Guest Post by Blaire Palmer
If you’re experiencing challenges with retention and skills shortages, you’re certainly not alone. And when it comes to maintaining employee engagement, culture matters.
On Thursday 26th January we had the pleasure of hosting a dinner at The Ned in London with HR Leaders from across the public sector. During this fantastic evening we discussed leadership, company culture and adapting to change through a challenging moment in the recruitment landscape.
We were also delighted to be joined by our guest speaker, Blaire Palmer, who is an expert in organisational culture and the future of leadership. The following article on becoming a better place to work is the final in a series of posts by Blaire about how you can be the champion of values and change in your organisation!
1 What do you stand for?
The focus on company culture became de rigueur in the 1980s and 90s when companies started boasting about their Mission Statement and getting mouse mats printed up with the corporate values on for everyone to memorise.
At the time it was almost certainly a PR exercise for most organisations.
Today, however, there is a broad understanding that culture makes all the difference. In challenging times – cost of living crisis, impact of Brexit, inflation, budget cuts, the ongoing effects of the pandemic…I could go on – it is starkly clear that how people feel directly affects their work. People turn up or log in, in the morning, carrying the stresses and strains of their personal lives, the bigger national and international picture and then experience the culture created at work, and that whole thing can be the perfect storm. It is no surprise that mental health is so high on the agenda and so many people seem to be struggling.
We may not be able to change the whole world (although I know that you’d give it a go!), but we can improve the experience people have of working with us. Not only it is the right thing to do but it’s the number one way to address the challenges our organisations are facing. Whether it’s recruitment and retention, financial pressures or dealing with the knock-on effects of Brexit and the pandemic, a better culture where people can do their best work, driven by a sense of purpose, is more likely to deliver the impact out there in the community than a culture that needs to be circumnavigated to get anything done.
Know what you stand for and stand for it
Most organisational values are worded as ‘We…”. “We trust our people’, “We work as a team”, and “We respect differences”.
But what happens when you change that word to “I”? “I trust people”, “I work as a team”, “I respect differences”?
Before you can expect anyone else to live by the organisation’s values and create a healthy, safe and vibrant culture, you have to know what YOU stand for. What is your ‘Why”? What values do you believe should be upheld and how do you feel when an organisation compromises on its values or doesn’t fully embrace what they mean?
If you aren’t willing to speak up, every time (using your emotional intelligence to inform you about picking your moment and your approach), then who is? Who else has culture and values slap bang in the middle of their remit? Who else is the voice of the employee if not you?
It’s not about winning every argument, because you won’t. But if you take the opportunity to keep culture on the table through all discussions then you’re being true to what you stand for.
Creatively addressing the challenges facing us today requires you to be the guardian of the values. And that means speaking your truth, every time, big issue or small issue.
2 The art of radical empowerment
I hate to be the voice of doom but I don’t think I’m telling you anything new when I say that we live in a highly polarised society.
According to the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer, only 30% of people say that they would help a person in need if they strongly disagreed about a matter of principle. Only 20% say they would live in the same neighbourhood as that person. And only 20% say they would be willing to have that person as a coworker. The same report says that the UK is at risk of entering the ‘severely polarised’ category and is verging on what it calls ‘entrenchment’, which means “I do not feel these divisions between people can be overcome”.
It makes it even more important that ‘Trust’ is high on your priority list when you’re thinking about culture and addressing the challenges facing you.
People already distrust authority figures, they don’t trust the news or social media, they feel the divide in society, and this can create a tendency to be wary of uncertainty, distrusting of institutions and cynical about information.
When people don’t trust, it’s harder to get them on board with change. They’ve been through enough and now you are asking them to change again. And they don’t 100% believe that you know what you’re doing!
Listen so hard you might change your mind
Before trying to convince anyone to change, we have to listen to them really hard. People are always trying to do the best they can. They do what they do and think what they think for good reason. In their shoes, you would be the same.
By listening you can step into their shoes and start seeing the world through their eyes. When you do that, you can often see why they were sceptical about your plan, saw risks that you hadn’t seen and, perhaps, had a better idea than you about how to solve this particular problem. It’s not enough to listen to understand, in order to better argue your case! You have to be willing to listen so hard YOU might change your mind.
Beyond listening to radical empowerment
Even that isn’t enough though. The next step is to test the limits of your willingness to trust by giving away your power! I call it Radical Empowerment. The person who will have to implement the decision becomes the final decision maker. Your job is to support them, give them access to the information they’ll need and help them learn how to make good decisions.
Empowerment is such a brave declaration of trust that you start to prove that, at least when it comes to working in your organisation, being trustworthy and being willing to trust, despite differences of opinion, or seniority, or age, matters. People are allowed to express their view and difference is valued.
Work might be the only place they feel like this, but they take that glimmer of belief that people can be trusted and that they are worthy of trust, out into their lives. And the multiplier effect of that is incalculable.
3 Be the guinea pig
It’s easy to look around your organisation and see the most serious offenders when it comes to reluctance to change.
Typically we will talk about the wonderful 10% who embrace change and want to drive it forward. Whether that is rethinking how we attract people to work for our organisation or whether it’s shifting the culture so that people simply love working there or coming up with a clever way to manage remote teams or the new IT system which will simplify how you manage data IF people can get their head around how to use it…there will always be a few who are up for it from the start.
Then you’ve got your middle 80% who will go along with it all because things change and ‘What can you do?” but they’re not your change champions.
And then you’ve got your 10% who are rather unfairly often called the Terrorists. They aren’t up for change, they don’t think the change will work and they think they can carry on as they are because, in the end, things will go back to normal.
Managing organisational change
Firstly, I’ve never liked this way of categorising people.
It’s easy to be an enthusiast for change when that particular change isn’t a change for you. If you wanted options for remote work and then it becomes policy you haven’t had to change your mind. The organisation is changing to be more like you were already. If you designed the new IT system, using it isn’t a change for you. It’s a known quantity and you’re fully onboard with the solution that you came up with. Not so for other people.
That 10% of ‘Terrorists’ may well be the ones who can see the flaws in your plan. Maybe they agree in theory but they understand far better than your flag-waving enthusiasts what change will entail and how painful it’s going to be.
Sometimes your ‘Top 10%’ hit a wall they weren’t anticipating (that your bottom 10% saw a mile off) and the shock of what change really means lands without warning.
And secondly, why on earth would someone be willing to change if they hadn’t seen you do it first? Others may have a longer journey ahead but, if you want others to do something differently or embrace new approaches to solving problems, you have to go first.
Get uncomfortable
Ask whether you and your team are REALLY changing things. Are you REALLY pushing the creative juices? Are you REALLY holding yourself to high standards? Are you doing the things that you want others to do…REALLY?
You don’t need to be perfect
But you have to be willing to change. Unless you are you won’t have credibility. But you also won’t have a recent reminder of what change feels like, how difficult it is to do sustainably and the very human temptation to give up or dilute your resolve.
A recent reminder of this in your own life and work will help you empathise with others and move them through the stages of change with your support. Leaders look for what isn’t working as well as it could and they disrupt the status quo to make things better. And they are willing to disrupt themselves continually too in search of even better ways of doing what they do. It starts with you.
Over the last 20 years, we’ve gained a greater understanding of culture and its importance, but we don’t seem to have moved the dial when it comes to people feeling that their organisational culture is engaging or that they are valued and appreciated for what they do.
If we are trying to address retention issues, for instance, culture becomes a huge topic. People say that lack of appreciation is the number one reason they leave a job. Only 30% of people say they actually feel engaged at work. 87% of organisations say that culture and engagement are their number one challenge.
We can get distracted by ‘presenting issues’ – today’s emergency or a role that just needs filling or a saving we just need to find to balance the books – and not realise that many of these presenting issues are distilled down to one, two or three core causes. And, while some of the causes may be out of our sphere of influence, culture lies at the core of many of these challenges and is within our sphere of influence.
Developing a better place to work
A better place to work means people will speak up about issues of concern.
A better place to work means that people will feel empowered to step up and solve problems they’ve seen. The best leaders don’t necessarily inspire followership but more leadership. You want a place where people offer to take the lead regardless of their seniority.
A better place to work means your best people will find that sense of meaning and purpose we all look for from our job. They will be able to see that their decision to do this work in this sector with this organisation, driven by a desire to make a difference, has a real impact. 54% of people say they would be willing to take a pay cut to work in an organisation that shared their values. They won’t seek a higher paying more soul-destroying job somewhere else if their needs are being met with you.
And job seekers who check out what people are saying on Glassdoor and Twitter and amongst their friends will be delighted to discover that you mean what you say and that they aren’t simply leaping from the frying pan into the fire.
To keep up with changing expectations of work while, at the same time, dealing with a very challenging national context, is a tough job. It requires you to be on top of your game. But, by embracing the challenges I’ve thrown down for you, not only will you make a difference to the people who work in your organisation and the people they serve, but you’ll craft a job for yourself that YOU’LL never want to leave either.
Want to make your organisation a better place to work?
Blaire’s series on leadership has highlighted that culture matters. If you’re ready to create a better place to work, get in touch to see how we can help with your recruitment and retention challenges!
