A Dynamic Dynamic

For the better or for the worse, the business landscape has changed after the pandemic. Every dynamic has evolved. Professional priorities are being re-evaluated. Governments are mulling and formulating workplace policies that are intended to reflect and be in sync with the reality of today’s day and age, one wherein weekends might end up beginning on Friday itself.

Over the last three years, the concept of a Social Enterprise — wherein purpose and values take precedence over the bottomline — has assumed the status of a “not mandated organisational mandate”. While companies world over have toed the line of this paradigm shift, the rapid priority-centred changes that the pandemic has catalysed has also created varying degrees of dissonance among each player on the global professional tapestry.

Amidst all this flux, employer-worker relations too have started charting a different course, one that companies need to be aware of for being ahead of the curve in the days to come.

Two Crucial Factors

In a report titled The Worker-Employer Relationship Disrupted, which was published last year, Deloitte zeroed in on two primary factors that serve as contextual bases for dissecting this dynamic:

1) Talent Supply: Be it reskilling, skill stability, automation, hybrid workplaces, or the myriad other professional evolutions that the pandemic has sparked, availability of professionals with relevant skill-sets will continue to shape companies and their narratives.

2) Government Impact: Be it in terms of their stances on global issues like Climate Change, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or in terms of their public-policy vision, Government Impact is an external factor that has a direct correlation with worker-employer relations.

Understanding Employee-Worker Relations Better

Using these two dimensions, we can dive deep into four potential worker-employer futures and get an understanding of how professional and companies can navigate those waters.

a) Work As Fashion:Relevant to industries which have a low Talent Supply and Government Impact. From a firm’s perspective, this dynamic is a reactive one. Workforce preferences and competitor pivots define company policies, without the two being amalgamated for insightful strategic decisions.

In such a dynamic, majoritarianism may end up overshadowing actual priorities and reducing crucial diverse voices to background noise. Like one of Dale Carnegie’s four prescribed solutions for increasing Employee Engagement — to “open a dialogue with managers and truly listening to understand their beliefs” — it is imperative for companies to be more nuanced in gauging employee needs, implement remedial policies down to the T, and empower them in areas that truly matter to them.

b) War Between Talent:Relevant to industries with a high Talent Supply and low Government Impact. Due to its highly competitive nature, and the lack of focus on the worker side, this dynamic is Impersonal in nature.

The kneejerk view that companies tend to take in this dynamic is to commodify workers. Not only does this curtail innovation, it can exacerbate social divides inside a company, and make stakeholders question the firm’s investment in them. Expediting onboarding, allocating more hiring priority to roles that are specialized, and incentives for retentions are areas that policy-makers in such a dynamic will need to focus on.

c) Work Is Work:Relevant to industries with a low Talent Supply and high Government Impact. The dynamic here is Professional, since workers — despite having fair compensations, career trajectories, and work environments — will not view their firms as the place that furthers their purpose and meaning.

Since workers don’t have a Purpose that is aligned with their firm, not only will that have a detrimental effect on Employee Engagement and productivity, it also has the potential to reduce shareholder trust. Fostering a sense of belonging should be the primary priority for leaders in such a dynamic, since the sense of being valued is the starting point for the Emotional Drivers of Employee Engagement that Dale Carnegie recommends.

d) Purpose Unleashed: Relevant to industries with a high Talent Supply and Government Impact. Since companies have the leeway to choose employees based on both talent and their Purpose alignment, this dynamic is Communal in nature.

While companies in such a dynamic will benefit from the mutual engagement that their North Star — Purpose — elicits from this relationship, such a dynamic too entails issues. Excessive emphasis on Purpose can only spark distrust among employees and stakeholders. Adequate thought may not be put into external communication. Employees who may not completely align with a firm’s Purpose may end up getting alienated and shunted into fringe groups. The company’s Purpose itself could become a bone of contention if it doesn’t evolve with times. While making Purpose the core of talent programmes and commitment expectations is the starting point for leaders in this dynamic, the true way forward is for them to exhibit their own Purpose alignment through external action.

In a business landscape that’s as complex as the one in which we work now, these four employee-worker dynamics are not mutually exclusive or exhaustive. As a leader, the onus is on you to recognise the defining traits of your domain, and make the choices that propel your company in the right direction.