Better, Faster: streamlining recruitment in the APS cites the APS State of the Service Employee Survey 2005/2006 saying:

more than one in four employees agreed that recruitment processes are difficult for candidates outside the APS to understand

more than one third perceived that the recruitment processes of their agency do not allow for recruitment to be completed in a timely manner.

about one in three employees perceived that the recruitment processes of their current agency do not enable their agency to attract the best candidates

over one third believed that their agency’s recruitment processes are too demanding of candidates

Recruitment in the APS is guided by certain minimum standards. One of these standards is that APS agencies will run an open, competitive selection process based on merit. This is based on an assessment of a person’s ability to do the job; avoiding patronage, favouritism and unjustified discrimination.

I can understand why the State of the Service Employee Survey received the results it did.  In some agencies, the APS recruitment process can be overly long due to the emphasis on the merit process. Another reason for the long process is that line managers have responsibility in drafting the role description and selection criteria and conducting the recruitment process . Line managers are already busy and do not have a lot of time to actually focus on recruitment and generally they are not experts in role design, marketing and recruitment.

Recruitment is not just about advertising, going through applications and interviewing. The essential components of  recruitment are strategy, attraction, candidate relationship management, technology, services and process. In today's employment market where talent is becoming scarce and organisations are competing for people who are already employed, candidate care is critical.

HR areas in APS agencies need to stop focusing on the process of recruitment and use technology to do this. They should be focusing their energy in supporting, educating and training line managers on recruitment strategy, attraction and candidate management.

There has been quite a few publications which have been developed to assist APS agencies in streamlining recruitment processes. Some of these are:

• Get it Right—a recruitment kit for managers;
• MAC 7 Report - Reducing Red Tape in the APS;
• Better, Faster: streamlining recruitment in the APS; and
  
• ANAO Audit Report No.31  2007–08 - Management of Recruitment in the Australian Public Service.

I read an interesting article from Dr John Sullivan, Top 10 Indications That You Are a Dinosaur (Old-School) Recruiter! After reading this I think the APS has a long way to go to get past "Old School" recruitment.

When will the revolution start I wonder?

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The biggest challenge for organisations over the next 20 to 40 years is attracting and retaining skilled workers. Australia's oldest baby boomers are now 63 and ready to retire. The ageing workforce is growing and we will not have enough people to replace them. Not only that, organisations are at risk of losing a career's worth of knowledge.

In response to this organisations should be attempting to extend the working careers of mature age employees. Organisations will need to be able to attract, retain and develop the right people. To be able to build attraction and retention strategies an organisation must first identify:

• the critical roles to deliver current work as well as any future work;
• what skills and knowledge are required in these roles;
• the people in these roles  and what their career intentions are;
• talented people from outside the business and how they can attract them;
• what development is required to ensure employees are skilled and ready to deliver new business; and
• its ageing workforce and the implications of this such as retirement, career planning, flexible working arrangements and succession management.

Some mature age attraction and retention strategies that organisations can look at are:

• flexible working options (reduced hours, job sharing, additional leave for caring purposes, etc.);
• training and development;
• having mature age workers as mentors to younger staff;
• having younger staff mentor mature age workers on new technology;
• establish a contact list for short term employment and projects for workers who have retired; and
• establish an alumni for mentoring and networking opportunities for workers who have retired .

As part of my assignment I also had to give a presentation and I thought I should share it outside of the classroom.

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• How To Get The Best Out Of Your Gen-Y Employees (1)

Over the last few weeks I have been reading a book called Retiring the Generation Gap: How Employees Young and Old Can Find Common Solution. Based on research regarding intergenerational conflict, how different generations really are, and what workplaces can do reduce conflicts among people of different generations, it is based on US research conducted over seven years. 

The main point I learnt from this book is that all generations have similar values; they just express them differently. It also highlighted that if you are party to a conflict that appears to be about generation-based values differences it is most likely that the conflict is between individuals and that it has nothing to do with their generation and the conflict is about difference in behaviour rather than about a fundamental values difference.

The research from this book highlighted that top ten values for all generations were:

• Family (72%)
• Integrity (65%)
• Achievement (48%)
• Love (48%)
• Competence (47%)
• Happiness (46%)
• Self-respect (45%)
• Wisdom (45%)
• Balance (39%)
• Responsibility (38%) [1]

I know that this is US research, but I wonder how different it would be in Australia?

What do you think?

1. Retiring the Generation Gap: How employees young and old can find common ground, Deal, J., 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Inc., p15

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• How To Get The Best Out Of Your Gen-Y Employees (1)

Dr Babara Griffin, from the University of Western Sydney, has recently studied the impact of bad manners in the workplace. Dr Griffin used data from Hewitt Associates' Best Employer Survey of more than 54,000 employees from 179 organisations across Australia and New Zealand. From this data she found that one in five employees experience a significant incident of bad manners at work once a month.

Bullying has a large impact on employee engagement including whether an employee will stay in an organisation, will speak positively about the organisation and more importantly whether the employee will go that extra mile when needed. Bullying also causes psychological distress and poor physical health. Bullying not only impacts the person being bullied but other people who see this occurring in the workplace, as well as family and friends.

I have started to read the The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t. There is an example in the book of one bully costing an organisation US$160000; 60% of recovery was deducted from his year-end bonus. The cost represented the time spent by others in dealing with the bully and assisting victims, counseling sessions, recruiting and inducting new people (due to attrition) and training. This amount could have been higher if a person being bullied decided to sue the organisation for psychological distress.

Imagine you have a number of bullies in your organisation... What this is costing and what is the impact on your employer brand?

In the book Bob Sutton suggests ten steps to enforcing the No Asshole Rule. These are:

1. Say the rule, write it down and act on it.
2. Assholes will hire other assholes therefore ensure you have civilized people interviewing.
3. Get rid of assholes fast.
4. Treat certified assholes as incompetent employees. Do not reward them if they are doing extraordinarily well but persistently bully others.
5. Power breeds nastiness.
6. Embrace the power-performance paradox but do everything you can do downplay and reduce status differences.
7. Manage moments - not just practices, policies and systems.
8. Model and teach constructive confrontation.
9. Adopt the one asshole rule (apparently when there are rare occasions of bad behaviour it reminds people how not to behave).
10. The bottom line - link big policies to small decencies.

So, what can you do? Ensure you have bullying and harassment policies, but more importantly ensure everyone in your organisation is expected and does walk the talk. If they don't then do something about it. Taking a stand against bullying requires strong leadership from everyone in the organisation from the CEO down.

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poor spelling and grammar and a failure to understand what constitutes appropriate corporate behaviour are the biggest bugbears... communication skills of Gen Y staff disappointed 48% of SME owners, while 37% complain Gen Ys lack acceptable technical skills...
Almost 90% of employers said that Gen Ys are more demanding than other workers especially when it comes to advancing their careers, and 79% say Gen Ys are more likely to ask for a pay rise. They are also much more likely to demand better office amenities and more time off to study, as well as more training opportunities and mentoring.

There are positives. Gen Ys are tech savvy and companies can rely on them to help keep up with the latest technology trends.

Smart Company also provided some tips on managing Gen Y:

1. Retention starts with recruitment
2. Be flexible
3. Provide the 'why'
4. Provide regular constructive feedback
5. Set clear career paths and determine goals
6. Coaching and mentoring
7. Salary
8. Develop an organisational culture that is inclusive of everyone
9. Watch your words
10. Practice what you preach

For me this makes sense, not just for Gen Y, but for any employee. To really engage employees so that they are productive, managers need to understand what each one's needs are. There is no use saying that one single approach will suit everybody. I'm Gen X and I know the list above appeals to me, just not in that order.

A Manpower white paper titled Engaging the Total Workforce lists 12 engagement drivers which motivate employees, these are

1. Being treated with respect
2. Having a clear understanding of what is expected
3. Having a sense of belonging
4. Being treated equally
5. Access to tools, resources and information to perform
6. Receiving the training that is needed to perform in the role
7. Open and honest two-way feedback
8. Strong teamwork
9. Receiving recognition
10. Opportunities to learn, develop and progress
11. Understanding how the role contributes to the success of the business
12. Security

I find point 12 very interesting given that there is a trend to move from organisation to organisation or even into different careers.

So what can you do? If your organisation does not have employee surveys to find out what motivates employees, work with your line manager to help them understand what motivates their staff. Then assist the line managers in putting some of those strategies in place.

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• Read your organisation's strategic plan and other strategic documents. If it doesn't have one, ask why not. Suggest that HR be part of the planning process
• If you do not have strong financial skills build a relationship with the finance people and have them explain the financial side of the business to you. You could also use this relationship to enable you to have some costings done on recruitment, attrition, absenteeism, OH&S, etc.
• Build your knowledge on the internal and external environmental factors so you are able to detect potential opportunities or problems
• Talk to managers, employees, customers, investors and anyone you think might have something to contribute

A model I use when conducting an environmental analysis is from Human Resource Management: Transforming Theory into Innovative Practice [1]:

When analysing the internal environment you should consider the:

• ownership of the organisation, i.e. is it public, private or something else?
• organisation's size
• organisation's strategy (theres that strategy word again!)
• oganisation's structure (bureaucratic, centralised etc)
• organisational culture (not only what the organisation espouses its culture to be, but also the unwritten culture
• organisational history
• resources available

When analysing the external environment you should consider the:

• environmental factors
• technological factors
• economic factors
• labour market
• international factors
• industrial relations
• political factors
• legal factors
• social factors (i.e corporate social responsibility)
• demographic factors
• industry trends
• cultural factors

For the external environment you could use the information provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The Department of Defence has released the Defence Personnel Environment Scan 2025 which has a whole chapter on Australia and the global context, see part 3. The Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) would also be a good resource.

So what are you waiting for, go out and learn your business!

__

1. Hartel, C., Fujimoto, Y., Strybosch, V., Fitzpatrick, K. (2007) Human Resource Management: Transforming Theory into Innovative Practice, Pearson Education Australia, NSW.

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