As a service excellence and leadership improvement strategist, I see business cultures up close: the good, the struggling and the toxic. When I walk into a meeting with employees of a business, tell-tale signs about the culture show up long before the formal discussions begin.
“Don’t quote me. This is off the record. Will my name be called?” When these are some of the comments that dot the verbal landscape, before, during and after the session, it indicates that anonymity is the safe space. The meeting is the performative venue. This should be of concern to every manager.
It’s always useful for culture to be under scrutiny. It gives managers both a pulse and a panoramic view of the state of health of their departments, as well as that of the wider business. An employee forum is designed to be a listening event, where managers make the voice of the employee, the primary focus of the event. When conducted consistently, these forums provide invaluable intelligence. They expose emerging concerns, highlight hidden opportunities and reveal cultural dynamics, long before they become costly problems.
Yet despite these benefits, many managers avoid hosting them. As a matter of fact, in some cases, even essential weekly, or monthly staff meetings, are almost non-existent. The reason given, with a straight face, is that staff meetings are held when needed. I believe that the real reasons are to be found elsewhere.
One reason is fear. A sense of inadequacy can inflict fear in people. Many managers resist employee forums because they lack the skills to moderate scenarios that have the potential to escalate into heated sessions. Employees can turn into an attack mob, if the conditions are ripe and when this happens, managers who lack crisis management skills, head for cover. When individuals feel a sense of inadequacy, often, the default decision, is to avoid the situation altogether. Persistent avoidance and low tolerance for risk, now turn into self-inflicted dysfunction.
Some managers prefer to not have their shortcomings exposed in public. Their egos do not permit honest scrutiny. Many are guilty of neglecting issues, tolerating poor performance, enabling behavioural infractions and procrastinating on essential decisions. When these conditions exist, they would prefer not to be challenged with evidence of their lack of accountability.
During employee forums, managers may be confronted with difficult questions, for which they have no definitive answers. Rather than enduring the embarrassment of looking incompetent, they opt for the preferred route of ignoring the overdue need for a session. Additionally, when a manager has had a previous negative experience, there’s a reluctance to host another session. Unfortunately, one bad experience becomes the justification for silence as a standard operating procedure.
Some managers harbour a real fear of employee unity around shared issues, especially when these issues are thorny. Because collective awareness can galvanize employee sentiment and mobilize actions that may feel threatening, managers may hesitate to take the risk of having their authority challenged.
Instead of retreating from employee forums, managers should view these engagements as opportunities to build positive workplace cultures. Whether the desire is to curate a spanking new culture, or reset one that is either struggling or toxic, a forum is a meaningful way to start or accelerate the journey.
Employee forums create a platform for the voice of the employee to be heard. When well curated and moderated, they provide structured spaces for employees to become contributors, instead of passive recipients of executive decisions. They become spaces where feedback can be welcomed as an opportunity to hear what dashboards, KPIs and reports cannot, or do not capture. They reveal sentiment, uncover concerns and expose friction. They bring the human reality of the workplace into focus.
One of the most significant benefits of these forums, is that they create momentum for the many grand and actionable ideas that employees possess. Unfortunately, for many managers, the conversations that they avoid today, become the problems that they need to manage tomorrow.
The question for every manager is simple: “Are you creating a culture where employees have a voice, or a culture where they have to whisper?”
