26 Aug Reinventing Your Workplace
You’re constantly reinventing your brand and need to do the same for your workplace.
While I was walking my dog yesterday morning, I was listening to a podcast and the guest brought up the topic of reinventing yourself. She talked about how it was never too late and we go through many cycles of life where we totally reinvent ourselves and it’s a beautiful thing.
I love the idea of being able to reinvent yourself, without any judgement, shame or anchoring to the past. We’ve all done this, whether consciously and purposefully or unconsciously through time and organic growth. I moved from Los Angeles, a place I’ve called home my entire life, to Denver last year and I’m loving this new chapter. I’m getting a new tattoo next week that represents moving forward and being in my truth. I’m setting new boundaries, making new friends, and redefining what I want out of friendships and my relationship.
So, it got me thinking about another type of reinventing I’m very passionate about; cultural reinvention in the workplace. Call it culture change, renovation, or reinvention – it all pretty much means the same thing. It’s when you realize, most likely from your employees, that your workplace culture isn’t serving you or anyone else best anymore. You’re constantly reinventing your brand, products/services and need to also do the same in your workplace!
The first step to reinventing your workplace is to assess what’s working and what’s not working. Talk to your people, do surveys and stay interviews (see my past blogs about this) and ask them about their experience. Take a close look at your practices, policies, benefits, behaviors, values, what you celebrate and reward, what you allow and encourage, the frequency in which creativity and ideas flow freely, how engaged people really are, their level of stress and burnout, how safe and valued they feel, what boundaries are set, how conflicts are resolved. These elements are what create your culture. They matter. Now. More than ever.
Maybe you’re already doing a great job and things just need a small revamp. It’s Ok to recognize and say you want to do better. To ask for feedback. It’s also not all on you as a business owner or leader – you can’t do this alone. This is a process done collaboratively with your people (and maybe an outsourced HR pro!).
A workplace isn’t reinvented overnight. It takes purposeful, incremental change over time and earning the trust of your people. The alternative is that you continue to #quietlyquit on your people, your teams, and your company. Which, as we’ve seen, only leads to people understandably setting boundaries around work, being actively disengaged, or leaving.
What are you doing to reinvent yourself? If you’re a leader or business owner, what are you doing to reinvent your workplace culture?