workforce
Keeping the good apples
The best approach to hiring
from outside your sector.
By Bruce Mullan
M
any community organisations
are hiring ex-corporates for their
C-suite to bring in some new
thinking and business acumen. A logical
strategy given the depth and nature of
government reforms to operate more in
a business-to-consumer way rather than
business-to-government. Boards and CEOs
believe a corporate background will bring
some commercial know-how, ideas from
other industries and consumer expertise
into management teams.
Many not-for-profit aged care providers
have a long and successful history built on
a strong reputation. Aged care providers
have a brand just like any other business. In
many respects, your brand is the primary
intangible business asset. Investing in
people is risky, especially someone who
doesn’t know your sector. How these
executives turn up, how long they stay and
the difference they make is important to
your brand and culture. What is the brand
impact of a poor hiring decision at the top?
A brand holds an intrinsic and intangible
meaning in the minds of your customers
and sets an expectation about the service
they will receive from your company. It’s
in your DNA. It stands for something, and
everything. It’s an attractive proposition to
people from the corporate sector to work
in a business that benefits the community
and the greater good.
When it comes to work, you can distil
what motivates people into three areas.
10 agedcareinsite.com.au
First, it’s the autonomy to make their
own decisions on a day to day basis –
employees just want to get on with it.
Next, it’s about being good at what they
do. Everyone wants to be proud of their
work. Lastly, it’s about doing something
meaningful. How can your eight hours a
day make a difference to someone else?
If you look closely, most aged care brands
tick all those boxes.
Further, I see ‘organisation’ as a metaphor
for a set of structured relationships to
serve a brand. Trust is the glue that holds
those relationships together, internally and
externally. You either have trust, you don’t
have it, or are trying to get it back. A brand
attracts the right people, and with high trust
you can do pretty much anything. Without
trust, nothing else matters.
Recently, there have been many
high-profile cases of well-known brands
solely motivated by profit damaging
their reputation and the trust of their
customers and long-standing employees
due to the poor behaviour of the boards
and leadership teams. Currently, Air New
Zealand, Qantas, JB Hi-Fi, Toyota and
Mazda hold the top five places for trusted
Australian brands, while the four big banks
and AMP have dropped significantly in
12 months and are now outside the top
50 (according to the 2019 Corporate
Reputation Index).
So now you might be thinking of hiring
someone with a corporate background.
Think of a situation when someone was
recruited from a corporate leadership role
into a not-for-profit organisation. How did
they show up? Did the apple cart get upset?
Firstly, I have come across dozens of
ex-corporates with preconceived or flawed
assumptions about what the health and
community sector does. The expectation
gap begins with a values clash around
where your business sits on the purpose-
profit continuum – a poor cultural fit.
Next, these people often come with a
myopic focus on “what is wrong” founded
on a presumption that only a corporate
methodology can fix whatever might
be wrong. This is seen by others as an
arrogant attitude from someone who
has spent less than five minutes in the
organisation.
Lastly, in the health and community
sectors, the stakeholder base is much
broader and more complex. The
“organisational rhythm” is a different tempo
because big decisions require time and
consultation to gain genuine consensus.
Successful CEOs in the NFP sector know
this only too well. This can be eminently
frustrating for a gung-ho ex-corporate
leader used to doing things their own way.
The hiring outcome is a lack of utilisation
of the expertise of a person that was meant
to improve the condition of the business.
What can be worse is the development of
fractured relationships with capable long-
standing employees.
So how can ex-corporate hires
successfully fit in and integrate their
expertise from the get-go? The critical
elements of successful leadership
transitions into community aged care are:
1. S
tart with a focus on what’s working and
seek to understand what’s not.
2. Slow down. Incrementally adapt their
commercial skill set and expertise to
the sector.
3. Find ways to develop deeper connections
with the people around them.
4. Enable opportunities for self-reflection –
to reassess assumptions and perceptions.
The benefits of a successful ex-corporate
leader transition into the community
sector are profound. It starts with
developing stronger working relationships
and maintaining a healthy respect for the
past to ignite future possibilities. Having
and keeping the right people on your
team bus brings a fresh perspective and
new ideas. You will get to places you
never thought possible.
All of this strengthens and reinforces your
brand: your most important asset. For a
business that is in the business of human
services, it is your brand that attracts
the right people to ultimately drive your
economic engine. There are many talented
disenchanted corporate leaders looking
for work with meaning. Perhaps your
brand is what they’re looking for, and you
can keep a bunch of good apples in your
management team. ■
Bruce Mullan is a certified workplace
coach bringing energy and focus through
the art of organisational coaching.