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Do Your Employees Tell You the Truth? How to Foster an Environment Where They Do

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StrategyDriven Corporate Culture Article | Corporate Culture | Do Your Employees Tell You the Truth? How to Foster an Environment Where They DoAre the people in your organization telling you the truth? As a manager, if you ask someone working for you, “What should we be doing better?” or “Where can we improve?” how honest do you think he or she will be?

Will your staff give you a laundry list of opportunities for improvement, an overview of key issues that hold your company back, or nothing of substance? Do your employees feel emotionally safe enough to have these authentic conversations? And if not, why?

These questions are at the heart of building a brilliant culture, an organizational culture that is driven by authenticity, adaptability, and a willingness to listen. In several decades of organizational business consulting, I’ve found that culture often distinguishes truly successful and healthy organizations from their dysfunctional counterparts. And one of the biggest indicators of a brilliant culture is a willingness—of everyone in the organization—to both tell the truth and listen. Truth-telling is essential to building a brilliant culture, but it doesn’t happen without leaders and managers who are willing to listen to what they hear and meet people where they are.

As a manager, the impetus falls on you to set that tone. Ask yourself: When I do annual reviews, sit down to discuss key issues, or collaborate on problem-solving, do people speak honestly with me, without fear of repercussion? If they don’t, what’s keeping them from doing so?

How to Foster a Safe Environment

One of the best ways to foster an environment in which it’s emotionally safe to tell the truth is to listen to what you hear instead of only acknowledging what you wanted or hoped to hear. Consciously work on enhancing your ability to meet people where they are and focus on developing your follow-up questions. Try staying in the present more often. Rather than thinking about the next item on your agenda during a discussion, offer your full and undivided attention. You may learn that you’ve been missing essential information in previous conversations.

The truth sets organizational cultures free. Only when we understand what’s actually happening in a company culture can we choose to realign behaviors, beliefs, and strategies. Careful listening, validating other perspectives, and follow-through build trust, signal respect, and show people they are valued—all bedrocks of emotional safety. Learn to listen to what you hear and you just may be surprised at the truths that find their way into the light.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Corporate Culture Article | Corporate Culture | Do Your Employees Tell You the Truth? How to Foster an Environment Where They DoClaudette Rowley is the CEO of Cultural Brilliance, a cultural design and change management consultancy. Over the past twenty years, she has consulted, trained, and coached executive leaders and teams at Fortune 1000 companies, small businesses, academic institutions, and start-ups, helping them create proactive and innovative workplace cultures that deliver outstanding results. She lays out a road map for organizational success in her new book, Cultural Brilliance: The DNA of Organizational Excellence. Learn more at culturalbrilliance.com.

Top 3 Reasons Why Happy Employees Are Good for Business

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Employees are your business’s biggest assets. Your company can only grow as rapidly as the growth of the employees that support it. In a market as competitive as today, employees also act as a competitive advantage.

Recent studies have shown that keeping employees happy is a great investment. Businesses whose employees are happy produce better results and can be more agile on the market. Aside from the boost in agility, there are other reasons why happy employees are good for business.

Higher Employee Engagement

Happy employees are 12% more productive according to a study by University of Warwick. The spike in productivity is a great thing for your business, especially when you take into account the collective effect that spike produces when the majority of the employees are happy.

It doesn’t stop at productivity either. Happy employees have higher employee engagement in general. This means they are more likely to take initiatives, come up with creative ideas and solutions, and make steps to further contribute to the success of the company.

Higher employee engagement also leads to lower friction within the organization. Engaged employees will speak up about issues they come across in an attempt to maintain a healthy and pleasant working environment. The business will run at a much higher efficiency this way; the 12% boost in productivity we discussed earlier will have an even bigger impact at this stage.

Fewer (Costly) Errors

The biggest cost for a business isn’t the cost of production or operations, but the mistakes employees make along the way. A simple mistake can lead to a much bigger cost too; when a sales officer failed to meet the customer’s deadline, for instance, the loss in sales can be catastrophic to the business’s growth.

This is where keeping employees happy comes into its own. Happy employees have better ability to stay focused. They are result-oriented and goal-driven too. Pair these traits with the higher employee engagement, and you have the perfect recipe for minimizing costly errors in business operations.

You can use online resources such as SalariesHub.com to find out more about what employees expect from a position or a career. Creating a better compensation package and providing employees with clear career paths are among the best ways to boost employee happiness and increase their ability to perform well at work.

Healthier Team

Lastly, there is the added benefit of having a healthier team when your employees are happy. Happy employees live better and longer. They tend to take fewer sick days and are more economical to insure too. These may seem like small advantages to gain, but they are advantages worth pursuing nonetheless.

The attempt to boost employee happiness can go hand in hand with that of creating a healthier team. By introducing a corporate fitness program, for example, you can help employees stay healthy and happy in the long run.

At the end of the day, you don’t need researches and studies to come to the conclusion that happy employees are good for business. Through a better working environment, a clear career path, and a supportive organization, the right investment in employee happiness can produce a great return for the business.

Your Workforce Will Be Happier If You Do These Things

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Every great business needs a happy workforce behind it. No business got off the ground or became successful with a team of grumbling employees who were resentful of the things they had to do. A happy workforce means a higher quality of work. How can you make your workforce happier? Do these things…

Be A Better Boss

A boss in this day and age shouldn’t be somebody who watches from the sidelines and gives people orders. It’s somebody who’s willing to get their hands dirty and go above and beyond for their team. It’s somebody who has an open door policy, listens, and wants to make things as enjoyable as possible for them. You need to genuinely care about your employees to be a great boss. They’ll be able to tell if you’re genuine or not too. You’re not going to get people doing their best work or building a great reputation if you’re only worried about yourself in business.

Make Their Lives Easier

How can you make your employees lives easier? Could you maybe ensure that they have the supplies they need to make lunch, with a microwave, refrigerator, and kettle? Could you ensure they have the highest quality equipment, as well as implement trustworthy programs to help them get things done faster? You can automate some processes, but with others, you’re going to need to find better ways of simplifying. There’s a reason programs like Excel are so popular. You can check out the infographic below if you think this is something you could use.


Credit to STL

Time to Let Someone Go at Work? Here’s How to Do It Properly

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If it’s time to let someone go at work, you may be wondering how to drop the bombshell without creating chaos. Firing an employee is easier said than done, and in some cases, there is more than dignity at stake, so it’s important to tread carefully.

Aside from the obvious discomfort of firing your problem employee, letting him or her go too hastily could be detrimental to your business. Those who feel they were mistreated could take legal action, so you need to make sure you’re following the necessary steps to avoid ending up in court.

With this in mind, here are four tips to help you lay someone off at work without creating unnecessary conflict.

Give Your Employee Time

If you have to let someone go from your business, it shouldn’t come as a shock. You should have been providing the employee with feedback throughout his employment and giving him chances to improve. If someone gets fired out of the blue, he is more likely to want to take action for wrongful dismissal.

Similarly, you should give your employee time to attend the meeting. Don’t schedule it for first thing in the morning, but don’t wait until the end of the day either. If you’ve planned a meeting, your employee probably knows what’s coming, so give him time to prepare.

Be Private

Respect your employee’s privacy by keeping his colleagues in the dark about his departure, so he doesn’t feel like he’s been shunned from all sides. When it comes to letting him go, make sure you do it in a quiet space away from other workers and give him a chance to leave unnoticed. Whatever the circumstances, your employee has the right to retain his dignity.

Be Kind, Not Condescending

There’s no reason to belittle your employee, no matter why they’re leaving the business. In fact, talking down to someone in this situation could come back to haunt you later down the line. Ex-employees talk to competitors and potential clients, and you don’t want your name dragged through the dirt.

To avoid getting a reputation as a poor manager, try to deliver the news as kindly as possible without being condescending. Offer to help the employee find a new job by pointing him in the direction of a free resume builder or providing a reference. Your employee may be upset or angry when you first lay him off, but over time he will remember those small gestures and speak of you more favorably.

Focus on the Facts

Don’t make excuses or come across too personal. It’s entirely acceptable to fire someone because he doesn’t fit in with your business, so don’t feel like you have to lie about budget cuts or pressure from above. Be honest and tell him it’s not a good fit, and try not to stray into emotional territory. Have an HR representative present with all the required documentation to hand, and keep the meeting formal but friendly.

Firing an employee is no one’s favorite job, but it does need to be done from time-to-time. Approaching the situation with humility and care will make the process smoother for everyone involved, so be sure to follow these four steps.

9 Team Building Activities Your Entire Staff Can Enjoy

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In theory, organizing team building activities is a perfect way to get your team to get to know each other outside the office and form a stronger bond within the office as a result. However, finding the right activity for everyone if you are running a company that has multiple departments can be a real challenge.If your workforce is very diverse, there’s a good chance that preferences are going to vary – especially if you have a workforce in which there are employees who are not all the same relative age. This is why you need to find a way to celebrate these differences by choose activities everyone feels comfortable participating in.

Here’s a list of fun team building exercises everyone can participate in and enjoy.

Scavenger Hunt

Purpose: Teamwork

A scavenger hunt is a classic team collaboration game. The rules are easy:

Split your team into equal sized groups and send them out with a list of fun things to find. You can choose whether you want to do this in the office or outside the office. Set a time limit for all groups and put together some fun clues or even riddles that will force your teams to get creative and use not just their eyes but their brains as well! Whichever team comes back with the most items once time has run out is the winner.

Minefield

Purpose: Communication and problem solving

For this indoor game, you will need an empty room or hallway and a bunch of random office items. You can use office chairs, paper, boxes, anything you have around the office that isn’t too delicate or expensive to create obstacles in the empty space or “minefield.” Divide teams into pairs in which one of them must be blindfolded.

The other one must guide that person from start to finish without setting off any mines. That means they cannot step on any obstacles or venture outside the given boundaries. Their only guidance is the voice of their partner. You can change the number of pairs and obstacles depending on how difficult you want this game to be.

Three Truths and a Lie

Purpose: Getting to know each other

This is a really easy game. Before starting, give each team member four slips of paper where each of them can secretly write down three truths and one lie about themselves. It’s very important that the lie is believable. Instruct them not to reveal to anyone what they wrote down!

Then allow 15 minutes for conversation between the team members. This is the time when everyone should go around the room and talk about their written talking points in random order. The goal here is to convince others that your lie is a truth while you try to guess other people’s lies by asking them different questions. Remember- you should not reveal your truths or lies to other team members, even if everyone else has already guessed everything!

Say My Name

Purpose: Breaking stereotypes

Everyone should write down names (e.g. someone famous) or types of people (e.g. professor, doctor, wealthy, athletic) on name tags. Then put those tags on each team member’s back or forehead so they cannot see who they are but everyone else can.

Give people a few minutes to talk to each other and ask questions. The point is to treat everyone according to stereotypes related to the name on their tag. After each team member figures out who they are, they should exit the game and leave the rest of the people to continue playing. This game allows your employees to have fun and engage in conversation while confronting stereotypes at the same time.


Office Trivia

Purpose: Bonding

This is one of the easiest team building games to put together! All you have to do is come up with a series of questions about your office and then test your team’s knowledge. You can ask a variety of questions such as: “What brand of computer does a certain employee use?” “How many people are in the finance department” or “How many windows are there in the office?” or “Who takes their coffee with cream and sugar?”

Besides bonding people through conversation, this fun and easy team building activity is great for testing how observant people are and how much they know about their office, company and colleagues.

Community Service

Purpose: Enhance teamwork and collaboration

Find an activity that reflects your company values, get out of the office for a day and do something good for your community. This team building activity is not only excellent for getting your employees together and bonding through something that’s incredible positive, it’s also great for the overall image of your company in terms of local marketing.

When businesses go out into their communities and help people in need, the members of the community take notice and reward those businesses with loyalty.

Mural Painting

Purpose: Enhancing creativity

For this fun and creative team building activity you will need paint, brushes and something to paint on. It can be a canvas or a wall of your building/office. The point is to give each member of the team complete freedom to paint whatever they want. Give them a general theme and then let everyone create their own colorful masterpieces.

If you are giving an individual canvas to each employee, put them together and display them in your office as a mural once they are dry. Some people might refuse to paint at first because they don’t think they are talented, so make sure you explain to everyone that this is not a contest. This game’s purpose is to show that everyone has a creative side once they overcome their fears of showing it.


Make Your Logo

Purpose: Problem solving

Start by asking everyone to empty their pockets, purses and wallets and gather all the coins you can find and then place the coins on a table in front of you. Each team member should create their own logo for the company or team using the coins in front of them in one minute.

You may also use pens, notebooks, paper and anything you else you have around the office to create the logo. The logo can represent the team members individually or you can work together to create a logo for the department or even the entire organization. It’s a fun and creative game that encourages resourcefulness.

Peanut Butter and Jelly

Purpose: Communication skills

For this team building activity, you will need a small piece of paper for each employee and a list of well-known “couples” such as peanut butter and jelly, Romeo and Juliet, salt and pepper, and so on. Each team member should wear the name of one half of each pair on their backs.

Have everyone mingle and try to figure out the word on their backs while only asking each other “Yes or No” questions. Once they figure out their word, they have to find the other half of their pair. As they find each other, have them sit down while the rest of the team continues until everyone has connected with their pair.

About the Author

Tamara Luzajic is a web content writer and editor, currently working as a copywriter at Humanity, employee scheduling and workforce management software.