I recently learned of a book published a few years ago named The Alliance: Managing Talent In The Networked Age, written by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh.
The book details a new framework for employee-employer relationships; they suggest that an adjusting of the ‘compact’ we make with each other can produce more trust and more results. Intrigued, I did some research…
Source Material
I found a number of information-rich resources created by the team behind the book, enough to get a good sense of the what they are pitching I think. Here’s a pretty long article written in 2013, for the Harvard Business Review, named Tours of Duty: The New Employer-Employee Compact.
I also found this excellent slideshare made by Reid Hoffman in 2014 named The Alliance: A Visual Summary. Though this doesn’t cover everything the book does, it does seem like it is ‘the core’ of the theory.
Main Points
This idea was developed out of the recognition that there is an engagement problem in the modern workplace, that employees are asked to add value to the company ‘indefinitely’, with no little to no attention paid to the worker’s long-term employability. There use to be a long-term alignment of interests between employers & employees, but that was back when people used to work for one company their whole lives. Few people have that expectation anymore. Right now there is open dishonesty between employer and employees:
Companies expect employee loyalty WITHOUT committing job security or professional development.
Employees say they are loyal but LEAVE the moment a better opportunity comes.
They contend that because of this dishonesty, there are losses to both sides.
Employers continually lose valuable people.
Employees fail to fully invest in their current job because they’re scanning the marketplace for new opportunities.
They argue that there needs to be a more open discussion about terms of employment, goals, and long-term career path planning, and that by having a more formal compact, an ‘alliance’, between employee and employer we can increase trust on both sides of the table.
This more formal arrangement is called a ‘tour of duty’ and Reid Hoffman seems to believe that ALL EMPLOYEES at a company should be on a tour of duty. There are a couple different types of tours of duty: 1) Rotational, 2) Transformational, and 3) Foundational.
They argue that creating these short-term alliances increases trust, incentivizing the employee to produce real tangible results during their ‘tours’ and then afterwards they serve as an important resource and advocate for the firm.
I thought that part very interesting; the system really puts a premium on networking, and this is one example: the alumni network. I had never really given it much thought; but like a university alumni network – there is a ton of value in maintaining connections. Former employees can serve as brand ambassadors and advocates, or may even find their way back to the firm.
They say not to be afraid of entrepreneurial employees, because their innovation/forward-thinking is such an asset. Part of the beauty of the ‘tour of duty’ way of thinking is openness, and the understanding, that people are mobile in their job prospects — referencing a study of 20,000 workers that discovered that out of the ‘high potentials’ about 1 in 4 were planning on switching jobs in the next year. A shocking reality.
Some of the complaints I’ve Heard
1) Only applicable in specific niche industries
It relies on a highly fluid employment environment.
It relies on the jobs lending itself to well-defined benchmarks like in tech – a ‘new product launch’.
My reactions
Do all industries not suffer from the misalignment of employee & employer long-term interests?
Technically, shouldn’t the lack of fluidity make it more of an ’employers market’? Don’t all employees deserve the opportunity to have well-defined benchmarks?
2) Too resource intensive of a process
The process of creating these personalized ‘tours of duty’ is too resource intensive. Especially because of the quasi-contract nature of these plans.
My reactions
This ‘cost’ only seems new because we have not been acknowledging the time and resources that ought to go into the professional development process, and working to improve employee engagement that way.
3) Benefits to the employee are amorphous.
The benefits to the employee are abstract. The company is supposed to make employee more valuable by making them more adaptive and skillful.
My reactions
If you can get the company to buy into the process, and actually spend time working with employees on individualized career plans based around ‘tours of duty’ then I think that’s an enormous leap forward for the employee. Not abstract if you can get company buy-in.