In The Know with Axonify

Designing Jobs That Don’t Suck! w/ Dr. Steven Hunt (Chief Expert of Technology & Work - SAP)

Axonify Season 5 Episode 35

What do today’s employees want in a job?

Dr. Steven T. Hunt, Ph.D., SAP’s Chief Expert of Technology & Work, joins JD Dillon to share his perspective on what it takes to create a desirable workplace. Steve digs into trendy topics, like generational differences and remote work, and explains why they’re distractions from the important ideas organizations should focus on: job design and human psychology. 

Steve also talks about his new book, Talent Tectonics, and how it can help companies design work experiences that attract, enable and retain exceptional employees.

In The Know is brought to you by Axonify, the proven frontline enablement solution that gives employees everything they need to learn, connect and get things done. With an industry-leading 83% engagement rate, Axonify is used by companies to deliver next-level CX, higher sales, improved workplace safety and lower turnover. To learn more about how Axonify enables over 3.5 million frontline workers in 160-plus countries, in over 250 companies including Lowe’s, Kroger, Walmart and Citizens Bank, visit axonify.com.

JD Dillon (01:12):

Hello friends, how are you today? It's great to see you, and welcome to the 36th episode of In the Know, your 25-minute deep dive into the modern employee experience and what we can do to make it better. I'm JD from Axonify, and today's show is all about jobs. Now I know what you're thinking: Isn't every episode of this show about jobs? It's a talk show about the modern workplace, after all. Well, yes and no. See, here at ITK, we're focused on sharing practical insights that you can use to solve some of the most common workplace problems. That includes everything from technology optimization and learning, accessibility to employee engagement and the smart application of AI. But while we've talked a lot about different problems people experience on the job, we've never really talked about the job itself until today. You see, you don't have to do much research to find out that people's attitudes about work have shifted dramatically over the past couple of years, especially with rising inflation record levels of burnout and a renewed emphasis on mental health.

(02:21):

People are asking big questions about what work should be in 2023 and beyond. And perhaps the biggest question of all is, “What do today's employees want in a job?” I have many opinions, but my guest today has even more answers. Dr. Steven Hunt, SAP's Chief Expert of Technology and Work, is here to share his insights into creating a desirable workplace. We're also going to be playing a game called, whose book is that? To give our live viewers a chance to grab a free copy of Steve's new book, talent Tectonics. So be on the lookout for that during our show. But before we welcome our special ITK guest, I have some pretty big news, and it's about Taylor Swift. Now, do I have any swifties in the audience right now? Let us know in the chat by dropping your favorite Taylor Swift song.

(03:12):

I'm torn between You Belong With Me because it's just a great song and Shake It Off because it has some special meaning in my life. Anyway, Taylor Swift, if you haven't heard, is in the middle of the ERAs tour right now, and she's just raking it in—to the tune of almost $2 billion in tour revenue. It's her first tour since 2018, and there's a lot of pent-up demand for live performances right now after the past couple of years. And it's Taylor Swift, so it's not surprising that she's breaking all these records. So all of this talk about her tour got me thinking: what if I went out on tour and I know I’m not Taylor Swift, but I did drop my version of an album late last year, does that mean I should hit the road and promote that?

(04:04):

So that's why I'm officially excited to announce the ERAS Tour. No, the Ecosystem Tour. That's right. I got the name of my tour wrong right away, but I'm bringing the modern learning ecosystem to you this fall as part of a global performance series. I've got dates in Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Nashville, New York City, and Seoul, South Korea. And because I'm definitely not making that Taylor Swift money, I'm also coming to you digitally via Mighty Networks, Microsoft Teams, YouTube, and, of course, Zoom. The tour is kicking off on September 27th at the Cognoa Learn Ops Summit, where I'm going to be talking about AI's impact on the learning ecosystem alongside folks from Amazon ChemED and IBM. Then, in December, I'm heading to Japan virtually to talk about the modern learning mindset and how we can help influencers across our organizations think differently about the role of learning in the modern workplace.

(05:03):

Then I'm going to Nashville in October for AxoniCom 2023, hosting three main stage panels and sharing stories from my book with the Axonify community. But first, I'm stopping in Las Vegas, where I'm joining today's ITK guest for an executive breakfast forum on improving the frontline work experience. And I've got lots more dates booked for the first leg of the Ecosystem tour. So head over right now to ecosystemtour.com, which is a very real website, for more information, and I can guarantee you you're not going to have to pay Taylor Swift prices to hang out with me this fall. That's just a little bit about the Ecosystem tour. Now, let's welcome our special guest on ITK, Dr. Steven Hunt. Steve’s work focuses on the intersection of human psychology work, technology and business performance. An internationally recognized thought leader in the field of human resource technology, he's worked with over 1000 companies around the globe, spanning almost every industry. Steve focuses on helping companies increase workforce agility and performance by improving employee experience, development, engagement, inclusion and well-being. His new book “Talent Tectonics” explains how digitalization and demographics are transforming work and what companies must do to thrive in a world of accelerating change, increasing diversity and growing skill shortages. Steve Hunt, you're In The Know. How are you doing?

Steve Hunt (06:27):

Great, great. I love your tour, too, by the way. When “Talent Tectonics” came out, I did like the Shaking up the World of Work tour, but I'm more like the Grateful Dead or Fish. I never really go off-tour. I just keep going and going and going.

JD Dillon (06:42):

That's a good comparison. I need to find my version of a comparison, and we also need to start working up some real merch. There's the tour's content, but then there's the merch.

Steve Hunt (06:51):

Absolutely. Absolutely.

JD Dillon (06:52):

So, let's dive right in with the big question right out of the gate. What do employees want in the job today? And I'm curious how those changes and expectations may have inspired you to write your new book.

Steve Hunt (07:04):

I think a little bit of background about what I do is important. I'm an industrial organizational psychologist by training. So, most people are probably familiar with that. It's the psychology of work. It's not clinical psychology, but looking at how to create more effective work environments and make better decisions about people at work. That is my professional background, but my career has focused on the role of technology in creating effective work environments, and that's what I do at SAP. I've worked with thousands of companies at this point in my career, looking at how we can use technology to create more effective work environments and realizing that the work environments we need to create are being changed largely due to technology and other factors. I wrote Talent Tectonics because of all the conversations I was having with the customers dealing with the changing nature of work: what is it people want, how do we need to manage them differently, and what's the impact of all these technologies?

(07:56):

And when I wrote the book, I wrote it because people asked me if I would write another book. It's actually my third book about all these changes. And I thought, well, you've written a book, JD, it's a pain in the neck to write a book. It's like I'm going to have no social life for five months and hope my spouse doesn't leave me. But I thought, so if I'm going to write a book, I want to write one that I feel really adds to what's out there. And what I looked at is that I have a relatively unique perspective on the world as a psychologist working for a global technology company with thousands of organizations. This book focuses on three things. One, how the nature of work is changing due to digitization and demographic shifts, and how technology is changing and enabling us to manage people differently and teach people to learn differently.

(08:40):

But the one thing that makes this book different from a lot of other books about the future of worker trends is that it also focuses on the one thing about work that is not changing, which is the psychology of people, the fundamental psychology. And we're going to talk a little more about it. Yeah, there are differences in attitudes and values, but the fundamental psychology of people, the things that make us happy, that make us learn, that make us engaged, don't change from one generation to the next. We don't evolve that fast. I always use the example of plays by Shakespeare, for example, that was written Shakespeare's written 500 years ago. Yet it still resonates with us because it deals with fundamental psychological truths about people. And so what the book does, “Talent Tectonics,” is it looks at how we need to use technology to adapt.

(09:28):

And first of all, it starts with how we understand the changing nature of work, how we use technology to adapt to that and how we think about how we manage people. Grounding it in the one thing about work that isn't changing is people's fundamental psychology. That's a long answer. But what do people want from work? It's pretty simple. What people want from work is a subtext of what people want from life. They want a sense of security, they want a sense of growth, they want a sense of stability, they want a sense of accomplishment. They want to feel respected. As a matter of fact, one of the big changes in the last 20 years is people realizing this whole idea of separating work from life is unhealthy and unnatural. You can't do it. And that was one of the benefits we talked about with the pandemic when we all invited people into our homes, it broke down this mythological barrier that there's the work me and there's the life me. Yes, compartmentalization and separation. People do it, and there are differences, but the reality is what makes people happy at work is what makes them happy.

JD Dillon (10:29):

That's a great place to start the conversation. I know we're just going to scratch the surface in our chat today, but if any of you out there, our live viewers, want to dig in deeper and grab a copy of Steve's book, you need to keep your ears peeled. That's a statement for whose book is that question. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask a question about our books. So it's either my book, the Monitoring Ecosystem or Steve's, “Talent Tectonics”. And what I need you to do when I ask the question is if you're watching us live on LinkedIn right now, drop our name into the chat. Whose book do you think I'm talking about? So you're either going to type Steve or JD, and after the show, we're going to pick people who have dropped the names into the chat, and someone will walk away with a copy of Steve's book. So let's give it a try. So again, everyone out there, get ready; which book is that? One of our books has an audiobook. Which one of us got the audiobook treatment? Is it JD or is it Steve? Go ahead in the chat right now. Who do you think it is?

(11:32):

All right now, if you guessed Steve, you're correct, Steve did get the audiobook treatment while I will gladly come to your house and read the book for you personally for an exorbitant fee. That's my version of an audiobook. So we're going to do a couple more of those. So again, keep your ears peeled for more. Whose book is that? Questions now, Steve, back to the conversation now. There's plenty of talk out there about different generations and what people may be looking for in a job, and some people say the youth don't want to work anymore or that everyone wants to be a YouTube influencer. So I'm curious to get your perspective on how the definition of a good job differs by generation. So, is Gen Z looking for something different than me as a millennial, or how about corporate employees versus frontline workers? How should we be thinking about that?

Steve Hunt (12:20):

Yeah, well, first of all, I'd preface this by saying the type of jobs people are in has a much bigger impact on what they want from work than their generation. And we focus so much on generations when really what we should focus on is understanding employees and their jobs. So, for example, frontline workers what they want more of is quite different from people who identify heavily with their professional identity. And the amount of money you make at work has a big impact. If you're working in a job that pays $40,000 a year versus a job that pays $400,000 a year, it profoundly impacts what you care about at work. So, the whole generational stuff, I'm going to answer it, but I want to start by saying I think it's the wrong question. People love to talk about it, but I'll tell you we'd be a lot better off if we just focus on what my employees want in their jobs, regardless of their age. Okay. Having gotten off my soapbox, I'm going to get on a second soapbox.

(13:17):

Are there generational differences yet? There are, but again, it's just a formula for ageism. You don't need to be a Ph.D. in psychology to know that slapping labels on people based on their demographic characteristics and making generalizations about them is bad. Do you hear people saying, what is it that women want from work? You don't hear that question come up a lot. Are there differences in what men and women want from work? Yes. If you look at psychology, there are, but we don't frame the question that way because it leads to unhealthy thinking. Okay, but dial back, I will answer the question. How do the life experiences, and that's the way to phrase it, not the age but the life experiences you have shape your attitudes about work? It absolutely does. I mean a couple of things. It doesn't change the fundamental things that make work rewarding, like a sense of achievement, a sense of security, a sense of belonging.

(14:13):

That's the same regardless. However, your expectations about work and what it'll provide are influenced by the life experiences that you've had. One, in terms of the economic realities, if you grew up during a recession, it shapes your attitudes about job security if you grew up during it. And that's a big shift that's happened. If you graduated in the 1970s, there were more people graduating than there were jobs. Now it's flipped around. So it's changing the expectations people have about, hey, I can ask for more because I can get more. Because the labor shortage changes people's perceptions about what companies can and are to do in terms of offering jobs. The other thing that changes a lot is technology. We generally expect to be able to use technology at work that we had available when we were 16 years old. I kind of joke that asking a Gen Z to work without mobile would be asking a baby boomer to work without indoor plumbing.

(15:13):

The difference is that, when you're younger, you don't have a sense of the past. So as you're older with technology, you're like, well, yeah, the technology is not where it should be, but it's better than it was. But if you're younger, it's just not where it should be. There's no better than it was. And so I think a lot of the people's expectations and urgency around technology definitely are influenced by, again, life experience. The other, certainly social values and attitudes are affected, but those change a lot. So I think that's one of the things that people go, oh, kids are more conserved with the environment than older works. That's not necessarily true. Those change a lot across all areas. The last thing though, that by far and away that has the biggest impact is not the generation of the you were born. It's the career stage that you're in when you're just starting out a career.

(15:58):

You have different attitudes about desire for growth, feedback development than when you've been working in the job for like 20 years. And so this is one of the really big shifts. There's a lot of the things that we attribute to generational differences are really just differences in career stage and economic situation. Same thing with changing jobs. Kids, they quit more. That's actually not true. I'm Gen X barely. People in my generation change jobs more than millennials change jobs in their twenties. The twenties is when you change jobs a lot, right? And so a lot of the shifts that we associate with generational differences are actually just differences in career stage. So for example, I say somebody who stayed at home raised children until they were 40 and entered the workforce at 45 has a lot more similarities to somebody who's 22 and just graduating from college than maybe their spouse who'd been working for 20 years. So it's a lot of these other things. But I will end with going back to again though, I think the main discussion about generations is just people like talking about kids these days and that's been true for these kids. It's just not true. And it's also unhealthy. The year you were born isn't what matters. What matters is what's happened in the years since you were born and what you want to do with the years left. That's what we should focus on.

JD Dillon (17:13):

I will just reply with a resounding yes, although I did in fact walk to work uphill through snow both ways when I was younger. So I have to follow that question up with curiosity around everything that you're talking about today, all the insights that you're sharing. In your experience, do companies know or understand what employees want? And if they do, why don't they provide it? And if they don't, why don't they know?

Steve Hunt (17:42):

Yeah. Well they've gotten a lot better actually. It was funny just you think on generational difference. You know what we'll say to our kids, actually JD we're, when I started work, we had no internet. They'll be like, oh my god, that sounds like hell.

JD Dillon (17:55):

I had to use a rotary phone over the weekend and I was very confused.

Steve Hunt (17:59):

Imagine a world with no wireless connectivity

Speaker 3 (18:01):

At all anywhere.

Steve Hunt (18:06):

No. So going back companies, yes, companies understand far better now than they used to. And that's due to I would say two factors. One, that employee experience matters in a way now that it didn't matter differently. And this is a lot actually about what “Talent Tectonics” is about the nature of work largely due to digitalization, also demographic changes which affect our labour market and chronic seal shortages. But really digitalization is changing the very nature of work. We're not hiring people to act like machines, we're hiring people to act like people because we're getting machines to do repetitive tasks and all those things. And so we really want people to be is creative, collaborative, caring, empathetic, all these sorts of things we associate with effective performance. You can't do those things if you're not having a good employee experience. There's a term in psychology called emotional labor that refers to the mental and physical toll of trying to act externally differently from how you feel internally.

(19:02):

It is wearing on you to try to be engaged when you're exhausted or be happy when you're frustrated or don't feel cared for. And so companies are realising this. It's not just about retention. It's even more importantly about people can't do what we're paying them to do if we don't give them a good experience. This has led to a lot more focus on understanding employee experience. It's led to an explosion of technology on how to do it because one of the challenges, particularly for leaders in companies is one of our customers shared this with me. She said, A senior leader cannot actually understand the employee experience employees are having without using technology because they live in a bubble. When a senior leader walks out onto the plant floor, people treat them differently. They don't, especially the employees you want, don't just say, oh, my leader's here, I'm going to complain about what's wrong with work even if they have valid complaints.

(19:53):

And so this is where using a lot of different technologies, I mean there's survey technologies, there's pulse technologies, there are technologies you use to measure how long people are online. There's all kinds of different things. You have to be careful that you don't become creepy and spying about it. But companies are getting better and better knowledge about it. I think the reason, and they are doing a lot better too, by the way, work is better now than it was. Anyone who tells you work was better 50 years ago did not work 50 years ago, work literally shortened. Our lifespans work is physically much, much easier and better than it used to be, but it's psychologically more difficult. And that is where companies are really trying to look at how can we use technology to create more effective experiences. I think where we're on the cusp starting to happen is companies are realising they need to rethink job design itself, which is hard for a lot of leaders.

(20:45):

I mean, look at the whole remote work thing. What did we learn from remote work? We learned a couple things. One, I always joke about this, imagine if you'd gone into CEOs of companies in January of 2020 and said, I think we should move your entire professional workforce to a hundred percent remote in two weeks. They would've thought we were insane. But that's what companies did around the world. And what we learned is one, we obviously had the technology to work remotely, we just weren't using it. And two, we learned that why it was absolutely stressful. People prefer it. People prefer not having to commute lemmings every day into an office just to commute like lemmings every day into an office. What a surprise. So why weren't we working that way before? Because leaders have this assumption about this is how work is supposed to work.

(21:30):

And when we changed it and sadly took a pandemic to break that assumption, and we redesigned work using modern technology to give people a lot more flexibility and autonomy. It's a far more inclusive, there's all kinds of things that are benefits from it. Employee experience has gone up, but then you see leaders wanting to pull people back into offices. Why is that? Because they are comfortable with what's familiar to them and so many jobs. So many of the issues we have in jobs are things that are really, they're familiar based on very outdated technologies. It's constraining. So remote work's. Another place that's rocking the shift world right now is flexible schedules, giving employees control over their own time. So they can say, I want to take two hours off on a Wednesday, but I'll work an extra two hours on Saturday, which is by the way, how professionals work all the time, but shift workers.

(22:18):

So there's this real pressure where companies are getting a better understanding. But I think what it really is, the biggest reason why they're not fully leaning into technology to change this one is leadership leaders are like, well, I'm comfortable with what it is. Why should I change it? Unaware that we could do it differently with technology and really pushing these in technology. And the last one if I'm really kind of sad about it is economics sometimes what companies are focused on efficiency and productivity and they're like, well, if we change this, it would create more cost for us operationally, and we don't want to do that, which I understand, but what we're reaching is good employee experience is not about putting employee experience above company needs. It's about understanding that companies can't get what they need if employees don't get what they want. But the flip side is employees can't get what they want if companies don't get what they need because who pays for that experience? The profitability of the company. Good experiences don't come from working for failing companies. Where we are is we're getting this balance more and that's what the company is. But the biggest barrier to it I'd really say is leadership mindset leaders like saying, well, why should we change And not realising we can change and not pushing for that change, it doesn't affect them.

JD Dillon (23:33):

Absolutely. So we're going to run short on time, but before I get to our next question, I do want to give everyone who's watching live on LinkedIn right now, another chance to potentially get this copy of Steve's new book. So my next whose book is that question is going to be one of these two books includes a two page story about what we can learn about our work from Wiley Coyote. Which of us do you think has a mild obsession with 1940s cartoon characters? Is it Steve or is it jd? Drop your guests in the chat right now.

Steve Hunt (24:08):

I got to say jd, the books may be different, but we both do have a mild obsession with 1940s cartoons and characters. I'm

JD Dillon (24:15):

Right. Well there you go. It's a shared obsession as it were. But the answer is in fact jd, so I actually also have a keynote presentation I deliver called Don't Be the Coyote. So if you're interested in that, I can share more information.

Steve Hunt (24:27):

What about Yosemite Sam? That was my favourite.

JD Dillon (24:29):

I haven't figured out an analogy for Yosemite Sam in the modern workplace, but I'm working on it. You can guarantee that. So I do want to ask you, what do you think people out there who are watching right now, what can employers do today to start improving their employee experience? So some organisations might be a lot further along with some of the things that you've talked about. Some may be way behind the times. So what should people be doing right now if they want to move the needle?

Steve Hunt (24:54):

Yeah, I would like to break this into three areas. I don't want to just make up companies. There's so much that we can do as individuals and we should do, first of all, if you're a manager, you have a profound impact on the experience of other people. And I think as a manager it's sort of shifting that mindset, really trying to look at things from your employee's perspective. My father told me when I experienced bad management early in my career, he gave me advice. He said, there's nothing you can do about it as an employee at this point, but remember when you have people reporting to you, don't do to them what frustrated you so much when you were being managed. And there's actually studies too that show that bad management practises tend to cycle downhill. So if your boss does something to you that pisses you off, don't pass it on to your employees.

(25:34):

So managers, it's really kind of listen to your employees, establish rapport and partnership and try to look at things from their perspective and realise that it's a relationship and it will change over time. And turnover isn't bad, it's more like transitions we want. So shifting that mindset as a manager, if an employee, I think the biggest thing an employees is assume positive intent. Most managers are not insensitive. They're often unaware and overlooked worked. Most of them didn't ever really get a lot of training on how to be a manager. They just sort of stumbled into it.

(26:06):

But when you're thinking about and your manager try to create that establishment, that is a partnership. Going back to what I said, that they can't get what they need from you if you don't get what you want, but you can't get what you want if they don't get what you need from you. So look at this balance and assume with a manager that you have this dialogue and it's a partnership. It's not like a transactional reporting. You do this or else kind of thing. And I do realise there's big differences in the companies where you work with, but in general managers, they're not the enemy to create that relationship on the companies. It goes back to what I was talking about earlier, which is especially as hr, which tends to have the main focus on this is challenge assumptions and also really got to understand technology.

(26:47):

Our understanding of technology enables and constraints what we think is possible about work. So going back to my remote work technology that we could have worked remotely, but people didn't do it because they weren't aware it was even possible. And look how quickly we moved into that, but that's true in so many things about job design pay. We can have much more effective pay methods, learning obviously Exonify and what you guys do that if you're in hr, you really need to invest in looking at what the technology is enabling that makes things possible the weren't possible before, and then going back in the organisation and really challenging assumptions in the organisation. I have a lot of conversations with companies about staffing right now and they always focus on recruiting. And the thing that I always emphasise is the biggest thing that impacts your ability to attract and retain talent is job design. It's the job itself. And so I think the good news is there's an explosion of creativity in this space in the technology, and I think the hard thing is in HR is just getting to learn it. But also the nice thing about hr, the one thing we don't have to keep relearning is the psychology of people. If you understand what makes people happy, just look at the technology changes. But just look at how type back to those basic things, one thing that doesn't change what people want. Recognition, accomplishment, security, belongingness.

JD Dillon (28:04):

I think that's a great place to wrap up our conversation with that key insight sounds so simple, but it's really not in practise in that people be people. Yeah, people

Steve Hunt (28:13):

Be people.

JD Dillon (28:15):

Steve Hunt, thank you so much for joining us here on I T K today. I'm back.

Steve Hunt (28:19):

Yeah.

JD Dillon (28:20):

Hey, I was just asking where can people go to learn more about your work and grab a copy of your book.

Steve Hunt (28:24):

I think it was you or me. Well, talend tectonics.com has a thank you that we will tell you more about the book and when you can get it's available on Amazon and all the sites like that. Also, feel free to follow me on LinkedIn. I post and write about this stuff a lot of times and if you are going to be at Success Connect or HR Tech, I'm going to be there next week. But yeah, probably the best place is LinkedIn, Steven T. Hunt and talent tectonics.com.

JD Dillon (28:49):

Awesome. Again, thank you so much to Steven Hunt for being here on In the Know Today to share his insights into people, what people want in a job today, and be on the lookout for a DMM on LinkedIn if you dropped our names into the chat during the show, because you might be getting a free copy of Steve's book. If you had a good time today, be sure to subscribe to itk and over to Axonify.com/itk to sign up for show announcements and reminders. You can also check out the entire I T K collection on the Axonify YouTube channel or listen to in the Know Your Favourite podcast app and be sure to come back in two weeks as we continue our exploration of what it takes to create an awesome workplace. Melissa Daimler, CLO of Udemy will be here to talk about culture. Melissa will share the key elements of building exceptional workplace cultures and how behaviours, processes, and practises intersect to shape the outcome.

(29:37):

Plus, you'll have a chance to grab a copy of Melissa's new book, “Reculturing: Design Your Company Culture to Connect with Strategy and Purpose for Lasting Success.” Find out how you can build a workplace culture that works on Wednesday, October 5th at 11:30 AM Eastern from Melissa Daimler. Until then, I've been JD. Now you're In The Know. And always remember to ask yourself the important questions like how many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Just one. But it takes a long series of conversations and the light bulb needs to truly want to change. I'll see you next time. In the Know is produced by Sam Trieu, visually designed by Mark Anderson. Additional production support by Richia McCutcheon, Andrea Miller, Maliyah Bernard, Tuong La, and Meaghan Kay. The show is written and hosted by JD Dillon. ITK is an Axonify production. For more information on how Axonify helps frontline workers learn, connect and get things done, visit Axonify.com.



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