"People who have strong cultures don't necessarily have to be investing large amounts of money. It's really the time, attention, and effort that they're investing."
My experience at this conference has been absolutely fabulous. It's a great opportunity to hear people representing different companies in all different sectors talk about the impact of being able to measure employee engagement on their business and their business outcomes, and some of the actions that different people have taken as a result of the information they've gathered.
So, creating a culture of continuous listening is absolutely essential to have a real-time understanding of what associates are experiencing, particularly today when so many industries are going through transformational change.
Using TINYpulse to pulse over time and see what the employee sentiment is around different areas through the change can be really helpful in helping an organization focus on what do we need to be doing to help our associates as we move through the change process, and it is having how they're feeling in real time that allows us to know what it is we need to do. In order to create a culture where we really have strongly engaged employees is all about leadership behaviors.
Many times we make a mistake and think by focusing on the outcomes, and what we forget is that in a healthy organization it is values that drive behaviors, behaviors that drive culture, and culture that drives the outcomes. If we spent more time focusing on what are the behaviors that leaders need to be exhibiting in order to create the kind of culture we want to create, that's where we really start to get impact. And getting the information we get in real-time through TINYpulse enables us to look at where are some of our gaps, and what do we need to be doing in terms of the development of our leaders to enhance our culture.
I really believe that successful leaders who are doing this well, number one, understand the sentiment and what associates are feeling and experiencing. They have to really believe that it is truly the way in which our associates feel engaged that has an impact on all sorts of business outcomes. But in order to have people engaged, it means really taking time, energy and effort to understand what associates are feeling, and what do we need to do to improve their experience within the workplace. And when we do that, there are all sorts of positive results for the business, but I think sometimes we focus on the end and aren't focusing on what the leaders need to be doing, and it is truly the leader behaviors, having the right leaders exhibiting the right behaviors that will impact the outcomes we all want to get.
Leaders who really are focused on creating culture, I think are intentional about culture. They don't let culture just happen, which it will, but they're very intentional about what kind of culture do we want to have. What kind of experience do we want to provide for our associates, and then they are very intentional to make sure that their actions, their programs, the way they look at work-life balance, all sorts of other areas align with whom they say they are, and whom they want to be.
I really believe that people who are really having strong cultures don't necessarily have to be investing large amounts of money. It's really the time, attention and effort that they're investing. You know, you can measure what people are experiencing, and there are costs to things like the measurement, doing our analytics, and all of the things we do within organizations, but to me, that's just part of doing business.