Will the best graduates choose you or your competition? Make sure they choose you with the help of this research insight.

The US Army has published a social media handbook to guide their employees and their families. There is some really useful and practical stuff in there including tips, advice and frequently asked questions. It’s definitely something other organisations could usefully do too. In fact it occurs to me that having to create a handbook would help them to think through their position on social media which is half the battle as many companies still seem unsure where they stand on the subject.

Tapping into Gen Y talent proves less challenging for progressive employers. http://tinyurl.com/2blq8dm

The strength of strengths-based recruitment Sally Bibb explains how using strengths-based recruitment makes for better hiring decisions and more engaged, higher performing employees.

Differentiating themselves from the competition is a concern for most professional services firms. We are developing a clear and differentiated EVP to help our client to attract and retain the best people.

We have just completed a strengths-based recruitment project for Starbucks. Here is what their HR Director said about the work:

‘I was completely inspired working with talentsmoothie. They showed a great appreciation of our business challenges and their work on Generation Y and the strengths-based recruitment approach was so relevant to us that they quickly became a core part of our transformation plan. Over nine months we worked with talentsmoothie to define a new strengths-based approach to recruitment. Their partnership throughout the project was enlightening. They seamlessly immersed themselves in our business so that they could really understand how we operated, worked as active members of the project team to deliver results and continually coached and provoked the project team to consider a fair balance of cultural and commercial impacts.

Their experience, expertise and approach has been invaluable. I would not hesitate to recommend talentsmoothie to other businesses that are ready to embrace change and business transformation’.

Sandra Porter, HR Director, Starbucks Coffee Company, UK and Ireland

Article in Grapevine magazine about using your employees to help build your employer brand. Includes dos and don’t of social media from Justine James. Grapevine: Employer brand advocates

Across the divide

talentsmoothie’s Simon Walker writes for Health Club Manager magazine on managing generational diversity in the health club environment, both among staff and members.

Read the full article here

Generation Y for Rookies – Book of the month

British Airways in-flight magazine ‘BA Business Life’  reviews Sally’s book and gives it 8/10

Read the full review here.

We have just launched talentsmoothie training

In a nutshell, we are offering fresh thinking on core subjects (sales skills and influencing skills) and new subjects that most businesses need but don’t have on their training syllabus. So far we have:

• The Secrets of Successful Selling
• The Secrets of Successful Influencing and Persuading
• Employee Engagement Essentials
• Social Media and Digital Communications
• Leading in the New Business Context
• Leading Collaborative Teams

We bring up-to-the-minute content, effective learning design  and a team of fabulous trainers.

If your current offers could use some refreshing or you need any new programmes this year please get in touch.  We will be launching new programmes every few months.

If you need something that is not here, give us a call – it may be in the design room right now…

Click on the individual programme links above of on the training tab in the navigation bar to find out more.

I’m sure many of us have followed the ongoing strikes at British Airways by some of their Cabin Crew. I’m not going to go into the ins and outs of this dispute, but instead explore a couple of statistics that are often mentioned – the average pay for BA, when compared to rivals.

BA, apparently, are paying cabin crew on average £29,900, whilst their arch rival, Virgin only £14,000 (source BBC news). So the question is, with such a pay gap, how do Virgin attract, keep and engage their cabin crew? I think it has a lot to do with a clear and attractive Employee Value Proposition.

Virgin has a clear work-hard (and professionally) and play hard proposition. Fun and glamour are all part of the deal, including Branson’s famous house parties for staff. They also accept that being aircrew doesn’t have to be for life – so why not have some fun for a few years, then maybe do something else better paid? And of course if it’s new and exciting for the cabin crew, it’s going to be fresh and exciting for the passenger too. If you pay too much, maybe some people will be there for the wrong reasons (money) – what impact does that have on customers?

Ok, so my title was a little misleading, after all we know that BA costs are way above industry average for historical, ex- nationalised industry reasons. But Virgin does show us that they can have fresh, professional cabin crew, by getting the offer right – and they can keep their costs under control.

Lots has been written about Gen Y, those born since 1980 and currently in their twenties and their expectations and preferences driven by growing up in a particular set of economic, social and technological conditions.

But what about the next generation?

Gen Z ( also referred to as ‘Gen F’ for facebookers or ‘Gen C’ for content, being the first generation to truly grow up creating content on the web from an early age) are those born since the mid 90s. The oldest are still in school but will be in the work place in the next five years. As a group they are already important consumers.

So what is different about them? Well like all generations, by understanding the conditions and experiences they grew up in and with, we can get some insight into their expectations, preferences and views of the world.

It’s early days, but here are some of our observations and predictions.

They have grown up in a recession. So expect more thrifty attitudes and less of an expectation to fall into work easily. Those who are under 25 right now are the hardest hit by unemployment and current teenagers are very aware of this.

They are true digital natives. Gen Y have had lots of involvement in, and are comfortable with, technology and the internet, but Gen Z have truly lived and breathed it from a VERY early age, and it has been a key part of their childhood and schooling. Gen Z communicate with their friends, complete schoolwork, learn from and get entertained by the internet like no other generation before them. The recent BBC series, The Virtual Revolution suggested that that the internet is even changing the way teenagers think .They have a strong awareness of sustainability issues a. This is the generation that will have to deal with the consequences of global warming, peak oil, burgeoning global population and scarce resources. To them recycling isn’t just a neat idea it is essential.

Finally don’t forget the echo. Gen Y are sometimes called ‘echo boomers’, because they were kids of Baby boomer parents and some of the core values have been seen to be passed on. Gen Z are the kids of mainly Gen X parents, so expect some of Gen X’s attitudes and values to be seen in Gen Z, albeit manifesting in different ways. May be we will see a Gen Z version of Gen X’s value placed on having a job, any job.

Whatever Gen Z look like in the work place, having a generational diverse outlook will enable organisations to get the most from all their staff.

In this edition:

• Employee Engagement – cutting to the chase
• Need employee engagement expertise?
• The Virtual Revolution – how the internet is changing how we think
• Are you still in a frenzy over facebook?

Read this edition here

In a recent survey of over 1400 Chief Information Officers from blue chip organisations, only around 10% allowed full access to social networking sites such as Facebook to staff.

Lots has been written about how this frustrates workers (particularly, younger ones, the so-called Generation Y). This is true and can have a destructive impact on trust and engagement. Perhaps of more interest to some CEOs, banning Facebook can cost the and result in lost opportunity.

talentsmoothie’s Simon walker explores.

download the full article here

The case for employee engagement is now well established – engaged employees are more successful and productive employees.

Few would doubt that, it makes common sense. For the doubters the MacLeod report lays out the evidence of the return on investment of improving engagement, including the data produced by Gallup who, in 2006 examined 23,910 business units and compared top quartile and bottom quartile financial performance with engagement scores.

Sally Bibb explores this and the missing ingredient

download the full article here

This post has been reproduced with the kind permission of Marc Coleman, co-founder and Director of HR Network Europe.

When Peter and I started working on the Pan European HR Network in April last year, we interviewed an HR Leader and Executive Board Member of a Global 500 Company – someone whom had gained a place at the table and when questioned on the issue of HR adding value to the business, quickly moved to point out that this was a tired debate and HR needed to move on. HR must concentrate less on what they do and focus more on what HR needs to deliver, the goal to develop value-added HR practices not the fads and fancies. Nice to hear, however I must add that most of the HR people I speak to – there is a growing sense that some of the best HR people coming through are coming from non HR backgrounds.

An article by Mr Sathnam Sanghera at The Times on Human resources departments: I’ve never understood the point of them raised a heated debate between HR and non-HR at the end of the 2009 – the winner of the “Most Comments” and “Most Recommended”, Sathnam can certainly be commended for going straight for the HR jugular vein and bringing the debate to an up to date level of realisation for HR on how a good percentage of the public feel. He also laid claim that he wasn’t overly interested to complete all his homework on the subject of HR (or at least suggested that he didn’t), needling at any untouched nerves amongst his HR readership. It worked, it led to a fracas of on-line debate. Notably over the last quarter, The Times have reported on areas of HR, for example last week I blogged on “Pay for Performance” here again is a no holds barred account on Put Paid to the Pay Consultants from Mr Patrick Hosking (I am guessing his been talking to Sathnam as once again it goes straight for the jugular vein).

The transformation now expected by & of HR is daunting – the capability gaps are wide and the next 10 years are indeed (as reported in the media), critical for HR. The complexity and current demands of HR with the top agenda item being talent management aka ‘people’, its bringing HR closer to the CEO (whatever job title is adopted). Considering many still struggle with the model of “HR Business Partnership” that Dave Ulrich brought into existence in the early 90s where in short; HR “must give value or give notice”, close to 20 years on is that not telling us something? The job title can now be found in many companies – the question to be asked – is the value proposition/capability?

There is also a cultural dimension in how the Executive/Board supports the profile of HR within the organisation. Organisation’s claim that “people are our greatest asset” yet fail to discuss people at board meetings. The truth is that while true (if there were no people we wouldn’t be having this debate or perhaps including ‘competent’ as the first word in the statement or other key assets which have been considered above the “greatest asset” during this recession such as 1. The brand/reputation 2. Fixed assets 3. Rights to natural resources 4. Money 5. Algorithms (IT Companies) 6. Secret recipes  7. Systems and processes 8. Customers 9. Patents) this clichéd sentence has been so abused that it has lost all credibility. In our online group some months ago, another article which received plenty of attention was that of Deloitte’s;  suggesting HR is at risk of disappearing as a separate function. Good marketing as a sponsored article for their outsourcing division, especially if the article reaches those companies/CEO’s where HR is not adding value to the business. I still wonder how Deloitte’s HR Dept felt about their consulting division’s claims?

I noticed the subject was also a heated debate back home in Ireland, a country now heaving with bureaucrats and wasted opportunities, a country that sent “two” of their ministerial team on a weekend trip via private jet to basically beg Mr Michael Dell for the +3000 jobs already set sail from Limerick to Poland. The round trip flights for two people at a cost to the Irish taxpayer of €164,000. You will hear no singing of a Celtic tiger, the character in the tune has been replaced by a sloth with a rucksack full of rocks on its back.

I enjoyed this snippet from Jeremy Clarkson – Top Gear over the weekend:

As we now know, there are one or two flaws in the concept of global capitalism. For example, if you have a suit and a side parting, you can use money that doesn’t exist to create money that does, in your own bank account. And you can keep on doing this until the whole world goes completely bankrupt.

At the other end of the scale there are problems too. For instance, if you are very fat and lazy and you cannot be bothered to get a job, the system will only really care about your plight when you die and you have to be hosed out of your front room because the neighbours are complaining about the smell. “And who’s going to pay for that hosing?” the men with side partings will say.

Still, I believe that the upsides for those of us who are not very lazy but do not have side partings far outweigh the downsides. Let me give you an example. It is now almost impossible to buy a washing machine that is anything less than brilliant. Or a burger. Because McDonald’s and Burger King offer tasty snacks in every town in the world, anyone selling inferior burgers made from stale bread and dead horses will go out of business extremely quickly. Of course, small retailers whine and complain when Tesco moves into the area because Tesco will nick all their business. Yes, it will, if what you are selling is expensive and rubbish.

That’s the core of capitalism. “Better” will always win the day. And it doesn’t matter what form “better” takes. Better can mean cheaper, more convenient, nicer, prettier, more tasty, more healthy. In some way, you have to be better than the other guy, or your kids will soon be presented with a bill for hosing you out of your sitting room. Because the bosses of the giant corporations know this, they strive constantly to make what they sell better, and that’s brilliant for you and me. It’s why we don’t get punctures any more — because the tyre makers are constantly striving to be the best.

Consider, the HR function as the “very fat and lazy” that Jeremy describes above, HR has a ways to go before it’s ‘out of the woods’. My experience and I guess this is the lifecycle of business between recessions, is that it culls the excess and the complicated – those not adding value and improving the organisation’s DNA have been spliced or as I have heard a few HR misfortunes whimper in their embarrassment, caught on the receiving end of redundancies, “it’s time for a change, looking for new opportunities” …. no doubt it is.

A focus on “Player” not Partner to bridge the capability gap, the business “know-how” now required by the business and needed by HR. A new breed of HR.

Thanks to all for the comments and feedback below

In this edition:

• Are you au-fait with the new world of work?
• Generational Diversity Strategy – nice to have or essential for growth?
• Employee Value Proposition – an underrated business tool?
• Leading in the new business context

View the full newsletter here

Most junior doctors are from Generation Y (aged up to 28 years). Research (by talentsmoothie) on what “Gen Y” want from the workplace, from a 26 question survey of 2521 respondents, is shown in figure 1. 4 This suggests that Gen Y think differently to Generation X (aged up to 42 years) and the baby boomers (aged up to 62 years) about work, learning, and relationships. Up to 80% of Gen Y who were surveyed said that a good induction was important when starting a new job. Induction was considered more important than earning lots of money or fast promotion.

Download the full article here.

“talentsmoothie were our lead external partners in helping us to create our first Employee Value Proposition in AstraZeneca at both a global and a local level.

From concept design, formulation, testing and evaluation they proved themselves to be immensely capable and more than up to the challenge of advising on one of our biggest and complex pieces of organisational development. Through their rigorous approach, and ability to integrate other core elements such as our business strategy and corporate brand, they helped to ensure that our EVP will be sustainable for us in the medium to long term.

Above all it was their positive can-do attitude, their utmost flexibility and confidence in helping us to navigate ambiguous scenarios that really impressed. From my experience they are one of only a small handful of external partners that really truly understand what an EVP is and how it can work to drive a business and its culture forward.”

Stephen Lochhead – Director, Global Talent Attraction, AstraZeneca