Not quiet and not quitting: How inspired employees deliver inspiring projects

With everyone currently debating whether ”quiet quitting” means finding a good work-life balance, or simply slacking off, it seems a good opportunity to think about a more general, timeless question that frames the issue:

What makes employees spring out of bed in the morning, grab a coffee, and give a job all their energy and focus for eight hours?

What makes an employer great in the eyes of an employee? Why do people join, stay, or leave a company? When they’re working there, what drives or disrupts their level of engagement?

And how can a business attempt to find out the answers to these questions, while trying to measure why employees are inspired to work for them? Should we look at internal quantitative and qualitative data collected by the HR and culture team, or more formally with eNPS (employee Net Promoter Score)? Where does Glassdoor data come into the mix?

One thing we do know is that happy employees engage with their work much more. There is a direct link between eNPS and a brand’s core NPS. When a company’s eNPS is higher than 80, the NPS tends to go the same way.

The best employers have a high staff retention and low attrition rate. This kind of stability means employees can develop within their roles, and within the company.

It’s a totally symbiotic relationship. Happy employees with space and encouragement to grow engage with their jobs better, and that helps the business to grow, too. Growth means opportunities for personal training and development, as the employees don’t feel they need to reach the next step in their career by leaving to work somewhere else.

The generation game

So that’s the theory—but the practice is already happening all on its own. The global pandemic has accelerated changes that were already in play, as new generations entered the employment marketplace. The old ways of thinking about work and a job are fast becoming irrelevant. Whereas people used to think solely about their salary and job satisfaction, now they think about their sense of purpose, and how to develop it alongside a company mission they genuinely believe in.

A manager is no longer a boss who gives an annual review, but a coach who actively guides self-motivated employees. Managers are no longer just there to identify weaknesses, but to capitalize on and develop their team’s strengths.

People now want jobs that integrate into their lives and match their personal values—it’s not open to discussion. If people really are “quiet quitting,” it’s because their jobs just aren’t doing this for them.

Companies need to adapt and focus on this shift if they want to attract and retain the staff that will energetically grow their business, and harness that passion to best service clients.

Recently, SoftServe’s CEO, Chris Baker, was asked, “How does a company grow like crazy and remain human?” He gave an answer of four key points:

1. Work for a privately held company because you can take a longer-term view and be less beholden to the whims of the market.
2. Understand the value chain and how it is constantly moving; what’s needed now, who needs it, what will be needed in the near and mid-term future, and how you can best supply it.
3. Leverage the value chain to define a common goal with your employees, your partners, and your current and potential clients.
4. Identify your culture to support the common goal; evaluating it on an ongoing basis and aligning compensation in response.

SoftServe’s culture focuses on helping our clients to be successful. To do that, we develop our teams and ourselves with a shared outlook on achieving common goals.

Culture is a verb—not a noun

Culture is action. It succeeds based entirely on what each employee does every day.

For every position in our company, we develop a comprehensive job description. For every person, this covers the triad of what they achieve (goals), what they do (functional skills) and how they go about doing it (soft skills).

Then, we link the future of each person—through their professional development and that of their team—to the future of SoftServe as a whole. This is built on being active in everything that we do.

We make these comprehensive job descriptions transparently available. This builds both trust and knowledge as everyone can understand what is expected of them, their peers, and their leadership.

To create a strong culture and brand with happy, engaged and successful people, everyone needs to understand the common goals, and the cultural patterns needed to achieve them.

With a common, shared culture, everyone starts to invest in the outcome. And when that outcome is delivering exceptional results for customers, there is no better reason to partner with—or work for— SoftServe.

We’re not quitting, we’re definitely not quiet, and we’re invested from start to finish in doing the very best for our people and our clients.

We’re bringing our best and brightest to Gartner Symposium, and I’d love you to meet some of them. I’d also be very happy to talk to you more about how SoftServe’s inspired teams can help you achieve the next steps in your journey to improve customer experience, accelerate your digital transformation, or secure your organization against threat.