Employee Engagement Archives - The Future of Work Exchange

Spin for the Win with Gamification

Business Leadership General Insights HR Technology and Innovation by John Yuva on 11/21/2024

In an article on the Future of Work Exchange last week, we discussed digital credentials and badges as a means to recruit, verify, and retain talent. This week we’re exploring those concepts further through gamification in the workplace and how the Future of Work can be transformed by its utilization.

Gamification Defined

Gamification is defined by Investopedia as, “the incentivization of people’s engagement in non-game contexts and activities by using game-style mechanics.” First coined in 2002 by game designer Nick Pelling while incorporating game elements into ATM and vending machines, gamification became mainstream by 2009 and has only grown as a strategic approach in HR and business.

With employee engagement and productivity a high priority for enterprises, gamification bridges the employee experience with enterprise needs. It can turn mundane tasks and processes, such as training and upskilling, reviewing corporate and HR policies, rolling out new products and services, and even applying for a job within the organization into engaging activities.

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Employee Engagement Still Lacks Execution

Business Leadership Contingent Workforce General Insights HR Technology and Innovation by Christopher J. Dwyer on 11/20/2024

Today’s enterprises can be characterized as fast-paced, ever-evolving to effectively respond to a more dynamic marketplace. Within the hustle and bustle lies a critical workforce need that is often overlooked: employee engagement. The concept can be confused with simply offering employees certain monthly perks identified from a quick survey. However, it goes much deeper than that and reaches beyond permanent, full-time employees to those in the extended workforce, as well.

A well-rounded definition of employee engagement comes from Engage For Success: “Employee engagement is a workplace approach resulting in the right conditions for all members of an organization to give of their best each day, committed to their organization’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organizational success, with an enhanced sense of their own well-being.”

Powerful, Yet Underutilized

It is that commitment toward oneself and the enterprise that makes employee engagement such a powerful workforce approach. Yet, as a Gallup survey indicates, only 36% of U.S. employees are engaged in their work and workplace. The number is even lower on a global scale, with only 20% of employees engaged at work.

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Learning from the Past to Build the Workplace Cultures of the Future

Business Leadership Talent Acquisition by Christopher J. Dwyer on 10/30/2024

I can’t help but be a person that is incredibly nostalgic. As the holiday season approaches, I frequently think of my childhood days and the experiences that shaped me and made me the person I am today. While my memories at this time of year are appropriately focused on trick-or-treating in suburban Massachusetts as a youth, there are also memories that are more, let’s say…business-focused.

I’m lucky enough to have spent the past 18 years of my career at two firms (nearly 12 years with the famous Ardent Partners, the research parent of the Future of Work Exchange), however, before my foray into the world of human capital technology, the Future of Work movement, and talent management and technology research, I spent some time at companies with not-so-empathic leaders.

For example:

A VP who told me that it wasn’t okay to say “How’s it going?” to another person if I hadn’t met them yet.
A company owner who said that if I ever got tired, I wasn’t fit for a career in writing. (Let me know if you know someone that has never been or will never be tired…)
Another company owner (same company, different owner) who said I had a “defeatist attitude” when I told him that I didn’t feel appreciated or valued enough after working 80+ hour weeks for a straight month after two employees quit.
A CEO who said, after finding a single (one!) spelling error in a document that I produced (that totaled over 40 pages), that I needed to spend more time focusing and less time “theorizing” when writing, and;
A certain company owner (twice on this list!) that told me that I “would never find anything out there” when I resigned and gave my two weeks’ notice.

The specific examples above all link back to one key element: a terrible workplace culture. Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research has discovered that, over the past 12 months, 72% of businesses have taken steps to enhance workplace culture to better foster collaboration, engagement, diversity, and innovation.

Workplace culture isn’t just a nebulous concept anymore, but rather a true Future of Work state that affects talent acquisition, talent attraction, hiring success, brand awareness, and talent sustainability.

For too many years, I focused on those negative experiences, as well as my own professional mistakes. Sometimes they drove me to be better. Sometimes they hindered my progress. And, sometimes, they affected my mental health.

The mistakes and failures of the past, especially those stemming from poor leadership, can serve as invaluable lessons to shape the workplace cultures we strive for today. Rather than allowing past missteps to hold us back, we should use them to catalyze meaningful, positive change. Two years ago, ten years ago, or even twenty years in the past – the ideal workplace cultures we envision today should be informed by what we wish we had experienced back then. Reflecting on the shortcomings, pain points, and dissatisfactions of the past equips us to actively create the thriving, employee-centric environments we want to see now.

In today’s globalized, competitive business landscape, workplace culture has become a critical component of success. Elements like worker wellbeing, mental health support, employee experience, and overall company happiness are no longer optional – they are essential for retaining top talent, fostering innovation, and driving enterprise-wide prosperity.

Organizations that prioritize cultivating positive, enriching workplace cultures will be best positioned to thrive. By learning from past mistakes and intentionally shaping workplace cultures aligned with employee needs and values, companies can gain a competitive edge in attracting, developing, and retaining the best people.

The key is to let the lessons of the past propel us towards a better future, rather than allowing them to hold us back. With this mindset, the missteps of yesterday can become the catalysts for the workplace cultures of tomorrow.

Employee Experience and the Power of Engagement

Business Leadership General Insights HR Talent by John Yuva on 08/05/2024

One business constant over the last four years is uncertainty. Whether it’s the economy, geopolitics, or the overall market, enterprises must contend with that sense of the unknown. As such, having a flexible and agile workforce is essential when market dynamics shift. Flexibility and agility often derive from employee experience (EX) initiatives. Organizations that prioritize employee experience are more internally aligned and can better pivot when needs arise.

However, essential to employee experience is understanding that it goes beyond employee satisfaction. Rather, it is a strategic imperative that directly influences organizational culture, success, and the ability to navigate an ever-changing business landscape.

Employee Experience Begins and Ends with Engagement

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Voices Behind Quiet and Loud Quitters

Business Leadership General Insights HR Talent Uncategorized by John Yuva on 09/11/2023

One of the main tenets of the Future of Work is employee engagement. It sets the tone for how to motivate, influence, and inspire workers to embrace their work and the culture of the enterprise. Since 2022 when the workplace began to normalize after two tumultuous years of the pandemic, employee engagement has become a cornerstone to achieving a productive and competitive organization.

What is the result when a lack of employee engagement exists? Two employee behaviors — “quiet quitting” and “loud quitting” — become prevalent. Current workforce statistics indicate that disengagement is more prominent than management probably realizes.

Quiet Quitting Proliferates

In early 2022, a term emerged describing workers who are disengaged from the workplace and generally apply the minimal amount of work necessary to complete their job — quiet quitters. When compared to the overall workforce, quiet quitters represent the majority of workers today, with most struggling with stress and burnout.

According to Gallup’s State of the Workplace 2023 report, 52% of US/Canadian workplace employees fall within the “disengaged” (quiet quitter) category. It also represents the largest group that HR and business managers can actively engage with positive results by listening to employee concerns and issues.

What changes are quiet quitters most looking for to thrive in the workplace?

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Optimize Your Workforce with Recession-Proof Strategies, Part Three

Business Leadership Contingent Workforce General Insights HR Talent Technology and Innovation by John Yuva on 08/14/2023

Today concludes our three-part series exploring several contingent and workforce strategies to achieve a recession-proof enterprise.

We’re now two months into the second half of 2023 and economically speaking, things are looking positive. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that GDP grew 2.4% in the second quarter of 2023. The labor market remains tight with unemployment at 3.6%, a rate not witnessed in decades. However, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the tight labor market provides the Federal Reserve with the flexibility to continue raising interest rates to fight inflation. Currently, inflation rests at 3%, a percentage point higher than the Federal Reserve’s longer-run goal of 2%.

Does the state of the current U.S. economy equate to a “soft landing” and the evasion of a recession? Maybe, maybe not.

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How Are Businesses Enhancing the Employee Experience?

Business Leadership by Christopher J. Dwyer on 04/19/2023

It’s all about the “experience” today. All aspects of the modern-day workforce, including both FTEs and contingent workers, revolve around the day-to-day (and long-term) experience within a workplace setting. Business leaders cannot rely on archaic modalities of management any longer if they want their workers to be happy, satisfied, and, most importantly, productive. In the latest edition of the Future of Work Exchange‘s exclusive infographic series, How Are Businesses Enhancing the Employee Experience?, we unveil some new research findings on how business leaders plan to improve their employee engagement and employee experience initiatives.

Remote Work and Employee Engagement Are Inherently Linked

Business Leadership Talent by Christopher J. Dwyer on 03/06/2023

It seems that everywhere we turn, there are new return-to-office (RTO) mandates making headlines. Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy, recently mandated employees return to the office three days a week beginning in the spring. The same day of the mandate, over 14,000 employees joined a newly-created Slack channel to voice their displeasure with the ruling.

Disney’s executives followed a similar path, only much earlier in January, and, with four mandated days-in-office rather than the three dictated by Amazon. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff mandated three days in office in the midst of the company sunsetting its Future Forum consortium, which, SOMETHING enough, found that flexible working environment were incredibly conducive to productivity and employee engagement.

And, yeah, we all know Elon Musk’s feelings on remote work during his tumultuous time thus far at Twitter. There’s also this nugget from a recent Fortune article:

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Employee Engagement Still Lacks Execution

Business Leadership Contingent Workforce General Insights HR Technology and Innovation by John Yuva on 12/26/2022

Powerful, Yet Underutilized

However, for those enterprises with a fully entrenched employee engagement system, the results speak for themselves. According to Gallup, those leading organizations are experiencing the following benefits:

An increase of 18% in productivity (sales)
An increase of 23% in profitability
A decline of 40% in quality issues (defects)

Achieving these results requires engagement with every worker. With nearly half (nearly 48%) of today’s enterprises comprised of contingent workers (per Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research), employee engagement must include this critical workforce segment. When faced with the possibility of losing extended talent following a project or other initiative, employee engagement could be the competitive differentiator to retain them.

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The Rules of Wellness Have Changed

Business Leadership HR by Christopher J. Dwyer on 08/01/2022

The Future of Work movement thrives on many accelerants that range from advancements in talent acquisition to innovative tools and technology. However, the realm of humanity, wellness, and culture may be the most critical items in how work continues to evolve.

“Wellness” is often thrown around as a word that reflects healthy corporate “behavior” from the perspective(s) of the workforce (including extended talent), owed to a rise in business leadership’s greater understanding of empathy, inclusivity, and other aspects related to a better workplace. As the story goes, happier employees = more productive (and, hopefully, loyal) workers.

Although the Future of Work Exchange typically discusses how rigidity is the “anti-Future of Work” mindset, something as archaic as a desire for a business’ staff to be productive is absolutely one of those measures that is not bound by time or circumstance. That is, it’s always understandable that an executive remains focused on productivity; without this focus, the enterprise fails.

So why do we need to revisit wellness? Didn’t we just talk about this recently? Well, yes, we did. But that was nearly eight months ago, and, in a pandemic-led, economically-volatile, frenetic labor market-fueled world (both business and personal), the stakes have certainly changed.

A second straight quarter of the U.S. economic shrinking technically means that we’re entering a recession…even though it doesn’t necessarily feel like it. However, many organizations are already taking the steps to prepare for the worst, which means cut to the workforce and the linger specter of layoffs through the remainder of 2022.

And, oh yeah, there’s a still pandemic raging, along with a health emergency for monkeypox. Many, many individuals (as much as 2% or 3% of the total workforce, although that number could be lower or higher) could be suffering from “Long COVID” from past coronavirus infections, with the government still not defining how long-haulers can apply for and receive disability options.

These issues not only mean that wellness in the workplace becomes more important; it also translate into the need to reimagine how business leadership addresses and supports wellness in the wake of an evolving world:

Today’s “new” wellness rules should always, always include engagement and experience in the mix. Wellness is more than an employee or worker being physically healthy and appearing to be mentally fit for their role. Leaders must ensure that they expand how they support both physical and mental wellness during whichever turbulent times may lie ahead; whatever worked even during the worst of the pandemic may already be outdated. In nearly three years of consistent business evolution, the very concept of “wellness” has been transformed to include concepts like employee engagement and the talent experience. The total workforce should be engaged with leadership and their teams and coworkers, grounded in a positive workplace experience, and also feel appreciated, safe, and valued. The next generation of wellness strategies should always include engagement and experience as foundational elements.
Even the most stoic of performers may have something deeper happening in their personal lives; thus, there is no one-size-fits-all model that will “catch” those that require intermediation. Dips in productivity, a lack of communication, and poor collaboration are all markers of a worker suffering from something negative. These individuals are most often pointed to as the main recipients of wellness support; however, there are many workers that put on a happy face, remain incredibly productive, and seem to have it all together. These workers may not need support on the surface, however, there’s usually an undercurrent of burnout bubbling somewhere. Business leaders should arm themselves with the necessary attitude and knowledge in understanding what the warning signs are for employee burnout.
The hybrid workplace requires hybrid leadership…which now requires a more strategic mindset. During the spring and summer of 2020, many business leaders grappled with the complexities of managing a newly-remote workforce in the wake of social distancing, quarantining, etc. Video calls and new modes of leadership were straining, leaving these already-exhausted leaders confounded in how to capture the essence of collaboration without the benefit of in-person operations. Today, the issue has become more severe: onboarding workers can be a nightmare via remote methods, not to mention aspects of reskilling, upskilling, mentoring, etc. Business leaders cannot spend a few hours with a new worker and expect them to function productively while on auto-pilot.
Wellness was the answer all along to a problem that has plagued the business arena for nearly 16 months. Yes, we’re talking about The Great Resignation. Although the numbers dipped in May (4.3 million quits as opposed to 4.4 million the month before), an encouraging trend is emerging: fears of a recession, combined with inflation, may be helping to keep workers put. However, all it takes is a small wiggle upwards and we’re back to the much worse, higher trend. The refrain of “happier workers stay with their companies” could not be more true today. If a professional is engaged, satisfied, and having a positive experience while also working for leaders that are mindful, empathetic, and inclusive, it reflects an ideal recipe for wellness that also bodes well for retention. If workers have a flexible work-life integration, it is a powerful attribute that enables true wellness and wellbeing.