What Employees Want and What Employers Can Offer

This is particularly true for younger workers in Australia with the Deloitte 2019 Millennial Survey showing that loyalty to employers is waning and nearly half (49%) — would, if they had a choice, quit their current job in the next two years.³

Employees are expecting their companies to recognise their “whole selves” — from their unique values, backgrounds, and talents, to their perspectives on the workplace. This can inform employees’ big decisions, such as staying at their current organisations or accepting new positions.

And recognising the whole person means engaging with different employees in different ways. It is not enough for employers to look at employees through the lens of demographics like age and gender.

Employers need to understand their workforce on a deeper level by evolving employee surveys to cover attitudes, motivators, values, and goals to provide valuable insights into the most impactful ways to engage their people.

Using this approach, companies can develop employee profiles that can be used for program development, benefit offerings, and personalised communications that reflect the diverse needs of the workforce — at scale.

One way to do this is to focus more heavily on workplace culture and related programs. Employers underestimate the value of these intangible factors to employees and, as a result, could be missing opportunities to more deeply engage their workforce.

Many Australian workplaces have developed diversity and inclusion policies to support the attraction and retention of talent from minority backgrounds, e.g. lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender diverse, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ+), indigenous and culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities. However more can be done to create experiences to celebrate diversity in the workforce.

Affinity groups are one way employees can have meaningful opportunities to connect with each other, and feel a sense of belonging within their organisation — supporting one of the top drivers of happiness at work: having coworkers who are like family or friends.

The Deloitte 2019 Millennial Survey shows diversity is particularly crucial when young people are looking for work. When considering whether to work for an organisation, the majority of millennials cited giving a “great deal” or “fair amount” of importance to the gender, ethnicity, age, and general range of backgrounds of employers’ workforces.⁴

Our research found that more than two thirds (68%) of employees think diversity and inclusion (D&I) programs are important. Furthermore, our research revealed that meaningful work, a sense of purpose, workplace culture, and diversity and inclusion programs were all important ‘must haves’ when deciding to stay in a job or accept a new job.

For diversity and inclusion programs, this was particularly true for Gen Z’s and Gen Y’s in terms of ‘must haves’ compared with older generations.

Employees place great value on the ability to speak up — to share their opinions or feedback — without fear of retribution. This is another primary driver of happiness at work.

To facilitate this, employers should focus on building a culture that celebrates transparency, shared goals, and open dialogue. This must go beyond simple policies that proclaim a culture of feedback — employers have to live it by actively engaging the workforce in conversation and then acting on what they learn.

While many employers believe they are fostering this culture, there is a gap between how employers think they are doing and how comfortable employees actually feel speaking up. Younger employees, particularly, don’t always feel like they can speak freely. This is actually the fourth overall driver of employee happiness.

When employees feel that their individuality is being respected, and they have opportunities to share their opinions, they feel more purpose in what they do every day.

But what does purpose mean to employees of different backgrounds and age groups? This is the focus of our next insight.

In fact, a sense of purpose is critical in driving job performance and satisfaction. Meaningful work/a sense of purpose tops the list of ‘must have’ elements for employees when deciding to stay at or accept a new job.

Nearly all (93%) of employees consider purpose a must-have or a nice to have in the workplace, yet only two-thirds (68%) feel a strong sense of purpose when working.

However, what purpose means is much more multifaceted than many would imagine. A common belief is that for a company to attract purpose-motivated employees, they must have an altruistic mission driving their organisation. And while the data shows this is important, the way employees define what purpose means to them is actually broader and more varied across all generations.

All generations place a heavy focus on accomplishing their daily tasks but the younger generation — Gen Z — is more likely to want to ensure their work has a positive impact on the community while the older generation — Boomers — is more likely to want to create value for their company. Even within each generation, purpose can be multi-dimensional — it can mean many things.

If employers only think purpose stems from work that has a positive impact on society, they may struggle to connect it to their employees’ day-to-day experience, and may miss an opportunity to leverage purpose as a motivator. By simply acknowledging the value employees bring their organisations through effectively and efficiently completing their daily work, employers can help foster a deep sense of purpose and accomplishment in the workforce.

Employers across the board, but especially those employers of small or medium sized businesses, tend to overstate the importance elements of purpose have to employees, as shown in the graph below.

To adapt, employers must prepare their workforce, hiring for new skillsets — often in short supply — and reskilling employees that will be most affected.

Employers understand just how disruptive these technologies will continue to be in the workplace, and while many employees are seeing the impact, they may not fully realise the coming implications.

Technology plays a part in upskilling and retaining staff — the key challenges for employers. Employers must take a two-pronged approach. Upskilling current employees is necessary to ensure the workforce stays ready to adopt changing technologies, and keeping existing staff interested and investing in their development are crucial to overcoming these challenges.

When it comes to retraining for the workforce of the future, there is a disconnect as to who is responsible. Overall employees see it as their own responsibility to undertake this training, however younger employees are more likely to put the onus on employers with expectations shifting as they get older. Meanwhile, employers see the onus on them to provide training.

Although AI will feature strongly in the workplace of the future, employers must also stay focused on training for soft skills. While AI delivers efficiencies that are hard to replicate with a human workforce, what it cannot do (yet) is bring creativity, leadership, and interpersonal skills to solve problems or push organisational thinking forward. And with the time and resource savings from introducing AI, employers can dedicate more of their employees’ time to those value-adding activities.

Employers say their third highest challenge this year is ensuring that their workforce is adequately trained on more creative soft skills, including leadership, conflict resolution, curiosity, and communication.

Yet, only 50% of employers report they are actually offering relevant training today. As they evaluate their learning and development programs, employers should develop curricula designed to build these soft skills — with techniques like interactive scenario-based activities and coaching — and provide a clear expectation, along with a roadmap, on how to get there.

In fact, training is a key driver of job acceptance for this very reason. Providing these resources can help attract and retain employees, which is especially important in a competitive market.

So, what can employers do to stay competitive with training?