How to find good people is a top concern for nearly all my clients.
The solution doesn’t lie in how to find good people as much as it does in preparing your company for the workforce as it today vs how it used to be. There’s a future workforce and we need to prepare for it now.
We are in the beginning stages of a “people-driven workforce.” This people-driven workforce is largely the result of two things: 1) Technology has lowered barriers and has contributed to an increasing culture of transparency and sharing. 2) The consumerization of computer devices—smartphones and tablets—has spread into the workplace.
Another factor is that by 2020—in 5 years—over 50% of the workforce will be made up of millennials (aka Gen Y’ers). They’re digitally native; technology is how they communicate.
A recent global research project by Chess Media identified 3 workforce imperatives which have already made their way into the business world, probably into your business. But it’s not just millennials who are driving these imperatives… younger generations influence older ones making these common among a majority of the workforce.
Here’s a short summary of the 3 imperatives:
Social and collaboration technologies
About 70% of employees find email laborious and an ineffective way to communicate. They prefer social and collaboration technologies for communication: to get information, give information, ask questions and get answers, and to get input quickly from all the stakeholders of the project they’re working on. Social collaboration technology can be external applications like facebook and LinkedIn and also can be in-house technologies.
What’s more, workers want to collaborate with C-level management.
What should you do? Implement company-wide collaboration technology and make sure it’s integrated with most of your other software applications. Learn it and understand it deeply so that, as the business owner and leader, you can model it and interact with your employees and react to their comments on it.
Bring-your-own-device
Workers want to use their own smartphones, laptops, and tablets to interact with the company’s applications.
What should you do? Work with employees to create a policy that specifies what devices are allowed and how the company’s data will be secured.
Flexible work arrangements
These are no longer the exception; they’re the rule. There’s flexplace, flextime, and compressed workweek. They’re extremely common. 80% of companies have figured out how to find good people—offer flexible work arrangements. The benefits are irrefutable—improved productivity, retention, and morale.
What should you do? Give your employees more control of their work-lives—the ability to work how, when, and where they want. Set the stage by having sound policies for 1) social and collaboration technologies and for 2) bring-your-own-device. Then implement good HR policies that spell out the parameters in which flexible work arrangements must operate within in order to get the work done right.
Small business owners being more nimble are in a position to implement these strategies more quickly than large corporations. Interestingly, most of the cost lies in the time it takes to develop the policy and implement the practice. How to find good people? Prepare your company for today’s workforce and they’ll find you.
