Magnets for Talent
27 Feb, 2013
By Charlie Grantham and Norma Owen
Place is important for both communities and companies.
It is in the best interest of both communities and companies to consider the quality of physical place in their strategic decision-making processes. For communities, it is how to attract and retain key wealth creating talent. For companies, it is how to gain competitive advantage in making locational decisions.
“Place” is the experience of a physical environment. Think of a trip to Disneyland. Wow, what an experience — especially if you are a kid. It works for adults also. It’s the social architecture that draws us toward it. That’s why some folks love to travel — it’s about the experience of place. And place is becoming a powerful force for people making their own personal location decision. Rebecca Ryan, founder of Next Generation Consulting, and one of our favorite futurists and experts on worker psychology, says:
“There are many social and economic advantages of great places. But one of the most important may be this: where we live impacts our happiness. Your city, with its people and smells and nuances, grounds us in a solid physicality. We are our cities. And our cities are us.”
Place gives meaning to people, it gives them identity. People are proud of the place they live. Talk to someone from Texas or New York City, they will tell you about place. People are attracted to places with a positive meaning.
But let’s get down out of the clouds and see what this means for communities who want good people to live there and companies who want good people for employees.
Alternatives and Autonomy
The challenge facing every community and region today is how to adapt to the new global economy that depends on knowledge, creativity and innovation. It is becoming increasingly clear that the key to a thriving innovation-based economy is talent – knowledge workers and professionals. The emerging economic development paradigm focuses on making a region attractive to knowledge workers, in the well-founded belief that an area that attracts talented people will generate enough jobs to keep them there – and will develop a strong regional economy based on their wants and needs. 1
We are convinced that you can have all the roads, schools, airports, business services, Internet access, and hospitals you want; but if you don’t have a meaningful sense of community, you won’t see much in-migration.
But the larger question remains: what attracts these people to specific geographical areas? What causes them to move from their hometown, from a college town, or from their most recent residence to another area to live? What kinds of services, programs, and institutions make an area attractive to this key talent?
Our strong belief is that first and foremost knowledge workers value self-control and autonomy. And they view their careers and their personal life as something they want to plan and take care of on their own. Having the opportunity to choose among alternatives is thus a key component of what knowledge workers are looking for. But self-control and choice by themselves are not enough; knowledge workers, and especially talented millennials, also want to be part of strong communities that meet their other personal interests and needs — in other words a nice place to live and raise a family.
If, as we suspect, these wants and needs become the central features of an area that drives economic development, then cities and neighborhoods must consider carefully what attributes are most attractive in their planning and development programs. The city of Houston agrees and to show how serious they are about quality of place metrics, the Center for Houston’s Future publishes an annual Community Indicator Report. Without those attractors, the talent won’t come; and, as the economy becomes ever more dependent on innovation and ever more location-independent, regions that are less attractive will wither, and, in many cases, die.
The short answer to the question of attraction is sense of place. It is, frankly, about the psychology of the region. We are convinced that you can have all the roads, schools, airports, business services, Internet access, and hospitals you want; but if you don’t have a meaningful sense of community, you won’t see much in-migration. In a recent Money Crashers.com article, David Quilty advises talent to look at culture, safety, climate and environment as a few of the top “Where Should I Live?:14 Important Factors When Deciding the Place to Live.” Our contention is that these resources are just the price of entry. The more important question is what it takes for a community to be head-and-shoulders above average in attracting and retaining talent.
What’s a Community to Do?
The short answer is to spend as much time, attention and resources in developing social infrastructure or place. Specifically, work on these six things:
- Social and ethnic variety: the coolness factor
- Performing arts and historic preservation
- Civic engagement of a diversity of interests
- Social action programs
- Recreational variety
- Number of faith-based organizations
Besides having these general community development principles as a strategic planning guide, communities need to conduct periodic community health checks against these criteria. Over time, community leaders can see a correlation between economic and social health, which will give the return on investment metric voters will demand.
Right now, we are working with a handful of communities seeking to increase their sense of felt place. Their reason is driven by the increasing body of evidence that place matters and for the other drivers we outlined. The exciting thing is that these companies are treating the quality of place approach and their programs as something to be kept close to the vest — because they see competitive advantage.
What’s a Company to Do?
Again the short answer is to develop a plan for strategic location decision making that takes into account a location’s measurable sense of place. Just as a company does its due diligence around demographics, tax policies and real estate value analysis, including these social factors in the process is a great start.
We are proponents of the balanced scorecard approach in which these place factors are just another variable to be considered. The difficulty; however, is that there is no uniformity across communities for developing these indices. So, it will be incumbent upon companies to develop their own expertise in this area.
There is a plethora of data and secondary data available for comparative analysis, including www.policymap.com/, and www.census.gov/acs/www/. But, the issues are: what are the right indicators; and how reliable are they? Surely, a firm ready to make a long-term, multimillion-dollar decision can find the resources to do it right. Would you want to run a marathon without a physical checkup first? Thought so.
Lastly, a company can become proactive. When you get down to a short list of potentials, go out there and negotiate. Ask the mayor what he or she is doing (or will do) to encourage civic engagement, for example. We believe you will be surprised at the reaction you will get.
Right now, we are working with a handful of communities seeking to increase their sense of felt place. Their reason is driven by the increasing body of evidence that place matters and for the other drivers we outlined. The exciting thing is that these companies are treating the quality of place approach and their programs as something to be kept close to the vest — because they see competitive advantage.
Bottom Line
Talent is the next wave of competitive advantage for business — especially those involved in the technology, health care, education and environmental industries. Talent votes with its feet. It migrates to areas with high attractability. Chief among those factors is place.
Communities that want to be leaders, and wealth creators, need to focus on a few key areas, which define a sense and experience of place. Companies that want to tap into this talent market and reap a competitive advantage need to use these criteria in the strategic locational decision- making process.
These so-called “soft” metrics can be measured in a valid and reliable way. Periodic measurement and correlation with standard economic development indices can produce a return on investment analysis which both parties can use for assessing business and community performance. This builds a basis for collaborative planning and decision making.
Charlie Grantham and Norma Owen are part of the initiative, the FutureWork>ing<TOGETHER, www.futureworkingtogether.com. This short article is the byproduct of a much larger body of work. For details, email Grantham at cegrantham@gmail.com or Owen at normaowen@gmail.com. Also visit www.comm-design.net.
End Note
1.See “Market Segmentation and Development for Remote Work Centers” by James Ware and Charles Grantham, WIRED Working Paper, January, 2007, for a broader discussion of this new economic development paradigm.
Illustration by adamr at Free Digital Photos.net
