Hiring and retaining the right people has always been a critical business success factor. But, it’s never been more challenging than it is today. How can business leaders keep pace with the rapidly changing workplace expectations and norms?

If there’s a consistent theme that has run through my blog posts, it’s that your long-term business success hinges on your ability to evolve your business processes as you and the world around you change. What’s happening with respect to workplace dynamics today is a perfect example.

The Current Workplace Challenge

In just the past few years, many long-standing assumptions and best practices for managing people have been undermined by a tsunami of new developments. Consider the pandemic-inspired home versus office debate, shortages of workers, sexual harassment issues, pressure for more work-life balance, and increased political and even generational divisiveness to name a few.

No surprise that business leaders in companies of all sizes are finding themselves unsure of what workplace policies and processes will enable them to attract and retain the people they need while still being able to operate efficiently, effectively, and (oh, by the way) make a profit.

The Need for a Mindset Change

For the most part, policies and processes can keep pace with change through incremental improvements. But at some point, conditions have changed so much that the mindset or perspective that was the foundation upon which a process was designed in the first place is obsolete. If that’s the case, as I think it is now with respect to employer-employee relations, no amount of process tweaking will be adequate. A breakthrough change is required and that requires an often difficult (and internally resisted) change in mindset.

• The Old Mindset
  Employees have long been thought of as very valuable resources that managers should carefully recruit and work to retain. However, this has traditionally been done by employers with what I would call a “purchasing mindset.” You identify the type of “products” (people) you need, search for the best options available that fit the bill, hire the best ones you can find at a fair price, and then “install” them in your organization. If your hires deliver the performance value you expected, your content. If they don’t, you get frustrated and eventually replace them. And worst case, if they perform very well and then leave to work for a competitor, you question whether you should have become a manager in the first place.
  
  I’m being a little facetious, but I think the essence of what I’m describing is accurate. The problem with the “purchasing mindset” is that it looks at the workplace largely from the employer’s standpoint, not the employee’s. As a result, it doesn’t work well in an age where employees are very particular about where they want to work and are more interested in building their own career than being loyal to one company. And, it’s hopelessly blind to the rapidly changing workplace norms we are experiencing today. Workplace processes that were designed with a “purchasing mindset” simply don’t work anymore.
  
  
• A New Mindset
  There’s a different mindset to consider that we’re actually already familiar with and currently use effectively in another part of our businesses. It’s the perspective we have with regard to customers. You can’t have a business without customers and they’re notoriously hard to acquire and retain. So, over the years what you could call a “marketing mindset” has developed as the foundation for customer-related processes. While the “purchasing mindset” looks at things primarily from a company perspective, the “marketing mindset” seeks an ongoing win-win relationship between the company and its customers.
  
  Clearly employees are also essential to businesses and, as mentioned earlier, are arguably more difficult to acquire and retain than ever. So, maybe it’s time to switch from a “purchasing mindset” to a “marketing mindset” with respect to employees as well. It’s an approach that many companies are already moving towards and it’s a change that could benefit both your employees and your company.
  
  

  How to Implement the Change
  Here are some examples of how you could treat employees more like customers and what the benefits to overall company performance could be:
  
  

• Holistic Understanding
  A marketing best practice is to develop customer “personas” to describe the lifestyle, interests, and behaviors of members of the target market. These personas inform the design of the customer acquisition process in particular. Based on your company values and strategic direction, you could create desired  employee personas to help design more effective recruiting and retention processes.
  
  
• Recognizing the Journey
  Marketers use a tool called a “marketing funnel” or “customer journey” to define the stages customers go through from being totally unaware of a product to awareness, research, purchase, product experience, and (ideally) brand loyalty and advocacy. This helps them understand what happens from a customer’s perspective stage by stage and to create processes that help move them through the journey successfully. You could similarly define and leverage the “employee journey” from the employee’s perspective. It would cover the span from recruiting to hiring, onboarding, development/progression, and offboarding and help modify processes to increase job satisfaction and productivity.
    
• Two-Way Communication
  Consider how careful, thorough, and persistent you are with your communication to customers. And, consider how easy you try to make it for customers to communicate with you. It’s crucial to get your message out and to show customers you really care and listen to what they have to say on an ongoing basis. Do you do as good a job communicating with employees about company policies, happenings, strategic direction, opportunities for improvement, etc.? Could better, clearer customer-like two-way communication improve performance, minimize confusion, and improve morale?
  
  
• Pricing and Compensation
  Companies agonize over pricing policies and are constantly vigilant about what competitors may be charging to make sure they remain competitive. The best companies also involve customers in research about alternative pricing strategies. Should you be just as diligent and open with determining employee compensation and rewards? Few things are more demoralizing to employees than perceived compensation unfairness.

   

• Respect and Consideration
  Great companies are hypersensitive to potential customer reactions to problems, changes, and delays that are disruptive to their lives. Employees are people too with personal lives outside of work. Should you be just as sensitive to the impact of similar disruptions you impose on the lives of your employees? They will feel respected and it will have an impact on your ability to retain them.

As always, if you’d like more information or assistance regarding achieving your business and life goals or you just want someone to brainstorm, vent, or commiserate with, consider taking advantage of JPMA’s Executive Mentor Program by scheduling a free videoconference session with me. I’d enjoy meeting you and helping you any way I can. Check the JPMA web site for more information or contact Reta Adler at radler@jpma.org.

Ron Sidman was the founder and CEO of The First Years, Inc. and former Vice Chairman of the JPMA Board of Directors. He is currently a business consulting resource for JPMA members and serves on the Advisory Board of the School of Entrepreneurship at Florida Gulf Coast University where he also mentors students. Ron is also the founder and CEO of Evolutionary Success, LLC, a life and business coaching company.