Glassdoor Employer Branding Summit Presentation: Josh Bersin

Editor's Notes

• #2: We are so excited to have Josh Bersin help kick off our event as well. We asked Josh why attendees should tune in to his session. The number one reason is he will introduce brand new research based on Glassdoor data. We are keeping this pretty hush hush so make sure you tune in if you want to learn more about it! He will also talk about the Simply Irresistible business model for 21st century employee engagement and Why and how your Glassdoor ratings directly predict your own business performance
• #5: In my experience, there are lots of things that we find irresistible in life. From romance to sports to making money to beautiful children to exotic vacations, we all have those things that manage to hook us with joy. Those things that are utterly and deliciously irresistible.   For some, it’s potato chips. For others, it might be fresh baked cupcakes.
• #6: Worldwide, only 13 percent of employees across 142 countries are emotionally invested in their jobs. Gallup also found that those who are actively disengaged – that is those who are negative and potentially hostile to their employers, outnumber engaged employees at a rate of 2:1. Gallup believes this is costing businesses more than $800 billion in lost productivity and hiring costs around the world. Think about this: who owns the whole “retention and engagement” problem in your organization? How well do you really know what’s on people’s minds on a day to day basis. Do you measure retention regularly and study why it varies from place to place? While around 60% of businesses deploy some kind of engagement survey, our research shows that today’s process for measuring and managing engagement has become obsolete. Employee engagement is far more complex than it seems – and the old adage “people leave managers, not organizations” is definitely no longer true. New research shows that engagement is much more highly linked to ability to grow and top leadership than management: in other words good managers won’t get you to stay, but bad managers may make you want to leave. Companies like Adobe and JP Morgan Chase, who I spoke with in the last few weeks, told me that they are now taking a holistic look at engagement – considering the entire work environment, culture, supervisory skills, leadership, as well as the work itself. We believe this may be the the secret: over the next few years you will have to rethink your engagement and retention strategy in a highly integrated way. And technology is here to help. New social networking tools, pulse engagement tools, and analytics tools are now able to “predict” retention using Big Data. Some even monitor your employees’ changes to their social networking sites. Karen and I will be leading a panel of analytics experts to help you understand how world class companies manage data and we’re very lucky to have Hilary Mason, a real data scientist, talk with us on Wednesday afternoon.
• #8: Worldwide, only 13 percent of employees across 142 countries are emotionally invested in their jobs. Gallup also found that those who are actively disengaged – that is those who are negative and potentially hostile to their employers, outnumber engaged employees at a rate of 2:1. Gallup believes this is costing businesses more than $800 billion in lost productivity and hiring costs around the world. Think about this: who owns the whole “retention and engagement” problem in your organization? How well do you really know what’s on people’s minds on a day to day basis. Do you measure retention regularly and study why it varies from place to place? While around 60% of businesses deploy some kind of engagement survey, our research shows that today’s process for measuring and managing engagement has become obsolete. Employee engagement is far more complex than it seems – and the old adage “people leave managers, not organizations” is definitely no longer true. New research shows that engagement is much more highly linked to ability to grow and top leadership than management: in other words good managers won’t get you to stay, but bad managers may make you want to leave. Companies like Adobe and JP Morgan Chase, who I spoke with in the last few weeks, told me that they are now taking a holistic look at engagement – considering the entire work environment, culture, supervisory skills, leadership, as well as the work itself. We believe this may be the the secret: over the next few years you will have to rethink your engagement and retention strategy in a highly integrated way. And technology is here to help. New social networking tools, pulse engagement tools, and analytics tools are now able to “predict” retention using Big Data. Some even monitor your employees’ changes to their social networking sites. Karen and I will be leading a panel of analytics experts to help you understand how world class companies manage data and we’re very lucky to have Hilary Mason, a real data scientist, talk with us on Wednesday afternoon.
• #9: In a word, Millennials want to work for companies with a soul. Your entire work ethos, your products and services, and the opportunities you provide must be “soulful” and “meaningful” for them (and us). Joey Reiman, author of The Story of Purpose, said it well, “People are not motivated by the bottom line. It’s about the human factor— and purpose is the driver. It’s what stirs our souls and inspires us to do great things over a sustained period of time.”
• #10: 9/22/2014
• #12: But what about this issue of the “overwhelmed employee”? Where does that fit into the calculus of building the “irresistible organization”? First, it’s a big problem. Research shows that the average cell phone user checks his mobile device 150 times a day. Neurologist Larry Rosen has found that today’s office worker can only focus for six minutes on a single task, and then opens a window to check Facebook or do something else. We have become physically and emotionally addicted to the buzz, beep, or flash that comes from our devices. Julian Birkenshaw and Jordan Cohen noted in the Harvard Business Review that knowledge workers spend 41% of their time on discretionary activities that could be handled by others? Why? Because it’s easier to “complete” these little tasks than it is to ponder and struggle with more complex and difficult projects at work. They found that by changing work habits and reducing time-wasting meetings, people could save 15% of their time in a typical insurance company. The bigger issue, of course, is that society is now wired this way. Twitter’s explosive IPO says it all: if you can squeeze your message into 140 characters and blast it out by the millisecond, people will get addicted. Have you noticed how TV shows move faster than ever? They do. The broadcasters now change scenes 35% more frequently than they did only four years ago. This problem is here to stay, and our job is to figure out what to do about it. Mindfulness has become a fast-growing industry, moving beyond the best-seller list and newsstand. Pfizer recently told me they are putting “mindfulness” into their leadership curriculum, and “self-awareness” came up as one of the most important competencies in new leadership programs. Google and Patagonia offer yoga and meditation at work. Huffington Post has nap rooms. Arianna Huffington’s new website The Third Metric, which focuses on work-life balance, is the fastest growing part of her online presence.
• #14: All of which brings us to: The Simply Irresistible Organization   So here we are – facing perhaps the biggest challenge of the coming decade: how do we attract, engage, retain, and excite the 21st century workforce? What is the “new model” of employee engagement companies can use to drive performance in today’s economy?   After much research and discussions with many of you, I’ve concluded it comes down to five basic things. These five elements must fit together into a holistic “system” or “environment” which gives your company soul, meaning, and opportunity.  
• #15: The first is Meaningful Work. We have to design work itself so that it provides what Daniel Pink calls “autonomy, mastery, and purpose.” If more jobs are being automated by machines, we must design jobs so they are value-add and meaningful. At Edward Jones, one of the most high-performing stock brokers in the country (and a great place to work winner), people write their own job descriptions and sign up for their own deliverables. Think about what that says about empowerment, authority, and purpose. The second is Good Management. We cannot assume that supervisors or managers “know how to manage.” In most cases they don’t. As I’ve noted many times, when an individual is promoted from individual contributor to manager, they aren’t just changing jobs, they’re changing careers. We must spend more time selecting and building great managers. At Netflix, a company we all know as a simply irresistible organization, new managers receive weeks of education, and they are taught how to manage by context, not control. The third element is Flexibility and Inclusion. The entire work environment – including rewards, recognition, physical space, and technology – has to allow all employees to feel accepted and at home. This is much more than having a pingpong table in the office, but that’s certainly a piece. The fourth is Growth Opportunity. We’ve studied learning organizations for nearly 12 years now, and it’s clear to me that companies that provide more training for their people outperform their peers. And training takes place throughout the organization, as I will show you in a minute. The fifth is Trust in Leadership. Leaders must believe in the need to build an irresistible organization. They must trust, they must empower, they must be transparent, and they must have a sense of mission and purpose which resonates in the market and with their workers. Now let’s look at each element in more detail.
• #17: First let’s talk about Work itself. Without the right job, nobody finds their employer irresistible. There are four keys here. The first is designing a job which allows meaningful contribution – giving people autonomy, and freedom add real value. Zeynte Ton, the MIT business professor, studied the difference between “good jobs” and “bad jobs” in her new book “The Good Jobs Strategy.” Her research, which focuses heavily on retail, shows that companies that design jobs for higher value far outperform their competitors. She lists Home Depot, Costco, Nordstrom, UPS, and Mercedona as firms that pay their people 2-3X their peers, lavish them with training, yet are far more profitable than their “low cost competitors.” Why? In these companies, people have the time, motivation, and skills to cover for each other, rearrange the store to help sell more, and feel good about serving customers. How many times have you walked into a store when there’s nobody around and felt like walking out? Her research shows that companies with higher payroll per square foot are MORE PROFITABLE. The second key Meaningful Work is selecting the right people. We did research in 2011 and looked at the performance of cosmetic sales people, retail sales workers, customer service agents, and life scientists. In each of the companies we studied, we found a unique and company-specific set of qualities that helped fit the right person into the right job. At Bon-Ton Stores, this process of using I/O science to find just the right fit resulted in a doubling of sales in the first 12 months. The third key is the use of small, self-organizing teams. In the 1980s Fred Brooks learned that when you put more software engineers into a large project it actually goes slower, leading to the beginning of the agile software movement. Jeff Bezos uses the “two pizza rule” – if there are more than two pizzas at lunch, the team is too big. The fourth is to design slack into the system. People need time – time to improve the place, relax, learn, and collaborate. Google designed “20% time” – at Costco, when the store is slow, they let people go home for a few hours. When you “understaff” and overwork you create errors, waste, and ultimately burn people out. When you give people a little extra time you get engagement, improvement, and learning..
• #19: Now let’s talk about management. We all know that in today’s work environment, management is perhaps your greatest key to success. But as I mentioned earlier, management and leadership are the biggest challenges companies face. What’s going on? We have to recognize that the role of a “manager” has dramatically changed. While managers still supervise and direct, today they must serve as people who coach, inspire, and help their team. And the days of managers “sitting behind a desk” are over – they need to understand the work their people do. As GE put it, managers have to be “more electric” and “less general.” We also have to invest in first- and second-line leaders. I met with IBM, one of the best managed companies in the world, late last year and the CHRO Diane Gherson told us they found that over the years she believed they spent too much money on “leadership” and not enough on “management” – and I would say that I hear this over and over around the world. In January I had the opportunity to visit GE’s Crotonville leadership center, and I was amazed at the level of investment, focus, and passion the company has about management. At GE and other winning companies the role of manager is honored, and the company continuously invests in the tools, coaching and support managers need to be effective. Which leads me to another topic I want to touch on – the whole issue of performance management and the performance appraisal.
• #21: The third element in the irresistible organization is “Flexibility and Inclusion.” As you look at the “best places to work” and “firms of endearment” you find something else: a special, highly flexible, humanistic work environment. Today most of us struggle with tremendously complicated lives. We have children at home, elderly parents, or health and wellness issues of our own. According to More Magazine, 68% of women would rather have more free time than make more money —and while 40% of professional men work more than 50 hours per week, 80% would like to work fewer hours. So if we want people to engage with work, we have to give them a flexible and supportive work environment. SAS, the #2 place to work for the last 15 years, has an in-house day care center, gym, and pool. Their turnover rate is below 2%. Google has a bowling alley and yoga rooms. But flexibility goes far beyond just having a nice place to hang out. The workplace also has to be open, welcoming, and warm . Michael Bloomberg ripped out all the offices in NY City Hall and created an open bullpen to encourage collaboration. Companies like Deloitte, WL Gore, Apple, and Pixar design their facilities to bring together to help build relationships and trust. We all know the story of Yahoo asking employees to stop working at home and the failure of Best Buy to drive “results only work environment.” We aren’t proposing that people stop coming into the office. But we do have to create flexibility, give people tools and freedom to work the way they want. According to Entrepreneur magazine, companies with flexible work options have 40% higher levels of innovation and 12% higher employee satisfaction. And let me mention inclusion and diversity. There is no way you will become an “irresistible organization” unless you are truly inclusive to all – all races, genders, ages, and ways of thinking. This week we are launching our new diversity and inclusion research and the startling finding is that while 78% of respondents feel their companies promote themselves as highly diverse and inclusive, only 11% strongly agree that they are! Our research shows that “highly inclusive teams” outperform non-inclusive teams by 8:1. Remember David Rock’s research? When you don’t feel “included,” you feel threatened, and your productivity, customer service, and creativity goes away.
• #23: The fourth element of being irresistible is designing your organization for personal and professional growth. One of the top reasons people leave organizations is that they “can’t grow here.” I won’t spend a lot of time on high-impact learning, you’ve heard that from me many times. But what you do have to focus on is three big things: First, your management and structure must facilitate talent mobility. Managers should be incented to move people and create programs to help people succeed in new positions. Kim Lamoureux’s new succession management research, which is being launched this week, shows that fewer than 20% of companies have any succession plans at the first and second line level and only 3% have reached what a level we call “transparent talent mobility.” Facebook, Google, and Dropbox all have rotational assignment programs for new college graduates. United Health Group is developing a company-wide online assessment and job seeker program for their staff. I talked with Telstra, the largest telco in Australia, about bringing in professional career coaches to support managers and employees as they look for new jobs. You should invest in this area – today’s high-performers see work as a “tour of duty” and if you’re not giving them that tour they’ll find it elsewhere. Second, you must redesign your L&D function to be “pull” not “push.” Google, YouTube, and MOOCs are now becoming the fastest growing ways people learn, we must redesign your own L&D function to focus on making content easy to find, facilitating sharing of expertise, and adding lots of “flipped learning” to the mix. Third, you must take on a “supply chain” view of skills. As we wrote about in the Human Capital Trends study, it often takes many years to build expertise in various roles. Oil and Gas companies tell us it takes 5-7 years to reach “time to autonomy” in exploration and production. So if you are not constantly looking at your skills supply chain – and I’m talking about functional and technical skills, not just leadership – you will fall behind. This means changing the way people think about their career, giving managers tools to develop and move people, creating technical and functional career ladders, and convincing top management that investment in learning and mobility is well worth the money. Today we can no longer “hire” for top talent – we have to build it. Make your company a place to learn and grow and you will be amazed at how performance goes up.
• #25: Finally, I want to close on the topic of leadership. When you look at the “irresistible organizations” around the world, you always find top leaders who really care. They build trust, meaning, and purpose into their organizations – and they understand how to connect and take care of people. As Benjamin Disraeli said long ago, “When I was young I admired people who were clever, as I got old I admired people who were kind.” As Jeff Bezos put it, “It’s easier to be clever than it is to be kind.” Leaders today have to work hard to consider all the stakeholders in a business: yes they have to keep investors happy, but without a sense of “soul” and “love” for the organization itself, chasing profits alone will not succeed. Remember the story of Circuit City and how they fired 20% of their workforce to make their numbers back in the mid-2000s? They’re gone today. Look at what happened to Enron and MCI – these companies that lost the trust of their stakeholders don’t just under-perform, they disappear. And leaders must be willing to invest. Companies that try to starve their spending on people shoot themselves in the foot. Efficiently-run organizations invest heavily in people at all levels, they partner with their labor unions, and they pay above average wages. And they see inordinate amounts of employee loyalty and engagement and profit as a result. Finally don’t forget inspiration. It has become one of the top leadership values in business today. People will follow you if they believe in your mission – and being “irresistible” is often as much about ethos as it is about benefits.
• #26: The first is Meaningful Work. We have to design work itself so that it provides what Daniel Pink calls “autonomy, mastery, and purpose.” If more jobs are being automated by machines, we must design jobs so they are value-add and meaningful. At Edward Jones, one of the most high-performing stock brokers in the country (and a great place to work winner), people write their own job descriptions and sign up for their own deliverables. Think about what that says about empowerment, authority, and purpose. The second is Good Management. We cannot assume that supervisors or managers “know how to manage.” In most cases they don’t. As I’ve noted many times, when an individual is promoted from individual contributor to manager, they aren’t just changing jobs, they’re changing careers. We must spend more time selecting and building great managers. At Netflix, a company we all know as a simply irresistible organization, new managers receive weeks of education, and they are taught how to manage by context, not control. The third element is Flexibility and Inclusion. The entire work environment – including rewards, recognition, physical space, and technology – has to allow all employees to feel accepted and at home. This is much more than having a pingpong table in the office, but that’s certainly a piece. The fourth is Growth Opportunity. We’ve studied learning organizations for nearly 12 years now, and it’s clear to me that companies that provide more training for their people outperform their peers. And training takes place throughout the organization, as I will show you in a minute. The fifth is Trust in Leadership. Leaders must believe in the need to build an irresistible organization. They must trust, they must empower, they must be transparent, and they must have a sense of mission and purpose which resonates in the market and with their workers. Now let’s look at each element in more detail.
• #27: Our mission is simple: in order to thrive in today’s economy, and give improve the working conditions of our people, we have to learn how to make our organizations as irresistible as cupcakes.
• #28: I invite you to join me in the conversation. The 21st century workforce of today is different. We have to trust, listen, and change. This wont be easy. We have decades of traditional work practices to reconsider, and we have to learn to trust people at all levels. But we know in our hearts we can add more soul to our companies and make our businesses a better place to work. And we have the passion and goodness of youth to guide us. Let’s share our thoughts and ideas and we will share them with others. I look forward to hearing from each of you. Have a wonderful conference.