A Research Paper By Cyrus Erickson, Executive Leadership Coach, UNITED STATES
Organizational Leadership Opportunities focusing on Employee Engagement + Growth & Development
Organizations and employees face two critical and cultural opportunities in the post-pandemic work environment: Engagement and Growth + Development. Organizations pushed their employees beyond their limits during the pandemic. At the same time, the pandemic forced employees to ponder and question the importance and meaning of their work and contributions. Work-life measures became unbalanced and boundaries were exploited. From this, the “Great Resignation” was born, and “Quiet Quitting” re-emerged. Today the labor market remains tight and there is a workforce gap of over 4M unfilled positions compared to unemployed workers.[1]
Employee pulse surveys, and global metric gathering platforms, along with discussions with various leaders across the globe, validate these two key opportunities facing employees and organizations today: Engagement and Growth + Development. These topics are amplified by return-to-office challenges and the values that employees associate with their companies, as well as the significance and sense of purpose they attach to their work.
To address these challenges, leaders and employees have various goals and expectations of each other. Fortunately, many of these expectations are in a similar vein; yet some are also competing goals and outcomes.
Employees bring their expectations into the organization, while organizations provide the employee experience. Employees bring their individual well-being (good and bad) to the workplace; organizations provide the value and culture of investing in human capital and the importance of taking care of employees (good or bad).
With the principle of positive intent, these facets can join together to create strong employee engagement, better customer satisfaction, and, ultimately, an organization’s goals and performance metrics.
Additionally, generational differences in the workforce also create gaps in expectations and behaviors which present unique challenges to leaders and managers. Millennials and Gen Z employees have different approaches to human interaction and expectations which require modified approaches to motivating, training, and engaging these groups.
These generations grew up with different social norms, performance expectations, and, in some cases, lower self-esteem.[2] Their desire for immediate satisfaction, driven by the immediacy of social media, creates impatience and misunderstanding of traditional business protocols. These misunderstandings can include promotion expectations, salary gratifications, peer and manager social interactions, and more.
Challenge
How do companies recapture control over their human capital, and drive a values-based culture attached to meaningful purpose and work, all while delivering bottom-line results and profits to shareholders?
How do employees, who have experienced remote working and flexible work schedules, return to the office and maintain autonomy, and flexibility while seeking deeper meaning in their work, better human connections, and career growth and development?
Guided by the International Coach Federation(ICF) Professional coaching techniques and mindset, this paper will examine the latest research and ways to navigate and, potentially solve, the crossroads of company needs and employee expectations.
First, let’s dive further into Engagement with key topics surrounding employee engagement, work-life balance, and the importance of connecting employee/organization values.
Engagement
Engagement is sometimes referred to as the Employee Experience. The Employee experience can be defined as “the desire to make business more human —and to establish deeper, more meaningful connections through the work we do.”[3]
Purpose and Value in Your Work
Organizations and leaders need to recognize the connection between the business’s core values and the importance of the employee’s personal values. Currently, employee’s top, core value and concern is growth and development in the organization. How companies connect and prioritize growth and development drives employee engagement and intent to stay. According to Qualtrics 2023 Employee Experience trend report, employees crave growth and development opportunities that fulfill, challenge, and motivate them. When employees feel that their organization embodies these values, they’re 27% more likely to have higher engagement scores, and 23% more likely to stay working in the company for more than 3 years.[4]
The pandemic created large-scale shifts in people’s thoughts and feelings about their work. Everyone, from C-suite to frontline workers, is craving deeper meaning in their work and connection to their purpose in life. Employees now expect much more from their employers and will engage, or disengage, depending on how their needs are met.
This is where an organization – deeply rooted in its purpose and values – can win with today’s workforce. By putting the workforce first, a survey by McKinsey & Company saw a 49 percent improvement in employee engagement by aligning organizational values with individual purpose.[5]
Today, employees want to belong to organizations that reflect, champion, and live their values — whether that’s taking a stance on climate change, DEI programs, flexible work arrangements, or well-being initiatives.
Employee misalignment with company purpose has numerous cultural impacts: lack of motivation, high turnover, reduced collaboration, and, possibly, the organization’s reputation. Therefore, it is critical that organizations live and breathe their values and purpose consistently, especially from the top leaders and managers. Communication around these values must be consistent, direct, and transparent.
Return to Office
Returning to the office continues to be one of the biggest challenges facing organizations and their leaders. Employees are demanding flexibility and decision-making around their work schedules, while employers are stating that bringing workers back together (in the office) is important because it helps with issues such as problem-solving, training new hires, and reinforcing corporate culture.
It’s clear that full-time remote working is shifting back to “in-office” but the policies and enforcement are varied. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. took a hard-line approach earlier in the pandemic and pushed to get employees back together. The result is that offices now look largely like they did before Covid-19.[6]
Conversely, at LifePro Financial Services Inc. in San Diego, employees and job candidates were told that the job is “100% in-office.” As a result, almost a third of the firm’s employees quit after deciding the office policy wasn’t for them.[7]
There is no consistent or one-size-fits-all return to office guideline or best practice across industries and organizations. As recently as March 2023, Disney announced a return to office 4 days a week; Walmart corporate has been 5 days a week since 2022. Apple corporate implemented 3 days a week, yet emphasized flexibility in this arrangement.
Although companies set office policies, some managers largely allowed workers to ignore them which created confusion and further disengagement. “Uneven and inconsistent adoption in return to office policy has created inequities in how the model is applied and has made it difficult to realize the benefits of in-person learning, collaboration, and connection,” the Vanguard company said.[8]
Despite various # of days a week in office plans, here are several, clear, objective rules and protocols to consider. Through leadership surveys and discovery[9], the most successful policies:
- Must be well communicated, clear, consistent
- Are adhered to and enforced by leadership
- Offer flexibility in an equitable manner across the workforce
- Set 1 or 2 days a week for “all team members” in the office (e.g. Mondays, Tuesdays)
The “all team member” days offer leaders a key opportunity and platform to showcase and execute the company’s values and purpose – especially Growth + Development initiatives and opportunities. These days should be well structured and purposeful focused on building human connections and deeper meaning in their work. If employees come into the office and spend all day in video conference meetings, then this policy will quickly backfire and threaten to alienate employees.
Growth + Development
For many years, investment in human capital, specifically Growth + Development, has been side-lined. Well Intended plans are set annually for improved or advanced training, mentorships, offsite development, and online courses. But these are often the first programs that are delayed, postponed, or canceled due to budget constraints. Plus, shifting the company’s priorities and workload shelves these important growth initiatives.
The importance of Growth + Development as a value and its impact on employee engagement must be re-prioritized and engrained in C-suite and leader’s mindset for today’s fickle workforce. And, Capital investments should align with these values and goals.
Leaders and organizations need to innovate their approach to Growth + Development, moving from a mentality of “you (the employee) are the driver and owner of your development” to a more modern partnership and intentional approach. Employees are consistently told they must “own” their development– but the paths are not always clear and barriers, such as workload load, and resource access, exist. Leaders and managers need to keep these pathways clear and unburdened.
New thinking needs to include better access to training, more dedicated time for development, and supported learning hindsight. All these steps must connect to the efforts the employee is making to their own success (purpose), as well as, to the company’s goals.
Remote work team members may face limitations for Growth + Development. These workers may have less access to mentorship, networking, and training opportunities. This should be considered when programs are developed. Access must be provided, including streamlined technology, for this workforce population.
Based on talent scarcity and the high cost of external hires, employers also need to invest in reskilling and upskilling existing talent to accommodate shifting needs and business demands. The pandemic has accelerated the pace of technological change and automation, which has led to a mismatch of existing skills to business needs. Not only does this investment accomplish the stated employee’s expectation of constant learning and development, but it can also increase productivity by upwards of 12%.[10]
Another approach for organizations is to refocus hiring on core job skills, and then invest in upskilling this newly acquired talent for specific skills needed for the job. This builds internal growth and movement, along with attracting a more diverse talent pool.
Growth + Development investment in new approaches, improved access, and acquiring new skills will, ideally, payoff in employee satisfaction and long-term retention.
Professional Coaching Approach
As organizations, leaders, and individual contributors work to reconcile the differences and gaps in Engagement and Growth + Development, a Professional coach partnership can help to navigate these troubled waters to brainstorm, navigate, and develop solutions for their desired, future-forward workplace, relationship to work and the connection to the organization.
Utilizing the International Coach Federation’s (ICF) world-recognized competencies and ethical standards, a Professional Leadership coach develops a mutual and open partnership to focus on the organization and individual’s goals and desired outcomes.
This partnership can unlock and discover a future-forward proposition for a leader, their team, or the organization. Throughout the process, applying core competencies of building trust, listening actively, and asking powerful questions allows for an awakened awareness and future possibilities for the individual (“the who”) and to develop ways to solve these critical issues (“the what”).
A Professional coach’s tool kit includes thought-provoking questions that spark new thoughts, create awareness, and discover new possibilities. Below are potential questions surrounding the key topics and issues outlined above that can facilitate individual awareness and growth, along with problem-solving for the future:
Values and Purpose:
- What is my team asking for?
- What are my employees complaining the most about?
- What does my team value the most? Second most?
- What are the barriers to flexibility and pain points across my organization?
- How am I being authentic and living the company’s values and purpose? How do I feel about my connection to the company’s values and my life’s purpose?
- What opportunities are there to let employees structure their work lives to not just achieve personal balance, but also drive better business results?
- How adaptable am I as a leader in this constantly changing, dynamic environment?
- What can I do to develop camaraderie and connections outside of work for my team?
- What are we doing as an organization, or as a leader, to encourage open and transparent conversations?
- Would monthly catch-ups, or virtual happy hours, create stronger bonds among my team?
Return to Office | Well-being:
- In what ways can I offer more autonomy in the work being done?
- Are “all in-office” days purposeful and productive?
- What’s preventing teams or individual employees from taking the time they need to not just recuperate, but reprioritize to do their best work?
- How do I feel about our return-to-office policy?
- What am I doing to improve hybrid working arrangements?
- What am I doing to hold my team accountable?
- Am I allowing for psychological safety in difficult conversations?
- What is the organization doing to support me as a Leader?
Growth + Development:
- What % of the time are your employees spending on training?
- How much time / % do you think / would you like to be spending on training?
- What types of feedback are you giving to your direct reports around their performance? How frequently?
- What can I do to drive more human capital investments?
- What would an agile decision-making process look like in my team/organization?
- What can I do to protect training and development budgets?
- What does my organization need to do to re-skill and upskill the current workforce?
- What would need to change in our recruiting efforts by focusing on core skills?
- What team-building exercises can be implemented to build stronger human connections?
The Critical Topics of Engagement and Growth + Development
A global sphere illustrates the interconnected importance of bringing together the organization’s values and purpose with the employee’s purpose and life experiences. This visualizes the meeting in the middle, or “reaching across the globe”, grounded in authenticity, transparency, trust, and, probably most important, communication by everyone involved. Imagine the sphere is circular and constantly in motion – which means this coming together is dynamic, constantly changing, and needs to be flexible.
When considering the critical topics of Engagement and Growth + Development, with different parties involved, different points of view, constant change, and dynamic environment, the challenges and opportunities in the organizational relationships, teamwork, and coordination are paramount. Organizations and leaders would benefit from a Professional Coach partnership to navigate a course forward and help manage these dynamic relationships. While there is not one best practice for Engagement, or “right” solution regarding Growth + Development, a veteran business leader, with ICF Professional coaching skills, can provide an objective sounding board, thought-provoking challenges, and solution-oriented outcomes.
References
[1] “Navigating the taut talent tightrope amid economic uncertainty” McKinsey & Company | Jan. 3, 2023
[2]Simon Sinek on Millennials in the Workplace / YouTube
[3]Qualtrics 2023 Employee Experience Trends:https://www.qualtrics.com/ebooks-guides/2023-ex-trends-report/?
[4]Qualtrics 2023 Employee Experience Trends:https://www.qualtrics.com/ebooks-guides/2023-ex-trends-report/?
[5]The Future of Work: Seizing the Opportunities of the New Normal (McKinsey & Company) August 2, 2021
[6]WSJ article Jan 4, 2023 https://apple.news/A-_wHG5X4Q1izQYWZ7b0Cgw
[7]WSJ article Jan 4, 2023 https://apple.news/A-_wHG5X4Q1izQYWZ7b0Cgw
[8]WSJ article Jan 4, 2023 https://apple.news/A-_wHG5X4Q1izQYWZ7b0Cgw
[9] CRE Coaching Industry Survey | January – February 2023
[10]The future of the workforce: Investing in talent to prepare for uncertainty | McKinsey & Company June 7, 2021