Where is your focus?
Be an active consumer of your workplace.
Walk around, have conversations, feel the vibe.
How is your workplace culture right now? COVID-19 has given our workplaces cultures a shake up like never before, the degree of shake and impact will be unique to your situation but undoubtably your workplace and team culture has experienced change.
You might be feeling powerless to some of the changes but don’t stop investing in your people — seize the opportunity to take deliberate actions to invest in your culture and support your best resources: your people.
The best you can do for your workplace right now is to slow down and read the room, walk around and be an active consumer in your space. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that walking around only includes your physical workspace, your people are your culture and if you have people working from home or remotely, they are also contributing to your culture. Engage and have conversations with your peers/staff/managers, be receptive, open, and interested.
The changes you have experienced and are still experiencing may have caused you and your peers to reassess what work means and what sort of workplace culture you want to be part of. You may have greater clarity of what works best for you and your teams, within the boundaries of your industry requirements you may hold the answers to creating positive change and a more respectful workplace culture for you and your peers.
Feel the physical (and the virtual) vibe in your workplace, are people engaging with or avoiding each other? Are there periods of silence - and is that silence comfortable and productive, awkward? or seething? Talk to people about your workplace values and what they mean, ask questions, be curious; are your values even relevant anymore? Do your values make sense against the unwritten rules of your workplace? What are people not saying to each other or to management? Why not? Are people saying one thing to each other and something else behind their backs? Who are people listening to? What and where are the power relationships? Why? Do your managers say, ‘their door is always open’, but no-one dares to go in and be honest? Is your workplace task or people focused? Are people safe to collaborate or do they just say what they think they are expected to say?
Are you proud to work where you do? Why? Why not?
These are not easy questions to ask and the answers might not be easy to hear but you can’t build trust without being vulnerable — a culture of trust will then build respect. This trust and respect will increase feelings of psychological safety which in turn will feed innovation and will help turn your workplace into somewhere that people want to be.
Send us a message, Respect at Work can help to improve your workplace culture.