Company Cracks The Code To Human-Centered Employee Development

Well, hello everyone! How's it going today?

Excellent, excellent! So, there's a couple of things I want to clarify. I was going to be respectable today and wear shoes and things of that nature, but Chris said to me yesterday, "We all know you're not respectable, don't bother." So, I said, "Okay, fine, I'll come in with my flip-flops because that's what I'm used to."

The other thing—he said I'm a self-proclaimed IT nerd. Okay, that's only when I'm being formal. That's when I'm being serious about my title. Typically, I just say I'm a computer nerd. It's a little less formal, a little less professional.

So, who is this computer nerd, and what is he doing here today?

What I want to talk about today is what we're doing in our organization to change the way we look at a more traditional role—HR and employee development. We'll talk about some of the things we've run into, which I'm sure you guys can relate to, regarding the traditional performance evaluation model. Then, we'll move into an ongoing experiment we've been running for the last two years—how we've changed that model to focus more on employees rather than the company. After that, I'll share some outcomes, and hopefully, you can reach out, and we can talk more about how to make it work.

The Foundation of Business Agility

So, we're all here for business agility, right? I personally believe—and I don’t know about you guys—that the foundation of business agility, or any agility, is the people. People doing the work.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of times, our organizations aren’t really built around the people; they’re built around the work. Our structures are built around functional silos and the work to be done. If we're really going to enable business agility, we need to change that within our organizations and our culture.

The Changing Nature of Work

Why do we need to do that? For one thing, the nature of work is changing. How many people have work email on their mobile device? Okay, yeah, I do too. How many check it after hours? Oh, about the same number. Shocking.

We live in an always-on culture. The first thing I say to new employees when they join our organization is this: "I don’t believe in work-life balance."

I don't see any hands raising. Okay, fine. Well, I don’t believe in work-life balance, and let me tell you why.

I'm going to take some liberties and use some generalizations. The first generalization—which I know isn't true, but we’re going with it—is that everyone in this room sleeps for eight hours a day. We all get our good, full eight hours, right? Yeah, okay, a couple of us.

So, let’s generalize that there are 24 hours in a day. Eight of them, you're asleep. That leaves 16. What do you do for half of that? Work. And then what do we do for the rest? Work.

Even if we're really good at shutting off—no work email, no after-hours work—we still carry our work with us. Have you ever had a bad day at work and it rolled into your home life? Never, right? And vice versa—when you nearly lost it with your kids before walking out the door, does that roll into work? Never, right?

The idea of work-life balance is flawed because work is a huge part of our life. We spend way too much time at work to try to force a distinction between "work" and "life." It’s all life. We should acknowledge that.

The Liquid Workforce

The other thing that’s changing is the rise of the "liquid workforce." People don’t stay at one job for their entire careers anymore. How many people here have been with the same employer their whole career? Just a couple. That’s just not what we do anymore. We move around.

Now, I might offend some people, but a colleague of mine, Tim Gifford, coined what he calls "Gifford’s Law." He says, "If you've been at an organization for more than three years, it's for one of two reasons: One, you love your job and your company. Or two, you're unemployable anywhere else."

And we laugh, but when I work with different people, I kind of wonder. People are switching jobs all the time. And what's one of the leading causes of job switches? Poor leadership. People don’t feel supported at work.

The Problem with Performance Evaluations

So, how do we develop and support people at work today? Through the performance evaluation, right?

What's the worst day of your year? Performance evaluation day.

Actually, someone just said, "The day after the performance evaluation." That’s a good point.

For me, annual review day is the second worst day. The worst day is when the auditors say, "We'll be here tomorrow."

So, what’s wrong with annual reviews?

• They tend to be company-centric. We pay lip service to employees’ goals, but it’s really about what the company needs.
• They’re inflexible. How agile is it that I can’t change my goals for an entire year?
• They’re impersonal. Career paths are rigid—junior developer, developer, senior developer, tech lead. What if I don’t want to be a tech lead?

An Alternative Approach

We’ve been running an experiment for two years. Instead of performance evaluations, we have employees write a press release for themselves. They set their own goals and describe what they want to achieve in 5 or 10 years.

The results? People get really engaged. They open up about their personal and professional aspirations. We learn about their hobbies, their passions, and what really drives them. It allows us to support them in a way that aligns with what they truly want.

Outcomes

Some of the key outcomes:

• People think about their long-term goals rather than just their daily tasks.
• Teams build personal connections outside of work.
• We reward people based on their interests, not just monetary bonuses.
• Some people realize they don’t actually want to be in their current career—and they move on to something better for them.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, I want to bring us back to the core principle of agility: people over process.

Finally, I saw a quote from Richard Branson that sums up everything I wanted to say: "Happiness is the secret ingredient to successful business. If you have a happy company, it will be invincible."

That’s all I have for you today. Thanks, everybody!