We live in a collective work culture, writes Ashley Campbell
KEY POINTS:
How do you attract talented young New Zealanders to apply for your job? Promise them lots of money? Overseas transfers? Quick promotion to a position of authority? That will surely get them applying in droves.
Not so, says Jacqueline Smart, director of strategy for M&C Saatchi, who has
just completed an international study on the role of emotion in advertising.
With two American anthropologists, she compared how 18- to 24-year-old New Zealanders, Americans and Britons reacted to both print and screen ads and reached an interesting conclusion: young Kiwis react most positively to ads that make them feel they belong, they are good Kiwis and they are contributing to society.
"Some ads that were designed for for 18- to 24-year-olds in New Zealand created no emotion or didn't make them feel anything - but they worked better for America or the UK. The big thing that has come through is that unlike Australia [which she had previously studied] and America, New Zealand is not an individualistic culture."
That came as a surprise - after all, New Zealand has portrayed itself as a country of can-do individualists.
But our culture is changing, and the emotional cues that New Zealanders react to are changing - with Gen Y leading the way.
"We're not individualists, we're collective culturalists," says Smart. "We would all understand that the Eastern cultures are quite collective, and so too is Maori and Pacific [culture], but there's always been this notion in New Zealand that there are kind of two cultures."
Her research suggests that is no longer the case.
"It's wrong to assume therefore that Gen Y are all self-absorbed, a 'me' generation. It's more that in New Zealand [they are] looking at: how can I be relevant to who a New Zealander is now? And for anybody that's trying to talk to them, it's not about asserting status or putting yourself above somebody else." For an ad, any ad, to have an effect, it has to cause an emotional reaction. And the triggers for emotional reactions are not the same the world over, says Smart. In America, the triggers are all about self. In Britain, they are collectivist, but concerned with status and social hierarchy.
"The ongoing question that we filter our emotions through for New Zealanders is always around: am I being a good New Zealander? Am I more or less a New Zealander if I think or feel like this? That's our filter, if you like, and that indicates that we are a collective culture. And that's not the same as in America, where it's about: am I making the most of myself? And even in the UK, while it's about social groups it's [also] about going up the ladder."
And so back to that job ad. It's not, says Smart, that a good salary, overseas transfers, and the chance for promotion to positions of authority won't have any effect - it's just that they're less likely to clinch the deal here than they would in a different culture.
What is likely to clinch the deal for young Kiwis is a job that offers a sense of belonging, a sense of connectedness, a sense of being a good New Zealander.
Smart says her findings have profound implications for professional recruitment drives.
Take the current advertising campaign by TeachNZ - it misses the mark, she says.
"The current campaign, in my mind, plays to the fact that if you're a teacher, you're a good person, you can give back. But it talks about your wants and needs, what are the qualities of a teacher - that's different to saying what does a teacher contribute, what does a teacher give back?"
"They're talking about the individual qualities of a teacher and they're individualising the job and they're not talking about what does the job give back and its role in society?"
Not everybody is convinced that there is as significant a cultural difference as Smart's study suggests.
Julia Stones, Sheffield's Auckland manager of recruitment solutions, says Gen Y "is a global happening and is not tied to a particular geography".
With several of her consultants who have worked in Britain and other countries, Stones disputes Smart's conclusions about the emotional triggers for both British and Kiwi job applicants.
"I don't agree that UK Gen Y candidates think about moving up the social ladder," she says. "They would view social acceptance as outdated and are keen to look for career opportunities which help them to develop their skills so that they can be more marketable for their next role."
The same applies to Kiwi candidates, she says. "Gen Y is more collaborative and team-focused but it doesn't stop them thinking about how to develop their individual skills to make them more marketable/allow them more choice to make decisions about how they work."
And while she lists career development, fun, values-based culture, good team and work/life balance as likely to attract more Gen Y candidates to jobs in New Zealand, she also lists competitive salaries and global opportunities.
But Smart says comparing the police recruitment campaigns run in London and New Zealand - M&C Saatchi has both accounts - reveals the difference starkly.
"I like showing the planners in the UK, talking about how we could never run this campaign in New Zealand because it basically goes 'Do we want you?' and it's almost like 'Can you step up to the job?'"
"You'd be left with about three people in New Zealand. You can't have a strategy that eliminates people in New Zealand, you've got to have a strategy that includes people." New Zealand's campaign works on different levels, to appeal to different groups.
"The whole 'get better work stories' is the covering campaign idea. Under that you unpack the giving back to community, the positive policing, you unpack for the still staunch male 'you can still be strong and tough chase crooks' - you can talk about the variety of the job."
Smart is not suggesting recruitment advertisers stop talking about career advancement and salary.
But she is suggesting that, if their ads aren't getting the response they want, they need to ask why.
