Transcriber: Yulia Kallistratova Reviewer: Denise RQ
Evan Walden: My name is Evan Walden. This is Nathaniel Koloc.
We're here today to tell you
why we believe the best way to change the world
is for you to come alive in your work.
Over the next eight minutes we're going to tell you
why we believe this to be true, and what we're doing about it.
In 2009, when I graduated from the University of Vermont,
I needed a job.
Unemployment was looming,
my friends were starting to move back in with their parents,
and I decided that was not going to be me.
So I started relentlessly networking, and eventually landed a job
with a massive corporation selling chemicals.
The job looked awesome on paper:
I had the biggest salary of my life, got to drive a company car,
and best of all -- they offered to move me
out to Southern California to live on the beach,
which is something that I had always dreamed of.
So I took the job.
But after about a year, something started to feel off.
I promised myself I was going to live my values through my work,
and I was not passionate about the work that I was doing.
So as any people person tends to do when they start feeling insecure,
I picked up my phone, and I called all of my friends.
And I was surprised to find that a lot of them
felt the same way as I did.
They told me storied about being in coffee-shops, and bars,
and dinner parties on nights and weekends, talking and debating about how to solve
some of the world's most urgent pressing issues.
Issues like fixing the education system in the US,
issues like reversing global climate change
or eradicating global poverty.
But on Monday morning,
when they woke up to their alarm clocks at 7:30,
they went back to their jobs.
They've split themselves into two desperate halves,
and it was starting to lead to a deep feeling of self-betrayal.
One of the first people I called was actually Nat.
Nat and I've been best friends since college, and I figured,
he's a pretty smart guy, he probably knows what to do.
I think we were both kind of shocked to find
that although our backgrounds were very different,
we ended up in a similar place.
Nathaniel Koloc: When I was in college, I studied global human impact,
the big issues, the serious challenges that we face:
a changing climate, crushing poverty, ecosystems in decline, among others.
When I graduated, I was determined to find a job that would let me actually
move the needle on some of these issues and make a decent living.
But that proved pretty difficult to find.
My search for that took me to 11 different companies in the first year:
I did everything from ecotourism and outdoor education,
to installing rain barrels and doing home energy audits, I did everything.
And somehow, none of those roles felt like they had the right combination,
right balance of true impact, income, and professional development.
So in 2010, I went to Sweden for graduate school
to study Strategic Sustainable Development
under some of the world's leading experts in systems change.
The curriculum revolved around
how companies can move towards sustainability
in a way that was competitive and profitable.
And while I was there, doing these case studies and interviewing CEOs,
I had this realization that when companies hire smart people
with the right backgrounds, whose values are aligned with their purpose,
they don't have to hire consultants to tell them how to increase their impact,
their employees can figure out, they can figure how to become more sustainable.
It was at that moment that I started to see
the talent market itself as a huge lever for impact.
That was actually right around the time I got that phone call from Evan,
so we started doing some research into talent and hiring.
And what we found was somewhat surprising.
I'm going to share some information so you can have a background
about what hiring managers are facing now and in the coming years.
Let's start with this.
Last year, 50% of companies had trouble filling mission critical roles.
That means one out of two companies
couldn't find the right person at the right time for a key position.
Keep that in mind.
Let's talk about demographics.
There are 80 million baby boomers in the United States.
This is the generation that's going to be retiring in the next 10 to 20 years.
There are only 46 million
members of Generation X, the generation below them.
And Generation X already makes up 50% of the working population.
There are also 80 million Millennials
or Generation Y, that's members of our generation.
As soon as you see these numbers, it becomes immediately evident
that there aren't enough members of Generation X
to completely replace the retiring baby boomers,
meaning companies are going to have to rely on Millennials to bridge the gap.
But here's the thing:
of Millennials, only one out of five plan to stay with their current employer
longer than 18 months.
(Laughter)
They see work, and life, and careers much differently.
This presents a pretty significant and costly challenge to businesses
who are trying to understand what it means for the Millennials to be loyal to them.
And it's not just the Millennials.
Statistically speaking, one out of three of you in this room
is planning to leave your job in the next 12 months.
(Laughter)
And presumably, it's because on some level, you are not happy with it.
Well, why should companies care
if their employees are really happy and fulfilled?
Because happy people are productive employees.
And productive employees make profitable companies,
among other things, they actually come along with all sorts of benefits.
So, let's review: the world we live in today.
Many people, perhaps most,
still have a '9-to-5' self and a 'nights-and-weekends' self,
because the work that they do on a daily basis
is not deeply, soulfully fulfilling to them.
And for companies, three things are clear.
One: they haven't figured out a reliable way
to find the right person at the right time.
Two: they are going to have to rely on Millennials,
even though they're having some trouble understanding them.
(Laughter)
And three: there is immense strategic value in understanding
how to deeply fulfill your employees,
to unleash them in their roles, and keep them there.
EW: So these learnings and realizations
led Nat and I to build a company called ReWork.
At ReWork we build a community of people who lead with their values in their work,
and also happen to be pretty good at what they do.
We help these people by introducing them to hiring managers of companies
who are making a social or an environmental impact.
Our community is meant for people from many different backgrounds.
They come from cities and communities all across the United States,
they work for huge corporations, small non-profits, and prominent NGOs.
And they have attended and graduated
from universities, top universities, and community colleges.
And they all have one thing in common: they know what it is that they care about.
And they don't want to compromise that in their work.
When we were invited to come to talk to you here today,
we decided to poll our community and ask them some questions,
so we could share some insights with you.
This is what we found.
Of all the people who were currently in our talent pool who are employed,
70% of them told us they are looking to quit their jobs in the next six months,
assuming they can find the right opportunity.
And of those people who are looking to leave,
half of them shared with us that they haven't told their managers.
This is a pretty big problem
for the companies they're working for, isn't it?
Unexpected turnover can cost up to 200% of a position salary,
when you start to think about things like training, and benefits,
and the time that it takes to actually source that new role.
But here's the kicker:
of all those people who told us they wanted to leave their companies,
75% of them said that they would stay
with the organization they are currently working for
if they thought that organization was making a deep commitment
to social or environmental impact,
and that they were invited to make a meaningful contribution.
That's huge.
And when you start comparing those numbers to the stats that now we're sharing,
it really paints a picture
for what employee retainment and engagement is going to look like
as we move forward.
When people apply to our talent pool,
we ask them to write a brief personal narrative
telling us a little bit more about where they've come from,
where they want to go, and how they think we can help them.
I want to share with you guys some quotes from those narratives.
For some people, we are the first ones they've told about this deep desire
to make a transition in the work that they do.
For other people, they tell us,
they've been thinking about this stuff for a long time,
they know the issues,
and they are looking for a channel for new opportunities
to continue living their values through their work.
And for others still, they see us as a way to push back
against the pressure they face every single day to settle in their work.
They see this as the community of like-minded individuals,
and they're excited to be a part of it.
NK: As we look at these trends in talent desire,
we can see mirroring trends in business strategy.
Leaders of business today are coming to understand
that we live at a time of great transition.
The global economy is currently destroying our planet's ecological systems
and perpetuating social inequalities around the world.
It is not sustainable.
Luckily, we're now seeing a sizable shift in consumer demand
towards companies, products, and services
that are unambiguously making the world a better place
by addressing those global challenges that we've been mentioning.
Social enterprise and triple bottom line business is booming.
Many of those same leaders believe,
as do we, that in this transition lies an enormous business opportunity.
And they know that in order to take advantage of it,
they'll need the best and brightest of all generations working for them.
We believe that our data show that in order to achieve that,
they are going to need to create work environments
that allow people to take their whole selves to work, every day.
But that's not all.
This isn't just about opportunity for businesses.
We believe there's something much bigger going on.
We see the early stages of a movement building.
This movement is already composed of thousands of people
with the sharpest minds and the gentlest hearts,
refusing to settle for a world that doesn't meet their vision
of true justice, health, and prosperity.
And in that refusal to settle lies a commitment to themselves
to use their skills and strengths
to actively create the world that they want to live in.
We believe that that collective commitment is giving rise to a new kind of employee:
immensely talented but driven by purpose and fulfillment.
It'll be those companies that choose to understand
the values and priorities of this movement
who will truly be able to harness the power of the purpose-driven workforce.
Dan Pallotta, who is an expert in social innovation, says that,
"Our greatest fear is that we [will] die with the music still inside us."
We believe that it takes fulfilling work on a daily basis
to truly let that music out.
We believe that that is what it takes to meet your full potential,
that is what it takes to build a legacy,
that is what it takes to feel like you can die
feeling like you've done what you were put on this planet to do.
So, realize this is your life. This is your choice.
Don't settle.
(Applause)