I attended Atlassian’s Open House party last night. 300 plus people turned up.

Few observations:
A strong employment brand alone does not guarantee a steady flow of talent. Organisations who attract talent does so because they work hard at it.  Universally recognised brands are often the ones rolling up their sleeves.

Talent needs to be farmed, there is really no shortcut. You buy an engineer a beer with the knowledge you might need his skills a year from now. You invest time and money on uni students because they will join the ranks of productive citizens someday. Much of recruiting is giving first and taking later. At times it looks like karma at work. Atlassian founders are alumni of  UNSW programs. I ran into young UNSW students enjoying generous scholarships donated by Atlassian. Reaching out early is key. The good news is technology and an increasingly connected world makes it much easier. Perhaps, just-in-time recruitment thinking is not being utopian; it’s close to reality in many organisations, than imagined.

Met a couple of developers who hailed from various parts of the world – Germany, Brazil, USA and Thailand. When 457 visa is used the way it is meant to, good comes out it. 52% of engineers in Australia are born overseas. Some sectors by default requires a borderless talent strategy.  More than we realise, decisions at the policy level will greatly dictate talent movement and the fortunes of many organisations (and nations).

The likes of Joris Luijke admit they face great challenges to find good engineers (“it’s like pulling a tooth out”, I am told).  Acknowledging a problem is part of the journey to recruitment success; it forces you to take a deep look at the solutions available. Joris posses an acute sense of the staffing challenges faced by growing organisations, and he’s sharing his wisdom in Melbourne come November.

Have a look at our population map (page 3). Sarah Nguyen is Gen Y. Be prepared to see her generation taking a central role in the workplace (she believes majority of HR professionals are female. Data anyone?), if not by influence then by sheer number.

Red Oak beer is smooth. Atlassians are good host. When’s your Open House? Some pictures using iPhone.

The beer queue is long

but is worth the wait

Without doubt, the most popular person of the evening.

The basement opens out to a garden – perfect setting for beer, food and chat.

Food glorious food

Lesson time – Atlassian’s presentation on company history

Listening! Recruitment speaker Ross Clennett at the receiving end.

Wall of fame (or infamy) – media coverage of recruitment @ Atlassian

Eight down, 24 more engineers required.

Is this how they make software?

Brain food (No Harry Potter stuff here)

Talent Advisor – Sarah Nguyen

And the band played on

Tags: Atlassian, Joris Luijke, Recruitment, Ross Clennett, Sarah Nguyen

Do you offer monetary incentives to motivate staff?  Think again.

Dan Pink believes traditional reward practice like increasing pay aren’t always effective in motivating and improving staff performance. He argues that there is a huge mismatch between the science behind motivating people and what companies practice. To illustrate his point Dan quoted two riveting studies:

“In eight of the nine tasks we examined across the three experiments, higher incentives led to worse performance” ( Federal Reserve of Boston, Paper No. 05-11)

“We find that financial incentives….. can result in a negative impact on overall performance” (Dr Bernd Irlenbusch, London School of Economics)

Incidentally, Dan used Atlassian to illustrate the value of intrinsic rewards. Dan’s talk will challenge how you view incentives and staff motivation.

Tags: Atlassian, Dan Pink, Incentives, Motivation

It’s one thing to have a good story to tell. It is another to tell the story effectively.

Atlassian have a good story to tell. They also tell it rather honestly and convincingly.

Dig deeper and you will see Atlassian work really hard to spread their story – they blog incessantly (it looks like half their workforce have personal blogs), they tweet, they network on Facebook and upload their videos on YouTube. Isn’t it interesting, organisations that can afford to rest on their laurels are the ones that continue to work the hardest. Attracting talent is a never ending exercise.

My point is, the media landscape is fragmented like never before; the audience even more. Attention cannot be bought, it needs to be earned. You really have no choice, but to work hard at telling your story.

So, what is your story? How are you telling your story? Is your story heard?

Tags: Atlassian, Employer brand

Notes from the AHRI national convention (15-16 June).

Colourful industry: Our industry is much larger, varied and colourful than I imagined. Every conceivable workforce issue or process is addressed by one or more solution providers. Have you heard of Wise? Staffed mostly by ex-federal police members, they investigate and eliminate workplace bullying. NIDA, employing famous actors, brings a performance art approach to corporate training. ECE International provide remuneration solutions exclusively for Australian expats. Autopia will plant 17 trees for every new vehicle bought in a salary packaging deal. GraduateOpportunites offer all you can eat statistics on graduates. Loyalty programmes, reward management, training houses, recruitment firms, job boards, talent management software, payroll solutions, the list goes on and on. The ingenuity on show was impressive.

Training & Education: Increasingly important and apt for our turbulent times, the issue of training and development of staff stood out. When times are bad, educational institutions seems to thrive. Business schools, in particular, are heavily represented.  It is interesting to see AHRI (the conference host) competing directly with many of its customers. E-learning is making a lot of impressive noise. It seems online delivery of training is fast becoming a preferred choice.  How to maximise talent already recruited seems to be the flavour of the conference. I learnt onboarding management, retention, staff development and performance management are key concerns of businesses and growth area for suppliers.

Software vendors (talent management): The software landscape is noisy (You may recall the noisy Talent/recruitment management marketplace ). Vendors at the convention comes in all shapes and sizes. For the casual observer, it is a struggle to differentiate one from the other. For the discerning observer, it is still a daunting task. Look deeper and each of them have uniquely different journeys. CV Mail started life as a graduate mailing list, and now offers an ATS. SageMicropay have early roots in payroll now their product includes a recruitment module. Mindset founders have recruitment background, and they now tackle talent management. MYOB is synonymous with accounting software, but offer a whole range of workforce management tools. It is interesting how different vendors are shaped by their roots. I thought there is a marked difference in how a listed company and a family owned operation, view their business, their clients and their overall raison d’etre.

Overall, I am impressed by the advances in technology (Awed by the audacity of firms who try to address the entire life-cycle of an employee). End-to-end, all-in-one, seamless, integration and other geeky jargons dominates the conversations. While vendors cannot be faulted for parroting the virtues of their products, I wonder what tilts a customer to choose one vendor from another. Does telling the right story matters? Empathy to clients problems? Does the enthusiasm of those who manned the stall make a difference? What about the role of the ubiquitous brochures? The make-up of the staff? Perhaps, advances in technology may not be the main deal breaker that many (including the vendors) thought it is.

HR : I had the chance to meet a few HR professionals. Over coffee, Sarah Nguyen, shared about life at one Australia’s most intriguing technology companies – Atlassian. A predominantly Gen Y company, Atlassian staff blog and tweet profusely. Openness, independence and dissent (work related) is a way of life. Anne Ridgway, Head of HR, Australian Synchrotron, sourced skills that barely exist in Australia, and manages a workforce that is global in nature. Which talent management software will suit an open and innovative software company like Atlassian? Which particular solution paraded by the 100 or so vendors will address the staffing problem of Australian Synchrotron? While vendors made great strides, companies’ workforce challenges seems to always stay a step ahead.

Social media: Many of the vendors seems to be blissfully unaware of social media. Do you tweet? I’d begin a conversation. It seems many vendors go about their daily lives without (We have 100+ clients without using Twitter. Thank you very much) using any form of social media. If the status quo will or can be maintained is an altogether different matter. It seems HR folks in Australia do not tweet, yet. There is very little mention or use of Twitter, or social media for that matter (compare the relative quietness of #AHRI compared to #ATC09, a much smaller event). I later learnt Wifi access cost $100. It amazes me that in this day and age Internet access would be an issue at conferences. AHRI could easily increase its worth by making it easy for fans to spread their experiences.

Bottom line: Both the HR community and the vendors who serves them have a lot to learn from each other. I had many interesting discussions with a lots of interesting people. More post in the coming coming days. Photos.

Tags: AHRI, Atlassian, Australia Synchrotron, Autopia, CV Mail, ECE, Graduate Opportunities, Mindset, MYOB, NIDA, SageMicropay, WISE