This week I spent some time with the CEOs of the various companies that form Media Prima Bhd.
This organisation is Malaysia’s leading fully-integrated media company with a complete catalogue of media-related businesses in television, print, radio, as well as digital media.
Incidentally, this newspaper is part of their stable of businesses.
My sessions focused on working with these leaders to identify, and determine the real needs of their teams, while juxtaposing the organisation’s corporate aims, to these requirements.
I am drawing on my sessions with them, as well as my extensive experience through leadership coaching, training, and management consulting, to offer you some ideas about what employers, and employees really want from each other at the workplace.
In 2017, the Job Outlook 2018 Survey in the United States looked at what employers identified as the most important attributes that they are looking for in new hires for the coming year.
When I examine what I took back from my engagement session with these CEOs, the analysis matched the results from the survey.
The leaders I met, when hiring anyone new, say that they look at problem-solving skills as the most crucial trait they need.
In fact, my results were higher than that from the survey, which gave an 82.9% importance to this.
This means that if you want to be valuable to your employer, make learning this skill a priority.
Neuroscientists have proven that your brain cannot find solutions if you focus on the problem. Therefore, you need to be solution oriented. This is the highest need, in employers.
The next in this league table of sorts, is your capacity to work in teams.
The bosses I spoke with felt that rather than solo artists, they need orchestral musicians. The real mindset that they all wanted from their people was the ability to collaborate efficiently and effectively with each other.
Every change management initiative they were working on had this skill as a pre-requisite. No matter how skilled you are, you need be apt at being part of a team that creates beautiful collaborative music.
Leadership comes next.
Your bosses want you to showcase your ability to guide yourself and your teams towards meeting agreed goals. Employees need to exhibit a hunger to want to learn and hone their leadership skills.
All the line leaders requested for their teams to be put on various leadership development programmes.
This shows how important growth in this area is for anyone wishes to advance at their workplaces.
I was also curious about what these CEOs felt that their teams wanted in return from the organisation.
Of course, they are employees of the company too, so they were able to offer me input from a wage-earner’s perspective.
They argued that while salaries were not their biggest motivator, it was important that expectations were matched and people felt like they were being paid what they were worth.
Aspirational earning was also motivating factor.
Therefore, setting targets and declaring a salary growth matrix is a clear way to inspire your team. And, they also felt that if a company is able to justify pay structures clearly with a road map, and why some people get paid more, morale was always maintained at an acceptable level, at the work space.
The biggest millennial and centennial challenge that any organisation faces in Malaysia is offer your team a proper work-life balance.
Deloitte’s global survey on employee needs placed this almost on par with their salary.
This is possibly the reason why Amazon offers a 30-hour work-week for their team, and Airbnb gives employees a US$2,000 stipend annually, just to travel.
Next is opportunity for advancement. Your employees need to know where they are heading. If you do not offer a clear growth pathway, they will not stay.
The new generation of employee is especially keen on this. It becomes vital for you to create a development plan for each individual so as to keep them motivated.
And finally, you need infuse your employees with a sense of purpose. While they will see their salary as being vital, you need to understand this reality.
Definitive research by the Centre for Workforce Development at Rutgers University shows that 50% of millennials would take a pay cut for work that matches their own values.
This generation seeks to work for companies that are socially responsible, and place great emphasis on having a positive impact on society.
These insights were gleaned from a combination of the Job Outlook 2018 Survey as well as my intense consultations with all the CEOs within the Media Prima group of companies.
I have written about these areas previously, but my discussions with these platform leaders within one of Malaysia’s biggest multidimensional organisations confirm that these are the current dominant needs of employers, and employees.
Shankar R. Santhiram is managing consultant and executive leadership coach at EQTD Consulting. He is also the author of the national bestseller “So, You Want To Get Promoted?”