Havas Talent Bites event

I’m well behind with event write-ups but thought I’d just get down, in rough form, some of the key takeaways from this event back in October.

It was the first time I’d received an invite and all the presentations were really good.  Apparently the topic of workplace/organizational/employee culture was ‘softer’ than some they’ve had in the past but there was still plenty of good data and takeaways.

Glassdoor

• data, including their own, shows engagement does impact performance
• improvements to culture and feeling valued more important than increases in pay for engagement

I queried some of the data in terms of cause and effect, for example can you argue share price performance is linked to good engagement scores on Glassdoor surveys or are people using data such as Glassdoor’s to impact their share buying behaviors?  Obviously share buying algorithms are complex but it’s also probably fair to say your company will perform well across multiple metrics if culture is good.

• data shows importance of transparency, recognition, communication from leadership, solicitation of feedback, listening to feedback

I used Glassdoor a bit when job hunting but don’t think I actually used it when researching my, now, employer.  So the event was a useful reminder to use it as part of the brand positioning, particularly for ‘people’ teams trying to build engagement and a feeling that learning is important [or indeed that learning is work and work is learning].  Indeed a few jobs ago we actively responded to comments on social media about my department – some examples were given in the Q&A where orgs are really joined up on this and actively using gd as a brand platform.

Sage

Talked about the transformation of their business and the importance of cultural fit for new hires and bringing existing staff along.  There was discussion around recruiting by attitude and training the skill from there.  Their leadership model aiming to: Align, model, coach, reinforce way forward.

Liked their idea of having staff engage in “Social Fridays” – 30mins every month on how to engage with social.  Hope to snowball from your people into quality recruitment and support transformation.  They are also offering training to non-employee groups, including alumni and those on maternity (which is a great idea).

Havas

There were a few snippets, stories and ideas in this that I liked including:

• The way to portray culture as the connection between the “I” and “we” in the workplace.
• The point that if you are going to articulate the company’s values and behaviors then you need to reinforce those at every touch point.  Including describing the work of the organization via the behaviors (I doubt many do this very well).
• Consistent recruitment, including ways to avoid unconscious bias, also important.

Author: iangardnergb

My name is Ian Gardner and I am interested in various topics that can be seen as related to learning, technology and information. To see what I am reading elsewhere, follow me on The Old Reader (I.gardner.gb) and/or Twitter (@iangardnergb). View all posts by iangardnergb