Think about your first “real” job. Not the high school gig that provided weekend spending money, but the first job you craved, sought, and won. You stepped into that role motivated, eager to contribute, and full of ideas. If the role was a fit — if you had a manager who trusted you, and if you worked for an organization that helped hone and expand your talents — that desire to contribute probably continued for a long time.
For too many Americans, the shine of the dream job wore off quickly. In fact, today Gallup says only one-third of Americans are engaged at work. Waning interest affects employees, and it harms the organizations they work for, too. When a worker is no longer motivated to contribute, it leads to high absenteeism and turnover. Alternatively, Paul Zaks, founding director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies and a professor of economics, psychology, and management at Claremont Graduate University, has found employees who work at companies that empower them are more productive.
What does a workplace that celebrates individual potential look like?
First, it does not expect individuals to stay in one role. It invites them to continually learn and find new ways to contribute. In doing so, it excites workers and keeps them connected to what motivated them about a job in the first place. This type of culture doesn’t just benefit individual workers. For employers, it improves relationships between managers and employees, reduces turnover, increases productivity, and unleashes innovation since workers are able to experiment and tackle new challenges.
Employers cannot build this culture alone. Indeed, the work starts much earlier.
Help individuals identify their unique gifts, and build upon them
About three-quarters of Americans say their job is at least somewhat important to their identity — how they see themselves as a person. It follows then, that if people are not fulfilled at work, it can lead to a sense of personal hopelessness and worse, struggles with depression and substance use. Or, as the American Psychological Association has said, “When jobs are designed so that people can be replaceable, [workers will] feel replaceable.”
Workers feel less like cogs in the machine when, from the beginning of their education and throughout their career, they feel they have unique capabilities they can use to contribute to their own lives and the lives of others.
In other words, building a workplace culture that celebrates human potential starts well before a person ever looks for a job. It starts at home and in school. Parents, counselors, young learners, and, yes, employers, need organizations like the Make It Movement, which give middle and high school students the opportunity to contemplate what makes them tick and, from that, begin to find what work might be fulfilling to them.
Make It Movement also shows students all of the paths they can take to gain the skills Make It Movement also shows students all of the paths they can take to gain the skills they need to get hired for the jobs in which they are interested.
Organizations like SkillUp work with adult learners to give them the skills needed to excel in the professional field of their choosing. Opportunity@Work partners with employers to transform their hiring and talent practices so those policies put people, and the skills and aptitudes they bring to the table, at the center instead of other proxies like degrees.
Once a person’s fire is lit and they have pursued training that aligns with their interests, a strong workplace culture can keep the flame going.
Trusting employees allows them to innovate
Managers who trust their workers and help them find exciting new challenges to tackle inspire loyalty. From a survey of 11,000 companies in 15 countries, SHRM arrived at 10 drivers of a positive workplace culture. They include appreciation of employees’ unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences and whether a manager seeks employee input before making decisions.
Alternatively, managers who rule by top-down edicts run into trouble. According to a Monster.com survey, 46 percent of employees said they would leave their job if they felt micromanaged.
Several researchers also have found hyper-surveillance by employers reduces productivity. “Workforce surveillance reduces employees to keyboard strokes or minutes ‘on task,’ stripping them of their humanity,” a survey by Edelman concluded. “Focus instead on what actually motivates people in the workplace: the opportunity to improve and master skills, a clear sense of shared purpose that aligns to personal values, a work environment that offers autonomy, and the space and time to do their jobs well.” Correspondingly, Ethan Bernstein, associate professor in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School, determined creating zones of privacy may, under certain conditions, increase employee performance.
Organizational performance improves in companies where managers trust their employees because this culture encourages people to innovate and speak up, allowing good ideas to surface from the people closest to the task at hand.
Peter Drucker, celebrated as “the man who invented management,” believed a workplace culture built on trust was paramount. Executives and managers must build “organizations in which every person sees herself as a ‘manager’ and accepts the full burden … for her own job and work group [and] for her contribution to the performance and results of the entire organization,” said Drucker.
Several organizations, including the Drucker Institute, are working to help employers build cultures based on trust. The Kansas Leadership Center is another. It provides leadership training to create workplaces where everyone is equipped and empowered to contribute.
A culture that celebrates human potential drives mutual benefit
A culture that recognizes each person’s unique capabilities and potential contribute builds engagement, and engagement matters to the bottom line. Gallup has found companies at the top of the engagement ladder had:
- An 81 percent advantage over companies at the bottom of the ladder when it came to absenteeism rates;
- A 64 percent advantage in safety incidents, or accidents;
- A 41 percent advantage in product defects; and
- A 28 percent advantage in shrinkage, or employee theft.
Companies with better employee engagement also suffered less turnover. In high-turnover industries like retail, there was an 18 percent difference in turnover between the top companies and those at the bottom. In industries where turnover is traditionally low, the difference was 43 percent.
Gallup’s research also has shown companies with engaged workforces have higher earnings per share and recovered from the 2008 recession at a faster rate. “Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability,” former Xerox Chair and CEO Anne M. Mulcahey told Business Leadership Today.
Happy workers also improve survivability. For Drucker, the key to success in a rocky economy was employee-generated innovation. “The enterprise that does not innovate ages and declines,” he said. “And in a period of rapid change … the decline will be fast.”
In other words: companies that continually seek new ways for employees to use their unique aptitudes to contribute put their enterprise in a position to flourish.