As most HR consultants, my team and I spend a significant portion of our day studying the mutual impact that organizations and people have on each other, and another large portion thinking about what organizations do to attract and retain talent. We are all well aware that the trending strategy among most organizations is to build a corporate culture and create a lifestyle. However, talents from younger generations prefer strategies that address the unique drivers of their motivation.
Deloitte’s 2015 Global Human Capital Trends Report, one of the largest longitudinal studies on talent, leadership, and HR challenges and readiness in the world, reveals that 50% of the businesses surveyed across 106 countries consider culture and engagement the leading issues all HR departments must solve. According to Forbes Magazine (March, 2015), more and more corporations are building their cultures and they do so around “employment branding”.
Deloitte’s 2015 Global Human Capital Trends Report, one of the largest longitudinal studies on talent, leadership, and HR challenges and readiness in the world, reveals that 50% of the businesses surveyed across 106 countries consider culture and engagement the leading issues all HR departments must solve. According to Forbes Magazine (March, 2015), more and more corporations are building their cultures and they do so around “employment branding”.
The idea behind culture, engagement and employment branding is not new, yet it seems to be gaining more momentum. According to Furnham and Gunter, back in 1993, “organizational culture functions as the internal integration and coordination between firms operations and its employees. Internal integration can be described as the societal interaction of new members with the existing ones, creating boundaries of the organization feelings of identity among personals and commitment to the organization”. This definition embraces the idea of an organization as a builder and provider of a certain lifestyle, to ensure delivery and productivity, but with a much more limited scope than we have today. Organizations now envision a much broader corporate context, which includes clients, partners, suppliers, departments, society, and their relationships with the organization and employees. Lifestyle HR strategies capitalize on their years of experience and market power of organizations to attract talent.
However, the 2014 Deloitte Millennial Survey revealed that 78% of this segment is mostly attracted to innovation and 70% would rather work on their own than in traditionally organized companies because they want meaningful careers and a different approach to business. The survey does not highlight identity as the core motivating factor to attract talents to an organization. It does, however, highlight the future and individual passions as key motivating factors for Millennials and beyond.
So, how do organizations facing change attract that talent? What about young corporations without decades of stability? How do start-ups gain legitimacy? Disrupt the market? Or change the rules of the game? Or venture into unchartered strategies? In these cases, the broader context is either not yet developed or no longer relevant. To these players, following a lifestyle HR strategy is a “feast today, famine tomorrow” approach, in which the business context is perceived by talents as an endogamous structure formed by an organization and its employees, that offers nothing but an ego-based icon for job-seekers.
Dynamic or growth-based organizations as sophisticated as Boeing, Apple, or Google, as specialized as SAP Hanna, McKinsey or Deloitte, or as small as start-ups, SMEs and innovation boutiques, are focusing less on lifestyle and more on knowledge-based growth. They adopt flexible structures, dig deeper into the organizing principles of human behavior (beliefs, motivation, passions, etc.) and bend to the forces of business. They create effective communication & development strategies that foster and protect learning and understanding to ensure growth. They define, structure and transform themselves on the basis of how they evolve, and they attract talents that are willing to live in a more challenging environment.
Most talents today are self-regulated. They are looking for great projects, functional working environments, and professional growth. To simplify, if the work that the organization does is challenging and motivating, they will apply. If the team they are going to work with is functional, they will collaborate. And they will stay while the career path is enriching.
Does this mean that a lifestyle strategy is doomed to die? Not quite. It means talents have a choice.
However, the 2014 Deloitte Millennial Survey revealed that 78% of this segment is mostly attracted to innovation and 70% would rather work on their own than in traditionally organized companies because they want meaningful careers and a different approach to business. The survey does not highlight identity as the core motivating factor to attract talents to an organization. It does, however, highlight the future and individual passions as key motivating factors for Millennials and beyond.
So, how do organizations facing change attract that talent? What about young corporations without decades of stability? How do start-ups gain legitimacy? Disrupt the market? Or change the rules of the game? Or venture into unchartered strategies? In these cases, the broader context is either not yet developed or no longer relevant. To these players, following a lifestyle HR strategy is a “feast today, famine tomorrow” approach, in which the business context is perceived by talents as an endogamous structure formed by an organization and its employees, that offers nothing but an ego-based icon for job-seekers.
Dynamic or growth-based organizations as sophisticated as Boeing, Apple, or Google, as specialized as SAP Hanna, McKinsey or Deloitte, or as small as start-ups, SMEs and innovation boutiques, are focusing less on lifestyle and more on knowledge-based growth. They adopt flexible structures, dig deeper into the organizing principles of human behavior (beliefs, motivation, passions, etc.) and bend to the forces of business. They create effective communication & development strategies that foster and protect learning and understanding to ensure growth. They define, structure and transform themselves on the basis of how they evolve, and they attract talents that are willing to live in a more challenging environment.
Most talents today are self-regulated. They are looking for great projects, functional working environments, and professional growth. To simplify, if the work that the organization does is challenging and motivating, they will apply. If the team they are going to work with is functional, they will collaborate. And they will stay while the career path is enriching.
Does this mean that a lifestyle strategy is doomed to die? Not quite. It means talents have a choice.