INTOUCH – Crying out for Leadership

New Zealand organisations are in need of boosted leadership according to the people working in them. benchmark survey by Collective Learning Australia of 100 senior managers from private and public sector companies in New Zealand found the perception of leadership capability was the lowest ranked item amongst 14 key drivers of satisfaction with the employment experience.
The survey also shows that few companies appear to have clear strategy for succession planning, mentoring, or have defined strategy for developing leadership talent.
The research was conducted by employer brand specialist Brett Minchington who was “surprised that leadership would rate so low in New Zealand though similar result occurred in the Australian study in May 2007 suggesting that issues around leadership capability extend outside New Zealand”.
The driver of satisfaction of the employment experience was work environment. “At time when retention is on the minds of employers, improving the working environment is one way of improving the day-to-day working conditions of employees,” Minchington said.
An increased global emphasis on becoming preferred employer in the minds of the employee target audience and the need to be an ethical employer, is also reflected in the high rating for how well employers deliver in the area of corporate social responsibility. Increasingly organisations are realising that brand loyalty is created in many ways, but essentially it is all based on the relationships that an organisation builds with its partners,” Minchington said.
He added, “Many companies will be relieved to discover there was positive response to the question ‘Are the CEO and board well respected by employees?’” Equally many felt that “We work in an exciting and dynamic environment,” which should be encouraging to those employers seeking to retain staff.
Within the context of employer branding, how companies handle the recruitment and induction of employees is highly significant. Messages given out about the organisation during this stage will have tremendous impact on the ability of an organisation to recruit, induct and retain talent. In this survey, however, one of the lower scoring individual questions was, “Our internal and external communications reinforce our unique employment offerings,” Minchington said.
Vaughan Bradley, director of New Zealand recruitment advertising firm Haines, said, “What the survey results indicate are the beginnings of benchmark across New Zealand in how effective organisations are in building their Employer Brand. The benchmark results are timely given the talent and skill shortages being faced by both SMEs and large organisations in New Zealand.”