Advancing Workplace Priorities & Employee Values - Chapter 1

If we listen closely to the chatter within the industry regarding future of work, it is evolving to become a more HR/People & Communities centric one, and rightly so. We need to remember of course, this is a human thing, and we are in the business of making our fellow employees successful.

“I have proven to myself; I don’t need to work in the office and that I can work from home. ?I have also realised; I want to be in the office and I want to be everywhere in between. More importantly, it means I also need to pivot on demand, based on what I need to service my workflow and/or my own personal circumstances, at that moment.”

This represents the basic framework of what we as employees have learned because of recent world events associated with the topic that is the future of work. Capitalizing on this momentum, we need to tune into the recalibrated needs and expectations of employees and work on how we service that by delivering, sustaining, and scaling the role we can play in contributing.

As we look through fresh lenses, to try and understand how we can contribute to an outcome that is an employer of choice, at a time when “its all up for grabs”, we need to settle on a strategy that our fellow employees can relate to and more importantly, one that works for them first. The “what’s in it for me” sentiment has been accelerated by how we consume services in this modern digital age so how we contribute by delivering value to our employees, means those values need to directly relate to the individual and work for them first. If we get this right, it will translate into a phenomenal organizational impact that delivers productivity almost as a bi-product (amongst others), fuelled by loyalty. Loyalty of course is low effort and very, very high value, but it’s built on trust, and all that needs to be earned.

It’s at this junction where I am finding, folks start to overcomplicate things. Using the smartphone as a reference and looking at it in three layers, the one layer that is consistent with every smartphone on the planet (literally) is that it is either Android or Apple iOS.?

Looking at these two operating systems, let’s face it, their capability characteristics (from a user standpoint) are identical. The second layer up are “super apps” the ones that almost everyone has, like Facebook/Whatsapp for example. The third layer are apps that are more particular to you. This is where we all turn our phones over and although we all have the latest iPhone, each of us has many different apps. Those represent our individual persona, as the value of these apps are “in the eyes of the beholder” and thus vary by individual.

Why this is important to understand, is because I am seeing a lot of people in the industry approaching this future of work subject at that “app-level”, i.e. level three. I don’t mean they are all building apps, I am talking metaphorically of course but what I do mean is many are getting very caught up in persona centricity and digging deep, trying to group and solve this by categorizing it in pieces, perhaps over complicating things. We need to reverse out a little and identify the “Android/iOS” or “Facebook” apps (speaking metaphorically again of course) i.e. those high-value characteristics.

These are those user values that are built upon anthropological characteristics that transcend every persona, age group, culture etc. These are the ones the vast majority will hold dear. We want to defend them on behalf of our fellow employees and more importantly, equitably scale them. Think about it for a moment, this is the very reason the iPhone exists, when others were trying to solve problems in individual pieces. If I had a device for every capability my iPhone provides me today, I would be dragging a trailer load of devices around with me everywhere I go.

?Now that you understand the basic shape of the concept, it can be applied to almost everything however as it applies to this future of work subject, I have taken the time to drill deeper into it and attempt to unearth competent high-value characteristics. I have identified what I consider the backbone of employee value, better described as Employee Liberty, that is best summarised by philosopher Isaiah Berlin and reads as follows:

“Negative liberty is freedom from obstacles and interference by others. Positive liberty is freedom to control your own destiny and shape your own life. If we want to maximize net freedom in the future of work, we need to expand both positive and negative liberty."

If we are to evaluate this social disrupter that has been the work from home experiment during the pandemic, and really roll back the covers, we start to uncover a pattern where these very principles of liberty, are underpinning what almost every person is looking for.

CHAPTER 2: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/advancing-workplace-priorities-employee-values-chapter-john-corbett-1c/