Do you want to change the culture of your company? You may not want to and then again you may not have a choice. The question is, will you be a victim of the change or the manager of it?
Pick a Leader and they will tell you “I can’t find qualified employees or retain the ones I have.” They will tell you how bad the labor shortage is. Leaders see attracting and retaining employees as a major problem while overlooking a much larger problem associated with this issue.
Let’s take a minute and reminisce about the old days and its typical labor issues. Salary, tardiness, bad managers, excessive absenteeism, etc. The list is longer, but you get the general idea. Over time company’s developed and refined solutions to these labor issues. Another facet of this conversation is company culture. Every company has one. Investopedia defines company culture as: “the values, beliefs, and behaviors that determine how a company’s employees and management interact, perform, and handle business transactions. Often, corporate culture is implied, not expressly defined, or managed and develops organically over time from the cumulative traits of the people that the company hires”. In some companies there is a concerted effort to foster its culture others just let it evolve. Either way its there.
I find that in most small to midsized companies culture is implied, it has developed over time and as new employees were hired, they became indoctrinated in the culture frequently without really realizing it. SMB companies typically don’t expend the resources on ‘managing culture’ like larger companies, but they still have their own distinct culture.
So, how does the labor shortage issue and company culture present a problem and I believe a significant one for Leaders? First, labor shortages are a visible day to day operational situation staring you in the face where culture is that ‘thing’ in the background. In today’s world they are intertwined more than in the past.
Look at the labor pool you are drawing from. We knew for some time it was in transition away from ‘boomers’ to a smaller younger workforce that has different expectations and ideas about their work. Agree or disagree with their views it’s the package you get with a lot of the ‘new labor’ pool. Each ‘wave’ brings with it a certain set of variables, some you make like others not so much.
A recent survey (Deloiltte) of 15,000 members of Gen Z reveals just how willing America’s youngest workers are to bring activism into the office. The data shows that during their first few years in the office, Gen Z have eagerly infused their generational ethics into the workplace and demonstrated a willingness to turn down jobs and assignments based on personal politics.
It’s not just Gen Z challenging the work culture, social media and accepted general behavior are blurring the lines between work and non-work. Just about everything in the outside social environment today is dragged into the workplace.
Employees have always had opinions, and some were more willing than others to express them in the workplace. However, these were conversations over coffee or lunch. Today many employees expect their companies to take a visible public stand on social issues and express these feelings openly to other employees, company Leaders and social media about their views. Societal discourse is challenging entrepreneurialism, capitalism, and ‘traditional’ social norms.
What’s the impact on your culture? I believe it is changing your culture whether you like or not or even realize it but it’s not positive if you are not managing it. For employees it is making working relationships amongst people contentious or at a minimum uncomfortable. Work ‘norms’ are blurred along with acceptable social behavior. It is changing, modifying, or eliminating companies civic role in their community because of the risk of offending a group.
The best example of how Leaders are changing their culture unconsciously is a recent experience with the owner of a company who told me about a key employees continual absenteeism. “He misses to much work to frequently, but I think about trying to find someone better and the time and money to train them not knowing if they will be any better. So, I stick with him hoping he’ll change.” I wonder how his other employees view this one’s behavior. A partner in a large law firm stated it this way; “we only hire from the top 5% of the class of the top 10% of law schools world-wide. Now at the start of interviews candidates list their demands for working at the firm.”
We see examples of public companies implementing changes that have nothing to do with increasing shareholder value and in a lot of chases just the opposite. Are they managing cultural change in their company or reacting to the immediate environment?
The shortage of workers and their attitudes towards work and the role the company should play in society isn’t going to change for a significant period of time. The overall growth of the workforce is slowing down, skilled worker numbers are decreasing along with questions regarding the quality of graduates experience at all levels.
Companies are always experiencing some level of change however this labor force and society in general is accelerating the pace. The questions you need to ask yourself is this change in the best interest of your company and shareholders and are you going to manage it or just respond later when you ‘don’t’ like it? The problem is not labor supply, perceived labor activism or changing societal norms, it’s how you are responding to these changing dynamics that are driving significant cultural change in your company without managing it.