January is always a time to reflect on the highs and lows of theprevious 12 months and make fresh commitments for the year ahead. Thisis why every year, a rash of recruitment advertisements enjoin all of usto consider the prospect of 'New year ... new career'. Indeed, Januaryis not only the hottest month of the year for job-seeking activity but,in my experience, it is also the month in which managers most frequentlycomplain about poor staff performance.
All of which leads me to reflect on the findings of a major researchstudy conducted by the Corporate Leadership Council (CLC). It looked atthe impact of the employee value propositions (EVPs) of memberorganisations and involved 58,000 participants, spanning 20 industries,from 34 countries. In short, this was 'sit up and listen' stuff.
The first finding that hit me was the fact that one set of EVPattributes - those things of value to employees that an organisation isperceived to offer - serves to attract potential employees, while acompletely different set serves to retain current employees. Looking atthe two sets the difference was clear: substance.
Potential employees tend to judge employers on shallow EVP attributessuch as remuneration, location, perceived career opportunities andorganisational stability. Current employees, on the other hand, look atmuch deeper and insightful attributes such as how respectfully they aretreated, how well the jobs on offer match their own particular interestsand the quality of their immediate managers.
However, because potential employees are evaluating employers usingsuperficial criteria, they find it difficult to say whether a givenorganisation is truly a good, bad or indifferent employer. Indeed,unless an individual has actually worked for an organisation, CLC foundthat they were all perceived to be more or less the same.
So why use different criteria? After all, the sophisticated assessors oftheir existing employers are the very same people who are makingsuperficial judgments about potential employers. I think the answer istransparency.
Until recently, for many organisations the primary external expressionof their EVP has been the recruitment advertisement. And although 'Newyear ... new career' might represent a creative nadir, addressing thedeeper issues such as respect and manager quality is difficult to do inan advertisement without sounding utterly self-obsessed.
Thankfully, a solution appears to be at hand. Another research findingwas that organisations perceived to be delivering what their EVPpromises enjoy substantially higher levels of employee commitment. Thisresults in both improved performance (up by as much as 20%) and improvedretention (the probability of an individual leaving can be reduced by asmuch as 87%).
Now that's a positive finding in itself - enhanced performance andretention is good news at any time of year. But in an employmentenvironment of increasing transparency, I think it's potentiallyearth-shattering. Why? Well, think about how most people areincreasingly buying high-value items like plasma TVs and DVD players. Dothey trawl through the press looking at advertisements? Do they believewhat the sales people in the high street stores tell them? No. They goonline for expert opinion and look at what real-life customers have tosay.
In today's increasingly transparent market the same thing is happening.Organisations like Best Companies are producing insightful assessmentsof the deeper issues. Websites such as Where Women Want To Work aregiving employees a voice. Indeed, I'm sure that it's only a matter oftime before the major job boards will be offering a 'tell us yourexperiences' feature - and then the commitment of our people will beplain for all to see.
So, if we need to win commitment, the big question is: what do we needto do to get our people to perceive that we are delivering what our EVPspromise? According to the CLC research, the answer is simple. We have totell them what we are delivering. In short, we must invest as mucheffort bringing our EVP to life for our current employees as we do forour potential employees.
This brings me to my 2007 new year's resolution: to redouble McDonald'sefforts in reinforcing this message to our people. In fact, I've alreadywritten the headline for the inside story: Great Career ... StayHere.
Maybe you should be saying the same to your people this year.- David Fairhurst is vice-president for people, McDonald's Restaurants.
