How to hire and retain the right talent

In a McKinsey article - the stats are validating what we all seen to be feeling …… it’s harder to recruit, retain and maintain the right people and if you want to win the war on talent - you’ve gotta come to the party! 

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 4.3 million people voluntarily quit their jobs in December 2021, slightly below a record high in November 2021.

Their departures have left a huge hole in the labor market. 

The number of current job openings (10.9 million) exceeds the number of new hires (6.3 million). At a recent survey at Mckinseys recent survey of almost 600 workers who voluntarily left a job without another in hand, 44 percent said that they have little to no interest in returning to traditional jobs in the next six months. 

The rules of the game have changed. 

• you need to pay higher compensation,
• offer flexibility, 
• community, and 
• an inclusive culture 

The cost of switching jobs has gone down significantly.

There is less of a stigma associated with showing a gap in your résumé. 

Employees in many industries are confident that they can find work anywhere, whenever they are ready - They have seen friends and colleagues depart and survive, and they are confident that they can, too.

You need to redefine your attraction and retention strategies and build a value proposition that takes employees’ whole lives into account.

Why they left

• uncaring leaders, 
• unsustainable expectations of work performance, 
• lack of career advancement
• Overwork with less staff

Those that took new jobs cited

• Professional development - ability to learn
• workplace flexibility, 
• adequate compensation and 
• reasonable expectations about performance as top factors in taking a position 

What can you do to retain your team . How do you bring them back—and keep them?

Paul Findlay of Reach shared some interesting insights at our Nexttech Transformation forum facilitated by Bill Mclellan 

• life balance  - maybe offer subsidised cleaning services, gym memberships, free learning or on-site childcare services that would allow employees to eat lunch with their children
• Have a reason that makes them feel they are adding value and making a difference 
• providing extra days off for professional development or mental-health breaks
• Bonuses for great work 
• Recognition and create a feeling that your team is being listened to 
• Pay 100 percent of the tuition costs for employees seeking higher education. 

The bottom line is that companies must take a different approach, focused on the following core principles.

Doing something bigger than yourself

Fostering psychological safety and a sense of community, and measuring outcomes. Rather than conducting only exit interviews, adopt “stay” interviews, asking people how they are doing and what they need to continue in those roles?

As Mark Purbrick of Peoplogica said - have a joining party instead of a leaving party! 

Cultural factors can make a company more attractive to join and, ideally, provide more incentive to stay.

The power of collaboration 

Stack the deck in your favour - Expand your talent pool

Think more creatively about candidates: 

What about the nontraditional workers who aren’t even on their radars? 

Bring in Diverse groups 

As Fiona Love says - being innovative without Diversity and Inclusion is like playing sport with one hand tied behind your back! 

Based on Mckinseys research , this untapped source of labor could be as many as 23 million people. 

Lower the barriers to entry and rethink requirements for certain roles. 

Remove bias from the recruitment process!!

Consider students , those doing part-time or contract work , people you can train . 

Consider ex inmates - remove any questions about convictions or arrest records from job applications and to delay background checks until later in the hiring process.

Use Referron and encourage your team to find their friends using referral programs—for instance, launching a personalized “refer two friends” campaign, asking existing employees to recruit within their networks—and acknowledge that the best candidates may be outside the immediate radius of the company’s headquarters.

Use AI or overseas assistants to augment your team members skills Could functions be outsourced or automated ? 

In one company it was found that salespeople were spending the bulk of their days processing orders and managing documents rather than pursuing actual sales.

How can you create more value for both employer and employee using AI VR and BPO (business process outsourcing )

Thanks to the team at Mckinseys 

Aaron De Smet , Bonnie Dowling , Marino Mugayar-Baldocchi Bill Schaninger, Bryan Hancock, Laura Pineault, and Nicolette Rainone at Mckinseys for their article 

 The team at the Nexttech Transformation Forum - Cassandra Parton, Bill Mclellan, Mark Purbrick, Craig Saphin , Jane Valmadre, Paul Findlay , Ayon and Emma Sidney for their contribution at the Nexttech transformation forum 

The team at the BSI Diversity Equity and Inclusion Yarning Circle - Martin Stark, Kala Philip , Bindi Kuroz, Arthur Backouche, Peter Mousaferiadis, Imy Banaken , Ivan Schwartz, Anne Marie Elias,  Scott Hoskin and Ivan Kaye

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/gone-for-now-or-gone-for-good-how-to-play-the-new-talent-game-and-win-back-workers?cid=other-eml-alt-mip-mck&hdpid=e880de8e-a068-4ae9-a966-0e38c7f892a1&hctky=1453454&hlkid=a7d555df1afd491f814df284bba8d570

women in business

Supporting disability (or coolability in the workplace )

 

Effects of Russia being Isolated from Global Internet

What will the effects  be if Russia is cut off from the  Global Internet ?

For Russian population ? No tiktok, Facebook or insta - aaaargh

For world - will there be ramifications of increase in global cybercrime? 

Interesting Article from  Mohiuddin Ahmed is  Lecturer of Computing & Security and Paul Haskell-Dowland is Professor of Cyber Security Practice at Edith Cowan University. 

UN Warning on Climate Change in Australia

According to a recent United Nations climate change report, a rise of temperatures by 1.5 - 2°C will scorch northern Australia, kill the Great Barrier Reef, cause snowfields to disappear and cause flash floods from high intensity rainfall. 

Frequency of heatwaves will increase by 85 percent, with up to 70 percent more fire weather days by 2050 in some regions, causing a collapse of alpine ash, snowgum woodland, pencil pine and northern jarrah forests.

If global temperatures increase by 3°C, think Armageddon. We must come together and take Climate Action “that transforms virtually every human activity - now!” says Climate Activist Herman Gyr.

See full forum

https://dacastexpo.com/?id=480609ea-7a59-4459-894d-135525db17c6

UN report https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/

Edtech seems to be a hot space 🔥 to invest in - over the next 10 years

Venture capitalists (vcs) have invested  around $21bn into education technology companies in 2021, according to Holon iq, a research firm (see chart).l - 40 times more than a decade ago. 

Seventeen ed-tech startups became “unicorns” Half a dozen of them went public. They included Coursera and Duolingo .

Holon iq has predicted that global ed-tech revenues could almost double from $227bn that year to around $400bn in 2025, a fifth higher than its pre-pandemic forecast.

Schools and universities control much of the $6trn spent globally on education each year. They tend to be cash-strapped and conservative. Edtech is only 3pc 

For schools - broadband and tablets are the go and lawmakers in America have earmarked an extra $200bn or so for schools since the pandemic started.

Companies that offer after-school lessons—such as Outschool, an American unicorn, and GoStudent, an Austrian one—are growing fast

Adult learning is on the rise - with workers  taking  online courses that they thought would improve their prospects. 

Reskilling job and switching are the go and staff training is seen to be a strong retention tool 

 Up-and-coming firms include Guild, which helps blue-collar workers at giants such as Walmart and Disney gain new qualifications, and Better Up, an American company that helps professionals find coaching.

Nexttech is a company worth watching 

An influx of users and money in the pandemic has given more firms the muscle to expand abroad and to find ways of retaining users for longer, reckons Deborah Quazzo of gsv, a big educational investor. 

Take Byju’s. It has spent at least $2.8bn on a dozen acquisitions in an apparent attempt to string together services that will allow it to reach learners of all ages, from toddlers to career-changers - offering online classes in coding and maths to children in America, Brazil, Britain, Indonesia and elsewhere.

Welcome to the Nexttech Revolution 

Ed tech

https://www.economist.com/business/2022/02/19/can-the-ed-tech-boom-last

So, what do you wear to work?

Have you got a Pooh in your life?

💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙

“Today was a Difficult Day," said Pooh.

There was a pause.

"Do you want to talk about it?" asked Piglet.

"No," said Pooh after a bit. "No, I don't think I do."

"That's okay," said Piglet, and he came and sat beside his friend.

"What are you doing?" asked Pooh.

"Nothing, really," said Piglet. "Only, I know what Difficult Days are like. I quite often don't feel like talking about it on my Difficult Days either.

"But goodness," continued Piglet, "Difficult Days are so much easier when you know you've got someone there for you. And I'll always be here for you, Pooh."

And as Pooh sat there, working through in his head his Difficult Day, while the solid, reliable Piglet sat next to him quietly, swinging his little legs...he thought that his best friend had never been more right."

——————

I hope that you have a piglet in your life when you have a difficult day xxx

Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne

Creating innovation is as easy as N ABC

Curt Carlson who was CEO of SRI that was an organization that had been failing for 20 years. 

He implemented a value creation model and turned it around creating  SIRi many other innovative products . This methodology (NABC) (Needs,Approach, Benefits , Competition ) is now used by companies and governments around the world, including the U.S., Singapore, Taiwan, Sweden, Finland, Chile, and Japan.

Curt Carlson shares a whitepaper in the link below where he shares how Musk  Edison, Jobs, Sarnoff, Morita and Eastman have used this methodology .

Below is a small taste 

Creating an Innovative Product or business is like baking a cake 

To embark on a value creation journey - is like baking a cake - you need to start with a vision of what the cake will look like - but that’s not enough .

You need a recipe, access to the relevant ingredients and then persevere to discover the actual need, solution, and business model and then stay at it for years while pulling all the parts together.  

There are many ingredients - or factors that you need and have to come together, but generally, only a few essential factors determine the framework for success.  You must identify them at the start and then mitigate their risks to prove the innovation is feasible.  

Timing is super important 

The failure to get the timing right for an innovation is another reason so many initiatives fail.  It is like cooking a souffle – you must not be too early or too late.  The window of opportunity is often only a few years.  Jobs timed the iPhone perfectly.  

Below is a “Strawman” of the Value Creation model 

Value creation is a journey from the starting point on the bottom-left of the chart, where you “know nothing,” to the development of a valuable innovation.  

One of these ingredients is the knowledge from both technology and from other aspects of society, including trends in demographics, government regulations, and most importantly what the customer needs and prefers .  

You can never eliminate all the risks, endless issues come up, and the innovation evolves, as the zigs and zags on the chart indicate. 

These are the four fundamental questions that need to be answered 

• Is it a large and growing customer and market problem that impacts many?  
• Have you identified the actual need, the missing enabler, 
• Do you have a viable business model?  
• Can all the parts be assembled when you are ready to build the product and launch it into the marketplace?  

Innovating and trying to solve wicked complex problems requires an intense commitment to the value creation journey.  

 If you followed the value creation methodology, you will almost always mostly ended up in a good place. 

What it’s not about 

This form of enterprise strategy is not about writing 300-page business plans.  It is not about building huge teams.  And it is not about rapidly spending huge amounts of money.  Instead, it is about first getting the few fundamental concepts right and then aggressively de-risking them and the other elements of the solution, testing assumptions with potential customers, and finally building the offering. 

Here is a checklist of the strategic methodology described:

• Look for multiple "colliding exponentials," which often open major new white spaces.
• Identify a significant customer problem and market space.

Address the following key insights:

• Identify the actual important, growing unmet customer and market need.
• Pinpoint the missing ingredient that enables the innovation's solution.
• Create a viable starting business model.
• Provide evidence that all elements will be available to build and launch the offering - Cash 💰 being a significant ingredient
• Rapidly de-risk the key insights, major risks, and other potential barriers.
• Spend very few resources until the initiative is derisked, including the offering and business model.
• Assure a compelling and sustainable competitive advantage.
• Intensely drive the value creation process and identify a beachhead to get started. 

What did Musk say 

Musk says he focuses first on the fundamentals.  For example, he said, "Always go beyond memorizing formulas, passing tests, to always go deep into the underlying principles of a subject, to track any problem down to the root cause, buried in the dirt, in the dark."  In addition, he says, "The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur." 

About Curtis Carlson 

Curtis Raymond Carlson was president and CEO of SRI International from 1998 to 2014 and is a prominent technologist and pioneer in developing and using innovation best practices. While CEO of SRI International, revenue tripled to $550 million per year and tens of billions of dollars of new marketplace value was created, such as through Siri, an SRI spin-off company that was bought by Steve Jobs at Apple. 

While Carlson was CEO Mayfield Ventures partner, David Ladd, said, “SRI is now the best enterprise at turning its technology into economic value.”

He served on President Obama’s National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE). He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF).

Here is a link to the article

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/strategy-creating-transformational-innovations-curt-carlson-ph-d-