Inside ASI-AP

Last Thursday I attended the AHRI HR Practices Day at the Grand Hyatt. This is essentially a one day conference that starts at 7.30am with a breakfast speaker and concludes with a networking session at 5.30pm. It was the first time AHRI have held the Practices Day in Melbourne although they have had them annually in Brisbane for the past 4 years. I have attended them before and always found them to be informative and interesting.

The sessions of particular interest to me this year were:

Leadership and driving values: building a successful organisation - this was an address by the CEO of the Geelong Football Club. It was the first time of many that day that I heard how unfashionable it is to refer to management teams - it is all about leadership and leadership teams now, which apparently breaks down the 'us and them' barriers.

Acquisitions: overcoming allegiances to past employers - this was a real eye-opener! The speaker quoted a KPMG statistic which says that 83% of all mergers and acquisitions (M&A's) failed to produce any benefit for shareholders. According to a 2003 survey the success rates for M&A's are split evenly between successful, unsuccessful and moderately successful and one of the main reasons is that there is a lack of focus on managing the people and cultural issues. The speaker even commented that 'culture eats strategy for lunch'!

Healthy options: productivity workforce - this was about the implementation of a program to improve employee wellbeing and workplace culture undertaken by Southern Health. One of their particular challenges in spreading the word about their new program was that out of a workforce of 11,000+ employees, only half of them have access to email!!