Introduction
Readers of my blogs are in the known that I, and with me all Effragettes*, have a keen interest in creating a work environment that is good for both people and business.
I like to share a few observations based upon experiences from the past couple of months which have strengthened my conviction that you can’t have the one without the other. This is good news: you don’t have to compromise or make a choice.
The solution is simple: you adopt both lenses every time you take a decision. It is the leitmotif on how I interpret my role as EMEA Head of talent, leadership and organisation development at Dentsu Aegis Network, a top communications and performance marketing business who is innovating the way brands are built, and fundamental to all business activities within Effra consult, which I founded over 3 years ago.
The challenge or the opportunity as you like, is to make employee centricity a cultural pillar within each work environment. The benefit is abundantly clear: there is plenty of research out there quoted in HBR, by Mc Kinsey in their newsletters as well as conducted by the Bersin institute, to name a few sources, showing the positive correlation between engagement, as a proxy for employee centricity, and business results in terms of productivity, reduced turnover and absenteeism.
Employee centricity is making an in road
The need to put more genuine focus on employees, way beyond some cheap statements such as our people are our most important assets, is now being acknowledged by early adopter type businesses i.e. Prestigia, Google, Zappos, WooHoo, Alsop. These businesses spotted the opportunity and promptly elevated a single focus on employee engagement to a more holistic approach, creating roles such as Chief Happiness Officers who have as sole purpose to ensure that employee centricity is a leading principle within the organisation’s business (culture).
There are a few prominent Chief Happiness Officers, such as Jenn Lim, from Zappos and Chade-Meng Tan from Google. Chade-Meng actually goes by the title ‘Jolly Good Fellow’ and specifically heads up personal development within the company. In Alsop the CHO is known as Emma, surname not required to hit the key messages home. They are the need to go back to your essence as a business, promote simplicity (in processes, systems, platforms, habits and decisions) and for advocating psychological safety (a key factor in creating top team effectiveness and key finding from Google Aristotle project, 2016 ), authenticity and being personable. These are just some examples on how a business can make their cultural pillar of employee centricity concrete and operationalise this through business processes, decisions and interactions experienced by all.
We also spot a trend in revisiting the employee value proposition and ensuring that this is brought to live in all people experiences with organisations, not only by people on the payroll or contracting but also by prospective employees. We witnessed more effort to define that employee value proposition through actively involving (representation of) the many constituencies within the organisation’s ecosystem.
We notice and applaud that far more emphasis is put on cultural fit when organisations choose suppliers to ensure they form a mere extension of the workforce. Questions are no longer just geared to diversity and inclusion, GDPR compliance or ethical practices. Whilst this is not entirely new given that people consciously or subconsciously also included likeability in their decision making, we notice more rigour and thought put into objectively measuring the latter and turning this into a decision contributing criterion.
Employee and Client Centricity
Equally, in a society where transparency becomes more and more a key brand requisite and, as a result, reputational risk receives more attention in the boardroom, making the link between client and employee centricity more explicit, is pure common business sense and a further logical derivation to ensure that people and business just go hand in hand. It is well known that trust is the most important factor in client relations and a good predictor for a healthy commercial partnership. If you analyse the trust equation, introduced in 2000 by David Maister in his book, ‘The Trusted Advisor’, it is clear that it basically sends out the same message as what employees tell you on how they want to see their relationship with the business.
I hold a strong belief that the way to achieve people and client centricity to achieve a thriving business environment which delivers on the numbers as well as genuinely caring about its people and clients, is by focussing on culture more than structure, processes and strategy. Culture is nothing else than ensuring that all stakeholders related to the business behave in line with cultural principles and values in every thought they have, decision they make or conversation they are having.
What can HR people do in this perspective?
It struck me that many organisations underestimate the power of year end conversations to reinforce client and employee centricity and (banking on) cultural credits. It is painful to watch how many companies actually go into practices which are undermining their culture and are – consciously or subconsciously – destroying value and creating cultural deficits.
In this perspective, I like to share the piece of research conducted by the Mindgym, (see their website www.mindgym.com) which I have found very effective to grab business people’s attention on their role as a leader in performance development. It shows the six psychological conditions to create a culture of high performance (and engagement). They are:
It doesn’t take a genius to make the connection between leadership effectiveness, creating this environment of opportunity for employees and business results.
We do know that lots of businesses also leave value on the table here as the leadership skills in terms of how to effectively have some essential people conversations are suboptimal. People processes such as performance development and year end conversations are getting more of a reward (read: what will my bonus be like?), than a talent focus ( read: reviewing why is there such a role as mine, how could I contribute to the greater good and develop my skills and career at the same time? ). Another reason why businesses should be more opportunistic about their performance development practice is that it does have a great impact on the overall morale. The skills leaders learn and the priority they realise they need to give to this, has a positive impact on clients.
“Good people management contributes materially to employee engagement as well as to customer-centric mindset and behaviour. What distinguishes very unsatisfied employees from very satisfied employees is not primarily such things such as working conditions or pay but, rather, the way people are managed”. This is what Kim Macgillavry and PA SinYan found in their research “Focusing on the Critical Link Between Employee Engagement and Customer Centricity at DHL Freight”, 2016. Available from https://www.researchgate.net.
Only for the happy few?
And in case you wonder if this can only be achieved in businesses who pursue long term objectives and are not bound by short term objectives, and shareholder pressure, plenty of listed companies are engaged in good practices. Private equity companies, who till recently didn’t have the best of reputations in pursuing the people centric business model, are rapidly changing their practices. Examples here are Nordic capital, Bain capital and Carlyle.
Conclusion and key tips/call to action
*– people inspired by the purpose of Effra consult, a company that often is engaged in organising an “HR detox” , does all things people to boost business performance often turning common sense into common practice
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