Retention, Engagement and Development - Talent and Leadership Roundtable | Article

The Whitehall & Industry Group (WIG) hosted our 3^rd Talent and Leadership roundtable with representation from senior professionals from a range of our cross-sector members. These are delegate-led safe spaces where people can collaborate and share challenges, ideas, and solutions.

We started the session by asking the delegates as to how they were feeling about their role and what the future was looking like in their organisations:

With context from September's labour market outlook and statistics from the Office National Statistics (ONS), we set the scene against the backdrop of current talent trends. There have been record levels of pay growth and fierce competition for hiring especially in key areas, but unemployment is rising at the fastest rate outside a recession. Whilst inflation dropped by 0.1% in September, this is not enough for organisations to deliver sustainable growth and pay rises. Unemployment is up to 4.3% which is the highest it has been in two years, and at the same time job vacancies have dropped below one million for the first time since June 2021 (though still 20% higher than pre-pandemic levels). Despite that, 23.6% of businesses still report struggling with a shortage of workers (source REC) so retention for organisations remains key and set the scene for an engaging discussion.

How to retain top talent when there are limitations on additional monetary benefits?

How do you define and identify Talent in the first place? What does “talent” mean beyond the elite and high potential? Is there a notion of talent for all, and we all are talent? And how do we best capture and utilise this, as organisations focus on the retention of talent. Key elements that came out of the discussion were:

Change programmes redefining talent – this involves resetting the whole conversation.
Being realistic about top talent and who is being targeted. How do we segment the organisation? Where is it crucial to retain people; where are people adding value to wider sector and may move; where might people permeate –gain experience and come back, ‘boomerang careers’ and how as people teams do we make the most of this.
‘Managed Moves’ – short term opportunities in other areas of the organisation as a good way of developing and retaining talent.
Internal and external shadowing – where you spend time in different parts of the same organisation, or an external organisation as good ways to develop knowledge sharing and best practice.
Secondments with external organisations, are also a good way to develop talent and bring in new ideas.
Publicly funded companies have struggled due to limitations on pay brackets. So looked at offering training instead, and others are moving them around the business into new areas.
Utilisation of the apprenticeship levy to keep and upskill staff – putting managers on programmes to learn new skills and consider other routes and ways to enhance careers.
For more junior staff, using an 80-20 approach has proved successful– an example was shared where one day a week is given to focus on development in an area that is of interest to the individual. i.e., front line role four days a week and one day focused on policy, or vice versa.

The concept of ‘Stay interviews’ is being used elsewhere, asking what is it that makes you stay, or what would make you stay? 500 stay interviews were taken in one organisation and the big topics that emerged were:

flexibility – hybrid, time, and space. Making the office work for collaboration time. They have completely redesigned the office with this in mind, and data collected has also shown that this has been beneficial commercially.
Wellbeing – support from the organisation about the individual's wellbeing and wellness is important. They have increased the number of mental health allies, information around financial wellbeing, coaching, support for family etc.
Wanting to give back – time off policies for giving back time, working on sustainability projects, schools outreach and social value.

As a result, retention is improved due to the environment, and they have been able to attract a more diverse candidate pool, being able to highlight this as part of their EVP and attraction methodologies.

Organisations have been encouraging staff to take up NED & Trustee roles as this not only helps their personal development, but also benefits the organisations they are volunteering/advising on. It is important though that organisations do allow time off for volunteering/trustee work. A reminder that WIG operates in this area - NED & Trustee recruitment - and are always willing to support if needed.

A common starting point for understanding what employees really want are employee survey results, what are they telling us? For example, one organisation developed a ‘Leaders Like You’ programme– this was designed for diverse colleagues based on feedback from the survey and has been very well received.

Line Managers

We touched upon line management capability and the importance of this to retention both of the line managers themselves as well as those they manage!. We referenced the excellent discussion we had with the Government People Group on the work that they are doing with regards to line management capability development. But we also discussed coaching – how can we improve line managers who have coaching responsibilities. How do we enable them to be better coaches, deploy more understanding and show strong EQ.

Becoming intentional about development for managers can really help line managers access “leadership capabilities”. Many organisations discussed how they are looking at the Leadership curriculum – and how to make it more human, more adaptable and also more practical, experiential and meaningful – WIG is focussed on cross-sector, experiential learning and we would be delighted to discuss how we might be able to support in leadership development. We also discussed social learning – with the current preference being that it is not too much classroom based or too online. Finding a way to use the time people are in the office, to use that time for learning in a more informal way was deemed preferential.

Mentoring was also discussed as being an excellent way of developing staff, for both internal and external programmes and we discussed how WIG can offer support for mentoring.

Line managers are the teachers of the corporate world. HR leaders need to provide better clarity of the expectations of line managers, support them further as they become increasingly overwhelmed at having to be stellar at both their delivery area, and being a fantastic manager – and increasingly having less time to do both. Recognition should also be forthcoming for strong line managers.

One organisation has had success using a manager Insight survey – you ask your team how they are being managed by you and then you have a strong insight into the areas of development that you need to consider, ideally with matched learning opportunities for you.

Advertising line management expectations: There has been a tendency to recruit subject matter expertise skills above line management capability, and organisations need to be clearer about both the experience needed and the actual role that they will be carrying out and whether one is more important than the other, or where the time will be spent.

There was general agreement that leadership and management have been underinvested in over the years, and the pandemic emphasised that at our peril.

Creating a futureproof workforce – the role of HR in developing greater digital capability, supporting job design and restructures

Often the digital department is accountable for IT roll outs and the learning team is responsible for developing the organisation across all areas of learning. There is a need to bring together the two to avoid people falling through the gap in terms of digital skills.

You need to understand someone’s job to be able to introduce digital skills and areas to help with their time. There is a need to make learning more digital to modernise the offer but driven with an inclusion lens to make sure people don’t get left behind. Operational constraints can also be a barrier to digital. Estate-based colleagues in many organisations now have access to tablets along with instructions on how to use it. These measures go some way to plugging the gap.

There is widespread agreement that there is a need to work with digital colleagues to decipher the path forward:

There is real feeling that there is a burden on L&D to be ahead on technology and to help demystify the changes of AI as they are often asked questions by the rest of the organisation which are increasingly hard to answer without the upskilling of them as a team.
There are lots of examples where HR is really engaged with cutting edge IT, for example lots of organisations have successfully worked with AI and advanced technology for assessments – using gamified ways as part of the recruitment process e.g., using the recruitment Metaverse for graduate programme applicants to interact with current grads, online gaming tests etc…...
There was also a positive discussion around using AI to adapt job ads with more inclusive language – with some providers using technology which is able to scan the advert and suggest improvements, this has been used and has had a positive effect on recruitment. It does seem to be attracting more women and applicants with neurodiverse traits particularly.
How is ChatGPT affecting recruitment teams? Are CVs being generated this way and as a recruitment team, how are you able to spot this, challenge this and deal with it in the most appropriate way?
Some organisations have also introduced Digital Champions who are trained by the digital group, they are the advocates for digital in different parts of the organisations.

Challenges for 2024 and beyond

How do we define work? It’s bound to change in the future. People are learning from outside and bringing that in to work. How do employers recognise, capture, reward and amplify this?

The way that we understand jobs and performance management needs to change; skills-based organisations, skills-based learning, skills-based working. How does HR get on top of this and be ahead of the change curve?

What does the future of work look like from a hybrid/virtual/in the office perspective? We’re all trying to figure out the right formula, and nobody knows where it’s going to end. What does it mean for the organisation, and the fact that most people have different expectations now?

The role of the office and a distributed workforce was also shared: what does it mean for line managers/leaders, but also for employees? There is not a “one size fits all” instead organisations need to re-assess all elements of hybrid working that affect engagement, wellbeing, and retention.

This also includes role design – how we shape our jobs for the future? What is HRs role in really supporting senior leaders in thinking about the future shape and size of their workforce. How do we build those skills and capabilities internally and look for those externally? How can HR deliver for the future? How is HR using tech/AI/digital capabilities to make our services better. They are all important questions that HR teams everywhere are debating.

Regarding EVP - what’s our offer for our people? We have interesting roles, but how do we market the unique opportunities – we need to get better at selling the story. We discussed how we manage the complexity of employee engagement. There were lots of different perspectives about what the organisation is to different groups within the organisation. Understanding what people need at different points and placing incentives and benefits around those moments is key to retention and the EVP.

There were a lot of questions, and a consensus that leadership now is more challenging than ever, and it’s only going to get more challenging. However, better and more effective use of data is widely seen as an aid to decision making. Making sure the data we use is correct and used effectively to make better decisions is important. Raising awareness of this and helping those who use data to use it more effectively, is an important future skill.

Opportunities for 2024 and beyond

Changes of policy that will really help with talent attraction – eg changing rules around Visas and opening up the jobs market.

Apprentice levy – wide agreement that it is a good tool to use, but that employers are finding it difficult and complex. It was discussed that there’s an opportunity to understand how to make the most of that money. Organisations that are good at this, could help by sharing how they have made this work. It is also important to showcase success stories in this space, eg, using internal stories such as the MD having started as an apprentice. It is important to role model the behaviour at all levels in the organisation.

Secondment opportunities for senior leaders, and how this can improve knowledge sharing and key skills such as digital capabilities. Recent feedback from our Charity Next cohort of Fast Streamers placed on secondment with charities highlighted that 75% felt the secondment had improved their digital skills (and 100% felt it had improved their project management skills).

Building change capability as HR leaders continues to be as important and challenging as ever, but the rich knowledge sharing, best practices, ideas and challenges that the group were able to cover is, as always, a step in the right direction and we look forward to our next session to build upon much of this knowledge sharing.

Please do reach out to [email protected], or [email protected] if you have any questions on how WIG might be able to support retention, engagement and development in your organisation.

Originally published: 20 December 2023