This episode is one of our most unique of the HR Community Podcats series. Kris Clelland, Managing Director for Talint Partners, joins us for a riveting exploration of talent management's strategic facets in today's market. ...not just Australia, we are looking internationally too. His journey from tech recruitment to leading global teams magnifies the discussion with a focus on recruitment's evolution, highlighting the expanded roles HR professionals occupy in project management and workforce upskilling.
Kris's unique perspective, born from an impressive technical background, promises to unravel the intricacies of talent acquisition and retention, offering a playbook for HR mavens eager to adapt and thrive in a competitive and evolving market.
As your host, Shane O'Neill, I'm sharing personal insights from Kris's stints at the likes of Amazon and Wipro, examining organisational structures and the transformative power of data and analytics in the HR landscape.
We dissect the pros and cons of talent acquisition as a standalone function, stressing the need for robust collaboration between talent and HR to navigate the entire employee lifecycle. Moreover, this episode underscores an analytics-driven approach, emphasising how aligning metrics with business objectives can shape smarter, data-informed decisions that bolster organisational resilience.
Closing on a note of inclusivity, we tackle Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I), confronting the discomfort that accompanies DE&I audits and the revelations they bring. Emphasising DE&I's perpetual nature, akin to the relentless pursuit of sales excellence, we underscore the strategic importance of such initiatives for innovation and growth. Celebrating successes like those at Cognizant, we invite listeners to join us in celebrating and collaborating for a future where diversity isn't just a goal, but a celebrated reality.
This episode is one of our most unique of the HR Community Podcats series. Kris Clelland, Managing Director for Talint Partners, joins us for a riveting exploration of talent management's strategic facets in today's market. ...not just Australia, we are looking internationally too. His journey from tech recruitment to leading global teams magnifies the discussion with a focus on recruitment's evolution, highlighting the expanded roles HR professionals occupy in project management and workforce upskilling.
Kris's unique perspective, born from an impressive technical background, promises to unravel the intricacies of talent acquisition and retention, offering a playbook for HR mavens eager to adapt and thrive in a competitive and evolving market.
As your host, Shane O'Neill, I'm sharing personal insights from Kris's stints at the likes of Amazon and Wipro, examining organisational structures and the transformative power of data and analytics in the HR landscape.
We dissect the pros and cons of talent acquisition as a standalone function, stressing the need for robust collaboration between talent and HR to navigate the entire employee lifecycle. Moreover, this episode underscores an analytics-driven approach, emphasising how aligning metrics with business objectives can shape smarter, data-informed decisions that bolster organisational resilience.
Closing on a note of inclusivity, we tackle Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I), confronting the discomfort that accompanies DE&I audits and the revelations they bring. Emphasising DE&I's perpetual nature, akin to the relentless pursuit of sales excellence, we underscore the strategic importance of such initiatives for innovation and growth. Celebrating successes like those at Cognizant, we invite listeners to join us in celebrating and collaborating for a future where diversity isn't just a goal, but a celebrated reality.
Welcome to the HR community podcast. My name is Shane O'Neill, founder of Sillatals Talent, the HR and HSC recruitment community. Each episode, we will host HR leaders and discuss their journey and discover best practice HR solutions across the HR industry. Whether you're a CEO, hr executive or operating across the wider HR space, this podcast is for you. Please like and subscribe, and don't forget to comment and share your views. Enjoy the episode. Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of the HR community podcast. This afternoon I'm with Chris Clenand. Good afternoon, chris. Hey, chris and I have known each other a very long time. I'm comes with a wealth of knowledge in talent, hr D&I and we had a really good chat before the podcast just around what's happening here locally in Australia, as well as globally. So I will hand the mic over to you, chris. Can you tell us a little bit about who you were, your background in terms of experience, and let's go from there.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Thanks, shane, and hi everyone who's listening. For those who don't know me, my name is Shane Settis Chris Clenand. I've been in and around the talent acquisition traps for probably longer than I would want to admit.
Speaker 2:Don't come from a talent acquisition background. Like a lot of people, I sort of fell into talent acquisition or used it as an engine to probably stay in Australia or gain sponsorship and citizenship in Australia. I come from a technical background. Then a degree in engineering moved into pre-sales technical work, then moved into sales and sales management and that sort of led to going from product and software sales into sort of people and process sales and talent acquisition. And the last 10 years have been recruitment, initially with Michael Page, learning the ropes in the 360 degree recruitment style. And then I moved into talent acquisition, running regional, local and global teams for organizations as small as three to 500, right up to Amazon Web Services or Amazon, which at the time that I was there, was about 960,000. So, yeah, I've worked everything from startup scale up right through to large enterprise.
Speaker 2:My last full-time role was regional head of talent acquisition for Wipro, massive Indian systems integrator, where I had teams across Asia, pacific, middle East and Africa, and then for the last two years, I've been doing my own consulting stuff consulting, advisory, workshops, master classes and the areas that Shane said at the start of the call talent acquisition, talent management, de and I employer branding, evp, people analytics or talent analytics and talent data, and a few other areas. Very recently, I was announced as the managing director for talent to partners. For those of you who maybe don't recognize the name, talent partners, you might recognize the TIRA staffing awards. Talent partners are the organization who run and own the TIRA awards ceremonies globally, and in my new role, I will now be tasked at scaling all of the delivery models, sponsored content and everything else in Asia Pacific for their business as well. So yeah, that's a little bit about me Amazing, awesome.
Speaker 1:This has been in the making for a long, long time, Chris and everyone listening. We've spoken about having this podcast for a long time and recently Chris has stepped up into the new role of MD at talent partners. I thought this is going to be perfect timing because we can talk a little bit more about that and while we kick off the episode, let's get into, I guess, the more strategic stuff that I know you love when it comes to people and talent, Chris. Like, from a talent strategy perspective and I know the market is quite different now here in Australia globally We've gone from post COVID a huge push in terms of hiring. Last year, A lot of companies pulled back, started to look at their costs and restructure, and now this year there's still a few question marks, although it's quite early in the year. Like, tell us a little bit about the importance of investing in, firstly, the strategic side of talent and, in the current market, what do you think is a good approach by companies now? Is it looking at short-term, long-term? Let us know what you think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know that you've used the word talent quite loosely there, shane. It's a very big topic and I would say, post COVID anyone who's in any sort of talent acquisition or recruitment role the responsibility level and the remit that talent professionals now hold is much larger than it even was five, six years ago pre COVID. I think talent teams need to be thinking, as you said, more strategically and also getting way more involved in the project side post someone being hired and the talent management piece, internal engagement and mobility, upskilling and cross-skilling. I'm sure everyone's more than aware that the word skills seems to be used in nine out of 10 segments newsletters, articles, podcasts, streams, online events, virtual events, in-person events and there's a very strong reason for that is that talent do need to get involved more in identifying the skills for a role, rather than being sort of historic or chaotic and going after the tactical skill sets, the educational backgrounds that historically have fitted into the square peg, into the square hole. I don't think there is such a thing as a square peg for a square hole anymore and talent strategy, wise end to end, doesn't stop at someone being hired. I would say the recruitment life cycle probably ends around there, but you do still have to be in contact as a partner to your businesses, to HR, to talent management, to people analytics, to data teams, to ensure that, once the person is there, they're actually keeping a hold of the person from an organizational standpoint, but the person is actually suited into more than one stream within the business. So I think, certainly when it comes to talent strategy, there's a lot of pillars in there, or a lot more pillars than there certainly was in sort of five to seven years ago, and talent professionals are probably wearing two, three, four, x the hats that they did a short space of time ago, and I think it's a good thing, though, because it also means for that, building a skills-based organization.
Speaker 2:Talent professionals are now being recognized for having more skill sets than just finding people. So I think Mary's well into the sort of new way of thinking. If you look at some of the biggest ATSs in the globe, or especially in this region, that are building teams like smart recruiters and the Mariavich, et cetera, all of these platforms now have a skills inference into the product, so it allows you to understand what the person's skill set is behind a candidate before they're hired and also continue that process of building a skills-based organization internally and repurposing skills into other areas, as opposed to having to look externally, which, if you look at that, 10 years ago there wasn't too many ATSs outside of the biggies like the workdays, arnie Sims, etc. Had multiple modules like that within the platforms that were as intuitive as the actual applicant tracking or the candidate CRM side of the platform.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I wouldn't just say it's the strategy side that's changing. The tech side is obviously changing. Ai seems to be thrown around almost too much by people in organizations that don't understand a lot about it, but we all have to embrace it and move into this new way of working and working hand in hand with that. I mean AI and technology definitely comes into your strategy. But yeah, it just depends on size and scale and scope of organization as to what your strategy looks like and what point in time you're at in your strategy.
Speaker 2:It helped a lot of organizations across the globe, both internally and from an advisory and consulting standpoint, build a talent strategy roadmap, and those maps can be five or six stages long that span across 12 or 18 months, or it can be 20 to 25 stages long that span across the next eight to five year plan. So it just depends your level of maturity and complexity to your organization. Most people are starting to learn more now that we have things like chat, gpt and and barred and all of the tools that you can ask questions to. But yeah, I would certainly say that there's a lot more to a talent professionals role now that that you have to be involved in the strategic at some point. You can't just read the weeds in in the tactical all the time, even leaders I don't know too many leaders and, like me, as an example, I had over 300 people when I was at Wipro- and I used to be all the time.
Speaker 2:Why are you still in the weeds? And I'm like well, why are we still hiring at this aggressive rate of 12,000 people a quarter? How can we afford not to be? How can I afford not to be in the weeds If I don't understand what's going on? If I disappear one day, who's going to help if they don't understand what's going on? So yeah, I know that that answers probably more than your simple question, jane. But talent strategy as a whole talents a big, meaty word nowadays with talent management D, e, my, e, v, p, recruitment, marketing, retention and attraction, or attraction and engagement and retention. There's a lot more built into a talent role now than there certainly was when, when I first arrived in Australia.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and you touched on something there that's found quite interesting is, regardless of you know, being at that strategy level which you have been, like still getting into the weeds, still operating, you know, with the frontline If I was to flip that, chris, and like loop back into that strategic role that you've been in, I've seen companies in recent years sort of change the structure of talent as well. So if I give you an example and a lot of companies are recruited for talent, plugs into HR and you know the chief people officer sort of overseas that wider people culture, talent function, what I've seen in recent years is there's been talent functions that have reported directly into the business, worked alongside HR. You know what's. What's your sort of thoughts on? I'm sure there's no one size fits all model, but what's your sort of thoughts on having a structure where talent reports directly into the business, has the seat at the table, and how well do you think HR and talent should work together?
Speaker 2:Yeah, again, it depends on the size of the organization.
Speaker 2:I've worked for multiple organizations and in partnership or contracting into help sort of talent strategies with organizations where, as you said, the talent function rolls up into a CHR or a chief people officer or a chief HR officer or whatever. Personally I actually don't mind either way, like I'm not someone that says talent should always have their own function. It depends on the size of the organization. The two largest organizations that I worked for, amazon and Wipro we had our own standalone function in HR. We're a business partner to our function. Both organizations the talent acquisition function rolled up from a chief talent officer or a global head of talent acquisition and then straight into a COO.
Speaker 2:For me personally, if I think about my own development as a leader at Amazon, it definitely got me way more involved in the strategic and operational side of their business from a workforce strategy, workforce planning perspective, or I'll say very loosely, the lack of, sometimes, workforce planning, which is why big tech usually are the first to be hit by the mass redundancies. But it definitely made me understand a lot more about business leadership, business operations, the way the business was being run, business goals and objectives. But then other organizations that were slightly smaller, which often happens the talent acquisition function did roll up into an HR function. Quite a lot of the time in those roles the HR heads of the organizations just left me and my team to get on with stuff because they didn't fully understand the nuances of talent acquisition. But I was always very conscious of teaching the heads of HR and HRBPs and whoever we worked with a lot more about the talent side so that they fully understood end to end what we were doing and in return I would make sure that they were doing the exact same back and teaching me about what projects they have going. What does that mean for the talent that comes into the business? What does that mean for retention strategies? What does it mean for social economic reasons across the business? What are we doing with regards to DE and I?
Speaker 2:I would make sure that I understood more and more. And yeah, I mean it is one of those things where a lot of talent professionals will say I should always have their own function. I've just never been one of those. People have been on both sides and I'm not saying that I prefer or don't prefer either side, but the sizes of the two organizations that I was at that, the business rolled up into a chief operating officer. It made a lot more sense than bundling a lot more under the chief HR officer at the time, because I think it would have been too much for one person to manage. I mean, given that both of those organizations were 235,000 and over 900,000 employees, for every single person in that workforce to roll into HR, which ultimately is what happens you're responsible as a CHR for every person in the organization. To be responsible for that many people doesn't make sense. It makes sense to split it out, especially when the functions are separate.
Speaker 2:But I partnered and I made sure that my teams and talent weren't just business partners to the business, they were also partners to the HR team. To fully understand the full scope of, as soon as the person hits the ground, what does the contingent workforce strategy management look like? What is the lateral or the permanent hiring strategies look like? What does that retention piece look like? What are we doing for disability hires when they come into the building? What are we doing for neurodiverse hires once they're here? What are we doing for employer and talent branding? What are we doing for EVP? Yeah, so I made sure that they understood it and every single person that worked for me I'm sure there's a couple that probably would disagree have been thankful of the fact that I pushed the extra effort towards that partnership and not just the partner to the business. It just depends on the size of the organization. I think there's benefits of doing both sides.
Speaker 1:Yeah, amazing. You touched on something there a couple of times and I know you're big advocate for it Data. You love your data and I know you're a big advocate for it. So I'm going to probe you a little bit and get our listeners some advice, and I'd like to add some insight to, I guess, why data is so important, particularly with talent. As a HR recruiter, I'm exposed to a lot of data, particularly in companies that we're recruiting for, from attrition to retention rates and all that kind of stuff, but that's only scratching the surface. Tell us a little bit about a, I guess, the importance of investing in data when it comes to your talent and people's strategy, and also, nicely run off from that, what's the sort of data that you feel really matters to an organization? What should they be really focusing?
Speaker 2:on. Again, a pretty broad question, and what should the organization be focusing on? Also depends, when it comes to data, on the region, because you've got things like GDPR, which is highly influential across Europe, which organizations have to navigate carefully, but it just depends against size, scope, scale and global versus national versus local presence. It's funny that you say I love my data. I was speaking to someone yesterday about data as it pertains to new technologies, ai and ML, et cetera across the talent space, and the exact quote I got back from someone yesterday was oh my goodness, you're a geek. What is wrong?
Speaker 1:with you.
Speaker 2:It's something that I've always found. That's why I laughed when you said let's move on to data. I just think it's important because in times gone past, a lot of talent teams made decisions on knee-jerk reactions or gut feel. And it's because it's based on people and gut feel 60, 70% of the time is often right. But in order to progress in organization or, for example, with talent partners, just now we're working out strategies to become a truly global organization, building teams in every single region, so building teams across four to five continents, and a lot of the time it does come down to data, and it's the first thing that I asked for. Without data, you can't make a data-informed decision on what's best and you can't risk mitigation to say, okay, let's look at these 10 things that perhaps didn't go perfectly. How do we make them better based on data, but also here's all the things that are going well. Again, if you've not got the data to prove it, it comes down to gut feel, people data in particular. What I've seen over the past few years, especially over the last 12 months, have been out of the country. Quite a lot is that issues are being tackled head on, not just by single instances, but with a blend of technology, strategic thinking and a little bit of a touch of creativity. A lot of new platforms are bringing the creativity to the market, where you don't have to go outside to get stuff. Power BI tools are getting better and better. I know a lot of organizations similar to myself. At Wipro and at AWS, I had to do pivot tables and spreadsheets and present data to tell a story, but organizations are starting to realize that quality more often than not trumps quantity when it comes to data. It's about collecting the right data, not just more data for the sake of having it. If you don't know what to do with it, you don't know the story that it tells. There's no point in collecting it in the first place. Ai plays a big part in that. It enhances the understanding of, for example, workforce analytics, which can lead to more informed decisions to drive everything across the talent space, including DEI, talent management, retention, etc. However, with the AI piece being thrown in so much in the past 12 months, especially the last six to eight months, it's imperative to use AI responsibly and ensure that compliance is looked after, especially with ever-growing regions and parts works of global regulations. There's more and more regulations coming in now that play part in the data side.
Speaker 2:The second part of your question what type of data would you want to collect? It depends what you want to get out the other side. I did a recent project at the end of last year on building a diversity roadmap. The first thing that we did was an internal audit of the organization's DE&I and where they currently sat. It's something that a few people within the organization had read in a very good book on how to build a diversity roadmap.
Speaker 2:They particularly took notice of the building data and collecting data and they weren't asking the right questions. They were wondering why people in the organization weren't responding to the questions. I said you've got to also think about the questioning, for example, from a DE&I lens. If I was a minority which I'm so passionate about DE&I because I don't fall into any of the diversity categories and I've said this on stages around the globe at talks and panels and et cetera I think that's important as well and I'll come back to that. If you ask any of them more in DE&I, even for the diversity stuff, I said if I was a minority of X a category and I fell into X or Y or X and Y, I probably would put don't want to answer as that question, because the way that you phrase the question is also wrong.
Speaker 2:The way that you collect the data throughout your workforce is also very important. But again, it's about telling a story. When talent quite often make the mistake of giving data to a leadership team or to a stakeholder group as data, and then they try to waffle around the story, present the data as a story, present the most critical issues that you're deriving from the data and then go into leadership meetings or stakeholder meetings or hiring manager meetings with how you're going to solve what you've found from the data. Alternatively, if everything is going swimmingly which I'll call bullshit if someone says everything's going really well for the things that you're able to show from the data that are going well, what solutions are you putting in place or what involvements to that are you putting in place to make it better?
Speaker 2:When it comes to talent, there's so much data on the table when it comes to hiring numbers, average tenure, diversity throughout the organization, how the person was hired, source of hire, cost of hire, time to hire, all of these things. There's probably 150 more metrics as much as people focus on some of the ones that I mentioned there. There's so much data that you can derive, but don't derive the data just for the sake of having it Just to be able to say look at all these stats we've got. If you don't know what you're doing with the data to evolve processes and move it forward, probably pick out the ones that you know will influence the project work that you've got, or the areas that you know that you can help evolve. That would probably be my biggest piece of advice. There's so many organizations that I go into and I'm like, okay, show me some data. They've got 465 spreadsheets and stuff.
Speaker 1:I'm like what have you used this for?
Speaker 2:I don't know how to use it. Why have you pulled it? Data for me is a cool area because in a geeky way, you can start to tell a story and you can start to evolve a process, an organization, a department or whatever, Simply by looking at the complexities or the data validation, privacy concerns across the data, any sort of challenges that you can get out. You've got to have a more holistic view and a holistic approach to the talent landscape and how you can then use the data to improve things. I don't know if that answers your question, Shane. It does. It does.
Speaker 1:I really love the way you describe the data in terms of what you can do to progress, and you use words like optimize. Essentially, that's the proactive and progressive way of using the data in the right way. You've obviously partnered with a lot of amazing brands that have done that with the data as well, because I love speaking to you about it, because I learned so much about it myself. I find sometimes organizations not so much reluctant, but once they look under the hood they start to say, oh crap, the stats in the data isn't probably what we thought it was. Around the flip side, they see something that's really golden shiny. They think, okay, we're great at this, and ignore or forget about the rest.
Speaker 1:If I was to pluck one of those elements from a data perspective, if I was to look at the DNI, which you touched on as well, if I was to look at the DNI and say I would imagine that there's a lot of companies that probably maybe shy away sometimes from the data in their DNI because they know that there's so much more that they can do there, would I be right in saying that? Would I be wrong in saying that, from your experience, obviously, what do you think? And also. Yeah, let's flesh that one out, because I think the DNI is just such a huge topic. It's again quite broad, I agree, but it's just such a hot trend at the moment in talent and people's agendas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would 100% agree with you that a lot of organizations, especially companies that have done diversity on its four, the boardroom is quite often one or two demographics most, and it's not the boardroom that often bring me in, it's usually a minus one or a minus two level to larger organizations that ask for my assistance and the boardroom quite often don't want to see the results of a DE and I audit and it's because they know at heart that there are huge gaps in the diversity across their own workforce and across their own organizations, especially in Australia just now, I know that you had Natalie Flynn on recently. I've known Natalie since probably minus 90 days before she launched the equity. I've got so much respect for what she's trying to drive. And right now in Australia, with the Wajiya announcement, which is due in a month from now and end of February, where every single organization in the whole of Australia, over a hundred people, will be under jurisdiction to promote and produce all of the diversity data when it comes to gender equity and pay gaps within their organization. That's probably a good example to use just now because a lot of organizations have put that to the side. I've been speaking to organizations about this for a decade, and I'm sure so has Natalie and other organizations like Symmetra and other organizations who focus on diversity. But organizations here are so relaxed Look, it's not an issue right now, so we'll get to it. And organizations are still saying that today, even though this is only one month out, and I can't wait to see people's faces once that data becomes.
Speaker 2:Going back to data again once that data and that information becomes public or let's say, for example, your gender pay equity across your organization is 51% or 35% or 40% Organizations will very quickly crawl into the little hole in hide and boardrooms will have to do something about it. So I like the fact that there's been a bit of a force from Wiggy to put this publicly and make organizations produce the data. When it comes to DE and I, there are so many organizations that for me, are still at ground zero or ground one. But even the organizations who do it well most of them who have got very advanced diversity teams, who have got chief diversity officers and a few hundred people in a diversity team, who have either been brought in externally or picked, plumped into full time roles out of other roles within the organization, most of these organizations will still be able to show you, through data, exactly what they're doing well and what they could do better. And I guarantee you there's not one single topic in diversity, even in the organizations that are market leading organizations in the diversity spectrum, that would say that they're doing something perfectly. Every single one of these organizations will tell you that they have to continue to evolve.
Speaker 2:A lot of organizations make the mistake of thinking that a diversity roadmap, diversity strategy or doing something more, putting something in place, is a one to two or three to six months project. It's definitely not. It doesn't stop. It's almost like saying what do you do for sales? Do you bring someone in for one to three months and that's your sales done for the rest of the decade? The like? Of course we don't. We keep going. Well, why would diversity be any different, especially in today's age where you literally cannot say anything right or wrong in front of the right or wrong people anymore, and you're so conscious of that, not just from a verbal standpoint, but the way that your business is being portrayed to the external market, because that hinders your reputation.
Speaker 2:Again, moving on to a little bit of employer branding and potentially EVP, everything you do from a diversity standpoint affects your business. By bringing in more diverse people, you've got a much larger chance of increasing innovation across your organization through diversity of thought. If you're increasing innovation in your own organization, guess what that ends up? Equaling more profit, more revenue, larger scale, more growth. A lot of boardrooms don't look at it like that, but yeah, I mean, the diversity category is only getting larger and larger. I spoke on stage at a Nashville at Rec Fest last year alongside probably who I would call the global whale in diversity, a guy called Toran Ellis, who I've got extreme amounts of respect for. I've known him for a couple of years and I use him as a mentor myself. So I still, under no pretense, think I know even 50% about the stuff that I do in diversity, because I'm still learning from organizations that allow me to develop and enhance what they're doing through my own learning.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it's a huge topic.
Speaker 2:Data driving DE and IF. It's imperative. And if organizations just put a couple of weeks aside to run a diversity audit across their organization, they'd then start to realize where the gaps are. And make it an anonymous survey to your own employees, or bring in an external organization to do the survey so that there's a bit more security in the workforce's mind that it's not someone internally, so it's not gonna get told to the managers or the managers, managers et cetera. There's definitely a growing recognition of the ENI strategy and the risks behind it, especially the strategy risks about the time being super special.
Speaker 2:It's about getting probably granular with the metrics when it comes to DEI to understand where we're able to succeed and where we're falling off a cliff. But most organisations want to think that they're creating our inclusive culture, but a lot of them just don't know where to start or where to evolve, and there's plenty of organisations out there that would be able to help. I've done it for a lot of organisations in a short span of my own business in two years, and I know enough other organisations that I could pass people on to if I don't have capacity to help someone. But yeah, a lot of the time it's about reaching out and just learning what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong and a lot of people are scared to put their hand up in case that data doesn't go to the boardroom.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I mean, it's the same as anything. The first port of call is put your hand up and admit that you probably need help. But a lot of organisations are scared to do that because they don't know what comes back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and, like you said, I think the VG is just the start of it and I feel like those individuals are going to check in a bit of a push now, or a bit of a push in the right direction maybe. And also, I guess, from a recruitment perspective. I understand how important it is and how common it is now for candidates, for example, if they're going through a process, they're looking at the brand, they're looking at the values, they're looking at the all the typical stuff and see if it's the right fit for them. But they're also looking at who works in the business, like. What is the diversity? Who's on the board, what does the leadership team look like? What does the ELT look like? So, yeah, it's really, really interesting.
Speaker 1:I know you're flying tomorrow back to Europe and you're always flying around and on the move, so the only other question that I had on DE&I in particular was you touched on a little bit there but what are you seeing in terms of other regions or countries or industries? Who seems to be getting it right? And, yeah, it'd be really interesting to see what's working, what's working for people and where, and what industry. Obviously, I don't need you to call anyone out, but yeah, if there's anything that you think could be worth listeners hearing or looking into, that would be great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, if I'm looking at this through a global lens from my 25 notepads that are sitting next to me from last year's event circuit I'm a serial note taker, as you can probably tell from the board behind me, but I certainly noticed more and more organisations bringing to the forefront the recognition of neurodiversity and social mobility as critical facets of DE&I and gain interaction and more organisations talking about ensuring that people with different cognitive abilities, from varied social backgrounds are not just included but are provided with the tools and the support and the technology and whatever else to succeed that. Certainly across North America there was a huge rise in both of those topics where it's being recognised that it's no longer seen as normal to put someone just through the regular process, even pre-onboarding, and having to adapt your technology, your processes, even your workplaces to suit someone coming in who isn't from the traditional mould. When it comes to organisations that are doing it well, there's hundreds of organisations, in my opinion, that haven't necessarily nailed diversity but are certainly at the forefront of trying to change the landscape. If I mention even one of Wipros competitors, cognizant. Cognizant are known globally. A lot of people will know them from the sponsorship on the side of the Aston Martin F1 car Cognizant are an Indian systems integrator and, for me, probably one of the most progressive from a DE&I standpoint. They've built diversity teams not just a diversity council around moving the needle across multiple indices, and they're a consulting business. They're at the mercy of their clients. However, they've done everything possible to increase, even when it comes to gender diversity and also racial diversity or ethnic diversity across their organisation, all to be above 40%. There are plenty of organisations who, I think, push the needle on a global scale. Some of the largest organisations in the world do it really well and have specific programmes internally that focus on ERGs, that focus on certain groups, that focus on giving everyone an equal opportunity and a chance.
Speaker 2:There's a few organisations that I worked with last year who also bring the ERG groups together. I think that's a major mistake and I spoke about this on stage last year, particularly when I was at AWS, for example, and there was a group of about 80 people in the crowd from Amazon listening to the talk that I did and they didn't realise that I was part of Women at Amazon. I worked beside Michelle Hardy on a lot of the initiatives and trying to drive even early careers and preschool females into the technical realms as part of the Amazon project work. One of the biggest mistakes organisations make is by in my opinion anyway is by segmenting and separating ERGs. That also means that if you approach let's say, it's a Black women and workforce group, for example, and I try to approach them as a white heterosexual male to help push the needle for them, I'm often rejected from that group because I don't happen to fall into that boundary.
Speaker 2:The organisations that are doing it well are creating ERGs and safe spaces for certain demographics and groups, but they're also encouraging those groups to work together, because just because I'm a white heterosexual male does not mean that I should not be able to step into a neurodiverse LGBTQ group and help them push the needle in the workforce around bringing more people like themselves in. I think it's more important for the people that don't belong to the individual groups to step in and help the groups, because if every group then steps in, it's a much bigger driving force and power force to make a difference. So, yeah, some of the organisations across the globe and I won't name too many of them because I'm sure, as I said, they would even say that they could make it better Bringing little things like that, as opposed to segmenting and creating all these ERGs employee resource groups, which are great bring them together and allow them to collaborate together so that it doesn't feel like you're still a separated group within a larger organisation. That doesn't really solve the problem, in my opinion. So, yeah, I mean there's a lot of things that organisations this side of the globe are doing.
Speaker 2:My most recent newsletter that went out on LinkedIn actually spoke about a few organisations locally to Australia, asia Pacific and then wider global who I feel are doing better in diversity hiring and some examples of the initiatives that they've brought to the forefront. Anz and CBA were two of them who have created the entire national and regional programmes around diverse hiring. So they've got separate teams, separate groups, separate strategies etc. And that's always a good starting point is to get to there. But, yeah, diversity is a huge factor.
Speaker 1:It is, it is for sure, Could have said it like even before the call. We both agreed we talk about this stuff all the time and this episode could be a part one, two, three, four series, because there's so much they are feel like we've only scratched the surface today, but I mind for your time. I have a couple of quick questions for you, Chris, before you jet off to the other side of the world. But most influential person, who is it?
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness. Globally, that's a big question. Most influential person to me from a personal standpoint is definitely my grandfather. My grandfather grew up with absolutely nothing. My family have all become pretty well off because of the hard work in the grit that he put in. He was a coal miner. He's lost a couple of fingers through working his whole career, but he never he never put a finger down to allow anyone else to do anything for him. He's 98 years old. He's still dry, he still kicks around like he's 60.
Speaker 2:I'm looking forward to seeing him when I'm in the UK as of tomorrow, which will be nice for a few days in Scotland. But from a professional standpoint, he taught me everything, and my dad and my uncles and my aunts and then the generations that have teared down. That hard work, grit and determination definitely gets you places and he was also never someone that said anything that he would, that he did or would do, is perfect. He would always. He would always pick out holes in how something can be done better and I've always used that throughout my life. I would say from a professional standpoint, the the mail that I mentioned earlier Tor and Ellis has probably been one of my most desired sort of mentors.
Speaker 2:Over the past sort of five to six years I've kept in contact with him consistently. I've met up with him in multiple states across the US and he always drops everything to make time just to meet me for a chat. He's shaped a lot of the strategies that I've learned about from from the US, where there's inferno to put out when it comes to diversity, and I bring a lot of those strategies back to Australia and it's match that fires. I could wet my fingers and put the diversity fires out in Australia because we don't have the same issues, but he's definitely shaped a lot of things that I do. There's a lot of others who who have been influential. Lars Schmidt is definitely one of them. So those in HR you probably know who Lars is. I've spent a bit of time in multiple states with Lars as well and he's a wealth of knowledge and he's built multiple platforms to help evolve the the TA and HR spectrum. Yeah, yeah, there's a whole host. I could probably name about 50. But if I'm going to stick it to, three person.
Speaker 2:wise, it would be a family member. Sorry to my dad that it's not my dad, but I'm sorry to my dad, but I think he learned everything from my grandfather, which is understandable. And then, from a professional standpoint, it's probably Lars and and Toran Ellis.
Speaker 1:All right, girl, and I'll flip the question who do you inspire? Probably no one, but you've got one here for sure.
Speaker 2:A lot of the teams that I've been very lucky to lead and build across the globe. I keep in contact with multiple of my direct and indirect reports, even from Amazon, which was now sort of six, seven years ago, and I don't mean just here. People from the US I still meet up with because they use me as a mentor and they bounce ideas off of me, same with my very large team at Wipro. A lot of them still reach out to me, even for internal help with the stuff that they're doing at Wipro internally, and I'm in the head of TA, who stepped into my position, will often be in those emails when they email me something to ask for help and she'll be the first person to thank me. She stepped into my shoes.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I mean I try to inspire as many people as possible. When I speak about stuff or I give people examples, my main goal is for people to take one actionable insight back that they could potentially use in their own positions or roles of day to day life. I wouldn't want to name any names in case I come back and say he doesn't inspire me. I would like to think that there's that. There's a few, but yeah, I try just to. I'm always a giver. I don't ask for money for my time. I'm always interested to help people and that's the goal for me as a professional is not to be, not to be arrogant, but to be humble and respectful and helpful where I can be. So I'll always put my hand up to help. When I had my own before I joined talent partners, my accountant didn't love that I would give away.
Speaker 2:Free help 280 hours a year. But again, things always come back around. If I help someone, I'd like to think at some point it comes back around and most of the time not always, but most of the time it does.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can second a lot of that, like you've been such an inspiration for myself and what we've been doing here as a business as well, and you've you've always picked up the phone and gave advice where you can. So I do really appreciate it and I'm very mindful of his time and we're running over. But, like I said, I could sit here all day chatting about this kind of stuff with your face. So part two in the making, but, look, really appreciate your time today. Thanks for all the insight. Thanks everyone for listening in. Obviously, and I'm sure the notepads are out and there's lots of nuggets being taken down If there isn't any nuggets like genuinely anyone who's listening can always reach out to me.
Speaker 2:I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on email.
Speaker 2:If there's any talent in HR leaders that are interested in the event circuit that I'll be scaling across Asia Pacific this year, specifically Australia, new Zealand, feel free to flick me across your details and I'll add you into the growing delegate lists for a lot of those events I'll be. I'll be thrown multiple sizes of events and dinners and lunches, workshops, masterclasses, etc. Across Australia, which is the main goal for this year. And, yeah, if anyone wants to learn, I'll have the brightest and the best minds in the room, as well as as well as some of the most sought after speakers and influential people in the talent and HR spaces across the region. So, yeah, I'd love people to get involved. The database is already quite large, but I'm sure there'll be a whole cohort of people that listen to this that probably don't know who I am or what I do. And I'm yeah, I'm always available. People can add me on LinkedIn and reach out if they've got any questions or if they want to know more about some of the stuff that we've spoken about.
Speaker 1:Love that Open invite. Thank you so much, Chris. Talk to you very well. Thank you for tuning in to the HR Community Podcast. Remember to like and subscribe and share your views and comments below. This podcast was brought to you by Civitas Talent, the HR and HSC recruitment community. Whether you're a candidate looking for a new role or organization looking to secure brand new talent for your team, please get in touch with us today. Thank you.