By Rob Nathan – CCS Founder & CEO
People have not infrequently told me that they join an organisation because of the job, but they leave because of the manager or the culture. We know that work can be stressful and challenging, and there is nothing necessarily wrong with that. What is unacceptable however is when such pressure is exerted on employees that they believe, for whatever reason, they have to work harder and harder, to such a point where they find it difficult to draw a boundary. This is when burnout beckons.
But not all organisations are like this, or need to be so. Research conducted by Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen lead to the creation of a model titled:
Help! We need colleagues: Creating the workplace everyone wants.
I share this model below as a focus which could be used to evaluate what is already working and where needs attention. One way to use this would be to scale your view of where your organisation stands on each of the fifteen factors listed below, and then indicate which top three factors, if they moved 2-3 points up the scale, could make a significant difference to the ‘workplace everyone wants’.
Key to Model:
1 Reputation: Do you have a good reputation? Is the organisation positively mentioned in the media? Is the organisation recommended by its employees? Do you actively work on employer branding?
2 Recruitment: Do you have a professional recruitment process that ensures even the candidates who are not offered a position would recommend that process to others? Is there alignment between the jobs you describe in job postings and the reality that employees encounter?
3 Onboarding: Do you have a systematic onboarding process that is tailored individually and ensures both professional and social onboarding?
4 Culture and Values: Have you formulated explicit values that can serve as the foundation for the desired culture? Are these values upheld in reality?
5 Leadership quality: Is there coherence in the leadership chain vertically and horizontally? Are time and resources allocated for leadership development and leadership evaluation?
6 Balanced demands: Do you focus on preventing and managing work pressure and stress? Are demands and resources in balance? Is there social support?
7 Physical work environment: Do you have up-to-date physical facilities and digital equipment? Do you actively work on health promotion and the prevention of workplace accidents?
8 Psychological environment: Are you working to create a psychologically safe environment? Do you focus on preventing and addressing conflicts, bullying and abusive behaviour?
9 Competency development opportunities: Do you allocate resources for competency development that enables both personal and professional growth for individuals? What is your practice for supervision, feedback, peer learning and apprenticeships?
10 Career development opportunities: are there clear and attractive career paths for different profiles? Are there opportunities to take on new challenges and more responsibility?
11 Collegial networks: What do you do to strengthen the collegial cohesion in the workplace, fostering relationships where employees connect with each other? How do you support the creation and maintenance of meaningful professional and social communities?
12 Flexibility: Do your employees have flexibility, in terms of working hours, place of work and employment arrangements? Is there the opportunity for hybrid and remote working?
13: Purpose and Influence: Do you systematically work to combat meaningless bureaucracy and rules? Are there opportunities to make a positive impact? What do you do to empower and increase employees’ influence in their work?
14 Inclusion: Do you have a diverse organisation in terms of gender, age and expertise? Are you doing enough to create an inclusive workplace?
15 Compensation and benefits: Do you offer a competitive compensation package and attractive employee benefits that match industry standards?
