Time To Flourish

Leadership

Is It Time For a Culture Make-Over?

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Every organization has a culture.   Whether you have 10 employees or 10,000 employees, your organization has a culture.  Some cultures are methodically and strategically designed and maintained by the organization. Other cultures happen to the organization. The question you must ask yourself, is the culture at your organization what you want it to be?  Is it productive?  Are the employees engaged and happy?  Do employees stay? Do employees refer others to work there?

In reviewing culture surveys, a consistent theme is that executives tend to have a much higher opinion of their workplace culture in comparison to the feedback from their employees.  In other words, there tends to be a gap between how executives think their employees feel and how the employees actually feel. 

An organization’s reputation for workplace culture is usually well-known in their local community or even on a global scale.  If you asked your friends or colleagues to list companies with a toxic workplace culture and to list companies with a great culture; they would easily create that list based on either their own personal experiences or stories from others.  But what about the rest of businesses?   By definition, toxic means “containing or being poisonous material especially when capable of causing death or serious debilitation”.  While many organizations don’t necessarily have a toxic environment, they often do have much room for improvement.  They are in need of a culture make-over!

Sometimes organizations start out with a dynamic workplace culture but overtime it shifts.  When an organization goes through rapid growth in a short period of time, or experiences a change of ownership, or the founder retires; all of these types of events and others can cause the culture of a workplace to shift dramatically.  And if the culture isn’t a priority and culture isn’t part of the strategy then that shift is often for the worse.

Many organizations do a lot of things right, but they fall short on being a “best of” or top-tier company to work for because they have not made their culture a part of their strategy.   SHRM reported that approximately $223 billion has been lost by companies in the past 5 years from costs associated with employees leaving due to the workplace culture.    So, even if you don’t consider your workplace to be toxic, it’s probably worth evaluating.  If you have not conducted a comprehensive and inclusive survey of your employees in the past 12 months, then it’s time for a culture survey.  All improvements start with knowing your true baseline. 

Here are 10 signs that your organization needs a culture make-over:

  1. There is poor and/or haphazard communication.
  2. It is sometimes unclear to employees how decisions are made.
  3. There are instances of favoritism.
  4. There are instances of nepotism.
  5. Not all the bosses maintain the open-door policy.
  6. Employees feel unappreciated at times.
  7. Some of the good employees have been resigning or are job hunting.
  8. There is no clear succession planning in place.
  9. Employee professional development and career pathing is non-existent or lacking.
  10. There is high volume of gossip and drama.

If any of these resonate with you, then your organization is ready for a culture make-over. Contact Time To Flourish to learn more about how to “Makeover” your workplace culture.

Workplace Culture and Remote Workers – How To Make It Work

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Building a productive and collaborative culture is undoubtedly a difficult initiative requiring the commitment of everyone, from the very top to each branch and department.  Business owners and CEO’s acknowledge that employee engagement is crucial.  They are allocating resources to build a great workplace culture such as staff positions focused on people and culture, and talent optimization resources such as The Predictive Index.

One workplace trend that is presenting a significant challenge is the move towards greater numbers of employees working remotely.  There is great value in this trend including increased productivity, employee satisfaction levels and decrease of fixed real estate costs.  In fact, one study found that 73% of all departments will have remote workers by 2028 (Upwork, 2018).  So, the obvious question is, how do you build a productive workplace culture when you are managing employees who telecommute? 

Here are a few recommendations for building a great workplace culture for your remote teams.

  • Review/create Organizational Values:  If your organization has not selected a set of values that guide direction and mold workplace culture, then, make it a priority to create them.  If possible, involve all your employees in the process of selecting your values which will result in a sense of ownership across the organization.  This process will boost your culture in a positive way.  If you already have organizational core values, ensure that they are integrated and evident in the day-to-day business. 
  • Communicate culture:  Workplace culture is kept alive by including it in our conversation and our actions.  The challenge is to create a virtual world reflect the same values that exist in the brick and mortar world.
    • Incorporate workplace culture into each meeting by integrating core value and mission into the meeting objectives.
    • Ensure that the values and mission are evident and visual.  (incorporate them into presentation slides, emails, intranet portals, internal forms, etc.)
    • Ensure that remote workers are subject to the same culture as if they worked onsite.  For example, if your organization has an open-door culture at all levels, create a virtual open-door policy providing the same access and transparency.  If the culture is high energy and fun, then plan for ways to extend this to all remote workers.  For example, a virtual “State of the Company Pep Rally”, or maybe a virtual “Let’s go to the Movies” afternoon.
  • It’s crucial to foster a team environment from Day 1
    • Introduce new team members using video conferencing.  Have your team introduce themselves and mix it up sharing fun facts.
    • Devise a system where new team members are required to interact with other team members early on (mentor system, committee contribution, etc.)
    • Encourage sharing of best practices among the team to draw new team members into the fold.
    • As the leader, learn about your team members, strengths, areas for development, preferences, etc. 
  • Communication:  The challenge of managing remote workers is the tendency to have one-way communication.  Encourage open and multi-direction communication to eliminate feelings of isolation and separation.  Isolation and disconnection will lead to disengagement.
    • Establish a very specific system of communication
      • One-on-one calls/meetings
      • Group/team meetings
      • Weekly status updates
    • Schedule regular “all staff chats” using video conferencing as frequently as possible
    • Employ chat tools such as “Slack” to encourage communication and exchange of ideas
    • Keep it fun – for example, trivia question of the week, predictions of sports outcomes, discuss cliffhangers on commonly watched TV programs, etc.
  • Employ solid management skills
    • Get to know each member of your team
    • Quickly identify atypical behavior to catch potential issues
    • Learn individual strengths to create best partnerships/groupings within the team
    • Be cognizant of the need to vary management styles when working with a multi-generational workforce.  Ensure that you are sensitive to their “comfort zone” and work to draw everyone into the same space for highest productivity.

Global teams across multiple time zones experience similar challenges and certainly could benefit by similar strategies to open two-way communication.  Focusing on the workplace environment that you build for your remote employees will increase the advantages of a remote workforce.  The alternative will create issues which will negatively impact your growth and financial success.

Time To Flourish Becomes Newest Certified Partner of The Predictive Index

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Time To Flourish Uses The Predictive Index to Help Clients Maximize Workforce Productivity

Time To Flourish is now a Certified Partner of The Predictive Index (PI). Time To Flourish will provide talent optimization services with PI’s science-based methodologies to empower clients to align their people strategy with their business strategy to achieve optimal business results.

Offering over 35 years of collective management experience, Sandi Rapp and Maria Veglia help businesses accurately define the true competencies needed for specific positions. With data from PI, the Time To Flourish team can help businesses greatly improve their success in hiring top talent, designing winning teams, managing change, influencing productivity, and ultimately driving growth to achieve their business objectives.

Time To Flourish is a women-owned business offering consulting and performance improvement services. We partner with our clients to develop significant and lasting solutions to impact financial performance, employee retention and engagement. These custom solutions are developed in partnership with our clients and are based on an extensive, multi-faceted assessment. Schedule an appointment to learn more here.

About The Predictive Index

The Predictive Index (PI) is an award-winning talent optimization platform that aligns business strategy with people strategy for optimal business results. Sixty years of proven science, software, and a robust curriculum of insightful management workshops make PI the solution for any company looking to design great teams and culture, make objective hiring decisions, and inspire greatness in their people anywhere in the world. More than 8,000 clients and 150+ partners use PI—including Nissan, Citizens Bank, DocuSign, Subway, 47 Brand, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Omni Hotels—across 140+ countries. Learn more at https://www.predictiveindex.com/.

Time To Flourish will work with clients to uncover the root cause of business challenges and to implement the data-driven tools provided by The Predictive Index to boost employee engagement, workplace culture and financial performance.

To learn more about our services, email us at Contact@TimeToFlourish.net .

How strong is your EXTERNAL Team?!

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One of my family members was recently diagnosed with an aggressive cancer and we were discussing how important it is for her to lean on her tribe.  Tragedy can show you there are people in your corner that you never might have previously realized…unfortunately the opposite is also true.  You can find out that someone you thought was a part of your inner support circle, wasn’t really up for that role.  

Conversations like this have a tendency of causing you to reflect on many things in your own life. After many other personal and professional reflections, this conversation eventually had me thinking about the many external team members that have supported organizations that I have been a part of in my past. It also made me think about just how valuable it is to build a strong external team.  Successful leaders spend a substantial amount of their time building and maintain high performing teams, internal teams. People are the most important asset any organization can have so it only makes sense that a significant amount of time is invested in them.   But what about the amount of time invested in building your external team?  Do leaders spend the appropriate amount of time vetting and maintaining a high performing external team?  By external team, I mean the professionals that support your organization through services, software and products but are not employed by the organization.

Your corporate attorney, auditor and/or CPA, your employment attorney, marketing agency, recruiting agency, insurance broker, payroll company, IT solutions, business consultants, outside trainers, the list could go on depending on the size, scope and industry of your organization.  The key is remembering that all of the people that service or support your organization are also a part of your team and require management and leadership.

When I was brought into one organization as the CEO, they were in the middle of a legal battle that was portrayed to be insignificant in both financial consequence and the amount of time to be invested to the matter.  I quickly found out both of these things were not exactly accurate.  More importantly I also learned that the organization was using an attorney because that attorney was “who they always used”.  The unfortunate truth is that the size and scope of the matter had outgrown the expertise of this attorney.  That error cost the organization considerably.  I am not implying that a member of your external team who has always been good to you can’t continue to be a solid member of your team.  I am saying that you need to continually invest the time to reassess your external team to ensure that the level of service/products you needed yesterday versus what you need today and will need in the future will continue to be met by your external team members. 

A great external team can be a true difference maker for your organization.  The right IT solutions can ease frustrations, increase efficiencies and even contribute to greater work-life balance for your employees.   A professional recruiting agency can reduce your stress by having candidates discreetly lined up and ready to meet with you when you need to make that important staffing decision.  Your corporate attorney, regulatory attorney and cloud-based IT solutions could be the concoction that finally helps you sleep better at night knowing you have all the proper regulatory and safety precautions to protect your organization.  And if you live in any of the states (like NJ) with ever-changing employment laws, your labor attorney might quickly be a person you keep on speed-dial!

Your external team is an extension of your organization.  Make sure that team is properly staffed with all the right players!