 |
 |
 |
       |
 |
     |
 |
 |
|
|
|
 |
| Featured in Offshore
magazine |
|
| Corporate Culture: The People
Magnet |
|
Do you know what the culture of your company is? How do
you know?
Offshore enterprises are operating companies. Managers
in this industry are by nature primarily concerned with
doing things, making things run smoothly and profitably.
If they give any thought to corporate culture at all,
it is usually influenced by opinions forged from management
meeting conversations or casual observations during MBWA
(management by walking around). There is a very real likelihood
that management's view of a company's culture is markedly
different than the way employees see it.
Upper level executives tend to see their companies in
a more positive light than do the line level employees.
Understandably. They are successful, well-paid, and respected.
They can afford to feel good about the company. But the
view from the top may be very different from the way it
looks down in the yard, on the deck of boat, or on a rig
platform.
Employees at lower levels are much closer to the day-to-day
realities of what life in a company is really like. They
see the company from its underbelly, and what they see
isn't always as pretty as top management's view. As a
result, their attitude toward the company, their jobs,
and your customers can suffer. The corporate culture then
suffers. Ultimately, employee satisfaction suffers.
If you really want to know what's on your employees' minds,
ask them. Conduct systematic research to find out what
they're thinking and feeling.
"Systematic measurement" means repetition over
time. A single market research event only provides a snapshot
of attitudes and perceptions at one moment in time. By
repeating the research at intervals of six months or a
year over a period of several years, the data begins to
reveal trends and patterns. Conducting ongoing research
is especially important with regard to building a culture
of loyal employees because the results don't necessarily
show up in one quarter. Furthermore, with the continually
evolving offshore market, the environment in which one
survey is made may be markedly different only a few months
later. Sharp changes in oil prices for instance, can change
the overall mood quickly.
Research gives management a powerful foundation of fact-based
knowledge for decision making to build a strong corporate
culture. It provides hard numbers that can be correlated
to bottom line performance. Research transforms corporate
culture management from a black art into a scientific
profit strategy.
Ongoing monitoring need not be expensive. A well-designed
survey instrument can be a one-time investment that is
reusable over and over. The questionnaire can be self-administered.
Ongoing costs are limited to tabulation and trends analysis.
By analyzing the research over time, management can see
what parts of a corporate culture development initiative
are resonating with the employees and which ones aren't.
Though it's no substitute for experience and judgment,
research gives managers a realistic basis for making informed
decisions rather than educated guesses. Holding a wet
finger in the air to judge which way the wind is blowing
gives a broadly general idea of the direction. However,
scientific data measures not only the precise direction
at the moment but the exact speed, range of variance,
rate of change, and probable future direction and speed.
While cultures differ widely in the offshore industry,
they're more alike than you may think. Employees throughout
the industry share common concerns. If you address these
concerns effectively, you successfully bond your employees
to your company.
Four root concerns appear to plague all corporate cultures
to some degree, greater in some than others. They're rooted
in basic human nature, the needs and desires we all have.
They signify big obstacles to developing a strong unified
culture unless you do something to improve them.
These same four challenges appear persistently at the
top of the list:
Poor Communication. The
single greatest weakness in virtually every corporate
culture we've studied is that employees feel they don't
know what's going on most of the time. It's significant
that most employees say they rely on the company grapevine
to get the real scoop.
The most common form of "communication" in most
companies is the memo. It's also probably the worst way
to transmit information. Managers tend to feel they have
"communicated" because they mentioned something
once in Line 4 of Paragraph 6 on Page 3 of a memo last
month.
There are two problems with this. First, you can't assume
that everybody even reads a memo all the way through (or
at all). Second, people are inundated with bits of information
in today's world, so much so that little of it actually
registers in their memories; there's too much competition.
The first step to improving your connection is to recognize
that communication only happens when an idea actually
completes the journey from your mind to an employee's
mind. A memo is only a delivery device. It doesn't become
communication until the employee absorbs and grasps its
meaning.
Be creative in the way you deliver information. Try unexpected
and surprising ways to communicate. Hang posters in high-traffic
employee areas. Make message frames for bathroom mirrors.
Make your company newsletter strategic and useful instead
of a boring, outdated puff that nobody reads. Use technology
where available to you - email, satellite links, videocassettes,
and the like.
Repeat yourself. Tell them what you're going to tell them,
tell them, then tell them what you told them. For a message
to stick, it must be repeated with enough frequency to
make an impression that will last. Once is never enough.
Be open. Hush-hush secrecy tells employees you don't trust
them. It also divides the Ins from the Outs, splitting
the culture. When you take employees into your confidence,
you make them partners in your vision, allies in your
purpose.
Communication should be a two-way channel. Talk with your
employees, not at them. You can't learn anything about
the culture with your mouth open and your ears closed.
Poorly-Trained Middle Management.
Next to poor communication, the lack of people
management skills among supervisors is the largest contributor
to cultural dysfunction. In many companies, middle managers
typically get promoted from the rank and file because
they have been there longest or have the best functional
skills. Neither are qualifications by themselves to be
a good manager.
Consequently, people become foremen or supervisors who
have neither the temperament nor the training for coping
with the challenges of leadership. The fault lies with
top management.
Examine your criteria for selecting managers. Make sure
you're picking the people who can lead. Make sure they
have adequate training for the job. You can't expect someone
who was a whiz with a wrench automatically to be a great
foreman. More than likely, the person will simply behave
with the same bad habits learned from previous supervisors.
As a group, middle managers are more often than not a
barrier that blocks your vision from reaching the lower
levels of your organization. Your best intentions can't
get past the department heads to touch the rank and file
if your middle managers are incompetent.
Lack of Respect. The
computer world's axiom "garbage in - garbage out"
applies to the issue of how employees are treated in your
company. You get out of them what you put into them. Respect
flows from the very top and trickles down to the line
level. The research scores on this issue are always proportional
to rank; the lowest level employees feel the least respect.
If there is little respect at the top, none gets to the
bottom.
When employees feel they are treated with respect, they
are more likely to treat each other and customers respectfully.
Make it clear to your employees that you value them and
the job they do. Live up to your promises to them. Don't
con them. They know when you're insincere.
Look at your employees as individuals who each have something
to contribute to your success. They aren't just components
of the column called "Labor Expense." In truth,
respect reduces labor expense. Employees who feel valued
are more productive and stay on the job longer, cutting
turnover costs.
Favoritism.
Perhaps the most insidious of all cultural ills, favoritism
breeds organizational incest, rewards brown-nosers, and
undermines quality. When you allow cliques to develop
in a culture, you lose control of it. Cliques mean fragmentation
into factions. Cultural unity is a threat to them.
Promotions, raises, special favors, the best shifts, etc.,
should be awarded on merit, not on personal relationships.
Rewards should be earned based on superior effort, not
"who you know." A culture built on quality performance
and dedication to the company owns a powerful advantage
over a good-ole-boy establishment.
You may be inclined to dismiss these challenges, thinking
they don't apply to your company. Think again. Not a single
company we've studied - over a range of industries as
diverse as marine service, oil and gas, industrial supply,
gaming, hospitals and health, and entertainment - was
exempt from these problems. It's a good bet that yours
is affected, too. It's also a good bet that you don't
really know for sure.
Return to: Articles
|
|
|
|
| |
 |
|
|
 |
