Protected: Changing Employee Behavior
Business leaders too often think of changing employee behavior as trying to modify their core personalities — a nearly impossible task. But it is possible to inspire a mindset that drives behaviors designed to support a brand’s personality, and more importantly, a company’s mission.
Whether driven by a shift in leadership, an acquisition or simply in response to changing markets and new demands, businesses are always evolving. Success requires employees to evolve as well. After all, they author the brand experience and can serve as a powerful marketing channel, whether attracting new customers or recruiting new employees. When employees don’t behave in a manner that reflects the brand promise, it derails business strategy. Getting the business back on track requires getting everyone singing from the same songbook and acting accordingly.
As you consider how to engage employees on this journey, it’s important to analyze not just which key behaviors to target and how to make them a reality, but how they connect with your business objectives.
Aligning on Values
Even if your company is already working from a purpose-driven platform with a set of corresponding values, changes in the business (or employee behavior) warrants a reexamination. Tied to a strong mission, values beget behaviors. We closely collaborate with clients to:
Identify what behaviors are required to make the company’s mission a reality.
Conduct an exhaustive internal audit to uncover recurring themes tied to values.
Organize and rank proposed values with short definitions to help stakeholders discuss their usage and meaning.
Gaining Employee Buy-in
Leadership needs to look at the values as a commitment to employees, not just a commandment. This is about the internal environment you want to create as much as it is the external experience you want customers to have. Internal communications campaigns should give employees an active voice. Some ideas to consider:
Have teams identify which of their co-workers best exemplify the values and behaviors the organization wants to project.
Invite employees to define what the company’s values mean to them and how they incorporate them into their daily work.
Inquire about any perceived roadblocks to meeting behavior expectations.
Launching & Learning
(in Perpetuity)
Creative employee campaigns aside, the importance of being genuine with messaging cannot be overstated. Getting ahead of disbelief, which leads to low employee engagement, requires measurement through surveys, performance reviews and other feedback tools. As you evaluate progress, here are a few questions to consider:
Do survey results reveal clear disparities between departments or geographies of employees?
Is leadership serving as a model to others, displaying the right behaviors and praising others that do?
Have consequences been appropriately implemented and communicated?
Think it’s difficult changing employee behaviors? Imagine changing markets or industries.
As a business scales, culture and employee behavior must scale with it. That means having honest conversations about changing values and perceptions. Need help facilitating those?
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