Catherine Mattice* says the ‘them and us’ culture between management and staff has no place in a modern working environment.
The new wave of employees entering the workforce has shown an increasing interest in building personal relationships with leadership.
They want to know the person behind the leader making decisions that affect them.
Though it may seem like another burden on top of the many things leaders are tasked with, building relationships with front-line staff is an absolute necessity for creating a positive workplace culture.
Leadership visibility creates a feeling of transparency and trust which in turn increases job satisfaction and employee engagement.
In our line of work, we often work with a leadership team that is quite removed from the workforce.
This creates a feeling of secrecy and takes a toll on morale and the work environment as a whole.
We’ve brainstormed a ton of ideas over the years with our clients to help bridge the gap between leadership and employees, so we thought we’d share a few with you.
Engage with staff in fun ways
One of our clients is launching a coffee cart for their employees and assigning people from the executive team to serve for a couple of hours.
Imagine getting served a cappuccino by your Department Secretary!
Not only will employees get face time with key leadership, they’ll feel more valued by the organisation.
Put leadership and front-line staff on the same team
Organisations often include some sort of interactive game at events or icebreaker exercises in meetings.
Why not put people in teams and mix up the hierarchy? It encourages bonding and creates a shared goal between leadership and employees.
Plus, at the office the next day, employees will have something to talk about with the leadership team.
Create a reverse mentorship program
This provides opportunities for younger, less seasoned employees to provide their insight to those higher up in the organisation.
Not only does this foster new and innovative ideas that benefit the organisation, it also can help break the barrier between staff entering the workforce and those who are more established.
A final piece of advice is to start the relationship-building process when an employee is first onboarded.
This is the time to send the message around how leadership interacts with staff — you want them to know leadership is on their side.
*Catherine Mattice is the President of Civility Partners, which has been successfully providing programs on workplace bullying and building positive workplaces since 2007.
This article first appeared on the Civility Partners website.
