Managing Talent? - Stick to the basics

They keep coming, don’t they? The new “workplace contracts.” Those corporate covenants

for attracting and retaining the freshest, brightest talent. The new standards for proving your company understands what today’s employees want and need from their job—and their employer.

Maybe there’s something to that. Maybe millennials are very different than baby boomers.

Perhaps Generations X, Y and Z are more than a letter apart; maybe they are a world apart.

But in my experience with organizations large and small, young and old, hip and not-so-hip, most employees, regardless of their marketing demographic, want pretty much the same three things from their employers:

OPPORTUNITY (a job that provides a challenge, but also offers support, development, advancement, inspiration--and maybe even some fun).

TRANSPARENCY (leaders and managers who shoot straight, provide clear expectations, and foster two-way communication & employee involvement in decision making).

FAIRNESS (yes, a general sense of fair play—a code of behavior that respects the individual and promotes the power of teamwork, one that also provides constructive criticism, commensurate compensation, and an environment that beams recognition

on a job well done or an idea of merit).

If organizations focused on these evergreen issues, they needn’t bother with new covenants for becoming a great place to work. They’d already be one.