Performance Management for a Future Workforce – Elegant, Fair, and Durable

I was pleasantly surprised to see a chapter on performance management in Daniel Kahneman’s recent book Noise (2021). If anything, it is a major contributor to organisational noise. He points out that the relationship between performance ratings and actual performance is tenuous at best. With all the effort invested into performance management processes, it rarely engenders performance as such. It may have been comical had it not been so sad.   Why? David Rock et al., in their article, Kill Your Performance Ratings (2014), fittingly indicate that numerically labelling people inevitably generates a fight or flight “response that impairs good judgment“. Sadly, only one group seems to benefit from the performance management process – senior executives. They seem to intrinsically be rewarded by “the feelings of status, certainty and autonomy that occur when one is presiding over a forced ranking system”. This is neither desirable nor good enough.  Simultaneously, driven by the 4th industrial revolution and accelerated by the COVID pandemic, we are speeding into a technology-driven, disruptive, but human first era. As Dave Snowden (1999) points out, in this exciting new world, “knowledge can only be volunteered, it cannot be conscripted”. The same holds true for performance, caring and trust. As HR professionals and as custodians of this process, it is incumbent on us to fix it for the people and organisations we serve.  We have a unique opportunity amidst and post the pandemic, and it would be a travesty to squander it. The opportunity of a new, hybrid and hopefully changed workplace, but in lockstep a fundamentally changed performance management approach. Not scrapping it but changing it. We need to address performance management as a core and systemic tenet of the HR new normal. A noise muffler, not an amplifier.  To do so may require a shift away from the overuse of words, concepts, and terms such as performance, productivity, utilisation and sales targets as core beliefs in the performance management process. Instead, it may be more useful to consider contributions from teams rather than individuals as a starting point and fiercely focus on the concepts of recognition and the development of people.  We need to seek approaches that sensibly address the important neuroscience factors that impact people the world over, namely Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, Fairness (Rock et al., 2014). We are to build a framework that negates the negative overtones of performance management and strives to find a positive foundation to engage on an emotional and rational level. Wouldn’t it be great if we could at least say that the process was fair and did not undermine the autonomy of the people we work with?  Alvin Toffler is often quoted for stating that unlearning and relearning to be as important as learning itself. I think it is time to unbelieve some of our performance management myths and convictions. A time to create a process conducive to guiding authentic performance and behaviour. As core tenets, it needs to be elegant in form and philosophy, fair at all costs and a durable process supported by the people it is aimed to serve.  Wouldn’t it be great to experience a fair, team-driven, perhaps highly personalised performance management process through consumer-grade technology?    About the Author Barry Vorster is a human resource and consulting leader with a track record in strategic talent management, future of work and culture transformation applications. He is the Chief Strategy Officer, leads the VSLS Enablement Technologies and Workforce Transformation teams that specialise in strategic advisory, content experience design and technology enablement to unlock the true potential of organisations. He has more than twenty-five years of consulting experience and has been enmeshed in helping organisations within the ambit of human resources, organisational culture, HR technology, learning, and the future of work.

Building a Future-Fit Culture to Attract, Retain and Upskill Talent

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. This quote has been used and misquoted by management consultants and business “thinkers” so often that it has become a somewhat stale way of saying that your strategy won’t fix your people problems; unless one simultaneously addresses the root of the issue – your organisational culture and connected behaviours. Let’s look at how you can practically build a future-fit culture to ensure that you attract the right people to your team and keep them long enough to upskill them and send them out into the world of work with a more robust set of capabilities. How does organisational culture fit into the future of work? A lot has been said about the future of work as if it’s something to fear. It’s not. Especially if your culture is built to address the challenges that come with the inevitable workforce transformation. And unlocking the bests parts of your culture is the key to transforming at a pace that your peers cannot compete with. But having a future-fit culture does not happen by accident, and it certainly does not appear overnight. One of the critical aspects of a thriving culture is opening the conversation to everyone. When we co-create culture, we strengthen it through every interaction and drive adoption at every level.  People tend to own what they create. What do successful organisations use to build culture? From our wide industry insights, we have isolated two foundational pillars that reinforce our strategic approach to culture: give more in value than you take in return, and keep humans exactly where they belong – at the centre of it all. We fundamentally believe that what you do is what you are. To keep all of this from disintegrating into a buzz-word fest, here’s what you can practically do to establish and enhance your organisational culture: Invest in your people: Establish initiatives that sustain your investment in people. This could range from practically pairing team members across disciplines to get hands-on, real-time interactions that build trust, to hosting training workshops to share skills and master the art of presentation. Prioritise time and space for your team members to experiment, learn and explore the entire workplace. Building multi-role proficiency in team members is critical, so encourage your people to absorb as much as possible from every other person in the team. By prioritising learning and development, you’ll keep the team engaged long after the novelty of remote work wears off. Curate interesting, actual learning resources and host group discussions about a specific relevant topic once a week. Don’t think of team members as resources Late into our annual strategic discussion, one of our senior partners raised his aversion to the habit of calling people resources. And while this idea is entrenched in the labour culture as we know it, we’ve been challenging ourselves to step away from the term ‘resource’. Take up this challenge and watch how it opens up a new approach to how you think about your people and relate to each other. We all need to train a reflex that considers people, their challenges and their lives outside of work. This simple mind shift will bring on a ripple effect of positive changes to your culture as you keep building it. Why are we making such a fuss about culture and the future of work? Apart from the effects that culture may have on the wellbeing of your people, and ultimately the bottom line, we believe that unlocking your unique organisational culture can bring you closer to a future of work reality, which you need to remain sustainable and successful. There’s no denying that 2020 was the onset of incredible change for most organisations all across the globe, but the change isn’t stopping here. A global pandemic was the catalyst, and we’re all feeling the shock waves of workforce transformation as we try to reach our “new normal”. We’re making such a fuss about culture and the future of work because culture is the difference between riding the wave or being swept away by it. Culture, in our world, isn’t simply what you believe; it’s what you do. And if you’re not actively building your culture to be agile, experimental and more risk-tolerant, you’re not going to end up without culture- you’re going to end up with something much worse- a weak, toxic culture. About the Author Chantelle is a communications specialist with extensive experience in relationship management, content development and project management for corporate clients. She manages employee engagement across all VSLS value propositions and provides direction as the Chief of Staff for Team VSLS.

Harnessing the Power of the Internal Talent Marketplace within Unilever

A popular topic and trend in HR networks over the past decade has been the Open Talent Economy and how it will shape the future of work and resourcing. The benefits for both organisations and workers of the Open Talent Economy have been extensively explored and documented (Deloitte, 2013). Many companies have followed this trend and started to adopt a blend of full-time employees and short-term, project based, highly skilled talent who enter and exit the business as required. Research by Korn Ferry (2018) suggests that companies need to truly disrupt and not just evolve their talent strategies, ‘[harnessing] the gifts of talented individuals and [unleashing] them in a way that will deliver real market advantage’. Included in the eight imperatives they discuss to achieve this are: bending the organisation to suit talent as opposed to bending individuals to suit a job as well as creating an internal market ‘to enable the free flow of talent to meet capability needs’ as opposed to focussing on succession plans. In addition, in their Talent 2020 report, Deloitte (2013) identified one of the biggest challenges facing companies is that if employees are not engaged in meaningful work they will leave. Employees value meaningful work over other retention strategies. Furthermore Gallup (2016) shared valuable insights on how millennials want to work and live. Understanding these important insights and integrating them into a disruptive talent management strategy is key for any organisation that is passionate about retaining their critical talent and impacting business performance. At Unilever we have embraced the need to change the career narrative of our internal employees and implemented several initiatives that enhance internal talent fluidity and enable employees to manage their careers on their own terms. Two of these initiatives will be elaborated on in this article including the Flex Inner Mobility Platform and the UWork Program. The Flex Inner Mobility Platform (Flex) Employees need visibility of opportunities for new experiences, to see how they can continue to grow and develop in Unilever. Flex is a platform which allows all employees to create a profile. Managers requiring skills for specific projects advertise these projects specifying the skills and time required for the said project on the platform. On Flex, all employees irrespective of their work level, can search for available project opportunities which align with their career aspirations, purpose and potential and then choose to apply. The platform then instantly matches employees’ profiles with the opportunities available across Unilever globally thereby creating a borderless workplace and allowing an unrestricted flow of talent to address business needs. Flex experiences at Unilever have enabled us to democratise talent development for our employees allowing them to shift their careers from being title/hierarchy driven to being growth based, focusing on knowledge, skills and experiences & remaining relevant and future-proof. In this way, people can have diverse careers without leaving the company. At the same time the organisation can quickly resource critical projects with employees who have capacity and the skills/talent required thereby fuelling business capacity for growth. It is great way for managers to build a network of diversely talented individuals across the globe. Flex was launched in Unilever long before the COVID-19 pandemic, however, with the complete disruption of all business activity in 2020, our Flex platform has become one of Unilever’s most valuable investments. Using agile methodology, every business function was required to evaluate their priorities and shift focus to work on the critical projects identified. At the same time surplus and deficiencies in resourcing were identified with the changed critical focus areas. The resourcing focus of the business shifted from external talent acquisition to redeployment of internal talent. In order to preserve jobs, employees who had capacity were redeployed to critical projects. While this redeployment could have been executed manually via local cross-functional conversations, the Flex platform effectively enabled thousands of employees to be redeployed across the globe. The use of Flex has resulted in effective global collaboration and job retention across Unilever, demonstrating its power and efficiency as an inner mobility platform. This agile way of working has become embedded in our organisation and before advertising for any vacancy, managers are encouraged to be resourceful and consider segmenting the role into projects that can be placed on Flex and resourced by talent across the world. The exposure and development experiences for our employees has been phenomenal as has been the business impact in terms of thousands of hours of capacity that have been unlocked for Unilever. The U-Work Program U-Work is a Unilever employment model that is already live in the UK, Malaysia, Argentina, South Africa and the Philippines. In 2021 the programme will be rolled out in Spain, Russia, Turkey, Australia and New Zealand. The U-Work concept affords employees the flexibility and freedom associated with contract roles without having to sacrifice the security and benefits which are typically linked to permanent roles. U-Work is entirely voluntary and open to all permanent employees who desire a more flexible working arrangement. How it works is people in U-Work do not have a set role. They work on varying assignments as and when they choose, and in between assignments they are free to do whatever they desire. U-Workers receive a monthly retainer and set of benefits irrespective of whether they are on assignment or not and get paid for each assignment they work on. This flexible working model enables Unilever to retain highly skilled resources while at the same time it allows working parents to manage their time more effectively, people to travel or study without having to sacrifice their jobs and for people to reduce their working hours as they get older, just to name a few of the benefits. As the world becomes more agile, so will the workforce. As an employer, we need and require flexibility in our workforce to remain relevant especially as the workplace becomes increasingly automated where jobs are broken into tasks and projects. The benefit of the U-Work model to our business is having a pool of highly skilled resources, who know our business and who can hit the ground running and flow to work as required. At the same time people are afforded the opportunity to work on meaningful projects and continue to develop their skills and learn while enjoying the flexibility they can tailor to their stage of life, enabling professional and personal satisfaction. In summary, harnessing the power of our internal talent marketplace is a growing movement within Unilever and a strong culture of internal talent mobility is being created. Through democratisation of talent development and increased flexibility for our employees, we are reshaping our business. Not only are employees being empowered to manage their careers, but similarly Unilever is also being enhanced with agility, access to the right skills on demand and retention of key talent. About the Author Debbie Brien – Unilever Talent Acquisition Manager, Africa Debbie Brien heads up Talent Acquisition for Unilever across Africa. She has been with Unilever for 1.5 years prior to which she ran her own HR Consulting business for 14 years. She is psychologist with a special interest in Talent Management and 20 years experience in the recruitment industry. References Deloitte, 2013: The open talent economy People and work in a borderless workplace. https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/human-capital/articles/open-talenteconomy1.html Deloitte, 2013: Talent 2020: Surveying the Talent Paradox from the Employee Perspective. https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/talent/talent-2020-surveying-the-talent-paradoxfrom-the-employee-perspective.html?id=us:el:dc:redirect Gallup (2016): How Millennials want to Work and Live. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/238073/millennials-work-live.aspx Korn Ferry (2018): Reimagining Talent Management. https://focus.kornferry.com/reimagining-talent-management/

Why Learning and Talent Mobility Are Key in Today’s Workplace

A decade ago, few of us worked with a director of employee experience, a director of organisational learning and development, or a vice president of global impact and employee life. These roles were few and far between, which is just one simple example of how our workplaces are changing. The “2019 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends” report surveyed nearly 10,000 respondents in 119 countries to get more insight into workplace changes, and how we’re reconsidering our approach to jobs; new recruiting, hiring, and retention practices; and the adoption of technology in the workplace. The report identified 10 trends for companies to focus on for meaningful impact. In this post, I’ll explore two trends relating to learning and talent mobility that have particular resonance for human resources leaders. Learning in the Flow of Life The No. 1 reason people quit their jobs is the “inability to learn and grow,” according to respondents of the Deloitte report. It follows, then, that the No. 1 trend in 2019 is for organisations to change the way people learn, with 86 percent of respondents rating this issue important or very important. Jaime Fall, director of The Aspen Institute’s UpSkill America, confirms that “lots of surveys show that if millennials and Gen Z workers don’t feel their employers are investing in their education, training, or development, they’re not going to stay.” There’s another business reason to support prioritizing continuous learning. As Workday Chief People Officer Ashley Goldsmith says, “Advances in technology will continue to change the way we view talent and organize our workforces. In the face of this, it will be HR’s responsibility to provide the leadership necessary to ensure workers have the new skills required for our organisations to remain agile, efficient, and prepared for whatever disruptions the future brings.” Building up the right skills is critical. In fact, Deloitte cites a recent World Economic Forum report that found 54 percent of all employees “will require significant reskilling and upskilling in just three years.” So how are HR leaders addressing these challenges? Deloitte’s survey revealed the following: Eighty-four percent of organisations surveyed are increasing their investment in reskilling programs, with 53 percent saying that they would increase this budget by 6 percent or more. Seventy-seven percent of organisations surveyed are increasing their learning team’s headcount, elevating learning to the second-fastest-growing role in HR.   Organisations that invest in an always-learning, agile workforce will be more prepared to adapt to change and achieve their growth objectives, yet companies can do more than they’re currently doing. Other research bears out the importance of upskilling. Our global study, “Organisational Agility at Scale: The Key to Driving Digital Growth,” found that leading organisations—in terms of digital revenue growth and five identified attributes of organisational agility—are four times more likely than their less agile peers to plan to upskill more than 75 percent of their workforce. Smart leaders understand that these numbers are important. Feon Ang, vice president for talent and learning solutions, Asia Pacific, LinkedIn, noted in a MarketWatch article that organisations must embrace a culture of learning to remain resilient in a rapidly changing workforce. Talent Mobility: Look Within to Win The race for top talent has always been top of mind for HR leaders, but the methods for finding and retaining that talent has shifted. Sometimes, the best candidates are already working at your company, and the Deloitte report highlights that organisations must embrace internal mobility as a “natural, normal progression.” In fact, supporting the internal mobility of talent is good for employees and employers alike. It enables employees to continue to feel challenged and engaged with their work, acquire new skills, help fill organisational skills gaps, and make progress toward broader career goals. Additional drivers for internal mobility include expansion of operations, including globalization, and the shift of many organisations toward flatter organisational models. As a result, there’s a need to put employees in different roles, on different projects, or in different locations. The No. 1 reason people quit their jobs is the “inability to learn and grow,” according to the Deloitte report. Companies have strong business reasons to make internal talent mobility a priority. When Deloitte looked at the fastest-growing organisations, defined as those growing at 10 percent or more compared to the prior year, “they were twice as likely to have excellent talent mobility programs than organisations that were not growing at all, and more than three times more likely than organisations whose revenues were shrinking.” And yet more than 50 percent of this year’s survey respondents told Deloitte that it “was easier for employees to find a job outside their organisation than inside.” While the report found that internal mobility is a high priority, it’s difficult to do well. Only 6 percent of respondents described themselves as “excellent” at moving internal talent from role to role; 59 percent rate themselves fair or inadequate. The research turned up a number of reasons that organisations find it so challenging: Organisations don’t have the processes in place to identify internal candidates. Organisational silos pose a challenge for both managers and employees to look beyond their own groups and find the right roles and the right candidates. The necessary technology and systems are not in place to promote internal mobility. Incentives typically don’t exist for internal hiring, and the workplace culture does not promote talent sharing.   Investing in internal mobility can help employers find solutions to their talent needs, create more growth opportunities for employees, and develop future leaders. Cristina Goldt, vice president, HCM products, Workday, explains that one way to do that is for organisations to get comfortable with using a talent marketplace model to mobilize existing employees and promote internal mobility. “Looking within,” according to the report, “can make the crucial difference between struggling and succeeding.” Are You Ready for the New World of Work? Work is changing in ways that are completely unprecedented. In order to succeed and thrive in the new world of work, organisations must avoid the comfort of complacency. If companies are willing to challenge the old ways of doing things, embrace the changes that accompany technological innovation, and put employee development and engagement at the center of their business, together, they will create a better future of work. About the Author Julie Jares is a Workday staff writer covering professional services and human resources trends that impact business leaders.

Hiring Remote Workers? Mindset Is Everything … and It’s Not What You Think

As CEO of a fully remote company, I’m often approached by job candidates who say, “I would love to work from home!”. That’s great – and part of my goal to hire for fit – but that’s only part of the “fit.” People who power a remote business must dovetail with three criteria: an affinity for company values; the talent to meet specific job requirements; and the ability to work without supervision, apart from the rest of the crew. Those abilities all have their beginnings in the mind, each stemming from different intellectual capacities. Let’s say that two workers are equally qualified in the first two areas. They’ve demonstrated that they’re aligned with the company’s mission and values, and they have the chops to do their jobs. If we hire on those benchmarks alone, though, we may still make the very wrong choice. For example: “Mia” does her job via Wi-Fi at the local Starbucks. As her focus shifts from her laptop to the patrons, baristas, and the delicious smell of coffee, she forgets to return emails and compiles her report in bits and pieces. By lunchtime, she still isn’t finished. She heads to the nearby McDonald’s to work through lunch, only to catch up with her friends on social media instead. Her report will be late. “Paul” built a compact office in a corner of his great room at home. He put in a glass door so he can see the kids when they come home from school—but he also hired a nanny to supervise them until dinnertime. Paul goes for a run in the morning, finishes his paperwork by noon, and enjoys a restful lunch hour. Coworkers never have to wait long for phone or email replies, and Paul still has time to prep for the next day’s agenda before quitting time. Sure, discipline exists in different supply in different people. But that’s only part of the remote equation. Dedicating our focus to our tasks—by creating a quiet workspace and managing time well—shows respect for the freedom and obligations that come with teleworking. That’s a plus for Paul, but Mia has another problem. She may love the idea of working from a chosen location, but she doesn’t like to be alone. There are workarounds for that, such as shared office space with other remote workers. But that doesn’t mean Mia can hang around the water cooler all day and still perform her job. This isn’t a knock-on social people; it just means that working remotely takes a bit more effort at setting boundaries for ourselves. We don’t have the peer pressure of a coworker saying, “Well, we’d better get back to work,” after a chat in the break room. The remote meeting format is another protocol that virtual workers must embrace. People who are big talkers and poor listeners won’t cut it. Those who veer off topic or interrupt proceedings to attend to matters at home—or the coffee shop—won’t do, either. An active listener, respectful of who is speaking and of the time invested by colleagues, is a great communicator whom any remote operation would love to have. These are just the most obvious requirements of teleworkers. Running down details may take more effort from afar, so employees who follow up and follow through without having to be reminded are well suited to remote roles. Being technologically inclined or willing to learn is also a must unless the job is stuffing envelopes. Digital communication becomes more sophisticated every day, and staying connected is essential. There’s another need related to that—in the opposite direction. The ability to switch off and regenerate is something that remote workers must have and be able to do on their own. To help them, companies can strongly encourage or require that employees take breaks. Research shows that productivity depends on that. Poor Mia will always be underproductive because she never really hits her working stride amid all the distractions, so she tries to catch up by skipping breaks. At my company, one boost for productivity that teleworkers have is that they can get their work done whenever they are sharpest. If they’re morning people, they can get started early and finish early. If they’re night owls, they’re just finishing up when the morning folks rise. The only caveat is meeting fixed deadlines and mutual conferencing times, small concessions to gain additional freedoms. This brings us back around to the other two hiring-for-fit criteria: candidates who align with a company’s culture and who are qualified to do the assigned work. The best remote employees will be able to tie these things together with their brand of self-management. All three criteria, combined, actually strengthen one another when the hiring fit is right. So our HR process includes a peek into the mindset of job candidates. They take a personality test and are interviewed for their responses to our company’s business mission, core values, and work culture. We assess them for the skills we’re looking for and the capacity to learn new things. And when we get around to what it takes to work from a virtual office, we ask a trick question. We ask them where they get their coffee. Chris will be speaking at the 2019 HR + L&D Innovation & Tech Fest in Johannesburg on 26-27 August. About the Author Chris Dyer is a recognised performance expert. Constantly intrigued by what makes some businesses and individuals more successful, Chris has dedicated years of research to what drives productivity and profits. As a sought-after speaker and consultant, Chris works with organisations to help them transform their cultures. Chris is the author of The Power of Company Culture. He is also the Founder and CEO of PeopleG2, a company that has appeared on the Inc. 5000 list of the Fastest Growing Companies three times.

Emotionally Intelligent Leaders Know Tools Can’t Fix Collaboration. Here’s What They Do Instead

When I see high-performing teams working well together, I can attribute their success to three things every time: their people, tools, and practices. When I see dysfunctional teams, they almost always have the same tools as their high-performing counterparts. The difference is in the people and practices. In an age where work is increasingly about creative problem-solving (i.e., now and for the foreseeable future), effectiveness is the new efficiency. And robust collaboration is the key to effectiveness. Your team can’t stay relevant if you’re not constantly evolving the way you work, what you know, and the practices you employ. Too often, company leaders fall into the trap of thinking the collaboration tool du jour – think internal social networking platforms or digital scrapbooks – is just the silver bullet they need. “People aren’t sharing ideas? Don’t worry! We’ll get a tool to fix that.” But they learn quickly that without the right off-line behaviours, that shiny new tool is simply a sunk cost. But collaboration can’t be bought. No tool or app will solve your collaboration problems “out of the box”. It has to be part of the culture, something emotionally intelligent leaders understand intrinsically. They hire smart, life-long learners, and invest in creating an environment where they can thrive. Inevitably, today’s best leaders do these three things well: 1. Empower Teams to Make Their Own Decisions Emotionally intelligent leaders foster a collaborative culture by acknowledging they’re not the smartest person in the room. They decentralize decision-making and give teams the autonomy to move quickly and bring the full weight of their expertise to bear on whatever problem they’re solving. They leave meetings knowing more than they did when they arrived. They listen with intent. To keep everyone aligned, they lay out a vision for their teams to execute against. Letting the people closest to the work decide how the work will be done imparts a sense of ownership and gets people engaged. Without autonomous decision-making power, employees feel disconnected. They don’t see the relevance of their work, except as a means to a paycheck and maybe a promotion. That’s when information hoarding and office politics set in–culture killers of the highest order. 2. Create Fluid, Cross-Functional Teams There’s this little movement called DevOps you may have heard of that’s all about breaking down organizational silos. Turns out, the best way to get your HR people and your finance people to collaborate closely is to put them on the same team – if not as neighbours on your org chart, at least as contributors to the same project. I’m a member of a couple teams at Atlassian, one of which comprises six people from different functional backgrounds who all report to different managers. We’re all part-time on the project, but we’re active on it daily. The diversity of skills and thought in the mix means we arrive at better decisions (and faster) than if the project was handed off to each of us in turn. 3. Create a Safe Space for Dissent and Unlearning Contributing fresh or dissenting ideas puts you in an inherently vulnerable position. See also: partnering with another person to deliver your work. In order for people to embrace collaboration, they have to believe they won’t regret it. Diversity and inclusion are absolutely critical aspects of creating a safe space for collaboration. But you have to think beyond the numbers. Here’s a familiar exchange: “Our staff is 40% women!” … “Are they all clustered in Marketing and HR?” … “Pretty much. What’s your point?” The point is there has to be diversity at the team level, so everyone interacts with a diverse group of people and builds empathy every day. Practices matter, too. I’ve seen teams adopt blameless post-mortems (hat-tip to DevOps, once again) in which it’s assumed that whatever happened was a shared failure. An opportunity for the whole team or department to examine their systems and practices, then make some changes. Some even conduct pre-mortems in which they imagine how the project could fail, then take action to prevent it. When un-learning happens at the group level, it sends a signal that individual un-learning is ok, too. Fixing Collaboration Isn’t Easy, But It’s Effective Tools can’t undo the damage wrought by a toxic office environment or poor practices. To unleash our potential, we need to understand the human side of our interactions before we bake bad practices into whatever tools we roll out. If you’ve got already got whiteboards on every wall in your office, but people don’t feel comfortable collaborating, an online version of whiteboards won’t change anything. So fix the underlying problems first. Collaboration is the art and science of trust, respectful dissent, listening as much as talking, cognitive diversity, and psychological safety. None of which actually require technology. About the Author Dominic Price is Head of R&D and Work Futurist at Atlassian. With responsibilities spanning 5 global R&D centres, he is also the in-house “Team Doctor”, helping Atlassian scale by being ruthlessly efficient and effective, with one eye on the future. Dom helped pioneer the Team Playbook and has personally run hundreds of sessions with teams globally. Previously, Dom was GM of Program Management for a global gaming company and a Director of Deloitte providing assurance and consulting services. This article originally appeared on Inc.com and the HR Innovation & Tech Fest Australian blog.

[PODCAST] Matt Alder: Are You Getting Enough Talent Attention?

We live in an age of digital noise and distraction. How can you be sure you are getting the attention necessary to persuade the right people to join your company? Join Matt Alder, Keynote Speaker at HR Tech Fest 2016, for this webinar on the concept of “Talent Attention” which he is finding more and more of an issue for employers all over the world. This podcast is a recording of a webinar Matt conducted discussing: The Talent Attention problem and why it is getting worse Why it is easy to blame the tools but actually we need to think about Talent Acquisition in a different way A metaphor to illustrate what recruiters often get wrong when attempting to get the attention of potential hires The complexity problem A simple model that can help you radically improve your strategy and ensure you get the attention of the right talent   Listen to the podcast now. This podcast originally appeared on the Recruiting Future. About the Author Matt Alder helps organisations map their way through the digital revolution and the changing world of work through his company Metashift. He is also a long-established blogger, accomplished public speaker, podcaster and regular commentator on the emerging worlds of Social Recruiting and Mobile Recruiting. Connect with Matt @mattalder