Is it vision? Charisma?

“I know plenty of great leaders who aren’t Steve Jobs visionaries,” says Sinek. “I know fantastic leaders who don’t have charisma… We’re surrounded by overwhelming forces every day of our lives pushing us to play the finite game. The pressures are overwhelming. It takes unbelievable courage to put the important over the urgent.”

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Christine Liu, Innovation Editor for Harvard Business Review, gets tossed some tricky scenarios and shares how to answer questions like this for real. Saying “no” in an effective and productive way is the skill everyone needs to know to navigate work-life effectively.

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Andrea Davey is CEO for Scout Talent Group, a global recruitment organisation founded in Brisbane in 1999. The Group’s purpose is to “connect people to grow companies, careers and communities”; they do this by delivering outstanding recruitment and talent service-enabled software. Their success paving the way in recruitment and talent software and services means that Scout Talent is recognised as one of Australia’s leading recruitment platforms. The Group’s offices are located in Sydney, Melbourne, Vancouver and Auckland, with a Global Head Office in Brisbane.

As CEO, Davey is responsible for overseeing strategy, operations, people and resources for Scout Talent Group. Her primary goal is to increase stakeholder value by leading and executing the organisation’s strategy. Davey is determined to lead Scout Talent Group towards a successful IPO by 2023-24.

Being active in the recruitment and talent space, Davey shared some invaluable strategies about engagement and building a positive employee experience.

Let’s set the scene. Why does employee engagement matter? What does employee engagement mean to Scout Talent Group?  

On an individual level, most of us spend at least 40 hours a week (25% of our lives!) at work. So it’s important we’re enjoying the time we spend there. That’s not to say work has to be happy and fun all the time. It’s that you have to find it fulfilling and believe it’s a valuable use of your life.

From a company perspective, it doesn’t matter what the economic climate is like; whether there’s a high or low unemployment rates, whether we’re in an employer-driven or candidate-driven market. You’re not going to grow and succeed in business without the right people working for you and loving their job. What matters is who you have on your team and their level of buy-in. If they’re not engaged, it’s going to hold your organisation back.

(That reminds me about the webinar series we’re running at the moment about nailing your talent strategy for the next 12 months.)

At Scout Talent Group, I want people in the business who want to be here. Broadly speaking, that means they enjoy their work and find it fulfilling. I want that for them, because I care about them as individuals. Also, to get to where we want to go as a business [leading Scout Talent Group to successful IPO by 2023-24], we need high levels of engagement to achieve that.

“Employee engagement isn’t a one-time, “set and forget” thing.”

How do in-person, non-work-related opportunities to socialise contribute to your company culture?

At the end of every quarter, everyone from our offices comes together to celebrate and recognise each other’s successes at our “Quarterpalooza” events. These awards nights are a great way for our people to relax and socialise. It’s an opportunity to enjoy speeches, trophies, drinks, and dancing at a great venue. We’ve had some great themes so far, from heroes and villains, to activewear, and we usually top it off with something fun, like costume prizes or auctions.

These events are just one of the mechanisms we put in place to contribute to our culture. It’s an opportunity to reward and recognise our people for their hard work, in a setting that’s different to the office during the day. We try to incorporate an activity into these events, so it’s not “just” drinking at a bar. It’s an opportunity to socialise, engage in team building, and collaborate with people in the business you may not ordinarily spend time with.

“It’s an opportunity to reward and recognise our people for their hard work, in a setting that’s different to the office during the day.”

Awards are a central component of these events. It not only allows the business to recognise our team members’ outstanding achievements, but for them to be recognised in front of their peers.

You’re a proponent of Australian charity, Healthy Workplaces. Tell us about Healthy Workplaces and the benefits you’ve seen from offering corporate wellness initiatives.

Wellness is one of our core group values, so it starts there. We live this, promote it and bring it to life by promoting it to our current team members, candidates and clients.

Wellbeing sits alongside our other values, such as innovation and respect. It’s crucial.

One of the ways we bring it to life is through Healthy Workplaces, Scout Talent Group’s registered charity and corporate wellness arm. We choose to invest in this charity and its initiatives because we want our people to be active and experience wellbeing. We also want to extend our reach to positively impact other Australian and overseas organisations.

Healthy Workplace’s signature corporate wellness events include Tour de Office and Step Forward.

Check out our article about promoting your employer brand through corporate wellness and philanthropy.

When you’re physically and mentally well, you’re able to be your best, professionally and personally. Given you spend such huge percentage of time at work, giving people the opportunity to be active at work is a great investment.

I think my passion for health and fitness stems from my early days as a personal trainer and group fitness instructor.

With disruptions from the global pandemic this year, including working from home, what did Scout Talent Group do to adapt when you couldn’t meet in person?

Moving to work from home in such a short time presented a number of challenges. Everyone was so stressed and there were so many unknowns: we were dealing with a big life-changing event. We needed to think about new ways to keep engagement levels high during that period, keeping people feeling connected and giving them the support they needed through their leaders and peers.

So, we conducted a virtual Quarterpalooza event with games, costumes, awards, prizes, and drinks deliveries. We arranged optional team building and socialising events outside of work hours. Also, we implemented daily, virtual “All Hands Call” meetings. That’s something that was exciting for me, because people loved it so much and we’ve kept them in place, even after many of our team members returned to the office.

Excitingly, Healthy Workplaces also launched Step Forward, a free mobile app that encourages people to achieve the recommended 10,000 steps per day. We had prizes and weekly challenges, which was a great way to keep people feeling connected and active during what has been a challenging time.

One of Scout Talent Group’s values is ownership. How do you give your team members more autonomy and ownership?

At Scout Talent Group, we have leaders, not managers. Leadership comes with responsibility, but it’s the opportunity for them to “run their own business within the business.” We give them the tools and training they need to succeed, including results-based incentives, running a P&L statement, and making decisions without bureaucratic sign off processes.

We’re also rolling out Scout Talent Group share options to senior leaders and will filter that throughout our organisation, so people can gain a real share in the business.

We offer people the opportunity to engage in directorships, or “passion projects.” These exist outside of day-to-day work and give people the opportunity to expand their skills in other areas. In addition, we offer a Future Leader training program and promote from within wherever possible.

How do you conduct performance reviews?

So much can happen in a year. Our business moves fast and we’re growing quickly. Not to mention the business world moves quickly too; so it baffles me if a team member only had the opportunity to meet with their leader once every 6 or 12 months for feedback. Our team members have one-to-one meetings every month, so people have that opportunity for regular, two-way communication. It’s not just a leader “telling you what to do”; people can share their ideas and provide feedback on a regular basis.

Final question: employee engagement surveys. Overrated, or underrated?

When administered well with your end goals in mind, they’re a really valuable tool. Some people might think they’re overrated, because if it’s something you do to tick a box, then put the results in a drawer and not think about them again until the following year, it can feel like an overrated tool. But I’ve seen them used brilliantly by organisations to effect positive change, and that’s helped them get to the next level.

In our business, we conduct employee engagement surveys each year and work hard to implement positive change. We share the results at our quarterly Town Hall meetings. During these meetings, we talk about our business strategy, connect people to our purpose and provide an open forum for questions.

Do you conduct awards presentations or employee engagement in your organisation? What are your tips for employee engagement? Share a comment below. Stay in touch with Recruitment Marketing Magazine on LinkedIn. 

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Here are the eight standout skills and traits today’s influential HR and talent leaders have in common.

1. Maintain a growth mindset 

Great HR and talent leaders never stop learning! Deepening your knowledge of the ever-expanding field of talent will help you to better manage, support, and lead your team and organisation. Putting this knowledge into practice can serve to encourage the growth and development of your team and the larger workforce.

Refine your knowledge by reading articles, following other leaders in the talent space on social media, attending webinars and events, and listen to podcasts; you can take this even further by pursuing a degree or professional certification to continue to refine your knowledge. 

Successful talent and HR leaders display a thirst for understanding the benefits of new trends and staying connected to the latest industry updates. By incorporating your knowledge of best HR practices into your daily life, you can more effectively support your organisation’s strategic goals and direction.

2. Listen deeply (for what people “say” beyond words) 

Communication coaches and authors constantly talk about the critical role of active listening – that is, listening more, and talking less. We know this already! But listening deeply goes beyond words and just hearing what people are saying. 

True leaders listen for what others don’t express in words. They probe to discover and analyse what their team members are truly saying, their wants and needs, sometimes before they even know what they mean themselves. (Some consider that ability either intuition or psychological perception, but whatever the skill, they’re able to “hear” what’s not said and translate the message.) 

This type of leader often sits quietly at the periphery of a conversation, encouraging others to speak up with ideas or opinions.

3. Communicate effectively

Clear, effective messages can boost morale, increase loyalty and even save on your organisation’s bottom line. Research reveals that organisations that use highly effective communication practices are more than twice as likely to significantly outperform competitors that do not. 

Many opportunities exist for talent and HR leaders to develop effective communication skills; for example, strong writing skills can translate into clearly understood policies and procedures that drive organisational results. Great verbal communication skills can help your workforce to understand better their roles in securing effective outcomes and motivate them to perform at their best.

4. Live your organisation’s values

Do your values align with your organisation’s values? You can demonstrate your personal commitment to your organisation’s values in different ways. Great leaders lead by example. Take the lead in advancing your organisation’s values to all employees. You are uniquely positioned to build a community of employees who want to internalise and demonstrate your organisation’s values and ethical behaviours.

5. Plan and think strategically 

We know. It’s tempting to get caught up in your day to day, narrowly focusing your attention to build the most effective and productive workforce. On the surface, this concentration seems to make sense, but today, HR and talent leaders need to take a step back to assess the bigger picture. 

To be an effective leader, you must think strategically and connect recruitment and talent processes with wider business strategies – doing so requires an understanding of your organisation’s values, mission, goals and aspirations.

6. Measure and understand your metrics

Many HR professionals recognise the value of developing outstanding practices that attract, leverage, and retain the best employees for their organisations. Determining the value of those practices on the organization’s bottom line requires you to be able to understand and use data, metrics and key business statistics. There are many metrics you can choose to track (turnover, quality of applications, quality of hire, etc); ensure you’re selecting the right ones to assess ROI. (For example, preparing a cost/benefit analysis for offering a wellness program.) Metrics matter!

7. Be prepared to ask the tough questions 

Great communicators are prepared to ask questions they don’t know the answers to; that is, those that open rather than close doors.

Of course, questions can be used to gather information, but influential HR and talent leaders also ask questions to make others reflect, generate creative thinking, provoke caution and guide people. 

Note though, they don’t ask questions to sidetrack meetings or conversations. Instead, they use questions to discover opportunities and raise broader considerations. 

Strong HR and talent leaders become known for the tough questions they ask — those questions that can’t be answered quickly. Hard questions result in hard thinking and sometimes even harder work.

8. Summarise for the benefit of the group 

This final skill links back to good communication. Sometimes you need to be able to synthesise key points from a discussion and communicate them clearly to that audience or a larger group, and be clear on action steps. 

Listening is not enough. Analysing is not enough. Guiding and challenging is not enough. Influential leaders lead from the front. They communicate well with clear, concise courses of action to move people and their organisations forward.

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Lately, employer branding may have dropped off your radar. It’s understandable, especially if you’ve been struggling with hundreds of competing priorities (maintaining operations, serving clients and stakeholders and retaining people). Things have also shifted to a candidate-rich market, so you may be struggling with more applications than you can handle. But candidates are looking at employer brands more closely now, more so than before, and if you’re receiving huge volumes of applications, it’s important to continue to build a valuable employer brand for sustainable long-term recovery.

One of the ultimate goals of employer branding is to attract the right candidates and allow the wrong candidates to opt-out early in your recruitment process. While we’ve experienced plenty of change in 2020, this will remain fundamentally the same; especially in a candidate-rich market when you’re being overwhelmed with applications. 

How organisations treat their people during the Covid-19 crisis will be the acid test for candidates considering whether to join and will be a major factor in overall employer branding strategy.

 In considering the principles of how to build valuable brands in uncertain times, let’s first consider what’s valuable. Many people have been re-evaluating what is valuable in their lives and what’s not. With talk about recessions, employers need to consider how they’re going to remain valuable to those who are most important in their future (both their people and customers). 

The past offers brands important and timely insights that can help take the edge off of the uncertainty. During the last recession, brands adopted a variety of tactics to respond to changing consumer attitudes and behaviours. A JWT study from 2009 found that most approaches fit into six buckets: optimism, humour, nationalism, nostalgia, empowerment and value/price. Here’s how these approaches can be tailored to apply to employer branding now.

1. Empower people

Making your current team members feel like they have greater control will help strengthen your employer brand in challenging times and throughout recovery. Look to be the leading provider of choice in new initiatives will give them back control and increase your value to them.  

2. Sharpen up your recruitment advertisements

Traditionally, you may have written your job ads to attract as many candidates as possible. Now, you can afford to get more specific to attract people with the skills, experience and behavioural attributes you’re after. Sharpen and focus your recruitment advertisement to attract top talent, and allow unsuitable applicants to opt-out early.

3. Add value

While you can strategically roll out price promotions, savings and discounts for customers, what about candidates? While more great talent is available in a candidate-rich market, A-players can still be hard to find. If you can still provide a great candidate experience and good communications (Candidate Management Systems, branded email templates will most certainly come in handy), you will distinguish yourself and bolster your long-term strategy. 

4. Communicate with optimism 

During times of uncertainty and recovery, people learn to live with losses, making them more sensitive to what really matters. Inspire your current and future talent with optimism. Being a beacon for optimism in a world of dim circumstances can prove a powerful differentiator.

When used appropriately, a touch of humour in your social media posts and employer brand messaging can create a memorable experience for your people and brand. 

4. Reference the bigger picture 

If you are recruiting now, make a point of emphasising the positive impact that joining your organisation will have on Australia’s road to economic and social recovery. Address the new economy in people’s world, and share how people’s work will stimulate it.

On a similar note, reflecting on the past can help in referencing the bigger picture. Anxiety and nostalgia go hand in hand—when times are tough, it’s only natural to seek comfort in memories of what seems like a simpler era. Think about how you can remind your current talent (as well as customers) that you’ve been with them in good times and bad. For future candidates too, give them a lens to the better world you shared together and the bigger future you will create with them.

So what makes your employer brand valuable? Now is a unique opportunity to adjust and bolster your employer brand and reach a wider audience. Empower people, recruit efficiently with the right processes and tools to continue to add value to candidates. Tailor your communication strategy to include optimism, and reference the bigger picture. 

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The pandemic has forced the world’s largest work from home experiment, with many employees experiencing remote working for the first time. In this time of uncertainty, it is more important than ever for HR professionals to lead the charge in keeping employees engaged, informed and supported. 

Research shows that business leaders and managers have a critical role to play in employee engagement, with 80 per cent of HR professionals linking trust in leaders to engagement. Keeping teams engaged as we navigate this new way of working should be at the top of every organisation’s agenda. Employees working remotely will be relying on their business leaders and managers to provide security and stability, and to keep them focused on the organisation’s most critical priorities. 

Here are three tips to ensure employees feel engaged and connected to your business as they work remotely.

Maintain clear and regular communications between leaders and teams

A recent study shows three in four people globally are worried about ‘fake news’ and the spread of false information relating to COVID-19. Employees increasingly rely on their employers for trustworthy guidance and information. 63 per cent of global employees believe information they receive from their employers after one or two exposures to the information, compared to 58 per cent from government and 51 per cent from media. 

In addition to fulfilling people’s need for credible information, maintaining clear and consistent communications with employees can go a long way towards ensuring they feel supported and connected to your organisation’s culture.

In times of change and uncertainty, checking in with your people once or twice a day is a great start. Check-ins can take different forms, such as direct messages, emails or video chats, but aim to have at least one connection a day via video. The benefit of video conferencing is that you have both verbal and non-verbal opportunities to communicate with your colleagues – and it’s as close to an in-person interaction as you can get. These video catch ups don’t have to be formal: personal check-ins are just as important as structured meetings, and can help strengthen the ties between team members in what can be an isolating time. 

Leaders have a vital role to play in managing remote teams, and HR teams should support them as they look to navigate this complex transition. Remember that this new way of working is likely new to leaders as well, and they will look to HR teams for support and guidance on how they can keep team members engaged. Aside from daily check-ins at a team-level, consider weekly virtual all-company updates to keep people connected to the organisation and informed on the latest developments. 

Keep learning and development on your radar

With many businesses focused on moving forward in the wake of COVID-19, things like learning, development and performance management tend to get deprioritised. But learning and development initiatives are effective ways of keeping employees engaged and connected to their organisation.  Providing learning opportunities and setting up regular development conversations with managers will help employees feel valued and reassured that they can continue to develop and grow within your organisation.  

Consider learning apps that can be accessed on mobile and web, so employees can proactively stay on top of their own learning and development remotely. You can push out new learning and upskilling opportunities so employees can continue their career development even from home. Share links to online learning modules on a regular basis so employees are aware of the avenues available for them to improve their skills or learn new ones relevant now and into the future. 

Make flexible onboarding seamless for new starters

This is an unprecedented time for all of us, but it can be even more daunting for new starters. Joining a new workplace remotely means that new hires do not have the opportunity to connect in-person with colleagues, develop relationships easily or understand the dynamics of their new workplace.

As new starters navigate this situation, it’s important to ensure their onboarding experience is as seamless and positive as it can be. Effectively onboarding new starters virtually is key for them to prepare for their first few weeks remotely. Consider sharing pre-onboarding activities in the week before new joiners are due to start so they can prepare themselves for the journey ahead.

The first day of any new job is challenging, but you can help make sure it goes smoothly. Develop a schedule for their first week that ensures they are introduced to the right people and teams to start building relationships. New hires can feel lost during their first week in a role and not sure of what to do next. Sharing a schedule will help them navigate their first week without having to rely too heavily on their managers and team for direction.  

The onboarding experience should also set clear expectations. This is unchartered territory, and they will likely have a number of questions about how COVID-19 will impact their role and the businesses’ expectations of them. Engage with them frequently so you can provide guidance and manage expectations in real-time. This type of proactive support will show new hires you value and take care of your people, even in challenging situations. 

This pandemic will not last forever, and how you support employees through the coming weeks and months will have a big impact on their perceptions of, and loyalty towards your organisation in the future. Implementing these simple tips to keep your team engaged will pay off in the long run. 

As the Head of HR at PageUp, Chelsie Hastings draws on over a decade of experience in strategic talent management across a range of leading organisations.

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