The Great Workplace 2.0™, an ongoing research project sponsored by Champion Personnel System, Inc., is a fluid exposé on concepts of employment, what makes a great workplace, and how they have taken on the characteristic of morphing at “the speed of thought.”
The “Social Contract” with employers and workers has changed. The “workplace” is no longer just hired employees and employer. It is no longer a space confined to a legacy corporate structure. And that has dramatically changed the way people and executives look at Great Places To Work, and in turn Great Workplaces. The focus, in a highly productive company, has shifted to PURPOSE: both from an individual point of view and a “corporate viewpoint”. Walls and structures are coming down or are being made visible. Old lines of communications (Such as “Command and Control”) have been amended and the concept of “New Ideas” is no longer just defined as internal.
The purpose of The Great Workplace 2.0™ is simple: while it is happening, show core changes in great workplaces, so that start-ups, small and mid-size companies, can extract the principles that other companies are discovering. By example, grow in a healthy and sustainable fashion; return to our economy great dividends of revenue, value and innovation.
A great workplace functions at a higher level of purpose and productivity and is a more interesting place to work than other organizations. It attracts great talent and it attracts great results — for the customer. It extends its intelligent self-interests beyond the executive suite into the depths of its own employment, into the rich treasure troves of vendor knowledge, the community and to all participants (stake / shareholders). It reaches out to the crowd within its community for opportunities and solutions. A great workplace understands intrinsically that being “open” is an advantage. When it reaches, it extends its hand in a positive manner both internally and externally looking for strengths and sustainable principles on which to further grow the business and the opportunities for participants. It simply does not adhere to the old model of corporate hierarchy and held power. A great workplace of today invites being benchmarked, but is always one step beyond being so static that its definitions are fluid.
A great workplace is in fact a fluid community. It interacts with its participants and creates communication avenues that foster the immediate interaction of questions, ideas, opinions and therefore opportunities and solutions. It has substantially removed the obstacles to Open Innovation and discouraged most linear or legacy ideals. It uses knowledge gained through more “open-invitation” processes and feeds upon the rich knowledge and input from all sources that touch the organization. It is both created on and by purpose and has the ability to change its tactical or strategic directions quickly. The corporate legacy model focused upon impressive-sounding “Mission Statements” and “shareholder return” (regardless of what that meant). In many circumstances, businesses were operated not because they really wanted to, but because they “should.” They sustained themselves because there were stock certificates and legacies to support.
That old model was built upon relative size and the ability to do things for itself on a grand scale: benefits, bonuses, unions, giveaways, charitable donations, dividends and having employees see their company in print or in TV ads. If you work for Shell Oil or for General Motors you must work for a great company. We feted big companies as “great” workplaces because they flowed forth with great benefits, nominally gave away their services as charity and in general treated employees as cats in Pharaoh’s chambers. Just the mention of, “I work for National City Bank,” meant something impressive. It was akin to saying that you attended Notre Dame while the Fighting Irish were a national football powerhouse. The “aura” was the value. The old model created strong tribes and the reputation of that tribe became the recipient of all things corporate.
But while employers reveled in being big and powerful, the very nature of work, who does it, where, why and with whom has been changing dramatically and forever. The social contract with employers and workers has changed. The workplace is no longer just hired employees and employer. It is no longer a space confined to a legacy corporate structure. And that has dramatically changed the way people and executives look at great places to work, and in turn great workplaces.
The focus, in a highly productive company, has shifted to purpose: both from an individual point of view and a corporate directive. Walls and structures are coming down or are being made visible. Old lines of communications, such as, “Command and Control,” have been jettisoned and the concept of “new ideas” is no longer just defined as internal. Teamwork is now more important than ever, but only when it has collaboration at its foundation. Teamwork can be interpreted as a group of similarly trained or deployed people working for a single mission (e.g., basketball players: a linear orientation). Collaboration is geared toward having disparate talents working for a single outcome (even from different geographies), through different purposes (e.g., the entire organization including the players: non-linear input).
The core issue may be that we are still celebrating and making plans around the old model of great workplaces while the revolution representing what makes a great workplace / great place to work has been quietly stealing our best people, their minds and talents, and vendors — just like “John Galt” in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
The big companies will get bailouts. Ever hear of a $10 million ASV company getting a federal bailout in 2009? And, due to having created market niches for certain products will continue to survive (e.g., jet engines, gasoline, money / branded banks, hospitals). They will provide workplaces for people who want “big,” who want to work for “Mom.” There is absolutely nothing wrong with a big great workplace. Our work will show what is happening in and could be happening in the companies that employ 95% of our workers and create new jobs and businesses that aren’t in the news or on TV: The Great Workplace 2.0™.
The fundamental benchmarked attributes of The Great Workplace 2.0™:
Before we dive into each attribute, it needs to be noted that to be a great workplace / great place to work, an organization does not have to have each characteristic at equal levels. Based upon the nature of the organization, the products or services it offers, and the reason for the organization’s existence, the levels of these attributes can be different from one organization to another. Each attribute has deep explanatory sections to it, to further emphasize the why and how. In the end, it may seem that there are at least 50 components to The Great Workplace 2.0™, but our focus will be on the few that make the majority of the difference.
We have looked at the fundamental components of a great workplace as “acquirable and repeatable”: principles and actions that can be built into a new company or that can be achieved by an existing company.
1. Statement of Purpose: A great workplace has a meaningful Corporate Statement of Purpose that is the foundation for corporate culture and therefore provides greater meaning to employment and work opportunities. This statement is driven by the affects the organization has on their customers and the role each participant can play in that directive. Purpose becomes an ethos that creates the very foundation for The Great Workplace 2.0™.
2. Collaboration: A great workplace is committed to fostering a collaborative, productive, engaging and rewarding culture that encompasses customers, prospective employees, employees, vendors, participants and the community. The organization practices collaboration to the extent that “internal and external” no longer have a distinction, and it recognizes that “community” has no true boundaries.
3. Sustainability: A great workplace provides for enterprise sustainability as part of their core culture and is committed to educating all participants about their practices. Sustainability is defined in flexible terms for ecology, environment, volunteerism, and civic engagement / charitable offerings with the community, reputation, and internships from the community and product impact to future generations. Further, sustainability focuses on the continual existence of the organization as a viable entity for all participants … today and in the future.
4. Integrated Operating Plan: A great workplace has an operating plan to integrate jobs, careers, participants and the community in their (organizational and individual) pursuit of accomplishing their purpose. Intent or statements are not enough. This operating plan embraces the strategy and tactics of purposeful convergence of knowledge where technology is employed, not for the sake of technology (which becomes a distraction) but for the customer, and where obstacles to the purpose can be eliminated or minimized.
5. Intelligently Profitable: A great workplace has a financial focus on being intelligently profitable. This qualitative focus is founded in sustainability, the values within their purpose and a view of intelligent self interest for the organization and all participants. Intelligent self interest is defined as self interest that stands the test of, “how will my plan affect others?” It defines who the customer really is.
6. Benefits: A great workplace provides a sensible and tuned foundation of health and welfare benefits so that all employees can focus on their job purpose.
7. Immersion: A great workplace has a working plan for immersion (onboarding) of all participants: (new employees, contractors, vendors, promotions, teams/ groups, community, board, executives, consultants and families). The purpose of this working structure is to reduce the time to productivity and to facilitate the complete engagement of the participant throughout that participant’s life cycle.
8. Tools: A great workplace provides the tools for all participants to properly execute their responsibilities relative to their assignments and the organization’s purpose.
9. Act Local: A great workplace emphasizes buying locally and promotes its region as a great place to live and work. A great workplace realizes that its core “family” extends beyond the factory floor, the cubicles and offices into the surrounding geography. It realizes and nurtures the reality that an organization and its community are one entity in pursuit of mutual success.
10. Management shows and invokes visible, tangible leadership: This core action directly supports the organization’s Statement of Purpose and operating plan. This leadership preserves the integrity of the organization’s purpose, and is both duplicatable and repeatable — at any level.
11. Transparent Integrity: A great workplace practices this as a core value. It is the proof of “Say what you do, do what you say, and prove it”. For The Great Workplace, Transparent Integrity, allows an inside or outside skeptic to see that PR and reality match. In essence it says: “Yes, we really do”.
12. Values: The ability of a workplace to be great should never rely solely upon being big or rich. Great is a value, and values can never be bought. Jim Collins in, Built To Last, defines it this way: “It is dedicated to the idea that true greatness comes in direct proportion to the passionate pursuit of a purpose beyond money.” Values are CULTURE, and culture is the (mostly) unseen core of what makes the organization a living, breathing entity. Culture is the focal point of intent.
One thing that all great workplaces have in common is this: they’re remarkable (worthy, noticeable and unique). Not because they have excessive benefits, bonuses, on-site daycare, or a slide that takes you to the ground floor, but because the entire organization has a purpose that is built around an ideal: do what’s best for the customer.
The above definitions are only a part of an introduction to the entire research results for what makes a great workplace of today and tomorrow. The Great Workplace 2.0™ is not static. It is updated and changed on a regular basis as we discover other fundamentals that are forming the benchmarks of success. We invite your comments and insights, directly to the author.
All content, ideas and concepts © 2011 — Champion Personnel System, Inc., The Great Workplace™, A Job Near Home®, Inc., Work Is Good®, Inc., and Blue Collar Workplace®.
For more information: Robert Schepens; 216.823.5900. ras@thegreatworkplace.com, ras@championjobs.com.
Mr. Schepens is an unusually accomplished employment and business authority with over 30 years experience in Human Resources, Talent Acquisition and entrepreneurship. He owns several award-winning companies and is co-author of the book: The 9 Principles for Inspired Action, and Author of, The Great Workplace 2.0™.
