The Culture Bandwagon - HR May Need to Get Off
The culture narrative drives high performers away
People know that I don't jump on any bandwagon. Before I endorse any ideology, I try to understand it from several aspects, including my experiences and the experiences of the people around me.
I believe in the existence of a team culture that depends on the people, their personalities, mindsets, the processes that govern daily activities etc. Team (micro) culture is what is real to people. This is what they experience daily.
However, this is not what companies are pushing. They are pushing high-level agendas that employees seldom experience, like culture events, team-building activities, food, ping-pong tables, sleeping pods, slides, a thinking room, etc. But do these pay off, and can they counterbalance working on a bad team or with a manager? Can they offset the toxic behaviour of the manager?
Well, let's hope because companies of the size of 20-30 are hiring Culture Managers earning $110K and spending millions on these events and activities.
However, most employees only engage in workplace activities because they feel they have to but would rather spend that time focusing on their work. Let's be honest. None of us likes it when HR comes and says, "Hey guys, we are doing this fun activity from 4 to 5 pm, and we have no say in the matter.
Employees describe this as Corporate Prescribed Mandatory Fun. I call it ‘Voluntold’ when you pretend to volunteer to do something you were told to do.
HBR found that these types of environments make high performers quit. So why do we keep pushing an agenda that is expensive to maintain and drives high performers out of the organisation?
This is where the bandwagon mentality comes into the picture.
Reason 1 - Companies don't want to create a culture but a cult through ritualistic behaviours like chanting values or clapouts. Companies figured out that they can control (temporarily) our way of thinking (mental conditioning with an objective) and impact our behaviour if they push specific agendas like; we stand for something, our purpose, we are a family etc. There is a company that pays $2000 if you tattoo their culture onto your body. Red flag or what? We buy into this, but as we go along and see the reality, we quickly realise they are not true. That is where money is wasted.
Reason 2 - Pushback over workplace issues has become more diverse and challenging to handle. To minimise the risk, they put a cultural agenda framework around it. You can notice this because each time something happens, companies' public apology always includes something like "Our company takes workplace culture very seriously....." It is not bad, but it is done for the wrong reason. Self-protection and not for fostering an inclusive culture.
Reason 3 - Everyone else is doing it, and we all convinced each other it is important. The problem is that instead of looking at what kind of micro & macro culture we want to build and how to build it in a specific environment, companies started to copy each other which is nonsense because every organisation is different. As a result, micro-cultures at team levels are not addressed i.e. poor management and leadership pushing people out of the organisation. Oh, hang on! Hasn't HBR said that employees also leave because of the macro-cultural agendas? YES! So we are pushing employees out at both levels. Great! Companies, do you! Don’t copy others and benchmark yourself againts other companies. Do what your organisation and people need! Stop looking at others, their culture also sucks. You should know that by now. Just look at employee data across the globe. Nobody is satisfied and you are copying that!!??
Reason 4 - This is one of the last options to motivate staff who are no longer planning a lifetime career with us. Careers have changed forever, and companies are struggling to retain people. Unfortunately, they devised solutions that drive people away in their desperate fight to keep them. People don’t want to have anything to do with macro-cultural agendas i.e. DEI, wellbeing, a great place to work and all the rest. That’s why these agendas yield no result yet, we keep forcing them on people’s throats. Listen to your employees and if you want to keep them, fix the micro-culture within the organisation.
The Solution
In the customer service industry, we build service culture through service standards. Without those, there cannot be a culture of service established. So, my question to all HR professionals is, where are your standards for employees’ experiences across the organisation? Exactly! No standards, no same experience, no culture!
As Gary Vee said, "Employee culture doesn't come from doughnuts, games, and culture events. It comes from firing bad managers who are actively driving people out of the organisation". Okay, but how do we determine who qualifies as a bad manager? Standards for employee experience! It is the same principle as in the service industry. If you provide poor customer/guest experiences you perform poorly you get fired. Companies tolerate employees behaving poorly with each other by not setting the standards for employees’ experiences but they would never allow that for their guests/customers.
We’ve completely missed the mark on company culture if you ask me. There’s no real culture without setting standards for employee experiences. So forget the fun fairs, parties, and all that fluff! Put the standards in and outline the type of experiences you would like your employees to have and work backwards. That will shape all your processes, policies, leadership KPIs and competencies, training & development, and your reward system. Beacuse your culture is what you tolerate and reward through the system you have built.
If you need help designing your employees’ experiences give us a shout and click on the banner and/or watch the video series on YouTube.
Source that helped me with this article:
I have been trying to convince certain people how outdated and ineffective these fun and games approaches are to employee retention development. Employees who are already overwhelmed with time constraints do not want to take a mandatory 3-4 hour break for games. If they are forced to take that time, they immediately begin stressing about getting further behind on their work. They also easily and, more appropriately, perceive these games as attempts to distract them from the realization that the organization doesn’t want to make meaningful, structural changes to fix their concerns. This leads to distrust, frustration, stress, and increased resignations. Thank you for sharing your post!