Ben Telfer:
Hello, everyone. I hope you all are well. Welcome to today’s ICMIF webinar on attracting, retaining and developing the next generation of mutual talent. Today’s webinar also sees the publication of a new ICMIF report on the next generation of mutual talent, which is a collaborative appalled by members of the ICMIF Young Leaders Forum. This report features numerous practical examples of how ICMIF members, mutual and collaborative insurers from around the world are attracting, retaining, engaging, and developing millennial and Gen Z employees. Today, on today’s webinar, I will share a brief overview of the reports and some of the main findings. I’m also pleased to be joined representatives from two ICMIF members featured in this report, who will share their respective case studies.
As I mentioned before I introduced the two case studies that we’ll be sharing today, I just wanted to say some of the key findings from this piece of research. This report is the first research project of the ICMIF Young Leaders Forum. This is a group of 12 young professionals who are ICMIF members, and it acts as a steering committee for our young leaders activities. The forum acts as a platform for knowledge exchange and professional development for the members of the forum, but also as a network to help them share some of their insights with the rest of the ICMIF membership. For example, this is the sixth Young Leaders webinar, but we’re very excited to present the first collaborative report after this group has completed, and look forward and thank you for joining us today.
The report is a best practice report of companies within the ICMIF membership, and it features a number of initiatives, programs, and strategies that we hope will inspire and guide other organizations and help them position our unique business model as the employer of choice for the younger generation. In total, 23 organizations from the ICMIF membership are featured from across 17 countries around the world. As the title suggests, the report is split into two sections. Firstly, attracting millennial talent and then retaining and developing millennial talent. In terms of attracting millennials into your organization, there was a variety of successful initiatives that we found in this report, from attending face-to-face career days or virtual events, obviously something more relevant today. Social media was also seen as an important tool, both for direct talent attraction for this generation via sites like LinkedIn and Glassdoor, as well as other social media platforms that were used to raise the profile of our companies, leveraging some of their values as cooperative and mutual insurers that resonate with this generation.
Things like being socially conscious, environmentally friendly, ethical, being purpose-driven, and how they make an impact in communities. Generally, an alternative model than the profit driven shareholder companies. Social media was also a great way to share more about the values and culture of an organizations, and many companies have called on young employees, share their experience of working for the organization as brand ambassadors and highlighting the benefits of employment within a mutual organization. There were many other initiatives that we’ve seen to attract the younger generation, linked with the local universities and student groups, and many partnerships in the local community, generally to support young youths in the area. And again, not necessarily for talent acquisition, but more about brand awareness and promotion of these organizations as being socially responsible companies, something that really resonates with the younger generations. Into the second part of the report; retaining and developing millennial talent, many of the companies featured offer graduate programs and internships aimed at recent school leavers and recent graduates.
Professional development was also continued after these programs finished, and many companies supported further education opportunities, masters and MBAs. Others had more in-house learning opportunities in training, but what was important was to keep millennials motivated as they progressed through their careers, as they are looking for more opportunities along their own career paths. It’s not just formal education that we found, many were encouraged to learn from existing leaders in various mentoring schemes, and also reverse mentoring schemes, allowing that two way flow of skill and knowledge. Young professional networks were one thing that we saw many companies do. We’ve brought together a cohort of young or emerging professionals in a formalized way. Always slightly different in how they were structured and what their focus or activities were, most included some elements of peer networking and workshops both on a professional sense and social sense, many involved the leaders too, and various other community and charity work.
What we saw with these young professional networks was three key benefits. Firstly, they increased millennial engagement. Secondly, they aided personal development, and thirdly, they provided a collective voice to drive innovation and transformation within the organization. And finally, on a more holistic level, companies are adapting to the needs and desires of millennials. And not just millennials, but more in the new way of working with things like flexible working, how to maintain a work-life balance, use of collaboration spaces, wellness initiatives and ensuring they have the white culture and leadership to encourage personal growth. Finally, just to summarize some of the key findings, one of the first things I’d just say is that talent attraction, retention are linked, with many of the various examples featured in this report acting as a tool for both. The better, the culture for employee engagement and development, the more likely potential talent will be attracted to join an organization. The first thing that we’re going to note in the key findings, that it’s important to have that multichannel approach that is face-to-face virtual social media. And this mixture is important to reach millennials.
Of course, millennials are the digital native generation and they can consume so much via digital channels, but that personal touch is still important with how you attract and retain your millennial employees. The second thing is early brand awareness. Again, this is an indirect acquisition from early stages and early ages for people, support for youth projects, community involvement, and social media heavily use the highlight the values of a mutual organization and how these neutral values match younger generations. This also links to the next point about cooperative and mutual values that set the tone. Our model has a unique advantage, it can offer flexibility, transparency, meaningful impact, and social cohesion. And many of the best performing companies leverage this advantage in how they promote themselves as an employer and encourage staff to remain engaged. Talent development and investing in talent development is very important, especially as this millennial generation have higher expectations in terms of their personal career development. This can be a number of ways as I’ve mentioned before, external or in-house and informal schemes, things like mentoring.
This not only supports retention, but also creates better leaders, and also remembering that these are the future leaders of your company. And then the final thing is just peer networking and how this peer networking supports innovation and business transformation. It supports engagement, development and hearing that different voice and different perspective brings a new way of thinking, new skills, which is crucial now more than ever for the future growth and sustainability of organizations. Hopefully, that was a very quick short overview of the report. As I mentioned before, you can download the report directly from the platform and it will be sent to you at the end of today’s webinar. And now, I’m very pleased to hand over to case studies. Firstly, we have a PPS in South Africa, and I’m delighted to be joined by Subashni Gounder, who is the program manager of the PPS Foundation, and Lebo Tsotetsi, who is a marketing and communication specialist and part of our PPS young leadership network.
Subashni and Lebo, thank you for joining us today, and I’m pleased to hand over to both of you.
Subashni Gounder:
Good day, everybody, and thank you ICMIF for inviting PPS and its foundation to present today. My name is Subashni Gounder, and I’m the Program Manager of the PPS Foundation. Today, we will present on how PPS attracts, retains and develops the next generation of mutual talent. The PPS Foundation was established in 2016, and obtained its public benefit organization status in 2017. This means that the PPS Foundation can receive funds from outside stakeholders other than its primary donor, which is PPS Insurance. When a donation is received, a donor will receive a Section 18A, which will provide a tax benefits at the end of the tax year. We are also very proud to note that we’ve just released our second annual report. You will be able to view our annual report on the PPS website, as well as ICMIF’s. This annual report will provide you with a detailed breakdown of all programs and initiatives that our organization participate in, to ensure that our future leaders are ready to take on the world.
This slide depicts the journey of the PPS Foundation and the achievements it managed to get in the past four years. The work of the PPS Foundation is not dedicated … sorry. The work that the PPS Foundation does is dedicated to youth engagement and development, connecting to it’s today’s topic of attracting, retaining and developing the next generation of mutual talent. We have identified that a relationship has to start at grassroots levels. What grassroots means for PPS as the home of the graduate professionals is that our relationship begins in the tertiary space. I will now take you through the different programs and share how each program is linked to each other. Let’s speak to our bursary program. This program funds students through the tertiary education. This investment for PPS is to ensure that these individuals are empowered and our relationship with the youth starts here. However, in order for them to go through this educational journey, they need the resources to facilitate this. And this is done through a university support program.
This is where we drive projects that aim to the teaching and learning experiences of students at universities. The next step, when our youth is ready to take the next leap into the working world, we facilitate a work readiness program through LEAP. This program provides an individual with the necessary tools and skills to enter the working world. Professionals Connect is our graduate or outreach digital platform where our graduate internship program is advertised, as well as other graduate vacancies. Our graduate internship program is a robust 12 month program that provides our grad with workplace experience. The beneficiaries that are exposed to participate in these programs then become the PPS Foundation alumni. The image above is an indication of the work that we do, that has an impact on an individual or a large group. The individual above what’s part of our 2018 graduate internship development program. This is the quote that he shared with us when he was part of this program. He is currently still employed at PPS in our actuarial team.
The next image below speaks about our LEAP work readiness program. It has grown from strength to strength. I’d like to just give you the highlights of the PPS Foundation. The PPS Bursary Program, funded about 250 university students from its inception. The comprehensive funding covers books, accommodation, meals, and tuition. Addition to this funding, PPS Foundation sponsored data and digital devices to a few of its bursary holders due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This will allow students to work from home and enable them to complete the current academic year. Our bursary holders are fully covered until they complete the qualification. What sets us apart from other funders? I would say it’s the personal relationship that we build with our bursary holders. We keep in-touch with them on a regular basis, we even build relationships with their parents. We offer them the opportunity to request for a mentor or become a mentor to bursary holders that are younger than them.
Once a bursary holder qualifies, they automatically become part of our alumni and they have the opportunity to apply for the PPS Graduate Internship Program. The bursary holder has no obligation to pay back for the funding received, nor do they have a work back period clause. We do however, kindly request them to pay it forward by becoming mentors. And when they become economically empowered individuals, to nurture the potential of others. The graduate internship development program is one of the foundation’s flagship program. It has employed over 110 graduates. To date, we still have 70% of these graduates still employed at PPS. This percentage is an inclusive of our 2020 cohort. The 12 month program has a 95% completion rate. Once the program is complete, about 90% of these graduates are able to find employment immediately, either within PPS or outside. This program provides on the job training, soft skills training, which covers topics like emotional intelligence, personal mastery, financial management, just to name a few. The soft skills training is offered by our PPS Academy, which our CEO says that is our secret ingredient.
We also provide the graduates with a leadership qualification, and we partner with the University of South Africa and the Thabo Mbeki Foundation. In the last quarter of the program, the graduate interns have an opportunity to present our ex-co team and staff on innovate ideas that has been identified at PPS during the employment. This is how the PPS YLF was born. This was one of the recommendations that came from our 2018 graduate internship team. Lebo will provide you more insight on that program a little later. LEAP is our work readiness program. It stands for learned, engaged, accelerated professionals. It started in 2018, and in 2019, we rolled this program out to over 1,000 students. This program covers CV writing, interview skills and being digitally astute and aware. We also cover Money Matters, which is a consumer financial education program. The program is customized to our audience. It is interactive and fun. We have role-plays so that students get to experience what a real interview feels like.
We are currently working on creating a digital program, and it can be rolled out to students via a webinar. All I can say is that COVID has helped us speed up our digital skills. Our university support program, this program, from the inception, the foundation was able to sponsor more than 12 projects across all universities in South Africa. We fund university initiatives that positively impacts the life of a student. An example of some of these projects is PPS Foundation sponsored a plant chamber at the faculty of agriculture, and we were also able to kit out an engineering lab. This year, most of the requests that we have received is to sponsor universities so that they can purchase digital devices for their students, as well as obtain personal protective gear for students that are assisting public hospitals against COVID-19 as part of the in-service. In the last week, we were proud to say that we were able to donate PPEs five universities across the country, and this will continue in the coming weeks as well.
In addition to all of these programs, the PPS Foundation distributed over 100,000 meal packs to students at universities. We partner with an organization called Rise Against Hunger Africa. We do this because we know that a child cannot function nor concentrate on an empty stomach. As you all might be aware, there is a dire need for this in South Africa. All the programs that I have just mentioned, contributes towards an individual becoming employable. When they are part of our bursary program, they do not have to stress about finances. Should they be part of our graduate internship development program, they receive personalized attention for their career growth. We help thousands of students prepare for a job. When a student is hungry, we provide meals. We, at PPS, are passionate about our youth, their education, and then becoming employable and financially independent. We are constantly looking at ways to improve and grow our professional pipeline through nurturing potentials of individuals. Thank you very much, and I will now hand you over to Lebo.
Lebogang Tsotetsi:
Thank you very much. Thank you to ICMIF for the invitation. It’s an absolute honour for myself and Subashni to participate in today’s session. Just by way of introduction, my name is Lebogang Tsotetsi, and I am a marketing and communications specialist at PPS, as Ben Telfer has introduced earlier on. I’m very honoured to be part of this engagement today. I will be talking about the Young Leadership Forum, as Subashni alluded to earlier on, and just how it came about. Before I go into just the idea and the question that is right in front of you about, what do millennials want from organizations that they are part of, I’d like to tell you about my history at PPS. And it will shape the thinking behind how millennials view the world of work. I started out as a content developer, and this was for Professionals Connect, which is the graduate outreach portal.
What drew me close to this idea was that PPS was willing to provide information to people who are not necessarily going to work for them, but making sure that they’re empowered with the necessary information so that they propel themselves forward. And for me, it was exciting to say, here, the tools to either students and young professionals who are on the cusp of graduation and about to enter the job market, and use those resources to be the best version of yourself. I then moved on and became a marketing and communications specialist, and this is dealing quite a lot with PPS’s brand awareness from different aspects of the business. And that also has been an eye opener, because we pride ourselves in being the home of graduate professionals, and the work that we do out there and bringing the awareness of such an organization to people is really heart-warming. But I’m going to talk to you about the opportunity that came about from a proposition from our graduate interns in 2018, and that is the Young Leadership Forum.
In early 2019, we were given the opportunity to apply to be part of the inaugural YLF at PPS, and myself and 11 other colleagues who ended up being part of the final 12, were given the opportunity to provide strategic input to the organization. But what do millennials want from organization? One of the things is that they look for a good life-work balance. I mean, we are individuals that play hard, learn hard, work hard, and we would like that harmony in our lives. The second aspect is we look for opportunities to progress and be leaders within the organization, and that’s what the YLF has provided for a few of us within the organization. Professional development and training programs are important because we always look for opportunities that will help us hone our current skillset or build our new skills that we wouldn’t have necessarily found or had when we joined the organization. Sense of meaning from the work that we do is not just about an individual, but it’s about what the organization does internally and externally.
So, this speaks to employee value proposition or in this case also, at PPS, it would be member value proposition and how we choose to make a difference in the society that we operate in. Lastly, it’s flexibility and schedule. My focus will be on three of the five points, which are leadership opportunities, value-based work, opportunities for learning and advancement. But I want to share a detail that I found from the YLF. These two pictures are from the current cohort, which is the first team of the YLF at PPS, and I’m somewhere there in the mix. A colleague of mine who’s based in Bloemfontein, her name is Madeline, she says, “The program was very beneficial because some of the projects took us out of our comfort zone. It was great getting to learn from others and working in teams where people come from different regions. I’ve got a front row seat from how the business operated and the approaches that people used. PPS did a wonderful thing by putting a team to help solve problems innovatively, and this speaks to the quote, be the change that you want to see in the world.”
In addition to that, my other colleague who’s based in Pretoria said, “Being part of the Young Leadership Forum has proved that we, as millennials, can be a critical link or bridge between the established markets business structures and emerging culture. Participation in youth leadership is important because we straddle the divide between tried and tested business practices and the fresh and bold ideas that come from the young employees within a company.” And lastly, my other colleague, Simone, who’s based in Johannesburg, South Africa as well, said she learned the importance of being a forward and critical thinker. Being part of the PPS, YLF demonstrated confidence that senior leadership has in the youth and employees in general. They are ready to hand over and more than willing to teach, guide, groom and empower the young generation. The program really broke several norms and stereotypes.
This is the opportunity that was given to everyone, and one of the thing in our organization is that we really value that leadership exists in all pockets of the business. It’s not about your role, it’s not about the years that you spend in the company, but it’s about the fate that the organization has in its people. Millennials really do value leadership opportunities, and we have the cohort of the YLF at PPS have been provided with this. And one of the biggest things that we have drawn from it is the mentorship program where we were linked with other established professionals in the business, because we intend with staying with an organization that encourages and provides mentorship opportunities, and I can attest to that. One of the things I’ve noticed from the mentorship partnership that I’ve had is that it helps provide blind spots to situation that we wouldn’t have necessarily had, and getting to draw inspiration and all the lessons that somebody who has the years behind them and experience can share with you. So, millennials plus leadership definitely equals success.
The second point that I definitely believe that we’ve learned from this YLF at PPS is a value based work. I want to share something with the people that are listening in today, is that just before the COVID outbreak and what we, in South Africa, had as a national lockdown towards the end of March, a few weeks prior, our leadership actually went on an activation to inculcate the culture and make sure that people know about the values that are PPS. I could definitely attest and say, it was such an apt timing for this to take place and for us to know the values of the organization, to say, we take extreme ownership, we do the right thing, and we are eternally curious as PPS employees because when we are working from home, it’s easy to remember all those three things and know that at the end of the day, this is what drives an organization, but also the value based work. Similar to how the CSI and social responsibility work that the PPS Foundation does.
Millennials feel a strong linkage to organization that actually not only improves the life and benefits that the individuals who are part of their organization, but also externally. We want to be something that is much larger than a role. We want to be part of a group of people who make a difference. I think the starting point for us as the YLF at PPS was in getting to know each other from the different provinces in South Africa, we got to see life through each other’s lenses and how we can give an impact to the world in a different way. Lastly, the idea is all about opportunities for learning and advancement. If a company contributes to the development of its people, they will be forever indebted. That’s what I believe. Here are some fun facts, millennials rated professional growth and career development as the number one driver of engagement and retention. The second point is that 72% of millennials value the chance to learn new skills compared to just 48 of baby boomers and 62% of generation X.
And lastly, 5% of millennial felt that excellent training and development programs were essential when considering a potential employer. Now, with the YLF, we walked out, we walked in as excited young professionals who are really keen to make a difference in the organization, but the organization actually made a difference in our lives because we walked out with new knowledge that we would never have thought of. The partnership between the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute not only gave us new skills and ways on ideas on how we can improve ourselves, but also create an impactful work and projects that not only improve the society within PPS, but the societies that we are part of at home and Africa in general. We want to make sure that our continent advances and we become thought leaders in our homes, in our communities, whether it’s home, whether it’s in the relationships that we have with the people at home, as well as the broader South African community. That’s it from my end. Thank you very much, Ben Telfer and the ICMIF team for the opportunity. It was definitely wonderful to speak to the ideas that we have been presenting today.
Ben Telfer:
Thank you, Lebo and thank you, Subashni for that great overview of what the PPS Foundation does and some of the work you’re doing with young people in South Africa. Lebo, I really appreciate your personal journey and how the values of being a millennial has resonated in your work so far and what the YLF at PPS has achieved already in just two years. I’m very pleased to now introduce the second speaker from Desjardins, in Canada, and I’m very pleased to welcome Louis Sirois. Louis is a manager of events and special projects. Louis, thank you for joining us today, and I’ll hand over to you.
Louis Sirois:
Thank you, Ben Telfer. Hello everyone. I hope you and your peers are doing well and staying healthy. I’m very pleased to be joining this discussion today. I’m sorry in advance for my strong French accent. To that, I will try to give you many example of how Desjardins attract, retain and develop youth. First of all, who is Desjardins? Desjardins is the largest financial cooperative with 7 million member in clients in Canada. We employ over 47,000 employees and almost a 4,000 board members. We then rank the coolest financial institution according to millennials in Quebec, and we’re one of the Canada’s top employers in 2020, Canada’s top employer for young people, Canada’s best diversity employer, ranked as Canada’s top family friendly employers and Canada’s greenest employer. 30% of our employees are 35 years old or less, which means over 16,000 employees. Desjardins is very proud to be a leader from an HR perspective, which gives us a strong position on the market to attract, retain millennials and Gen Z.
Connecting with youth; for us, attracting and retaining employees doesn’t just come from an HR perspective, it needs to transcend everything you do. HR, yes, but also products, programs, investments, marketing, sponsorships and many more. Connecting with youth needs to be supported from many ways, but none of them, whatever, as much as for your organization, if you don’t share values with millennials. I think we need to look at it from both perspectives. How does Desjardins support youths? Well, I’m going to talk about three ways we do it; employment programs, supporting young employees and supporting youth in communities. First of all, employment programs; Desjardins is supporting our students with youth work experience to provide summer jobs and work experiences. We also have a young intern officer program for individual age from 18 to 30, to become familiar with the role of an officer or administrator at Desjardins or within any organization. We also offer paid internships, and we’re supporting recent graduates with financial services training program, customer service, and IT entry level jobs.
How we do that? Well, we are also very active on social networks for recruiting or just connecting with youth, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, et cetera, and we’re using many artists, comedians, entrepreneurs, spokesperson to connect with them. But we also have a lot of recruiting activities on school campus, youth events, music festivals, sport competitions. If you want to attract millennials or Gen Z, you need to be seen where they go or use platform they like. Let’s face the truth, a financial institution isn’t always representing their dream job, so you need to be creative to capture their attention and connect with them. Desjardins is also supporting young employees. We’re providing opportunities for development as our CEO’s youth advisory board, to share their concerns, vision and inspiration with the board of director and executive committee. We’re giving them a voice to influence strategies, to influence decisions that are made within the organization. We also have a young executive networks for managers on their 35 years of age. It’s financed and supported by the executive committee and the networking activities, conferences, collaboration platform, to support their development.
We have a comprehensive onboarding in-house training and career planning services to help people grow within the organization. We also offer mentoring and leadership training, as our new managers program, it helps them develop tools and networks with other new or young managers. We also provide financial support, flexible work arrangement, and encourage employees to pursue career related studies. Great support from managers and tools from a professional development, and we encourage managers to have a continuous discussion with your employee to make sure we understand their issues and support their development. We’re being a responsible and sustainable employer, and we’re also offering flexible work schedule and good work conditions. We offer innovative work environment with the innovation or top trend UX lab. We’re promoting healthy habits, participation in challenges and we have very good programs for our young families also.
Desjardins is very present to support youth in the community. A few years ago, we launched the biggest competition for open innovation on a global social change where 40% of the participants are 18 to 35, active in four different countries. It’s called Cooperathon. We also have a once a year, the Co-op Week. It’s held in October, and we have a program which is called A Helping Hand for Youth. It’s a program that engage over 7,000 employees and officers to volunteer during the day, during the week, in activities to support youth. We also have the Desjardins Foundation. Just in 2019, over $3 million were invested to support almost 220,000 youth. We offered 641 scholarships, the Desjardins Foundation prizes, which financially supports projects submitted by teachers and educational services employees. We also have many partnerships with organization that supports youth like Kids Help Phone, Kids Now Canada, EdCan Network and many more.
Over the last 50 years, was $28 million that were invested by Desjardins Foundation to support education and youth. We also have a financial literacy program, which is called I’m in Charge. It’s a financial education program for youth aged from 16 to 25, and newcomers to Canada. It helps them understand financial terms, learn how to make a budget and how to respect it. We’re supporting many others like the National Teen Driver Safety, and we have a mentoring for young entrepreneurs providing financing for start-ups and many more. Since last year, our executive committee committed to give 50 million per year to support in its initiatives that benefits youth aged from six to 30, and young entrepreneurs that are age from 35 and under. We invest in interests such as education, employment and entrepreneurship, health and healthy lifestyle and social engagement. You can actually learn more on our website at desjardins.com/supportingyoungpeople.
And how we do that? Well, many ways; scholarships, sponsorships, grants for school projects, donations to charities and educational institution, financial education, and many more. As I said first, you can organize a lot of our program for employees to support youth and communities, but you need to share values. Program development and financial investments are important steps to supporting youth, but to take it a step further, our values must genuinely align with what we say and to do, to support youth. Just to give you few example, our mission at Desjardins is to contribute to improving the economy and social wellbeing of people and communities within the compactable limits of its field of activity. So, it’s a mission that really connects with young people. And how does that reflect? Well, we’re investing in giving back to communities. Annually, we’re giving back 445 million redistributed to members and community. We’re involved to reduce inequalities. We support education, we offer sustainable finance and development, respect to the environment as our Socie Terra fund and portfolio, which is 100% oil free.
We support diversity and inclusion and many more. Basically, I think all those fields of action are things that reflect with the millennial and Gen Z. So as you can see, it’s going to go both ways, from top to bottom with the strong leadership and involvement of the executive management, but also from bottom to top, by giving youth a voice within the organization and let them influence the decisions, strategies, HR programs, etc. And remember, if you do a lot of advancements, create a lot of programs, none of this will connect with millennials, attract or retain them, if you don’t share some values with your organization. Thank you very much.
Ben Telfer:
Excellent. Thank you very much, Louis, a very comprehensive presentation that you’ve covered so much in just a short time. So, really appreciate you sharing what Desjardins is doing, both with the youth in the community and also your young employees. We do have a number of questions in, and we probably have a good 10 minutes to get to them. So again, please do send in any questions and we will pose them to Louis, Subashni and Lebo. Firstly, I’m going to start off with a question that is to you Lebo, if you’re there. You’ve achieved so much on PPS’s YLF in just a short amount of time. What advice would you give to others similar millennials in other organizations in how to set up a similar group at their respective companies.
Lebogang Tsotetsi:
Thank you very much, Ben Telfer, and thank you to the person who posed the question. I think the opportunity for young people is when you understand the vision of your organization as well, but it’s not only up to the organization. So, what they can do is probably link up with a training or development academy within the organization and propose such programs. The starting point is you’ll be surprised when you put out a call, an expression for interest and call to action, how people are interested in making a difference within the organization, but just they needed the platform. However, in the same breath, it does not require one to be part of an established forum to make a difference in their organization. You can do it as a unit and you have to basically get together with likeminded individuals. And we actually discovered now at YLF, that we had the same thoughts, we wanted to solve for the same thing, we ended up getting a platform that allowed us to do that.
So, another opportunity is linking up with peers and other millennials within the organization and seeing how you can make your voices be heard. And then, you can build a program with somebody who can help facilitate a structure such as a YLF in your organization.
Ben Telfer:
That’s an excellent point, Lebo. We’ve got another question that’s relating to your respective young leader networks. Louis, I think this relates to your Young Advisory Board, so I’ll come to you first with this question. These networks, these both report directly into senior management, how important is it to have that willingness of senior leadership to listen to young employees? And what advice would you give to companies who’d want to start that in terms of convincing senior managers that the voice of the younger generations needs to be heard in these strategic decisions?
Louis Sirois:
Yeah. Well, thanks for the question, Ben Telfer. Actually, the Youth Advisory Board has been created, I think five years ago, it was a wish from our actual president. As I said, you can do a lot of top to bottom programs or strategies, just like, I don’t know, sponsorships or investments or HR programs, but how do you make sure that everything you do connects with the young people? That’s why we created the Youth Advisory Board, and that board is actually reporting directly to the executive committee and the present office. And we’re consulting them on major question, let’s say we’re about to develop, I don’t know, a new housing program or a new way to support environment or stuff like that. We’re actually consulting them once in a while on specific questions, just to make sure that what we’re creating inside the organization is aligned with their vision. That board is actually created with, I think it’s 12 people. Four of them are employees, four of them are members or our clients, and four of them are board members from the local branches. So in that way, we’re making sure that we’re representing all our main public, and making sure that we have a full view of any issues are any programs where we’re consulting about.
Ben Telfer:
And the same question to Lebo and Subashni, how important is it to have that backing of senior leaders in terms of creating these advisory networks?
Lebogang Tsotetsi:
Hello, thank you so much, Ben Telfer, for the question. I think that it is a vital importance that we actually do have the buy in from our leaders, because there’s no way that a young leadership development program can actually be successful without the sponsorship and the time that is needed from our senior management level. It does not have to be from ex-co it has to be, everybody is a leader, and when it comes to sponsorship and if they believe that the youth and the young individuals of the organization is able to have a voice and to make a difference in the organization. It will be almost child’s play to implement. I mean, similar to when we rolled out the Young Leadership Forum for PPS last year, it was an easy buy because buy in came directly from our CEO, it filtered through to our ex-co members, our senior management, our heads of department, and that is why we were also able to partner our young leaders to become mentees of the execs who were the mentors of the program.
So it was the time spent, it was effort spent, but also from a development point of view, they realized that as organizations, the older the generation we are setting in our ways of doing things, but if we want to move and prosper as an organization and remain relevant, it’s definitely the youth that’s going to get us there.
Just in addition to that, it was the buy in that we are seeing … It’s very important, and some of us who in the YLF at PPS actually saw it first-hand after being inducted and how leadership was very excited to have fresh ideas coming from the panel of young leaders within the company. And after every presentation of project that was presented to the larger executive or senior leadership within the company, the feedback would be amazing. And that to us, gave us some extra impetus to keep on going and saying we’re on the right track, because the one thing that as a young person, you might actually doubt your capabilities and you think that you’d need to have some amount of years ahead of you or behind you rather to make a difference within your organization. But they were very excited about the kind of language that we spoke and how it spoke to business objectives and how it spoke to all the values of the company.
And doing the work that we have done in the last year was as easy as breathing because the executive and our mentors were really the wind beneath our wings.
Ben Telfer:
Excellent, Lebo. Another question still on the same topic of these young networks, young leader networks, Louis, you may have already answered some of this when you’re talking about your Young Advisory Board. The question is how many people are a part of it? Is there a leadership structure, and how are young leaders selected to be part of that leadership structure?
Louis Sirois:
Well, thanks for the question. Our young executive networks is actually consisted of all managers under 35 years of age within the organization, and people are free to join or not, the network. It is financed and supported by the executive committee, but we are self-organized. We actually have a committee of eight to 10 people that just meets a few times a month just to see what’s the calendar, what activities are we going to offer. The main goal of that network is actually to create a platform, create a place where young managers can exchange about their issues, they can network, they can meet new people that shares the same issues, same situation than others. Yes, we are talking a little bit about the strategic plan and the business strategies, but it’s more network to help people develop and connect with other people, share issues, share tools to be better managers.
Basically, the executive comedy is really close from our network when we’re doing, I don’t know, conferences or events or webinars. They’re very often with us to present a check and share their career and share some tools and share some of the advices, but it is a completely self-organized committee, and it’s composed of Desjardins. It means around 600 people within the organization. We’re about 3,000 managers total at Desjardins, and one sixth of them are young executives.
Ben Telfer:
Thank you, Louis. You make a very good point about these initiatives, these young leader programs are all employee-led. And actually in the report, there’s a bit of advice offered about how you can succeed in setting up these networks and also some of the challenges you might face. Lebo, can I just come to you with the same question? I think you mentioned this 12 on the PPS YLF. What is the governance structure like? Do you have a chair, and how is that supported by other senior leaders?
Lebogang Tsotetsi:
Thank you, Ben Telfer for the question. It’s 12 young leaders, there is no chairperson, we are all leaders within the team. And however, when we do run projects, we do have project leads. Last year, we were actually tasked with a project that looks at improving employee … It basically focuses on employee value proposition and making sure that we drive this group-wide. The projects that came across now, because we have to adapt to the current times of COVID-19, we have been pushed to make sure that we develop them even further by making sure that our staff members within the organization still gets taken care of while they are working from home. There’s three projects and those have team leads and we work in clusters. But that also does not mean that in between those classes, because one of the things that we strive for in our organization is to break the whole idea of silos and working away from each other.
So, there’s a very huge transfer of knowledge even within those small teams that drive those specific projects. We actually believe in making sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to share ideas when it comes to the projects, because what I might not might know, the other person might not and vice versa. What I don’t know, somebody may enlighten me and have a very quick solution, and because we all work in different styles and use different approaches. So that’s the beauty of having … You could say it’s like a liberal structure where everyone is a leader and they don’t need a formal structure to say, you are the chairperson, therefore, you are only allowed to make these decisions and this person oversees the finances. It actually helps us to impart not only knowledge but skills, because some people are more astute or skilled with financial knowledge. Some people are more technical and strategic, and that allows us to actually learn other things that we may have not had sight of when we started our term as young leaders. It’s a great way to exchange skills and knowledge.
Ben Telfer:
It seems like that’s great success already. We’ve got time for one more question. It’s a really great question. I’m going to ask all three speakers to make a comment on that. You’ve mentioned so many socially responsible actions that you’ve taken and that you are taking, that it must be a massive part of your employee value proposition. Could you talk a bit more about how you leverage the mutuality and cooperative values in your employee value proposition? Louis, perhaps I’ll come to you first, then Subashni, then Lebo. Louis?
Louis Sirois:
Yeah. Well, it’s actually a very good question. Desjardins has been created over 100 years ago, and sometimes especially for a financial institution in Canada where competition is actually growing up, people sometime forget what is a financial co-op. We’re actually about to launch, in a few months, mandatory training program, which is going to remind our employees why it is a financial co-op, why is a financial co-op different than any other banks. So, it is present to our, I don’t know, annual reports, training programs for new employees and internship to talk about cooperation, but it’s true that it’s hard to deep dive into many concept and explain it very well to employees. But we decided that in the upcoming months, we’re going to have a mandatory program that everyone’s going to learn about the history of the cooperative, what are the values of a mutual or cooperative institution and give them many, many examples of how we actually show that we are different.
I think we actually need to focus on that and make sure that it’s part of any integration of new employees, and even don’t forget to remind older employees how the corporate is different than any other organization.
Ben Telfer:
That’s a very, very good point. Subashni and Lebo, same question to you, how is PPS leveraging mutuality in your employee value proposition?
Subashni Gounder:
If we’re looking at the mutuality on our employee value proposition, we work very closely with our values. I mean, Lebo mentioned earlier when she spoke about the three key values that we rolled out at the beginning of the year. Also, when it comes to attracting young talent into our environment, we try to start informing them about PPS and what’s the possibilities of becoming a member, as well as what the rewards that they can obtain, should they become a member or if they become an employee of PPS. So, it works hand in hand. We definitely, from a foundation point of view, we always talk about nurturing potential. Part of our pillars that we have is the employee value that includes employees is the volunteers and program. That’s where we would all get together and we would pack meals and we know the ultimate goal or the objective of that is to feed university students that might be hungry and they are unable to study, but with that, it is coming with the brand of PPS, and that’s how we are able to attract the talent from outside of PPS.
We have the buy in from all our employees within PPS, contributing towards this. A student that’s in university, they would want to be part of an organization that cares, and it really works closely to nurturing them and helping them grow. So from a brand awareness point of view and nurturing this individual’s potential, definitely we have buy in from our staff members, and that’s one of the things … I mean, I had a staff member that started at the beginning of the year, and she said, one of the major reasons why she joined PPS was because of the work that the foundation does. It shows care, it shows love, it shows passion for the human, and it’s about sharing. No one owns it. It’s owned by everybody. Thank you.
Ben Telfer:
Thank you very much, Subashni. I’m afraid we’re going to have to end today’s webinar. There’s a few questions we didn’t get a chance to answer, so apologies for that. Thank you everybody for some excellent questions, and everybody for participating today. Before I leave you, just again, a reminder of this report, it will be sent to you immediately. And again, hopefully, there is some value in that for you. Please do get in touch with myself or anyone in the ICMIF team. If you have any questions, we’ll be happy to connect you with some of the case studies and other members of our ICMIF’s Young Leader Forum. As I mentioned before, this is the sixth webinar that we’ve hosted as a young leader’s webinar. And again, you can watch the others and any other webinars via the link on screen. We have two webinars coming up in the next couple of weeks, and again, registration link is on screen. Just a final thank you to everybody for joining today, to Louis, Lebo and Subashni for their excellent presentations and discussions.
Please do get in touch with myself if you have any questions about ICMIF Young Leaders. You can see our web page on the screen and also our LinkedIn group, and I hope there’ll be other opportunities to connect. Again, thank you everybody. I hope everybody stays safe, and enjoy the rest of your day. Goodbye.
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