Why You Should Stop Trying to Be (Win) the Best Place to Work
If you know me at all, you know I am a strong advocate of the power of employee culture. A power not just to attract and retain top talent, but a power to transform an organization into a more dynamic, efficient force that can set and attain higher goals. A transformative culture can accelerate the growth and development of each employee, giving them the opportunity to contribute in a more meaningful way year over year. This is proven to lead to higher engagement and satisfaction, reducing turnover and yielding the compounding benefit of employee retention throughout the organization.
However, culture will always be an outcome of our daily behavior. It can not be achieved by winning an award or by approaching it as an objective to check off a to-do list. By establishing “culture development” as a goal in a manner similar to how we project revenue or earnings, we are misaligning “who we are” with “what we do.” There is a difference. The proof is found when we come upon hard times. Maybe we lose a big customer, or we run into unexpected, unpreventable downtime. What we do will change, but who we are will prevail.
Yes, we need to be intentional with the development of our culture, otherwise it will become something different than we envision; variable from one location or area to another. We just can't afford for there to be a gap between our intention and our aim. By building a culture around the questions of a “best place” to work award survey, we aim to cookie cut our organization to fit an ideal that may or may not fit our workforce. The demographics of the workplace may very well be changing faster than the profile of the employer award surveys anyway.
So, which do you know better: the questions on the award survey or the questions your own employees have.
Let's spend more time getting to know our employees; where they are involved outside of work; what professional and personal goals they have; what causes their hearts to beat a bit faster; and what stumbling blocks they are encountering in our very own organization. It is here that we will find the best answers around which to shape our culture.
Insurance Law Specialist | Public Liability | Professional Indemnity | Life Insurance | Defamation Lawyer
6 年I was just reading about culture management the other day on LinkedIn, though they had the opposite opinion! Great to get both sides.
HR Leader | HR Operations, Talent Strategy, Employee Experience
6 年Totally agree that culture is only an output of collective behaviors. The organizational focus has to be an emphasis of how we want the business to behave, what activities we find important to being successful for our customers, and driving a reinforcement mechanism around those desired actions. One thought: by creating defined cultural goals in advance, do we narrow our focus on defining behaviors that limits the organizational capacity to be what we need to be in an undefined or quickly evolving market?
Senior-Level Strategic Communications Professional | SHRM Senior Certified Professional
6 年Excellent!