By Lisa Blankman, CPA
Manager, Audit & Assurance Services
Indiana has been blessed with the arrival of a number of high-profile companies in recent years, either through acquisitions or organic growth. These include many information technology firms that represent the second wave of the Dot-com boom, such as salesforce, a cloud computing company that acquired ExactTarget in 2013.
The entrance of salesforce is having a rippling effect on the Indianapolis marketplace beyond the highly visible Salesforce Tower (rechristened from Chase Tower), with its name beaming from the top of the tallest building in Indiana.
It and other companies are bringing new ideas to the workplace that could spread to other businesses and alter their culture – not the type of work they do, but how they do it. This may make it more challenging for others to acquire and retain top talent, especially the Millennial generation that will soon dominate the U.S. workforce as Baby Boomers pass into retirement.
In short, Silicon Valley is invading Central Indiana with new ideas about the workplace and desirable concepts.
Cummins and other businesses have made a big splash with tours of new facilities that include onsite amenities that are now standard on the West Coast – coffee bars, exercise stations, lounge areas, laundry service, even things like video game consoles. The “new casual” atmosphere may seem shocking to older generations, but you can believe that locals in their 20s and early 30s know about the sort of accommodations their peers are being offered.
Beyond the actual worksite, the dot-com wave is also impacting old ways of how businesses conducted their human relations operations. Things like flexible hours, remote work days and casual dress codes are slowly seeping into the expectations workers have for their employers.
Younger generations also desire to work somewhere that mirrors their own values, so things like sustainability and diversity in the workforce become important.
If you’re in the leadership of an organization, you need to be thinking about how you are going to hire and keep the best talent, especially Millennials, given this new paradigm. Because our expectation is it’s only going to accelerate. HR practices that may seem bleeding-edge in the Indianapolis market now will be standard operating procedure in five or 10 years.
As with any aspect of your operation, if you don’t adapt to the changing times you will quickly find your organization left behind.
Start engaging with your HR department and think of ways your business can be proactive about offering accommodations to your team that will enhance their work experience. The goal is to build loyalty and encourage them to stay and develop their skillsets to benefit your organization, rather than seeing that talent drain away to more nimble competition.
You may not be able to replicate everything a salesforce or Cummins is doing, especially if you don’t have the resources of a Fortune 500 company. But you may be surprised how easy it can be, for example, to allow some of your staff to work remotely a few days a week. Or wear jeans and casual shirts in the office when they’re not out meeting with clients.
By making your company’s workspace inviting and flexible, thoughtful managers/CEOs can make their organizations a destination where talented people want to work, grow and become the next generation of leaders themselves. Talent management will be the critical success factor for the growing business in need of energetic talent to take the company to the next level of success!
If you have any questions or comments, please contact Lisa Blankman at (317) 613-7856 or email [email protected].