Better for longer. Beat the retirement boom.

Better for longer. Beat the retirement boom.

Over the next 5 years, the Baby Boomers will hit retirement age.  Did you know that about 25% of Australia’s population are Baby Boomers?  And they’re reaching retirement age fast.   

According to ABS data anywhere between 15% to 18% of the Australian workforce will be retiring over the next few years.

This will create a new set of pressures on Australian businesses.  The skills gap that we are facing over the next 10 years is well documented, and we’re not the only country dealing with this same issue. These experienced and seasoned workers are proven to be one of the most productive and reliable age groups at work.

Mature age workers are an often underestimated goldmine of productivity:

• Mature age workers are less likely to take days off due to illness or to care for others, and are less likely to experience work related injuries than other workers;
• workers aged over 55 are five times less likely to change jobs compared with workers aged 20–24;
• mature workers can deliver an average net benefit of up to $1956 per year to their employer compared to other workers due to high retention rates, lower rates of absenteeism, decreased recruitment costs and greater return on investment;
• experienced workers have built up knowledge and skills during their time in the workforce;
• A study by Australian Health Management which examined the daily work habits of 4000 employees found that workers aged 55 years and over performed at their best for approximately seven hours out of an eight-hour day—an achievement that other workers in the study were unable to match.

(Source: Experience + Make age an advantage: Investing in Experience Toolkit, 2012, www.deewr.gov.au/experience.)

Consider the exponential and untapped value that baby boomers have. Value that is only discovered once they have left and at times this is lost to the business.

So, the issue for your business is, how are you going to attract and retain these workers?  Do you have a strategy? Do you understand the age breakdown of your workforce, and know the retirement plans of these key employees?

Replacing mature age workers, who understand your business, your goals and do a great job for you every day, may be more costly that you realise.

Providing flexible working opportunities, attractive superannuation arrangements and ongoing training are some of the keys to keeping mature age workers in your business longer.

Other strategies to consider are around knowledge management in your business.  Make sure that your intellectual property and customer relationships don’t retire along with some of your most loyal employees.  Having long term “easing out” strategies in place can help to minimise the impact on customers and day to day productivity in your business when long term employees retire.

Deborah Wilson is a Thought Leader at Trevor Roberts.   She works with companies every day on their people strategies.  If you would like advice on career transition, including retirement, career development, leadership development or recruitment advice, call today for a confidential discussion.  p 1300 876 118

Why Leadership will Make or Break the Community Services and Health Industry

Why Leadership will Make or Break the Community Services and Health Industry

An assumption that staff have the basic skills to change to customer-service focus is a key barrier for the Community Services and Health sector.  This emerged in discussions among senior HR managers at a series of forums that we ran in Sydney and Brisbane.

The ‘new’ world of person-centred care requires a different mindset that many people do not hold innately. Almost twenty years ago, Hugh Gunz from the University of Toronto wrote a great article called Right Strategy, Wrong Managers. His core argument is that if you shift strategy, such as from government funded delivery model to person centred care, then you need managers that think in a different way.

At our breakfast functions, we discussed the leadership behaviours that are the most effective to lead the health and community services organisations into the future. A great leader was described as:

1. Energetic and passionate,
2. who take ownership and drive change,
3. through a style of trust, honesty and support but,
4. are one with the organisation’s vision and,
5. can communicate ‘the why’ to people at all levels.

 There are few industries undergoing as much change as Health and Community Services (here’s a great environmental scan from the Community Services & Health Industry Skills Council).

Strong Authentic leadership will make or break organisations over the years ahead. Organisations that don’t adapt will shut down or be merged into those that do.

Retrenchment reactions reflect sentiment

Retrenchment reactions reflect sentiment

Violent outbursts are rare at retrenchment announcement meetings, in fact I can only recall one chair being thrown in our 19 years of operation. The vast majority of people experience a mix of anger, disappointment and anxiety about the future. These emotions are usually measured and often emerge in the early part of their outplacement program.

Strong emotional outbursts, however, have escalated in the past few months. This worrying trend reflects the negative sentiment in the employment market with people being increasingly concerned about the probability of finding another job. Professionals and middle managers are particularly concerned as many companies are trimming these roles.
 
Unfortunately, there is an inverse relationship between emotions and intelligence: as emotions go up, intelligence goes down. Thus the increase in strong emotional outbursts at retrenchment announcements.

Our team of career development consultants are finding that the intensity of support during outplacement programs has increased, however, people are still finding jobs within a reasonable time frame. The jobs are there, they are just harder to find.

More than ever, now is the time to ensure retrenchment processes are handled as effectively as possible to minimise the negative impact on those effected, and those staying.

The number one redundancy mistake organisations make.

The number one redundancy mistake organisations make.

 

The number one mistake organisations make when undertaking redundancies processes is going too fast.

Speed introduces the risk that either the people or processes are not fully prepared. By people I mean the managers that have to actually make the announcements. Processes refer to the backend calculations of payout entitlements, legal checking etc. There is nothing more unprofessional than redundancy letters that have the wrong amount on it. Worse still is the message this sends to departing staff: “you care about me so little you couldn’t even get a simple figure right”. Now that’s a strong statement, but we’ve heard it more than once.

Here are the two reasons why organisations fail to get the pace of redundancies right.

#1: Human Nature. It is natural for people to get unpleasant things over and done with as quickly as possible. As a manager, telling someone they don’t have a job is the most unpleasant part of managing. I heard recently that a decision to layoff staff was made by the Executive of an organisation on the Friday, communicated to the HR Manager on the Monday to begin two days later on the Wednesday. The key learning from this process was that the managers at the coalface did not have sufficient time to prepare. It was too fast.

#2 Artificial Deadline. 30^th June. End of financial year is the typical artificially created deadline to have redundancy processes finished and staff off the books. We see it every June – companies moving fast to meet this date when they simply did not start early enough or the decision was made in June, not April or May.

There is an ideal pace for redundancy. Starting from the planning stage through to post implementation requires thoughtful planning and consideration of the impact of decisions on all those involved.

Pace Matters.

Clickhere for our tip sheet for Managers and for HR Managers

 

Don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions regarding the Announcement Process, we are happy to talk you through it.

 

Cultural fit or Fit for Change?

[Dear Readers, I'm delighted to share this guest contribution from Deborah Wilson.
Regards, Edwin]

How do you evaluate whether your new employee is right for your workplace? Assessing whether your new employee has the right cultural fit is critical to giving them the best chance of becoming a happy and productive team member. When employees have the right cultural fit, this means that they feel challenged and supported at work. It’s that great feeling we all look for when we feel like we’re surrounded by like-minded people who are motivated by the same values as we are.

If you are the kind of person who loves a challenge, then you love working with others who see life in the same way. If you value contributing to the decision making process and having your own projects to work on, then you will thrive in an autonomous working environment.

That’s why human resources departments spend so much time and resources articulating the culture of the organisation and trying to find the right people they know will thrive there.

But what happens in a restructure? A new senior executive can change the nature of the culture overnight. When a new CEO moves in, the old ideas and culture can quickly become the way of the past. In fact employees who identified so strongly with the past culture can soon feel like outsiders!

Which employees survive in a restructure? Is it the ones who we so carefully selected based on their cultural fit? Probably not. Maybe we need to change our recruitment processes so that we look for employees who can thrive in different work environments.

Employees that rate high on flexibility and resilience are adaptable to change. They respond to change by seeing the opportunities, and the chance to take on new career directions. Instead of feeling threatened – their reaction is optimistic about new career pathways that may be opened up.

If you can find employees who have the innate capacity to be optimistic in times of change – then these are the type of people who will be more willing and prepared to adapt to changing business strategies.
So, as well as focussing on cultural fit, as part of your next selection process, look for employees who can come with you on the journey, as your organisation changes and adapts to stay successful. A nimble organisation needs flexible employees who are prepared to come along for the ride, and greet the challenges as they arise.
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Deborah Wilson is a Thought Leader at Trevor Roberts. She works with companies every day on their people strategies. If you would like advice on career transition, career development and leadership development. Linkedin Profile

 

The Labor Debacle:

Failure of Leadership or failure of team?

 

 

 

The Gillard/Rudd farce is more a failure of the team than a failure of leadership. The federal government runs a $1.3 trillion business with the Senior Leadership Team being the Cabinet. It is rare (although there have been examples) of a Senior Leadership Team behaving so ineffectively that it jeopardises the entire organisation.

There are three reasons why the Labor team failed.

First, and most important, they lost sight of their purpose. High performing teams cling tenaciously to why they are there. The ‘why’ unites a team by providing a clear picture of the future. It also keeps the strong ego’s in check.

Second, inconsistent behaviour of MP’s undermined the team’s effectiveness. High performing teams agree on the behaviours that will build trust, conflict, commitment, accountability and results (see Lencioni’s work on dysfunctions of a team). These behaviours are displayed by all members of the team and are firmly enforced. Oh, did I mention trust?

Third, the actual workings of the team contributed to its collapse. The processes and mechanics of a team including decision making and communication rhythm are hygiene factors. In other words if you don’t have them a team won’t perform, but having them won’t guarantee high performance.

Will Team Labor come back from this crisis? Everything occurs in cycles, so yes, they will bounce back in time as long as the focus is on the team not just the leadership.

 
Team trumps ego any day.

3 reasons why Linkedin isn’t working for you...

 

Over half of Linkedin’s revenue comes from its advanced backend tool for recruiters. Take 2 minutes to read this article to convince yourself of the powerful hold that Linkedin has on professionals. So, lets assume that you have a profile.  Most professionals, however, fail to fully utilise the power of Linkedin. Here’s three reason’s why:
  

#1. Inadequate or out of date information

If you don’t have enough information with the right keywords then the recruiting fraternity can’t find you.  (I disagree with the above article, however, don’t put all the detail of your history on linkedin – you don’t want recruiters to cull you before they’ve spoken with you.)

#2. Passively waiting for the next amazing job

While recruiters are extensive users, remember that they have less than 20% of the available jobs. If you really want to find your next job, first, know what you want to do, and second, use Linkedin to speak to people that may be able to help you get there.
 

#3. Use it only to get a job

Linkedin is a relationship building tool. Don’t just use it for getting a job, use it to build strong relationships and, in the process, build your brand in the market. These relationships will help you at some point in your career, you just can’t tell how, or when. Its called the Theory of Abundance.