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challenge is to maintain your ability to create value. While it is normal to increase your focus on costs when the environment gets tougher, you mustn’t lose sight of how you can buck the cycle, in particular through innovation. Trimming organisational fat without attacking the innovation muscle is a major challenge for HR in this kind of environment. There is no doubt it will occupy a great deal of my time, and that of my teams globally in the years to come.
So like many, you're the soldiers caught up in the war for talent? I’ve learned during my career that the time, money and energy that you spend fighting this so called war for talent is much better spent building an engine that will produce the talent that you need where you need it and when you need it. Ideally, I would never want to have to go to an executive search firm for anything else than a validation that our in-house talent is indeed better than what the market has to offer. This is my ambition for Anglo American. Once we have achieved this, there will be no talent war for us to fight.
In terms of creating good connections with universities and colleges? I would much rather fight the war for talent at that level. I strongly believe in our ability to attract bright graduates from the universities that we choose to work with globally. We have a compelling proposition that can appeal to many of them, from the geographies where we operate to the range of technologies we are working with, from the complexity of some of our copper or platinum mining operations to the mystique of the diamonds that we produce and commercialise. Branding that proposition properly and offering consistent career growth opportunities to graduates joining the company is a central piece of our talent strategy. We’ve had good success in this area in South Africa and will extend our efforts to all the countries where we work.
There are territories, Texas being a good example, where the whole locality is oil oriented and a career in oil is an obvious option. That isn’t the case everywhere in the world? It is the same in mining in some ways and building strong and lasting relationships with the communities among which we operate is key for us. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to this but there are strong interdependencies between community relations and our brand as an employer. It is true that we must sometime work hard to attract talent to some of our more remote locations. Deploying talent in the best interest of the group, both at global and local levels is essential to share knowledge and ensure the consistency of our operating standards. We have designed our organisation to make this possible.
How do you imagine the long-term plan for HR will pan out in the organisation across the globe? HR has gone through significant changes in the business over time and is seen as a reliable partner in each of our business units. My ambition is to align the function globally behind a common purpose to create a sustainable competitive advantage for Anglo American through an effective organisation and capable people. We have spent most of this year enabling a more effective organisation and will now focus our efforts on ensuring that we produce the talent necessary to properly staff this organisation at all levels: operational, functional, and managerial. This is an exciting agenda for HR. If executed properly, it will undoubtedly strengthen the leadership position of the function, both internally and within our industry.
What constitutes a leader? Expectations about leadership are changing significantly and as this sector is noted for its older demographic, how challenging is it for you to bring these changes in line with needs and expectations? In my experience, in an organisation, every change starts with the leaders. To truly transform an organisation, leadership has to start by, in a way, transforming itself. By this I mean that it would be delusional for any leadership team to think that they can generate extraordinary results by continuing with the same ordinary behaviours. And, to change to way you behave – as a team or as an individual, you have to first understand and then change the way you think. The way you think of your business and what it is capable of but also the way you think of yourself as leader or group of leaders. Often a deep crisis stimulates a change of thinking.
FROM A BRASS TACKS BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE, THE CURRENT ENVIRONMENT PROVIDES A PLATFORM FOR CHANGE. IT IS ESSENTIAL TO ADJUST YOUR PRIORITIES, YOUR STRUCTURE AND EVEN YOUR LEADERSHIP STYLE TO THE TIMES YOU ARE
Is HR likely to be more or less centralised? We are operating in very different environments and you do want that strong knowledge of the local issues and sensitivities. But there are things you absolutely want to standardise. These are the things that guarantee that people operate to the same global standard, the things that contribute to shaping the corporate culture. A good example is your talent management and learning activities. You want to use the same criteria to identify talent across the group. You want to train your operating personnel to perform certain operations in a given manner that is the safest and the most effective. You want to develop your future leaders in a consistent way so that they acquire the core competencies that you want to find in all of them. All this requires a certain degree of centralisation.
As we conclude, the mining sector is in a lag at the moment. In years’ time, what do you think will be the big indicators that you are doing the right things? The performance of HR will ultimately be reflected in the operational and financial performance of the company. The effectiveness of the organisation we put in place and the capability our staff at all levels will drive productivity gains and are key to our ability to create value. Aside from that, we often talk of HR being a partner for the business but I want us to be business leaders. Leaders in aligning the organisation and in creating the capability that will ensure that we meet our objectives.
But in cyclical industries, such as oil and gas or mining, there can be a tendency to ride the wave and when things are tough, wait for better days rather than challenge our thinking to generate new pathways for the business. I am very confident that, at Anglo American, we have created the platform and are having the leadership conversations that will lead to deep changes in organisational behaviours and ultimately to a differential level of performance.
From a personal point of view, you have travelled the world many times over in the course of your duties, and it sounds like you never did have that fixed position for the family for the long term. This year, my wife and I have become “empty nesters”: our eldest son is out of college and lives in New York, and our two daughters are students at McGill University and UCLA. From a very tight family unit travelling the world from one assignment to the next, we now have to cope with life on different continents and time zones. In this context, establishing a home base where the family will be able to get together has now become a priority for us. I would not risk predicting where this will be quite yet but it makes for interesting conversations between my wife and I at the dinner table.
FOR FURTHER INFO
www.angloamerican.com
HRD
SEPTEMBER 2016 thehrdirector 11
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