Marcia's Leadership Q and As: Build A Culture of Inclusivity—Employees Will Stay!

Q.What will it take to create more job security for our staff?

A. Recession, inflation, and layoffs are stories in the news. Leaders are aware of these but don’t react to them. But look at the economic fundamentals, your leadership foundation, and your connection with your customers. Remember that even in downturns, while some companies shrink, others emerge and scale. There are a business, product, and service cycles. There are also pivots you may need to pursue business viability.

After basic needs, people crave a sense of security and belonging. Create a culture and workplace that values supporting each other, helping others to contribute and thrive, and learning and working together to deliver great experiences to the customers (feeling of pride helping others.) Security comes from feeling inclusivity, belonging, solving tough problems, and creating the future as one team. Nothing instills fear and low morale faster than layoffs—do them as a last resort before you close the doors.

Leaders create the focus and direction for the organization. They identify mistakes as learning opportunities. For the company, failure is not an option. That’s why innovation as a business strategy is essential. All may need to pivot the business with new products and services or a deeper level of value to the customers. Remember when you could call a company? Someone answered the phone and made your reservation or answered your question. What do your customers need and value? Fill their needs and flourish.

Q. Uncertainty in 2023 seems certain. What should we invest in for our businesses to have a healthy ROI?

A. Invest time in education and communication with your employees and customers. Learn from them to understand where the busyness, complexity, and waste is running rampant in your company. Organizations are full of non-value-added activities. I’ll share a few ideas.

Communicate clearly with your employees about what you need them to accomplish. Then put everyone in the company to work to reduce waste. They know where it is. Leaders must be open to listening to contributions and new ideas. Have open, frequent, short, facilitated, and robust discussions. Strategize on how to implement the ideas that can make a difference. Give people the freedom to implement these ideas that will reduce the busyness and complexity. Simultaneously you can improve the quality of your support for each other and the services and products for your customers. Think about what really matters to the employees as they try to serve the customers. Focus time and energy in these areas.

One, think about how to improve meetings so they are focused and shorter. Too many people spend all day, every day in meetings. Reduce the number of meetings. Share ideas and make decisions together. Then give people the freedom to go do the work. Two, get rid of wasteful activities like performance appraisals that suck the time, life, and self-motivation from people. Instead, have healthy, two-way conversations as needed with a focus on, “How can I be of help? What do you need to improve your job?” Three, hierarchical and bureaucratic structures create dysfunction, disengagement, and turnover. Encourage people across departments to self-organize and work in teams to accomplish projects or solve problems. This takes trust and can only be built over time. There are hundreds more ideas.

Most of all, while some organizations are hunkering down, think about how you will invest in training and developing your people. This is the time to create your competitive edge, build trust, and innovate with new products and services. Get creative.