to the workforce skills that many organisations struggle to utilise and expectations that they fail to meet.

Millennials place a high value on work-life balance and often expect an employer to provide them with ongoing learning and development, career progression and mentoring and strong leadership. Only 2% of millennials view a career as a job for life, compared with 12% of other generations in the workforce. On average, Generation Y anticipate staying with an employer for roughly two to four years, while the average for the remainder of the workforce is over six years.

In turn they are accused by older generations of being entitled, narcissistic and unfocused, sometimes referred to as “Generation Me”.

Leadership expert, author and speaker, Simon Sinek, received a lot of attention for an interview he did in 2016 addressing millennials in the workplace. Sinek spoke about how he is regularly asked why millennials are un-leadable and why so many organisations struggle to meet their needs and hold on to them. Sinek outlined four main reasons why he thinks this is happening.

The first is the style of parenting many millennials were raised in. Sinek argues many of that generation were raised with the attitude “you are special and you can have whatever you want just because you want it”. Their self-esteem was massaged through “participation awards”, which ultimately devalued the effort more worthy award-winners and only made the kids who do poorly feel embarrassed.

Sinek suggests that this inflated sense of self-worth is shattered upon entering the workforce which then fosters low self-confidence and self-doubt.

Sinek’s second explanation is millennial’s unique relationship with technology. For many millennials their use of social media and mobile phones is a source of dopamine, a naturally-occurring neurotransmitter that helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers. Dopamine elevation is typically associated with alcohol and drug addiction. The pleasure sensation that the brain gets when dopamine levels are elevated creates the motivation for us to proactively perform actions that can recreate the sensation. Over time, by artificially raising the amount of dopamine the brain perceives is “normal,” the drugs – or social media – create a need that only they can meet. Sinek proposes that because many millennials have no restrictions set on social media use they are learning to seek validation and support from devices, not people. This can lead them to feel very isolated in the workplace, unable to form the type of relationships with their peers that would otherwise help support them.

Sinek’s third explanation is impatience. Millennials have grown up in a world of instant gratification. They’ve never had to learn to wait. They then apply this desire for instant gratification to jobs and relationships.

And then millennials’ relationships with self-esteem, social media and instant gratification are all put into play with Sinek’s fourth reason – the corporate environment. Millennials, without the skills to cope with stress and form connections, and in constant search for immediate results, are placed in corporate environments where their well-being is valued less than profit-making.

He argues it is the responsibility of the current leaders to help millennials by changing the corporate environment. “They blame themselves… but it’s not them. It’s the total lack of good leadership in our world today that is making them feel the way they do.”

Below are some methods for shifting your workplace environment to best welcome millennials, and make the most of their unique skills.

Enable training and career development

Highly-educated millennials have the opportunity to make their jobs a source of personal pride and fulfilment – they are more inclined to view their job as a method of “making an impact” on the world and providing meaning, rather than merely a means to make money. They want to grow, and react poorly to any sense of staticity or stagnancy. Rather than managers and leaders seeing this as a burden, it can be approached as an indication of millennials’ commitment to – and genuine investment – in the role.

Develop a welcoming workplace culture

Snide and petty comments about millennials’ perceived laziness and lack of focus does not create an environment millennials will particularly enjoy. Remember that every generation has had gripes about the generation that comes after it. Instead, take advantage of the millennials’ comfort and ease with working in teams. Make the most of their tech-savviness and ability multi-task. Millennials potential short-comings are usually paired with a skill other generations don’t have – don’t miss out what these skills can offer you workplace.

Adapt your management style

Much is made of millennials’ delicate egos and over-dependence on praise. But it is worth recognising the value of regular recognition of good work – for all your staff members, not just millennials. Rather than dismiss millennials’ needs as childish and unsupportable in the corporate world, look to what aspects of their upbringing and experience could have value. Don’t resist change simply on the grounds that it is unknown – instead make use of what’s now available to you.

Finally, it is important to note that any broad generalisations about an entire generation of people are inevitably going to paint only the broadest brush strokes, and for many these characterisations of millennials will be far from the truth. Indeed this portrait has been regularly criticised for only really encapsulating the traits of largely white, affluent millennials in the Western world. It’s therefore crucial that this commentary be taken with a grain of salt.

Creating the right culture for your workplace

All workplaces have a culture – sometimes more than one – that colours employees’ interactions and behaviour, as well as what is considered appropriate or acceptable conduct. The abstract, nebulous nature of culture often means organisations write it off as outside of their control. Nonetheless, the right culture is a crucial to a business’s success.

Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, when asked about the importance of workplace culture in business replied:

“The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs. When the culture is strong, you can trust everyone to do the right thing. People can be independent and autonomous. They can be entrepreneurial…Ever notice how families or tribes don’t require much process? That is because there is such a strong trust and culture that it supersedes any process. In organisations (or even in a society) where culture is weak, you need an abundance of heavy, precise rules and processes.”

A workplace’s culture is the product of each individual, their communication with one another, and the organisation and environment in which they work. No two cultures will be exactly the same, and what is a desirable culture for one workplace may not work for another. Below are some ideas for developing the culture you want for your workplace, whatever that may be.

Hire the right people

At the heart of a workplace’s culture are its people, which means creating the right culture for your workplace must inform your hiring practices. There will be many talented people with the education, experience and skills to match a role, but that won’t make them a good fit for the culture of the broader organisation. During the hiring process be explicit: ask prospective employees to describe the type of culture they have come from and what type of workplace culture they are hoping to move into. Include questions about their broader motivations, passions and values. This will enable you to make hiring choices that will actively contribute to the culture you want to create.

Create the right space

The physical environment that your employees work in will also inform the culture that develops. Substantial structural decisions such as whether the office is open plan and which departments are close to each other play a part, as do smaller decisions such as decor and seating arrangements. Also relevant to the environment’s impact on a workplace’s culture is how the space is used day-to-day: meeting locations and where lunch is eaten for example can all play a part in determining a workplace culture.

Have a clear vision

An organisation’s vision is the foundation of its culture. Although vision is determined at the top of an organisation, it lays the groundwork for determining the type of culture that will develop within the workplace. It will play a role in who applies for jobs within your organisation, who stays for the long-term, and how each employee will understand their role. So make sure that vision is clear, precise and accessible. Ensure every employee knows it, and lets it inform every action they take at work.

Measure it

Culture may seem an impossible concept to measure or quantify, and there will certainly be limits on how it can be presented in a spreadsheet. But with the right metrics and feedback loops, even something as intangible as culture can be measured. Having established the culture you want to facilitate, identify how this might manifest amongst the individual employees. Create surveys that directly address workplace culture and regularly collate the results. Even if you can’t put it into a graph, you will have some empirical data on the type of culture within your workplace.

Recognition and Reward

If you can measure it, you can reward it. Often workplaces will have a mismatch between what is desired behaviour and what is actually rewarded. Make sure you are providing clear and consistent indicators of the type of culture you want to foster and then reward those who follow suit by recognising and celebrating behaviour that creates the desired culture. Furthermore, ensure that instances where behaviour and interactions undermine a positive workplace culture are dealt with promptly.

Lastly, remember that a positive workplace culture needs to be reinforced from the top. As always, leadership is crucial in establishing the type of workplace that you want, so set the example who want to see mirrored by your employees. And never underestimate the value of a strong and positive workplace culture. As Chesky says, “If you break the culture, you break the machine that creates your products.”

 

 

Encouraging diversity in your workplace

Many organisations now recognise that a diverse workplace is not only something to aim for on equity grounds, it is also strength that enriches and expands the skill sets and understanding of an organisation. A workplace that values diversity can increase employee job satisfaction, in turn reducing staff turnover, as well as harness perspectives and insights it might not otherwise consider – a crucial step to understanding different customers and markets. At a time when Australia is facing a skills shortage and an ageing population, workplace diversity is more important than ever.

However, actually ensuring people of diverse backgrounds are hired in your organisation and are then made to feel welcome is something that many workplaces struggle with. Here are five steps you can take to encourage workplace diversity.

 

  1. Ensure your HR team recognises the importance of diversity

    There is no point espousing the importance of a diverse workplace if the people responsible for hiring are not on board. An HR team needs to do more than pay lip service to the value of diversity – it needs to truly appreciate that a homogenous workplace is one that is missing out on crucial perspectives and skills. Ensure your HR team has done rigorous diversity training, and, critically, ensure your HR team itself is diverse.

  2. Invest in diversity training

    There will be limitations to what an organisation can learn through in-house measures. Organise for an external body to run diversity training for your workplace and ensure that all employees attend – even (maybe, especially) senior staff. Get feedback on what the workplace thought of the training – have debriefs with staff members who may have specific concerns or questions. These will not be trainings that you can organise as a one-off occasion. They will need to be ongoing, firstly to cater to new employees and secondly because diversity is not a static or fixed issue – it is constantly changing and being re-assessed as Australia’s wider diversity changes. What’s more, if the aim of the training is to educate the workplace, a commitment to reinforcing the lessons is important.

  1. Implement diversity-friendly policies

    Providing alternative working arrangements, such as a compressed work week, job-sharing, part-time roles and modified start and end times to the working day will make your workplace more accessible to those with children and caring responsibilities. Accommodating cultural and religious holidays will make your workplace more welcoming to employees from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, as will permitting diversity-friendly clothing choices in the office. Lastly, but most importantly, make sure that your wages are fair and equal – not only within your organisation but across the workforce more broadly.

  1. Mentoring

    While facilitating diversity in junior and middle management positions is often very achievable, ensuring that diversity reaches the senior levels of an organisation will often involve further steps. Mentoring is one way to encourage diversity in executive positions. Match underrepresented employees with senior members of staff and encourage membership with relevant external professional organisations to support diversity in your workplace.

  1. Recognise your own limitations

    Any individual will have a limited experience of the world and will subsequently have limited perspectives on a given issue. Acknowledge that there may not always be an objective way of seeing something and if someone else in your office has a different perspective, stop talking and listen. Everyone has unconscious biases. Don’t be defensive if you are called out on them – acknowledge it is okay to be wrong and treat it as a learning experience.

The Proactive Approach To Retention

Kate Jones outlines how a multi-pronged approach to managing staff can reap significant dividends in terms of staff retention.

Put your workers first, your customers second and your shareholders third, says Richard Branson, and the rest will take care of itself.

Prioritising staff ahead of customers bucks the “customer comes first” mantra corporations have held dear for decades. Yet a gradual power shift has seen employee well-being, remuneration and physical health become more vital than ever before.

Research shows better staff retention is better for business. Fostering a workforce of happy and engaged employees lifts productivity levels and drives business growth.

What’s more, an effective retention strategy saves companies time and money. It also means organisations avoid the expenses involved in engaging recruitment firms and the time spent interviewing and training new staff.

A high turnover of employees can place pressure on workers forced to pick up the slack, resulting in a drop in staff morale. It can also expose businesses to a loss of corporate intelligence, which can leave them vulnerable in a competitive marketplace.

Why are employees leaving?

IML has identified the chief reasons for taking on another job role.

New challenge – 81.9%
Limited career advancement opportunities – 56.5%
Insufficient financial reward – 44.4%
Conflict with Staff/Manager – 29.6%
Logistically difficult – 21.8%
Lack of development/training -18.5%
Lack of recognition – 16.7%
Feeling unsupported/overworked – 12.0%
Insufficient non-financial reward – 8.8%
Underutilised – 8.8%
Lack of flexible start-finish times – 4.6%
Unrealistic goals being set – 4.2%
Lack of flexible working arrangements – 3.2%
Other – 11.1%

Source: 2016 National Salary Survey

 

Retention Strategies

 

The latest research into staff retention reveals the smartest strategies are multi-pronged, proactive and sustained.

The 2016 Staff Retention Report by the the Institute of Managers and Leaders shows 54.6% of Australian organisations are concerned about how to keep their employees, compared to 48.8% the previous year. However, an increased focus on ways to improve engagement of in-house talent may be responsible for a falling resignation rate.

Since 2012, resignations have fallen by 13.4% to 10.3%.

To reduce resignation rates businesses used a range of methods including exit interviews, reviewing or updating staff remuneration and conducting job satisfaction surveys.

Local Government Association Queensland (LGAQ) HR manager, Angie Gibson says job satisfaction surveys have helped her keep a pulse on employee engagement. For the past three years the LGAQ has recorded job satisfaction scores of 93%, 85% and 92%.

“If you look after your staff, they will look after you and that’s reflected in our survey, and I’m really proud of that,” Gibson says.

The LGAQ uses various methods to ensure staff retention and chief among them is a program called Well At Work. The program is steered by an eight-person Wellness Committee, which assesses the effectiveness of current practices. The program has been recognised by the Queensland Government’s Happier. Healthier. Workplaces initiative and with an Australian Human Resources Institute award.

Gibson says it includes everything from pedometer challenges to family social days.

“We look after emotional, physical, mental, social and occupational areas of an employee,” she explains. “Some people think its all airy-fairy, but its very physical, emotional, social – all those sort of things. We really support people.”

A new 12-program will be launched at the LGAQ this month to check and encourage employee health and promote inclusion through social activities.

“We’ll do things like ergonomic assessments, healthy heart checks in May, flu vaccinations, our social day at Simpson Falls, Mount Coot-tha, on a weekend so all families can get together,” Gibson says.

“We’ll do a Walk to Work day and have a breakfast here, we’ll have end-of-year functions, a Melbourne Cup function, mental health days. There’s something every month and every second Wednesday is Wellness Wednesday where we have massages and meditation in our rooms.”

In addition to the wellness program, the organisation also has a reward and recognition scheme that acknowledges outstanding work in the form of a presentation and a gift voucher.

As all-encompassing as these initiatives are, they mean little without measurement and assessment. Throughout the year, Gibson conducts job satisfaction surveys that quiz staff on everything from healthy eating at work to the issue of bonuses.

Gibson also performs a thorough remuneration check to ensure they are not falling behind industry rates.

“I do a remuneration benchmarking report every year, so I use the National Salary Survey which is one of my main things for the corporate side of the business,” she says.

“I look through all the State Government public sector wages and federal and always request reviews from the larger agencies like our Hays, Robert Walters and I research particular jobs on Seek. And every three or four years I’ll go out to a specialist company like Mercer who survey say the top six roles in the organisation to make sure their work value’s there, to make sure we’re not getting too far behind the ball.”

 

The Pay Factor

So what’s more important – pay or job satisfaction?

The  2016 National Salary Survey shows the top three reasons for employees taking on another job role are: seeking a new challenge at 81.9%, limited career advancement opportunities at 56.5% and insufficient financial reward at 44.4%.

Charles Go, Research Product Manager at IML, says remuneration should be a top priority for those developing retention strategies.

“No matter how cool your office is, how many benefits they have or how supported they feel at work, at the end of the day, people still need to pay their bills, save for holidays and afford to live the lives they want,” he says.

“At the very least, review and benchmark your employees’ salaries on a yearly basis and provide increases that are in line with inflation.”

Sales staff traditionally receives salary bonuses, but Go says it’s now becoming common for support, technical and finance staff to receive bonuses. He recommends clearly defining expectations, checking performance to make sure that they are on track and ensuring the bonuses are based on the company’s overall targets so the company doesn’t pay them if it is not making any money.

“Go one step further by encouraging and supporting them to reach those stretch targets to get their bonus,” he says.

“You’ll be surprised at the increased level of engagement when people truly feel like they are closer and closer to the finish line.”

Not every company can offer cash incentives or raises. Instead, they should consider giving better benefits, says Go.

“It could translate to long run savings for the employee,” he says.

“For example, if a staff member can work from home one day a week that will save them $100 a week on day care expenses, which will be about $4,800 a year.”

 

Other Benefits

 

Flexible benefits can have a surprising affect. Organisations offering time in lieu to reimburse overtime had resignation rates of just 9.8% compared to 10.9% for those who didn’t compensate staff for extra hours worked.

Additional super contributions also make a difference. Organisations that made extra super contributions had a lower than average resignation rate at 9.5% compared to 10.5%.

Developing a supportive learning environment is key to keeping workers challenged. More than 18% of employees report resigning because of a lack of professional development and training.

Research shows personal interviews are the most effective way of evaluating training, followed by pre and post training surveys and training feedback forms.

Building an effective staff retention plan is about more than just meeting an employee’s needs. It’s about surpassing them.

In today’s disruptive market, staff retention strategies need to take a holistic approach to give employees the support they need to do their job well. A continual, proactive strategy creates a happier, more engaged workforce and safeguards organisations against the eroding effects of continual resignations.

Visit  National Salary Survey and find out how we can help your organisation to attract and retain top talent.