Symmetra

A flexibility revolution is happening in Australian organisations, with flexible work being identified as the number one area of priority for sustainable workforce strategy[1].  At Symmetra, we have certainly noticed an increasing appetite for flexibility initiatives that create real change.

Despite this popularity surge, some high profile organisations locally and globally have been pulling back on their culture of flexibility, giving people the impression that those who bravely embraced this culture have come to realise it was nothing more than a failed experiment.

Reverting back to the past where people were required to be physically present during set times, going back to the ‘good old days’, right at a time in our history where the very nature and concept of work is evolving at exponential speed, seems odd.

The ‘good old days’ when flexibility was the exception, not the norm.

Creating flexible work cultures is now seen as a strategic imperative to ensure that organisations remain competitive.

This business case is driven by many factors, such as rapid technology advancement and changing business models.  We are seeing a movement towards a globalised economy where our customers and colleagues could be anywhere in the world.  Working across multiple time zones means that we are slowly saying goodbye to ‘business hours’.

Technology is opening up new ways of interacting with our customers and also shifting their expectations in a digital economy.  There is a growing acceptance that organisations need to adapt to the rapid evolution of business and society – having an agile, adaptive and productive workforce is seen as an imperative that no organisation can afford to overlook. 

Trying out flexibility at work and not achieving the anticipated success does not mean we should dismiss it – it simply signifies that this change is not easy.  Instead of going backwards we need to learn from past trials (and failures!) to get better at it.

The benefits of working face to face cannot be dismissed.  The social aspects of work, the ability to spontaneously collaborate and communicate with ease are worth valuing.  To ensure that the benefits of flexibility are achieved, while the benefits of face time are not lost, a much more strategic and systemic approach to change needs to be adopted.

In our work, we see that for every negative case, there are many more organisations that are quietly thriving as a result of moving towards this modern workplace culture.  It is when times get hard and organisations need to ask employees to dig deep, flexibility can help make this possible.

Working in a flexible way that breaks down the traditional meaning of what ‘work’ is and how it is done is a hallmark of new businesses that are rising and taking over markets that were previously considered safe houses.  Just think of how online retail purchasing has impacted bricks and mortar stores in such a short amount of time – the on demand, 24/7 way of meeting customer needs has become a growing feature of the new age of work[2].  Without flexibility, these customer expectations could not be met and it is only a matter of time before they will be met by a competitor.

Flexible work culture is the modern evolution of the workplace and if businesses want to remain competitive into the future, they need to ensure they are equipped to deal with it.

If we see flexibility as long term, permanent cultural change and not a ‘phase’ that people will soon get over, it becomes clear that solutions to drive this change need a long term, strategic approach synchronised with business strategy.  This is not a feel good topic for a leadership forum, or something that will shift as a result of a single workshop. Those who want to see a real change recognise the need for a systemic process that is tailored and multi-phased. 

This means engagement and support from leadership on the business case for flexibility and challenging people’s assumptions about what it means to work in this way.  It means letting go of our long-held beliefs of who can or should access flexible work and for what reasons.  It means understanding the real barriers to change and taking proactive steps to embed a flexible work culture at every level.  It means recognising the value of an agile and adaptable workforce and challenging the perception of flexible work arrangements as an employee perk.

Change is not easy and it means learning new ways of doing business.  But the benefits of embedding flexible work culture are immense, both to individuals and to businesses.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON SYMMETRA’S FLEXIBLE WORK SOLUTIONS, VISIT OUR FLEXAGILITY PAGE, CALL US ON +61 (0) 2 8570 9400 OR EMAIL FLEX@symmetra.com.au  

As this national public holiday approaches, it is an important to recognise that not every Australian celebrates this day.  There are many mixed feelings within our society, having multiple meanings as a day of both celebration and of mourning.

Each year, Australia Day is one of the highlights of the summer.  Perfectly positioned in the calendar to extend our season of celebration into late January, Australia day has become an annual tradition, celebrated nationally with BBQs, beach parties and music festivals.

New South Wales has long celebrated this day, with Sydney being the focal point of initial British occupation, but January 26 came to the fore as a day of celebration during the 1988 bicentenary, with all states and territories joining New South Wales in their annual tradition.

Over the past two decades, this has evolved as a symbolic day of national pride through Australian of the Year ceremonies and becoming a popular day for citizenship events.  Even though it feels like things have always been this way, the Australia Day long weekend became official in 1994, when it became a national public holiday.

Australia day marks the date that Captain Arthur Phillip formally took possession of New South Wales and raised the British flag back in 1788.  For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, this represents a time of deep loss of rights, family, land and culture. This is why Australia Day is sometimes called Invasion Day or Survival Day.

We encourage people to consider that, for some, Australia Day can evoke feelings of pain, loss and shame for Australia’s Indigenous history.   The use of the Australian Flag as a symbol and the presence of the Union Jack provides a reminder of the British colonisation and dispossession of our Indigenous people.

The National Australia Day Council’s motto, introduced in 1986 in preparation for the Bicentenary, centred on the national flag. Source: National Australia Day Council, National Archives of Australia: C4688, box 1 (www.australiaday.org.au)

It is not to say that either those who celebrate or mourn are correct in their perspective. However, a level of cultural sensitivity and an open mind to multiple perspectives is necessary.

For some it is a day of joy, for others it is a day of sorrow.  For everyone, it is an opportunity to have the conversation about reconciliation, to be proud of our diverse culture and open up conversations about both our past and our future.   While considering the broad spectrum of emotions that Australia Day arouses in us, we can remain optimistic about a future where we build a more inclusive culture, recognising the impact of colonisation on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, and work towards closing the gap between indigenous and other Australians.

To Continue the conversation in your organisation, check out Symmetra’s First Australians Workshop.

For more information on Australia Day and its history, check out www.australiaday.org.au

An article by Errol Price, Legal Director, Symmetra

The legal profession in Australia, like its counterparts in other advanced jurisdictions, is facing a period of radical change. The business model which has served the profession well for over a century is now starting to show strains and cracks.

The changes will take place in many areas, but chief amongst these will be the people composition of firms, how law firm members are recruited, promoted, mentored and selected for assignments.

The profession is aware of the seismic shifts that are taking place and it is well understood that those legal firms which are able to adapt to the change most quickly or better still to anticipate some of them, will survive and prosper; those that cannot will fall by the wayside and may well disappear.

Working with some of Australia’s leading legal firms, Symmetra is delivering specialised initiatives to develop leaders of the profession to gain new perspectives on proactively meeting the challenge.  Symmetra has noticed a growing demand for programmes such as diversity and inclusion as well as unconscious bias, that address the unique challenges that lie ahead for the legal industry.

The forces which are currently impacting on the legal system have arrived simultaneously from a number of unrelated sources. The factors Symmetra identifies as driving this change are:

Pressure on costs

Power is shifting from the suppliers to the purchasers of legal services. Clients are becoming more cost conscious and discerning. Remuneration will be increasingly linked to product and results – billable hours will become a rarity in time. Large corporations, in particular, will use their financial muscle and the knowledge of their in-house counsel to get the best deal.

Increasing awareness and sophistication of clients

Consumers of services whether they be medical, accounting or legal have greater access to information through the internet and through social media which will enable them to constantly monitor and evaluate the cost, quality and effectiveness of the services which they purchase. Lawyers will have to be increasingly transparent and accountable at every stage of delivery.

Disaggregation or commoditization

Legal services of a fairly routine or non-complex kind will increasingly become commoditized. They will be supplied by businesses or professionals not necessarily peopled by trained lawyers. High-end and complex legal services will continue to be delivered by trained lawyers, but lengthy legal processes will be broken down into smaller and discrete parts with the more straight-forward ones being outsourced to organisations with lower cost structures

Globalisation

Markets for legal services will become globalised and will begin to emulate to a certain extent the way commerce generally has become globalised. Some legal services will continue to be restricted by regulation to locals but even this will succumb to internationalisation as foreign firms merge with or take-over local firms or simply enter the local legal marketplace.

Technological developments

Technology is developing so rapidly and is changing virtually every conceivable industry so radically that it is not possible to envisage all the ways in which it will reconfigure the legal profession. Some of the likely advances and innovations will include:

• Online dispute resolution
• Electronic market place where sellers of legal services can present their offerings, credentials and fee structures and buyers can purchase their services in much the same way as they do with other products on the internet
• Artificial intelligence – computers are now at the point where they no longer simply store and sort vast amounts of data but can engage in solving complex problems in a manner which mimics human thought, only much faster. Legal problems will in future become increasingly the domain of computer resolution.
• Social networking is increasingly becoming a mode of business communication and this is something that will have to be embrace by the legal profession

New Competitors

As the market for legal services becomes liberalised and more transparent, competitors from non-traditional sources will undoubtedly emerge. Accounting firms and others whose services intersect with legal regulation and advice will increasingly broaden the range of their legal offerings.

Almost all individuals and organisations are notoriously resistant to change but perhaps none more so than the legal profession.

How adaptable to change is the legal industry?

In 2010, a group of psychological researchers in the USA (Foster, Richard, Rohrer and Sirkin) comparing the personality traits of 1800 lawyers against 4800 high-level managers and other professionals concluded that the lawyers scored higher on being:

• Excitable – becoming tense and overly critical
• Cautious – being reluctant to take risks
• Sceptical – a tendency to become argumentative as well as suspicious of others.

They scored lower on the characteristics of being bold; colourful, mischievous and imaginative.

The difficulty, therefore, is that the legal profession appears to be fundamentally averse to change, but nonetheless recognises that it is inevitable. Since most lawyers are steeped in the ethos of their profession and are inherently cautious and sceptical of rapid changes, those who occupy the most senior and powerful positions are unlikely to be the originators of the most effective changes.

A critical first step in meeting the new wave of challenges is for legal firms and institutions to fully and unambiguously embrace diversity and use it to embark on a road of cultural reorientation.

Diversity in this sense is not a numbers game – simply increasing the head-count of women and minorities. It requires the absorption of people into the organisation from many different spheres – including non-lawyers – whose conceptual framework is fundamentally different from the Anglo-white males currently populating the top echelons of Australia’s legal professions.

In this way, new ideas, new technologies, new talents, structure and business models will come to the fore and help Australia become a dynamic service driven economy in the 21^st century.

Heather Price, Symmetra CEO, was recently featured on the Ambition website, discussing Unconscious Bias.

To read the article, check out the Ambition Website

Yahoo has become the talk of Twitter and Silicon Valley for its provocative move to terminate the option to telecommute, generating international debate over workplace flexibility. Critics advised that employee morale will plummet, Yahoo will lose key people, and Yahoo’s efforts to enhance collaboration will backfire.

There’s plenty of research that seems to support these grim predictions. In 2012, Regus conducted a survey globally with 16,000 senior executives. The survey found that flexible working helps companies overcome barriers for growth.

Yahoo is a fascinating case because it exposes the underlying tensions in the pattern of decentralising knowledge with employees working out of the office.

It assumes that employees who are not physically present are contributing less. Yet, numerous studies have revealed that employees working offsite, contribute more or the same as those working onsite. Actually, many work overtime to compensate for their lack of presence and also as a result of the access that technology has engendered.

There is the perceived benefit that organisations are able to acquire and leverage more value from employees who are ‘present’ in the office. However, while the Yahoo memo claims that “innovation, collaboration and interaction” are the outcome of being present at work, this assertion is not necessarily true.

The theory that extracting more time and presence from employees will increase productivity is misinformed and deceptive.  In the Regus survey, 72 per cent of respondents globally – 73 per cent in Australia – said their company is more productive as a direct result of flexible working.

A further 68 per cent believe that flexible working creates additional revenue bringing real, tangible results to support the case for flexible working.

Unquestionably, sometimes employees need to work extra hours to complete particular tasks or during certain project phases, but creating an organisational culture that demands continuous presence can lead to a poor sense of wellbeing and ineffectiveness.

Apart from the business benefit, the Regus study confirms that 58 per cent of employees globally – 63 per cent of Australians – believe that they feel more energised and motivated, highlighting that flexible working practices are also a key talent retention tool.

Flexible ways of working are becoming the norm globally, driving economic growth and accommodating for work and family demands, thus improving employment opportunities for all.

The demand for flexibility no longer comes only from working mothers. It comes from working fathers; from people who want to do further study; mature workers who want to gradually transition into retirement; and from Australians who have carer responsibilities.

Thus, Yahoo’s decision is inherently inequitable. For some employees, chiefly those with carer responsibilities, they will miss out on the very opportunities that enabled them to work, participate and innovate in the first place.

It is not surprising that among the top 100 companies on Forbes’ 2012 list of the best companies to work for, 84 offer telecommuting benefits.

So what is really behind this recent reaction against supporting flexible working? Employees say Mayer made the decision to resolve problems particular to Yahoo not as a blanket statement against working remotely.

”Morale was terrible because the company was thought to be dying,” said a former Yahoo manager. ”When you have a workforce that is not terribly motivated, it built bad habits over years.”

Yahoo had become an organisation full of directionless employees with low morale, where a bloated administration had made Yahoo uncompetitive: ”In the tech world it was such a bummer to say you worked for Yahoo,” said a former senior employee.

It has also been suggested that Mayer was looking to get rid of unproductive workers without the costs associated with redundancies.

What is clear is that Yahoo’s reaction is unlikely to resolve the issues acknowledged in the memo as it doesn’t focus on where and how these attributes are shaped.

From an employee perspective, it may feel that by demanding presence in the office, management is attempting to extricate more time and energy from them through surveillance.

Moreover, it seems to be a regressive step in the expansion of flexible work options that are proven to be beneficial for organisations and their employees.

At Cisco, for example, teleworking is encouraged, generating an estimated annual savings of $277 million in productivity.  A 2008 internal survey found that 75 per cent felt the timeliness of their work was improved, and 83 per cent said their ability to communicate and collaborate was the same as, if not better than, it was when working on site.

If productivity and collaboration are really the issue, then Yahoo’s problem may not be employees working from home, but perhaps managers who lack the knowledge and skills to implement flexibility in a way that benefits both individuals and the company.

In November 2012, The Australian Federal Government followed through on their promise to modernise and improve on the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act.  The new amended act has been developed to drive improved gender equality outcomes and provide business with a new framework for gender equality.

So…  what’s new?

1. New name and new focus.  This new legislation has changed from Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act to The Workplace Gender Equality Act.
2. New Objectives.  As suggested by the name change, the objectives of the act is taking the emphasis off women and making it about gender equality.
3. Change in reporting.  Online reporting, access to data from previous years and the ability to compare with others and industries will all be developed.
4. New power to the agency.  The funding for WGEA has doubled and their role has been expanded to include business support, resources and assistance to organisations.
5. CEO sign off.  Top-level support for organisational change towards gender equality is crucial, and CEOs will now be required to sign off on the WGEA reporting.
6. Benchmarks.  These won’t be part of the compliance framework, but will be used to show how organisations are performing as compared to others in their industry.
7. Minimum standards.  Previously, there were no minimum standards in place.  These will now be set by industry and evidence based, to ensure that poor performing organisations can be identified.

Reporting to the WGEA

From 2014, non-public sector businesses with 100 or more employees will be required to report annually on six Gender Equality Indicators (GEIs).

GEI One: Gender composition of the workforce.

Organisations will need to report on their workplace profile by gender, employment status (part time, full time, casual, contract), as well as the occupational categories for managers and non-managers.  This includes data, plus the existence of any strategies or policies that support gender equality.

Starting in 2014, this reporting will be boosted to include following areas by gender and manager/non-manager:

• Composition of recruitment application
• Composition of applicants interviewed
• Composition of applicants appointed
• The number and proportion of promotions
• The number and proportion of resignations

GEI Two: Gender composition of governing bodies of relevant employers.

If there is a governing body, the gender profile must be reported on.  Organisations will also be required to report whether they have gender targets for this body.  It must also be stated whether selection of members is based on a formal, merit based strategy.

GEI Three: Equal remuneration between women and men.

Data on all forms of remuneration by gender will need to be reported.  Organisations will also need to report on what they are doing to address gender pay gaps – their remuneration policy and pay equity objectives included in this policy, whether or not they have analysed their gender pay gap and what steps they may have taken as a result.

GEI Four: Availability and utility of employment terms, conditions and practices relating to flexible working arrangements for employees and to working arrangements supporting employees with family or caring responsibilities.

This is the gender equality indicator that addresses parental leave and flexible work.  It is divided into two parts:

1. Employer Funded Paid Parental Leave.   How organisations pay it and how much they pay.  The 2014/2015 reporting will also introduce return to work from parental leave as well as the number of requests and approvals for extended parental leave requirements.
2. Employment Terms, Conditions and Practices such as:

• The availability of flexible working arrangements by gender and manager / non-manager
• Details of the policies or strategies in place for flexible work, to support carers or those who are impacted by domestic violence.
• Non-leave based measures such as subsidised child care, breastfeeding facilities and referral services for care.

GEI Five: Consultation with employees on issues concerning gender equality in the workplace.

Organisations must report on whether or not they consult with employees on matters specifically relating to gender equality.  Reporting includes the method of consultation, as well as who was consulted.

GEI Six:  Other matters specified by the minister.

Employers are to report on whether it has a sex based harassment and discrimination prevention strategy or policy in place.  This also includes the grievance process.  Organisations also have to report whether or not managers are given training on this topic and how often it is offered.

What happens if organisations do not comply?

Organisations who do not comply with the legislation may be publicly named, as well as be excluded from any deals with government, such as grants.

As you can see from the summary, organisations are required to report on the existence of many policies and strategies, but they  will not necessarily be penalised if they do not have them.  This is one of the criticisms of the Act – does it really force organisations to change their ways?

Written into the Act is Access Requirements.  Once a WGEA annual report is finalised, organisations must:

1. Inform its employees and members or shareholders that the report has been lodged.
2. Provide access to the report to employees and members or shareholders.
3. Give employees the opportunity to comment on the report.

This new Act will allow us all to distinguish between the organisations who are taking this challenge seriously and those who fulfil the minimum requirements.  A business that intends to be an attractive place for talented employees, one who meets their customers standards in corporate social responsibility and one that maintains the value of their brand should take these compliance standards very seriously.

These gender equality indicators will be measured, benchmarked and are the foundation of the minimum standards.  One of the big key differences of this legislation is the inclusion of business practices that lead to these outcomes.  These are the lead indicators that contribute to the gender equality outcomes.  This provides organisations with standards of practice that are based on evidence to drive greater gender equality.

However, these indicators are by no means an exhaustive list.  There are many things that are not included in the Act that are known to improve gender equality outcomes.  Indicators such as informal flexible work arrangements and embedding accountable gender targets at all levels are not there. It is the businesses that go to beyond the minimum compliance outlined by the Act and work towards best practice that will have the best gender equality outcomes and the resulting business benefits.

By Errol Price, Director – Legal.

It has often been remarked that the law lags behind Social and Economic changes.  We see this once again with the Law’s rather slow adaptation to significant social shifts regarding the rights of mothers returning to work after having children.

Between 1991 and 2011 (according to census data) the proportion of mothers with children under 18 years who were employed rose from 55% to 65%.

A recent report issued by the Australian Institute of Family Studies (Author Jennifer Baxter) ‘Parents Working Out Work’ has tracked the changes in maternal employment over the past 30 years.

In general mothers in Australia are returning to work sooner and in greater numbers after bearing children.  Mostly they prefer to work part-time.

While many employers have become attuned to the requirements of accommodating mothers returning from parental leave, it has to be said that often returning mothers experience difficulties when requesting part-time work.

Until recently, an aggrieved employee, refused part-time work after returning from parental leave and seeking legal redress, would have brought a discrimination claim based on family or carer responsibilities under State laws or the Federal Sex Discrimination Act.  Pursuing these claims is usually time-consuming and onerous and therefore not frequently undertaken. Many mothers who are refused part-time work by their previous employers prefer not to engage in a dispute and so take up work below their capabilities or choose not to work altogether.

The recent decision of Hanina Rind v Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees (2013) has opened up a new and probably simpler legal avenue.

Ms Rind’s employment was governed by an Enterprise Agreement which provided that a request to return to work on a part-time basis could be refused by the employer only on reasonable grounds related to the employer’s business.  However, after the birth of Ms Rind’s second child her employer, the Institute, insisted that she could only return to her job as an IT systems administrator on a full-time basis.  Ms Rind refused to return to work on this basis.

The employer contended that Ms Rind had thus abandoned her work, while she argued, on the other hand, that she had been constructively dismissed.  The Fair Work Commission hearing the dispute noted that some 4 months after Ms Rind was due to return, the employer had not yet filled the position with a full time employee.  Therefore the Commission concluded that the refusal to allow her to work part-time was unreasonable and she had been constructively dismissed.

Interestingly, the Commissioner noted that while in earlier times part-time work on returning from parental leave might have been considered a privilege, this is no longer the case.

In other words a switch from full-time to part-time work should be considered a basic right and a natural consequence of returning to work after bearing children.  Under the National Employment Standards which are part of the Fair Work Act, employees who have been working continuously for 12 months and have responsibilities to care for a child under school-going age or under 18 years with a disability may request in writing a change in working arrangements.

Although the Act does not provide a specific remedy if the employer unreasonably refuses this request, it would seem that this recent case does in fact provide a generic remedy of which employers need to be aware.

Kate Kelleher, a senior consultant with Symmetra attended Supply Nation’s Connect 2013 awards conference in Melbourne on May 14 and 15 this year.

Supply Nation provides a direct business to business purchasing link between corporate Australia, government agencies and Indigenous-owned businesses. They are otherwise known as a dating agency for business.

Kelleher, who is Supply Nation Certified herself, delivers Symmetra’s ‘Embedding Inclusion – First Australians’ cultural safety workshops.

Below is a blog from Kate about this exciting and inspirational event.

‘Australia’s biggest indigenous networking event’

Supply Nation, formerly known as AIMSC (the Australian Indigenous Minority Supplier Council), sponsored the conference. They are a business to business membership body and government approved certifier for Indigenous owned and managed companies.  This event was a Conference and Tradeshow for corporate and Government members to meet with certified Aboriginal owned businesses. The conference included local and international speakers, case studies on successful alliances; break out sessions on different aspects of achieving the Conference theme “turning contacts into contracts” and then a very well attended tradeshow that showcased the businesses.

David A. Hinson, National Director of the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) in the US, as our keynote speaker for Connect 2013. Mr Hinson captured the attention of the audience with his insights into business development and supplier diversity. He reflected upon the importance of flexibility in an ever-changing environment, and the need for exceptional marketing practices, fresh ideas and an open-minded approach to business. He also highlighted that in a diverse workplace, the desire to work together – irrespective of individual backgrounds – is of paramount importance and the key to making any organisation or project a success.

The standout moment for me

Overall – the talent, maturity and experience of the suppliers; the willingness of the members to engage and, as a ‘first-timer’, the friendliness of the people. The Coles-Yaru Water case study was a particularly successful story that had a big impact. It explains how Symmetra worked on a cultural safety roll-out with Coles in the ACT and NSW.  Coles attributed part of their success to having 600+ of their employees (at operational management level and above) participate in cultural awareness workshops.  Symmetra provided the training for about 50% of those workshops.

Kate Kelleher (second from right at front) with the Coles workshop participants.

Understanding the benefits of creating alliances with indigenous owned businesses

Empowerment

For the indigenous community there is  clear recognition that self-empowerment has numerous positive benefits, from the initial step of workforce participation, to the development of multi-million dollar businesses. This was described at the Conference as a ‘hand up’ rather than the stereotypical ‘handout’.  From the member’s perspective; exercising their social responsibility, engaging with a growing workforce demographic and diversifying their supply chain all come about through participation with Supply Nation and the businesses they certify.

Real Change

There was one personal story stood out to me. A female was left to bring up her two children after a violent relationship. She established her own business and with the assistance of the local Indigenous Chamber of Commerce and Supply Nation, she was able to expand her capacity and won a half million dollar contract (along with a regular monthly cash flow) from a major Corporate client.  When sitting with the Corporate Executive at the Awards dinner table on Wednesday night she was able to say to them face to face “You have no idea how this will transform the lives of me and my family”. She said they had tears in their eyes to know first hand that they were making a difference.

Accountability and transparency

Many Corporate and Government groups expressed determination to undertake a set amount of business with Aboriginal owned businesses, as either a commitment with their Indigenous Opportunities Program (IOP) or as a practical goal within their Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP).  Supply Nation certification takes the guess work out of the equation, providing more accountability and transparency for business looking to partner with indigenous suppliers.

The role that Symmetra plays

Symmetra provides a myth busting, cultural safety workshop “Embedding Inclusion – First Australians” which addresses the significant unconscious bias still prevalent in today’s workplace.