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#WorkTrends: Culture Wins

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Two out of three Americans hate their jobs.

That’s a crazy statistic, and it’s one we all want to be on the opposite end of. We want to love going to work — and we want everyone else on our team to love work, too.

This week on #WorkTrends, we’re talking to William Vanderbloemen, author of the new book “Culture Wins: The Roadmap to an Irresistible Workplace.” He’s helping us think through why culture matters so much and how we can all build better ones.

You can listen to the full episode below, or keep reading for this week’s topic. Share your thoughts with us using the hashtag #WorkTrends.

Work Is Family

I thought I could get through 5 minutes of an interview without bringing up the “M” word, but nope — we jumped into a conversation about millennials right away. Vanderbloemen points to the number of workers, by generation, who are available to work. There are a lot of baby boomers and millennials, and much fewer Gen Xers. As the Boomers start to retire, millennials are going to absolutely dominate the workforce. So their preferences about work are only going to become more important in the next 10 years, he says.

“Smart companies are starting to say, ‘What are the things we can learn about this generation? How can we build a workplace that matches them so we can retain them?’”

One thing that’s unique about millennials: They prioritize financial security, but are marrying and having children much later in life. So, Vanderbloemen says, “that means the people they work with are their family. And if they don’t like the people they work with or the place they work, they’re going to go find another family to hang out with.”

Millennials aren’t looking to stay at one organization for 20 years, but finding ways to retain millennial employees for just two years longer than your competition can lead to huge advantages for employers, he says.

Values Trump Fun

We’ve talked before on #WorkTrends about fun at work. So I asked Vanderbloemen: Does fun at work matter? His simple answer: Nope. “If I could rewrite my book, I’d have one more chapter titled ‘Culture Does Not Equal Fun.’ Work is work, and work is where you show up to get things done. A lot of people mistake a winning culture for a place that’s fun.”

When his company won a Best Place to Work award from Entrepreneur a few years back, he was surprised that they took home the top prize even though they had a simple office without bells and whistles like free food or foosball tables. Instead, his team focused on their values.

“We laid out nine clear values of how we function together,” he says. “We’ve hired around it. We’ve reviewed people around it. We compensate around it. We fired people because of it. And it’s created a sense of family. Now, is it fun when you all function the same way? Absolutely, but if fun is the target you’re going to be chasing windmills. Fun is a byproduct of a healthy culture, but it’s not the target.”

Vanderbloemen reverse-engineered his company’s culture to define his team’s core values — or what he calls “defining our kind of crazy.” One of those values is “ridiculous responsiveness.” He realized early on, when he was running his business from a card table, that clients were amazed by how quickly he got back to them. He realized that responsiveness set him apart from the competition, so he made sure to hire only people who were “almost maniacal about getting back to people right away.”

Defining your culture, he says, is all about asking this question: “When we’re at our best, what do we do that’s common to us but uncommon to other teams around us?”

Build a Business Case for Culture

Vanderbloemen has seen the impact culture can have on a team — and on the bottom line. When he was writing his book, he researched more than 100 companies with award-winning cultures. One thing they all had in common: they invest cold, hard dollars in culture every year.

So, how can HR pros make a business case for investing in culture? Vanderbloemen says HR teams have to shift the conversation away from spending and instead focus on how investing in culture will save the organization money and create fewer people problems.

“There’s nothing more expensive to a business than people problems,” he says. He points to one tech company that has two very similar competitors, but they’re much more profitable than those competitors. What sets them apart? They invest 5% of their revenue on culture.

“In the tech industry, turnover is rampant,” he says. This particular tech sector’s churn rate is about 38%. Once the company started spending money on culture, their churn rate dropped to 2%. “So, every year, four people leave instead of 76. That’s 72 vacancies they don’t have to deal with every year. By spending a million dollars on culture, they’ve retained people. They have momentum in their business, less turnover cost, less hiring cost and greater profitability.”

“That’s why we called this book ‘Culture Wins,’” he says. “It’s a way to win in the coming years.”

Continue the conversation. Join us on Twitter (#WorkTrends) for our weekly chat on Wednesdays at 1:30 p.m. Eastern, 10:30 a.m. Pacific or anywhere in the world you are joining from to discuss this topic and more.

Beware the Feel Good Work Culture

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How critical is work culture to recruitment and employee retention? It’s important, I’ll give you that. But a feel good work culture might do more harm than good. As the economy continues to grow, hiring managers and HR personnel realize how fiercely they must compete for top talent. As I recently wrote, if you’re looking to snag the best prospects, employee perks alone just won’t cut it.

Today’s modern employee is looking for much more than great benefits and a healthy 401K plan. Those recruiting for tech industries especially know that companies such as Google and Facebook have raised the bar when it comes to work culture and the lure of a fun, modern office space.

And yes, I regularly encourage businesses to think creatively, encourage a human-centered workplace, and build a collaborative and relationship-driven work culture. But there is a catch—a trap, if you will—to all these good feelings. Focusing too much on creating a happy workplace may mean you create one that’s less productive. Let’s take a look.

The Bottom Line Impact of an Engaged Workplace

It is easy to drift into Kumbaya-land when discussing how to build an engaged work culture. There is much talk of employee self-actualization and this new, seamless “work-life” way of living that impacts an individual from sunup to sundown.

But the real reason there is so much focus on employee engagement is because the numbers back up the fact that engaged employees are far more productive. Business leaders are beginning to understand that the bottom line is directly and greatly impacted by their work culture.

At the end of last year, CareerBliss released their 5th annual CareerBliss 50 Happiest Companies in America, and it is not surprising that it is populated with industry leaders. As CEO and Chief Happiness Officer Heidi Golledge says, “It is important to see how workplaces are constantly evolving and changing. Creating happiness at work is a very fluid process, building and adapting to a changing workforce, while accounting for the key factors that create happier environments.”

Too Much Focus on Feeling Good Affects Productivity

Employee happiness matters to business success, period. But let’s take a look at the flip side of the coin. As I mentioned, studies repeatedly show that positive work environments equal higher productivity, but I caution against going too far in the “feel good” direction. There is a big difference between creating a happy work culture and creating an environment where productivity comes second to individual happiness. Building a culture of engaged employees does not mean you create a stress-free zone where accountability and productivity take a back seat to personal needs and wants. In order to create an engaged, but successful workplace, a good portion of the “happy” culture must be connected to performance.

What good is a happy workplace if profitability is at risk? A happy employee is also an employed employee, and it is management’s job to keep the business alive and thriving. A culture of excellence, where employees and teams are recognized and rewarded for success, is a signature element of both a happy work culture and a profitable business.

Finding the Balance between Sound Business and a Positive Work Culture

Offering perks like free lunches, part-time remote work schedules, and flex time are benefits any employee appreciates. Paid leave and great healthcare also help to make employees feel valued. However, to build a truly positive work culture, go a step further and create a clear vision so that all employees understand your core principles. Create clear lines of open communication so both management and their reports know that they will be heard.

The danger in not having a strategy for how to achieve a positive, happy work culture is that management may make some very expensive decisions centered on perks and individual happiness without a clear connection to performance. If you’re not careful, you may create an environment where people feel that their right to be happy and not stressed out takes precedence over performance.

Getting the Positive Work Culture Right

For a good example of strategic planning for a positive work culture, we need look no further than Netflix. The slideshare presentation outlining their corporate strategy lays the foundation with the title: Freedom with Responsibility. They clearly lay out that their “culture focuses on helping us achieve excellence.” There is no confusion about the goal—it’s clearly communicated, right at the onset.

In the presentation, Netflix talks about values and they directly connect them to performance, stating, “The actual company values, as opposed to the nice sounding values, are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go.”

The company nails exactly what I’m talking about. “Great values is not espresso, lush benefits, sushi lunches, grand parties or nice offices…We do some of these things, but only if they are efficient at attracting and retaining stunning colleagues.”

No one at Netflix can be confused about the company’s work culture and goals after watching their 124-slide presentation. They have obviously thought it through and clearly communicated their intentions.

What do you think? What is your experience with positive work cultures and strategies that create engaged employees? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this topic.

Photo credit: study world culutre via photopin (license)

A version of this article was first published on Huffington Post on 12/30/15

When Our Workplace Culture Is On Fire

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“The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire. We don’t need no water let the m-f burn.” –The Bloodhound Gang

At least, that’s the melodic hip-hop mantra many of us have wanted to repetitively belt out at some point in our world of work lives (with an unapologetic emphasis on the unabbreviated curse word, of course).

Not because we’re having so much fun dancing around the water cooler, or in the break room, or the conference room, house music thumping in our heads, but because our workplace culture around has all but burned out our aspirational goals.

Many years ago I worked for a firm with an unsettlingly quiet dragon at the helm, one that erupted at the most seemingly inconsequential things, especially when he felt out of the communication loop of any minute detail of the client services work we delivered week to week.

Most mythic dragons spew toxic flames but usually telegraph their eruptions. Heroes have time to duck and cover, but most of us expendables, however, do not.

But this particular dragon? No telegraphing whatsoever. Nothing but surprise eruption after surprise eruption with the complete “why” context not quite coming clear until after the smoke literally cleared and you were sweeping your own ashes from a dust pan into your cubicle trashcan.

After surviving the first year unscathed, jousting internal “windmills” and ungrateful clients, I was presented the opportunity to travel internationally and work onsite for at least six months with a great client of ours. My excitement was palpable and was exceeded only by my naïve, inquisitive nature.

So I started asking the client questions about where I’d be living and how much my per diem would be each day, and the like.

It seemed to me to be innocuous enough, as did the client, but as soon as the dragon caught wind of my inquiries, my days of being a hero were doomed. Without notice and no more than an hour after my client e-mail exchange, the dragon swooped down the long hallway to where the account managers worked and let loose an ungodly fire that decimated every single cell in my godforsaken soul, something I had never experienced before, nor since.

Damn, let the m-f burn. And burn I did.

I lasted just over 3.5 years in that hardcore culture, never really fitting it. While I learned a lot of valuable lessons, and had sound relationships with many colleagues, some that still exist to this date, when I left there, I never looked back.

I imagined that I was the dragon burning that place to the ground. Over and over and over again. All the while bouncing to the house music, curse words intact.

The quest for all of us is to find a company culture that fits (which is the one that forever eludes us). But mercy me, we must keep working towards the goal of finding, and/or making it, and keeping it. According to Strategy& of PwC, 96% of employees have stated a “culture change” is needed at their company. Only about half of all employees say their leaders treat culture as a priority on a day-to-day basis. Fewer still say culture is effectively managed at their companies.

But culture goes deeper than a workplace flexibility, pizza lunches, ping-pong tables – or international travel to exotic client locales. In fact it should drive most every aspect of business – from customer relations to internal practices. Culture is a living breathing entity in companies and one of the most important drivers.

Today, talent science shows us that we perform better when we’re a fit with our workplace culture. This is the science of using quantifiable data to find and hire employees that will be most engaged with the company, its culture, and therefore contributing more to the bottom line and driving business outcomes.

But when we talked about this on the TalentCulture #TChat Show, we all rediscovered what we already new so very well, and only now we can better analyze it – the fact that there are many, many layers of cultural nuance, driven by leadership as well as every single individual contributor in the organization.

Which is why RoundPegg, a company that increases business performance through applied culture science and employee engagement software, believes we can:

  1. Measure it. The first thing you have to do is to “look in the mirror” and measure the values of everyone in the company, via surveys and assessments. How’s everyone really wired in the organization and why? Personal values are the best predictors of what’s happening in company, but until recently we really didn’t have the powerful combination of modern psychology, computing power and rigorous algorithms.  Now we do.
  2. Analyze it. For example, take a mid-size firm growing rapidly that burned through a huge investment but wasn’t performing. Their board of directors of course found the firm’s lackluster performance less than acceptable and demanded the “righting of the ship.” Internally they thought accountability was the issue, but after measuring the values and analyzing the results, the most challenging issue was really about rules — half wanted rules, structure and discipline, and the other half wanted flexibility and freedom, to be more spontaneous. This was at the real root of their stagnation.
  3. Then change it. Once identified, they realized that communication was at the heart of their rules issue, one that had previously only been paid lip service, if any at all. Over the course of six months clear communication channels were developed and maintained, and the course corrections they made impacted employee development, hiring those who shared the same newly unified values, and improving overall engagement that had immediate and long-term improvements, especially business growth.

Values and engagement aren’t just nice-to-haves, they’re personally vital, and when our workplace culture is on fire from jousting fiery dragons and ungrateful exchanges, it kills our shared values, productive affinity and the business mojo within.

Gathering the right cultural data and analyzing what’s wrong with collective values allows organizations to make the changes that insulate the entire business and keep them somewhat dragon safe.

photo credit: balt-arts via photopin cc