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Recently in one small UK service company, free lance senior consultants decided that in the tough climate they were facing with less work to go around, they would instead pass on various jobs to colleagues to provide a more equitable distribution.
Short term the senior consultants would lose out, long term they were building a dedicated community of committed people who above all trusted each other.
The benefits of such trust and engagement of those concerned can hardly be under estimated. It can strongly affect the culture of the organisation with fundamental effects such as promoting quality, high performance and care for customers or clients. These in turn are what ultimately affect the bottom line.
Given the inertia of so many organisations where change is constant yet real shifts in culture and behaviour are rather rarer, what can HR professionals actually do to promote more community?
The first step is being willing to actively talk about the company as a community and explain what that implies in practice.
Secondly it means seeking out and encouraging small initiatives that promote community, for example finding groups that are wondering about how to get something done to make things better.
Thirdly, it means spreading around the company examples of community in action. When people learn of these they are often feel uplifted and encouraged to know such things are happening in their own organisation. They start wondering what they might do in their own sphere of activity.
Fourthly, it means helping people leave behind a victim mentality, a “poor me” or “blamer” style of behaviour that saps energy and undermines the sense that “our destiny is in our own hands.”
Finally it means the HR professional, at whatever level, holds a wider view than just the organisation and its day-to-day concerns. This is thinking of the organisation as part of a wider community and what that means in practice.
Promoting the company a community is a cultural issue, in particular not seeing the company as merely driven by strategy and goals.
As the CEO of Merc once put it, “Culture eats strategy for lunch” and it is culture that HR professionals will need to most obtain a strong grip on to obtain or retain a seat at the top table.
Louis Gerstner, the man who rescued IBM from near oblivion admitted that he originally thought culture was one among several important elements producing success. But while at IBM he came to see “culture isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game.”
In helping companies to become strong communities, HR needs to learn to play the culture game, since for long term survival of both their role and the company itself it is the only game in town.
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