Keynote profile: Zrinka Lovrencic, Great Place to Work Institute
Zrinka Lovrencic is managing consultant of the Great Place to Work Institute and the keynote speaker at Melcrum's second annual employee engagement conference in Melbourne April 21st-22nd.
Here, speaking to James Bennett, Melcrum's head of content, Lovrencic, gives communicators an insight into what she'll be discussing at the event, explains what the most important element of becoming a great place to work is and reveals why internal communicators are central to the transformation of ordinary companies becoming great companies.
The Great Place to Work Institute was born 20 years ago when two New York Times journalists dreamed up a feature idea to look at the worst performing businesses. Twenty years later, executives around the globe now wait in anticipation for the annual world-renowned 100 best places to work list.
According to independent research by Russell Investment Group, companies acknowledged as "Great Places to Work" outperform standard market indices by a factor of two to three.
The study suggests a strong link between workplace culture and a business' financial performance. Russell research showed that: "Great workplaces have significant competitive advantages as a result of the high trust relationships between employees and management. Trust can contribute to higher levels of co-operation, greater commitment, lower employee turnover, decreased use of sick time and improved customer support."
How does the Best Place to Work process work?
The 2010 "Best Places to Work" study list was researched between 1st August 2009 and 31st March 2010. Companies nominate themselves for the study via our website. Our methodology enables us to identify the strengths in workplaces and the areas that can be developed, thereby supporting efforts to improve the organizational culture.
Our methodology enables us to identify the strengths in workplaces and the areas that can be developed.
What does it mean to be a Great Place To Work?
We believe maximizing performance through people is the key lever for sustainable competitive advantage in today's highly mobile labor economy. The added benefit is the media exposure that comes with being one of the best companies to work for in Australia and also globally.
We believe that any organization, irrespective of industry, size, location and so on can be a great workplace. Our approach is based on the major findings of 20 years of research - that trust between managers and employees is the primary defining characteristic of the very best workplaces.
At the heart of our definition of a great place to work – a place where employees "trust the people they work for, have pride in what they do and enjoy the people they work with" – is the idea that a great workplace is measured by the quality of the three, interconnected relationships that exist:
- The relationship between employees and management
- The relationship between employees and their jobs/company
- The relationship between employees and other employees
How key is communication in a business?
Communication is one of the things we really focus on when assessing organizations at Great Places To Work, and we do a lot of consulting for companies that are struggling. Usually, if things are going wrong in a company it’s down to the communication, or rather the lack of it.
Usually, if things are going wrong in a company, it's down to the communication...or lack of it.
Are companies struggling with communication on a global scale?
A lot of the time companies will take part in our study and the results from the survey will come back surprisingly low. When they take part in any work with us there are two parts to it: one is the staff survey and the other is a culture audit. Both of these let us know more about the company and their policies and procedures.
The problem, however, is that the staff often have no idea that it's available to them. We ask, "how do you communicate to the staff?" and they reply, "well, we let them know about this at induction." Often, this kind of information is on their intranet – things just aren't communicated enough.
Or, for example, when changes happen within the organization, for instance a project, and a shift is made from plan A to plan B and then staff say "we don't get told about it because changes have already happened."
Communication at the start of a project is really good but often when change takes place, communication drops off. It's in those times when communication is most important, when you have to let people know about what's going on in the organization, why it's changing and why the organization isn't heading for the same outcome any more.
It's that message that gets diluted and it doesn't get passed on. Or the management team has a meeting and it's up to each manager to pass everything on. But these days the problem is that managers not only have a job of managing people, they also have other tasks and issues to focus on and targets to meet. You then have the problem of something urgent coming up and the messages not being passed on.
Are you seeing a breakdown in communication as a more common problem than ever before?
It's a consistent problem. Communication is one of those things that's easily forgotten about in organizations.
Are the best companies to work for globally the best communicators?
This is one of the great things about some companies who don't realize they have such a wide and diverse variety of employees – the same communication needs to be repeated and replicated to reach everyone. Some organizations on the Great Place To Work list often have very open lines of communication with all their employees and actively promote and encourage employees to ask questions and make suggestions.
Not only that, very often the CEO or top-level executives are open and accessible to everyone whether it be by open forums that they host, recorded message, traveling around the country or around the globe meeting employees, or regular face-to-face meetings. They also have a regularly updated intranet, while there are some organizations that have department meetings with team members from other departments joining them, collaborating and communicating openly about what's happening in their divisions.
Those departments are then always aware of each other's goals, good and bad news is always shared and out in the open and employees, at whatever level, are open to discussing any issue in public. It's really important to let everyone have access to information even when it's bad news.
What communication traits do the top performers have in common?
The best companies recognize that different employees respond to different methods of communication so they use different communication means to repeat the same message. This way it reaches as many of their employees as possible.
The best companies recognize that different employees respond to different methods of communication.
Being an open and honest organization is definitely a trait of being a great company to work for – can you give an example?
Morgan Stanley, Google, Russell Investment and Netapp are just a few companies that are all open and honest in the way they communicate. Netapp especially. It's a large US company whose president makes sure he has a conversation and a social network with all of his staff. He's even comfortable with any member of his staff emailing him asking him whatever they want. Just because it's a global organization and your office is on a different continent doesn't mean you can't contact the top man and ask him questions about what's happening in the business.
Morgan Stanley also has so many great programmes in place to enable communication and messages to be passed on.
The best way to sum it up is that you have to know the demographics of your employees and you have to know how they respond best to various forms of communication. Are they better off having a face-to-face meeting in front of a manager, or an email sent by the CEO? It's important that this reaches everyone so it closes the door to any speculation, rumors and gossip.
Do you think communicators play an important role in companies?
Most definitely. Organizations that do it well are really those that dedicate someone to the role of communication. These days employees are a lot more educated than they were, they want to know a lot more, they have access to a lot more information and they want to be part of the organization.
They want to know how they, as an individual and small piece of the jigsaw, fit into the bigger picture. It's no longer acceptable to ask your manager and be told, "don't worry, that doesn't concern you and the job you do." That doesn't make you feel like a valued part of the team and that you're making a difference in the organization. Everybody needs to feel that they're making a difference otherwise what's the point of staying there?
Trust has been hit dramatically over the last two years – how important is trust in a business?
The companies that have fared the best during the storm are the ones that have tried to be [laughs] as open and honest as possible. They showed fragility by saying, "we don't know what's going to happen", "we assumed this was what was going to happen", "these are the best and worst case scenarios". It's very important to show you're human and sometimes we don't have all the answers and it's ok to show that side to your employees.
Engagement plays a huge part but there are many other factors at play. I would say trust is the most important factor. You need to have open and honest communication with your employer and that needs to be constant. You need to have a good relationship with your team and you need to be proud of the work you do and pride in the organization you work for.
Engagement plays a huge part but trust is the most important factor.
Do you have any good local examples?
Russell Investment comes to mind. It knew that when the financial crisis hit it was going to take its toll on their employees and headcount so it was very open and honest right from the beginning. Rather than announce the news by calling people into special rooms on a Friday like some companies do, there were no big surprises.
It was very quick to respond to the crisis and figure out what the worst case scenario was, and when it worked out how many staff would be affected they got everybody together and explained the situation clearly and outlined exactly what was going to happen.
A certain amount of employees were told they would have to leave and the company suggested they start looking for work if they could, but equally the company said that if they needed additional support it would give as much as they needed. "We're here to support you and there are no surprises" is a key message when communicating in a situation like that.
How has it changed the way you as an individual treat your employees/colleagues?
My last two roles have been with undoubtedly some of the worst companies to work for, so I always aim to be aware of how my employees may perceive something I do or say, I don't want anyone to feel the way my previous managers have made me feel.
Within your keynote you’re going to be talking about the key communication traits of the organizations in the 2009 Great Places to Work For research
The 2010 list won't be ready by the time I come to deliver my keynote. I will be pulling together some really great communication practices that are happening in the best companies, ones that are easy to implement. I know there are plenty out there that require lots of money and organizations with high profit margins can do that but the majority can't. But there are some simple ideas and measures you can implement and I plan to speak about some of those.
Can you give us a sneak peak?
A few simple measures that any organization can implement and make a huge difference include:
Staff newsletters that used to happen but don't happen anymore. This is simple to rectify and start producing immediately.
Most organizations have an intranet but the majority of organizations don't update them. This is easy to fix. The infrastructure is in place, the issue is just that the communication team needs to get together and re-energize. If an intranet or newsletter isn't for your busiess then perhaps hold a global forum or regular meetings.
When managers receive important messages they need to pass them on to staff rather than set them aside because they have a fire to put out.
Google has a "Thank God it's Friday" meeting where it discusses how it's faring on various projects, and allows employees to ask whatever questions they want to. These meetings are also recorded so you can watch it back whenever you like.
When managers receive important messages they need to learn to always pass them on to their staff rather than set them aside because they have a fire to put out.
In your presentation you’re going to be speaking about the five measures of high trust work cultures – can you tell us a bit more?
I'll be talking about credibility, respect, fairness, pride and camaraderie. Credibility looks at your relationship with your manager, two-way communication; fairness looks at whether or not you're getting the right equipment to, or being given the opportunity to, do your job properly; respect looks at being supported and respected regardless of age, sex and so on; pride looks at three different levels, pride in the personal job, pride in the team and pride in the organization as a whole, while camaraderie looks at how deep the family feeling of the team goes.
How can internal communicators implement those measures?
It takes a bit of work to implement them. You need to have the right policies and the right framework in place for employees to have the right equipment required to do their jobs and service themselves professionally. So, if you have a training and development program in place it goes back to communication. How are you communicating that? How are you making sure that employees know what training is available, what they’re entitled to, when it’s happening and so on, is just one of the examples.
If a company wants to make and stick to one resolution for 2010, what should it be?
Get to know your staff and what their needs, wants and plans are for the future. Also get to know them on a personal level. Show them you care and value their opinion.
How important is internal communication in Australia?
We're seeing far more communication professionals in organizations here but it's not only internal but also external. The function is rapidly developing here.
When does 2010 Best Companies survey come out?
24th June this year.
I see you’ve already been tweeting about it?
[Laughs] Yes, I'm trying to get my head around Twitter. I don't quite understand it.
Book your place at the conference now.
Have your say
Are you a practitioner working in Australia? What are your current challenges? What do you think about the Great Place to Work list? Share your thoughts with us below.
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