Vibrant Cultures Don’t Carry Passengers
One of the positive workplace cultural aspects to come out of the COVID-19 crisis has been an increased emphasis on the wellbeing of staff. As soon as governments declared lockdowns, most organisations focused on what it would take to ensure that their staff were safe and well and went to great lengths to check-in on their mental health.
Empathy has long been missing from workplace cultures, with the focus instead being on presenteeism (‘how many hours are you working and what times are you available?’) and busy-ness (back-to-back meetings, unrealistic deadlines, a focus on low priority work), rather than on creating something that people felt genuinely connected to and willing to perform for.
With children and vulnerable people to care for, many employees have had to juggle the hours in their days to ensure that they are as productive as they possibly can be. This requires courage, discipline, commitment and an understanding of the consequences should you not perform.
I’ve spoken to many organisations over the last three months who haven’t yet managed to balance empathy AND performance. Too much empathy can lead to complacency and when cultures are pleasant, rather than vibrant, performance dips. Passengers will allow this to happen and wait for others to take control, rather than looking at themselves and asking what they can do.
It’s critically important to understand the circumstances of employees and to help people set appropriate boundaries. But it’s also equally important that everyone contributes to the targets that have been set. It benefits no-one if performance and results suffer.
If your organisation wasn’t very good at doing this prior to the COVID-19 lockdown, it’s unlikely that it’s improved over the last three months.
Vibrant cultures around the world are great at not only being empathetic towards their staff, but also in ensuring that everyone performs to their optimum potential. Vibrant cultures ensure that behaviours and the principles of collaboration are agreed, priorities are clear, deadlines are achievable, and that managers understand how to set expectations to ensure that progress is maintained. Where they don’t then courageous conversations are had until performance improves.
If just one of these vital ingredients is missing, employees can rightly point to the lack of guidance or support from senior management. However, if they are all in place and being practised on a daily basis, then poor performance or behaviour cannot and should not be tolerated.
Where employees have to care for children or vulnerable people their capacity for productive work will be reduced and priorities should be reset. Otherwise, working from home is not an excuse to underperform. Managers need to do their job and keep people motivated and inspired in line with the goals, keeping a watchful eye on their mental health at the same time.
They should also look out for those who simply can’t switch off.
Being self-employed I know all too well that having the laptop open 16 hours a day is not only unsustainable, but also leads to long periods of procrastination which may ultimately affect the quality of work. Healthy routines are required along with the discipline to stay focused on what needs to be done, otherwise, these people become passengers too.
Vibrant cultures don’t carry passengers. They are empathetic, yet emphatic when it comes to performance and these are the cultures that will always prevail regardless of the circumstances they find themselves in.
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