Using Shared Value to Retain Top Talent

By guest writer, the leadership, visioning and goal setting practitioner, Paul Vittles.

Picture this: A good practice employer. Great pay and benefits. Progressive workplace health and wellbeing policies. Investing in its people. Great induction training and support. Excellent skills training. Mentoring and coaching programs. Management development provided to proactively support career progression. Leadership development. A wide range of personal development programs, including pioneering spiritual development opportunities.

And then one of the most talented young leaders announces they are going to leave because they want to ‘make a real difference’ and ‘give something back to society’. You might be thinking ‘how bloody selfish is that?’ – what about giving back to the employer that has invested so much in your personal and professional growth?!

But it happens and it will increasingly happen over the coming decades. Even with a global economic slowdown, the war for talent is very much alive and expectations are rising in terms of what a good practice employer will provide. More of our young talented emerging leaders are seeing opportunities to ‘make a difference’ in either their own commercial enterprise, harnessing the low entry cost, fast start up digital world, or in the growing world of social enterprise.

Talented executives see new heroes in entrepreneurs who are not only highly successful commercially but are becoming philanthropists at a much younger age. It is also quite common these days to hear young executives saying they want to make a lot of money fast so they can become a philanthropist or social investor.

Employers must keep evolving their thinking and their practice in line with patterns and trends in what motivates their people.

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Turning cultural and language barriers into business opportunity

[This feature was co-authored with Adrianne Talbot-Thomson; refer endnote]

If someone told you that a thorny social problem could be transformed into a business opportunity that spins off environmental, economic and societal benefits, you probably tell ‘em they’re dreamin’.

However this is exactly what is happening through the formation of event waste-management firm, GreenConnect, in the Illawarra region of NSW. It is the holistic view taken by its founders that underpins its fledgling success and there are a multitude of lessons for business, non-profits and government to be garnered from it.

The suburbs that fringe Wollongong to the south are now home to refugees from a range of countries, such as Burma, Ethiopia, Congo, Liberia and Sudan. Cultural and language barriers stand in the way of integration into local communities. The unemployment rate runs at close to 90% for this group because:

• English language proficiency is non-existent or poor
• Australian work culture is quite different to their own experiences
• They often lack access to decent transport; and
• Compulsory TAFE attendance inhibits their capacity to hold down regular work.

 
This was a problem until Robynne Murphy saw an opportunity to integrate refugee participation into the Illawarra Folk Festival, which sowed the seeds for the formation of GreenConnect.

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The innovation most feared: Simplicity

I love the idea of simplicity – maybe because I’m a simple sort of guy! I, along with many others, have recently gravitated towards a modern, advanced running technique known as … barefoot running. Funnily enough, using the foot as was originally intended appears to be better for you than cushioning it from its natural pronations.

In four decades of ‘innovative’ running shoe design, we’ve pretty much come back full circle to nature’s way. This way of ‘innovative’ thinking is not good news for businesses whose products may be good, but whose level of design, price or complexity is not always necessary. It also raises the question as to what types of organisations are most likely to fill the gaps – social enterprise should take note.

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Levering the ‘Tail’ of the Charity Donor Market

A service known as Philanthroper launched earlier this year in the US with the aim of harnessing contributions from individuals and applying them to the smaller end of the charity market. It is trying to lever the ‘tail’ of the donor market – the market for small donation amounts. Will it succeed? Read more →