Rapid changes to the workplace, increasing customer demands and growing workloads are finding 8 in 10 employees facing burnout, leaving only about one-third engaged at work. Low rates of satisfaction, increasing reliance on digital interventions and a highly competitive job market have found many employees to be in a spot Gallup refers to as The Great Detachment.
This leaves many employees feeling unsure about their role in a company. Without the ability to create a connection, it’s difficult for employees to find their purpose within an organization. This also contributes to where and how they fit within a company’s mission and purpose. Not surprisingly, workplace interactions can influence and intensify these emotions. Feeling overwhelmed and overtasked, it can be hard to how to correct course before it’s too late.
Boosting Productivity
Employers looking to move the needle from detachment to productivity might consider enlisting some of the tips from the book The Employee Advantage: How Putting Workers First Helps Businesses Thrive by Stephan Meier, a professor of business strategy at Columbia Business School.
The premise of the book: shifting how employers view and how they treat their employees. Meier emphasizes that putting employees first and treating them nicely should be analogous to how a company treats its customers. For example, a customer-centric approach has long been a competitive advantage. Meier views the act of looking at employees as customers as a smart way to humanize work and in turn maximize employee engagement and motivation.
Steps to Humanizing Work
- Purpose
- Autonomy
- Competence
- Relatedness
Employee Experience
Boosting the employee experience does not happen overnight. It is an incremental approach to learning what customers value and how to maximize those feelings to create optimal values for the customer and in turn the organization. Similar steps can be taken with the employee experience to create more motivated, productive employees. Improving the employee experience can also be a smart way to defend an organization against quiet quitting.
This process will likely be unique to each company and its employees but here are some guidelines worth considering.
- Money isn’t everything. In fact, more employees value flexibility and balance. Purely financial incentives might work in the short term but can create distrust and apathy in the long-term.
- Find and keep good employees. Hiring is incredibly expensive so it makes sense to find the right employee the first time and learn how you can keep them.
- Provide a path for advancement. Upward mobility helps keep employees and employees who feel respected and appreciated are more likely to stay.
- Listen to employees. Your employees are boots on the ground. Because they are in the thick of things every day, there’s a good chance they’ll know when an issue arises and how to fix it. Trust and listen.
- Create alignment to provide purpose, bringing things full circle. When employer and employee goals are both coordinated, employees feel purposeful, engaged, and valued, leading to better performance and a more cohesive workplace.
