Employees are not demotivated. The sickness rate is high. Teamwork is not working well. The bad morale is affecting performance. Often the causes of such problems are not obvious. We help corporations to find the causes of a poor organizational climate.
Many companies have recognized that their employees are unhappy, but they don’t know why.
However, in order to take the right measures, the true causes of dissatisfaction must be known.
What can corporations do to improve the organizational climate?
There are many ways leaders can improve organizational climate. Here are the six most important:
Employees must be able to address problems openly. This requires defined communication spaces – e.g., confidential one-on-one meetings – and established communication rules.
Different communication formats are important, e.g., confidential one-on-one meetings, group discussions, and open or informal rounds. Managers should find a good balance between open and confidential formats, while at the same time creating space for employees to exchange ideas with each other.
Managers should respond to feedback, even if they cannot change a situation immediately. Signaling to employees that they are being heard, even when managers have little time, shows appreciation and contributes significantly to employees’ overall happiness.
Managers should create an atmosphere in which mistakes can be addressed. Being allowed to address irritations with colleagues and superiors improves cooperation and operational processes. It is important to be sensitive: exposing employees in a group is degrading and demotivating for the people concerned. Criticism is important, but not every topic belongs in the team meeting.
All employees should be recognized as an active part of the team. Regardless of performance or role, everyone should have a say. In every group, there are special roles, e.g., the “informal leader” to whom the team orients itself, or the “adversary” who criticizes particularly frequently. The former can be given special responsibility by the manager and built up as a right-hand man. The latter can be involved by the manager by showing him special appreciation. Recognizing and involving special roles instead of excluding them promotes satisfaction and performance in the group.
Supervisors should evaluate performance transparently. Employees must know where they stand. Goals must be clearly defined. “Where do I stand?”, “Where do we stand?”, “Where do we want to go?” are fundamental questions for any professional collaboration. Making longer-term developments in the company and in the team transparent and regularly recalling them helps to counteract premature assessments such as “nothing will change anyway”.
At three sites of this telecommunications group in the “Very Small Enterprises” sector with 100 employees, the morale is low. Repeated surveys show that employees are dissatisfied. But managers don’t understand what the problem is. The salary is good, the office is well equipped, business is good. What is the problem?
Employees have been dissatisfied for some time. Managers have already tried numerous measures and surveyed employees to find out how they work.
We note in our analysis that executives always asked the questions in a way that got them the answers they wanted to hear.
Instead of figuring out the real concerns, managers take actions that miss the real needs of employees. Unintentionally, they make the situation even worse.
With every survey that misses the actual needs of employees, dissatisfaction grows.
We found this out relatively quickly through attentive questioning and listening, and by using trainers who were passionate about the same topics as the employees.
Once the problem has been identified, the task for managers is to regain the trust of their employees. To do this, they had to fundamentally change their leadership culture and behavior which they did with our support.
In training and coaching sessions, managers learn to create communication spaces where employees can say what they really think.
Management succeeds in creating a culture of listening and gradually regaining the trust of employees with open communication.
Managers who thought they knew their employees’ needs learn to really listen to their them.
From the outside, this solution seems obvious. But those involved are often too caught up in their dynamics and emotions to come up with it themselves.
Today, the organizational climate is much better and the increased satisfaction is reflected in significantly better operating results.
