Today’s workforce wants more than just to climb the corporate ladder. Professionals at all levels are increasingly searching for meaning and purpose, placing a greater importance on achieving fulfillment both at home and at work. While we no longer expect to find a job for life, neither are we willing to put up with drudgery and repetition of work that does not engage and stimulate us.
Genuine leaders are able to harness this opportunity to cultivate a culture with not only a clear purpose and vision that the entire company can ‘buy into’ but care and attention for the individuals that will each play a part in the success of that business. We all have many and varied ideas of ‘fulfillment’ and by taking the time to understand and align an individual’s life ambition to that of the company you breed a performance culture.
Egon Zhender are the McKinsey of the talent world, they do a lot of research into maximising the performance and success of executives. They have recently surveyed 1,275 senior executives to better understand the relationship between the alignment of personal goals and professional objectives, read it here, it inspired this post. A lot of the findings resonate with way we operate at Champers Advisory and it’s great to see empirical evidence supporting the way we deliver the work and the outcomes we achieve.
The old mechanics of ‘carrot and stick’ motivation does not deliver results. There is no linear relationship between increased financial rewards and output in the knowledge economy. We often cite this excellent video from RSA animate adapts Dan Pink’s talk on what drives us and how to create an engaged workforce.
These concepts of employee engagement beyond the paycheck are not new, they are just not universally understood and adopted. All too often the workplace is seen as a completely separate operating environment than the rest of it’s inhabitants life. We are operating an increasingly distributed workforce, embracing autonomy in working practice but are we engaging the workforce to align their goals to that of the enterprise? If not you’re sitting on a huge opportunity.
Champers Advisory exists to bring more enjoyment and success to the workplace. We work with companies to help them and their employees express and communicate clarity of purpose, driving results and enjoying success. Please contact us to arrange our first meeting together, we guarantee it will be a positive experience.
Charles Cadbury 