The Past, Present & Future of Workplace Culture

Warning! This is not one of those byte-sized social media read. You will take 20 minutes to read this article. It might make sense to take one part at a time! In case you have read Part 1 in my earlier post, you can jump to Part 2. Since the canvas is very wide, my attempt is to initiate a conversation, rather than close any debate.

Part 1- The Past

In case you are over 40 years of age, try and remember your first job. I remember mine vividly. It was at a progressive local company. As I went to my first boss, a 55-year-old veteran in an old established organization, he asked me a question, “Are you an MBA, son?” “Yes,” I replied.

“In that case you are like a virus in our system. We will produce enough antibodies to eject you fast,” he said half in jest. Not the most inspiring welcome for a 24- year-old! It never occurred to me to contest his view. Years later I realised that I was following an unwritten rule of the workplace culture.

And yes, he was right. I left in a year’s time!

Fast forward to my next job. This time I joined a well-known multinational –  a technology leader in its field. I got an opportunity to work in the newly set up HRD department in one of their plants in another city. (In those days, organizations were rapidly transforming from Personnel to HRD). One of my tasks was to invite dignitaries from our Head Office to address us in our newly minted “Training Room”. I had two tasks – arrange for a sapling to be planted with the name of the dignitary on a suitable plaque and get my managers to come to the training room, listen to the senior official speak, and make notes on notepads which proudly bore the name “HRD – Training & Education”. In case the visiting dignitary was an expat from our HO whose spouse had accompanied him, my wife was given a role too – organising a city trip and shopping experience for the lady. (The visiting senior executive was always a man). At that time, I did not know that I was yet again following a very important unstated rule of the workplace culture.

I finally got what was considered a big break in my career when a multinational bank with a presence all over the world selected me and I quickly rose to become the Head of Compensation. The bank, in those days, belonged to the select group of big corporates who were valiantly upholding the colonial culture in the country. Not just in dress (formal- tie and jacket), in customs (Friday lunch at the Club), but also in policies (in the Compensation function, we used to refer, in hushed tones, to a select group of brown sahibs who were on “expat terms”).

The HRD movement had not made much of a dent in the organization, but some progress was visible. They had just dropped a requirement in the service rules that stated that the Senior Manager will invite the executive and his fiancé for a cup of tea. The unstated reason was to ensure that the social class structure of the bank was not disrupted! Thanks to such measures of “liberalisation”, people from middle class backgrounds, like me, could now get into the bank.

In those days of limited automation, my entire department - including me - had to work late nights during the “increment season”. My boss, who was an expat, would leave for his club at 6 p.m.  This kind man, knowing that we would be working late, would peep into our section on the way out, pat our backs and exhort us to work hard. “Work hard, you have a bright future in the bank,” he would say. He would not say anything concrete, but most managers like me would interpret it as a chance to go and work outside the country in one of the numerous global offices of the bank. Much later, I realised that this too was an unwritten rule of the workplace culture!

You must be wondering which are these unwritten rules of the workplace culture that I am referring to? Thanks to the American author- philosopher Peter Block I learnt how to articulate them.

Rule Number 1: Respect for Authority (Plant a sapling & call all managers to take notes from an authority figure)

Rule Number 2: Denial of self-expression (Do not speak up in front of your boss, even if you do not agree with him)

Rule number 3: Sacrifice in the present, for unnamed future rewards (Work hard, one day you too will be able to leave early and go to the Club)

Rule Number 4: The belief that the above is right. (All successful senior leaders have followed the above rules)

In case you are wondering what the basis in Organizational Behaviour for the above rules is, let me hasten to tell you that the origin of the above rules has nothing to do with workplace culture per se.

They are the characteristics of a societal system called Patriarchy.

Most of us who grew up in a joint family will understand the respect the patriarch (head of the family) wields in the family. Most of you who are the youngest daughter-in-law in a joint family, will understand what denial of self-expression means and what it means to sacrifice in the present for unnamed future rewards.

When we joined organizations, we brought our societal culture along with us. Patriarchy with its emphasis on class/ religion, gender and age –  all of it found its way into our organizational culture. At least in the past.

Do these rules work today? For many, they do not. In the next section of this article, I will probe why they don’t work any longer.

What makes patriarchal cultures work? The key driver of a patriarchal culture is power. Power demands control.

People give their lives to their organizations so that in return they can wield more power:  A bigger office, authority to sign bigger contracts, cancel leaves of others, reserve a suite permanently in a hotel, a private jet even. And when you become the patriarch you wield absolute power. Your picture will be put up in many of your offices, books will be written on you, buildings will be named after you. And of course, money will never be a constraint. You have earned it the hard way. Not spending time with your family, not seeing your children grow up, not having trusting relationships with people who do not come to you for access to your power and often not taking care of your health – these are but small prices to pay for the power you wield.

It is as if you are high on some addictive substance; except in this case power is the cocaine to your system! Power, not technology, drove the biggest gamification of workplace culture in the past. If you are a large legacy organization, the chances are that the top 5 per cent of your senior managers are still addicted to the power game. But it is working less and less with the bottom 70 per cent of the people – the Gen Y and the millennials.

Patriarchy is not working in producing sustained business results. You want proof? If your senior management is in a patriarchal mindset, compare your shareholder returns over the last ten years with the overall share market growth. Unless you are in a niche area, a monopoly and not dependent on talent, you are at best keeping pace with the share market. The best workplaces are delivering 4 to 5 times higher returns than the standard Sensex, Russel 3000 or S&P 500 baskets.

In my subsequent two parts, I will discuss why large parts of patriarchy in workplace culture will die and why the best workplaces have found a better way to manage their culture.

Part 2- The present

Why is Patriarchy dying?

Patriarchy, like many other societal structures, is based on power. Over the last two decades or so we have seen some significant developments. Chief among them are the explosive growth of smart phones and mobile data consumption, social media and access to information, use of technology for machine learning and artificial intelligence (Internet of Things). Women now routinely outnumber men, not only in traditional courses like nursing and BEd, but also in MA, MSc and MCom (Masters in Arts, Science and Commerce).

The middle class and higher middle class have seen a significant increase in terms of real purchasing power -and gradually the percentage of people in extreme poverty (earning less than 2 USD a day) is coming down.

Power being a zero-sum game cannot increase or decrease in absolute terms. Power is shifting from the Organizations and their representatives (the managers) to talent. While job creation has not gone up significantly, thanks to technology, demand is at an all-time high for digital native artisans. A digital native artisan is not only comfortable with digital technologies but knows how to use it to fulfil a market need.

None of the current day educational institutes produce digital native artisans. At best they can produce talent who are tech-savvy and understand current business models of the kind Amazon, Netflix, Uber or Airbnb has. Digital Native Artisan or a DNA is more than skills – it is about an attitude of continuous learning and unlearning.

Moreover, the biggest change in workplace culture in the present is the realisation that to attract and retain talent you will have to do exactly what you do to attract and retain customers.

I call it a mindset of Employee = Customer.

Take the example of a Retail Company which has hundreds of distributors, who deliver to thousands of outlets that will in turn deliver to the end customers. Who is the customer in this case? The company knows that it must track the final customer (popularly called as a customer segment of N=1) but is equally focussed on the experience of the distributors and retail outlets – both of whom are important parts of the value chain.

An Oyo Rooms will be an example of such a Company. Recent examples of discontent among the partners in the value chain for Uber, Ola, MakeMyTrip (GoIbibo) and many others show that engagement and trust with partners is very important. However, if you really think about it, the value chain does not start outside the legal boundaries of the Organization. Value is created by its own employees first.

An Organization whose mindset is to squeeze partners in the external value chain will most likely also do the same with people in the internal value chain. An Uber does not recognise its drivers as employees, even though it controls many significant aspects of what the driver can do (but not how much time he must work).

Does your Organization view its people as “cost”? Or do they see them as revenue? For example, if a sales person does 10 million INR of sales and his/her salary is 1 million INR, is he/she viewed as 1 million INR in cost or as a 9 million INR net revenue customer? The same can be extrapolated for a team that includes people from all functions like Accounts, HR, Administration – all of whom are required to deliver to the customer. Is this entire team being looked upon as a cost or as net revenue?

How is the mindset of Employee = Customer demonstrated? Some of the key features of a great place to work today are as follows:

1.      Employee experience is as important as customer experience. Employees are important not just because they are loyal and productive, but also because of the impact they have on the employer brand. These Organizations realise that just like customers, employees can be promoters or detractors too.

2.      Managers at all levels meet their team members, actively listen to them and are perceived to be both approachable and capable of giving straight answers.

3.      Employees are dealt with as individuals by managers and while everyone aspires for purpose, autonomy and mastery, managers know that they need to teach, coach, support or delegate depending on where the employee is in a competence versus commitment matrix.

There is always a gap between what we perceive to be a superior experience and how it is perceived by the recipient. As quoted in Harvard Business Review, Bain & Company in a survey of 362 companies, found that while 80 per cent of the companies believe that the customer experience they provide is superior, only 8 per cent of the customers described their experience as superior.

Engaging your people may be easier than delighting your customer. However, not without the mindset of Employee = Customer.

Part 3- The future

Last year over 700 companies registered with Great Place to Work? Institute in India alone to do a workplace culture assessment. Yet, in the list of the 100 best companies announced by the Institute in their prestigious annual Study with The Economic Times only 19 companies were new! What do these companies do to create such high employee experience, as evidenced by the high entry barrier to the list of 100 best workplaces?

We know! The best workplaces create a high trust- high performance? workplace culture by using the following levers:

1.      Career & Growth Opportunities - A Bajaj Finance has been able to grow their business consistently over the last many years as a bulk of their front-line staff promotion is automatic on meeting pre-set criteria. This practice of “Auto-promotion” creates transparency, sense of fairness and positive ambition in many employees. At Classic Stripes the highest weight in the Key Result Area of each manager’s appraisal is given to developing the second and third line managers in their function.

2.      Pride in your Organization’s brand – Each employee at NTPC knows that every 3rd bulb in the country is lit by electricity produced by NTPC. Employees may have small dreams but helping them achieve them generates a sense of pride. Personal goals of new Euro-champs (sales force of Eureka Forbes) are put down on a Dream Card, which is filed in his personal folder with HR. During quarterly reviews, the employee's leader sits and checks where he/she stands with regards to fulfilling the dream and helps chalk out plans for the same. These dreams could be simple, yet important such as buying a car or contributing financially to a sister’s marriage (note that these are actual examples).

3.      Family feeling- Contrary to assertions by business leaders on how they are a pro-team and not a family, evidence shows that best workplaces are not significantly better than others in weeding out non-performers. They do not have to try too hard because they are significantly better in making people performers! 80 per cent of employees in the best workplaces believe that their culture is marked by both high trust and high discretionary effort, as opposed to only 67 per cent of the rest. No wonder, Sales Force, the number one workplace in the world (Yes, it is Sales Force not Google!) takes a huge amount of pride in their ‘Ohana’ culture. In Hawaiian culture, Ohana represents the idea that families — blood-related, adopted, or intentional — are bound together, and that family members are responsible for one another. When Marc Benioff created Salesforce in 1999, he made sure that “Ohana” was in the company's foundations. For every company that is embarrassed to use the word family in context of their culture, you may like to know that there is a best workplace like SC Johnson that proudly advertises that it is “a family company at work for a better world”.

4.      Fair performance appraisal – Unlike the past, a combination of data analytics and technology is making fair performance appraisal an achievable possibility. At GSK traditional incentive schemes for sales roles in many Geographies are being done away with. So confident is the Organization that driving right behaviours and activities will lead to sales, that it is doing away with a culture of sales at all cost. Practices like auto-promotion in front line sales are significantly contributing in bringing down perceptions of favouritism and politicking.

The future brings its own challenges. The key challenges to my mind for the best workplaces will be the following:

1.      Getting your business model right – No matter which business you are in, right now someone is trying to disrupt your business. Gone are the days of one business model working for long periods of time. If you are struggling with getting your business model right, you will find it difficult to be a great place to work.

2.      Transparency & Feedback – SAP Labs India is a great place to work. They have an interesting practice called “speed-mentoring” where mentoring happens in 15 minutes! Like anything that SAP Labs do, they take feedback on the mentors. Currently, they are running at a 95 per cent advocacy rating i.e. 95 per cent of their people who have experienced this form of mentoring will recommend it to their friends. Even great workplaces like J&J and Unilever are struggling to manage their brands in an age where one incident can get magnified and communicated everywhere in no time at all.

3.      24 by 7 Leadership – Transparency also means gone are the days when leaders could say the right things at the right time to the right people. Today you have to say the right things, all the time, to all people! Saying & Doing what you say has always been a leadership trait. Today, a leader must “live” what he says 24 by 7.

“Can I not be myself at work?” asked a CEO with some exasperation. “You can be your best self at work,” was my answer. Leadership has become a spiritual journey of self-development. Those who came to positions of leadership only due to the lure of power and money will fall by the way side. I know of a CEO who commissioned a feedback survey and is simply too scared to disclose the results to his colleagues! Sadly, for him, his colleagues do not need a feedback report, they know! Remember, you can stop your HR function from taking feedback from employees, or edit uncomfortable areas in the feedback tool, but you cannot stop people from posting their experience in social media.

4.      Great Place to Work for ALL – Best workplaces like Salesforce are taking a stand. One of their core values is Equality. Salesforce does not just limit themselves to equality within their organization. When it comes to Equal Opportunity, Equal Rights, Equal pay and Equal access to education, Salesforce will mobilise public opinion, lobby and do what it can to create an equal world. The Great Workplaces of future will use their high trust-high performance? workplace cultures to bring about a faster social change.

To create a great place to work for ALL we will have to reach to the last basic unit which impacts employee experience – the manager! If you are a senior executive today concerned with protecting your employer brand, you may have missed the fact that people are already talking about you, not just your Organization. Are you a great people manager? This information will be soon available to ALL.

__________________________________________________________________________Prasenjit Bhattacharya is the CEO of Great Place to Work? Institute, India, as well as, a Director at Great Place to Work? Institute, Sri Lanka. Views are personal.