Employee perks, including paid time off and year-end bonuses, typically follow a predictable model: “The higher up you are, the more you get,” says Agata Zasada, senior vice president of people and culture at earned wage access platform provider ZayZoon. It’s a strategy, she says, that is both “outdated” and detrimental to how frontline employees perceive the workplace culture.

“Tenure, title and perceived value to the organization often dictate who reaps the best rewards,” says Zasada. “But it too often overlooks frontline employees who are closest to customers and clients.”

When such employees lack autonomy and effective recognition, she says, it can have a bottom-line impact on the organization.

“Frontline employees deserve more tangible rewards like time off or bonus pay,” she says. “It’s time to destroy the traditional and redesign the workplace culture.”

Leveraging L&D to improve workplace culture

According to Zasada, a workplace culture that empowers employees recognizes that they can and should be the drivers of their own growth. But HR leaders historically have been the gatekeepers to employee growth, she says. HR teams and managers create pre-determined career paths and learning courses for employees, and if they want to stray from those opportunities, they have to come to HR for approval.

“But learning and development aren’t linear,” she says. “True growth happens when employees take charge of their growth while being supported by their organization.”

Through meaningful one-on-ones, for example, leaders can uncover what employees want to learn, what they need to get there and what outcomes they are looking for. From there, she says, an organization can determine what roads and resources best resonate with employees.

“Although traditional career-planning artifacts are a great place to start, people leaders should be facilitators of growth, helping employees make informed decisions on their development while creating tailored learning paths on a person-by-person basis,” she says. In her view, whether it’s hands-on projects or mentorship opportunities, employees need to be in the driver’s seat.

Rewards and recognition can play a key role in transforming L&D.

“HR can make learning and development more impactful and engaging for all employees,” she says. “By democratizing rewards from HR or top leaders down to frontline managers, you can build a culture of everyday impact and cultivate performance daily versus the traditional methods.”

Performance management: a collective approach

This transformation is key in today’s environment. Gen Z and millennials, Zasada notes, often aren’t chasing titles or rushing to move up the corporate ladder like generations before them. Instead, they’re looking for organizations that can provide flexibility, purpose and agency.

“HR teams need to rethink how we distribute rewards across an organization,” she says, prioritizing “autonomy, flexibility and wellbeing for the employees who are moving the needle day-to-day, and not just the C-suite.”

Through a performance management lens, such an approach focuses on department accomplishments more than individual performance reviews, which she says are outdated and lack a holistic view of team success.

“No one works on an island in the workplace,” she says, and managers and HR shouldn’t evaluate them as such. Instead of focusing on individual key performance indicators or isolated goals, HR leaders should align an entire team or department around a collective outcome that supports an organization’s purpose or mission.

“When you shift reviews toward collective team goals and mission,” Zasada says, it empowers employees to “collaborate more closely, enhance team cohesion and share accountability for both team failure and success.”

In that way, employees will gain a clearer idea of how their contributions are driving their team or department’s success and how they are supporting broader business objectives.

“If everyone knows what the one priority is,” she says, “it helps make it clear the project or action an employee should take.”

Empowering growth through purpose

As employees increasingly strive for purpose—both personally and professionally—Zasada recommends HR be more proactive in helping them see their impact. For instance, monthly “purpose alignment workshops” can give employees a better understanding of, and control over, how their contributions align with the company’s direction.

At ZayZoon, leaders host daily stand-ups for all employees, during which they share team updates, company announcements and employee shout-outs, all of which “drive back to our core values,” Zasada says.

Letting employees take a more active role in their personal growth and that of the company, she adds, isn’t just a matter of “revising KPIs or metrics.”

“It’s a chance to realign an entire organization with purpose regularly, through a clear and collective mission,” she concludes.