CSR, Women and Violence
April 16, 2012
Today I had thought to report on some ideas for constructing a sustainable economy. Some other time.
Instead the ever readable Akhila Vijayaraghavan, founder of international CSR consultancy The Green Den, has written a potent blog about the treatment of women in her native Indian society.
In particular she points to the recent deaths of two baby girls named Neha Afreen and Falak, who have died through severe battering within the last 6 weeks.
Here is a bit more detail of the cases: those of a sensitive disposition should look away now.
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Eight Tips For Corporate Volunteering
March 20, 2012
It’s almost certain that you’ve never heard of the the Global Corporate Volunteer Council (GCVC). Created by the International Association for Volunteer Effort, its founding members include Citi Bank, Disney, Levi Strauss and Samsung.
Corporate volunteering is nothing new: a business releases its employees from their day job to allow them to engage with the civil society within which the company exists. How long the release is for varies between a day a month and a week a year. Sometimes the employee receives a stipend from their employer, sometimes they don’t.
International corporate volunteering (ICV) is much the same beast but on a bigger scale. Businesses place their employees on a volunteer basis in international projects where their skills can contribute to the achievement of a defined goal. Sometimes these can take months to achieve, sometimes shorter.
Back in June 2011 GCVC published a final report into the international state of ICV, and it makes interesting reading. Part of the report is “Seven Learnings” which, although aimed specifically at ICV, are almost equally applicable to any company of any size running a volunteer programme.
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Social Media: Extending and Connecting the Recruitment Conversation
November 22, 2011
This is the third in a series of three interviews focused on careers, employer brand and social media: Paul (Corporate Eye CEO) interviews Matthew Berry, Resourcing Director at Centrica.
Often there’s a gap – particularly for graduates – between the time of recruitment, and the first day of work. How do you keep that relationship fresh?
And then again, at the end of employment: how can you keep communication channels open?
In this interview, Matt Berry explains how social media can be used to extend the conversation at both ends—and, indeed, to connect/reconnect employees with the company:
“alumni and onboarding… there’s a lot of potential, and the reason is that these networks are about relationships and communicating, and that’s what these tools are for. They’re designed to build a network and to communicate with people.
“the key in all of this: it’s about initiating a conversation. It’s still got to be a quality conversation
“with social media—and this is something that a lot of people underestimate—you must constantly turn the handle to engage”
Paul and Matthew talk about Centrica’s experience of extending relationships with candidates, employees and alumni through social recruiting techniques… do listen, this interview is crammed full of insight and information about how one of the largest companies in the UK manage social media recruitment.
I’ve broken the interview down into smaller pieces, so that you can quickly find particular points you’d like to hear about. I’ve also included the whole interview and a transcript.
Part 1: Social media and recruitment
Key topics:
- Facebook, interns and graduates
- LinkedIn, professional hires and the advantages of being a direct recruiter
- targeting on LinkedIn
- importance of investing in skilled social media people
Soundbites:
“We have up to 500,000 applicants per annum… so trying to find a simple way of getting messages out to that fairly large audience is not easy, but social media lends itself very nicely to that”
“‘RateMyPlacement’, for example, is very important around the summer placement in the intern programmes because via that feedback and word of mouth via our participants we are building a reputation in delivering a great work experience. We encourage all our summer placement to leave their views on those ratings sites…”
“one of the big benefits we see in LinkedIn is that certainly half to three quarters of anyone [professional hires] that we would hire is already on it”
“when we do our executive recruitment [LinkedIn] would be the place we start no matter what”
“social media doesn’t just happen. It is an interactive thing by its nature and it needs some skilled people to really get full advantage from it”
“We have our applicant tracking system … linked in to Facebook, so you can physically tap into any job in our organisation in the UK from our Facebook page”
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Length: 19:18
Download: Matthew Berry interview: part 1
Part 2: Social media and onboarding
Key topics:
- social media and decision-making
- using social media for support
- control, pragmatism and the front line
Soundbites:
“it’s about trying to put information where people are already… our graduates, four or five years ago, were creating a Centrica 2007 intake Facebook page. We didn’t. And we couldn’t stop it if we wanted”
“so we just started tapping into that, giving them a framework… we’ll have induction days which we completely schedule via these groups, and they communicate, talk and support each other”
“one of the things we’ve recently built is an onboarding site, specifically for anyone that joins our business the moment they say ‘Yes, I’d love the job’. And one of the key things there is linking people into our social network”
“we can’t stop people saying what they say anyway but at least we know what’s being said, which is of huge benefit”
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Length: 5:49
Download: Matthew Berry interview: part 2
Part 3: Social media and alumni
Key topics
- risks and niche knowledge
- maintaining relationships with talent
- sharing internal information with alumni
Soundbites:
“We’ve got some demographic challenges where we have to think a bit more flexibly about how do we capture some of that talent”
“not to have some mechanism to keep in touch is a bit of a risk, particularly where some of these individuals have such niche knowledge that’s very hard to replace”
“we’ll always be doing projects or elements of work that will still be of interest to that professional community”
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Length: 6:39
Download: Matthew Berry interview: part 3
Part 4: Social media and referral recruiting
Key topics:
- social-media-enabling the referral process
- tracking and transparency
- engaging internally to get people to embrace it
Soundbites:
“social media is an underestimated tool for referral programmes”
“It’s not how do we engage the external marketplace, it’s how do we engage the internal marketplace”
“we make sure that any role we have running an internal person can look at it and within [...] two clicks they can share that job with their friends. So you could send me a link [...] and I could apply straight away, and that would also help the business track the fact that you were the person that had introduced me”
“the external team now handles all internal recruitment as well… that team is now directly talking to all of these candidates. We would have 5-10,000 applications internally per annum, so we’re making sure that we’re the hub of all that communication”
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Length: 5:28
Download: Matthew Berry interview: part 4
Part 5: Social recruitment governance
Key topics:
- social media policies, freedom and message control
- presenting a coherent front to the external candidate world
- avoiding the cold-call scenario
- merging of the social media and recruitment platforms
Soundbites:
“we have a social media policy of course which is a fairly straightforward thing [...] social media is part of everyone’s lives. Use it but use your common sense”.
“The big challenge with social media – or one of them – is that if you don’t keep your content relevant and fresh and up-to-date then there’s no reason for anyone to look at anything that you’re doing”
“it’s about the engagement activity that would get you interested to come in rather than pushing hard to push opportunities at people”
“Businesses will have to get more mature in the social media space, which is going to take a little bit of time. I think it’s an opportunity to make the process a bit more engaging. But I don’t think it’s going to make life easier.”
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Length: 8:24
Download: Matthew Berry interview: part 5
Here’s the whole interview, in case you’d rather listen to it end-to-end; and the transcript, for those who prefer to read.
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Length: 45:39
Download: Matthew Berry interview (whole interview)
Download: Transcript
Many thanks to Matthew for taking the time to talk to Paul.
Who were we speaking to?
Matthew Berry started his career as a chemical engineer in the steel industry covering a number of operational, technical and management positions.
With a desire for travel, Matthew moved from Australia to the UK and worked as a Search and Selection consultant for European energy and process industries.
For the past 8 years, Matthew has worked with Centrica in a number of HR roles and is currently Resourcing Director for the Centrica Group.
Measuring and Communicating Your Best Asset
October 25, 2011
This is the second in a series of three interviews focused on careers, employer brand and social media: Paul (Corporate Eye CEO) interviews Andrew Mayo, Director at Mayo Learning International, and President of the HR Society here in the UK.
Companies often claim that their people are their best assets, but just how do you measure and communicate the importance of people to a company?
Good applicants – like investors and other stakeholders – will review the corporate website and the annual report to find out more about a company. Obviously company culture, talent development and employee engagement all matter to current and future employees, but they can reveal a surprising amount about the company for other stakeholders, potentially supporting the case for investment.
But measuring, and reporting on, human resources isn’t easy, and nor is it easy to compare the results between companies.
Do listen as Andrew gives us some valuable insights into people related measurement and discusses how companies promote employer brand, measurement of – and reporting on – human capital and employee engagement, and the risks that social media can pose for human resources.
I’ve broken the interview down into smaller pieces, so that you can quickly find particular points you’d like to hear about. I’ve also included the whole interview and a transcript.
Part 1: Attracting Talent and Employer Brand: The Balancing Act
Key topics:
- company brand vs employer brand
- attracting vs filtering applications
- appealing to graduates vs experienced candidates
Soundbites:
“The first thing that has always mattered most to new graduates is not, as often thought, the salary and benefits particularly. It’s the training they will get… but also ‘What kind of work will you give me?’”
“I’m often amazed how people come to interviews and they’ve done practically no research on the company itself, they’ve just been focused on the job.”
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Length: 11:47
Download: Andrew Mayo interview: part 1
Part 2: Measuring and Communicating Human Capital
Key topics:
- annual reporting on people: ‘our best assets’
- difficulties in measuring human capital
- what the numbers can reveal about the company
Soundbites:
“… Vodafone, Shell and Smith & Nephew have done good work in producing numbers and comparing with previous years and even in some cases saying ‘These are our targets’. For me, that tells me a lot about the strength of the workforce and the strength of the company ethos, the strength of engagement of the people and so on.”
“Figures like ‘We only went outside to the market for 20% of the vacancies that arose’ tell me they’ve got a very robust internal development and growth system…statistically, that correlates with sustainable business performance, and so that tells me this is a company worth investing in.”
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Length: 7:12
Download: Andrew Mayo interview: part 2
Part 3: Measuring and Communicating Engagement
Key topics
- efforts to standardise measures
- the measures that matter:
- labour turnover
- absence rates
- what employees say
Soundbites:
“Engagement means we actually care and we’re committed to what we’re trying to achieve here.”
“The problem is that at a corporate level in an annual report you’re going to report an average, and an average is always the enemy of truth.”
“The three measures I think are relevant are labour turnover…absence rates… [and] to ask people carefully thought out questions. Not only about ‘are you engaged?’ but also checking out the factors that you know lead to engagement.”
“Research in engagement says that there are a relatively small number of things that really make a difference to people, and whether they understand company strategy or not is not one of them.”
“Engagement correlates with performance as well. And the more engaged a workforce is, the better an organisation it’s likely to be both for its customers and for investors.”
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Length: 8:36
Download: Andrew Mayo interview: part 3
Part 4: Social Media, Human Resources and Employer Branding
Key topics:
- issues for HR: privacy, currency, cynicism and authenticity
- importance of monitoring social media
- cynicism and the need to provide evidence
Soundbites:
“You can’t stop anybody asking the question ‘is there anybody out there that’s worked for X?’ However from a company point of view that’s extremely dangerous. You don’t know whether they had a good experience or a bad experience. They might have worked five years ago and the company’s completely different today. So organisations have really got to take an initiative here.”
“People are cynical, and they’ll be cynical of what any company tells them. So whatever you put on the website, you’ve got to back it up with as many facts as possible”
“It’s a big challenge for HR… it really needs the best image possible to be able to attract people. And yet a lot of the things which cause the image of a company to be a problem are out of their control.”
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Length: 10:32
Download: Andrew Mayo interview: part 4
Here’s the whole interview, in case you’d rather listen to it end-to-end; and the transcript, for those who prefer to read.
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Length: 38:10
Download: Andrew Mayo interview (whole interview)
Download: Transcript
Many thanks to Andrew for taking the time to talk to Paul.
Who were we speaking to?
Professor Andrew Mayo has nearly 30 years experience in industry. For the last decade he has been a Fellow and Programme Director at the Centre for Management Development at London Business School, Associate Professor of Human Capital Management at Middlesex University Business School, and Director of the highly regarded consultancy company, Mayo Learning International. He holds degrees in Chemical Engineering, Operations Research and Management, and a Diploma in Finance and Accounting, and is a frequent conference speaker and author. His specialities are in HR Strategy, Workforce Planning and Human Capital Measurement.
It’s Not Easy Being a NED
September 26, 2011
I suspect that many people have no idea what a big impact non-executive directors (NEDs) can have on an organisation.
If anything, the man on the Clapham omnibus probably thinks of non-execs – if he’s heard of them at all – as white men with grey hair who get together every so often for a quick meeting and a decent lunch, in exchange for a sizeable chunk of change.
Although Boards are struggling with many issues – and diversity is one of them – this is a very outdated view of a NED. A good NED can be an extremely valuable (if often unsung) resource for the Board and for the business as a whole, and the role of the NED has become increasingly significant in recent years.
NED responsibilities include contributing to developing the corporate strategy, ensuring that reporting is accurate, and checking that the risk management system for the company is robust and comprehensive. They also work on remuneration and succession planning for the executive team. They have a role in assuring compliance with governance codes, ethical standards and best practice, as well in protecting shareholders’ interests. And because (if independent) they have no financial stake in the business other than salary, they should be able to provide an objective view.
NEDs should be able to contribute their expertise in other companies and other industries, enabling the Board to see different perspectives. Because of their experience ‘from elsewhere’ they may be able to see risks and opportunities that the executive team has overlooked. But they need to understand this business well enough that their advice doesn’t have a negative impact…
And while the Board should function as a team, executives and non-executives together, the NEDs are also expected to monitor the behaviour of the executives, and to challenge them on their decisions.
All this is a difficult balancing act; the executive team probably hold their roles because they are highly competent, strong-minded and forceful characters, with a great deal of expertise in their areas. A good NED will be able to provide a counterpoint to the existing team, while not being drowned out by it.
Why mention this? Well, the NED awards are coming up again, with awards available in 5 different categories: FTSE 100; Not-for-Profit or Public service; Quoted; AIM companies; and unquoted companies. And there’s an overall winner too: last year this was Mary Francis, Senior Independent Director (SID) at Centrica, who was commended for her role as SID and as Chair of the company’s Corporate Responsibility committee.
There are just over 3 weeks left to nominate before the October 21 deadline; is there a NED you feel has excelled this year?
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