• Part 1: Research and insights deep dive on the topics keeping leaders up at night, from the team at Magnetic. we’re shining a light on employee tensions — check our part 1 of our Thought Report. (Rather view the Thought Report as pdf? Download your free copy here.)

We’ve noticed something big. In our work helping multinationals, start-ups and government bodies across all sorts of industries build better futures, we’ve seen a remarkable shift. Companies are increasingly prioritising innovation efforts not on their customer experience, but on another quickly evolving and increasingly more complex cohort: their employees.

Stumbling out of a global pandemic into an unending parade of other world- changing crises, we’re still coming to terms with the fact that the status quo has been shattered. Things will never be the same again for any business, and even the briefest exercise in self-reflection will quickly reveal that organisations cannot rely on the same old tricks when it comes to employee experience. Unconvinced? Ask yourself this.

How can an employee trust their compensation will rise by enough to get by, when average pay has fallen by 2.6% in the face of soaring inflation?

Why would someone feel connected to their company when 85% of senior leaders just assume they’re lazy and unproductive when working remotely? Why should a worker care about going the extra mile when average UK house prices are now an insurmountable seven times the average wage? Is it any wonder only 9% of UK workers are engaged at work?

There’s been a startling transformation in employee relationships with the world of work, and we can see it’s not for the better. A glance at the news recalls the Winter of Discontent of the late 1970s, a period marked by widespread strikes and public disruption. Train drivers, port workers, nurses and postal managers have all striked or are threatening to, as a hostile government promises to impose restrictions. History has a knack for repetition, but this spate of industrial action has been surprising in how much it’s rallied public support; over half of Brits would sympathise with doctors, nurses, firefighters and teachers going on industrial action. Facing no other choice, workers are becoming increasingly frustrated in their relationship with employers.

These responses are unsurprising when the outlook is so bleak. The war in Ukraine, global supply chain issues and low productivity growth have all multiplied to inflate prices to unsustainable levels. In fact, the upcoming year will see the biggest fall in living standards since records began. Faced with further threats of recession, redundancy and financial instability, relationships between employers and employees grow tense. Directives on pay cuts and penny-pinching from leadership in UK and US businesses come with the awkward reality that they remain some of the most unequal developed countries in the world. Telling your employees to strap on a pair, keep calm and carry on when the world goes to hell is a bitter pill to swallow.

All of these dynamics have heightened in a world trying to course correct following the impact of a once in a lifetime (hopefully) pandemic. Hybrid working, though somewhat maligned, is undoubtedly here to stay, and if a business wanted to fully go back to the office, it would risk losing up to 39% of its workforce. Work-life balances are being re-evaluated and reclaimed by employees, and well-being has become a new battleground for recruitment and retention, with more than 60% of employees really valuing the well-being services offered by their employer. Now, crucially, this does not mean a single mental health webinar will help keep employees engaged and alleviate tensions, far from it.

As we’ll discuss in more detail in the series of articles, the call to action here is to identify and demonstrate a wider, more holistic and nuanced approach to well-being and flexibility that fits the needs of your people. The pandemic has heralded a transformation in employee expectations, and requires employers to transform too.

This appearance of a newly empowered, well- being literate workforce has been placed on the shoulders of an emerging Gen Z intake, a seemingly unpredictable and fickle group that has provided countless think-pieces. Much has been written about their cynical attitude towards the world of work, perhaps best exemplified by the ‘anti-work’ movement on Reddit (“You did nothing wrong by asking to be treated right” opines one post), and many of the trends mentioned can be viewed through this generational lens, but it should certainly not be limited to that.

We know, for example, that disputes over flexible working and office mandates can be drawn along gendered lines; male-dominated firms are more likely to insist on workers going back to the office. Rebecca Seal, author of Solo, a book on remote working, makes a powerful remark:

“The patriarchy wants us all back in the office — of course it does, because the old normal has served white middle class men with power very well for the last 200 years.”

Stirring stuff, putting historic gender inequalities front and centre of the debate on flexibility, autonomy and well-being. Similar tensions arise when considering ethnic minority employees and their status in the workplace. It’s now common knowledge that the pandemic disproportionately impacted minority employees, who were far more likely to be key workers in vulnerable workplaces. Ethnic minority workers are twice as likely to be nurses, security guards or bus drivers, and almost 50% more likely to be waiters and waitresses. Of those who were able to work from home, 58% said their experience was positive compared to how they worked before the pandemic, though a quarter reported that they still experienced harassment while working from home. A comprehensive report by the Trades Union Congress concludes:

“[there is a] clear preference among minority workers for employers to be more flexible — while ensuring that changed working patterns do not exacerbate inequalities.”

Current trends in employee relations with their employers are consequently a product of key macro uncertainties, and can manifest through the lens of class, gender, generation and race and much more. These tensions have birthed a plethora of buzzword phenomena: the Great Resignation, the Great Reshuffle, Quiet Quitting, Quiet Firing. The statistical evidence for these grand movements might be disputed, but their importance lies much more in the fact they represent a mass disenfranchisement, a lack of connection, a cliffside drop in engagement and enthusiasm of an organisation’s most valuable superpower: its people.

What can we conclude from this? Singularly, that the new employee experience required of this new era is yet to be pieced together, and observing the landscape, it seems like many companies are trying to solve the wrong puzzle. They’re grappling with how to make hybrid work, fudging together the old Partonesque ‘9–5’ reality with the new ‘work from anywhere’, ‘treat me as an individual’, ‘give me a reason to care’ era. This fusing together of the old and the new in a haphazard way is taking huge amounts of brain power (especially at a senior and line manager level) and creating frustration.

What we need is fresh thinking to solve new problems that have arisen as a result of the emergence of hybrid, not the problem of hybrid itself. We’ve already mastered the latter to some extent, that can be left safely alone. The shift in focus towards employee experience is a matter of survival, a just-in-time response to a complex design challenge that will be different for every organisation, and every employee. There is no one size fits all. There is no silver bullet. It requires innovation. There are four key tensions we’ve identified as prime areas to focus on when conceptualising the new employee experience. Each reflects a battle between combative forces that companies need to balance in order to retain a workforce that expects and deserves more. The fight is on.

This is the first part in our series of articles breaking down this huge topic. Follow us for more on the four key tensions. (Rather view the full Thought Report as pdf? Download your free copy here.)

Magnetic is a design and innovation company that helps design better futures. We’ve worked with global businesses to build capabilities, products, services and transform organisations. To find out more, get in touch: hello@wearemagnetic.com.