Posts belonging to Category employee engagement

Though we did write about Cathy Benko, vice president and managing principal at Deloitte Consulting, closer to when her book, The Career Lattice, came out (she actually co-authored it with Molly Anderson, Deloitte’s director of talent), her message as Wednesday morning’s keynoter at Impact 2013 was inspiring nonetheless.

It was nice to hear (and not just edit) her premise that talent management and employee engagement can no longer be about climbing the corporate ladder, but should instead be thought of as more of a lattice system, with far more employees moving laterally across an organization than waiting to be booted up to higher levels of management and eventually the executive suite.

“There is this tidal wave of change [around talent management] staring us in the face,” Benko told attendees. “We need to accept it and move forward.”

But that’s not easy, she said, citing research findings that show HR is the “least agile” position in business today. With changes in society, including the changing family structure, and with this lattice organization taking hold, employers and their HR leaders are going to have to be even more creative and must lead the way in giving employees something in return for having to give up this ever-dwindling ladder-climbing, promotion-based workforce.

That something, said Benko, involves taking charge and establishing more robust workplace-flexibility programs … programs that actually work on a more transparent basis. Engagement levels will immediately respond to such an effort. “It used to be,” she said, “that engagement meant just showing up; now, it involves many more non-measurable aspects,” including, but not limited to, skills-based volunteering opportunities and corporate-sustainability efforts that the new force of Gen Yers can believe in. And, yes, flexibility.

Benko encouraged HR professionals to not only dismantle the corporate ladder, but focus more now on “systematizing agility” and helping employees stay relevant in their job functions so they can move around better.

“Staying relevant in this business environment,” she said, “is a skill [and job] unto itself.”

She also encouraged HR not to mistake the business models they’re comfortable with for those they should be advancing.

Do not confuse a portfolio of projects, programs and policies — though admittedly all necessary — “with a system of change,” she said.

So how does HR value more of the intangible value of people, all wanting and needing a much more transparent, mobile and engaging experience in a much flatter organization? Benko posed.

For starters, she said, consider the fact that “people trust who they know and choose to follow more than their corporate leaders.” Citing research from Edelman’s 2013 Trust Barometer, she told attendees that 69 percent of respondents said they “trust those they feel are experts more than their employers or CEOs.”

Research also showed companies that have figured all this out, said Benko, showed 40 percent more profitability, 78 percent more productivity and 100 percent more return on assets.

“Where do you take all this from here?” she said. “That’s your call.”

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A big question was pondered on day two of the Health Benefits & Leadership Conference^™ in Las Vegas: Can companies change their employees’ behavior, and if yes, then how?

Benefits consultant and HREOnline columnist Carol Harnett moderated a panel to address that very question. HR is leading the charge to try and get employees to lose weight, become more active and participate in health-improvement programs, she said, yet this often involves getting them to not only change their behavior, but sustain those changes for the long-term. How can it be done?

HR has to “make it mindlessly easy to be healthy in the workplace,” said panelist Amy Moore, innovations design leader for Memphis-based Healthways, in response to a question from Harnett (who took questions texted by the audience to her cell phone) about how to sustain engagement with wellness programs. “You need to think about how you structure permanent changes so that people end up practicing the behaviors you want by default.”

As an example, said Moore, organizations can add low-priced healthier items to the food sold in their vending machines while raising the prices of the junky snacks just enough to cause inconvenience. For example, she said, raising the price of a brownie to $1.01 will force an employee to consider whether she really wants it, especially if she has to walk back to her desk to get a penny. “And, if she decides she’s going to buy it anyway, at least she’ll get the benefit of that extra walk back and forth from her desk,” said Moore.

Another audience member sent Harnett a question on whether carrots or sticks were most effective. “I think you need to look at the differences between people and determine what works best for them,” said Vlad Gyster, founder and CEO of benefits-communication firm H Engage.

“If you’re focused on helping people achieve quality of life, setting up punitive measures can have a negative effect,” said panelist Rosemary Passantino, commuications manager for the health service system of the City of San Francisco. “You need to frame it in a positive way–as in, we’re all working together toward this goal, so we can continue to have these things that we value … frame it nicely.”

The City and County of San Francisco is in the process of moving its employees to a consumer-directed health plan , changing plan designs to require employees to pay more for certain types of copays in order to change behavior related to utilization, which is a big change for those employees, said Passantino. “As public employees, they’ve been fairly well shielded from the rise in healthcare costs up to now, so we’re trying to incentivize them to change their behaviors,” she said. The city is also working with local healthcare providers to make it easier for employees to navigate the healthcare system and attain their healthcare goals, she added. Its primary cost management strategy is building collaborations with medical groups and hospitals to find common rewards in delivering more coordinated and efficient care (setting up two accountable-care organizations in association with Blue Shield, for example.). “For the average person, the healthcare system is like throwing someone into the Alaskan wilderness,” she said.

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A desire to boost communication and collaboration was a big part of the explanation behind Yahoo!’s much-debated decision to call its telecommuters back to the office.  

As a step toward bringing Yahoo! employees closer together, perhaps Marissa Mayer and company should get in touch with Herman Miller Inc.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal article (subscription required), the Zeeland, Mich.-based office furniture manufacturer—often credited with introducing cubicles to the workplace in the 1960s—is cleaning up these days, helping companies ditch the cubicle concept in favor of cutting-edge office layouts that encourage teamwork, not to mention save space and cut costs.

Herman Miller’s revenue, the article says, has increased by nearly one-third in the past two years, thanks in part to high-profile clients such as Microsoft Corp., which hired the company’s consultants to track how space was being used at a handful of Microsoft locations. Upon finding that conference rooms designed for 20 people were often being used by only two or three at a time, Microsoft created a number of “focus rooms”—cozier spaces more ideal for meetings of two-to-four people.

The notion of “post-cubicle” offices isn’t new, of course, with such spaces beginning to pop up at least a decade ago, corresponding with the rise of electronic communications and the type of ever-evolving technologies that have changed the definition of what a workstation can be. But the recent recession put a damper on the trend, the Wall Street Journal notes, citing figures from market researcher IBISWorld that found the office-furniture industry’s revenue dropping 26 percent in 2009, for example.

This year, however, figures to be a strong year of growth, according to IBISWorld, which predicts office-furniture makers’ revenue will reach $21.5 billion this year, an increase of more than 4 percent compared to 2012.

Silicon Valley companies are well-known for their innovative, inventive work environments—think Google’s new “Bay View” campus, which features angled walkways designed to create accidental encounters—but they aren’t the only ones reimagining the modern office.

Campbell Soup Co., for instance, recently remodeled its Camden, N.J. headquarters with furniture and input from Herman Miller. In addition to standardizing managers’ and executives’ offices at 120 square feet in order to create more open space for common areas, Campbell has created “huddle rooms” to host smaller meetings, similar to the spaces in use at Microsoft.

The changes have certainly had the intended effect, says Beth Jolly, a Campbell spokesperson.

“People are collaborating much more,” Jolly told the Wall Street Journal, without being “bound by walls or cubes.”

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Want to help your organization increase the productivity and happiness of its employees? Want to increase your own? Try being helpful.

That’s the message of Adam Grant, the youngest-tenured and highest-rated professor at the Wharton School, who is the subject of a really fascinating cover story in this Sunday’s New York Times magazine. Grant is the sort of person for whom no request for help goes unanswered. Google gets in touch with him to help it solve problems, but just about everyone who reaches out to Grant for assistance gets help as well. Here’s a typical example:

His largess extends to people he doesn’t even know. A student at Warwick Business School in England recently wrote to express his admiration and to ask Grant how he manages to publish so often, and in such top-tier journals. Grant did not think, upon reading that e-mail, I cannot possibly answer in full every such query and still publish so often, and in such top-tier journals. Instead, Grant, who often returns home after a day of teaching to an in-box of 200 e-mails, responded, “I’m happy to set up a phone call if you want to discuss!” He attached handouts and slides from the presentation on productivity he gave to the Academy of Management annual conference a few years earlier.”

Grant’s motivation to help others is mostly altruistic, but not entirely. He believes that focusing on the contribution of our work to other peoples’ lives has the potential to make us more productive than when we just think about helping ourselves. In his new book, Give and Take, he cites the example of a fundraising call center at the University of Michigan, where he was a student. The student-employees at the call center were feeling undermotivated, and no wonder: call-center work is often grueling and unsatisfying, and at this particular call center the rejection rate was 93 percent. The call-center manager had tried various ways of motivating the workers (including incentives and competitions) but none of them had worked.

Given that the call center raised funds that helped pay for student scholarships, Grant proposed giving the employees an opportunity to see the end results of their work. So he brought in a scholarship student to give a 10-minute talk about how the grant had changed his life and he was now about to start work as a teacher with Teach for America.  A month after the testimonial, the workers were spending 142 percent more time on the phone and bringing in 171 percent more revenue, even though they were using the same script.  Eventually, the call center’s revenues skyrocketed by 400 percent.

In another example cited in the article, Grant found that an employee-beneficiary fund managed by Borders Group had a notable impact on workers’ commitment to the company. Employees were given the opportunity to donate to the fund and have their donations matched by the company, which used the fund to help employees who were facing financial difficulty. Through interviews and questionnaires, Grant found that even employees who donated just a few dollars a week felt a significant increase in their commitment to Borders. Grant determined that “as a result of gratitude to the company for the opportunity to affirm a valued aspect of their identities, they developed stronger affective commitment to the company.”

In the article, Grant admits that some companies might take advantage of this altruistic impulse among workers to compensate for paltry pay or lousy working conditions. And showing employees the results of their work probably won’t compensate for deeper ills plaguing an organization. At a panel, one of Grant’s former professors sarcastically questioned whether employees at the Foxconn facility in China would stop committing suicide if they were shown people who were incredibly happy with their iPhones.

There’s plenty more in the article and I highly recommend it. One of the points that stuck with me is the benefit accrued from continually helping other people — when you readily do favors for other people, it results in a lot more people who are inclined to help you. As Susan Dominus, the article’s author, writes: “The path to success is filled with people helping to clear the way.”

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I came across this study from Randstad US  the other day that speaks to something I wrote a feature about back in our mid-October digital edition — that younger and older workers are much more closely aligned in temperament, taste and priorities than either demographic group is with Gen Xers.

Mind you, the studies are considering two different groups of older workers, baby boomers and mature workers, but the general finding seems to be that millennials’ goals and needs at work mirror those of their parents’ generation (and even the next one back) more than they do the goals and needs of those who came just before them.

In Randstad’s “Engagement Study,” it finds employees in two demographically opposed age brackets (millennials, born 1979 to 1994, and mature workers, born before 1946) share a common vocational verdict: They both expressed a more positive outlook on their careers than other demographics surveyed.

In fact, 89 percent of mature workers and 75 percent of millennials say they enjoy going to work every day, and a majority of both groups feel inspired to do their best at work (95 percent of mature respondents and 80 percent of millennials). These workers also perceive a higher morale in the workplace than other age groups, with 69 percent of millennials and 64 percent of mature workers finding a positive energy at work, compared to just a 53-percent average among other groups, including Gen X.

Similarly, in my October Q&A with talent-management and demographic expert Sylvia Ann Hewlett titled “Rethinking Demographics,” she presents her case for millennials and baby boomers (born 1946 through 1964) being cut from the same cloth when it comes to their interests in flexible schedules and social connections, their commitments to bettering the planet and finding meaning in their work, and even the fact that they both value loyalty to their employers.

On the contrary, says Hewlett — whose research into this was published in a Harvard Business Review article, ”How Gen Y & Boomers Will Reshape Your Agenda” — Gen Xers (born 1965 through 1978) are the lone group among the three. She calls them “the generation of hard knocks … hit hardest by two or three major recessions [and] burned in underwater mortgages with young children.”

Both Hewlett and Jim Link, managing director for Randstad US, say companies need to do a much better job incorporating these similarities and differences into engagement and talent-management strategies. Link says it’s “critical for companies [to] dive into what engagement and retention drivers are aligned and not aligned [in order to] identify and prioritize the larget opportunities to improve employee engagement … .”

Such as, you might ask? For one, Hewlett suggests partnering young and old in a kind of training-up-and-training-down program. Another might involve sending boomers and millennials out together on volunteer projects.

Both say initiating programs with demographic alignment in mind will reap rewards you can’t even imagine till you try.

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Monster.com and Millennial Branding put that question to nearly 3,000 Monster users in a recent survey, and got some surprising answers.

Among the 2,828 respondents, 41 percent of Generation X employees (roughly defined as those between the ages of 30 and 49) and 45 percent of baby boomers (50-to-69-years-old) said they consider themselves to be entrepreneurial. In comparison, 32 percent of Generation Y respondents (ages 18 to 29) said the same.

These findings rebut the survey authors’ original hypothesis that Gen Y possessed a stronger entrepreneurial spirit than their older counterparts, says Dan Schawbel, founder and managing partner of Boston-based Millennial Branding and author of Promote Yourself. He attributes these figures to a combination of factors working in older employees’ favor.

“I believe that older workers view themselves as being more entrepreneurial because they have work experience, strong Rolodexes and [more] wealth compared to Gen Y,” says Schawbel.

Gen Ys are just starting out, and have a lot to learn in order to be fully equipped to start a business. Gen Y isn’t in a good financial situation right now, has the highest unemployment rate, has student loans, and many are living with their parents. We hear a lot of success stories of Gen Ys making millions through entrepreneurship, but those are still rare cases.”

Differences aside, the survey authors note more employees across generations indicating an itch to pursue their own endeavors as opposed to “traditional jobs or careers.” As such, employers would be wise to harness employees’ entrepreneurial skills and put them to work within their organizations, or risk seeing them in action elsewhere.

“Companies and HR leaders should focus on creating intrapreneurship programs that satisfy these employees, so they don’t leave to start their own ventures,” says Schawbel, citing companies such as DreamWorks, Google, 3M and Microsoft as examples of organizations using such programs “as a marketing tool to attract the best talent and as a way to increase retention rates among current employees.”

And, it seems a fair number of employees are ready to stretch beyond their everyday duties and take on new tasks within the company. Nearly one-third of respondents feel they have the freedom, flexibility and resources to be an intrapreneur, and 42 percent of respondents feel they have opportunities to work on projects outside their direct responsibilities.

Only 23 percent, however, said they feel encouraged to work on such projects. HR leaders must train managers to be more open to intrapreneurship and “have formal programs that embrace it,” says Schawbel.

“The big accounting firms have contests where employees compete to get their ideas funded. Ernst & Young’s Power Pitch program is one example. And Dreamworks teaches [employees] to pitch ideas, and then lets [them] pitch their executives,” he says.

What it comes down to is fostering a culture of innovation and enabling everyone, regardless of age, to let their ideas be heard.”

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“People join companies and leave managers,” the old saying goes.

Well, if a recent Monster.com poll is any clue, you may want to keep one eye on the door.

The informal survey of 577 Monster.com users from around the world found more than three-quarters of respondents saying they would boot their boss from their position if given the chance.

Not all of these respondents, however, thought they were necessarily the ones to fill the void. Here’s what participants had to say when asked who they would put in the big chair:

• I’d vote for the current boss to keep his or her job (24 percent).

• I’d vote for a colleague who’d make a better manager (25 percent).

• I’d vote for myself (30 percent).

• I’d hope for a new candidate to enter the race (21 percent).

Workers surveyed in Mexico were the most likely to believe they were ready to take the reins, with 46 percent saying they would prefer to see themselves in their manager’s role. Forty-five percent of employees in France said the same. Overall though, workers in Europe expressed less confidence in their potential managerial prowess, with just 28 percent reporting they would vote for themselves.

Respondents in the United States were among the most supportive of their colleagues’ abilities, with 27 percent saying they believe a co-worker would be a step up from their current boss.

From an employer standpoint, findings from the poll—which Monster notes was not scientific and reflects only the opinions of users who chose to participate—are a sort of mixed bag.

“The fact we see such a large percentage of people who would vote themselves into their boss’s position shows many workers have confidence and drive, which is ultimately good for any organization,” says Mary Ellen Slayter, Monster.com career expert.

On the other hand, employees who are less than thrilled with their supervisors often start to entertain thoughts of leaving their current role, or exiting the organization altogether. And rightfully so, says Slayter.  

“If people don’t feel confident with their current leadership, they should consider alternatives, such as moving to a new group within their organization where managers have a good reputation for their leadership qualities, and failing that, explore better opportunities elsewhere outside the company.”

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It looks like Google has become a fixture at the top of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list.

The company cinched the No. 1 spot on the recently released 2013 Best Companies list, making it four first-place finishes in a row for the Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet giant.

Interesting subcategory: Top Perks, where a handful of Best Companies were highlighted for offering especially generous and/or unique benefits to their workers.

And, not surprisingly, Google was also recognized for some of the perquisites its employees so famously enjoy.

In addition to the free haircuts, gourmet food, fitness classes and myriad other perks Google is known for, the company was singled out for another, less-flashy benefit HRE noted in this space a few months back.

In 2011, the company began offering “death benefits” to spouses or domestic partners of U.S.-based Google employees who die while under the employ of the company. The surviving spouse or partner will receive a check for 50 percent of the deceased employee’s salary for 10 years, as well as acquiring vested stock benefits. Their children will also receive $1,000 a month until the age of 19; possibly longer if the child is still a full-time student.

That’s a substantial addition to an already impressive list of benefits, but Google only ranked 8^th on the most recent Top Perks list. Check out the offerings from some of the companies that out-perked Google:

Coming in at No. 68 on the Best Companies list, Intel took this year’s Top Perks prize. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based electronics company really gives its people the star treatment, literally rolling out a red carpet for new employees to walk down—flanked by Intel Studios’ photographers and videographers—on their way to receiving welcome packages and a warm round of applause from their colleagues.

Qualcomm (No. 11 overall) hosts a farmer’s market at two of its locations on a weekly basis, offering items ranging from traditional produce to jams and jellies. Employees with “veggie box subscriptions” can pick up their produce packages at one of the cafes at Qualcomm’s San Diego headquarters.

Hitachi Data Systems (No. 63 overall) is a haven for its dog-loving employees, hosting a mid-summer “Dog Day,” where workers bring their pets to stroll through a vendor fair that often includes local groomers, store owners and pet trainers in addition to a dog talent show. Hitachi runs a raffle in the week leading up to Dog Day, with proceeds going to a local animal charity.

By now, every employer understands that offering “extras” beyond a nice pay package is part of attracting and holding on to their best people. And, as evidenced by the examples above, some companies go to greater, more lavish lengths than others in this department. But it’s hard to deny that these types of perks play a very real part in making these Best Companies desirable destinations for top talent.

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The Conference Board’s CEO Challenge 2013 surveyed 729 senior executives worldwide, who were asked to identify and rank the most pressing challenges they face, and their strategies for addressing each one. Worldwide, human capital — how best to develop, engage, manage and retain talent — was named the leading challenge (from a list of 10 challenges that included customer relationships, government regulation, corporate brand and reputation and global expansion). Operational excellence was in second place, followed by innovation and customer relationships.

It’s quite a change from the 2012 CEO Challenge survey, in which leaders chose “innovation” as the No. 1 challenge and “global political/economic risk” and “government regulation” ranked among the top four challenges. In this year’s survey, “leaders seem to be turning away from macro factors outside their control to look hard at their own organizations, employees, customers, level of efficiency, and capacity for innovation,” says Bart van Ark, the Conference Board’s executive vice president and chief economist.

Breaking out the results by region, human capital was the No. 1 challenge in Asia and Europe — indeed, in Europe it jumped from seventh place in last year’s survey. In the United States, operational excellence was cited as the No. 1 challenge, followed by government regulation (the Affordable Care Act and “fiscal cliff” skirmishes undoubtedly factors there) and innovation. When asked to select how they planned to respond to these challenges, CEOs chose “growing talent internally” as their No. 1 strategy for dealing with human capital. ”Provide employee training and development” and “raise employee engagement” were also top choices.

Last year’s No. 1 challenge, innovation, fell to No. 3 in this year’s survey. Six of the top 10 approaches to innovation chosen by the leaders involved human capital, including “creating a culture of innovation,” “develop innovation skills for all employees” and “find, engage and incentivize innovative staff.” When considering innovation, it might be helpful to ensure that leaders and employees are both in agreement on innovation, as this recent HRE story points out.

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It’s nice to think that your highest-achieving, hardest-working employees are driven to excel in the name of meeting team goals, advancing the company’s mission, increasing market share and all of that good stuff.

And many of them are. That should be part of what pushes them, anyway.

We all know there needs to be something in it for them as well. The prospect of receiving a promotion is one obvious motivator, and employees want to know what’s required to reach the next rung on the company ladder. And from an employer standpoint, making sure workers understand how they can continue climbing is also a wonderful recruitment and retention tool.

Nevertheless, a recent survey from Scottsdale, Ariz.-based WorldatWork finds very few companies making serious efforts to convey promotional guidelines and policies to their workforces.

The survey of 873 HR, compensation and benefits managers found just 16 percent of respondents saying their organizations widely communicate such information to employees.

Companies neglecting to share parameters for employee promotions do so at their own peril, says Kerry Chou, practice leader with WorldatWork, in a statement announcing the findings.

Employers may be missing out on an opportunity to enhance [their] ability to attract, motivate and retain employees by not sharing general information about the guidelines or processes associated with promotions.”

While employers may be mostly hush-hush on promotional guidelines, the study finds organizations still finding room in the budget for programs supporting employee advancement, and respondents report promoting about 8 percent of employees in a typical year.

The survey also found the average promotional increase award to salaried employees in 2012 was 8.7 percent, compared to 8.3 percent in 2010. Officers and executives received an average promotional pay increase of 10.2 percent, versus a median jump of 9.5 percent two years ago.

Most responding companies (81 percent) defined a promotion by an increase in pay, band, grade or level, and/or the addition of higher-level responsibilities (76 percent).

Make special note of how most respondents defined a promotion: While nearly one in five organizations reported awarding promotions without salary increases, the importance of providing a bump in compensation shouldn’t be overlooked, says Chou. In other words, pay up when you promote.

While a bigger title and recognition from peers are nice, employees will usually not feel completely satisfied with a promotion unless there is a meaningful increase in base pay.”

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