The number one thing that you should do before you implement a strategy or start to even think about making change is, to talk to your employees. Find out what is not working for them, because it may not be a training workshop that they need. Maybe it’s that they want to have a better relationship with their manager. And, the fact that they're doing an incredible workload, that used to be three people's worth of work is now on their shoulders, now they're struggling with that. They need some support, but they don't get that support because they don't speak to their manager.
So, is it actually a wellbeing strategy that you need? Yes. I agree that everybody can be more educated on how to look after their personal mental wellbeing and their physical wellbeing. Absolutely. Without a doubt, although education is one thing. But listening to your employees, listening to what change they want is far more important. For example If you know there is a challenge within your household, if you think about your family life, if you're trying to improve the environment, you have to start by listening.
Ask your team to open up, take it in, sit there. Don't say anything, then feel the pain. Let them tell you all the things that aren't working so that you can start to piece together a way to a better future, a way to change things, but everybody has to be part of that process. We can't just think, Oh, I'll do this, that will work. You have to listen to people.
And that's where consultants come in because we have listened to people previously, and we will still encourage you to listen and talk and get people involved in that process. But great culture transformation consultants have been through that. We've had experience. We've worked in similar situations and other organizations where we've helped to implement things along the way, and we've seen the results. This helps us to talk from a place of confidence and experience. We KNOW it's going to make a difference. That's why I can be so confident talking about it here. You have to listen to your people, regardless of what environment you're in. That's where we have to start. Start by asking them the difficult questions, but be prepared for the answers.
I will never forget the time, I worked somewhere and I made a recommendation and I said, look I suggest we do an employee engagement survey. We really need to find out what people think. (Actually, it would have been better to do it face to face or in small sessions where people would just be honest, but people are scared to be honest.)
When you run an engagement survey, they can really fill it out in their own time after reflection and it can be anonymous. You can find out some of the real crux of what is going on within your organisation. They fill in the engagement survey where they give insights on the organization and what is going on the ground a lot more.
Anyway, back to the story, I remember this one circumstance where I made this recommendation that we need to start with an employee engagement survey. And what I was told was ‘No, let’s not do it now. I don't think that the timing is right.’
Let me tell you the timing is always right to listen to your people.
It's not about whether you are just about to change the commission structure, or you're just about to break up for Christmas. You should always be talking to your employees about what they want and how they feel. What they like and what they don't like.
It should not be a case of timing when it comes to your employee engagement survey. Okay. Too much is overkill. It’s not about giving them a survey every day, however, to understand your people, least on a regular basis, to get some type of feedback, it's the place to start.
It's this place to start to change your culture because culture is a feeling. It's how you feel when you are somewhere. And that is emotions and that's emotioneering.
You wouldn't start to fix a car before you realise what was wrong with it. So, why do we do that when it comes to working environments?
The Modern Mind Group are emotioneering human performance not engineering it.
As a learning and performance consultancy, we work with your business to identify and improve performance gaps so that you can be more profitable and professionally develop your people. Over 10 years of expertise in learning and performance with results to back it all up. Why settle for the average when there is a world of possibility when you know how to achieve it? Untapped potential - Let's go get it!
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