What Is a Great Workplace? This series of posts is adapted from an article by Marcus Buckingham and Curt W. Coffman, the authors of ‘First, Break All The Rules’ (Simon and Schuster, 1999) based on some research by The Gallop Organisation. It’s findings are as true today as then. But are you implementing them?
[Is the answer pay, or benefits? Or is it too complex to understand?
Traditionally, management believed that people will always dislike work, and when they are at work, they will always want to be somewhere else.
For years, organizations have attempted to measure and understand employee opinions in an effort to understand great workplaces. They have primarily discovered what a great workplace is not, versus what it is. Companies emerged from one consulting project after another with a list of "don'ts" or "quick fixes," without observing much sustainable change.
A few years ago, The Gallup Organization decided to initiate a multi-year research project to characterize a great workplace. The first task was to define what "great" was. They decided that, while a great workplace is one where employees are satisfied with their jobs, it could not be considered "great" if it was not producing positive business outcomes. So they studied workplaces with an eye on four key outcome variables:
- employee retention
- customer satisfaction
- productivity
- profitability]
They made a number of key discoveries. Two in particular were:
Discovery #1: There are no great companies. There are only great workgroups.
Gallup discovered that to truly understand the workplace, you must be closer than the 36,000 feet level. At cloud level, it is impossible to distinguish the best from the mediocre workgroups. Best practices of productive workplaces can only be observed at the workgroup level. Although there is a tremendous range in the characteristics of great workgroups, great workplaces in different companies have a great deal in common.
Discovery # 2: There appear to be 12 dimensions that consistently describe great workgroups.
It is easy to understand why companies have focused on situational issues, such as pay, parking, cafeteria discounts, etc. It’s easier to influence these factors from an overall company strategy. But these factors do not really make a difference to the best, most productive employees and workgroups, and they don’t explain job satisfaction.
While the 12 key dimensions certainly do not explain everything, they consistently correlate with those workgroups that have higher employee retention, higher customer satisfaction, higher productivity, and higher profits.
The dimensions do not include pay and benefits. That does not mean that pay and benefits are not important, but it does mean that they do not differentiate great workgroups from the rest.
What follows is a description of the first of the 12 key attributes of great workplaces. I’ll publish a summary of the other 11 in future posts, so stay tuned. Read more of this post
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