UKG’s Chief Belonging Officer: ‘We have an opportunity shortage’, not a talent one
At UKG Connect in London, UNLEASH got exclusive insight from UKG execs, as well as HR and IT leaders from Greggs, Costa Coffee, Greater Anglia, Menzies Aviation and Boots, about how to solve talent challenges in 2024 and beyond.
HR Leader Insight
Talent shortages were the main topic of conversation at UKG's recent Connect event in London.
HR and IT leaders from a range of UKG EMEA customers shared their challenges, and how they are solving them.
Tech may be key, but in his keynote (and an exclusive interview with UNLEASH), UKG's Chief Belonging, Equity and Impact Officer Brian Reaves explained what else needs to be top of mind for organizations wanting to be great places to work.
There’s a lot of talk about how talent shortages are a key challenge for employers, but particularly for the frontline.
However, at a recent UKG Connect event at the Tower of London, IT and HR leaders from Menzies Aviation and Boots shared how in reality their biggest talent challenge is actually retention.
Speaking on a customer panel session at UKG Connect, Kelly Butler, IT Time & Attendance Team Lead at Menzies Aviation, noted “we bring them in, we train them” and then because they are then certified to be airside, they “become a hot commodity in the airport”.
Having invested all that time and effort in upskilling them, the challenge is retaining them – they might not want a job out in the rain, instead, Butler joked they may want to work inside, maybe at Boots in the Terminal.
Another panelist Chris Scorer, Senior Manager, Time & Attendance at Boots, laughed, but noted that retention is also key for Boots. He talked about having the right people in the right place at the right time.
UNLEASH America was a resounding triumph, filled with game-changing speakers, dynamic content, breakthrough HR technology and great opportunities to reimagine, network and connect!
While things like continuous learning and top-notch employee listening are part of the retention strategy for Boots, tech also has a part to play in improving employee engagement.
The key with tech at work is making people’s lives easier (not harder) – and automating processes, and freeing up their time to do more value-adding work. That was the view of Himesh Patel, Head of IT Service Delivery at UK train company Greater Anglia, who spoke in the final session at UKG Connect.
Greggs’ Labor Planning, Efficiency and Loss Prevention Manager Neil Parrish had the same attitude – “nobody really likes change that much” so bringing employees on board early on with tech was key.
Katie Little, Labor Operations Manager at Costa Coffee, agreed; she shared that in implementing new UKG tech, her team was very “mindful” of the change curve, and invested in a lot of learning and development for teams and store managers.
Butler from Menzies Aviation also picked up on this tech thread; she noted that tech helps put the power in people’s hands, thereby creating a sense of empowerment and belonging.
Sitting on the same panel with Butler and Scorer was Accenture’s Pip Trenaman; she noted the importance of having easy and seamless tech – always think about the “end user journey”.
At the end of the day, retention isn’t just HR’s job.
There’s a need for HR to work collaboratively with the rest of the business, and with managers specifically. Trenaman stated that driving successful workplace engagement is “very much a team game, not an individual sport”.
DEIB as a solution to retention
For Boots’ Scorer, feedback mechanisms are also key to engagement and retention – it means that leadership can hear straight away if new policies or tech isn’t working, and then make changes.
The key to successful listening, as Brian Reaves, Chief Belonging, Equity and Impact Officer at UKG, shared in his UKG Connect keynote, is to not just hear, but to actually listen.
The key difference is that “listening requires you suspend the belief you already know the answer”.
“Feedback is a gift” – it is all about making companies better and seeing it as “we’re going to win together, as opposed to I win at the expense of you”, as Reaves shared in an exclusive UNLEASH interview.
Brian Reaves speaking at UKG Connect in London.
According to Reaves – and data from UKG-owned Great Place To Work – there are four essential ingredients to building a fantastic workplace: trust, pride, camaraderie and for all (it has to be a great place of work for all, not just some).
Accenture’s Trenaman also talks about the importance of trust and purpose to drive employee engagement.
The final one, ‘for all’, is particularly hard – it is a “never ending journey”, said Reaves, and one that is complicated by ongoing culture wars and political discourse.
Reaves shares with UNLEASH: “Don’t let outside influences divide” and focus instead on building a great culture where companies see “someone’s uniqueness as a strength”, and really try to meet people where they are.
People who have to fit in don’t belong, [and] we’re not really getting the maximum out of that individual [because] they’re spending a lot of energy [trying to be] someone else,” Reaves tells UNLEASH.
It may be hard work, but there are huge rewards to reap from getting these four elements right – according to Great Place To Work’s data, success here can drive six percent better stock performance and 50% higher employee retention.
For Reaves, belonging is a necessity to solve employer’s talent shortages – this is because he believes “we have an opportunity shortage”, and its “mathematically almost impossible” to have a real talent shortage (because there are 8 billion people in the world, and 70% are of working age).
HR are you ready to create welcoming environments to everyone, where trust, pride and camaraderie are top of mind, and very quickly nip your talent attraction and retention challenges in the bud?
