Successful organisations understand and connect more deeply with the values of their employees, according to speakers at Women in Super’s recent Conference of Major Superannuation Funds (CMSF) breakfast.
The relationship between employer and employee has been radically reshaped in the wake of the pandemic, placing new demands on organisations to understand what really drives their staff.
Nadia Schiavon, Head of Securities Services, Australia and New Zealand, J.P. Morgan said the way organisations think about staff needs to change if they want to retain talent.
“We've just been through a world pandemic and it's really fundamentally changed the way we work: the importance of health, wellbeing, and staff retention,” she said.
The pace of employee turnover is expected to jump 50-75% while companies are taking 18% longer to fill roles than before the pandemic, according to Gartner[1], which will place more pressure on employers.
Schiavon said J.P. Morgan has restructured the way they look at talent and retention post pandemic, focusing on growth, development, culture, innovation, development, and purpose as part of their employee value proposition.
Why staff leave employers
Jack Brown, Associate Director, Kaizen Recruitment, said 26 of the last 32 people he had spoken to had given the same reason for leaving their employer: “They lacked career development and career opportunities within their current team and couldn't foresee outside of their teams where else they could go within that organisation.”
A recent year-long McKinsey survey found the top reason people left their organisation was a lack of career development opportunities (41%), followed by inadequate compensation (36%) and uncaring and uninspiring leaders (34%)[2].
Amy Ridley, Head of People and Culture, CareSuper, said it was important to connect staff with the organisation’s strategic purpose to create personal meaning, as well as build moments of social connection between people.
“The silver lining of the COVID pandemic is that wellbeing is now embraced in a much more holistic way – no longer can it just be about the standard physical benefits and mental health training.”
CareSuper has an internal coaching program where all staff get unlimited access to individual coaching sessions and workshops to support their personal development and wellbeing. CareSuper managers have also recently completed a year-long leadership training program that included a module on building psychological safety among teams to encourage diverse perspectives.
Acknowledging a desire for purpose and greater flexibility
Ridley said that since the pandemic, staff were particularly wanting to pinpoint their individual contributions to more meaningful work, even within profit-for-member funds.
“We’ve started utilising job crafting and a strengths-based approach so that staff can more readily identify their strengths,” she said. “ Positive psychology research shows that staff are more engaged, satisfied and feel more purposeful if they're using their strengths at work – how can they craft their role to maximise that?”
Brown said Kaizen was seeing a big uplift in ESG roles, which aligned with many candidates’ personal values and desire to make a difference.
Flexible working from home and the office had become standard since the pandemic, but it could also lead to staff burnout through longer working hours. CareSuper encourages managers to set a delay on sending emails if they’re working in the evening, while at J.P Morgan staff are empowered to request that out-of-hours calls or meetings be rescheduled to a more mutually agreeable time.
“What's most important is getting managers who will lead by example,” according to Professor Joanne Earl, School of Psychological Sciences, Macquarie University. “You can have all the systems and edicts and policies you like, but if the top managers are still not demonstrating those values, then that will reinforce it.”
Women starting to win more roles, higher pay increases
Brown said many male candidates were still overconfident and demanded more money than equivalent female candidates. Women also tended to de-select themselves if they didn’t meet every aspect of a job description, although the situation was improving. Last year, more than half of Kaizen’s job placements (51%) went to female candidates.
“A lot of those placements, they had never even considered that role before,” Brown said. “They're generally getting uplifts of 30 or 40% on their salary, which is gigantic, only because their current company has completely undervalued them… and probably they haven't really thought that they deserve that or maybe it's that unconscious bias they've been subjected to their whole life.”
Sponsors and mentors often play important roles helping candidates take the next step in their careers through encouragement, finding opportunities, or advocating for them within an organisation.
Schiavon, a huge supporter of Sponsorship said “I think all managers really need to take a punt on people and say: ‘They’ve got three quarters [of the position description] they can do this - they’ve got the skills’ – I am going to shepherd them and I am going to see them through to success.”
Retirement challenges still unequally borne by women
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Retirement Intentions survey revealed that women comprised almost two-thirds (61.2%) of the 196,000 people who recently retired and we're trying to get back into the workforce, according to Earl.
Her research suggests people should take a more considered approach when they retire or accept a redundancy package[3]. While financial advice is crucial, pre-retirees also need to consider other aspects of their lives such as health and career.
“That holistic approach helps people to get in their head why they want to leave work and when they want to leave work.”
ABS data also shows that women are disproportionately affected by caring responsibilities and a lack of flexibility, which forces them to leave the workforce, underlining the need for further change among employers.
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