Treating Employees Like Customers
Every talented employee has a set of cognitive needs (intellectual, affective, motivational, volitional), that can be discovered and documented in a psychographic profile. Just as we segment customers by psychographic profiles we can segment employees and make sure we design benefit programs, policies, work environments, management practices and change programs to meet those needs.
More strategically, employee psychographic profiles can be used to clarify the intangible aspects of your firm’s employee value proposition and compete more effectively in the war for talent.
The question is how do we define psychographic profiles for employees? In my cognitive design class I teach profiling techniques for both customers and employees. To start the discussion for employees we look at an older HBR article that describes the cognitive needs of front-line workers and talks about how meeting those needs is the key to Firing them up! The profiles include:
Process and Metrics: Clarity of expectations and creates a clear sense of responsibility and purpose (e.g. Johnson Controls and Toyota)
Mission, Values and Pride: Leverages shared values and creates pride in belonging (e.g. US Marine Corps and 3M)
Entrepreneurial Spirit: Leverages a need for self determination and contribution to create a high-risk high-reward work environment.
Individual Achievement: Leverages a sense of individuality and creates a focus on individual achievement and accomplishments (FirstUSA, McKinsey)
Reward and Celebration: Leverages the power of recognition and inclusion to create a focus on a supportive and interactive work environment (e.g. Mary Kay, Tupperware).
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Note the emphasis is on individual cognitive needs that are shared by a group of people. Establishing such profiles and then designing organizational artifacts (selection processes, benefits programs, policies, etc.) is how you do “culture management” cognitive design style.
