What's Important At Work? Part 1 of 4

Often, I ask people “What do you look for in your next job?” or “What are the best bits about working here?” or “What do you think working there would be like?” The risk is that I get a front-of-mind answer. It may not reflect what’s truly important; it might not represent their full experience or aspirations. After I ask broad, open questions, I often need to prompt to make sure that all aspects of work are considered.

I need to have a good grasp on – generally – What’s Important at Work? Then they can respond to prompts and start to rank what’s important to them or what’s delivered well or what’s perceived to be delivered well.

So, I’ve repeated an exercise I did a while ago, and researched What’s Important at Work?

I wanted the exercise to be rigorous, so I looked at a lot of the academic research. I checked what Engage 4 Success, CIPD or SHRM had to say on the matter – and the research they employed. I looked at engagement and other surveys. I reviewed definitions from consultancies and some of the recognised experts in their fields. In this way, I got hard fact as well as advised opinion – crucial when you deal with human behaviour and motivation.

Some might call heresy, but I’ve looked at employer brand, employee engagement and organisational culture interchangeably. They’re all just different takes on What’s Important at Work? When you look at how people define and measure them, they cover the same ground – just from different angles. And whichever angle you take, one affects the other. Employer perception is affected by levels of engagement, is affected by behaviour, is affected by communication, is affected by who you attract. Etc etc and so on.

And I’ve arrived at a dozen factors that define What’s Important at Work:

1. Status and Reputation
2. Integrity and Values
3. Leadership and Vision
4. Management and Support
5. Expectations and Focus
6. Voice and Contribution
7. Accomplishment and Control
8. Recognition and Value
9. Learning and Progress
10. Time and Place
11. People and Teams
12. Environment and Process

So there we have it. All done and dusted. Simply apply one or two probing questions to each of those and off you go. You can measure the perception of any employer internally or externally. Set some benchmarks if you like. You have confidence that understanding these 12 factors will give you the full picture.

Only, as much as I love simplicity, it isn’t quite a simple as that. I’ll explain why in my next blog