Moore’s Law transforms the Employee Experience. If you take a sheet of paper (0.004 inches thick) and add another paper on top of it, how thick would it be? How about adding another 40 papers on top of it, creating a stack of 42 papers? You’ve easily calculated that — it’s 1.65 in. This is what’s called linear growth — you simply add the constant (0.004 in).
Now take a piece of paper with the same thickness — 0.004 in — and fold it on top of itself. That will double its thickness to 0.008 in and every consecutive fold will double its thickness again. Now add up 40 more folds for a combined fold of 42. How thick would the paper be?
42 folds of a paper would get you to the moon.
This is what’s called exponential growth — you square the constant (0.004 in).
This is the problem when it comes to employee experience. It’s quite easy to predict linear growth, but when it comes to exponential growth, most predictions will fall flat. Even though it’s hard to predict exponential growth, it’s not impossible. To do that right, we need to apply Moore’s Law.
Employee experience standards grew exponentially
The current situation when it comes to employee experience has drastically changed in the past 30 years. If you took a worker from the 1930s and sent him to the 1960s, things wouldn’t be that different. There would be changes, but nothing that would shock the worker enough to feel like it’s another civilization.
Now take a worker from 1990 and send him to this day — a workforce of the Internet, smartphones, remote teams and work, freelancers, AI, etc. It would feel like a completely different world.
Today’s market rewards creativity, innovation, disruption, and scale. Things like top-down management, obeying rules, and following orders fall into oblivion. And with that, the employees of today have a drastically different approach to work than workers just 30 years ago.
The problem is that most companies can’t catch up to it which is shown by the data:
- Turnover rate is 50% in the first four months at a job
- 55% are currently unhappy at work,
- 85% are disengaged and seeking other employment opportunities, and
- Massive workloads on employee’s backs actually decrease productivity by 68%.
However, there are companies that adapt quickly and lead the way when it comes to employee experience. And that’s why these companies get (and retain) top talent from the workforce.
Companies like Mindvalley, Widen, Azimut, Zappos, and many others apply Moore’s Law when it comes to employee experience. We think you should too.
Moore’s Law in action
Moore’s Law, named after the co-founder of Intel Gordon Moore, states that the world’s maximum computing power doubles every two years — it grows exponentially. He realized that this applies to multiple verticals and industries, such as general human advancement and employee experience.
Culture and bottom-up style of decision-making replaced the old top-down structure, which proves the point that “what got you here, won’t get you there.”
Buurtzorg, a Dutch healthcare organization with over 10,000 nurses, lowered its absenteeism for sickness by 60% and turnover by 33%. The reason: an amazing employee experience program.
- John Deere’s Asia offices have human-centered onboarding processes that make employees want to quit the company and rejoin just to re-experience the program.
- GitHub, a software company, gives its employees unlimited personal time off.
- Mindvalley has learning Fridays where your only task for the day is to learn, not work
All of this heavily impacts the bottom-line and brings the companies massive profit share for years to come.
The 4 employee experience standards…today
These are, in forefront companies, considered bare minimum when it comes to the employee experience:
Flat hierarchies
Layers of management are slow to move. The market today awards speed and the ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn. This requires limiting the number of hands a proposal needs to go through until it’s implemented.
An employee idea that needs 200 days to get a “green light” will be picked up and implemented by the competitor 4x faster.
Remote work
The days where management thought that workers are lazy, unproductive, and need constant supervision are long gone. Today’s workforce expects trust and responsibility from their employers. Remote work shows that — “We trust you enough to leave you unattended and believe you will do your job.”
This is a make-or-break factor when it comes to top talent.
Personal and professional growth
This is especially true with Millennials and Gen Z, the generation which is just now entering the workforce.
It’s no longer enough to just have a job — workers want a clear path of progress. This doesn’t necessarily mean more money, but the opportunity to grow as an individual and as a professional.
Purpose
Top talent requires that companies have a social responsibility. It needs to invest in creating a positive impact in the society where it operates.
Purpose is the currency of this generation. Money is considered a side-effect of working on the things you truly care about, not as an end by itself.
We saw what people are willing to work for when it comes to purpose. Both Wikipedia and Linux were done for free because they serve a purpose which is higher than just a salary.
A purpose galvanizes people and makes change agents out of them. This is something the workforce today demands from the employers.
Future trends in employee experience
The standards are here to keep you afloat, but the real battle is at the forefront of employee experience. Here we see certain things slowly emerging:
- Increase in self-management and self-regulation
- Gamification
- Entrapreneurship
Recall Moore’s Law which tells us that the rate of employee experience standards will grow exponentially. Recall the tiny paper just 0.004 inches thick that managed to reach the moon in 42 folds. You will realize the potential and speed of exponential growth.
Here’s the scary fact when it comes to exponential growth: Folding the paper 103 times will get you to the end of the observable universe. You need to follow the trends to stay in the race.
But to truly lead the front, you will need to innovate at the forefront.
What will you do?