News and Articles
Shaping Workplace Culture
19th January 2007
Businesses today are facing interesting times, New Zealand has the lowest un-employment in over 30 years and a generational attitude change towards work. This change has been brought about through societal changes in values, wants and desires. Our wants are much more complex these days, we are more used to luxuries in our home lives and generally want it all and want it now and this attitude gets carried through to the work place. With national un-employment levels sitting at around 4% we have the option to be much choosier about where we work and with whom we work.
This places tremendous pressure on work places to maintain their workforce. Progressive companies are coming up with innovative ways to reward and recognise their staff. In some industries competition for staff is very fierce resulting in high turn over, and in organisations where staff do not feel are they are rewarded highly enough, they will go down the road to another organisation that will pay them more and provide better working conditions.
Because of the current employment climate, workers have the freedom to seek work life balance, fulfilment, rewards, and recognition. The 3 Ps that once determined job and life success Prestige, Promotion and Position have been replaced with the 3 L's Luxuries, Leisure and Lifestyle.
This does not mean that we simply need to pay people more, ask them to work less hours and give them lots of rewards, there are ways we can make our workplace more attractive. One way is through effective leadership.
An organisation is largely shaped by its leader and their values, whether the leader has made a conscious effort to shape it this way or not. If this leader is high in Leadership Intelligence (LQ) they will have the ability to take their workers on a journey with them to achieve organisational and individual success. Workers are more inclined to be loyal to a company if they share in its values and feel comfortable with the path the leader of the organisation has determined.
Often you will see an organisation that was once very successful and, if the leader of that organisation leaves and a new leader comes in with a different set of values, it can see a complete turnover within the workforce. Likewise an under performing organisation can be turned into a highly successful organisation under a change of leadership. With any leadership change there will be some staff changes for those who don't share in the same values. A leader with high Leadership Intelligence has the perception to interpret current organisational visions and values and have the ability to get the workers to follow the same path, as well as recognising the needs and wants of the organisations workforce and work toward shaping a work place that fulfils these wants.
In my early career I experienced a change in leadership in a medium sized organisation that I worked for. The culture went from a friendly, fun, family orientated organisation where we were passionate about our jobs, worked very hard and achieved great success, to an autocratic, military style operation. The new leader came with his own set of values, he had a vision for the company which was vastly different and provided no room for discussion. At the same time he promised very large bonus's for those that could stay the distance and achieve the huge financial growth the he so desired for the organisation.
Within a year the company experienced a 60% staff turn over, resulting in a huge loss of knowledge and skill, some employees had been with the company for over 15 years. This organisation experienced a very turbulent few years until he moved on.
What this leader failed to recognise was his leadership style and approach didn't fit within the environment, he was not succeeding in leading his workforce to achieve a common set of goals and objectives which resulted in a very negative workplace culture, very low staff moral and productivity. This leader also didn't recognise the motivations of his staff, the promise of a large sum bonus did not provide the fulfilment and work life balance that they had previously enjoyed.
I often look back on this experience and now recognise that this leader was low in leadership intelligence, he lacked the ability to take his workers on his journey. A different leader, higher in leadership intelligence may have been able to achieve such ambitious objectives and shape the culture back into a much more positive environment.
Through effective leadership and recruiting leaders with high leadership intelligence we can shape our organisations culture into a positive and productive environment.
Prepared by Liz Plank and Ian Chitty