Apparently Younger Employees Value Being Respected, Who Knew?
What's in this month's Newsletter?
Jobs and Talent
Apparently Younger Employees Value Being Respected, Who Knew?
Personal and Professional Updates
Jobs and Talent
Organizational Development Roles (2) - Visiting Nurse Service of NY
The team at VNSNY are looking for two team members to work on Organizational Development – an OD Director and Program Lead. If you’ve got over 7 years experience in the field and are looking for an OD job in NYC, these roles are highly in demand!
Talent Development Curriculum Lead - Deposco, ATL
My old friend and colleague, Thomas Eskew, is building out his team at Deposco. They have an impressive organization and are growing rapidly. I have a feeling that this role will be one of many posted in the coming months! If you have 5+ years of experience in this space, this could be a great role for you.
Multiple Openings – Justworks
According to the talented Jen Fox (Hi Jen!), Justworks has over 140 open positions including many in the People and Workplace group. Roles such as Director of People Ops, DEI recruiting specialists and talent sourcers, Director of Total Rewards, and more. Check them out and email me if interested.
Note: If you’d like me to feature relevant openings in this monthly newsletter, just message me. There’s no cost associated with this… I just enjoy it! I typically feature roles in the talent/learning/people space, but I’m open to occasionally sharing others. I’m quite proud that readers have filled important roles thanks to this Newsletter!
Apparently Younger Employees Value Being Respected, Who Knew?
Researchers at Kansas State University just published a study in the International Journal of Business Communication that is making waves. Surveying over 1,000 employees ages 21-34 found that “autonomous respect” – roughly translated as respect beyond the contributions and confines of one’s job role – was the strongest predictor of occupational resilience, which strongly predicts job satisfaction, employee loyalty, and job engagement (LaGree et al., 2021).
Hmmm… you don’t say? Who would have guessed?!
The researchers are an unfair target for my sarcasm; this is an impressive study. Their 25 question survey (built from other validated questionnaires) has a robust sample and their conclusions are quite sound. I found the entire publication to largely avoid academic jargon and really found value in their discussion section (message me if you would like to access the Full Text), but it was admittedly light on specific, practical recommendations:
“In addition, our findings offer practical implications for organizational leaders seeking to attract and retain younger workers and to bolster their resilience in facing challenges at work. It is possible that organizations that train and develop supervisors with sensitivity to issues of respect and recognition, will be more successful in retaining employees, fostering higher levels of performance, and achieving greater profitability. Such training might be incorporated into onboarding for all new hires. For example, Sundaram and Barrett (2020) addressed how to build business resilience. They recommended that leaders refresh their tactics by focusing on inspiring their people and reigniting their workforce. Our nascent theory-building suggests that young employees can be inspired when leaders and managers are trained to effectively express individual respect to employees, ultimately cultivating a respectful workplace culture. Beyond the potential for improving productivity and reducing costs, organizations can create more humanistic work environments that offer dignity and compassion to employees.”
In conclusion: be more sensitive to respect and recognition and inspire people.
Okay, sure. But how, specifically?
One of my favorite, quick-hit topics I build into many of the managerial trainings I facilitate offers some practical guidance: LASER. Look Around for Signs of Excellence and Reinforce (Recognize/Reward). Managers who look for performance and note it will foment more of it.
This sounds rather straightforward – and it is – with two basic caveats:
1) Excellence should often be thought of as the consistent performance of productive behaviors, not simply just those rare moments of over-and-beyond performance. We under-appreciate consistency. The continued execution of good work is something that should be recognized and rewarded far more than is typical.
Does a colleague always send along useful recap emails? Show up with good ideas? Help to promote others’ suggestions and ideas selflessly? Tell them – tell them publicly, if you think they’ll respond well to that recognition. Most importantly, tell them what specifically their consistent performance does for the team, organization, and you. It’s not enough to say “good job!”; you should explicitly link their actions to results in your phrasing.
2) Look Around requires an active posture. It’s not enough simply to reinforce the behaviors that are thrust before your eyes. What the LASER framework demands is that we actively seek out opportunities to rightly recognize and reward our team members. You have to go looking for praiseworthy behaviors, not waiting for them to populate.
This isn’t hard! If you spend just a few moments thinking about each person on your team, you can likely identify one thing that they’re doing well – something you’d like to see them continue doing. Sometimes it can be helpful to think of the inverse: what actions, if discontinued, would make your life harder?
I’ll make a big claim here: As a manager, incorporating the LASER approach to communication and feedback is among the single lowest cost/highest benefit tools at your disposal.
An interesting question is whether or not these findings – on the particular value of autonomous respect – would be equally pronounced for other generations in the workplace? I’m not sure.
What do you think? I want to know! Please email me.
Personal & Professional Updates
Charlotte is 21 months old today and talking a mile a minute (wonder where she gets that from?). Similar to her father, much of what she says is rather unenlightening (but has the occasional useful nugget). She’s done quite well switching to her new daycare and seems to have no problem wearing a mask. Jess and I are extremely encouraged by the prospect of her eligibility for an EUA for Covid vaccination by as early as this year. That will really give us a level of comfort we’ve not yet seen.
Late 2021 and 2022 scheduling continues to be on my mind; in particular, I’m beginning to book training facilitations and anticipate having one or two spots for executive coaching open up in early 2022. Please let me know if there are any projects we can work on together!
That's it for this edition - please reach out if I can be at all helpful.
Stay safe, get vaccinated! Be compassionate and intentional.