At the initiative of Szabolcs Bubik, I met with Judit Pottok, a senior HR Business Partner at E.ON, to see how an organization with thousands of employees differs from a small company when it comes to attracting Generation Y or Z.
K.Zs: What is the biggest challenge you face in motivating employees? How do you impact an organization of thousands of people and make people feel good about themselves?
P.J: One of the biggest challenges in a large organization is that you can't make a decision that works for everyone. And you can't have the decision-maker talk to everybody individually who might be affected badly - a lot of it is up to the immediate supervisor, and you can't sit there with everybody and make sure that they say precisely what you want them to say and exactly how you want them to say it. The other is speed: you make a decision, for example, you introduce a new rule in performance appraisal, you run it through the organization, if it's not okay, it doesn't work for some reason, it's months, even a year before it's found out... We have a corporate culture project to ensure that important messages are consistently and regularly delivered to employees to have an impact.
How does decision-making happen in a small company, what works for you, and what could be done better?
K.Zs: I think we have found the first common ground. Even in a small company, it's hard to decide that everyone agrees. If my supervisor changes on an issue that could affect me without involving me in the decision, I can quickly feel helpless and powerless. Along with me, others need to have control over their own lives. That is why the more decisions are made where the work is done, the more I feel I influence my own space and my work. We do this by discussing all the change proposals together every Wednesday for an hour and a half. It is a relatively time-consuming solution, but it has the advantage that everyone can make suggestions, ask clarifying questions, and take a stand. We see the leadership role as a servant, a support function than a decision-maker.
In a company of thousands of people, what is the opportunity for an employee to renew themselves when they get tired of their job and want to move on?
P.J: We have that at the program level as well. Out of thousands of people, it's harder to stand out, but every manager can see who on their team is worth paying attention to. Every year, a new Talent Programme is launched, where colleagues can apply, be recommended by their own and other managers, and then, after a selection process, the program is launched. They are given more opportunities for development than the average employee. Still, there is no promise of a specific position at the end of the process - everyone has to find and take advantage of opportunities for themselves. Periodic rotation works, although I don't think we use it as often as possible. The diversity of a large company is an advantage; there are plenty of opportunities for those who want to move here. But I imagine you have more flexibility in job content, am I right?
K.Zs: The talent program sounds good; I'm curious about more details. We have the flexibility to offer a relatively wide range of tasks, even in the short term, for those who want to try their hand at it. We also have a colleague who started as a developer and has found that he wants to put his excellent communication skills to better use, so he is now a project manager who works with clients to define needs. It's pretty clear that she's much better at this than writing out a to-do list, but we wouldn't have found this out if we hadn't tried it.
How do you recruit? How do you attract people, and how do you choose who you want to work with in the future?
P.J: You could say we use the traditional recruitment processes and tools. Each job has its job profile, and about that, the manager has the opportunity to color, say, a job advertisement with the soft things that are more important and more pronounced for him than the particular job search. Candidates who respond to the ad are screened by telephone and then in a face-to-face interview, and above a certain job level, we also use an additional tool, the AC (Assessment Center). For more complex searches, we use a headhunting company, and there is also a referral scheme whereby if an existing colleague recommends an external candidate for a particular job, we pay a bonus - if, of course, that specific candidate is thriving based on the probationary period. Of course, it is clear that the traditional tools and processes alone are not enough to operate at the right level - the labor market is now supply-driven, not demand-driven. We need to rely more and more on employer branding, focusing on the value proposition we can offer as an employer to those who choose to work for us. Or, for example, we also need to be more open to feedback from colleagues and candidates, whether it's about the recruitment process, our remuneration tools, or other HR-related issues - flexibility will be the key, I think, to find people who are looking for jobs in the future: and I didn't mean to say that we find them. And the hard part comes after that: not just finding colleagues, but then keeping them - and that's going to get more complicated as Generation Y, and Z make entirely new demands on a job...
K.Zs: We will talk more about this at the ICF Successor Generations - Generations ICF conference. The topic of the roundtable is what a multi and a small company has to offer Generation Y, and Z. Thank you for sharing your experiences
P.J: Thank you too; I look forward to the conversation!
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