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AGELESS WISDOM

Benjamin Chaminade talks to consultant, director and author

Robert K Critchley about dismantling age stereotypes.

U I’m trying to formulate a new generational classification (see ‘Generation Gap’, hrmonthly, October 2005) because, for example, a baby-boomer here is the same as a Gen X or Y in France. That’s why I’ve developed a new way of thinking about this based on the career cycle, from the first year of work to retirement. People follow a cycle of four steps, and it’s working everywhere, from the US to Australia, from Morocco to France.

You are first an Explorer. They could be defined as Gen Y, but not only, because there are a lot more people in their 40s or 50s who want a new career. They’ve had enough of what they’ve been doing and want something different, but they don’t know why, so they explore. Then you have the Experts. They want to become the best-in-field. They don’t mind which company they work for, it’s about knowledge. Then you have the Professionals who are much more driven by prestige and the brand name of the company. “Even if I have a broom and a PhD, I’m okay because I know in two years or 15 years I’ll still be there. At the end you have the Passionates, driven by something else—it could be work, but it could also be their kids, or a passion for…And it can be at any age?

U Yes. At any age and you can be a bit of an Expert and a Passionate, a bit of an Explorer and a Professional. The thing is, I’m not putting people in boxes any more. I’m trying to give directions for their life depending on what they are expecting.And you can move between one and another. I agree, we need to look at the person, not their birth certificate!

U Yes, and you change from one to the other or being a bit of this and that.That’s how I feel. Here’s an example of growing up in Peru or growing up in Australia. This is the first generation in the history of Australia that has grown up in an environment and reached their 50s largely unscathed by war, disease or famine. Most people 50 or less haven’t experienced these traumas.

U Benjamin Chaminade: Your distinguished career has included being president of an international company and director of diverse publicly listed companies. More recently you have become an author. What perspective do you bring to your new book, Rewire or Rust?Robert Critchley: It emphasises the importance of the link between HR and the CEO. Having passionate, motivated employees equals happy customers which results in more profit. The book focuses on helping Generation Xers and baby-boomers, addressing their work-life balance, career planning, and thinking through their goals and strategies. Whether it be to work less, work to live or live to work, plan for retirement, or put your career on a downshift, the book helps the reader plan their life.

U Are the Gen X and baby-boomer classifications still applicable?I feel a little frustrated because we were using the same age groupings four years ago. The Gen X who was 32 is now 36. And if I’m 38 and you’re 42, for example, you’re a boomer and I’m a Gen X, but we don’t think differently. It’s getting very grey… I’ve met people aged 30 who act and think like a 60-year-old. We went to a concert recently and witnessed a 62-year-old by the name of Mick Jagger who acts and thinks like a 30-year-old.

I think the terms are useful for understanding the dif-ferences between people. The most important thing is not to run your life by “I’m a Gen X and I must live this way”. Understand that people are thinking differently, because so often the generational myopia is such that we think everyone thinks like we do. There is value in understanding the way different generations think and act—understand but don’t try to typecast.

“…so often the generational myopia is such that we think everyone thinks like we do.”

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ILLUSTRATION: SARA AN

DERSON

Put simply, if I’m going to live until 90 and I retire early at 55, then I’ll probably have spent 35 years in the workforce and 35 years watching Home and Away. So I need to work longer to build up the savings I need to have an acceptable living standard for my potentially longer retirement.

Looking at the ageing workforce, many companies are discovering a shortage in their skills base, and many organisations are being reactive and not proactive. But some companies are very positive. I am the chairman of a facilities management group, Thomas & Coffey Limited, operating in coal mines and ports. Last year with our graduate intake at Wollongong, we took on two 34-year-old mature-age apprentices because we’re recognising that they have a 30-year plus work life. And there’s a shortage of young people. If you go to the coal mine areas in the Bowen Basin in Queensland, the skills shortage is phenomenal. People have to be creative, flexible and work out different ways to recruit and retain people.

But there are still a lot of employers in this country who don’t realise that the next five years in the work-force are going to be totally unrelated to the last 30 years because we have more people leaving than join-ing. We need to recognise the enormous number of older workers capable of working in their 50s, 60s and 70s. Something like only 15 per cent of jobs in Australia today are manual, so many are based on intelligence.

The most powerful woman in the United Kingdom is Queen Elizabeth. The most powerful man in the United States until a few months ago was Alan Greenspan. Both are in their 80th year!

I was speaking on my research in Peru late last year and only 20 per cent of the Peruvian population of 25 million is in the formal workforce. So 80 per cent, whether they be six or 60, have no understanding of what a career is. They don’t know what a Gen Y or X is. All they know about is survival, all their life. And it doesn’t change as they age. They just get greater survival instincts.

I often ridicule the differences between a 38-year-old and a 42-year-old where they are typecast differently. Why is it that someone over 40 can’t always get an inter-view with some recruitment companies? It’s absurd.

U In your book, Doing nothing is not an option, you note research from two years ago by DBM which says that 55 per cent of companies polled had no plan in place to retain or attract workers aged 50 and over. Has anything changed?Very little from my research. There’s no doubt that the focus on the aged worker is getting more front-page coverage. Two years ago, if I was looking to read about our ageing population, I may have located a small article on page 17. The worker shortage has now become front-page.

I’ve been working over the last year on an age manage-ment project for the Australian Government, addressing the need to continue employing older workers longer and the need for people over 50 to keep working longer.

Left: Robert Critchley; Right: Benjamin Chaminade

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“We need to look more widely and give a greater number of people a chance.”

Not all those older workers want to be the bosses. They may wish to downshift and think of their career not as going up a hill and falling off the cliff as they retire, but more like a bell curve. You’re going up the left side and then at some point in your life—at 30, 40, 50 or 60—you start to phase down the right side of the bell to where you might work three days a week at 65 and two days a week at 70 and keep going.

We can’t do anything about getting people to have more children in the short term. In 1961 each female on average had 3.75 children and today it’s 1.75. There’s a 20-year lag time if we want to increase birth rates. However, we have a lot of people who are on welfare, single mums, people with disabilities, and all those women who’ve been out of the workforce a long time have been doing a lot of multi-skilling—raising a fam-ily, living on a limited budget, being a partner—with no performance reviews or salary increases. There’s a huge potential workforce capable of participating.

We need to look more widely and give a greater number of people a chance. We can certainly outsource jobs to lower-cost countries, which we are doing, but we need to rethink what we are trying to achieve and think in terms of flexibility. It’s not just the person of 55 who may want to scale back to three days a week. It may be a person at 32 who wants to drop out and go backpacking for a year around Europe, or have some children and work two days a week for five years and recommence her career later on. Maybe a person wants to work part-time so they can do a second degree.

One example is my solicitor in Sydney. His assistant wasn’t in the office and I asked where he was. I was told he’s backpacking around Europe for a year with his girlfriend. I said “That’s a shame” and my solicitor said “No, it’s not. He’ll come back after a year and resume his career and be motivated.”

We need to create flexible work environments for all our employees.

U Is this your silver-bullet solution for the skills shortage in Australia?Yes. I’ll give you another example. I’m a director of Worklife International, which focuses on internal coach-ing, career development, and the retention and motiva-tion of people. I’m able to put my views into practice because I’m also a director of companies listed on the stock exchange.

I’m honoured to be Chairman of Noni B, the fashion group, with 190 stores around Australia. Noni B’s focus is the 35-plus female demographic. Ninety-nine per cent of our staff are female and 50 per cent are over

45 years of age. We’ve listened to our staff through surveys and recognised that we need to create a flex-ible work environment, because many of those women have children, grandchildren and parents to care for. They need to be able to work in a flexible environ-ment, so we have a large percentage of staff as per-manent part-time.

That may sound very nice, but let me talk about it from a practical business perspective. You want to cre-ate an environment for your staff so they come to work on Monday feeling passionate about their job, saying this is the place I want to be. That translates into very happy staff, satisfying customers who want to come back. Noni B has increased profits on average over 30 per cent a year in the last four years in a tough retail environment. Happy staff equals happy customers equals happy shareholders.

U What were the two or three main things you used to help them change?I cannot take credit for a special culture that has existed for 30 years. We had detailed staff surveys and recog-nised our people needed flexibility. The founder and CEO, Alan Kindl, makes a very important statement to all our staff: “Your family is the most important thing in your life, and we can never be that. We want to promote flexibility so you’re coming to work on terms that work for you.”

Secondly, we provide continuous development— making sure you are being up-skilled and working smart in your environment. Thirdly, we have a very strong values culture, observing strong family values which emanate from the founders and their family (who are all in the business).

U Will companies and sectors with bad HR practices suffer from the skills shortage more than the others?

If they’re not suffering now, they’re going to be. The days of bullying your staff and autocratic management must come to an end. The words I hear CEOs express—“We want to be an employer of choice”—are the most misused words I’ve experienced in the business world in the last decade. It’s time for CEOs to walk the talk and fortunately some are—however, some are not.

I believe the Gen Xs and Ys—if we’re going to define them—are smarter than the boomers. The boomers applied for a job and if they got offered it, said, “Great, when do I start?” The Xs and Ys ask, “What is your vision? What is your commitment to society? Where do you believe you’re going? Why should I work with you for the next five years? What value-added will I/we bring to the community?”

This is awesome—a whole different attitude coming through. Employers who are proactive and truly want to create an environment where people

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ROBERT K CRITCHLEYNow based in NSW, Robert K Critchley helps business organisations develop strategies to ensure employees are motivated, passionate and achieving work-life balance. He is also a director of consultancy company Worklife International.

In his prior corporate role, he was international president of DBM Inc, an outplacement and career management company responsible for business operations in 49 countries. Critchley started and developed the DBM business under licence in Australia, then sold it to the US parent. He also served as Asia-Pacific president for DBM.

Earlier in his career, he was in the banking industry for more than 20 years, mainly in Australia and the UK. He also developed a specialist business focusing on corporate turnarounds and training.

He is chairman or director of several companies listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, in equipment hire, facilities management, fashion retail, transport and construction.

Critchley has written the books Rewired, Rehired or Retired? (2002) and Doing Nothing Is Not An Option—Facing the Imminent Labour Crisis (2005). His new book, Rewire or Rust, will be released in the next month or two.

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want to come to work, where they’re passionate, where we focus on their needs to make sure they have a good work-life balance, they have continu-ous learning in an environment that fits with their family environment—for those employers who are proactive, word-of-mouth will prevail. Because we always tell our friends which employers are good and not so good.

The people who stick to the old ways are going to get caught out. Some companies are going to find that their prosperity suffers. They might not even survive.

U There are more recruitment companies in Australia, with 20 million people, than in France where we have 70 million people. What is the recruitment companies’ role? Do they need to change focus?The smart recruitment companies are being similarly proactive. Often recruitment companies get a brief from their customer that includes a job description—we want the person to be under 40, etc. Even though they’re not supposed to say that, they do.

Many recruitment companies accept the brief and go out to find someone to fit the description. But the really professional companies are reviewing the brief and going back to their customer and educating them. They highlight that, if there are two applicants 35 and 55 and the job is technical, then they can both do it.

And some jobs can be accomplished from a home office. An estimated 20 million people in the US are working online from a home office. In Europe, the fig-ure is about 43 million, and close to two million people in Australia. We need to assess whether Mary has to come into the office every day, and does she have to work full-time or part-time?

U What impact will the new, adversarial industrial rela-tions legislation have on these good things that need to happen—happy workplaces, etc?Not for one second do I profess to be the expert, but I do feel positive about it for a few reasons. You’ll never stop a bad employer and make them a good employer, but this groundswell of changing demographics, where we have skills shortages because we’re having fewer children and living longer, is going to make employers realise that they have to create a positive environment for their staff. Treat them badly and staff over the next five years will have a lot more employment options than the staff of the last five years, and they won’t stay with you.

The other positive side of the new IR legislation is that it gives the employer greater flexibility to create a structure that suits the employee. For example, for a mum who can work 9–3.30, but has to take the kids to school and pick them up and seeks employment, it should be easier in some circumstances.

There will be people who will abuse the IR legisla-tion, but my gut feeling is that, when we look back in two or three years, we’ll say there are some good things here. I’m being totally non-political in making this comment.

U In terms of your own career, how did you get from bank-ing to where you are now?I joined the bank when I was 16 and did my studies after we were married. But at 41 I was bored, and I was helping friends who had a business that was failing, in my spare time. I helped them save the business for free, then friends of friends asked me to do the same. All of a sudden I had a business. I still worked at the bank for two days a week for nine months. I was pursu-ing my passion, which was helping people and busi-nesses prosper together. Then I started DBM as a licensee, built it up and sold it to the parent, then took on a global role.

I have fun with what I do. I don’t regard it as work. I have a balanced life. I like to speak and share my research, and I’m speaking in Fiji next week at a confer-ence—and nobody believes I’m working! I’m going back to Latin America, where my books have been translated for presentations.

I can talk about my research, consult, and help people in not-for-profit organisations. I work with companies as a director or chairman. I also like skiing, hiking and playing tennis. Most importantly, I have more time for my family.

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“This is awesome–a whole different attitude coming through.”

Writing Rewired, Rehired or Retired (2002) was a life-changing experience. I was travelling five months of the year around the world as international president of DBM, and my family would drop me an email: “Page 42, par 4—this can’t be you?” I realised from that and a couple of unpleasant personal experiences, including 9/11—I was in New York that day—that there’s more to life. It made me stop travelling so much, rethink my career and stop working crazy hours. I’ve scaled back.

What I’m describing is the me of today. The me of four years ago wasn’t very smart.

That’s why I think HR professionals have an enormous contribution to make. We have the CEO and the CFO, but the head of HR should be linked closely with those two—because people are the one sustainable differen-tiator you have. They are your one major asset, the one that differentiates you and helps you create a culture that’s different from your competitors. We can all copy competitors products, but we can’t copy the people.

U Where are the HR gurus? There are many for manage-ment, but why not HR?In Australia HR has not always been treated so well. The multinationals and Australian companies downsized their HR departments in the late-1990s, and at the CEO level there’s not always enough appreciation of the difference between someone who walks in on Monday highly moti-vated, with a productivity level of 200 per cent, and someone who walks in with problems at home, who doesn’t like their job and is thinking of other things they want to do, and has productivity of 10 per cent. You don’t have to be an accountant to work out the difference to the bottom line. We see it in companies so often.

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I spend a lot of time talking to organisations, and there are wonderful entrepreneurial, visionary leaders out there, and I feel confident. But I regard them as the minority and we need to spend a lot more time educat-ing some of our leaders in how to be leaders. There are a lot of managers, but not too many leaders. I’ll possibly receive some rude phone calls now!

U Where does learning to lead begin?Some people may be natural leaders—they were cap-tain of the netball or football team at school. But not everyone can be the captain and we need to spend more time developing leadership skills... There’s an old book, The Peter Principle (by Laurence Peter, first published in 1969), that says people are promoted to their level of incompetence, and that still stands today. Someone who’s a star gets to go to the next stage, but because you’re the best player on the team doesn’t mean you’re going to be the best coach. Leaders should re-read The Peter Principle.

I also think we need to put leadership into the cur-riculum in schools and universities, and at the early stages of induction and development when people join organisations.

At Worklife International, we do a lot of work in that area—helping companies identify where their talent for tomorrow is.

Theoretically we’re looking for tomorrow’s leaders, but, unless you have very good systems and proce-dures in place, someone can be hidden away in the Port Hedland branch of your organisation because their boss thinks they’re good but doesn’t tell anyone else.

At Coates Hire, CEO Malcolm Jackman has imple-mented a strategy for a leadership development pro-gram. They are identifying people who are going to be tomorrow’s leaders, and they can be 25 or 55. They’re the best people. It’s ability-driven, not age-driven.

BENJAMIN CHAMINADEBenjamin Chaminade, the director of InsideHR, is a consultant and author who specialises in talent management and human capital strategic development. He began his consulting career in France, where he is a best-selling author, before moving to Australia three years ago.

He has written several books including Skill Management and Employer of Choice Best Practices. Chaminade’s latest book, HR as a key element in a quality culture, was recognised as the ‘Best Management and Performance Book’ by HR managers in France.

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“They are identifying people who are going to be tomorrow’s leaders, and they can be 25 or 55.”