Why is a great work environment and a strong culture better for your employees and better for business? Michael C. Bush, CEO,
So that’s the power, because that’s what a great culture does. A culture that excludes people, treats people differently, and has an inconsistently great experience is not a great place to work for all; it’s a great place to work for some. So we talked about those things, and it was great to be on the stage, look at the audience and at people taking notes or punching things into their phone, because they were showing me, “This is what I like.
So what we’re trying to do is show organizations that they don’t need a business case to know they should treat people great. The other thing about Workday Rising is… Typical HR conferences, which are what culture conferences typically are, have a lot of HR people, but not many CFOs, CIOs, or CTOs. They look at these types of conferences and think, “I’m absolutely not going there.”
The demographic changes that are occurring—millennials coming into the workforce and transforming it in terms of that age group—mean that it needs to be a great place to work for all. So, what we saw is a huge opportunity to think about equality and equity in a different way. Because there are some areas, such as diversity and inclusion—as soon as you say the word diversity, some people feel left out.
Let’s say right now somebody can have a town hall meeting, and when you walk in, the CEO and everybody are sitting with their arms crossed, tight-lipped, leaning back in their chairs—you sense there’s a problem. Actually, there’s been a problem, but it’s almost too late to fix it at that point. Yet that’s what many companies are doing. And some are missing that signal.
We have enough data now to personalize these things, to make sure this is about equity, everybody gets exactly what they need. And so here’s what is different about the leader of today, and the leader of the future: The leader of the future has to be willing to get feedback often. Now for all of us leaders, it’s much easier to get feedback once a year, but we’re moving into a time where you’re going to get it once a quarter. Once a month. If you’re at Workday, you’re getting it every week.
I think that this movement of collecting data and analyzing data will help solve some of the most vexing problems we’ve had with managing and supporting people. For example, when we talk about something like diversity—which we’ve been talking about around the world for 30 years—it has made some progress, but not nearly as much progress as all of us know we need to make.