Let′s make soulless companies a thing of the past.

Welcome to my newsletter - this time, Working from Home versus Working from Anywhere plays a key role - but also we look at those who simply cannot work from home or anywhere. Last time, Ina shared her views on the Gallup study. This time,Stuart Hardy shares his view about?the role of Technology in Reinforcing Corporate Soul.?Find out more about Stuart and the other members.

The Learning Culture … the unknown species…

?It′s been a buzzword for the past years … “we need to transform our culture into a learning culture” has been a mantra in many board rooms. There′s been many definitions – but this one from New Metrics is really hitting the nail on its head. Probably because they asked the right question (which is one key ingredient of a learning culture): “But what exactly is a learning culture, and why does every company already investing in training and development not already have one?”

?Here′s their view: “A learning culture supports an open mindset, an independent quest for knowledge, and shared learning directed toward the mission and goals of the organization. According to a recent study published in the Harvard Business Review, the single biggest driver of business impact is the strength of an organization’s learning culture and companies who effectively enable their employees to learn and grow are at least 30% more likely to become market leaders in their industries over an extended period of time. (…) Recent research by the Society for Human Resource Management revealed that only 10% of organizations have managed to create this environment with just 20% of employees demonstrating effective learning behaviors at work.”

?One thing that is important to understand is the difference between a learning-centric culture and a knowledge-centric culture?

A Learning Culture focuses much more on creating a learning and feedback-centric approach to day-to-day people management aligned with the business’s challenges and strategic directions. This requires an agile deployment of learning budgets to create highly bespoke just-in-time interventions across multiple channels to suit different learning personas and groups.

New Metrics view it this way: “To stay ahead of the curve and move an organization towards a true Learning Culture, companies must first focus on developing a portfolio of dynamic capabilities by creating an always-on learning eco-system underpinned by reimagined processes, reward systems and talent management frameworks. This will allow each individual, team or group to access learning when it is needed the most in order to deliver effectively against a change in strategy, a new market opportunity and any industry disruption.

Purpose, Technology and Innovation – the building blocks of Corporate Soul in the 4th Industrial Revolution

For a company to have a soul that liberates the best from its people and drives meaningful customer experiences it is essential that leaders understand the systemic connections between culture, EX, and the?key contextual drivers of business growth in the 4th Industrial Revolution.

Typically in the technology led environment we are currently in – business growth will come from innovation and not volume. In order for the full potential of Corporate Soul to be liberated the relationship between ‘Shared Purpose’ which drives meaning for employees and customers, ‘Technology’ which is the driving force that underpins the forces of change, and ‘Innovation’ which is the business impact we want top create to drive growth – needs to be orchestrated, so that leaders get the best from the areas of interface and they don’t remain strategic silos.

Where Technology and Shared Purpose overlap?we have ‘TSR’ or Technological Social Responsibility because great leaders understand that technology should be at the heart of a company’s strategy, including the impact it has on all stakeholders – including employees, customers and wider society.

Where Technology and Innovation overlap?we find the enabling world of technology liberating change and transformation to help us achieve new ways of doing things and stop old ways, with impactful strategies, business models and experiences that bring benefits to all stakeholders.

Finally,?where Shared Purpose and Innovation overlap?we can create meaningful opportunities for solving the challenges faced by the planet. If leaders with a taste for operating on the balcony as well as the dancefloor orchestrate effective strategies?in these areas of overlap, then a truly flourishing and ‘connected’?Corporate Soul is the ‘end result’ that we all strive for.

So what does this tell us – well, it tells us that Corporate Soul is the product of a finely balanced eco-system that does not only encompass shared understanding, shared purpose and shared behavior creating that sense of belonging - but also considers the interconnectivity between that world and the context of the 4th Industrial Revolution.

Without an effective aligned strategy taking ‘context into account’, companies with the best cultures and employee experience in the world will still fall victim to challenges of this VUCA world - by truly taking a holistic approach - leaders with foresight will be overtaking the competition, liberating growth and creating new sources of value for society.

Gallup State of the Workplace – Insight 2: Stress among the world’s workers reached an all-time high — again.

In the last newsletter, we shared the summary of the 2022 study. This time, we focus on the stress levels which are the focus of the Insight #2 of the study: “44% of employees experienced stress a lot of the previous day. In 2020, the world’s workers reached an all-time high for experiencing stress during a lot of the previous day. In 2021, this percentage went even higher. Those who agreed with this item may not have been stressed about work, but they were certainly stressed at work. Inevitably, the stress workers feel impacts the workplace. And while 2021 saw declines in worry, sadness and anger, all these negative emotions remained above pre-pandemic levels.”

Working from anywhere – take a look at interesting working policies from pioneering companies

Building on the last newsletter, Working from Home (WfH) is one thing. Working from Anywhere (WfA) takes it to the next level. According to a Qualtrics Report in April 2021, 80% of employees looking for a new job said it was important to them that their next job offer them the opportunity to live anywhere.

The latest Work From Anywhere White Paper indicated that 55% of companies believe that work from anywhere would be a core employee benefit over the next 10 years. Whether you look at this evolution from an employee or employer perspective, it is clear that we have arrived at the point where most companies realize the benefits of hiring beyond the 30km radius of their office.

Especially when you consider the abundance of different options to enable hire or work from anywhere, companies can no longer put their head in the sand especially if competitors are using it to attract a higher quality pipeline of international talent. Here′s the link to the full article.

Working from Home – Working from Anywhere:

Don’t overlook the employees who can’t work remotely

?While the public discussion is about WfH and WfH, PWC reminds us that a significant share of the global workforce can’t work remotely. This group—45% of the respondents in their survey—report less satisfaction with their job than those working in hybrid or fully remote work settings (50% versus 63%).

?PWC summarizes: “Workers who can’t work remotely are also far less likely than others to say they find their job fulfilling, believe that their team cares about their well-being, feel that they’re fairly rewarded financially or feel they can be creative in their work. As companies revisit their workforce strategies, they must take into greater account these disaffected—and most likely disempowered—employees.

?In addition, companies need to consider the role that these in-person employees play in overall community responses to the pandemic, as part of the organization’s broader social responsibility mandate. After all, these employees often serve a critical role in society, providing services that cannot happen remotely.”?Read more about it here.

Understanding Organizational Complexity: It′s time to say good-bye to the middle manager

How to design teams from the get-go is a critical element of organizational design. One thing that often gets overlooked is the question of social interactions. So, for a team increasing from three to four team members, although there is only one more person, the number of efficient communication lines suddenly doubles from 3 to 6. Similarly, imagine being in a team of five team members. Here there are 10 such communication lines at play. But double the number of team members to ten, and you suddenly have a complex network of 45 communication lines.

As more people try to communicate with each other, the number of interactions increases immensely. Here we hit a problem—our brain simply can't handle this. The structure of the mind is that it can't really handle very large numbers of relationships. Scientists like Robin Dunbar have told us for decades that our social world is very small-scale. They say there are approximately 5 people we can have tight relationships with, and another 15 people we can have slightly less intense relationships with. Think of sports teams, for example. They are rarely being bigger than 15 people. The same principles apply in business and management. There are natural limits to the number of people we can communicate, coordinate and perform with. There are limits to the number of colleagues you happily drink coffee with, and even fewer that you invite over for dinner.

Many decades ago, organizations invented hierarchies (including the role of ‘middle manager’) to solve this problem. Managers were installed to lower transaction costs inside organizations. As they did so, they took these tasks away from front-line employees, and reduced costs. That created two problems:

1. First, the wellbeing of the front-line employees: they did not benefit much from this change. Most people don’t like to be stripped of tasks like communication and coordination. It didn't really motivate or engage front line staff.
2. Second, the possibilities that digital technologies brought to internal communications meant transaction costs of one-to-one and one-to-many interactions dropped basically to zero. This questions the manager's role from a 'transaction cost' perspective.

?One result is evident in the progressive organizations. They have departed far from traditional managerial hierarchies. Instead, they structure themselves as decentralised networks of teams.?These networks have no (or few) middle managers. They feature highly autonomous teams where members take care of communication, coordination and contracting themselves. But as Metcalfe's Law shows, when there are no managers, teams must be small. And small enough that members do not get overloaded with communication and information which our brains can't handle!

Numbers don′t lie

Brighthouse have shared data from their latest research: Corporate Purpose needs more than a statement—it needs actions and words. From a survey of employees, 61% of those from Purpose companies saw it as a communication and branding tool; 73% of employees from companies without Purpose believed it should guide strategy and operations.

Great HBR Read: Why Microsoft Measures Employee Thriving, Not Engagement

Microsoft executives Dawn Klinghoffer and Elizabeth McCune share their insights in this HBR article by summarizing “Why Thriving Is the New North Star”:

“Prior to this year, we conducted one lengthy, annual survey that tracked employee engagement. It often took months to digest and plan actions around. Yet, we consistently encountered challenges in building a shared definition of engagement across the company. (…) So, we started asking employees for feedback through a shorter yet more focused survey every six months (…) We also sought to define a new, higher bar that went beyond engagement only, drawing inspiration from many sources. One was what Our Chief People Officer, Kathleen Hogan, calls “The 5 P’s.” Similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy, it breaks down employee fulfillment into five key, successive components:

• pay,
• perks,
• people,
• pride, and
• purpose

(…) At Microsoft, we define thriving as “to be energized and empowered to do meaningful work.” This is the new core aspiration we have for our employees, one that challenges us to push ourselves every day so every employee can feel they’re pursuing that sense of purpose. (…) When our first employee survey data came back earlier this year, we began benchmarking our thriving for the first time. We looked at not just how many people reported they were thriving, but calculated company-wide averages based on responses from a five-point scale — if an employee selected “strongly disagree,” that translated to an individual score of zero, and “strongly agree” would be the equivalent of a 100. This ensured our insights took into account all positive, negative, and neutral sentiment.

After analyzing the results, we found that thriving averaged a 77 across the company — a number we see as strong, but one we can still work on. When we broke down thriving into its three components, we saw that meaningful work (79) and empowerment (79) both scored higher among employees than energized (73). Read the full article here.

Gartner:?Will the need for purpose fade with the pandemic?

Great study from Gartner. When employees seek personal value and purpose at work, what should employers do about this? Just pay people more? Their analysis suggests that “Pay will always be a factor, more so in certain situations — if people were chronically underpaid in their pre-COVID-19 roles, for example. But it turns out that pay is far from the only motivator.

People are motivated when they feel valued and create impact (and commensurate pay is part of that equation). It turns out that people want acknowledgment, growth opportunities and to feel valued, trusted and empowered. Frontline workers in particular voice a desire to feel respected. Employees increasingly want to bring their authentic selves to work.

People want purpose in their lives — and that includes work. The more an employer limits those things, the higher the employee’s intent to leave. And employees are considering that balance now more than ever. We at Gartner have been talking for some time about the need to make work a win-win proposition for both employees and employers, but we are seeing a fundamental change in the value equation.”

Tribe of Leaders Podcast – listen in to my discussion with Emi Kirshner

Emi and I talked about how to build a company with soul - or bring a company back to its soul. "You have to start when things are alright because as we all know in business, things might be alright today but they might be very difficult tomorrow."?is one of my statements of a?great conversation.?Listen to the podcast here.

The next edition of the Building Corporate Soul newsletter will be live on LinkedIn on July 23. Please continue to join me on my mission to make soulless companies a thing of the past in 2022!