Positive Employee Experiences When Company Culture Changes

I was recently asked by a reporter about to create positive employee experiences when a company culture changes. Here are my answers to their questions.

In your opinion, why do some employees view a change in company culture as a negative? 

Resistance to change is instinctual. It involves unlearning and unlearning in all animals, including humans, follows a very specific pattern and that pattern involves initial resistance to change. The key for leaders is to understand that resistance is not necessarily a reflection on employee desire. Though it can be if the culture is changing for the wrong reasons on in a less ethical direction.

How do you communicate those changes to keep employees on the same page? 

It can help involve the employees directly in the planning. If a manager says – we are doing this differently – without input – they risk creating changes that make things worse for employees. When employees are involved in the discussions on WHY changes are being made – they are less likely to resist.  It’s the difference between dictating change and co-creating change.   If you want to establish new rules for handle interpersonal disagreements for instance, telling people – here is the new complaint process yields very different results from having conversations where individuals agree on a new process together. When people co-create new social rules, they are accountable for the rules they helped co-create and agreed to.  If they didn’t agree to the new rules, they aren’t accountable to them – as much as a manager might like them to be.

How do you help employees remain positive as the company culture evolves?

Positive reinforcement and support through the process and regular check ins to make sure the new culture being co-created is still moving in a good direction – so that course corrections can occur quickly and that people are rewarded for pointing out the problems with implementation – will help employees remain positive. It is when people don’t feel like they are being heard – that they get really negative. Culture must be co-created. It cannot be dictated and people who don’t like where the culture is going, have a right to be heard. But the process through which these conversations take place – should be positive which is why appreciative inquiry works so well.


I teach both humanistic management approaches and behavioral science based approaches to change management. https://humanistlearning.com 

Is goal setting a waste of time?

Question: Many companies require employees to set goals, especially for the new year, but some workers balk at the idea. They whip something off and quickly forget what they even wrote down. How could the process be handled better so that employees don't view it as simply administrative garbage that wastes time?

Answer:

Most of the time, these exercises are administrative garbage that wastes time, because there is no follow up. Ever. You could write anything done. No one looks at it – or follows up to see if you did it or accomplished your goals.

If companies really want employees to create goals – they should first, ask themselves some questions. Starting with – WHY!!!! Why do you want employees to write down goals? What exactly are you hoping will change as a result of employees setting goals. If the answer is – well – we think it’s a good way to motivate people – then the next question should also by why. Why do you want to motivate people? What will motivated employees do differently? Keep asking these questions – until you get to your real problem that you really want changed. 

Once you understand what exactly it is you really hope will change – you can start thinking of ways you might accomplish that. Asking employees to write down goals – is probably not the best way to get whatever your real goal is accomplished. But you won’t know that – until you know what exactly you are hoping to change by doing whatever it is you think you should do as a manager. 

Good managers, don’t waste employees time on nonsense. They focus their energy and work to create cohesive work groups that excel at problem solving collaboratively.  Thinking you need employees to have “goals” as employees -  may be a proxy problem. It may not be – but it most likely is. Focus on what your real problem is and your employees will thank you.

A better idea: 

It may be better to do a session with key employees at various levels of the organization and have a conversation about what the company can do better to help the employees get their jobs done more effectively.  Ask them – what they think the goals of the manager should be for the coming year. What do employees wish the managers would do differently? That information – will probably yield better change results than asking employees what they want to change about themselves.

 

So I would flip the question upside down and rethink why I think asking employees to write down goals is a good idea in the first place and instead - focus on finding out how I could do better as their manager. I'm pretty sure - every employee has ideas on how their manager can improve things. 

 

What is the Key to Employee Engagement During Staff Training Programs?

Many of my customers think they need live training in order to ensure that staff are actively engaged in the training program so that they learn.  I'm obviously quite happy to provide a live training - especially if it's in a location I'd like to visit, but live training aren't necessary to engaged participation in a training.

In fact, when customers want a live training, I often require them to participate in an online training to prep participants for the live discussion by providing education on key concepts prior to the live discussion.

To help you understand the problem of employee engagement and why I don't think live is necessarily better - here is a recent Q&A I did with a reporter. 

Question: 

What is employee engagement? And why has it become so crucial in the present day? How does staff training play a key role in employee engagement?  How can brands increase their employee engagement during staff training? What are the key factors?

Answer: 

The training – has to be of interest to them. Something they want to learn. If they aren’t interested in learning whatever it is you are teaching – they will be disengaged and it really doesn’t matter what sorts of whistles and bells you add to the training.  An example – harassment training. Most of this training is geared towards managers telling them – to not bully or harass employees because – it’s illegal.  Any manager who is bullying or harassing employees – isn’t interested in stopping and doesn’t really care about the training – it doesn’t apply to them – it’s just a requirement they are forced to sit through.  If … on the other hand – you approach this as a training for people currently being harassed or bullied – and you teach them – how to make it stop – you will have VERY engaged learners. 

For things where everyone has to learn whatever it is – to get engagement  you need to provide a reason why they should care. Not just – why do they need to learn this to do their job – but why it matters?  Caring and mattering are moral and ethical judgements. Without a moral reason to learn something – why would anyone care? A moral and ethical dimension that should be included in any training. For example – when I do leadership training – I not only provide practical skills – I also provide philosophic tweaks. I appeal to people’s sense of morality and ethics – how the world should be ideally. What sort of person/leader do they want to be – ideally. Once I activate people’s moral compass and encourage them to think of themselves – not just as a manager – but as  a quality human being – we can use that to discuss how good people – behave in certain stressful situations and now people want to learn – because this is about them – being moral and ethical and the person they aspire to be. If you can activate people’s moral compass and make learning a skill seem like a moral imperative – you will engage them more readily than if you just – present information.

Some things – can’t be made all that engaging. For the things that aren’t engaging – you can at least make them fun and use gamification to help – keep people interested and participating. But even these things can include moral and ethical considerations. Even if you are just training someone on how to clean up a mess – how they impact others. How this impacts work flow – matters. 

To me – I distinguish between engaged- and active. Engaged learners – want to learn. Active learners – are actively learning – even if they don’t want to learn. 

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If you want to learn more about how ethics impacts employee motivation - I am speaking with Prof. Manuel Guillén on Nov 30th for a live online Q&A on the importance of morality on motivation. Information and registration for this free event here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/humanistic-management-professionals-lunch-and-learn-employee-motivation-with-prof-manuel-guillen-tickets-50782666322

And if you would like to organize a training for your leadership team or staff - please let me know. I offer humanistic management training that is both practical, science based and integrated ethical philosophy so that people participating in the training - really want to learn and more importantly - change what they are doing so that they can be more effective and ethical at the same time. A list of my humanistic management programs are here: 

https://humanistlearning.com/category/businesscourses/

Lectors in cigar factories.lesson in employee wellbeing and community

A lesson in employee well being and community

I live in Florida - near Tampa. My son loves to go to Ybor City - which is where the cigar factories were. The history of the cigar factories is interesting. They almost located in my county - which was bigger population wise. But our founding fathers were greed SOBs (the used enslaved labor up until the 1940s - and actually the last slavery prosecution here was in 2005). Anyway - they priced the land too high and the cigar companies located where the land was cheaper - in Tampa.  Tampa grew to be a major city. Mine - is hardly worth noting.

But I'm not here to talk about the negative impact greed had on the development - or rather - lack of development - in my county.

Instead - I want to talk about he practice of lectors.  Making cigars is simple - but tedious. So - the companies allowed workers to pool their resources and hire a lector to read stories and news and other things to the workers to help relieve the boredom. The choice of material was made by the workers.

The lector - helped build community - within the community of workers. It's something they shared together and enjoyed together while they worked.

It's an interesting concept to think about. How might workers today - create community - through shared story telling.

Pride, Optimism and Recognition in the Workplace

How do you instill pride and optimism in your employees? What actionable steps do you need to take?

The first question you need to ask is – what people really want? The answer: to be treated as a respected and valued human being.  No one is a robot. No one wants to be ignored or worse, put down.   All humans have a need to belong and that includes belonging in the workplace.

It is very easy for managers to not pay attention to the real humans who are their employees. Managers have their own bosses with deadlines and stresses and more. They need the staff they manage to get the work that needs to be done done.

The managers who have happy staff, are the ones who take the time to recognize and respect the people who work for them as truly unique individuals who are valued members of the team.  This isn’t something that can be dictated, it has to be modelled and taught.

The problem is most managers don’t get training on what the role of a manager is and how to do it properly. So, they act how they think they should act and sometimes, their insecurities get in the way of them making human connections.

Now, I admit, I am NOT the greatest at making human connections because I’m a bit of an introvert. But a big part of my practice as a Humanist is to actually make eye contact when I meet someone. I try to get and remember their name. I try to be human with them. Meaning, I try to be my real self and not act as if I am someone I’m not. I’m a flawed geeky human. I share that with others.  The managers I have had that I respected the most, were not only the most real, they were also the most genuinely respectful people I’ve ever worked for. That is what we all should be aiming for.

Soft Management Skills.

The “soft skills required to do this right, like actively listening take time. That’s why people don’t do them. To treat your employees as fully human, you have to give them your time as a manager. Listen to them. Talk to them. Learn about what their struggles are and what their dreams are and who they want to be and who they admire and what tv shows and movies and music they like.  This takes time.  And it’s not optional. It’s necessary to learn what motivates your employees so you can provide them with what they need and want.

Trust

Often what people want is to be trusted. This can be demonstrated by asking for their opinion on decision making and respecting the input they are providing.  Don’t just give lip service to team work. Actually treat the members of your team as equally valued.

Respect

The next thing people want is to be treated with respect. This is why bullying, harassment and discrimination should never be tolerated. Unless you are a sadist, most people don’t enjoy working in an environment with a bully. So don’t just write off interpersonal problems as normal. They aren’t and they negatively effect the work being done and the decisions being made. Address them professionally and get rid of any employee who is not respectful of their co-workers.

Clear directions: 

Part of communication is being clear about what needs to be done. I offer a course on the 7 sins of staff management. They are all communication sins.  One of the sins is to not tell someone WHY a particular job needs to be done.  This is so important because if an employee doesn’t know why something has to be done, then if something happens that makes doing that job hard or impossible, they won’t necessarily know how to prioritize the fixing of it and they won’t necessarily understand how important it is to find a work around to get it done. In other words, the why jobs need to get done, helps employees be creative when a problem arises in the course of doing the job.

Individualize Recognition

Finally, when it comes to recognition, different people need different things. And unless you get to know who they are, really, you won’t know what they really need. Some people need and want public acknowledgement of their contributions to the team. Others would cringe if you made a public spectacle of them.  What I learned from my time as a volunteer manager is that most people are looking for friendship and while managers can’t really be friends with their staff, they can still instill a sense of camaraderie and respect in the team.

To learn more consider taking these courses or offer them to your new managers are part of their orientation program.

Examples of Change Management & Employee Engagement in Action

Last week I wrote about how to use science to successfully manage change processes. Today, I want to give you an example of how this works from my personal experience.

My first real job out of college was as a volunteer manager. I was brought in to fix a toxic volunteer staff relationship at a rather large non-profit. Toxic is an understatement.  We had 10 volunteers who thought it was their job to spy on the staff and report them being bad. For obvious reasons, staff didn’t want anything to do with the volunteers and were refusing to work with them.

The first thing I did was I talked to staff to find out what they hoped volunteers could do that would be helpful.  I didn’t assume I knew the answer, I found out, from the people who were open to the idea that volunteers could be helpful what they wanted volunteers to do and more importantly would allow volunteers to do. I didn’t force the issue. I just said – if you have a volunteer that actually wanted to help, what would you ask them to do?

I had 3 staff members who were willing to experiment with volunteers in a limited capacity. We agreed that volunteers could do 1 thing for them that would actually be helpful if it was done. We wrote a job description for this work so it was clear what a volunteer’s responsibilities were and who they reported to and why.  I created a new volunteer intake process that involved an application and screening process and training on the work we wanted them to do and we put all our existing volunteers through the process. 8 of the existing 10 volunteers agreed to go through this process and most confided that they had hated the old system because it was very negative and they had volunteered because they wanted to be helpful.

At this point, I only had a few staff members who were willing to work with the volunteers, but we assigned volunteers to them, gave them training and I worked closely with the staff to encourage them and help them mediate any problems with their volunteers. Basically, I had to train both the staff and the volunteers how to work productively together. This process took a couple of months.  Once those few staff members were working productively with their volunteers and their relationships had improved, other staff starting asking if they could have volunteers to help them too.
With every new request for volunteers, we wrote up a job description, created a training and recruited people into the system, worked closely with the staff and volunteers for the first few months to ensure that the system was running the way we wanted it to and that the relationships were positive and helpful.

We eventually grew the program to 500+ volunteers donating over 20,000 hours per year in every department in the agency.

This doesn’t mean it was smooth sailing. One of our pre-existing volunteers had a major blowout (which is a behavioral dynamic that occurs as part of the change process. Most times this is mild, but in some cases, it can be a – blowout).  This woman was the ringleader of the “old guard” spying project. She stayed on, but then continued to be horrid. I had to fire her 2 months into the transition as she was refusing to do the work we were asking volunteers to do. She launched an attack on me to try and get me fired. But by this time, I had allies in the organization that REALLY liked how things had changed, so the attempt to get me fired failed and after that – it was smooth sailing.

Our volunteers corp grew to include youth volunteers, law enforcement volunteers, adults with dual diagnosis and more. And we did all that while reducing our accident rate to the point our insurance company gave us a refund.

To recap the process, I used:

I started small and proved the concept by nurturing and promoting it over time. This is the key to effective change management.  Well, that and not being freaked out by the resistance. Plan for it. In advance. I didn’t fire the problem volunteer right away even though I knew exactly who she was and why she was a problem. I gave her an opportunity to change and gave her the benefit of the doubt. Only once the new system was in place and working well and she was an outlier, did I move against her. And honestly – firing was not my first choice; I had really hoped she would get with the new program.

Change is a well-studied phenomenon. Behavioral scientists know how to create change and what will happen when change is introduced to a group or an individual. If you want to be effective at it, use science, it works.

To learn more – check out this course: Why is Change so Hard

Employee Engagement and Change Management

Using science to help navigate the change process

I teach behavioral science applied to change management. Specifically, what we know about how learning and unlearning occurs and how that impacts change management processes.  I teach a course – Why is Change So Hard? that explores this.

What can organizations do to understand and manage employee engagement during times of change?

Organizations, if they want to be successful at creating change, need to learn how exactly people adapt to change and learn and unlearned new work habits. If you don’t have a good grounding in the science, a lot of what happens will catch you off guard. For instance, resistance to change is predicted to occur and is a natural part of the process that should not freak anyone out. Plan for it instead. Give employees time to adjust and adapt to the change. This is mostly about the mindset of the managers in charge of the change process and their expectations and how they deal with the resistance, which again, is normal and predicted.

What happens to Employee Engagement during different types of change?

Whenever change occurs, what we are really discussing is the removal of reward. So one way of doing things worked, now it doesn’t anymore. This can occur when you change your operating system for instance or your email system. People will resist and get upset and complain. What is happening is like a grief process. There is resistance to the new reality, and eventually people accept the new reality because they have no choice. This is normal. Not something to be upset about if you are the manager in charge. Treat it like grief. Commiserate and keep gently encouraging people to adapt. No – we can’t go back.

Another type of change occurs where the old way still works. This is much harder to change because it means people can refuse to change. And if they can refuse to change, they will refuse.  This happens when you try to change the culture of an organization, or you try to get a harassment situation to stop, or you are asking people to use a new form but the can still use the old form and still get things done. What happens is that people resist, not because they are being jerks, but because – that’s just part of the change process. There are ways to help employees adjust. You can enable and empower early adopters, support them and use them to create a new norm. But mostly, you just have to stay calm and patient during the rebellion to change and let it play out while exerting pressure to change.

What really helps is to adjust your training so that instead of having a 1 time training and expecting change, you roll out your training over time.  For instance, my sister works at a company that changed their email system. They were given an initial training, then over the period of 2 months, the training department sent out daily reminders about the new system and how to use it and nudges etc. This was a brilliant way to address the change, because it took into account the fact that people had to unlearn the old system and learn the new system and that is inevitably a process that takes a month or so. So plan accordingly.  You are building a habit and that takes a month or so of repetition.

What influences Employee Engagement during periods of change?

The attitude of the managers is key. If managers view the resistance in negative terms, meaning they take it personally or ascribe motivation to the resistance that has nothing to do with what is actually happening, they can make the process way more unpleasant that it really needs to be.   If managers view the resistance not as an attack on themselves, but as a normal part of the change process, they can be a lot more compassionate to the staff who are resisting and this makes the whole process easier and helps with how they go about motivating employees.  Managers who take resistance personally tend to try and bully employees into change. Managers who take a compassionate approach are supportive. Most employees prefer supportive approaches to bullying approaches.

What types of companies are doing this well? 

I think one of the best examples is Morgan Stanley – a couple of years ago they changed their corporate culture successfully - http://humanisthappiness.blogspot.com/2015/06/can-bankers-change.html  Details at: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/05/can-bankers-behave/389558/

What could companies be doing differently? 

When planning for change, they should take into account the natural resistance and plan for it. They should also understand that this is a marathon not a sprint. You can’t just do a training and have things be different. You have to manage the change process over time to be successful.

How do you implement a change management program that supports Employee Engagement?

 If the change is largely cultural, I recommend implementing the change in stages. Do a proof of concept with a smaller group and then fold in the rest in stages, building upon success. What you are trying to do is ensure that the change you want is solidified in the least resistant group and then using that group to help drive the social adoption which does require social validation. Each group brought in is given enough time to adapt and solidify the new behaviors before bringing in the next group.

If the change is structural, then you organize your training to take place over a period of two months and build in a LOT of repetition so that the new habits become – habits.

To learn more – consider taking my course – why is change so hard or have me do a training for your team.

Make Problems Interesting

“Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.”  Paul Hawken

I came across this quote and fell in love with it. If you read my blog regularly you know I have address this topic before. Businesses are in business only if they solve problems.  (http://humanisthappiness.blogspot.com/2015/11/what-does-it-mean-to-be-manager.html)

The challenge all managers and leaders have is how to get other people engaged in the work you need them to do.  One way is to order them and threaten them. Do the work or else! This may gain compliance but it’s not actually a good management technique and people who manage like that aren’t managers, they are bullies pretending to be managers because – no one ever taught them how to actually manage.

A better way is to understand, you are in the business of solving problems and the problems you are solving are worth solving, or I hope they are.  If there is a problem in how you are solving a problem, well, that’s worth solving too.

Do your employees even know what the problems are that you hired them to solve? Or did you just hire them and ask them to do a job but not explain to them why this job needs to be done?  I ask because - the not explaining why the job is being done is a sin of staff management that is committed ALL THE TIME!  (Yes I have a course on this - https://humanistlearning.com/7-sins-of-staff-management/ - Yes it’s worth taking- yes it will help explain to your managers what a manager is actually responsible for. Yes I can include it as part of an on-boarding training for new managers that includes sexual harassment training for )

If you want engaged excited self-motivated employees, start with making sure they understand that you are in the business of solving problems. Explain the problem you are solving. Explain the solution you have that is really constructive and helpful at solving the problem. What you will end up with is employees who actually get and understand WHY they are doing the work they are doing.   Will all your employees be engaged? Of course not. That’s not a realistic goal. But more will be engaged by this approach than a – just do your job approach.  Engage your employees in problem solving.