How can managers and executives adapt their management style to meet the expectations and behaviours of new employees?
Since the teleworking revolution was caused by various confinements, we are now in a position to step back and take a closer look at the consequences for working habits. Remote working has far-reaching consequences for the "demographic transition" we're facing in the workplace.
It seems that the younger generation of employees is looking for a different way of life. Either they are looking for a job with a clear and meaningful objective that corresponds to their convictions(Les Echos), or they tend to see their job as purely alimentary and so their focus is elsewhere. The latter is very much in line with remote or nomadic working habits(Boss Magazine).
The average length of employment in certain high-growth companies in the United States is around 1.8 years.
Both of these phenomena have major consequences for companies, resulting in higher turnover for employers. The longevity of some high-growth companies in the U.S. averages 1.8 years.(Forbes). "Big resignation will move to sustained resignation."(Harvard Business Review). That's why the current trends we're facing can be seen as a demographic transition within companies.
These 2 trends - teleworking & increased turnover - which have been fuelling each other in recent months, have 3 consequences for managers:
The development of management & productivity tools, accelerated by remote working, has reshaped the role of managers, many of whom are now automated, enabling the same level of performance to be maintained with fewer managers. Then, companies can choose to operate with fewer managers, or modify their roles for more personalized relationships with employees. "Organizations that choose to change the expectations of their managers will need to change the mindset and skills of managers, from managing tasks to managing the complete employee experience."(Harvard Business Review).
In both cases, their ability to pass on knowledge, or their capacity to give teams the means to do so, will be essential.
What remains essential, and even more so with the new generation and the new way of working, is the quality of exchanges and listening between manager and employee. More than ever, with trends towards telecommuting and loss of interest in the company, managers have a role to play in retaining talent.
How can we do this? By maintaining regular exchange rituals to capture employee needs and nurture motivation. There are a number of specialized career management tools, such as our partner Empowill, which make these exchanges more fluid and useful.
There are also innovative, collaborative platforms that have emerged since the acceleration of hybrid working. WorkAdventure is a good example of a platform that aims to make communication between teams smoother and easier, helping the role of managers and the relationship with employees. With your avatar, you can interact spontaneously with your colleagues and collaborate on your team's project while creating a social bond.
Studies show that remote workers perform as well as office-based employees(Gartner). "However, managers believe that people who work in the office perform better and are more likely to be promoted than people who work from home."(Harvard Business Review)
In addition to the potential risk to diversity and inclusion (minorities and women are more likely to work remotely), this poses serious threats to organizations that may reward or blame employees for non-objective reasons, making them more likely to leave or disengage from their jobs.
This perception bias is reinforced by managers who publicly declare that teleworkers perform less well(WeWork, Spotify, etc.). There may indeed be a correlation between company performance and the number of teleworkers, but it is difficult to establish causality. For this, we would either need to have access to these companies' individual performance evaluations (if they are objective), or have multiple data points from many companies in various sectors to compare different work policies without causal bias.
Moving from a situation where employees stay for 3 to 5 years, to one where they look elsewhere after a year and a half, completely changes the way companies need to manage know-how.
On the one hand, organizations can no longer afford to spend days in training to integrate new recruits, or to wait 6 months until they have figured out for themselves how to navigate the organization and processes in place.
On the other hand, new recruits are much more demanding in terms of skills and training than previous generations(Forbes).
Not being able to provide sound, relevant training programs makes it more likely that new recruits will leave in the coming months, and their expectations go beyond hour-long meetings or outdated PowerPoint booklets that they stop reading after the 2nd page and are asked to update 1 week after their arrival.
Not being able to secure the know-how accumulated over the last 6 months quickly and efficiently before employees leave can jeopardize the business, given the scale and unpredictability of resignations.
Organizations need to move from a system where few people hold the power to share knowledge to one where every individual easily disseminates knowledge to deliver the most relevant and usable content to the person who needs it, as quickly as possible.
By way of comparison, companies should move from a vision where training materials are controlled by small groups of people and distributed via a single channel, as was the case with television, to a system where anyone can share content and tutorials with clear editorial guidelines and minimal moderation, as Youtube enables. "70% of Generation Y users have watched Youtube to learn how to do something new"(Think with Google).
"With Komin, we have documented our operating procedures 10x faster than with paper"
- J. Cerruti (Methods & Industrialization Manager)
