Business Strategy

Taking It To The Top

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Q: What does it take to become ‘an employer of choice’ in Canada?

A: Employee engagement

Every year, industry analysts who specialize in surveying Canadian workplaces publicize the list of top employers across the country.  In 2019, the list of honorees included the 50 Canadian workplaces who excel at employee engagement.

Click here to read the top 50 list and selection criteria.

Air Canada is one of the repeat winners to make it to this list. This does not happen by accident or default. The commitment Air Canada has made to employee engagement comes from the strategic alignment of its business strategy to its human resources strategy.  As noted in the article, Air Canada promotes its ‘people first culture’ as a business priority. The setting of this priority gives us a great example of a strategic initiative which establishes both a company and industry benchmark dedicated to excellence, which then drives organizational success.

As a result, Air Canada has been recognized for multiple award-winning industry and human resources initiatives, including Canadian top employer and diversity categories.

Click here to read about Air Canada’s award winning profile.   

Employee engagement is more than measuring whether or not people feel good about their jobs when they complete a survey. It comes from a consistent application and belief in ‘people first’ strategies through all aspects of the company hierarchy. We see this through the title of the person holding the senior human resources position at Air Canada. The leadership role for this particular senior vice president includes accountability and responsibility for a strategic commitment to human resource management with a portfolio dedicated to ‘People, Culture and Communications’.

Industry awards provide us with great examples of how standards of excellence can be applied and achieved. In the case of Air Canada, we see how leadership commitment from the top to its people and culture results in being at the top of the list for industry awards.

Discussion Questions:

  1. How would you rate the commitment to employee engagement at your current workforce?
  2. Select one or two companies from the top 50 list noted in the article. Provide an internet search on each company’s profile, including their strategic plans. How is employee engagement reflected in each plan?
  3. As an HR professional, would you be motivated to work for one of the top 50 companies? Explain your rationale.

Mission, Vision, and Values

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The mantra of mission, vision, and values has been at the core of most modern-day organizations for many decades. Even though many organization’s mission, vision and values statements are sometimes lost from creation to implementation, they are still very important to their success and defined culture.

Many are saying that in the upcoming digital transformation of the workplace, culture will be even more important to organizational success than it is today. According to Edgar Schein, Professor Emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management:

“The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture. If you do not manage culture, it manages you.”

Many organizations have great products, but if they don’t proactively manage their culture, bad things happen. Remember the Volkswagen emissions scandal?  Here is an excerpt from VW’s mission statement:

“We assume responsibility regarding the environment, safety, and social issues. We act with integrity.”

I think most would agree that knowingly falsifying diesel emissions is not in alignment with the mission statement.  How does an organization’s culture get so off track? If you believe Schein, VW failed to manage their culture and they paid dearly for the misalignment, some say up to $33 billion for the scandal.

Cecile Alper-Leroux, Vice President of Human Capital Management (HCM) Innovation at Ultimate Software, believes we need to reorder how we manage our organizations. Vision still comes first, and she also believes in putting culture before strategy. She believes culture is the true driver of any organizational strategy.  (Click here to read her article)

Discussion Questions

Research a company from a traditional industry and compare it to a new hi-tech company. Compare their mission, vision, and values.  How do they define each of the workplace cultures?

As a new HR professional, do you think workplace culture will be more or less important in organizations that are undergoing a digital transformation?  Support and defend your position.

How an Organization Views Their Employees Matters!

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Big data it is a huge trend in today’s business world. It’s in the headlines and organizations are trying to gather and use it effectively. Big data analytics has expanded its scope yet again, the hot new topic being employee analytics. Actually, Deloitte has a fancier name for this leading-edge HR trend: High-impact people analytics.

Research conducted by Deloitte illustrates that when an organization reaches a high level of maturity on high-impact people analytics it is significantly more successful. The research demonstrates that organizations using people analytics in effective ways report 82 percent higher three-year average profit than “low-maturity” organizations.

An 82% increase in profit is a huge return. How does organizational success like that come about? Well, Deloitte provides a road map to develop a high-impact people analytics organization.

Click here to see the map.

The Bersin Deloitte consulting study outlines seven key findings on how an organization can mature their people analytics. This blog will focus on one key finding from this study, which is: “using multiple listening channels.”

Click here and scroll until to you see the concept of Enterprise “listening” architecture.

HR in today’s organizations is complex as many organizational problems have multiple causes. If there are multiple causes, the more information channels an organization can access, the greater the probability that it can solve a problem effectively.

This is where the use of multiple listening channels comes in. There are a number of ways to listen to what employees are saying about an organization. For example:

  • Organizational cultural audits
  • Frequent pulse surveys
  • Anonymous feedback tools
  • Performance reviews
  • Coaching programs
  • Exit interviews
  • HR key performance indicators
  • Social media monitoring

Which of the above channels is your organization listening to? Deciding which channels to listen to is key to designing your listening architecture. HR has always been about taking subjective information and making it more objective. By using sophisticated people-analytics and developing the correct listening architecture you can greatly improve your capabilities, which will in turn increase your organization’s chances of success.

Discussion Questions:

Pick three of the above listening channels, and for each one research a system that would allow you to collect credible information.

If you were an HR director, and were asked to pick only one listening channel, which one would you choose as your first priority and why?

 

Upcoming HR Trends, 2018

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HR trends may not be radically changing year after year, but they are becoming more intense and more critical to organization success. Every year the HR professional should consider what the current success driver for HR is in their industry. You never want to be the dinosaur asking, “does anyone else feel it’s getting colder here?” To avoid becoming obsolete in your profession you need to stay on top of what is happening in the external business world, and reflect on industry trends.

  • Here is a 2017 survey that sums up some of the current HR trends:
  • Less transaction, more strategy
  • Less formal but more frequent feedback
  • Less manual process, more data

Click here to read about the Paycor HR trends survey.

These are not radical trends, nor are they particularly disruptive, but they are important changes in HR. Each one should be reflected upon by the HR professional. All HR professionals should ask themselves the following big questions every year:

  1. Which transactional activity does HR do that is obsolete?
  2. What is the most important area of business strategy I should focus on this year?
  3. How can HR improve the employee performance management system this year?
  4. What HR data should we keep tracking? What data should we stop tracking? What data should we start tracking?

Doing this on a regular basis will keep you and your organization current, and will enable your organization to be proactive instead of reactive. This is what Jim Collins calls the flywheel effect in his book “Good to Great”.

Combine the flywheel concept with a reflective HR practice and there is business success in the forecast.

Discussion questions:

Read the Paycor HR trends and survey. Pick the HR trend you feel is the most important, explaining your decision. In addition, research a company that is a leader with respect to that trend.

Click on this link. Pick one of Jim Collins’ articles and create a 3-minute presentation summary of the topic.

 

What Is Going Wrong in Canadian Workplaces?

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The numbers are in and they do not look good.

In a recent HRNOW posting, it was reported that a 40% leadership failure-rate exists in the workplace.

This week’s upbeat HR research is even more alarming. Hays Canada has been conducting workplace satisfaction surveys since 2013 and the changes they have found this year are alarming:

  • Work satisfaction is down 19%.
  • 8% of Canadian employees would consider leaving their job for another position, an increase of 12.2% from 2013.

Here is how I interpret the above numbers on what Canadian employees are really trying to say to their leaders. The message is loud and clear: We are not happy with our work and we are ready to leave you.

When almost 90% of the respondents want to leave their organization it is time for Canadian employers to step up, look in the mirror, and ask why is this happening?

Many leaders will default to claiming that people want to leave their company to get more pay elsewhere. That’s not it; research is also illustrating that 75% would accept less pay for their ideal job, and that 41% are ready to leave for better company culture.

Could this sad state of employee relations possibly be linked to our management and leadership practices? Of course, the answer is yes.

Click here to read 2017 What People Want Survey: Fact Sheet from Hays.

Canadian employers must start to take these concerns seriously and become proactive in evaluating and improving company culture, and in focusing on employee satisfaction. Consider the above research alongside the fact that Canada is seeing its lowest unemployment rate in 9 years. Employee retention and recruitment may soon be a significant problem and HR departments have to start developing solutions. Solving this problem in your own context may begin with improving your company’s perceived organizational culture.

Discussion Questions:

  1. Identify two companies you would like to work for, research their company culture and explain why you would like to work for them.
  2. What would you recommend if your VP of HR asked you to conduct a corporate-culture survey? Where would you start? Develop an action plan to present to an HR department.