The Workforce Beyond Boomers
The Workforce Beyond Baby Boomers
Staci Hegarty, M.Ed, VP of Equity and Inclusion
2030 is the year all Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964) will be at or above the traditional retirement age of 65. Although many Boomers work well past that age, there will be more open roles within organizations that cannot be filled by the next generation of workers. Combine this with the Great Resignation, employers are finding themselves in the difficult position of not being able to find enough qualified workers.
What Does the Future of the Workforce Look Like?
Organizations are not only losing the employee, they are also losing historical knowledge and the skillsets that come with time spent on the job. On average, Boomers are most likely to spend more years with the same employer than the other generations. The average Boomer has a workplace tenure of over eight years, with several studies indicating that nearly 40% have been with their employer for 20+ years. Gen X (born 1965-1979) averages about 5 years, while Millenials (born 1980-1994) and Gen Z (born 1995-2012) both average less than three years.
The younger generations are quick to leave an organization that does not value their time, talents, and insights, and with so many open roles, they are able to find new opportunities relatively quickly. Employee attrition can destroy a company by derailing the strategic plan, stifling innovation, and driving up costs related to human resources and recruiting. We are already in a hiring crisis and employers must take tangible and impactful action to retain and promote the workers they already have.
How Do We Support the Next Generations?
The old mindset of employee retention no longer works. A fair salary is an obvious requirement to attract a retain employees, but that alone will not be enough to prevent an employee from leaving. The culture of the company is the most important thing to workers. Job security, work/life balance, connections with coworkers and flexibility – in not only work schedule but in workplace (home versus in-office) – are the top four drivers of employee satisfaction. Organizational Change Management (OCM) in partnership with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) work will allow companies to transform the existing workplace culture from “good enough for now” to dynamic, empowered, and innovative.
Envision RISE offers a comprehensive approach to help companies build a dynamic and empowered workplace culture that is prepared and adaptable. Through surveys, focus groups, executive alignment, and policy review, Envision RISE can help companies understand their employees’ sentiment, identify areas of improvement, and develop a roadmap for continual improvement. This approach is crucial for creating a workplace culture that not only retains employees but also drives innovation and growth.
Contact us to get started. Listen in to the most recent Envision RISE Podcast featuring Martine Kalaw, founder of Martine Kalaw Enterprises and author of “ABCs of Diversity,” as we discuss the generational changes actively happening and how they are reshaping the future of the workforce.
Unlocking Employee Retention: Strategies for the Challenging Labor Market
Unlocking Employee Retention: Strategies for the Challenging Labor Market
Staci Hegarty, M.Ed, VP of Equity and Inclusion
In the United States, a common complaint is that “no one wants to work,” even though we are currently experiencing a period of the lowest unemployment in the past 50 years. This, coupled with the fact that all Baby Boomers are rapidly reaching traditional retirement age by the year 2030, means we are in a difficult position of having more open roles than we have available workers.
In this environment, employee retention has become a top priority for companies, particularly amid “The Great Resignation.” Envision RISE course RISE-08 “Transparent Development and Retention Practices” states, “Healthy, high-performing organizations have the policies and procedures in place to uncover problems before it costs them high-potential employees. Once employees start resigning, the reputation of the company is at risk.”
Retaining Current Talent
Rather than competing for qualified candidates, organizations are taking steps to retain the ones they already have. The days of a steady paycheck being enough are long gone. Employees now seek fair and equitable pay, benefits that meet their needs, and a workplace culture that values what each person brings to the job, as well as inclusion and a sense of belonging.
Unfortunately, many employers dismiss these desires as passing fads or entitlement. However, research indicates that employees who feel a greater sense of belonging and inclusion at work report a significantly higher Employer Net Promoter Score (eNPS), which measures the likelihood that a current employee would recommend a company as a great place to work. This metric can provide insights into company culture, predict turnover, and gauge overall employee engagement.
How to Measure Inclusion and Belonging
Here are a few ways to start measuring inclusion and belonging at your organization:
- Start by examining who is in your workforce. Who gets hired and who stays?
- Provide thoughtful exit interviews. What do they tell you?
- Consider using “Stay Interviews.” Stay Interviews identify trends that could be contributing to employee turnover. By prioritizing employee retention and cultivating an inclusive workplace culture, companies can thrive in this challenging labor market.
Overall, companies must invest in employee retention if they want to remain competitive and profitable. A steady paycheck may have been enough in the past, but today’s employees seek much more than that. Fair pay, appropriate benefits, and inclusive workplace culture are essential components to successful employee retention. Ultimately, it’s up to employers to earn the loyalty of their current employees by creating a work environment that meets employee expectations and shares in the companies’ successes. Ensuring that all employees feel valued, respected, and part of a greater whole will help any organization stay competitive. For guidance on how best to meet these goals, contact Envision RISE for employee retention services and strategies tailored to your needs.
New Year, New Work/Life Balance
New Year, New Work/Life Balance: 6 Ways to Create, Apply, and Measure a Work/Life Balance
Staci Hegarty, M.Ed, VP of Equity and Inclusion
Achieving better work/life balance is a common, and meaningful, New Year’s resolution, especially if you are a remote or hybrid worker. Many of us have undoubtedly found ourselves still sitting at our desks, dinner in hand, or having a prolonged night at the office beyond the standard quitting time. It is a worthy goal with usually unclear steps or structure to achievement. If this is a goal you have set for yourself in 2023, it’s important to determine a few things:
1. Your definition of work/life balance. It’s difficult to achieve what you cannot visualize. Would that mean working fewer hours? Working different hours? Having fewer tasks or responsibilities in certain areas of your life?
2. The root cause for why you feel out of balance. For example, have your working conditions changed as the results of a new role, staffing issues, new leadership, or a temporary high-priority project that is taking up more of your time? Perhaps there are changes in your personal life, such as a new baby, an illness, or a change in family income. Even a new pet can add additional responsibilities and cause a change to your routine.
3. What boundaries need to be set at work and at home. Most of us struggle with saying “no.’ In some workplace cultures, the word “no” is interpreted as not being a team player or dedicated employee. At home, it may be even more challenging to say “no” to the needs of our family/friends.
4. Where your needs fall on your list of priorities. We may find it difficult to take care of ourselves when we perceive that we are needed by others. It doesn’t take very long to find ourselves trying to pour from an empty cup, then criticizing ourselves for not being good enough when we feel tired, burnt out, or resentful.
5. How to know when work/life balance is achieved. This is a difficult goal to quantify, unlike weight loss or increased exercise or other popular resolutions. We know what imbalance feels like, but we may not truly know what balance feels like.
6. How to adjust your expectations. It is unlikely that you will achieve equality in how you distribute your time between your professional and personal life. Aim for equity, where each part of your life gets what it needs to thrive.
In Envision RISE training, course RISE-06 Harmonization: Demystifying the Entanglement between Work and Life shares:
‘Balance implies that things will become equal, which is not truly what we are attempting. We only have one life. Why would we think we can have a work life that is separate from our home life? We would be better served to find ways to harmonize all parts of our lives with one another, allowing for each to take center stage as needed, and then step back into the chorus when the time comes.’
With a little self-reflection and a willingness to create and enforce boundaries, our lives can become more manageable, more fulfilling, and less chaotic. No one can do this for us, we must be willing to do it ourselves.
For support on creating balance and managing organizational changes in the workspace, contact us at Envision RISE. We work to create a powerful integration and understanding of the relationship between your organization and your workforce.
Promoting a Culture of Calm During Chaos
Staci Hegarty, Envision RISE, Vice President of Equity & Inclusion
We are more than two years into the most intense period of change that most of us have ever experienced in the workplace, and for some of us, in our lifetime. After the initial shock, many organizations managed to adapt to life during COVID. Theses adaptations were far from perfect, and we are still working through it and learning from it. There is civil unrest across the US, which will not abate any time soon. The economy is teetering on the brink of recession, with inflation at a 40-year high and gasoline hitting record prices. The “Great Resignation” coupled with low unemployment pushed staffing levels to the breaking point. Many organizations are struggling to find their center. Those that have taken promoting a culture of calm during chaos seriously have been better able to weather the storms.
We are not our best selves right now.
And yet, we have done some of our best change management over the past couple of years. We were so confident in what we believed to be true for so long that we rarely questioned it. When forced to question almost everything, look what we discovered! We can be flexible in our work locations and still get results. We can engage in uncomfortable conversations about topics we were always told were off limits at work, which allows us to learn more about ourselves and our colleagues. The economic issues we experience are not in a vacuum; we are an inextricably connected global economy. Finally, we can demand better from our workplace cultures, or we can find a better workplace.
For those waiting to “return to normal,” I have bad news for you. There is no going back. The last few years exposed many truths about our workplaces and how we are affected by that culture. Crisis shows us our true selves.
Amid chaos, what was the prevailing emotion at your company? Did you find out that your organization is much more fragile than you realized? Or did you uncover innovation and resilience that was just beneath the surface of everyday life?
Understand more about your company by understanding its DNA. Your company’s DNA structures the ecosystem framework. Upon this framework is built the foundation for your culture throughout the employee lifecycle. When the DNA is fragmented, broken, or otherwise unstable, it creates an imbalance that compromises the health of the organization. Unhealthy organizations struggle to overcome the stress of change, especially unexpected change. The RISE Human Resources Management (HRM) DNA analysis helps identify the areas that need attention and strengthening. Combine the HRM DNA analysis with the Envision RISE comprehensive cultural assessment to create an actionable strategic plan for lasting organizational cultural transformation.
Hiring the Right Chief Diversity Officer the First Time
Staci Hegarty, Envision RISE, Vice President of Equity & Inclusion
Most people with the responsibility of hiring new employees have had at least one experience with a “bad hire.” I don’t love that phrase, it somehow places blame on no one and everyone without encouraging any accountability within the process. But for lack of a better phrase, I’m going to use it.
Bad hires are expensive for the company and the culture. Salary, benefits, maybe relocation, and training are all sunk costs for every new employee. The hope is that the new employee will contribute to the organization in a way that is productive, thus justifying these costs. A new employee likely left another job to accept this opportunity. They accept that there are costs to a new job, even if it is a higher salary. For a while, everyone is investing, and no one is really seeing dividends. Most of the time the investment pays off and the new hire works out.
When they don’t work out, there are consequences for everyone. Not just the monetary output from the company, but what a bad hire can mean in the long run. An underperforming employee often comes with a negative attitude, which has an impact on colleagues and customers. That negativity can spread quickly to employees who used to be contributors. There are expenses that are difficult to quantify, such as lost productivity during the initial training and learning period. Most projections are that when a new hire doesn’t work out, it is often a cost of more than $100,000 to the company in losses.
What happens when a “bad hire” is your Chief Diversity Officer (CDO)? The field of diversity, equity, and inclusion is notorious for high turnover and burnout. The qualifications for the role are often unclear. What kind of degree should the person hold, if at all? How many years of experience are appropriate (hint: stop looking for the “10 years of experience” unicorn, there aren’t many of us who meet that requirement)? For many organizations, this is a new role, with a vague job description, minimal budget, no staff, and a reporting structure that can be stifling for a DE&I expert to execute their duties. Yet the expectations for measurable, immediate change are high (if not impossible).
While sometimes they are reviled, other times they are encumbered with unrealistic expectations of patience, compassion, and forgiveness. A bad hire in this role can set your DE&I efforts back more than not having created the role in the first place.
Everyone in your organization is watching your CDO. They set the tone for what the cultural shifts will look like. They are responsible for the psychological safety of your employees, often while sacrificing their own. While sometimes they are reviled, other times they are encumbered with unrealistic expectations of patience, compassion, and forgiveness. A bad hire in this role can set your DE&I efforts back more than not having created the role in the first place. Before you hire, take the time to create a detailed and robust job description. Build a budget for the role, including a salary which is commensurate with the responsibilities. Take the time to vet any internal candidates thoroughly. Sometimes an internal hire makes perfect sense, other times it may not. This is not the time to be in a hurry to close the job requisition.
Finally, the entire leadership team needs to be aligned in their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Your Chief Diversity Officer will be a member of the leadership team and must be viewed as such by his/her/their peers. If the rest of the team isn’t ready, take the time to work through it. This is where a third-party can help with an Executive Alignment program. These programs are reasonably short but can have a big impact on the effectiveness of your leadership team and your DE&I efforts.
Adding a Chief Diversity Officer to your organization is ideal for establishing a culture of belonging. Invest the time, money, and effort to do it well the first time.
Authentic DEI Change Demands Courage
Are you starting (or restarting) a diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative at work? That’s great! I am sincerely proud of you. If you are doing it right, you are probably feeling uncertain and maybe even a bit afraid of what is going to happen.
This kind of work, if done authentically and with the goal of transformative change, takes courage. Certainly not the courage that is required to be a person of color, a member of the LGBTQ+ community, a person with a disability, or any other marginalized person. But courage, nonetheless.
For every CEO who says they want to know the real results of their workforce equity and inclusion survey, there are far more who really only want to hear how well they are doing. Even more don’t want to do the survey because they are certain they know how their employees are feeling.
Many leaders want to check a box with a few hours of sensitivity training. Maybe bring in a motivational speaker or post a couple of things on the company intranet to celebrate X History Month. These things are nice, they really are. They can foster community and create shared experiences. They are not equity and inclusion initiatives that bring about change.
Transformative change requires the courage to face those employee surveys, reading every comment without coming up with excuses for why that negative response is an example of a disgruntled employee rather than accepting that there is something worth examining in that comment. Transformative change requires leaders to be intentional about creating a diverse workforce that is more than a headcount of the people of color on the payroll. It is a pay equity review that includes a solution for correcting inequities. It is a comprehensive review of policies and procedures to make sure they are truly inclusive. It is cultural competency training that requires employees to understand themselves and their own blind spots, not just to memorize a list of ways to not offend their colleagues. It is about implementing restorative justice techniques to help resolve conflicts. A lot of these things aren’t nice. They can be difficult and painful. Transformation is rarely nice as it is happening. This is the difference between repainting your living room (nice!) and renovating your entire kitchen by taking everything down to the studs and working with an architect to create a functional and modernized space (transformational!).
We all wish for a more inclusive and equitable world, whether at work, at school, or within our communities. If you are a leader, you must lead through the challenges and difficulties. As writer Elizabeth Gilbert said, “Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.”
The True Cost of Employee Turnover
Staci Hegarty, Envision RISE, Global Director of Equity & Inclusion
Turnover – there are a lot of reasons for it: the economy, company-wide reduction in force, new opportunity, automation, the employee was a “bad hire” or missed performance expectations, perhaps the employee had a life change that forced them to make a choice between their job and their other responsibilities, the list goes on and on. The uncertainty brought on by COVID-19 has only increased the problem, especially for women and more specifically, women of color.
Turnover sucks up time, money, resources, and morale. Most studies indicate that it costs a company approximately 30% of the departing employee’s salary to hire a replacement and may take up to two years for the new employee to gain proficiency in their role. That’s a cost of $15,000 to replace an employee making $45,000 a year! Are you wondering how that could be? Try this calculation to see how quickly the costs add up.
Of course, it is unrealistic to try to bring the employee turnover rate to zero (althoughI happen to work for a company that has managed to do just that for the past two years). Some things are outside of our control, such as a global pandemic. Instead of focusing on those things, focus on the other things. This is the part that can make leaders uncomfortable. What exactly is a “bad hire”? Was the employee truly bad? By that I mean were they grossly unqualified for the role, abusive, dangerous, or otherwise irredeemable? That really doesn’t happen that often.
What about the employee who leaves for a new opportunity? More money, flexible hours, better benefits or a promotion in title or responsibility are all very attractive. If another company sees the potential in your employee, why don’t you? After all, you actually know this person on some level. You probably know their strengths, their weaknesses and hopefully their career goals. Waiting until an employee gives their notice and then making a counteroffer to keep them sends the message that the better opportunity was always there, the company just had to be forced to offer it. If your process isn’t transparent and equitable it will alienate your employees and cause them to lose trust, even if they stay – for now.
Exit interviews are notoriously inaccurate for tracking the reason that employees voluntarily left the company. Very few people are willing to give the unvarnished truth if a culture is toxic, racist, sexist, homophobic or ableist, especially if the soon-to-be former employee needs to rely on the organization to provide a favorable reference in the future. No one wants to be labeled as overly sensitive, or as the person who “plays the race card,” or “can’t take a joke.” They may go to sites such as Glassdoor to post a scathing and anonymous review, but they won’t tell your Human Resources specialist.
If your company is trying to create a more diverse and inclusive culture, those online reviews may be hindering your efforts. If your open position ads say that you offer a diverse and inclusive culture, yet the anonymous reviews say otherwise, you are not going to achieve your goal. It may be time to get a third party involved. A baseline employee survey can offer valuable insights into your existing culture and help your senior leadership team formulate a plan to address the cultural issues that are impacting your turnover rates. What’s the ROI? Run the turnover cost calculation using the average salary at your company. Chances are it is less expensive to do the survey and have the results analyzed than it is to replace just a couple of employees. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives don’t have to be all-encompassing to start making a difference, but they do have to start somewhere.
IpX’s RISE platform can support your organization’s efforts to create an inclusive environment that drives employee retention.
Legacy Systems in Your Company’s Culture
Staci Hegarty, Vice President, Equity & Inclusion, Envision RISE
Most of us know what a legacy system is in software and computer systems. It’s the system that was chosen years ago, for reasons that may no longer be clear. Maybe the system works okay for now, but the fixes are expensive and time-consuming when they come up. Additional things have been added to your business, and the upgrades either don’t interface well with the legacy system or perhaps not at all, so there is another step added to the process. Maybe the legacy system still works fine for engineering, but it can’t support the rest of the enterprise.
In almost every meeting, the issue of a legacy system arises. Most people agree that it is a problem, but replacing a legacy system is not easy. First you have to establish requirements and decide on a good replacement, then you have to find the money. How will we make sure that critical information isn’t lost in the transition? Can current equipment even run the new system? How are we going to get everyone trained? How much time will be lost making the change? It’s complicated and messy and no one wants to do it even though everyone agrees it needs to be done. Like ignoring the small crack in the foundation of your house, it’s only going to get more difficult and more expensive to repair.
What does this have to do with inclusion and equity at work? Everything.
I work for a company that is best known for CM2, a configuration and change process management platform. Conventional configuration management focuses on manufacturing and engineering of a physical product – the processes and tools. Over the years CM2 has expanded to include the entire enterprise, recognizing that every organization has its own ecosystem – the processes, tools, and people. When we work with clients, one of the key factors in preparing to make a change is assessing the organizational readiness for change. The processes and tools won’t make much difference if the people aren’t ready. Before long, our organizational change management services were a swelling part of our model. We looked closer and it became clear that how people feel at work has a direct effect on how people perform at work. Not how they feel about their paychecks or their tasks, but how they feel about being a part of the workplace community. Do they feel that they belong and are accepted for who they are?
Legacy systems are not just software.
Legacy systems show up in our policies, job descriptions, hiring practices, incentive plans, and company celebrations. They are in our marketing and advertising. They are reflected in the Board of Directors. That doesn’t mean those systems are necessarily bad or intentionally biased, but we need to make sure they are evolving to meet the needs of our employees, our communities, and our customers. Just like technology, culture evolves. Chances are your workforce does not look like it did 30 years ago. Are you expecting to keep the same systems and force people to comply? They may try to conform for a while, but sooner or later they will find a job that embraces them instead of demanding that they leave who they are at the front door.
Conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) can make people very uncomfortable. The terms seem ambiguous, what does diversity even mean? For some people, the language of DEI is not only unfamiliar, it sounds like complaining or even blaming. It may even seem like some sort of trap, just waiting for an unsuspecting executive to say the wrong thing. Comprehensive DEI platforms are not a big game of “Gotcha!” They are designed to help companies get out of their own way. When we are able to understand where people are coming from, we can better serve them. When we look at our legacy systems in culture, we can make upgrades that make things easier for everyone.
Building a more equitable and inclusive workplace is just like replacing a legacy software system. It can be complex and even messy at times. It’s easy for organizations and their leadership to decide it isn’t worth the investment right now, that there are other things that are more important. For many, the approach is that if it seems to work okay for now, they will plan to budget for it in the next year or two. Meanwhile, the people who use it every day are wondering when something is going to be done because they know they can’t keep using the outdated system much longer. Organizations are more than products and tools; they are the people who work there, the customers who buy their products or services, and the communities of which they are a part. Creating a culture of belonging is not only possible, but necessary for innovation and growth.
Envision RISE is a training and services model to create an environment where all people are encouraged to draw upon their unique experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds to ensure sustainable long-term success of the organization. The RISE platform instills a novel way of thinking that focuses on fulfilling the needs of the individual and not simply an HR-centered initiative. This is an evolution from legacy Organizational Change Management (OCM) methods to a modern fit-for-purpose Organizational Evolution & Sustainability (OE&S) platform.
COVID-19 Has Worsened Gender Pay Disparity
Staci Hegarty, IpX Global Director of Equity & Inclusion
Before COVID-19, US women were already experiencing a significant gap in pay when compared with their male counterparts. On average, women earn 81.6 cents for every dollar that men earn, with median average earnings coming in at $9,766 less than men. March 31, 2020, marked the day that women earned what men earned in 2019. For women of color the numbers are more disheartening when compared with white men. Black women earn 62 cents for every dollar, Native women earn 57 cents and Latina women earn 54 cents.
Now, nearly six months into a global pandemic that forced the lucky ones to work at home and brought record-level unemployment to the rest, the inequity in women’s pay has become more obvious. Women fill more “essential” jobs than men, yet they also take on the majority of child-related jobs in the home. With daycares and schools not returning to normal operations, many women have had no choice but to leave their jobs. Even women who work from home have found that balancing work and family responsibilities has become even more challenging than before COVID-19.
As businesses begin to reopen, organizations need to take quick action to ensure that the women in their workforces are not left behind. Instead of seeing the reopening of some businesses as a chance to “get back to normal,” this is the time to acknowledge that the old way of operating was not working very well for half of employees. Not only do women need to be involved in how businesses resume operations, but they need to have the ability to raise concerns and work toward creative solutions to bring more gender equity to the workplace.
When organizations include all voices in the decision-making process, new ideas are brought forth. Innovative ways of working benefit not only the workers but also the company. With less turnover and an engaged workforce, energy and resources can be spent on the goals of the organization instead of trying to fix the problems brought on by doing things the way they have always been done.
Sources:
https://www.businessinsider.com/gender-wage-pay-gap-charts-2017-3
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/28/883458147/how-coronavirus-could-widen-the-gender-wage-gap
https://unglobalcompact.org/academy/how-business-can-support-women-in-times-of-crisis
Your Workforce is Waiting to See Action
Staci K. Hegarty M.Ed, IpX Academia Director
Protests and vigils have been on-going in the US for nearly two months. Debates over use-of-force by police, systemic racism, and the inequitable treatment of Black Americans at school, work and within our communities have dominated the national news cycle. By June, social media accounts of businesses of all sizes highlighted their mission and values, nearly always with a focus on supporting a culture of non-discrimination. But what happens after June and moving forward? When organizations ask the question, “Have we started the real work of anti-racism and anti-discrimination?” In general, the answer appears to be “not really.”
At the root of much of the inaction is fear. Fear of doing or saying the wrong thing. Fear of losing customers. Fear of not knowing where to begin. Fear of trying to change and still failing to create a diverse workforce. Fear of the unknown. Fear of change.
The small steps are the starting point. In order to truly create an inclusive workplace, an investment must be made in making diversity, equity, and belonging engrained in every part of the enterprise. Seek resources to help your organization move forward without feeling overwhelmed. Here are a few resources for improving your support for equality as a leader, closing the disability inclusion gap, and what it looks like to lead an anti-racist organization. For most companies, non-discrimination policies are based on employment law which differ from state to state.
Budgeting for training and full-time leadership roles that focus solely on creating an equitable culture is one key to success. It is more than “sensitivity training” once a year for a couple of hours; it is a full immersion in the language and behaviors that lead to a workplace that values all employees and encourages them to each bring their whole selves to work each day.
Keep an eye out for more OCM focused content as IpX unveils its RISE platform dedicated to Respect, Inclusion, Service and Equity in the workforce.