The Great Place to Work European Conference 2016 takes place in the RDS Dublin this week and highlights the challenges of recruiting and keeping top talent in a globalised world.
While a free gym membership, gourmet canteen food or an in-house masseuse might draw employees into an organisation, perks such as these aren’t enough to keep the good ones there.
Companies want ambitious, driven employees. But qualities like these are what make people want to carve out their own career paths. If a company fails to nurture its employees’ desire for success, they will find somewhere else that does. Sooner or later, even free massages get boring.
“We have spent a long time fostering an environment of trust,” explains Paul Breslin, head of the European office of video game publisher, Riot Games, on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For, for two years.
“If we decide to hire you, the moment you walk in the door of Riot Games, we trust you. This ‘default to trust’ policy is made possible through a long, hiring process. We want to make sure the people that join are the right people.”
Trust is one part of Riot Games’ capacity to retain good staff. A lot of thought goes into the physical environment our staff must work in. There are no offices, just meeting rooms, and every wall is a whiteboard so that everyone else can see what you’re working on. We want the workspace to be a fluid, collaboration zone.”
Breslin acknowledges, however, that the real key to keeping talent is empowerment. “No one cares more about your career than you,” he says.
“The expectation of today’s talented workforce is to have great career development and great opportunities ahead of them. It’s not really about food or massages. It’s more about what organisations can offer to help them get better. We’re like a sports team: we want healthy athletes.
“So we always accommodate those wishing to upskill or learn more.”
Being authentic
This kind of business culture requires a different kind of management style also. It all comes down to being authentic about endeavouring to "gain commitment" rather than "force compliance", explains Manley Hopkinson, author of Compassionate Leadership.
“Forcing compliance is relatively easy and so has been the default leadership and management style for many years. Gaining commitment can only come from each individual realising the fulfilment of ‘self-worth’.
“What is needed is a shift to a more ‘compassionate’ style of leadership whereby an organisation is looking to secure the ‘best for’ all involved, and hence gaining the ‘best from’ all. Research backs this up. If you look at the seminal work from Dr André de Waal, of the Centre for High Performance, and tie it in with John Adair’s famous and well established ‘balanced leadership model’, it is proven that leaders need to spend two-thirds of their effort in developing the quality of their people and the quality of the organisational relationships – internal and external. Time spent in developing your people and not chasing the dollar, actually delivers the dollar as well as delivering a resilient and sustainable organisation.”
Do the same rules apply to the public sector as the private? David Macleod is co-chair of Engage for Success, a UK Employee Engagement Task Force which recently published a report which outlines four key areas that successful organisations get right. “Our research was based on the private and public sector, the entire spectrum of the economy,” he says.
“Regardless of whether one works for the State or private enterprise, there are a number of key characteristics in any thriving workplace. Firstly, there is a strategic narrative that employees can hold in their heads about where the organisaton comes from, where it is today, and where it aspires to go in the future.
“This narrative relates to their own job and gives them a positive reason to get out of bed. In other words, they must have had some part in helping shape that story and owning its outcome.”
The second relates to management. “Good management works with its employees and makes clear what success will look like in each individual role. Don’t treat people as human capital but as human beings. This is done by listening to people’s concerns, helping out with things like childcare, encouraging further training and giving advice.”
“The third is what we call ‘employee voice’. People’s opinions and intelligence carry from the front to the back of the organisation – from the most junior to senior voices. So everyone’s voice must be heard. No one expects democracy, but they do expect to be taken seriously. If you ignore people and don’t listen to their grievances, their voices will travel on social media and elsewhere.”
Things go wrong in businesses all the time. People expect this. What matters, however, is whether problems are caught when they are minor or if they are allowed to build up.
“Employee voice is the business equivalent of the smoke alarm because little things are caught,” says MacLeod.
The fourth and final ingredient to a successful workplace environment is integrity. Many organisations will have their values on the wall.
Those values must be observable in those in the behaviour of management as well as everyone else. If the values on the wall overlap with behaviours staff observe, then a positive culture will grow. If they’re different, distrust will enter the fray.”
A Continental perspective: Finnish Software developers, Vincit
Mikko Kuitunen of Finnish Software developers, Vincit, shares some of the factors needed to build a world-class work environment.
“Our main and only company-level goal is: ‘Tomorrow we’ll have happier customers and employees
Some examples of its employee empowerment include: a company credit card with complete authority to purchase any equipment required or wanted to facilitate the completion of work; and free time to pursue personal interests in software development.
Further examples of employee empowerment include Vincit’s willingness to accommodate the personal dreams and pursuits of its employees. For example, Vincit will allow employees who are launching their own start-ups to work reduced hours or work on an as-available basis. The human resources policies in place at Vincit mean only top developers are hired and retained, and a side effect of that process is that all employees at Vincit feel they can trust their colleagues to be exceptional performers.
Vincit also offers a good severance payout for unhappy employees to pursue other opportunities.”
