Creating the right culture for your workplace

All workplaces have a culture – sometimes more than one – that colours employees’ interactions and behaviour, as well as what is considered appropriate or acceptable conduct. The abstract, nebulous nature of culture often means organisations write it off as outside of their control. Nonetheless, the right culture is a crucial to a business’s success.

Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, when asked about the importance of workplace culture in business replied:

“The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs. When the culture is strong, you can trust everyone to do the right thing. People can be independent and autonomous. They can be entrepreneurial…Ever notice how families or tribes don’t require much process? That is because there is such a strong trust and culture that it supersedes any process. In organisations (or even in a society) where culture is weak, you need an abundance of heavy, precise rules and processes.”

A workplace’s culture is the product of each individual, their communication with one another, and the organisation and environment in which they work. No two cultures will be exactly the same, and what is a desirable culture for one workplace may not work for another. Below are some ideas for developing the culture you want for your workplace, whatever that may be.

Hire the right people

At the heart of a workplace’s culture are its people, which means creating the right culture for your workplace must inform your hiring practices. There will be many talented people with the education, experience and skills to match a role, but that won’t make them a good fit for the culture of the broader organisation. During the hiring process be explicit: ask prospective employees to describe the type of culture they have come from and what type of workplace culture they are hoping to move into. Include questions about their broader motivations, passions and values. This will enable you to make hiring choices that will actively contribute to the culture you want to create.

Create the right space

The physical environment that your employees work in will also inform the culture that develops. Substantial structural decisions such as whether the office is open plan and which departments are close to each other play a part, as do smaller decisions such as decor and seating arrangements. Also relevant to the environment’s impact on a workplace’s culture is how the space is used day-to-day: meeting locations and where lunch is eaten for example can all play a part in determining a workplace culture.

Have a clear vision

An organisation’s vision is the foundation of its culture. Although vision is determined at the top of an organisation, it lays the groundwork for determining the type of culture that will develop within the workplace. It will play a role in who applies for jobs within your organisation, who stays for the long-term, and how each employee will understand their role. So make sure that vision is clear, precise and accessible. Ensure every employee knows it, and lets it inform every action they take at work.

Measure it

Culture may seem an impossible concept to measure or quantify, and there will certainly be limits on how it can be presented in a spreadsheet. But with the right metrics and feedback loops, even something as intangible as culture can be measured. Having established the culture you want to facilitate, identify how this might manifest amongst the individual employees. Create surveys that directly address workplace culture and regularly collate the results. Even if you can’t put it into a graph, you will have some empirical data on the type of culture within your workplace.

Recognition and Reward

If you can measure it, you can reward it. Often workplaces will have a mismatch between what is desired behaviour and what is actually rewarded. Make sure you are providing clear and consistent indicators of the type of culture you want to foster and then reward those who follow suit by recognising and celebrating behaviour that creates the desired culture. Furthermore, ensure that instances where behaviour and interactions undermine a positive workplace culture are dealt with promptly.

Lastly, remember that a positive workplace culture needs to be reinforced from the top. As always, leadership is crucial in establishing the type of workplace that you want, so set the example who want to see mirrored by your employees. And never underestimate the value of a strong and positive workplace culture. As Chesky says, “If you break the culture, you break the machine that creates your products.”

 

 

Encouraging diversity in your workplace

Many organisations now recognise that a diverse workplace is not only something to aim for on equity grounds, it is also strength that enriches and expands the skill sets and understanding of an organisation. A workplace that values diversity can increase employee job satisfaction, in turn reducing staff turnover, as well as harness perspectives and insights it might not otherwise consider – a crucial step to understanding different customers and markets. At a time when Australia is facing a skills shortage and an ageing population, workplace diversity is more important than ever.

However, actually ensuring people of diverse backgrounds are hired in your organisation and are then made to feel welcome is something that many workplaces struggle with. Here are five steps you can take to encourage workplace diversity.

 

  1. Ensure your HR team recognises the importance of diversity

    There is no point espousing the importance of a diverse workplace if the people responsible for hiring are not on board. An HR team needs to do more than pay lip service to the value of diversity – it needs to truly appreciate that a homogenous workplace is one that is missing out on crucial perspectives and skills. Ensure your HR team has done rigorous diversity training, and, critically, ensure your HR team itself is diverse.

  2. Invest in diversity training

    There will be limitations to what an organisation can learn through in-house measures. Organise for an external body to run diversity training for your workplace and ensure that all employees attend – even (maybe, especially) senior staff. Get feedback on what the workplace thought of the training – have debriefs with staff members who may have specific concerns or questions. These will not be trainings that you can organise as a one-off occasion. They will need to be ongoing, firstly to cater to new employees and secondly because diversity is not a static or fixed issue – it is constantly changing and being re-assessed as Australia’s wider diversity changes. What’s more, if the aim of the training is to educate the workplace, a commitment to reinforcing the lessons is important.

  1. Implement diversity-friendly policies

    Providing alternative working arrangements, such as a compressed work week, job-sharing, part-time roles and modified start and end times to the working day will make your workplace more accessible to those with children and caring responsibilities. Accommodating cultural and religious holidays will make your workplace more welcoming to employees from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, as will permitting diversity-friendly clothing choices in the office. Lastly, but most importantly, make sure that your wages are fair and equal – not only within your organisation but across the workforce more broadly.

  1. Mentoring

    While facilitating diversity in junior and middle management positions is often very achievable, ensuring that diversity reaches the senior levels of an organisation will often involve further steps. Mentoring is one way to encourage diversity in executive positions. Match underrepresented employees with senior members of staff and encourage membership with relevant external professional organisations to support diversity in your workplace.

  1. Recognise your own limitations

    Any individual will have a limited experience of the world and will subsequently have limited perspectives on a given issue. Acknowledge that there may not always be an objective way of seeing something and if someone else in your office has a different perspective, stop talking and listen. Everyone has unconscious biases. Don’t be defensive if you are called out on them – acknowledge it is okay to be wrong and treat it as a learning experience.

Gender diversity means nothing without inclusion

Having a quota for women and minorities isn’t inclusion if you treat them as outsiders.

By Jane Caro
Jane Caro is an advocate of inclusion.

Many years ago I appeared on a TV panel show. There were usually four men and a chick on the panel – sometimes me, sometimes someone else. We used to joke among ourselves about rotating in the mandatory “chick’s spot”. I’d brought up the lack of female panellists with the producers on occasion and, one day, for the first time, I was sharing the desk with two men (plus the male host) and another woman. The producers had paid attention!

But I noticed as we sat waiting for filming to start, the three men had a very blokey conversation about footy. Me and my fellow female panellist sat silently as they talked over our heads. Did we feel included? No, we did not.

There used to be an annual advertising awards event dedicated to the year’s best newspaper ads. It was run over a weekend as part of a conference, and I was a regular on the panel. It was a lot of fun, mostly, but there was always tension between the women delegates and the men. Women were often the butt of the jokes. It was always made clear to me that we were there on sufferance, rather than our merits, even if we sometimes won awards. I noticed the same barely disguised aggression towards the few openly gay men in the industry, too.

The last year I ever attended, one of the very few female creative directors in the advertising business (there remain almost none) made a very moving speech about her day and how hard it would be to fit in having children with her incredibly demanding job. She was acknowledging that unlike her male counterparts, she had to choose between career and family.

With some honourable exceptions, the male delegates reacted to her speech with hostility. Having children was “a lifestyle choice” and entirely a woman’s problem, we were told. The fact that many of the men holding this view were frantically trying to bed as many pretty young creatives as possible, while they had a wife at home minding the kids, escaped them. For self-declared smart men, they missed a lot.

“Being included and feeling included are two quite separate things.”

I liked her speech but, as the mother of two, I wanted to let some of the young women delegates know that it was possible to combine a successful career in advertising and a family. I got up and said so, citing my own career and those of a few of the other women in the room.

I was cut short. “I don’t think we would say you’d had a successful career, Jane,” opined one of the men on the panel – a man, I might add, with far less of a track record than me. (Oh, for the towering confidence of a mediocre white man.)

After 35 successful (by any measure) years in my industry, did I feel included? No, I did not.

Being included and feeling included are two quite separate things. I suspect that’s why the majority of new businesses are started by women. Sooner or later we get the message we are not wanted.

Inclusion is not about grudgingly allowing a few chicks and/or Indigenous/Muslim/Asian/LGBTQI/people of colour a seat on the panel, the management committee or the board. It’s not about driving numbers, although that matters. You cannot feel included if you are not actually wanted.

Inclusion matters because those of us who are outsiders (basically anyone who isn’t white, male, Christian, under 60 and, probably, with a private school education) have different views of the world. That richness of diverse views and experiences matters. We’ve all heard the stats on how diversity in management increases a business’s profitability and even share prices.

Indeed, one of the reasons I won awards in advertising creative was because my gender and feminism gave me a different way of looking at things. I saw the world in a way the majority of blokes didn’t see it. My perspective wasn’t better or worse – it was different.

We need difference. It makes life more fun and interesting and it makes businesses better at their business. We just need to make a little effort to make the different feel, well, less different.

Jane Caro runs her own communications consultancy. She worked in the advertising industry for 30 years and is now an author, journalist, lecturer and media commentator. Follow her on Twitter: @janecaro.