Figure out what your employees want
Griffith has four children, so he has experienced and mastered every new communication outlet short of Twitter. But even though he understands the changes, he still spends a good bit of time learning what younger employees want.
“I try to understand what they’re looking for,” he says. “I speak to our new-hire groups and have a two-way dialogue (to learn) what are they trying to get out of their experience and their career at Ernst & Young.”
Griffith realizes the best thing he can do in his endeavor is to get help, since he can’t regularly speak with 2,200 people. Ernst & Young has a lead people development consultant, something most companies wouldn’t swing for, but that has led them to a practice anyone can afford. The firm has partner-Gen Y panels, which pair a half dozen younger employees with several senior executives for a conversation about the work atmosphere. The key is realizing the best way to get more from your younger employees is to start a dialogue about what they expect from you.
“I find the way that we solve a lot of things at Ernst & Young is we create a lot of awareness around an imperative and then we move to action,” he says. “It’s not always an easy thing. Sometimes you’ve got to make people aware of the issue and make sure it’s on the front of their mind.”
Using his comfort with modern communications, Griffith also likes to “play on their field,” creating the company’s first Facebook page, texting potential job candidates and creating a blog. It is in these communications where he began to realize what many leaders fail to see: Younger employees want to work hard, but the old rules are out. Griffith uses his blog to create a two-way forum where he can get real-time feedback on issues they see in the firm.
“One thing I know about the blog is, it’s available to our people, I know that I can control the content, so that it’s accurate, timely, virtual, and it gives us the ability to message what we want to accomplish in the sub-area and in the firm,” he says. “Leaders need to think about this because the people that I’m trying to communicate with, they expect a two-way platform.”
You can use whatever forum you like, but Griffith says the key is sparking a two-way conversation. He helps push that on his blog with things like Starbucks gift cards to the first five or 10 responders who respond to posts with viable ideas or suggestions, giving him fodder for ongoing dialogue.
“Sometimes you need to encourage and enthuse them to create the two-way platform,” he says. “But, remember, it goes both ways, and then I can respond again if something’s not perfectly clear with my own comment to their comment on my original blog entry.”
