Employee engagement is a tough nut for any business to crack. Failure to adapt to employees' career expectations or to ease their sense of being overwhelmed — by work demands, by constant technology distractions or by the disappearance of work/life balance — can drag down more than engagement. Performance and profitability suffer, too.
Those problems won't work themselves out, of course. A solution lies in creating what Josh Bersin, founder of talent management consulting firm Bersin by Deloitte, calls an "irresistible workplace." The concept stems from research conducted for the Deloitte 2014 Human Capital Trends Study. Bersin says the research identified two fundamental changes that has altered the relationship between employees and employers:
- The significant, ongoing employee engagement problem that businesses struggle to solve. Business leaders struggle to pinpoint the specific problems, though, partly because Millennials are flooding into the workforce with different expectations than pervious generations.
- Employees are now inundated with so much information and technological distractions that they feel overwhelmed.
"We have so much technology that’s infiltrated our lives that the barriers between work and life have disappeared, so many employees feel that they are just overwhelmed by the pace and the volume of activity that they’re dealing with at work," Bersin says. "It’s created a real engagement crisis."
The good news for business leaders? There’s hope. Watch Bersin's interview below with our irresistible friend Bill Kutik, veteran technology columnist for Human Resource Executive, about what the "irresistible workplace" entails, and why it's crucial to talent management.
Related Resources
Want to keep learning? Explore our products, customer stories, and the latest industry insights.
Blog Post
Mitigating employee compliance risks
Corporate scandals, highly publicised lawsuits, fines totaling millions of dollars — these typically aren't scenarios you want associated with your company name. Today, employee compliance is one of the most essential parts of business, yet only 40 percent of companies say they are thoroughly prepared for a compliance audit. To keep out of hot water and uphold employee compliance standards, businesses must adhere to internal policies and procedures and federal and state laws.
Customer Story
Upping the game across the entire end-to-end employee experience
The myCareer team in the NSW Department of Customer Service (DCS) is the creator, administrator and proud guardian of a platform providing People & Culture support to seven diverse ‘clusters’ of government agencies — each with its own unique interface and expectations. From a starting point of multiple, unintegrated systems and time-consuming, error-prone manual processes, the team used Cornerstone to digitise the entire employee lifecycle — from finding and recruiting talent through onboarding, performance management, learning and offboarding.
Blog Post
Sustainability in HR: The Evolution of Green HR Practices
The role and responsibilities of the HR sector are constantly changing, and not just due to the inevitable digital transformation. In recent years, awareness of environmental issues has increased significantly, especially among younger generations who are no longer willing to compromise on their ideals and principles.