The New Future Workplace Model - A step-by-step guide to modernization for STEM companies
The New Future Workplace Model - A step-by-step guide to modernization for STEM companies
The left- and right-swiping generation needs more than just trendy workspaces and open-keg perks for millennial retention. It's a big question mark in the industry right now. Millennials are shifting in and out of careers, disrupting the familiar flow of loyal STEM labor, and choosing unpredictable opportunities over stability. Juxtapose that with the traditional engineering industry: an aging organization with steep vacancies for improving our failing infrastructure, ensuring resiliency for 21st century climate needs, and adapting to digital industrialization.The World Economic Forum has found that 75 million jobs may be converted to 133 million new jobs using a machine- and algorithm-based framework. The traditional engineering industry is on the precipice of incredible shifts with the fourth industrial revolution. My industry is a major vector expected to be regenerated--civil engineering. Set this to the tune of 88% of the Fortune 500 companies no longer exist since 1955. The options are few: adapt to a changing workplace environment or become obsolete as companies lose control of the narrative. The labor market is out of congruence with the millennial job economy.The term active inertia" describes the failure to adapt behavioral practices even in the face of dramatic environmental shifts, persistent retention problems, and irrelevancy. Last month we saw how millennials are our customers and our communities. This month, I want to break down step-by-step how companies can be agile enough to cultivate their millennial talent and vision to produce a new future workplace model in alignment with this generation's values. Engineering is changing. And we need to act now.
Take advantage of growth mindset
Millennials are interested in learning and developing with 59% saying that this growth is the most important factor to them in their jobs. Training should be a key focus as workplaces benefit from multi-generational communication, both upskilling of mid-level and senior folks to changes in technology, and transfers of institutional knowledge to the new generations. Currently, training can be inadequate, either the incorrect format or is not conducive to time constraints. On the whole, the engineering industry is not leading the trend on implementing VR, AR (augmented reality), and AI as a tool for employee development. Why not?
Effective training lessons should have a range of options, to accommodate different learning styles, from games to articles to videos.
Leverage millennial's unbridled curiosity for information: podcasts that can be listened to during commutes, online classes, and non-traditional forms of learning.
Allow access to digital training to upskill employees which feel they need additional resources to maintain a technical edge. MOOCs are free, but the employee needs labor hours and encouragement from their employer.
Start meetings with a teaching moment. In addition to a safety moment, share knowledge on new tools, platforms, and information that may be useful.
Create an internal marketplace for flexible positions
The millennial generation has been loud about their desire for challenge and change. Instead of capitalizing on this, companies have created silos and processes which encumber the mobility of millennials. Employers should provide a way for their employees to be agile in their careers so that they do not feel stagnated. Millennials are driven and will reach for opportunities to challenge themselves. Companies should focus on the gaps in their skill set: technical breadth, communication, and knowledge transfer.
Allow employees to fill multiple positions at once: part management, part technical, part coaching, part communications, part innovations. Let employees set their own targets for percentage of each position.
Provide an internal marketplace with grant-like budgets for employees to try out their own ideas.
Track grants through blockchain technology, where every employee has a window into how the grant budgets are managed.
Allow engineers to become more well balanced by taking up different roles in different projects. Provide avenues for anyone willing to shift to other technical areas temporarily. The world is changing to need more specialists, not generalists but that doesn't mean it's conducive to work in a bubble.
Train employees in change management and curtailment for continuity of information and productivity even with the inevitable shift of team collaborators.
Because millennials need to see fulfillment in what they are doing, encourage them to think outside the box. Your millennial staff may have a good idea to create a solar road that's zero-energy efficient. Let them try it out on a bike path. Allow employees, in their flexible work environments, to pick up these side hustles when their normal workload is light. Their generation is familiar with this motivation and most prefer fulfilling careers over easier, more consistent duties. Allow them to choose this path, being delicate to apply the theory of work-life balance, a critical component for retention.
Interface employees by mentoring and reverse mentoring
Sun Microsystems created a mentorship program and found that in a 7-year period, employee retention rates rose saving the company $6.7M. Similarly, reverse mentoring was found to benefit 97% of employees highlighted by Dell Technologies. A DQ to EQ transfer can help younger staff learn psychological space and older staff learn vanguard technologies. Again and again we see that millennials are mapping out their careers way in advance and that they are looking for something that provides a sense of doing good in their communities. In part for the affirmations that they are used to receiving but in part to grow within a fast-paced world. Only 17% of millennials think that the feedback they are getting is valuable. Millennials want feedback, even if they aren't asking for it.
Provide access to different forms of coaching: professional, career, technical. Bust up the one-line managerial organization charts so that employees are more autonomous and more well-rounded.
Partner older generations with younger generations to facilitate the flow of information between them. Create an online system which functions as a community's posting board: match people who find fulfillment in coaching with those who are looking for coaches.
Designate coaches which are all age-levels to provide early leadership opportunities to emerging leaders.
Implement a formal mentorship program which can take the awkwardness out of employees asking for mentors or waiting around for a unicorn mentor.
Provide valuable feedback in a safe environment, by mentors that the employees themselves have chosen.
Decouple salary from performance reviews.
Provide ongoing, interactive feedback instead of batch delivery.
Provide an autonomous way for employees to message their concerns to each other so that each individual can take in all reviews and decide themselves which are relevant and needs more discussion.
Emphasize weekly feedback. It can be centered around a project or follow the one-minute managerial model. It can be an IM between employees or a budget for employees to grab a coffee to-go together.
Compensate employees based on their world views
Millennials, Gen X, and Gen Z are split over how they want to be compensated. Some focus in on a results only work environment (ROWE), such as that implemented at Gap and the White House. Others prefer to be paid hourly, to optimize productivity and promote challenging projects. Each model has its cons, allowing lackluster performance by unmotivated employees. Many engineering companies employ the model with the most allowance for abuse and employee dissatisfaction: salaried employees with PTO compensation for overtime or no direct compensation supported by top-down management of day-to-day tasks.
Allow full-time employees to choose salaried or hourly, but retaining benefits as a FTE.
Place more emphasis on accountability and less on work hours and locations.
Use timesheets to track the statistics of what employees are working on and chart that against performance goals.
Be authentic about how you're collecting data and be transparent about everyone's data. Workers hold themselves and each other accountable.
All employees, regardless of if they are E1 or CEO, should be recording their workable hours so that pay can be adjusted adequately. This goes for overhead and nonbillable hours.
I am also at fault for working overhead hours and not recording my time. It is a privilege that I have the resources and time to do that, but it makes it more difficult for underprivileged employees to have an equal shot at merit-based recognition.
Allow for vagabonding & flexible work environments
We will need to adopt systems which encourage, not prohibit, flexible work atmospheres, to retain the wanderlust generation. We know that lack of flexibility is the number one reasons millennials quit their job, as ideas like "retirement mentality" (aka waiting to start life after retirement) slowly die. YOLO. Similarly, the new workplace projects require globally connected employees. Dell has already set the goal of having half its employees flexible by 2020, with efforts to show the reduction in real estate expenses unburdened by the shareholders.
Save cash on brick and mortars and instead let millennials be driven by their desire for flexible work spaces.
Recontextualize the idea that mentorship and experience-learning can only be done within a brick and mortar space. Learning should be people- and situation-dependent, not space-dependent. In fact, research has shown that 84% of employee's creative work is not done in the office.
Build your corporate atmosphere on metric-driven accountability and sponsorship.
Flexibility should be available to all employees, not dependent on manager or role.
Millennials are known as the generation which collects experiences, not material possessions, in both real life and the monopoly version. Plus we've already seen that flexible work hours are the bare necessity to retaining good female and non-traditional talent of any age. Modernization makes business sense.
Provide multi-platform and multi-location communication access
You don’t want someone to design a 40 story skyscraper without considering the structural, environmental, and political aspects. Each project may need a team of the best technical, marketing, psychology, sociology, and engineering staff. It's just not practical to expect that they all live in the same city, commuting to the same building everyday. In order to elevate our engineering, we need to simulate this connection through virtual social settings.
Teach skills to interact virtually on multi-platform and multi-location communication access.
Move to shared virtual workspaces like Microsoft Teams and slack for document control, workspace flexibility, and inclusivity of less extroverted employees.
Migrate from email communication to forum-based communication. Use this as a mechanism to smooth out change management.
Build collaboration resources into your work environment like OneDrive and Evernote.
Incentivize employees to use more digital spaces to better promote searchable notetaking and organization between multiple employees. Allow employees options to use ipads and other mobile devices instead of printing quotas.
Foster communication across disciplines by providing for regional conferences and other in-person events.
Smart engineering companies will harness the global connectedness of their younger staff, finding a way to crowd source projects and ideas which influence more industries than just engineering. Problems are interconnected and evolving as our communities become more globally intertwined. We will need solutions that facilitate ideas from all aspects of our communities from scientists and attorneys to social outreach and education.
Embrace gig economy
For years, companies have been resulting to freelance or short-term contracts to offset periods of heavy workload. Similarly, the gig economy lifestyle appeals to millennials as they value more time off, freedom and flexibility, and location autonomy over 401ks and titles (Richie Norton). Millennials prefer autonomy and agency which leads to increased performance. And it's not just millennials. In 2016, more than 1 in 4 workers participated in gig economy. Employees who wish to pursue a term in office, an entrepreneurial idea, or additional parental leave can have fluid careers under gig economy.
Use predictive analytics to track retention rates after parental leave and rates of new/return hires returning from parental leave. Large data sets on this sort of research is surprisingly lacking.
Track training hours spent on new hires and return hires.
Let employees shift in and out of a 40-hour week model, in alignment with projects and with their personal and financial lives.
Start with a pilot program and gauge its popularity and success. Consider full-time incentives to employees working a traditional 40-hour dance card.
Roll up projects into a program so that each project has a delineated finish date.
Companies should provide an opportunity for employees to opt for a sabbatical but retain the ability to return. It's estimated that Gen Z will be more entrepreneurial and looking for opportunity to transition in their careers. A company who pilots a psuedo-gig economy type environment will have more difficulty forecasting capital as accurately at first, but in the current model we don't track when employees plan to spend their overhead PTO anyway. After we capture the big data related to millennial workload trends, we'll become more effective by empowering employees to do projects them, and their consumer peers, want to be doing.
Force a reckoning in diversity
Unequivocally, we are moving towards a society with no majority. GenZ is just shy of not having a white majority. This may be diversity by default but as the popular phrase goes: diversity is about being invited to dance, inclusion is about being allowed to dance. Mix-gendered and mix-socioeconomic teams perform better by being more creative, justify their opinions and risk-taking better, and produce more accurate results (Lipman). Engineers should be leading this cause, if not for the sake of altruism and healthy work environments, but for successful endeavors, increased profit margins and happy customers. Instead, we see a lack of diversity in the engineering and sciences industry in all positions.
Tie bonuses not just to diversity hiring, but also to diversity success. Use data-based decision to craft a corporate strategy.
Encourage coaches (previously called managers) to peel back their unconscious bias lens in a non-mandatory unconscious bias training, fully supported by the executive office.
Hire a Chief Diversity Officer. In case it needs to be said, this position should not be male and pale.
Correct imbalances in how companies advertise vacancies.
Create a diversity impetus by having more diversity in visible, senior positions.
Disrupt the culture by incentivizing others to change the culture too just like Intel. Effective change starts with a movement, not a mandate.
Report all hours regardless of pay scale to limit the resource-privileged employees ability to be unfairly promoted.
The demographic in the workplace is changing along with corporate responsibility of D&I. Companies owe it to their shareholders and to the minorities and women in their lives to infuse their principles with inclusive excellence.
Chip away at unfair pay practices
Economists estimated a $4.3 Trillion increase to the American economy solely by providing equal pay for women (Lipman). In some European countries like Germany and the UK, laws for pay audits and government-backed initiatives to promote female-appointed board positions are common. The US, on the other hand, is rolling back progress. Where legislation falls short, companies should disrupt the current practices to retain millennials. Waiting for the political climate to change is too long and will come at the expense of potential energy from lost employees.
Implement one of the many different pay transparency systems.
Release job categories and demographic information at a minimum.
Be intentional about the message: you are advocating for fair practices to provide fair opportunity.
Mimic successful tech companies which find benefit in complete transparency among millennials.
Allow employees to freely discuss pay and encourage employees to discuss financial awareness.
Prohibit asking potential hires about previous pay to disrupt the cycle of pay disparities.
Perform a pay gap audit such as that done by companies like Salesforce, Apple, Intel, SpaceX and Gap, Inc.
Provide proof of fair pay. Textualize the workplace as an organization that supports fair pay.
Companies with more than 250 employees should publish data about gender discrepancies.
Discourage employees from not recording worked hours to buffer their project metrics. This is not only illegal but provides unfair advantage to employees of certain demographics. It's rampantly done in consulting and leads to a worsened corporate climate.
What's more is that the stigma generally attributed to releasing pay information is being reduced with millennials in the work place. A third of employees openly discuss salary with their coworkers. 44% of job seekers value pay transparency for short term and long term potential. Money might not be an influence on long-term satisfaction, and is less important to millennials workers.
Pay secrecy fosters an environment of hostility and toxic competition. Pay transparency allows colleagues to keep each other accountable. Evidence also suggests that less secrecy about pay results in greater employee loyalty and lower turnover (Lipman, That's What She Said). It is an employer's responsibility to instigate an elevated culture of caring.
Sweeten the deal by bringing benefits into the frontline
Many of the incentives which are already in place, are strongholds for the traditional engineer. 401k and student loan forgiveness were essential necessities for Generation X. In 2018, 30-38% of a worker's compensation is benefits. 63% of job seekers value benefits as criteria for job searches. 48% of US workers say benefits matter to them and 41% look for jobs with flexible location capabilities.
Continue 401k and loan forgiveness programs to benefit older generations.
Promise a guaranteed 40-hour workweek to retain the more experienced generations.
Show exact data on how much margin an employee needs to be eligible for benefits.
Do market research to determine how to align with incentives that keep the best talent.
Pilot a program like LinkedIn's Perk Up with $500 a quarter for employees to use as they want--personal trainers to dog walkers, and other ways to make their work/life balance and worklife easier.
Think outside the box. My company just released a holiday benefit of $50 reimbursement for rideshare and safe holiday travel.
Prohibit accrual rates from restarting as an incentive for re-hires.
Longer-term employees and return employees benefit the company by reduced costs in onboarding and training. Companies can harness this benefit by promoting their benefits.
Modernize
Gen Xers and Gen Zers may work jobs that don't excite them just for the financial security or access to the corporate ladder. This is not the case for millennials. It's unknown if this will change when more millennials have mortgages and parental stresses, but studies suggest it's unlikely. Companies need to strive to reimagine things that aren't working anymore. Systems can be easily streamlined and automated to appeal to millennials who dislike routines and insist on sleek user-friendly interfaces.
Menial tasks should be completed by automation, human-machine interaction, and digital computing.
Allow Gen Z, who value stability, to use this vision to further your company, rather than quit to start their own company.
Do a listening tour to figure out where there are grievances and where there is millennial vision.
Seek millennial council. Millennials have a keen eye for clunky processes and have no patience for inefficient delivery or poor customer service.
Hire a Chief Modernization Officer (CMO). Companies should have a position whose first priority is predicting the needs of the future workplace and contribute to the overall business strategy.
Build an empowered next generation group, promote millennials into positions where they have influence, and support emerging leaders with resources to step into executive management early to sanction their opinions before it's too late. Empower your younger staff.
We need to shift to the positions needed for the future of our industry, filling gaps where we can with automation and streamlining processes while limiting processes that aren't wholly necessary.
Though ping-pong tables and pub crawl career fairs are attractive to millennials, the true retention efforts should be placed in career growth and flexibility, comfortable diverse workspaces, and employee autonomy. A generation that grew up in political turmoil, economic instability, and digital innovation, they are no strangers to movement and change. Corporations are going to have to be just as agile to rewire their thinking if they want to retain this valuable workforce. Simply, talented employees have job options but corporation don't have labor options.
Change is too slow to fruition. Time to accelerate.
