Written by Nathan Hewitt
Is ‘personalised work’ the post-COVID-19 reality?
Once the novelty of working from home wears off, and for many it already has, comes the challenge of maintaining connection, building affiliation and building cultures.
The jewel of Australia’s tech sector, Atlassian, has been lauded for giving staff the privilege of working from home forever. But when I posted the story on our team Slack channel, I added a comment warning of the longer-term impact of “remote forever”.
One of our senior team members replied: “Why do people travel in the morning to an office, in a packed tram/train carrying a laptop, then work on that laptop only to carry it back home in a packed train, wasting precious time? That looked comical to me for a long time.”
When I worked for another technology company, we spent a lot of energy trying to convince leadership that WFH did not mean a free ride and would, in fact, unleash productivity and improve engagement. COVID-19 has brought forward the idea of WFH as an alternative arrangement for many who would not have otherwise considered it.
While we may be revelling in the success of dismantling the long-held bias that you need to see someone at work to trust they are doing the work, it comes with its own challenges around organisational relevance.
Does it matter what company you work for if the only difference between one job and another is for whom you are completing a task, and perhaps the one or two people with whom you work closely?
Work is a relationship, and relationships thrive on intimate and frequent connections.
When we all worked in offices, some of that intimacy was built by the serendipity of conversations you had while going about your day’s work.
There was always the potential to catch someone from outside your team and share an idea and solicit a different perspective. There was an ease of connections and interactions that can be hard to replicate in a remote work context.
How do you look out for people, mentor them, develop them, when your interactions are all booked in, bounded within a strict working day?
Being remote is a little bit like trying to establish a long-distance relationship which, as many know, has the chances of success stacked against it.
Then there is the influence of place, and of space. At REA Group, where I worked for some years, the building fed the culture. Its design and redesign had been carefully thought through to maximise connections and space to collaborate – and not just with those in your immediate team.
Why do people go to church to pray, the pub to drink, and the footy to watch their team, when they have the Bible at home, beer in the fridge and a TV in the living room? Because they are looking for connection, community and inspiration.
Once the novelty of WFH wears off, and for many it already has, comes the challenge of maintaining connection, building affiliation and building cultures when people and teams are not physically spending time together in a shared space.
Ongoing remote work presents practical challenges for organisations, particularly around company culture and organisational HR.
Is there a way to assess performance when you can’t see people at work? How do you look out for people, mentor them, develop them, when your interactions are all booked in, bounded within a strict working day? What way to acknowledge someone for something you heard they did well, as you might if you jump in a lift together?
Diversity of perspective
There is a real risk our employment relationship becomes transactional, which affects engagement, which then affects productivity.
We know from our own work in this space, personality is not 16 types on a table. It is way more nuanced and diverse than that. In a population of 85,000, equal men and women, we find at least 400 uniquely identifiable personality types.
We live in a world of hyper-personalisation, from our morning news feed to our Netflix profile based on our viewing history. How can an organisation retain that diversity of perspective. That is when it usually thinks of two binary ways of working: in an office or at home? It can’t. That is why the future of work has to involve a new type of technology. One that can navigate the rich mix of types we work with and adapt to their communication and working style.
I have championed for WFH when in senior HR positions. However, this experience highlighted the many things I might have taken for granted in an office environment. It has nothing to do with fancy decor and an ergonomic chair. It’s more the human moments of serendipitous connection that disappeared so quickly, almost without time to say goodbye.
It would be great to think we all emerge from this situation with a mind to honour the things we have learnt about our “work selves” and, most importantly, to build company cultures that thrive by accommodating those diverse needs.
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Why you need to treat your candidates as you would your customers
If a new customer entered your store and was keen on buying something, you would never dream of ignoring them.
Even if they’re just browsing, you would not let them leave without trying to make a good impression on them. You’d try and win them over for next time they are looking to buy. You’d respect and thank them for thinking about you, and share knowledge with them about products you have, so that they leave better informed consumers. Maybe they’ll remember you the next time they have a purchase to make.
This same philosophy needs to apply to candidates who apply for jobs at your organisation.
Yet, everyday we don’t … and it’s damaging. It’s damaging to both brands and to the people who apply to them.
You need to treat your candidates as you do your customers. You need to treat them with respect, give them an interview experience that makes them feel comfortable, familiar and convenient, is fast, and dignifies the effort they have made in applying. Go further and give them feedback and insights about their strengths and weaknesses that they can use when looking at other jobs, it’s likely they will think of you in the future, and recommend you to their friends.
What Qantas did right
As Michael Eizenberg, Head of Qantas Group Talent, Digital & Analytics told us: “We care deeply about two things when it comes to hiring. Firstly, diversity and inclusivity, and secondly the experience of everyone who comes into contact with the Qantas brand. Our goal is to treat every candidate like we would a customer.”
Qantas metrics prove the value of treating candidates as customers.
- Application completion is at 93%, a phenomenal outcome. (Completion rate of the video interview previously used was 50%.)
- 98% of candidates report the feedback they are provided is helpful and accurate.
What to look out for
The idea of creating positive candidate experiences is not new, but the global talent shortage has empowered candidates in a way that companies are no longer the ones wielding the power.
You’re not doing the choosing. Candidates are. They are assessing you at every step of the way in a recruitment process.
We need to treat candidates not just as ‘prospective employees’, but put on the best show as “prospective employers”. We need to roll out the red carpet and listen to their needs – from the first moment they interact with us.
We’ve heard about the great resignation across the globe as people have reassessed their lives and decided they want more from their job than just a steady paycheck.
People looking for jobs not only have more choices, but they also possess more information about companies thanks to technology like Glassdoor. They will likely do research on your company before they apply.
Much like shopping has changed the way people buy things, making online comparisons and reading reviews, the internet has created a similar opportunity for job seekers who are looking for the best place to work.
Organisations need to not only consciously articulate and promote the value they offer and why people should consider working for them – they actually have to prove it through their recruitment process.
The candidate is a consumer of your “product’ (your workplace and everything you stand for), or at least you need to think of them as one.
This means making people feel valued by your company even before they work there.
You can read how Qantas’ approach to treat candidates as customers has improved the quality and retention on their candidates here.
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Hiring automation: It’s Time To Use Your Words
This Recruiter Says How You Write and What You Write Can Tell an Employer a Great Deal About Your Fit.
Barbara Hyman believes the most important skill for people looking for a job in the post-COVID world will be the ability to write.
“People who think clearly, write clearly,’’ says the chief executive of the artificial intelligence-powered recruiting firm Sapia, which judges its candidates on the most basic of skills.
The firm, which has big-name backers including Myer family member Rupert Myer, former Aconex founder turned venture capitalist Leigh Jasper, fund manager Dion Hershan and former JB Were partner Sam Brougham, gives every job candidate a first interview by asking them five text-based behavioural questions on their phone that take around 20 minutes to answer.
Then the company’s predictive models assign a “suitability” score to each candidate using over 80 features extracted from their responses and the system specifically precludes the use of names, gender and age to determine the recommended shortlist, removing unconscious bias from the recruitment process.
The company’s technology has already been used by 400,000 candidates looking for roles in retail, healthcare, customer service, hospitality, contact centres and graduate and trainee roles across 34 countries.
Its clients include Qantas, Bunnings, the Iceland Group grocery chain in the UK and Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica.
But Hyman says her biggest target client in the post-COVID world is government.
She believes the economy can only be sustainably reactivated through large-scale job security and that requires redeploying existing skillsets to meet in-demand industries.
“This requires a sophisticated and scaleable solution to find jobs for those whose industries have been decimated by the pandemic and have no jobs to return to. Our solution can immediately activate these job seekers into the new economy, steering them to the jobs they will be good at, she says.
She claims if the government activated this sort of technology for a range of growth industries the economic and social impact would be unprecedented.
“In a healthy economy, the cost benefit in Australia alone is $1bn net benefit (cost) for every 100,000 workers that get back to work one month earlier through reduced welfare payments and increased consumer spending. That is significantly higher when accounting for government subsidies as a result of COVID,” she says.
“A big part of getting back to work is the confidence and the mindset. We are exploring different avenues to allow people to use our chat bot to find their true role in the new economy. This is the vision we are trying to sell to government – you have your own personalised career coach that helps you find the ideal role.”
Hyman said one of the company’s big-name backers Rupert Myer, the chair of the Australia Council for the Arts and an emeritus trustee of The National Gallery of Victoria, had given her “amazing introductions” into the government and university sectors.
“When I came into the business in February 2018 it was running out of money. I had to get a bunch of the existing investors to support me,’’ says Hyman, a former chief human resources officer at REA Group and a human resources and marketing director at Boston Consulting.
Her data science leader at Sapia is Sri Lankan-born Buddhi Jayatilleke, who has a diverse background in machine learning, software engineering and academic research.
The firm has raised $4m in the past 2 years, including bringing in Australian global recruitment and talent management firm Hudson as a strategic investor last year.
“That gave us credibility because the number two recruitment firm in the market believes in what we are doing,’’ Hyman says.
“Whether you like it or not, there is enormous amount we can learn about you in 200 words. Just the very fact we don’t use any secret or behavioural data, you have to build trust from the beginning with your candidate. The completion rates are 95 per cent, the engagement rates are 99 per cent. But the key point is when we give you back your feedback. It is effectively a public service we are performing with this feedback.”
One of the firm’s initial backers was Rampersand, the venture capital firm which has a focus on early growth stage tech businesses.
Rampersand co-founder Paul Naphtali says the firm invested in Sapia for its ability to put data at the centre of a company’s people strategy.
“It’s a massive challenge for a start-up to aggregate the data and build the algorithms that can identify an individual’s suitability to a role quickly and accurately. It was a bold and ambitious plan from the beginning, and Sapia is now well on its way to becoming that data-centric engine,’’ he says.
“The company started with working to turbocharge the recruitment process by quickly identifying the right talent for the right roles.
“It’s taken time to build the tech and the data sets, but it’s paying off as a number of Australia’s leading companies now have Sapia as a default part of the process.”
He says the firm is now entering a new phase “where it also powers internal people management as well as for job seekers, which is obviously very relevant in the current environment”.
Recently in London Sapia was awarded the TIARA Talent Tech Star which honours the businesses globally in the talent acquisition industry.
Source: DAMON KITNEY, The Australian, October 30, 2020
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Losing talent? Audit talent acquisition with this template
The following is an excerpt from our Talent Acquisition Transformation Guide, a comprehensive playbook to help you audit and improve your recruitment strategy.
Winning more talent means getting your team in ship shape. In many organizations, the Talent Acquisition business operates in an isolated camp – no one sees or hears from you unless you have good or bad news about a particular candidate or role vacancy.
Efficiency in recruitment requires absolute alignment. Your people leaders and your executive team must be in alignment with your new strategy, because they are equally responsible for executing it. Gone are the days when, for example, marketing managers could pass a job description for a copywriter to a Talent Acquisition specialist and wash their hands of the prospecting dirty work. Now, more than ever, the hiring manager and the specialist must form a partnership, sharing the duties of advertising, promoting, vetting, interviewing and assessing. After all, candidates for said copywriter role will expect it.
To get cooperation and buy-in from your people leaders, you need to form a visible, purposeful A-team.
Step 1: Create your recruitment A-team
Your crack recruitment task force should comprise:
- Your chiefest people leader (be it a CPO, CHRO, or Head of Talent Acquisition)
- Talent Acquisition specialists and representatives (obviously)
- Representatives from each department in the organization
- Importantly, a representative from the marketing team
Once your team is formed, you need to complete a basic audit to see where your recruitment pipeline is at – and the roadblocks stopping you from securing the talent you need.
Step 2: Fill out this Talent Requirements Matrix
This step sounds obvious on the face of it, but it actually requires some speculation and problem-solving. Consider this simple matrix, filled in with examples – it’s a good starting point on getting alignment with the A-team on your hiring needs.
| Role | Critical skills | Priority | Existing org. strength | Applicants/candidate declined | Advertised salary | Market salary | Notes/suggestions |
| Head of marketing |
| Very high | Low (no marketing leadership) | 40/38 | $150k p/a | $190k p/a |
|
| Software engineer |
| Low | High (replacing a team of 20) | 10/10 | $120k p/a | $130k p/a |
|
| Office manager |
| High | Low (no office manager for ~3 months) | 0/0 | $100k p/a | $100k p/a |
|
Once you’ve filled out your Talent Requirements Matrix, the next step is effective triage. Almost everyone in the A-team will already be aware of your highest hiring priorities, but by filling out this matrix, you can focus talent acquisition efforts on coming up with weird and wonderful ideas for attracting the right candidates. Times like these require outside-the-box thinking!