Win the War for Talent: prioritise personalised people experiences
Personalising the Customer Experience has been well understood by marketeers for some time.
Personalising the Employee Experience is something Leaders and HR are currently wrapping their Heads around. (Ulrich)
When it comes to Attracting Diversity, Igniting Inclusion and Enabling Equity, personalised employee experiences are key.
By way of demonstration, the Work Experience the “Sandwhich Generation” needs, to deliver outcomes and sustain their personal and professional performance - is likely different to a Millennial’s needs.
But here’s the catch - the labels - aka Unconscious Biases can be unhelpful.
Organisations understandably, like to have consistency and fairness across their teams, which explains why using ‘cookie cutter’ approaches to designing work, has become the norm. However, we know there is a big difference in the outcomes of taking an equal approach for all, versus an approach which achieves equitable outcomes for all.
As highlighted in the graphic above, the view of the game for the shortest person, is no better with the provision of the same support for all, ie. 1 box. Applying a ‘one size fits all’ approach through the creation of ‘Generic’ Work Experiences, may not assist in improving an individual’s specific life outcomes.
With the best of intentions, we’ve historically designed parental leave to be more favourable to primary carers than secondary.
Does it actually matter who provides primary or secondary care? Care from either parent, benefits the child in much the same way.
We’ve inadvertently increased flexibility for those providing care to young children, but not to those providing care to elders or other family members who have higher care needs.
Everyone in our society deserves to have the care they need, at the time they need it, not just young children.
With an ageing population, and a desire for elder family members to remain in their homes for longer, this is becoming a situation with some urgency for many.
When everyone is treated the same (ie. equally), some team members will find their work experience no better, and will have no choice but to search for an alternative employer, who has evolved their work experience to better meet their unique needs.
What might a Personalised People Experience actually look like?
This is an evolving area, however, some notable current examples are:
The choice to select your WorkPlace based on the type of work you need to accomplish that day.
Deep reflective thinking may be better undertaken at home for some, whilst for others it may be away from the kids or house-mates, closeted in a quiet room in the office.
Taking a day of leave which enables you, family and friends to celebrate holidays which reflect your culture and values.
versus mandating the observation of Australia Day for example, for which many increasingly have conscientious objections.
Having an unscheduled down-day, because you’ve worked around the clock to make sure a client deliverable gets over the line (and there is nothing pressing for you to attend to), which means your sleep deprived and cognitively overloaded brain can recharge as needed.
Working from a remote office permanently, to facilitate a tree-change or a sea-change, or to accommodate your partner’s work arrangements, your children’s schooling or ageing parents care arrangements.
Working a 4 day week and benefiting from the now well established productivity, profitability and wellbeing benefits associated with a more sustainable and integrated work-life. (Barnes & Jones)
Choosing flexible Parental and Carer’s leave options - which enable anyone of any gender, to share the care of any member of their family for continuous, spaced or discrete periods of time.
The potential options are literally as diverse as the personal circumstances and needs of the people in your organisation.
Where Do We Start?
When designing your new personalised people experience, there is always the option to trial an approach and revisit it if the environment or a stakeholder’s needs change down the track. That is the very essence of flexible workplaces, they are flexible.
They are also focussed on outcomes, more than they are inputs.
What we typically find, however, is with:
flexibility and ongoing dialogue,
outcomes focussed accountabilities, and
goodwill from all parties,
these arrangements typically become the ‘new normal’. The business and human performance results speak themselves.
You can consciously choose to embrace Personalised People Experiences as a way to:
Win the War for Talent;
Access the most Diverse thinking and high potential talent,
Ignite Inclusion and Equity at scale,
co-create a new, better and profitable normal, which delivers win-win-win outcomes.
If you’d like to understand more about this journey or explore our Flexible WorkPlaces programs, or wish to prepare your leaders to create a consciously collaborative, high performance AND inclusive environment, please reach out for a Discovery Discussion, and we’ll help you build your strategy or optimised approach.