The empowered employee experience
Here are three ways to build an edge when designing benefits for the next-generation workforce.
The last year has been full of surprises, challenges, and above all, reflection. As we collectively catch our breath in preparation for what comes next, one thing is clear: remote-first was just the beginning—the (r)evolution in how we work will continue far after our return to social living.
We’re entering the era of the empowered employee experience, with implications on everything from benefits to office design. People, teams and benefits specialists must again rise to the occasion as they create the standards for the new era of work.
Related: The hybrid workforce: 4 steps to get it right
Here are three ways to build an edge when designing benefits for the next-generation workforce.
1. Embrace the empowered employee
The next frontier of the war for talent is an empowered employee experience.
Choice and flexibility: Employees want a say in how they are most productive and happy. To enable this, and to unlock the discretionary effort, engagement, and loyalty of their employees, companies must promote choice and flexibility in how, where, and when people do their work.
Output not input: Expect to see the best employers cultivate a consistent culture of measuring and rewarding output (results), not input (face time). The lever that optimizes output is talented, happy, and motivated employees. Benefits teams have a huge role to play in properly incentivizing this change and making it stick.
The whole person: During the depths of the pandemic, productivity increased overall in the US by 10.1% in a single quarter. What followed was burnout, Zoom fatigue, and an epidemic of women stepping back from the workforce. Remind your team that you value their whole selves by offering perks designed to support physical and emotional well-being such as yoga classes, ergonomics support, mindfulness resources, special events open to the whole family, self-directed PTO, volunteer time off, and all-company days off.
2. Build for distributed teams
As we nail down processes to enable globally distributed, time zone agnostic teams, we may soon see companies add “work whenever” to their list of flexible perks. This is the year to add related goals to your team roadmap and lay the foundation.
Build asynchronous skills: your team may or may not have these already. In most cases, this skill is unevenly distributed and team-specific. To get your entire organization working cross-functionally with a common set of standards, we first must get the basics right:
- Communication – how to communicate effectively in writing,
- Documentation – how to prepare and leverage the robust documentation required for asynchronous work to be successful, and
- Expectations – how to set clear deadlines, RACIs, and KPIs.
Invest in tools: build a stack of workflow, communications, and project management tools that support effective distributed work.
Experiment: trial core “synchronous” hours and get feedback from the team on how it worked for them. Iterate by starting back at step 1 and 2.
3. Enable connection
A connected team is a winning team. But the means of connection must change to match the realities of the empowered employee experience.
The ultimate perk: Your team may be dispersed but coming together in a way that reflects your culture, whether in person or virtually, is more important than ever. Virtual events are scalable and enable the entire team to partake in new connection rituals. In-person engagement offers an even more special opportunity to create an incredible employee experience. This will become the ultimate perk.
Purpose-built: Remote-first enables the empowered employee to do focused work wherever they are most happy and productive. Workspaces will be purpose-built for work. On the other hand, connection spaces should be purpose-built for connection. As you begin reimagining the details of your physical spaces, remember that collaboration, team building, and interaction will happen in the spaces most conducive to it.
Give back: If we’ve learned anything about each other in the last year, it’s that we’re endlessly interconnected. A remote-first work experience creates an even stronger connection to our neighbors, communities, and the world— the best employers recognize this and will empower their employees to embrace connection through volunteering. Offering paid volunteer time off respects the individual, the community they live and work in, and their individual passions.
The world was thrown into unimaginable change a year ago. While disorienting, there has also never been a bigger opportunity to sharpen your talent acquisition, employee engagement, and retention edge than now through thoughtful, modern benefits.
Companies that ignore the zeitgeist or force back the old ways of work will lose talent at a rapid clip to remote-first, flexible, people-centric employers. Be ready, as this will create an outsized advantage for YOU as you quickly attract and stack your ranks with the industry’s best minds.
As they say, change is the only constant. Plan accordingly and reap the rewards!
Vanessa Black is head of people programs and engagement at Tanium.
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