Blog

Does Remote Work Help Or Hinder Employee Happiness?

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags:
remote work employee happiness

The question of whether or not to allow employees to work remotely is heavily debated from one organization to another. While many startups and consultancies like ours have had success giving their team members flexible work hours, other organizations are hesitant to adopt a new policy of remote work. If you are looking for remote work, you may want to check out jobs at a company like software developers Clevertech.

For some organizations, the concept of letting people work from home means letting go of control over their employee’s activity, which may—in their mind—hinder productivity. For others, the decision to keep people in the office is more about creating a vibrant and active office culture. More and more people are starting to work from home though because it’s just more convenient for them, others like the fact that they can save on their energy bills as it’s technically business energy. If you would like to learn more then you can read this website here.

Very few companies attempt to find a solution somewhere in the middle.

MIT’s Sloan School of Management on the other hand, is testing an innovative way to bridge the gap between the physical office culture and the flexibility of remote work: robots.

A recent article from Business Insider about their approach reads: “On the days when employees aren’t in the office, they have the option of using a robot — essentially an iPad and stick on wheels — to make them feel like they’re physically present among their coworkers.”

Of course, this immediately caught our attention. We asked our team to weigh in on their experiment, and their thoughts about remote work in general. Here’s what they had to say:

Does Remote Work Help Or Hinder Employee Happiness?

cary-paulCary Paul, Senior Associate

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. True not only personally, but also for business relationships. While remote work can foster a sense of trust between companies and their employees, many teams miss out on the benefits of face-to-face interaction with the rest of their teammates.

That said, there are some real benefits to allowing people to work remotely. Remote work allows team members to be at their best, in their ideal life situation. It makes us think harder about whether that monthly management meeting is really necessary. And in some studies, it’s been shown to actually increase productivity and reduce overhead.

In an organization like ours, remote teamwork is actually good practice for the many times we need to engage in remote client work. People need to intentionally work on the skills required to hear and be heard, and remote collaboration is an excellent way to flex those active listening muscles.

claire taylorClaire Taylor, Associate

As far as making a remote team more of a team, establishing a connection in-person is super helpful. I’ve had past experiences where I was onsite with my team for a period of time while getting spun up on the job before I began working remotely. It gave me the opportunity to interact with my coworkers in both formal and informal contexts (e.g., meetings and lunches) and provided a base for our relationships. It made future phone calls and other remote interactions feel more comfortable and personal since I knew my coworkers. I went back onsite about once a month, and those visits were a great opportunity to build relationships with the team I only saw occasionally. My coworkers were usually excited to see me and have an opportunity to further build out relationships.

However, this is not representative of all remote teams.

Many remote teams don’t have the luxury of being collocated any of the time because they don’t have a central location or headquarters. In these instances, it might make sense to plan an in-person meeting or event, if feasible, so team members have an opportunity to meet in person. A meeting of the team via video conference might also be viable, with the team engaging in introductory or team building activities.

I think the biggest challenge with remote teams is that all communication and socialization must be intentional. There is no opportunity to run into someone at the water cooler or to go for lunch or happy hour together. However, since time together must be planned, this is a great opportunity for scheduled checkins and activities for the team. Just like teams that sit in the same location, an open door policy for virtual communication can help facilitate teamwork and crosstalk. Keeping an open dialogue, especially about challenges and questions, can help prevent the isolation that accompanies remote work. While much of work can be focused and accomplished by a single individual, much of what is done in the workplace is better done collaboratively and interactively, and the effort to make those interactions occur is the major hangup; not the technology.

Advancements simply enable interaction. Team members still must make the effort to make use of these resources.

pamela-faragoPamela Farago, OD Intern

Even though the idea of robots standing in for remote employees seems more like the plot line of a slower-paced Terminator movie than standard workplace practice, it highlights how the new age of remote work is an important opportunity for both leaders and their employees to grow together.

Many leaders say that they find it difficult to delegate tasks to their employees and to trust their employees to get that work done on time. Working remotely adds an additional wrinkle to that scenario: employers can no longer check up on their workers in the ways they would have in the past. Leaders must therefore trust their employees more, and this increased level of trust may reciprocally spark augmented autonomy and a sense of ownership from workers.

In addition to employees gaining a sense of autonomy from their leader, remote work may also increase productivity by allowing them to work from their own comfortable spaces. Each employee has a different type of environment that puts him or her in the productive zone. Allowing remote work lets employees find their own happy space to efficiently get their tasks done.

While these are the positives behind remote work, the camaraderie that comes from sharing an office environment can be lost if the proper precautions are not taken. Nothing can truly replace in-person communication and interaction; not even robotic employees.

Leaders should make other attempts to foster camaraderie when employees do physically come into the office. For example, having an all-staff catered lunch once a month where employees can mingle in real-time. Or, having a meeting once a quarter where all project workers must be physically present.

While remote work fosters trust, autonomy, and productivity, camaraderie can suffer as a result. Having just a few reasons to go back to the office can help stymie this potential teamwork decline.

Remote teams will be back in the office. Even the Terminator agrees.

chelsea-weberChelsea Weber, OD Intern

I love the flexibility of working remotely when I need to.

I can work during hours when I feel most productive, set up in a coffee shop and do some work while I travel, or jump into a meeting from virtually anywhere. As a student balancing work, school, and life responsibilities, this level of flexibility is perfect. When I need to do some intense solo work, the remote/virtual model is great.

And yet, even in our digital age, even as a proud member of the Millennial Generation, I think there’s still a lot to be said for in-person collaboration.

The other day, I walked into the office and got into a conversation with a colleague about a sticky piece of a client project. In thirty minutes, we were able to dialogue and come up with solutions in a quick, organic way; feeding off of each other’s energy and separate expertise.

That kind of organic problem solving is nearly impossible to replicate in the virtual, remote work world. It’s hard to learn a person’s communication style through a screen. It’s even harder for us to work together efficiently if we don’t know how the other one works and communicates.

There’s a lot of research showing that the development of innovative teams requires high levels of trust and empathy–two things that are very quickly established in person. Virtually, that trust and empathy requires more deliberate steps to develop.

So approach remote and virtual work with caution. If your team is working largely independently, fine. If what you need are high levels of trust, collaboration, and innovative problem solving, consider finding ways to get people in the same room together.

anton-riusAnton Rius, Digital Marketing Manager

As a former member of cubicle city and an introvert by nature, I thrive in a remote work environment. But, I understand that there are a few things that are unique to our organization and my role that make it possible.

First, I’m not client facing. Most of my work can be done from anywhere with wifi and a laptop, and when I need to interface with my teammates, Google Hangouts works wonderfully.

Second, gothamCulture does an excellent job of giving employees complete ownership over their roles. We are all focused on our goals and the greater good of the business, and regardless of where we are in the world or what we’re doing, we all collectively know that there is a common goal among the entire team.

That said, there is something about the one day in the office a week that I wouldn’t trade for anything. It’s not about productivity or my ability to work, though. It’s about camaraderie.

Once a week I am able to chat with my west coast colleagues in person, learn about their lives, and get to know them on a much deeper level than might be possible over a virtual meeting. I’m not as productive on those days, but we spend more time building a strong bond over random ideas and stories that simply wouldn’t be possible through Skype, Slack, or even remote controlled iPads on sticks.

How to Prepare For Successful Organizational Culture Change

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: , ,
prepare for successful organizational culture change

While most of your employees likely understand that their primary responsibility at work is — well — to work, I’m going out on a limb here and guessing that they don’t want to be treated like mindless drones in the process.

In today’s hyper-connected world, employees are making their voices heard: They want to join organizations that stand for something. They want to align themselves with a corporate culture that fits their own beliefs and values. A place where they can bring their best selves and contribute in ways that make a difference.

Read More…

5 Myths About Organizational Culture Every CEO Should Know

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
5 myths about organizational culture

The rising awareness of the importance of organizational culture has given way to a host of new pundits and opinions on the topic.

Many thought leaders today are talking about company culture as if it’s akin to capturing a unicorn. It carries a romantic and mythological appeal that makes it an irresistible topic of conversation, but they still haven’t fully figured out how to effectively shape it to drive the right behaviors in their organizations.

Unfortunately, a lack of rigor in process as well as a lack of real-world experience makes it challenging at best for them to really help businesses understand and harness the power of their cultures. And as a result, when it comes to measuring bottom-line performance metrics like profitability, sales growth and market share as they relate to culture, they have yet to connect the dots between fact and fiction.

With that in mind, here are 5 common myths about organizational culture, debunked:

Myth #1:  “We can’t manage what we can’t measure.“

The term “culture” is in and of itself pretty tough for people to wrap their heads around in a consistent and meaningful way. Culture can cover any number of aspects of organizational functioning. It evolves constantly based on what seems to be working in the current business context and it subconsciously influences people to behave in certain ways. Often, employees are not even aware of how it’s affecting their everyday work.

How can we hope to manage something we find difficult to even define?

There are a lot of aspects of culture that are all playing a role in shaping employees thoughts and behaviors in the day-to-day, but only some of those have been studied rigorously and have been found to be directly linked to performance.

If you’re working to understand your current culture and how it may be impacting the performance of your business, start with the aspects of culture that are linked to empirical research; not just someone else’s opinion.

Myth #2:  “Culture takes years to change.”

This is not wholly untrue. It does take a long time for collective norms and ways of working to develop and, through success, become more entrenched in the collective mindset as the right way to do things. The longer that “way of doing things” reigns supreme (and the longer that way meets with successful results) the harder it is to change it.

That said, culture can change quickly. It usually takes a “gut punch” to the organization that clearly shows everyone that the old ways of doing things that had yielded success for many years are no longer going to cut it in today’s business environment.

Myth #3:  “Culture is a silver bullet that will take away all of our problems.”

Business today is extremely dynamic, involving more and more stakeholders who demand greater amounts of input and control than ever before. Trying to find a silver bullet solution to these kinds of complex issues is akin to spotting a unicorn ordering a double macchiato at your local Starbucks.

Culture is inherently a multi-faceted concept and, thus, there is no single solution that’s going to align everyone in your organization to reach your goals. Typically, true culture transformation requires a multi-pronged approach to achieve the results you require. For example, clarifying and aligning stakeholders about the strategy, providing tools and skills so people can do what you are asking of them and adapting systems and processes to improve work flow might all be potential intervention efforts to get things moving in the right direction.

Myth #4:  “It’s HR’s job to worry about stuff like this.”

While HR can, and often does, play a critical role in the culture assessment and evolution process in many organizations, one fatal pitfall is when executives extend that role to include ownership of the entire process.

Culture is a collective concept and, as such, should be owned by the collective.  Everyone in your organization needs to be involved in both understanding what aspects of the culture will help drive success and which may need to change in order to keep the organization relevant in changing business environments.  This is everyone’s job. Leaders cannot simply delegate responsibility for leading these types of changes.

Myth #5:  “We can do this internally.”

In other words, you and your team were involved in creating the culture, so it’s up to you to fix it. Yes and no.

In many instances, organizations find it difficult to assess and evolve their own culture because so much of it resides in the collective subconscious and is taken for granted in the day-to-day. Because of this, it is often much more beneficial to engage with a team of external experts who can examine your organization with fresh and unbiased eyes.

This gives you the ability to dig much deeper into the beliefs and assumptions that are driving behavior than you could ever hope to get to on your own. External experts also bring proven methodologies and structure to the process that helps to expedite your efforts.

Additionally, in many organizations people don’t always feel comfortable opening up to internal colleagues in the same way they might with an external person. An objective third party can help facilitate a more honest assessment of current assumptions and behaviors.

So, while culture may not be the silver bullet you may have thought it was, or the unicorn that will magically solve your organization’s performance problems, it is still too important for your organization to ignore.

And now that you know the truth, it’s up to you, as a leader, to help your organization succeed. How will you take the first step to create a high performance culture in your organization?

Next Time, Say Something Real to Inspire Greatness

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
inspire greatness

Guest Article Written By Lou Solomon

Years ago I attended a radio group awards gala for excellence in ratings and revenue. Everyone in that ballroom had already achieved a high bar of performance and made a huge sacrifice just to have been invited to this event. But the seating chart didn’t say that. The very best performers were seated in front of the room and the lesser best were seated in a graduated order toward the back, according to actual numbers. My team sat at the back of the room, the last of best.

The lights dimmed and the CEO, we’ll call him Jim, stepped out into the spotlight. “If those of you in the back of the room want to move to the front row,” he said, “you’re about to learn from the true champions.” He went on to say, “Tonight we celebrate, but tomorrow we will ask more of you for the new fiscal year. We are a fast growth organization, and we won’t concede to anything but fast growth at each of our properties.”

Someone on my team grumbled, “I thought we were all champions,” and another, “Wow, we get to celebrate for one night and then it’s another year of working harder!” and I thought, “Jim, you’re committed to fast growth for the shareholders—what’s the commitment to this team?”

It’s important to consider that it’s not just what someone says, but the way in which words are said that reveals true meaning of what a person wants to get across, thus impacting business success. Research proves it: MIT’s Alex “Sandy” Pentland, one of the ‘seven most powerful data scientists in the world’ did a study outfitting executives at a party with devices that recorded data on their social signals—tone of voice, gesticulation, proximity to others, and more to show if being more positive and energetic would impact business success.

The results showed that social signals (also called honest signals) are often mimicked by the receiver, and that the more positive and energetic the person is, the more positive and energetic the receivers will be, driving better productivity and success in business. Humans use many types of signals, but social signals are unusual in that they cause changes in the receiver of the signal. For instance, if we’re spending time together, and I’m happy and chipper, you’ll be more happy and chipper.

Being conscious of honest signals in conjunction with our words reminds business leaders they have the power to affect workplace productivity and culture for the better or worse each day.

Scores of scenes like that one play out every hour at company all-staff meetings, retreats, awards galas, video conferences, and everywhere employees are gathered across the globe. Ironically the blow back on attempts to control people with fear moves an organization backward into disengagement and turnover.

The obvious and overlooked alternative? Stop unloading your own fear and say something real and authentic with words that inspire positive change to build trust, a positive workplace culture, and productivity.

Authentic communication asks that we open ourselves up to humanness.

What if Jim had talked about the giftedness in every individual in the room?  He might have made us all feel included in the celebration. If he had expressed his deep gratitude, he might have instilled trust. Instead of making us feel a sense of dread, he might have given us a vote of confidence to lean into our greatness for not only the company, but also one another and ourselves.  Instead, he made some of those hard-working people fearful that while they might be good, but not quite good enough.  Mind you, these things would have to have come from the heart.

Here are 5 points for reflection when you have the opportunity to connect with employees at a company event:

  1. Give careful thought to what you can do to bring authentic value to people.
  2. Tell a relevant personal story and share what your life has taught you.
  3. Let people know you understand and appreciate their contribution (and make sure you do).
  4. Activate the best ideas and inspiration within people by giving voice to your own true passion for the future.
  5. Articulate a bigger picture and more meaningful purpose than the work alone.

By replacing negative tone and lackluster words with a positive tone and authentic appreciative words, workplace productivity and trust in an organization can grow, enabling a business to be successful. Each new day is an opportunity to inspire greatness in your organization, and say something real.

Lou Solomon

 

Lou Solomon is CEO of Interact, a communications consultancy that helps business leaders and their teams build authenticity, make connections, earn trust and build influence. She is the author of “Say Something Real” and is also an adjunct faculty member at the McColl School of Business at Queens University of Charlotte.  Connect with her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

How Exceptional Companies Create High Performance Cultures

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: , ,
create high performance culture

For years, as an employee of a variety of organizations ranging from small consulting firms to the US Army, I’ve been increasingly fascinated with the way in which groups functioned.  How some could quickly align around a common set of practices that added tremendous value, while others could not.  How some organizations were able to coordinate and integrate efforts across the globe by setting clear values, expectations and processes in place where others seemed to be operating behind the curve every step of the way.

A decade later, having spent the majority of my professional career in the organizational culture space, I continue to be driven to understand how leaders and organizations are able to achieve significant and lasting performance that catapults them ahead of the competition (or not). Why do these leaders and organizations succeed while others just seem to lag or cease to exist altogether?

While there are a lot of variables that come into play in each situation, one common root always seems played a key role – the culture.

If culture is defined as “the way things get done around here,” the way of doing things that organizations develop through trial and error, over time, are the things that drive behavior and performance.

Organizations that are able to set very clear and aligned values and processes will consistently outperform those that cannot. Furthermore, leaders who understand when it’s time to do things differently in order to stay relevant are those that are best able to adapt their organizations to changes in the business environment.

While it sounds simple in theory, its much more difficult to pull off in reality- ask any business leader out there.

So, how can leaders make this happen? How do you intentionally create a sustainable culture of high performance in your organization?

How Your Company Can Achieve High Performance

Now that “culture” has been recognized as Merriam-Webster’s word of the year, the role of culture in a high performance organization seems to be coming of age in business. This new awareness has given me the opportunity to meet a variety of people who have shared their own ideas about how culture drives performance. One such person is Olli Laurén, who leads the Global Machinery and Engineering segment of Egon Zehnder’s Industrial Practice.

I had a chance to spend some time with Olli recently to talk about his recent research paper, “How Exceptional Companies Create a High Performance Culture.” Together, we discussed 3 core abilities that an organization must possess in order to reach high performance:

1. The ability to stop and take a hard look in the mirror.  In today’s rapid-fire business environment, taking a minute to press pause and think can seem like a death-sentence.  Unfortunately, organizations that operate in this fashion may continue to spin their wheels with the same old ways of doing things to try to solve problems that have changed or evolved over time.

Olli calls this quality “a passion for renewal.” Organizations that are able to stop from time-to-time to really understand why they are doing these things are better positioned to identify the need to change in order to keep pace with the market and continue to drive results.

2. The ability to include all stakeholders in the conversation.  Culture is a collective concept- a phenomenon that forms and evolves through the norms of the group.  While many people view culture as the responsibility of leadership alone, the most successful organizations I’ve observed and worked with over the years are those that understand and value the input of their stakeholders.

Olli recognizes the need for transparent and trusting relationships throughout an organization. By fostering trust and transparency at all levels, stakeholders are given a safe environment to provide input and take an active role in shaping the organization’s culture.

3. The ability to let go of the existing behaviors and practices that are no longer serving the organization’s success.  Knowing you should lose ten pounds and actually changing your behavior to do it are two very different things. Getting people to understand that some ways of doing things are no longer effective and actually getting them to change is similar. In both cases, you must take the time to change behaviors that are no longer supporting your desired goals.

Humility is a key concept here, for leaders and employees alike. It takes a lot for people to be comfortable with giving up the way they’ve always done things.  Some take it as a statement that what they’ve been doing all along was wrong.  Others fear that they may not be able to succeed if asked to doing things differently.  Still others hear that there is a need to change but their leaders don’t role model the new expectations, which makes it easy to stay in the same old habits.

Can You Create a High Performance Culture?

The challenge that leaders face in creating high performance cultures is overcoming the deeply rooted assumptions and behaviors that aren’t doing their organization any favors.

Does that mean it’s impossible? Absolutely not.

If my experience has taught me anything, it’s that any organization, no matter what size or industry, has the ability to build and sustain a culture of high performance. To make that happen, you, as a leader, must be willing to take a hard look in the mirror with your colleagues, dig deep into what needs to change, and help your entire organization let go of the behaviors that are no longer serving its goals.

[Tweet “Change doesn’t have to be an attack on the past.”] It’s simply a stepping stone on the path to your organization’s long-term success.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.

One Surprising Way To Build Resilience In The Workplace

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
build resilience in the workplace

“You don’t learn to walk by following the rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.” – Richard Branson

As an entrepreneur, business owner, or a leader in your organization, you may already know how important it is to be adaptable, build trust, and align your team around a common purpose that drives your bottom line performance goals.

But, how do you, as a leader, weave these qualities into the fabric of your team? How can you proactively create an organizational culture that allows for mistakes, encourages perseverance, and engages all of your stakeholders around a common goal?

In today’s rapidly changing and ever evolving business marketplace, there are few qualities that drive a team’s success like resilience. And in my experience, the best way you can help your team build resilience in the workplace is to explore the skills and experiences related to improv comedy.

Why Improv?

Years ago, I had the opportunity to work with a major service/product organization on training for a point-of-sale system.

As part of the supporting effort for the training, we developed a series of improv exercises to engage the participants, raise their level of commitment, and actually help some of the key points in the training be more “sticky”.  This initial training became a core component of a multi-year engagement, and I saw first hand that these core improv skills became key building blocks for the system trainers and users.

Why? There were three core components of improv that helped this organization’s training program succeed:

  1. Focus: In improvisational comedy, participants must come together as a unified team to make an improv scene work, no matter their skill level or seniority.  When even the most tangential (wacky) ideas, distractions or curveballs are introduced, it is up to the team to collectively bring focus to the scene through adapting to the change in stride.
  2. Commitment: Commitment on stage is no different than commitment in the workplace. Those participants who are committed (not just “doing” but COMMITTED) to a scene are as successful and contributory as those who are committed in the workplace.
  3. Energy: The longest engagements, solutions, services, or efforts will most certainly languish if your workforce doesn’t bring energy to the process.  So, too, will an improv exercise languish if the participants don’t bring over-the-top levels of energy to their words and actions. Energy becomes the engine for an organization to be resilient and sustain their efforts.

“Yes, And…”

There is a key concept in improv called the “yes, and…” rule. Instead of thinking about problems as obstacles, and stifling team members with a “yes, but…” response, the “yes, and…” rule allows your team to brainstorm as a collective, build off of each other’s ideas in a positive way, and foster an environment of creativity and innovation.

So, how does it work? In another article I wrote for the BossaBlog, I gave the following example; an exercise called “Animal Ad Agency.” It works like this:

Break into small groups.  Five to seven is ideal.  Each small group forms a circle. Ask each group to name two things:

  • An animal. (Take the quickest or best answer.)
  • A common household product.  (Take the quickest or best answer.)

Then explain that your organization has been hired to be the advertising firm to sell the common household product to a group of those animals.

Describe the process to the group.

Someone starts by identifying a feature of the product that would be compelling for the animal; the next person says “yes, and…” then gives their feature; and so on around the circle. It might sound like this for selling Eyeglasses to Elephants:

  • Person 1: The glasses would be enormous, to fit their large head.
  • Person 2: Yes, and…they would have a special nose-saddle to adapt to the movement of their trunks.
  • Person 3: Yes, and…they would have a heads-up display that pinpoints distance to their next meal.
  • Person 4: Yes, and…they would have special bifocals strictly for seeing their tiny mouse friends.
  • And so on…

When you debrief, discuss the importance of “yes, and…” in terms of the creative process.  As a team of professionals, what types of new possibilities are created by thinking in terms of “yes, and…” instead of the more often heard “no, because…” or even “Yes, but…”

The benefits of an exercise of this type will remain evident into the future as well.  Meetings and discussions will include more “yes, and” thinking—and the results will be immediate and valuable.

Building Resilience Through Improv

We as leaders inspire trust as we let everyone know that ALL voices are heard and are important, that the best ideas come from building together as a team, and by letting our personnel know that we trust and empower them to come up with the solutions.

These three core concepts—adaptability, trust, and a common purpose—are the building blocks needed for successful, sustainable teams. Show them that it’s ok to trust their gut, try new things, and learn from their mistakes. They will learn to be resilient, they’ll be more prepared when problems arise, and they’ll be better aligned to collectively handle anything that may come their way.

How Can a Company Effectively Hire For Cultural Fit?

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
hiring cultural fit

While cultural fit is often lauded as the most important part of hiring for both recruiters and candidates, it’s not always done in a way that truly puts the company’s cultural values before personal opinions. A recent New York Times article about hiring for cultural fit explores this idea further.

Here at gothamCulture, we’re not quite ready to give up on the importance of cultural fit, however. While many companies may struggle to set aside personal bias, cultural fit is a critical part of our hiring decisions.

Whether you realize it or not, every new employee has an impact across any organization, and we want to ensure that the changes we put in place align well with our overall culture and values.

In addition to more traditional ways of vetting job applicants, we ensure every candidate is part of a team interview as an opportunity to get to know his or her potential coworkers. This ensures that both the team and the interviewee are comfortable with their potential relationships and roles in the company going forward.

But, we understand that not every organization functions this way. So, we asked our team to share their answers to the following question:

How can organizations ensure that they are hiring for cultural fit?

mark-emersonMark Emerson, General Manager

I don’t think an HR manager who gets a requirement from a department head about a new hire can possibly be able to assess cultural fit, but that is usually not the role of HR.  Their job is to assess work history, credentials and technical skills to actually perform the work. It’s then generally the role of the manager to assess the cultural fit.

And this is where I think the process can break down.

I hired someone a long time ago who was fully qualified for the role, but I didn’t read the culture of my team properly and it ended up being somewhat of a disaster. I vowed not to make that mistake again and instituted team interviews. The team was taken aback at first but over time, began to really appreciate the fact that I valued their judgment and wasn’t simply throwing someone new into their established culture without their input. They quickly took to the process and we ended up with some outstanding teammates.

It’s cumbersome and logistically more difficult to do team interviews, but I can’t see not doing them. The team has valuable input, insight into their daily work, and might see things that the manager doesn’t.

Simultaneously giving the team a chance to vet applicants and giving the applicant the chance to vet the team is a win-win. It allows everyone to ‘see the field’ and it prevents the hierarchical nature of a manager solely deciding on the fit of a candidate.

arthur-kimArthur Kim, Engagement Manager

Most companies don’t spend enough time or effort on their hiring practices. Unfortunately, many don’t even hire until they are barely able to keep their heads above water with all the business activity they have coming in.

When it comes time to interview candidates, they either have a random manager speak with the candidate or the hiring manager is so busy that they haven’t had time to properly prepare. As a result, the interviewer has little or no knowledge of the job that the interviewee is applying for.

It’s important that every interviewer knows the position being applied for, but more importantly, they need to fully understand the culture and values of the company so they can convey that message and see if the candidate fits into those characteristics.

It’s also important for upper management to prep interviewers with what needs to be asked, what to look for in a candidate, topics of conversation and what questions they’re allowed to ask.

If cultural fit is a priority, they should design the interview to vet those characteristics, rather than generic problem-solving or skills-assessment questions.

pamela-faragoPamela Farago, OD Intern

A company becomes who it hires, so the future culture of an organization is strongly tied to the kinds of people it selects to represent it today. However, a potential employee’s “cultural fit” in the organization should not be determined by their certain talkative type of personality or their specific love of baseball.

The values and goals that a company holds are what should be assessed when determining a potential employee’s cultural fit, not their hobbies and hometowns.  If employers merely hired new workers who they wanted to hang out with and who shared all their same thought processes, an organization would become an army of clones, both incapable of innovating and prone to making poor decisions due to limited information.

To ensure that company values and goals are the criteria used to make hiring decisions, a business should consider several steps.

First, the organization should sit down and document what their values and goals actually are.  Then, the organization’s determined culture should be communicated not only to its current employees, but also to its potential employees. This allows potential employees to make a preliminary judgment of whether they should even apply for a job with this company.

Finally, the business should assess the fit of potential employees’ values and goals to the values and goals that it holds using an objective assessment, such as a structured interview or checklist. This would decrease the potential for interviewers to make subjective decisions about candidates based on either their own definitions of “cultural fit” or their favorite sports team.

chelsea-weberChelsea Weber, OD Intern

Working for an organization where I feel like I “fit in” has deepened my ability to lean into the work, take risks, and perform.  There are deep benefits on both sides of the equation—when employees and their employers are on the same page as far as “the way we do things around here,” everyone gets to spend time on deeper conversations.

And yet, a word of caution when using “cultural fit” as a singular benchmark for hiring: If an organization is not explicitly aware of the culture it seeks to fit, hiring managers and supervisors risk letting implicit biases seep into their hiring practices. Be wary of the words “cultural fit” becoming a veil for discrimination.

Companies should ask themselves: Are we aware of what we’re looking for when we hire for “cultural fit?” Are the things we look for measurable? Truly based on what will drive performance in our organization?

Consider doing exercises to uncover those implicit biases—there are online tests and conversations you can have to be honest with yourself and your team about what might get in the way.  Finally, remember that cultural fit is a conversation. Uncover what the person you’re hiring is looking for, and ask candidly if that matches what your company offers.

How to Jumpstart a Stalled Corporate Culture of Innovation

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
corporate culture of innovation

How often have you heard of a company being widely hailed as innovative in their field these days? It seems like everyone, especially in the startup world, wants to disrupt an industry, become a game changer, or spark a revolution in the hearts and minds of their consumers and competitors.

Unfortunately, chasing a buzzword without really understanding the deeper drivers of human behavior in organizations is not really the most effective way of achieving “disruptor status”.

Innovation is one of the most overused buzzwords today, and while the concept seems to arouse the keen attention of entrepreneurs and startups, it seldom gains any traction in larger, more established organizations.  Many startups flare and burn out in the quest for innovation. For large, established organizations, familiarity and current processes often outweigh the ability to drive it.

So, what does it mean to be innovative? [Tweet “How can your organization, no matter what size or industry, sustain a culture of innovation?”]

What Is Innovation, Really?

Many people think innovation is the process of being creative and coming up with new ideas.  But, these folks are missing the other key component of innovation- actually translating that creative vision into a product or service that adds value to someone else.

In for-profit business, this usually extends further to include the requirement that those other people are actually willing to pay money for such an innovation. If your only goal is to innovate without any sense of the reality of the market and of what is actually valuable to others, you are setting yourself up for failure.

In addition, a lot of people assume a company can “be innovative” by trying to inject a few innovative practices into their process. They may look at an innovative company like Apple or Treehouse, who have woven in innovative behaviors, and try to emulate those behaviors in their own organization.

As you may have guessed, this rarely works.

Companies that are truly innovative are not necessarily consciously doing things to “be innovative.” Rather, they value at their core, certain things that drive innovative behavior and the result is innovation.

It’s really a culture issue- something that resides in the deep recesses of the collective subconscious that guides people by saying, “Hey, these behaviors that are usually associated with innovation- those are really good behaviors in this organization and we really value them.”

Creating a culture of innovation is more about building an engine of employee behaviors within your organization. But, even the most well intentioned engines of innovation can stall unless you continuously provide the right fuel to support those behaviors.

How Do You Jumpstart Your Organization When Innovation Stalls?

A sure sign that the engine of innovation is stalling in your company is when most of your energy is focused on internal or established processes, while external factors in the market and competition are largely ignored.

If we consider Quinn and Rohrbaugh’s competing values framework, organizations who focus internally rather than balancing their focus between the internal and external sides of business may unintentionally set themselves up for failure in the long-term.

There is quite a bit of research on this topic that strongly suggests that the most sustainably successful organizations are those that are able to manage the dynamic tensions that exist between the internal and external components of their business.

Here are four ways you, as a leader, can help fuel a culture of innovation in your company:

Raise Awareness and Common Understanding

It all starts with helping people in the organization to develop some perspective around what organizational culture is and how it drives attitudes and behaviors to every corner of the company.

By raising common awareness, people are able to talk about why there isn’t really a silver bullet they can use to “be innovative.”  It’s more than just doing something differently- it goes to the core of what is valued and what isn’t. Without bringing this to light through common understanding and dialogue, innovation efforts may face a long, uphill battle as the current culture fights against the change.

Make a Collective Decision to Change

If your organization is focusing too much on the internal and you collectively agree that this is an issue; it’s time to make the decision to change.  Only when this decision is made and people are on board with the need will you open the door to begin the journey.

Being Intentional About Shifting Behavior

It’s not enough to just go forth and proclaim that people should now, all of a sudden, behave in new ways. People have survived and prospered for years by doing things a certain way and they aren’t likely to jump into a new way of being because you said so.

It’s going to take leaders getting out there and showing people that behaving in new ways that drive innovation is not only okay; it’s welcome.  They can show and reinforce that these behaviors are welcome by rewarding and recognizing those who exhibit them and not punishing those who try and fail.

Aligning existing systems and processes to incentivize exploration of new behaviors takes very careful thought and effort.

Give it Time

The current ways of doing things in your organization didn’t happen overnight and neither will large changes in behavior.  It will take time for people to be open to experimenting with new behaviors and it will take many iterations of the organization seeing that those new ways of doing things actually yield success.

Over time, as people realize that those new behaviors result in positive outcomes, they will become part of the culture and, in turn, become the accepted way things are done.  Eventually, they will move into the collective subconscious as a way that people behave without needing to even really think about it.

When all is said and done, you can’t force innovation in an organization whose culture doesn’t value it. On its best day, it would be an uphill battle and, on it’s worst day, could leave people frustrated, exhausted and confused.  There is no silver bullet solution when attempting to evolve and organization to be more innovative.  Those organizations that are interested in driving innovative behavior should spend less on outfitting meeting rooms with Koosh Balls and more time understanding their cultures, their values, and how those are driving their performance.

This article originally appeared on Forbes

What Your Employees Really Need to Keep Them Engaged

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
key to keeping employees engaged

Employee engagement is one of the top challenges facing organizations today. In fact, 87% of organizations cited employee engagement as a top concern, according to a recent report from Deloitte.

There may be many reasons why this is suddenly, and increasingly a concern for leaders over the past several years. And while behaviors like micromanagement, poor pay or benefits, or a lack of appreciation or praise are often cited, they don’t paint an accurate picture of the entire engagement story.

Read More…

Creating a Culture of Safety: More Than a Kitschy Catchphrase

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
creating a culture of safety

You’ve probably seen it before: a well-meaning cartoon safety poster hanging in your company warehouse about ladder safety; complete with a catchy slogan like, “while on a ladder, never step back to admire your work.”

Reminders like these are good for a chuckle, but are they actually effective?

All too often, organizations espouse the value of safety by pasting the walls with posters like these, making safety one of the organization’s core values while meeting only the minimum requirements for safety awareness, training and protective equipment.

Unfortunately, the critical importance of safety is seldom taken seriously unless there’s a serious accident in the workplace.

3 Misconceptions About Safety Culture

The term safety culture, coined in 1988, has become a very common concept in the world of safety, and for good reason.

As evidenced by the many significant accidents and incidents over the years, even though organizations may say safety is important, the underlying culture of the organization puts safety down on the list of priorities.  A company may even have the systems in place to track safety and to meet regulations imposed on them, but safety isn’t what is truly valued at the end of the day or what drives day-to-day behavior in the field.

There are a number of recent incidents around the world that leave me wondering: if organizations are talking about safety culture all the time, why aren’t we able to drive safety values and thinking into their DNA?

Why aren’t more organizations able to embrace safety culture in a meaningful and sustainable way?  Here are 3 misconceptions that are keeping organizations from truly embracing safety into their culture:

1. Although many people use the term “safety culture”, the current methods for assessing and transforming culture tend to fall very heavily on the safety side and less so on the culture side.

In order to truly drive safety as a value in ways that change behavior at all levels in an organization, it’s time for the field to acknowledge a critical need to bring safety and culture into more of a balance in the assessment and transformation of organizations.

2. The way in which we intervene to drive safety performance needs to be turned on its head.  Addressing the symptoms without addressing the root causes of unsafe behavior doesn’t create sustainable improvement.

This is not to suggest that this shift in approach is not happening.  One example of a cultural evolution is the Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP), developed for use in the aviation industry by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Integrating a completely new system into the DNA of airlines made it possible for companies to identify risks before they result in accidents, thereby giving them the ability to proactively address potential hazards.  This process also fundamentally changed the way in which safety is viewed in organizations.  Rather than being something that people hide away for fear of punishment, employees are rewarded (not be punished) for voluntarily disclosing near misses and breaches of safety before they come to light in some other way.

3. The term “culture of safety” creates the impression that safety is the only positive outcome of understanding and shaping a culture.

Contrarily, research shows that organizations that create clarity and alignment about what they stand for, what they value, and how people work together, not only achieve better safety performance but they also tend to pull ahead of their competitors in metrics such as sales growth, market share, employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction and operational performance.

At the end of the day, creating a culture of safety is not about catchy slogans, posters, or PSA’s. It must become a part of your organization’s DNA.

If you truly want to create a culture that values safety as a key aspect of success, you must begin to tip the scales and find the balance between safety and culture. Only then will you be able to move meaningful, sustainable change around the importance of safety in your organization.

This article originally appeared on Forbes