Want your employees and thus company to succeed, really succeed? Strengthen your people’s level of satisfaction and engagement. It’s simple but not easy.
In 2015, Bersin by Deloitte found that 87 percent of organizations consider culture and employee engagement as one of their top challenges. Employee engagement is the core of every workplace success.
While employee engagement is far from a new concept, upcoming trends present exciting and much needed new approaches.
Having surveyed 400,000 management and employee representatives over the past few years, the employee happiness consulting firm of TINYpulse has come up with some rather interesting 2016 Employee Engagement Predictions.
Their sixteen management-related predictions tell a surprisingly linear story about the changing face of management. Here are eight that I found particularly intriguing.
Accountability. (An issue that comes up with nearly all of my clients) Employees are moving toward owning personal accountability in their workplace. They want to matter and have their work count. Fulfilling their potential looms large in their minds. Companies will find more success in engagement strategies that involve employee growth initiatives and make them an active part of the process.
Professional development. With personal accountability looming large in employees’ minds, professional development will be a major concern. Employees seek opportunities to grow and prove themselves. Lack of professional development opportunities will be a deciding factor in turnover rates and will pop up frequently in exit interviews.
Strengthened onboarding. Onboarding will need to evolve beyond the old standby of a stack of paperwork and passively watching presentations to a more active, future-oriented process that allows employees to hit the ground running and become an insider sooner, with a plan for their growth within the company. Without it, employees will flounder, lose interest, and leave.
Shifting values. Millennials will continue to dominate the workplace culture. Since millennials became the largest generation in the workforce this past year, they will exert majority influence on company culture. This means that workplace values will shift to those prioritized by this generation—collaboration, social responsibility and work-life balance and integration.
Enhanced leadership. Younger employees filling the upper ranks will shift the definition of leadership. As baby boomers retire and younger employees fill supervisory roles, the nature of leadership will evolve towards a more collaborative and less hierarchical management style. With the workforce embracing personal accountability, this leadership style will tap into a great wealth of energy.
Transparency is vital. Millennials have grown up with information being instantly accessible, so with their voice in the workplace increasing, you’ll hear them pushing more for management transparency. This will be a boon for young and old employees alike, since TINYpulse’s data has shown that transparency from leadership has a high correlation with employee happiness.
Looping feedback. Feedback processes will become two-way. As the workforce places more importance on both collaboration from leadership and their own personal accountability, look for more feedback processes to become reciprocal. Performance reviews? Forget the one-way road; they’ll become a welcome loop which will benefit all involved.
Pulsing feedback. Feedback that comes late is nothing short of useless. More feedback processes will become pulsing as collaboration and transparency can’t happen without feedback. Successful organizations will be those who take the pulse of employee issues —
monthly, weekly, even daily — instead of waiting to do it once a year. Faster information will mean faster reactions and better outcomes.
The future is looking bright for employers who welcome and pay attention to these changing trends. My experience in working with companies in the midst of these changes has been quite positive. The key, as with any change, is that all sides take time to listen, value differing perspectives and learn from one another.
Millinneals, there’s a wealth of information to gain from your exiting baby boomer leaders, insights and unique (often humorous) experiences you’ll not find in any book. Baby Boomers, you just may have a thing or two to learn from the younger versions of yourself who are entering the work place. Exciting times indeed!
Master Executive and Leadership Coach Ann Golden Eglé, MCC, has steered highly-successful individuals to greater results since 1998. President of Golden Visions & Associates, LLC, Ann can be reached at 541-385-8887 or subscribe to her newsletter at www.GVAsuccess.com
