Our research mission was to discover how changes in the global economy and shifting demographics would impact the employment and talent marketplace, from both the employer and employee perspectives. By understanding both views, we would be able to offer advice to both companies and employees on how to prepare to meet each other’s expectations for the future. In 2014, we collaborated with SuccessFactors, an SAP company, and Oxford Economics to conduct twin studies of executives and employees across 27 countries to find out what the future workforce wants.

Altogether we polled 2,800 employees and polled or interviewed 2,700 executives, with even distribution across countries. Employees were working professionals in white-collar jobs, and executives were largely senior executives in a direct-reporting relationship to a CEO or company president. The respondents came from across many thousands of companies, encompassing industries such as retail, public sector, finance, healthcare, consumer goods, and others. An independent polling firm selected all respondents. Since our focus was on the future, half of our employee respondents were Millennials–people born after 1979. Countries in which we surveyed are shown in Figure A.1.

A little more than 53 percent of the employee respondents were men, and almost 47 percent were women. Executives were not sorted by age or gender, since we did not anticipate there would be enough females or Millennials in top jobs to help us sort the data. Each survey asked a broad range of questions covering over 90 items focusing on factors such as contributors to their job satisfaction, their company benefits and offerings, development opportunities, benefits, culture, manager quality, and skills.

We also inserted variables to sort the respondents by work performance or job satisfaction. In the case of employees, we asked for their last performance review rating, their intention to leave, and their overall job satisfaction. In the case of executives, we asked how profitable and how fast their companies were growing compared to others in their industry. As one of our data sorts, we compared high performers to low performers in both surveys. When we refer to high-performing employees in the book, they are the people who said their performance rating was above average or excellent. As an example, high performers were 26 percent more likely than low performers to say that self-directed learning was one of the top three ways they have experienced the most professional development. That insight helped inform our practice “Learn on the Fly” and inspired us to look further at how high performers direct their own learning.

In addition to the global surveys, we estimate we interviewed and talked to hundreds of people and consulted with dozens of academic or corporate learning experts to refine and validate our practices. We reviewed more than 1,000 academic papers, kept Amazon in business with book deliveries, and clicked through countless of the web’s estimated trillion pages. As partners, we have researched together since we started our doctoral programs together in 1999. Our first project was interviewing award-winning people to determine how they used their networks in achieving their success. This long research partnership enabled us to span a broad array of research topics and translate those into actionable career development practices.

Key Workplace 2020 Survey Findings

Overall, our survey findings fall into five broad themes, outlined below:

1. The face of the workforce is shifting to be more diverse and global. Executives agreed strongly that they will be hiring more contingent, part-time, and contract labor, meaning the future of work will be comprised of a more flexible workforce.
2. Millennials are not as different as widely reported, at least when it comes to what they want at work. By and large, people of all ages want meaningful work, aspire to make a difference, and value the same benefits. Millennials are different in that they want more feedback and more development than their non-Millennial peers, understandably so since they are earlier in their careers.
3. Executives and employees don’t see eye to eye on what matters to job satisfaction. Compensation was the most important factor to both satisfaction and loyalty, but executives reported a low focus on competitive compensation. The one exception where compensation was not ranked first was in the United States. There Millennials rated development as their top factor driving satisfaction and loyalty. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard professor, based upon her research says that when companies provide an environment that offers employees a chance to gain mastery, be a highly connected member, and experience meaningful work, money becomes a distant fourth. This may be true in more stable economic times, or perhaps our study’s respondents aren’t experiencing the first three in a consistent way, as money has risen to the top of their agenda. Executives also highly value loyalty and commitment from their employees, which is surprising given that out of the Fortune 500, fewer than 100 companies have an average employee tenure greater than five years. Gallup routinely reports that most employees are disengaged, so no wonder options elsewhere seem attractive. Even at Google, one of the most desired companies to work for in the world, average employee tenure is just a little over a year, partially attributable to growth, but low nonetheless.
4. To be prepared for the future, both employees and executives agreed that more preparation is needed for leaders. Even though executives said they anticipated having more diverse employees, only 34 percent of executives said their leaders were prepared to lead a more diverse workplace. Less than half of executives—47 percent—said their organizations were prepared to lead in a global environment.
5. Finally, employees were clear that they need development to be prepared for tomorrow’s workplace. The number one concern employees around the world share is that their position will change or their skills will become obsolete, shown in Figure A.2. Additionally, only 50 percent of the employees from our survey believe the skills they have today will be the skills they need just three years from now. Only 34 percent say their company provides the training they need to stay current.