The Win-Win Workplace isn't a eulogy for this broken workplace. Anyone can rattle of what's wrong with work. Frankly, that's depressing. Instead, this book focuses on what's going right. Armed with data, real-world stories, and a road map that's been test-driven in real companies, I'm here to show you how to tear down the walls between leaders, managers, and frontline workers and implement a strategy whereby workers thrive and your business succeeds. I will highlight companies across healthcare, transportation, tech, manufacturing, and financial services that are choosing a different strategy, a new playbook. In contrast with the Zero-Sum workplace, these companies
* position a purpose greater than profits front and center of the organization's raison d'être (for a medical device company, the purpose can be innovation to improve quality of life for people with disabilities; for a toy manufacturer, purpose can be bringing joy to young and old);
* prioritize all employees' well-being;
* embrace and celebrate diversity and inclusion;
* build a community that values the unique contributions and perspectives of every individual;
* foster continuous learning and development;
* manage human resources strategically; and
* regularly communicate progress at all levels to ensure transparency and buy-in.
THE MAKING OF A ROAD MAP: FROM WORKER SKILLS TO WORKER WELL-BEING
Here's where I want you to know exactly (but briefly) how the Win-Win workplace strategy developed, so that you can feel confident it's deeply rooted in real data. My research began in 2018 at New Profit, a national nonprofit with a twenty-year history of investing in entrepreneurs and organizations committed to breaking down barriers between people and their opportunity. Its Future of Work Grand Challenge aimed to prepare more than 10 million low-wage workers for career success by 2025. With a multimillion-dollar purse, New Profit's idea was to give a "moon-shot" prize to innovators who were developing products and services to help workers gain the tech skills that would be in demand in the future—such as cloud computing, cybersecurity, and climate mitigation. My job was to conduct a qualitative analysis of the 1,200-plus organizations that applied for the prize. To do this, I collected the details of their training ideas and solutions, as well as the demographics of their leadership and self-reported human capital. We used the same metrics to document the progress of New Profit's ultimate investments in prizewinners.
My New Profit colleagues and I went into this thinking that skills were the answer—that what the future workplace needed were investments 'now' in technological solutions for giving low-wage workers the skills they would need to succeed moving forward. We conducted in-depth interviews with over a hundred corporate executives across multiple sectors and industries.
These included oil and gas extraction, and the manufacturing of cars, machinery, electronics, and food products. Our interviews also went deep into service industries, including transportation, warehousing, finance, insurance, information technology, communication, education, healthcare, hospitality, and professional and business services (consulting). From these same industries, we interviewed 80 employers and 180 workers.
