Q&A

NEWS & VIEWS

Michael O’Malley, author

Michael O’Malley, co-author of “Organizations for People,” spoke with Workforce to discuss the best (and worst) practices when it comes to structuring a healthy workplace culture to maintain high employee engagement. Workforce Editorial Assistant Yasmeen Qahwash spoke with O’Malley.

Q&A: Healthy workplace culture, high engagement

Workforce: What are some best practices when it comes to creating a healthy workplace culture and maintaining engagement?

Michael O’Malley: It starts with the premise that there are institutional rules, like the foundation of the workplace is mutual respect and that that’s enforced so that there are certain ways of behaving that are acceptable and ways that are unacceptable and that those are widely known. It’s not only a general attitude that you have toward one another, but it carries over to incidences of respect. So, you show up for meetings on time, you respond to people’s questions and you’re helpful — all of those kinds of interpersonal rules that enhance the pleasure of the workplace. It starts with basic rules of respect and values. The companies that I visited tend to put the employees at the center of their organization and that means that there’s a lot of employee involvement. I can’t say there’s complete transparency, but there is significant transparency on how the company is doing and there’s general openness about news, events and finances and so forth about what’s going on in the company. When decisions are made, employees are fundamentally a part of that decision process. WF: Why is this a challenge for many organizations?

O’Malley: A lot of what these companies do seem un-businesslike and risky from an organizational point of view. I think they are slightly afraid of trying out things that are a little bit different and may seem odd in business settings that people have grown accustomed to. So, these places are oddities, they do things that other places don’t do and I think the challenge is for people to break away from this strict notion of “this is the way it’s done” and to try something that’s a little bit different. Maybe it’s a fear of looking a little bit foolish by trying something that may not work. I have to say that not everything that these companies do does work, but there is a very high tolerance internally for trying things and if it doesn’t work, then learning from those experiences and modifying their approach. Over time people become acclimated to these different ways and are very patient with one another in trying out things that are new. I think the fear really has to do with outmoded conceptions about what the workplace should look like. WF: Do you think organizations should come up with an alternative name for their staff, rather than use the term employee?

O’Malley: Yes. I don’t think any of the places I visited refer to employees as “employees.” They actually view that as a subservient relationship and they want a culture that’s more even where there’s open, two-way communication. They want people to act independently and “employees” sort of has this dependency that they want to discourage. The Motley Fool, an investment advisory house, they call each other “fools.” People at Patagonia are “Patagoniacs.” I think this does two things; it fosters a bond that I think “employee” doesn’t have, but it also denotes a relationship with each other and the company that is more egalitarian, which is what these companies want.