Cracking the Culture Code

If you want to dramatically improve your bottom line, engage your employees. Profitability, employee retention, creativity, cost reduction and earnings per share have all been linked to employee engagement in studies  by Accenture, Gallup and others. Gallup found that firms with highly engaged team members are 12 percent more profitable and 18 percent more productive than their peers.

So how do they do it and sustain it? It is not a result of your corporate mission statement; it is the result of workplace culture.  Call it the E³ Culture equation-Engaged, Empowered and Energized.

Two-way Feedback

Create an expectation of regular, professional and honest feedback. This can be one of the most challenging practices to incorporate, but without it, establishing other critical areas is nearly impossible.

Ground rules for feedback sessions include timeliness of feedback; openness to feedback (ask the person if they are open and have time to talk); and above all else, connect the feedback to behaviors and results. During feedback sessions, solicit employee thoughts on improving the situation. Also, offer to support them in creating the changes needed to maintain the positive or improve the negative.

Trust

Dissatisfaction in leadership, whether it's executives, managers or supervisors, is often cited as the number one reason people quit. Leaders who act with integrity by keeping their word, honoring and respecting others, and clearly communicating and acting in the best interests of the organization and client, will be trusted.

Pivotal to maintaining trust is how you handle broken integrity. Owning up to mistakes in front of the staff, asking to be held accountable and committing to correcting bad behaviors are critical to repairing trust. Nothing says trust like gut-level honesty.

Career Track

Engaged employees are always learning. Hold genuine conversations with employees about development, advancement and career growth. An absence of these talks leads employees to feel caught in a dead-end job where management doesn't care.

Talking to staff about how they can advance may give an aspiring leader a path forward when before none was clear. Also be on the lookout for those looking to take on more responsibility. Managers can't get promoted without someone to fill their shoes.

These conversations don't need to be-and shouldn't be-about possibilities that don't exist. Sharing a good book, providing flexibility in schedules or even asking for their input on workplace training and professional development are all great places to start.

Managers who listen closely to the aspirations of their team members show employees management cares, and that, with appropriate resources, may be willing to support employee growth.

Role in Success

Establish a customer-centric culture where everyone can clearly and readily explain how he or she helps the customer. Understanding the impact your work has on customers' experience fuels pride in a job well done. Without a customer-centric focus, many well-intentioned initiatives can become intellectual exercises, at best.

Nothing drives meaning and a sense of purpose more than knowing you helped to overcome a customer's want, need, fear or concern.

Influence

Engaging employees requires insuring they are heard and have a meaningful influence in decision-making. For managers this means moving from setting standards for employees to coaching toward goals.

Our experience has shown that four out of five team members, when given firm standards and the resources to succeed, establish goals more audacious than those envisioned by management.

Being open to the suggestions of others doesn't mean those ideas must be implemented, but it does foster an atmosphere of collaboration and creativity.

Collaboration and creativity then become living and breathing embodiments of an E³ Culture, where employee engagement is high, two-way feedback is a regular occurrence and everyone is invested in the company's success.

Dan Demers is founder and president of ReMission Consulting, a NH  training and consulting firm. He can be reached at dan@remissionconsulting.com.