Staying in Balance: Workforce Changes & Corporate Culture
40
The presentation will begin at the top of the hour. A dial in number will not be provided. Listen to today’s webinar using your computer’s speakers or headphones. Staying in Balance: Workforce Changes & Corporate Culture #WFwebinar
Staying in Balance: Workforce Changes & Corporate Culture
The presentation will begin at the top of the hour. A dial in number will not be provided. Listen to today’s webinar using your computer’s speakers or headphones.
Staying in Balance: Workforce Changes & Corporate Culture
#WFwebinar
Speakers: Mike Phillips Sarah Kimmel Director of Feedback Stragegy Director of Research and Advisory Services Cvent Web Surveys Human Capital Media Moderator: Sarah Sipek Associate Editor Workforce magazine
Staying in Balance: Workforce Changes & Corporate Culture
#WFwebinar
Tools You Can Use Audio Control
– A dial in number will not be provided.
– Adjust the volume by sliding the indicator in the Media Player box to the left.
– Also check your computer’s volume for external speakers or headsets.
#WFwebinar
Tools You Can Use
Speaker Bios
Resources
Media Player Q&A
Slides
Twitter
Help
Post Event Evaluation Share This
Group Chat
HRCI
WF Webinars
Tools You Can Use Q&A and Live Group Chat
– Enter your first name and initial and join the live discussion with other webinar attendees
– Enter technical or content-related questions into the Q&A box
– Type your question in the space at the bottom.
– Click “Submit.”
Q&A
Group Chat
Tools You Can Use Twitter - Click “Post” in the Twitter widget.
#WFwebinar @WorkforceNews
#WFwebinar
1. May I receive a copy of the slides?
YES! Click on the resource list located on the top left portion of your screen.
2. May I review the webinar recording at a later date?
YES! You may log in again using today’s link to review the presentation on-demand.
3. Is this webinar HRCI certified?
YES! The HRCI certification code will appear in the box to the right of the slides after the required watch-time has elapsed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Sarah Sipek Associate Editor Workforce magazine
Staying in Balance: Workforce Changes & Corporate Culture
#WFwebinar
Mike Phillips Director of Feedback Strategy
Cvent
Staying in Balance: Workforce Changes & Corporate Culture
#WFwebinar
Sarah Kimmel Director of Research and Advisory Services
Human Capital Media
Staying in Balance: Workforce Changes & Corporate Culture
Mike Phillips Director of Feedback Strategy Cvent Web Surveys
Today’s Speakers
Sarah Kimmel Director, Research & Advisory Services Human Capital Media Group
Agenda
Generational Differences
Study Details
Study Results Importance of Employee Engagement Programs
Creating an Engaged Workplace for All
Questions & Answers
About Cvent
NYSE:CVT publically-traded company
1300+ customers
1,450+ full-time employees worldwide
Recent
Awards
About Workforce
Workforce Magazine Workforce is a multimedia publication that covers the intersection of people management and business strategy. Our community of senior-level human resources executives and C-level officers are the key decision-makers on talent management matters in the 2,500 largest corporations in America. They read us for our editorial focus and relevance to help them improve their business — and their bottom line — through effective management of the workforce. Our content helps HR professionals approach their jobs from a more strategic, big-picture, business-results perspective.
No One-Size-Fits-All Approach
Presenter
Presentation Notes
As companies employ a wide range of workers from different generations, a variety of work-life balance programs are needed to meet expectations within the workforce because there is no one-size-fits all approach.
Understanding Generations in Workforce
Presenter
Presentation Notes
But challenges exist to ensure all management levels recognize the need to institute work-life balance programs, adapt a variety of programs that satisfy the needs of a multigenerational workforce and raise awareness of available programs once in place.
Study Background
Respondent Details
• Surveyed 504 HR professionals at management level and above across industries
• This study addresses the opinions of those professionals regarding the attitudes of different generations toward work-life balance and what members of those generations are looking for.
• Organizations included small, midsize and large enterprises: • Small: Less than 1,000 employees • Midsize: 1,000 to 5,000 employees • Large: More than 5,000 employees
Presenter
Presentation Notes
The survey was designed to examine how HR managers view the need for work-life balance programs and how those programs are valued by today’s multigenerational workforce. To better understand the perception of generational attitudes toward work-life balance programs, Cvent, in collaboration with Workforce magazine, surveyed 504 human resource professionals at manager level and above to gain insight into the attitudes about and challenges of current and future work-life balance programs. The organizations participating in the survey were from a broad range of industries and organization sizes. Around 22% were from Globally distributed organizations. And just a note: when I discuss the differences between small, midsize and large organizations, we’re defining small organizations as less than 1,000 employees, and large organizations as having more than 5,000 employees. Let’s take a look at some of the results.
Results: Generational Gap
What are the workplace culture expectations of each generation at your organization?
Percentage of HR professionals who rank these expectations as a key concern for each generation.
Presenter
Presentation Notes
The first thing I’d like to address is whether HR professionals are seeing a difference between expectations for workforce culture between the generations. There’s an ongoing debate in several different functional areas of HR about whether there’s really that much of a difference between the incoming Millennials and the rest of the workforce. In Learning and Development, for example, there’s a lot of credible research out there that Millennials really don’t learn any differently from everyone else, although they may have some differences in preferences. But when it comes to workplace culture, this is not what HR professionals are experiencing. 96% of the HR professionals in our survey report that in their experience the generations in the workplace have differing expectations regarding work-life balance. According to respondents, there is a perception that baby boomers place an emphasis on personal responsibility and accountability (90.2 percent). When asked to define Gen Xers in the workforce, HR managers indicate that the top needs of the group are employer-provided services like child-care (74.2 percent) or financial planning (74.2 percent). When asked to describe the top concern for millennials, HR professionals indicate that it is important for management to acknowledge how technology allows work, even teamwork, to be accomplished anywhere without requiring daily on-site work (95 percent) HR managers are aware that millennials prefer using technology to improve their work-life. According to HR professionals, millennials overwhelmingly believe that doing good work is more important than where it occurs. There were some very stark differences across nearly every workplace culture question that we asked on the survey with regards to the expectations of the generations in the workforce. I’m going to share two of these as examples.
HR’s Perception of the generational demand for Services at Work to Help Manage Work-Life Balance
• According to HR professionals, Millennials and Gen Xers have much higher expectations for their employers regarding services to help manage work/life balance.
• Child care • Financial planning
• Demand for these offerings is more than double what it is among baby boomers.
Percentage of HR professionals who rank this expectation as a key concern for each generation.
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Overall, our research suggests that HR professionals make few distinctions between the preferences of Gen Xers and millennials regarding work-life balance issues. However, there is one notable exception: the desire to have services such as child care and financial planning included as part of work-life balance programs. HR professionals report that Gen Xers (74.2 percent) expect their organization to provide services like child care and financial planning in greater numbers than either millennials (67.5 percent) or baby boomers (31.4 percent) (Figure 3). This is perhaps not surprising; unlike baby boomers — who have presumably already raised families, and have likely (hopefully) had their retirement planning in place for some time — or millennials, who have not yet begun to raise families, Gen Xers are at an age where family planning and future retirement are top-of-mind issues, and thus child care services offered through their workplace are attractive offerings. This is perhaps the biggest area where service to Gen Xers could be improved, since services such as financial planning and child care are some of the least-represented work-life programs across organizations as indicated by respondents, with financial services offered at 26.4 percent of companies and child care offered at 8.3 percent of companies. Child care services are more routinely offered at large companies (20 percent) than small (4.1 percent), perhaps due to their greater resources. This lack of offered services could be a problem for organizations in the future and indicates an area for potential planning, especially as millennials begin to age and the demand for these programs grows. You might look at this and think, maybe this isn’t about the culture changing, maybe this is just about the differing needs of sections of the workforce depending on what stage they’re at in life. Is the culture of the workplace really changing?
Employees Needing to Address Personal Challenges Should not be Penalized
HR Professionals recognize that workplace culture expectations have changed in the younger generations.
Percentage of HR professionals who rank this expectation as a key concern for each generation.
Presenter
Presentation Notes
The switch to the idea of the workplace as a more employee-centered place, is demonstrated much more clearly when you ask about something like whether employees should not be penalized for prioritizing personal challenges that they’re facing. In the experience of HR professionals, there is a decided gap in the generations on issues related to “loyalty” or “dedication” and what that means. HR professionals indicate that millennials overwhelmingly believe that employees should not be penalized for addressing personal challenges (86.2 percent). Their take on how the baby boomers see this issue is less flexible. In their experience only half of baby boomers would expect this kind of flexibility in the workplace culture when it comes to personal priorities (53.2 percent). This helps to clarify why work-life programs are increasing in priority for HR professionals: As the field of talent becomes increasingly represented by millennials, organizations that demonstrate a cultural commitment to work-life will have a distinct recruiting advantage. According to the HR professionals in our study, there is this division on every cultural issue we asked about, including whether the quality of the work is more important that where it’s done, the preference for distance working technologies, and the opportunity to be involved in more mission critical work earlier in an employee’s tenure. The picture that emerges is that HR professionals understand the Baby Boomers as largely expecting the workplace culture to be face-to-face, with a strong emphasis on accountability and personal responsibility. While Gen Xers and Millennials expect the workplace culture to be much more flexible and adaptive and supportive.
Which Work-life Balance Programs are in Place at your Organization?
Presenter
Presentation Notes
So, what work/life balance programs and strategies are the most commonly used today? According to HR professionals, the three most commonly used work/life balance programs/strategies at their organizations are flex-time, a relaxed dress code and educational reimbursement. However, number 4 and 5 are likely just as important as they’re being used by about half of the organizations we surveyed. Health and wellness programs have a wide traction in organizations today at 53% and nearly 50% of organizations say they also have flexible distance working arrangements of some kind- and we’ll look at that more in depth in a few minutes. One strategy that may not fit the traditional model of work-life balance (which includes such areas as talent management, health/wellness and employee relations) is a relaxed workplace dress code in Use at 60 percent of the organizations we surveyed. Two possibilities exist for why a relaxed dress code is such a popular strategy: the ease of implementation and the size of the business. Dress codes are relatively simple to change, and changing a dress-code policy is less expensive than many potential policy changes or service programs. Smaller companies are significantly more likely to have adopted a relaxed dress code (65.8 percent), although both midsize (51.1 percent) and large companies (52.4 percent) are taking advantage of this simple-to-use work-life choice. No matter what size the organization, more than half of them have relaxed their dress code. As to whether this is truly of significance to employees, consider both the expense of acquiring a business formal wardrobe (and cleaning it) and the additional time spent each day in getting ready for work. Also consider how profound a difference this can make in the workplace regarding employee expectations about what is valued by the organization. Lower down on the list of work-life balance programs in use are things like financial planning services, used by 1 in 4 organizations, and child care services, both of which are more likely to be offered by larger organizations than smaller ones. And as was shown earlier, both are key expectations of GenXers and Millennials. The demand for those services will only grow as Millennials become a greater percentage of the workforce and transition into raising families and planning for retirement.
Results: Priorities
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Creative Notes: need a different background image
Is the Need to Address Work-life Balance a Priority at your Organization?
Presenter
Presentation Notes
So, what kind of urgency are organizations feeling about addressing work/life balance? While HR professionals clearly recognize that the expectations about workplace culture are changing, do they also recognize addressing work/life balance as a priority? HR representatives recognize the importance of work-life balance programs (Figure 4) with 46% reporting that addressing work/life balance was a critical to high priority a their organization, and 85% percent say it’s a moderate-to-critical priority. At small organizations, 49 percent indicate that addressing work-life balance issues was a high or critical priority. This number dropped to 39 percent for midsize organizations, before was the highest in large organizations, where 52 percent said it was a critical to high priority to address work/life balance.
Work-life balance is increasing as a priority concern
51.6% 43.2%
5.2%
Over the past three years, has addressing work/life balance been increasing or decreasing as a priority concern?
IncreasingStayed the sameDecreasing
Presenter
Presentation Notes
So, has this been a trend? Is work/life balance increasing as a priority concern for HR professionals? Yes. Addressing work-life balance is a present and increasing priority for HR representatives, with more than half of respondents (51.3 percent) noting an increase over the past three years for work/life balance as a priority concern. Only 5% say that this is decreasing as a priority. While addressing work-life may be key for attracting and recruiting talent, some HR professionals have noted a challenge in securing buy-in from the organization. As one manufacturing professional said, “Our organization agrees that we need the work-life balance but we don’t ‘practice’ it,” while several respondents said work-life balance was not considered a priority at their organizations. We’ll take a look at more evidence that there is a tension in organizations around just how well they’re doing in transforming the workplace culture on work-life balance issues, and in particular how a lot of that tension has to do with buy-in from senior management.
Results: Concerns and Challenges
Top 3 Factors that Create a Perception of Imbalance Between Work and Personal Life Among Employees
Factors contributing to the perception of work/life imbalance are both logistical and cultural.
Presenter
Presentation Notes
We asked HR professionals that factors create a perception of imbalance between work and personal life for employees. The answers are both logistical, for example, understaffing, unpredictable work schedules and travel requirements, but they are also cultural, for example, the perception within the organization that work always takes precedence, that employees who address personal issues are less committed to the organization, that managers and peers have performance requirements that do not account for personal life requirements. Only 10% say that their formal policies either explicitly or implicitly imply that employees’ personal commitments are not a factor. According to HR professionals, the top three factors that create work-life imbalance are understaffing (58.7 percent), a perceived expectation that work always takes precedence over personal matters (50.5 percent), and unpredictable work hours/schedules (37.9 percent). While understaffing was the largest concern across the board, it was most keenly felt at midsize and large companies. More than half (50.5 percent) of respondents at small companies cited understaffing as a concern; this number jumped to three-quarters of respondents at midsize (75.6 percent) and large (75.3 percent) companies. Layoffs caused by the Great Recession may explain the understaffing unease. There are still many companies that continue to maintain a “lean” workforce size defined by downsizing. This has some HR managers frustrated, as was the case for one respondent in the business services sector who said, “Some of our employees work five 10-hour days and every other Saturday due to downsizing. ... Our revenue has been increasing the last several years … yet we are still working with the same amount of people.” I’m sure this is familiar territory for many of you. Yet on the cultural front, the expectation that work always comes first is definitely a key factor in creating a perception of work/life imbalance at an organization. It is that expectation that is shared by baby boomers, but not by Millennials that is the core of the tension within organizations that are in the midst of cultural transition.
Does Senior Leadership Generally Consider Work-life Balance Initiatives to be a Requirement for Sustainable Business Practices or as Privileges and Perks for Employees?
Presenter
Presentation Notes
While HR professionals recognize that work-life balance programs are a priority for the incoming generation, challenges still exist to having robust work-life balance programs across all organizations. Three key challenges are ensuring a variety of programs are implemented to satisfy different generational needs, ensuring senior leadership recognizes that work-life balance programs are a necessary component of the business and, as we’ll see in a minute, having senior leadership communicating the importance of work-life balance to employees. We asked HR professionals whether the senior leadership at their organization generally considers work/life balance initiatives to be a requirement for sustainable business practices or privileges and perks for employees. They say that senior leadership considers work-life balance programs more as privileges (32.5 percent) than requirements (21.1 percent). While 46% say “a little bit of both” this implies that they needed some convincing that work/life balance initiatives are a requirement for sustainable business practices.
How well are they doing?
35.7%
34.7%
27.2%
33.0%
38.7%
40.2%
50.4%
42.4%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
My organization does a good job ofcommunicating the importance of
work/life balance as a means toward…
We have many programs at myorganization that are designed to make
it more convenient for employees to…
Senior management communicatesoften about the importance of employee
balance and health.
We train supervisors and managers onthe need to empathize with and support
employees when they need personal…
AgreeDisagree
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Normally, when I’m reporting survey items like this, I’d only report the percentage that agree with the statement. However, the really interesting story here is how many HR professionals disagreed with these statements, often quite strongly. First, when we asked them whether they’re doing a good job communicating the importance of work/life balance, roughly a third say they are, a third are neutral and a third disagree. In addition, 40% disagree with the statement that they have many programs in place to make it more convenient for employees to address personal business. And a whopping 50% disagree that their senior management communicates often about the importance of employee balance and heath. Finally, only a third say that they train supervisors and managers on the need to empathize with and support employees when they need personal time, while 42% disagree. On the whole, what we see HR professionals saying here is that they don’t think their organizations are doing a great job communicating the importance of work/life balance, that they don’t have a lot of programs to prioritize employee’s need to deal with personal business, their senior management isn’t likely to be communicating very frequently about the importance of work/life balance and their mid-level managers, by and large, aren’t trained to provide support to employees. This is particularly concerning since 86% of HR professionals say that not being penalized for needing to address personal challenges is a key expectation for Millennials.
Are employees involved in the process?
• One in three organizations asks employees to submit ideas for improving work/life balance. Of those:
• Two thirds report those ideas to senior leadership.
• One in four report those ideas in an open forum.
• Two thirds implement some of the ideas they receive from employees.
Presenter
Presentation Notes
We were also interested in how many organizations involve their employees in efforts to improve work/life balance. Do they solicit ideas from employees? Do those ideas get used? And how transparent is the process of collaborating with employees to improve work/life balance? A little more than one in three organizations asks employees to submit ideas for improving work/life balance. Of those, two thirds report the ideas that are gathered to senior leadership. Only one in four report those ideas in an open forum. And two thirds implement some of the ideas that they receive from employees. Demonstrating that the organization values employee input and is willing to take action on suggestions, whether the reporting happens on a company intranet or in a newsletter, could go a long way toward building goodwill, not only for millennials, who tend to place a high value on this kind of transparency, but across all generations in the workforce. HR professionals are aware that all generational levels value two things: the perception that a commitment to work-life balance is shared across all management levels, and the recognition that employees needing to address personal challenges should not be penalized. Research conducted by Workspan suggests that providing the business case for work-life balance and asking what employees need by utilizing survey tools such as focus groups and internal surveys can go a long way toward improving employees’ perception of their company’s work-life balance culture.
Telecommuting Attitudes at Organizations
• Half of the organizations we surveyed said that they had some kind of flexible distance work programs in place.
• Nearly 9 in 10 report that flexible distance work arrangements are important to millennials.
• One in four organizations we surveyed report that they have a clearly articulated telecommuter policy in place.
Presenter
Presentation Notes
As I mentioned earlier, millennials and Gen Xers have the demonstrated desire to be able to work in nontraditional settings. HR professionals have responded to their needs: 49.2 percent say their workplace has the tools to enable teams to collaborate during the work day regardless of location. However, it is less clear that clearly communicated guidelines for distance working arrangements exist. Only 29% percent of HR professionals believe their organization has a clear telecommuter policy. Given that nearly half of all companies offer telecommuting programs — and such programs are favored by 87.7 percent of millennials — having clear telecommuter policies is one way to improve pre-existing work-life balance programs. I’m going to pass this back to Mike Phillips, who’s going to talk more about the intersection of employee engagement and work/life balance programs and the importance of measuring both satisfaction and engagement with work/life balance.
Importance of Employee Engagement Programs to Measure Work-life Balance Program Effectiveness
Employee Engagement Defined
The measurable degree of an employee’s positive or negative emotional attachment to their job, colleagues and organization that profoundly influences their willingness to learn and perform at work.
“ “
Current State of Measurement
[CATEGORY NAME
] … [CATEGORY …
[CATEGORY NAME] - [VALUE]
“Do You Have A Formal Employee Survey?”
In spite of the importance of employee retention to agency success, more than two-thirds of those surveyed do not have a formal process, such as employee opinion surveys or other research tools, for assessing employee engagement.
Employee Engagement Study, July 2012
“ “
Why is Engagement Important?
Revenue: engaged employees play a major role in helping achieve revenue goals.
Productivity: engaged employees are more productive.
Morale: engaged employees have higher morale.
Creativity: engaged employees are viewed as more creative and innovative.
Stakeholder loyalty: engaged employees are key to creating more loyal stakeholders.
Work-Life Balance and Employee Engagement
“Organizations that create cultures that value balance, and assist employees to achieve life balance will be rewarded with highly engaged employees. Work-life balance does not mean that employees are not loyal, nor committed to their organizations, it means that employees want to lead whole lives, not lives solely centered on work.”
Vince Molinaro, PhD and David Weiss, PhD Knightsbridge Capital Management “Driving Employee Engagement” April 13, 2014
Creating an Engaging Workplace For All
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Addressing the personal needs of today’s workforce is key for HR professionals. Many organizations already offer a variety of work-life balance programs to address the different needs of the current multigenerational workforce. Companies currently offer programs such as flex time, a relaxed dress code and educational reimbursement to meet the needs of the baby boomers, Gen Xers and millennials in their workforces. There is still room for improvement, as areas such as financial planning that are more important to a specific segment of the workforce could be offered by more organizations. However, by and large HR professionals recognize that work-life balance programs are a priority for their workers, and that this priority has only increased over time. Challenges for HR representatives include employment factors such as understaffing that create a perception of work-life imbalance. HR managers also face the challenges of communicating to all levels of the workforce. Senior leadership will need to be on board with the implementation of new programs, and employees could be made more aware of programs once they are put into place. Given that HR professionals recognize that work-life balance programs are becoming crucial to their employees — especially to the younger generation — they are on top of making sure that their organizations offer many different programs that satisfy the needs of today’s workforce.
Please complete the webinar evaluation.
#WFwebinar
Join our next Webinar! Calculating Overtime Correctly under the Fair Labor
Standards Act (FLSA)
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Webinars start at 2 p.m. Eastern / 11 a.m. Pacific
Register for all upcoming Workforce Webinars at www.workforce.com/webinars
