In our first two blogs – The Importance of Organizational Health and How to Assess Organizational Health – we explained the meaning of the term, the role leaders play in employee buy-in, and how to measure your company’s robustness.
These overarching topics have led us to the next phase of the organizational health journey: how to improve it.
Here’s some dismal news: according to Gallup, disengaged employees cost the world $7.8 trillion in lost productivity. Yes, that’s a ‘t.’ This is equal to 11% of the global GDP.
Ryan Pendell, Senior Workplace Science Editor for Gallup, says that engagement is not the default position for employees. “[It] is not a characteristic of employees, but rather an experience created by organizations, managers and team members.”
And here’s some good news: “building a highly engaged organization takes intention, investment and effort over several years.” It’s worth it and doing so feeds into the overall business health.
Consulting firm OrgHealth outlines four critical areas of focus:
- collaboration
- leadership accountability
- strategic momentum
- talent magnetism
Within each area, OrgHeath breaks down simple steps firms can follow to achieve success. For collaboration, it suggests things such as talking less but asking more questions; and offering team time to other departments to help solve problems. Within leadership accountability, executives are encouraged to get aggressive about discovering their personal blind spots and not arguing when they receive feedback from their peers or direct reports. Strategic momentum can be achieved by communicating plans clearly to all levels within the organization, checking in and setting goals that are both “achievable” and “stretching”. And for talent magnetism, companies need to identify the values they need to hire for; and improve performance in the other three categories.
Our own eBook – OrgHealth – building a Culture of Trust – follows the principles of Patrick Lencioni and the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. This eBook provides a useful outline of how to move from a dysfunctional team to a cohesive one, how to form new habits, and ways to develop five key behaviours – which we will further explain in our next blog.
Get in touch with our team for more details on improving your organization’s health.
