Managing the Millennial Mid-Career Culture Clash With Kelly Waffle

 

A mid-career culture clash is fueling employee resignations and a talent crisis. What can businesses do to improve mid-career employee retention?

Today, Hanna Hasl-Kelchner has a treasure trove of wisdom from her guest in this episode. Kelly Waffle, the Head of Digital Strategy at Hinge, shares valuable research about mid-career culture clashes. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn more.

What You’ll Discover About The Millennial Mid-Career Culture Clash:

• The two things that cause a millennial mid-career culture clash
• The biggest eye-openers of the study
• How organization size impacts millennial mid-career culture clash
• Why senior management often misses the signs of a millennial mid-career culture clash
• And MUCH more.

GUEST: Kelly Waffle

Kelly Waffle is Head of Digital Strategy at Hinge, the leading research-based branding and marketing firm for professional services. With more than 15 years of B2B and digital marketing experience, he guides clients through the complex interplay of technology, processes, research, programs, creative and analytics.

Kelly also leads the engagement efforts for the Hinge Research Institute—helping clients use research to grow and be more profitable. A thought leader in Account- Based Marketing (ABM), Kelly has been recognized by Onalytica as a Top 50 Martech Global Influencer. He has won awards for his marketing automation expertise. A prolific writer and speaker, he has tens of thousands of followers on Twitter and LinkedIn.

 

Related Resources:

https://linkedin.com/in/kellyjwaffle

https://hingemarketing.com

https://hingemarketing.com/library/article/culture-clash-the-employee-experience-problem-and-how-to-fix-it

https://hingemarketing.com/library/article/navigating-the-mid-career-talent-crisis-a-report-for-the-professional-services

If you liked this interview you might also like these Corporate Governance and Culture episodes.

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Millennial Mid-Career Culture Clash With Kelly Waffle

A mid-career culture clash is fueling employee resignations at a talent crisis according to my next guest. Maybe you’ve seen it where you work. What can businesses do to improve mid-career employee retention? Our guest has some answers for you.

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I’ve got a great guest for you. He’s Kelly Waffle, who’s the Head of Digital Strategy at Hinge, the leading research-based branding and marketing firm for professional services, where he also leads the engagement efforts for the Hinge Research Institute, helping clients use research to grow and be more profitable. He’s been recognized by Onalytica as a Top MarTech Global Influencer, and has won awards for his marketing automation expertise. It’s such a privilege and honor to have him here. Welcome, Kelly.

Thank you, Hanna. I’m looking forward to our conversation.

I am too because your organization does some impressive research. I was particularly excited to learn about two studies that you’ve released this year 2022. One about mid-career talent crisis, and the other about the culture clash between employees who are mid-career. It feels like those two are somewhat connected. I’d like to explore that with you in the time that we have now. Let’s start with who falls into that mid-career category. Can you give me some idea of demographics, age groups, psychographics? Who are these people?

The mid-career folks are those people who I would call the mid-level people. They are the ones that have been out in the marketplace for a few years now. They’re not your entry level employees. They’re not even your employees that have probably been there for 1 or 2 jobs. It’s those employees probably anywhere from 35 to 45 years of age that have got some experience. They could even be first or second line managers in your organization.

What kind of job responsibilities would they have?

That’s what’s really interesting about the studies is that we looked at almost 300 folks in these two studies, and we really focused on what you were talking about, the mid-career people, leadership, and then senior executives. What we found is that the mid-career people are those people, and I’m sure it’s true in a lot of our listeners’ organizations, these are the people that are caught in the middle. They’ve got to work up, and work with the leadership and the senior executives on strategy, implementing strategy, management, processes, things like that.

They’re also the ones that have to work downward and manage the teams. They have to motivate the people. They have to make sure that the work is getting done. They have to take those strategies and convert them into tactics. They’re working it from both ends, as well as doing their own roles and responsibilities.

That’s interesting. It sounds like they’re caught in the middle, but that’s really nothing new, Kelly. That’s the definition of mid-career. Where’s the culture clash coming up from? What’s this mid-career culture clash that you’ve discovered?

There are a couple of things that are interesting about the two research studies that we did here. The first is when you talk about the Great Resignation or The Big Quit or however you want to identify this trend that’s happening right now with talent acquisition and talent retention, most people think that it mainly affects the junior people, the entry level people, the 20-somethings. That’s not the case. Our research shows that it’s these mid-career people that are the largest group that are leaving most cultures. In fact, some of our research shows that, these people are not only disappointed, but almost half of them that we surveyed had quit their job in the past year.

What’s causing the clash? I understand that a lot of people are rethinking things, but it would seem that these are not entry level people that are like, “I have to change jobs in order to get a higher salary. This is what my generation does. We job hop and it’s perfectly acceptable. This is how I get ahead.” These are people that have proven themselves already. They have some serious responsibility. They can see that brass ring up above them. It’s not like, “I have to keep moving,” but yet they want to move. Where is the clash?

There are two things happening here, which are very interesting from our perspective. One is the clash is with the culture overall. These people, depending on how they define and interpret culture, they’re not happy with the culture. In fact, in our research, those people that are in that category, mid-career, about half of them were dissatisfied with their company culture, about 48%. Whereas if you look at like a senior executive, only 10% of the senior executives that we talked to were dissatisfied with their company culture.

Company culture can mean a lot of different things. When we surveyed these folks, surprisingly, and you touched on this earlier, it was not a competitive salary or vacation or PTO or work-life balance that was driving their culture or making them not like their culture. It was things about being comfortable sharing their thoughts with leadership, having fulfilling and engaging work, having experiences that help them grow their career, being treated with respect by peers, having transparent leadership. It’s these intangibles that make up culture in their minds, and that’s what’s driving it. Whereas most people would think, “They’re dissatisfied with their salary, or they’re not getting enough PTO.”

The other thing that I will say is one of the things that we thought was fascinating in the study was what you were talking about earlier, this culture clash. The clash comes about not just because of what I just talked about, but because most of these folks feel that senior leadership, senior executives do not understand them and are not in touch with the employees. In our study, culture came in number two. The main reason why these guys are leaving is really because they’re frustrated with their leadership and management team. Like I said, in our survey, at least a third of them had quit jobs within the last year.

 

I’m not sure if your research addressed this, but the senior leadership were mid-career at one point too. You’d think that they could identify with what these folks are going through. I can’t imagine that the folks who are mid-career haven’t tugged on the shirt sleeve and say, “Let’s talk about X, Y, Z.” It’s some of these factors that are causing dissatisfaction. Where do you think the wall is being built up and why?

I’ve gotten validation from a lot of different organizations of different sizes. For some reason, once you cross over that threshold into senior leadership, the way that you look at things happens to change. Even though they’d been in a mid-career role at one time in their life, they’ve seemed to have forgotten that. Our research shows that when we asked the different groups about how they can improve the culture. When we asked that of the mid-career folks, they came back and they were strongly for more mental health days. They wanted more the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs to help them improve the culture.

When we asked the same question to the leadership-level folks, they came back and said, “We should have more socially responsible programs, maybe some notes of gratitude, maybe a health and wellness credit that people could use.” What was really telling us when we asked the senior executives, they came back and they didn’t mention any of those things. They said, “We should be reinforcing our corporate message and our core values. If more people were on board with that, then they would buy into our culture.” It’s a complete different perspective on things than the way that the mid-career employees are looking at it.

We should be reinforcing our corporate messaging and core values. If more people were on board with that, they would buy into our culture. Share on X

If I hear you correctly, the senior folks were basically doubling down, and pushing the blame on the mid-career folks for not getting it. Does that sound?

I don’t know if I would go that far, but yeah. I think it’s heading in that direction. They don’t want to move the company line. They’re settled in the way things are. If they just went back and readdress or refresh things with their team, they feel like then they would get it.

That’s a very tactful way of putting it, Kelly. I appreciate that. Thank you. Of all the factors that were identified, if the senior leadership was really listening and wanting to make an effort to bridge the gap as opposed to putting up a toll road, what do you think would garner the most support and perhaps enthusiasm from those who are mid-career?

There are a lot of things. Some of the stuff that they came back and told us was that they wanted more recognition. Even like shout-outs or notes of gratitude, which don’t cost any money, go a long way. Just a team or individual recognition played a big role. Some of the things that I thought were really interesting were when we asked them about what services or programs would help improve a company culture, they overwhelmingly said that they would like to have more in-person work-related social events.

Over the last couple years, a lot of organizations have been switching to these virtual happy hours and things like that, but now these employees are saying, “I miss some of that comradery. I miss some of that personal interaction. I’m willing to go in person and meet up with some folks and be able to exchange information, get caught up on stuff, but do it more face-to-face.” In fact, virtual social events was at the bottom of the list. It’s a list of about 10 or 12 recommendations and virtual social events were at the bottom, while in-person events was at the top.

What else, besides in-person events, can you give us maybe 2 or 3?

I think some of the things that they were talking about like I mentioned were the shout-outs or the notes of gratitude. This is interesting because this is telling of an organization, which is around providing transparency as far as company performance metrics. Letting them know what the goals are for the company for that month or that quarter, then how did the company do against those metrics. Some organizations that I’ve talked to have become more open about that, and then there are still other organizations out there where the highest levels of management know about this, but the mid-level people and below aren’t privy to a lot of that information.

What was the biggest eyeopener in these studies? There are two of them here, and I’m not sure if it was the same a-ha moment for you when you started to see the results come in, or if there were two different things. What surprised you?

I think it was around the disconnect between the senior executives and the mid-career people. I would be thinking, like you had mentioned earlier, and a lot of folks that I’ve talked to, the senior executives should be aware of what’s happening with the mid-career folks because they’ve been in the shoes before. They talk with these people. They hear some of this stuff.

Over and over again, as I went out to validate some of this research, people would tell me stories about how their senior management was either ignorant of what was going on or they were ignoring it. That was probably the number one driver as to why these people, like you had mentioned earlier, the company has invested so much time and effort into them, giving them a lot of responsibility.

These people are the real drivers of your day-to-day business. If you don’t have this layer within your organization, your organization is doomed to failure. For that many people to be leaving, over 30% of these mid-career people are leaving every year. The thing that was most surprising to me on the one study was that not only a third of them leaving every year, but a third of them quit without even having another offer from another job. What that tells you about how frustrated they are is that they actually put in the notice and they quit without having any kind of backup program in place.

I don’t know if your study asked the question as a follow-up, but did they explain why they were willing to take that leap? Was it confidence in the job market, that right now it is really the employee’s job market in terms of supply and demand? Or is it, “I need a break, I can’t do this anymore. I’ve got to make a clean break in order to even be able to interview any place else?”

We didn’t go in depth into that, but post-survey, I did go out and talk to a number of these folks, and it was for a variety of reasons. Like you said, the market is in the employees’ favor right now, so a lot of these people are able to get similar positions at a higher compensation package. Others are able to work more from home. They don’t have to go into the office. Some of these people told me, “My organization was starting to require me to be in the office 4 to 5 days a week,” and they didn’t like that.

The key point here is that these are the mid-career people. They have enough experience under their belt now that they could decide to go out on their own start-up, their own consultation service, their own small business. A lot of these people said, “I’m going to take some time off and get my work-life balance back to the priorities that I want to do.”

Some folks told me that they just recently had some little additions to their family, so they wanted to take some time off. In the past, they really hadn’t done that, but with everything going on, they thought that this was a good time to do that, and they wouldn’t be able to do that later on. It’s for a variety of different reasons, but the concerning part is that it’s all coming to a head. You’ve got all of these people that are frustrated. It doesn’t take very much for them to suddenly one day pull the trigger and walk into their boss’ office and say, “I’m giving my two weeks’ notice.”

Did you notice a difference when it comes to organization size when trying to manage this mid-career culture clash?

That’s actually a good question. I didn’t know how this was going to play out, but employees at larger companies tend to be less satisfied with their company’s culture. I think that this is for a number of different reasons. It’s a strategy that everyone has got to go through when they’re trying to make a clear decision, “Do I go to that larger company that’s got more resources and maybe more opportunities and more benefits and things like that, but I will be a smaller fish in a bigger pond, or do I go to the smaller company where I’ve got more roles and responsibilities. I’m actually owning some of the work that I’m doing, and I can see its impact faster.” Some of these small companies, if you get in with the right culture, you are going to get the recognition and everything that you’re looking for. It is interesting though that the larger companies, right now at least, there’s a higher dissatisfaction on the culture.

Employees at larger companies tend to be less satisfied with their company's culture. Share on X

Kelly, here comes the big question. What message do you have for senior management who’s unaware or maybe is turning a blind eye to this mid-career culture clash?

I’ve been sharing this message with senior managers over the past few months that the culture clashes are real. You can no longer ignore them, and you can’t claim that you know about them. There’s enough research out there that identifies this, and you’ve got to address that, number one, or else this is just going to continue.

 

Number two, what I thought was interesting from the research was that there are ways that you can change the company culture without spending a lot of money right off the bat. When I talk to a lot of senior executives, they’re like, “We realize we have an issue with the culture, but that’s going to take us a tremendous amount of money to fix. Right now, we’re not set up to invest that kind of money and things like that.”

As I had mentioned earlier, what a lot of these mid-career folks are looking for really doesn’t cost a lot as far as hard dollars. You’re looking at things like employee recognition or shout-outs, these in-person happy hours, getting more respect from peers. Some of the folks just want a clearer path for their career. They want more transparency with their bosses and senior executives. None of these things cost any hard dollars. They’re pretty easy to implement, and that would be a good way to put a stick on the ground and see if you can do something to have an impact positively on your culture within the next six months.

There you go. Low cost, high return. Thank you so much, Kelly. This has been a great eye-opener. I appreciate all you do with your research to help businesses be more successful and profitable. Thanks so much for reading. Be sure to tell your friends about the show and leave a positive review. We’ll be back next time with another episode of Business Confidential Now. Until then, have a great day and an even better tomorrow.

 

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