Category: human resources

support felt

Perceived organizational support is about as important as training and career development in the employee engagement mix. One particular conceptual framework to map employee engagement in the banking industry is built on four pillars: training and career development, co-worker relationship, perceived organizational support, and reward and recognition. The model is beautiful in its simplicity, and there aren’t many barriers to apply this model outside the banking industry.

Earlier I described training and career development and co-worker relationship. Now, let’s look into perceived organizational support.

Perceived organizational support.

Emphasis on perception. Some organizations think they support their employees quite well, whereas, in reality, the employees indicate feeling little to no support from the organization. Sometimes the underlying reason can be as simple as a misunderstanding. For example, Samia is very ambitious, and naturally, she wants to improve her professional capabilities. Her employer offers courses, online learning tools, and workshops. Except they failed to mention it on numerous occasions. During hiring or pre-boarding, but no later than onboarding, crucial aspects like this should have been brought up.

Organizations seeking out (increased) employee engagement must support their employees. Period. From small, one-off initiatives like a birthday card to large career-spanning initiatives to fully support the people throughout their journey with the company.

One way to go about this is to just ask. Ask the employees what it is they need. Some employees might not be able to vocalize their needs well, which is fine; that’s why a framework to map professional preferences comes in handy.

job tree

One particular conceptual framework to map employee engagement in the banking industry is built on four pillars. Training and career development, co-worker relationship, perceived organizational support, and reward and recognition. The model is beautiful in its simplicity, and there aren’t many barriers to apply this model outside the banking industry.

In the next few days, I’ll briefly describe each pillar.

Training and career development.

As time progresses, it’s becoming more apparent that one of the best ways to convince people to choose for an employer is the ability of the employer to provide perspective. Not in an old-fashioned kind of way, as in, if you work hard, we’ll bump your salary in eighteen months. If you keep working hard, we’ll bump it again in another eighteen months, and so on…

In this day and age, providing perspective means offering the candidate a map. A map with a pin showing the candidate, today, you are here. Tomorrow, proverbially, these are all the (career) routes you could take. 

Some of them might require hard-skills training. Perhaps additional degrees or certificates are necessary for a follow-on job. Some of them might require soft-skills training. When an employer moves into a managerial position, specific people skills, stress management, and responsibility become increasingly important.

Mapping the current situation, combined with suggesting multiple possibilities and future outcomes, is the foundation for training and career development.

Practical advice: map both people’s and jobs’ hard- and soft-skills to create a tree of internal career possibilities, alongside insight into which skills gaps need to be bridged to move between positions.

still fits

One of the three ways to get to know employees better, with the ambition to boost employee engagement, is to focus on the “talent fit,” according to this Forbes article.

According to the article, the way to focus on “talent fit” is to ask employees if the job still fits them.

Pretty straightforward and not a bad idea at all.

Additionally, companies should leverage a model, preferably academically validated, to build those insights at scale.

why quit

4 reasons why software engineers leave their job.

Mismatch in expectations

Wait a minute, this is not what I’ve been sold. Often, the way the job has been offered initially doesn’t align with what it feels like to actually perform in the role, every day.

Flawed remote work strategy

A remote work strategy shouldn’t revolve around the required amount of days employees must come to the office. It should be about the most efficient way to get synchronous work done. This depends heavily on how teams organize themselves, as opposed to an enforced, top-down approach.

Bigger picture

In many cases, software engineers don’t really feel what their efforts contribute to. For clients or internal projects, ideally, the impact that they helped realize, should be made as tangible as possible.

No recognition

Sleepless nights, plagued by that one stubborn bug that just won’t go away. An architectural innovation that dramatically reduces cost structure or doubles performance… So many efforts go by unnoticed. Without empathic leadership, the proverbial pat on the back, it’s hard to keep pushing code daily.

it’s not salary

How to make sure employees stay? Spoiler alert; it’s not salary.

Jack Parsons once said: “the employee who leaves a company because of the salary can return because of the culture, but the one who leaves because of the culture will never return because of the salary”.

Excellent job culture and company culture aren’t just valuable for current employees, it’s a powerful magnet to attract new candidates, as well as re-attract ex-employees.

Building a company culture, bottom-up, starts with job culture. One employee after the other. Making sure the match is right, both on a hard-skills – and soft-skills level creates an upward spiral that serves as a coil for the above-mentioned magnet.

hero

Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own story. This powerful quote by Franz Kafka potentially reveals a lot about us humans.

I believe that many of us are necessarily the hero(in) of our own job.

When employers, specifically managers and leaders, fail to recognize, respect, and empathize with their hero(in) employees, expecting them to be involved and engaged is unrealistic.

tech changes

Here is an example of how technology changes consumers and producers.

Back in the day, TV shows were written so that you’d still understand what was going on no matter when you tuned in. If you missed an episode, you missed an episode. One way to help viewers was to have a steady cast that appears in every single episode.

Nowadays, people (binge) watch TV shows. On-demand, whenever it’s convenient. For instance, the Netflix remake of “House of Cards” has characters disappearing, only to make their return eight episodes later. This principle allows for a new layer of complexity. Complexity that challenges the writers even more in their creative processes.

Safe to say, streaming technology altered viewers’ behaviors. This behavior change, in turn, influences producers’ behaviors, only to further alter viewers’ behaviors.

Imagine for a second how technology has influenced employees’ behavior. Hybrid working is here to stay. How does that influence employers? What are some of the principles they should embrace to further engage with their employees?

thank you

Thank you. These two words and their impact have been researched thoroughly, with tons of new research appearing every day.

When managers thank their employees for their contributions, acknowledge their achievements, and give credit where credit is due, employees are four times more likely to feel engaged.

Whom are you going to thank today?

doctor translator

When you get your blood checked at the doctor, they don’t just forward the lab results. Most of us are laypeople, medically speaking, so we need a couple of things from the doctor.

We need them to translate the results. All these numbers, exotic-sounding terms, and ratios. What do they even mean? Not a whole lot until our doctor interprets the results for us. This number here, dear patient, means your cholesterol is too high. This number indicates you have a vitamin D deficiency.

We need them to guide us on how to improve specific metrics. Once the lab results have been translated, we need them to provide us with actionable advice on how we can improve our situation. Make changes to your diet, or take some supplements, for example.

Businesses looking to hire top talent often use assessments in the process. Those results need to be translated as well, alongside practical advice as to how to improve based on those results.

vip’s

Sixty percent of job seekers report having a negative candidate experience with the employers they engage with.

Imagine sixty percent of customers having a negative experience leading up to purchase with a particular company. How long would it take for that company to go bankrupt?

Signing with a new employer is arguably a more significant life event than most purchases of goods or services. Hence, candidates considering an employer should be treated as vip’s.