The power of transparency in the workplace

The workplace is changing rapidly and the relationship between employees and employers is evolving into a series of partnerships rather than the traditional ‘paternal’ approach favoured by many companies up until now. The idea of commanding and controlling a workforce seems alien to so many people these days, yet it was the norm before the turn of the millennium, and is still common practice in many companies.

There was a time when a ‘boss’ was the person who told you what to do, ‘work’ was somewhere you were expected to be between certain hours every day of the week, and information was distributed on a need to know basis. Now, transparency has blown through the workplace leaving in its wake a ‘new normal’ – this is shifting the balance of knowledge and empowerment towards employees.

Employees used to be in the dark in the workplace. The employer would hold all the cards from the moment someone walked through the door for an interview to the moment they walked out of the door on their way to another job or to retirement. Information about salary, the interview process, the benefits package and the culture, and about how a company had treated its staff in the past, was restricted, or at the very least difficult to find. This has meant that until a few years ago making decisions about where to work has been based on very limited, incomplete and certainly one-sided information. We have all been essentially taking risks about the building blocks of our careers – sometimes that has worked in our favour and sometimes not.

Anyone involved with creating, nurturing and enhancing a brand or a company’s reputation knows that a brand is not just what you say it is; it is also what people say about it. When it comes to an ‘employer brand’, job seekers get far more information online than what they read on a company’s career site. So a company’s employer brand is not just about what an employer puts out but it is also about the voice of the people that interact with the company, be they employees, customers, investors, shareholders or others. In today’s online, social media world, job seekers get aggregated opinions of millions of ‘insiders’ on tap, plus data that they simply could not get elsewhere.

For companies that, to put it gently, place a lower value on how employees feel and whether they are satisfied and engaged, the game is well and truly up. The inside track on all jobs and companies is now out there for all to see. It is time for these companies to shape up.

This transparency will continue to change the workplace rapidly. Those companies that cannot, or refuse to, adapt will wither and those that embrace the trend will flourish. We are already seeing this today, with companies living their lives in the open finding it easier and cheaper to recruit and having much higher rates of retention. Not to mention, of course, the significant impact on the bottom line of an engaged workforce with everyone pulling in the same direction.

Source:

https://www.demos.co.uk/files/GoodJobs_essaycollection.pdf?1418312724