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Five factors to make your corporate culture effective

MICHAEL COATES

Special to The Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, Aug. 13 2014, 7:00 PM EDT

Last updated Wednesday, Aug. 13 2014, 11:57 AM EDT

This column is part of Globe Careers’ Leadership Lab series, where executives and experts share their views and advice about leadership and management. Follow us at @Globe_Careers. Find all Leadership Lab stories at tgam.ca/leadershiplab

There are almost as many ways to develop an effective corporate culture as there are companies that have them. For me, the key to building an effective culture began with an understanding of the people with whom I worked.

When I assumed the leadership of Hill+Knowlton Canada 18 years ago, the company had just come through a long period of internal instability, with many of the “stars” of the firm – those who were best known and had a reputation that went beyond the company – choosing to leave. In many cases, they were unwilling to invest their energy in a firm that did not put their individual interests first.

The people who remained were competent and highly skilled consultants, but were unaccustomed to leadership roles and inexperienced in business development. Faced with this reality, we built a culture around the strengths of those who remained, focusing on collaboration, high standards and constantimprovement.

These quickly became the governing principles of the firm, as I soon learned that a team culture is much more powerful than one dominated by individuals. A diverse group of people working in collaboration can almost always produce a better-quality product than a firm that is driven by “stars.”

Once the foundations of our culture were articulated, there were five key factors that we found made the culture effective:

Consistent communication: The cultural principles of the company must be communicated consistently by the leadership and demonstrated every day. We knew that nothing would bring greater discredit to our culture than leaders who said they subscribed to the culture but behaved another way. Internal newsletters, business planning processes and company awards all needed to be structured around the principles we held.

Celebrate success: The key to maintaining cultural momentum has been providing all employees with a line of sight on every success the company achieves. Success needs to be celebrated throughout the organization, and the teams primarily responsible should be lauded across the company. A leader must have the good sense to make these successes about his people, not himself. Celebrating success drives theesprit de corps and a pride that enhances the quality of the work a company does.

Be transparent: Companies need to be transparent in their strategic planning and how they treat their employees. The more a company shares information, the more employees feel like a team and have a shared responsibility over the success of the company. This transparency should even extend to lessons about the failures that occur – because failure can be our best teacher, provided people learn from those mistakes. You should talk about them and not cover them up.

Respect everyone’s contribution: You need to be able to listen to your people, and accept their feedback and criticism. A good corporate culture also invests in the training and welfare of its staff and trusts what employees have to say. This rule of thumb must cascade from the most senior levels of the organization right down to the company mailroom. Everyone needs to feel that their contribution is respected in a meaningful way.

Continually benchmark your performance: Being a great place to work doesn’t happen overnight – it’s a process of continual improvement, where each year you try to do a better job of employee satisfaction and retention. There are a variety of benchmarking metrics you can use and you must survey your company annually – in good times and bad – to get honest feedback. Then you need to have a transparent discussion about the findings and put a plan in place to make improvements for all to see.

Over the years, we’ve adjusted and fine-tuned how we put our corporate culture into practice, but one thing we have never changed is our focus on collaboration, high standards and constant improvement – because it works.

Michael Coates (@MCoates_HK) is the president and CEO of Americas region of Hill+Knowlton Strategies Canada (@hk_canada).

SUPPLY CHAIN LOGISTICS UPDATE: There's a Supply Chain Talent "Perfect Storm" On the Horizon

Bronwen Hann

Boutique Specialty Recruitment Leader in Supply Chain,Logistics,Procurement,Planning & Operations

There's a Supply Chain Talent "Perfect Storm" On the Horizon

August 06, 2014

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For well over a year, we’ve been writing on our blog about the talent gap in Supply Chain. A combination of Baby Boomers moving towards retirement in the middle to upper echelons of the field, and the lack of education for young people about the tremendous opportunities the profession can offer means that going forward the demand for Supply Chain talent is only going to increase exponentially.

There is more opportunity for professionals in the field than ever before – but potentially more headaches for employers trying to fill those talent gaps. We’ve blogged about it on our own site. We’ve been asked to guest post on other sites as well on this very subject. It’s probably the biggest talent story that affects our particular vertical each and every day.

As a specialty boutique recruiter in this narrow area, it obviously is very beneficial for us to point out that Supply Chain is a growing career field with lots of opportunity for advancement for career seekers. But we’re not just blowing smoke here. Every week, and in the past few weeks especially, there’s been a real uptick in articles from the wider supply chain global community about talent deficit, and how employers can and should prepare. This stuff is music to our ears and we love to pass this essential industry related information on to who we know – especially when it is something as important as staffing shortages.

So we recently spotted another great piece about the tremendous pressure that’s occurring in the Supply Chain talent market in Canada and the U.S. We wanted to share it with everyone in our network and in doing so make a few comments. This particular one comes from Supply Chain 24/7, who have written an excellent overview of where the job market in Supply Chain is going in the next few years. In their words, “in the rush for talent, a storm may be brewing that will contract the pool for Supply Chain talent.”

We think it’s an excellent metaphor for what’s on the horizon as it relates to the world of Supply Chain talent. The article was written by Kusumal Ruamsook and Christopher Craigshead, two Supply Chain researchers at Penn State, and goes into a lot of detail that’s extremely valuable for organizations with a Supply Chain and anyone thinking about how to manage their hiring Supply Chain Talent. It breaks the issue down into four emerging trends:

1. Demand is increasing for talented Supply Chain professionals. As an example, the article cites data from the U.S. Bureau of Labour statistics saying that logistics jobs are estimated to grow 26% by 2020.
2. Supply Chain Professionals are retiring at a Rapid Clip. It’s estimated that 60 million Baby Boomers in the U.S. alone will retire by 2025. Same certainly goes for Canada too.
3. Supply Chain job requirements are changing rapidly. Instead of just the “hard” analytical skills that were crucial to the industrial era, today’s Supply Chain requires cross-functional skills, as well as “soft” communications and leadership skills. The article identifies how individuals need to adapt to stay on top of these changes.
4. This fourth trend is somewhat of a dark horse. The number of faculty currently teaching the Supply Chain field at the post secondary level isn’t high enough to train all the new professionals that are needed. And, High School grads aren’t even learning that Supply Chain is a viable career option – what’s that all about? This is the area that really concerns us here at Argentus. What is education doing to ease the pain for SCM? Not a lot it seems.

So what’s the overall effect of these trends, if they all come to pass in the next few years as predicted? In the authors’ words: “Organizations in the midst of the storm will find it increasingly difficult to simultaneously search for the right talents to back-fill those who retired or about to retire, raise the skill sets of existing talents to meet the needs of a changing environment, and groom high-potential talents into future supply chain leaders.”

While this article is specific to U.S., Canadian trends and statistics tend to mirror what happens south of the border and are comparable from what we’ve read here and elsewhere.

It’s one thing to identify a problem, but what makes this article so outstanding is that the authors go on to provide overall strategies that hiring managers and companies can use to deal with this shortage of talent. Here’s what top organizations are investing in to “weather” the storm:

1. Improving overall value propositions for potential employees. This involves looking at overall compensation, work/life balance, career growth opportunities, and other ways that companies can present themselves as an attractive option for top candidates.
2. Mapping talent needs strategically. What competencies are “must have”? What are the future needs of the business, and what’s the gap between existing skill sets and those needs in the future? According to the authors, this is something that needs to be reassessed on an ongoing basis to make the talent strategy future-proof.
3. Focusing on talent retention. The authors outline how younger professionals in Generation X and Y have higher rates of voluntary turnover compared to the Baby Boomer generation. Companies need to work to retain these employees so as not to lose them to roles that might seem initially more attractive.
4. Investing in leadership development for existing employees. The overall goal of these strategies is to turn a company’s “labour force” into its bench of leadership. The authors identify that most of today’s Supply Chain professionals don’t have undergraduate degrees in the discipline. They outline how organizations can invest in their employees by helping with formal ongoing education (university, certifications) as well as informal educational opportunities like mentorship and stronger internal training programs.
5. Collaborating with Universities and Colleges to help identify up and coming young people who would excel in the field. This collaboration involves building relationships with students before they enter the workforce. This includes helping with industry-developed curriculum, offering scholarships, offering paid internships, and doing guest lectures in educational institutions to build interest and excitement for the SCM discipline as a whole.

This is just an overview of what the authors provide. It’s really worth reading through it in its entirety (here’s the link again). It’s likely that we’re going to see more and more news outlets in the Supply Chain field picking up on this hot talent deficit issue. This story is only in its infancy, and we’re only going to be hearing about it more and more.

While the threat of a Supply Chain shortage is worrisome in the long run, we’re thrilled that demand for skilled Supply Chain professionals is only increasing. Beyond that, it’s tremendously exciting that as a specialty staffing provider within Supply Chain management, we have the increased chance to partner with more companies to help them think more strategically about their plan for talent retention and acquisition both on the Direct Hire and Contingent sides of the equation.

What have you encountered in your organizations? Is it becoming harder to find talented Supply Chain Professionals?