I always like to keep up-to-date with the management side of the working environment as well as the technical side, but this past little while has had some quite interesting information published about corporate culture.
Firstly, Lucy Nottingham, Director, Strategic Partnerships at Marsh & McLennan Insights, wrote a paper entitled Identifying and Responding to a Dysfunctional Culture, saying: “For the past year, headlines have screamed with incidents of organizations’ cultural missteps or toxic cultures and almost weekly reports of CEO or executive dismissals from infractions. Boards are asking themselves – does our organization have cultural problems, and if so, how do we detect it and respond?”
According to the report, more than half of technical employees (52%) believe their workplaces are toxic, and a toxic workplace culture is given as the main reason for employee burnout.
The report identified the following 10 warning signs of a dysfunctional work culture, in an effort to help companies recognize if there is a problem in their organization:
- No clear organizational vision or set of values
- All information to the board runs through the CEO
- Fighting amongst leadership
- Debate and challenge are not encouraged
- Limited transparency into organizational decision-making
- Complacency and resistance to discuss culture
- Bad news is not shared and employees do not feel comfortable reporting incidents
- Strong focus on individual results or a “get it done at all costs” attitude
- High employee turnover rates by business unit, race, age, gender, function, etc.
- Limited transparency on factors for promotion or success
I hope that doesn’t sound like where you work! What solutions does the report propose? For the full board it suggests:
- Consider cultural issues in CEO selection
- Capture a comprehensive range of information relating to corporate culture
- Ensure culture is a regularly scheduled board agenda item.
The compensation committee should:
- Ensure compensation structure supports desired culture and ethical behaviour
- Consider how culture-related elements are factors of executive compensation.
The audit committee’s actions are:
- Review compliance updates
- Review whistleblower hotline reports
- Examine deep-dive data from employee surveys.
Lastly the nominating/governance committee’s actions are:
- Consider culture in director selection and diversity of boards
- Review succession planning and process for senior executive officers.
Outside the board, the report recommends the following actions:
- Explore cultural issues when on-boarding
- Visit sites to better understand day-to-day operations
- Build relationships beyond C-suite to get honest feedback
- Review external feedback on the organization (eg social media)
- Apply experience and judgement to be attuned to culture “warning signs”.
In conclusion, the report says: Boards must be attuned to the potential warning signs of a dysfunctional or toxic culture within their organization. They can tap into various information sources – from employee surveys to culture dashboards – to glean insights into the culture within their company. “If there are cultural issues that need to be addressed, boards are increasingly pressured by stakeholders to take action, act quickly, and remediate any potential reputational effects. By tracking cultural indicators, increasing cultural awareness in the company, and proactively applying levers of change where necessary, boards can help steer the culture – creating greater alignment of the entire workforce to the vision of the organization.”
At much the same time, I see there was a podcast by Paul L Marciano on LEADx hosted by Kevin Kruse. Dr Marciano wrote the book: Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work: Build a Culture of Employee Engagement with the Principles of RESPECT. So, another look at culture and getting people motivated at work.
Dr Marciano started by saying that 40 years’ worth of research tells us not only that traditional reward and recognition programs aren’t effective, they actually decrease the overall morale of a workforce. He suggested that what’s needed for high employee engagement is a leader’s capacity to connect emotionally to their employees.
So, one way for the board to ‘take the temperature’ of the organization is a staff survey, but what questions should you ask? TinyPulse posted a list of “20 Essential Employee Engagement Survey Questions” here. They were:
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you at work?
Regularly finding out where your company’s morale falls on the 10-point scale allows you to track morale over time. The key, however, is consistency.
- Would you refer someone to work here?
The likelihood that an employee would recommend someone else to work here is a reflection of how satisfied that person is with their job.
- Do you have a clear understanding of your career or promotion path?
Gallup found that employees who get the opportunity to continually develop are twice as likely to say they will spend their career with their company.
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your work-life balance?
Employees need to balance work and their personal life in order to be productive and engaged. If employees are feeling lopsided, then that’s a red flag that signals burnout is right around the corner.
- Hypothetically, if you were to leave tomorrow, what would your reason be?
Bad communication, lack of transparency, feeling unvalued – these can all be uncovered by asking this question.
- Do you feel valued at work?
Research shows that only 21% of employees feel strongly valued at work.
- How frequently do you receive recognition from your manager?
Find out how the leadership team is doing with recognizing their employees.
- The last time you accomplished a big project, did you receive any recognition?
Feeling valued at work is a huge motivator. This question will help uncover if leaders (or peers) have missed the mark when it comes to recognition.
- Do you believe you’ll be able to reach your full potential here?
Employees want to work at a place that will nurture their desire for growth. The more opportunities for growth your organization can offer, the longer employees will stay.
- If you were given the chance, would you reapply to your current job?
Employees happy with their current job are more likely to reapply to that very same position.
- Do you foresee yourself working here one year from now?
If a majority of your employees are saying they don’t see themselves working here in one year, you’ve got some changes to make.
- Do you believe the leadership team takes your feedback seriously?
When leaders don’t take feedback or suggestions seriously, it shows that they’re not committed to making improvements. And frankly, it makes employees feel unvalued.
- Do you feel like the management team here is transparent?
Research shows that transparency is the number one factor that contributes to workplace happiness.
- With eyes closed, can you recite our organization’s values?
Apparently, only 42% of employees know their organization’s vision, mission, and cultural values.
- What three words would you use to describe our culture?
Fun, suppressive, supportive? Use the results to find ways to strengthen and improve your culture to suit your employees’ needs.
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how comfortable do you feel giving upwards feedback to your supervisor?
Employees should feel comfortable providing feedback to their supervisors so that they can continue to offer suggestions for improvements.
- Do you feel like coworkers give each other respect here?
How do employees truly feel about each other.
- Do you believe we live authentically by our organizational values?
Do your employees feel like the organization’s values are just meaningless words on the walls? An organization’s values are there as guidelines for behaviours and decisions.
- Does our executive team contribute to a positive work culture?
An insight into how well leaders are upholding the organization’s culture.
- Do you have fun at work?
Find out if your employees think your organization’s culture is worth waking up every day for.
So, while it seems that some cultures can be toxic, it also seems like there are ways to improve the culture of any organization and make life for mainframers and others much better.