Let’s rewind the clock 10 to 15 years. At that time, if you worked for an organization that wasn’t really treating people well, what would you do? In most cases, not much. There really wasn’t much transparency in the workplace, and employees didn’t have much of a voice. This meant that most organizations could pretty much treat employees however they wanted. Big organizations had cash and brand power, which translated to being able to attract the best talent. Brand power today ain’t what it used to be. You don’t automatically want to work for a company like Starbucks, Disney, or Ford just because of the name. These organizations are having to try much harder to get the people they need and want, and transparency is the key.
Today’s world is very different. Not only do we see enormous business turbulence, competition, and pace of change, but also employees today have a voice that they’ve never had before. Man, are they using it! Hundreds of sites around the world rank organizations on everything from being a best place to work to being a diverse organization to offering great flexibility to having an environment with the least amount of stress and everything in between. Combine that with social media sites and transparent career sites like Glassdoor, and you’re living in a whole other business world. Organizations cannot afford not to invest in employee experience if even for this one reason. People can and will know everything about your organization even before speaking with anyone who works there. This includes salary information, benefits packages, corporate culture, questions asked during the interview process, and practically everything else.
When most people go shopping at a big-box retailer, they usually already know what they want and how much they should pay for it. That’s because they have already done the research and know exactly what they want. This same logic applies to the world of people and organizations. People will seek out organizations that they know are good to work for and that treat their employees well. If you invest in employee experience, then it pays off in spades because your organization will quickly become known as an amazing place to work. This is something that companies such as Google, Facebook, Riot Games, and World Wide Technology have figured out rather quickly.
Together these powerful drivers are forcing organizations to create places where employees genuinely want to show up to work and where employees are able to bring their ideas, their dreams, their aspirations, their hopes, and even their fears to work. We all deserve to work for this type of organization, but the vast majority of employees around the world don’t. It’s time to fix that.
My new book, The Employee Experience Advantage (Wiley, March 2017) analyzes over 250 global organizations to understand how to create a place where people genuinely want to show up to work. Subscribe to the newsletter here.
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