The most recent edition of the Harvard Business Review is leading with ‘what most companies get wrong about managing talent’, with a sub-header ‘they misjudge what really matters to employees’. This got grabbed my attention. Finally people are waking up to the need to avoid making assumptions about what good looks like for their people.
This is a drum we have been banging at People Lab since we first started. And we explain it using our MAGIC-CA model of EX. But on further inspection I realised my joy was a bit premature.
In an piece entitled ‘rethink your value proposition – offer your people more than just flexibility’, Mark Mortenesen and Amy Edmonson make their case. They argue for an Employee Value Proposition (EVP) as a system of four interrelated factors:
- Material offerings such as compensation, office space, location, etc.
- Opportunities to develop and grow, which includes the way organisations help employees acquire new skills.
- Connection and community, which involves the benefits that come from being part of a large group, as well as being appreciated and valued for who you are.
- Meaning and purpose, which is pretty self-explanatory, but includes employees desire to improve both local and global society.
So far so good.
And let’s be honest, much of the above maps to the universal themes of a great experience that we outline as part of our MAGIC-CA model.
But let’s just go back to that sub-header – ‘companies misjudge what really matters to employees’…
Within the article, the writers recommend leaders assessing what their company has, and what their company needs. They recommend using data collected from traditional surveys and interviews to understand the supply and demand side of the equation. They also recommend changing the conversation, highlighting the need for managers and their reports to discuss the EVP in an integrated way. For example, don’t just announce a new policy, explain why it’s necessary for the company.
I’m not convinced doing any of this will prevent companies from misjudging what really matters to employees. There are implicit biases in using traditional surveys and interviews, given that, someone, somewhere has decided what questions to ask employees.
I wholeheartedly support changing the conversation. But for me this is much deeper than simply explaining the context for a new policy. Changing the conversation is all about genuinely understanding what really matters to employees. They have missed out the ‘individuals differences’ aspect of the MAGIC-CA model. And the way to discover this is via a ‘best experience conversation’ to get to the heart of what good looks like for your people.
This is where we acknowledge that it can be easy to misjudge what really matters to employees, and to avoid this we have to seek out their input in a meaningful way, hence using the Best EX conversation.
If you’d like to know how to run a best experience conversation, then you can download this handy guide here.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on this – so please do drop us a line!
