THEN: Ten years ago, social media was fairly new and a little unsettling for business leaders and HR. Twitter was just 1 year old, and Facebook was thought of mainly as a distraction that threatened to decrease productivity. Two-thirds of employers used technology to block connections to banned websites in 2006, 3 out of 4 monitored which websites workers visited and more than half monitored employees’ e-mails, according to a BambooHR study of HR trends. NOW: A more relaxed attitude prevails. Last year, just 30 percent of organizations blocked access to certain sites and even fewer kept an eye on what workers were viewing and e-mailing, according to BambooHR. Of course, company leaders fully understand that social media can be distracting—and will continue to be for as long as there are cute cat videos to share—but they also realize that trying to control employees’ online lives at work is likely futile and perhaps even counterproductive. Social media is “how people are used to finding information and communicating. If you limit it too much, it’s going to stifle them,” says Donatella Verrico, chief human resources officer at law firm Lowenstein Sandler in Roseland, N.J. WHAT’S NEXT: In the next decade, companies may well abandon e-mail and use social media or other instant messaging tools as their primary internal communication vehicle, predicts Shawn Casemore, president of Ontario, Canada-based management consulting firm Casemore and Co. Inc. |
Percentage of companies that track which websites employees visit
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THEN: Health and retirement programs were among the most common benefits employers provided, and benefit offerings were relatively limited.
efits. Companies have responded by recalibrating their perks to remain competitive in the war for talent. Retail giant Amazon, for example, offers its hourly employees a generous tuition benefit and onsite schooling. The startling detail? The company trains workers for jobs outside of Amazon.The Career Choice program offers up to 95 percent reimbursement of tuition and fees (up to $12,000 over four years) to train employees in high-demand fields in regions where they work. They can learn about aircraft mechanics, machine tool technologies and nursing, for example.
NOW: Employees still value the basics, but they also want more flexible and individualized ben “Being able to advertise such a program helps with recruiting,” says Juan Garcia, Amazon’s global leader for associate career development. And internal studies show that participants have one-fourth the attrition rate of nonparticipants. Nearly 10,000 people have taken advantage of the benefit.Student loan help is another popular perk with modern workers. “Years ago, the employee entered the workforce wanting to know right from the beginning, ‘What is my retirement plan?’ The entry-level employee is now burdened with educational debt that didn’t exist previously, and they’re asking, ‘What kind of benefits can you provide for student debt?’ ” says Skip Spriggs, senior executive vice president and chief human resources officer at TIAA, a New York City-based financial services company. |
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3. Feedback Becomes Fluid
THEN: Companies relied heavily on annual reviews to assess employees’ performance and provide feedback—and some used draconian strategies that pitted workers against one another. At Microsoft, for example, managers relied on stacked ranking, or the “rank and yank” style of employee assessment, in which the employees with the lowest ratings tended to end up looking for other opportunities in the company—or elsewhere.
NOW: Companies are adopting a less formal and more flexible approach. After Microsoft moved away from stacked ranking in 2013, managers began using a process called Connects, in which workers get real-time feedback without structured reviews. Instead of numbered rankings, it’s about the employees’ impact over the last two to three months, their anticipated future impact, what they learned from various experiences and how they grew professionally, says Chuck Edward, head of global talent acquisition at Microsoft, which employs 110,000 people worldwide. And instead of encouraging competition among colleagues, the system fosters collaboration. Employees are assessed on how they worked with their teams and contributed to others’ success. That’s a welcome approach, especially among Millennial workers. Nearly 6 out of 10 said they have been upset by a performance review, and most prefer ongoing conversations about their performance, according to a study by HR outsourcing company TriNet.
85% of Millennials would feel more confident in their current position if they had more-frequent performance conversations with their managers.