Designing Your Own Workforce of One: Cultivating a Customized Employment Experience in Your Organization

By: David Y. Smith and Susan Cantrell

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Synopsis: Companies have excelled by treating customers as "markets of one," offering them personalized buying experiences. But in managing their own workers, most firms still use one-size-fits-all HR practices. A better approach, according to talent management experts Susan Cantrell and David Smith, is to treat each employee as a "workforce of one." In this chapter they help you determine your own unique path toward managing your workforce as a workforce of one by choosing which of four customization approaches-workforce segmentation, modular choices, broad and simple rules, or employee-defined personalization-will work best in your organization, based on your specific business needs and types of employees. The chapter concludes with an inside view of how four leading companies-Best Buy, Procter & Gamble, Men's Wearhouse, and the Royal Bank of Scotland-chose the customization approaches that best suited their organizations. An easy-to-take quiz will help you do the same. This chapter was originally published as Chapter 6 of "Workforce of One: Revolutionizing Talent Management Through Customization."