Culture, Purpose and Engagement

Whenever I am asked to discuss ‘culture’ and ‘employee engagement’, the famous quote from management guru Peter Drucker springs to my head “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. This applies to every single organisation, leaders and HR executives must appreciate and accept that highly engaged organisations attract the best talent, they will have the lowest rates of turnover, reduced sickness absence and more likely to be profitable over a longer period of time.

Culture and engagement cannot be owned by HR, every leader and executive must take responsibility, but it is also important to separate culture from engagement, although they are related, you must get the culture right before tackling engagement. 

Culture is how the organisation operates, it is how the leadership defines how the organisation will communicate with external suppliers, partners and its customers. It is concerned with behaviours and expectations that inform employees of their interactional responsibilities. This needs to be driven by leaders, otherwise, there is no way for employees to understand how they are expected to behave. These set of behaviours must be adopted from the most senior person, all the way down and they must be inculcated across the organisation at all levels.

Purpose is what an organisation stands for, the purpose cannot be purely profit or power driven, otherwise staff will become demotivated and will seek other opportunities. People are driven by purpose, so the key is for the organisations vision and values to drive the purpose of why people want to belong to the organisation and to fulfil their potential. Although profits are key to an organisation’s success and longevity, they cannot be the purpose of the organisation, leaders need to look further and wider, in order to create the purpose of why people come to work each day and do their very best.

Engagement is how people feel about their culture and purpose. Culture needs to be open, transparent, collaborative and trustworthy, but it also needs to be a behaviour adopted by all, particularly by senior management and leaders, who set the examples to others. Getting the culture right can be difficult, cultures develop over time, but can also change overnight, notably in a negative stance towards the ideological culture that is intended. Engaged employees will only materialise when the purpose is more than profit, bureaucracy and power. The purpose should be more concerned with developing cohesive relationships, developing employees to their full potential and to create a sense of belonging, for the employee towards the organisation.

But what does drive engagement? The argument has already been set, to that of having a high impact culture and a clear organisational purpose away from profit and power. It is often suggested that employee benefits and compensation drive engagement but pay and financial rewards are known as “hygiene factors” and not “engagement factors”. Some may argue that financial rewards and compensation need to be at a level that prevents staff from wanting to leave, but the argument further exists that increasing financial rewards does not necessarily increase engagement levels.

I have identified five clear areas for discussion, that I believe will drive engagement and culture within an organisation. These are:

1. Meaningful work for all employees
2. Flexible, Supportive and Inclusive workplace
3. Effective leadership and management
4. Establish transparency, vision and purpose in the organisational leadership.
5. Create growth and opportunities for employees.

The most important aspect of employee engagement is ensuring that work is meaningful for our employees. Often there are employees that are under-utilised, some will have much broader skills and experience that could be better suited to elsewhere within the organisation. This must start at the recruitment phase, selecting the right people for the right job, ensuring that the candidates have the right skills and experience, whilst also considering if they will fit in to the organisations culture. As technology advances, organisations are seeking to do more with less resources, this leads to roles changing their dynamics and the organisation must seek to develop staff to ensure that they remain competitive. In this scenario, it would be good practice to consult with staff about changes to their role and determine how best their skills and experience can be utilised across the organisation. Meaningful work is more likely to take place in small teams, organisations should seek to develop small coherent teams, which can feel empowered, they are able to make decisions more quickly and the team will build a strong and professional relationship. Organisations should also consider encouraging staff to spend a day doing something different than their normal role, maybe working in another team or mentoring colleagues. This is a process adopted by Google, who adopt a time to think, create and rest policy, in which they allow staff to spend 20% of their contractual hours doing something different. Some may argue that this policy could be counterproductive, but Google claim that overworking people leads to burn out, lower productivity, poor customer service, increase sickness absence and exhaustion. So, giving people time away from their core roles and redesigning their jobs around the organisation need and their skills and experience, can increase employee engagement.

Another key area is establishing a flexible, supportive and humane working environment. We spend much of our time at work, so the conditions need to be set to make employees feel safe, they need to feel appreciated and they need a sense of belonging to the organisation. Life can be complicated, we are often unaware of the personal challenges that are going on in people’s lives, so we need to get the working environment right, for all. There is often not a ‘best size fits all’, we all have different needs, wants and priorities, but creating working groups to gauge the best environment is a very good place to start. The first driver is employee benefits and wellness programmes, pay and financial benefits are not necessarily drivers for engagement, so organisations should seek to provide other incentives, they may wish to include flexible working hours/days, paid time off for study and leave, gym memberships which are usually heavily discounted for multiple memberships, the ability to work from home or maybe creating a social environment in the workplace. The supportive mechanism stems from people feeling safe and appreciated, that they can raise concerns, without fear of retribution.  The simple and soft approach is recognising people, this can be from managers or from peers, but a simple ‘thank you’ goes a long way in building engagement. There should always be a top to bottom culture of appreciation but encouraging peers to be appreciative and kind to each other, will further aid this strategy. Some organisations have employee awards, either monthly or annually, whilst others will recognise in other ways, such as writing personal letters or awarding an extra day’s annual leave. Any awards should be encouraged to be nominated by peers and not just management, promoting an equal space for recognition. Finally, we will look at building an inclusive and humane working environment, I would like to stress that Equality and Diversity, wherever this responsibility may sit in an organisation, is not an HR function or strategy, but is that of a corporate responsibility. A humane and inclusive environment leads to people feeling safe, there are no barriers, everyone is treated as an equal and all are respected equally. Diverse workplaces attract people from much wider demographics and cultures, they generally outperform peers who do not prioritise such strategies, whilst retention and sickness absence levels are much improved. Inclusion comes from the top, our leaders must overcome their unconscious biases and promote equality and diversity throughout the organisation, whilst allowing open forums to exist to raise awareness of the importance of an inclusive environment. An inclusive and humane environment will contribute to a positive culture and thus raise engagement.

Effective leadership and management are key to any organisation’s success, but culturally, it is paramount. I personally feel and would argue that managers are more of an influence than leaders, whilst our leaders devise strategy and drive vision, it is our managers that implement this to the wider workforce. We need to invest in our managers, they must have the knowledge and support to carry out their duties, ensuring that the internal processes are developed and maintained to meet the needs of both the consumer and employee. Investing in fundamental management practices can have such a positive impact on engagement, performance and retention. How does a good manager act? This is a very difficult question, but my argument would be that they are approachable, they make time for their staff, they listen and act on concerns raised by their staff, they hold themselves accountable and they are supportive. A good manager will also create simple and achievable goals for their staff, ensuring that they are clear and transparent and linked to the organisations vision and goals. Furthermore, a manager needs to drive a culture of coaching, utilising strength within the organisation to develop and support others. Leaders are responsible for developing managers, organisations that invest in management development are more likely to have an engaged workforce, as they continuously focus on building new leaders, connecting leaders to each other and giving leaders the coaching and support they need to develop themselves and their staff. Finally, and probably most importantly, is that a manager’s job is not to manage work, but rather to develop, coach and managing people effectively, so that they perform at their best, at all times.

Organisational leadership is largely associated with four key practices, by getting this right, is highly likely to have a direct impact on employee engagement and a positive culture. The first practice is to develop and communicate a clear and strong purpose, defining what success looks like, how an engaged environment and positive culture will feel and how innovation and commitment will drive forward to the organisations vision and goals. It is about offering people a purpose to come to work and to perform at their very best, it is about the organisation defining the value of its employees, investors, partners and other stakeholders. When you offer people a mission and purpose, aside of financial returns, you attract passionate individuals who want to contribute to the success of the organisation, which brings with it, levels of commitment and engagement. Second, comes transparency, probably the most challenging aspect, but one which cannot be discounted. Organisations need to be open and transparent in what they do and how they do it, because thanks to open source and social media, these can easily be communicated, with disastrous effects for some companies. Traditional leaders often believe that they can manage the truth, through public relations or timely communications, which is why they often struggle with transparency, this can cause disengagement with millennials who see transparency as a direct driver towards loyalty with their organisation. Leaders must continuously invest in ‘people’, highly engaged organisations will give their time to meet with teams and individuals, showing a caring approach. They will also invest money in education and courses, developing the current staff for the next generation, adopting a ‘high impact learning’ environment will both retain and attract high calibre individuals. The key word is ‘inspiration’ leaders and managers must consistently talk about the future, sharing the vision and translating the business objectives and strategy, in to meaningful conversations.

Finally, organisations need to create growth and opportunities for their employees. People will leave if they see that there are no opportunities or growth, organisations can lose exemplary and high performing staff, just because they did not provide the right opportunities for them. Most engagement research cites learning opportunities, professional development and career progression as amongst the top drivers for satisfaction, but still organisations fail to address these, and turnover becomes problematic. Building opportunities for growth can be a complex and systemic challenge, firstly there must be genuine opportunities, people must be willing to take developmental opportunities and the culture needs to be based on a supportive and learning approach, whilst giving people the time to learn. Organisations also need to consider how they will reward learning and development, this for managers could stem based on their ability to develop others, their ability to select the best applicants for promotion and to maintain a high level of retention. The key message is creating an irresistible organisation, one that no employee wants to leave, the best way to achieve this, is by creating clear opportunities and growth, for those who want to succeed and whom have the right attributes, behaviours, skills and experience.

To conclude, organisations need to concentrate on simplicity, they need to make work simple, they need to remove complex processes and bureaucracy, whilst having trust and giving autonomy to managers, who ultimately can be accountable for their team’s performance. Organisations need to develop teams committed to their mission, they need to be passionate about their work and they must be able to work collaboratively. A highly engaged workforce will adopt a high impact culture, everyone will have a purpose and engagement will be owned by all, defined by how they feel about the culture and purpose.

Mark Horton MBA