What keeps high-performing employees devoted to their jobs, even in a dismal work environment? The answer, surprisingly, isn’t a steady salary. Even in a grim economy, according to research by the Center for Work-Life Policy in the US, the two key levers in strengthening employee engagement are stimulating assignments and great colleagues.
It’s impossible to underestimate the importance of a community at work, especially in these turbulent times. After enduring wave after wave of job cuts, plant closures and corporate bankruptcies, employees uniformly say that what enables them to keep going is being able to talk to others who listen to and understand their concerns.
At the same time, organisations also benefit from encouraging and endorsing employee communities. In addition to providing a sympathetic ear, the groups help to build internal professional networks and develop career skills. Many offer nuanced learning opportunities; for example, women’s networks may teach negotiating skills and “Millennial groups” pair young newcomers with senior mentors. All of these actions make talented employees feel more attached to both their colleagues and to their company.
A spectrum of options exists to create a sense of collaboration, from in-person meetings to videoconferencing, webcasts and even Twitter. Virtual forums are especially important to fostering camaraderie among workers scattered geographically.
The following three ways can help organisations to make these communities work for both their members and their employers:
1. Company-supported networks or affinity groups – grassroots internal organisations that address the needs of a particular employee group, such as women, engineers or Hispanic staff – have proved a huge winner for employees and employers alike in this recession. These provide a much-needed sense of connection for people who might otherwise feel adrift as their companies focus on survival.
In 2009, each of GE’s five affinity groups was required to come up with new ways to engage members and reach organisational goals (retention, promotion, training) in light of new economic realities. One programme, created by GE’s women’s network, has since tweaked its offerings to emphasise talent-spotting and support.
Called My Connections, the programme requires regional senior leaders, dubbed “champions”, to sponsor local pods – groups of about 20 women who meet six to eight times a year. To ensure the pods are productive and not simply social groups, the champions appoint “coaches” to lead, plan and evaluate events. In addition to ensuring that up-and-coming leaders get to meet senior leaders, the pods provide much-needed personal connections during these tough times.
2. In October 2007 the technology giant EMC launched EMC ONE, an online forum based on off -the-shelf social networking software that allows basic collaboration and discussion. As the recession bore down, the experiment bore fruit. One particularly successful community is called “The Water Cooler”. True to its name, any topic is open for discussion, from company cost-cutting to the economy’s effect on families.
In addition to advice and healthy venting, Water Cooler conversations have also provided productive solutions to the special challenges of the recession. In December 2008, an EMC employee invited colleagues to post “constructive ideas to save money”. More than 320 ideas were suggested, including unpaid time off and lowering the temperature at EMC headquarters by two degrees. “There were hundreds of tangible cost-saving ideas that went above and beyond any ideas the company might have come up with,” said Polly Pearson, vice-president of employment brand and strategy development. Today, EMC ONE hosts more than 160 virtual communities. Almost one-third of EMC’s 40,000 workers worldwide are registered users who actively contribute and another 11,000 are “lurkers”, representing an impressive 50 per cent adoption rate among the workforce.
3. In 2008, the new women’s employee affinity network at credit ratings agency Moody’s proposed to management the idea of creating a back-up childcare programme. When the idea was floated at a series of company- wide information sessions, though, most of the questions concerned not childcare but eldercare. The company’s response, effective from 1 January 1: dedicated centres for back-up childcare and eldercare opened at its offices in New York and San Francisco. Resources were also made available for employees in other parts of the country. Community groups provide unparalleled insights into workforce issues that might otherwise go unaddressed and fester. For employees, knowing their company cares what they have to say, encourages them to say it and trusts them enough to let them say it without censorship is a gift of inestimable value. For employers, supporting such sentiments translates into a tremendously powerful talent retention tool. Without much effort and at a negligible cost, employers and employees can create a real community at work and reap and promulgate its many benefits.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett (cwlp@worklifepolicy. org) is founder and president of the Center for Work-Life Policy and author of Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down. She is based in New York
