There is an over used phrase ”The war for talent” that through it’s over use hides a key message that Corporations must address.
Put simply, the value of your corporate brand internally – to your employees – is as critical to your companies success as the value of you attach to your brand with your customers and suppliers. I wonder how many of you allocate a similar amount of time, money and resources to that internal brand – what I am going to refer to as the “Employee Value Proposition” – as you do to your external brand?
Talent chooses where to work. It always has, many of you will argue. Sure, but in today’s workplace this is ever more so – it is almost like this particular hypothesis has taken steroids. Talent chooses not only with whom to work, but where and when. Technology has liberated the worker from the workplace and help shift power from the centre to the edges – to the individual. To you and to me.
Well the rules of this so called “war” have changed. Subtlety, but changed they most certainly have.
No longer is this a “war” where the protagonists work 9-5. No longer is this a war where the talent receives a gold watch after 30 years loyal service. No longer is this a ”war” where hierarchy, titles or salary are the factors that determine power, authority or choice. No longer does your external brand act as a sufficient attractant to talent
The reality is that many middle to senior managers were born outside the digital age. At worst they were educated in a world of slide rules and log tables and to them technology is something that their grandchildren or children show them. At best they come form an age where when they were at high school, computers were something that those who did not play sports spent their time locked away in bedrooms or computer labs doing. And as a result many of us from that generation used derogatory terms like geeks or nerds to label those that that did not conform.
Organizations now have a tough call. It is no longer the corporation that – to extend our analogy – is the sports jock or the conformist. That power has shifted to a younger generation – a digital and connected generation – who loyalty is no longer to the company but to their own values, ethics and desires and who have grown up in a world enabled by rather than suspicious of the technology and where choice, immediacy and opinion are the currencies of value.
Where those values overlap with a company’s values then sustained employment will co-exist. When they deviate the talent moves on to find a closer match, their resume untainted by the regular moves, and secure in the knowledge they are creating value in their own brand.
What this means is that this “war for talent” is now more potent, more unstructured and more difficult to win. The criticality of that Employee Value Proposition to an organization’s ability to attract, and retain the talent is now evident, yet few companies are giving it the management time or budget to address it.
The strategies, plans and processes that all those “old fashioned” leaders or senior managers tuck around them as comfort blankets are in danger of being undermined by the spotty twenty something year old with skills, attitude and choice. Worse than that. Those managers have no idea how to lead a team who think, respond and are motivated entirely differently. The managers’ world of spreadsheets, metrics and meetings may still exist, but they are often unsure how to measure or interpret the information that is being shared, as they do not have the basic knowledge in place.
In a bizarre twist, the very dissolution of those old values of hierarchy, loyalty and trust that were perceived to be the bedrock of corporate success and employee aspiration have been replaced by more updated values of social responsibility, ethical policies and a desire to be responsible. The old values are still evident, but the weight applied to them by this new generation entering the work force is different.
And unless a corporation recognizes this and adapts its policies and rewards together with re-educating its leadership to manage differently, then its own brand, value and survivability will be undermined.
In many ways this new generation – we can put labels on them such as Gen-Y, Gen–Z or Gen–C if that helps – are more principled. They are less concerned by money and more concerned by doing the right thing for the right reasons. The portability of their skills, the portability (literally) of the technology required to do their job, and the demand for their talents means that your corporate brand has to be a tight fit for their own personal brand, before they will consider investing their time with you.
This subtle shift of power is possible because of the social media networks, low cost of technology and pervasive understanding within this generation of how to utilize the two for personal benefit. In effect everyone – especially for the talent we all hanker after – is now the CEO of Me.INC and every decision, every action they takes about reinforcing that brand’s profile and reputation, is at the heart of why the Employee Value Proposition is so critical to review and adapt to these disruptive times.
So where does this all leave us?
Well, in the next series of posts I am going to dig deeper into the Employee Value Proposition. What its constituent elements, requirements and benefits are as well as how we measure it or fix them if it is broken.
