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Perspectives
Elevating the workplace experience
The importance of employee engagement and meaningful work
Improving the employee experience is critical to attracting and retaining talent in today's tight labor market. Deloitte helps organizations approach this challenge through four experiential lenses: personal, organizational, physical, and digital. This article focuses on the first of these lenses—the personal—and the importance of employee engagement.
The personal lens: Delivering a meaningful work experience
Organizations have long recognized that focusing on the customer experience is vital to the success of the company. While the emphasis on improving the employee experience has gained traction in recent years, it still lags behind. With the US unemployment rate dropping to 3.6 percent in May 2019, its lowest since December 1969,1 attracting and retaining talent is becoming increasingly difficult—and more important—in a tight labor market. Unsatisfied top performers can cause major disruption and challenges within organizations.
In today’s competitive talent landscape, organizations need to execute a top-grade workplace experience. Deloitte’s approach to workplace experience helps clients recognize that it should be an organization-wide priority that can be cohesively and holistically designed by looking through four experiential lenses: personal, organizational, physical, and digital. In this paper, we’ll discuss the first cornerstone of improving employee experience, “personal experience.”
Deloitte defines the personal workplace experience as the human connections and mechanisms that create a high level of purpose and meaning between workers and the organization. At the core of any human experience is the desire to belong and feel connected with others and to contribute to something of significance and value.
While this may sound like a tall, existential order, there are tangible ways organizations can design a powerful personal experience. They essentially boil down to two primary components:
- Personal connections
- Purpose and meaning
Personal connections
Collaboration tools and technologies have no doubt made it easier for people to connect with our colleagues across different geographies and time zones. The increase in remote work offers advantages in enabling individuals to balance their work and personal lives. But there may be unintended consequences as well.
In his book, Back to Human, Dan Schawbel explains that:
Despite the illusion of 24/7 connection, in reality, most workers feel isolated from their colleagues, their organization, and their leaders.2
In support of this notion, the Loneliness Index found that more than half of Americans surveyed lack meaningful interactions throughout the day.3 This has a real and substantial impact in the workplace.
According to Darcy Gruttardo, director of the Center for Workplace Mental Health, there is a direct relationship “between loneliness and productivity and absenteeism.”4 Furthermore, isolation in organizations can hinder productivity and suppress creativity.5
The power of meaningful work connections can often get overshadowed by new technologies and an emphasis on productivity and efficiency. Given that employees spend the majority of their adult lives in the workplace, it behooves organizations to understand the true nature (and costs) of how they interact and connect with one another.
How, then, in a society dependent on technology, can companies create a workforce experience that nurtures an enduring relationship with the organization and is social in nature? How can organizations create a personal experience that meets people’s needs at a human level?
Here’s how two organizations are meeting this challenge:
- At a leading data company, leaders elevate human connections through the organization’s employee wellness program. Throughout the organization’s more than 100 locations, a variety of social gatherings—ranging from volunteer projects to painting parties—are held to enable the workforce to bring their whole selves to work and cultivate connections within and across the organization.6
- A large, global insurance company takes a multipronged approach to build bonds within its workforce. This includes implementing an organization-wide initiative to stimulate relationship-building among team members, encouraging cross-functional collaboration, creating structured mentorship and coaching opportunities, and launching employee resource groups to provide employees with continued support.7
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to improving the employee experience. Building a connected culture necessitates a tailored approach. An organization needs to tap into how best to foster lasting connections among its workforce that align with its unique culture and values. To that point, all organizations should seek employee feedback to empower them to shape their own workplace experience.
The workforce experience is bottom-up, where the workforce, not the organization, is the focus.8 To bring workers to the center, they should be included in the conversation.
Additionally, organizations need to consider how tools and technologies encourage (or discourage) workforce connectedness. How can they be leveraged to contribute positively to efficiency and productivity without negatively influencing the day-to-day human touch of the personal workplace experience?
Purpose and meaning
Improving the employee experience is also defined by the meaning people derive from our work and feeling connected to the larger purpose of the organization.
- In Daniel Pink’s New York Times bestseller, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, he identifies that desire for purpose—the ambition to contribute to something of importance and meaning—is one of the three key elements that drive human behavior (along with autonomy and mastery).9
- Similarly, a LinkedIn study revealed that 49 percent of employees surveyed would give up part of their compensation to stay in their position with an added sense of purpose.10
- In case you’re not convinced just yet, in a survey conducted by Globoforce’s Workhuman Research Institute, 32 percent of survey-takers responded “My job – I find the work meaningful” when asked why they stay at their company.11
There is no shortage of statistics highlighting the importance of purpose and meaning in the workplace. But what does it actually look like when employees find their work meaningful?
Wharton Management professor Adam Grant identified that employees in a university fundraising call center saw, on average, the amount of time spent on the phone double, and weekly donations increase from $411 to $2,083, after simply having a five-minute interaction with the scholarship beneficiaries. The mere reminder of the outcome of their work kept their larger purpose top of mind. Consequently, it had a direct influence on their performance.12
A large technology firm adopted a similar strategy. It identified that, after its software developers met with end users in person, they were able to relate to them better and were more motivated to create an interface with the end user in mind.13
Amy Wrzesniewski, a professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management who focuses on how people find meaning in their work, demonstrated that nurses who shifted their roles from taskmaster to “patient advocate” were more satisfied and more effective in their jobs.14 Their job was no longer defined by a list of responsibilities. Rather, it was directly linked to the purpose of the organization, which is providing patient care.
Finding opportunities to connect the workforce to the customer can be immensely powerful. Enabling the workforce to empathize with their customers can establish a meaningful connection between them, their work, and the purpose of the organization.
Imbuing work with purpose and meaning
Creating mechanisms that provide a high level of purpose and meaning for the workforce requires a customized and thoughtful approach. But here are some universal tips that can get organizations started:
- Regularly communicate the mission and purpose of the organization. The workforce needs to have a clear understanding of the goals and values guiding the organization. Leadership and frontline managers should be continually reinforcing why employees are showing up to work every day.
- Express how workers’ specific jobs fit into the big picture. This is of particular importance for frontline managers. Employees can often find their day-to-day work filled with seemingly rote and tedious tasks. Their managers should help them realize how these tasks contribute to the organization’s mission.
- Involve employees in decision-making. While certain decisions are best left to the top brass, and it’s not always feasible to include everyone in the process, identify opportunities to include others when possible. Having a say in organizational issues can provide employees with a sense of purpose and establish a strong bond between them and the organization’s purpose.
The importance of employee engagement can’t be overemphasized. Organizations need to approach the personal workplace experience with the understanding that all humans have an innate desire to feel connected with others and to be part of something larger than themselves. To cultivate an authentic personal experience for employees, employers should focus on how to foster a culture of connectivity in a digital world and create meaningful work that ties closely to the purpose of the organization.
Endnotes:
1 Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey.
2 How Great Leaders Create Connection in the Age of Isolation, 2018.
3 David M. Cordani, "Addressing loneliness in the workplace: Good for individuals, good for business," Washington Post, July 19, 2018.
4 Rita Pyrillis, "Workplace Loneliness Is Sad for People and Bad for Business," Workforce, May 8, 2018.
5 John Cacioppo et al., "Toward a neurology of loneliness," Psychology Bulletin 140, no. 6 (2014): pp. 1464–504.
6 Pyrillis, "Workplace Loneliness Is Sad for People and Bad for Business."
7 Cordani, "Addressing loneliness in the workplace."
8 "From Employee Experience to Human Experience: Putting meaning back into work", April 11, 2019.
9 Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, 2009.
10 LinkedIn Fulfillment Study 2016 – Survey conducted among 3,000 professionals and 500 recruiters/HR professionals in the UK in July.
11 Stephanie Vozza, "4 Ways To Help Employees Find Meaning At Work," Fast Company, January 19, 2018.
12 Michelle McQuaid, "How To Make Work More Meaningful,"
13 Ibid.
14 Chip Conley, "Creating Meaning in Day-to-Day Work," American Management Association, January 24, 2019.
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