Andrew Levy never expected that his career would land him in the Philippines. Levy is a senior managing consultant who worked for IBM for fifteen years before being accepted to the IBM Corporate Service Corps. During those fifteen years, he gained international business experience through IBM, as well as an MBA in global management. But it was only after leading a team on emergency and disaster response for one month in the Philippines that he said, “Now I am truly a global executive. This experience of living and working in Davao City, Philippines, to improve the quality of the country’s emergency response systems was life changing. The in-country experience is something no other company could offer at that time. Being able to get acquainted with other members of the IBM team via social networking groups, receiving online training and orientation on the culture and business issues facing companies in the Philippines, and taking part in an important project that made a real difference to the people of the Philippines—all of this has been a life- and career-changing experience for me. Quite frankly, it is the reason why I continue to be excited about working for IBM.”

How can companies create more enthusiastic and committed employees like Andrew Levy? The factors that go into attraction, motivation, development, and retention of employees are typically called employee engagement. Most of the research on employee engagement focuses on when individuals are engaged on the job, such as when they offer to do extra assignments, speak up when they see a different way to do things, or rate their intent to stay with a company highly.¹ But, as the example of Andrew Levy of IBM underscores, it is important for companies to go beyond chronicling specific employee engagement factors. Employers must create a workplace where employees can build a personal and emotional relationship to the employer brand.

The essential ingredients used to create engaged employees are similar to those present in a satisfying personal relationship: mutual trust, authentic communication, respect, shared values, and a commitment to growing together. Consider this comment by Dorie Morgan, a Millennial document control specialist working in the manufacturing industry: “Attracting employees is like dating. For a serious relationship to work, you need to be clear and upfront from the beginning.” The advice on dating is endless: just type in “What Do Men Want” in the YouTube search engine, and you will find more than 245,000 videos on the subject. But if you type in “What Do Employees Want,” you will find only 2,260 YouTube videos, many of which are inappropriate for corporate consumption. Where can a company go for solid advice?

To date, there have been few holistic models for how organizations can prepare for the future by creating truly engaged employees who go on to live and breathe the employer brand while delivering exceptional service. We define the 2020 workplace as an organizational environment that provides an intensely personalized, social experience to attract, develop, and engage employees across all generations and geographies. In this chapter we present the Workplace Engagement 2020 Model (WE 2020), a set of principles any organization—large or small, multinational or local—can use to build engaged employees for now and into the future.

We propose that the underlying principles of the workplace of the future are already in action among innovative and forward-thinking organizations. These companies are living examples of how integrating the WE 2020 model gives them a competitive advantage in attracting, developing, and retaining top talent both now and in 2020.

THE WORKPLACE ENGAGEMENT 2020 MODEL

In thinking about the future, the easiest question to ask most employees is what they would like their next job to be like. “The Generations @ Work” survey provided a list of fifteen characteristics for respondents to indicate as criteria for selecting their next job. All four generations surveyed agreed on the top ten, as shown in table 3-1.

TABLE 3-1: TOP 10 DESIRED EMPLOYER CHARACTERISTICS BY GENERATION

Has strong values

Blended Rank Order: 1

Traditionalists: 1

Baby Boomers: 1

Generation X: 2

Millennials: 2

 

Will develop my skills for the future

Blended Rank Order: 2

Traditionalists: 7

Baby Boomers: 4

Generation X: 1

Millennials: 1

 

Offers flexible benefits and rewards

Blended Rank Order: 3

Traditionalists: 3

Baby Boomers: 2

Generation X: 3

Millennials: 3

 

Offers the ability to blend work and life

Blended Rank Order: 4

Traditionalists: 2

Baby Boomers: 3

Generation X: 4

Millennials: 5

 

Is a good employer brand

Blended Rank Order: 5

Traditionalists: 4

Baby Boomers: 5

Generation X: 6

Millennials: 8

 

Offers a clear career path

Blended Rank Order: 6

Traditionalists: 8

Baby Boomers: 8

Generation X: 5

Millennials: 4

 

Has a reputation for corporate social responsibility

Blended Rank Order: 7

Traditionalists: 6

Baby Boomers: 6

Generation X: 7

Millennials: 7

 

Will allow me to work from any location

Blended Rank Order: 8

Traditionalists: 5

Baby Boomers: 7

Generation X: 8

Millennials: 10

 

Will pay for my continuing education

Blended Rank Order: 9

Traditionalists: 9

Baby Boomers: 9

Generation X: 9

Millennials: 9

 

Has employees I think I could be friends with

Blended Rank Order: 10

Traditionalists: 10

Baby Boomers: 10

Generation X: 10

Millennials: 6

 

Source: “The Generations @ Work” survey, Future Workplace.

 

Although the generations agreed on the top ten characteristics, there are some notable findings in the survey. Having a company with strong values, a strong brand, and a reputation for corporate social responsibility is of nearly the same importance across generations. Differences emerge in preparing skills for the future, as Traditionalists rank that much lower than the later generations, who might be planning to remain in the workforce for a longer time. The importance of friends in the workplace is higher for Millennials, indicating a greater need for a social environment. It is also interesting that Traditionalists rank the need for location flexibility significantly higher than Millennials rate it. Through a combination of research review, conversation with thought leaders, our surveys, and more than a hundred interviews with companies in the forefront, we have developed a model that we believe expresses the needs of all of the generations, while preparing for the workplace of 2020, shown in figure 3-1. The Workplace Engagement 2020 model covers the underlying principles that the future workplace must embody, as well as the most relevant and impactful areas in which to practice the principles within an organization.

Figure 3-1: The Workforce Engagement 2020 Model

Source: Future Workplace.

These practice areas start with ensuring that strong values resonate across the generations, creating a brand that employees identify with and developing a reputation for corporate social responsibility. Although there are many areas that can contribute to an engaged workforce, we have focused on four: recruiting, connecting employees through advanced communication methods, learning, and leadership. In our model, we call these:

 

1. Social recruiting. A practice that leverages social and professional networks, both online and offline, from both a candidate’s perspective and the hiring side, to connect to, communicate with, engage, inform, and attract future talent.

 

2. Über-connection. Building the organization’s capability to use the social media tools already in use by many marketing departments to connect with customers and expanding their usage to the engagement of employees.

 

3. Social learning. Learning that is collaborative, immediate, relevant, and presented in the context of an individual’s unique work environment.

 

4. Accelerated leadership. Developing a capacity to build leaders faster while introducing them to innovation in management.

 

As shown in the model, the 2020 workplace that engages employees effectively will have the following five principles resonating throughout its organizational practices. In respondents’ write-in comments from our survey “The Generations @ Work,” these five terms were repeated over and over by people around the world, across industries, and across generations. These workplaces will feature:

 

1. Collaboration. As organizations become more complex, more global, and more virtual, the need to ensure that the workplace culture reinforces collaboration across the entire enterprise becomes increasingly important. Traditionally, this has meant internal collaboration, including how people personally collaborate, as well as how the organization structures collaboration across teams. In the future, external collaboration will grow exponentially as a requirement, including working with suppliers, customers, consumers, government entities, nongovernmental organizations, and local communities. Even today, organizations are putting executives into supplier companies for temporary assignments to strengthen the total value chain to customers and provide accelerated leadership development for their own executives. Cisco’s councils and boards, described in chapter 7, are an example of the 2020 workplace’s collaborative environment. In thinking about what Millennials will want from the workplace of the future, Mary Greatbatch, a health care worker from Australia, said that in the future we will need to include Millennials “in major collaborative decisions.”

 

2. Authenticity. All the generations have been shaped by recent incidences of corporate excess, the use of political power for personal gain, and incessant, pervasive marketing. The emerging requirements will demand that an organization harmonize its messaging across all aspects of its operations in a way that reflects its core “values in use,” as Edgar Schein called them, as opposed to “professed values.” ² Authenticity is of primary importance in building an organization’s values, brand, and reputation. A necessary component of authenticity is transparency, and the best companies are already pioneering in this area, frequently using social media, through the use of techniques such as open financial books, blogging from CEOs to line employees, collective wikis, and full disclosure on pay. Danielle Pearson, a Generation Xer and consultant to the energy industry, advocates using “realistic job previews as part of the retention process, provided they are authentic.”

 

3. Personalization. The words “personal” or “personalized” showed up hundreds of times in the write-in sections of our survey. No longer will it be possible to “process” all employees in the same way with nearly identical employment offers, career paths, and benefits options. Even the concept of “processing” employees as they come into an organization suggests an antiquated assembly-line view of the employee relationship. We advocate banishing the word from the human resources lexicon. Crafting an employment relationship that meets the needs of every generation at each life stage while providing them with the ability to attain their personal career goals will require organizations to use mass customization techniques usually reserved for consumers. As Nichole Urban, a Millennial working in the hospitality industry, says, “Personal attention goes a long way. Employees my age are much more likely to feel invested in the goals of the company if they are ingrained in the community of the company. That is why it is important to have friends at work.” Some of the examples we cover include reaching out to potential employees in their own spaces, using informal learning techniques to allow context-based customization, and freeing employees to use social media to allow them to über-connect across the organization.

 

4. Innovation. The power of innovation is that it enables organizational and personal sustainability. Organizations that innovate are able to compete continually in the marketplace. People who work in innovative organizations are personally learning and advancing their skill sets to the leading edges of their domain expertise. Potential employees are attracted to organizations that have a renewable and energizing source of ideas for the future, putting pressure on organizations to also offer innovative practices aligned to organizational strategy. Innovative companies take traditional practices and turn them on their head. For example, in chapter 6 we relate an example of how mentoring can be expanded using social media and can even become reverse mentoring, with Millennial line employees mentoring senior executives, as featured in chapter 7. As Darryl Greyling, an internal compliance officer based in South Africa, says, “Millennials respond better to innovative and mature management,” suggesting the importance of experience in management while using progressive and up-to-the-minute techniques.

 

5. Social connection. The era of recognizing heroic individualism is over—at least as it relates to how we engage, recognize, and reward employees. After all, who gets the credit for a product that was developed on a wiki by dozens of people through five major iterations? Employers will need to offer fun, engaging environments—whether virtual or physical—that satisfy the basic human need to be a member of a highly regarded community. A natural extension of providing a social environment is the use of social media tools and techniques to allow employees to connect with communities that will best enable their workplace performance and support their life interests, covered in chapter 5. The presence of a vibrant, social workplace is of high importance for Millennials, as, among other things, they are seeking a workplace with employees they can connect with on and off the job. This is an image that no company evokes as strongly as Google, often referred to as “a company that feels like grad school.”³ Every company builds its brand as an extension of what its founders believe in, and at Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin set out to create a company where they would enjoy spending time. In other words, they aimed to create an environment that has the feel of graduate school, complete with small work groups, lots of experimentation, vigorous feedback loops, and the freedom to devote 20 percent of one’s time to noncore initiatives. In this way, Google continually develops new products while also being known as a place where innovation can be everyone’s passion.⁴

 

These five principles underlie the values, brand, and reputation of a company, as well as the practice areas that can most affect the ability to engage the 2020 workforce. We considered other practice areas, such as rewards, benefits, and customized employee contracts, but the preponderance of evidence pointed us to these five areas as the most influential and practical areas on which to focus to create an engaged workforce. It is our intent to help organizations select the areas where change can be most needed and provide guidance in how to make that change happen.

THE TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE

A growing movement exists to expand the accounting practices of companies beyond the financial aspects to include human capital and sustainable environmental practices. To date, the challenge has been to reduce the subjectivity of the nonfinancial measures, so organizations are issuing separate corporate social responsibility reports as addenda to their annual reports to demonstrate good faith.

This “triple bottom line” is sometimes referred to as “TBL” or, alternatively, as “people, planet, and profits” it refers to the concept of an organization that pays attention to values beyond those of shareholders to include those of all stakeholders. This concept is one that resonates with many Millennials as well as to those of the other generations in the aftermath of the recession that began in 2008.

People, or human capital, are a component of TBL that pertains to extending fair and equitable business practices to the people who are employed by the company and the region in which a corporation conducts its business, thus recognizing the interdependencies of all stakeholders. Planet, or natural capital, refers to the need for sustainable environmental practices. A TBL organization endeavors to leave as small an environmental footprint as possible, to try at least to do no harm. This includes managing energy consumption and reducing waste throughout the supply chain. When the entire supply chain is considered, including what it takes to grow the crops that feed the cattle that go to slaughter that are shipped to the stores that are packaged for consumers, it is estimated that the average U.S. consumer generates a ton of waste per day.⁵ Organizations that pay attention to their environmental impact can attract a generation who were sensitized to environmental issues in kindergarten and spent their high school years volunteering in community service projects. Progressing to a workplace where they have the opportunity to play a proactive role on the issues they care about in the world will be an appealing proposition.

Profit, or financial capital, is the economic benefit paid to the owners of the organization. Of course, companies will always be measured on their financial returns, but some have speculated that the singular focus on quarterly returns was partially to blame for the 2008 economic crisis.⁶ Now is the opportunity for companies to report on their triple bottom line and to use this as a way to attract the next generations of employees.

THE IMPORTANCE OF YOUR ORGANIZATION’S BRAND, VALUES, AND REPUTATION

To begin, there is one practice area so important that it must be done well, or work done in the rest of the model will not be able to compensate for its lack. First, organizations must differentiate themselves through their employer brand, creating a set of values and corresponding culture, while building a reputation as organizations committed to something more than profits. All of these were in the top ten priorities for an employee offer for each generation, as shown earlier in table 3-1.

Every company expresses its brand, values, and reputation in different ways, whether it’s Google’s famous “Do no evil” or Intuit’s policy of allowing all employees to have three paid days off to donate their time to the cause of their choice. These principles, summarized in figure 3-1, underlie all the practices featured in this book and demonstrate how WE 2020 can be practically applied in any organization. Establishing and implementing a set of values, and reinforcing the tenets of a culture with brand and resulting reputation, may actually be the least expensive and most effective way to create a compelling workplace. Potentially, this can have the most lasting impact on encouraging employees to select and remain at a company. Social media can be used to help communicate with and reach potential employees, but, as seen in some of the following examples, it is not a necessary requirement.

Projecting a Brand

Although many factors contribute to an employer’s value proposition, most employees desire a company name on their résumé that gives them a sense of pride. Talented employees from tarnished companies have experienced the heartache of having their own future employability threatened by the disgrace of their executives, as, for example, happened to some employees of Enron, who have largely given up looking for corporate jobs and started their own businesses.⁷ No matter how well a company performs in the other aspects of the model, if this core is not solid, no amount of work on other areas will compensate for it.

Libby Sartain, a former head of HR at both Southwest Airlines and Yahoo!, was once asked in a job interview, “What are the things you have to do in HR, no matter what?” As she describes it, her first reaction was “Each company has its own set of priorities and challenges, which call for different solutions.” But after a moment’s thought, she replied, “The importance of an employee brand is so core that no matter where I worked, I would ensure we were clear on defining and implementing an employee brand based on the unique culture and values of the company.”⁸

Building a solid brand is integral to the workplace of the future, but marketing that brand can no longer be done in the traditional ways of the past. In the first place, Sartain says, “Millennials are not going to believe the brand without hearing from their friends in their social networks. Additionally, there is still going to be a need to have a personal touch. The message that goes to a software engineer is likely not the same message that will go to a sales representative. We not only have to reach people through their trusted friends, but we also need to have a segmented approach.” Especially for those who are accustomed to and comfortable with buying on the Web, choosing where to work becomes heavily influenced by online research. The ability to compare and contrast jobs via the Web and social media is unprecedented in the history of job searching. It is now easy to get a good sense of an organization’s culture by getting information from friends on social media sites; visiting Web sites such as glassdoor.com, a site where people post their salaries and comment on working at their company; and judging the sophistication of the company’s Web site. All these have become important factors in making career decisions.

A word of caution, though: a company with a great brand is not necessarily a great place to work at. The most successful companies have figured out how to integrate the internal and external brand seamlessly in a way that makes work life an authentic extension of the brand. No company better exemplifies this than Nike.

Mike Tarbell has been with Nike more than a dozen years and is now the head of talent management, which includes the development of Nike talent by having employees gain critical experiences, as well as engaging them in structured learning and development. “We have a philosophy that seventy percent of development happens on the job, twenty percent through coaching and mentoring, and ten percent through learning and development programs.” How does the employer brand permeate talent management decisions? Tarbell continues, “It is important that our employment brand is as positive to employees and external candidates as our brand in the marketplace is with our consumers. Our talent strategy is integrated and holistic—which means it is designed to create accountability and ownership with the Nike employee and across the organization’s functional ‘talent pipelines.’ It is strongly based on our values and engaging employees to realize both their individual potential as well as Nike’s potential. We also build proactive and ongoing relationships with external candidates to build internal and external successors for future roles.

“As Nike has grown, we’ve worked very hard to maintain the qualities of our culture that make Nike unique. Our values, known as the Nike Maxims, are foundational to our culture. These maxims [such as ‘We are on offense, always’ and ‘The consumer decides’] are designed to create a framework for decision making among all employees and how we operate as teams. Other symbols of the culture are embedded in our DNA—in sales meetings, new-employee orientation, performance reviews, on the internal Web site, broadcast on the Nike internal radio station, known as KAOS, and in the visual images of athletes at our offices and facilities. There’s always a desire to stay grounded in our roots—and to be true to the Nike culture. We use words like innovation, performance, teamwork, and authenticity as the language of who we are.

“As the company has gotten bigger, it has remained very personal—much like many athletes and consumers relate to our brands. It’s casual, nonhierarchical, and a collaborative environment. That drives the decisions we make, how we act, and what our culture looks like. Pregame, our new-hire orientation, emphasizes our heritage, history, and the Nike Maxims. We intentionally create an experience for employees to discover the culture and how they can bring their own diverse skills and abilities to make a contribution. Our cultural assessment [employee survey] is a way to solicit ongoing input from employees about the culture, diversity and inclusion, management practices and programs; and a way to hold ourselves accountable for continuing to improve. It goes back to the employment brand—making the employee experience on par with the consumer experience. When I have asked employees why they stay, they say, ‘I love the brand. I love the product. I love the team.’ No one thing has done this for us—but we try to reinforce these simple concepts. It’s about staying true to who we are.”

Nike is not alone in its commitment to building a strong employer brand. As Kristen Weirick, the director of talent acquisition at Whirlpool, says, “The quickest way to kill your brand is to communicate externally something that does not resonate internally…. Everybody goes home and tells somebody what their day was like.”⁹ People are drawn to organizations they believe will enhance their own personal brand and image. Having a good brand at the company you work for is personal and influences your decision of where to work and whether or not you will stay.¹⁰ Although communicating a brand through social media can be highly effective, as it is with connecting with customers, it is first and foremost important to have a defined, authentic, engaging brand. Engagement flows from an authentic brand, not from campaigns in any media.

Living the Values

What if a company does not have an easily recognized consumer brand? What if it is a small or midsized firm? Can it still have a set of values and a culture that stand out to make a compelling employee offer? Qualcomm, a San Diego, California–based company, grew quickly after being founded in 1985. Now a Fortune 500 company with nearly 13,000 employees, it is still not a household name, even though its technologies are contained in many consumers’ mobile phones. The early culture of the company was full of entertainment, entrepreneurship, and innovation. As it rapidly expanded, it became difficult to retain the unique culture that made it have a “casual, fun atmosphere that breeds innovation.”¹¹

One of the programs that Qualcomm used and continues to use to sustain its fun and innovative culture is a practice called “52 Weeks.” For a new employee at Qualcomm, knowing the brand and culture is not as intuitive from the start as it is at Nike, so the process of successfully integrating an employee into the culture requires a more planned program.

As Tamar Elkeles, the vice president of learning and organization development, says, “Our primary goal for ‘52 Weeks’ is to create and retain our culture. We were growing so rapidly and hiring thousands of people every year, and we wanted to keep a culture that encouraged risk taking and entrepreneurship. The way we chose to do this is to tell stories, because we wanted to give people a realistic job preview and ensure the culture continues.”

All new Qualcomm employees are automatically registered online to receive a story a week for their first year. Progressing from the founding of the company to the present day, the stories describe the history of the company’s technology successes and failures, as well as the rationale behind key decisions, all while conveying the company’s culture in a memorable format.

The stories continue to change and morph as employees submit newer versions of them. One of the perennial favorites is a story about the dress code. Since Qualcomm is based in San Diego, it’s not unusual for employees to surf or ride bikes at lunchtime, so the dress code is understandably relaxed. However, the chief technologist came in one morning and spotted an employee parading through the halls in pink bunny slippers, inspiring him to send out a memo clarifying the dress code. Called the Franklin memo, after the name of the chief technologist, the memo instructed that from that point on, “While there is no dress code at Qualcomm, no one shall knowingly wear shoes with ears.”

According to Elkeles, this was an amusing way to communicate that the Qualcomm dress code, though relaxed, did in fact have limits. Other stories tell about the perseverance and risk-taking attitude that distinguished the company in its early years and how contrarian thinking led to some of the company’s most important innovations.

The stories also reflect transparency as a way to encourage the type of risk taking that has been successful for Qualcomm, while discouraging the converse. In another of the “52 Weeks” stories, an overengineered project is described. “The team fell in love with the technology, and with too little input from customers, ended up spending too much money and effort on a product that did not fare well in the marketplace,” says Elkeles. By telling the story of a failure, Qualcomm emphasizes its commitment to customer-requirement-driven design, bounded by sensible financial investments. It also reinforces a cultural norm of open discussion and learning from mistakes, an asset that can help a technology company remain competitive and nimble in the marketplace.

How does Qualcomm know that the “52 Weeks” stories are working? “The stories get retold. It becomes lore,” says Elkeles. “You know it’s working because people tell the stories to others.” Story suggestions are submitted by employees, so the set of stories is constantly being updated. A story is selected if it conveys a piece of the important cultural norms of execution or innovation, has a lesson that helps people understand Qualcomm, and is memorable. Each story is tracked to determine how many people click through to read the story, with the average story yielding 3,000 click-throughs, meaning that people who are not new hires are also reading the stories. A story with fewer than average click-throughs is replaced with a new one, creating a fresh and dynamic set of “52 Weeks.”

Establishing Reputation Through Corporate Social Responsibility

According to a survey by PwC, 88 percent of Millennials in the United States want to engage in some form of public service, which indicates that they would also be interested in joining an employer that has a track record of corporate social responsibility.¹² Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a concept “whereby organizations consider the interests of society by taking responsibility for the impact of their activities on customers, suppliers, employees and stakeholders as well as the environment.”¹³

As Glen Naedts, a member of the Millennial generation working in the retail, travel, and hospitality industry in Europe, says, “I believe we are a new breed on the market with higher regard for the values the company has instead of money as the sole incentive. We are more concerned about the environment and the future of the planet, monetary system, human relations, etc.”

For all generations, working for a company that has a strong commitment to corporate social responsibility is one of the top ten factors that influence their selection of a future employer, as reported in “The Generations @ Work” survey. Corporate social responsibility is also important to customers, and studies show that potential customers who identify personally with the CSR activities of a company are more likely to buy from that company. Similarly, employees want to remain with a company that is working for something bigger than the company alone.¹⁴

For small- and medium-sized businesses, it is possible to create a sense of purpose for each employee that can be a competitive appeal to attracting Millennials and their desire to make a difference. However, large companies have the advantage of scale in creating and implementing wide-reaching, high-impact CSR possibilities that can also be appealing to the Millennial generation, as Andrew Levy of IBM noted at the opening of this chapter. While members of all four generations surveyed consider CSR as a factor in selecting an employer, it is especially key for younger employees. One possible reason for this is that many Millennials spent years in high school volunteering on community projects, sometimes as a criterion for graduation. They thus enter the workplace with this as one of their expectations for an employer.

For some organizations, this means picking specific social issues that are strongly linked to their core mission. Some companies, such as Goldman Sachs, a global investment bank with offices in all the major world financial centers, have developed CSR programs that are becoming an important lever for creating social change and attracting employees to the firm. In 2009 Goldman Sachs was one of the top ten companies in Fortune magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work For. The firm has received much media acclaim for its “10,000 Women” program, which is “increasing the number of underserved women receiving a business and management education…and improving the quality and capacity of business and management education around the world.” In this five-year program, “Goldman Sachs will support partnerships with universities and development organizations that will lead to 10,000 women receiving a business and management education.”¹⁵

While the initial partnerships fund business and management education certificates for 10,000 women in countries around the world, the program does much more than that. It opens doors for thousands of women whose financial and practical circumstances prevent them from receiving a traditional business education. Clearly, preparing brand-loyal future investors aligns with the mission of Goldman Sachs, but the $100 million investment shows a dedication to more than the potential future business those 10,000 women will bring to the company.¹⁶

Qualcomm’s CSR program includes working with local and global partners to bring wireless technology around the world to developing communities. Its Wireless Reach program helps deliver everything from better health care to improved education and business opportunities and safer streets, all of which serve to improve quality of life.¹⁷ Since Qualcomm products are so closely aligned with mobile phone availability, the company is able to achieve an especially well aligned set of objectives.

Intuit is another example of how a company’s founder can build an employer brand to reinforce his or her own beliefs about corporate social responsibility. Intuit, recognized as one of the most admired software companies, operates under the principle “With our success comes the responsibility to give back to the community.”¹⁸ Scott Cook, the founder of Intuit and a former Bain & Company consultant, emphasizes the importance of creating a healthy company. But the underlying values he holds are reflected in his statement that it is the responsibility of a company to give back to the community, backed by a policy allowing employees three days of personal time to volunteer at the organization of their choice. “It becomes part of the watercooler talk,” said Rob Lake, a former head of talent acquisition at Intuit. “People enjoy telling the stories of what they did with their time. Some people went to help out with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and others donated their time after the tsunami in 2004. Personally, I used to work as a tradesman, so I donate my time to helping remodel and rebuild women’s shelters. The thing at Intuit is that you know it’s part of their DNA and not just a set of values up on the wall.” This commitment to corporate social responsibility has become a strong part of Intuit’s operating principles.

Sometimes reaching people early in their careers not only helps build a favorable impression of a company’s brand but also can influence future employees and customers through a broad set of activities. Cisco is one such company, as it has cultivated a strong reputation across areas such as environmental, economic, educational, and social initiatives.¹⁹ One example of Cisco’s CSR projects is City Year, and organization that places young adults in a year of community service. A key part of the program is leadership development of the volunteers, making them much more likely to emerge as leaders in their careers when their service with City Year is complete.²⁰ The thousands of young adults who have gone through the City Year program will also remember the investment Cisco made in their own development.

But CSR can reach beyond recruiting to be aligned with the mission of a company’s corporate learning department. Consider CIGNA University, the learning department of CIGNA, a health service company that has expanded beyond offering learning to its internal employees to providing educational programs to consumers on how the health care system works, as well as key components of the health care political debate.²¹ Inspired by www.freerice.com,²² the CIGNA University developed a program called Water for People. As people take a short online quiz answering questions about their knowledge of health and the health care system, money is donated to Water for People. Every three questions correctly answered provide a day’s worth of water for children in India. Using a gaming approach and a set of interactive tools, the program helps consumers learn about making informed choices about health care, while simultaneously creating a way for them to play a part in donating clean, safe water to countries in need. Karen Kocher, the chief learning officer of Cigna, shares this insight about the value of the Water for People program: “Not only does the free training lead to better-informed consumers of health care benefits, which benefits the company overall, but it helps build a reputation as a company invested in more than its own profits.”

A DIVERSITY OF PATHS LEADS TO THE 2020 WORKPLACE

Innovation in building and communicating the employer brand, values, and reputation is only the first step to ensuring an engaged workforce in the future. To achieve employee engagement, companies are using very different tactics, each unique to their own culture and brand. There is no single path to achieve an engaged workforce in 2020. We recommend creating workplaces that are collaborative, authentic, personal, innovative, and social, expressed in the unique culture of the organization. To start, build a strong brand message consistent inside and outside the organization, supported by values that resonate across generations and geographies. Then seek to innovate the HR practices, particularly in the areas of recruiting, corporate learning, usage of social media inside the company, and leadership development. Taken together, these are the building blocks of a 2020 workplace, necessary to address the forces described in chapter 1: shifting demographics, globalization, and the social Web. In the next four chapters, we will profile practices which provide the greatest opportunity to showcase value to the employees of 2020. Each of these practices, however, emanates from the core of the organization. A small yet growing group of employers has penetrated the frontiers of employee engagement. Through their stories, we will share creative, successful methods to find and engage your employees, expand beyond traditional corporate learning, and accelerate leadership so that organization success is part of everyone’s job.

SUMMARY

• Expand your definition of collaboration in the workplace. Traditionally, collaboration has been conceived of as internal, referring to how individuals collaborate on a one-to-one basis. In the workplace of the future, external collaboration will gain in importance as companies and communication technologies expand on a global scale.
• Be authentic in your policies and branding. The era in which we live is saturated with information. Potential employees expect to be able to access unprecedented amounts of information about companies prior to considering working at them. Companies that do not offer this level of transparency will be hurt by their lack of disclosure. Employers should also expect that potential employees will conduct thorough research of any claims made by the company on a variety of Web sites. Thus, honesty and transparency are key facets of authenticity that will need to be instituted.
• Personalize the employment contract. Employees are beginning to demand that they be treated as individuals. One-size-fits-all employment offers, career paths, and benefits options are becoming a thing of the past. The savvy HR professional will instead focus on fostering employment relationships that meet the needs of each discrete segment of employees.
• Make innovation a core value of your company. Organizations that innovate are able to compete continually in the marketplace and help their employees learn and advance their skill sets. Companies need to focus on innovation, not only to stay current in the market but because potential employees are attracted to organizations that have ideas for the future.
• Encourage social interactions and connections among your employees. In the networked world we live in, providing a social environment at the office, though necessary, is no longer enough. Instead, employers will need to foster the use of social media tools and techniques to allow employees to connect with global communities.