Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Culture of Things podcast. I'm your host, Brendan Rogers and this is episode 47. Today I'm talking with Mark Purbrick. Mark is the managing director of PeopleLogica and he has over 35 years of management experience, 23 of these years at general manager or chief executive officer level, and over 30 years of board director experience for both private enterprise and government controlled entities.
With extensive experience in hospitality, retail, production, agribusiness, direct marketing, government and people analytics, Mark assists clients to make the right business and people capital decisions. As one of the first adopters of people Analytics, Mark has designed innovative people capital solutions and has ensured that PeopleLogica is at the forefront of people tests, assessments and surveys. His passion lies principally in the attraction, selection and retention of high performing talent. The reality is that the traditional recruitment process of resume, interview and reference checking only delivers high performers about 26% of the time, meaning that 74% of the time recruiters and hiring managers do not get it right. By using advanced people analytics, this success rate can be increased by 200 to 300%, which then delivers an average 40% reduction in employee turnover rates. Mark consults to senior executives of some of the largest multinational organizations and business owners, Chief executive officers and not for profits. If you want to learn more about attracting, selecting and retaining high performing talent, then stay tuned to the conversation. Mark, welcome to the Culture of Things podcast.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Thanks, Brandon. It's great to be here and great to be here with all your listeners.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: Thank you, mate. An absolute pleasure having you as well. Now, I have to challenge you on one thing. In that introduction we talked about this passion you have around attracting, selecting and retaining high performing talent. I know that's a passion for you, but. But are you as passionate in that about compared to your wine interests?
[00:02:00] Speaker B: Well, it's a very good question because I'm a winemaker by trade, so some would say that I've taken a very different course in my career to what most winemakers have taken. But I think it's fair to say, Brendan, that my passion for fantastic wines is equal, if not slightly higher, than my passion for attracting and retaining high performance. But I get paid for one and the other one costs more.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: And I'm starting to think also that maybe the wine side of things in your interest there helps you cope with some of the people stuff that we know we have to deal with from time to time.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: Well, it's probably why I've got so much gray hair with other people's people problems. And I think you're right. I think Nothing like a 20 year old red on a Friday night just to wash away all of those people challenges so that they set off the weekend just right.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Absolutely mate, absolutely. I know you work very hard so I'm sure you deserve at the end of the week, there's no doubt about it mate. Jump in a bit if you can. Just give the listeners a bit of an overview on people logic. Its business been around a long time, really cemented its place in that area of the industry. Tell us a bit about that.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: The main thing that we do and what sets an analytic business apart, especially in a field of HR where HR is generally all about gut feel and whether you like people is our job is to provide objective information to management teams, hiring managers, business owners, HR professionals that make them be far more objective about the people they're looking at employing and the people they currently employ.
Because we have a tendency not to do that and it probably reflects which I find incredibly distressing. When you look at the stats for Australia and all western countries where we have somewhere between 20 and 30% of all employees are actively disengaged in the workplace. And you know, I'm very lucky and I know you're the same yourself. Brendan is we love what we do and we go to work every day and really enjoy it. We shouldn't take that for granted. Most people aren't like that and it's only about 20 odd percent of Australians that actually really love going to work. So a lot of what we do in our business is to get more people loving their work and we're a technology business so it's about putting science and technology into an area that has generally been gut feel and improve the outcomes for everybody, especially the employees.
[00:04:27] Speaker A: Markham, what sort of. Before we go right into the topic, what sort of leaders or businesses do you find are coming to you to seek help and even at what stage of their business are they in that they're coming to you for help?
[00:04:41] Speaker B: Yeah, look, I don't think there's any particular business or stage that they're at where they come to help.
It's more about the actual individuals. You know, one of the biggest challenges we have is I'm 60 years old and I can relate to a lot of over 45 year old, you know, managers and a lot of them have this belief that they've been recruiting people for the last 20, 30, 40 years and they know how to do it. But when you then ask them the question, you say put your hand on your heart and tell me what percentage of all the people you've employed over those years have actually ended up being high performance. And I can guarantee you it is going to be around about that 25% plus or minus a few percent.
And I can guarantee you every time It'll be about 25% plus or minus a few percent, where the people they've employed have turned out to be disappointing and haven't measured up to their expectations. And, and I think the really important thing is for everybody, for every business owner and manager and HR professional, I don't know of anybody that's ever purposely hired a poor performer and yet 25% of all employees in Australia are considered substandard or not yet competent by their managers.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a scary thought, mate, isn't it? I have to say, you don't look a day over 59, mate.
[00:06:08] Speaker B: Must be those reds.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: Absolutely.
High performing talent. Let's dive into this. Let's just frame up. What's your view on what does actually high performing talent look like?
[00:06:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a good question. So in your introduction you had that and very rightly, that the statistics show that the traditional recruitment process only delivers the desired result 26% of the time. And the reality is, if you ask any process expert if you had a process that only delivered the desired result 26% of the time, which is high performing, you know, recruiting a high performer, they tell you the process is broken. And the reality is a traditional recruitment process of interview, resume and references, it's broken, it doesn't work. The definition of high performing talent is people that not only are functionally very good at their role, but also contribute to the organization on a leadership basis. I don't believe that leadership is a role title. I believe that you will have casuals in your organization that can be absolute leaders in what they're doing.
So leadership is a mindset and you don't have to be in a management role to be a leader. There's a lot of managers that aren't leaders, I can tell you. So understanding what a high performer is, I think is one of the most difficult challenges that business owners have and management teams have. It's easy in sales because we've got to measure the sales, but most other parts of the organization, it's far more difficult to be objective about what a high performer.
So it needs to look at a whole raft of areas. So their functional expertise, their contribution to the culture of the organisation, their contribution to really the fabric of the organisation and how they support other people, their contribution and their dedication to looking after clients. So all of it needs to come into determining what a high performer is.
As I mentioned before, you know, the stats are really clear that you've got only about 20% of employees that are actively engaged in the workplace. So they're the ones that love coming to work. They really enjoy coming to work. It's, you know, work is a very important part of them because they get so much out of it. And then we've got 50% that, you know, they vary depending on the day of how engaged they are and then 25 odd percent that are actively disengaged. So they're trying to pull the company down while the top performers are trying to pull the company up. But I think the most important part for everybody to understand though is that high performers are two to three times more productive than poor performers. But you're paying them the same amount of money. And too often managers aren't challenging themselves about whether the person they've got their direct reports, whether they are performing at the level that they should be performing. And a lot of that time is because managers don't want to admit they got it wrong when they hired them. So they tend to make, they tend to compound the situation by making decisions that defend a previously poor decision and not taking on board. The one fundamental truth to do with employees is we don't always get it right. You know, people are people, people are a very amorphous thing in that, you know, then even with all our tools as well, you know, we can select people 200 to 300% more often that are going to be high performers. It's still not 100% and people just have to accept that sometimes we make the wrong decisions. But the important thing is for managers to then take that on board and then make the right decision after that and accept that they got it wrong and do something about it. Because you know what, that's part of leadership as well. It's accepting you made a mistake and then doing something about it.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: In the height in the hybrid working world, I've seen too many business owners and their businesses suffer because of poor performing employees leading to below average results.
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Yeah, once again, absolutely, mate. There's a number of things you said there. You and I are very much on the same page around the behaviors and the importance around behaviors in high performance. With all the data you've collected over the years and all the help you've given businesses, is there some consistency you've seen in the sort of behaviors that most high performers have? And if so, what does that look like?
[00:10:59] Speaker B: Yeah, look, the behaviours required in a role are very particular to the role and that's why we develop high performance benchmarks. Because, you know, an attribute in role A may be a really positive, that same attribute in role B will be a real negative because of the nature of the role. I think the best way for anybody to truly understand who are their high performers in their business, because sometimes people find it really difficult to identify that is the question they ask themselves is, would I unreservably re employ that person tomorrow without a hesitation? Because if your answer is an emphatic yes to that, then they're a high performer, unless you're fooling yourself. But generally that's the best way for you to be able to identify, right, these are my top performers because I would unreservedly re employ them tomorrow.
And then I believe it's the manager's responsibility is to then look highly, objectively and unemotively at all of the rest of their direct reports and say, what haven't I done as a manager to improve their performance? What haven't I provided them? What environment haven't I given them for them to shine?
And in most cases, the manager can improve their performance substantially by the way they act and what they do. But there will be some people in there that no matter what you do is you're never going to get them to be adequate, let alone anything else. And that's when you then have to make a hard decision. But at the end of the day, I look at it saying, you know, no one wants to be trapped in a job they're not successful in and they're not enjoying. So really, sometimes you've got to set people free and help them on their journey with a career, and it may be with another organisation, but certainly I think we have an obligation to help them.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: So I absolutely love that question about, you know, would you 100%, without a shadow of a doubt, you know, re employ that person? I think that just covers every sort of angle. So, mate, thank you very much for sharing. Unfortunately, based on the stats, the answer on three quarters of the time would probably Be? No.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: Well, it is, but it's an important discussion for a manager to have with themselves. And because if you can't be honest with yourself, they don't have to share it with anybody else, you know, but they've got to be honest with themselves. And I think in sales, it's even. It's even more exposing. And the statistics are really clear. 55% of all people in a sales role aren't actually suited to sites. And of the remaining 45% that are suited to sales, 25% out of that 40, 45% are selling a product or service that's not suited to them.
And so that's why you've only got about 25% of all salespeople that are considered high performers. It's only about 25% of all salespeople that consistently hit budgets. Most salespeople don't consistently hit budgets. And sales is all about behaviors.
And the beauty of sales is there's active measures on sales. Sales is the easiest role to measure of whether someone's being a high performer or not. And I think sales managers need to take more of a responsibility. They need to be far more objective in their hiring process because salespeople are really good at selling themselves to other salespeople and they're very good at mirroring the person across the interview table. And so sales managers can have a tendency of selecting people that are more like themselves. But they're not employing someone to be a sales manager, they're employing someone to be a salesperson. And that's where it starts falling down.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: Yeah, there's two things that stick out to me. And again, this phrase comes up so often, I find myself always using it. Culture is a reflection of leadership. So perhaps if you've got a performer that's maybe not up to scratch, supposedly based on the leader, we need to look at ourselves first. But the second thing that I took from you and what you just said is that so important to have the right people, but the right people in the right roles. And no doubt the work that you do helps organizations achieve that. But let's get into the attracting this talent, this high performing talent, and we'll move on to the selecting. So let's take a scenario. You know, I'm leading a business. I've had some people turn over and stuff. What advice would you give me? I want to start to attract some high performing talent. How do I do this?
[00:15:26] Speaker B: The first bit of advice is recruitment is a process. People make it out to be a lot harder than what it is.
If you follow the process, it's actually really quite easy.
The first part about recruitment is I don't know how anybody can go out and recruit for a role unless they truly understand what type of beast they're looking for. They already know from the position description what experience they want, what knowledge they need, what skills they want. So all the learnable skills and knowledge they have that in the position description, so that's fine. But what we're talking about is the beast. What's the heart, mind and soul, the person that you require in the role. I don't know how anybody can go out and even start looking for someone unless they have an idea of what that beast actually looks like to start off with, which is really the heart, mind and soul, which is what people analytics measure. That's what its real strength is, is focusing people on the type of person you also want, not just the learnable skills and knowledge they need to have. So once you have that benchmark developed now, whether you use tools like ours or you're just doing it on your head and doing on a piece of paper, it doesn't matter how you do it. There might be a difference in accuracy and result out, but still, you're still going to be far better off then. I think one of the biggest mistakes that happens is with the job ad is the least amount of time, it appears to me, the least amount of time that hiring managers, HR professionals and professional recruiters put into the whole selection process is the job ad. They have a tendency to just copy and paste the position description, chuck it into job ad, chuck it up on, seek and hope for the best. And the problem with that is it doesn't answer the one fundamental question that really good candidates and really any candidates, and especially our millennials and Gen Next is now the one question they want answered, which is what's in it for me? And the salary doesn't cut it. That's one small part of it.
So what we get our clients to do is when you understand what type of beast you want, you therefore understand what they enjoy doing and what they don't enjoy doing.
So when you're then writing your job ad is you still have a paragraph about how good the company is, because that's important and the security of it and security of employment.
But instead of then just ramming the position description in there, so what you're going to do for the company is we change that to we actually put in there what the company, what the role is going to offer to the person. So it's More about if you enjoy doing this, enjoy doing this, don't like doing this, you know, and things like, you know, you don't like managers looking over your shoulder, you don't like being micromanaged, you don't like. And. And you're straight down the line because it's all based on the behaviors of the benchmark of the role. Because what then happens is when people are reading the job ad, they're not reading about a job anymore, they're reading about what they'll enjoy doing. So it's actually about their engagement and whether this role is something that is for them.
Importantly, what it also does is it gets them to look at a role and instead of them saying, well, I'd never want to work in a contact centre and that their view of not working in a contact centre could have been because one of their best mates worked in a contact center four years ago and hated it, so they now think, well, I don't want to work in a contact center. But if the job ad goes through all of these things of what you enjoy doing and what you don't enjoy doing and they look and they go, well, I never thought I wanted to work in a contact center. But that's me. What they've just explained there is me. And then underneath you've got. If the above resonates with you, that's what our high performers are like. So you can be a high performer in our team. So it reaffirms to them that they should at least have a look. And those what we call targeted job advertisements, we generally get a three to six times uplift in the number of quality candidates applying. And that's the game is getting quality candidates in. It's not about the total number, it's how many quality candidates you get.
So I think that is, that's probably the second part of it. So you've got to know what sort of beast you're after and then attract that type of beast to apply for your job. Advertisement because the reality is we've got 100% failure rate of recruiting the best person for the job if they haven't applied for the job in the first place.
So you can't look at them if they don't apply for the job.
So that's the next part. I think the attraction phase is one of the most important phases because if you can't look at them, you can't employ them, then the next part then is the interviewing process and the screening process. And that's where a lot of our, you know, analytics come into it, whether it's ours or anybody else's, is helping the hiring managers and HR professionals to really concentrate on what's important in the role our interview guides provide. It provides a measure of fit, so it actually measures the fit of the candidates of the role. It identifies the potential barriers to success so it highlights where the challenges could be for that person in the role. It then provides interview questions that are tailored to dig down into all of those areas so the hiring manager can work out one whether the person is self managing that area and whether they're flexing across or whether they need to provide an environment for them to flex across. Because it's all about getting the person to behave the way you want them to behave between nine and five.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: Our interview will continue after this an expression of gratitude or reciprocity, no matter how large or small, is an important part of a healthy culture and relationships. Our friends at Jangler have a great app that allows you to send a gift card with a personal video, voice message or funny gif you can send right away or schedule to send on the perfect day and time set and forget. I like that. I have found it perfect for clients, employees, birthdays or any celebration where I can't be there in person. It's quick, easy to send and you can spend instantly in store or online. When you receive a card, check it out@jangler.com mate I want to now go into that selection process. We've hopefully attracted a high quality or a number of high quality candidates and created some healthy competition. And and it's a great point you make. I think that you know that candidate uplift and the way that you've put that targeted ad together, hopefully it does allow for a lot more quality coming through rather than the quantity. Because you know as well as I do a lot of business owners and leaders, they're having to have sort through a lot of, let's say rubbish, I guess people that are not aligned really to the role. They're just sort of applying for everything. So thank you for sharing that. But the selecting process and look, I probably want to look at it from a stage of you guys have got so much information, so many handy tools and so much experience that you can really help people with. And I don't want to undermine the importance of selecting the right candidate, but probably based on our time schedules today, let's say given your experience, if we had the perfect case scenario, and let's drop that back to say minimum viable product of maybe three things that you think through the Selection process are absolutely vital for leaders to do if they were to do nothing else. These are our foundations. Talk a bit about that, mate.
[00:22:59] Speaker B: I think it comes down, I think probably the three biggest mistakes that people make in the selection process.
There's a thing called the psychological contract. And the psychological contract is the unwritten contract that's made that starts at the attraction phase, but particularly through the selection phase. The unwritten contract that's made between the potential employer and the candidates, and it's based on what the employer really promises on the way through. A lot of employers, a lot of managers, promise things to candidates about career progression, about benefits, about a whole lot of stuff that is really stretching the truth of what actually happens in the organisation.
And so the psychological contract is really, really important.
My number one lesson to all people out there that are tasked with selection, if you don't do anything else, do this, is do not blow up the attributes of the organization if you can't deliver it. Because the downside of that, if you do, when you employ that person, when those things don't happen and they find out that it was all rubbish and you were just gilding the lily at the start, it's not a good place to be with an employee because that doesn't help with engagement. So that would be the first one. The second part is people will say in the first three minutes of the interview, I know whether they're good or not. I can tell you. No, you don't. Sometimes in the first three minutes there may be, but I can tell you you don't, because there's no way in the world you've done enough digging in three minutes to determine that or not. The other one that I think is a real failing at the moment is, especially in roles where they get a lot of applications and in the screening side, there is a substantial amount of unconscious and conscious bias when people are looking at resumes.
We will all have cases of friends of ours or people we know who say, I applied for a job, it's perfect for me, I'd be fantastic in it. They didn't even get a first interview. Now, whether they're right or not doesn't matter, but let's say at least some of those people that have said it to us would be right. There are some people who are just not good at writing resumes. There are some who don't go and pay a resume writer to put together a professional resume for them. And yet people are determining whether they're even going to get looked at based on reading. Probably Two paragraphs of the COVID letter and maybe three quarters of the first page of their resume and they're either in or out from there.
And then there's also the unconscious bias. And it could be because of what suburb or what town they live in. It could be because of their gender, it could be because of the length of their surname. There's a whole lot of stuff there. Whether people like it or not, there's unconscious bias.
So the screening process, you know, we've been concerned about this for a long, long time. And, you know, because of COVID we've been able to now provide to organizations unlimited psychometric assessments. So you can actually use a psychometric instrument to screen candidates up front for the type of beast you're after. Which then means that if they're not very good at resume writing or it doesn't matter where they come from or what they are or any of that stuff is if they have a certain fit and above, you've got to have a look at them, which levels the playing field for everybody and essentially eradicates unconscious bias. So unconscious bias would be the third one that I think people have to be really careful.
[00:26:31] Speaker A: Yeah, fantastic points. I really love that psychological contract scenario. I've never heard that term before, but I get exactly what you're saying. If that alignment's not there from, you know, day one, then yeah, you certainly have some problems, don't you?
[00:26:46] Speaker B: Well, you've broken trust. And you know, the other thing about selection is it's the opportunity, especially for the hiring manager, so who the person's going to report to, but for the organization as a whole. So HR professionals have to really take this on board.
It's the opportunity to show how professional an organization you are. And too many times people treat candidates, I was going to say with disdain, and that's probably unfair, but they don't treat them with the respect they should treat them. Every candidate. And they don't take into account that people talk to other people and people can become clients of yours further down the track, you know, in 10 years time they could be running a company of which you're tendering for and they remember your company is being very poor. You've got to treat your candidates with a huge amount of respect and a lot of people don't do that. They have them waiting when they shouldn't. They say, I'm going to get back to you by a certain date. But they don't. You know, we are really firm whenever we're doing our own recruitment is we set the timelines down. And when we have the interviews with, you know, the first interview, we give them the timelines. And the timelines we give are timelines we know we're always going to beat. We're always going to be in front of that because it shows the professionalism of the organization. You're not there to become friends with them. You're there to show them that you're highly professional. And I think, you know, one of the mistakes that, that hiring managers make is they more it's about finding out what they like the person. And you know, what it's not about like, it's about whether the person is going to be a future high performer. And the interview, the selection process is not an opportunity for people to hire their next best mate. It's not about that. And sometimes you're going to be hiring people that you don't particularly like personally, but it's not about you. It's about how they're going to perform in the role and whether they're going to be a high performer. So I mentioned earlier that, you know, the recruitment process is a process and we provide our clients with essentially the fact sheets of being able to keep it as a process. And I think that really helps them and happy to provide it to your listeners as well because it's important for us.
I don't care whether people use our services or not, but I want them to give their employees, their candidates and future employees the best experience ever.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: And I'm going to get you to share what you think may be the best tool around that interview process that you guys have. But I've got to share a short story because what you just said resonated me around the disrespect I think that organizations can show candidates. And I. My wife, she's. She's working, had been working for a while now, but during the process of finding a role, she had a couple of interviews. And one of the interviews she actually got was for a funeral company. And she had the interview, felt really good. She followed up a number of times, they never got back to her at all. And I thought, wow, a funeral company that doesn't have the respect about people, even when they've had an interview to get back to them and say, look, you've not been successful. I just could not believe it. And the taste that leaves in your mouth. And then you think, would you ever put your loved ones that have passed away to that funeral company? I know I wouldn't because I know how they treat people.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: Yep. And I'm sure Your wife and you have told many people and told them the name of that funeral home and they'll never use it. And that's exactly right.
It's courtesy, you know, and we talk about common courtesy and unfortunately, for some reason, a lot of people think that the candidates don't deserve the courtesy that they would provide their clients. Well, I think they do. I think all candidates deserve the same courtesy. All candidates.
A candidate should never have to chase up an employer, especially after they've had an interview. They shouldn't have to chase them up to where it is. The employer should be proactive. If they don't think they're the right person, tell them, you know, that's fine, but they should never have to chase them up. It should never. They should never have to do that, you know, and one of the. One of the other things is, if a candidate doesn't get a role, the highest respect and compliment you can ever get as an organisation is when they tell their friends and say, you know, I missed out on this role and I'm really shattered that I didn't get it. Because I've got to tell you, they were fantastic to deal with. They'd be great to work for, you know, it's a shame I didn't get it, you know, if ever you get a chance to work for them, I reckon you should have a look at them, because even though they didn't get the role, they'll sing you praises and that's what you want.
[00:31:18] Speaker A: Such a great point. I've given you a little bit of time to think in the background while you've been saying that, so I gave you the lead in. You've got so many tools available. I want to narrow it down to this interview process. If I'm a business and I need some help in this area and PeopleLogica is a great place to come. What is a tool you think offers the best value? If they just had the resource or the budget, just to. Just to have one at their disposal for the interview process or in that process of recruiting.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: There's a lot of psychometric assessments out and there's quite a few very good ones, but there's a lot that aren't very good and will send you down the wrong direction.
To get the best out of the interview process, you need to use a psychometric instrument. That's the first thing when, if you're talking to any provider is the ones that you need to use are ones that have a distortion scale in there. So they actually measure. They measure the candidate's candor. So they measure the quality of the information being provided by the candidate and they need to have, it's called a coefficient alpha score, a Cronbach's coefficient alpha score. They need to be over 0.70 because anything below that is not reliable enough for selection. It's reliable enough for internal coaching, mentoring and other stuff. So, you know, discomised Briggs, you know, has really good applications within there, but it's got to be above first selection. And you know, we, we offer two platforms and I know no one likes spending money they don't want to, and especially in today's times, but I think people have to look at it as an investment and an insurance policy because I can tell you that the cost of recruiting a poor performer is 100 times more, if not more, than the cost of actually making sure you don't recruit them in the first place.
So to answer your question is you need to have a psychometric assessment that's validated, that's reliable, that provides you with an interview guide that measures the person's fit to the role that you're looking at. And it not only measures their fit, but it identifies where the potential barriers are and then provides you with the behavioural interview questions to drill down in all of those areas to satisfy yourself whether it's manageable. So that would be the number one tool to use.
[00:33:36] Speaker A: Thank you, mate. And I really want you just to riff on this for maybe a minute or two. What are those costs that you see day to day in businesses of getting the wrong person into the organization?
[00:33:50] Speaker B: Look, there's a lot of calculators out there and they're all based on it. And globally it's pretty well accepted that the cost of recruiting a poor performer or the cost of losing a high performer. So you've got the two ends of the spectrum. So one is bringing on a poor performer, the other one is losing a high performer and, you know, retaining. We'll talk about retaining, you know, top talent later. But so the way they look at the cost is you take the base salary and you look at it's between 50% to 250% of the base salary. So for an entry level employee, so an employee on, you know, between 40 and 60, $70,000 or so, it would be about 50% of their base salary. So your cost of bringing on a poor performer or losing a top performer is going to be around 30, $35,000. You don't see it on your bottom line because it's all the time that your management team spends trying to deal with problems and fixing things up. And that is a massive cost, let alone retraining costs and all and recruitment costs to replace them and everything else that goes in.
And then up to about 250% where you get up into the executive roles, executive roles that have impact. Executive roles where let's say they're on $200,000. Well, that cost can be half a million dollar cost to the organization because of the catch up, because of the lost knowledge and everything else. So it's between 50% and 250% of the base salary.
[00:35:24] Speaker A: Wow. It's an unbelievable cost. And just relate that to. Look, it's an unbelievable cost for any business. But if you think about small medium businesses, that's a massive impact, isn't it?
[00:35:34] Speaker B: And it's really just. Sorry, Brennan. And is if you're a smaller business, you know, and you've got less than 20 employees, you can't afford to have substandard employees running. You just can't afford it. It's far too high a cost. If you're a big multinational with 5000 employees plus you can have hundreds of them walking around and it's okay, it's fine. But you can't afford it when you're a small business. And we talked about before, no one likes spending money when they don't want to. But I reckon if you said to every small business owner and also every large business executive, you know, for the cost of 1,000 or dollars or less, to essentially measure the fit and measure the suitability of your three shortlisted candidates, that's probably about the best thousand dollars of insurance you can ever spend. When you think of that, you know, if your average manager is being paid 100 odd dollars an hour on the books, it doesn't take long to chew through 10 hours of performance management time because you've got a substandard performer there.
[00:36:39] Speaker A: Let's get into this retaining talent. So we've attracted some talent, we've interviewed some talent and there's a bit of a process around that. Again, I'm sure you don't sign up to the belief that one interview again, three or four minutes and you sorted, you found the talent you need. But let's get into the retaining talent. Why is that part so important? And what do companies need to do to retain top talent?
[00:37:01] Speaker B: And I think there's also an extra level on this, which is the belief, whether rightly or wrongly, that millennials are changing jobs a lot more now as well and moving around a lot. So the retention of talent. You work so hard to get on really good talent and you work so hard to foster them and to essentially extract the benefits of the organization from them, you need to work as equally as hard at the retention side with them. So, for example, my view for part of my talent retention is none of my employees have ever asked for a pay rise. And the reason they've never asked for a pay rise is because every six months I have in my diary and I look at every one of those employees and I ask myself one really simple question, and that is, if they handed their resignation into me today, what would I have done two months ago to make sure that didn't happen? And so every six months, that's the question I ask myself. So now, whether that is an increase in salary, whether it's. It's providing a dinner for them and their partner to go out dinner or whether it's doing something else, it doesn't matter what you're doing, but it's being really honest with yourself of who is your key talent and actually putting effort and thought into retaining them.
And it does start back to the first day on the job. You know, the first day that somebody walks into an organization, far too often this happens where they walk into the office, the receptionist doesn't know who they are, they're made to wait 15 minutes for the manager to come out. They get in there and they say, yeah, we haven't quite got all the schedule organized and we haven't got this.
The first day will absolutely imprint on the person to whether this is an organisation that they should stay in or not.
Everybody, when they change jobs, they're really nervous whether they actually did the right thing. And it doesn't matter how confident they are about the new job they're going into, there's still that little bit inside their stomach that is going, oh, I hope I did the right thing. And that first day we have it, when they come in, they've already on their computer and within their outlook, it already has blocked out all the meetings they're having with all the people.
We don't start people on Mondays, we start them on Wednesdays because it's a really high learning environment in our environment. So three days is enough, otherwise they'll feel like a jelly up in the top of the head. So we have those three days, then they have a weekend and allows them to think it through. But we have their essentially the whole week and a half plan. The first week and a half is all planned within their diary. And if it's a Larger organization, you have their receptionist. When the person comes in, the receptionist should know, they should say, how you going, Mark? Welcome to the team. You know, I'll just go and get Bill and Bill come in and Bill's out there, you know, one minute later, takes you in. If you've got business cards, they're already sitting there. If it's a. If you've got a company car, the keys are already there, you've got all the forms that you need to sign and everything's organized because then that person will go home and say to their partner or spouse or mates, say, I made a great decision. How good is this? And that really flows over and then the next part of it is, part of that onboarding process is to really show that your principal concern is for your new employee to really love their job and for them to be successful. Your concern is all about them loving their job and being successful.
Not about where they just get the sense that they're just another cog in the wheel just for you to do what you need to do. And I think that's really important as well.
[00:40:50] Speaker A: Yeah, once again, fantastic points. And I guess my takeaway to sum a little bit of that up is really about the most effective thing you can do is be prepared and make them feel welcome. Flowing on from that, let's say that first few weeks has gone really, really well and they're into their stride.
Is there a most effective tip? Can I say that you think is really, really important for the organisation or particularly the leader that this person is being led by to do regularly?
[00:41:21] Speaker B: So if you've used psychometric assessments for the recruitment side, then you also then get coaching reports at the back end and so they give a range of coaching, mentoring and training suggestion that will mitigate any of those potential barriers to success. So from day one, you're actually looking at that. So if you've used assessments to do that, then on the onboarding stage, you actually sit down with the new employee, you give them their individual profile. So it's a profile on themselves. It came out of the back end of the, of the assessment and then when they've gone through that, then you'll have the discussion that goes like this. What we found through the assessment is that you're more assertive than what this position typically requires.
So this is what we're going to do. So the manager would have pulled the. Either the mentoring or coaching suggestion out of the coaching report. And so this is what we do. So you actually, and you have a maximum of four things per employee. So they actually talk about how the manager is going to flex their management style to suit the employee instead of them just treating everybody the same. And obviously that has a huge impact on their first day as well, because they're going, not only do they treat me with respect and it's been fantastic, they've already identified where I could potentially trip up. And we've got, we've got a thing in place. So what comes out of that then is an employee action plan. So the employee then develops an employee action plan. If you're not using assessments, then to your point, three weeks down the track is they need to develop that employee action plan. So we develop it on the first day. But you don't have that knowledge if you don't have the assessment results. So you've got to wait until you see the person for the first three weeks and probably you won't have a great knowledge of them, but at least you can start on them. But put together an employee action plan and show the employee that you as a manager are just as committed to their success as you are to your own success.
[00:43:23] Speaker A: So, Mike, once again, you. So many fantastic points and I guess what I want to understand from you again, in your extensive experience, coaching can be difficult for leaders.
How much easier have you found it for leaders in order to become better coaches of their people and help their people improve? When they've got that sort of information, information to hand, whether that's an action plan that you know they've had some help devise, or whether they've used some tools that PeopleLogica provide, how much easier, in your experience, do you think they find it to have those sort of coaching conversations?
[00:43:56] Speaker B: Now, the biggest challenge that we've all had is when you're promoted to being a supervisor or when you're promoted to being a manager, no one actually gives you any training on how to actually manage people. And I think all of us, when we first start managing people, we're all like blind men in a dark room, you know, walking around trying to work out what we actually do. And I know I certainly wasn't because no one, no one gives you the guidance and the tips on how to actually do it. So I think there's a couple of things. And also, let's not forget, we know people leave managers, they don't leave companies. And there is a lot of organizations will invest in leadership development for their executive leadership team and that's fine, you need to do that. But they seem to forget one fundamental characteristic of nearly all companies is the vast majority of all the employees report to mid level management. They don't report to senior management.
And one of our drives and passion is that organisations should develop leadership capability at all levels, not just the executive level, at all levels and especially at mid level management, but also especially at supervisory level. No one ever does it, you know, and by using the tools, you know, the people analytics with coaching reports and all that, there's also leadership reports, there's team leadership reports. You know, one of the things we're really big on is 360 leadership surveys. And I personally believe that 360 leadership surveys are the most effective personal leadership development tool going around. But I also recognize that a lot of them aren't done very well. And the process, it's all about the process for 360 leadership. 360 leadership. If it's not done well, it can actually do more damage than help.
So whoever you're using or if you're going to do a 360 leadership program, just make sure they're really good. Check the ask, get to know their process so that the process is really strong because it's about nurturing your managers to become better leaders. And every dollar invested in increasing leadership potential within an organization, I guarantee you will be returned to the bottom line and will be returned in increased revenue, increased profitability and most importantly probably is increased customer service level.
[00:46:27] Speaker A: Mate. And I'll tell you what, I wish we had time to dig into that because that sounds like just a whole other podcast conversation. So we'll arrange that for some time in the future. Mate, there's a lot of things come out today that I reckon we could just dive into in another hour or so for another time.
Biggest challenge of all because again, all of the information you've shared, I want you to get it down to maybe one bit of advice. But when we're talking about this topic, attracting, selecting and retaining high performing talent, what would be that single biggest bit of advice you would give to leaders out there in order to get them on the journey on the right path around attracting, selecting and retaining high performing talent?
[00:47:09] Speaker B: It's a $10 million question, isn't it really?
[00:47:13] Speaker A: I hope to sell it after the episode.
[00:47:17] Speaker B: Well, I think the best tip I can give to anybody is stop hiring on like stop using your gut to hire. If you're not hiring someone on fit, then you're never going to get the best outcome. The reality is, you know, for all of your listeners, they will be using advanced technology in every other part of their business. In finance in operations, in sales, in manufacturing. They will be upgrading their technology, they'll be looking at new technology, they'll be piloting new technology.
For some reason, when it gets to HR and gets to people, it stops. And it just doesn't make sense.
Technology we know in every other part of the business improves the outcome. And that's what it does. We know technology, people, analytics in the HR part absolutely improves the outcome. You know, it's got an ROI of well over 20 times, far more than most of the technology you have in your operations side and sales and all of that.
And a lot of it is, I think is because, because we're all people. Everybody thinks that they know other people. And you know what, it doesn't work that way. I can tell you we've had multiple occasions where someone has been working for a manager for two, three years and then we put them through our assessments and then when we're doing the debrief on it, the manager will say, well, that's not right. And I just look at the person who's done the assessment. I said, do you want to tell him or do you want me to? And every time they'll say, that is me. I just don't behave like that in the workplace. So, so that, that my biggest tip is stop hiring on like, stop using your gut, you know, measure fit, use technology and start piloting, start trying different stuff. Even if you're using people analytics at the moment, keep piloting stuff, always test it, see what else is out there. Because you don't know what you don't know.
[00:49:13] Speaker A: So well said, mate. And I think it is quite fascinating that maybe a business, they could spend, I don't know, a million bucks on a bit of new technology or a new machinery, but they may not spend $1,000 on a leadership course or some bit of analytics to help better understand their people and help them become better employees. So mate, thank you very much for that. How can our listeners get hold of you, mate?
[00:49:36] Speaker B: Look, can send an email, send it directly to me, markipelogica.com or call us here in the office and you know, got a whole team that love to have a chat to you. And, and the number is 029-936-9000 or go to our website, which I'm sure the details will be there for that. Look, at the end of the day, we just want every company to be doing it better. We, we will provide all your leaders access to our resource center, which has a whole lot of fact sheets and tips and all of that and whether they want to use our direct services or not, we just want them to do it better. And so if they want access to all of that, just send us an email or give us a call and connect them up to that so that hopefully with at least that they can start heading in the right direction. And then when they're ready to be really serious about it, or even if they're using assessments at the moment, is have a look at what's around. We have great deals on running pilots and it's a really cheap way to see how you can improve your business. And businesses are all about people. So you get the people right, you're gonna be far better off.
[00:50:46] Speaker A: Absolutely, mate. And look, we were gonna put all of this stuff into the show notes and the links and all that sort of stuff so people will be able to access it, no problems. But thank you very much for that, that's fantastic. Again, anything that we can get out there to help other leaders, myself and whoever, when working with businesses is very, very handy.
And I have to testament to you, you're so generous with your time. You and I have had a number of conversations. We met through Bill Clifton up at Banlaw up in Newcastle. Thanks Bill. A fantastic guy as well. And I know Mark, you're doing fantastic work with those guys. So thank you so much for today. I found this conversation absolutely fascinating. I think we've gone for a little bit longer than what I expected, but I could have gone for so much longer, mate. There's so many things that like your mind, your experience, the work that you're doing is so helpful for businesses, so helpful for leaders, and you're just a great bloke. So thank you very much for being a guest on the Culture of Things podcast.
[00:51:42] Speaker B: Thanks Brendan, and really thank you to everybody, all of your listeners. And like I said, I'm serious about it. We're here to help you, so if you need anything to help, just contact us.
[00:52:03] Speaker A: Mark's experience in the people analytics space is first class. Everything he shares in our interview makes so much sense. It would be hard for any leader to argue why they wouldn't use some of the tools available to help attract, select and retain high performing talent. As Mark said, leadership is a mindset. The mindset of great leaders involves a focus on continuous improvement which would lead them to improving on the traditional and underperforming recruitment process. These were my three key takeaways from my conversation with Mark. My first key takeaway, recruitment is a process.
As Mark explained, there is a way to attract Quality candidates Select quality candidates and retain high performing people. If you get good at the process and use some tools to help refine it, your chances of working with high performers increases dramatically. Don't treat recruitment as Russian roulette. Develop a recruitment process and follow it. My second key takeaway Leaders are honest with themselves. If someone in their team isn't performing, they will look at themselves first. They will ask themselves questions like have I given them an environment to shine? Or have I coached them to improve their performance?
Leaders have an obligation to do all they can to coach people to high performance. If it's not happening, they need to look at themselves first.
My third key takeaway Leaders treat candidates with respect.
A candidate should never have to chase an employer to find out what's going on. Whether the candidate gets the job or not, they will tell people about their experience.
If a person doesn't get the job, you want them to talk highly about the organisation, not dish it to all their friends.
Real leaders treat all candidates with respect.
So in summary, my three key takeaways Recruitment is a process.
Leaders are honest with themselves and leaders treat candidates with respect. I want to give a big shout out to Alex and Joe from the Glenn Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Centre. They're both listeners of the podcast and have been using the information to support them on their leadership journey. They are already fine community leaders but like all leaders, know that we can always improve. Thanks guys. I appreciate both of you. You can find the Culture of things on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Make sure you follow our pages to get our exclusive the Culture of Things content. If you have any questions or feedback about this episode, please feel free to send me a message. Brendanrogers. Com AU thank you for listening. Stay safe until next time.
