Globoforce CEO On Why Grumpy Bosses Are Culture Killers

Globoforce CEO Eric Mosley has grown the company over the course of 20 years, with one simple mantra in mind: WorkHuman

“The WorkHuman movement basically recognizes that if we treat our employees as human beings and we make work more human and recognize the needs of human beings, then we will get more productivity, more energy out of those employees,” says Mosley.

It isn’t just the mantra for the cloud-based software firm out of Framingham, Mass, it’s an ideology. There are WorkHuman conferences, social media communities, and much more. It’s helped the company, whose software helps companies recognize employee performance, take advantage of a changing paradigm in corporate culture.

Mosley talked to Chief Executive about this changing culture, the end of the “grumpy boss,” and more. Below are excerpts from this conversation.

Talk to me about the changing culture in business.

There is basically an awakening in corporate America where [CEOs and executives] have realized that the old paradigm of managers being little dictators doesn’t work anymore. You have to inspire people and you have to figure out what makes a person tick… there’s a hierarchy of human needs. If you want to get to the intrinsic motivation of people, you have to satisfy these needs. And these needs revolve around things like social connections, having relationships in work. And then also positive reinforcement, feeling that the work that you do is appreciated. And it’s only when those kind of human needs are met can we really express ourselves and be creative.

“The old grumpy manager just doesn’t have the capacity to change culture in the way that an energized workforce can.”

When those needs are not met, it’s like a weight on top of people because they feel like they don’t have a social connection in the workplace, they don’t feel that if they do work will be noticed or appreciated. And when employees are in that position say, you’re basically…it’s like you put a big weight on their shoulders and they can’t get energized, they can’t get motivated, they can’t be creative. When you fulfill them in that way, so when you get to make sure they have social connections in work, when you make sure that they are recognized when they do good work, suddenly you take that weight off her shoulders and they, suddenly then you unleash creativity and energy from them.

WorkHuman is about making the workplace a more human environment. We’re basically recognizing that people have core needs and anything that strips them of those core needs is a negative for a company’s performance. Anything that basically caters to those needs is a positive. It’s really resonated, it’s taken off.

What would you say are the biggest challenges you’re facing as CEO of Globoforce?

When you’re building a company and you have a big marketplace with lots of potential customers, they’re all at different stages in their journey in the development of culture. For us, if you go back a couple of years, the concept I’m talking about like making work more human, was kind of unheard of and it was something that we have had to introduce and evangelize. As the years have gone by…that’s changed. The majority of companies we talk to, they are coming to us because they want to make work more human for their employees. But there’s still pockets of companies that are a little bit more old fashioned and afraid to give up power to their employees. That’s always a challenge, how to help those companies see that they have this dormant energy source in the company. And by letting go a little, that’s when they get the most dramatic change.

One example of that concept is crowdsourced pay. And crowdsourced pay is where basically you take a percentage of your bonus budget. In every compensation strategy, there is base pay, benefits, and bonuses. But if you take a percentage of that compensation budget and give it out to the people to give to each other, you’ve democratized pay. And that’s a very powerful concept. The more old-fashioned the company the harder it is for them to get their heads around that idea. No longer is all of their compensation and employee received dictated by our direct manager on the company.