Sustainable Human Performance
I. Introduction
The Workplace Innovation Trust (WIT) Ignites leaders to anticipate future workplace challenges in order to imagine and shape environments where people can be their best selves and do their best work. It convenes driven leaders who care deeply about creating healthy and productive workplaces where people thrive. This Samudra community is run in partnership with FLYN Consulting and includes senior human resources, employee experience, technology, and operational leaders.
The WIT chooses three topics to workshop each year. Below is a summary of the community discussions and conclusions on our second topic of 2023, sustainable human performance.
II. Session #1: Defining the Challenge
The members dove into identifying the most critical pain points and potential areas of greatest impact. The top two vote-getters were an inability to create a sense of community and belonging and a lack of alignment with corporate goals and purpose.
Inability to Create a Sense of Community and Belonging: The challenge of creating a sense of community and belonging in a hybrid work setting was deemed the area where members can currently make the greatest impact on boosting performance and employee wellbeing. A common sentiment is, "We have a strong connection at the team level, but broader connectedness to the larger community is a challenge."
Lack of Alignment with Corporate Goals and Purpose: A lack of alignment with corporate goals and purpose is resulting in employee disengagement and inefficiency. A number of members admitted the challenge is manifesting in daily team and individual frustrations with not knowing what work to prioritize and difficulty in connecting personal efforts with corporate success. A key sub-theme was the need for better knowledge flow and workflow tools. As a later speaker called out, a recent Gallup poll highlights this lack of alignment in organizations: “...most employees do not know why they're there…or what the organization is trying to achieve.” 78% don't know where they're going; 59% don't know why they're going there.
Across the entire conversation was a concern over the erosion of trust. One participant emphasized, "Employees are unsure of their future, and it's challenging to build trust when leaders ask them to return to the workplace after remote work proved successful." Organizations that openly embraced hybrid work and empowered employees to choose their work style showed a higher level of trust and commitment. However, some employees still hesitated to fully embrace remote work due to concerns about being perceived as less valuable.
To address these challenges, the group recognized the importance of leadership role modeling, creating a safe environment for employees to voice their preferences, and fostering a culture of open communication and trust.
III. Session #2: Expanding Our Horizons
At our second meeting, we invited some guests to expand our thinking on how to build communities and alignment. Our panelists included:
Dorian Nasby, leading Executive Development at Pinterest.
Nichole Marshall, leading Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Pinterest.
Noelle Peart, leading Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Exos, an elite coaching company that has leveraged the science of coaching top athletes into maximizing human performance in organizations.
Dave Kopans, founder and CEO of PF Loop, where they have encapsulated deep learning on positive psychology, feedforward research, meetings best practices, interpersonal relationships, and goal best practices into an innovative Goal Success Service called TripodGSS.
Highlights of this conversation centered around a strong consensus on the need to build community by incorporating and living corporate values and purpose in everyday interactions, leadership behaviors, and work processes. As one example, one member starts every meeting with a reminder of values, “until I sound like a broken record,”…but it works!
Deploy Your Culture Code: Noelle (Exos) shared the results of their pilot 4-day work week, and how it fits with their company culture and purpose in building a “readiness” workforce. There is a lot of design in this from “team Tuesdays” in the office to “you do you Fridays”, that allows “people to feel like they have the flexibility and the support of the organization.” She noted leaning into feedback from their resource groups to help refine this pilot. Such as their “dependables” group, for parents and caretakers, to help define what a “work week” should look like. “I think from a belonging standpoint, it's actually helped bring some teams closer together, which has been really great in HR as we get that feedback.”
Build Resilience and Strengthen the “Wise Mind”: Participants called out basic, yet often neglected, needs such as sleep, recovery time, and “treating people like people.” The goal is to let our employees show up in the “wise mind”, versus the emotional one. [The wise mind, says Kopans, is a concept from dialectical behavior therapy. Basically, “your ability to think through the issues”, especially under contentious or stressful conditions.] This thread was also picked up later in our discussion around the need to coach our leaders to support resilient behaviors in their teams.
Leading in VUCA Environments: Samudra has written a lot about our member organizations recalibrating to thrive amidst a long-term trend of volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous conditions. Pinterest spoke directly about ‘grounding their leaders in change’: ‘We have our senior leader community meet quarterly for a combination of vision, strategic clarity, alignment, and content sharing so they, in turn, can share with their teams, but we also spent a ton of time with developing them around handling change…change is gonna happen. Here are some tools and techniques to think about it. Here's how you can help your teams deal with it. Here's how to partner through it.” This includes an onboarding process that grounds newly hired leaders in the organization, makes connections, and identifies an executive “buddy.”
IV. Session #3: Imagining it Forward
At our final session, our members from Corning and Riviera Partners took the spotlight and shared which programs they are testing to address performance, what is working, and what is not.
Corning is a multinational manufacturing company founded in 1851.
Cases Discussion: Sustaining Human Performance
Situation:
We have many external pressures with the pandemic, the economy, war, politics on top of our internal pressures of digital transformation, financial pressures, changing business needs, silo business priorities, organization and operational changes, and mixed hybrid working model, with results of experiencing higher increase of fatigue in our organizations and losing our people connectivity.
What’s working
Corporation wide:
Human welfare programs
Strong supporter of diversity and inclusion
Changes in health care benefits
Increase focus on career planning
Strong values
Remote, hybrid, office
Connections:
Annual operating priorities
First team mindset in CTS
Increased focused on culture
Process & Technology:
Corporate wide support for our transformation
New increased focus on operations
People:
Hire to retire
What we’ve tried
Corporation wide:
Focus on the individual
Connections:
Communications and culture
Process & Technology:
Corporate wide and board approval to invest
People:
Retention
Challenges
Complex business model (priorities)
Not everyone understands how they contribute to annual operating priorites
Connections relationship bulking is more difficult with mixed working environment
Investing in transformation, behind on foundation
IT siloed on how functions manage, operate and how they focus on people and culture
Risk in aging populations and higher % are retiring
Struggle with mid-career hires
Corning, like many of our members, faced employee fatigue and a decline in people connectivity coming out of the pandemic and through their intense business transformation projects.
Practices Tried (What Worked):
Human Welfare Programs: Corning implemented various programs to support employees' well-being, such as addressing burnout, stress, and fitness, and providing healthcare memberships.
Diversity and Inclusion Support: The company made changes to the healthcare program to support diverse family situations, including non-married couples, maternity leave for men, support for aging parents, and fertility assistance.
Leadership Focus: Corning initiated key programs to foster connections and improve communication, culture, and processes. They invested in IT transformation, focusing on leadership development and individual growth.
Challenges (What Did Not Work):
Complexity and Prioritization: Corning struggled with managing multiple businesses within the company, each with its own priorities and leaders, making it difficult to set and align overall priorities effectively.
Difficulty Saying No: The company found it challenging to say no to requests and struggled to prioritize projects, leading to potential resource allocation issues.
Connection and Culture: The shift to remote and hybrid work during the pandemic affected employee connections and understanding of the company culture, posing retention challenges, especially for mid-career hires.
The membership suggested the following effective practices:
Cadence of Accountability: Establishing a consistent prioritization and data meeting every quarter to curate talent data, engage with business partners, and make clearer decisions in the moment.
Clarity of Action: Focusing on cascading decisions and actions, rather than seeking a grand scheme of priorities, to capitalize on agility in a constantly changing environment.
Decentralized Decision Making: Pushing decision-making authority down to where decisions are best understood and made, empowering teams to have more governance over their actions.
Riviera Partners is a professional services firm founded in 2002. It is largely remote and geographically distributed.
Cases Discussion: Sustaining Human Performance
Situation:
We grew rapidly during covid and hired people throughout the country and are now operating in a hybrid model, although primarily remote. This has taken a huge toll on our sense of community and belonging, with majority of employees having never actually met each other. In addition, we are challenged in how to transfer knowledge and manage workflows in a business that largely relies on “apprenticeship” and exchange of tacit knowledge.
What we’ve tried
Implemented
Geo-gatherings (organically led)
Cohorts
Days in Office in hubs
All-hands - #RiviX, Happenings
Spotlights and ICYMI
Workflow Tech mandates (Salesforce, SutroX)
Women’s Group
Nudging with FOMO, e.g., Slack
In Process
Co-workings Days in other geos
Master Classes
Mandatory case studies and AAR
Swag attack
What’s working
Being a broken record on Purpose, Mission, Values
Focusing on building community
Getting people together socially
Balance of Nudging + Mandates
Challenges
How to capture and spread tacit knowledge among a remote workforce
Maintaining energy and community morale in a tough market
Riviera’s key challenges are centered around knowledge sharing and maintaining a sense of connection and belonging in a virtualized environment. Their Chief People Officer is testing out a broad array of social programs, from geographical in-person meet-ups to using tech platforms like Microsoft Teams and Slack to facilitate knowledge transfer and sharing funny or interesting content to build social connections.
The emphasis on ‘designing for social’ is working, as is a constant repetition of purpose, mission, and values. However, they still face challenges with knowledge transfer and work process transition. The complexity of the organization, especially with remote and dispersed teams, makes it difficult to ensure that people are effectively sharing knowledge and collaborating across teams.
An effective practice suggested by one member is cross-company, mandatory, functionally-aligned meetings to share best practices and learning.
V. Conclusion
Throughout the sessions, we collected input from our members on CrowdSmart. Here is the collective voice on what efforts are deemed most impactful to building community and alignment:
Through senior leadership interactions and informal dialogue that’s continuous and authentic
Inclusively highlighting examples of employees living our values in the workplace
Reminding them of the impact we have on our customers through storytelling
Talent Marketplace, Town Halls, Coaching Circles, and Recognition Program
Regular bi weekly videos with leaders, community days with volunteering opportunities
Volunteering together
By ensuring the purpose and values becomes part of day to day conversation and employees performance management
Starts with onboarding - focus on the 1) people 2) the process 3) the product - all needs to be aligned around the purpose and values of the organization