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In 2019, an army of about 100 researchers volunteered to sit in on 466 economics talks delivered across the United States, from recruitment seminars to the most prestigious annual conference of American economists.

They painstakingly coded thousands of interactions between speakers and participants, recording not only the number of questions received by each speaker but the nature and tone of the questions.

“We find that even after including rich controls, women presenters are asked more questions and the questions asked of women are more likely to be patronising or hostile,” they concluded in a 2021 paper “Gender and the Dynamics of Economics Seminars”.

Theirs is just one of an evolving field of study in economics exposing persistent hidden gender bias in the workplace.

A seminal study released in 2000 by economists Claudia Goldin and Celia Rouse revealed how the proportion of women employed in symphony orchestras increased after the selectors introduced blind auditions.

In 2010, a Harvard Business School study revealed how people rated identical CVs more highly when they were from a job candidate named “Howard” rather than “Heidi”.

Researchers have also shown how men, too, can fall foul of gender stereotypes. A Swiss study released last year found men were half as likely as women to receive a callback from employers when applying for traditionally female-dominated jobs.

“Gender biases run in both directions,” says Leonora Risse, a senior lecturer in economics at RMIT University and a research fellow at Harvard University’s Women and Public Policy Program. “They arise whenever a person is stepping out of the traditional role prescribed for them by social norms.”

But it is women who have historically borne the financial penalty of stereotyping, as shown by the persistent unexplained gender pay gap, even after seniority and industry of employment are accounted for.

So, what can women do to overcome gender bias and advance their careers?

1. Become aware

The first step to combating bias, says Risse, is to become aware of its existence.

“Many women, especially in the early stages of their careers or education, are not attuned to gender bias unless they unfortunately happen to experience outright harassment or discrimination.”

It can take time for women to wake up to the subtle discrimination they face, by which time, lifetime earnings can be severely impacted.

“It is understandable that many young women don’t want to ‘play the gender card’ – they want to prove themselves in what they are told is a meritocratic system, ” says Risse.

“But blindness to the existence of biases can mean that women end up internalising them and perpetuating the gender norms that circulate throughout society.”

2. Call it out

Risse says research is continually shedding new light on the gender biases that still persist across different industries. ”Once we learn to recognise bias, we need to be able to call it out.”

It can be difficult for individual women to call out discrimination in their workplace, making events like International Women’s Day an important opportunity to do so, says Risse.

“This is where the factual research and analysis, like the studies cited earlier, become part of our tool kit.”

3. Advocate to redesign systems

Solutions focused on “fix-the-institution” rather than “fix-the-women” are the most effective in helping women secure pay equity, according to a 2020 paper by economists Maria Recalde and Lise Vesterlund.

Policies like banning salary negotiations altogether – such as Reddit did in 2015 – and banning employers from requesting to see salary histories (which often set a low anchor point for women’s negotiations) all helped women, they found.

But policies to boost transparency around pay and pay negotiations were by far the most effective in narrowing gender disparities. “This includes permission to discuss salary information, disclosing pay ranges, reporting pay statistics by occupation and gender, and letting candidates know if and when compensation is negotiable.”

4. Seek out mentors and sponsors

Independent economist Nicki Hutley says women need to look for extra support in the workplace.

“I think you can never overestimate the importance of having a good mentor and a strong network to build career opportunities,” she says.

More recently, women have been advised to find not only a mentor in the workplace – a sounding board for advice – but a “sponsor”: someone who will advocate on your behalf for pay rises or promotions.

5. Learn to negotiate

“Women are actually excellent negotiators (better than men) when they are negotiating for others,” says University of Sydney economics professor Deborah Cobb-Clark.

“So, it is not that they do not know how to negotiate, they are often just uncomfortable doing it for themselves.”

“My advice for women is to develop their negotiation skills through formal training (business schools teach these courses) or self-help books. Learning some formal negotiation techniques can often help women get comfortable doing it.”

While Cobb-Clark is reticent to delegate responsibility for beating gender bias to women themselves, she says arming yourself with some better negotiation skills can’t hurt.

“I get the ‘fix the system argument’ in principle, but I am also pragmatic. Fixing the system could take generations … improving women’s ability to play the game seems like a faster – if less elegant – solution.”

Learning and creativity often take a hit under remote work conditions. What’s happening in your brain when this occurs and what can you do about it?

When employees come together to brainstorm, it’s common to enter a state of ‘burstiness’ – they’re rapidly bouncing concepts around, building on each others’ ideas and getting closer to finding an innovative solution.

That creative spark is often extinguished in remote work environments.

It’s an experience that’s all too familiar for Joel Pearson, a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of New South Wales.

He recalls what happened when he and his team at Future Minds Lab, an experimental start-up that operates within the School of Psychology at UNSW, began taking part in virtual brainstorming during Sydney’s lockdown last year.

“It felt like we had a clock ticking down in front of us. It was really hard to throw casual ideas around in the same way we could in the room with someone,” says Pearson.

“When you’re in the room with someone, the most interesting and creative things will often come from left field. Or right at the end of a meeting, someone will throw something out there, and another person will chime in and say, ‘Oh, that’s interesting. What if we tried that?’”

Dr Fiona Kerr, founder and CEO of the NeuroTech Institute, explains that creativity flourishes in the presence of others through the process of brainwave synchronisation.

“Our brains fire a lot when we’re together, especially when we’re creating. The higher the level of inter-brain synchronisation between people, the higher the level of intra-brain synchronisation in each individual’s brain, which is how much different areas in the brain collaborate and connect, and the speed with which they do that,” says Kerr.

Interactive networks

People thrive in the company of others.

Being together enables us to learn from, and build off, each other’s ideas.

“When you’re in a creative zone, you have multiple parts of the brain operating at once,” says Kerr. “The salience network, the default mode network and the central executive network are all interacting, and when they’re all firing, they block out a lot of external stimuli and you can focus very deeply.”

“When we ask, ‘Where do people get their insights?’, very few people say, ‘In the office.’ They get them when they’re walking the dog, or having a shower, or washing the dishes… Working from home has increased the opportunity to create those conditions.” – Lynda Edwards, Lead Consultant, The NeuroLeadership Institute.

In-person interactions also allow complementary ideas to sit side by side.

“There’s a saying about wisdom being the ability to hold different thoughts in your head at the same time,” says Kerr. “Creative ideation is when you are starting to either disconnect networks and reconnect them, or to build new networks out of what you already have.”

Your proximity to other people also helps to send creative sparks flying.

“There are about 2000 chemo signals [chemical signals the body gives off] that we absorb when we’re physically with another person, and this influences how we process information, and how we encode and rebuild ideas,” says Kerr.

Stimulating environments are often key in sparking rich electrochemical activity.

This collaborative stage is often where creative ideas are born, before you start to encode and make patterns with the data.

Insights in solitude

Creativity is as much a group activity as it is an individual exercise in contemplation.

“After collaborating in direct proximity, the brain needs time to let the ideas settle, make connections and put scaffolding in place. For that, we tend to like being on our own,” says Kerr.

This provides strong scientific support for the value of a hybrid model. Neurons start firing when employees are ideating together before they’re given space to dissect the information when working from home. 

An effective creative process will involve a few rounds of swapping between the group phase in a live situation to allow for the neurophysiological impacts that only happen with proximity, and the individual phase, normally with two to three phases of each stage, says Kerr.

The NeuroLeadership Institute, a research body bringing neuroscientists and leadership experts together to create evidence-based leadership advice, has identified several design principles that contribute to the ‘conditions of insight’.

These are: being in a quiet space, internally focused, in a positive state and not directly focusing on the problem you’re trying to solve.

The institute’s Lead Consultant, Lynda Edwards, says those conditions are more likely to occur outside of the office.

“Employees who have access to a home office with a decent-sized desk and a good setup will have ideal opportunities to create. The physical setting can promote the conditions in our brains to increase the [likelihood of having an] Aha! moment,” says Edwards.

“If you want to put existing information together in new and exciting ways, you need to have a quieter brain. When we ask, ‘Where do people get their insights?’, very few people say, ‘In the office.’ They get them when they’re walking the dog, or having a shower, or washing the dishes… Working from home has increased the opportunity to create those conditions. It’s had a really positive impact on creativity.”

Distant learning

Rote learning new information may be easier in a quieter space when you’re not distracted by the hustle and bustle of a lively office, but for more creative learning that requires extrapolation, a physical workspace is far superior, says Kerr. 

Face-to-face encounters that involve a high degree of eye contact better embed learning, a recent experiment revealed.

“Researchers put electrical caps on students in a classroom and looked at how the kids connected with each other,” says Kerr.

“Half of the children had to look each other in the eyes for two minutes before they went back into the classroom and the other half didn’t. Even though they were all sharing space, the ones that actively looked at someone else had more activated brain areas, and were more engaged and proactive in coming up with ideas.”

Though you might engage in eye contact over a screen, it’s a more impoverished type of interaction compared to in-person, says Kerr.

“There are parts of your brain, especially socio-emotional areas, that don’t ever turn on over a screen. You’re not getting chemo signalling, and the majority of electrochemical connection around inter-brain synchronisation doesn’t happen, especially if you have not met in person.

“We have hundreds of areas in our brain that are looking for micro-behaviours – all these signs we normally get when we are face to face with someone. They often can’t be coded over screens, but our brains are still looking for them. That’s partly what is driving video call fatigue.”

Learning is also enhanced when there’s an “emotional tag”, says Kerr. 

Unsurprisingly, an emotional connection is far more likely to form when we meet someone in a face-to-face setting.

“The more hooks you can put onto a piece of information you lodge in your brain, the easier it is to find again and bring it back into conscious memory.” –
Dr Fiona Kerr, Founder and CEO, the NeuroTech Institute

Kerr recently conducted an experiment investigating how complex decision-making differs in a group versus individual scenario. 

In the study, individuals were either: on their own and had to learn how to apply new knowledge; working on the task on their own, but with another person close to them in the room; or they first collaborated with another person on an initial task, before completing the complex problem.

“The people who collaborated with another person face to face before completing the individual problem learned faster, and applied the knowledge more quickly and consistently throughout the exercise.”

Whether online or in-person, teaching the information to someone else is also going to enhance memory retention, and embed the memory more strongly.

“It’s not just a matter of getting information into our brains,” says Pearson. “If you revisit the information within 24 hours, and then again within a week or two, long-term retention will be far greater.

Edwards advises providing opportunities for social connection through learning.

“When you see that person or team again, it helps to bring back the learning content. We know it goes into the hippocampus, the memory centre of the brain, a lot more strongly if we have that social setting”.

Australia’s national gender pay gap stands at 13.8 per cent. That is, Australian women working full-time continue to be paid significantly less than their male full-time colleagues.

Part of that is due to women working in traditionally low-paid industries, such as age and child care, and part is due to women occupying less senior roles within those industries.

However, even after allowing for seniority and industry, researchers continue to strike a bedrock difference in payments between the genders, due to discrimination and unconscious bias.

Interestingly, recent studies have shown it is not that women don’t ask for pay rises as often as men do, but that they are less likely to get them when they do ask.

“One of the biggest misconceptions is that women are less likely to negotiate or ask for pay rises,” says Mary Wooldridge, director of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. “Research has proven this isn’t true: women are asking, but they are less likely to receive pay rises than men.”

‘Do your research on the average salary for your role, or position, in your company and within your industry.’

Ruchi Sinha, associate professor at the University of South Australia’s Centre for Workplace Excellence

So, how can women put their best foot forward to secure a pay rise?

1. Always negotiate

University of Sydney economics professor Deborah Cobb-Clark believes women are still too shy about negotiating their salaries – particularly starting salaries.

“I had this discussion with a male employer,” recalls Cobb-Clark. “He did seem to care about gender equity, and he wanted me to help get the new women recruits to negotiate their opening salaries. He literally said: ‘I am making these women offers, and they are simply taking them’.

“You need to tell them they have to negotiate with me. The men all negotiate, and I am ending up with a gender gap in starting salaries.’”

2. Aim higher

Ruchi Sinha, associate professor at the University of South Australia’s Centre for Workplace Excellence, says women often ask for too little when it comes to pay rises, and need to set higher targets for what they want.

“Do your research on the average salary for your role, or position, in your company and within your industry. Then find out what is the higher end – above average – and… make your aspiration on the higher end of your researched band,” she says.

3. Build a case

Sinha says it is important to build an “evidence-based case” that your knowledge, skills and performance are above-average.

“Go in knowing your value and don’t let others undermine you,” says Sinha.

“Link your ask to actual meeting of [Key Performance Indicators] and your record of performance on agreed-upon metrics – not new metrics introduced in the conversation.

“Refocus the negotiator’s attention to your past performance and your future plans, to show that the compensation is not just for the past but for the excellent plans you are committed to pursuing in the future.”

4. Show warmth, competence

It is sad but true that women need to negotiate differently to men, says Sinha. “They are going to be disliked more if they do not balance warmth with competence.”

“When you ask for a pay rise, link to how it will help your team, using ‘we’ to show that you are inclusive about your team goals, and that your compensation will reflect on how you spend time and attention to motivate others and build a high-performing team.

“Your warmth also shows the extent that you link your pay increase to benefits for the organisation as whole. Simultaneously, show your competence by ‘anchoring your ask’ and basing it on research and data.”

5. Never accept first offer

“Even if you like the first offer, take the time to negotiate,” says Sinha.

“If you find yourself loving the first offer, it does not mean that you cannot negotiate for others things. Go back to the table and show gratitude for the offer – but ask for other aspects of the job that will affect your productivity and wellbeing. For example, flexibility, autonomy, special projects, professional development or budget.”

Underlying inflation rose 0.5 per cent in February to be 3.2 per cent over the preceding 12 months and above the Reserve Bank of Australia’s target band, according to the Melbourne Institute monthly inflation gauge.

The gauge, which tracks inflation on a month-by-month basis compared with the Bureau of Statistics’ quarterly metric, will stoke expectations that the central bank will be forced to raise interest rates this year.

“I think we’re going to see significant price increases in both headline and underlying terms in this quarter,” Melbourne Institute Associate Professor Sam Tsiaplias said, adding that it was not just petrol prices that were rising.

“It’s more of an across the board price change, and it looks like the magnitude will be ... similar to what we saw in the previous quarter.”

Underlying inflation – the RBA’s preferred measure – rose 1 per cent in the three months to December 31 to be up 2.6 per cent over the year, solidly within the RBA’s 2 per cent to 3 per cent target band.

The RBA board will meet for its monthly meeting on Tuesday.

It is expected to leave the record low 0.1 per cent cash rate for another month, taking a “patient” approach towards meeting its employment and wage objectives.

Large-scale flooding across southern Queensland and northern NSW could push up the price of some food products, adding pressure to household balance sheets, but analysts said it was too early to determine the full effects.

January retail sales surprise to the upside

Retail sales posted stronger than expected growth of 1.8 per cent in January despite a shadow lockdown caused by the omicron COVID-19 variant ripping through Australia’s eastern seaboard.

At $32.5 billion, retail sales were up 6.4 per cent compared with the same period in 2021. Spending in Western Australia (up 4.7 per cent to $3.7 billion) and the Northern Territory (up 1.3 per cent to $310.5 million) hit record levels.

The rise followed a large fall in December when sales dropped 4.4 per cent – although that fall came after 7.3 per cent growth in November and 4.9 per cent in October as restrictions eased in NSW and Victoria.

“The emergence of the omicron variant and rising COVID-19 case numbers, combined with an absence of mandated lockdowns has resulted in a range of different consumer behaviours,” Australian Bureau of Statistics head of economy-wide statistics Ben James said.

Food spending rose 2.2 per cent as people spent more time at home, and spending on dining fell 0.8 per cent. Retail spending managed 4.5 per cent growth, and department store spending shot up 4.9 per cent in the month.

“Easing of restrictions ... through February and into March has enabled a further increase in household spending, with bank card spending data reporting steady rises,” KPMG senior economist Sarah Hunter said.

Households still squirrelling away cash

Despite the increase in spending, households are continuing to squirrel cash away in their bank accounts. Household deposits rose by another $6.5 billion in January to reach a level $251 billion higher than in December 2019.

Policymakers are uncertain about how households will deploy the money. The government hopes the money will be spent on an economy-boosting wave of consumption over 2022, but some economists believe the money will be used to absorb interest rate increases forecast for later in the year.

Company gross operating profits rose by 2 per cent in the December quarter, and business inventories rose 1.1 per cent, which is expected to add a full percentage point to GDP in Wednesday’s national accounts data.

“We are hearing anecdotes that some businesses are holding higher inventories to help guard against supply disruptions and elevated shipping times,” CBA senior economist Kristina Clifton said.

“Higher profits likely reflect government support provided to businesses early in the quarter while the delta lockdowns were still in place as well as a rebound in sales as the lockdowns ended.”

Profits rose strongly in the quarter for the manufacturing sector (up 23.3 per cent), and transport and storage (up 26.6 per cent).

Mining sector profits fell 5.7 per cent in the quarter as bulk commodity prices declined, although they were up 36 per cent for the year because of record iron ore prices in the first half of 2021.

Economists expect the economy to have grown between 2.9 per cent and 4.25 per cent in the three months to December 31.

• New research from NAB shows one in five Australians quit their job within the last year.
• It follows questions around whether Australia’s jobs data suggests it is following the US toward a ‘Great Resignation’.
• Experts suggest Australians aren’t dropping out of the workforce altogether but are seeking higher salaries with new employers.

Questions about whether ‘The Great Resignation’ has reached Australia — or will — continues, with fresh NAB data showing people are on the move.

New research from NAB shows one in five Australians quit their job within the last year, and 25% are considering changing their place of employment. 

While in the US, data has supported observed trends showing a growing subset of the population is dropping out of the workforce altogether or retiring early, analysis of the Australian workforce has painted a murkier picture.

The NAB survey of 2,000 Australians found the highest resignation rate was among unskilled workers such as parking attendants, fruit pickers, labourer assistants and cleaners.

Its data showed around 37% of the workers in these industries changed jobs.

This was followed by high levels of resignations among labourers and technology workers.

The data comes amid a wider conversation around wage rises in the country, namely whether Australian workers will see them after more than eight years of stagnant wage growth. Experts have suggested low unemployment has given workers more options in a job market that has also been squeezed by two years of closed borders.

Some economists and union leaders are confident the country’s current record-low unemployment rate could lead to a welcome boost to worker bargaining power, or that the battle for talent will help workers win pay rises by changing jobs. 

In a speech on February 2, RBA Governor Philip Lowe said the central bank intended to ensure it maintained inflation in order to reach its goal of 3% unemployment this year, a factor it said could lead to wage rises. 

Unemployment dropped to 4.2% in January, the lowest in Australia since the global financial crisis.

“We don’t want to see inflation too low or too high,” Lowe said. 

“We will do what is necessary to maintain low and stable inflation, which is important not only in its own right but also as a precondition for a sustained period of full employment.”

Julie Rynski, business banking executive at NAB, said the mass resignation over the past 12 months had not yet translated into higher wages but rather forced companies to offer perks and improve culture in an effort to retain staff.

Data from LinkedIn suggested that in contrast to the US, where employees left the workforce altogether, Australians are moving on to new jobs at the fastest rate since the start of the pandemic.

It found six in 10 prospective job seekers said they were primarily motivated to leave because they hadn’t seen a pay rise since the start of the pandemic.

Similarly, according to NAB’s survey results, around 31% plan to move to a different or new role in a new industry or move to a different or new role in the same industry. 

Just 22% however plan to move to a similar role in the same industry, and 17% move to a similar role in a new industry.

Australian and New Zealand businesses have needed to build new levels of resilience in response to ongoing COVID-19 impacts. With continuous staffing and supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic, businesses are now looking ahead to longer-term solutions that will help them meet the needs of a permanently changed business environment.

As a result, workplace flexibility, sustainability, and increased human collaboration with artificial intelligence (AI) are key trends that will shape organisations in 2022.

While businesses have always aimed to optimise the interaction between people, processes, and technology, there will be an increased focus on how AI will drive greater levels of employee safety, security, and productivity in a largely mobile and geographically distributed work environment. Tools and processes that deliver higher levels of employee satisfaction are also likely to dominate the work environment this year.
 
There are three big trends for Australian and New Zealand businesses in 2022.

1. Workplace flexibility is the new normal

Workers are feeling burnt out, so are demanding more from their employers in terms of workplace flexibility. The “Great Resignation” has underscored the need for an increased focus on employee sentiment, experience, retention, and wellness in the workplace.

To attract and retain employees, businesses must offer tools and processes that support workplace flexibility across every aspect of work. This includes the ability to conduct administrative and financial processes, such as spend management, at a time and on a device that suits the employee.

As well as benefiting employees, flexible workplace solutions benefit businesses with improved agility through real-time data insights that help inform budgets and business decision-making.

2. Safe, sustainable travel takes off  

Amidst the latest COVID concerns, business travel is still slowly returning, led by domestic trips. The biggest change in employee travel is that more businesses are adopting clear policies regarding travel safety, disruptions, and changes. This relies on cloud-based communication platforms with real-time capabilities that continuously keep travellers informed and protected.  

In 2022, there will be a growing demand for ‘bleisure’ travel, which lets business travellers add personal time onto their business trips, or work from a vacation destination. This requires much greater flexibility with business and travel processes than businesses have had in the past.

As well as safe travel, employees now expect their employers to implement carbon offsets with business travel. In the coming year, there will be a fundamental shift in how businesses respond to climate change, which will include more comprehensive sustainability reporting and the adoption of more eco-conscious travel.

3. The explosion of AI in the workplace

AI investments will be increasingly important for businesses to keep pace with the digital economy. Shifting to a mobile, distributed workplace depends on AI technologies that support communication and collaboration in the cloud. Gartner suggests there will be much greater interaction between humans and AI, with AI software revenue forecast to grow to US$62.5 billion in 2022, which is a 21.3 per cent increase on 2021.

This growth also encompasses AI investments to meet the need for greater levels of network performance, data security, and privacy.

Additionally, AI will perform a pivotal role in eliminating the pandemic transmission risk presented by paper-based, manual processes.

In 2020 and 2021, COVID-19 sent shockwaves through Australian and New Zealand businesses that found themselves operating in survival mode. In 2022, businesses will see a turning point where they are re-evaluating processes and tools and re-inventing the way they operate to build greater levels of resilience that supports future growth. These 2022 trends will extend far beyond this year and will, in fact, set the foundation for next-generation business models that will deliver ongoing business optimisation into the future.

How can you tend to your culture in a hybrid environment and rapidly changing workforce? And what can you do to safeguard your company from a potential flood of leave applications in a few months time?

Each year, experts make predictions about the trends that are likely to shape the next 12 months.

But how will these play out in practice? HRM speaks with two HR practitioners about managing a changing workforce in 2022.

Redefining the workplace

As we head into year three of living through a pandemic, one of the first things to consider is what the ‘workplace’ actually is, says Joan Lurie, developmental psychologist and CEO of Orgonomix.

After two years of various COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns, for those who can, working remotely has become normal. Home offices have been set up (remember the great desk shortage of 2020?), we’ve formed new habits and most of us are happily saying “you’re on mute” a lot less as we all finally figure out Zoom.

“We’re used to thinking about work as a place that we go to, but in fact the ‘workplace’ is no longer one integrated physical space – it’s a network,” says Lurie.

In the past, going to a single place to work helped as a cultural leveller, she says. But with the rise in remote work – which shows no signs of stopping even once the pandemic ends – HR practitioners have an increasingly complex, diverse and ever-changing workforce to manage.

“I think the big adaptive challenge for organisations and for HR is letting go of the idea of workplace uniformity and cultural fit,” says Lurie.

“Leaders and HR have to think about the multiplicity of ‘workplaces’ and ensuring all employees have a safe, conducive place to work from, which enables them to focus and do their best work. Personalisation is a big trend with customers – maybe so too with employees?” 

Culture in a hybrid and changing workforce

With no uniform experience of the workplace, keeping a business’ culture alive can be challenging. But there’s a greater role for HR than hosting virtual events and ensuring managers have regular check-ins with employees.  

“One of the most important tools for hybrid work is to help people develop their systemic intelligence,” says Lurie. “A principle of systems theory is that boundaries are held in our minds as much as in physical spaces.

“What holds us together in a systems lens is our role in relation to each other and our sense of  interdependence. Each part sees how they sustain the whole, and the whole exists to sustain the part.”

In other words, ensuring employees know how they contribute to their team, and how their team contributes to the business as a whole, can foster a sense of connectedness.

“It’s great if you want to try and accommodate everyone, but you also need some business pragmatism and commercial reality.” – Susan Sadler CPHR, AHRI’s South Australian State President and CEO of Red Wagon Workplace Solutions. 

“It can be liberating and deeply inclusive beyond physical limitations,” says Lurie. “Paradoxically, given we’re talking about remote work, thinking this way can enable a more integrated, interdependent and adaptive culture. This is the network culture we need to grow to thrive in the new landscape.” 

Other ideas to foster a sense of shared culture could include creating a mentor program to help new employees feel connected to their colleagues, or implementing an annual business retreat where colleagues can get to know each other on a more personal level than often happens through a video call. 

Ensuring you keep company traditions alive for remote workers – for example sending cupcakes to celebrate a birthday if you would usually organise a cake in the office – can also make employees feel like part of the team no matter where they are.

A focus on mental health at all levels

As a general rule, humans don’t fare well with uncertainty – and that’s exactly what we’ve been living with for the past two years. Most of us can no longer count on being able to make that dinner reservation with friends, head interstate for a weekend getaway or even get a doctor’s appointment.

Add to this the isolation that can come with working from home, and additional stressors such as homeschooling or dealing with ageing parents, and many Australians are feeling burnt out.

While HR practitioners work closely with leaders to help them support their workforce, it’s also vital to consider the mental health of leaders themselves, says Susan Sadler CPHR, AHRI’s South Australian State President and CEO of Red Wagon Workplace Solutions. 

“​​As an employee, it’s easy to forget that your manager has their own stresses; you don’t know what they’re going through,” she says. “But HR practitioners are in a unique position where they are more likely to be trusted to support those people through that. That’s a really key role that almost only HR can play.”

It’s also important to look after your own mental health, and Sadler suggests approaching conversations with an ‘ask and give’ mentality.

“It’s about having a mindset of, ‘What can I give you, but what do I need as well?’,” she explains. “I do this in my own team meetings. We ask who has the capacity to give and you need to be brave enough to ask for help.

“We can’t do everything on our own. We are all tired, and we’re no use to anyone if we crumble. HR has a responsibility to look after each other, to ask for help and to support leaders with their mental health so they don’t get forgotten.”

Navigating a return to the office

As governments move away from lockdowns and work from home mandates, Sadler says employers will have a lot more discretion – and with that comes responsibility.

Some companies are opting for a ‘team A’ and ‘team B’ system (where the groups alternate days in the workplace) to ensure spaces aren’t too crowded, while others are using tools such as Slack to keep track of who will be in the office and when. 

“Employers’ natural inclinations are often ‘I want you in the office’ but there are employees who just don’t feel comfortable or ready to do that,” she says. “The challenge is that all the issues we’ve previously experienced around having split teams and creating an effective hybrid model still remain.”

Where possible, businesses should treat employees who are hesitant to return to the physical office on a case-by-case basis, she says. And HR practitioners should recognise that allowing employees to work from home isn’t just about offering flexibility in a changing workforce, “it’s about psychological and physical safety in a way that we’ve not considered before,” says Sadler.

“We need to be careful and considered in how we have those conversations with people about what they feel is safe, and how you’re going to roll that out in the workforce.”

Flexibility and autonomy in a changing workforce

With shifting power dynamics in the labour market, many employees are looking for greater autonomy. Seventy per cent of employees want a management approach that empowers them rather than a command-and-control workplace, according to research from The Access Group. 

The same research found that 47 per cent of Australian companies are sticking to established ways of operating – and limiting employees’ self-determination in the process.

With the threat of the Great Resignation looming, affording employees greater freedom and flexibility will likely be key to retaining talent in a changing workforce.

Rather than overhauling a company’s entire management approach, there are quick and easy ways to offer employees more freedom. This could include giving an employee a project to manage, allowing employees to set their own goals and structure their work day and granting greater flexibility beyond working from home, for example working outside the traditional 9-to-5. 

“We’ve had a taste of autonomy, and we like it,” says Sadler. “For very traditional industries and managers this can be a challenge.”

“It’s great if you want to try and accommodate everyone, but you also need some business pragmatism and commercial reality.” – CPHR, AHRI’s South Australian State President and CEO of Red Wagon Workplace Solutions.

An important role for HR is identifying managers who are reluctant to loosen the reins, and then helping them to grant their direct reports more freedom. For example, they might need to work through the idea that it’s often the result that matters – not how an employee arrived at it. 

“Everyone has a different style and different needs of their manager that will bring out the best in them,” she says. “We need to approach that with the same consideration we always have. People are still people.”

Handling leave requests

Australians have more annual leave days banked than ever before. In fact, the number of annual leave days owing hit 185 million in September – up 35.5 million days from a year earlier.

This means that once the current COVID-19 wave dies down and people become more confident about travel, leave requests are likely to start rolling in. 

While it’s in the interests of businesses to reduce high leave liabilities, Sadler says employers need to have a plan in place should an employee get stuck interstate or overseas. 

“You need to do a risk assessment and understand that things don’t always go according to plan,” she says. “If an employee plans to travel overseas, taking several weeks off to exhaust their leave, and they get stuck, what happens?”

This might be less of an issue if the employee can work remotely, but for those who can’t, it’s important to remember it’s not the employer’s responsibility to find work for them to do, says Sadler.

An alternative might be to offer an employee unpaid leave, but there will likely be a “finite tolerance”. 

“It’s great if you want to try and accommodate everyone, but you also need some business pragmatism and commercial reality,” she says. “There needs to be some thought given to managing those things.”

• The workers union has criticised a raft of companies terminating enterprise agreements amid a period experts suggest could prompt wage rises for Australian workers.
• It follows a second year of restricted international borders that continued to fuel the country’s skills shortage.
• Reports have emerged suggesting unions are seeking to drive a hard bargain as employers fight for workers. 

The workers union has called out several cases of industries seeking to end enterprise agreements between employers and staff, amid a rare period of opportunity for employees to seek higher wages.

Since the end of 2021, when the second year of restricted international borders continued to fuel the country’s skills shortage, and amid economic conditions set to push wages up, experts suggested workers had a golden opportunity to renegotiate wages.

In November, Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) secretary Sally McManus said a series of payments by universities were a sign staff are in high demand.

“Workers have got this brief period of time with the borders closed where they’ve got more individual bargaining power,” McManus told Guardian Australia at the time. 

Jenny Lambert, the director of economics, employment and skills at the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said a “worker market” was emerging, where staff were better placed to set terms with their employer.

Similarly, Julia Angrisano, the national secretary of the Finance Sector Union, told the Sydney Morning Herald in January she plans to negotiate a substantial wage rise in enterprise agreement negotiations this year for her members, pointing to a 4% wage rise — higher than the RBA’s forecast 2.5% average wage rise for 2021.

Angrisano said forecast rising inflation factored into this, as did ongoing border restrictions. 

The statements come amid evidence this month that the Australian workforce surged back to life following the lockdowns brought on by the Delta COVID-19 wave in 2021.

ABS data revealed Australia’s jobless rate dropped to 4.2% in December, the lowest in more than 13 years.

Overall wages growth in Australia saw a 0.6% lift through the September quarter of 2021, while year-on-year wage growth ticked up to 2.2%, according to the ABS data.

Westpac’s economists this month projected annual wage growth ahead of that of the RBA. The bank said wage growth would be running at 3% by the end of June as a shortage of workers filters through to bigger pay rises from employers to attract and retain staff.

ACTU criticises raft of agreement terminations 

However, a gap in the rules that lets employers terminate agreements through the Fair Work Commission (FWC) is destroying workers’ chances to capitalise on the current conditions, the ACTU says.  

Enterprise agreements, struck between employers and staff by industry bodies representing workers, form the basis of wage improvements across industries that go beyond award rates.

The agreements provide conditions that leave workers better off overall than the underlying award governing their industry, with the employment conditions set down continuing until a new agreement is struck or they are terminated by the Fair Work Commission.

Last week, the ACTU decried the termination of enterprise agreements by Qantas and Patrick Terminals this month as an opportunistic move by employers to cut employee pay ahead of a potential change of government in May. 

Labor has said it will stop employers from unilaterally terminating agreements if it wins the election which is due to be held by late May. 

The ability of employers to obtain orders from the FWC terminating agreements without the consent of employees was a “serious flaw in workers’ protections,” McManus said.

On January 20 Qantas told its International flight attendants it had applied to the FWC to terminate their agreement, a decision which would cut wages by almost half for some staff. 

The same day NSW port Patrick Terminals told the FWC it wanted to terminate its existing enterprise agreement, which would potentially cut dock workers’ wages by 50%, along with hurting job security. 

While profit margins increased at Patrick Terminals by 11% over the last year, and with Qantas receiving $2 billion government support in 2021, the ACTU said the moves snatched the opportunity for bargaining from these industry unions during a period of favourable conditions. 

Michele O’Neil, president of the ACTU, said Patricks Terminals was engaging in “bare-faced profiteering” in the midst of a pandemic in “trying to terminate an agreement which has created ports which are incredibly efficient and profitable”. 

O’Neil said that Qantas was “threatening workers to try and force through a deal, slash wages and keep more of our money for themselves”. 

“Qantas should withdraw this threat, and should be condemned by the Morrison government,” she said. 

We all know remote work and hybrid workforces won’t end anytime soon. So what skills do leaders need to develop to effectively manage virtual teams? 

Only 10 per cent of people who can work remotely want to go back to a traditional work environment in a full-time capacity after the pandemic, according to a PwC survey of more than 2000 Australian workers. Instead, 74 per cent would prefer a mixture of in-person and remote work, while 16 per cent would be happy not to return to the office at all. 

It’s not hard to see why. The benefits of working remotely – no commute, a better work-life balance, the chance to occasionally work from your ‘soft office’ (aka the bed or couch) – have been well reported.  

But for leaders, remote work can be a different story. Many were thrust into virtual management roles for the first time in 2020, often without any training or understanding of the different skills needed to lead people through a screen.

Some managers approached the shift to remote work with skepticism, associating it with a host of problems from tech issues to the challenge of staying connected to colleagues without face-to-face interaction.

Then there’s the trust problem. Research shows that managers who can’t physically see their team members don’t always believe they’re working. As a result, a manager might put more pressure on employees to always be available. At its worst, this can lead to micromanagement, which in turn can lead to a drop in employee motivation. 

So how can managers best lead their virtual teams and make their own work lives easier? According to Professors Payal Sharma, Lauren D’Innocenzo and Bradley Kirkman, it’s all about adopting an empowering leadership style.

Through interviews with hundreds of remote leaders, the trio set out to understand why some leaders resist empowering their virtual teams – and how to overcome it.

What is empowering leadership?

Delegating authority and decision making, coaching team members rather than directing them, and seeking input to help solve problems are all examples of empowering leadership. Basically, it’s about giving employees more autonomy and ownership over their work. 

Having a manager with an empowering style can make people happier in their jobs, feel a greater sense of commitment and creativity, improve performance and make them less likely to quit.

“[Empowering leadership] is really about leaders seeking to motivate employees to their highest potential,” says Sharma, an Assistant Professor of Management at the University of Nevada Las Vegas Lee Business School.

“For example, a project manager could seek input from team members on how to carry out work. They would then use that input to allow team members the space to get work done in that manner. [That is] demonstrating empowering leadership.”

There is ample discussion about the best styles of authority and how to emulate them, but far less about the more nuanced attributes of excellent leadership… until now.

Depending on what books or articles you read, there are more than twenty different leadership styles. An autocratic leader, for example, is generally a unilateral decision-maker, while a democratic one encourages input before making decisions. A delegative style, meanwhile, assigns responsibility and decision-making to other managers. But, as with most things in life, style is not nearly as important as substance. So, whether you aspire to be a person of authority or already are, here are 20 attributes that great ones encompass.

1. Compassion and empathy: When a leader demonstrates these qualities, they earn the respect and loyalty of those around them: it’s that simple.

2. Emphasis on open communication: Leaders should ensure that employees have a voice and a platform for expressing thoughts.

3. Articulates clear expectations: A person in authority has a responsibility to express expectations in a manner which employees can follow, as well as regularly assess process and progress.

4. Always teaches: Most great staff members are made. A great manager recognizes that a critical aspect of their job is to teach and grow employees’ knowledge base. Think of it as akin to banking: You can either stick money in a savings account and watch it grow slowly or invest and see it grow exponentially faster.

5. Inspires others: Inspiration is about engendering creativity, loyalty, dedication and every other positive attribute we want employees to possess.

6. Leads by example: Anyone in a position of authority should hold themselves to the same expectations to which they hold others.

7. Embraces opportunities: Change and challenges can be seen as problematic, but a capable leader embraces them as opportunities to adapt, learn and grow.

8. Fosters creativity: Employees inevitably possess capability resources beyond their assigned tasks. Each one of them has the ability to bring new perspectives and ideas, so encourage that.

9. Encourages feedback: All leaders generally have the final say, but great ones solicit and listen to feedback and take it into consideration before taking action.

10. Empowers others: The best way to grow successfully is to encourage others to constructively contribute — to freely entrust staff members with important tasks, and to solicit innovations from them.

11. Offers transparency: Whether what needs saying is good or bad, a leader offers communication clarity, which engenders trust and loyalty and reduces stress.

12. Takes accountability: No one is perfect and no one should expect perfection from others. Part of being a winning authority figure is owning mistakes.

13. Is authentic: Most people do not want to feel patronized or pandered to. Be yourself and be genuine, and you will inspire others to do the same.

14. Acknowledges effort and results: Recognition is a powerful tool: It sends the message that you see and appreciate the actions of those around you. Every employee is valuable, yes, but each one of them need to told exactly why.

15. Is loyal: From turnover to productivity (or their lack), loyalty manifests itself in many ways, and the best way to foster it is to demonstrate it.

16. Rewards excellence: Superlative work should be a high bar not easy to reach, and for those who do achieve it, there should be a suitable reward.

17. Shares in success: Whether through profit sharing, career advancement or other bonuses or opportunities, when a company experiences success, it should share it with the people responsible for making it possible.

18. Avoids distractions: A great leader has the vision, mission and values that help define a company. If something does not align with or deters from these principles, it should be removed or avoided.

19. Actively listens and observes: We learn by watching and listening, not by talking and directing. Take time every day to fine-tune those managerial antennae.

20. Asks for help: There is likely no better way to make someone feel valued and appreciated than asking them for help. Your humility as a leader in doing so will pay off tenfold. After all, great leadership is not inherent to everyone, and should not be limited to those with power; it is a process that can and needs to be cultivated.