Employees do what they’re told because the boss said so – not because they personally respect their manager. Typically, employees will treat their manager in a respectful manner because of his or her position of authority. 

That is, as manager, you can either give employees rewards and promotions or deny them. Respect based on rewards is extrinsic thus; it’s short-lived and does little to compel employees to work to their full potential. To move beyond a transactional or authority-based respect and gain maximum discretionary effort, you need to earn referent power. This is largely achieved when employees sense that you respect them.  

I asked Ron, a revered senior manager at Boeing, what strategy he found most effective in terms of employee respect. “The best way to earn respect is to pay respect,” he said. “And that requires the occasion for trust, openness and honesty to emerge. The best way I’ve found to do this is through a feedback technique called Start, Stop and Continue” (SSC). 

This change management model is also known as Stop, Keep and Start; it is used to improve services or teams. We’ll stick to the Start, Stop and Continue (SSC) acronym.   

How does SSC work? 

“Each quarter I ask my reports to brainstorm about what they would like me to start, stop or continue doing,” Ron explained. “Then I leave the room. The team deliberates and selects one person to write a summary for me. After I consider the report, I acknowledge and validate their feedback by setting change goals for myself. At our next meeting, they evaluate my progress. I also encourage them to call me out anytime I’m falling into old habits. Some do, and while we laugh about it ― I learn.” 

Some managers take offence to feedback. Does criticism bother you?

“It’s common for people to be on the defence and make excuses but it’s impossible to grow if we place blame elsewhere. We have to admit to and own the problem.” 

“To do this, you have to invite feedback, appreciate diverse perspectives, and view the SSC process as a continuous improvement plan. The focus here is on our own performance as managers, rather than employee or team performance,” he said.

“The most challenging aspects are to listen objectively, discover your blind spots and think about how you present yourself. You have to see the problem before you can attempt to fix it. The SSC was built to do this. Criticism is asked for and expected in this forum; you view it as instructional rather than judgmental.”

Why does the SSC method work well?

“The process is effective because it functions as a self-checks-and-balances, providing anonymity for my employees and accountability for myself. People are more honest and comfortable speaking up when they know their opinions count and their feedback is anonymous.” 

“The SSC model succeeds because it’s ongoing and holds us accountable for developmental goals. It’s significantly more effective than the annual 360-degree feedback program where soft skills often get lost in the shuffle.” 

“It gives me the framework and insight to know what my employees expect from me and gives them the opportunity to be managed in the way they want. Over time, SSC breaks down barriers and fosters trust on a more personal level. That’s been a game-changer because they bring their concerns directly to me instead of getting frustrated and shutting down, which ultimately increases respect, communication and performance.” 

Does giving praise and recognition show respect?

“There are basic norms symbolic of respect including kindness and empathy,” Ron continued.  

Recognition and praise helps more in the areas of building esteem and incentivizing employees to keep up the good work. And although most people like to be praised and recognized, they don’t necessarily feel respected. Respect is demonstrated when others detect sincerity and believe that we care about their thoughts. Listening to and acting on their feedback shows that we are attentive and concerned, and find important who they are and what they think.”   

Respect is not only for the rich and famous

The very act of asking what you can start, stop or continue imparts respect, independent of individual merit or expertise. This levels the playing field where employees don’t feel they have to be Bill Gates to be heard or get respect. Implementing this type of feedback loop demonstrates that you value your employees’ opinions, trust their judgment, and care about their well-being. 

Employee praise and monetary rewards are out of mind when out of sight, whereas the SSC strategy yields referent power and thus, sustainable respect. Implementing and reflecting on SSC feedback can earn the type of respect that pays off in increased employee effort and performance. Employees will want to work for you – and not just because you’re the boss.

Christine Alexy is a professional writer focused on motivational psychology and leadership development. After 15 years of  IT network engineering, Christine re-invented her career when she graduated with honours from Penn State University with a BS in Business Leadership and IT/Security and Risk Analysis.

Dovetailing her professional leadership experience, she is a ghostwriter and researcher for top business leaders and a popular blogger. Christine has supplied extensive research and writing for Steve Van Valin, CEO of Culturology, helping him author a manuscript on purpose and meaning at work. She also ghostwrites high-level content for the HR industry related to ethics and organisational culture. A staunch proponent for meaningful and innovative leadership for today’s multi-generational workforce, Christine regularly shares her insights through her Thought Leadership Thursday blog posts on LinkedIn, @Serve2LeadLyceum on Twitter, and Leadership Lyceum on 

The post What do employees want from managers?  appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

Your weapons to win the war for talent

Organisations need to adopt a holistic approach to employee engagement, just as they do with customer engagement. Employees are customers. And they want to be catered to.

How do you cater?

You first become people-centric. You get a pulse on what today’s employees expect opposed to what they desire and crave. Reminder ― millennials are now 35% of the workforce and will be 75% by 2025.

Best advice: plan tomorrow, today.

Why do we care?

We care because only 34% of the workforce is engaged, while only 13% are highly-engaged. Disengagement stats aside, the bottom line ― employees’ motives have changed. Thus, organisations who want to be top competitors must change too.

Leftovers: stale engagement today’s employees already expect

Doughnut and dress-down Fridays are like leftovers; they’ve already been chewed on and they won’t attract and retain top talent today.

Check out the list of run-of-the-mill engagement leftovers:

• competitive compensation and benefits, and workplace apps for benefit enrolment
• work/life integration, flexible work hours and work-from-home benefits
• proactive, participative, transparent, and democratic leadership
• autonomy in how work is performed
• input and involvement in decision making
• clear expectations and goals, delivering feedback about progress and improvement
• acknowledgement, recognition, gratitude and encouragement
• employee-hosted lunch and learns
• healthy onsite food and access to fitness equipment
• standards for digital communication with managers (call, text, or email).

The essential but bland list continues. But the millennial entrepreneur mindset hungers for more. They desire a forward-thinking organisation with a buffet of employee experiences (EX). And if you don’t serve such a menu these connoisseurs will leave for an organisation that will fill their hunger pangs.

I won’t batter you with vanilla details about EX. Just check out this list of hors d’oeuvres that will whet their appetites:  

Appetisers: attractive engagement today’s employees desire:

• personalised and meaningful work
• participants of corporate social responsibility, an active role in a cause and a purpose
• frequent, proactive, ongoing snap-feedback and conversations
• strengths based personal and professional growth and development opportunities
• employee journey mapping designed around employees’ drivers and desires from hire to retire
• mapping how the work in the weeds impacts the final product or service
• open collaboration and brainstorming in unique social spaces
• mentoring; cross-training; business exposure and projects with high visibility
• in-the-moment-managers who are empathic, caring, trusting and accept smartphone use at work (without snarky looks).

Dessert: salivating engagement today’s employees crave:

• To fully engage millennials, organisations need to disrupt inertia. They need to add sugar and spice to employee value propositions. And offer dessert to complete the full-course meal, such as epic onboarding, orientations and original ongoing experiences to keep them coming back for more.  

What does that dessert taste like?

Interactive encounters, connectedness and defining moments ― the kind that creates over-the-top stories, the kind that are social media worthy and inspires stars, likes and shares.

A kind called Immersive EX, a savoury flavour that will revolutionise your culture with a zest that will get people to talk, tweet and Snapchat about your brand.

Escape rooms (e-rooms) are more than just fun recreational adventure games for friends and family. They are now immersive experiences for professionals that:

• attract top talent
• elicit teambuilding
• teach new skills
• market new products.  

E-rooms allow employees to bond as they work together to solve problems. Organisations such as Boeing, Nestle-Purina, and Proctor & Gamble have all taken advantage of e-rooms to provide EX and increase employee engagement. In fact, “experiential organisations had more than four times the average profit and more than two times the average revenue.”

Google France has created its own escape game called Première Pièce. Using Google tools, products and apps, participants must solve a series of puzzles together in order to escape.

What sets escape rooms apart from typical training or alternative events where people work together to solve problems is that each individual has the chance to feel like a hero when they find a clue.  

Escape Hunt is a leading global provider of escape room experiences, including six locations in Australia (Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, etc.). They are redefining escape rooms, shifting from a family and friends fun fad to a teamwork and training tool.

Escape Hunt offers customised corporate friendly game themes. However, unlike the average escape room, they provide a teamwork debriefing after the challenge is complete, where participants explore their behaviour and what they learned about their leadership skills. According to an interview with Rebecca Assice, director and master franchisor at Escape Hunt, “Teamwork is critical here so participants will have to display many competencies that are necessary for a productive workplace environment including communication, leadership, stress management, problem solving and lateral thinking.”

Teams not only take these key learnings back to the workplace to share with their colleagues, they also build trust and forge new relationships with peers that they may have never interacted with in the past. One Trip Advisor leader said, “the entire group got engaged and participated 100%. It got everyone working together from young to old.”  

Escape rooms provide employees with the opportunity to learn about their strengths. Another Trip Advisor leader mentioned that it spurred “thought-provoking discussion” about how people interacted with one another.

Top businesses such as Google Sydney, Ernst & Young, Deloitte, and Commonwealth Bank of Australia have given positive feedback about their employee experience with Escape Hunt. A few of their sentiments included that it was a “fantastic experience” from an organisational aspect, “encouraged every member to contribute and work together,” is “perfect for team building, “and it’s a “super fun activity for a team building activity that isn’t cheesy.”

Assice adds that many of their corporate clients agree, “It is the best team building experience they have ever done. Part of the reason for this is it’s team building without it feeling like team building. So teams are having loads of fun while they are working together. It’s also very unique so a change from the same old tired experiences people have done for years.”

Anheuser-Busch  brought the escape room experience in-house. They reinvented their hiring process from “beer sampling to career sampling.” Their onboarding e-room is attracting an overwhelming number of quality prospective candidates. Modelled after real employees and real events, candidates get first-hand experience of what it’s like to work at Anheuser prior to applying. Candidates enter a simulated Anheuser-Busch office and are given the challenge to get a new brewery up and running within 15 minutes.

This not only allows Anheuser to bring aboard candidates that desire to be there but also prunes those who don’t fit the Anheuser culture – reducing costly turnover.

The bottom line: organisations can bring aboard the right talent, improve skills, cooperation, engagement, and productivity through teambuilding, and retain talent by making employee experience a priority.

Christine Alexy is a professional writer focused on motivational psychology and leadership development. After 15 years of  IT network engineering, Christine re-invented her career when she graduated with honours from Penn State University with a BS in Business Leadership and IT/Security and Risk Analysis.

Dovetailing her professional leadership experience, she is a ghostwriter and researcher for top business leaders and a popular blogger. Christine has supplied extensive research and writing for Steve Van Valin, CEO of Culturology, helping him author a manuscript on purpose and meaning at work. She also ghostwrites high-level content for the HR industry related to ethics and organisational culture. A staunch proponent for meaningful and innovative leadership for today’s multi-generational workforce, Christine regularly shares her insights through her Thought Leadership Thursday blog posts on LinkedIn, @Serve2LeadLyceum on Twitter, and Leadership Lyceum on Google+.

The post Immersive employee experience: the new battlefield appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

Development is both the tool and the fix for what Millennials want.

Train people well enough so they can leave.

Treat them well enough so they don’t want to.

 

― Richard Branson

Millennials have gotten a bad rap.

They have been described as narcissistic, unengaged job hoppers and worse.

If the generations who raised these Gen Ys aren’t willing to take some responsibility for the alleged trophy-kid syndrome, then they can’t take credit for producing the “generation me” that are confident, adaptable, resourceful, educated, tech-savvy multitaskers that think – and do – outside of the box.

Do Millennials Job Hop?

They do – but no more than Gen Xer’s. Why do some hop? Millennials are looking for quick career mobility, but the gig economy of agile talent and today’s flat organisations constrain their opportunities for growth and advancement. This is largely why nearly 70 per cent of Millennials are not engaged and why we have an entrepreneurism epidemic.

Given that Millennials will comprise 75 per cent of the workforce in a few years, instead of maligning these high-achievers, we should learn how to incentivise them and create the opportunities they seek.

What Do Millennials Want?

Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup, said Millennials:

• don’t just work for a pay cheque – they want purposeful and meaningful work
• don’t just pursue job satisfaction – they pursue development
• don’t want bosses – they want coaches
• don’t want annual reviews – they want ongoing communication and feedback
• don’t want to fix their weaknesses – they want to develop their strengths.

Why Millennials want and need development

Tell me and I forget; teach me and I may remember; involve me and I learn.

 

― Benjamin Franklin

Many Millennials missed out on essential life skills with both parents working. Tired from work and frequently riddled with guilt, parents compensated for their daily absence by praising, serving and waiting on their children rather than showing them how to cook, organise, balance finances, or change tires.

The shift to a service-based economy (for those who can afford it) hasn’t helped. Lawns are mowed, oil is changed, toilets are unclogged with the click of Craigslist or Airtasker.

Living in the digital-lane, Millennials spend less time interacting with their parents because their minds are in the “cloud” and their faces are tethered to iPhones – which their parents bought and paid for.

On another front, school curriculum transformed from practical hands-on survival of Design & Technology and Home Economics to a more abstract mental skill development. In addition to being shielded from life skills, Millennials live at home longer because of steep housing costs, HECs debt, and scarcity of living-wage jobs.

The outcome? A disadvantaged generation that is disparaged because they have been deprived of adulting.

Holly Swyers, a professor of anthropology and Racheal Weinstein, psychotherapist, identified and addresses these gaps and disadvantages by teaching adulting. “Adulting School” helps Millennials “navigate from dependence to independence,” developing skills in business, finance, and professional networking, through mentor assisted live webinars and private social media groups.

Whatever the reasons for Millennials’ deep-seated growth needs, relentless pursuit of knowledge and hard-core drive for personal and professional development, it’s a positive. Organisations can benefit by creating learning environments that satisfy Millennial wants and fill the “skills” gap among this surging workforce.

Creating agile learning environments

Coaching and mentoring are optimal methods for development, ongoing communication, designing meaningful work, and building on strengths and life skills. Mentoring further helps Millennials mature into “adulting” and offers insights about your organisation, mission, and operations, allowing them to see how their role contributes to the bigger picture. All of which makes work more meaningful.

Unlike the traditional “boss” focused on tactical job descriptions, mentors learn about their mentee’s strengths and ambitions, and then set goals to guide them on the behaviours, skills, and connections needed to reach their objectives, and increase their business acumen and strategic relationships.

Let’s not forget, this digital cohort’s prowess and proclivity for social media and the Internet of Things. E-learning, LMS, and learning mobile apps complement coaching and mentoring.

Millennials not only rely on platforms such as these but e-learning LMS keeps them engaged because it supplements ongoing communication through immersive learning communities and message boards. E-learning delivers the bitesize training that Millennials can digest over time so they can reflect on and then practice newly acquired learnings and knowledge until they have honed the skills.

LMS tools also provide quantifiable results that reveal progress for both the employee and organisation. The combination of e-learning LMS, mentoring, and coaching confers constant feedback to employees, and transfers what they have learned into something that matters ― practical skills aligned with their goals to contribute, impact and advance.

Strengths development

Another priority that organisations face is Millennials’ pivotal focus on developing their strengths.

Gallup recommends companies transition to a “strengths-based culture”; otherwise, “they won’t attract and keep their stars.” In this regard, a useful tool like CliftonStrengths online assessment, (a.k.a. StrengthsFinder 2.0) can be tapped. In fact, 85% of Fortune 500 companies use it to help develop their workforce.

Interpreting strengths-assessment results can be illuminating, but the process itself may be even more beneficial. After employees complete the assessments, managers should have them share their results at the next team meeting. The process itself is engaging because they learn about each other, realise common strengths and build trust. Armed with these insights, managers can better coach to employee strengths and design individual and team projects.

Whenever there are training costs there is usually resistance. When proposing tools such as LMS and CliftonStrengths to finance, remember what the CFO asked, “What happens if we invest in developing our people and they leave us?” Then remember what the CEO said, “What happens if we don’t and they stay?”

A development program that doesn’t break the budget or resources

With scarce resources and tight budgets, many organisations are challenged to offer purpose, meaning and continuous development to employees. Nevertheless, it can be accomplished through the pairing of individuals. Peer-to-peer pairing began nearly two decades ago when Alan Cooper, the father of Visual Basic, founded pair design. But pairing is no longer just a programmer’s panacea. It has evolved into paired work partners, also called paired research, where pairs meet for a few hours weekly, dividing time to work together on projects in their field of expertise.

Leading corporations got the memo. They know that continuous growth and development is a goal in itself, but it’s also part of a larger goal to perform work that matters. While they interlace several methods, including Corporate Social Responsibility and philanthropy, to fulfill altruistic values, paired work and job rotation are used to satisfy Millennials’ pursuit of meaning and sense of progress through development and career mobility.

Pairing as a mutual mentorship

Job rotation has been around for decades but it can be disruptive because it usually requires long-term assignments in different locations. Pairing resembles facets of job rotation, but it functions as a mutual mentorship where peers learn from one another. And it is less costly because pairing is typically based on short-term assignments internal to the location or within local departments.

Although peer-to-peer pairing rotations typically occur more frequently, it can still offer benefits similar to job rotation, including exposure to various roles, business segments, functional areas and experts.

Pairing exposes employees to hands-on, experiential challenges that expand perspectives, knowledge, networks, and skills. Pairing mentorships can be utilised as a horizontal career lattice opening up opportunities to advance to a new level.

Multinationals such as Boeing, Siemens, Vanguard, Amazon, and Deloitte have implemented different flavors of job rotation and mentoring programs. These enterprises make personal and professional development part of their core strategy because they know that ongoing development not only attracts top talent but keeps them engaged, and thus they stay longer.

Why pairing is a win/win for employees and companies

Working pairs increase:

• intrinsic motivation, meaningful relationships and productivity
• knowledge and skills that are transferrable across the organisation
• leadership opportunities and accelerated advancement
• learning of clients and customers, and transfer of domain knowledge.

Working pairs decrease:

• costly turnover and absenteeism
• poor decision-making, mistakes & unethical shortcuts
• silos of knowledge and information within the organisation
• personal internet usage and social media distractions.

Pairs also reduce unhealthy competitive cultures as it involves shared ownership of the goal. In addition, it brings a sense of accountability because people in pairs typically don’t want to let their partner down.

Coaching, e-learning LMS, and the interaction and interdependency that occurs between pairs can confer the relationships and dynamics that fulfill the values Millennials desire and create sustainable value for the organisation such as employee attraction, engagement, loyalty and commitment.

How does your company invest in growth and development? Let us know in the comments.

Christine Alexy is a professional writer focused on motivational psychology and leadership development. After 15 years of  IT network engineering, Christine re-invented her career when she graduated with honours from Penn State University with a BS in Business Leadership and IT/Security and Risk Analysis.

Dovetailing her professional leadership experience, she is a ghostwriter and researcher for top business leaders and a popular blogger. Christine has supplied extensive research and writing for Steve Van Valin, CEO of Culturology, helping him author a manuscript on purpose and meaning at work. She also ghostwrites high-level content for the HR industry related to ethics and organisational culture. A staunch proponent for meaningful and innovative leadership for today’s multi-generational workforce, Christine regularly shares her insights through her Thought Leadership Thursday blog posts on LinkedIn, @Serve2LeadLyceum on Twitter, and Leadership Lyceum on Google+.

The post Professional development: the gravitational pull that attracts, engages & retains Millennials appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

Diversity and Inclusion is not only a global business challenge but also more vital today than ever.

Why?

Because millennials will make up 75% of the workforce by 2023 and are “the most demographically diverse generation in the workforce.

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) are used synonymously, yet they are two halves that must meet to make a whole.

SHRM defines diversity as “the collective mixture of differences and similarities that includes … individual and organisational characteristics, values, beliefs, experiences, backgrounds, preferences, and behaviours.” And it defines inclusion as “the achievement of a work environment in which all individuals are treated fairly and respectfully, have equal access to opportunities and resources, and can contribute fully to the organisation’s success.”

Put them together and what do you get?

Reiterations by many organisations of similar noble sentiments embedded as part of their mission statements. However, their messages haven’t always matched their movements.

Diversity and inclusion means hiring equivalent numbers of diverse professionals at the executive level and on the front lines, and ensuring they feel respected and belong.

Belonging is a basic need of every human. When people have a deep sense of belonging, they feel accepted and have a lower intent to leave because they become embedded in their social environment.

Why do most organisations fail to achieve D&I?

Plain and simple: Homogenous decision-makers determine both the problems and solutions.

D&I emerges organically, it doesn’t begin or end at the leadership center, nor by solely changing policies. Attracting and retaining the best talent occurs when organisations stop sounding the part and start playing the part.

Fortunately, some Fortune 500 companies have shifted from “preaching to operationalising” to taking action. This year Johnson & Johnson (J&J) ranked number 1 in WilsonHCG’s top 100 Employment Brands Report and won the Employer of Choice for Gender Equality citation in Australia. WilsonHCG also ranked ADP in the top 10.

The WilsonHCG Top 10 earned a combined 157 per cent more in revenue than the bottom 10.

More importantly, J&J and ADP’s top rankings and esteemed reputations are positive byproducts of how they treat people, not a horse and pony show to win awards.

J&J and ADP didn’t become global leaders of D&I by accident and they never rest on their laurels.

D&I is their culture and it’s tied to the core of their business. They understand that without diverse perspectives they cannot promote innovative solutions and employee engagement. And they realise that a diverse workforce is the only gateway to inclusion, and thus ensure their leaders reflect all their people.

In their words, “Diversity is built in to everything we do”… “Diversity and Inclusion is how we work every day.”

Advantages

According to Gallup, Workplaces that are diverse and inclusive have many competitive advantages, including:

• increased job satisfaction, retention and organisational commitment
• increased trust and well-being
• increased creativity and innovation
• lower levels of conflict, intention to quit, stress, job withdrawal and organisational turnover.

D&I is not only the right thing to do, “having diverse teams improves financial outcomes.” Gallup found that the combination of employee engagement and diversity resulted in 46% and 58% higher financial performance, for business units in two independent companies.

How does ADP drive commitment to D&I?

C-suite and senior executives:

• make D&I your core strategy, lead by example and be accountable
• ensure your fellow leaders are representative of your employees and clients
• take an active role in D&I and participate in D&I initiatives
• get directly involved in the hiring process at all levels, even the junior-level positions
• be dedicated to diversity recruitment efforts, using tools like Visual Search to prevent unconscious bias, allowing you and your recruiters to focus on skills rather than employee demographics.

How does J&J drive commitment to D&I?

They invest in and support initiatives such as:

• formal mentorship programs for cross-gender, cross-functional, cross-segment, cross-generational and cross-regional employees
• mentorship programs that pair diverse students with industry leaders
• STEM²D (science, technology, engineering, maths, manufacturing, and design) mentorships for women.

Johnson & Johnson and ADP are blazing the trail with their D&I leadership development and mentoring programs. In fact, ADP uses Business Resource Groups (BRG) to engage and retain under-represented employees. Because ADP has a more proportional number of diverse leaders than most enterprises, they have gained the deep insights necessary to provide a structure and environment that gives voice to values and value to voices.

CFO Jan Siegmund founded and serves as executive sponsor to ADP Pride, its LGBTQ BRG that focuses on increasing inclusion and diversity. Other BRGs support employees to belong and believe their work is meaningful.

And ADP executives are always open and enthusiastic to sponsor new BRGs.

All organisations can become “whole” by practicing SHRM’s definition of D&I. They can form D&I executive committees that uncover the real problems, as well as provide mentorship programs and sponsor employee-led groups similar to J&J and ADP’s BRG’s.

Diversity and inclusion are the sustainable organic answers to treating employees fairly, increasing worker performance and company revenue, and meeting the global business challenges a company faces today. D&I is the disrupt that will attract, engage and retain a multicultural, complementary and cutting-edge talent pool.

What diversity and inclusiveness initiative does your organisation get involved in? Let us know in the comments.

Christine Alexy is a professional writer focused on motivational psychology and leadership development. After 15 years of  IT network engineering, Christine re-invented her career when she graduated with honours from Penn State University with a BS in Business Leadership and IT/Security and Risk Analysis.

Dovetailing her professional leadership experience, she is a ghostwriter and researcher for top business leaders and a popular blogger. Christine has supplied extensive research and writing for Steve Van Valin, CEO of Culturology, helping him author a manuscript on purpose and meaning at work. She also ghostwrites high-level content for the HR industry related to ethics and organisational culture. A staunch proponent for meaningful and innovative leadership for today’s multi-generational workforce, Christine regularly shares her insights through her Thought Leadership Thursday blog posts on LinkedIn, @Serve2LeadLyceum on Twitter, and Leadership Lyceum on Google+.

The post Diversity and inclusion: the organic answer for talent acquisition and retention appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

Successful organisations are winning the war on talent by understanding the ingredients the millennial workforce craves, and they know how to serve it.

So, what are the ingredients?

• a collaborative, participative, and innovative culture
• employee connectedness and meaningful work
• continuous coaching and mentoring
• personal and professional development, and measurable progress
• proactive feedback, recognition, and rewards.
  

How can you serve this dish successfully?
You serve it with gamification “garnish”. Gamification streamlines engagement because it delivers monumental in-the-moment employee experiences that combine all of the above ingredients.

What is gamification?
It’s a mind-tantalising game-like interface integrated with adaptive machine-learning apps that generate intelligent decisions based on input analysis.

In a nutshell, it makes engagement… a game!

This “game”:

• spurs a sense of competition and incentivises collaboration
• motivates participation, engagement, and teamwork
• accelerates learning and personalises development
• increases information recall and retention
• is relevant now and sustainable for the future.

Worxogo, a pioneer in persuasive AI technology, developed a business gamification solution called Mia. Mia is a personal digital coach. Its self-learning AI engine that allows insights into employee behaviours and preferences (intrinsic, extrinsic motivations) and personality traits. Mia’s predictive algorithms align KPIs with behaviour preferences to assess and improve performance through visual game “nudges.”

Many leading organisations including PwC, Larsen & Toubro (leading construction company in Melbourne) and Wipro (global leader in technology consulting with clients throughout Australia) have turned to Mia AI to bolster their engagement strategy. In fact, Worxogo’s clients saw a 70% increase in participation.  

Worxogo Mia products have delivered significant business impact and employee engagement for retail sales, manufacturing, and financial services organisations.

Mia comes in three flavours. We’ll focus on two: gIM and Xogolign.

Give your people a voice
gIM was developed to build and sustain a participative, innovative workplace culture. Its competitive, point-based “accomplishment” feature and progress tracker increases participation and collaboration, while its “idea submissions” feature delivers sustainable impact and change programs.

How?

It gives users a voice through idea input and generation. Employees can track how many ideas they’ve submitted and how many people liked, followed, commented on, or integrated their ideas. This boosts morale, motivation and movement!

Today’s employees want to be important contributors to conversations and outcomes. gIM ensures those ideas and feedback are heard and given credit. One millennial at Google said, “Ideas come from conversations… ideas matter…” She feels that her “ideas matter” because she has been heard. A Google executive at her Switzerland branch said, “People give us a lot of feedback and we take that feedback very seriously and make significant changes based on that feedback.” While no one can match Google’s engaged culture, every organisation can work toward it using gamification.

Mia also brings a sense of meaning to work because it fosters employee connectedness and can tie into the organisation’s purpose and mission.

It offers the growth and development that employees seek. Employees are swiftly alerted and thus privy to different work opportunities and volunteer initiatives, allowing employers to offer millennials the à la carte choices they crave.

Employees can personalise their volunteer efforts, such as volunteering to be a project lead or participating in community give-back that match their goals and values. This not only makes their work meaningful but also accelerates their career by gaining exposure to new roles within the organisation.   

Make your learning and development programs memorable
Organisations invest millions each year in training and development. But it’s not sticking.

Why not?

Because people are either bored or distracted at training seminars. If leaders were retaining and putting into practice what they’ve been taught, we’d see more than 34% of the workforce engaged.

If we want the other 66% engaged we have to find ways to make it stick.

Gamification has been proven to increase learning completion, recall and retention.   
Worxogo Xogolign Mia is the glue. It is everything gIM is and more. It can identify skill gaps, and flag top performers and poor performers. Sales teams in the financial sector doubled their productivity and First-Time-Right (FTR) performance, improving sales by 25%. Some manufacturing suppliers saw a three-time increase in On-Time-in-Full (OTIF) performance.

Simply put: gamification elicits the democratisation of knowledge and ideas. And it offers real-time interactive updates and participative feedback, even in a decentralised organisation.

Boomers and Gen Xers will probably never agree that AI can take the place of face-to-face interaction but today’s employees thrive in the virtual space.

Gamification keeps employees focused and incentivises them to learn, participate, collaborate, and quickly engage and respond. Much of that incentive is driven by instant feedback and gratification through rewards and recognition for their work in the form of badges and points for being top contributors.  

Up your game. Use gamification as a garnish in your efforts to engage your people. It’s the immersive experience tool that satiates your employees’ hunger and wins the war for talent.

Christine Alexy is a professional writer focused on motivational psychology and leadership development. After 15 years of  IT network engineering, Christine re-invented her career when she graduated with honours from Penn State University with a BS in Business Leadership and IT/Security and Risk Analysis.

Dovetailing her professional leadership experience, she is a ghostwriter and researcher for top business leaders and a popular blogger. Christine has supplied extensive research and writing for Steve Van Valin, CEO of Culturology, helping him author a manuscript on purpose and meaning at work. She also ghostwrites high-level content for the HR industry related to ethics and organisational culture. A staunch proponent for meaningful and innovative leadership for today’s multi-generational workforce, Christine regularly shares her insights through her Thought Leadership Thursday blog posts on LinkedIn, @Serve2LeadLyceum on Twitter, and Leadership Lyceum on Google+.

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