New Generations: Attracting, Developing and Retaining Top Talent

There's a HUGE difference between thinking about "engagement dynamics" like attraction, development and retention - and thinking about "dynamic engagement" … it's a whole different ball game. Dynamic engagement represents the shift in thinking organisations need in order to be talent-competitive into the future.

So, for something different, here is a presentation I delivered at the "ABC of XYZ" new generations conference, put on by the good guys and girls at McCrindle Research, in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, August 2010.

Click here

The presentation explores the critical role innovative 'development' programs play in the attraction and retention of top talent. Furthermore, examples of innovative 'next generation' talent development programs are outlined. it's all about "dynamic engagement" … enjoy!

Warm regards,

Josh Mackenzie

Develop new leaders, faster.

Graduates in their 2^nd year of work who are looking to develop themselves further are not craving time management, team work and problem solving skills workshops. They want to move beyond ‘basic skills’ to ‘leadership-oriented’ skills. So what are we doing about it?

In the AAGE’s recent Graduate Development and Retention Survey for 2010, 1,754 graduate in Australia were asked what areas they wanted further education. Here were the top 10 results:

1. Technical Skills specific to my career: 45%
2. Business Knowledge: 45%
3. Industry and Business Knowledge: 40%
4. Influence and Negotiation Skills: 38%
5. Project Management: 34%
6. Analytical Skills: 33%
7. People Management: 31%
8. Relationship Building: 26%
9. Knowledge of Business Etiquette: 24%
10. Conflict Resolution: 24%

Leadership-oriented skills like these are what many top graduates are looking for. Not surprisingly; young, fresh new leaders are what many businesses are looking to their graduate programs to provide.

So my question is this:

Why not focus on these “leadership-oriented” skills in their 1^st year? Why wait?

The answer is because many 1^st year graduate development programs are too focused on ‘basic skills’ like time management, team work and problem solving amongst others. This means that leadership-oriented skills like those listed above often get held back until year 2 or 3 … or just get left out all together!

Here’s an idea … if the industry could find a way to effectively and efficiently empower graduates to self-teach the ‘basic skills’ BEFORE they arrived on day 1, wouldn’t it make sense to then focus graduate development programs on ‘leadership-oriented’ skills from that point onwards?

Let’s get a little clever and think carefully about this.

Employers recruit grads because they're smart, switched on and keen. Most 'basic skills' can be self taught with the right tools in the right environment by people who are … wait for it … smart, switched on and keen!

What’s more, an average 6 month gap between when most grads accept their job offers and when they actually start the following year could be a perfect window of time to provide them with self-teach tools to do it.

They’d turn up on day one job ready with the basic skills under their belt, and your entire graduate development program is 1 year ahead of schedule. Now you can develop new leaders, faster.

A focus on leadership development from the outset is already happening with some leading employers and it is fast becoming best practice in the industry. Why? Because it simply speeds up how quickly businesses see a return on their graduate programs in terms of creating a pool of new leaders … and does so because it invests limited training budgets in skill areas that provide more ‘bang for their buck’ long term.

Stop Training Graduates. Start Developing Leaders. Now there's an idea …

On a beautiful beach in the far flung north of Maui in Hawaii, just last week and on my honeymoon (ahh heaven), it hit me like a brick wall.

No, I hadn’t just snorkeled my head in to a wall of coral. It was a thought not so tropical, but definitely topical. (ooh, did you like that?)

As leadership teams and businesses look at plans and budgets for their 2011 graduate development programs, getting maximum return on investment is #1.

So, what is considered 'return on investment' for graduate development programs? What is 'return' REALLY all about?

Here are some Maui-inspired thoughts. By the way … I didn't have an under-water pen and pad on me at the time and it was too deep to write in the sand on the ocean floor, so I'll do my best to remember my thinking…

1) ROI from graduate development programs is really about providing a workforce-appropriate funnel of high performing, job ready YOUNG LEADERS.

2) ROI is not about improved business etiquette, time management and written communication skills.

3) Assessing ROI requires something to assess against that fits the ideal competencies, culture and expectations of the leadership teams making the investment.

Here’s an idea, a mindset, a theory, that leading graduate employers are latching on to …

STOP RUNNING GRADUATE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS.

Oh my god! Did I just say that? Really? Well, yes! Seriously, why develop graduates to be great graduates? That not what most businesses want! They want young leaders.

START RUNNING YOUNG LEADER DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS.

Across the industry, let’s get smarter and even more strategic about how we use our graduate development budgets in 2011 to give our businesses what they want from us. Many basic skills can be learned well enough by reading 3 best-selling books, or watching a series of short online videos on the subject and being coached by a manager on the job to apply new skills. They don't require full day workshops.

Lets innovate highly cost effective ways to deliver basic skill development that doesn’t soak up time and budget, and leave a greater share of the pie to invest in actual leadership development.

Let's invest instead in developing real leadership behaviours in young people to give organisations their ideal funnel of workforce-appropriate, high performing, job ready YOUNG LEADERS. That is maximum ROI.

If on the other hand, a graduate development program is really about producing a production line of young monkeys, then obviously I’m wrong. I take it all back and shall return to my beach in the far flung north of Maui and shut up.

Actually … that sounds good … call me wrong ... go on … please!

Josh Mackenzie

Managing Director - Australia

Development Beyond Learning

Why Abbott's plan for Govt graduate recruitment is completely flawed and what we should do instead.

An article has been floating around the graduate recruitment industry this week in light of Tony Abbott's 2010 budget reply. It regards freezing graduate recruitment in the Australian Public Service (APS) for 2 years should the coalition be elected this year.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/051710-abbot...ts-public-sector-hiring-freeze.html

If the goal is cost reduction across the APS, Tony Abbott's plan for APS graduate recruitment is completely flawed.

I understand any government will need to take drastic measures to claw back the debt coming out of the GFC (or Labor's time in government, depending on your views) ... however freezing the very talent pipeline that provides the APS with some of its highest quality people (young graduates) for 2 years will INCREASE costs in the APS long term, not reduce them.

Freezing graduate recruitment in the APS for 2 years will:

1) Compound the massive LEADERSHIP GAP across the entire APS over the next 5-10 years as the ageing APS workforce retires on mass. More than 70% of the Senior Executive Service (SES) are aged 45 or more and will be looking towards retirement in that time. As they retire, there will be no-one to replace them. (MAC Report, “Managing and sustaining the APS workforce”)

2) Compound the massive SKILLS SHORTAGE contributed to by retention issues and career progression expectations in graduates. 62% of graduates in their first year of working in the service expect to leave within 3 years. (AAGE Development and Retention Survey, 2009) Not only will a certain percentage of graduates continue to move, they will not be replaced. Any sector needs to plan for natural attrition and will pay down the track if they don’t.

3) Majorly damage the graduate employer brands APS departments and agencies have spent the past 10 years or more building ... the employer brands that today attract the best of the best graduate talent from all over Australia and will take another 10 years to rebuild. The same challenge major firms and IT companies faced when they froze graduate programs after the dot.com bust and 9/11 in 2001 and arguably, have only recently recovered from.

The solution to cutting people costs in the APS is not to freeze graduate recruitment. That's the last thing the APS should be doing.

With all due respect to the many thousands of 45+ year old APS employees who have served our country for so many years, the people cost is in those in the ageing workforce who no-longer want to be there.

The solution to cutting people costs is to let those in the ageing APS workforce who want retire, to retire. APS statistics show retirement number will be large in the next 5-10 years anyway. We should replace them, as well as as reduce people costs, through ongoing, structured programs involving:

1) Increasing graduate recruitment over the next 5-10 years, year on year;

2) Ensuring the ageing workforce, particularly leaders and managers, are trained, inspired and rewarded for leading, mentoring and passing down decades of knowledge and experience to graduates as they move through the ranks in their first 5 years, before 70% retire in the next 5-10 years.

3) Accepting that embracing new graduates and fresh young talent consistently over the next 10 years WILL close the leadership gap, reduce the skills shortage and position the APS well to maintain the positive graduate employer brand it has built. As a result, improving the organisational culture, effectiveness and cost structure of the APS long term.

And if that's not enough, the argument is simple.

In order to best serve the Australian people and be the best APS it can be, which is what the APS exists for, shouldn’t we continue to give the APS access to our country’s best young people so they can do that?

Leading and Managing Gen Y - is it still an issue?

The evidence suggests “yes”.

Take the government sector as an example. We have been chosen (and we’re honoured!) to partner with the Australian Public Service Commission to deliver a full day program called: Leading, engaging and retaining generation Y graduates and emerging talent.

The first program has sold out. Seven major federal government departments are involving their graduate managers and supervisors because the issue is very real.

And the corporate sector has shown similar signs.

In fact, even approaching the height of the global downturn in late 2008, 61% of CEOs reported still having enormous difficulty in attracting and retaining Generation Y graduates (“Millennials at work: Perspectives from a new generation” PwC).

As the Australian economy improves and our relatively low unemployment rate of 5% stabilises, power will shift back towards the employee and young people will regain confidence, high expectations and new choices between jobs and careers. Educated graduates will again lead the charge and leadership will continue to matter.

From over 100 surveys of more than 40,000 participants conducted by McCrindle Research, 42% of Generation Y respondents reported that poor leadership and management was the main reason for leaving their previous role. (Mark McCrindle, The ABC of XYZ – Understanding Global Generations).

So is the solution to teach your leaders and managers the “Generation Y” mindset to better lead, manage and retain your graduates?

I don’t think so. Generational segmentation was designed (and is very useful) for things like marketing and workforce planning. Not for leadership. It’s all about how to lead and manage the individual.

One part of the solution is to help your leaders and managers to adopt the Multi-Generational Mindset.

The Multi-Generational Mindset appreciates generational influences but cuts through generational paradigms and assumptions by focusing on the individual’s needs.

The Multi-Generational Mindset:
* Inspires you to appreciate external influences on generational groups;
* Challenges you to rethink generational paradigms when leading and managing people;
* Develops 'behavioural flexibility' as a key still of the multi-generational leader;
* Equips you to tap into the values, styles and motivators of individuals, not their generations;
* Empowers you to better appreciate, lead and inspire people of any generation.

The more keynote talks I give to leaders and managers about the Multi-Generational Mindset and the more our team works with them in leadership development programs, the more evidence we find of this.

Helping leaders reframe their thinking about generations to adopt a Multi-Generational Mindset leads to stronger relationships, stronger coaching and mentoring and increased on-the-job development of their people.

And with this, everybody wins. The business wins because they get more bang for their buck from their people. The program manager wins because senior leadership sees they’re adding even more value to the business.

People win because they now find themselves working with more managers who are better leaders, more of the time.

So is leading and managing Generation Y still an issue? Yes. Adopting the Multi-Generational Mindset is a big part of the solution.

How could your leaders and managers also benefit from developing the Multi-Generational Mindset?


Warm Regards,

Josh Mackenzie
Keynote Speaker
Director, Development Beyond Learning

The Multi-Generational Leader

Post GFC, generational gaps continue to CLOSE.

Regardless of when we were born, we’re all looking for the same things from our leaders. Nothing has changed. Skills, behaviours, and values are breaking down traditional ‘generational’ lines and making generations similar in many ways. No longer can we make assumptions about Gen Y, Gen X and the Baby Boomers.

An example of this change lives in the use of social networking tools:

* The average age of a Linked-In user is 41 years old;

* 33% of Twitter users are more than 40 years old;

* 40% of MySpace users are 35 to 55 years old;

* The fastest growing demographic of Facebook users is women over 55 years old.

Where once the social networking world was dominated by the very young, that is no longer so.

What other assumptions no longer hold true? If traditional ‘generational’ lines are fading, do we assume we need to lead people from different generations, differently?

The truth is that regardless of generation, what is required from us as leaders is the same.

Behavioural flexibility is crucial for leaders to adapt to the individual diversity of skills, behaviours, influences and values in today’s teams. As leaders, we’re being challenged to reframe the assumptions we make about Gen Y, Gen X and the Baby Boomers in our teams.

What does this mean for how you lead, coach and communicate with your team members?

Explore 9 leadership capabilities here:

http://www.dblearning.biz/Graduates_Leader.html

Josh Mackenzie

Director, Speaker and Author

Development Beyond Learning

Demands Drive Innovation in Graduate Development

As grad programs kick off this month, employers are placing heavier-than-ever demands on graduate development programs to bring the greatest possible value to the organisation. Which makes this an exciting time. Demands are driving innovation and the employers who embrace them will benefit for years to come.

At DBL, our team is inspired about 3 strategies we’re seeing adopted in graduate development programs that will create value for organisations into the future. The great news is that each one is flexible to fit your program size, budget and organisational culture:

1) Individualise each graduate’s development to ensure relevance to each graduate’s development needs and application back in the business. Do this through using development assessments, one-on-one coffee coaching before and after each intervention, flexibility for a graduate to choose paths or streams of training within your program based on their development needs ... (the list goes on!);

2) Blend multiple delivery formats to get better bang for your buck and allow some individualisation in a tailored program that fits your business. This might mean adopting a non-traditional approach that mixes interactive online modules, individual coaching, group mentoring, workshops, practical business projects and individual challenges back in the business over the length of your graduate program. Get creative.

3) Embed senior leaders and managers into the fabric of your development program to expose graduates to their leaders, build strong relationships, and increase the chances of application of new knowledge and skills back in the business. Expose, expose, expose.

To discuss how we might be able to help you in your graduate development program, please get in touch.

Explore 9 Graduate Development Capabilities for your program here:
http://www.dblearning.biz/Graduates_program.html

Josh Mackenzie
Director, Speaker and Author
Development Beyond Learning