Revolution with a human face

What­ev­er the 21st-cen­tu­ry work­place looks like, it will include peo­ple-shaped spaces. New tech­nol­o­gy may be bring­ing about a rev­o­lu­tion as pro­found as the move from an agrar­i­an to an indus­tri­al soci­ety, but few would dis­agree with the idea that a com­mit­ted, engaged and pro­duc­tive work­force is essen­tial for organ­i­sa­tions to sur­vive or main­tain prof­itabil­i­ty.

But the cur­rent busi­ness cli­mate has height­ened the need for effec­tive tal­ent nur­tur­ing, says Pro­fes­sor Paul Spar­row, direc­tor of the Cen­tre for Per­for­mance-led HR at Lan­cast­er Uni­ver­si­ty Man­age­ment School.

“Com­pet­i­tive forces are requir­ing organ­i­sa­tions to take con­trol of the skills sup­ply chain through the use of more for­ward plan­ning,” he says. “Strate­gic work­force plan­ning is aimed at iden­ti­fy­ing the char­ac­ter­is­tics of human cap­i­tal need­ed to achieve a strate­gic objec­tive and then scal­ing the activ­i­ties need­ed.”

Cris Beswick, con­sul­tant and author of The Road to Inno­va­tion, believes that in the future how com­pa­nies oper­ate will be just as impor­tant as what they do. “If we take it as giv­en that organ­i­sa­tions should have great prod­ucts and ser­vices, their dif­fer­en­tia­tor will be how their cul­ture marks them out from the com­pe­ti­tion,” he says. “Organ­i­sa­tions that under­stand how to attract, retain and devel­op tal­ent will be the ones we admire.”

Find­ing the right peo­ple is the first hur­dle to over­come. On the face of it, increas­ing num­bers of grad­u­ates imply a wider choice for employ­ers; but there is a grow­ing gulf between their skills and those required by busi­ness­es.

It empow­ers peo­ple to solve prob­lems them­selves rather than pass them on

As grad­u­ates often have lit­tle in the way of rel­e­vant employ­ment history,many employ­ers opt to run tal­ent assess­ments ahead of hir­ing, says Sean Howard, vice pres­i­dent of solu­tions mar­ket­ing at SHL, a HR con­sul­tan­cy, with peo­ple skills becom­ing espe­cial­ly impor­tant.

Tech­nol­o­gy is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant in help­ing to attract grad­u­ates, says Pro­fes­sor Spar­row point­ing to the use of “gam­i­fi­ca­tion” by com­pa­nies such as Dis­ney. “They design their web­sites to reflect the sense of play­ing a strat­e­gy game,” he says. “It’s a more intense form of a real­is­tic job pre­view.”

Once on board, one way of com­bin­ing greater pro­duc­tiv­i­ty with attract­ing and retain­ing the right staff is to devel­op a cul­ture of “intre­pre­neur­ship”, where employ­ees are encour­aged to come up with solu­tions to prob­lems or sug­ges­tions for rev­enue gen­er­a­tion.

“It’s about giv­ing employ­ees an oppor­tu­ni­ty to share their thoughts and feed back ideas to man­age­ment,” says Derek Bish­op, direc­tor of Cul­ture Con­sul­tan­cy, a busi­ness advi­so­ry ser­vice. “It’s the front­line staff in most organ­i­sa­tions who can see most clear­ly what’s not work­ing.”

Such an approach is help­ing attract more staff for IT ser­vices com­pa­ny Fujit­su, accord­ing to Ella Ben­nett, the company’s HR direc­tor for UK and Ire­land. “It empow­ers peo­ple to solve prob­lems them­selves rather than pass them on,” she says. “Cer­tain­ly with our ser­vice desks, we’re able to attract peo­ple because the jobs are inher­ent­ly more inter­est­ing. One of the rea­sons we did this was because of the lev­els of attri­tion and the amount of on-board­ing and train­ing that we need­ed to do. It’s a real dif­fer­en­tia­tor for us in terms of get­ting senior peo­ple in too.”

Hav­ing an effec­tive induc­tion process can go a long way to ensur­ing employ­ees become pro­duc­tive quick­ly, as well as boost­ing over­all reten­tion rates. “Good onboard­ing should start when a can­di­date accepts an offer,” says Chris Phillips, vice pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing, Europe, the Mid­dle East and Africa (EMEA), at Taleo, a recruit­ment and tal­ent man­age­ment com­pa­ny. “This can include doing sim­ple things effi­cient­ly such as pro­vid­ing them with a Black­Ber­ry or lap­top through to offer­ing them ini­tial devel­op­ment activ­i­ties and train­ing super­vised by a ded­i­cat­ed men­tor.”

But fail­ing to get the process right means more than the loss of a poten­tial­ly tal­ent­ed employ­ee, warns Raj Tul­siani, chief exec­u­tive of Green Park Inter­im and Exec­u­tive Resourc­ing. “It’s arguable that the greater cost is the time for all the peo­ple that are involved with that new hire, which takes them away from their own work. That mag­ni­fies the cost, some­times by a fac­tor of three or four.”

And in a world where there are so many new calls on cor­po­rate expens­es, that’s a cost no busi­ness needs to waste.

Whatever the 21st-century workplace looks like, it will include people-shaped spaces. New technology may be bringing about a revolution as profound as the move from an agrarian to an industrial society, but few would disagree with the idea that a committed, engaged and productive workforce is essential for organisations to survive or maintain profitability.