How are you vested in the company you work for? What does that look like to you? Asking another way, how are you in service to your company? Now tell me, how is the company in service to you? What do you expect from your company? As an employer, I would ask these questions to potential employees in interviews and make note of answers and then once someone is hired, I would ask them the same questions every year and keep track of the learnings.
When we go to work for a company, the company lays out expectations they have for their employees. Why do we not ask employees what they expect from their company? It seems as if it is a leap of faith for most people to assume the company is going to provide the intangible list of things we are looking to make our life better. I am curious to know if there would be a parallel between the trajectory of the company's growth and the individuals own growth, if these questions and answers were given importance. I believe that your job is suppose to make your life better and not because of the money it pays you, but more than that, because it truly adds to your life.
If we made growth and investment more of a two way conversation of being 'in service', would employees be more vested in the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly outcome? Would we gain a greater growth by making work mean something not only to the company, but to the individual employee. We know that in the current market people are searching for work that means something to them. If one of the company's goals were to give employees equity of treatment, could you then create a culture that provides an opportunity for higher fulfillment, as individuals and a total sum?
Most people have a natural propensity towards growth and when they grow and expand, then so does the company and its culture. The growth becomes thoughtful growth. I'm betting it's the secret sauce of employment for the future. Small companies have a better chance of making this happen, but once a company gets to a certain size, they loose their familiarity to the individuals that make up a company and this task becomes to difficult. Or does it? Is it a conscious or unconscious choice by the company to not share in these alignment of goals? Would this practice mitigate burnout? Would it increase employee engagement? Could it possibily increase profitability? I once worked for a company that a senior manager announced to the entire sales team, 'work life balance does not exist and your kidding yourself if you think it does.' At that moment I realized this was perhaps not the company I wanted to work for. I wish we had discussed this during the interview process.