October 11, 2007

Engaging Employees Hearts and Minds and Enterprise Architecture

The Wall Street Journal, 1 October 2007 reports that “employers should—and increasingly do—care about creating a great workplace.”

Companies are realizing the “the human beings who execute the goals of business are more than just cogs in a wheel.” Companies are now showing they do care more about their workers, through:

  • Best workplace lists—vying for venerated positions on best-workplace lists
  • Luring recruits—“pledging their devotion to work-family balance” and other employee-friendly benefits
  • Employee engagement—boasting about their level of worker-commitment, which manifests itself in low employee turnover; or employees volunteering to make an extra effort on the job

In the traditional rigid, controlling workplace, workers’ needs are left unmet; over time, this “erodes concentration, commitment, and creativity.” Good workplace policies “enable employees to manage their large lives, freeing them to apply more brainpower to complex information-age jobs.”

What’s more, organizations are finding that creating a great workplace for employees actually pays off in dollars (i.e. it “actually causes an increase in a company’s overall financial performance.”)

The New York Conference Board found in a study last year “clear and mounting evidence that employee engagement is strongly correlated to ‘productivity, profit, and revenue growth.’”

User-centric EA is driven to mission execution and meeting end user needs (including employee satisfaction). This is why I have been a long-time proponent for adding a human capital reference model and perspective to the Federal Enterprise Architecture. Balancing these two approaches (mission and employee) creates the synergy that organizations need for long-term success. There is a motto that I often use that expresses this right on—“mission first, people always!”


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