How HR leaders can win the millennials back
Welcome to Intrro #47. On this momentous occasion, we can finally say that the world has seen more Intrro newsletters than U.S. Presidents. This week, we look at how HR teams can help their companies to adapt and survive now that millennials have taken over the asylum.
The problem with productivity software
In a week that’s seen Google announce 12,000 layoffs, it’s fair to say that the balance of power is shifting away from employees and back towards the bosses. Indeed, the days of tech workers enjoying a confetti room brunch (followed by a massage) could well be numbered.
But while there is a temptation for companies to exercise their newfound power and extract some ‘extremely hardcore’ productivity, a fascinating piece by Nir Eyal in the Harvard Business Review cautions that we should be wary of corporate paranoia over remote working, and of the idea that tech and surveillance can make us more productive.
“When employees know their performance is being measured by the rules of productivity software, they become motivated to prioritise emails and messages over their core work,” writes Nir.
Professor Leslie Perlow, author of Sleeping with Your Smartphone, describes this phenomenon as a damaging “cycle of responsiveness”, where employees feel obliged to wade through the email mountain or reply to every Slack channel ping. Regular readers may recall that we previously covered the phenomenon of app overload ; thoughtful leaders are concerned that Zoom, Slack and Teams are distracting workers and playing havoc with our app-addled brains.
“Employees are distracted by constant interruptions, pointless meetings, and a never-ending flow of emails (some of which you may have initiated),” Nir writes in the HBR.
“Schedule-syncing helps you gain better insight into how people spend their time.”
Nir goes on to pose some of the questions that managers might wish to ask themselves:
Ultimately, there is no app for being an effective leader who promotes positive human interactions. For some further reading, this book published by Stripe Press, Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building, makes a compelling argument for “scaling the most important resource a company has: its people”.
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz
As we’ve reported before, more than half of workers want job security – not office dogs and pool parties. No wonder that Mercedes-Benz employees were chuffed to wake up and learn they’d received a €7,300 bonus. Does this presage a broader exodus of tech talent towards more traditional industries?
As this New York Times piece – republished by SFGATE – points out: “A majority of tech jobs are at companies outside the tech sector in industries like banking, retail, health care and manufacturing whose operations are increasingly becoming digital”.?
On Twitter, Bill Gurley offered some wise words on this cultural chasm between startupland and traditional corporate behemoths.
And for some pretty graphs showing exactly how different types of companies have been affected by staff cuts, check out this Tomasz Tunguz post on LinkedIn .
Time to poach executive talent from big tech?
It’s a turbulent time for hiring, and a deluge of the largest tech companies have seen their market capitalisations shredded (see below). But could this present an opportunity for recruiters to pounce on executive talent? Those who are paid mostly in stock are currently under-valued, so it might be a smart time to offer an enticing pay packet before any market correction ‘lifts all boats’.
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“Where have all the go-getters gone?”
“Your co-workers are less ambitious”, reports the Wall Street Journal (paywall). Are we really all sitting around in slippers and bathrobes, and if so, what’s behind this phenomenon?
‘Many white-collar workers say the events of the past three years have reordered their priorities and showed them what they were missing when they were spending so much time at the office. Now that normalcy is returning, even some of the workers who used to be always on and always striving say they find themselves eyeing the clock as the day winds down, saying no to overtime work or even taking pay cuts for better work-life balance.’
Slacking off?
Similarly, a leaked Slack all-hands meeting has uncovered an apparent culture clash between Slackers and parent company Salesforce, as reported in Fortune (and dissected on Twitter ).
Adapting to a majority-millennial workforce
“The emergence of majority-millennial workforces has led to a profound shift in employee preferences”, reports McKinsey in its wide-ranging analysis of ‘HR’s new operating model’. Below are the five models identified by McKinsey after interviewing more than 100 chief HR officers and people leaders.
How HR can rise to the challenge
Clearly, unless the wave of layoffs really does lead to a hardcore Muskian reversion, there is work to do in figuring out how we hiring leaders can respond to this COVID-inspired cultural reset. Unless you agree with Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus, who told the FT that “nobody works, nobody gives a damn”, it’s worth thinking about the small changes we can make to retain those bright sparks whose priorities might have shifted.
EX (Employee Experience) is all the rage, and tools like Culture Amp arguably offer a way to squeeze the gap between the office and the boardroom, helping businesses to retain staff and grow to their potential. Elsewhere, slimmed-down companies are increasingly relying on top performers , so granting autonomy – but not burnout – could be an agile solution if you’re playing the long game. And if all else fails, just give them free pizza and ping pong. ????
Things you might have missed
Recruiting fail
ChatGPT is the talk of the town, but while there are many benefits of using the revolutionary AI chatbot, it’s probably not the best substitute for…err…recruiting.
Thanks for reading
We hope you’re having a fast and furious start to the lunar year. Thanks for reading Intrro #47 – keep spreading the word and we’ll see you next time.