Engaging your Future Workforce will be more complex than ever!
By: Shruti L Kandoth
Tags: Employee Engagement, Employee Experience, Employee Retention, Workforce Management, Future Workforce

When I started researching on the employee engagement specifically in the light of new talent strategies that seek to bring in Bots, Robots and People together, I started with the widely accepted concept…

‘The more we belong and connect, the more we feel engaged and responsible’

…and the more we feel engaged and responsible, the better our team productivity and effectiveness will be. There is a direct co-relation between all of them.

Over the course, it was observed and assimilated that all the employee engagement programmes has been founded on the understanding that the employee engagement is directly associated with employee’s needs fulfilment. It is believed that the better our workplaces can cater to our needs, the more engaged we will be at our workplaces.

As I studied the recent new trends and traditional practices, I could easily relate those to the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

From ‘Naps’ and ‘Debunking Detox’ workshops at Asana to weight loss challenges at Draper to onsite healthcare services and financial wellbeing support at Google, “Fit for Life” program offers meditation and mindfulness classes at Intuit and free Zumba classes at Microsoft, Organisations across the world are innovating to set up new well-being programmes focussing the physiological needs for their employees. There is a new found understanding that if the mental and physical state of employee is neglected…there cannot be an expectation of productivity, morale and engagement. A mentally and physically unwell workforce can never be truly effective and efficient.

The more traditional programmes around employee benefits and recognition for better engagement are evolving too. Whether it is the ‘G Book’ — the book of ‘Good Stuff’ that all employees at Cloud 9 Living are encouraged to write to recognize team members for personal and professional accomplishments or the “Best Loved Employees” toolkit that is equipping all managers at Yankee Candles for handing out staff appreciation awards or Disney’s internal newsletter “Eyes and Ears” featuring employee appreciation awards and milestones, Employee appreciation days at TMobile and even Social Media Recognition for employees started by St. Louis Children’s hospital, are all great examples illustrating the creativity in this space. More and more organisations are deploying SMAC (social media, mobile, analytics and cloud) and gamification applications leveraging the latest tools and technologies. These programmes are specifically targeting Recognition and Rewards needs in the hierarchy.

We also see organisations are trying to get better with workplace design, changing performance management to ensure more aligned goal setting etc. catering to some of the self-actualisation (Stretch) needs as well as deploying new benefits, flexible working schedules, sabbaticals for learning and appreciation with more robust health and safety guidelines building some degree of autonomy (ability to control situations) for their employees.

However any programmes for the most relevant need — the need of belonging and connection are being limited to launching collaboration platforms, networks and communities.

The hierarchy of needs suggests that we need Love and Affection to build a sense of belonging. These terms may sound non-related in the context of our workplaces. We definitely do not expect our peers and colleagues to love us and shower us with affection, but, we can translate these terms to Respect, Trust, Honesty and Courtesy. The fact remains that as employees, irrespective of our level, we can easily miss to see any value in the best of the programmes, if we are treated poorly, given insufficient support, our interaction experience suffers and our levels of trust get impacted.

A study in the past also confirmed to this hypothesis. Of over 20,000 employees, those who felt respected by their management reported 92% greater focus and prioritization and 55% more engagement. It has been fairly easy to deduce that Inclusion, Trust, Respect and Experience are all critical to improve the value from employee engagement programmes. Without a focus on these, the most innovative employee engagement programmes and strategies will remain to be mere investments with no sustained value.

‘If wishes were horses…’ I could close on the subject now however, going back to the original context; I have to add to these difficult subjects, the usual dynamics of changing internal and external environment, the black swan events and new talent strategies of Bot, Robots, Remote and Temporary Workers. With the new mix, employee engagement for the future workforce is a daunting and almost impossible task.

These upcoming times will open a new Pandora’s Box for organisations. Whether it is the advent of millennials, contingent staff, bots and robots or the constantly changing needs of employees based on their career and life stages, when we apply the law of diminishing marginal utility…all the programmes that are working brilliantly today will be irrelevant tomorrow.

Imagine the new definition of Inclusion! Think of what it means to Respect, Trust and Experience in the workplace which has different age groups and types of workforces. What type of support infrastructure organisations will need to build for employees who may work with more and more machines, more remotely, using bots and robots, and with those that may choose to work at multiple organisations at the same time?

The following key considerations are a must to evolve a strategy that works for your future workforce engagement:

The Maslow’s needs hierarchy does not always let us want to be connected — the need of connected and belonging becomes important only after the physiological and autonomy needs are fulfilled. For example the health and safety needs will hold more importance than any other especially in current time. Employee priorities differ by their tenure in the organisation, level, work and personal life stages — -The ways and need to engage has different context for different workforces. For example a millennial will think of connecting and networking in a different context than a Gen X. An employee getting married or moving houses may have different perspectives towards the ongoing engagement initiatives. Elements for connection and engagement are evolving — The definition of connection and belonging itself will be evolving due to the changing the physical and mental mind-sets. Sufficient effort needs to be dedicated for the same. I went through a TED Talk that talked about scientists experimenting to make robots respond to emotions and were leveraging them to build virtual presence of grandparents for the kids who are far away. It will be important to define what connection and engagement may mean in this post Covid-19 era and future. Era of temporary short-term connections — All connections will become temporary and of shorter term as more of the workforce will be millennials, contractors, free-lancers, remote working and fluid workforces with shorter tenures and multiple work disciplines. Programmes that build a ‘connect’ between the living, non-living and ‘semi-living’ beings — In the era of remote connections, artificial intelligence, programmes that build a connect need re-imagination and innovation. It is easy to stop talking to one another if all the answers were accurately responded to by the machines. As more and more services get delivered by Bots and Robots, we will need programmes that encourage employees to make human connections for engagement. New and multiple channels for communication and collaboration require us to re-learn all the time — the communication channels and mediums will continuously evolve with changing technologies, selecting the right ones for a specific duration should be considered. For e.g. One needs to determine which channels to use to build virtual communities on Cloud.

Organisations will need a new, reimagined, dynamic and sound employee engagement strategy which is built on robust analytics of segmentation, positive employee experience and support infrastructure with a core focussing on building a culture of Inclusion, mutual respect, trust and courtesy while working with living, non-living and semi-living beings. Organisations proactively will be required to:

1. Segment workforces often to a level to:

Understand differentiated priorities

Know the needs of different workforces

Define what is positive experience and interaction

2. Plan your workforce for the next few years understanding the evolution of workforce mix and the split between Bots, Robots, Fluid and Permanent Workforce

3. Develop and evolve programmes based on:

employee segment priorities

employee segment experience expectations

connection requirements for all beings

4. Embed the culture of Inclusion, Mutual Respect and Positive Interaction as foundation to employee engagement

5. Build physical and psychological support system for your workforce

6. Measure and track employee engagement using the right tools

7. Innovate and improve continuously to manage changing internal and external environment

To get started, organisations must start the process of identifying and building the right employee analytics solutions, leveraging creative thinking and innovation tools to solve this necessary maze of complexity.

Please reach out to me for a discussion, feedback and ideas.