When businesses help unlock the innate potential of their employees, both the companies and the people who work for them benefit. But, according to a January 2025 Gallup poll, only 39 percent of employees feel strongly that someone cares about them at work, a drop from 47 percent in March 2020. Fewer employees, just 30%, feel strongly they have someone at work encouraging their development. That number was down from 36 percent in March 2020.
So, what are the successful companies doing right?
Each year, the Drucker Institute releases a ranking of America’s “Best-Managed Companies.” The Top 250 are featured in The Wall Street Journal and now, as the Charles Koch Foundation (CKF) reported last December, the institute has launched a podcast, “Doing the Right Things Well,” to provide a more comprehensive look at how these companies unlock human potential.
The first two episodes of the podcast are online now and are available at this link.
This first episode features two leading executives from CBRE, a global leader in commercial real estate services and investments. Lewis Horne and Jessica Lall discuss CBRE’s approach to employee recruitment, mentorship, and the role of an organization within communities.
Instead of pedigree, CBRE focuses hiring people from diverse backgrounds and outside the industry who fit the company’s values — a commitment to the communities the company works in, a knack for problem solving, and the ability to look ahead to anticipate emerging needs. Lall’s own hiring path to CBRE illustrates the firm’s “focus on people” — individual applicants’ personal attributes — in hiring and talent development. In fact, Horne recruited Lall despite her having no background in commercial real estate.
The second episode features EPAM, a U.S.-based company that specializes in software engineering services, digital platform engineering, and digital product design. Podcast host Michael Kelly interviewed the firm’s Chief Learning Scientist Sandra Loughlin, an organizational psychologist who has explored the intersection of skills-based employee enablement and technology-driven business transformation.
“EPAM is unique in a lot of ways, but what I’ve found is that we are just fantastic at finding great talent,” Loughlin said. “We hire based on direct evidence that someone knows and can do things, as opposed to just assuming that because they have a degree they can do [something]. Because of that orientation, we are able to have a more expanded talent tool than our competitors because we are not limiting our search criteria, we’re not limiting the funnel to people that have a certain degree.”
Listen to the “Doing the Right Things Well” podcast.