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Svante Randlert, Business & People Advisor, key-note speaker at Competo 12^th event

 

»On average, 10 out of 10 CEO`s that I talk to have a business plan and they know it very well. But only one of them has or knows a people plan. It is really interesting – we know what and why we are selling, but we do not know what kind of people do we need, who do we have to attract or how do we keep them engaged in the future for 2-3 years– that is the missing people plan. Building an employer brand should be a process that puts people – our employees – into the centre. They are, after all, every company`s ultimate competitive advantage that differentiates them from the competition.«

 

We all know a lot about managing product and service brands but not so much about managing an employer brand. Are there similarities? What is (or should be) different in product vs. employer brand management?

I believe we only have one brand. But we definitely can learn a lot about employer branding from how we manage the product brand. When we deal with product brands we think a lot about what differentiates us from competitors – if I would wake a marketing officer up in the middle of the night and ask them »What makes you better than your competitors?« they would know the answer straight away. But if I would wake an HR manager up in the middle of the night, they would be as good at differentiating their people policy from the competitors. Therefore I believe we have to be more sales oriented in human resources. After all, people want to know the difference between two employers. There is a lot of nonsense in messages about companies as employers – we are so often saying the exactly same thing as our competitors! We should learn from sales and marketing, stop talking about hygiene factors and start thinking about our competitive advantage.

 

How do we do that – what is the competitive advantage that differentiates an »okay« employer from a great employer if we exclude hygiene factors such as payment, working hours, location and content of work?

Everything comes back to marketing rules – the more similar product you sell, the more similar the employer is, the more it is the culture that matters. When you take away all the »corporate noise«, it all comes down to people. It’s your people that competitors can never have. I definitely am going to challenge the mainstream thinking at Competo event this year because I believe we have to work more with employee branding rather than employer branding. Employer branding is the communication from the employer and employee branding is communication from employees. Let’s compare it to web sites offering hotels around the world. Today no one books a hotel just because of what the hotel`s marketing department writes on the web site. We want to have the technical information of course, but we do not make the decision based on it. We trust and believe and are persuaded by what the hotel`s customers say. The career page works the same – the information there is necessary, but what the employees are saying is what matters. We can build an employer brand, but the real attractiveness of it is also a consequence of what employees are saying. We all know how important it is to listen to and to work with the customers, but we forget it should be the same in employer branding too. We have to listen to and work with the employees!

 

Svante Randlert is an internationally renown Business and People Advisor with vast experience in human resources and employer branding. We are happy to have him as our key-note speaker at 12th Competo event, where he is going to address issues such as how to build an attractive employer brand, how to talk to talents in the labour market and how to use employer brand to build valuable internal and external relationships.

V sredo 30.11.2016 smo v Competu organizirali že 11.dogodek. Govorili smo o prihodnosti dela. Z nami sta bila dva vrhunska predavatelja: karizmatični in energični HR evropski futurolog Perry Timms ter eden izmed najboljših slovenskih motivacijskih govorcev ter doktor psihologije Aleksander Zadel.

Na dogodku smo premierno predstavili tudi rezultate Competo raziskave “Kako so podjetja v Sloveniji seznanjena in pripravljena z izzivi prihodnosti dela”. Dogodek se je odvijal v Austria Trend hotelu in udeležilo se ga je 350 ljudi.

Zahvaljujemo se tudi vsem našim pokroviteljem, ki so omogočili, da smo dogodek izpeljali na najvišji ravni: marketinški agenciji Luna/TBWA, Summit avto, Generali, NLB, AMZS, SAP; Mercator, Petrol in Meetpoint.

 

Blog post to precede the keynote speech Perry Timms – HR Futurologist and Chief Energy Officer – PTHR

We are all fascinated, frightened and perhaps philosophical about the future. Our future. Your future. The future of society and work. That we are in times of disruptive innovation only adds to our emotional reaction to our thoughts of the future. We can be an optimists about the future; be pessimists or as my good friend and renowned Futurologist and Trend Spotter Magnus Lindkvist recently wrote, we could all be possibilists about the future. There are possibilities in an abundant form like we have never imagined or experienced before.

Let’s start with the big ticket issues: will we see a new economic model take over from the current neo-liberal form of capitalism? Will we see – as people like Umair Haque, Raj Sissodia and Thomas Picketty have claimed, a new form of conscious capitalism, a recycling of profit and a value + impact over wealth + acquisition approaches to life and business? Will we see ourselves living in a post-materialistic, leasing mentality with the concept of ownership replaced by the use and reuse in the so-called sharing or collaborative consumption economy?

Whatever the economic model, it feels like the existing one has reached its use-by date but money still talks – for now. The other big ticket issue is work. The product of capitalism is goods and services that enrich lives. To make the most of this, people need to earn money (unless they are fortunate enough to inherit) and that means work. And in most cases jobs. I say most cases as this is also being challenged. The concept of employment. Of ownership and allegiance to the corporate brand. The uniform, the values set, the benefits package. Gary Hamel – the World’s Number 1 Business Thinker – says we’re moving out of the job-based controlist term into what has been coined by Nilofer Merchant’s work on value in the social era as “work not jobs”. The concept of not being owned by the corporation but allies to its cause; hired for specific tasks and activities but free to move around the labour market and endow others with your skills, passions and endeavours.

This aspect – work over jobs – probably has the biggest controversial impact to the world of work and indeed to Competo and all those in the recruitment industry. Or does it?

Tenureship, movement of roles, competition for top talent is ALREADY changing this dynamic let alone the rise of the so-called gig economy and the prediction that is coming true of Charles Handy’s portfolio career. I am sure when Handy coined the phrase, he was envisioning silver haired men and women in the twilight of their careers, backed with some form of equity pension surety and dabbling in Non-Executive roles, charitable pursuits and consulting ventures. But in reality this is appealing to twenty-somethings, tech startup entrepreneurs in their teens and even high school grads shunning the idea of a static university education in favour of gigging.

However you feel or whatever you believe in the changes in the “job” market, we are in the midst of a lot of change. People doing work for free on Wikipedia, hiring for short term coding assignments through Stack Overflow and GitHub, or in exchange for other services via Skilltrade and Upwork. These are friction free ways to find and do work. Via a technological social platform. Get paid or trade (I’ll write you a marketing blog if you can design me a logo). Are they end of recruiters? Not yet certainly but they are challenging the traditional agency model of registering and the intermediary matches work and a worker. So my prediction for the recruiter or head hunter of the future will be along these lines.

1. An absolute A-list type networker. It’s not enough to be connected to many people, you will need to know them, understand them and be able to act in an agent capacity for workers as much as you do client organisations. We will probably see more professional networkers coming into their own as they will know the person in terms of their values, skills, habits, preferences, morals and ethos and even what charitable causes they support. The package of the future will be less cash and bonus and more a big shopping list of benefits, societal good, communality, giving and ecologically transparent operating principles. If you’re to beat the social networks, search algorithms and direct hiring processes, you will need to add value by providing outrageously good matching of work and worker.
2. An analyst / programmer. OK maybe not a full on coder but more than just a Boolean string creator. The ability to understand data science, to utilise analytical skills in data mining and information wrangling will need to be coupled with the ability to create at least search-related algorithms and understand machine learning. The search tools of the future will have much more context-specific processing power. Google’s next version of speech to search will be about “things not strings”. It will learn with you as you talk through search criteria to retrieve information about people and organisations. Understanding how to make the most of these sophisticated search tools will bring to life Clay Shirky’s theory – that we’re not in an information overload situation, it’s a filtering problem. You will be a master filtration expert.
3. A life partner. Such is the power of relationships, all recruiting will be showing value by going beyond hiring. You will be the coach, confidante and collaborator of those who have work and those who want work. The equivalent of a life-long personal stylist, you will be helping people find fulfilling work and helping organisations find amazing people to do that work. It will need to be beyond the mere hiring request and invoice clearance. You will help people with pre and on-boarding, you will help with team integration, cultural and values related dialogue, career enhancement, personal mission fulfillment and help with exit and transition. This may sound like something you do now, and if so, great; you’re asymmetrically part of the future. Yet it will be like a concierge service and there will be more of you doing this for people, more intimately and with clients who trust and appreciate you as if you were their own.

It’s humanity and emotional and social intelligence that will win the so called war for talent. The job boards, the machine-like hiring and the social networks will have their place but this kind of premier league, platinum service will see people and work much more aligned in a harmonious, fulfilling and joyful symbiosis. People make organisations and working with great people in great organisations makes great people. Hiring those great people through being the supreme networker, the coder and analyst and the life-long coaching partner could well be the magic trio of successful recruiting for many years to come. Or there’s likely a robot out there somewhere that might suffice…

 

Perry Timms

Founder – PTHR & the iPractice

Social Media & HR Adviser to the CIPD

Visiting Fellow – Sheffield Hallam University Business School

Fellow – the RSA.org

Fellow – the Corporate Rebels

Non-Executive Director – Starling Arts

Chief Connector and Certified Freedom at Work coach – WorldBlu.com

Futurist – IBM Future of Work Programme

TEDx Speaker – The Future of Work

 

Ljudje smo edina živa bitja, ki si lahko prihodnost zavestno predstavljamo.

Lahko jo kreiramo. Lahko si predstavljamo stvari, ki še ne obstajajo. Lahko jih ustvarimo s svojimi rokami. Ko pri tem sodeluje več ljudi, se morda zgodijo stvari, ki jih ni načrtoval celo nihče od njih. Prihodnost je neulovljiva, nepredstavljiva. Ali lahko morda kljub vsemu odmaknemo tančico, ki zastira prihodnost in uzremo vsaj delček tistega kar nas čaka v prihodnosti?

 

Zakaj potrebujemo informacije?

Dobre, verodostojne informacije nam pomagajo sprejemati boljše odločitve. Kako je lahko informacija glede tega kaj napovedujemo za prihodnost lahko dobra in verodostojna? Več izkušenj kot imamo, bolj kot znamo sklepati, lažje si predstavljamo kam nas vodijo sodobni trendi razvoja delovnih okolij.

 

Competovci ves čas izzivamo prihodnost

Drznost, pogum, verodostojnost in profesionalnost krasijo modernega poslovnega človeka, kamor se prištevamo tudi sodelavci Competa. Zato si upamo napovedati kdo lahko zasede določeno delovno mesto. Drznemo si sklepati kdo od kandidatov se bo najbolje ujel z ekipo. Odločno posredujemo informacije kakšen slog vodenja je za posameznika najbolj primeren. S svojim delom vsak dan soustvarjamo prihodnost.

 

Ali si zato lahko drznemo predpostaviti kakšna prihodnost nas čaka v poslovnem svetu?Katere tehnologije bodo prevladovale? Katere bodo vzniknile? Kako bodo izgledala delovna mesta prihodnosti?

Ne vem. To bi bilo ugibanje. Mi poznamo ljudi. Zato poskušamo razmišljati iz okvirov, ki so nam najbolj poznani. Poznamo principe vzgoje v katerih rastejo bodoči iskalci zaposlitev. Poznamo osebnostne lastnosti in vedenjske navade sodobnih ljudi. Ali lahko v tem znanju najdemo informacije, ki nam lahko pomagajo napovedati izzive prihodnjih medosebnih odnosov na delovnem mestu? Ki nam lahko pomagajo razumeti, kaj bo motiviralo prihodnje generacije delojemalcev? Ki nam olajšajo napovedovati kakšne vodje bomo potrebovali? Mi se teh izzivov ne bojimo. Zavedamo se odgovornosti, ki jo imamo. Z vami bi radi delili vizijo, ki jo vidimo pred seboj.

 

 

Iztočnice The Future of Work

1. Kako potrošniški način razmišljanja oblikuje prihodnost?
2. Pripadnost je super – toda do koga ali česa?
3. Tržne proti osebnim normam.
4. Individualizem proti skupnosti.
5. Kako se bo spremenilo odločanje? Algoritmi ali intuicija?
6. Kako bomo vodili ljudi, ki so danes stari 18 let in želijo izgledati kot pop zvezde, početi stvari kot Messi ali Ronaldo, sanjajo, da bodo izbrani v naslednji resničnostni šov, ter so prepričani, da je You tube kanal skozi katerega bodo zasloveli?

    

Aleksander Zadel, Competo partner

“Vodenje in čustvena inteligentnost” je naslov 9.Competo dogodka, ki smo ga imeli v sredo 6. maja 2015. dr. Aleksander Zadel nas je navdušil z motivacijskim predavanjem. V drugem delu pa sta z nami izkušnje delila dva izjemna sogovornika – Emil Tedeschi (Atlantic Group) in Tomaž Berločnik (Petrol).

 

 

 

Predavanje dr. Aleksandra Zadela: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anQZPMNvsZ0

Okrogla miza z gostoma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk9vBATbuaU