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good afternoon everybody thank you for joining us uh could you please let me
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know in the chat if you can hear me okay
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okay great amazing you are very much on time everybody
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we're impressed so hi welcome my name is charlotteville i'm the regional head of operations for cipd in the middle east
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and i am delighted to be your host today again um through the cipd webinar um
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today's webinar is hosted by stephanie middleton cooperation with our headquarters so um 50 of the audience
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will probably be coming from the uk um and regions and the rest from the middle east so if
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you do want to let us know where you're joining us from in the chat box and what you're hoping to get most from this
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session that would be very very helpful um so we live in a little bit of a strange time and hosting a webinar and
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talking about business as usual can seem somewhat tone deaf just when we thought everything was going back to normal
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or somewhat um we've been hit by another crisis so we know that the news can be overwhelming um and that many of you
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will be concerned about your family friends and colleagues affected by the war in ukraine uh and its consequences
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at home and afar if you are a cipd member in the uk we do have a well-being hotline um which my
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colleagues will pop down in the chat if you need somebody to talk down to talk to um and we encourage you people
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professionals to look after your own health and well-being um in that of your
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of your of your teams and workforces and we have good resources available around sustained responsible business
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well-being mental health on our website which we'll be sharing with you so today we're talking about raising our
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employee value proposition um this has been very much on top of everybody's agenda ever since the
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dynamics have quite shifted since the beginnings of it um throughout the pandemic employees
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have had the opportunity to rethink their expectations off and their relationships with work and their
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co-workers amidst the backdrop of a similar simmering workplace revolution where employees are seeking more human century
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workplaces with greater flexibility more visible signs of social responsibility inclusive cultures flexible working and
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opportunities for personal and career growth how can employers adjust their evp
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and most critically where should we start so in this session today we'll look into
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how the pandemic exactly has transformed the employer employee relationship the greater microeconomic background that
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we're operating in and what's happened and what is about to happen and how it will impact our evp and our employer
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brands we look into the critical elements of a good value proposition in a postcoded world um
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and look at the different elements and how employees can where employees can start throughout the entire
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employee life cycle um this session is being recorded so you will be sent a recording aft if you've
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pre-registered you will be sent a recording and a link to our youtube um shortly after this is over we will be
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starting with a presentation and a conversation uh please do let us know your thoughts if this is helpful not
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helpful if you have a burning question send us to them in the chat please be engaging that's the only way that i can
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best help you and ensure this session is as valuable as possible for you um if the sessions relate to if the questions
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relate directly to what we're talking to i will pick them up there and then otherwise don't worry we will have time
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for direct q a to answer your questions at the end we'll try and keep 15 minutes for this this webinar is one hour long
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so thank you for joining us and now let's get started so to get us started and give us a
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bigger picture in the in the backdrop against which we are operating i'd like to invite my colleague john boyce who is
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a labor market economist at the cipd thanks very much charlotte so
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uh i guess i'm going to talk about some of the the background and really sets
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the scene for how difficult it is for employers at the moment uh so we're going to talk about supply and
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demand of candidates and and what's really useful is that at any one time it's usually
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quite difficult to tell a story uh and to apply you know to more than one context of war
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more than one labor market um but there's been an uncanny uh amount of synchronization um in the in the
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challenges uh that we face in the global economy at the moment so if i talk about inflation
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which is being largely driven by energy uh energy costs you know that's something that's being felt in lots of
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places if i talk about the uh closure of the economy uh from covid in the
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reopening you know it it pretty much happened at the same time so um my slides will be slightly uk centric but
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they're more kind of demonstrative of um of challenges that are being faced all over the world so if we start with the
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the first slide um what the pandemic did is it did some really quite dramatic things to the
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vertical axis on all of our charts um so this is job adverts in the uk
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over time so it's going right back to 2003. um you can see a big drop off after the
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financial crash but you know relatively small in the grand scheme of things and then it started to grow
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now in the pre-pandemic era we were thinking wow look at these vacancies
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they're up to 750 000. this is a record breaker we're in a jobs boom and you
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know part of me thought is it just that it's easier to put a job ad on the internet nowadays can i even trust these
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figures and then along came kovid and it fell through the floor such a dramatic fall so
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at this time it was you know it was incredibly easy to um get stuff relatively speaking
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there were not many jobs there were not many employers recruiting um everything was on on hold everything was was being
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chilled um now the most obvious thing that then happened was the economy reopened and
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these these um job adverts they did not recover to pre-pandemic levels they shot
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way past it um so i'm using words to describe the chart but it does a lot of
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the heavy lifting for me here so this is the context that we're in today demand for people is through the roof
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and in these circumstances you can imagine that the employee value proposition is is
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even more important than it might usually be um so the next slide shows unemployment
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and uh you can see the dotted line anything after that is is a uh a forecast uh now the interesting thing
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to know is it it jumps up a little bit when the pandemic came along but for the most part and this is in the uk it
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stayed low now in the in the us they didn't have a furlough scheme they had enhanced unemployment so their
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unemployment went up really high but then it came down really low again and this is a general pattern that you've
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seen across europe where there were similar furlough schemes uh it didn't rise too high
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now the interesting bit is to look at the forecast into the future and we can see that it's actually expected to get a
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little bit lower to go down to 3.8 which is really low on employment uh and then
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it's expected to rise gradually to about five percent but the context is that unemployment is low and it's expected to
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stay very very low to continue so i think of this as the if if vacancies are the
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demand side this is the supply side how many candidates are available um
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and certainly the ratio of people unemployed to candid to um vacancies
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there were about four people unemployed to every one vacancy during the pandemic there's now about
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one so there are just many fewer people looking for each job um now
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i had to put a note in here that you know this this is a from the bank of england's monetary policy report from
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february and uh since then a war's broken out in europe and um the
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consequences are are such that i think this unemployment uh projections are probably
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a little bit too optimistic now um i suspect it will rise a little bit further
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um so if we if we move on to the next slide there's been a lot of talk about the great resignation uh and of course
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this is very important for the employee value proposition again because we're thinking about how how
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uh to treat the incumbent workforce are people getting itchy feet and looking to move um i picked up this chart it's job
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to job moves and i think the interesting thing to see is again we can see the great recession the financial crash and
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there's a big drop so you know when there's a downturn you expect a bit of a drop in people moving jobs they they
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stay where they are it's the safe place to be and um a lot of people have been pointing
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towards the record-breaking figure the 3.2 at the end but i just
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kind of think well that clearly has come just after a massive drop so
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my sort of thesis is that the uh uh rate of job to job moves of resigning is
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really just all that built up churn from the lack of churn or turnover during the
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pandemic and now that's being unleashed i don't actually think there's a massively increased appetite for
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moving jobs um so the next slide which i think is uh quite an important one really and
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probably going to become one of the most important things talking points this year is inflation
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um this was the the bank of england's report from february again they were expecting it to peak at seven and a
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quarter percent in april who knows it could now it could be foreseeably be 10 now you know we could have very high
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inflation um what's clever about this chart is they've kind of teased out the
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uh effect of energy prices and the effect of everything else so inflation's
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just a basket of goods it's yogurt and blueberries and bananas and all those things but also energy and um
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you can clearly see that the line that is cpi inflation and the one that excludes energy this uh the the sort of
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blue the light blue line um these are terrible charts when i make charts i use different colors i i'll use a blue and a
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pink or something but um i think i'm going to have a preference for 10 shades of blue so the lower line is where
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inflation would be if we didn't have this big effect of energy prices and and the war in ukraine
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has only made this worse so we're thinking inflation's going to peak at a very high level uh that means that
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workers will have less money in their pockets in real terms even if wages manage to increase by five percent then
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you're looking at a net difference of five and a quite a big cut um i guess
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the only thing to the only saving grace is that that is felt across the world and it's felt
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across all businesses so you're not necessarily put a disadvantage um but i think it will put uh pressure on on
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wages on raising nominal wages so i think i have one more slide
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this is just some fun data google mobility data on how many people
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are traveling to the office um i've i've chosen a selection of uk cities but you
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can actually do anyway i think you could do bahrain dubai you could do singapore um
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all that data is available the only problem is that because different countries locked down at
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different times when you chart them all on the same chart it's quite a mess whereas at least when i chart cities in
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the uk they sort of move together and um you can see essentially the story
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of this chart is that during the first lockdown everyone started working from home and it's gradually cracked back up
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but it is way way below the baseline um you know we are still not moving to the
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office anymore um i think when in the context of him employee uh value proposition i'm just thinking about it
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there's a clear preference that's been shown it's a norm that started to embed we're two years on and i actually don't
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know where this is going to settle but i think that it probably will settle somewhere near wherever it is now so
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most cities we're talking about 20 less footfall um as a result and and like i say google
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keep publishing this data and it's free and it's openly available and you can look up all sorts of um geographies you
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can get really quite granular even in the in the uk which is is interesting um so yeah that that's that's pretty much
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me done um that's setting the context of some of the pressures uh where the balance of power is between employees
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and employers and crucially thinking forward a little bit about the challenges we're going to have this year particularly in regards to an energy
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crisis that will force inflation a bit higher and possibly unemployment a bit higher too
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thank you john such an interesting presentation and not necessarily the most optimistic but certainly eye opening um joining me today is christine
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bellander senior director at ruben health and based in abu dhabi in the
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united arab emirates and um francis is the managing director and founder of
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turkey people he is a consultant working with some of the largest retail groups like and other organizations in the region
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and we let them introduce themselves in due time um so to get surprises christine would you uh what what how do
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you see those trends reflected in the middle east what's your what's your impression on this
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hi charlotte thank you uh very much for uh this session for inviting me and and i was
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really looking forward to it um can you hear me well yeah perfect okay i just wanted to make
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sure with the sound um so so basically when when we look in the middle east it's uh it's it's i think very similar
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than the rest of the world in in regards of how the pandemic has impacted us and
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the way we have uh i would say reacted because we as as the world or as the
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middle east or an organization and us it's uh it's it's something that you
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know we talked about but then it really hit us and we had to really adapt
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and the agile very quickly um so and and for us it was uh at the same
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time we were launching uh uh the organization in january 2021 so the year
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of pandemic started we were at the project phase and we launched in january 2021 we're still in the pandemic and i
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would say that the good thing with that is we were already like living the pandemic
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tweaking our our our benefits our rewards our policy our approach uh as we
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were like okay this this is not uh this is a big impact this this we would need
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to be more innovative creative and adapt and and when we see the working from home and and other uh
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uh way of work is it's not gonna go anywhere because you know what it's
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there's things that are working so let's keep it and it makes our people happy so we need to incorporate that but as as
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janna's as as raises it's not something that's only impacted the uk or canada or
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or the united arab emirates it was literally worldwide and everybody was
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adapting and i think we all have like the the same impact and we need to think
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about uh similar approach
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absolutely thank you um christine can you give us a bit of a background and
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yes all right yeah and by the way charlotte your your sound is uh is squeaky a little bit okay
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basically uh uh we can say that our our first years were around 2006 when the
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health care sector was within mubarak investment company and we became our own in january 2021 as mubarak
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so currently with the welcome of our new member of the family uem uh euremia
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medical we are currently around uh 11 assets and about 5 000
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caregivers so so basically mubarak health is our mission or our vision is to really
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change and transform the healthcare and landscape uh here in the region uh
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and expand and see if it's not only abu dhabi not only the united arab emirates
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but in the middle east and we'll see where it goes but it's it's really a positive change that we want to make
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something that is sustainable patient-centric our caregiver are at the
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heart of everything we are the healthcare sector uh have been strongly
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hit by the pandemic but we have incredible and very very agile and tough
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people within our rank and we are very proud of them so this is in a nutshell what is that
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help and i'm very proud to be part of this organization thank you christine
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um all right so you're a perspective rexy how has this i hope you can hear me i mean i'm very
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sorry yeah can you hear me i can hear but like it's a bit garbled
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but it's fun all right um randy how have you seen the pandemic and the recent situation
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impact and affect the employee employer relationship and what have you seen your clients and organizations in the region
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do as a consequence of that thank you thank you first of all let me
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introduce myself charlotte um and hello everyone wherever you're joining from um
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my name is renzi um i used to head the people experience of childhood groups shelter group is basically one of the
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luck biggest luxury retailers in the middle east representing brands like sephora
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swarovski lacrosse chanel caroline herrera most recently which was actually last
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year i decided after heading the people experience of the group that i would
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like to set up my own employee experience um consulting business so now i'm also consulting for the likes of
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l'occitane lvmh beauty and some of the fintech organizations in the middle east
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so that's a bit about me uh so going back to your question charlotte um what i have seen especially if like um
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having worked with clients now in the middle east um i think i can relate to what john was
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saying something about the great resignation um what i have seen very very clear was like in the beginning of
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the pandemic i those organizations who didn't pivot enough when it comes to offering
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flexibility uh not not only talking about like people being able to work remotely and whatnot because that was a
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given already during the pandemic um we're actually struggling more um
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two years into the pandemic not only attracting talents but also retaining talents
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for example like back in 2018 i authored the um flexible
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working arrangement of shell hook group where we deserve together with my team we design what that road map looks like
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and then create the basic framework of what flexibility means not only from the standpoint of
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where can they work but how do they do their work within the larger scheme of things
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and then from there we've offered the different business units within the group flexibility on how do you
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interpret that given the dna of your business unit given the dna of your brand on how would you like to be
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flexible so i think that was initially um
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well appreciated once it's launched but like i think few months into the implementation people realize oh it's
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too open mainly the senior people um the vps the gms and the sea levels they sound like well this is too open like we
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cannot work this out bloody blah blah and then what we discovered was actually when you work with these senior people
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um and then give them enable them by letting them know what technology will enable them
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and their people to offer flexibility um it becomes much easier for a lot of people so we have
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also invested at that time on developing leaders on to make sure that they are
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equally enabled in making sure that they also
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drive flexibility in their business units going back to what i was saying earlier
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also working with other organizations in the middle east one of the things that i'm also seeing
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is around well-being because i think globally most organizations were seeing
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they're only driving you know like the the easy ones to drive in the space of well-being which is around let's
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organize like a yoga session let's organize a webinar on mental health let's organize this and that without
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really looking at the entire employee life cycle how do you embed that well-being holistic well-being aspect in
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your entire employee life cycle to make sure people really feel that they are
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well taken care of by the organization so looking at the different dimensions
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of wellbeing whether it's has something to do with your process with your policy um christine mentioned something about
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reviewing all the benefits yes i think that's super important that's something also we've done in childhood group like
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two years ago really really looked at the statement of benefits for employees so that they really see that in addition
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to salary which is always a given when you run surveys where people want like more money more money more money but
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once you show them the picture of what are we offering you to look after
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you will look while wait while working for us then you completely see a different picture or maybe a shift on
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how peop employees see when it comes to holistic well-being
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thank you rincey i'm just gonna take a little bit over while charlotte is trying to log back in and have a perfect
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sound so you and i will have a great conversation so when i prepare myself
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for this session i was just looking a little bit into like the the updates on the trends and i was looking at some of
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the cluster like people work well-being which yeah grow and and also great
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resignation i will give you an example where um as we were uh
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creating our company and we went live in 2021 the the compassionate uh side of our
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leadership and i'm sure and say you will have something to say about that but this is something that i have seen and i
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have uh the transformation and the willingness of our leader uh to go on
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the floor visit our asset and and we have 11 assets and we have updated
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medicine we have national reference laboratory i'm not going to go through all of them dana alimara
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going on the floor and and having this discussion and and hearing them their
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their personal life huh and i think this is part of this of this new employee
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evp is now our employees and also our candidate
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are expecting that we have this connection it's not only me as an employee i'm not a worker i am a person
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and we've seen that we have done more one-to-one we have done day face to face
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day i went to one of our assets sitting with the physician hearing them out
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understanding what they're going through explaining our process our guidelines i
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think a one-to-one same level typical conversation and you could feel like i
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would say the the the sentiment of the engagement it changed before it was not like that
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it was kind of okay let's have some check-ins let's see the media this and that now it's something that is
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demanded for a good cause and serves very well i don't know if you have experienced something similar in your
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experience maybe you can share yes i love what you said there christine about like compassion from leaders i
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think even for for us back in 2018 if i remember that like in the beginning of 2020 2019 and the beginning of the
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pandemic because like few years back we basically created um people
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experienced communities within the organization in different countries so that we want to
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relieve hr of the responsibility of driving all these engagement well-being and all these things and it becomes more
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of a bottom-up approach um so what happened was during the pandemic because
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of all these things that are happening like people feel isolated people are working they don't have the right enough
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the right environment for them to work from home uh what we've seen was these communities
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basically foster deeper connection uh with all our employees even virtually um
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because now people are exposed to their dogs their their cats their you know like their their family and everyone
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else so what was entering that actually happened there because we already set up these
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people experienced communities in the very beginning like going back to your point about like people um leaders
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showing more compassion i think people also become more vulnerable to one
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another and that also strengthen that deeper connection between team
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members between managers and also employees and what i have seen was and
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managers and leaders capitalize on these deeper connections because it's not all about money right so like when you feel
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connected with another person um it make things so much easier do you agree
26:53
sorry we have a technical moment let me try if somebody knows how i can bring back
26:59
charlotte into being a panelist i would love your support
27:05
i've been thrown so charlotte is asking uh if she can
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come back how do i do that i think if you click on the rock if
27:40
there's many charlotte yes chad i don't see and myth
27:47
there's a lot of charlotte actually how can i
27:54
uh maybe no i'm really okay good idea do you see it
28:00
can you do it okay
28:05
it's okay i think she's gonna try but we'll continue i do agree princey
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and uh uh depending there there might be questions but i want to cover uh other
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things that might be a word to uh to also uh share with our attendees is
28:24
maybe some of the things that we have worked on as we were going to the the pandemic so as an example uh from from
28:31
bada health what we have looked into uh in in our rewards uh uh it's part of my
28:37
function and what we have looked is having a re-look and we we did not hesitate you know usually in
28:43
the old days and companies you have to have a pretty good business case to go and say hey let us re-look at the way we
28:50
have modeled our bonus or our do we need to introduce l-tip uh
28:57
do we need to now it's like it's it's it's a given we need to we need to to
29:02
take care of our of our employees and we need to to be able to attract uh uh the
29:08
the candidate we really need also also to showcase uh or walk the talk showcase
29:15
a strong uh uh company culture and and brand but also demonstrated so this is
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something that we have done uh in terms of uh from our silent reward we will look at our bonus we're we're
29:28
considering maybe a long-term incentive plan uh the work for uh the work from home leave this is something that is not
29:35
like uh during the pandemic it is part of our policy there's a flexibility
29:40
there's a numbers uh per per month that is allowed this the the leave if you are
29:46
uh have a covered uh we are also looking at more going through internal
29:51
appointment instead of let's say a promotion because why because that's the need we need we we want to encourage and
29:58
demonstrate that this growth within the organization and again retention is
30:03
really what we think uh so internal appointment uh so in terms of reward have you like uh uh done
30:11
similar uh uh things or change or rewards or benefit or policies
30:18
100 christine um i think sorry like what you said about like retention i think um
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what i saw like in the last couple of years uh was the focus was als one the focus is
30:31
attracting people but it's it the retention is equally more important because going back to what john was
30:37
presenting earlier it's this great resignation what we have seen in the last two years as key people are leaving
30:44
the roles um especially here in the middle east because they're more demanding going back again to what john
30:49
said something about the shift in the power like now like i remember very clearly having a sat down with our head
30:56
of talent acquisition like um attracting people the first thing that they actually ask is like what does
31:04
flexibility look like in your organization am i expected to come to work all the time um
31:11
actually like this is very interesting i'm just gonna sidetrack a little bit here i read a very interesting article this morning
31:17
about on cnbc about ceos now are asking their employees to
31:23
come back tim cooks for instance um asking like apple employees so we want to welcome you back but like there's a
31:29
gap with the perception of employees wanting to go back to the workplace and it's very similar here in the middle
31:35
east people might think that middle east is too far away from like you know like the flexibility practice um globally but
31:42
we're not um people are people people have the same needs i think it's the the
31:47
mindset also of senior leaders when it comes to making sure that
31:53
employees feel heard about what's going on and what's important to them and then
31:58
this is what the deeper connection i was talking about earlier they don't want anymore the usual okay we're gonna offer
32:04
you monday tuesday work from home and then you come back here in that i think
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if you're doing that i think at least for me i'm running a lot of surveys um here in the middle east and
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people do not want that people want real flexibility where people can actually like do things that matter to them so if
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we don't want to lose employees we need to start having the dialogue exactly what you said there earlier christine
32:29
employee listening now is the past what we need is a dialogue with employees and
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turn those dialogue into actions
32:40
shall not you're back i'm so happy i hope this sounds is fine you're
32:46
perfect you're perfect i love what you just said ryan c employee listening is the past what we need is a two-way
32:52
conversation i think we all agree on um on this on disney that are some might
32:59
argue not so new we had the gen z coming into the generation that was a debate that was already pandemic
33:05
the pandemic definitely put employee experience flexibility you've talked about compassion and and empathetic
33:12
leadership front and center and and certainly that human-centric idea
33:18
now if it was that easy all organizations would have a fantastic employee value
33:24
proposition so right so i'm interested to hear
33:29
we mostly understand what employees want in your experience christine my first
33:35
question to you is what is the biggest barrier to if having to changing your value
33:41
position ah that that's a really good question so
33:46
the biggest okay it could be it could be
33:52
that people that are already within the organization really like what it is right now and when you bring change for
33:59
anybody even if it's the the nicest and the most beautiful and packaged change
34:04
it is change and people will have a first reaction of low wait a minute why are you doing that
34:10
change what's the background what is what is it what it what it is for me in in this so they will have this so so
34:16
it's just we all need to to accept that when you bring change you need to be
34:22
this needs to be well communicated this needs to be uh uh
34:28
presented example and and don't shy away from you know saying hey you know what
34:35
the change if i take you personally and it's to go back to this personal touch that we were discussing with fancy is
34:42
you know sharla this is you presently this is your current employee value proposition this is how it's going to
34:48
look like so it's it's now you have almost to go group by group sometimes
34:53
person to person uh have the door open for people who are more resisting
34:59
to it to explain that i will say it's if we can perceive it it's a barrier i
35:04
would say it's a little bit of challenge but if you have the heart at the good place and you know that it's the best
35:09
thing for your people and for the organization then it's uh it's it will not be a hard
35:15
seller if i can jump in on that um um if in
35:22
addition to what christine was talking about also i think for me is the biggest thing is also the mindset um at least me
35:29
coming from an organization with employees who have been in the organization for the last 50 60 years
35:35
the biggest challenge because we did actually because i was part of the task force in redoing like an evp uh early on
35:43
in the transformation period of the group and then it was revamped again during the pandemic the
35:50
biggest part was actually the mindset of people on who are we
35:55
what do we want to do because like um this is where confusions becomes like um a big challenge for a
36:03
lot of organizations because of do we want to become google do you want to become linked and do we want to be like everyone just wants to be wants to
36:10
aspire to be another organization but what people are forgetting is who we really are that's why perhaps these days
36:17
more and more purpose is becoming more important like really defining what your purpose is clarifying and clearly
36:25
articulating to your people who you really are as an organization because if you are not a fun organization like
36:30
google why do it because then it becomes less authentic for people and then you
36:36
attract the wrong people the other thing i think like if i if i may add here is the biggest barrier to
36:43
um redefining your evp is not communicating it defining evp is one thing but
36:50
communicating the evp beyond emails video is another thing also this is
36:57
where we struggled also in the very beginning where we saw like okay we're communicating the culture the the
37:03
culture of the future culture for the future but people are not digesting the
37:08
information so we really look we looked at we revisited how we communicate how
37:14
we activate a lot of these things beyond the normal channels of communication such as email such as town hall
37:22
because if again we go back to the deeper connection how do we connect with them where we don't just send an email
37:29
how do we connect with them where we just advise people in a town hall setting
37:37
yeah absolutely what you're saying reminds me of the contents parallel that we make between employee experience and
37:44
a customer experience right you're thinking of a holistic journey where it would seem so outdated to just talk to
37:51
your customers by phoning them yet it seems that hr is lagging behind a little bit in that in that communication
37:57
that we don't always have that partnership with marketing with internal comes with comes throughout the business
38:04
and um i love that you're touching upon culture as well so i i know this could be a much more long more much more than
38:10
one hour long session but we'll try and and keep it to just touching on culture i think what's
38:17
what we're touching here is is one end of the evp it's the bigger part the purpose the strategy which
38:24
we always talk about culture change i know christine you've done a lot of transformation it's one of the longest
38:31
and most difficult processes to do in a company that's not as simple as just changing one element i'm interested to
38:37
delve a little bit into that and then later i'm also interested for people who want something they can take away today
38:44
to look at more simple elements further down the line of the edp that could be
38:49
implemented um so perhaps just a word on on culture change and leadership buy-in christine what's your biggest lesson
38:56
when it comes to engaging leaders in culture transformation
39:04
my biggest lesson is first of all um
39:09
be as as as human capital be very ready when you introduce change
39:15
because you can have leaders that you need to convince that you you it comes from you you are a
39:23
role model people are looking at you uh and then you have the others that will
39:29
that will have that instinctual and this is the second part this is what we have
39:34
here and we still have and i help it was not hard to convince our ceo hassan noes
39:42
our c-suite just to say guys and ladies and gentlemen we really need
39:47
you on board they were already on board and and and that's we had lived it when
39:53
i was at mubarak investment company when we did the merger and it's the same thing the success even if you struggle and
40:00
even if if if uh there's back and forth and red flags and and whatever if you
40:06
have your leadership that it comes from them they already know like yes we're
40:12
here what do you want us to do and not even that they even propose way forward i'm gonna be there let's do a
40:18
tour let's go one on one let's meet let's sit down make sure that you go one by one when we answer all the questions
40:25
and everybody has a voice it's ah it makes the the the road to making the
40:33
change successful so much easier it doesn't mean that when when
40:38
leadership is is a bit like the system that it's not going to be successful but it's harder so that will be my biggest
40:46
uh lesson learned be ready and then you can you know you adapt to which leader uh
40:53
you you gonna partner with on that and i will try to encourage you
41:00
to keep your answers short just because we do have a bit to cover later on that um
41:05
making the case for certain things that have a direct proven return on investment is easy
41:12
making the case for things like culture change diversity and inclusion well-being and mental health
41:18
are either difficult is it more difficult because you don't necessarily have the data historically or it's more
41:24
difficult to measure or sometimes by trying to measure those very elements you actually sabotaging your your your
41:32
own your own view because search some of these things shouldn't be measured long term so
41:37
what would you say to those leaders who want to offer flexibility in those hr professionals who would like to to
41:43
modernize your evp look at flexibility look at um growth opportunities look at mobility
41:50
but can't make the case for this because of the data
41:55
renzi or myself me yeah maybe maybe maybe i can share that i'll
42:00
share um i think for me the big thing here is
42:06
inspiring people this is a very different approach from from christine because my experience
42:13
working with like senior leaders is i found myself like really hustling to convince them like we
42:21
need to change we need to change we need to change so what i've done differently to change my approach was
42:27
i looked at partnering with a leader in the organization who was actually
42:34
basically my ambassador who's willing to do it in their business unit so we partnered together we worked together
42:40
and we created success stories and just like any change when they see something is successful like everyone just jumped
42:46
the bandwagon i remember very clearly early on in my hustling days of culture
42:52
transformation and employee experience i had to go to different gms vps svps
42:57
asking them like oh let's work together let's work together um only if you said yes and the ones who said yes also are
43:04
maybe no let's i want to do this because it's a fad but one thing i realized from that
43:09
experience was the ones who really committed to i built a stronger relationship with them and
43:16
they become my promoters and ambassadors to the point of now i don't even have to
43:21
tell them or ask them like let's work together they just come to me because they have seen the success stories of
43:27
other business units that's something that we see for as a fred always when we talk about hr
43:32
analytics as well on workforce planning and all of these things that at the end of the day the figures are one thing but it's how you tell the story that you're
43:40
going to get people buy into this having said that um
43:45
we've been talking about mindset and i think that to me trust is
43:50
critical it's the underlying it's it's the base to everything that
43:55
you're going to build on without trust you can't have successful flexible working your people are not going to
44:01
take the parental leave you're not going to have psychological safety i mean and unfortunately a lot of traditional
44:08
businesses have seen business continue and even flourish for some during the
44:13
pandemic yet are keen to get back to the old ways because they do not trust
44:20
employees um it's obviously difficult to say that
44:26
how do you build trust or if you were an hr professional within an
44:32
organization where the leaders are mistrusting what would you try to do perhaps what
44:38
could be a workaround for somebody who wants to bring about change in that context
44:43
i think here it's uh um having a one-on-one approach so for me i will i
44:49
will go and sit down with that leader and and have a discussion and where does it come from and and and give me some
44:56
example and trying to coach that leader to you know what put put some uh
45:03
um things uh that will make you comfortable and will will will test to
45:08
see that the the person on the other side of the computer uh uh or at home uh
45:14
is is is working is uh uh and have this conversation with with your with your
45:19
employee you know uh in a constructive way hey listen you know we have a big
45:24
project and it's important that maybe you can give me an update in the morning at night uh
45:30
you know but set set the discussion the expectation uh and and and then i
45:37
hopefully with time the confirm the the conf the the the
45:43
comfort will settle in uh but not going directly and says no no i want everybody
45:48
you know i want to micromanage i want i want to see people sometimes seeing people we have seen presenteeism it's
45:54
not better uh that doesn't mean that they are working uh so so i will have a
46:00
chat if either it's a leader or group of leader and just try to find a way to build that
46:07
trust or confirm that this person need to have a more of a uh uh you know what
46:13
more touch points with with that person uh if i can chip into that one i have a
46:19
very interesting story uh with one of my clients um this was uh back when we implemented also the um flexible working
46:27
arrangement everyone was celebrating and then like come implementation time like
46:33
some of the gm's who were reporting to a vp like call me renzi we need your help
46:38
we need your help because like i thought like we can implement a lot of these things but like our vp said like no no no we're not gonna be doing it like
46:45
everyone has to come to the office so just like what christine had done i
46:50
actually just sat down with the with that leader and then just found out what
46:55
was he afraid of when it comes to implementing it because with trust usually people cannot trust
47:00
because of so many fears um because trust is two ways right like do it people don't trust because of they
47:06
cannot guarantee the reputability of like the value that this person will bring
47:11
they cannot trust the knowledge or the expertise of the other person but once you identify
47:18
what are the fears of the leader then work with the leader on okay how can we
47:24
minimize the fear so then this is when they start talking to you about like but i don't know how would we collaborate i
47:30
don't know how would i know if someone's doing a lot of these things then we start looking into introducing the use
47:36
of technology so that they can collaborate online then we started redefining
47:42
purposeful meetings on when do you do meetings online and when do you do meetings offline also so that you can
47:49
have that face-to-face conversation with employees i think after that there's a quick huge turn around 180 degrees turn
47:56
around and then like you know like the some of the games just call me like i don't know what you've done but like listen like um now the vp said like okay
48:02
yeah we're going to be implementing this but we have to do abcdefg so i think um
48:09
approach this with compassion as hr professionals i think we leave we live
48:15
and breathe a lot of these topics but leaders senior leaders or any employees
48:20
they don't know any of these things so let's approach this with compassion and understand where you know like the fear
48:28
is coming from and help them to identify what are those things that can help them
48:33
minimize the fear of not trusting other people thank you
48:39
that's a great segue into the next topic i wanted to to address with you um you're talking about hr talking with
48:46
leaders and onboarding leaders and leaders are not just you're not just managing upwards you're managing across
48:52
the organization we very often talk about the critical role of line managers we've seen it
48:59
during the pandemic the importance like manager that line managers have played in in installing a psychological safety
49:06
and managing their people how do you
49:12
upskill line managers and on-board line managers so we're talking line managers we're not talking to an hr team we're
49:19
talking line managers across the business and very often across sites if you're in retail or banking or so how do
49:25
you up skill line managers to be able to make these decisions and have these conversations v we were talking earlier
49:32
about being more authentic leading being human-centric is that something that's learned
49:40
um so i would love to kind of have your your take on these line managers
49:46
so so basically and and this is something that is naturally inside of me is like
49:53
everybody uh can can learn develop uh at their own
49:59
speed at their own level and and you cannot also force somebody to go to a certain extent if if
50:05
if that this is the limit but everybody should be given the chance
50:11
and maybe a little bit like the the the approach with the
50:16
the manager that have an issue with people working from home then again it's it's i think as an
50:23
organization as hc you have struck a right cord when you say we need to be very good at analytics at trending at
50:31
uh surveying at taking the pulse of our people as a cheats our responsibility uh
50:38
to take care of our people so when you see line manager that do have issues or
50:43
don't feel comfortable don't assume that everybody's at the same level just go reach out provide
50:50
training provide a one-to-one provide support
50:57
give them the tools give them the tools of hey you know what
51:03
can i observe or what how did you felt when you met with your employee or i didn't know how to start if i know how
51:09
to start it would be so much easier okay there you go let me provide you with some tool let's do a roll case or a
51:16
scenario and so i i think it's everybody can be upskilled to a certain limit and
51:22
you need to respect that but you have to give the benefit of the doubt and just go ahead with that and then just
51:28
take whatever tool and intelligence that you have in hc and just create that
51:33
opportunity for the line manager yeah and if i if i can just say we know
51:38
that i think it was a 2017 report that um found that less than half of line
51:44
managers ever had any formal training whatsoever in people management um and very often we see organizations
51:52
unfortunately leaving out line managers unless they are considered as high potential leaders
51:58
you know they're kind of left out and they yet have the responsibility of people trickling down your values and
52:04
your and the behaviors that you want to promote rincey you were going to say something
52:09
yes um my personal purpose in life is to you know
52:14
inspire people to bring their best to work every day and i really believe in inspiring people
52:20
so in addition to what christine mentioned earlier about like training people what i have seen work really
52:26
really well um in like previous projects that i have worked on was when you
52:31
create this community of leaders and then you showcase like best practice
52:37
or case study or how they did it then it's less intimidating for people
52:42
because what i have seen in the past was managers you know like you feel more
52:47
lonely the higher you go up in the corporate ladder you feel alone and you feel you know like you don't want to be
52:53
vulnerable but the moment you see that like within your community of leaders and managers that these things can be
52:59
done then it's such a powerful thing like i remember when when i hosted a breakfast session um where um i invited
53:07
some of the gm's of the business units to highlight a particular topic and how did they approach this and it's a very
53:13
very important topic across the organization that was a huge success because like
53:20
they don't have to learn it from like a professor they don't have to do an mba they're hearing it directly from their
53:26
peers on how do they tackle the problem and i think the growth there and the learning is much better because it's in
53:33
a safe place where we're all leaders and we're only highlighting things that have been done and what worked really well
53:39
thank you ranci um i want i see we're we've got a couple minutes left so if
53:45
you do have questions or comments for us uh please do drop them in a chat or the q a button if you prefer to be anonymous
53:52
and we will pick them up um we've talked about so many different elements of the evp and if i reflect on
54:00
the ones that are emerging or that have changed the most in in the sense of a
54:05
need um we've seen i guess two trends right there's a compassionate leadership to
54:10
human bring your whole self to work going from seeing your boss with their cat their dogs their home their you know
54:16
what you're referring to earlier ranci to suddenly going back to the old cop-ray codes just doesn't cut it it
54:22
seems as if you're being cold you're not only being old-fashioned but you're cutting out a line of communication that
54:28
had been opened throughout the pandemic um and the other part which which we've talked about is flexibility and we're
54:35
seeing now so during the pandemic we've seen many organizations of offer hybrid working
54:42
extra we've seen we thought that was going to be the way forward we saw organizations starting to go with
54:48
that and just a few weeks ago we've seen google suddenly asking every
54:53
employee to return to the office um was that
54:58
and i guess the comment to that is probably the difficulty of maintaining culture
55:04
when working remotely or a single cohesive culture um so perhaps a comment to that if you'd
55:11
like uh christine um and uh and what's next do we have to offer that
55:18
flexibility can we can we go back do we should we go back um
55:23
i i think uh huh okay it's a slash personal slash or
55:28
organizational hack that i have but no i i think that uh keeping that
55:34
flexibility is will be the way going forward uh because what we have seen and maybe
55:41
sorry john if i'm just like picking on you right now but i think the trends that we could see
55:48
is that you know what during the pandemic at the beginning and i do remember some some webinar that i have
55:54
uh participated or attended is like performance in terms of
55:59
employees have not dropped sometimes they have like super increase because all of a sudden it's a change it's
56:06
exciting we have to do it we're not the only one and we want to demonstrate that we are
56:11
able to do sometimes it's not that good because it can lead to some kind of burnout and such a thing
56:16
but but the performance of our of our employees have not considered the uh drop it's it changed we adapted so
56:25
uh uh i i will say no flexible and vermin are there to stay and it's
56:32
now to the organization i think i saw some comments from uh rachel or i don't
56:37
know who about the brand of the the the organization this is just going with the culture and
56:44
the branding of your company is like how you you present the flexible working
56:49
uh is it a lot not a lot but it needs to go and sync with your your your company
56:54
branding uh and they're able to be you know to attract and retain but flexibility is there i think to stay
57:04
the final comments i get rounding back to to john's initial presentation about the current situation and what we're
57:11
expecting to see in terms of of trends um lower purchasing power potentially economic crisis um weaker
57:19
financial and mentor stability etc so people looking out for safety
57:25
do you see this as a challenge for companies or as an opportunity and i i wonder
57:33
christine you're you've been working rewards for a very long time and we've had so many talks about long-term
57:38
incentives and reward and finding the right way to ways to reward and motivate employees with in reward of the right
57:45
behaviors how much of this today is about financial rewards
57:52
it depends on which oh sorry i'm cutting you you get me excited [Laughter]
57:58
i will say that that when you were talking rewards flexibility you you i go back to some reading i have done
58:05
but also what i'm going through it depends on the generation you're talking about and and right now not only about
58:11
the pandemic but where we are in terms of work in german we have multi-generational
58:18
people working together but i will say that the two main components are flexibility
58:24
and the right reward so again hc be intelligence be
58:30
acute to your people need be acute to your population and then your sector et cetera but
58:37
this is it flexibility and reward work depending on the generation
58:43
where the top two but always the top two so both of them goes together but you
58:49
will not attract or retain somebody just saying hey we have the greatest bonus
58:54
it will not work if this person wants to be able to come back home
59:01
earlier to go pick up their kid at at school and then continue working at home
59:06
if it's not going to work for long you can give them the best the best bonus ever
59:11
if for this mother or this father they want to go and pick up their kids at two o'clock and then promise they will work
59:17
from home from them and you say no that has as well a very big impact
59:27
so if i answer your question yeah i'm here i'm i'm listening to you um
59:33
absolutely agree and i think to that and and to to conclude that discussion as well um we've had
59:40
we've had a few discussions offline which would make for hours of broadcast probably but we're talking about
59:46
attracting talent and how negotiate the negotiating power and bargain that candidates have today with with
59:52
organizations where it's been a few years we're saying candidates should also interview
59:58
organizations and and not just one way but today we're not only expecting it we
1:00:03
actually want it to be so we're expecting candidates as well to to negotiate and um we've observed i mean
1:00:10
that's the offline conversations i've had with a few people coming from the community the biggest part of the negotiation lately
1:00:17
was around flexible working being able to go and work from my home country when i haven't
1:00:22
been able to travel for two years during the pandemic knowing that i don't have to take three weeks off just because my parents are at
1:00:28
the end of the world perhaps i can find a way to work outside and that will mean for hr in human capital to go beyond the
1:00:36
traditional framework and find ways to work around it perhaps the legal framework isn't there yet perhaps there
1:00:42
isn't a precedent here but how do we meet candidates halfway um while we're searching for this
1:00:47
session um there are a couple of articles that came up including a great uh gotten our
1:00:52
report on korea on the topic we'll be discussing today and i love what their vp said
1:00:58
um she said the reality is that free ships in a work environment have eroded the impact of the traditional evp
1:01:04
employees are people not just workers work is a subset of life not separate
1:01:09
from it and values come through feelings not just features yeah
1:01:14
um and i i felt that really encapsulated a lot of the aspects that we've discussed and i've seen we've seen that
1:01:21
the switch i know we're over the time and and rinses like that but i've seen the change in in our tenant acquisition
1:01:28
team the the the the quick turnaround the the the the passion they have for for for
1:01:34
the candidate and and and the approach they have and and the touch points and
1:01:40
the the goals with the onboarding taking care of our candidate is as much
1:01:45
important because once they come in they want to they want to you know when they're getting interviewed it's like i
1:01:51
want to have the feeling of what it is to work for you so tell me the truth because i will
1:01:57
discover very quickly you know so you need to respect the candidate as well and i've seen them it's like
1:02:04
those conversations the the the those close contacts you know sharing the information their
1:02:10
brand the culture how we are the flexibility that we offer and et cetera is becoming very very important in part
1:02:18
to all those discussions i i see absolutely [Music]
1:02:24
yeah yeah if i can just add i think like if we really want to really look at our
1:02:31
evp in this i i don't know if i can still stay what we're still in the middle or where the
1:02:36
tail end of the pandemic but i think we really need to look into more focusing
1:02:42
on the culture of the organization uh because what christine said like money is one thing um
1:02:48
sooner or later no matter how high the salary of a person but if the
1:02:54
person is not treated well going back to what you're saying about childhood people need to feel it people need to
1:02:59
feel valid if they don't feel anything with the organization like sooner or later this person will leave or this
1:03:07
person will stay and will stay unproductive while collecting the money from the organization so we have
1:03:14
the biggest opportunity like i'm talking about for organizations across the globe now to really really
1:03:21
look at what kind of culture would you like to have in the future and whether it's flexibility what does flexibility
1:03:26
mean for your organization without copying an organization what does development opportunities be
1:03:33
on technical training behavioral leadership training but training me as a person as
1:03:38
a human being talking about like well-being going far beyond what the typical well-being
1:03:44
notions of um yoga physical work exercise how do we embed a lot of these things in the
1:03:51
entire employee life cycle and then make it in such a way that we're watching a movie you will always have your ups and
1:03:57
downs in the movie but you know you know you have that deeper connection with the
1:04:02
organization so you can forgive the mistakes
1:04:08
absolutely and you know what it very very often starts and ends with culture
1:04:13
uh all of these important discussions thank you so much for this fascinating discussion john christine and ranci um
1:04:22
if people want to find you and connect with you can they connect with you on linkedin find you on linkedin yes yes
1:04:28
yes they can find me florencio rincey padilla or if you can just visit perkypeople.com.nz
1:04:34
um happy to just even just have a chat with you guys if you just want to have a chat fantastic so thank you so much for
1:04:41
joining us this was uh john boyce from the cipd christine belanger from mubarak health and florencia de la from 30
1:04:47
people thank you everybody for joining us today it's been a pleasure i hope this has been helpful you will be sunday
1:04:52
recording along with follow-up information and please don't forg don't forget to follow us on social media cipd
1:04:58
middle east on linkedin or cipd um for our main big account in the uk if you've
1:05:04
got stuff to tell us some things you'd like us to talk about in our next editions um for cipd middle east it's
1:05:10
events cipd.ae and the team will be delighted to hear from you thank you so
1:05:15
much everybody please do take care of yourselves thank you thank you everyone stay safe
1:05:22
bye