First Choice Workplaces
What if I told you that right now, half of your team are considering leaving, only 1 in 5 are actively engaged. Furthermore, half of your team feel less connected since Covid-19 began.
Achievers recently released their 4th annual 2020 Employee Engagement and Retention Report, which surveyed 2,000 employed adults across the U.S. and Canada. And they found that what employees were really feeling and thinking could be best summed up in three words…
Culture, Communication and Connection. I believe these are the catalyst for helping us achieve a very different outcome! Let me share with you why.
Let’s talk about a Culture of recognition.
Creating a culture of recognition has never been more important as we come out of one of the most emotional, and physically dividing seasons we have ever experienced. Twenty percent of employees reported that feeling underappreciated for their contributions was hindering their engagement at work, and 74 percent wish they received more recognition at work. In addition, more than three-quarters (80 percent) of employees also felt a strong recognition culture makes a company attractive to work for.
The key to a culture of recognition is to be fully engaged in the 3 spaces that every organization occupies and building a mechanism to celebrate our wins.
The 3 Spaces
First is the Transactional space which encompasses what we do and how we do it. This space traditionally drives recognition through things like our Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and is connected to our missional goals.
For more employee centric organizations, the Relational space also drives recognition. This space is the home of who we are and why we matter. This space would be measured by something we call, Key Success Indicators (KSI’s) and is connected to our vision and values.
The 3rd space, the Creative space, is the home of innovation, empowerment and engagement. This space is activated when the Transactional and Relational space work well together.
For First Choice Workplaces the Creative space of organizations will be much more front and center and that is exactly where we want it. The season of constantly pushing our employees for more and more is past. Now it is about being intentional with setting them up for success.
At Capstone Coaching we use a number of different tools and frameworks to help facilitate the curation and engagement of these 3 spaces for leaders and their teams.
So we have looked at Culture. Now, let’s talk about Intentional and Open Communication.
To facilitate and successfully achieve a First Choice Workplace, the importance of more transparent and open communication is critical. It must be driven by a genuine desire to solicit, dissect and implement feedback from every team member. It will not be a one-and-done process that often happens in highly transactional organizations.
It will become a communication culture where people own and feel valued and heard through it. In other words, it will respond to both the transactional and relational space of the organization and set the creative space up for success!
In terms of emotional intelligence, it will become even more important to raise the level of every team member’s self and team awareness. One of the great benefits of a highly engaged Creative space is the arrival of great ideas that otherwise might never be tabled. The Creative space helps facilitate healthy conflict, where we can passionately disagree without taking it personally, and remain committed and empowered.
At Capstone Coaching we employ many communication tools such as Patrick Lencioni’s 5 Behaviours of a Cohesive Team and our Mastery Workshop Series.
Finally, let’s unpack Connection by Design and Passion
For many organizations, the rise of remote workplaces and virtual meetings will continue. We know from our PeopleFIRST program that people are emotionally and digitally fatigued. Some of the symptoms such as feeling less patient, more stressed, less competent and more disconnected will need to be addressed to establish a more permanent connecting platform. This platform needs to define things like a “home office” and a “workday” to protect team members from burnout and disengagement.
Remember for most of us, we “jury-rigged” (or “MacGyvered” if you are old enough!) a process to deal with the immediate realities of Covid-19 and modified it as the circumstances dictated. It is time to build our virtual platform on a solid foundation and holistically define the remote operating practices that include prioritizing connection with our remote workers.
Our choices reveal what we are passionate about, and as we have navigated through this season of Covid-19 we have made choices that have perhaps increased our passion or repositioned it. In the Achievers report the top reason for people choosing to stay with an organization is work-life balance (followed by recognition!).
"While many employees have gained significant flexibility during the pandemic as a result of working from home, that flexibility doesn't mean they have a better work-life balance," said Natalie Baumgartner, chief workforce scientist at Achievers.
We need to better understand what the needs and desires are for our teams in terms of work life balance whether it be at the office or remotely. The key is curiosity without opinion, expectation or judgement that begins with me; I am curious why you are passion about…
We also need to be aware of what causes are closest to our team member’s hearts that align with our organizational values. From environmental, to social justice, to fairness, actively engaging the team in exploring our common passion will serve to empower our workplace community and help us achieve a desired First Choice Workplace.
At Capstone Coaching we use organizational process and gap analysis tools to help curate and engage connections by design and passion.
The 3 C’s to a First Choice Workplace: Culture, Communication and Connecting.
I would love your feedback and I want to give a big thank you to Achievers for investing in our workplace communities and cultures and help set us up for success!
One of my favorite questions seems very appropriate for this new First Choice Workplace season;
What’s at risk to start working on your 3 C’s? What’s at risk not to?
How can we help?
