Читать книгу Experience, Inc. - Jill Popelka - Страница 17

The world of work has changed, and leaders need to manage differently not just to attract and retain talent but also to create and recreate high-performing, adaptable organizations. Leaders need to:

 do more than just provide people with secure jobs – they need to create environments that unleash their full potential.

 go beyond traditional offerings like fair pay and career development to create experiences that give people a sense of purpose, agency, belonging, and recognition.

Employee experience will be a crucial metric of business success for a long time. There will always be trends, especially ones that emerge from innovations in technology and communication. There will be black swan events, like the pandemic, that cause a bigger rethink than was imagined. There will be shifts in social norms that change the nature and demands of work. Once upon a time, size outpaced more than just about any other organizational asset, only to be replaced in recent years (thanks to Moore's Law and explosions in microprocessing) by speed and agility. As stated earlier, America's top CEOs touted “shareholder capitalism” repeatedly for a generation until they didn't, and it was time to replace it with “stakeholder capitalism.” Still, it's hard to imagine a time when elevating worker experience will be deemed unimportant.

At this point, I hope you're no longer wondering why to build such a culture, but rather how. A study from Qualtrics XM Institute titled “Three Shifts for Employee Experience Success” encourages companies to alter their mindset in these ways:

1 from functional job execution to purpose-led empowerment

2 from disinterested surveying to collaborative understanding and action

3 from HR-driven programs to employee-engaging leaders¹⁷

Each organization will have its own formula for creating and improving employee experience. The chapters that follow will share instructive stories of good – and bad – employee experience, how management adapts, as well as insights into building a strong foundation centered on trust, purpose, and inspiration.

How can leaders, managers, CHROs, and others position their companies to thrive in the new world? Some questions they'll want to ask themselves:

 Is my view of the employee experience changing?

 How does my company need to change to improve the employee experience?

 How will we find the best people?

 What are the most effective ways to retain them?

 How will we solve for high performance simultaneously with high employee fulfillment?

 How can we inspire a culture where employees are encouraged to constantly reinvent themselves, and in doing so, reinvent their skill sets for the future?

 How can managers lead their teams in meaningful and effective ways?

 What has the pandemic revealed about people and connection?

 How can we improve productivity by putting people, rather than HR practices, at the center of the process?

 How can we develop a sustainable workforce, one that enjoys equal access to learning and skill development?

I talk to leaders and customers all the time, but my passion is employees, the backbone of success. Talking with our employees gives me insight into our business health, our customers, and the risks and opportunities in our future. I think about our business metrics all the time, but my focus is on employees. It's an ever-changing landscape, but the only way to drive growth and innovation and improvements in our business is to stay close to our people and our culture.

I'm not suggesting it's easy to change culture. I'm not suggesting we can even agree on what's happening in the world of work. I hear some people talk about the unique opportunities that exist right now, and job openings that exceed in number the people able or willing to fill them. Moments later, I hear people lamenting that they're working harder than ever, because their colleague left and there's no one to fill the gap, and they're told to “suck it up,” doing more work for the same pay. Which has made them feel – bizarrely – simultaneously more valued and less valued. One worker we spoke to said she was of two minds about a dress code at her place of employment: “There are no uniforms here, so it's a more casual job, which is both a positive and negative,” said Anna, manager at a food market. “Positive because you feel you can be more yourself, we all feel it, which leads to more camaraderie, and I have made so many good friends among my co-workers, which was so helpful during the pandemic when they were the only people I would see. But then the casualness made some people take the job less seriously than they should.”

There is no one view or definition we can all agree on.

The other day, I asked my son, Cole, an 18-year-old member of the iGeneration and a future employee, “What is experience?”

“A great experience,” he said, “is memorable and impactful. Whether it's negative or positive, you learn something from it. Oh, and other people are involved.”

True, I'm biased, but I find that to be about as eloquent a description of the concept as I've come across. At its core, experience is about gaining knowledge, changing the way we understand and operate in the world around us. As I referenced earlier, a recent survey stated that the single biggest factor for determining whether people stayed with a company was the availability of opportunities for learning and development. We are fortunate that our knowledge economy allows so many with curiosity to educate themselves, to set themselves up for something better.

And there is some social element, an opportunity to engage with others.

When employees talk about setting themselves up for something better, there are many things to consider.

Photo Source: SAP SuccessFactors/Adobe Stock

The whole self framework is a lens into how employees experience change and opportunity throughout their careers. Each employee has a unique experience, the elements of which include work styles, mindsets, experiences, aspirations, passions, and more. These elements dynamically change just as we do.

In an ideal scenario, employees can align their whole self with their work. They feel a sense of hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism. This sense of fulfillment is described as having high psychological capital; thus people become far more encouraged and motivated by their work: They can take on anything. When psychological capital is higher overall, it creates organizational durability in times of change.

When it comes to reskilling and upskilling, the whole self framework can be employed to help people autonomously seek out opportunities. In turn, they feel a far greater sense of connection to their organization because their work aligns closely with who they are and who they wish to become. They can navigate unpredictable circumstances but are also more likely to engage autonomously; think creatively; experiment with new ideas, roles, or opportunities; and evolve from paper pushers to mountain movers for their organizations.

Organizations can develop talent as well as create and access a rich set of data. Businesses can gain real-time insight into what inspires their people, to better understand what programs are effective and what skills are being developed across their workforce. Leaders will know how best to pivot their talent at a moment's notice, whom to bring on, and where to redeploy — all in a mutually beneficial way. For every opportunity an organization can provide, it will have a transformative effect on both the individual and the business.

This connects the dots: where an employee's whole self is fulfilled, psychological capital is high, and it spills over across teams and broader areas of the organization, at scale, to transform culture and drive better business outcomes.

We want work to be meaningful. Nurturing. Passion-satisfying.

Joyful.

I sincerely believe that when employees find their purpose and passion, the strength within them that represents their unique value: That is when they experience joy at work.

What a concept! Who could have thought such a thing 3,000 years ago, or even 100?