119. Transparent Ways to Communicate Your Culture Survey Results

SPEAKER_00 0:24

I help you to develop your leaders your team. And I help you to optimize your organizational couches. I'm here to help you find ways to change your workplace. So why? Because we spend more time in our waking days at work than we do with our loved ones. It has to be a good place to be. So in this podcast, you can expect a mix of interviews with amazing thought leaders and then some solo episodes from myself as well. Hello, hello, and welcome to this solo episode of the Ways to Change Your Workplace podcast with me, your host, Prina Sharp. And so many of you have asked me, I've written a newsletter about it for my community, and I've provided lots of free tools for my community. Now, if you're not on my newsletter, you really should be. The link is in the show notes. Get in there because I provide loads of freebies. Now, the freebie I am talking to is in relation to creating transparency with your culture survey results. Lots of people have asked me to cover this in terms of a podcast because there are many issues. The culture survey is announced by HR. Many, many, many people fill it out. Then the results come out, and they may not be the best results, but what I'm hearing from many of you is that you receive the results from HR, and they may well be overwhelming, or you don't get anything beyond any extra help from HR as to how to deliver the results consistently across the organization, and therefore it's all a bit piecemeal, and people can read your bullshit or other leaders' bullshit. So we need transparency and consistency when we are delivering culture survey results. So I have got lots to cover for you. Without further ado, let's talk about what it is. So organizational culture, as we all know, if you don't know, is the shared values, beliefs, and behaviors that shape the way that employees work and interact within a company. It is a crucial aspect of any organization as it can greatly impact employee engagement, productivity, and overall success. So to understand organizate to understand and improve uh organizational culture, many companies conduct organizational culture surveys. These surveys gather feedback from employees and they provide valuable insights into the current state of the company's culture. So in this podcast, I want to discuss the importance of transparency within organizational culture survey results and how it can benefit both employees, the company, and you, the leader. So I'm gonna cover all sorts. Let's talk about the fact that we need transparency. Why do we need transparency first off? Transparency when it comes to sharing your results builds trust and engagement with your employees and with the organization. When employees feel that their opinions and feedback are valued and taken into consideration, they are more likely to be engaged and committed to their job. So sharing the results of an organizational culture survey shows employees that the company is committed to improving and it values the employees' input. So this can really truly lead to increased employee satisfaction and retention. We all know about this, it's not a big secret. The other thing, uh the other benefit of being transparent with your organizational culture results is that it encourages open communication. Now, transparency with survey results encourages open communication, not within only your team or within your division, but across the whole organization. Why would you not want to be influential in the narrative that is in relation to your culture survey? Either you own it or the gossip drums will kick off and they will make up whatever they want to. So when employees see that their feedback is being taken seriously, they are more likely to share their thoughts and opinions openly when we encourage open communication with our survey results. This open communication can lead to better understanding of the company's culture and any issues that need to be addressed. It also creates a culture of transparency and honesty, which can improve overall communication within the company. The other bonus of being transparent with your culture survey results is that it identifies areas for improvement. Now, we all can improve in some way or another. This is the way of the world. So, by sharing the results of your culture survey, it allows the organization to identify areas for improvement, for getting even better. By openly discussing the survey results, you can address any issues or concerns that employees have, and you can work towards creating a better culture. This can lead to increased employee satisfaction, productivity, ownership, and belonging, all of the good words. But there is a missing piece in the puzzle. This is the story since the beginning of time. I have heard this in my over 20 years of career within you know the field of human resources, and even still, I'm no longer in HR, but as my own boss, I'm still hearing the same story. The leaders are holding back that they're not being transparent in relation to their culture survey results. So I want to address that factor as well. Why do leaders potentially hold back? I've got ideas. So idea number one could be the fact that the leader is upset by the results, they are just truly gutted. What can I say? And I've had clients who have had exactly this experience, and then what comes off that when you're upset with the results is that you don't know what to say, and then you don't know what to do next. So you're just in this horrible hamster wheel of just being stuck, and therefore you just wanna put your head and hide away somewhere, put your head in head in the sand. I was gonna say, but you just want to hide because of the fact that you are upset off your results, and because of the fact that you don't know what to say and how to say it. So we have to go back to why we need to be transparent. People are gonna remember how you handle the worst situations. This is your make or break moment for your professional brand. If you are a regular listener, you know I talk about professional brand over personal brand. Your professional brand is different to your personal self. So shit sticks if you have got bad I guess scores against your professional brand. And the bad score definitely is when you refuse to or when you don't effectively share your culture survey results in a transparent way. Now I want you just to stop, take a pause, and think about the many organizations that you may have worked at. How many times has this happened? How many times has a leader not properly shared their culture survey results? And let me ask you, what happened there? Did the gossip group start their gossiping and making up stories as to what's happening and why it's happening? Did the leader get a bad rap? A bad rap in terms of you know, they can't talk, they're not willing to share, they're not willing to communicate. And then you know what comes of that? That's also a bad rap on your professional brand, on your reputation, because of the fact that your people feel like you are trying to hide something. Now, psychological safety 101 always talks about the fact that we need to build trust within an organization and build trust as a leader. Now, if you're holding back in terms of your culture survey results, what the hell does that say about you? Does that make you a trustful leader? You know what the answer is. So I want to quote to you, I'm gonna give you a direct quote. I've been reading a brilliant article by um Farnham Street. So if you haven't, FS blog, you you have to check it out. And the article is titled You Are Only As Good as Your Worst Day. What I'll do is I'll put the article in my show notes. So if you want to check it out, go out. So the article says that you are only as good as your worst day. I'm gonna read it. We tend to measure performance by what happens when things are going well. Yet, how people, organizations, companies, leaders, and other things do on their best day isn't all that instructive. To find the truth, we need to look at what happens on the worst day. And there's a beautiful quote anyone can steer the ship when the sea is calm. That's the end of the quote. But then what about when the sea is not calm in the workplace context? How are you gonna steer your ship? This is what I really want to talk to you about. And then the article goes on to talk about the fact that leaders are only as good as how they lead during times of uncertainty and fear. The article goes on to state, do they hide away from public sight, or do they serve as a reassuring, sympathetic presence that brings everyone together? Do they do what is defensible or what's best for everyone in the long run? Are they forced to react in the moment, or were they already prepared? So the article goes on. You can read it. But I want to talk to you about the fact that we need to be transparent. And this is the hurdle for many a leader. How to be transparent. I think that's often the missing piece within the workforce, and HR teams are not equipped enough often, as I have repeatedly seen. So if you want your HR team to have a word with me, I've got such a good tool and a template that I'm happy to share it. And if you want it, connect with me on LinkedIn uh or drop me an email, you'll have my details in the show notes, and I'm happy to share it with you. So, first off, let us use the KISS principle when we are being transparent about our culture surveys. KISS being keep it simple, stupid. Let's forget the stupid word. But keep it simple, it's really important to keep it simple because culture surveys can be very overwhelming. They can be very overwhelming for the leader, and they are definitely very overwhelming for the employee as well. It's all in HR Lingo, which is not really usually plain English, and people can get lost with the overwhelm because there is a lot within a culture survey. So I've got a tool to simplify the way that you share your results, and I'll share that with you in a bit. But first off, if your results are not the best, own it and then and then first off, you're gonna own it and take ownership for the fact that whatever happened and therefore the results are not the best. You need to unpack what that whatever happened was. So it's often good to get an external facilitator in or ask your HR team to work with you to unpack the results. And when I've been called into organizations to unpack survey results, there's some simple things that I do. First off, we can you know give the debrief of the results and whatnot, share that, and let's not overdo it. So our top three brilliant results, we need to celebrate that. I share that, and then our top three to five worst results that we need to work on. I share that with whether it be the team, the division, or the organization. And then I facilitate a conversation, a workshop session conversation around the fact that we need to uncover what has gone well, what has not gone well, and is there anything else that we're missing? Now I've got a whole facilitated session around that, and they're brilliant sessions. The other thing that you can do is use an analogy off a ship. A ship has sails which take it forward. So, what are the sails that are taking us forward as a team, as a division, or an organization in relation to our organizational culture survey results? And then a ship also has an anchor or anchors that hold it down. So, using that analogy, you can talk about the anchors that are holding your team, your division, or your organization down in relation to the culture survey results. What are they? Then you need to actually discuss what the issues are, and that's why I recommend that it's usually good to have an external facilitator or your HR team to facilitate this because you need to take a step back either as a participant, or let's be honest, if the issues are about leadership, then you need to often get the hell out of the room. So consider what you need to do. And then we've got all of our results in terms of all of the stuff that's not going well, and that could be with solutions as well at this stage, or it's just a brain dump of all of the stuff that's not going well. Then we need to agree or vote on areas for improvement. What are they? We need to come up with solutions as a collective. So this is the co-creation aspect of your organizational culture because it's not only leaders that own the culture, it's not only HR that own the culture, it is everybody. Therefore, everybody needs to get involved in the action planning and the solution planning as well, right? So, in this session now that you're holding, you will have solutions and areas for improvement. If there are many, many, then do a voting system, a tick, or you know, a sticker against the top areas for improvement. And then you need to dedicate, whether it be a committee, a working party, or a project team, to work on culture improvement or culture optimization as I like to call it, throughout the time until your next survey result comes through. So you need to dedicate regular time throughout the year or the 18 months or two years, whatever. So you can add it to your team meetings agendas as a reminder of what are we doing in terms of optimizing our culture. What I'm really trying to say to you here is please, please, please do not set and forget. One thing that often happens with culture survey results is there'll be the big rah-rah to get lots of uh responses, you'll get loads of responses, and then there'll be another big rah-rah for sharing the results. But then the missing piece often is this section which I'm talking to you about, the actions, the workshop to actually unpack the results, and then to decide what the hell you're gonna do with them afterwards, and how you and the rest of the team, division, or organization are going to own the results and the actions that you need to improve upon. You then need to measure the actions that you all agreed upon over time, so you can't forget this again, it's not a set and forget activity. And then let's say your next culture surveys coming up. This is a beautiful time to remind people of all of the work that you've been doing to improve the organizational culture. So I talk about this in relation to psychologically priming. We get so busy within our business as usual and everyday work that sometimes we forget all of the good stuff that we're doing within our culture optimization efforts if we are not clearly articulating that and using you know the real words of this is what we're doing to optimize our culture. You can, as a leader, often just get lost in your own to-dos, you know, operational work as well as strategic work. But can I just remind you of the fact that managing your organizational culture and building your organizational culture is actually strategic work and it needs to be given the respect in relation to time and conversation and space that it needs to be really worked on? That is me off my high horse now. I would love to hear from you as to what has worked, what transparent skills have leaders shared, what has really worked in terms of your past culture surveys and where we have good case studies and success stories. I'd love to know. Drop me a message, connect with me on LinkedIn, email me, do whatever. My details are in the show notes because I really want to hear from you as to the good case studies. Because my gosh, I'm telling you, I'm hearing repeatedly from you about the bad case studies. And the way I'm hearing about it is either when I have coffee catch-ups or people direct message me on LinkedIn, or I get random emails in my inbox saying Prina, this is just what's happened in my organization, and can you help out? So, know that you are not alone. I've given you a few practical steps here. Please, please, please go forth and prosper and optimize your organizational culture. We spend far more of our day at work than we do with our loved ones. It has to be a good place to be. Sort your culture out. Over now, and I'll see you in the next episode. How good was that episode? If you liked it, be sure to share it with a couple of other people. Also, in the show notes are details about my newsletter. Keep in touch. I send a newsletter out around once a month. It won't be spammy, it will be very practical. And if we're not connected on LinkedIn yet, we must be connect with me on LinkedIn. And on Instagram, I am Prina.shar. I will see you somewhere else or in the next episode. Until then, goodbye.