"Simple principles for strong leadership"/ "Massages, free fish help eastern Europe tackle labour shortages"

Dec. 22, 2018 "Simple principles for strong leadership": Today I found this article by Guy Cormier in the Globe and Mail: 

President and CEO, Desjardins Group

Running a large organization is a daunting task for any leader. For many, the pressures of adapting to rapidly changing technologies such as fintech and blockchain, consumers’ increasing move to digital, and an environment where industry “disruption” is commonplace, make it even more challenging.

The question for all 21st-century leaders is how to innovate and grow, while keeping true to your values, roots and key strengths.

At Desjardins, our values are more than a century old. As a co-operative, we approach our business in a bit of a different way. Our organization was created by members for the well-being of members and to support socio-economic development.

 My challenge is to lead more than 45,000 employees and 5,000 officers and to encourage them to adapt, modernize, expand and innovate in a complex business environment while we continue to make our 7 million members and clients our top priority. We also have had to do all this while managing a complex brand transition from our acquisition of State Farm Canada while staying true to our co-operative roots.

My approach is deceptively simple and may sound familiar to most leaders. Here are four concepts that have worked:

Keep it simple

Despite the complexity and competitiveness of the financial services industry, customers insist that we make it easy to do business with us. They want the best service where, when and how it suits them. 

For example, people might dread the mortgage-renewal process because it’s complicated and time-consuming. We wanted to make this process simpler and less of a burden to our customers, so we introduced a digital mortgage renewal where you can easily review and renew your mortgage with four to five taps on your mobile phone.

Keeping our customers first is not a new concept for leaders. But we must instill it in our employees. Make it simpler for the customer of the 21st century to work with you.

Relentlessly integrate the modern

Disruption is now common and technology is advancing at an exponential pace. At Desjardins we view disruptors as potential partners, not as competitors. We bring our capital, experience and reach to take the best innovations and mainstream them faster. By doing this, we’re able to onboard innovation in ways that meet the changing needs of customers and our employees.

We recently partnered with a startup called Hardbacon, a fintech organization that makes investing simpler for everyone. We helped them during the startup process by providing them with office space, mentoring and other services. Their app connects and monitors multiple brokerage accounts to look for vulnerabilities, expose hidden fees and provide investment education. 

We were able to play a role in their development and we now offer their solutions for free to new customers of Desjardins Online Brokerage. This type of collaboration could have been seen as a threat, but it turned out to be a win-win scenario, especially for our customers. A good question to ask yourself is whether you are open to new ways of doing things and actively involved in fostering growth to benefit your customers.

Never lose sight of the human touch

Customers count on committed employees who want to provide excellent service and our employees are all brand ambassadors. Technology makes everything faster and easier, but it can have a big drawback – a lack of human interaction. As much as customers demand a human touch, so too do employees, especially if they are to carry your message to customers.

One of the early commitments I made as CEO was to ensure that I was the visible face of my message. To do this, I hold a webcast with all 45,000 employees every quarter. This personal approach lets me share my thinking and it lets others share their thoughts with me. 

I also try to meet as many people as I can when I travel to different parts of the country. E-mails are efficient and necessary, but they can never take the place of in-person conversations. As a leader, these conversations not only give you insights, but also give you a good pulse on where things are in the company.

Performance vs. purpose

Performance is often measured in numbers – profits, growth and margins. These are all key drivers, but they don’t measure whether an organization is fulfilling its purpose. Being everyone’s “No. 1 choice” means that people choose to do business with us and work for us. 

And I believe that to achieve that goal an organization must stay focused on its values and roots – its purpose as an organization. For Desjardins, it’s about being a true socio-economic leader that supports our members/clients, employees and the communities we serve. So, in its own way, our success at fulfilling our purpose is another driver of performance. If we don’t perform on this measure, we won’t perform financially.

Leading large organizations in the 21st century is a mile-a-minute challenge defined by the competing interests of financial performance, customer demands and the relentless pace of innovation. But Desjardins and many other successful companies are finding that success lies in strong values such as focusing on purpose over performance, always keeping your focus on the human elements of your business and always putting customer needs first.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/careers/leadership/article-simple-principles-for-strong-leadership-modernize-humanize-and-find/


 "Massages, free fish help eastern Europe tackle labour shortages": Today I found this article by Michael Kahn in the Globe and Mail:

PRAGUE (Reuters) - What’s does a company do when it doesn’t have enough workers and unemployment rates are at record lows? In eastern Europe answers includes workplace massages, free carp for Christmas and guaranteed jobs for spouses.

With some of the European Union’s lowest unemployment rates, companies in the region are increasingly being forced to adopt novel measures to attract and retain workers so they can carry on expanding.


Take Amazon (AMZN.O), which employs 20,000 people in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia and wanted to hire another 10,000 for the holiday season. To fully staff its centers, the company has to bus in staff from cities up to 90 minutes away.

The U.S. giant also uses daily questionnaires to ensure workers are happy, asking among other things whether restrooms are clean as managers try to resolve immediately any issue that might dissatisfy employees.

 “The only way we can get these numbers is by spending lots of time on the conditions and the work environment,” said Steven Harman, who oversees Amazon’s logistics centers across a number of European countries.

Filling positions is a struggle for companies such as Amazon in the Czech Republic where the unemployment rate is the lowest in European Union at well under 3 percent. The number of job vacancies in the country of 10.6 million people is the highest since records started in 1995. 

“It is about where the people are applying from and we find the most efficient way to get them to our fulfillment centers,” Harman said. 

Jaroslav Hanak, president of the Czech Confederation of Industry, predicted the hunt for workers would get even more difficult in the coming months, with employers sweetening offers to prospective staff.

 Hiring students and offering vocational training, providing an extra week of holiday and offering day care to lure mothers with young children back to work are examples, Hanak said. 

KEEP IT IN THE FAMILY 

In Slovakia, many companies are hiring workers from non-EU countries without work permits to plug the gap, especially for construction or seasonal jobs, said Julius Kostolny, deputy chief of the country’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry. 

Companies are also offering to cover severance pay for employees willing to quit a previous job at a day’s notice, rather than working out the traditional 60-day period, he said. 

“There is also a new phenomenon,” Kostolny said. “Businesses are focusing on couples. If a man starts working at a company, the company guarantees a job for the wife.”

 In Bulgaria, companies say labor shortages are one of the main factors preventing faster economic growth. 

According to the Bulgarian Industrial Capital Association, the nation of 7 million people needs at least half a million workers in the next five years to grow. 

Canada’s Telus International, which provides business outsourcing services and employs more than 3,000 people in Bulgaria, has started offering air tickets and relocation support to attract young Bulgarians living abroad, as well as free German lessons and a 2,500 euro ($2,867) bonus. 

It also throws in free fitness club memberships, massages and yoga for its workers - benefits more common in places such as Silicon Valley and London than Sofia. 

“We have had to decline new business and projects due to lack of workers,” Telus spokeswoman Simona Stiliyanova said. “We face challenges in finding people with proper language skills and this is the reason to seek new ways to find them.” 

In Poland, at least one company uses prisoners to beef up its workforce. Amica Wronki (AMCP.WA), a household appliance maker and wholesaler, has started cooperating with the country’s biggest prison and now has 50 inmates on its books. 

Poland’s unemployment rate is expected to remain lower than 6 percent through the end of 2018, hovering at levels unseen since the early 1990s. Officials view the labor shortage in some industries as a growing threat to the economy. 

“The project helps local entrepreneurs to solve some of the problems associated with the search for employees for production positions, which result from the high density of plants in this part of the country,” Amica spokesman Tomasz Pietrzyk said. 

CHRISTMAS CARP Other companies in the region’s biggest economy are simply throwing cash at the problem. Budimex (BDXP.WA), Poland’s largest construction company and subsidiary of Spain’s Ferrovial (FER.MC), has launched a program offering money to anyone who helps find new workers. 

“We are aiming for a long-term duration of the program,” spokesman Michal Wrzosek said. “We are looking for more or less 50 different specializations.”

In Hungary, a Eurostat survey cited by economists at Erste Group Bank (ERST.VI) showed a lack of workers limited production at 83 percent of industrial companies in the third quarter, and at half of Polish and 44 percent of Czech businesses. 

Hungary’s chronic labor shortage is now feeding into corporate takeover activity with some companies making acquisitions to find the workers or expertise needed to keep their businesses humming. 

Companies across eastern Europe are also ramping up investment in automation to cope with shortages that started after the 2008 financial crisis and worsened in 2011 when final curbs on workers moving to richer EU countries were lifted. 

But sometimes a more human touch does the trick.

 Czech bearing maker Koyo - part of Japan’s Jtekt (6473.T) - offers a range of perks and has set up what it calls a Dojo training center in a nod to its Japanese owners to train local unskilled workers quickly for manufacturing jobs. 

And as an end-of-year gesture, Koyo sends every worker home with a carp for their traditional Czech Christmas meal. 

“On Friday, every employee will get a carp and they don’t have to worry about buying one themselves,” said Petr Novak, Koyo’s managing director. 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-easteurope-workers/massages-and-free-fish-help-east-europe-tackle-labor-shortages-idUSKCN1OK0P0

Dec. 14, 2019 My opinion: Here is a "Christmas Carp" for the holiday season.