From: http://www.bizjournals.com/
One of the most significant factors to attract and hold talented employees is the quality of the work environment.
Not everyone can be a Google with its organic free food, volleyball courts, and great programs. But all organizations can offer opportunities to grow and learn.
This continuing education concept can be the difference between engaged employees who want to be included helping a company be productive and profitable and organizations where people come in, do their minimal job just to collect a paycheck, and leave.
Both from research on worker needs and the newest information about neuropsychology, there is evidence that people up and down an organization at a core level all want two major things:
- To be heard and acknowledged
- To have meaningful relationships
Rethinking what matters
When everyone is included, important changes can occur. Sometimes we need to turn our thinking upside down to rethink who and what really matters.
Several years ago we began leadership development with a mid-size scientific device company when Kim, the vice president of operations, called with a dilemma. There were comments flying around the shipping department, including lots of off-color jokes, focused on the sales and marketing team. It came to light the shippers felt left out and disregarded.
The head of the shipping team told the VP that the consensus was, “We’re not really included, just the hired help to do the menial tasks, not smart enough or fancy enough for an overnight meeting with dinner and discussion.”
Kim brought this up at a senior team meeting, and the CEO brushed the comments aside with “What do they expect? All they have to do is put our very expensive devices into boxes and get them to the trucks. Why should we have them go to an offsite? They are invited to the annual family picnic, isn’t that enough?”
Apparently not.
Fast forward months later when, after internal conflict and disruption in the leadership team, it was decided to have a “one-time only” overnight offsite for the shipping department.
The CEO predicted it would be a waste of time and money, but he would let the program take place only so he could say “I told you so” afterward.
Building a cathedral
The shippers were nervous and pleased, all on their best behavior.
There was one telling moment when as facilitators we asked them to talk about the importance of their jobs. “No big deal,” they said. “Just putting stuff in boxes and slapping names and addresses on the outside and getting them to the drivers.”
When asked what they knew about the devices they were shipping, there was lots of silence. The VP was asked to talk about the purpose of the devices, whose lives would be made more comfortable by them, and the cost of what these men were shipping around the world.
It was an eye opening experience.
These men had no idea they were part of a company that was helping people heal from serious injuries and that what they were packing into those nondescript boxes was vital to the health and well-being of people they would never meet.
It was one of those moments, as the proverbial story goes, where instead of seeing themselves as bricklayers, they saw themselves as helping build a cathedral.
A wake-up call
These men began to see themselves as belonging to a worthy group. By the end of the off-site (where meals were mainly pizza and sandwiches), they had redesigned how the pallets would be organized to make sure these fragile devices had the best chance of not being damaged.
Leadership and management had a wake-up call.
This company has changed dramatically since that time several years ago. Leadership is now much more a matter of encouraging others to develop and use their own creativity.
There is now a strong sense of empowerment and camaraderie, and the term “meaningful work” has taken on a new meaning.
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