If you’re a Chief Human Resources or Chief People Officer, then you can request to join a brand new community I put together called Future Of Work Leaders which focuses on the future of work and employee experience. Join leaders from Tractor Supply, Johnson & Johnson, Lego, Dow, Northrop Grumman and many others. We come together virtually each month and once a year in-person to tackle big themes that go beyond traditional HR.
For years, companies have used carefully curated stories to attract talent. They went as far as painting pictures of supportive managers, flexible work options, and thriving cultures. But the era of polished storytelling without substance is over.
We’ve entered a new age of work where kombucha taps, branded hoodies, and on-site massages are becoming bland and boring. These initiatives can’t seem to hold any longer the fast-breaking employee engagement in many companies today.
Moreover, employees today aren’t just listening to what companies say; they’re watching what they do. And if there’s a mismatch, they’ll walk without hesitation. Right now, transparency is the new currency of trust. That means your employee experience must match your employee branding. Because now, the story has to be true.
In this week’s episode of Leadership Spark, we explore why the perks arms race is failing — and what the best companies are doing differently.
Listen to the episode here on Apple Podcast & leave a review
Why “Best Place to Work” Claims Are Under Scrutiny
For decades, companies have relied on carefully curated career pages and highlight reels to attract talent. They told often glossy, aspirational stories about life inside the organization. But the world has become hyper-transparent, stories alone aren’t enough.
What employees really want is truth. If you claim to have a flexible work culture but punish people for actually using it, that contradiction will surface faster than you think. The new mandate is simple: your employer brand must match your employee experience. If you say you’re a great place to work, you better live up to it.
We used to be able to get away with telling a great story. Now, if you say you’re a people-first company, you need to show it. If you promote coaching, flexibility, or innovation, you’d better have the infrastructure, accountability, and culture to back that up. Otherwise, you’re in triple trouble: missing expectations, eroding trust, and sending high-potential talent elsewhere when they should be inside your company.
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This episode is sponsored by Workhuman:
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Employee Engagement is Misunderstood
The traditional approach to engagement often kicks in only when it’s too late. An annual survey reveals unhappy employees, HR scrambles to respond, and a short-term program — think hot yoga on Tuesdays — is rolled out as the fix. Disengagement isn’t due to a lack of snacks. It’s a lack of meaningful work.
But engagement doesn’t vanish overnight. People come in excited. They want to contribute. What saps that energy is what they find over time: outdated processes, internal politics, lack of clarity, and a workplace that feels transactional.
Smart companies recognize that employee engagement isn’t something you fix after it breaks. It’s something you design from day one.
However, many organizations use Band-Aids — short-term dopamine hits that don’t address the root issue. Psychologists call this the hedonic treadmill: we adapt quickly to pleasures, and soon they stop registering as valuable.
Give employees constant perks and they’ll start expecting them because now they see themselves as consumers of the workplace, not contributors to it. Instead of asking, “What can I give?”, the mindset becomes, “What do I get?”. Worse, they’ll equate being valued with being pampered. That’s a dangerous precedent.
Listen to the episode here on Apple Podcast & leave a review!
Why Smaller Companies Have a Secret Weapon
Here’s the good news. If you’re a smaller or more agile company, you have a competitive edge that the giants don’t: speed.
When engagement drops at a global bank, fixing it could take two years of surveys, focus groups, and change management. By then, the team has changed and so has the culture. But if you’re nimble, you can act now. You can prevent bureaucracy from forming. You can design a culture that keeps the fire from burning out in the first place.
Moving From Transaction to Experience
So what’s the big shift happening today? The best companies are no longer treating work like a transaction. They’re creating workplaces that feel like experiences.
Psychologist Thomas Gilovich found that material purchases lose value over time, but experiences gain value. Great companies are using this insight to rethink their culture. They’re asking: How can we make working here feel like something people are proud to be part of — not just something they do to get paid?
That shift — from transactional to experiential — is the future of retention, loyalty, and performance.
If you’re tired of gimmicks and ready to build something that actually lasts, this episode is for you. Find out what makes culture stick, how to turn employees into believers, and why it’s time to retire the “perk-first” mindset once and for all.
🎧 Listen to the full episode here
And if this sparked something in you, share it with a colleague or your HR team. Because the companies that will win in the future are the ones who learn how to make work worth believing in.