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The Importance of Educating Gen Z on Employee Benefits to Retain Top Talent

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Global Trade Daily

The Importance of Educating Gen Z on Employee Benefits to Retain Top Talent

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The labor market has undergone a significant shift in the past few decades. In the midst of a turbulent market, low unemployment, and the remaining tailwinds of the Great Resignation, more employers are asking themselves what they can do to support their employees.

For Generation Z, the youngest generation just entering the workforce, those needs include benefits – not just having them, but having customized options and understanding how to maximize their benefits.

This generation, which was born 1995 or later, is just finishing education and entering the workforce for the first time. They experienced radically different circumstances than the previous generations – especially with the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent shift in the labor market – and they have different needs and criteria for job searches.

They’re competitive, in demand, and discerning. To attract top talent in this budding workforce, employers need to provide attractive benefits and educate employees on why they’re better than competitors.

Health insurance is a given, but Gen Z is also looking for other benefits that will enhance their lives, such as tuition reimbursement, income protection, flexible schedules, and other benefits. They understand what’s out there, but that doesn’t mean they understand their options, how benefits work, and how the decisions they make now affect their current situation and their future.

Employers can be a crucial step in bridging that gap. You can help your employees understand why your benefits are competitive and show them how to make the most of what’s available. In return, you’ll have employees that are maximizing your investment into their benefits, satisfied with their jobs, and loyal to your employer brand.

What Makes Gen Z Different?

Gen Z includes members that were born between 1995 and 2012. The eldest among them are just a few years into their careers, while the youngest are just now entering the workforce. They are the most ethnically and racially diverse generation in the US to this point and digital natives.

Millennials and Gen Z have a lot in common, but their experiences in the workforce are quite different. The former were entering the workforce before or during the Great Recession, experiencing job instability and a setback on their career paths.

Gen Z, on the other hand, had a more promising career start amid a booming economy – until the COVID-19 pandemic hit. One advantage they have, however, is that they are familiar with the gig economy and different online opportunities, so they’re not afraid to rely on multiple income sources to make ends meet.

So, what does Gen Z expect from a workplace?

It’s impossible to generalize or summarize an entire generation with sweeping statements, especially when there’s a big gap between the oldest and youngest and a few major events in between, but there are some consistencies across these individuals:

They appreciate a company’s true mission and transparency, rather than platitude or performative expressions.

  • They want to know that the work they do matters.
  • They want learning and growth opportunities that will help their careers.
  • They want to be part of a company with a strong, positive culture.

When it comes to benefits, things get more complex. Gen Z automatically expects health and retirement benefits, which most companies offer. They also want flexibility and options that will help them move forward in life, such as financial education, wealth and income protection, and tuition reimbursement.

Here are some ways that you, as an employer, can help Gen Z employees make the most of their benefits.

Help Them Navigate the Complexities of Health Insurance

Health insurance is the most important of employee benefits, but it’s pretty new to most Gen Z employees. Before they enter the workforce, these candidates have been relying on their parents’ health plans and may not be aware of all the different options they have for health insurance – nor how those choices impact their financial situation.

High school and college don’t prepare young adults for choosing benefits or making decisions based on major life changes, such as getting married or having kids. With health insurance, what works for a single person is drastically different from the needs of a family with young children.

In addition, health insurance plans use a lot of complex jargon and carry fine print that employees need to pay attention to when making the right decision for their individual needs.

As an employer, you can demystify health insurance by educating employees on the key aspects of healthcare plans:

Monthly Premiums

Gen Z employees should be educated on the share of health insurance premiums and how that premium is split between them and the employer. They also need to understand how choosing the deductible and coinsurance affect their monthly premium. It may be tempting for them to choose the lowest monthly premium, not realizing that they have an exorbitant deductible or a high coinsurance percentage to pay.

Deductibles

Deductibles are a big consideration with a healthcare plan. Employees have to understand how deductibles work and how choosing their deductible amount can affect the monthly premium and their out-of-pocket expenses when they need medical care. This is especially important for employees who are insuring an entire family.

Copays

Copays are part of virtually every insurance plan. Generally, the higher the upfront premium, the lower the copay. Some copays only go into effect after the deductible is met, while others are required for specific services before the deductible comes into play. These are important distinctions that employees need to fully understand to make an informed decision.

In-Network vs. Out-of-Network

Most health insurance plans have a network with insurer contracts that are negotiated for better rates with different healthcare providers. Any enrollees who seek healthcare services outside of their network may have much higher costs for their care. With some plans, an out-of-network provider may mean insurance won’t pay anything, which could become an issue with specialists, different locations, or other circumstances.

Show the Value of Tax-Advantaged Accounts

If you have health savings accounts (HSAs) or flexible spending accounts (FSAs) for your employees, educate them on the value they offer. Otherwise, your employees may not understand why these accounts are so helpful or the advantages, such as taking a health savings account with them if they take a different job.

Essential Services

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires health insurance plans cover 10 essential services:

  1. Ambulatory patient services
  2. Emergency services
  3. Hospitalization
  4. Pregnancy, maternity, and newborn care
  5. Mental health and substance use disorder treatments
  6. Rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices
  7. Prescription drugs
  8. Preventive and wellness services
  9. Pediatric services
  10. Laboratory services

Plans must also offer birth control coverage and breastfeeding coverage.

Employees need to understand what these services are and how they affect their healthcare plan to make an informed decision.

Show the Value of Wealth and Income-Protection Benefits

Like benefits, the American education system doesn’t include a lot of practical financial education for general studies. Unless a student takes courses in accounting or finance, they’re missing out on vital life skills to make sound financial decisions as they enter the workforce.

Benefits education programs can help employees understand the wealth and income-protection benefits that are available to them and how they can take steps now to secure their financial future.

Cover the Guidelines Tuition Reimbursement or Continuing Education

Tuition reimbursement or other education benefits are appealing to job candidates. If you offer benefits for education, make sure your employees understand what options are available to them and the conditions for taking advantage of them.

For example, if your tuition reimbursement only pays for education within a certain field of study or up to a certain amount, employees need to know what they’re financially responsible for. Satisfactory academic progress is another common requirement of tuition reimbursement.

Tips for Educating Gen Z on Benefits

There’s a lot of information to cover, but here are some tips to make benefits education stick with your Gen Z employees.

Offer Customizable Plans

Employees have different needs and circumstances that can impact their decisions for benefits. Instead of choosing a cookie-cutter plan that only dissatisfy employees and waste money, offer customizable benefits plans that employees can adjust for their own needs.

Educate Them on Their Options

Employees need to know what options are available to choose the right benefits. Otherwise, they may just pick whatever is in front of them, missing the true value of the benefits packages you offer.

In addition, a new graduate may not understand why choosing the right health insurance plan or contributing to a retirement plan is a good move while they’re young to secure their financial future as they near retirement.

You can use tools like workshops or forums with questions and answers, archived resources, and enrollment meetings to educate employees. Having a mix of different options allows all employees to access the information they need.

Talk About Benefits Outside of Open Enrollment

Benefits conversations tend to take place around open enrollment, but they shouldn’t be limited to this period. Schedule time to discuss benefits throughout the year and around major life changes, such as starting a family. Any big changes in an employee’s life can lead to changes in their benefits plan.

Educate Your Gen Z Employees

If you want to attract the right Gen Z talent, retain them, and keep them loyal to your company, benefits education is a great start to ensure they make sound decisions to protect themselves now and in the future. 

Author Bio

Frank Mengert continues to find success by spotting opportunities where others see nothing. As the founder and CEO of ebm, a leading provider of employee benefits solutions. Frank has built the business by bridging the gap between insurance and technology driven solutions for brokers, consultants, carriers, and employers nationwide.

 

supply chain
Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, Uncategorized

8 Strategies for Empowering Emerging Talent in the Supply Chain Industry

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Some supply chain industry companies need help attracting new talent. Executives can turn this around by making opportunities more appealing to applicants. 

Although improving job-specific details like pay is crucial to future employees, they’ll also appreciate employers who provide training for the workplace and their lives.

1. Make Hours More Flexible

Supply chain management teams should consider letting their teams have flexible hours. Recent research shows that when given the opportunity, 87% of employed adults chose flexible work schedules over those requiring 40 hours in an office each week.

Employees could agree to set their schedules at least a week or two in advance so everyone knows who will be at work and who will be remote during specific dates. It makes modern workplaces more competitive than employers with strictly traditional schedules. 

Supply chain companies can empower their teams to get more joy from their employment by appealing to a broader audience of workers and future hires.

2. Provide Career Growth Plans

Forward momentum is key to retaining employees. No one enjoys feeling stuck in a job. They want to improve their skills and gain promotions as rewards for their efforts. Communication is the best way to ensure this career growth occurs for talent in the supply chain industry.

Management teams could create general growth plans for specific roles within their organization. The employees in those positions can trace their way up the company ladder based on which departments they want to work within as the months and years pass. 

People who see their potential future charted before their eyes will know they have the forward momentum required for a long-term career.

3. Update Teams Regularly on Automation

Researchers with the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health noted that employees of all ages feel worried that automation will replace them, but that anxiety is especially prevalent among young people. They have many years ahead to work, pay their bills, save for retirement and enjoy their jobs. Supply chain employers must communicate their job security with regular updates on the industry’s automation.

Recurring meetings present opportunities to discuss the latest technological updates to work processes and explain why they’re necessary. The core of each gathering should focus on how each employee will remain on the team even with machine-focused optimization. 

People feel empowered when they have job security because they know their efforts won’t become a waste of time.

4. Provide a Scholarship Program

Young people often hear that getting a college education is the best way to secure a comfortable paycheck. However, 75% of people choosing not to attend college are opting out because they can’t afford it. They may feel like they’ll never make a livable wage because they can’t get a degree, but employers can erase that anxiety with scholarship programs.

Scholarship programs are life-changing financially and empowering personally. They show employees they are worth more than paycheck and benefits. Their dreams are worth pursuing, which they may not hear from people or organizations outside the workplace.

One company that hosts a scholarship program recently awarded two women with money to help them through college. As a result, Elayne Blancas received financial support as she worked to become the first in her family to graduate as an engineer. Elizabeth Landers was able to apply to more residencies with the goal of providing healthcare in her home state of Oklahoma. Communities will benefit from their support while the company providing the scholarship creates opportunities for aspiring professionals. 

5. Demonstrate How Their Teams Help the Environment

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) plans are more important to the modern workforce. They demonstrate an employer’s commitment to the planet and their communities through sustainable, compassionate business practices defined in ESG policies.

Research shows that 41% of employees want to work for companies with ESG plans, which includes one in four people in Gen Z. Leadership teams can formulate actionable plans regarding how their supply chain company can improve the planet, give back to its community, support employees and commit itself to the highest ethical business standards.

Publishing these commitments on the company website and posting them around the building reminds team members that everyone wants the same thing. They’ll support their employer more enthusiastically and feel heard, resulting in a desire to stay with the company.

6. Implement Recurring Raise Schedules

The annual inflation rate rises and falls, but it reached a peak of 8% in 2022. It makes everything from groceries to utilities more expensive, which is discouraging for people who aren’t receiving recurring raises.

Some employers don’t promise raises on a specific schedule, but doing so could help retain emerging talent in the supply chain industry. Scheduling an annual raise for each employee — unless their job performance takes a drastic turn for the worse — makes their futures brighter if they stay with the company longer. They know they’ll be able to keep up with the cost of living, providing peace of mind and financial stability.

7. Schedule Individual Growth Meetings

Workplace leaders can always meet with team members one-on-one to plan their futures. These meetings create time to ask big questions like:

  • What does the employee want to do with their career?
  • How do they want to use the skills they’re learning?
  • How would their work feel more fulfilling?

It’s nearly impossible to make these changes without employer support. Management teams could rearrange schedules to allow more study time for ongoing learning or connect employees with in-house mentors so they learn from those they look up to.

When these meetings occur, leaders should record the desired path forward within the company on a shared document. Employees can reflect on their short- and long-term plans to feel empowered and stay with the company longer.

8. Celebrate Everyone’s Successes

Recognition is vital in the workplace. People need to know their employers value their efforts and cheer them on. Pizza parties and gift cards are always options, but financial incentives through bonuses are equally — if not more — essential to employees.

Celebrate them as individuals in private meetings and as teams. Leaders can call out people’s accomplishments so everyone applauds. The widespread recognition bonds employees and makes them feel valued. They’ll continue making an effort to help their supply chain employer, which supports everyone who depends on the company for a living.

Empower Talent in the Supply Chain Industry

Companies should always seek opportunities to work with their team members more effectively. Empowering emerging talent in the supply chain industry with these ideas is an excellent start. They’ll show employees their value, forge stronger relationships and make people want to stay with their employers longer by supporting everyone differently.

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Archives, Global Trade Daily, Special Reports

Critical Skills for the Future Workforce

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If you conduct a search for critical future workforce skills, words like “resilience,” “adaptability,” and “critical thinking” will undoubtedly appear pretty high in your results. Not so surprising, given the year we’ve collectively just endured and the level of uncertainty that doesn’t appear to be abating any time too soon.

Advancements in technology, robotics, and automation were quickly driving us toward significant workforce change and a need to upskill or reskill teams even before the global pandemic put more pressure on the gas. Now, many of those skills require nuanced approaches as we embrace more remote work, distributed teams and virtual connectivity – and terms like “liquid” are being used to describe the blurred lines in what the workforce of the future will look like.

The good news is that global mobility professionals are well equipped with the right blend of skills and knowledge to meet the changing needs. Because mobility sits at the intersection of talent acquisition and retention, compensation and benefits, tax and immigration, payroll and other HR functional areas, the role has become increasingly critical to business success.

Resilience

As 2020 clearly demonstrated, mobility requires agile practitioners who can guide the company as the workforce environment rapidly evolves, helping organizations respond immediately to emergencies, recover, and then reimagine business to stay relevant. Corporations have met the challenges imposed by COVID-19 in a variety of ways, encouraging flexibility when it comes to the employee base. We’re seeing far more attention paid to the personal situation of individual employees and a greater willingness to allow different approaches to achieving harmony between work and personal life.

While many relocations or cross-border assignments may still be on hold in the current environment, the surge in remote work has opened up talent pools, making it possible for companies to move jobs to people. GM teams have the big-picture view about what talent and skills are available, in what locations, and where there may be gaps that can be creatively filled.

Initiative

Mobility houses a level of expertise in many crucial areas, including tax and immigration, and can act as a hub of information on these subjects. This helps streamline processes and provides the organization with the tools and insights to make smart decisions with respect to employee work location requests as well as meeting company plans for growth. Knowing the actual work location of every employee adds complexity to the job while highlighting the need for full awareness of any potential consequences.

As one GM professional put it – many functions, including some of those in broader HR, operate in the more traditional, “black and white” space. Mobility professionals are problem-solvers and critical thinkers who are comfortable working in some of what might be called “gray” areas to find solutions. Greater levels of cross-collaboration and learning between mobility and other core functions of the business, including talent acquisition and reward, will help position organizations to be ready to meet future challenges and staffing needs.

DEI Support

Another benefit of a broader talent pool is that mobility can be a powerful tool to help foster greater diversity, equity and inclusion. We’re beginning to see a heightened focus on holistic skill sets as opposed to just one’s previous job positions or titles, which can open the door to building a more diverse global workforce. Mobility can be instrumental in executing a leadership talent plan that ensures cultural awareness is a top priority, too. International assignments can be strong talent acquisition and development tools, and help pave the way to success in a global marketplace.

Technical Expertise and Analysis

Mobility uses technology in multiple ways, including tracking and reporting on global employees, helping to manage program spend and finding ways to reduce costs, and speeding communication throughout the organization. As the tools and skillsets continue to evolve, predictive analytics will continue to play an important role in helping the business understand which individuals might be best suited for assignment success and why.

Mobility uses data to present a compelling story. Gaining greater comfort levels with statistics is critical as a more evidenced-based approach is becoming increasingly important when making business decisions and demonstrating the ROI of an assignment. While understanding the numbers is vital, integrating the human element to the discussion is a significant advantage mobility can provide to conversations about policy, process or procedures. Consistent administration and delivery of HR benefits to the employee population – including mobility – has been a guiding principle for corporations, and although the pandemic has altered this approach to some extent, it remains important to analyze decisions in terms of setting precedence while maintaining equity.

The critical skills needed for the future blend the technical, people, empathy and communication arenas, and talent mobility professionals bring a healthy mix of all of them to the table.

________________________________________________________________

Leah Johnson is Sterling Lexicon’s Director, Client Solutions, and has worked in the global mobility industry for more than 20 years. She has held management positions in business development, operations, account management, and consulting, and had the opportunity to live and work in Tokyo and Hong Kong for six years. She initiated destination services in Hong Kong for a relocation management company and directed global mobility for Goldman Sachs in the APAC region. She graduated from Colgate University, earned an MBA from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and maintains a Senior Certified Professional (SCP) certification from SHRM.

leadership
Archives, Commentary, Global Trade Daily

How Your Leadership Style Affects Company Culture

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When you think of company culture, many things may come to mind. Of course, there are the flashier aspects of company culture (think in-office happy hours or team bowling outings). There are also more subtle elements, such as how workspaces are arranged. While these are undoubtedly parts of a company’s culture, they are not what is at the core.

The culture of a business starts at the very top. The leadership styles of executives set the tone for a company’s internal culture. Leadership affects all aspects of business, including perceived values and goals, communication norms, and employee engagement.

Aspects of company culture are most effective when they solve a problem that employees care about. When improving your company’s culture, think about the issues that affect your staff and the solutions that could be implemented to resolve them. Then, sell this idea to your team. If they truly believe in the “why” that backs up an idea, they are more likely to get behind it.

________________________________________________________________

Joel Patterson (www.JoelPatterson.com) is the founder of The Vested Group, a business technology consulting firm in the Dallas, Texas area, and ForbesBooks author of The Big Commitment: Solving The Mysteries Of Your ERP Implementation. He has worked in the consulting field for over 20 years. Patterson began his consulting career at Arthur Andersen and Capgemini before helping found Lucidity Consulting Group in 2001. For 15 years he specialized in implementing Tier One ERP, software systems designed to service the needs of large, complex corporations. In 2011, Patterson founded The Vested Group, which focuses on bringing comprehensive cloud-based business management solutions to start-ups and well-established businesses alike. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Baylor University.

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Archives, Executive Education, Global Trade Daily

Corporate Culture, Knowledge Management and Talent Management: How Are They Linked?

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This article portrays a more detailed picture of the effects of corporate culture on knowledge management and talent management that have been mentioned but not placed in a model in the past.

How Corporate Culture Elevates Knowledge Management?

Culture is the resource that builds upon the foundation that helps organizations prosper. Edgar Schein, one of the prominent management scholars, describes corporate culture as a “pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.”

Corporate culture is, therefore, reflected in shared assumptions, symbols, beliefs, values, and norms that specify how employees understand problems and appropriately react to them.

Executives can manifest themselves as change agents who manipulate corporate culture with the aim of improving knowledge management. Organizational culture includes three dimensions of collaboration, trust, and learning. Executives can facilitate collaboration by developing relationships in organizations. Executives can contribute to the cultural aspect of trust, by considering both employee’s individual interests and the company’s essential needs. Also, executives identify the individual needs of their employees and develop a learning culture by intellectually stimulating them to generate new knowledge and share it with others. Executives can, therefore, highly manipulate a firm’s culture to conform to the needs and expectations of strategic goals and objectives.

Knowledge management is enhanced by providing further opportunities and information sharing. Executives can enhance knowledge sharing by providing access to knowledge, and stimulate new ideas and knowledge generation, transfer an individual’s knowledge to other members and departments and improve knowledge capturing, storing, and accumulating, aiming at achieving organizational goals. Executives can propel knowledge sharing in the company to generate more innovative ideas and solutions for new and demanding issues that come up constantly in our hypercompetitive economic environment. By doing this, executives can build a strong corporate culture to share experiences gained by imitating, observing, and practicing.

Executives have found that corporate culture impacts knowledge management through facilitating knowledge sharing throughout all levels of the organization. Corporate culture focuses on defining and recognizing core knowledge areas, sharing organizational knowledge, and scanning for new knowledge to keep the quality of their product or services continuously improving. Therefore, corporate culture is an essential requirement of corporate learning by which knowledge is shared among people.

Particularly, the three cultural aspects of collaboration, trust, and learning play a critical role in enhancing the effectiveness of corporate learning. For example, collaboration provides a shared understanding of the current issues and problems among employees, which helps to generate new ideas within organizations. Trust towards their leader’s decisions is a necessary precursor to creating new knowledge. The key is for executives to inculcate a culture of trust and transparency of knowledge sharing within organizations so that information can be found and used instantaneously.

Moreover, the amount of time spent learning is positively related to the amount of knowledge gained, shared, and implemented. Therefore, executives can reshape, and in some cases, manipulate corporate culture to facilitate corporate learning within departmental and business units of organizations. Executives can now see how corporate culture constitutes the foundation of a supportive workplace to share and synthesize organizational knowledge and subsequently limit the gaps between success and possible failure.

How Knowledge Management Elevates Talent Management

Executives have found that knowledge management is modifying behaviors resulting in newer insight and knowledge. Changing the existing behaviors of followers generating new knowledge is a key factor in improving a firm’s competitive advantage. This is a fact but it happens through the way talented employees are managed by executives. Why is this, you may ask? Because knowledge management is a process that leads to acquiring new insights and knowledge, and potentially to correct sub-optimal or ineffective actions and behaviors that cause companies to spiral out of control.

Executives need to first support this approach for knowledge management. Talent management in organizations is the ultimate outcome of the knowledge management by which it is created and acquired by connecting with others that want to share successes and failures. This leads to converting acquired knowledge into organizational processes and activities to improve or discontinue processes that either contribute or inhibit success. Many executives see talent management as an outcome of various factors such as knowledge management and a climate inspiring innovation and creativity within organizations. However, a more comprehensive approach needs to be introduced to put together the various aspects of potential contributions to talent management.

Knowledge management requires various processes such as knowledge acquisition, collaboration, dissemination, sharing, generation, and storage to acquire knowledge within an organization. A question remains: how can we establish the relationship between knowledge management and talent management?

Well, there are scholars that highlight the strategic role of knowledge management in enhancing the effectiveness of talent management. For example, one scholar by the name of Bayyavarapu at the University of Western Ontario suggests a learning-based approach to talent management to understand how knowledge management is related to various practices of talent management. More importantly, the effective implementation of talent management requires the sharing of best practices and experiences among employees. Knowledge management improves organizational processes by sharing knowledge that can increase both follower engagement and personal development.

Executives can, in fact, enhance knowledge management when they would like to concentrate on sharing it to empower followers in order to build a learning climate. Most importantly, knowledge is managed through “learning by doing” which is more engaging. Executives around the globe realize that they play a critical role to achieve the best learning climate and for improving knowledge management that creates learning and growing the organization. Engaging followers and getting them to participate in knowledge management activities is an important part of talent management. Thus, knowledge management positively impacts the effectiveness of talent management through facilitating knowledge sharing by all executives and employees of the organization. Shared knowledge can contribute to the development of a learning organization in which people continuously grow and develop both personally and professionally. Executives require people who are engaged and inspired to meet the demands of day-to-day operations.

For now, executives can develop conducive learning climates that foster collaboration and knowledge management in which knowledge is shared and exploited. Unshared knowledge is like lettuce in the refrigerator—if eaten and shared, everyone enjoys it, if not, it could go bad and not have any use. Executives found that shared knowledge enables companies to improve knowledge management, and that talent management is highly dependent on stimulating continuous learning within organizations. Executives play a crucial role in elevating talent management by enhancing knowledge management to empower employees to pursue organizational goals.

The following figure provides a snapshot of how executives steering corporate culture enhance knowledge management and talent management.

In Conclusion

Insufficient consideration of the impact of knowledge management on the organization’s talent management has been also exposed. Thus, I suggest that scholars take our ideas and continue to conduct research using executives as the focal point so that academic scholarship can meet the needs of managerial implications at the higher echelons of organizations worldwide.

_____________________________________________________________

Mostafa Sayyadi works with senior business leaders to effectively develop innovation in companies and helps companies—from start-ups to the Fortune 100—succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders. He is a business book author and a long-time contributor to business publications and his work has been featured in top-flight business publications.

culture
Archives, Executive Education, Global Trade Daily

Develop a Strong Business Culture to Effectively Identify, Satisfy and Retain the Most Talented Employees

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Culture is the resource that builds upon the foundations that helps organizations prosper. Edgar Schein, one of the prominent management scholars, describes corporate culture as a pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration that has worked well enough to be considered valid, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems. Corporate culture is reflected in shared assumptions, symbols, beliefs, values, and norms that specify how employees understand problems and appropriately react to them.

Executives can manifest themselves as change agents who manipulate corporate culture with the aim of improving knowledge management. Organizational culture includes three dimensions of collaboration, trust, and learning. Executives can facilitate collaboration by developing relationships in organizations. Executive can contribute to the cultural aspect of trust, through considering both employee’s individual interests and the company’s essential needs. Also, executives identify the individual needs of their employees and develop a learning culture by intellectually stimulating them to generate new knowledge and share it with others. Executives can, therefore, highly manipulate a firm’s culture to conform to the needs and expectations of strategic goals and objectives.

Knowledge management is enhanced by providing further opportunities and information sharing. Executives can enhance knowledge sharing by providing access to knowledge, and stimulate new ideas and knowledge generation, transfer an individual’s knowledge to other members and departments and improve knowledge capturing, storing, and accumulating, aiming at achieving organizational goals. Executives can propel knowledge sharing in the company to generate more innovative ideas and solutions for new and demanding issues that come up constantly in our hypercompetitive economic environment. In doing this, executives can build a strong corporate culture to share experiences gained by imitating, observing, and practicing.

Executives have found that corporate culture impacts knowledge management through facilitating knowledge sharing throughout all levels of the organization. Corporate culture focuses on defining and recognizing core knowledge areas, sharing organizational knowledge, and scanning for new knowledge to keep the quality of their product or services continuously improving. Therefore, corporate culture is an essential requirement of corporate leaning by which knowledge is shared among people.

Particularly, the three cultural aspects of collaboration, trust, and learning play a critical role in enhancing the effectiveness of corporate leaning. For example, collaboration provides a shared understanding of the current issues and problems among employees, which helps to generate new ideas within organizations. Trust towards their leader’s decisions is a necessary precursor to creating new knowledge. The key is for executives to inculcate a culture of trust and transparency of knowledge sharing within organizations so that information can be found and used instantaneously.

Moreover, the amount of time spent learning is positively related to the amount of knowledge gained, shared, and implemented. Therefore, executives can reshape, and in some cases, manipulate corporate culture to facilitate corporate leaning within departmental and business units of organizations. Executives can now see how corporate culture constitutes the foundation of a supportive workplace to share and synthesize organizational knowledge and subsequently limit the gaps between success and possible failure.

Furthermore, executives have found that knowledge management as modifying behaviors resulting in newer insight and knowledge. Changing the existing behaviors of followers generating new knowledge, and is, therefore, a key factor in improving a firm’s competitive advantage. This is a fact but it happens through the way talented employees are managed by executives. Why is this, you may ask? Because knowledge management is a process that leads to acquiring new insights and knowledge, and potentially to correct sub-optimal or ineffective actions and behaviors that cause companies to spiral out of control.

Executives need to first support this approach for knowledge management because talent management in organizations is the ultimate outcome of the knowledge management by which knowledge is created and acquired. This is done by connecting knowledge with others that want to share successes and failures. This leads to converting acquired knowledge into organizational processes and activities to improve or discontinue processes that either contribute or inhibit success. Many executives see talent management as an outcome of various factors such as knowledge management and a climate inspiring innovation and creativity within organizations. However, a more comprehensive approach needs to be introduced to put together the various aspects of potential contributions to talent management.

Knowledge management requires various processes such as knowledge acquisition, collaboration, dissemination, sharing, generation, and storage to acquire knowledge within an organization. A question remains, how can we establish the relationship between knowledge management and talent management? Well, there are scholars that highlight the strategic role of knowledge management in enhancing the effectiveness of talent management. For example, one scholar by the name of Bayyavarapu in the University of Western Ontario suggests a learning-based approach to talent management to understand how knowledge management is related to various practices of talent management. More importantly, the effective implementation of talent management requires the sharing of best practices and experiences among employees.

Knowledge management improves organizational processes by sharing knowledge that can increase both follower engagement and personal development. Executives can, in fact, enhance knowledge management when they would like to concentrate on sharing knowledge to empower followers in order to build a learning climate. Most importantly, in knowledge management, knowledge is managed through “learning by doing” which is more engaging. Executives around the globe realize that they play a critical role to achieve the best learning climate and for improving knowledge management that creates learning and growing the organization.

Engaging followers and getting them to participate in knowledge management activities is an important part of talent management. Thus, knowledge management positively impacts the effectiveness of talent management through facilitating knowledge sharing by all executives and employees of the organization. Shared knowledge can contribute to the development of a learning organization in which people continuously grow and develop both personally and professionally. Executives require people who are engaged and inspired to meet the demands of day-to-day operations.

For now, executives can develop conducive learning climates that foster collaboration and knowledge management in which knowledge is shared and exploited. Unshared knowledge is like lettuce in the refrigerator—if eaten and shared, everyone enjoys it, if not, it could go bad and not have any use. Executives found that shared knowledge enables companies to improve knowledge management, and that talent management is highly dependent on stimulating continuous learning within organizations. Thus, executives play a crucial role in elevating talent management by enhancing knowledge management to empower employees to pursue organizational goals.

The following figure provides a snapshot of how executives steering corporate culture enhance knowledge management and talent management.

In conclusion, insufficient consideration of the impact of knowledge management on the organization’s talent management has been also exposed. Thus, I suggest that scholars take our ideas and continue to conduct research using executives as the focal point so that academic scholarship can meet the needs of managerial implications at the higher echelons of organizations worldwide.

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Mostafa Sayyadi works with senior business leaders to effectively develop innovation in companies and helps companies—from start-ups to the Fortune 100—succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders. He is a business book author and a long-time contributor to business publications and his work has been featured in top-flight business publications.

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Archives, Commentary, Global Trade Daily, News

Job Market Trends and Their Effects on Companies

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The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has touched just about every part of the economy, and the jobs market as a whole has gone into alarming freefall, despite the government’s job retention measures.

Where are the jobs going?

The sectors which have struggled most are, by and large, the ones you might expect. Aviation, hospitality, and retail have had to contend with unprecedented slumps in demand, and many businesses have responded by slashing their payrolls.

Even household names like HSBC have announced thousands of redundancies, albeit spread across the globe.

What is the economic outlook like?

According to the Guardian’s redundancy counter, more than 150,000 people have been made redundant, and more than nine million remain furloughed as of the 28th of July. Moreover, the number of employees on company payrolls tumbled during the lockdown period by around 649,000.

Though economic forecasts are not widely lauded for their reliability, the ones that are being focussed on by the mainstream media remain consistently bleak. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the body set up to advise the treasury, unemployment levels could skyrocket by the end of the year to levels not seen since the 1980s.

With that said, certain areas of the economy are now enjoying a surge in pent-up demand. Car dealerships are making sales faster than they can restock their forecourts; estate agents find themselves inundated with inquiries. Whether this can be sustained to the end of the year remains

The best-case scenario is a ‘v’-shaped recession – a sharp decline followed by an equally sharp uptick. This is a wildly different recession to the one experienced in 2008. The financial fundamentals which underpin the modern economy remain sound, and thus there’s some reason for cautious optimism – as articulated by the Bank of England’s Andy Haldane in June.

What can be done?

What does all this mean for businesses looking to navigate the post-COVID landscape?

Among the more popular shifts has been toward e-commerce. Retailers have tried to cope with sparse footfall by making the transition to trading online. E-commerce has, in fact, been in rude health through the pandemic, and it’s likely that this shift will outlast the pandemic itself.

Businesses may also wish to anticipate a fall in demand by being more cautious with their investments. Risk assessments and strategizing are set to be more crucial than ever, as is seeking out alternative forms of commercial finance from specialized online lenders.

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Archives, Commentary, Global Trade Daily

Leading a Small Business Through COVID and Other Troubling Times

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With the coronavirus shaking up the economy and upending the day-to-day operations of businesses, it’s perhaps more critical than ever that corporate CEOs and small business owners summon up all their leadership skills.

Employees who usually are just down the hall are now working remotely from home. The supply chain is disrupted. And customers and clients may be changing their spending habits.

But, as important as business savvy and financial expertise can be in riding out all the economic effects of the pandemic, other traits also come into play and may be just as essential, says Marsha Friedman, a successful entrepreneur who still leads a business she launched three decades ago.

“One of those essential traits is courage,” says Friedman, founder and president of News & Experts (www.newsandexperts.com), a national PR firm. “Thirty years ago when I started my company, I probably would never have said it takes courage to lead a small business, but without it, I assure you, you’ll fail.”

Friedman, who is also the ForbesBooks author of Gaining the Publicity Edge: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Growing Your Brand Through National Media Coverage, understands this first-hand. Her firm, like many businesses, endured tough economic times after the 9/11 attacks. Revenue dropped and bankruptcy loomed as a real possibility.

“I had to figure out how to turn my company around,” she says. “It took courage, endurance, and perseverance, but I knew I could not go back, so I had no choice but to go forward.” 

Courage is just one of what Friedman calls the 5 C’s for building and maintaining a successful business through the good times and bad. “They’re the guiding principles I’ve learned through the ups and downs and all the mistakes,” she says. “They can work during the difficulties we now face as well.”

In addition to courage, Friedman’s other C’s are:

Caring . First, care enough about yourself and your dreams to believe you can achieve success even in these daunting times, Friedman says. “Just as important is caring about your staff and creating a positive work environment for them despite the troubles we face,” she says. “Be supportive of them throughout this situation that is bringing additional stress to everyone’s lives.” Finally, a good business leader cares about customers, Friedman says. Be willing to listen to their concerns, take responsibility for mistakes, and correct them.

Confidence. Most people have faced and overcome challenges in life. The confidence that allowed them to prevail over those challenges needs to be brought into play in business more than ever right now, Friedman says. “Believing you can reach for and achieve your short-term and long-term goals is essential to getting you there,” she says. “Maintaining your confidence is important to get through these unsettling times.”

Competence. It’s critical to stay up on the disruptions in your industry that the coronavirus is causing. “If you’re forced to downsize, this may be the time to reorganize and tap into the skills and abilities of your remaining team that are different from the roles you hired them for,” Friedman says. “That’s why it’s always important to have hired competent people who you can rely on no matter what the situation.”

Commitment . Stay dedicated to your goals no matter how difficult that becomes during these challenging conditions. Friedman says there may be times when this will be not only difficult, but downright painful. That was the case for her during those tough times after the 9/11 attacks. “I had to make drastic cuts, including letting go beloved employees.” she says. “But I never wanted to suffer a failure, and so I stayed committed to the goal and succeeded in pulling the business through those rough times.” 

“As we face the current challenges, you have to stay the course, remain positive and show caring for everyone related to your business,” Friedman says. “Most of all, no matter how dismal it seems right now, you need to have confidence that you are going to get through it.”

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Marsha Friedman, ForbesBooks author of Gaining the Publicity Edge: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Growing Your Brand Through National Media Coverage, is a successful entrepreneur and public relations expert with nearly 30 years’ experience developing publicity strategies for celebrities, corporations and professionals in the field of business, health and finance.  Using the proprietary system she created as founder and President of News & Experts (www.newsandexperts.com), an award-winning national public relations agency, her firm secures thousands of top-tier media placements annually for its clients.  The former senior vice president for marketing at the American Economic Council, Marsha is a sought-after advisor on PR issues and strategies, who shares her knowledge both as a popular speaker around the country and in her Amazon best-selling book, Celebritize Yourself.

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Archives, Executive Education, Global Trade Daily

How Global Leaders Can Manage Knowledge, Risk, and Talent Management

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Risk management, according to Karl Wiig, Chairman of Knowledge Research Institute, is an operational approach to represent knowledge management. But, in this case, it seeks to apply organizational knowledge in order to satisfy and exceed employees’ expectations and improve talent well-being.

All executives need to be aware of how to better control risk management, which coincides with talent well-being. To do this, they should understand the mediating role of knowledge management. This may be the answer executives need but may also lack the fundamental fortitude necessary to be an all-encompassing approach to predict talent well-being within companies. Due to this limitation, the focus of this article is based upon the critical role of risk management which allows a rich basis for understanding the mechanisms by which talent well-being is influenced.

Executives see knowledge management as an employee’s capabilities in securing benefits received by joining in risk management. Therefore, talent well-being has been determined as resources accessible through knowledge management to enhance executive operational risk management. One good example, in which Victor Sino, a director of Operational Risk Management at a prominent large organization states that operational risk is a risk of loss due to failed talent well-being, processes, systems, and an external event. Some of these can be controlled by executives and others are risks that have to be factored into strategic decision-making.

Companies were assumed to be defenseless entities against threats, and opportunities happened in business environments that were serendipitous versus planned and organized. Organizational risk management was developed to offset problems before they occur and to adjust or ship resources accordingly in the event of a threat. Executives must recognize problems, and work hard to overcome them. First, executives will need to adopt knowledge management to identify the employee’s individual learning needs and become more inspired them to put extra effort into their work. This can also improve talent well-being through acquiring additional knowledge and developing better relationships with them, and providing newer solutions and creating a better workplace for them.

Operational risk of large corporations is at risk if they can be easily imitated by the competition. Therefore, firm-specific knowledge must be guarded and not shared with the competition. Any leak of such information may expose the organization and increase the operational risk. Thus, the ownership of knowledge, or what I would prefer to call knowledge management, falls under the operational risk category and must be managed and also monitored due to fluctuations in the dynamic economic environment of today. This can improve talent well-being through fostering the dynamic relationships among employees and departments, but most importantly, through satisfying employee needs. When executives have people in place to manage knowledge and embrace risk management, the organization can see better satisfaction with the most talented employees, and most importantly, enhance talent well-being.

Integrating Knowledge Management and Talent Management to Retain the Most Talented Employees

I suggest that both important factors of knowledge management and talent management constitute the foundation of a supportive workplace to reduce operational risk – two major concerns of global leaders today. Talent management is essential for business growth and prosperity while knowledge management, if not embraced, can lead to operational risk. Knowledge management can help organizations identify their inefficiencies in each process, and subsequently, recover them on an instantaneous basis, enabling executives to prevent further operational risk. Adding more manageable control of internal resources and reducing operational risk. Thus, when executives ensure the effectiveness of knowledge management they increase control and lessen operational risk.

Knowledge management utilizes modifications in order to efficiently and effectively use organizational resources, decrease costs, and control operational risk. Knowledge management also develops cohesive infrastructures to store and retrieve the knowledge to enable employees in creating more innovative solutions to problems and managing operational risks. My explanation of this is clearly within the executive span of control and potentially limits operational risk. I designed an approach for executives in large corporations to use talent management coupled with very prominent and useful construct of knowledge management so that the managerial implication is sound, justified, and operational to eliminate the gaps and serve the most talented employees in the organization that exist in the spaces between the lines of the organization.

Knowledge management enhances a firm’s capabilities to decrease the risk of imitation of organizational capabilities by competitors thus, managing operational risk. In doing this, executives that adopt knowledge management develop organizational communications aimed at providing valuable resources for organizations. They also enhance knowledge sharing among organizational members and stipulate knowledge to be shared around the organization. This process can potentially build an effective learning company in which the most talented employees can develop both personally and professionally. Knowledge management could, therefore, positively impact the most talented employee’s retention, through meeting the goals of personal development.

Additionally, executives that employ knowledge management create new ideas and knowledge for innovation through motivating the most talented employees to more innovatively solve organizational problems. Executives today realize that knowledge is the one of most strategic factors for organizations from a competitive standpoint. Knowledge management is a necessary precursor to creating new knowledge and ideas within organizations. The creation of new knowledge is a process and can be essential to identify the most talented employees’ needs and also recognize changes happening in the business environment. Through knowledge management, executives can contribute to identify and meet the most talented employees’ needs which lies at the focal point of executive success.

In conclusion, I suggest that executives embrace knowledge management. Knowledge management influences some of the spans of control of executive responsibility. My primary focus is on one factor (i.e. talent management) but there are many more important components of the managerial function that can be enhanced when knowledge management is embraced. The key here is that there are positive effects of knowledge management on talent management.

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Mostafa Sayyadi works with senior business leaders to effectively develop innovation in companies and helps companies—from start-ups to the Fortune 100—succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders. He is a business book author and a long-time contributor to business publications and his work has been featured in top-flight business publications.

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Archives, Global Trade Daily, Special Reports

Is Your Business a Revolving Door? 10 Ways To Keep Your Best Employees.

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Employee retention and turnover are important terms to every business owner and leader. But sometimes the driving factors behind why employees leave aren’t fully grasped or addressed by leadership, and if that disconnect persists, the business suffers while some of the best employees beat a path to the door.

“Leaders know that it’s vital to attract good talent, but knowing how to keep good talent involves an important process that leaders must learn and practice,” says Steve Baker (www.greatgame.com), a business coach, vice president of The Great Game of Business Inc., and co-author with Rich Armstrong of GET IN THE GAME: How To Create Rapid Financial Results And Lasting Cultural Change.

“Making employee retention a priority for your company is essential for continual growth, success, and sustainability.”

Baker and Armstrong offer 10 tips to business leaders and managers on how they can retain their best employees. Make employees feel they’re part of something special. “In the same way that you promote the value proposition of your products and services to potential customers, you should do the same with employees, only focusing on your attributes as an employer,” Armstrong says. “Inclusivity and pride are feelings you can leverage to help them understand that working for your organization is a unique opportunity.”

Emphasize the purpose and meaning of the work. “The outstanding employees you seek to hire and retain have special talents, skills, and drive,” Baker says. “Make it clear to them that what they are doing benefits both the company and your customers in important ways.”

Ensure deserving team members are rewarded. Successful companies reward employees who go above and beyond. “Recognition, bonuses, and promotions demonstrate your respect and appreciation for hard-working team members,” Armstrong says.

Give employees more responsibility. One of the most effective employee retention strategies is to give them greater responsibility to make a bigger difference. “This starts with financial literacy training and continues with regular updates on business statistics like profits and revenue, and details on how their efforts are moving the needle,” Baker says.

Surround employees with other talented workers. People like to be a part of teams that are built for success. “By creating groups of skilled and motivated workers,” Armstrong says, “you can tap into a competitive and cooperative partnership that will benefit the business as a whole.”

Mentor employees. “When you prioritize personal growth and development,” Baker says, “employees see that their careers are going somewhere and that their organization’s interests are aligned with their own.”

Nurture trust in leadership. All great relationships are built on trust, and the workplace is no different. “Outstanding employees will stay if they trust leadership,” Armstrong says, “and that trust grows from leaders being honest, open, and interested in their team members.”

Get employees emotionally invested. People are passionate about the things they have helped create. “The more you engage employees in the development of the organization,” Baker says, “the more emotionally invested they become and the more likely they are to stay.”

Create a positive work culture.  “If you create a drama-free environment where honesty and integrity matter, your employee retention rate will rise,” Armstrong says.

Provide competitive compensation. “None of the other retention strategies matter if you continue to underpay an employee,” Baker says. “It is important to stay on top of what constitutes fair compensation in your industry.”

“Increasing employee retention and keeping it at a high level is challenging,” says Armstrong, “but you can start by getting your people in the same game the owner is: the game of business.

“You can build a winning culture by creating a business of business people. Allowing employees to contribute to a greater good and valuing their contribution inspires loyalty and commitment. At the end of the day, it’s all about creating a winning company and a company of winners.”

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Rich Armstrong (www.greatgame.com) is the president of The Great Game of Business Inc., and co-author, with Steve Baker, of GET IN THE GAME: How To Create Rapid Financial Results And Lasting Cultural Change. This book is the how-to application of Jack Stack’s 1992 bestseller, The Great Game of Business. Armstrong and Baker co-authored the update of Stack’s book in The Great Game of Business – 20th Anniversary Edition. Armstrong has nearly 30 years of experience in improving business performance and employee engagement through the practice of open-book management and employee ownership.

Steve Baker (www.greatgame.com) is the vice president of The Great Game of Business Inc., and is a top-rated, sought-after speaker and coach on the subjects of open-book management, strategy, and execution, leadership, and employee engagement. Baker is a career marketing and branding professional and an award-winning artist.