Employee collaboration for teamwork and proper policy change implementation.

I recently consulted for a company that asked for help with their employee culture. They felt the culture was dwindling and inner company team collaboration was at an all time low. So I dug into the root cause. After speaking with employees, looking at historical company changes, I discovered it was a bad process of policy changing of procedures and implementation process.

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Employees felt if their dept was to get a procedure change they were not included in that process, had no input, and were just forced to follow a broken system. An “or else” culture. Those employees, while required to do their normal work, now had to adapt to addition work and current work flow changes that caused them to get behind. When asking for help they were shot down with being argumentative and wanting to cause issues. So employees started to leave, under perform, miss work. Sometimes Doctors make their own worse patients. In this case management thought they knew it all and caused their own issues.

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This practice is far too common in any business. School teaches you the book way but not the human element. Management almost acts like a robot these days and while yes, the task must get completed to run a company, without factoring in the human element, you won’t create a team that works for you because they “want to”. You will only have a team that “must” work for you because of the next paycheck, which creates a massive issue for companies because employee turnover with skilled or legacy knowledge is starting to be extremely valuable for company growth. A new employee gets hired and just sees no future after the first week, never breaking the cycle.

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During the pandemic the “employee” culture changed, people got options, the entire job market changed. I get calls all the time from companies asking if I know good people. Well yes, but I’m not going to refer anyone into a bad culture but even if I did, chances are those people are with companies that recognize their value and are compensating them to never leave. What kind of company are you creating?

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If you want to do policy and procedure changes you should follow these critical steps.

1. Realize if you want a team, get ALL members involved who would touch that procedure. You are NOT all knowing.

2. Explain to everyone why you need to make a change and LISTEN to their input, right or wrong. People want to be heard and involved, it gets skin in the game.

3. Compliment the input, make people feel appreciated.

4. Try and use some of that input, not just to get people on board faster but also to expand your thinking of the project, finding the holes that you missed.

5. Once the process is made, email it out, print it, then TRAIN on it! Everyone needs the opportunity to ask questions and give input.

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Doing this will mean YOU can move forward quickly with little resistance. Now you have a TEAM working for you because they “want to”, not because they “have to”.?

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