One of the things I think is quite interesting about changes in work and the workforce is how many of these are aligned - for example we need work to be cut up differently from the old 9 to 5, 40 hours per week approach, and increasingly people want to fit work in to their lives in smaller, more flexible chunks as well.
Of course, this doesn't always apply and even when it does, matching demand and supply when both are much more complicated than they were before is quite tough to do - but at least the potential is there.
For example the typical middle level manager that you might want to send abroad or have commuting to two of three countries every week may not want this sort of experience given their links and responsibilities at home, but a younger manager without these responsibilities might relish the challenge this type of working would provide (again as I've just been posting, these are just stereotypes and what's really important is to personalise our people management approaches, understanding each individual's engagement drivers and offering them an individual employment deal.)
That's why, whilst I was an HR Director at Ernst & Young, we tried to articulate the pyschological contract between the firm and our employees (see the picture, taken from Michael Wellin's book, Managing the Pyschological Contract, at the organisation and team level but also to try to get our employees to think about it too - what do they give to the firm, and what do they receive back?
The more that we could do this, the greater our ability to personalise the deal and provide what the employee wanted, and the higher the likelihood the employee would feel rationally as well as emotionally engaged and therefore have greater likelihood to stay in the organisation. It implies risk as well though - once you start to articulate the deal like this it becomes even more important to deliver upon the articulated expectations. If you're not going to deliver it's much more effective just not to talk about it. Which is, I think, a large part of the reason why most organisations don't do it. But also why if you really do want to be people centric, that it's a very good reason why you should.
Of course, this doesn't always apply and even when it does, matching demand and supply when both are much more complicated than they were before is quite tough to do - but at least the potential is there.
For example the typical middle level manager that you might want to send abroad or have commuting to two of three countries every week may not want this sort of experience given their links and responsibilities at home, but a younger manager without these responsibilities might relish the challenge this type of working would provide (again as I've just been posting, these are just stereotypes and what's really important is to personalise our people management approaches, understanding each individual's engagement drivers and offering them an individual employment deal.)
That's why, whilst I was an HR Director at Ernst & Young, we tried to articulate the pyschological contract between the firm and our employees (see the picture, taken from Michael Wellin's book, Managing the Pyschological Contract, at the organisation and team level but also to try to get our employees to think about it too - what do they give to the firm, and what do they receive back?
The more that we could do this, the greater our ability to personalise the deal and provide what the employee wanted, and the higher the likelihood the employee would feel rationally as well as emotionally engaged and therefore have greater likelihood to stay in the organisation. It implies risk as well though - once you start to articulate the deal like this it becomes even more important to deliver upon the articulated expectations. If you're not going to deliver it's much more effective just not to talk about it. Which is, I think, a large part of the reason why most organisations don't do it. But also why if you really do want to be people centric, that it's a very good reason why you should.
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