Books
Get Weird! 101 Innovative Ways to Make Your Company a Great Place to Work by John Putzier. Out-of-the-box ideas divided up into sections on creative thinking and problem solving, recruitment, retention, culture change, incentives and training, development and sales. Buy@Fishpond
Just Rewards: Reward Your Staff and Reap the Benefits by Jamelle Wells is an Australian book of ideas, similar to Get Weird without being quite so, well, weird. Buy@Fishpond
The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack. One hundred people will always beat one. This simple idea led Jack Stack to build a business where everyone knows how the business works—and has a stake in the outcome. Buy@Fishpond
Websites
Department of Labour Work-Life Balance Project: A wealth of research and how-to guides on work/life balance.
Employee Engagement: An in-depth look at what makes for an engaging place to work
Thiagi: Abundant resources on training that's "faster, cheaper and better". Includes a free newsletter and tons of articles on how to design games that get people learning
Businessballs: A collection of free ideas and resources for managers.
Podcasts
The Engaging Brand Podcast: Inspiring interviews with global thinkers about how to engage people at work
The Knowledge Gym Podcast Includes Mike Doughty's interview with Avril Henry on winning the war for talent.
Of course, it also helps if training is presented in a fun and genuinely interactive way. Drama, storytelling and gameplay are finding their way into the workplace.
London-based consultants Edward Harbour and Jill Connock advise setting clear goals and objectives for training. For instance, are you assessing skills or developing them? Is everyone getting the same difficulty level, or do some need a higher level than others?
Storytelling is a tool that has only recently been recognised as a training device. Managers demand data, but often leave much of it unread. The same thing happens to new employees confronted with raw data—it's hard to remember, and has no context to apply.
On the other hand, stories mirror how our brains have learned and remembered information from childhood. Stories also spark change, as shown by the case studies in Wake Me When The Data Is Over, a book of stories about storytelling in the workplace.
One case study describes Gen-i's transformation from a standalone business to become part of the Telecom stable. Storytelling was a key ingredient introduced by Wellington-based consultant Mary-Alice Arthur in creating a shared vision of what the new organisation would look like.
Games can go beyond fun to engage trainees in activities that help them explore concepts, master skills and examine personal paradigms, according to Thiagi, a company that designs games for organisational learning. Thiagi recommends co-designing games with participants, not just because it saves time but also because it helps people learn better.
Games can be used to teach any aspect of the business, including business itself. Jack Stack, author of The Great Game of The Business, turned profit and loss statements into a game in which every employee had a stake. His company began at ten cents per share in 1980 and within five years each share was worth $13. Stack attributes the company's ongoing success—and steady stream of willing recruits—to his employees' willingness to learn the rules, master the fundamentals and play as a team.
"In a worldwide study, just 21 percent of employees were freely giving their time, energy, creativity and knowledge to their work. That's a disturbingly small number"
Speaker and author Avril Henry advises organisations to invest in training and development for every person in the organisation. "The only competitive advantage we have in the future will lie in the quality of our people," she said in a recent Knowledge Gym podcast.
According to Henry, it's particularly important to develop coaching and mentoring skills in managers, team leaders and supervisors. "These aren't skills you acquire overnight through your pillow," she says. "People have to be trained in how to coach and mentor."
A workplace that pays more attention to coaching, mentoring, training and development could bridge what HR consultancy Towers Perrin calls the 'engagement gap'. In a worldwide study, just 21 percent of employees were freely giving their time, energy, creativity and knowledge to their work. As Towers Perrin managing director Julie Gebauer says: "That's a disturbingly small number when you think about the impact people have on a business and its customers."
The study also showed that employees are eager to invest more of themselves to help the company succeed, if they can envisage a personal return on investment. That return takes the shape of things like challenging work, opportunities to grow and learn, feeling proud to work for a socially responsible organisation, and the opportunity to make a real contribution.
It turns out that even in the biggest organisation, people want to know that what they do matters.
Keep up the churn
Is it really so important for staff to stay at their jobs?
Staff turnover is a mixed bag in the creative industries. The national average, according to Statistics NZ's Linked Employer-Employee Data report for the June 2006 quarter, is 17.6 percent.
In publishing and recorded media, where you might expect a fairly high rate of turnover, it's only 14.4 percent.
Scientific research has a very low turnover of 10.6 percent, perhaps because research can never be done in a hurry.
Marketing and business management services, on the other hand, have a turnover of 18 percent, while motion picture, radio and television services—areas dominated by contractors, freelancers and casual work—have a predictably high turnover rate of 18.8 percent.
Finally, libraries, museums and the arts have a turnover of 16.3 percent.
IBM's Global Human Capital Study 2008 reports increasing rates of turnover during the last two years, attributing them to globalisation, changing workforce demographics and shifting generational attitudes.
Traditionally high turnover is considered unfavourable and a factor that the HR industry tries to minimise. But particularly for large companies, it may be better to optimise, rather than minimise, turnover rate. At IndyMac Bank in California, carefully prepared statistical models show management where savings in efficiency and productivity cancel out the costs of turnover of underperforming staff.
The bank's former vice president for performance management, accountability and compensation, Jeff Higgins, says in a report on Workforce.com that it's very hard to find any report that shows the financial benefits of turnover, even though the benefits are clearly there. With a turnover rate five to ten points above industry benchmarks, the bank should have been dying a slow death. Instead, it reported 23 percent earnings growth in 2004.
In the bank's experience, turnover is generally healthy among entry-level underperformers, but it starts getting expensive at executive level. The company calculates the financial threshold by taking into account the performance level and the compensation level.
Turnover is an issue the managers of the future may not have to think about too much, particularly in the freelance-intensive creative industries. In the freelance world, turnover is a non sequitur—an independent, self-directed worker will stay at the job for as long as it works for them, and their client. Maybe that's a good mindset for employees as well.
The money or the bag
Cash is great, but an interesting job is workplace gold.
It's not all about the money. Really. That's what most of the research—as well as psychology — tells us.
In 1999, researcher Kenneth Kovach compared the job priorities of employees with those of employers. The study asked 1,000 employees and 100 employers to list the things they felt would motivate workers. There was no overlap; employers believed good wages and job security would be top-of-mind, but employees valued interesting work and feeling appreciated and involved in the business above the more tangible rewards.
Kovach's findings fit in with what psychologists know about human nature. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs theory identifies a search for meaning and significance as a powerful human motivator. He theorised that once we've dealt with the basics of life and personal safety, our deeper desires kick in, such as the need to belong, to be valued and for self-actualisation.
In a strange Stateside twist, 2007 research from the Society for Human Resource Management's Job Satisfaction Survey 2007 shows employees are looking mainly for money and benefits and then job security, before moving on to lesser concerns like work/life balance and communication between employees and senior management. Perhaps it's an American thing, or perhaps it's a reflection of growing unease about job security in large corporates. But even if there is a temporary swing back towards cold, hard cash in an era of instability, smart organisations will make sure the deeper, more enduring needs are met.
In January 2006, local recruitment company Hays surveyed New Zealanders about the factors that influence their choice of companies to work for. Their top three results were reputation, professional development and training, and career opportunities. It also found that 84 percent of employees would turn down a higher-paying offer from a potential employer with a bad reputation.
