Hearing Without Listening

Often, internal communications/employee engagement is expected to perform miracles. A culture that has devolved to toxicity gets thrust into the professionals lap and they're told to "fix this."

I had breakfast with a friend yesterday - she'd recently landed a new gig; and we talked about various places she'd worked - and how they'd handled such culture disasters. And, no surprise, the only potential to fix it occurs if there's buy-in from up high. If leadership doesn't want things to change; there's nothing anyone can do to offset that.

But, even when leadership says they want things to change; they may still not be open to the necessary change. I told my friend about a situation where the company I was working for "heard" but didn't "listen" to the employees; even when they specifically had asked for feedback!

In this case, the company held a LunchNLearn on microaggressions -- a timely topic, to be sure. And, when the 45 minute talk was over; the moderator opened a new window with a "whiteboard" (the whole company was virtual); and invited people to share their thoughts on the session (anonymously, by typing onto the whiteboard).

Initially, the feedback was the standard "Oh, this was awesome!" and "I learned so much." And then, one comment showed up: "I'm the only trans person in this company and I feel it every day."

Wow.

The courage it took to write that was massive, to be sure.

And a few minutes later, another comment appeared: "There's an awful lot of misogyny in this company." And, over the next few minutes, a handful more - not overwhelming at all; but when all was said and done, out of maybe 30 comments; perhaps 4-5 were of that type.

When the presentation was completed, I reconnected with my manager and her manager -- and we all talked about how great the presentation had been; and I asked, "Do you have any ideas on how you want to move forward from here?"

Silence.

And then, they asked, "Why do we need to do anything?"

I replied, "Well, we just had 4-5 comments that really need to be addressed; we need to come up with a plan that - at least - checks out the claims; maybe a more comprehensive training; you can't really have anyone feeling that way."

And the response: "Well, we did that already. That's what we just did. We let them vent."

I tried to explain that -- it was because of the session (and the open commenting after) -- that there was a need to do more. Prior, there could've been viable deniability that anything was wrong; now there was no doubt. And, now that the company knew of these issues, those comments represented 4-5 lawsuits waiting to happen (if the company did nothing in response). None of my attempts to persuade them of this worked, though; and the company did nothing -- not even offering validation of the concerns.

I left the company shortly thereafter (and, honestly, over the next 6-8 months, apparently, so did upwards of 80 percent of the people working there). A toxic environment is bad enough; a company that refuses to do anything to address that toxicity is one to be exited promptly (and these days, workers are far less reluctant to jump ship).