Why Every Company Needs to Grant Employees the Freedom to Speak Up

I naturally have my own set of criteria for what constitutes an ideal workplace – including an intellectually challenging environment that allows me to do work that can make a difference in people’s lives. But if you lead any organization, you have to look much further than your own personal preferences. At our firm, we’ve learned several key lessons about what it takes to foster an environment where people are enthusiastic and motivated to come to work each day.

1. Make the effort to carefully uncover what employees want.

We have always prided ourselves on having a collaborative and supportive corporate culture. To make sure people experience that type of environment, we regularly survey our employees, providing them with a forum to provide honest, anonymous feedback. We generally score very high on employee satisfaction and engagement, but a few years ago we did uncover a surprising result. Some of our staff did not feel they always had the opportunity to express their views to management and have their voices heard.

Now it’s very dangerous for any firm to have an environment where people are afraid to express a contrary opinion, and the history of the financial services industry, in particular, is littered with firms that got into massive trouble because they didn’t encourage or even permit people to stand up and disagree with management decisions. You may not always like what you hear, but you absolutely must have an environment where people can offer opposing viewpoints.

2. When employees suggest ways to improve your culture, make sure you take action.

We have probably all had the experience of working at firms where you raise an important issue to management, helping to identify a need that should be addressed, and then nothing ever gets done about it. That sort of consistent inaction – and indifference – can have a devastating effect on employee morale.

On the other hand, when you do recognize and make attempts to address employees’ concerns, their confidence in, and commitment to, your organization can skyrocket.

Once the issue at our firm was identified, I challenged our entire leadership team to address it, and we developed what became a broad, company-wide effort.

I wanted everyone across the firm to know how personally committed I am to ensuring that we have an environment that fosters open dialogues and the expression of different opinions. I filmed a video encouraging everyone to be both bold in expressing their views and open to hearing others’ perspectives.

I also went on a listening tour. We invited small groups of employees to meet with me over lunch to ask questions and share their thoughts about the firm and the direction we were taking with various business initiatives. We brought in people from different parts of the organization for these sessions, so the meetings also provided an opportunity for people to get to know other parts of the firm better. The feedback we received on these lunches was universally positive. People appreciated the opportunity to learn more and share their views on the direction of the firm in an intimate setting.

Our efforts to provide employees with more access to leaders of the firm extend far beyond me. Other members of our senior leadership team regularly have skip-level meetings so they can gain insights in one-on-one sessions with more people than their direct reports.

Officers in our transfer agency, which directly serves our fund shareholders, regularly hold “anything goes” meetings with up to 10 employees. People can ask questions and discuss whatever business topic is on their minds, anything from the firm’s benefit package to our growth strategy.

We also instituted a “Speaking Up” program that offers training for managers on how to actively listen and inspire trust among their staff. We provide additional training resources to all employees, to help them feel freer and more confident about presenting their ideas to their supervisors and their colleagues in meetings. One of those tools is a powerful TED talk from businesswoman Margaret Heffernan, titled “Dare to Disagree,” who provides powerful examples of the powers of allowing constructive conflict and the importance of having an environment where you allow people to examine all the ways a decision could be wrong before you gain confidence that it is right.

All of our efforts to encourage and support open discussions had a direct impact on improving our culture, and we found marked improvements on those scores in subsequent employee surveys.

3. Celebrate diversity.

To ensure people feel valued, you also must have a culture that fosters diversity. As I wrote in a previous column, “Success Happens When We Embrace Change – and Everyone Has a Voice,” we have a number of Business Resource Groups that enable people to meet for discussions and engage with events that examine important issues for women, the LGBT community, veterans, and people from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. A culture that values diversity will help ensure that everyone feels comfortable and respected at work and, just as importantly, bringing people with different backgrounds and perspectives together will contribute enormously to your organization’s long-term success.

4. Don’t allow jerks to disrupt everyone’s work experience.

At our firm, we don’t tolerate people who don’t behave with respect towards their colleagues and our clients. The management professor Robert Sutton wrote a famous Harvard Business Review article, followed by a book, on how exceedingly difficult and disrespectful personalities can destroy an organization’s morale, productivity and culture. (Warning: Those who are offended by vulgar language may want to skip over the next sentence!) To avoid these risks, organizations can employ the simple and direct strategy that served as the title of Dr. Sutton’s book: The No Asshole Rule.

With that wise advice in mind, we make sure we hire and train people who are focused on achieving our company mission; embody our corporate values of excellence, integrity, collaboration and passion; and truly know how to work with others to achieve a common goal.

A better workplace helps foster a motivated team

Fostering an open, supportive and diverse environment isn’t always easy. As Margaret Heffernan noted in her TED talk, it takes courage to be willing to speak up, to tolerate having people who will disagree with you, and to avoid the natural instinct to surround ourselves with people who mirror our own background, culture and opinions. I encourage everyone at my firm to be bold. The value of doing that is you have an organization that people are excited to be a part of and one that is far more likely to succeed over the long term.