Canadian HR Reporter

STRATEGIC CAPABILITY NETWORK'S PANEL of thought leaders brings decades of experience from the senior ranks of Canada's business community. eir commentary puts HR management issues into context and looks at the practical implications of proposals and policies. CANADIAN HR REPORTER June 12, 2017 EXECUTIVE SERIES 15 www.scnetwork.ca Join our professional community of Canadian HR & Organizational Leaders: • Connecting @ monthly events • Collaborating with peers • Challenging conventional thinking The Power of Human Capital CULTIVATING LEADERSHIP FOR 35 YEARS Great Leaders GROW www.scnetwork.ca Feeling connected and fulfi lled at work Five SCNetwork members engage in a back-and-forth on Bill Schiemann's presentation Ian Hendry: In a world that seems to be fi lled with so much negative energy, I appreciated Bill Schiemann's build on Marin Seligman's work in the fi eld of positive psychology. e conversation brought us back to that inner human need and Schiemann's defi nition of life fulfi llment as achieving your dreams and creating a lifestyle that brings exception- al happiness and inner peace. e big question for the audience was whether organizations have a role in helping create that positive expe- rience because it is extremely relevant to organizational performance. Jan van der Hoop: Schiemann and his organization have clearly done a lot of research into what makes people and organizations tick. His ACE model (alignment, capabilities, engagement) is a useful reference point as one in- dicator of health, and it echoes much of the work done since the mid-1990s, when Gallup set out to study what makes up the DNA of a "great manager." e bottom line is people feel most connected and "fulfi lled" at work, and do their best work, when four critical aspects of fi t line up: fi t with the manager, with the work they are assigned, with the people they spend their day with, and with the organization's mission, vision and values. When the fi t is right, it sets up a state of potential engagement that the manager, if she is on her game, can catalyze with the employee into a state of engagement. at Schiemann's research sug- gests no more than 20 per cent of the workforce feels fulfi lled at work should come as no surprise; it is en- tirely consistent with two decades' worth of fi ndings regarding levels of engagement. Many employers complain about the attitudes of "privileged" millennials and a widespread lack of loyalty in today's workforce. I'd suggest there's no lack of loy- alty, but loyalty is reciprocal and needs to be earned. In our day, you could buy my loyalty with a paycheque, and in return you'd get my head and (most of ) my heart. Today, in a diff erent reality, where paternalism is long dead, there is little job security and people have been taught the hard way that they need to look out for their own interests. Nowadays, hearts and minds need to be won diff er- ently — with integrity, purpose, meaning and connection. Organizations whose managers can foster those qualities will be the employers of choice. Tracey White: I agree, Jan. Loy- alty is perhaps a time-stamped concept. Individuals who entered the workforce during an era when loyalty equalled lifetime employ- ment will fall wide of the mark in trying to apply the same standard to the workforce of today. In a rapidly changing business envi- ronment, it's disconcerting that many, if not most, HR and man- agement programs are products of this bygone era. Contingent or "gig" workers are expected to make up 40 per cent of the United States workforce by 2020, according to research by TinyPulse. In Canada, we may be well on the way already. A McMaster University study con- ducted in 2013 classifi ed 52 per cent of workers in the Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area as "pre- carious." Contingent employment is a fast-growing phenomenon that we don't fully understand because reliable data is thin. Yet, we are experiencing economic changes that are reshaping the very concept of work and, with it, attitudes like loyalty. Schiemann rightly observed that organizations can't create an engaged workforce if large groups of people are left out of HR pro- grams because they do not meet the prevailing defi nition of a "full- time employees." Perhaps this standard too is time-stamped. We have had many conversa- tions at SCNetwork lately where it is clear the gig economy is not on HR's radar. As one member remarked, "Contingent employ- ees are out of scope for HR"; in- stead, these workers are managed by procurement. By 2020, 50 per cent of the North American workforce will be millennials and the fi rst gen- Z employees will join the labour market. The life experience of these workers does not include notions of lifetime employment, nor, if we're honest, do employers want to return to this model. As Schiemann said, HR needs a shift in mindset. Paul Pittman: I remember an interview with a senior executive at a major global company who said the best people at the com- pany would get to the top despite what people in HR do to them (I like to think he meant "for" but the wry smile suggested otherwise). How true those words were, and they have infl uenced my activities many times since. Schiemann, for me, is adding more understanding to this off -the-cuff remark. Not everyone can be fulfi lled in their work — not everyone has the opportunities, resources, con- fi dence or synapse to be truly ful- fi lled. Some will get there without any help from a single employer and need a variety of experiences. However, as employers, we can do a pile more for those folks who perhaps don't know what their passion is yet or perhaps don't have all of the tools or natural re- sources to achieve complete work life satisfaction. We can do more to nurture their engagement. We can create environments that en- able people to explore their pas- sions and master their skills. Perhaps we should consider our role as employer in aiming for fulfi llment in the work lives of our employees — individuals capable of creating super value because they are living their pas- sion. For everyone else, improved engagement is as much as we can achieve. We should never forget too that engagement at work can be achieved through fulfi llment outside of work (Schiemann re- fers to this as the "whole person"). In addition to his organization's work, there is a great book by Mi- haly Csikszentmihalyi titled Flow: e Psychology of Optimal Expe- rience which talks about personal fulfi llment as a means of reaching higher levels of engagement at work. We should never forget we can make work life more accessi- ble to enable personal fulfi llment in other areas that will contribute to retention. A signifi cant takeaway for me was how the audience of primar- ily HR folks responded to Schie- mann's question about what con- stitutes people risk. I would sug- gest we still don't understand the broader fi nancial risks that manag- ing people poses for organizations. White: One of the most frus- trating things for me is how many HR metrics are focused on cost. As long as human labour is viewed merely as a cost to be minimized, and not as an investment with long-term growth implications, we will never understand or be able to quantify people risk. As we move to an economy where value creation depends on brainpower, the insuffi ciencies of current mea- surement tools are becoming glar- ingly obvious for business and the economy more broadly. Silvia Lulka: What strikes me about Schiemann's research is how parallel the individual's and the organization's journeys are, and need to be. Organizations have the lens of mission, vision, values, strategy and balancing stakeholders. Individuals have the lens of vision, values, life goals, lighthouse goals, plans and bal- ancing elements of our lives. e very idea that an organiza- tion needs to look at the fulfi ll- ment of the "whole persons" who make up its employee base shows the need for us, as leaders and as individuals, to continually look at what we do, why we do it, what we need to continue and what we need to change. What does loy- alty mean today, and what does it mean going forward? What does being an employee mean today, and is that the best defi nition for the next decade? What does it mean to love and be fulfi lled by your job today, and what will that look like tomorrow? Van der Hoop: And whose job is engagement anyway? HR needs to get out of the engagement busi- ness. It's up to the manager and the individual to create a relation- ship, a context and a fl ow that optimizes organizational outputs and individual fulfi lment. Gifted managers have done that all along; the best we can do is make sure the right people are promoted to management, and given the training and tools to manage oth- ers, and then held accountable for results. PANELLISTS: • Ian Hendry, former president of the Strategic Capability Network and managing partner at Karian & Associates in Toronto • Jan G. van der Hoop, president of Fit First Technologies in Toronto • Tracey White, owner and managing director at Strategy in Action in Toronto • Paul Pittman, founder and president of the Human Well in Toronto • Silvia Lulka, director of coaching at Rogers Communications in Toronto Ian Hendry Paul Pittman Jan van der Hoop Tracey White Silvia Lulka Not everyone can be fulfi lled in their work — they lack the resources or opportunities.

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