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Understanding your workforce in the Age of Agency
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00:00Comment bien vous connaissez votre workforce ?
00:04Je pense que trois ans, c'était une question très simple pour les leaders.
00:09Ils connaissent leur équipe bien. Ils connaissent qui ils étaient,
00:11ils connaissent ce qu'ils motivés, ils connaissent ce qu'ils valorisent.
00:15Mais aujourd'hui, aujourd'hui, les choses sont un peu trickier.
00:18Je regarde les deux et demi années,
00:20je dirais que ce qu'on a tout été fait collectivement
00:23a changé nous en vraiment très important.
00:27En tout cas, pour un simple exemple,
00:29les employés qui ont pu travailler à la pandémie.
00:33Ces gens, généralement, ont trouvé un nouveau sens d'enthusiasm
00:39pour la flexibilité.
00:40Flexibilité en comment, quand et où ils travaillent.
00:43Et, comme nous regardons l'économique,
00:46je pense qu'il y a beaucoup de questions,
00:48c'est, oui, mais c'est bon durant la pandémie.
00:52Et je peux comprendre ça durant les économiques économiques,
00:55mais où est-ce que ça all va ?
00:57C'est ce qu'on va à aller verser dans la pandémie ?
01:00C'est ce qu'on va être un permanent, plus durable trend ?
01:02Ou est-ce qu'on va être un peu comme un petit peu
01:05un petit peu de temps ?
01:06Et si c'est un petit peu,
01:09comment ça va,
01:10c'est ce qu'on va aller verser dans la pandémie ?
01:12Pour répondre à ces questions,
01:14je veux partager avec vous des données
01:15que nous avons collecté,
01:16comme nous avons fait des des premiers researches.
01:18Juste, nous avons fait un état de 31,000 personnes
01:22de 31,000 personnes.
01:23So a very broad-based study
01:24to ask about their values
01:27and how those have changed,
01:28especially related to work.
01:30And what we found
01:31is that there are indeed changes afoot.
01:34For instance,
01:35we found now that around the world,
01:37globally,
01:38on average,
01:3854% of workers
01:40are telling us
01:41that they would prioritize
01:42their health and well-being
01:45over work.
01:47Closely related,
01:4847%,
01:48so almost half of workers,
01:5047% of workers
01:52are telling us
01:52that they would prioritize
01:53actually their personal lives
01:55and their family
01:56over their careers.
01:58Now,
01:59you may have heard quite a bit
01:59about the Great Resignation,
02:01perhaps more a North American phenomenon
02:03than we sometimes see here in Europe,
02:05but our data revealed
02:06that in fact,
02:0818%,
02:0818% of the global workforce
02:10actually changed employers
02:12over the course of the last 12 months.
02:14And listen to this,
02:15the number one reason for it
02:16this time wasn't pay.
02:18The number one reason instead
02:21was health and well-being,
02:22and specifically,
02:24it was work-life balance.
02:25Now,
02:26while we've all been very focused
02:27on the pandemic,
02:28we've also seen
02:29that we are making our way
02:31towards some very specific
02:33demographic milestones.
02:35In many markets across the world,
02:37in fact,
02:37we are inching our way
02:38towards almost 50%
02:40of the global workforce,
02:41actually being Millennials and Gen Z.
02:45And that means that they have
02:46a different take on work.
02:47They are bringing in new attitudes
02:49that we'll talk about
02:50in just a moment.
02:51One of those attitudes
02:53is a data point
02:54that kind of blew my socks off.
02:56The number is 70%.
02:58Over 70% of Millennials and Gen Z worldwide
03:01have what we,
03:03in English, call a side hustle
03:05or a second job
03:06where they are pursuing
03:07not only money,
03:08but they are also pursuing
03:10what they say
03:10is their passion.
03:12As I think about
03:13these data points
03:14and many others,
03:14I have concluded that,
03:16you know what?
03:16I don't think that this is
03:17just a temporary swing
03:19of the pendulum.
03:19I actually think there's
03:21something happening
03:21to workers,
03:23to the labor market,
03:24to how people think
03:25about work
03:25and the role that it plays
03:27in their lives.
03:29And although we will
03:30definitely see
03:31the ebb and flow
03:31of macroeconomic circumstances,
03:34I think it is fair to say
03:36that emerging from the pandemic,
03:38coming out of what we have
03:40all experienced together,
03:41that employees are actually
03:43looking for a new deal
03:45when it comes to
03:46what employment is all about.
03:48All right.
03:48So, what is this new deal?
03:50Well, I think the signs
03:51are actually all around us.
03:53As we look around,
03:54we hear a lot about flexibility.
03:55We hear a lot about autonomy.
03:58The rising generation
03:59talks a lot about purpose
04:00and meaning in their jobs.
04:02But I think that there is
04:03one word that I would use
04:05that encapsulates so much of this,
04:08and that word is agency.
04:10It's kind of just a fancy way
04:12of describing that workers
04:14want more control
04:15over how, when, and where they work.
04:18Again, they've been able
04:18to assert a lot of that control
04:20during a global health crisis,
04:22and they're thinking now
04:25that they would like
04:25to continue to keep that control.
04:28Now, where does this come from?
04:29Where does this desire
04:30to have agency come from?
04:31I think we'll be analyzing that
04:33for many years,
04:34but there is one place
04:35that really connects with me,
04:36and that is the hyper-personalization
04:39that all of us feel in our lives
04:41as we think about how we're interacting
04:43with the rest of the world.
04:45Just think for a moment
04:46about this device
04:47that we all carry.
04:49It's a simple, small screen,
04:50but the experiences that we have
04:52as we look at news,
04:53as we communicate with people,
04:55as we organize ourselves,
04:57as we even do shopping,
04:58are hyper, hyper-personalized.
05:01They are built around us
05:02as an individual
05:03and what we want.
05:04And I think that many employees,
05:06the signs tend to point
05:08to the fact that many employees
05:10are taking this expectation
05:11for hyper-personalization
05:13and they're bringing it to work.
05:14They want their employers
05:16to understand and support
05:17their needs and their values.
05:21Now, in so many ways,
05:22I think that this is good for business
05:23all around the world.
05:24It means that we are getting
05:25a diversity of opinions,
05:27that we're challenging the status quo,
05:30that we are thinking about
05:31what's in it for the individual,
05:33that we are really kind of
05:34starting to look at new patterns of work,
05:36and that's awesome.
05:37But I also think that there is a danger here,
05:40or a warning that I would give you,
05:42and it is simply this.
05:45If left unchecked,
05:46this hyper focus,
05:49this laser focus on individuality,
05:51on the agency of workers,
05:54comes into direct conflict
05:56with the unity that is required
05:58for an organization
05:59to get its job done.
06:00You see, it really takes work
06:03to take a group of agents
06:05and turn them into a team
06:07with esprit de corps.
06:09Let me give you a very simple example.
06:10At Microsoft, we too are trying
06:12to get our workers
06:13to come into the office.
06:14Now, there are cultural differences.
06:15In different parts around the world,
06:17we see people more willing to come in.
06:19But on our Redmond campus,
06:20as a simple example,
06:21it has been somewhat difficult
06:23to get people to come back into the office.
06:25And so, we are not beneath doing
06:27what many organizations have done,
06:28and that is provide free food.
06:31The tacos have been my favorite.
06:33Taco Tuesdays.
06:34I come in for Taco Tuesdays.
06:36Who wouldn't come in for Taco Tuesdays?
06:38And in fact, we did see
06:39that the badge in numbers showed us
06:41that as we offer free food,
06:42more people come in.
06:43The problem, of course, is
06:45when we stopped offering the food,
06:48well, you can imagine
06:49people were asking themselves questions.
06:52Now, what's going on here?
06:53Why is it that tacos will be a draw?
06:56I think that this speaks to agency.
06:58I think it speaks to this idea
07:00that we are all economic actors here,
07:04and we ask ourselves,
07:05well, what's in it for me?
07:06And if you really think about
07:08what's going on right here and right now,
07:10it takes leadership, real leadership,
07:13to take this group of diverse actors
07:15and bring them together
07:16and turn them into a team.
07:19All right.
07:20So, to tee things up today in the discussion,
07:22I want to end with a discussion quickly
07:24on leadership.
07:26I'm going to assert to you
07:27that in this moment right here
07:29that it looks as though
07:31what we're all focused on
07:33is kind of getting people
07:34to come back into the office.
07:35It looks like we're kind of talking
07:36about new patterns of work,
07:38but there's something deeper going on.
07:41This isn't just about coaxing people
07:44back into a physical space.
07:46No.
07:47This is about some tension
07:49between individuals and an organization.
07:52This is tension about workers
07:54and their expectations
07:55for kind of new patterns of work
07:57that are just focused on them
08:00as individuals.
08:02That's what is at work here.
08:03And I'm going to assert
08:05that this will require new patterns
08:07of leadership.
08:08A new pattern of leadership
08:09based on two concepts.
08:10Two concepts that I will call
08:13empathy and stewardship.
08:16Now, I say that this is a new pattern,
08:19but if we go back 2,500 years in history,
08:22we actually find a leader
08:24who summarized it very succinctly.
08:26This is Cyrus the Great,
08:28the king of the first Persian Empire.
08:30He said it this way,
08:31diversity in council,
08:33and unity in command.
08:35And I'd like to take Cyrus' words today
08:38with a few of my own thoughts,
08:40unpack empathy and stewardship,
08:42and allow that to frame up our discussion.
08:45Let's start with empathy.
08:47Counterintuitively,
08:48I believe that empathy
08:49is actually about data.
08:52Now, that may not make sense to you,
08:54but here's how I would explain it.
08:56Empathy is about curiosity.
08:57It's about trying to understand
08:59and listening carefully.
09:00In a business context,
09:02it is about starting with your people,
09:03but it's also deeply about understanding
09:06every aspect of your business.
09:08Your customers, the market,
09:09your competitors.
09:11As you think about this idea,
09:13this idea of collecting data,
09:15you see that Cyrus was onto something
09:17that we shouldn't expect our leaders
09:19to have the answers in this day and age
09:21of volatility,
09:22but we should expect
09:24that they are surrounding themselves
09:27with people with very diverse opinions.
09:29And then as a leader,
09:30your job is to empathetically listen,
09:33to gather as much information as you can,
09:35to construct mental models,
09:36to test those models through experiments,
09:38and ultimately to get to a place
09:40that you're understanding reality.
09:42This is, for me,
09:44why empathy is so magical.
09:46Because empathy takes what we do with diversity.
09:50It takes different opinions,
09:52even those that don't agree,
09:53and it constructs the best possible view of reality
09:58so that we can make good decisions.
09:59Alright, so if empathy is about data,
10:01now I'm going to assert something else.
10:02This idea of stewardship.
10:05Stewardship for the mission of the company.
10:07Empathy for the individual.
10:09As we look at that stewardship,
10:10I'm going to say that that's all about another word.
10:13It may, again, sound counterintuitive,
10:15but I believe it is about culture.
10:18And that's because I would say that culture
10:19is the most effective way to build and sustain the unity
10:24that is required for an organization to pursue its mission.
10:27That's a lot of thoughts.
10:29Culture is the most effective way to build and sustain
10:32the unity required in order to pursue its mission.
10:37I think that culture is more effective
10:39than any organizational structure.
10:40I think it is more effective than any type of fancy office.
10:45And I think that we have to be much more thoughtful
10:48about how we use culture to drive unity.
10:51Now, thinking about people exercising their agency,
10:55you may say, boy, it sure seems like the culture
10:58we would be after then.
10:59That culture should be about kind of, you know,
11:02making sure every individual has all of their needs met.
11:05But I would tell you it's exactly the opposite.
11:08The best, most effective culture actually makes clear decisions
11:12and clear distinctions.
11:13It drives clarity, particularly around what the organization stands for,
11:18how they're going to get their work done,
11:20and what they're trying to accomplish.
11:23Leaders who are able to in this way create culture
11:26create something that truly is magical.
11:28They are able to create something that builds on top of pluralism,
11:33on top of diversity, but then is able to use their stewardship
11:37of the mission, their clarity of thought,
11:39to allow the agency of others to decide if they're in or out.
11:44Because with clarity, that allows these agents
11:48to make their own clear decisions.
11:50Now, as we combine this idea of empathy and stewardship,
11:54empathy for the individual, stewardship for the mission,
11:56I think what you really get is trust.
12:00That is an elusive quality for so many leaders.
12:02It is hard to gain. It is easy to lose.
12:06But trust in today's volatile world, boy,
12:08it has a gravitational pull that is all its own.
12:13People flock to trusted leaders, and they do so
12:15because they believe that those leaders will help them
12:18navigate the uncertainty of the future.
12:21Leaders who are able to balance this new equation,
12:24balance the empathy required to focus on individuals,
12:28balance the stewardship of the mission.
12:30Boy, they set the tone for their organizations.
12:33They teach others how to be leaders with this pattern.
12:37And that is incredible.
12:39In many ways, they are able to create a new type of organization.
12:44An organization that balances that agency that individuals want,
12:47and that in so many ways then unites the group to go after the mission.
12:53And that is powerful.
12:55As I think about these concepts, boy, it is easy to see this moment as a time
13:00when we're just trying to coax people back into the office.
13:02When we say, oh, the future of work must be about where you work.
13:05It must be about these kind of new work patterns.
13:07That is true superficially.
13:08But what is happening here is we are actually negotiating a new deal.
13:14A new deal between the individual and the organization.
13:18And what we negotiate and how we negotiate will be so important.
13:22Now, are we tipping into a recession?
13:23Well, the Financial Times this week said that economists' consensus is,
13:27yes, they think that we will in 2023.
13:30So there are dark clouds on the horizon.
13:32But even though there are risks ahead of us, even though there are challenges,
13:35I believe that the opportunity and potential has never been greater.
13:38I believe that our best days are ahead of us.
13:41And if we realize what's happening now, if we understand actually the issues at play,
13:47I think that together we can create a better tomorrow for employees, for employers,
13:53and for everyone in the world.
13:56Now, I could stand here and talk forever with you about this.
13:59There's quite a bit to unpack.
14:00But instead of doing that, I'd like to invite two of my good friends onto the stage.
14:04They are two of the world's leading experts on this topic.
14:08We have Dr. Michael Gervais, who is a high-performance psychologist
14:11and is focused on the idea of mindset and how it relates to people's potential.
14:16And Anne Helen Peterson, the author, speaker, and journalist,
14:21who has recently written a book, Out of Office, The Big Problem,
14:23and Bigger Promise of Working for Home.
14:25Please join me in welcoming Michael and Anne Helen to the stage.
14:29Thank you.
14:44All right. Well, that was wonderful.
14:45And it touches on so many things that I have been hearing from workers over the last year
14:52as we've transitioned into this moment of trying to figure out what back to the office looks like, right?
14:59Like, what is this tension between people going into the office and back out after different waves of COVID,
15:06and a real desire for autonomy?
15:09You know, people have developed their patterns of, I know what I do.
15:13I know, like, how to make it work in my life.
15:16With that tension of, well, there are some things that demand presence
15:20and that demand people being in the office together.
15:23So how do we figure out the push and pull between autonomy and agency
15:28and that larger drive for collectivism?
15:31So, Jared, I want to ask you, what are you seeing that has worked well, and what is more of
15:37a struggle?
15:38Well, I'll start with what hasn't worked well.
15:40You know, as I've looked down, this is my job to study this.
15:43We have seen that kind of some arbitrary, top-down rules that have been imposed by companies,
15:47those have been met with quite a bit of resistance.
15:49In fact, in many places, those have had to be walked back as people are told what days they should
15:55show up
15:55or that there's no more flexibility left.
15:58And I guess what I would say, Anne Helen, is that the things that seem to be working
16:01are when employers work with their employees kind of on an experimental basis
16:05to find their way through this future here.
16:08So it's more about being a bit of, you know, a learn-it-all rather than a know-it-all
16:13as you're trying to figure out what is going to work.
16:16Yeah, and I think that what I've seen in terms of frustration is when an office says, you know,
16:21no matter what, you are back in the office Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, right?
16:26Or there's no reason to be back in the office, and that arbitrariness really seems to undercut
16:32people's understanding of their own agency.
16:35And I want to also think about this word, agency.
16:39You know, the connotation of this word in the way that we're talking about it is autonomy.
16:44But then think about the agency itself, right?
16:47In Hollywood, an agent who works at an agency is the person who advocates for the individual star.
16:54And these agencies became incredibly popular in the 1950s and 1960s
17:00after the dissolution of the studio system.
17:03And they also became very popular in sports because what these agents did was give individuals
17:08the ability to advocate for themselves to have a new deal with the work that they did.
17:15So how are you seeing this develop in sports?
17:17This is maybe a connotation that people don't immediately think of, but I think there's a lot to unpack there.
17:24Well, sport is in many respects ahead of the curve when it comes to human capabilities
17:31because that is their job.
17:32Their job is to push the edges as far as they possibly can go.
17:36And while the stories don't quite fit all the time, meaning the way of thinking of the athlete
17:47and the way of thinking of the employee, but there is an analogy that I want to play forward.
17:52Because in the workforce, we get time off.
17:55In the sport world, we have seasons off.
17:58So there is a difference there.
18:00But the margins are so razor thin in the sport world that the pushing to the edge is part of
18:09the deep drive of the individual.
18:11But then the entire ecosystem, the supporter of the agents, are engaged for one reason,
18:19to help them unlock their potential.
18:21And so the bridge here is that, and the insight, is that 40 years ago, this wasn't the case.
18:2840 years ago, the head coach did it all.
18:32They were the nutritionist, they were the technical coach, they were the strength coach, and they were the psychologist.
18:39What happened over time is specialties started to emerge.
18:43And as specialties emerged, we're now in the phase where you couldn't go to a sport franchise and not see
18:50those subspecialties
18:51that are lined up well to support the one and the many, the team.
18:56Now psychology is taking a front seat in those organizations.
19:01And so that insight is a bit of a harbinger pointing to what's happening in business now.
19:07is that the athletes on the edge have always said, I want to understand how to be my best.
19:14And then we have teammates that are going to help each other have each other's back.
19:18So it's the teaming part that's unique.
19:21It's the individuals fundamentally organizing their life to do better.
19:25And then it's the sciences that support the team and the individuals as one mission.
19:31The last part here where sport is just a little bit ahead of the curve is that the coaches are
19:39delivering the mental skills to help the people be their very best.
19:44So no longer are we saying psychology is, and I'm a trained psychologist, psychology is not in the back office
19:50and a, you know, well-lit room and a comfy couch.
19:53It's not that it's in the ecosystem of the entire organization.
19:59So the coaches have upskilled to deliver mental skills to the athletes as opposed to some subspecialty that's down the
20:07hall.
20:07We're starting to see that now in particular businesses.
20:11I think that's a really interesting parallel to what you can see happening with leaders and data and data, which
20:18is offers a way to develop empathy.
20:21I think you can look at a manager who can see when their team is logging onto teams, when they're
20:29sending emails, when they're getting interrupted and calendars too full and use that data to help teach the people that
20:37they manage.
20:38Hey, here's how I see you exercising your agency.
20:42Here's how I can collaborate with you to still have that agency, but to be smarter about the way that
20:48you work.
20:49How do you think, though, that like you can balance that need for agency with companies overarching need to be
20:56competitive, to increase shareholder value, all those things?
21:00We know that the research is very clear that those that have an environment where people are stressed and irritated
21:08and agitated, they don't perform to their abilities.
21:11They don't like the way they feel and they don't like the way they feel in that organization.
21:17So the opposite is what we're paying attention to is how do we help people recover better?
21:22How do we help them understand how to be vibrant, how to have a sense of flourishing?
21:27And again, it goes back to the upskilling where we're helping the leaders of the organization understand how to deliver
21:34the psychological skills of calm and confidence and trust and relationship.
21:40To help people have a sense of belonging so that there's this unique intersection between well-being and high performance.
21:48That is the new skilling that's taking place with leaders.
21:52Do you have anything to add in on that, Jared?
21:54Well, I think that one of the persistent and kind of durable trends that we'll see coming out of the
21:58pandemic will be this idea that well-being won't just be the domain of the individual.
22:03That if we think about that tension between the individual and the organization, one of the things that organizations will
22:08start to pick up and that good leaders will pick up is responsibility for at least a part of teaching
22:14skills to help with well-being.
22:15So we're excited. We've, you know, Microsoft, we've recently launched a number of technologies that we think can help here
22:21that capture some of these signals that help people have the data they need as leaders to be more effective.
22:26One of those is called Viva, but that I think is going to be a very, very durable trend coming
22:31out of pandemic.
22:33So we have all this technology that makes it possible for us to work remotely, for us to work flexibly.
22:38Like I was just doing some work back behind here.
22:42You know, that's how so many of us try to figure out our days.
22:46But technology can only do so much, right?
22:48Like technology, one thing I noticed during the pandemic is it allowed me to work from anywhere at any time,
22:54but it also allowed me to work anywhere at any time, right?
22:58Like I worked all the time and work slipped into all of these different corners of my life.
23:03So you really have to think about what are guardrails that we can put on the technology that has facilitated
23:09this flexibility.
23:10How are you thinking about that?
23:11Yeah, one of the not so good trends has been what I would call a shapeless work day.
23:16You know, your flexibility is also becoming my anxiety.
23:19We're seeing, for instance, the emergence of a three peak work day based on our analysis of telemetry in Microsoft
23:26365.
23:26There's a peak of work in the morning.
23:28There's a peak of work in the afternoon.
23:30That's always been there.
23:31That shape.
23:32But now there's a peak of work between 8 and 10 p.m. local time for almost all regions of
23:37the world.
23:37It's brand new.
23:38And all of a sudden, when that starts happening, you feel like you just can't escape work.
23:42So we are finding that technology can make a really big difference in creating these boundaries that didn't exist before
23:48and helping people mostly culturally decide what work is going to look like in their organization.
23:54And that would be the thing that we would say is don't depend on the technology alone.
23:57You need to, as a leader, take that culture.
23:59Take the clarity that I talked about.
24:01Drive some clarity in how this is all going to work.
24:03And when you have done that, then you can use the technology to support it.
24:08Yeah, I am a huge fan of the delay send function.
24:11One of the best things out there.
24:14I think just as a means of wrapping up, if leaders can take one piece of advice from this conversation,
24:20what do you think it would be?
24:21I would say the investment in culture, as Jared spoke about earlier, is one of the deepest investments we can
24:27make.
24:28And from our standpoint, culture is the artifact of relationships.
24:32That relationship begins with the relationship with the individual and then with others and then with the environment and then
24:39with machines at some level.
24:41And that investment with self first is where leaders are going to need to help build that sense of belonging
24:48and purpose at work.
24:50And to teach the psychological skills to help do that is a requirement in the new workforce.
24:56And I would say that as you think about this moment, as I said earlier, it's easy to think you're
25:01just trying to get people back into the office or you're refurbishing your conference rooms.
25:04It is not that.
25:05This is a moment of change.
25:07This is a moment for the emergence of new leaders and new leadership patterns.
25:11I would just beg of you to think differently about it.
25:13When we talk about the future of work, it is all about how we're going to change culturally the way
25:19that we get things done.
25:21And I'm excited about that.
25:21I think there's real opportunity if you take the bull by the horns.
25:25Thank you both so much.
25:26This has been wonderful.
25:27And thank you.
25:28Thank you, everyone.
25:29Thank you.
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