"Step into my office, close the shower curtain"

Extract from Workplace Revolutions - The Sydney Morning Herald 1 October 2002.

The notion of treating them mean to keep them keen is almost a heresy in the new workplace, writes Sherrill Nixon in the second part of a Herald series.

Management gurus around the world have finally hit on the next big thing in business - treating their staff like human beings.

If you're not people-centric these days, you haven't a hope of succeeding in the new business world, where human capital is king.

Successful traders in human capital have ditched their love of technology to engage in a "war for talent" to recruit and retain top staff, placing the best of the best in "talent programs".

They spend millions on developing "values", "visions" and "mission statements", which they plaster on office walls or ask people to wear on ID tags close to their heart.

And today's best leaders have "emotional intelligence" to deal with the "Millennials", the new generation just entering the workforce with a completely different attitude to work.

These newcomers have no respect for authority and formality, and the workplace is evolving to accommodate them.

Take "Campus MLC" - the headquarters of the financial services company that is Sydney's leading example of the officeless office.

Behind its 50-year-old facade in North Sydney, this workplace of the future has no private offices, only workstations laid out in a wavy fashion on open-plan floors.

Even the CEO, Peter Scott, and senior executives sit at workstations the same size as that of the most junior worker.

Business is done in the queue for coffee at the café on level six, or at the huge dining tables in the kitchens at the centre of each floor.

If you want a private meeting you duck into one of the colourful "meeting pods" scattered over the 12 floors or grab a table that has a shower curtain around it for some privacy.

"When you walk around you won't be able to spot the power," says Rosemary Kirkby, who led the MLC workplace transformation in the late 1990s.

"The emphasis is on contribution, it's not on seniority … the world is just too complex and too fast for the command-and-control (management model) to work."

That was the old way. Now, the creed goes, it's back to basics after a string of cost-cutting exercises dressed up as innovative management that elevated technology and procedure to corporate gods.

Gone is the "total quality management" approach of the 1980s that sought to make money by squeezing every last inch and dollar out of company processes.

Ditched is the downsizing frenzy of the 1990s that dictated mass sackings to improve the bottom line.

Today, the management mantra is all about people and the knowledge they carry around in their heads.

"People are your greatest asset," says Anthony Davidson, a director of the management development company Performance Frontiers. "That, now more than ever, is the reality.

"We are talking about human intellect. Unless you are going to have your human intellect working for you, you are going to be outgunned by other organisations who are using their human capital effectively."

One of the driving factors in this new mindset in the Generation X or Y employee (Gen Y is also known as the Millennials), whose loyalty is only to themselves, not to their boss.

Raised on technology and constant change, these employees hate hierarchy and refuse to be workaholics like their baby boomer parents.

Mobile and motivated not by money but by life experiences, they want to feel that they are contributing to something big. Their motto is "challenge me", and that is what today's employers say they must do to retain their services.

In this new people-centric world of business, even the term human resources has been abandoned in some companies, replaced by employee relations or even people-and-performance or people-and-knowledge directors.

Some companies even allow their HR directors to take a seat at the executive table and highlight HR strategy in their annual report to attract investment and staff.

However, not everyone is convinced by the new management mantra of "people are our greatest resource".

"The evidence is that (a mantra) is all it remains", says David Lamond, the director of the Sydney Graduate School of Management.

"These are the things that are trotted out to make shareholders feel good … what we do know is that Australian employees are working longer hours, working harder than ever before.

If we indeed were being people-centric, we would be seeing people working smarter instead of working harder.

It's time Australian companies got serious about their claims to be people-centric."

<back to top>