Episode 20: Global Insights Into HR Excellence with Deborah Wilkes
Trina Sunday: If you’re curious about what drives excellence in HR and what is happening in HR on opposite sides of the world, then tune into my conversation with Deborah Wilkes from Enable HR International. We look at all of it, the operating models, the dysfunction, the issues of the day and how can we lean in and support our HR teams. Welcome to Reimagining HR with Trina Sunday, the rule breaking podcast where we challenge our thinking and our current people practise. This podcast is for time poor HR teams and business leaders who are feeling the burn, lacking laughs and not feeling the love. I’m Trena, your host and I’m here to cut through the bs, explore different ways of thinking and create high impact HR functions because happier, healthier organisations are better for our people and our, bottom line. So if you are keen to flip traditional HR on its head, hit the follow or subscribe button so you’re the first to know when new episodes drop. I’m, here to help and also to shake things up. So let’s get started. Joining me today is Deborah Wilkes. She was the head of HR4 Europe in the IT and pharmaceutical industries and has been consulting in HR OD leadership and management development in world leading organisations for over 25 years. And she’s based in the UK and doing some phenomenal work on empowering HR and published a book saying just that in 2021. And for me, I’ve known Deborah for a long time and we have a shared passion in terms of enabling HR to do great things. So welcome to the podcast.
Deborah Wilkes: Debbie, thank you for inviting me.
Trina Sunday: I’m really keen, I guess, to get us started. For people that don’t know you potentially in my listener network, I’m keen to know a little bit about your career and I guess what’s led you to the point of being really clear in your passion and your mandate for empowering HR and kind of just trying to understand a little bit about where that’s come from.
Deborah Wilkes: Well, I worked my way up in HR the hard way. So I started in the admin role, then the personnel officer role because I’m that old, did my cipd, I’m now a fellow, so I did go all the way through that and that was really good to get fully qualified. And then that launched me into management roles and I headed up a UK company first and then went into European roles in the IT and pharma sectors. Well, HR is a tough job, isn’t it? So actually some of it I loved and some of it was really tough, like the inbox being completely Full. And also I have to say that I was always the most senior woman in the organisation, the only woman on the management team. And I did get all that gets a bit wearing. And the part that I enjoyed most in the job was the development developing people. So I’d peek through the window. So I’d organised for an external trainer to come in and I’d have a look and I’d think, oh, that looks such good fun. I want to do that. So I really did have a great few years heading up the HR function, but I also wanted to set up my own business and also relocate. So I did that, that and focused on leadership and management development for any function. So at that point I wasn’t focused on hr.
Trina Sunday: Yeah.
Deborah Wilkes: Although HR people were often my clients and I’d carry on going to my CIPD event, so I was always keeping in touch. M and, then there was a particular day a few years ago when I was at a CIPD event and chatting with HR people and I said to one of them, oh, tell me what’s happening, what you’re doing at the moment. And she said, well, we’ve got salary review time and I’ve had the most frustrating few days working with managers to organise the the whole performance rating thing and the salary increases and then hear stories that they go back to somebody and say, I wanted to give you an A but HR wouldn’t let me. M Or I wanted to give you a bonus but HR wouldn’t let me. And I thought, that is so familiar to me from 25 years before. Yeah, why hasn’t that, changed? So my colleague and I decided to research that because I really do care about hr. It’s important. And also there was lots in the press articles being very critical about HR and people saying HR should do this and HR should do that. So we did a lot of research. We spoke to CEOs, to, ah, HRDs, to people at every level in HR. And we did a lot of desk research with all the articles, all the competency frameworks. Because the question that we wanted to answer was, what is it that organisations need from hr? So we created the seven enablers that I know you work with, which is great. So we wanted to create a framework, it’s like a competency framework, although it’s got behaviours and activities in it. They needed to be measurable because a lot of people, even the CIPD and, Dave Ulrich would use phrases that were actually very complicated. So, for example, a credible activist. I love that Phrase. And I know exactly what Dave Ulrich means when he says that. M. But how do you break it down into bite sized pieces so that you can develop it, measure it, give people feedback on it, do a360 on it and ask other people whether they think these great things are in place? So that was our mindset when we went into designing this evaluation tool. so that was my journey in. It was really this feeling that HR is so important and yet it was still struggling. And HR people would say to us, we know we need to change, but we don’t know how.
Trina Sunday: Yeah, that’s so familiar to me. And I think because it, it’s going back a while now though, isn’t it? When you and George Naylor started Enable HR International, it’s kind of, what is it, eight years ago?
Deborah Wilkes: Yeah, yeah.
Trina Sunday: So it’s a long time ago. And that research and you know, I love the concept and the development framework, when we talk about, at the end of the day, it’s what makes great hr. Right. And I think those conversations and the research around what drives excellence in hr, it does allow people to break it down. And I guess for people that aren’t familiar with the framework, a test, there’s seven of them. You know, I know that you look at things in that framework around perspective making sure that we’ve got our, eye on the prize, that we’re constantly talking with the business, working with the business, but then acting according to that, not just hearing it and dismissing it. You obviously talk about connection. So connection isI’m sitting here like rattling things off of my fingers, by the way. No one can see that on video, on a podcast. But so connection is that space where we’re generally building the trust and respect that gets that credibility or the seat at the table. I think some of the language that we often hear out there, push, is an interesting one to me. So push is one of the enablers and that’s around pace and resilience. Right. And being able to, kind of stand up. And a lot of people will look at it as pushback. And I think part of what when I have conversations around the enablers, it’s that voice to speak up, right? It’s that voice to call out what’s not. You know, you talk about focus, right thing at the right time to get the right results. I’m testing myself here. rigour. So I think we talk about rigour and that’s kind of delivering on what you say you’re going to do. And making sure we know our craft and the devil’s in the detail. So being good at what we do and showing up consistently in that space and then you’ve got the balance. So that balance in terms of conflicting priorities, juggling all the things, getting the short game and the long game the values coupled with the performance, but then it all rolls up into number seven. Right. Reputation. And that to me is a really interesting conversation. I’ve done podcast conversations around this not that long ago as well, around how HR perceived. But it’s kind of, it’s that winning the hearts and minds of the business in terms of us being really impactful and having the credibility to drive business success as opposed to the HR agenda. I’m curious to know, of your seven enablers, where do you think HR are smashing it and doing the strongest? And where do you think we have the most work to do? I’m curious now, a few years on, do you still see areas where we’re kind of doing okay or areas where it’s like, gee, we need to lean in here.
Deborah Wilkes: That’s really interesting, isn’t it? Because if we think about the push one, it looks sort of look at it first off and think what’s that about? But actually there was so much that we heard from people about that whole area, we decided to give it an enabler of its own because organisations do need HR to push forward and to push back. So quite often that’s about HR advocacy, actually really explaining why HR cares about the employee experience, but being able to turn that into numbers. Yeah, so that kind of links, back to the perspective one which is about really understanding your business. I think the one that HR people are naturally good at is connection. So HR people are good at building relationships. Often they do care, they really care. So they’ll be empathetic. And of course that’s hard work and can be quite draining.
Trina Sunday: Yeah.
Deborah Wilkes: Especially if or when I should say you want to move the relationship to the upper level and you can’t actually be quite as nice as you would like to be. So we get the classic dilemma of, in the business partnering role that you’re fed up of having stuff dumped on you so you want to renegotiate the relationship with the line manager. And at first they can feel quite let down if you’re saying, well, no, I’m not just going to take these things off you anymore. My time will be much better spent if you and I are working more long term. We’re looking at issues, we’re working proactively. Rather than waiting for somebody to leave, we’re actually putting the conditions in place for them to stay. First of all, that can actually feel quite hard because they do feel very connected and they want to be helpful.
Trina Sunday: And I think in the connection, I think I see pockets of that in terms of building the rapport and the relationship. But it’s the power and the connection or the power in the relationship where I think we’ve probably still got some work to do. And what I mean by that is I’m not sure that we’re being strategic enough in our connections. And so if we are in a partnering role, for example, and we’ve got our area manager, that we are looking after their portfolio and that’s our client base in terms of all of the people stuff, technical term. But there’s other relationships and connections that we need to make if we’re going to get that perspective, like you talked about. In terms of understanding what’s happening in the business, I think we need connections in a broader stakeholder group than where we are putting a lot of our energy. That’s my observation, anyway.
Deborah Wilkes: Yeah. And sometimes working up a level so that you can really influence line managers from within their own bosses. So you’re not just having this constant struggle between HR and the line, but you really do need the leaders of HR to build the right kind of relationship right at the top and for the business leader then to feed that right down.
Trina Sunday: Yeah. And that’s reputation. Right. That’s where our brand sits. That’s where people’s perception of us and the value that we add. Our CPOs, our CHROs, whoever your top HR people and culture person is, that’s the strategic partnerships that we’re creating in that space. But I think in the hiring manager or the client portfolio, knowing what’s happening above to help managers that might be flailing. You know, we’ve got a lot of managers, at least here in Australia, who it’s a struggle like we’ve got both in HR and in the business and operations. We’ve got that people being pulled from pillar to post and that constant firefighting. And I’ve spoken on previous episodes about how we cut through that. I’m curious to know, how do you think we’re going with partnering? I’m curious to know where your thoughts are around hr generally, how the business partners are going. I have some observations around HR feeling a bit fractured. And we’ve always had a bit of us and them across OD and hr. I Think you’ve worked in all of those areas enough probably to have felt some of that tension over the time. But I’m keen to know, especially from a uk, and obviously you’re working globally. What are your observations of how we’re tracking in terms of partnering against the or within other functions as well of hr? What are your observations?
Deborah Wilkes: Well, a key shift for me during the last few months to a year really, is that when I’m talking about partnering inside organisations, realising that you need to look at the bigger picture of the whole HR function. So sometimes it’s really not fair to ask, the HR BP to operate more strategically if they can’t delegate some of their work to somebody else or to shared services, because building those strategic relationships takes time. So we want them to be proactive and build the future and have conversations about the future rather than having conversations about right now. And I’ve got a tool, about four modes of business partnering and they’re all valid, but you really want to be in the top right hand of this, which is co creating, really understanding your part of the business and, being able to feed in your great expertise about HR so that, you can create a great solution. And so when we think about the three legged model, I know there’s been a lot of, there’ve been a lot of alternative suggestions put forward, but they look great on a piece of paper but actually when you think them through, they’re too complicated. You really want to be able to explain HR’s operating model really easily to the business because the question they’re going to ask themselves is who do I talk to about X? Yeah, that is their main question.
Trina Sunday: And when you talk about that three legged model, I assume you’re talking about the Ulrich model, where we’ve got HR business partnering, shared services and then what he calls centres of excellence.
Deborah Wilkes: Yeah.
Trina Sunday: Is that what you’re talking about when you’re talking about the three.
Deborah Wilkes: Exactly, yeah. So the three marble, he drew it as a stool with three legs. And what’s happened in practise is that some of those teams. So for example, the classic thing is that centres of excellence, or expertise as I like to call them, otherwise it sounds like they’re better than everybody else, doesn’t it?
Trina Sunday: Yes.
Deborah Wilkes: Which doesn’t go down very well.
Trina Sunday: No, it does not.
Deborah Wilkes: They tend to go off in a world of their own. And to be quite honest, I’ve done it myself. I’ve, had a great idea for an intervention. I’ve got rather carried away with it. Spent hours and days and weeks crafting it into something really elegant and beautiful. And then you try and roll it out. By the way, as soon as you hear that expression roll it out, alarm bells should ring because you know that suggests you’re going to flatten everybody in front of you if you’re going to roll it out. It’s not business led, that is expertise led. And HR’s interventions need to be business led. And in my book I use the analogy of a plug socket and an adapter. If we’re going abroad, I know you’ve got the three pin in Australia just like us. So when we go abroad, if I go to Italy, for example, it’s a two pin plug. So I know I’ve got to take my adapter. I don’t go into Italy and think, oh, these stupid Italians, they should have three pin plugs. I know I need to take my adapter because I have to adapt to them and only if I do that will the electricity flow.
Trina Sunday: Yeah.
Deborah Wilkes: And I think that’s a powerful analogy for HR because we have to adapt to what the business needs. So when I was working with a client at an HR conference recently, I knew that we’d really made progress when one of the COE people said, so what you’re saying is I need to talk to the business partner before I even start designing something.
Trina Sunday: Yes, yes, you do, exactly. And this is history repeated though, right? Like, and this is where I think in the work that I do and the conversations I have when HR leads have brought me in to review HR functions, transform their strategy, review their structures, see if things are humming, see where the alignment is. Is it a capability issue? Is it a clarity issue? Is it that we haven’t actually empowered people to do what they’re really great at and we’re thwarting them at every opportunity because our culture is built for bureaucracy. A lot of those conversations are around the HR business partners and the OD and the co-creation, it’s really interesting where I hear a lot of language around co-creation between HR and the business. But when I say HR in that context, it’s often might be OD saying that and HR saying that separately in different contexts. There’s not often the same co-creation approach inside our HR functions. And nothing pisses people off more than people not walking the talk. Right? So we talk to the business around collaborating for them to be kind of co creating in terms of solutions to problems. But we’re not really role modelling that very well ourselves. I don’t think across different areas yeah. Have you leaned in a lot to different operating models and structures lately to have an opinion around what you’re seeing change out there? Because I know that with Gartner and we’ve had a brief conversation around pools of problem solvers or different things. Do you still feel like, from a HR perspective, we’re coming back to those three core elements and that’s where the simplicity of it lies? Is that what I’m hearing?
Deborah Wilkes: Absolutely. So it makes complete sense to have those three types of people in the hr, ah, function and, something that gets huge traction every time I post about it and my clients really like is all I’ve done is take the Ulrich model that was three legs on a stool and turned it into three circles that overlap. So it’s a Venn diagram, so that then you can identify how you want those functions to interact internally. So, for example, an early question that centres of expertise and business partners should ask or discuss is, what is the business problem that we want to solve? Because the other fact is that business problems don’t fall neatly into HR specialisms. It may not be a, ah, TA problem like, say, I was working with a bank recently and, the way that the branch manager put a problem was how do we get people performing quickly? So when you think about that, that’s almost every branch of hr, ah, you’ve got the job design, you’ve got the recruitment, you’ve got the onboarding, you’ve got the performance management, you’ve got the culture. So we need to have HR collaborating more internally and not having these sort of. They might only be thin walls, but if your job is reward, then all you see is a reward problem. It’s like that old thing, isn’t it? If what you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Trina Sunday: Got this picture of my head of HR people being issued with a hammer on commencement and yeah, it’s taking me to a visual place that’s probably not very helpful.
Deborah Wilkes: Well, we’ve all rather favourite hammers, haven’t we, M?
Trina Sunday: Yeah.
Deborah Wilkes: And so we need to listen to what the business leader is saying. And within that same theme is not use HR jargon. HR jargon turns business people off so much they don’t even bother to learn what it means. So again, it’s like a microaggression for us to continually use HR language with our client groups. We just keep banging on aboutwhether it’s succession planning orsome of these phrases that we use. Or od. And that isn’t how they see it.
Trina Sunday: And I think the problem society, I do a lot of work around design thinkingwith my clients around that very thing you’re talking about, about defining the problem clearly. And the problem to the business does look nothing like what we think the problem is. And I think we’re quite fast to jump to solutions and designing things that are not going to shift the needle or make a difference. And the business knows it, which is why we don’t get the buy in early because they know it’s going to be a waste of time. And so that early engagement and co creation goes a long way in that. I’m curious, Debbie, what’s some of the research that enable HR International are doing at the moment to better understand hr? You do a lot of research since You’ve started in 2016. I’m curious to know what the focus is at the moment and what intel you’re gathering that’s going to help our profession.
Deborah Wilkes: Yeah, so the survey we were doing at the moment is called Confidence in hr. And of course it’s a nice bit of double meaning because organisations obviously need to feel confident in hr. So we wanted to look at that. And also we know that for some HR people they feel pretty beaten up. Covid was very hard for hr. Sometimes the HR people were the only people in the building, everybody else was out. They kept businesses going. They had to implement laws and regulations that they heard on the news one day and then implement, them the next day. And some HR leaders emerged from that with a stronger reputation for really adding value to the business and others not because they were just so overwhelmed with work. And we know that in order for HR to rise up they really need to sort of step into the leadership space and become strong partners in the business. So we wanted to look into what helps HR people to be confident. How confident are they feeling? And there’s this great expression, isn’t that imposter syndrome? And I’ve coached some great HR leaders and you know, they suffer from it. I gotta be honest, I suffer from it. You know, sometimes I’m doing a webinar, and I suddenly have the thought, why should people listen to me on this topic? You know, whether it’s because I got an HR background, I don’t know. But it’s a very common feeling and it does seem particularly prevalent in HR people and there are ways of combating it. So we really wanted to understand it. So we’re asking questions about what HR feels the Organisation thinks about them, like, do they add value, for example, do they focus on the right things? And then asking HR people, or what do you think about the value that you add? and then we ask the question, how are you feeling? How are you feeling about your job? And whenever we do surveys, we also ask for free text. So there’s quite often a drop down. If somebody scores a question high, we’ll say what helps you to do that? Or if they score low or so what makes it difficult for you to do that. And there’s absolute gold in some of those comments. You can see what it’s like in hr. You know, some people who’ve got leaders within HR who really aren’t leading the function, business leaders who don’t treat HR well and just don’t let them get involved. And there are skills, aspects to that as well. So that’s part of what we do. Really, you could say the spine of what we do in enable HR is improve the relationship between HR and the business in order to increase the impact of hr. So first of all, you’ve got to believe that that’s your role, that you are helping the business. You’ve got to feel confident enough to do it. We talked about push earlier, didn’t we? in order to push forward and push back, we need to feel strong enough in ourselves and really believe in what we’re saying, believe that HR has a really important role to play. And then there are skills that help you to do that. There are approaches that HR people can learn that can help them to change the conversation that they have with their client groups.
Trina Sunday: I’m interested to see what the results of that research will be because certainly I think that there is an undercurrent of. I like the duality of the question in terms of confidence in HR and from within hr. And I’m interested to see if the research is backing in what we’re seeing and that is that we have variations, as you mentioned, and Covid has been a big test, but similarly different market drivers and expansion or contraction really as well. In terms of downsizing. There’s been lots of shifts in organisations and HR are the shining in those moments or not. And definitely feeling overwhelmed and burnt out or that they’re thriving and we want the latter, don’t we? So I’m really interested to see what that tells us. Yeah, I’m curious to know, kind of outside, from a business perspective in the uk, for example, noting you’ve got clients elsewhere as well, what are you seeing as some of the core Challenges that HR are facing. What’s a lot of the noise about at, the moment, outside of our own structures and work and capability? Like, from a workforce perspective, are you seeing any patterns ofwhere we’ve got challenges that are happening on your side of the hemisphere?
Deborah Wilkes: So you mean sort of the technical challenges, whether it’s demographic.
Trina Sunday: Yeah. Or anything to do with people, really, where you’re seeing pockets of energy and effort needing to be put because things are not going very well.
Deborah Wilkes: Well, I think that we’re still on a huge journey post Covid. So we’ve got remote working and, hybrid working. And you might have senior people. You’ve seen it in the press, haven’t you? Likethe CEO of KPMG being quoted as saying, we will have everybody back in the office by next April. I mean, what planet is he on? The world has moved on. And, why? What does that give you other than a feeling of control and some illusion of safety? Because you see lots of people sitting at desks. So this journey of understanding what performance really looks like, because there is a genuine concern that people sometimes are less productive when they’re not in the office. Well, let’s face it, you can be unproductive when you’re in the office. So understanding productivity is a challenge. M I think there is a real issue around middle managers because they’re like the meat in the sandwich in the hybrid working recipe, if you like, because they need to put more effort into managing remotely. They have to remember to make regular connections. They have to proactively manage workloads and, psychological safety and make sure that people are all right and really cheque that they’re all right at the same time as, probably having more pressure from above about productivity. And I think there is a bit of a generational divide as well at the moment, because the people at those senior levels, they’re my generation and younger even. But when we think about millennials, Gen Z’s, their expectations are different. And, the way they use tech, they’re the COVID generation as well. So some of them, their, careers and their university times were disrupted. M. So it feels like there is still flux. And, the most important word, I think, is trust.
Trina Sunday: Tell me more.
Deborah Wilkes: Trust and productivity go together. So creating trust means sort of building a scaffolding. And it does take effort. A scaffolding of mutual understanding so you really know each other. A, scaffolding of work expectations and being really clear about the role, being clear what is okay and what isn’t. Okay, so more boundaries I think in the hybrid world have to be set explicitly and don’t just assume that something’s okay, we have to actually talk about it and really spending time to get to know somebody because then you build the kind of trust that then makes everything work much better. And you have the feeling that you can trust people. And if you’ve got that feeling, then you don’t have people saying I want you back in the office because they trust you to do the job wherever you are. And then productivity follows because you’ve also created clarity for the person around their job and they can put their hand up if they need help. you can have conversations about what’s not working. So it is a time when leadership and management are really, really important.
Trina Sunday: So much resonates in that, and so many parallels I guess to what my observations are. I think I spoke at the UN Women in Leadership Summit this week that was in Perth and did an unconference session with middle managers, which I just love as a concept because you’re freestyling with a group in the room, no PowerPoints, you just roll where the conversation needs to roll. And so you’ve got to bring all the tools out depending on what comes up. But that stuck in the middle is really starting to have a toll on some people as well. So that middle management layer of which there are HR leaders in that middle management bucket as well that are being. But it’s the pressure from above which often is coming with a lack of clarity and visibility. There’s the pressure from below which is also highlighting some of that multi generational issues that you’re talking about and the differences between values, styles, expectations. But then I feel like there’s also the pressure from the sidewhere we’ve got this peer and this competition of sorts depending on the culture of organisations of course and the backdrop that we’re working in. But there’s definitely seems to be an exacerbation of what that pressure feels like in that middle management space. And the hybrid complexity is creating a lot of challenges obviously globally. And so what you are describing is very similar to what’s happening here in Australia and in Asia where I’m doing work as well, funnily enough. But there’s I guess culturally a difference where people have gone back to the office quicker in some of the countries that I’m working in in Southeast Asia than we have because there’s not that assertion against the authority. I guess that’s a very generalised comment but I think That a lot of it when we’re in that space. It was different in Covid. Right. When people were working remote through Covid and when it all started, a lot of the times you had the relationships already now that it’s kept going. Trust needing to be built in virtual environments and onboarding people virtuallybuilding your relationships virtually in that remote model. Because business has changed a lot as well. So we’re seeing lots of commercial leases just closed up because there are operating expenses that organisations can save if they are embracing hybrid. And so there is a business rationale in there. But I think those that are demanding the return to the office are fear based cultures. I think it is the power at the top and I think it comes from the fact that without being able to see and control people, some of those leaders just don’t know how to lead. And I think that’s part of the.
Deborah Wilkes: Problem that shows a lack of trust and a lack of respect. And especially the younger generations, they won’t tolerate it. They’d rather walk, put up with it.
Trina Sunday: Yeah. And I don’t know if it’s the same in the uk, but we’ve had a lot of conversations around sense of entitlement for younger workers. And you know, and I’ve had really interesting conversations around this because I’m like, these are the smartest people ever. They’ve watched their parents work themselves into the ground and they don’t want to do that. How smart is it for someone to watch something happen that is toxic and unhealthy and decide not to do it? If only we do that in all the phases of our life and make good choices. But I think that the judgement. I’ve had some really interesting conversations because some of the senior leaders that are pushing back and trying to control it or are making the comments around young upstarts and being entitled. When you really break it down and you have deep conversations, it’s because they resent it. They wish they had that freedom that they wish that they were going to have that better balance in their life that they’ve now missed out on because they’re on the flip side. And they’ve missed the kids growing up. They’ve missed it all. They’re already at uni.
Deborah Wilkes: True. And II’ve got a 25 year old in the house and he works for the civil service. And so the other day he’s in the lounge and he’s watching TV and I said, aren’t you supposed to be working today? And he said, yeah, he said, but I wasn’t feeling it. And first of all, I get that very human reaction of, come onthat’s to workbecause that’s my generation. But then you’re quite right, I get this other reaction, which is. That is completely right. I know there are times when actually I should just stop. But because I’ve been programmed to work until at least 5:00, I keep going and I probably don’t work as productively. And he will carry on, working till seven now, if he’s doing something he loves, he’ll work till 10 o’clock at night. It’s a completely different mindset.
Trina Sunday: but it’s about flow. Right. And I think this is where wellbeing is a big focus for us, which I’m sure it is for you too. But I think we’re seeing some really acute needs, I guess, for organisations to show up differently when it comes to not just physical, but emotional, psychological, financial, all the wellbeings. We have people that are depleted, not coping, burnt out. And so our response to that is needing to look different and we’re needing to kind of meet people where they’re at, because it’s not one size fits all. But I think there’s a lot of people that don’t have that awareness around the rhythms of the work that they have. And, I’m a night owl and I think it’s one of those things where you’ve got to know when you can work well and be productive. I could sit at a desk for four hours because that’s my work hours. And I’ll tell you right now, I’ll get nothing done, nothing meaningful. But if you can work to your flow and your rhythm, then you’re going to be more productive. Yeah, but obviously the big conversations we have is the fairness around those that can have that flexibility in the way they work and those that are on the front line who can’t.
Deborah Wilkes: Yeah, exactly.
Trina Sunday: I’m curious to know what that looks like in the uk.
Deborah Wilkes: Well, I think it is an issue, isn’t it? Becausewe’ve got Amazon drivers driving around and having to make X number of deliveries and we have had zero hours contracts, but we’re getting rid of those. Never agreed with those at all.
Trina Sunday: What do you mean, a zero hours contract? What’s that?
Deborah Wilkes: So that is when the basis of the contract is that you don’t do any work at all and we can ask you to work and you can say no. So in one week they might say, we want you to work 10 hours today and you can say yes or no or 10 hours this week and you can say yes or no. So you can imagine there are some people that love that. I never agreed with it. It was brought in by the EU actually, rather than the uk and we’re now moving away from that. So what they said is this is great for the gig economy. Somebody can have three jobs at the same time and they can do what they want. But of course most people want a steady income.
Trina Sunday: Mhm.
Deborah Wilkes: And zero hours contract is just too risky. Yeah. Ah, people do talk about the gig economy. I think that we have a Labour government now, which is a great thing after having so many years of Tory governments who are all about capitalism. I’m not very political, but I’m a great believer in the pendulum swinging from side to side. And it really does need to swing back to the employees because I know in Australia your unions have got massive power and they haven’t here anymore. It’s a very different climate from that.
Trina Sunday: Point of view and it depends on the industry. But I think that there is a strong place where unions and the enterprise bargaining kind of system has really helped kind of put employee concerns on the table. It’s not necessarily consistent across industries. So I still feel like there’s some real pockets where employees are not represented. I feel like that’s compounded by the fact that a lot of the membership bases are not representative. So we have really multicultural country, culturally and linguistically diverse. You know, our first nations brothers and sisters have had a disadvantage in opportunities against us Anglos that have come in. And so there’s lots of different challenges for different groups where I think when you look at some of the union movements, they’re not necessarily representing the cross section of what the workforce looks like. You’re getting quite an interesting view. I’ll probably have some labour relations people throw some stats and graphs at me in response to that around how diverse. And I would welcome that because I’m curious to know kind of how representative, because everything that I go to does not necessarily have the representation that we would want to see from a diversity, equity, inclusion point of view. Even the UN Women in Leadership Summit that I was talking about, it was interesting sitting there and thinking, is this space accessible for all the people that might need to or want to be in this space? And it’s not just where we are with gender equity and it’s not just where we are in terms of migrant workforce or culturally diverse. Workforces, but it’s even socioeconomic status starting to see a massive shift in that and that’s causing someand I did speak to someone who was like, I don’t feel comfortable coming into this venue. It’s like a rich person’s hotel. And I found that really interesting in terms ofwhen you look and reflect on the representation. And so from that union point of view, we’ve got lots that’s being driven that are, supporting employees. But if we look at those that might need equity by design built into the employment arrangements, we’ve still got a way to go, I think.
Deborah Wilkes: So it’s the whole thing about the role models in society as well, isn’t it? I do think we’ve come a long way. I actually went to a DEI meeting, sort of a networking thing, with a presentation by some specialists a while ago, and there were some black people expressing their need for better recognition. I’m totally, totally supportive of that. The funny thing was that I caught myself remembering how bloody awful it was for me when I was in my 20s. It was so hard and I hadn’t realised, I don’t think until that moment how. Well, I really can understand people who feel patronised and excluded. So I do think as women, we’ve come massive distance, haven’t, we? And so if we can help other people to feel and be included in a similar way, then it just enriches society, doesn’t it? Imagine now we think 100 years ago we didn’t even have the vote. Actually, that might not be. We might have had to vote.
Trina Sunday: Well, not in Australia.
Deborah Wilkes: Better cheque our date.
Trina Sunday: You know, our, history comes in a lot later than yours, obviously.
Deborah Wilkes: And in hr we have such potential to do great work and that’s why I care about it so much. M this is the thing I want to leave with the world. M HR matters. It matters because you help individual people. that then translates into helping there families and their communities. And, creating a great place to work is also good for business. We’ve got to get better at proving it using data. We were talking about that earlier. Using data to actually prove the relationship between well being and trust and supportive leadership, the really direct connections between those things and productivity and profit. So we’ve got to get smarter at doing that, but we definitely can.
Trina Sunday: Now, I’m curious to know before we wrap up our chat, Deborah, what does reimagining HR look like to you?
Deborah Wilkes: Well, for me it is aboutif we imagine thrones at the top of the organisation that, ah, hr, right up there with the CEO, with the whole C suite. They’re really partnering with the CEO. They’re in the room when the CEO is thinking. So that even if it’s a CEO that doesn’t naturally think of the people aspects of their plans, they can quickly integrate those because the CPO is there reminding them. And actually a great CPO or CHRO or HRD is a great thinking partner for business leaders. So it’s that closeness, that alignment and if then that is reflected all the way down the organisation, that’s good for everyone.
Trina Sunday: Sure is.
Deborah Wilkes: That’s my dream.
Trina Sunday: That’s the dream. Deborah Wilkes, thank you for joining us and we’ll talk to you next time.
Deborah Wilkes: Thank you, Trina. Bye.
Trina Sunday: Before you go, if you’re listening to this episode pretty close to the release date, then you might still have an opportunity to respond to Enable HR survey on confidence in hr. The survey link will be in the show notes. We’d love to hear what you think. Thanks for tuning in and leaning in to this week’s episode. As we look to reimagine how we show up for our people, organisations and community, reach out to us via our website at reimaginehr.com.au with your HR horror stories or suggestions of people you’d love to hear from or topics you want to explore. It’s all about people, purpose and impact and we are here for all of it.
Until next time, take care, team.
