Christina Chau: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar. We're just gonna wait another minute to let everyone log on and get their audio ready. So please bear with us. Thank you.
Alright, everyone. We're gonna go ahead and get started. Welcome to today's webinar.
We'll let a few more folks join before we get deep into the content.
But in the meantime, if you want to start chatting with one another, as the holidays are approaching I love to hear what you guys are doing to celebrate your people this year.
This is one of my favourite webinars to do during December because I get to hear all of the fun holiday celebrations and events that companies do for their employees. So if you want to throw in the chat, any fun things that you guys are doing to celebrate your employees or anything new that you haven't done in the past, to celebrate the holidays.
Alright. Before we begin, we just have a couple housekeeping items. Today's presentation is both SHRM and HRCI certified for one hour of general credit. If you would like to receive credit, the program IDs will be available at the end of the presentation.
This webinar is also being recorded and will be sent out to all registered attendees by the end of the week.
Now today, you're lucky enough to have me as your presenter, but I'd also love for you all to be able to interact with each other. So as I'm sharing insights and ideas during the webinar, please feel free to share your own best practices or thoughts or ideas in the chat. Also, if you have questions on anything that you see or that I share today, please submit your questions in the Q&A box, and we'll have time to answer them at the end of the presentation.
Our webinars provide a fun opportunity for attendees to learn from one another. So please go ahead and do that in the hour that we have together.
And I'm gonna dive right in. Let's set up what the world looks like right now. So 2023, last month of of the year, things still feel a little bit uncertain. Right? Fortunately, we don't have a global pandemic that we're worried about or that's a huge concern right now.
But there's still a lot of uncertainty, political, economic uncertainty, continued layoffs, this very, very rapid expansion of AI. And even with all that, there's still this war for talent that we face.
So as we go into this next year, I think a lot of us are asking ourselves, you know, what do employees need? What do they want in 2024? Well, today, we'll talk about a few things that research shows employees are looking for in the workplace this year.
And it all really comes down to this one word: shift. What you hear in today's webinar is not huge, brand new, drastically different news than what you already know.
Rather, what we'll discuss are small shifts in the employee expectations and employee needs and the desires of the workplace, and also how companies can make small adjustments in their own culture initiatives to accommodate these shifts.
You'll notice that I'm not gonna talk about big huge initiatives that you have to take on. No big major changes. No huge projects to tackle for 2024. I think we can all agree we don't need anything big or new to have to put on our plates. But just small subtle ways to improve employee experiences at work that will have a big impact on your organisation.
We'll go over five workplace culture trends for 2024 and how you can prepare for them.
So the first culture trend we wanna talk about is the meaning of flexibility is shifting. And before I talk about this, I wanted to get us started with a fun poll.
So let's warm up with an easy poll. The question is gonna be, where are you listening to this webinar from right now?
So are you in your office at work? You know, it's Wednesday. Even if you have a hybrid schedule, a lot of people still go to the office on Wednesdays. Are you at home? Are you in your home office? Are you like me, sitting in the kitchen counter at home, listening to this webinar or maybe, you know, doing some laundry?
Are you in the car? Are you running errands or driving to a doctor's appointment and listening to this webinar? Are you at the gym? Maybe you're on a treadmill or on a stationary bike listening to this webinar. Maybe you've gone for a walk outside, you're having a walking meeting today, which I love to do. It's cloudy and cold and Colorado where I am, so I'm definitely not on a walk today. Maybe you're at a coffee shop, you're working at a coffee shop listening in there, or maybe you're running errands.
I'm not going to be offended if you're at Target right now, smelling those wonderful scented candles or buying last-minute holiday gifts while listening to this webinar. No, I'm not gonna take any offence to that. So, feel free to fill in where you're at, and then we'll check on the results.
Now Whitney, if you can share results, that'd be great.
Perfect. So it seems like, oh, no one is at Target. Great. So it seems like most people are at home, or at their office at work listening to this webinar.
Okay. So when people think of workplace flexibility, this is what most people think. Right? They think about where physically the location that they're working at. But over the past few years, we've seen employees crave that type of flexibility, right, the the physical work environment.
They wanna be somewhere else rather than in the office because it allows them to better balance their lives and greatly improve their sense of fulfillment. And in the traditional sense of workplace flexibility, that's what it means. It means where you're working or what time you're working when you start your day.
However, being able to work at home or at a coffee shop, that can be difficult for workers in manufacturing or retail or healthcare, construction, or hospitality.
All of these offline workers that aren't able to do their jobs from home.
However, the idea and the concept of flexibility is shifting. Right? A little bit, especially as many companies are mandating that return to the office.
So flexibility is no longer just about where you work. It's no longer just about the physical spot of working or even the the schedule that you're working.
For many employees, flexibility encompasses so much more than just where they're at. It's about having a choice and having a sense of governance over our work and our time. And employees want some choice in how they accomplish their work.
They want some autonomy over their time at work, and they want some time for personal interests and personal needs outside of work. So our O.C. Tanner Institute's research found that employees want the following when it comes to workplace flexibility.
They want, first of all, leadership support. They want their leaders to support employees and show empathy and understanding for their needs. They also want organisational support. They want organisations to empower leaders to give those employees flexibility and provide policies and tools to do so.
They're looking for empowerment. They wanna feel empowered to make decisions about their own jobs. And they wanna have some work choice, some discretion about what work they do and how they actually do it. They also want autonomy to manage their work days.
This includes when they come in, where they work from, but also what they do during their day. It's really a small shift in how employees themselves view flexibility and how they define it. In fact, 67% of employees feel appreciated when their leader offers them a choice in the work they do. So what type of work they're actually doing, what things they're working on, what projects they take on.
66% feel their leader appreciates them when they can accomplish their tasks in the way that they want. And 59% said their leader shows appreciation by allowing them that additional flexibility.
So what can organisations do? Well, first, remember that workplace flexibility does not just mean working from home. Providing flexibility can be a small shift. It doesn't have to be an overhaul of all your policies. You don't have to give everyone a hundred percent remote work options or let employees just come and go as they please during the day without actually doing any work.
It means giving employees some choice and autonomy and how they spend their work hours. And that really can be done through small changes in workplace policies as well as expectations.
The second thing organisations can do is ensure all employees are able to take time off for their unique situations and also to be supportive when they do so.
I think we all understand that our critical offline employees can't stock shelves or make products or drive trucks from home. They know that. Right? But we can give them time and flexibility in how they do their jobs, how they work, and also even when.
You know, when we talk to offline employees about flexibility and focus groups, many of them mentioned just wanting to be able to take some personal time off during work to go to a doctor's appointment, or to take some time if their dog needs to go to the vet, or they wanna watch their child's school performance or attend their Christmas class party.
They're not asking for a lot. They just want a little bit of flexibility in their day to do what they need to do in their personal lives, and they don't wanna have to be reprimanded or punished for it.
They don't wanna be docked when they need to take a couple hours off to go to a dentist appointment, or even flexibility to adjust and start their end times because maybe they need pick up a child from school or take them to soccer practice, or maybe they want the autonomy to do their jobs in the way they know best, even if you're on a production line, or even if you're stocking shelves, that freedom to innovate and to be more efficient in ways that they see fit.
These are things that companies can provide all employees in terms of flexibility without really being too much of a burden on the organisation itself.
Another example of giving these types of employees flexibility in their work is to be supportive, right, when they need to go to a doctor's appointment, or they need to, you know, go see their child's play. So if another teammate is covering that employee shifts or their work while they're gone, taking care of personal matters, make sure that you recognise them, and you thank them, and you use that opportunity to build team and build community.
Also not trying to contact employees when they're out doing their personal errands or out on vacation. How many of us are kind of guilty like I am of answering work emails while on vacation. But when employees are taking that time off for their personal lives, to respect that and to support that and to cover their responsibilities at work if needed, and setting aside time for things like completing a training or skill building instead of adding on top of their normal workload giving them the flexibility to take some time on the clock to do that.
I think building community and staying connected while employees are outside of the office is really important as well. Whether it's a hybrid employee or they're out on that personal errand, make sure you have tools to keep them connected. Make sure they can hear the latest company news. They can hear important announcements, and they are still part of their teams.
Right? I think most employees, from what we've heard in our research, most employees understand that not all roles are gonna have the same type of flexibility. Not everyone can work remote, not everyone can even be on that hybrid schedule, maybe, but they understand when flexibility is possible and when it's not given. So when workplace flexibility appears inequitable, it can be very damaging to a workplace culture.
So provide some sense of flexibility for all of your employees, and it can look different and it might be different, but give everyone that opportunity to have flexibility in their jobs.
Our research shows that this type of flexibility actually improves business results. It improves things like satisfaction with the job, engagement levels, the sense of fulfillment at work, being a promoter for the organisation, having a thriving culture, and having employees wanting to stay longer. Providing that level of flexibility, whether it's in location or schedule or autonomy in their jobs is impactful.
And I think this quote really nails it. Right? This is, a quote about how it's gonna look different for everyone, but it's possible. And Stephanie Olson, who's the Founder and Executive of We Are Rosie says this. She says, "What workers need is for their employers to figure out the 'how' of flexibility.
It will look different within every company, every department and even at the team level, but every leader owes it to the people that they work with to find out what kind of flexibilitiy is ideal for their team and how much of that flexibility as possible within the balance of ensuring that the team performs." It'll look different and won't be exactly the same for each role, but it's possible.
And I wanna share what this looks like in the real world. I wanna tell a quick story about Estella, who is a nurse at the wonderful Ohio Living, one of the nation's largest not-for-profit multi-site aging services organisations.
Every day, Estella cares for people who are sick and who need extra help. This is a phenomenal organisation, and they have amazing leaders.
Last year, Estella's mother-in-law who lives in Kenya, got very, very sick. And she and her husband needed to fly home for what could have been her final hours. I mean, it was pretty bad. After hearing the news, Estella's leaders didn't hesitate.
They jumped right in to take care of her job responsibilities and her patients, and they told her to go. So Estella flies back to Kenya with her husband, and they find her mother-in-law. She's barely hanging on at the hospital. And so for days, Estella takes care of her.
Estella is a caregiver. This is what she does, and so she took care of her mother-in-law.
And eventually, her mother-in-law began to improve.
Eventually, to everyone's amazement, she actually was released from the hospital. So she goes back to her home, Estella stays with her and continues to care for her. And amazingly, her mother-in-law makes a full recovery. And so she goes from almost passing away to being able to fully recover because Estella was there for her.
And Estella was there because Ohio Living and their leaders were flexible. They provided that flexibility to her at work. And because of that, they didn't just change a life. They literally saved a life.
And that's what flexibility looks like in an organisation, and that's the type of flexibility that our employees are looking for.
So culture trend number two: Employees are looking for empathy with action.
You know, empathy isn't a new topic in the workplace. Companies have been talking about it for decades. Right? We talk about different types of leadership styles, things like servant leadership and qualities that leaders should have. It's not a new topic, but still 41% of employees feel their leaders' expressions of empathy are empty of meaningful deeds.
And the shift with empathy is this. Right? It's not that empathy is a new topic, but it's a different definition of what empathy should be. Empathy is not just a feeling. It needs to be an action.
We often ask the question, and I ask it a lot to myself. Is empathy a trait that some people just have and others don't? Are some leaders just born empatheic and some leaders not, or is it something that can be learned? And our research finds that empathy is actually a practice.
It is an understanding followed by supportive action. So it is something that can be learned and practiced by organisations everywhere. And we at O.C. Tanner call this practical empathy, and our practical empathy index is based on the actions that you see on the screen. So first, it's about focusing on the person. It's prioritising their needs, their challenges, their potential, and understanding them.
It's asking for their input and feedback on policies and programs at work and also just their day-to-day employee experience, both the negative and the positive.
It's listening to learn, not just showing sympathy and showing concern, but actually actively listening to what the employee is struggling with. And embracing different perspectives, right, being open and accepting of different viewpoints.
It's also about taking supportive action. So this is the kicker. This is the shift. This is going beyond just feeling for someone or feeling sympathy, and actually taking action on their behalf.
And then the last is respecting boundaries, having supportive resources in place so leaders don't have to act as therapists and and they're not burnt out by practicing that empathy.
So the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella says this. He says, "Empathy is a muscle, so it needs to be exercised."
So what can organisations do? Well first, encourage leaders to listen and understand their people. So like we said, empathy is a practice, but it's grounded in understanding and supported by action. So leaders must first start to understand the unique roles, the career aspirations, the perspectives of their people.
Ask questions, listen, get their feedback on policies, get their feedback on changes, get their feedback on their work.
This isn't too new. This is something that we know good leaders do anyway, but here, the shift is to take supportive action.
So when you hear an employee struggling with a work project or process, or they need additional resources, or they're having challenges with another team or colleague, maybe they're having a personal issue at home, for leaders to take action, to provide them with tools and resources and support and information that can help them. If a leader's hearing, for example, that their employee is struggling to get to work on time because they have to drop their child off at daycare across town, perhaps look at shifting schedules and seeing if that employee can modify their work hours to a later time. It's about not just feeling bad and feeling concerned, but acting upon that.
And then third have boundaries on leader empathy.
So there is such a thing as empathy fatigue. We see that in healthcare workers, and leaders can get it too. So to make practical empathy sustainable, boundaries must be in place.
Give leaders training to know when they should intervene and when they can help. Or when it's more appropriate to suggest other HR resources or other outside resources, for things like mental health services or family services or childcare resources.
And when leaders connect employees with those outside resources, they're still practicing empathy. They're still understanding and taking action. It prevents them from feeling burnt out. It prevents them from being drained, and and suffering that burnout. And also recognise leaders when they practice empathy. It's really important if they are providing their employees and their teams with the things that they need, that they feel valued and seen for that and appreciated.
Our research finds practical empathy has a big impact. So when leaders' empathy contains meaningful action and support, employees are more likely to be engaged more likely to feel a sense of belonging and fulfillment at work, and they're more likely to be a promoter of the organisation.
So it's not just a nice feeling to have. Practicing empathy actually has impact on results.
I wanted to share this example, from KPMG, which does a great job at practicing empathy. So KPMG is a professional services firm. And they use practical empathy to help their people feel and do their best at work. So they regularly solicit feedback from partners and employees on how they can improve well-being at work, and they give this exhaustive list of resources to support employee mental health. Right? They cover everything from digital and in-person therapy to caregiver programs. They have support for major life events and webcasts that normalize conversations around mental well-being. I mean, they have this broad range of resources available for employees.
In addition to providing that, though, KPMG also removed tasks from leaders that aren't related to their core jobs. So if they were doing administrative tasks or you know, timekeeping tasks or things that aren't really helping them manage their teams well, KPMG took that away so that they can focus more on being modern leaders. Being coaches and mentors and advocating for their people, as well as attend to their own needs. Jason Larue is the Partner and total rewards leader at KPMG, and he says we don't wanna turn our leaders into therapists because that's not good for the individual or the leader.
Instead, KPMG puts guardrails around empathy. So they encourage leaders to understand and help their people as much as necessary, but they also ensure leaders know who to reach out to if they need to. They know what additional resources are available.
Jason says this is a big opportunity. Right? There's an opportunity to make empathy a core skill at organisations.
There's a strong ROI. If we invest a dollar in prevention, we see lower medical costs and higher productivity, both of which hit the bottom line. It's the right thing to do and a real advantage for businesses to do this.
A great example of practical empathy with boundaries. I love that Jason talks about it as a skill that all leaders can practice and also that they provide boundaries to leader empathy so they aren't burnt out.
Alright. The next culture trend we're seeing is a shift in skill building. So modern skill building is collaborative.
Again, this is not a new thing. Companies have skill building opportunities for their people and have had them for, you know, for decades. But what the shift is, is that it's now more collaborative. There's obviously a shift in the skills that people need at work, right, with AI and all the new technology.
The skills needed in the workplace are shifting. So our skill building initiatives and programs should also make that same shift.
And in the past, it just seems like either the organisations were a hundred percent responsible for skill building in employees, like, through mandating classes or training for employees, even if employees didn't always want them. Or that the development was a hundred percent the responsibility of employees where employees were responsible for finding those training opportunities on their own, and then taking their own personal time to pursue them on top of their regular work responsibilities.
But that time is ending. And right now in the modern workplace, skill building is a lot more collaborative. It's more cooperative, and it often builds more than just skills.
So let's look at how cooperative skill building works in the modern workplace.
First, solicit employee feedback on skill building. Ask employees what kinds of classes and programs they like to see for skill building. This can include the topic and what they wanna learn, but also how they wanna learn those skills. Employees will feel more empowered when they see their companies taking their input as they're building skill building development programs. So if employees have a preference and they feel there's a good way to learn, the company takes that into account and creates programs based on that feedback, employees feel more empowered.
Number two, give employees choice and time for skill building. So 70% of employees in our research say it's very or extremely important for organisations to give employees time to complete trainings. So give them time on the clock during work hours to take those classes in training, provide special projects and mentorship opportunities that they can do while they're at work. When employees are given time at work to do skill building activities and trainings, they're four times more likely to participate in them. It's a lot harder to participate in a skill building opportunity when you're trying to do it on top of your normal workload or needing to take extra hours outside to do it.
And doing those things really leads to building more than just skills. It actually builds a sense of community and belonging and inclusion at work.
When employees feel their company supports their development, gives them time at work to do those development activities, and cares about their interests and skills outside of work, like giving them reimbursement or opportunities to do hobby type classes or more personal development, employees end up feeling more fulfilled and engaged and a better sense of community, and a sense of belonging.
It makes them feel connected. It makes them wanna stay. So if you think about it, as a company is investing in development in their people, and they're looking at them not just as work professionals or workers in the organisation, but as people who also wanna be developed in other ways outside of their jobs, with more hobby type classes, they wanna stay longer. Right? Who doesn't wanna work for an organisation that invests in their growth and development and their success together?
And then the third recommendation here is to incorporate recognition into skill building. So, Brandon Hall Group finds current recognition and rewards for employees who reach new competency levels and scale milestones to be inadequate.
And sadly, we see the same. When we work with companies, we find that not a lot of companies are recognising when employees do build those skills or do complete trainings.
Few companies recognise when someone's gone through a certification process. Right? But recognising employees throughout that skill building process, shows them they're valued. It shows that they've achieved something important to the organisation as they learn those new skills.
So here's how that might look like.
A lot of companies often reserve recognition or rewards for skill building at the very end. An employee has finished a training. They finished a certification. They've gone through a set of classes and they get recognised.
But we actually find that when you recognise along the way, it's more impactful. Don't reserve recognition just for the end of a skill building activity. While that's important, it's even more important to reinforce it as employees are learning that skill. So employees have three times greater odds of being satisfied with their skill building experience if they're recognised at the end, but that increases to four times greater odds of being satisfied if they get recognition throughout that experience.
And I compare it to something like cheering a friend or a family member on a marathon. Right? It's great that you're at the end, that you're, that they're crossing the finish line, you're cheering them on, they get their metal, and it's a great celebration. But I think what's even more important to anyone running a marathon is cheering them on along the way, at mile three, at mile seven, at mile ten.
Having that reinforcement, that what they're doing is working and important, and that they can get there. That's what recognising folks during skill building feels like. Learning new skills is important. We see you doing it, and we appreciate you for it.
Provide ample time and opportunities for leaders and peers to recognise employees as they're going through skills. And then as they practice them afterwards, if an employee has learned a new skill, and now they're putting it into practice in their normal jobs, recognising them reinforces idea that skill building is important to the organisation and that they're doing great work with it.
Alright. Before I introduce the next culture trend, I wanted to do another poll with you all. So what percentage of the time do you spend at a computer for your job?
I think many of the attendees here are either HR leaders or work in leadership roles or maybe engagement, teams, what percentage of your time do you spend at a computer?
I am remote, so I spent a hundred percent of my time working on a computer since I don't have a conference room in my house to go to. And, I don't have any coworkers at the moment--They're all at school and work--to talk to.
But I know within the office, a lot of times folks are at a computer and then often in meetings outside or walking around the plant floor, talking to other coworkers.
So I'm just curious for the attendees here. What percentage of you are at a computer most of the time?
And we can take a look at the results.
Alright. So as I kind of anticipated, majority of the attendees here at their computer 75% to 100% of the time. And then there's a quite a few that actually are only at their computers maybe half to three quarters of the time at work.
Now for those of us that do spend close to 100% of our time on a computer, think of all the tools that we have access to because we are on our computers all day. Right? We can do email. We have communication tools. It could be Slack or Teams. We have social media.
We can access all our tools, we can access our recognition program.
Now think about if you weren't working at a computer. If you were one of those people that didn't spend any time at a computer or only use it for a little bit each day. How would you access those same tools? How would you get your email or communicate with coworkers? Or Find HR processes online?
A large majority of the world's workforce feels overlooked and unappreciated despite being essential to success due to this lack of technology. But they also feel this lack of empowerment and enablement at work because of where they work. And we call these folks workers in the 80%.
So who are the 80%?
Now if you listened to our webinar last month, our O.C. Tanner Institute researchers took a deep dive into employees in the 80% and how they feel. But in case you missed it or you've forgotten, I'm gonna do a quick overview of who these folks are.
So employees in the 80% typically do not work at a desk.
They lack access to regular technology and tools that keep them connected to their organisations.
And they don't have the same opportunities or autonomy or influence and voice as others in the workplace. And, these employees typically work in healthcare, retail, manufacturing, transportation, hospitality, and construction. But nearly every organisation has employees in the 80%. So even if you're a financial organisation or you're in consulting or you're an accounting firm, you likely have a few workers in the 80%.
We all know that these workers are essential, and they're critical to an organisation's success. Right? We literally cannot function without them. And yet, they feel unseen, and they feel undervalued. And their experiences at work differ very drastically from their corporate peers.
So here's some troubling stats about the 80%, and this is from eighty workers in the 80%. This is what they tell us. So 50% of employees in this workforce feel expendable at work, which breaks my heart. Nearly two out of every five say they are viewed as inferior by other employees in the office.
Over one-third report senior leaders minimize or dismiss their ideas.
And only 35% feel they have the freedom to take time away from work for those personal errands that we've talked about. And many of the 80% live in survival mode, and that's their words. They tell us that they're barely surviving.
So think about how the way we view the 80% workforce has shifted, pre-, during, and post-pandemic. Right? So pre-pandemic, like, we didn't think about these workers very much and their needs. During the pandemic, they became heroes.
Right? They were our front-line workers. They were at the hospitals. They were at the grocery stores.
You know, they were delivering stuff in their truck, we clapped for them. We cheered them on. You know, we held them up high. And now that we've gone kind of back to normal, we've once again almost forgotten about them.
And I think this quote really sums it up nicely. This is from an employee, who works in manufacturing in one of our focus groups, and they said, "We're front line, so we're lowest on the totem pole. We're not selling, we're not pushing products, so we're not rewarded for what we do. People on the corporate side are getting branded clothing, four-day trips. It's just totally different. They get respect."
I think that does a great job of summing up how many workers in the 80% feel. And the disparity that they feel from their corporate peers of what they get and the opportunities they have at work versus what some of the other employees have at work.
And this particular focus group participant wasn't wrong. When we asked about the 80% experience and workers in the 80%, how they feel about different elements of their daily experience. We see a huge discrepancy between how workers in the 80% feel versus how corporate workers feel. And this runs the gamut between, do they think the organisation cares about them?
Do they trust their leaders? Do they feel empathy in the workplace? Do they feel connected to the organisation? Do they feel seen and valued?
Or have they been having a positive employee experience? If you look at the chart, you can see that there's almost a 20-30% gap in many cases of how workers in the 80% feel versus how their corporate peers feel. And that's very disheartening.
However, we found that when workers in the 80% feel seen and valued, when they feel appreciated, when they feel like their company cares about them. Things like engagement and great work, the sense of belonging and community and fulfillment and desire to stay all increased. Right? Just feeling seen and feeling valued changes the experience of workers in the 80%. It makes them feel more positive about their employee experience.
So what can organisations do? Well, one, understand the needs and the experiences of workers in the 80%. Train leaders to ask and listen and learn about their employees in the 80%, right, to practice empathy, both their experiences at work and outside of work. What battles do they encounter before they even come to the office?
Sitting in some focus groups recently, I heard that a lot of employees, you know, have to travel an hour to get to work potentially on a bus or a train at five o'clock in the morning in the bitter cold before the sun even comes up, you know, to get to the location of their workplace. So that's about all these workers are facing before they even start their jobs.
What obstacles do they face in their jobs? At work? What resources do they need to do their jobs more effectively? What ideas do they have? What matters most to them at work? And how do they like to be appreciated? Understanding their challenges and their experiences enables us to better address those and provide the resources needed.
Also, to improve access and enablement for workers in the 80%. So this is both access to tools and technology at work to keep them connected. But also enablement and voice in the workplace.
Give workers in the 80% the same resources and support and empowerment that corporate workers receive. Right? Provide them with things like flexibility to leave work for doctor's appointments or run personal errands or if they have family obligations, seek their feedback during changes and important decisions.
Give them autonomy to innovate at work, to do the work in the way they know best. Ensure they have opportunities to be recognised and rewarded at work just like their corporate peers do.
And speaking of recognition, many technology-focused employee recognition tools and programs often are not accessible to workers in the 80%. So companies often have a platform that's online that people can go to to recognise one another and send ecards, and that's great.
But if you don't have access to a computer at work or you're not working at a desk, you're not gonna be able to access those programs. So companies really need to provide either access to them or alternative tools to ensure that leaders are familiar with using them.
So that they can recognise one another or they can recognise their teams in a way that's meaningful to workers in the 80%. You can do this by having a wide variety of recognition tools so that they're available to both your online and offline folks, and offer a variety of awards that employees can choose from, and also present recognition in front of others so that everyone can see the contributions of workers in the 80%. Don't just, you know, give recognition one-on-one or even just share it with your team.
But if you can broadcast it across a company either on a social wall, you have the intranet or even shared screens and cafeterias and break rooms and lobbies. All of those are ways that you can help the 80% feel seen.
We actually have a great new ebook that just came out. You can find it on our website on octanner.com that dives into great detail in terms of how you can recognise workers in the 80% in a meaningful way and and what tools are available for you.
But I also wanted to share on this webinar some clients that are doing this really well.
So Bluescope Steel is a steel organisation that wanted to recognise all their employees after a strong financial year. So they gave every employee the opportunity to choose five gift cards from leading retailers to help ensure they could find something that they or their families wanted or needed that year. So not just one gift card, but five, which is amazing.
But accessibility and inclusivity were really critical for Bluescope. They wanted to make sure that everyone was able to access these gift cards and order them. So workers in their steel factories, their manufacturing facilities but also folks that maybe are often forgotten: cleaners, labour hire contractors, also offline folks that are excluded from recognition initiatives a lot of times.
So they provided both a physical thank you card and gift selection as well as an online portal for employees to order their gift cards. And Nikki Ray, Head of Awards at Bluescope said, "I've heard some lovely stories from our people. Some of our security guards did a cartwheel flip to express how happy they were to feel included." So a great way to make sure that all workers, including workers in the 80%, could be invited to select a gift card and be recognised.
BHP is a mining organisation. So another company that has a large offline population and they provide physical thank you notes and physical resource guides for leaders to reach their teams that are thousands of feet underground in those mines. Not gonna get internet access when you're down into mine, and there's no computers down there. So they have physical recognition tools for their people.
They also have symbolic pins that connect offline employees to BHP's history and their products and their equipment and their strategy to make sure that these minors do feel connected to the organisation in a meaningful way.
Treasury Wine Estates is a winery, a vineyard. And they make its recognition program available and accessible to workers both in the corporate offices, but also outside. Right? So workers that work in the vineyard, that work in the cellars, that, you know, sell in their in their warehouses.
They have a mobile app, they have an automatic workflow, and they have symbolic awards that can guarantee every employee will give and receive recognition and feel part of that company and feel appreciated for their contributions.
And then finally Southwest Airlines. So Southwest Airlines is a company of love. That's their ticker symbol. They're at Dallas Love Field. I mean, they are, they are a great organisation that recognises their people. They use a mobile app to make sure that their employees are connected to their recognition program, they also have physical access code cards because so many of their employees are working on the ramp, at customer service, or in the air on planes.
And they wanna recognise their people for helping customers, right, for creating a great customer experience. They also utilise a box, a swag box at onboarding to help new employees feel recognised.
In the air, their employees are literally offline. Right? They don't have access to technology and tools at work. And so this is a great way to reach employees no matter where they're working from. And these are really just a few examples of what companies can do to ensure that their workers in the 80% feel seen and appreciated and feel valued at work.
Alright. And then our last culture trend for today is number five. That time flew by.
Resilience requires more than blunt endurance.
So think about the common definitions of resilience. It's grit, it's grin and bear it, it's pushing through, getting on, it's keeping calm and carry on, right, isn't that the British term for resilience?
But really, this only leads to burnout. It leads to lots and lots of burnout. And this definition of grit and pushing through hard times to build resiliency really relies too much on the capacity of an individual to carry it and to lift it. And it ignores the issues and challenges of the changing demands and requirements and the, you know, fluidity of the workplace that causes someone to need to be resilient.
It's reactionary to outside forces rather than getting ahead of them. And so our research finds that over 53% of employees say they're expected to just push through challenges without complaining. And this leads to a 125% likely higher likelihood of burnout. So pushing through, just enduring leads to burnout.
And all organisations want to build resilience right? They wanna build resilient workforces, especially in today's world. It is so uncertain out there. Things are changing so quickly.
Organisations need to be resilient. And to do that, they need to have resilient employees, but how we approach resiliency is shifting. The definition, like flexibility, of resiliency is shifting. And rather than seeing change and challenges as setbacks or crises to overcome, we need to start seeing them as opportunities. Opportunities for companies and employees to evolve and innovate and to improve.
And the biggest question I think is, how do organisations do this? Even if an organisation wanted to be more resilient, how do they help their people become more resilient?
Well you have to build nimble resiliency.
Now nimble resiliency is different than the traditional definitions and models of resiliency. Right? Nimble resiliency means that you are guided by these three principles. You're guided by adaptability.
You anticipate changes and challenges and adjusting and innovating to meet them. So you're constantly pivoting, you're able to change. You're also guided by proactivity, you're continually evolving and seeking new ways of doing things instead of only reacting. So rather than doing the same thing over and over again and then panicking, you know, when a crisis comes up, you're constantly looking for ways to innovate and to do things differently. And then finally perseverance, you see setbacks as opportunities to learn and grow rather than as times of crisis.
And here's a great quote that illustrates this idea, and it's from an organisation that really had to be resilient during the pandemic. So Steven Stein, who's the founder of Multi-Health Systems, says, "The way we look at resilience has changed. We used to think it was grit, being strong, getting through it. Now it has shifted to more self-awareness and responsiveness to the people around you."
So what can organisations do? Well, one: incorporate nimble resilience practices in the workplace, whether that's through your policies or your programs or your workplace culture. So remember, those nimble resilient practices are adaptability and being proactive and perseverance.
So incorporate those ideas into your workplace culture, into your workplace policies. It could be something like encouraging employees to build relationships, right, to find new solutions to challenges, to work collaboratively across disciplines. It could be encouraging them to adopt a forward-thinking perspective that embraces change, any practice that leads them to be more adaptable, proactive, and to persevere.
And then we need leadership support here. Right? We need to train leaders to practice modern leadership because those leaders also practice nimble resilient behaviours.
So if you think about nimbly resilient leaders, they think and they work across disciplines. They embrace change. They encourage pivoting perspectives when they're faced with new questions and challenges.
And because they do this, then their teams do the same. Right? Most of us model what our leaders do. So modern leaders, and those are leaders who mentor and inspire and connect employees rather than control and gatekeep their people,
they naturally practice those things. They naturally do those things. They communicate transparently. They build relationships between employees.
They foster an environment of psychological safety.
They prioritise things like employee well-being and flexibility and autonomy. Now all of those things help employees build nimble resilience. So if you train your leaders to adopt modern leadership practices, they will also be practicing nimbly resilient practices.
And then the third recommendation is to recognise and reward employees when they exhibit nimbly resilient behaviours. So in order to reinforce new behaviours and to really make it part of your culture, recognising employees when they do them does a great job of reinforcing that in their minds. When they adapt and innovate, when they think of new ways of doing things, when they question maybe what you're doing, when they use setbacks as growth opportunities, and they don't fall down, but rather they persevere, recognise employees when they do those behaviours.
When organisations are nimbly resilient, not when they push through and use grit, but when they actually are proactive and adaptive and they persevere, they see increased odds of revenue, and innovation in the face of obstacles. They have employees who have a strong desire to stay with the organisation for another year. And they have a thriving workplace culture. So like empathy, like flexibility, like the other culture trends we talked about today, being nimbly resilient has an impact on business outcomes.
Alright. That was my last culture trend for the webinar. I'm gonna do a little recap here.
The five culture trends that we're seeing for 2024 are one: The meaning of flexibility is shifting. It's no longer just about where people are working or even when they're working. It's also about how they do their work and some autonomy over their time at work.
We're also seeing that employees are looking for empathy with actions. So not just feeling sympathy or feeling concern, but actually taking proactive action to help them.
We're finding that modern skill building is collaborative. It's not a hundred percent the responsibility of organisations or employees, but it's a mix. It's employees and organisations working together to create a skill building program that works for for their people.
Workers in the 80% need to feel seen. We want to make sure that those crucial essential workers, the frontline workers that helped us through the pandemic continue to feel valued and appreciated at work.
And we're finding that resilience requires more than blunt endurance, especially in today's world and in the workplace today with all the changes that are happening. Being able to be proactive and adapt and to persevere is what's gonna get an organisation through successfully.
So overall, we're seeing a workplace shift. Right? It's a shift in employee expectations and needs, and that requires a shift in how organisations craft their culture initiatives. But I think the good news is that all of this is doable. Again, we're not saying you have to implement brand new programs or make huge changes in your organisations.
Taking small micro steps to improve the employee experience can have a huge impact. All of the research that I shared today comes from the 2024 Global Culture Report from our amazing O.C. Tanner Institute. Now this is a comprehensive report that has all of the latest research and insights and best practices into workplace culture. And it includes a lot more detail on the five culture trends that I shared today.
So I encourage you to check it out on our site, octanner.com, to read and download the entire report. I think Whitney can probably link that to the chat here, as well as our new ebook that we have on offline employees, so that you can check out our resources, get more research, get more insights into what employees are looking for and that shift that that we're seeing in the workplace right now.
Alright. And now I'm gonna leave some time for questions.
Submit any questions that you have in the Q&A box. You can find that on your Zoom screen, and we'll get through as many as we can.
I also, while we're doing Q&A, I'm gonna show the certification code here for SHRM and HRCI, so you guys can write those down and get your credits for attending our webinar today. And again, visit us at octanner.com. We have some great resources on how to address many of these culture trends, and you can get our Global Culture Report on our site as well.
Okay. So I'll leave that up and I'm gonna quickly come over to Q&A.
Alright. So how much has the need for empathy changed since the pandemic? It feels like more is required. However, This person, Lisa, you're in healthcare, so you may be a little bit biased. You know, it's interesting because empathy has always been a topic of conversation, especially for healthcare organisations. That's what you all do.
And even before pandemic, it was, you know, when you talk about employee well-being and emotional and social well-being and servant leader I mean, there's been books written on empathy.
But I think after pandemic, the idea of employee well-being and empathy has just grown. Right? Because I think everyone reevaluated where they wanted to be and what the role that their jobs had in their lives during pandemic. And once we kind of came out of pandemic and went back to normal, I think employees are willing to put up with a little bit less than they were in the past.
So if they had organisations that had, you know, difficult leaders or, or non-empathetic leaders, they were no longer willing to stay at those organisations. And so I think empathy now after pandemic is even more--I agree with Lisa.
It's even more required. Employees are looking for it. And there's more willingness, I think, on the employee side, to leave their jobs if they don't find, if they're working for an organisation that's not treating their employees in an empathetic way, that's not practicing empathy, they will go to another job to find that. We see that a lot with that return to work mandate that happened.
I think in the beginning of, was it this year or maybe end of last year, where companies were requiring their employees to return to the office. And a lot of companies did it in a not great way. It wasn't a discussion. It wasn't, you know, done in an empathetic way.
It was really a mandate. And a lot of companies said you either come back to work or you don't have a job anymore. And I think employees decided, you know what? I don't wanna work for an organisation like that where change was not handled well.
Employers are not listening to my needs, so I'm gonna leave. And we saw a lot of employees change jobs, change industries, change companies because of it. So I do think empathy is a very, is a practice, not just a trait, a practice that's in high demand right now.
So can you share ways that you encourage two way communication with the 80% that don't have access to company wide emails or feedback systems? Yeah. So that's a great question.
A lot of the tools that companies use are for communication, are things like emails or, you know, Slack or Teams communication tools. And a lot of workers in the 80% do not have access to that. So there's a few ways that you can do communication well. One is by leveraging leaders of teams in the 80%.
So we see this a lot in, like, manufacturing companies or, you know, like BHP, mining companies. Leaders often have huddle time. They have group huddles or shift huddles at the beginning of each shift to talk about important announcements or policy changes or things that their teams need to know.
They set goals, you know, in those team huddles. That's a great way to not only give information, but also hear from employees, of, you know, challenges they're facing or things that they need, resources that they need, or, you know, ideas that they have. Another way to do that if it's if a group setting doesn't work is one-on-ones. So we always encourage companies to have one-on-ones with their people.
We encourage leaders, middle managers, you know, senior-level leaders to have one on ones with all of their employees on a regular basis because that one on one is really a time of connection. It's a time where you can not only share information with your 80% workforce, but also hear from employees in the 80%. So having regular one on ones, whether it's weekly or monthly or inviting them to come to your office with open office hours. All of those will encourage workers in the 80% to come share their experiences and their feedback.
Also apps. If you have workers in the 80% that use mobile apps, so like, we know a lot of companies have their own mobile apps that they use for retail workers or healthcare workers. Zebra is another one that we're familiar with to communicate and to do work back and forth. That's another great way.
In healthcare, in particular, I used to work in healthcare, and I know there's so many different programs and systems that healthcare workers use. They have discharge systems and computer systems and you know, we had a midas system for patient information.
You could incorporate communication to those systems because they are in the employee flow of work. They do let the employee check messages and look at announcements while they're using those for their everyday work day.
What are some initiatives you think companies should roll out in the EX space in 2024? Oh, that's a big question.
You know, I really think it needs to start with empathy. I think empathy flows through a lot of the other culture trends we're seeing. Right? So flexibility at work is based on empathy.
Nimble resilience is based on empathy, helping the 80% feel seen and valued, that's all based on empathy. And so I think as you're looking at your employee experience for 2024, think about your whole employee journey and the daily experiences that they have.
And how can you build in more empathetic initiatives, or how can you build out more ways employees can give that feedback or be seen and valued in their everyday experiences. So I know a big initiative a lot of companies are focusing on right now and have been in the past few years is onboarding because of the, you know, great resignation a few years ago, and onboarding is a huge thing that a lot of companies have engaged O.C. Tanner with. And so they're looking at how do we create a more comprehensive onboarding experience that's beyond just orientation and knowing where the bathrooms are.
How do we help our employees feel seen and valued, you know, and feel appreciated for joining our company? How do we help them feel welcomed and connected into their teams their first few days at work? Southwest Airlines, the example I showed, does a great job at onboarding their employees. They have a whole red carpet experience that they provide their employees, for onboarding.
So I think that's a great place to start, and to start building that connection and that empathy and that, you know, sense of being seen and valued.
I think other employee experience initiatives really can focus on strengthening that connection between leaders and employees, whether it is more one on ones, and one on one conversations that they're having, or it's employee well-being initiatives that you're tackling.
But I really think empathy, especially right now, is a big focus. And anything you can do in the employee experience to connect and build that sense of connection and well-being and empathy would make a big impact.
I had another question on the side, is there a risk of quiet hiring with skill building?
So we have heard that before, that concern that if I help my employees build skills, they're gonna think that I am making them do more work with less pay. On the flip side, we've heard if I give my employees more skill building, they're gonna think that they can leave. They can take those new skills and leave and get a job with more pay. And what we found is that none of those are true.
When we asked employees why they wanna build skills, a very, very small percentage said that they wanted to build skills to leave for a new job. Most people wanna build skills because they wanna to do better in their roles or get a promotion at their companies, or, you know, they want personal development. On the other side, we don't know a lot of organisations that are actively trying to manipulate their employees and make them build skills so that they can have them do more. Right?
And that's where I think the shift in skill building is happening right now. It's becoming a lot more collaborative. It's not just the company saying you're gonna learn these skills. Or the employee saying, I wanna learn new skills so I can leave.
It really is more of a cooperative, collaborative approach where employees and companies are coming together and saying what skills are needed? With AI, with advances in technology, what are things that we're gonna need to learn in the next five, ten years, and and how do we get there?
And I think I'll cover maybe one last question. Let me just take a quick look here.
Let's see.
Ways to see the 80%? There's a few more questions here about helping employees with burnout and the ways to see the 80%, especially in things like health care and other industries that have a high burnout rate. I think really there's a lot to helping the 80% have a great experience at work, and there's a lot, with both technology and access to that information in the technology that they need to do their work, but also that empowerment. And I think that's where organisations can really focus.
Right? If you don't have technology to help keep them connected, start thinking about ways that you can do that. But also even more important, maybe, it would be the empowerment. Helping them feel seen and valued, helping them feel like they have a voice and decisions.
I feel like so many organisations look to their corporate employees, to make decisions on changes or new policies coming out, and they often neglect their workers in the 80%.
I think giving them that empowerment to decide how they wanna do their jobs. And then I know in a lot of instances, workers in 80% don't have a lot of flexibility in how they're doing their jobs. If you're on a production line, you're in a facility, you're stocking shelves, you're working with patients. You know, there's only so much you can do, but giving them as much autonomy and as much flexibility and freedom to make decisions about their work.
How are they gonna treat those patients? How are they gonna take care of a customer who's had a cancelled flight? You know, maybe it's not just one way of addressing that problem. But giving employees flexibility to make those decisions in their work and be able to do the work in the way they see best.
A great example of this is actually Ritz Carlton, and they know not everyone is the Ritz, and it's a great hotel chain. But what they do for their customer service folks is if a customer or a someone has a problem rather than saying, this is what you can do for that customer. They actually just give, their customer service people free rein to kinda decide what's the best way to solve that problem for that customer. So I heard a story.
I don't know if it's true, but I heard they get, you know, a certain amount of money, like a thousand dollars, you know, per day to take care of a customer if something has gone wrong. But it's up to the discretion of that individual worker to decide what is the best way to take care of that customer. I feel like those are things we could do to help our employees in the 80% feel valued. So in a manufacturing plant, you know, on a nursing unit, giving employees that empowerment, that opportunity, that autonomy to decide, how am I gonna take care of my patients in the best way today?
How am I gonna create this product or put together, you know, this process in a way that works for us, giving them that that sense of, opportunity to do it in the best way they see fit. Like, those are some ways that we can empower the 80%, and help them just feel like, you know, that they belong, that they're part of the organisation, and that they're important.
Alright. I think we're almost out of time here, so I am going to wrap up. Thank you all so much for attending our webinar today. I hope you found it helpful.
It is going to be recorded. So it will be posted on our site at octanner.com if you want to watch it again or share it with your colleagues. I hope you've had a chance to connect with one another today in the chat, and share some ideas. And we look forward to seeing you again on another O.C. Tanner webinar in 2024.
Have a very happy holidays and hope you get some rest and relaxation and a little bit of a break this holiday before we go into the new year. So thank you everyone, and have a great day.
