Apparently there are seven major challenges currently occupying the minds of business leaders and causing them concern. At least, that is what the conference speaker told us, feeding back the results of Metlife’s global research study.
Interestingly, there was no specific mention of the fear of disruptive ideas and the impact they might have on their business that, according to different research I reported last week, was the greatest fear of 64% of CEO’s! Even so, the points raised still warrant serious consideration.
The seven, very briefly, are:
- Attracting and retaining the right talent (37% and 41% respectively of those polled);
- Costs of doing business; particularly future costs in a rapidly changing, increasingly competitive market;
- Declining productivity;
- An aging workforce and the inter-generational differences;
- Diversity and the disparate employee needs;
- More difficult customers who make it more difficult to provide a great customer experience;
- Employee engagement (largely seen as the remedy for the other six.)
While the first and last of these points clearly book-end the importance of people and the manner in which they are managed, this is actually the thread that runs through all seven. Once again this highlights the need to make people the priority. Notwithstanding the context, and thus its seeming topicality, this list is in fact timeless. It reveals the extent to which, historically, we have overlooked the importance of people in business. In fact, if you are really harsh, you could even say that it highlights the failure of the HR profession.
Rather than dwelling on the negative, however, it should be seized as an opportunity to really make a difference. The circumstances that gave rise to people being little more than an expendable resource no longer exist. The time has come for people to take their place as the primary organizational assets they are.
When you do this you will:
- Attract and retain the right people, who optimize their talent.
- Be better placed to minimize the costs of doing business, as a result of a more proactive workforce. Remember, the costs of doing business only really matter when compared to your competitors’ costs; and as long as you are serving a useful purpose, and providing a product or service that meets that purpose, costs should not be a major cause for concern.
- Improve productivity through the energy, enthusiasm and enterprise of your people optimizing their talent.
- Migrate effortlessly to the next generation. People need to optimize their talents and feel useful and be appreciated. When you enable them do that you will find the generational differences pale disappear.
- More readily cater for diversity and individual employee needs.
- Provide a great customer experience. This goes without saying when the service is provided by people who care.
- Recognise employee engagement as an outcome rather than a project or process. Fulfilled people are engaged people and they don’t need extrinsic incentives to be engaged.
If you are thinking, “That’s all very well, but I still don’t know how to about this,” then you need to think about my ‘Every Individual Matters’ model. This:
- Takes the bull by the horns and provides the means to account for, manage and treat people as assets;
- Offers a new model of universal employee ownership without involving equity and at no cost to employee or employer;
- Offers a cost neutral way of replacing your incentive remuneration scheme (if you have one) and replacing it with a reward structure that is more equitable and less open to manipulation and abuse; and
- A consistent means for measuring the human contribution to the organization, bridging the divide between HR and Finance, and so paving the way for HR to improve its credibility and take its place in the executive suite.
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Contact me today for a free 30 minute conversation about how my ‘Every Individual Matters’ model can help you create an organisational culture that embraces change and transforms – and sustains – organisational performance.
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Bay is the founder and director of Zealise, and the creator of the ‘Every Individual Matters’ organisational culture model that helps transform organisational performance and bottom-line results. Bay is also the author of several books, including “Lean Organisations Need FAT People” and “The 7 Deadly Toxins of Employee Engagement.”