The First Step Towards a Better Workplace!

As a young professional working in international corporations and small businesses, I was always aware, to some extent, of what these working environments were missing in terms of professional development and work culture. In addition to this first-hand experience, I also collected information from colleagues. Even with all this, when I started my research on the subject of the workplace, I was blown away. I realized that the questions of development and organizational culture were now intertwined with those of robots, artificial intelligence, climate change and the future of the human being. Discussions about the future of work are no longer simply focusing on the objective of developing talents. We need to ask ourselves how to enable the new generation of workforce. How to provide these future leaders and protagonists with a mindset that allows to keep up with the changes we are witnessing every day.
In the quest for building a better workplace, different ecosystems react differently due to their nature and DNA. Startups often embrace new mindsets in order to provide an environment that is attractive to new talents. Corporations, on the other hand, are tied with decades of tradition and routine. Most of them are hoping small changes will be enough to retain the new workforce without shocking their existing system. Universities and educators are collaborating with the business world to ensure a more efficient and smoother transition from schools to jobs. Consultants are being replaced by coaches in different industries and many companies such as Glee Factor are born to help businesses and professionals at different stages of their organizational change.
In order to better understand the real issues in these different ecosystems, Glee Factor interviewed 20 professionals from talent requisition managers and organizational development strategists to engineers, buyers and designers. We were hoping to find a common area where all these individuals and businesses were trying to improve. And we did. We asked all of our interviewees, “what is the most important topic you have to discuss at your workplace?” They all answered, “Communication!” For managers and leaders, it was a challenge to communicate with their teams and peers. Especially with colleagues in other countries with different work cultures. It was also hard to transfer values and the purpose of the company or of a specific project. For employees, it was hard to get feedback, to share ideas, to be vulnerable and to solve conflict.
HBR published an article that shows two third of managers are uncomfortable communicating with their employees. Based on a new Interact survey conducted online by Harris Poll with 2,058 U.S. adults — 1,120 of them were employed, and 616 of the employed people were managers — a stunning majority (69%) of the managers said that they’re often uncomfortable communicating with employees. Over a third (37%) of the managers said that they’re uncomfortable having to give direct feedback about their employees’ performance if they think the employee might respond negatively to the feedback.
The survey results also showed that many managers are uncomfortable with becoming vulnerable, recognizing achievements, delivering the “company line,” giving clear directions, crediting others with having good ideas, speaking face to face, and having difficult feedback conversations in general.
While industries are trying to differentiate themselves from others, the challenges they face and accomplish are more similar than different. In this era, organizational change is happening in any industry and ecosystem. It can be a great opportunity for all of us to focus on what is really affecting our workplaces. Why not start with communication?
