Emerging Trends in People Management

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The best workplaces find innovative ways to create personal and meaningful connections with their employees despite rising challenges.

The nature of work is changing in ways that require innovation in how leaders engage and manage their workforces.  Technology has created virtual workplaces, resulting in co-workers being widely dispersed and working at different times of the day. The mixture of people in the workforce is evolving too, spanning generations and geographies with a demographic more diverse and reflective of the communities where companies are located. Despite the global recession, employees continue to enjoy more choice of where to work. They no longer plan to stay with a company for life, leading to increased job-hopping and cross-fertilisation of workplace cultures.

"Would you approach an employee to chat about the health risks associated with his or her being overweight? It’s a challenging conversation with a friend or spouse, let alone an employee. Yet, managers at Nordea Life & Pensions, a Danish-based pension life company, routinely initiate such talks with their employees."

In response to these challenges, the best workplaces focus not just on workers’ basic economic and security needs, but on creating meaningful work and supportive social networks for employees.

This article, published in Swiss Business, details several innovative practices and insights being utilized to address these challenges by best companies from across the globe.

Robert Levering and Marcus Erb