‘Archetype’ is Greek for ‘original pattern,’ used to identify human characters in psychology. It is something fluid within a ‘container,’ which gets a definite shape and is a common method to understand things, relevant to talent intelligence and employee development planning.

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung identified 12 character archetypes that reside within a collective unconscious of humans, a form of innate human knowledge passed down from our ancestors.

Jung believed that archetypes were part of the collective unconscious that influenced individual behavior by generating images and concepts within the individual. These images and concepts served as guides influencing one’s behavior.

Each of these 12 archetypes has its own set of characteristics, values, attitudes, and behaviors.

The corporate perspective of the Jungian archetype

Each of the 12 archetypes is a powerful identity. The advertising and marketing industry has applied that concept to create brand archetypes to identify themselves in any of these 12 iconic models to breathe life into them.

Personality is universal and eternal, and they represent everyone’s fundamental needs and desires. Consumers can connect with or relate to the personality and aspirations of the brand archetype. Giving brands an identity will bring consumers close to them.

Archetypes in employee engagement

Archetypes are helpful when confronted with new and novel roles. They provide the guidelines for behavior when we are unsure and help us predict others’ behaviors.

Gaining a detailed view of employees could be a challenging exercise because of everyone’s uniqueness. With workforce planning, we cannot say that they do not come across the common archetypes in organizations.

Every company has its DNA, making it an enjoyable subject to learn and understand for HR leaders. An outsider must know that the exact role of two different companies within the same industry is very different when coming to critical skillsets.

Determining Productivity with the Employee Engagement Matrix

Managers usually oversimplify their view of employee engagement by using either personal satisfaction or employee performance as proxies for employee engagement. Contrarily, with this simplistic view, managers miss key behavioral signals about how engaged their employees are.

For instance, you may find an employee happy with their job, but this employee may not be productive. Similarly, another employee might not be effective, but they may not go above and beyond for the sake of the organization.

Managers must account for employees’ behaviors and their performance and the employees’ perceptions. Though an employee may go out of his/her way to keep your customers happy, is the employee feeling burned out?

Another employee may have a positive perception about the organization, but it may not help the organization if he/she is not giving it all. Looking at these factors will help you determine which levers to pull to ensure employee engagement.

Understanding your organization’s peer archetype will help in planning for reskilling and developing critical competencies. At Draup, we collect data, namely JDs and profiles, to model the competencies.

Here is a sample Software Engineer archetype we developed for Uber.

 

As you can see, each type of person has a different engagement archetype based on perception and behavior. Managers must understand every employees’ perception of the meaning of work to ensure engagement.

How to Engage with Employees

Having understood the employee archetypes that influence employee engagement, let us look at how you could engage with employees using AI-based talent intelligence.

Diagnose reasons for disengagement and act

Employee disengagement could stem from different causes. One could be compensation; another could be burnout; while some may not be happy with the management, some may feel inadequate career advancement opportunities.

You can find out why employees are disengaged by having them fill out a form. If employees feel overwhelmed with work, you can assign someone to assist them or transfer tasks to another qualified employee. If anyone thinks they do not see career advancement opportunities, you can discuss and develop a plan.

Care about your team

Employees have their individuality, unique interests, opinions, and attributes. Take an interest in what they do at work. Know them personally, how their weekend went, ask about their personal goals, etc.

Allow their personality to shine occasionally. This kind of interaction will help you determine which archetype employees fall into, based on which you can decide your further engagement.

Provide individual attention

When organizations are multinational, multigenerational, and multi-ethnic, employers must find what motivates all the employees individually, like who is best suited for particular positions.

Managers must understand each employees’ tendencies and use them to decide what approach to use in employee engagement activities. For example, employees who are assigned tasks they love doing will be more engaged than employees whose preferences are not considered.

Encourage professional development

When a job gets monotonous, and there is nothing that can challenge an employee, they become disengaged. When they notice colleagues growing while they not, it might feel like they are retrogressing.

More than 87% of millennials consider professional development to be crucial. People would like to work that requires them to use their minds, develop their skills, and constantly become better at their job. Several ways to improve employee engagement are

• Provide coaching,
• Encourage them to sign up for courses, and
• Strengthen employee development framework.

Review their tasks and explain the relevance of it all

How employees understand their work is a factor influencing the employee’s perception of the organization. If your employees do not know the relevance of their work, they may perceive the organization negatively or indifferently. Tell employees how their work relates to the bigger picture.

To ensure managers give employees an understanding of the relevance of their work, managers should plan for regular staff meetings to share the short-term and long-term goals, contributing to better employee engagement.

AI-based talent intelligence makes it easy.

Provide continuous feedback

Highly engaged employees were 3.3 times more likely to report that they received adequate feedback for their work than disengaged workers. It is impossible to have engaged employees without feedback. There are systems that can collect data and provide insight so that the management can provide feedback.

Draup’s talent intelligence platform analyses personality traits, employee information, technology and soft skills, engagement guidelines, and a hiring opportunity index to suggest candidates for a profile.

Its AI-powered talent intelligence platform studies the talent ecosystem at an emerging location before setting up an office. Draup can also conduct Archetype analysis on specific companies.