The Future of Work and Employee Engagement

The Future of Work and Employee Engagement

By Alan Gregerman

Let’s face it. The world of work and workplaces has changed. What started out as a “blip” that would send us home for a few months is now a seismic shift in the way that many of us work - especially those of us who spend our working lives in offices. Moving forward companies and organizations will need to think and act very differently to attract, retain, and unlock the genius in their most talented people.

1. WORK IS WHAT WE DO, NOT WHERE WE DO IT…

Let’s be clear, if given the choice, most people don’t want to go back to the office full time. Which means that corporate cultures and leadership styles that are based on being together will no longer cut it. Before Covid arrived most of us assumed that the office was the place to be. It was the heartbeat of work – the place where important things happened and we dutifully showed up forty hours a week or more to be seen, hang out with other members of our team, impress our bosses, and advance our careers. It was where we were most productive, or so we thought. And we were willing to get all dressed up and brave our commute because it was how work, or at least office work, got done. This worked out very well for our companies and organizations because it was easier to keep tabs on us and what we were doing.

But, spoiler alert, most of us are perfectly productive at the dining room table. Or at the desk in the corner of our bedroom. While we may have asked for a day a week to work from home before the pandemic – something that many of our employers grudgingly permitted – we are now way more inclined to consider coming into the office for a day a week once the coast is clear. And most of us, with the possible exceptions of older workers and bosses (or people who are simply desperate to get out of the house), don’t ever plan to return to the office full-time. In fact, many of us aren’t likely to come to the office at all unless we are given a good reason to. Sure, we will miss our friends at work and impromptu gatherings at the coffee station or water cooler, but we have lots of other ways to stay connected with them. Besides, we really don’t want to see most of our colleagues all of the time.

Which poses real challenges for organizations that are trying to attract and keep their best talent. Because if someone is less keen on hanging out at the office, with all of its advantages and support, how are we going to keep them engaged, brilliant, and eager to be on our team? This is a particular concern when they can be part of any team from the cozy confines of their home office…including teams that will pay them more to do roughly the same thing. Take a close look at the job ads for many of today’s leading companies and you are likely to see the word “remote.” From the perspective of a forward-thinking enterprise, the ability to source the best people no matter where they live is a real plus. And this level of flexibility on the part of organizations quickly demonstrates to potential employees that their desires are being understood.

Obviously, we all need to do some rethinking. In fact, we need to create a new formula for engagement and a new relationship with our people that is more purposeful and more employee-centered than company-centered.

2. IT ALL STARTS WITH UNDERSTANDING OUR PEOPLE…

As companies and organizations wrestle with when and how to come back to the office, most are struggling with what the future of work should look like and how to how to build a compelling bond with all their people. In fact, it is a big question that most of our customers are asking us to help them address. Because if we can’t figure this out, it is not particularly easy to figure out how to unlock the creativity and genius that our businesses rely on.

Obviously, engagement begins with a deep understanding of each employee and what matters most to them. This means appreciating that everyone is unique, which is going to be a particularly heavy lift for organizations that struggle to treat people as individuals. They tend to do best, or be most efficient, when they offer a “cookie-cutter” approach to jobs, titles, levels, onboarding, pay, and benefits. What if, instead, we became way more empathetic and saw each person’s needs and hopes – including where and how they would like to work - as the key to getting the best out of them? What if we sat down (or Zoom-ed in) with every one of our people to discover how we can best support their ability to learn, grow, innovate, and make a difference? And what if we began with a simple question…

“We have this level of resources to allocate to this role, what is the best way to provide them to inspire you to be a rock star?”

3. FIVE KEYS…

Salary matters, but not as much as you might think. In fact, our quick survey of customers and many of their young and talented employees suggests that five things matter more…

·??????The nature of the work and doing stuff that matters.

·??????The opportunity to learn new things that benefit their careers and lives.

·??????The sense of belonging, especially when they are not in the office regularly.

·??????The chance to do good together in a place that cares about more than the bottom line.

·??????The ability to have fun together.

Interesting Work. While everyone has to start their career somewhere, the most talented people want that somewhere to be a place where the work is interesting and matters. In other words, work that is worth getting up for or logging on for. In an importance sense, every job is worth doing but only if we can make a clear connection between what is being done, our purpose as a company or organization, and the value we deliver to those we have the privilege to serve.

Learning. It should go without saying that the most talented and motivated people are keen on learning and growing. It should also go without saying that the best companies and organizations see learning as a key to their ongoing success. In his wonderful book “Drive,” Dan Pink is particularly clear about the importance of mastery and learning as a key to engaging and bringing out the best in people. But we have to think more broadly about learning than we have in the past by seeing that learning is all about continually developing new knowledge and skills that enable people to grow in the work they do and also grow as people. Some of this is “hard” skills that are increasingly in demand…innovation and design thinking as well as data science and analytics come to mind…and some of this is “softer” skills that include communicating, collaborating, being curious, listening, avoiding distraction, leveraging distraction, and solving problems.

Learning also appreciates that there is more to an individual than what they do at work every day. In fact, the most enlightened enterprises are enabling employees to spend time learning new languages that they might never use on the job, learning how to paint or play a musical instrument, learning how to cook healthier food or make wiser investment decisions, learning to meditate, do yoga, or exercise. This recognition that people are multi-dimensional helps to engage and build a stronger tie with members of our teams.

Belonging. To stay engaged, people also need to feel that they belong! That they are known, appreciated for who they are, and are an important part of something that matters—i.e., a company or organization that does work or produces a product, service, or solution that makes a real difference. This means feeling valued and recognized as more than simply a cog in a wheel. One simple way to do this is to regularly ask for peoples’ input on things that matter. This can be a new product or service idea, our strategy, new ideas for learning, or their thoughts on which local nonprofits to support. It also means thanking them and acknowledging them publicly for the work that they do. Not in the same way that employees of the month get a parking space, but in ways that are important to them. I recall attending a workshop in which it was suggested that today’s employees need to be “rewarded” with an employee of the day prize if we want them to stay. I have much more faith in the new generation of workers that they don’t need to always be told that they are great, but they do need to feel respected and valued as members of our team. And, just as we ask them what it would take to inspire them, we should also ask them how they would like to be recognized and appreciated.

Belonging also means getting the chance to collaborate, innovate, and be led and mentored by people they respect. Maybe a simpler way to think about belonging is to realize that the more we involve people in our work and success, rather than leaving them to simply getting through their digital in-box each day, the more we give them a sense that we care and that they matter.

Doing Good Together. The most compelling organizations also focus on engaging their people to make a difference in the communities they operate in. This means tapping the talents and energy of their people to build houses, tutor kids, teach English and other skills to refugees, serve meals, improve public health, rescue animals, save energy, etc. The more we know about today’s young people, the more we know that they care about the world around them and making the world a better and more just place, and they expect the companies they work for to help them to create opportunities to do good in addition to doing work.

Having Fun Together. I noted above that the most talented people have very little desire to spend eight hours a day with their co-workers, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t want to like and spend time with the other members of their team. In fact, people love to come together to have fun with people they enjoy being with. This means meeting for pizza and happy hours, going bowling or riding go carts, and exploring the world around them together. They won’t want to do this all the time, but enough to get to know their co-workers and bosses as people is important. And if some of this fun can involve shared learning that is even better.

4. THE FUTURE OF THE OFFICE…

In March of 2020 many of us went home, never thinking that home would become our regular workplace. And, 21 months later, we’ve been home so long that we can’t imagine returning to the office for anything close to full time. In the process we have figured out how to be pretty darn productive working remotely. And pretty darn happy not having to commute, or dress up, or race to a meeting, or leave the dog, or be at our best. We’ve also figured out that it didn’t really take eight hours a day to do all the important stuff that we were doing in an office. And while this doesn’t mean the end of offices, it does suggest the need to change when and how we use them.

There is a lot of important stuff that still can and must go on in offices. But not five days a week. Maybe one or two days a week, but only if we have a legitimate reason to bring people together. And those one or two days should probably be somewhere between Tuesday and Thursday so people have the ability to create longer weekends where they can balance work and the rest of their lives. During the days when we do come together we should have meetings that actually matter and for which Zoom or your favorite collaboration tool simply won’t cut it. These should be meetings that build alignment, that provide information we all need to receive and engage around, that ask big questions, that provide new skills, and that build a great sense of connection and camaraderie.

The office should also be a base from which we innovate and stretch our thinking together, always focused on the essential question:

“What is our full potential as an organization?”

The office should also be a place where we have enough connection with our colleagues, bosses, mentors, and insightful strangers to realize that our enterprises care about our growth and development as team members and humans. And it should be a base from which we engage and explore the world, learn from it, and make it better. The rest I can do at home, or at a local coffee house, or from an Airbnb in San Juan - wearing a nice sweater and my pajama bottoms.