The New Employee Contract

My father worked for one company his entire career. I have redacted the name of the company to save the innocent. His career is somewhat of a cliche storyline from an 80s movie. He started in the mailroom as a messenger and rose to be a Controller in the Advertising Department. Late in his career, he was offered to reapply for his job, didn’t get it, and was forced to retire. Here is a man who worked his entire life for one company, gave his mind, hands, and heart, and how did they reward him? They made him apply for his own job, which he didn’t get (yes his own job!), and they forced him into retirement. Now if you ask him, it was a blessing, because during his tenure at the company he saw a transformation of the company. The original promise of a stable career and growth had been lost to short-term financial goals and bad executive decisions. He was happy to retire and has been living his best life since.?

My father’s story ends well. Even though our family was financially under stress for a period of time, he is much happier in retirement. I tell this story because my father's experience in his company had an influence on my career. It seems that the original unwritten contract between my father and his company had eroded over his time at the company. He started with the company and it had a promise of developing and training him to eventually move from the mailroom to another role, maybe leadership. During his tenure somewhere, the contract either eroded or was completely abandoned. The idea that the company prioritized short-term financial gains instead of its employee's well-being was counterintuitive. Having your employees interview for their own jobs sounds like they wanted a younger (read cheaper) workforce. You will often find subtle ageism masked in “financial efficiencies” or “re-orgs”.?

While my first career as a failed accountant was very short (yes, I was fired from my first job), I pivoted my career early into Human Resources. For decades I had a thesis that if companies focused on their employees, the company's financial gains would follow. Candidly, most of my career has been trying to convince CEOs and companies of this correlation. The good news today is that we are seeing a shift. While we are still beholden to macroeconomic influences around quarterly financial calls and executive compensation rooted in short-term goals, there are a few companies that finally got the script right. These companies are taking a new look at the employee contract asking “how can we change it?” There is also so much data now that correlates great employee experiences with business results, that companies can no longer ignore the data. But, yes there is always a “but” - we have so much more work to do in order to build this New Employee Contract.?

This work is the reason why I wrote this book and used its main point about a new contract as its title. I look at this new employee contract through the lens of the next generation of employees now coming into the workforce. Instead of being surprised about what this generation wants and needs, I provide tactical advice for CEOs, Leaders, HR folks, and companies on how they can recruit, engage, and train Gen Z, while making a “macro” statement on how the relationship (aka contract) must be rewritten between employers and employees.?

This is truly a labor of love for me and I am excited to share these thoughts with the broader business community. The book is a bit contrarian, mixed with lots of hope about a future of work that is charted by The New Employee Contract.

The book is available today - please grab a copy here. Enjoy!