The Culture of Speaking-up

Last week we celebrated 17 glorious years of Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance. The ceremonial cake-cutting with our long service colleagues, Gracy, who has been with us for 17 years and Sanjeev was indeed special.

What followed next was, according to me, the real highlight of the event. It was the open house. Here I get my entire management committee to come up and respond to any question our colleagues may have for us. We’ve done this in the past, and with each of these sessions I see the comfort level of our teams rising. And that’s what this post is about. The increasing need of being transparent, and open with your own employees. The culture of encouraging your colleagues to speak to you as a colleague, and not as a superior, holds the key in making your organisation a great place to work. Even if there is an open-office culture, if the dialogue is not two-way, then a big part of the whole idea is missing.

I believe as a leader, while you have an eye on your business, your greater role is to bring your colleagues together. To make them comfortable, to encourage them to think bold, to provide them opportunities to innovate, to enable them to make mistakes and learn, and most importantly, to bring about a culture of openness and transparency within your own organisation. While we may have several opportunities to connect with different sets of employees through the year, an open house for all employees is like a leveler for me. It encourages all your employees to speak to you one-on-one, express their needs and aspirations as well as bring out some points that you may have missed. Also, while responding these questions, there are several other messages your colleagues are taking away from it. These sessions are unscripted. They offer a chance for us to tell our colleagues on how open the leadership team is towards taking in new ideas/suggestions, hearing problems, giving solutions, directing them to the right sets of people and so on. These underlying messages sometimes stick more amongst employees, in my opinion.

As I mentioned earlier, with each passing session I see many of my colleagues being more comfortable to express themselves. We’ve seen some good ideas come in, we’ve seen some old timers bring out inputs from their vast experience within the company and industry, we’ve had fresh new perspective been showcased, and overall these open houses are helping us build a fairly positive environment within the company, and amongst all colleagues. Leaders must invest their time to help teams think, innovate and most critically, express themselves. The culture of speaking-up is one of the most integral part of an organisation, and every leader must drive it across the company.