What do Your Future Employees want?
“Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.” “Daring leaders work to make sure people can be themselves and feel a sense of belonging.” “Only when diverse perspectives are included, respected, and valued can we start to get a full picture of the world.” – Brene Brown
Thanks to the pandemic, a new set of consumer and workers’ expectations pushed industries into an unprecedented digital transformation – forcing companies of all sizes to rethink how to draw, retain, and manage talent.
Here we explore what your future employers want.
Purpose.
Your employees want more purpose from work than they’re getting.
Why? It’s simple; people want purpose in their lives — including when they work.
As a great leader, you need to understand that purpose means your staff are actively connected to your company’s goal – when employees understand that their work matters, they remain loyal, engaged, and proud of the work, which leads to an enriched sense of fulfilment that extends to every area of a person’s life.
Start by increasing employee engagement; create a work environment that encourages team members to submit suggestions and initiatives regularly. Secondly, get clear on company beliefs and values and communicate these with staff beyond just having them appear in their onboarding materials.
The importance of feeling useful.
At work, feeling meaningful is key to employee satisfaction and motivation – workers who feel important tend to perform harder and stay with an institution longer.
As an employer, look for ways to actively help your employees feel useful. For example, you might want to engage them in creating a five-year strategy for your business or take the opportunity to give more responsibility to qualified and proven employees. Empowering workers to gain skills and leadership experience will benefit your business in countless ways, including a boost in productivity. As a result, those who feel their purpose aligns with their work are likely to remain engaged and motivated and less likely to leave – reducing your costs and lack of efficiency associated with high employee turnover.
Equalise employee voices.
Welcome to 2022, where hybrid working conditions are the norm. If you haven’t noticed, this shift has changed how to communicate and nurture staff working remotely and in-office.
With the right digital platform, you can embrace the opportunity to create an equitable workforce, ensuring all your workers, regardless of location, have an equal opportunity to share their opinions and ideas.
Embracing diverse workplaces will boost innovation, creativity, and profits while cultivating a workplace culture of inclusiveness and a greater chance of growth and success.
Virtual employees need to feel listened to, understood, and involved continually.
There are several ways to create an integrated communication platform, but here is where to start:
- Direct messaging and message boards
- Internal social media
- Polls and surveys
- Performance management and continuous evaluation
Embrace tech platforms for productivity.
As mentioned in our opening paragraph, employee expectations have altered – your new and evolved workers demand access to the right tools and technologies they need to do their jobs. This step alone will transform your business into a more prosperous, mobile, and modern organisation.
When you give your employees the right tech to do their jobs, you foster collaboration, innovation, flexibility and overall job fulfilment. Even online task management tools that allow staff to stay on top of daily responsibilities actively will improve job satisfaction. At OITC, we use the online platform Quip and have found it helps to keep our team connected and more productive – this central platform allows us all to collaborate through documents, spreadsheets, checklists, and chat easily.
