Back to basics: The basic elements of great workplaces

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Everyone’s talking about the future of work and making predictions about the new or next normal. We all agree it’s different and evolving. We’re letting go of old beliefs and behaviors and experimenting with new ones. But as we do, let’s not “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” Instead, let’s refresh and reinforce the foundational principles of workplace culture. Because they remain the same.

Just as in 2019, to be a great workplace in 2022 and beyond, your guidelines and norms need to create an environment where people feel connected to each other and to shared goals. Your policies should help team members feel they belong and make valued contributions. Your processes should help them grow, thrive and shine. For that to happen, your workplace culture needs to be on a solid foundation of three important things: trust, respect and community.

Trust

Trust is everything and everything about workplace culture rides on trust. No wonder: It’s the basic building block of human connection. It’s so fundamental to healthy relationships that our brains release oxytocin — the “love hormone” associated with empathy and relationship-building — when we trust another person.

Without trust between team members and in leaders and leadership, all other efforts to strengthen culture are for naught. If trust levels are low, building them should be your priority. If you have a trusting environment, keep reinforcing it — because if trust is lost, it’s nearly impossible to regain. Here are some best practices for creating and maintaining a culture of trust. Be:

• Be authentic and honest. Don’t fake or pretend to be someone you’re not or know things you don’t know. If you’re an introvert, for example, don’t try to act like an extrovert. People will see through it and you’ll risk losing credibility and trust.
• Show you’re human by being vulnerable. Admit you don’t have the answer or that you made a mistake. Be an “asker” rather than an “answerer” and embrace a “learn it all” vs. “know it all’ mindset.
• Show up on time, keep your commitments, meet your deadlines, follow through on your promises.
• Tell the truth — the whole truth. Don’t leave out details or sugar coat, even if it’s bad news. Chances are, people will find out eventually, and if you weren’t forthright in the first place, you’ll lose their trust.
• Explain guidelines and expectations clearly, including how and why they exist, and apply them equally to everyone.
• Give and share credit for successes. Recognize team members publicly, and never, ever accept undue or misplaced credit.
• Keep everyone in the loop. Frequent communication is reassuring and builds trust, especially when people are feeling uncertain.
• Team members need to feel safe opening up and sharing personal information. Keeping it private helps build trust.

While it can be hard to earn and build trust, it’s easy to lose it; so watch out for anything that could look like favoritism, inequality, dishonesty or “virtue signaling.” For example, I’ve heard stories of leaders working remotely while requiring team members to be in the office. Or companies saying they support flexibility and work-life balance but only promoting those who work around the clock.

Respect

Respect tops the list of “10 elements of culture that matter most to employees” in a recent report published in MIT Sloan Management Review. More than anything else, team members want to be treated “with consideration, courtesy and dignity” and want their thoughts and opinions to be taken seriously.

Conversely, not feeling respected — or worse, feeling disrespected — had the largest negative impact on company culture ratings. Employees who were disrespected at work said they felt “demeaned, degraded, like disposable cogs in a wheel, treated like children and second-class citizens.” Yikes.

No leader wants their team members to feel that way; so focus on the following to boost respect in your work environment.

• Make it a core value. At DS+CO, respect is the tangible, actionable cornerstone of our core values. It’s not just a word in a handbook but a guide for our behavior. For example, we’ve fired clients who were unkind or disrespectful to our team members. We’ve resigned accounts that made our folks uncomfortable or asked them to do something unethical.
• Empower decision-making. Respect intelligence and capability by empowering teams to get the job done. Give them autonomy and don’t micro-manage. Let people on the front lines closest to customers make routine decisions. And involve them in executive and strategic decisions.
• Solicit opinions. Show you value your people by asking for their thoughts and ideas. Collect regular feedback through one-on-ones, pulse surveys, small and large interactive meetings, town halls and unstructured Q&A sessions.
• Listen — really listen. The single-best way to show respect is to give undivided attention. Put your phone down, close your other screens, make eye contact, and stay engaged and in the moment when people talk to you. Ask for clarification if needed, nod and react verbally and with body language.
• There’s no point in gathering input if you don’t respond. Always share out what you’ve heard and what you are or are not doing about it and why. When a DS+CO team member comes to us with a suggestion, we say “yes” on the spot or give them an answer within 48 hours. This shows we value and respect their opinions and encourages people to continue to come up with great ideas that advance the company.
• Acknowledge achievement. Recognize accomplishments, highlighting their measurable outcomes and impacts on the team, business or client’s business.
• Show appreciation. Whether public or private, with a gift or words, gratitude and thanks go a long way.
• Value people’s time. Don’t make people wait or waste their time. Be punctual. Don’t schedule non-urgent meetings during crunch times, at 7 a.m. on Monday or 4 p.m. on Friday. Keep meetings focused and productive, and only invite people who really need to be there.

Community

Of all aspects of workplace culture, sense of community is most at risk right now. Especially in remote and hybrid situations and for recent hires and young employees. Here are some ways to build connections and promote inclusion and belonging.

• Involve team members in decisions large and small. I think the reason our team members at DS+CO internalize and uphold our core values is because they helped develop them. We “crowd-sourced” our core values at all-agency meetings and workshopped, voted and vetted them together as a team. That exercise brought us together and strengthened our individual and collective relationships; so include and invite every single person to participate in discussions and decisions. It’s a meaningful way to build connections and community, helping people feel they belong and contribute.
• See what brings people together. Many companies have employees working in locations across the country and even the globe, so you have to be intentional about building bonds. At DS+CO, we host monthly social events at various locations in Buffalo — last month was Mumbo Wings n Things, next month is a tiki boat tour — and in-office days with special treats like therapy dogs, yoga classes, chili cookoffs or an ice cream truck at our Victor office. We’ll pay transportation and lodging so out-of-town team members can join us. And we’re keeping an eye on what generates the most participation, interaction and engagement.
• Take a leadership road trip. People are hungry for face time with leaders: 60% of professionals surveyed by recruiter Robert Walter said they felt disengaged without it, and 66% were likely to leave their job because of lack of communication with leaders. Sure, video meetings are practical, but what if your leaders took a road trip to a few central locations a few times a year? We have several team members in Florida and our CEO flew down last winter to get together with them in a mid-spot. Since then, we’ve added teammates in nearby states, so maybe next time we can offer to fly them in, too.
• Encourage managers to reach out. Frequent communication with direct managers is even more important, especially in hybrid and remote environments. The Robert Walters report says remote managers risk “killing company culture” if they don’t intentionally, purposefully connect with their direct reports. So encourage every manager to schedule weekly one-on-ones with every team member. Remind them to ask how the person is doing and feeling and not focus solely on work. Allow time for the conversation to evolve and flow freely. It’s not the frequency, but the quality of the connections that counts. Managers need to understand what makes each person tick, what they need to thrive and how the company can provide it.
• Rethink onboarding. If you’re hiring people into a hybrid or remote environment, you’ll want to expand your onboarding processes to bring your culture to life for new team members. Identify and share stories that illustrate your culture in action, like the one I told above about firing clients. You can even point out the moral of the story as it relates to one of your core values, like respect. And in addition to career coaches and mentors, assign buddies to help new hires build their social networks, absorb your norms and observe teammates living your values.

Nurture outperforms nature

Maintaining a strong organizational culture is more about how you behave than who you hire. New team members are quick to adapt and enjoy the norms and values they see and experience in their daily workplace interactions. It’s no coincidence people are naturally happiest and motivated by the timeless tenets of great workplaces: trust, respect, community, purpose. Basic elements that never go out of style and never stop working. So instead of worrying and speculating about where and when people work, let’s focus on the foundational aspects that help team members thrive and do their best work, wherever they work.

Lauren Dixon is board chair of Dixon Schwabl + Co., a marketing communications firm, which has  been honored as a Best Place to Work.