W4D1 Granth
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Year after year, decade after decade, we in Human Resources have heard it again and again. We are going to use the great ideas our employees have to enhance the workforce, to drive for greater customer service and make this a best place to work. And still, for all of the work that has gone into such initiatives, very little has changed.
S o many of our organizations have conducted employee engagement surveys to determine our strengths and weaknesses. What do your employees love? What do they hate? What can we do better? In many cases, the areas needing improvement come down to two things: communication
and recognition. Our success or failure in those areas are huge factors in
determining the level of employee engagement. Rightfully so. We focus on
improving those areas because superior employee engagement remains the holy
grail of human resources management and development. Drive better employee
engagement, and you drive better customer service. Better customer service
makes for happier, more loyal customers. Happier customers interact better
with your employees, thereby further driving better employee engagement. Who
doesn’t love to work in a place where the people coming through the door are
happy to see you? Ideally, you create a perpetual motion machine of success!
Where we’ve been
The problem has been how to move the needle on employee engagement. We
have tried all sorts of approaches. There have been idea generation programs,
with group meetings, suggestion boxes, incentives and a host of other
methodologies to connect with employees and request their feedback. We have
done these the old school way – on paper – and with a more modern approach,
taking things online. We have designed recognition programs, with everything
from annual service awards to financial incentives to giving away fancy trips for
group achievements.
Jess A. Bunshaft Jess A. Bunshaft, Esq., has served in HR management for over twenty years and was Executive Vice President & CHRO at Goodwill Industries of Greater New York and Northern New Jersey. He is president of Synergist Workforce Solutions LLC (www.synergistwfs.com), providing HR management and employee development and training. Contact Jess@SynergistWFS.com
The Quest for Employee Voice and the Role of Appreciative Inquiry
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To encourage communication, we have designed newsletters, have held Town
Hall meetings, have done weekly small group breakfasts with the CEO. The
best we usually get is bits of feedback. True breakthroughs in engagement and
communication are a rarity.
In a recent discussion with a colleague at a recognized “best place to work”, she
said what many of us are thinking… “The problem with current programs is that
they’re the same old programs” – tweaked and repackaged with new names.
Since she knew the “big bosses” wouldn’t be happy with that view, as they’ve
ignored her requests to change the approach, she asked that I not use her name.
But the sentiment shouldn’t be unfamiliar to most of us.
At that top tier employer, it seems like it’s all been done before. Yes, employees
who exemplify the best of the organization have been identified. They have
found the core values and behaviors that make those employees special, and they
have trumpeted the successes, setting examples for other employees, putting
these top performers front-and-center in public campaigns meant to drive
greater public awareness and greater business for the organization. For all that,
this veteran HR professional, herself a top performer, can see that these are just
retreads of things we’ve been doing for ages.
How we can do better
While we do get feedback from some employees through these methods, we all
know we can do better. In our practice, we have been exploring the possibilities
for Appreciative Inquiry (AI) as the driver to take the search for employee voice
– and our quest for that holy grail of engagement – to the next level. As most
readers will know, AI goes beyond the usual work-focused communications.
It doesn’t look just to past experiences – particularly to failures as learning
experiences – but rather looks at both the employees’ best work and their vision
for the best possible future.
As stated in Positive Momentum (HR Magazine, June 2013), “Instead of asking
‘What’s wrong with this organization?,’ it’s asking ‘What’s right?’ and ‘What
gives life to this organization when it’s most alive?’”, citing David Cooperrider of
the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University.
Right there, we see the difference between what we have traditionally done and
what we could, and should, be doing. What gives the organization life when it is
most alive? At an employee level, what makes the job its best? When do we hit
our peak as employees? And it’s not simply a matter of identifying those peaks.
Rather, the inquiries themselves are as important as the information gathered.
True breakthroughs in engagement and communication are a rarity.
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So how do we move in this new direction to explore employee voice and see what
gold is waiting to be discovered?
Taking existing tools, we can easily build in AI and engage with employees like
we never have before. In our consulting practice, we’ve built AI into an existing
facilitated brainstorming framework to begin employee discussions, designed to
introduce AI into the workforces we serve. The open contribution framework of a
facilitated brainstorming approach, when implemented properly, makes clear to
the employees in a brainstorming session that we really want them to share their
best ideas. Why, you may ask, is that particular framework important to this
process? Because AI values employees’ goals and vision above all else, building
on what has worked in the past and where employees dream of taking things in
the future. For those not familiar with the AI framework, the four components,
as shared in A Positive Revolution in Change: Appreciative Inquiry, are:
Discovery: Mobilizing a whole system inquiry into the positive change core.
Dream: Creating a clear results-oriented vision in relation to discovered potential
and in relation to questions of higher purpose: “What is the world calling us to
become?”
Design: Creating possibility propositions of the ideal organization, a design
people feel is capable of magnifying the positive core and realizing the
articulated new dream.
Destiny: Strengthening the affirmative capability of the whole system, enabling it
to build hope and momentum around a deep purpose and creating processes for
learning, adjustment, and improvisation, like a jazz group over time.
So why does this matter? What’s different and how will we make new
discoveries? We have had employee communication, recognition and engagement
initiatives for many years. They have been called different things, but we have
rolled them out in lots of workplaces and in various formats.
As noted in Linking Perceived Employee Voice and Creativity, “Individuals who
believe that a given work role activity is personally meaningful are intrinsically
motivated to invest themselves more fully in it” (Ganjali and Rezaee, 2016). This
article notes that research has demonstrated that strengthening employee voice
leads to more intrinsic motivation, and more intrinsically motivated employees
tend to be more flexible, persevering and creative. These all are characteristics
we value when we want our employees to create a top-performing environment.
Further supporting this push in a positive direction, we see many sources
examining the value of forward-thinking initiatives. In Hope: A New Positive
AI Practitioner, August 2018, Bunshaft: The Quest for the Appreciative Voice and AI
Research has demonstrated that strengthening employee voice leads to more intrinsic motivation.
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Strength for Human Resource Development, Fred Luthans and Susan M. Jensen of
the University of Nebraska-Lincoln note that “high-hope human resources
seem especially needed for today’s extremely turbulent environment.” They
go on to note that, “Emerging research also suggests a link between the use of
appreciative inquiry, employees’ hope levels, and the expressed willingness to
perform organizational citizenship behaviors” (Luthans and Jensen, 2002).
Finding employee voice
So how do we bring this background to exploring employee voice? Again, our
focus needs to be on improving communication, so we hear our employees
better. The use of facilitated brainstorming with an AI focus and the use of
retention interviews can help us connect our Appreciative Inquiry structure to
the quest for greater communication and hearing the voice of our employees.
The tools for encouraging employee communication are already in place. As
discussed in Promoting Employee Voice and Upward Communication in Healthcare,
“Leaders created voice opportunity (Ashford, Sutcliffe and Christianson, 2009)
through visibility and approachability and the use of both formal and informal
communication channels” (Adelman and Stokes, 2012). In order to find appreciative
voice, we then use our existing structures and the brainstorming methodology
mentioned above to seek out the dreams of our employees. What is our higher
purpose and what are our ideals driving us to become?
In my recent role as chief human resources officer of a major not-for-profit
organization in New York, our human resources department, working together
with management across the organization, found ways, using limited resources, to
connect with employees and move the needle on engagement. In a workforce spread
across two states, through multiple divisions with different goals, including a large
retail division and a large human services division, as well as youth programs and
contracted business services, improving retention and driving engagement in the
right direction were quite challenging, especially with limited financial resources.
As generational change impacts the organization, as it is doing across the entire
American workforce, it has become necessary to recognize the importance of an
approach that connects with millennials as well as longer-serving employees.
As Executive Vice President & Chief Development Officer Karen Means stated,
“Because the workforce has changed dramatically, traditional employee
engagement falls short of hitting the mark. Millennials in particular are looking
for very specific ways to connect. The savvy employer, if they get it and are open
to a paradigm shift, will have a dedicated, motivated workforce.”
High-hope human resources seem especially needed for today’s extremely turbulent environment. Luthans and Jensen
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Of course, to really drive this type of new initiative forward, buy-in from top
management is vital. When this is done correctly, it doesn’t only garner great
results from the information collected and the follow-up, but the process
shows respect from senior management and genuine recognition of the value of
contributions from staff at all levels. That is a great motivator to drive CEOs and
other senior managers to get on board. That should be our main selling point!
Structuring our efforts
As we move forward in group efforts based in AI, we may dovetail this with
individual interviews, as well as brainstorming sessions. Individual interviews
may serve multiple purposes, but they can largely follow the structure of a
retention interview (sometimes called a “stay interview”), where the interviewer
seeks from long-term star employees their feedback on what makes them
stay and keeps them engaged with the organization. These interviews don’t
always have the full components of an AI process, but they echo some of the
same sentiments, as they are looking primarily for the positive. Rather than
fixing things that are wrong, they build on things that are right and look for
opportunities across the organization, infecting the other staff with the same
kind of dedication and forward drive.
Examples of stay/retention interview questions include:
• What motivates you?
• What do you look forward to when you come to work every day?
• What talents of yours would you like to use more at work?
• If you could change something about your job, what would it be?
These questions can open the door, as they focus on the positive. Building in
elements of AI lets us drive for the brightest future for an organization. By
marrying the elements of AI to a robust communication program, we can drive
the appreciative voice into what we are doing and find the very best of our
workforce, revealing a path forward to greatness. We explore the best of our
best employees, find their dreams for the best future for themselves and our
organizations, and build to levels previously unattainable. Through these efforts,
organizations can climb from being good employers to great ones, from being
great to one of the handful who can see themselves as the best of their industry!
To really drive this type of new initiative forward, buy-in from top management is vital.
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