Regional leadership - Health Sciences - Curtin University of ...

WRITTEN BY TONY MALKOVIC
FEATURE
Valuing the workplace
COMPANIES STRUGGLING TO RECRUIT AND RETAIN STAFF DURING THE CURRENT SKILLS SHORTAGE
DON’T NECESSARILY NEED FISTFULS OF DOLLARS TO TEMPT WORKERS: FINDING AND ADOPTING
THE RIGHT CORPORATE VALUES CAN BE WHAT MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE.
Professor Tony Travaglione likes explaining
how the introduction of corporate values
needs to be backed by senior management
by citing what happened to giant computer
company IBM.
About five years ago, IBM was in the
doldrums and its CEO decided to realign the
company’s direction by asking its workers to
determine the values it should operate by.
So, in a 72-hour online forum, he invited them
to tell him what they thought the company
should stand for.
“That’s a very extensive exercise when you
have hundreds of thousands of employees
worldwide,” explains Travaglione, who is head
of Curtin’s School of Management and a
member of the University’s Leadership and
Management Development Reference Group.
“But IBM’s CEO, Sam Palmisano, was
generally available to take emails from anyone
around the world – people say that’s crazy,
but it happened.”
In the end, there were some 22,000
responses, which the company distilled into
three main values – dedication, innovation,
and trust and personal responsibility –
and IBM became a textbook case study for
values-driven leadership.
It’s about aligning the values of the employee, the organisation and the values of senior leadership.
Travaglione – who is involved in a
three-year $390,000 Australian Research
Council project that is implementing a
values-driven leadership model in one of WA’s
largest public sector agencies, Main Roads
WA (see accompanying story) – says values
can basically serve as a ‘moral compass’
for both organisations and employees.
“When a person finds a company with
similar values – say ‘green’ or environmental
values, or a commitment to work-family
values – they can often see a long-term
future with that company. They see this as
respecting them as individuals, which
translates into trust and support in the
workplace. Such workers are often better
motivated and more loyal to the organisation.
“It’s all about aligning the values of the
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ALLAN MYLES
employee with the values of the organisation
and the values of senior leadership.”
In the current skills shortage, Travaglione
says corporate headhunters often report
feedback similar to the following from
potential employees: “Okay, you want me to
come to Perth, it’s pretty isolated and real
estate prices are high, so what can you offer
me in terms of a work-life balance? I don’t
have that now in London/Johannesburg/
Sydney. Can I have a look at the values
statement of the company that you’re trying
to float me into?”.
“And the first response if they can’t see
that work-life balance in the company’s values
will be ‘sorry, not interested’,” says
Travaglione. “That’s the starting point for
many people now, they’re saying straight out:
‘I’m not making the big move if I don’t have
that as one of the value statements’.”
He says although a values-driven
leadership model needs to start with the full
support of the CEO and the senior leadership
team, it’s up to employees to get involved and
decide what values the organisation stands
for.
“When Main Roads, or IBM, devised its
values, it didn’t come about by four people
sitting in a dark room. It wasn’t done by the
PR department or the marketing department
or the HR department, it started right at the
ground floor and extended all the way up.
It only gets ratified at the top. So people
actually have ownership of this. There’s
none of this ‘we plan to be world-best’;
they’re realistic, because they are working
L TO R: PROFESSOR TONY TRAVAGLIONE
(HEAD OF SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT), JOHN TAYA
(HR EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR MAIN ROADS WA), MENNO
HENNEVELD (COMMISSIONER OF MAIN ROADS WA)
on the ground.”
“Main Roads is an interesting example.
It went from an organisation with a long,
proud history to the brink of extinction and
was revived to its current status as one of
Western Australia’s best performing public
sector organisations through strong
leadership and values-driven management.”
Now in its third year, the Main Roads
research project is currently focusing on
helping employees and managers incorporate
their agreed and adopted values into their
day-to-day activities and decision-making so
that both behaviour and values are aligned.
Travaglione says that’s not always easy
when, for years, managers might have been
guided by policy statements handed down by
various departments.
“For example, an engineer managing a
project worth millions of dollars might come
up against a situation he or she is not familiar
New approach passes road-test
Main Roads WA has a big job. The
organisation is responsible for the
building and maintenance of roads across
the State – an area that covers one-third
of Australia and includes more than 17,500
kilometres of highways and roads valued
at over $27 billion.
With a key focus on attracting and
retaining staff for the future, the values
adopted by the organisation over the past
few years include: roads matter; working
together; excellence in customer service;
embracing challenge; professionalism;
and family.
Menno Henneveld, the Commissioner of
Main Roads WA, says those values are one
of several key areas that became part of
the agency’s push towards a greater
customer focus.
“When we started, we didn’t really have
a clear idea what we were going to do with
values-based management,” he explains.
“But as a corporate executive, I felt we
needed to move away from the standard
black-and-white guidelines-type approach
to decision-making that we had taken in
the past.
“We found there were circumstances
where the guidelines, rules and standards
didn’t help us in making decisions; that’s
when you need to fall back on values,
which is the concept we tried to get
across to people.”
He says staff were sceptical at first
with. They can’t just pull out a policy manual,
because the solution is not going to be in
there. In terms of managing that project, that
engineer has to have a set of organisational
values that will help steer every decision he
or she makes.”
Travaglione says every executive meeting at
Main Roads is now values-driven. If initiatives
are not linked to the corporate values, there’s
a fair chance they won’t proceed.
“For instance, one initiative required funding
to the occupational health and safety area to
be increased to purchase certain products for
employees. So people thought about it for a
while – for about a whole 10 seconds – and
said: ‘That’s one of our values, don’t worry
about the cost’. And so it just happened.”
Travaglione says a value-driven leadership
model – when implemented properly – has
tangible results: recruitment costs are less,
retention costs are less, job satisfaction is
and felt a values-based management
approach was a bit ‘touchy-feely’. But not
any more.
“The most pleasing thing is that
employees talk about it,” he says. “I know
of organisations where a lot of fuss has
been made about values and they’re put
in a picture frame on the wall, and that’s
the end of it. But we wanted people to
think about the values and how they
affected their everyday decision-making.”
We needed to move away from
the standard black-and-white
guidelines-type approach to
decision-making that we had
taken in the past.
That approach has caught on to the
extent that values are used in the agency’s
selection processes and in its performance
management of staff. They are also
embedded in its business model.
And it seems to be working. Main
Roads has recently won several awards
for its efforts, including the ‘Employer of
Choice’ (public sector category), ‘Best
Graduate Intake’ and ‘Best HR Strategic
Plan’ prizes in the 2007 Australian
HR Awards.
It also picked up a national ‘Excellence
in People Management’ award from the
Australian Human Resources Institute.
higher, and there’s more stability in terms of
leadership in the overall organisation.
“‘I actually enjoy going to work’ is the
average response you’ll get from Main Roads
employees, because they know what they’re
doing sits comfortably with their values,” he
explains. “So, at the end of the day, you’ve
got people staying at Main Roads, earning
maybe half of what they could be earning in
the mining sector, because the values
alignment is there.
“Moving from a ‘corporate governance’ to
a ‘corporate integrity’ approach is quite
leading-edge. I think the Main Roads example
will be followed with interest by other public
sector organisations as community and
government expectations change.”
Contact: Professor Tony Travaglione
Email: T.Travaglione@curtin.edu.au
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