With a younger generation rising in the workplace, technology replacing more and more roles and new technology and data centric strategies demanding new skills that are short in supply, 2014 could be the year of the employee. Recruitment and retention will require new strategies and investments in this new normal. So how will HR be redefined? How will organizations begin taking career development seriously? How will we rewrite the traditional rules of acquisition and retention to win the war for talent?
Contributors

• • John J. Higginson, CTO, Wheels Inc.
  • Josh Bersin, Principal and Founder, Bersin by Deloitte
  • Steve Safier, Chief Transformation and Human Resources Officer, Panasonic North America

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Transcript 

Sanjog Aul [00:00:26]:

Hello, and, welcome to CIO Talk Radio. To learn more about the show, please visit www.ciotalkradio.com. As always, we invite you to join the discussion on Twitter, hashtag CTR live, and look for this show as hashtag talent. Today’s topic is IT Employee Retention in the New Normal  . And our guests for today’s show are Steve Saphir, who is the chief transformation and human resource officer with Panasonic North America. Good morning, Steve. How are you?

Steve Safier[00:00:54]:

Fine. Thank you. Good morning.

Sanjog Aul [00:00:56]:

Great. Great to have you. We also have  John J. Higginson, who’s the Chief Technology Officer with Wheels. John, how are you doing?

John J. Higginson [00:01:02]:

I’m good. Good morning.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:03]:

Good morning to you. And Josh Bersin, Principal and Founder of Bersin by Deloitte. Josh, how is life going in California there?

Josh Bersin [00:01:10]:

It’s good. We’re all up and down here on the West Coast today.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:15]:

Alright. Great. Welcome all of you to this show. Now we’ve talked recently on the show about Generation Why and about the changing wants and needs of the upcoming workforce, about putting employees first and how companies can help make a positive difference in their employees’ lives. So all of those discussions add up to some of the challenges companies are facing in retaining talent, specifically we’re talking about here IT talent, and in order to nurture their skills and helping them to develop a career. Today, so we wanted to get the perspective of an IT leader, someone from HR, and an analyst to talk about how HR and organizations will be redefined to take career development seriously and, rethink acquisition and retention strategies. So starting with you, Steve, if you were to look at the HR professionals, since you lead that in at Panasonic, what are the challenges that you feel HR professionals are seeing, with respect to people and let’s specifically talk about the IT side?

Steve Safier[00:02:15]:

Sure. So I’d probably describe the challenge in a few different levels. I think generally there’s a challenge for HR that’s always existed in terms of proving not only relevance to the business, but also contributing to the business bottom line. So we in HR always have to look at how do we help the business achieve objectives like increasing revenues and how do we drive towards profitability. And as we know, of course, IT is a very important partner in that equation. If we drill down within the organization to people, again, there’s a general movement, I should say, or trend that we find in that people entering the workforce now are in some ways different than people who entered it, say, 20 and 30 years ago. I think they want to have more say in their careers. They want to have more say in their jobs and probably expect to stay with companies fewer years than would have been true in the past. And as we drill down into IT, I think all those themes get even more sharply defined. I think IT people want access to technology. They want access to meaningful jobs. They want to make a difference to the business. They want to have relevance, both for their careers and for their personal life. And they’re willing to move from company to company, which makes our challenge from an HR perspective all the more real and impactful because we need to address those challenges and keep and attract the best people with us.

Sanjog Aul [00:03:49]:

Josh, you’ve lived your life and worked on this career where you’ve handled. Now are IT folks really that tough of an animal to deal with?

Steve Safier[00:04:00]:

Yes. In fact, it may be one

Josh Bersin [00:04:01]:

of the worst segments of talent from this standpoint because there’s such a shortage of technical skills in many companies, whether that be IT or software engineering for more product development. And it’s interesting to hear Steve’s perspective because from where I sit, I see this and I live in the Bay Area where there’s a huge war for talent again. And we just for example, Dice, which is a survey company that does job postings for IT and technical professionals, just put out a survey that said that 30% of IT professionals believe they could find a better job within 60 days if they looked. Which basically tells you how transparent the job market is. These tools like LinkedIn, and to some degree Glassdoor and Twitter, have put the job market online. So if you’re a technical professional, you’re an analytics expert, you’re a database expert, you’re really good at a particular technology, jobs are going to come to you. So just as Steve said, the real challenge for an employer is to create what we call an irresistible work organization that somebody would not want to leave and really, really focus on what’s gonna make people want to stick around. And there’s many new issues that are on people’s minds now when they decide where to work and where to stay.

Sanjog Aul [00:05:32]:

John, you’ve been an IT leader for quite some time and you’ve built teams, you’ve attempted to retain them, you’ve attempted to attract them. What’s your story?

John J. Higginson [00:05:42]:

Yes. I agree with what Josh and Steve said. I mean, it is we’ve gone through a couple of cycles in technology and technology has always been a competitive field. I mean, I’ve been doing this for 20 plus years and it’s always been competitive. And it got really competitive around the .com boom and it feels like we’re in that again where there just seem like there are far more jobs out there than there are people to do it. I think we do a lot of things and I’ve done a lot of things on my team that you hear about in companies. We have foosball and we have coffee machines in the cafeteria. We do things like small perks like that. What I found is that it really for technology people and particularly people technology people of Gen Y and millennials who are coming in, it really comes down to two things. One is they want to feel they have a sense of ownership. They want to feel a sense of ownership in the work that they’re doing, which means they want to understand. They want to understand the larger goal of what’s being developed. They want to be heard when they have ideas. They want to have outlets, to bring those ideas forward. And they want to feel challenged. They want to work on things that are interesting. And a lot of the people who have gotten in technology there, that’s why they got into it. And so for us, it’s making sure people have a chance to rotate between teams. It’s making sure that people have a way to talk about ideas and that there’s just a kind of lively debate. One thing that certainly went out the window, I think a long time ago in technology organizations, is the hierarchical model where you had a handful of philosopher kings at the top who said, well, this is exactly how we’re going to build this and this is how it’s going to work. And then everybody just executed that. It’s a far more collaborative environment. And that results actually in building good technology, but it also helps with retention. And I think the one thing that’s related to that is I think if you run technology organizations today, you have to the new normal is people don’t stay very long. You don’t have people who are going to be around for 10 years. That’s just not the norm. And you have to have people that want to stick around as long as they can and it makes sense for their career and your business goals, but you have to get used to the fact there’s going to be a certain amount of new people coming into the team every year.

Sanjog Aul [00:08:08]:

So, Steve, why would you unnecessarily put another item on your plate if the trend is that people are not gonna stay longer no matter how much you dance in front of them? Why would you even go the retention route? Should that be part of your strategy, or would you rather just attract people so that you keep filling the hopper?

Steve Safier[00:08:27]:

No. I think there’s value in retention. I want people who will stay with us as long as it makes sense for us and as long as it makes sense for them. We talked a little bit earlier about the transparency that exists in the job market. I want people who feel that they’re getting a fair shake from us, that they have, as John or Josh said, visibility into what we’re trying to do as a company, that they understand their role in it. Now, one of the interesting things about the IT profession is that I think earlier than most, maybe also with the legal profession, the IT profession introduced into organizations this notion of perhaps a truer meritocracy. That, we found that supervising people wasn’t the be all and end all of somebody’s career. That there were technical skills and contributions to teams and to businesses that made sense for IT people. And we recognized that and I think struggled in some traditional HR systems to figure out ways to develop people. So how do we move people up their careers without necessarily giving them supervisor responsibilities? In fact, sometimes keeping them away from supervisor responsibilities. And for that reason, I think that the broader we can be and the more flexible we can be in having jobs and roles and contributions that fit for people, we don’t have to worry so much about attraction and retention. It’s more, let us give you something that’s meaningful for you. You stay as long as you can. I know at some point in your life, you’re probably gonna get a more competitive job offer. And hopefully I’ve been able to give you enough that makes you think twice that, gee, do I want to leave or do I want to stay because there’s some things here that are more important to me? So I guess long story short, not one answer on attraction or retention, but a number of ways we can recognize people to make this a worthwhile stop for them on their career path.

Josh Bersin [00:10:21]:

Yeah. I would say that, you know, from what I’ve learned talking to many, many companies is that people actually don’t like to change jobs all the time. I mean, they will if they feel that they can and it’s in their best interest. But most people would prefer to stick around. So our challenge as employers, just as Steve and John are saying, is to create a work environment that gives you opportunities to work on great stuff and progress. And the interesting problem I think we just talked about is too many companies still have this model where if you don’t turn into a manager, you’re not going to really get ahead. And that’s really ridiculous in today’s job market, particularly in technology where there are functional leaders needed, there are technical leaders needed, there are project leaders needed and managers play less and less of a role every day. And I was kind of interested in John’s comment about smaller teams and whether they use agile software development methodologies or how you do that. I remember I worked for IBM in the 1980s and these IT departments were massive departments with thousands of DBAs and thousands of COBOL programmers operating like automaton. But I don’t think it works that way anymore. So I actually think really the mission for any employer, particularly IT, is to create this dynamic environment so people don’t want to leave. Because actually, I don’t think people really prefer job hopping all that much.

John J. Higginson [00:11:56]:

So, yes, I would just one quick thing on that, Sanjog. I think that is true. I think people form relationships in the team and there’s a sense of shared accomplishment and people don’t necessarily want to leave that. I think when that feeling of shared accomplishment goes away or they feel like they’re not progressing, that’s when they look for other opportunities. And as you said earlier, the reality is they don’t have to look all that hard. In fact, a lot of them are getting inbound calls anyway, luring them to other jobs. And so if when they become dissatisfied in the role, it’s very easy for them to move. But I think as long as they feel fulfilled in it, we’re far more likely to retain them.

Steve Safier[00:12:46]:

If I can add to that, this is Steve. There’s a concept that’s come to my head that I’ve heard said in different ways, but it’s around wasted energy. I think that we have a lot of people in the workforce now who are very eager and very able to work hard. And they do. They’re accessible at all hours through communications, etc. But I think if people feel like they’re spinning wheels, that a lot of their energy is spent on bureaucratic stuff or projects that don’t see the light of day or just checking the box because a manager asks them to, that that’s really the kiss of death for somebody’s tenure. It’s that wasted energy that I’ve been thinking about more and more as being a problem within organizations and not just true at IT but all over.

Sanjog Aul [00:13:30]:

Let’s take a quick break, listeners. We’ll be right back. Josh, please hold your thought. We’ll be right back, listeners, and please stay tuned. It’s an interesting conversation. Good warm up.

Sanjog Aul [00:15:32]:

Welcome back. So Josh, you had a thought on the energy question?

Josh Bersin [00:15:36]:

Yeah. I think this concept of wasted energy is a really good one. I mean, I’ve had a lot of IT and technical people work for me over the years, and we have an engineering team now. And I’ll tell you what turns them on the most is not only building something great, but watching it being used and seeing people gain value from it and contributing to it over time. So one of the things I guess to think about in IT, and I’m not an IT executive, but is can you organize the team so people get to stick with projects and see them fulfill their mission in the market, whether that be internally or externally, and really feel that their energy is being rewarded directly with people using this stuff. That’s very empowering for people, and it makes people not wanna leave. And I think that’s a really great concept.

Sanjog Aul [00:16:28]:

Alright. We have a caller. Yeah, go ahead. Steve, you have a comment here?

John J. Higginson [00:16:33]:

No. I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Sanjog Aul [00:16:36]:

Alright. So let’s take the caller. This is Karen from Toronto.

Karen [00:16:40]:

Hello, gentlemen.

Sanjog Aul [00:16:42]:

Good morning. Hello there.

Josh Bersin [00:16:44]:

Hello?

Sanjog Aul [00:16:46]:

Yes. We can hear you, Karen.

Karen [00:16:47]:

Wonderful. Thank you. Well, I just wanted to share that as a Canadian in business, we’re always kinda taught by leadership. We’re told to wait and see and look and leverage what the Americas or the Americans are doing, because they’re so aggressive. And what I felt was that because you guys step up, take assertive leadership, you’re being innovative here and taking preventative measures rather than after the fact. I mean, I don’t see that as aggressive and that we need to maybe not always leverage, but definitely thank you for the innovation that’s coming from this thought. Especially the manager, what you were saying, like not everybody wanted to be in that level of giving reviews to people. So manager wasn’t something that path was followed. Does that make sense?

Steve Safier[00:17:51]:

Hi. This is Steve from Panasonic. It does make sense, although I will take a little bit of a different angle. It’s hard to stereotype about countries in general, but my experience of Canadians has always been that they will challenge and look at things differently and it doesn’t have to be done this particular way. There’s almost a sense of reality there that I appreciate about how this is going to work practically. So I think really the commonality is around the business issue versus the country and the people who want to make a difference. All right.

Sanjog Aul [00:18:31]:

Thank you so much for your call, Karen.

Karen [00:18:33]:

Thank you, Sanjog Aul.

Josh Bersin [00:18:34]:

Great. Sanjog, there’s one more thing that I just want to mention that I think is something to consider. If you’re a manager and you have a project, say an IT project or system or an implementation, and the question is how is that manager being measured? If he or she is being measured by on time, on budget, they’re going to push their team as hard as they can to get the work done. And that may or may not be a good thing for the retention of the people. Because there may be somebody really good on that team that frankly has done this six times and just doesn’t want to do it one more time. And so from the manager standpoint, I want to keep that person on the team because he’s going to make a success. But on the other hand, from retention standpoint, that person really needs another role. He needs to be rotated out. So one of the things we have to be careful of is how do we reward leaders for producing and developing people, not just getting work done. And I think that’s an issue that a lot of companies struggle with, that results in retention problems simply because they’re pushing people too hard on the performance measure.

Steve Safier[00:19:42]:

This is Steve. I could not agree with you more. I think what you’ve really nailed is the essential challenge of leadership and it’s not to try to fit everybody into one role or one set of expectations. It’s really looking at the configuration of the team and seeing how do you best leverage people’s talents. And sometimes that’s different around different projects. So I think you’re right. I think historically, we’ve asked managers to measure everyone against this common yardstick. And it’s as much as I don’t like stereotyping about countries, I’m not crazy about always resorting to sports analogies. But it’s like a coach. There’s a series of roles and a series of talents and a set of players. And given this particular situation, how do you move people around and at the same time have them all feel like they’re making a valuable contribution. So I think that’s a great point.

John J. Higginson [00:20:33]:

So, John, a quick question for you. Is, like, basically, you see the both comments that you’ve got. Now when you build your teams, do you think you have a few people who dominate all different situations and they look like stars and then the other people who should have been given the required focus on nurturing or coaching, they fall by the wayside?

Sanjog Aul [00:20:35]:

Yeah. I think it’s true that you do wind up with certain people who are just head and shoulders above other people in terms of creativity or technical skills or capability. And some of that is just natural. I’m also not a huge fan of sports analogies. But I mean, you do wind up with having the star players on teams. But you also have to have a team around them, because in Chicago, despite the championships which came later in the early days, Michael Jordan didn’t have a team around him. He didn’t go very far. So you do have that. But I do agree with the comments about giving people opportunity and helping to grow them. And that ultimately what we’re trying to do here at Wheels and of my teams is we’re building technology and that might be software, that might be combined hardware software solutions and that’s really the art stick. Are you building good products? And yes, dates are important and yes, quality is very important. But if you focus on those very tactical measures, you will get managers who just focus on short term goals and just hitting those things where I think for technology leaders in particular, one of their most important tasks is actually attracting, retaining and growing talent in their teams and in the team collectively. Over the years, I wind up interviewing everybody that comes through the door for whatever the role is in the technology team and my managers do as well. And the reason is because that’s probably the most important activity we can do. There’s lots of other things we can spend our time in. But if we’re not getting the right people on the team, if we’re not making sure that it’s a good fit, then we’re ultimately not doing our job. And I think one thing that helps managers too which we’ve done lots of companies have taken to this is, after a certain number of iterations on a project, we do agile and a certain number of releases, you actually move people around. It’s healthy for the individual employee, but it’s healthy for the team too because it forces them to adapt and rethink their processes and rethink their approach and it ultimately makes everybody better.

John J. Higginson [00:20:56]:

Josh, question for you. Is there a concept of best talent, actually a good idea? This concept of best talent a good idea when you’re looking at retention? Because the best could become mediocre when with the pace at which everything is changing around us. So what is your basis to say I’m gonna retain this versus that?

Sanjog Aul [00:21:44]:

Yeah. Well, there’s this terrible practice in HR that’s been around for years, which I didn’t, I mean I’m not a fan of it, but it’s there, which is creating a list of hypos. High potentials. And almost everybody does this. And they rank people by their potential to move either up the organization or into more functional or technical roles. And then there’s people at the bottom of the list of course. And one of the things that people worry about is losing those hypos because they’re the ones that presumably could go somewhere else and do something much, much better. You know, my experience, I’m in my mid to late 50s and I’ve been around for a while. My experience is that people that are hypos in one particular organization or one particular situation may not be hypos in other ones. And there are superstars everywhere of course, software engineers, project managers and so forth. And I think the attitude that we need to take and hopefully you guys agree is that everybody has the potential to improve, everybody has the potential to contribute. We help them do that, that’s the coaching model. And we give them a sense of what that means so they know if they’re contributing well. And if they’re not, we give them some support or we coach them out of the business. Maybe they don’t fit. There may be cultural reasons. There’s a big trend right now to hire for culture, not just technology and skills. You know I’ve worked in some software companies that are brutal, really well known companies that everybody would want to work for, that are actually horrible places to work culturally, and they attracted a certain breed of people that were willing to work very, very hard for the big upside at the end, but other people didn’t. There were other people that wanted to work on a more relaxed environment, maybe just as exciting, but not the same culture. So I don’t really particularly think that we should be overly focused on just those top, top people. But everybody has them and they have to be very, very careful. But you don’t want to bend the whole organization backwards just to preserve one super duper engineer and everybody else gets upset. And I’d be curious what you guys think. You guys are sort of in the trenches with this issue.

John J. Higginson [00:21:45]:

Yes, this is John. I can speak to that. And it was really our executives who gave us that feedback. So as you say, like other companies, we had a hypo program and we took a bit of a turn this year. And what our executive said is we don’t want to create a class of people who have and a class of people who have not, kind of similar to Josh’s comment. We’ve changed the program and it’s going to sound subtle, but it’s actually been somewhat profound. We now have an enhanced development program, an EDP program as opposed to a hypo program. And our slogan and mission is everybody gets development. These people get a particular kind of development. And we’ve focused a lot on talent management and on training this last year or two. And we have particular sets of courses and training experiences that are dedicated to different people at different stages of their career or individual contributors versus managers. But I very much like that notion of let’s not create a class of haves and have nots. Let’s try to develop everybody to be their best. And at some point, they and we make a choice as to whether it’s a good fit for them.

Sanjog Aul [00:23:24]:

John? This is John. If we could band together and get rid of stack ranking, I think that would be great. Yes, I agree. I mean, we work to offer opportunity for everyone, because we certainly have a sense of what our depth chart is. And if we have a new project, who might we move on to that in a leadership role or in a certain critical technical role. But really it’s about the entire team and it’s about giving the entire team opportunity. And that opportunity might come in the form of contests where we ask people for ideas and the best idea wins and then they get to work on implementing that idea even if it’s not a planned business project, to training, to conferences. One thing I’ll add on to the people that don’t fit and I agree, it’s as much about culture and it’s as much about fitting what the team is like and what the company is like to what the employee is comfortable with. The caveat I’ll put on to that is, I think you wind up ascertaining that relatively quickly. Sometimes you do it in the interview, but that’s an imperfect process. But early on usually in somebody’s tenure with the company, you can tell it doesn’t fit. And our philosophy has always been, if it isn’t working, you just need to say that and you just need to move on. I think sometimes we fall into the trap and I’ve done this too where you say, well, maybe another 3 months, maybe another 6 months when you know in your heart it’s not working. And I think that’s as important because the team sees that. The team knows long before managers do what’s working and what’s not. And they’re just a lot of times they’re just waiting for us to catch up. So Steve, when you look at your and then we’ll take a quick break by the way, but we just want to set the stage. So when we come in and talk about we are going to set up this retention strategy, this attraction strategy, How much of empirical primary research based data that we have and we collect on a regular basis from directly the employees or the people who we are interviewing for us to make those determinations? Or is this coming out of some studies, some reports, and that may not be relevant to our environment? So I’d love to get your thoughts on how it is being done to keep it practical, keep it real. Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back.

Sanjog Aul [00:28:47]:

Welcome back. So, Steve, how real is our or the what’s the basis of our strategies that you’re creating for retention and attraction of talent? Is it outdated? Is it being continually refreshed? What’s your source?

Speaker 0 [00:29:30]:

That’s a great question. I think in some respects, it’s similar to what it’s always been, although perhaps we’re trying to do a better job at it. And that is there’s a fluid feedback cycle where we’re constantly talking to our internal customers, our IT people and the people who use IT services. So I’m talking to executives. Our HR business partners are talking to their colleagues within the organization and to the IT people themselves. We do employee opinion surveys. We do exit interviews when people leave. So that there’s a constant flow of information as to what people are looking for, what’s working, what needs to be improved. Then we have more we’ve turned more to statistics. So we’ll do comp analyses against survey data and also talk to our recruiters to say what are we hearing from the market in terms of the compensation levels we need to pay and sometimes what’s important are the base salaries versus the bonus opportunities and the benefits that we offer. So there’s that data. And then as we go further along the data continuum, we have KPIs that we measure. So time to hire and voluntary turnover and involuntary turnover. Then we get a little bit more future oriented. So we embarked on an effort this past year with the help of a consulting firm to take on an initiative called predictive analytics. And we looked at, you can think of it as a big data approach, although in our sense it wasn’t that big a data approach. It certainly was data intensive where we looked at a lot of different factors in the organization and tried to find out what predicted staying with a company, what predicted turnover. By the way, I will tell you that the major factor that predicted retention was training. If a person had at least 1 training course, he or she was more likely to stay with the organization. So that was an interesting finding. And now we’re transitioning to become even more future oriented and doing a structured workforce planning effort. So what are the needs of the business? What are the available sources of talent out there? And how do we start looking 1 to 3 to 5 years out to put in the kinds of people that some of our workforce is going to leave, retire, leave for whatever reason? How do we put in the kind of workforce that we need? So if this were on a video, I could show you a graph. But it goes from the more fluid and perhaps the more anecdotal to the more data intensive both from a retroactive perspective but also looking forward.

Steve Safier[00:29:42]:

John, if you were to look at the environments that you’ve been in, would you say HR driving talent retention even for IT has born better results? Or would you say IT driving it, inviting HR as and when needed, has helped. What is that mix? Because the data, the way it gets collected for the people within IT and the type of analysis that you do with understanding of semantics of what IT requires at any given time in terms of skill mix, what has worked?

Speaker 0 [00:30:13]:

What’s worked best in my experience is a partnership with a real partnership with HR and IT. And HR has tremendous insight into both external information about the market and what’s happening in certain job types as well as information internally. As much as we know about some of the day to day activities of the team and what people like or don’t like, HR gets that as well. And I think the organizations that I’ve worked in, HR has done a really good job of being that group that people, if they had concerns, they were comfortable going to. And so being able to collaborate with HR and say, okay, this is the kind of team we want to build. This is what works and doesn’t work in our culture. And some of that comes through employee surveys. Some of that comes through anecdotal information. That’s what’s worked best for me. I think IT just like HR does surveys and collects information, I think IT has an obligation to do that too. One of the things that we’ve done is one of the things we have here at Wheels, which we have something called the Ask Me Anything. So, every month we have the entire team and we have folks who are offshore who can do it remotely. But the entire team gets together and somebody presents. So, it’s somebody on the team or somebody in the business presenting, talking about something that’s going on. And then a good third of that meeting is people who have submitted questions throughout the month and those questions get answered. And it’s a great way IT teams tend to be more introverted. And so having a forum where people raise their hands and speak in front of the group is not always as effective, but giving people the opportunity to submit questions in advance and then address them and everybody hears the answers. We’ve had some really good questions. We have some really tough questions. Some really get to the heart of what’s our strategy around this as a business and what’s our plan for this technology or how we’re going to solve this problem, which seems to be a really thorny problem. But I think that that’s part of that feedback loop and we share all that information with HR as well because it helps them work with us to figure out the right whether it be training programs or just the right cultural changes in the company to make it an inviting place and to retain employees.

Sanjog Aul [00:31:16]:

This is Steve. Can I jump in on that for just a moment? First of all, thank you for describing IT and HR as a partnership. I couldn’t agree with you more. In terms of the communication, we had a similar experience and took it in a similar direction. We had found that employees in general, even outside IT, were feeling like they weren’t aware enough of what was going on in the business. So like many companies, we started town hall meetings, and they were primarily run by a CEO with some guest speakers, and our CFO would present financials. And we found our CEO really raised his hand and said, you know what, this is getting somewhat stale because I’m doing most of the talking. We made two changes in addition to asking for questions upfront or in advance. One was we changed it to something we call the Panasonic Exchange. And we’ve now run two of these with a third plan for after the summer in September, where rather than one person speaking, we have a panel of people from a particular business with a moderator. And it just becomes much more fluid, much more conversational, much more flexible. The second, and perhaps, John, you’ve done this as well, is we’ve enabled people to text in questions real time. And similar to what we had today on the phone, it’s been very helpful because we get now a wave of questions from people who probably in the past wouldn’t have been comfortable asking. And those questions are good and our panel handles them. And it makes for a lot more lively and real experience.

Steve Safier[00:31:30]:

Josh, go ahead Josh.

Sanjog Aul [00:33:59]:

Well I just wanted to comment. You guys are actually keying into something that’s really, really big that’s happening. You know, the old fashioned way of measuring somebody’s satisfaction is what’s called an engagement survey. And companies do those once a year. And they literally wait a year before they survey somebody again and see how things are going. And there’s a big transition, and I think it’s a disruption going on, with HR departments, and HR is sometimes behind actually, trying to build anonymous real time feedback. Because sometimes it doesn’t have to be anonymous. You know, if I’m really angry about something that happened at work, I may not want to put my name on it, but I certainly want to raise the issue. And I think what you guys are describing are great processes for doing that, but I actually think over the next year or two, we have these poll survey tools. I just talked to a company that’s building a mobile app that allows people to contribute anonymous comments to their company online, through a website like Glassdoor. So if the management is not interested in hearing it, they’re going to contribute it anyway. So I think there’s a really, really big need for leaders like both of you guys to find ways to get people to open up. And technical people don’t like to speak up in public sometimes about what’s on their minds. They want to use other tools. So, you know, I really applaud you for doing that. I think it’s a huge issue now.

John J. Higginson [00:34:32]:

Josh, coming to the situation where we said it is a merit based, it’s becoming a merit based organization. And then the culture, in some cases, you said it’s horrible because they make them work harder. Other people don’t want to work. When it comes to retention, would you think it’s a better idea to also have that balance there where people who want just a cushy job and not actually voluntarily working towards going that extra mile should be managed out automatically or there’s attrition. Because if you’re gonna keep people who are not performing and people who are really busting their chops, it would be demotivating.

Steve Safier[00:36:54]:

Well, there’s a really, really famous picture that Jack Welch put out. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. It’s a two by two grid and it has performance on one axis and fit with the organization on the other. And the issue that he talked about many times was what do I do with a really, really high performing individual who does not fit? You know, the person that breaks glass but gets a lot of work done. And he said, you know, and I think I’ve seen this in many companies, after many, many years you gotta let that person go. Because it really is the team that matters. And so, you know, when you have a and I’ve been in companies where the superstars are revered and everybody else is just ignored. And that’s generally dysfunctional because those guys leave too and sometimes they don’t know the answer and it is really the value of the entire team that matters. And so I think there’s this tough relationship between performance and culture. We want everybody to perform well, but sometimes we have to dial back just a tiny bit on the performance measure to make sure we have a team that’s actually operating well together. And again, it’s sort of that sports analogy. Why is it that you can have a bunch of superstars and a new coach will come in and all of a sudden they’ll start winning games when they weren’t before? It’s this relationship between the people. And I think it’s particularly true in technical roles where there’s such wide variations in skill sets amongst the teams. I mean, that’s certainly what I’ve learned.

Sanjog Aul [00:38:24]:

Yes, this is John. I would agree with that. And I think there’s another risk inherent in focusing too much on superstars as you create a kind of hero mentality where only certain people can solve a problem. And that’s a really tough place to be as a business or as a team because for one thing it doesn’t scale, for another thing they may not always get it right and if they do and if they get it wrong or if they leave then you’re really in trouble. So I agree, it’s more about you’re going to have people all over the continuum in terms of talent capability, but the team is paramount overall.

Josh Bersin [00:38:25]:

Yes, the only part I’d point out is on the bottom side. I wouldn’t go so far as to say cushy. There’s probably no room for cushy, but certainly people perform in different ways at different levels and I think we need to respect that and leverage that.

Sanjog Aul [00:39:52]:

Let’s take a quick break. Listeners, we’ll be right back. And John, when we come back, we’d like to ask if there was a way for us to identify specific ways for an individual to enter an organization at a specific level and then like a career framework of sorts. It’s been seen multiple times that it has been a very reactionary approach to when a person gets into an organization, the way they move up a ladder or go up to make a lateral move, and there is no predictable approach to it. And everybody sits there scratching their head that why was I promoted versus why I was not promoted. And that doesn’t go very far. While we talk about culture, we talk about everything else but the definition of what a given organization should have in terms of their career lattice, career framework, and specific level competencies, etc. Either we go way too high which becomes too difficult and complex to handle or we do minimal. So what’s that healthy balance where we define something in black and white and then work with that as a plan? Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back.

Josh Bersin [00:40:32]:

Welcome back. So, John, talking about art form, like, we’re building a culture and nurturing people, etcetera, etcetera. All that definitely everyone must be doing. But what are we what’s the state of the science behind building an IT organizational structure, the proper levels and competencies and actually using them? One is to get it made and a report gathering dust, but actually to implement it.

John J. Higginson [00:42:05]:

It definitely is both science and art. I do think there are tools that you can apply. And I’ve certainly in my teams, we’ve done things like career ladders both for a technical and a non technical track and we’ll be able to sit with people and talk about the kinds of roles we have on the team. And if they’re interested, if they never want to manage people, which is fine and certainly there are lots and lots of really critical, really valuable roles in technology that have nothing to do with people leadership that they can kind of see that path. But the art part of that is everybody is different and everybody is going to have a different path to get to either where they want to get career wise or even figuring out where they want to be because a lot of people and over the years I’ve worked with a lot of young technology people who do get to look at it and say, well, my path forward is being a manager. And they’re given opportunities to lead a team or to lead a project and they hate it because it’s just not what they want to do. They want to stay close to the technology. They want to focus on that rather than people leadership. And it’s a very different discipline and a very different interest. In terms of culture, I think what happens sometimes, and I mentioned earlier, you know, we do foosball and things like that, and that’s part of it. But the culture is the more important part because you can put those things in the cafeteria, but that’s not going to change the culture. And if you’re thinking about changing the culture of the team, you have to have an honest conversation with yourself and the team about what works, what doesn’t and what you want the culture to be. A number of years ago, I joined a team that had a really deep seated blame culture where the team and the company, when something went wrong, the first thing they wanted to do was figure out whose head they were going to take for having that mistake be made. And it took a long time but you had to do very public kind of whimsical things. We had a cheese head that we passed around. And so whoever made a mistake, they would admit that they made a mistake. And then they would pick somebody who would get the cheese head. So somebody who had nothing to do with the problem would have to wear the cheese head. And eventually, the team got the larger lesson, which is, look, we’re in this together. We’re going to succeed and fail together. Let’s focus on the solutions and where we go. But that was something we had to examine in the team and say, this isn’t the culture we want. Why do we have it and then figure out how to fix it. But you really do have to have that kind of honest conversation with yourselves, your team and even the company’s leadership, because otherwise if you just put foosball tables in and free soda, it’s not going to change the culture.

Steve Safier[00:42:44]:

Josh, do you see a pattern of companies who have had better retention, better environment to be adopting a certain tricks and techniques and strategies?

Sanjog Aul [00:43:00]:

Well, you know, it’s funny. I’m a little bit of an older guy. I’ve been around I mean, I’ve started my career back in the days when you basically had cubicles and that was it. And I go to these big tech companies and I see all the fancy food and the free lunch and the free dinner and the free breakfast and the foosball tables and the yoga classes and I used to think, oh, that’s ridiculous. But actually I disagree. I actually think it’s important for a different reason, not just culture. You know, not only is it a little bit of an entitlement culture, at least in Silicon Valley, but I actually think there’s another problem going on. We call it the overwhelmed employee. Our research shows, and this just blew my mind, roughly 65% to 70% of companies at the HR exec level tell us that their people are overwhelmed. They have too much to do, too many emails, too many meetings, too many conference calls, too many text messages. They’re carrying their phones home at night and they can’t manage it all. And so they’re unproductive just from the volume of stuff they’re dealing with. And leaders, it’s even worse. So, and I don’t know about tech, the tech community is dealing with this too. So we have to give people time to relax and think and rest and talk. And that might mean physically changing the office and moving people around physically from place to place and letting them go play ping pong for a while. Because the work world is pretty doggone demanding. I mean, I’ve been in the working world for 35 years, and I can’t believe how it’s a 24/7 world now. I mean, I’m an analyst, so it’s particularly hard for me. But I can’t get away from it. You know, you go home, you’ve got your email with you everywhere you go. Everywhere you know, in the bathroom, when you’re in the coffee shop, it’s always there. So I actually think this work environment thing is a very significant issue. And you have to look at it as a part of making your organization productive, not just a benefit. I think it’s the reality of the work world. And I’d be very curious what you guys have to say on that topic.

Steve Safier[00:43:49]:

Sure. This is Steve. I think the physical environment is very important. It enables certain behaviors, communicates certain messages. But I also think that to add to that, there’s a perspective that’s very important if one can embrace it to be able to communicate. And that is some of these things are not life and death issues. And mistakes are okay. You know, what I tell people I really want is heart and smart. I mean, we develop competency models too, but that’s my ultimate competency model. I want people who are committed, they have heart, and then they’re smart. But I know mistakes are gonna happen. In fact, the toughest things that we do are going to incur the greatest mistakes, and we want to keep taking on challenges. So I think it’s helping people keep that perspective. I think it’s also not only a tolerance, but an embrace of what people might need to do outside of work. So if someone comes up to me and says, you know, my fourth grade kid’s in a class play tomorrow, and I need to go, I kind of cut them off mid sentence and say goodbye. Because I know they’re going to work and I know they’re going to work after the play. So while one has to be somewhat careful about that across a big organization, I think it’s that perspective that, hey, it’s all right. Just one quick example. I have a fellow who came over to me a couple of days ago, actually, it was yesterday. And he is, in many respects, the perfect employee. Heart, smart, always working well, and in fact, has a job that includes an exquisite level of detail. Guess what? He made a mistake the other day. And he came to me, which was the right thing to do, to own up to it, and I said, oh, okay. You usually get this right. We can fix it. Let’s go on. I think it’s that perspective that’s important to communicate to people because you’re right, we’re always available. At the end of the day, I think sometimes we have to smell the roses.

Sanjog Aul [00:43:49]:

Yes, this is John. I think some of this is generational too and I think it’s good that younger people in particular view the lines between work and personal life and other activities being very blurry. I mean they’re used to being reachable everywhere, they’re used to working on things. And I think recognizing that in the workplace, being able to take breaks and not saying, well, were you here from 08:00 to 05:00 today? Did you put in five hours? We really need to focus on the accomplishment about getting the work done, however it gets done, making sure it actually gets finished.

Steve Safier[00:44:07]:

And I think also this is Steve again to separate between I like to tell people what’s a crunch and what’s not a crunch. So if it’s not a crunch, if it doesn’t have to get done tomorrow, then I’ll tell them explicitly, I don’t want this tomorrow. Maybe I want it in 10 days. And other things I’ll say, you know, sorry, but this is a crunch. I need it later today or I need it tomorrow. And I think helping people understand that difference gets you buy in and also, frankly, helps the projects that are a crunch get done because people know, gee, this really is urgent.

Sanjog Aul [00:44:39]:

Alright. Fifteen seconds each starting with you, Josh. If you had to say one thing to the organizations out there to improve the retention for the technology talent, what would that be? I would say it’s make sure that people are working on great projects and that their manager, supervisor, leader is there to help them and coach them. And I think if people feel that they’re there, that they’re getting help and they’re working on fun stuff, they’re gonna stick around and they’re gonna really contribute.

John J. Higginson [00:46:17]:

John?

Sanjog Aul [00:49:04]:

I think create a culture where candor is not only possible, but is expected both ways, where you tell them what’s real and what’s working and what’s not and they’re free to tell you that because you learn an awful lot that way and I think that’s how you ultimately make the organization better and that is how you retain people because as Josh mentioned earlier, people today, they suss out the bureaucracy and what’s not real, and they know what’s going on. And so to hear you acknowledge that and acknowledge that you want to work with them to make it better, that makes a huge difference in attracting and retaining people.

Josh Bersin [00:49:17]:

Very quickly, Steve.

Steve Safier[00:51:26]:

Show them what you need from them from a business perspective and recognize that you’re a spot along their career, that you’re a spot within their broader life, and figure out the best way to meet both sides’ needs.

John J. Higginson [00:53:04]:

On behalf of the show and our listeners, I’d really like to thank you, Steve, Josh, and John, for sharing your thoughts about how we can retain IT talent in this new normal. Search for CIO Talk Radio, and be sure to follow us on Twitter. Thank you again for listening to CIO Talk Radio. This is Sanjog Aul, your talk show host. Till next week, take care, and God bless.