Experience, Inc.. Jill Popelka
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bottom line. When the company creates a positive “organizational climate” – a concept from psychology, describing an environment that reflects beliefs, attitudes, and behavioral norms shared across people in a group – it influences sales revenue, customer satisfaction scores, manufacturing productivity, product quality, patient care, safety incidents, security breaches, employee well-being, equity and inclusiveness, and other metrics that impact company profit and growth. Furthermore, when you create such an appealing organizational climate, talented people who are outside the tent want to come join you inside it.
A company that does not put its employees first, whose workers are figuratively hiking through a swamp in ill-fitting boots, with people whose presence they don't enjoy: That's a business with serious problems.
What Employees Want
To attract the best employees, you must provide a great employee experience. How do you achieve that?
Two in three U.S. employees say that the most important issue for CEOs to communicate is the company's values.1 Seven in ten employees say that leadership's stance on social issues influences whether they stay in their current job.2 Nearly three in four claim that their principal driver is “work that has purpose and meaning.”3 And nine in ten executives believe that an organization with shared purpose will enjoy employee satisfaction.4 The demand for meaningful, purposeful work has never been stronger than it is today.
Is compensation suddenly not important? Of course it is – though in one survey, the portion of workers who say that pay is most important is only 19 percent.5 There will inevitably be significant differences in how much people say they are motivated by money; salespeople will answer differently from social workers. Compensation is a huge influence on our willingness to accept and remain in a job, even if it is not that important to us in the day-to-day work. What's more, the issue of money can be a huge de-motivator for anyone who feels they are being paid unfairly.
It's not just about purpose and meaning, though. Opportunities for learning and a breadth of career development in a professional job are among the top reasons given for remaining with a company.6 In fact, one study found that 94 percent of employees say they would stay at a company longer if they had learning opportunities.7 Three-quarters of employees say they are more motivated to improve their technical and professional skills as a result of the pandemic.8
Our fundamental psychology has not changed all that much. What made our grandparents happy at work is the same for us: achieving meaningful things in an organization where we are appreciated, valued, and feel a sense of belonging. What has changed is the environment we live in. What has changed is our ability to get the things that make us happy at work.
And a lot of people out there are not happy.
A staggering number of people are quitting their jobs without immediately looking for the next one – a phenomenon in the United States and elsewhere that's been dubbed (in the U.S., anyway) “The Great Resignation,” creating an unpredictable labor market. “I don't want to make the same mistakes, where I just take anything, because I could end up in an even worse situation,” says Kara,* formerly a project manager at a software company, voicing a common concern. “Now that I have an idea of what's out there, I don't want to jump into a brand-new role just yet.” Companies are worried about recruitment and retention, about compensation and perks, and whether their efforts will succeed in this new landscape. Working conditions at a given company, bad or good, are public knowledge. “Amazon built cutting-edge package processing facilities to cater to shoppers' appetite for fast delivery, far outpacing competitors,” reports The New York Times. “But the business did not devote enough resources and attention to how it served employees, according to many longtime workers.”9
Burnout, a key indicator for quitting, is rampant. Among tech workers, 58 percent report experiencing it.10 Lots of employees – and former employees – are prioritizing that ever-elusive “work-life balance.”
Companies are starting to address employee experience, but it's not easy given that they're already dealing with the challenge of the hybrid workplace. What are the new working policies? What do employees really need? How do leaders meet those individual wants and expectations if they oversee a company of 100,000? Or even just 100? Business leaders and CHROs alike face a challenge.
“I know they want to create a better experience,” says Rachel, a copywriter and brand developer, about the mid-sized design firm she left for a better opportunity, “but I don't think they really know how.”
Keeping Pace
For those in positions of leadership, it may feel daunting to try to manage the pace of change today. But we all know it's necessary in order to stay relevant and succeed. Because people change. Society changes. Constantly. On a recent trip to Washington, D.C., with my daughter, Kalie, I came across these words etched in stone: “Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times.” Thomas Jefferson said that more than two centuries ago, and it's still true today.11 Companies and their practices must change to keep pace with the progress of the human mind.
It's hard to argue that the changes in work from thousands of years ago to a century ago were greater than what we've experienced in just the last two generations, or the last five years. The word disruption has been overused, yet it accurately describes what has been going on for the last decade and even more recently. Business leaders have seen a massive reorientation around the notion of work.
Your work life was once far less flexible. Today, there's more choice, thus companies need to compete harder for your attention and loyalty. Since 1972, average gross domestic product (GDP) per capita around the globe has increased more than tenfold, which translates to more personal discretionary spending, which means more people who are able and willing to tolerate a few months out of work looking for their next job.12 Many people are no longer satisfied simply by reaching the base levels of Maslow's iconic hierarchy pyramid – physiological (food, shelter, etc.) and safety/security (employment, social stability, etc.). They want to scale the upper levels, right to the top of the pyramid: self-actualization.
Who – during the Great Depression – would have thought that self-actualization was something to expect from one's job? Work was about a steady paycheck. Now, more people are willing and able to make trade-offs. Do I want to spend x more hours making y more money? Or do I want to spend more time meditating? “What if paid work is not the only worthwhile use of one's time?” The New York Times' Farhad Manjoo ponders. “What if crushing it in your career is not the only way to attain status and significance in society?”13
People want and need to feel