New Technologies are Generating New Ways of Working
Making it possible to find almost anyone or anything anywhere easily and quickly. By dramatically reducing the cost of communication transactions and coordination. The world is changing how we get things done – which is why the employee brand is so important.
The next generation is already chasing, opportunity, challenge, meaning, and conditions. Careers built around skills, experience, and networks rather than institutional affiliation.
So how we relate to work is changing dramatically. In the future, businesses will tap the best person for the specific task at the specific moment in time. Organisations will constitute a flexible community of people who work. This will lead to a smaller number of core employees and a wider community of individuals who have been pre-qualified and contracted.
Richard Branson is famous for saying: ‘Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers’. The customer may well be king, but the king will soon look for different subjects if served with indifference. Your employee is your new customer. You’ll need to offer what she’s looking for and that means you need a plan.
It’s baffling that many senior leaders seem to expect their employees to offer exceptional customer service, whilst offering them an exceptionally poor one. Remarkably, given its broad reach, employee branding is not just considered a poor relation to Company Branding. But also to some internal functions. Information Technology often makes the case for investing in tech and money is readily dished out for new tools and pieces of equipment.
People? Why Do We Forget Them?
The most important work today is discretionary. People have to want to provide an extraordinary service. Individuals must choose to share ideas and work together, no one can be forced to innovate. So how do we tap into this need?
Meaning is the new money, adopting best practices is old school, crafting unique experiences for employees and customers are the future. Trying to be all things to all people is doomed to fail. Attracting and retaining people who value what you have to offer is the future. Offering a little of everything is old hat. Excelling in specific areas that align with your values will be key to your success.
In most organisations, employee branding just happens. It’s a collection of disjointed touchpoints owned by different people, each reflecting the personality of that person. It’s rare to find a business with an employee branding strategy. Let alone defined employee journey maps, empathy maps, and culture processes. To fully drive this point home, imagine if you let your IT just ‘happen’? The outcome would be disastrous and to add to this, many organisations are culling jobs. A greater focus is required on more for less.
As organisations evolve, few people will have broad organisationally defined titles. Titles will be time-bound and action-oriented. Some people will take on multiple projects at a time for multiple businesses Some projects will be short; others very long. People will have great flexibility in choosing or bidding for assignments on various projects compensation will be tied to the project.
The Role of Companies
Companies will compete for talent based on the commercial value of learning. Also, their vitality, productivity, and the employee’s ability to transform and manage change. Are you ready? You’ll need some way of signifying and communicating on the job learning and achievements will grow already we see ‘Badges’ Educational degrees will diminish as a currency in the job market.
There’s a metaphor here: making the best out of what you already have is an easier route to success than chasing something new. Because if you achieve employee involvement and participation the chances are that the 15% employee engagement rate across the world will start to rise. Only by seeking to utilise the strengths of your teams can you begin on the ladder to achieve a high-performing culture. Many organisations talk about this but so few achieve it.
With a rise in homeworking, the old-fashioned productivity via presenteeism is more difficult to achieve – not that I subscribe to this form of management. Therefore, many organisations are going to have to use new methods to try to achieve these rises. It’s my belief that you can achieve such rises by focusing on the three Es of productivity: Energy, Empathy, and Environment.
Research suggests that 97% of people believe that these three E’s have an impact on productivity. As much as customers desire a positive experience, so do employees. A major issue is that many of those responsible don’t have a good grasp of the topic.
Employee branding is a new set of skills and tools, rather than an extenion of HR. It is about putting people at the heart of every organisation because everyone matters at work. This will lead to a more motivated, engaged, and productive workforce. Which will, ultimately, lead to a positive impact upon the bottom line.
My Tips For the Future:
- Combine different types of knowledge and expertise to come up with something better for your team and your customer. Harness even the smallest unit of knowledge and determine what information to share, and with whom. Make information free-flowing between agreed parties.
- Learn to tap an individual’s particular knowledge, skills, and capacities in ways that contribute to the success of the whole. By creating insightful relationships with team members, customers, suppliers, and others.
- Move rapidly by detecting and responding to market and environmental shifts.
- Focus on Learning, Mobilising Intelligence, Collaboration, Innovation, and Openness to new insights.
- Questions? Ask!
