The Future of Work: What Attracts Good People and How to Retain Employees

There has been a lot of talk about the draw of “flexibility” when it comes to work, but it’s not always about schedules and remote work. Flexibility today comes from culture, leadership, empowerment, and the entire work experience.

In the premiere episode of Work from Anywhere, a Haworth Connect podcast, Haworth Corporate Marketing and Content Manager Christine Gritter chatted with workplace culture expert Eric Termuende to compare notes and share insights on the future of work. Find out what really attracts and retains good people and discover the culture shifts that are bringing them back into the workplace for connection and collaboration.

Podcast Transcript

Christine: Hi. I'm Christine Gritter with Haworth, and I'm here today with Eric Termuende. He's a seasoned keynote speaker and bestselling author who empowers brands, associations, and leaders to navigate uncertainty and build thriving places to work. Eric really has a deep understanding of the next generation of work and how to attract and retain the right people.

We're gonna have a conversation around the future of work and really where that is going, what he's seeing, the research that he's been doing, and—here at Haworth—what we know about the future of the workplace. And we're gonna compare notes.

Thank you for being with us, Eric.

Eric: I'm excited to be here in Holland, Michigan at HQ. How fun is that?

Christine: We're actually in person.

Eric: Mm-hm.

Christine: It's been a while, so it's great to have you right across the table from me.

Let's talk a little bit about what kind of lessons we think we learned during the pandemic. We all went on this global experiment of going and figuring out how to work—not in the office. And there's some things we probably learned from that, as we're trying to figure out how to move on.

Eric: Oh, completely.

First of all, we've heard it many times before that innovation thrives in times of necessity. I think it came from Satya Nadella in the first three months of the pandemic—he was quoted saying that we accelerated what we know to be the future of work about 10 years in the first chapters of the pandemic. And with that acceleration, came learning and understanding that I don't think that anyone's crystal ball could have truly predicted. Some of those things being that indeed many of us—especially the knowledge workers—can work from anywhere.

We found that camaraderie, a sense of belonging, and community are paramount. Always have been. Always will be. We found that leadership cannot be compromised. And that the micromanagement that existed in the days of old can no longer exist. We found that labor markets can indeed tighten, and the leverage can go to the employee. And with the leverage going to the employee, different demands and needs need to be met.

We learned that work perhaps gained a new identity in the last couple of years. Work used to be something that we had to do to put food on our plates. That's not the case now. There's more flexibility and choice, but perhaps more importantly, more options than ever existed before.

And so, the lessons that we've experienced over the last couple of years have redefined work as a whole, how we interact, how we communicate. But I wouldn't say that it’s changed—necessarily—completely. It's more just like the future of work has [changed]. It’s more evolved to be more modern and more capable—just like the technology and the tools around us have.

Christine: Very true. Very true.

One of the things that makes me think about it is the idea of what is changing as far as leadership. There's a lot of conversations around, “How did leaders manage this?” [They’re] used to a certain management style, used to a way of [knowing] where people were, and used to how they implemented culture into an organization.

Eric: So, I'm gonna ask you, what does "implemented culture" mean?

Christine: That's a good question. So really, how does culture build in an organization? When there's concern that culture is being eroded—because people are not together—how do we keep that alive?

Eric: There’s a distinction that may need to be made—just from my perspective—because the way I see it is that culture is neither strengthened nor eroded; it simply shifts for better or worse.

It's almost like this static thing that will move on the Likert scale from one to 10, but it's always a solid number. But what we've seen is that culture—over the pandemic and in the months following the pandemic—has shifted from being the ownership of senior leadership to more department or team leadership.

In an organization like Haworth, there is a culture. No doubt. Anyone can tell. But different teams will have different cultures. Different leaders will have different leadership styles and different teams will have a wildly different working experience. The accounting team is gonna have a wildly different experience than the HR team and than the sales team. And it's not better or worse.

It's not that all of these teams aren't working to fulfill the mission, the vision, the values of Haworth. All of that's true.

That said—especially through the pandemic—we found that culture and the ownership of culture is very much dependent on that team leader and how they conduct their everyday behaviors with their team. And I think that's incredibly optimistic for the individual leaders because now senior leadership can empower leaders of any team to build an incredible place to work—to build that camaraderie, collaboration, cohesion, inclusion, respect, integrity. But also make people feel—and remind them—that the work they do is important for the organization, and they indeed are making a difference.

Christine: I think that's a very interesting shift, right? Where we're shifting now from how we've even looked at the workplace [as] being something that is driven by what the organizational needs are.

Eric: Mm-hm!

Christine: …And shifting now into: if you focus on the individual needs, it'll be better overall for the organization.

Eric: Mm-hm.

I think from like an office design perspective, if we want to talk about the future of work, it's not that we'll be designing for an office exclusively, which of course we still will be. But we'll be designing for teams within the office. Because you can bet the marketing team and the creative team—who [are] gonna roll up their sleeves and get out the Expo markers and write on whiteboards, or whatever it might be—they're gonna require a different space than the UI/UX team, than the e-com team.

And again, there's an incredible opportunity to create spaces that people want to come to because it allows them to do their best work with people they enjoy doing work with. We've seen over the past couple of years now that flexibility, remote work, hybrid work, all of these things are certainly coming to the forefront—or already have come to the forefront.

But if we wanna get out the crystal ball and make a couple risky guesses, I would probably argue that flexibility as we know it today will not exist in the working world of tomorrow.

Will remote work exist? Yes. Will hybrid work exist? Yes. Will flexible work exist—in that you can come in [any] three days that you want out the week? I don't think so. Because if they did, it would probably be Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And the worst thing that would happen is that somebody would come in Monday by themselves.

…And then, two people would come in Tuesday. And then, four people would come in Wednesday. And then, you start to develop these weird sort of cliques across the team. You build these weird dynamics. People are included. People are excluded. “Why did you come to the office on Monday when we're all here Thursday? Do you not like hanging out with us? Why did you come in at all if you were gonna be coming in by yourself?”

I think these are conversations that right now—especially in a tight labor market—are happening. But I don't see [them] happening in the months and years to come, simply because if you're gonna come to the office, chances are, it's because of the collaboration, creativity, and cohesion you're not getting when you're working from home. You're not just coming for the coffee. Let's just put it that way.

Christine: You're coming to be able to do that face-to-face collaboration that's not scheduled, that's not in an hour[-long] Teams call. Even, we looked at younger office workers—which shocked me—actually missed the office 10% more than older [office workers] during the pandemic. And a lot of that, I think, had to do with the fact that they didn't get the face-to-face time they wanted.

Eric: I mean, you look at real estate prices. Everyone's living in a one-bedroom apartment or their parents' basement. They just graduated out of college or university or high school, or whatever it might be, where they were around 50 of their friends at any given time. The loneliness epidemic is real. Disconnection is real. Mental health issues are real. Not to mention, career advancement is a necessity for those younger individuals.

Yeah. It's no surprise to me that the younger generation actually wants to come to the office simply because Mom and Dad are thumping around upstairs while you're in the basement by yourself in a dark room,  hammering away at your computer. I'd probably want to come to the office too.

Christine: We talked about this as an employees’ market right now. Like in real estate, it's a buyers' market. What are they not getting that's causing them to make these decisions? Like, what has happened during the pandemic that we're like, “Oh, I don't wanna be here anymore,” or, “I'm not coming back to the place that I thought I was?”

Eric: Labor market has shrunk significantly. We like to think that every negative thing with respect to work over the past couple of years, COVID is to blame. I think that we are shining the spotlight on the wrong thing.

Right now, twice as many people are exiting the workforce, as they did in 2010, 2011, 2012. Baby Boomers are essentially retiring at rates that we've never seen before: 10,000, 12,000 people per day in America alone. That's [number] one. Number two, immigration was almost at a standstill through COVID. So, we're seeing a significant decrease in the people that we need to keep the economy strong.

Another thing is that the creation of new business—of freelancing, gig economy, etc.—has gone through the roof. But one of the bigger factors that we're not talking about enough is that we're simply not reproducing at the same rate that we used to. We're reproducing 30% less than in 2007. For every two people, the reproduction rate in America right now is about 1.7. It hasn't been above 2.1, which is the number that we need to have a sustainable growth in the economy, since 1970, which by the way… like… Vietnam War.

Christine: Yeah.

Eric: So, without immigration, with the retiring workforce—and the fact that we're not replacing our people at the rate that we need to—no doubt, the numbers just don't add up. Now with real estate prices still through the roof, with childcare being really expensive, with healthcare prices going up and up faster than the rate of inflation, we're actually seeing now more mothers are staying at home to raise the kids because it's the better economic decision.

We don't like to talk about it too much, but the opioid crisis is responsible actually for a lot of people leaving the workforce. And we've got the richest generation ever—leaving the workforce right now—that is enabling their children to work part-time, or maybe even to not work at all.

Even back in July—when we had 528,000 new jobs created—at that time, there were 11 and a half million vacant jobs in America and only about 5.9 million people to fill them. So just looking at the numbers, you talk about this being an employees’ market right now. The demand certainly can be from the employees.

Now, we could get into another conversation around the sustainability of that and culture as well. In the last 24 months, about a third of the American workforce has changed jobs. That's significant. The research is showing that they're taking about a 15 to 20% pay bump as a result of it. Now the interesting thing about that—and something that I've said for years—is that perks and benefits will attract talent, but culture and experience keep it. And one thing that we very rarely discuss is that our best recruiters are the people that work for us.

Often, we put up the “careers” page or the “about us” page, or we put some sort of ad up, and we promote and sell this incredible experience. And you think [people are saying,] “I'm just gonna take a job based on something that's produced really well?” Not at all.

However, [let’s say] the people that work at that company come to play softball with me on a Thursday night and tell me how incredible their day at work was, how collaborative their space was, how included their leader makes them feel. Meanwhile, I'm sitting on the fence wondering if the place that I'm working at is any good for me at all. You wanna guess where my next resume is going?

I would say that the best attraction strategy is actually a good retention strategy. And the best retention strategy is to create a place where people feel like they belong, feel like they're trusted, feel like they can experiment and try new things.

Christine: Before the pandemic, one of the trends that we were seeing was a conversation around “experience economy.” One of the ways I think about it is: There used to be a bumper sticker back in the 80s that was, “He with the most toys wins.” Because it was all about getting the material [items], getting the money, getting the stuff.

Eric: Yeah.

Christine: As generations came up, the change was: Instead of, “He with the most toys wins,” it was, “He with the most passport stamps wins.” Spending money, not on things, but on experiences.

Eric: I would say now it's, “He with most time wins.”

Christine: Meaning, “He with the most time to do things?”

Eric: Well, I think we're living in an era where customization and choice is number one. And so, whether that means you go fly to Mykonos—or you go to the beach in Holland, Michigan for the day with your family—it used to be [that] the person who had three or four cell phones and was most connected had the most power. Now, it's the person who doesn't carry a cellphone at all is the one that I aspire to be because you don't need to be anywhere. You're not at the beck and call of somebody who needs you right now. You have total autonomy and freedom of your time, of your domain, of your lifestyle.

Christine: So, “He with the most choices?”

Eric: …Which I would say, in this case, is synonymous with time.

Christine: Right.

Eric, thank you. This was a great conversation. I had a lot of fun. I hope you did too.

Eric: Sure did.

Christine: So, I appreciate you being with us today.

Eric: Fantastic. Christine, thanks for the work you do. And thanks for having me here.

Christine: We will see how we continue to move forward, [by] creating great workplaces for people and supporting the future that we know is happening right now.