Grab on tight to your talent

Grab on tight to your talent

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Business leaders are reporting a sharp increase in competitors trying to steal their talent in a recent international survey conducted by Right Management. In the latest edition of their research, close to two thirds of employers agreed or strongly agreed with the premise that other companies are headhunting their own leaders – a sharp increase on the year before.

The survey attracted 202 respondents – CEOs and senior human resource professionals from organisations of diverse size and revenue, and which operated in diverse sectors on six continents.

When asked, ‘Do other companies actively try to recruit your organisation’s leaders?’, 63% of respondents said either that they strongly agreed or agreed, compared with 42% the previous year. An additional 22% said that they neither agreed nor disagreed (compared with 43% the previous year). In both years, 15% either strongly disagreed or disagreed.

“The new data tells us that competitive pressures have grown more acute and top talent is being targeted more than before. Many more employers now feel vulnerable to poaching by other companies, a trend identified by CEOs in every region of the world,” Ron Sims, of Right Management, said.

Sims pointed to the transparency that technology lends to organisations as one of the key drivers of this trend. “Social media and internet job boards expose the human resources of every company to outside parties,” he said. “The negative implication for an organisation’s bench strength and management succession are plain to see,” Sims added.

While Sims acknowledged that having the opportunity to poach talent in this way could pay dividends for your own organisation’s talent, he warned that the tactic ‘cuts both ways’.

New app allows you to compare salaries globally

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International recruitment consultancy Robert Walters re-launched its ‘Salary Checker’ app this week. The app, which reached number one in the top free business apps on iTunes (New Zealand), allows job seekers and employers instantly to compare salaries for a number of professions across 20 different countries.

The app’s data is drawn from Robert Walters’ Global Salary Survey, which has been running for more than 10 years. It allows users to:

• Compare salaries for professions across continents: Asia, the Americas, Europe, UK, Africa
• Compare salaries across different sectors
• Compare salaries for several jobs at one time
• Save favourite salaries and searches
• Determine their own market rate
• Track salary trends over time

“Finding out what you’re worth can be a minefield, but our new Salary Checker app makes it easy to determine what your current salary should be,” Erin Simmons, marketing manager at Robert Walters, said.

The app isn’t only for job seekers – it can also be a useful tool for employers who need to determine the salary range that they should offer a candidate. “The app also provides a comprehensive and accurate overview for employers looking to benchmark pay against the rest of the market,” Simmons said.

The current app is an upgrade of the first version, which was launched in 2011 for iPhone and iPad. This version is free and is available for all tablets and smart phones (both Apple and Android devices).

The power of a deconstructed office

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Progressive organisations are beginning to treat the workspace as an active tool rather than a passive backdrop, according to Keti Malkoski, workplace research psychologist with Schiavello.

This focus may lead to a decision to shift to a different work environment, such as ‘hot desking’ or ‘activity-based working’ (ABW). The former is focused on the desk: employees are no longer allocated their own, but several employees will use the work station at different times. ABW environments, on the other hand, divide the office into quiet and collaborative spaces that suit diverse tasks.

In Malkoski’s opinion, ABW is the more advanced approach. “[ABW] is an extension of hot desking, in my mind, and it’s probably a more relevant extension in that it’s starting to think about how people are working, and they’re working in different work modes,” she said.

As well as better supporting the work that staff do, a deconstructed office can lend greater autonomy to individual employees, demonstrating trust in them. “It’s no longer about visibility, and that notion of presenteeism, it’s giving autonomy back to the individual and creating a model that’s work output, as opposed to work process, focused,” Malkoski said. And this can be empowering.

Rose Clements, HR Director of Microsoft Australia, has had first-hand experience of the shift to ABW. “It’s required us to be adaptable and agile, we’ve had to think differently how we’re onboarding people, we’ve had to think differently about the strengths that our managers need to be comfortable in managing in this kind of environment,” Clements said. However, she insisted that the results have been entirely positive.

As Malkoski suggested, staff empowerment was an important part of the experience at Microsoft. “That required very much a culture of trust, accountability and empowerment, because you’ve got to genuinely believe that your employees get up every day with the intention of having a great day, that they’re going to want to be successful,” Clements said.

It strikes Clements as ‘ironic’ that organisations, whether by default or design, often express a lack of trust in their employees by emphasising presenteeism and heavy-handed style of management. “Our people know that they have outcomes and achievements and deliverables that are part of their commitment to Microsoft, and that’s what we look for, that’s what we evaluate performance on,” she said.