Employee Magnetism: Defining the Moments that Matter

Why will purpose be a key element of the future Employee Experience?

What do you find most motivating about your work? Why is it you do what you do?

We’re all different, and are likely to be motivated by different things. This will vary at different stages of our lives, too. And of course, extrinsic rewards (like being paid at the end of the month!) will always play a part. However, Daniel Pink (5) argues that in the modern workplace, motivation increasingly goes beyond these extrinsic rewards, and is becoming far more about intrinsic motivation – in other words, doing something because we find it inherently rewarding.

Pink famously argues that there is a unifying formula for intrinsic motivation at work: Autonomy, (work that we have control over); Mastery (work we feel we are good, or getting better, at) and Purpose (work that makes us feel part of something bigger). Supporting the importance of purpose is the fact that a lack of meaningful work was recently cited in the top five reasons for leaving among people who quit their job without another lined up, ranking even higher than inadequate compensation or lack of flexibility (6).

This brings us to our first prediction for the future of the employee experience: That purpose will move from a ‘nice-to-have’ to a ‘must-have’. But if purpose is already a core intrinsic motivator for everyone, then why does it make this list? What could be different in the future?

If we explore what the data says about the behaviour of different generations at work, we find something interesting. A Deloitte survey of over 4,000 people found that over a quarter (29%) of 16–24-year-olds have left an organisation because it wasn’t true to its purpose. The same is true of only 8% of 55-64-year-olds (7). So, it seems younger generations are more likely to say that purpose is a significant factor for them in choosing where they work. While we can’t infer from this that younger generations actually feel more motivated by purpose, we can say that their behaviour seems to be different.

Why is this? It could be a number of reasons – perhaps it’s about changing career expectations. Do they feel freer to act in line with an innate desire for purpose and meaning because there is less pressure to stay in one organisation? Maybe it comes from witnessing events like the 2008 recession or the Covid pandemic at a time when they were about to, or had recently, entered the workforce, and the subsequent impact on their mindset around work. Finally, it could be linked to broader societal, political, and environmental issues, like the urgency we’re seeing today around climate change, and a motivation to play a part in doing good in the world. My colleague Alexandra Shoobert writes more about the changing expectations individuals have about their careers.

Whatever the reasons might be for this shift, recognising that newer members of the workforce are more and more likely to make employment decisions based on purpose and meaning is key – as is how employers choose to respond.

Designing purpose into the EX

An organisation’s purpose can be defined as its reason for existing.

A review by Kings College London researchers (8) identified three common types of purpose when it comes to organisations. Firstly, there are competence-based purpose statements emphasising the value of the organisation’s product or service – like Netflix, whose purpose is ‘to entertain the world’, and Google, who ’organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.’ Then there are culture-based purpose statements, which focus on how the business operates. One example is Aldi: ‘We provide value and quality to our customers by being fair and efficient in all we do’. Finally, there are cause-based statements, like Patagonia’s ‘We’re in business to save our home planet’. These focus on explaining the organisation’s social or environmental impact.

The researchers argue that all three types can be effective, so long as they are plausible and authentic. They also share some practical strategies for effectively embedding purpose throughout the organisation, a common pitfall for organisations that may invest in refining their purpose statement as a marketing tool, but fail to back it up with genuine action or integrate it fully into their EX. These include:

1. Strategy alignment: Align your strategic objectives with your purpose and review your products and services to decide what to stop, start or continue to integrate purpose into day-to-day work.
2. Hiring and onboarding: This could be through the questions you ask at interview, or by connecting new employees with the beneficiaries of your purpose.
3. Individual alignment: Encourage employees to reflect on what the purpose means to them as an individual and make it their own. Unilever did this through workshops for all employees, with the goal of being able to articulate their own personal purpose, as well as how it fits into the overarching purpose.
4. Leadership alignment: This could be discussing purpose in all management meetings; helping leaders to help their teams understand how they play a part; or recognising and rewarding people who have embodied the organisation’s purpose.
5. Measuring impact: Aim to measure purpose-related impact with financial, social and environmental objectives. When it comes to employees, this could include how well they understand the purpose, and their perceptions on how much the organisation is really doing.

By considering purpose at every step of the employee journey – from how you attract and recruit talent to how you develop, promote and retain them – you can ensure your organisation is full of people who feel connected to, and driven by, your purpose. Not only will this help create real impact in the world, it will also help you stay competitive as an employer for talent who is increasingly rating ‘purpose’ as a fundamental factor in choosing where they work.

Why will trust be a key element of the future EX?

Why is trust important at work? Research on over 10,000 desk workers found that 1 in 4 don’t feel trusted by their employer. Despite this, of those who said they didn’t feel trusted, 87% felt they were performing well. This was consistent across all ages and tenures, and spanned countries, industries and roles. (9)

So, what is causing this trust gap? And what is the impact? Since the rapid rise of remote work, managers and leaders can’t rely on physically seeing their team members and building in-person relationships with them to help drive performance. This isn’t (yet) a natural state of being for us and is something we need to get more used to. By putting in place tools and strategies to help build trust in other ways (which we will come to later), organisations will reduce the need to rely on presenteeism to create trust.

And of course, trust goes both ways. Trusting that your employer will operate with integrity and treat you and others well is a critical aspect of the employee experience. In fact, 76% of employees would consider looking for a new job if there was an unfair gender pay gap or no D&I policy at their organisation (10).

Rachel Botsman, trust expert, author and Oxford University Lecturer, argues that right now we are going through “one of the greatest trust shifts of all time – from institutional to distributed trust” (11). She observes that just as the internet and social media have enabled news and information to flow freely between individuals, rather than top-down via newspapers, radio or TV; and platforms like Airbnb and Uber mean we often place our trust in reviews and ratings from other users more than a particular brand; there is a parallel with how trust is transforming in the workplace.

If institutional trust was built on trusting authorities and experts, and by reporting upwards and communicating downwards (12), in this new world of distributed trust, the power will increasingly sit with the collective employees, not just at the top; there will be an expectation of greater transparency, and a sense of trust needing to be earned by employers, rather than given automatically.

So – what action should organisations be taking to address these shifts?

Designing trust into the Employee Experience

Neuroscientist Paul J. Zak has spent much of his career researching trust – such as which behaviours elicit trust from others, and what is going on in our brains when we trust (or don’t trust) someone. To understand the role of trust in the workplace, Zak’s research found that compared with low-trust organisations, people in high-trust organisations had a substantially better employee experience. They were 76% more engaged, 74% less stressed, had 106% more energy at work, were 50% more productive and 29% more satisfied with their lives (13).

So, what are the factors that make an organisation ‘high trust’? He identified a set of key behaviours from managers and leaders that were common to the high trust organisations. These included:

• Intentionally build social relationships
• Set difficult, but achievable work – then let people do it their own way
• Recognise excellence
• Share information broadly
• Show vulnerability by asking for help

These behaviours – which reflect the themes we’ve discussed around the higher need for autonomy and transparency – are things that all managers and leaders can do to foster a culture of trust in their teams and organisation.

When it comes to culture, however, it’s critical to look not only at behaviours, but at processes, systems and structure, too. These things are all ‘silent communicators’ that are doing two things when it comes to your employee experience:

• Having a huge influence on everyone’s day-to-day behaviour and decision making
• Acting as ‘silent communicators’ that tell your employees what is truly valued

For example, if you tell your leadership team that they need to be prioritising sustainability, but meeting agendas are dominated by short-term financial metrics, they won’t have the headspace or opportunity to really act on this. In turn, their teams won’t feel enabled to make decisions that drive sustainability, and there will be a mismatch between intentions and reality. For more information about delivering on your sustainability ambitions, read Gary Ashton’s article.

If you tell your employees that the organisation is committed to D&I, but they don’t see diversity on the Board; D&I considerations haven’t been properly embedded in the recruitment process; and there are no Employee Resource Groups or diverse leadership pipelines set up; it is much harder for the right behaviours to happen, and this will be evident to everyone.

The need for trust in organisations is evolving, along with the way that we build it. By thinking about trust from two angles – the ‘soft’ (behaviours and capabilities) and the ‘hard’ (systems and processes), you can build a high-trust organisation that employees will want to join – and stay a part of.