How are organizations adjusting their talent models to get ready for the employee of the future?
In part 3 of our interview series with Antonio Queiroz, Chief Digital Officer at Euroclear on winning in Industry 4.0 , he shares his perspectives on how leaders can attract and increase their engagement with Industry 4.0 talent.
Throughout our conversation we covered four items:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
A global workforce is about more than just remote working | Engaging Industry 4.0 talent | Three actions to increase your ability to attract Industry 4.0 talent | Being ready for the employee of the future |
1. A global workforce is about more than just remote working
Our first topic has come up in nearly every meeting I’ve had over the past 18 months: the new definition of “coming to work.” While many people have been working remotely, few companies have figured out how to build a thriving global workforce.
Antonio described it this way:
“In more and more jobs, your physical presence no longer correlates to the impact you have. The pandemic has shown us that remote work can be very effective. Yet, most companies are not ready for true talent dispersion. If you want to win, you need to build a truly global workforce: allowing you to attract the best people, wherever they are on the planet. This will require you to build practices that truly guarantee people get equal opportunity wherever they are.”
Right around the time of our discussion, David Cancel, CEO of marketing software company Drift, made a similar statement in a CNN article. He explained that, as he moved his company to permanent remote work, he noticed he had to overcome ‘hidden’ barriers such as the tendency to promote employees who are near the office far more frequently and/or require that the most senior leaders be present in person.
As Antonio and David stressed: building a truly global workforce requires more than just allowing people to work remotely, it’s about reviewing all your practices and policies to ensure employees have equal career opportunities independent of where they work from.
That certainly isn’t easy, but the upside is potentially one of the largest upsides businesses have ever faced: access to a truly global workforce.
2. Engaging Industry 4.0 talent
Employee engagement has long been recognized as a foundational element of Operational Excellence. However, the drivers of employee engagement have shifted significantly, with purpose and work environment becoming far more important.
Antonio shared:
“10-15 years ago, in my home country of Portugal, fear of unemployment drove many people to ‘choosing’ their job. That has totally changed. Now, the way you do the job and what the company does – ‘Do you do the right thing?’ – makes a significant difference. People say: ‘No, I don’t want to work for a company if I don’t believe in their purpose’. Industry 4.0 talent wants to be able to identify with the purpose of their company.”
In my own work, I’ve seen potential candidates put increasing emphasis on work environment in choosing their next position. Antonio went one level further though, sharing how he has seen candidates leave because the work environment didn’t fit them and how peer-executives and HR struggle to believe this.
“At one of my previous employers we had to recruit a group of developers and we had candidates ask us things like, ‘Can I choose my laptop?’ And the answer was ‘No.’ So the candidate would stand up and is ready to go. We counter and say ‘But we are going to pay you 20% more.’ Then he asks, ‘Can I have two screens?’ We answer ‘No.’ And so they leave.
I remember in the debrief, HR saying: ‘Are you serious? They’re not signing for this?’ and we would say ‘Yes.’ We had a long way to go.
Initially, people thought this was just a small group of outliers, but over time it became clear this was the talent we needed. If we were going to attract them, we had to change.
The next group that helped us understand just how much we had to change was a group of contractors. We were used to our money buying us any service. But they said ‘No. Fifty percent of what we discuss with you will not come through and my people will just resign. So, no, I don’t need your money.’
When we started debriefing in the executive-team on this, we realized: there’s a new way-of-working and we need to change ours if we want to be able to work with the best talent.”
3. Three actions to increase your ability to attract Industry 4.0 talent
I asked Antonio what approaches he had seen succeed in overcoming these challenges:
He described three key actions his current company has taken:
1. We changed the physical work environment:
"Our office setting, our laptop policies. This is one of the most visible and probably the easiest change to make. As much as possible, we made sure that any member of the organization can have the tools and work environment they need to be their best. No more one-size-fits-all, force-fit model of phone, laptop or desk configuration."
2. We created a new onboarding and talent-development process:
"Especially in a permanent remote-working context, it’s critical to think through what you can do to make talent truly part of the company. Can you create additional discussion venues, virtual coffees, maybe there’s a way to have people meet in local small-group meetings? Two critical questions throughout the onboarding are: are we making the company’s purpose tangible and are we listening well to what our team members are looking for?"
3. (And most importantly) We’re creating new, Agile working relationships:
"Throughout the pandemic, we’ve become, of course, much better at remote work. But even before the pandemic, we had started quite a large Agile Operational Excellence transformation. We’re finding new ways to increase our speed of execution, empower our people more and make work better for them and for the company. This has also allowed us to address some of the concerns of some of our more Agile suppliers.”
4. Attracting top talent means being ready
In the above examples, the wake-up call from candidates and from suppliers – fintechs in particular – was a blessing in disguise. It undoubtedly helped prepare some of the large institutions for the demands of the pandemic and corresponding work-from-home requirements.
While Antonio’s suggestions might seem challenging for more “traditional” companies, they’re most certainly not the “end-stage” for companies completely re-thinking employer-employee relationships and pushing topics such as “unbossing.”
Successfully navigating this shift in talent models requires an ability to meet talent where they are. It means being ready to say to potential candidates, “Tell me what you need to be successful.” and having the infrastructure, tools and processes to quickly respond to their needs.
Key takeaways for Industry 4.0 Talent:
Global talent: build the practices that will guarantee equal opportunity no matter where people are, in order to give your organization access to the world’s top talent
Leading with purpose: Industry 4.0 talent wants to identify with the purpose of their company and job.
Build the environment for them: The work environment should match the talent you are trying to attract. Think of it as their home: it needs to suit them and be adjustable to help them succeed.
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