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Culture Shock
Tom Doescher
- According to Gallup, about half of all workers have jobs they need to do on-site, such as manufacturing, transportation, health care, education, and service. More on this group later.
- Commit to hybrid work (i.e. a combination of at home and at the office) for your remote-ready employees. Do this or nobody with any talent will ever work for your company again. (Editorial comment: That’s a strong statement, but it’s backed up by lots of surveys, interviews, and data.)
- When Gallup asks workers who have jobs that require collaboration how many days would be best to work in the office, the sweet spot was two to three days.
- Gallup recommends (they actually discourage a formal policy) that companies suggest to their workers to consider Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday as on-site days. Gallup has found that most workers prefer these as in-office days.
- Gallup labels workers who prefer a job that’s 9 to 5, where work and life are separated, as splitters; and workers who prefer blending work and life throughout the day are identified as blenders. According to the surveys, splitters and blenders are pretty evenly divided (50-50). (Editorial comment: But don’t assume anything.)
- In No. 1, I mentioned that about half the workforce can’t perform their work remotely. (Editorial comment: This can lead to some hard feelings.) Gallup offered several ideas for these workers: Work remotely some of the time, work at multiple locations, have a choice over the hours they do work (flextime), and offer four-day workweeks (four 10-hour days, with flexible time and end times).
- The most important factor in building a winning team is the “manager,” who accounts for 70 percent of the variance between engaged and disengaged workers. (Editorial comment: We’ve known for years that the immediate supervisor is the primary reason someone leaves a company.)
- Per their surveys, 80 percent of the workers who said they received meaningful feedback in the past week were fully engaged.
- Your engaged employees create engaged (delighted) customers. When employees hate their organization and their boss, the customer feels it.
In this book, the authors also spend a fair amount of time making the case — and providing great tools and examples — for having employees work in their “strengths.” This always reminds me of Frank Moran, who did this back in the 1950s and ’60s. At the time, even in our small firm, he would try to create a meaningful, productive position that amplified a professional’s strengths.
This is a quick, easy read that I’d suggest to most business owners.