12 things managers must do to create a great workplace 1 of 12

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.

1. Knowing What’s Expected

[Expectations are the milestones we use to measure our progress and, within the workplace, those milestones mark the pathways that guide us toward achievement. If expectations are not clear, we are hesitant, indecisive, and unsure of ourselves.

The importance of properly setting expectations for employees is one of the 12 key discoveries from a multiyear research effort by The Gallup Organization. Our objective was to identify the consistent dimensions of workplaces with high levels of four critical outcomes: employee retention, customer satisfaction, productivity and profitability. The research identified 12 dimensions that consistently correlate with these four outcomes -- dimensions Gallup now uses to measure the health of a workplace. An associated research effort, in which Gallup studied more than 80,000 managers, focused on discovering what great managers do to create quality workplaces.

Setting clear expectations is not a new concept for managers. In our attempts to define expectations, however, we often over-operationalize jobs. We put all of the focus on describing the steps to follow, and in doing so, create an environment that communicates, "Check your mind at the door and follow these steps, and you will meet expectations." This roboticizing of humans builds little self-worth and self-confidence, and dramatically impairs quality output. When management focuses on defining steps, setting expectations becomes an exercise in controlling employees, rather than guiding different people with different styles toward productive outcomes.

So, how does a manager, who is held accountable for a team's performance, set expectations? The best managers tell us they define the right outcomes first, and then let each person find his or her own route toward those outcomes. This approach resolves the manager's dilemma. It allows the individual to grow via the discovery of his or her "path of least resistance." It appreciates and values differences between employee styles, and lets people capitalize on their strengths to achieve their fullest potential.

This approach also encourages employees to take responsibility. Great managers want each employee to feel a certain amount of pressure to achieve. Defining the right outcomes creates the tension, the thrill and the pressure of being out there alone, with a very definite target.

Of course, we realize that every job has a certain number of steps associated with it. Some jobs have more of them than do others. The question is, do the steps support a clear perspective on the particular, desired, outcomes? Many times, the steps actually obscure the outcome, and the result is mere activity with no broader purpose.]

Please leave a comment, or phone me on 0412 921 292 if you’d like some help in your business to implement any of what you’ve read here.

My thanks to Steve Anson, CEO and founder of www.PerfectPatients.com for pointing out this research to me some time ago.