culture

Let’s face it, there are all too many potential workforce points of dislocation and fracture.

An organisation might find internal fault lines that are the result of employees’ ages and generations, they might involve different faiths or religions, race and ethnicity, tenure, language, sexuality, education, neuro-divergence, whether an individual is WFH or office based, whether they are in head office or elsewhere, which country they work out of, which department they are in. And that’s before we touch on hierarchy. 

With any group of people and/or employees, there are potentially more things pulling them apart as there as those which bring them together. The construct of an organisation can be built on flimsy, insubstantial foundations. There is less holding an organisation together than we might think. And, in their different ways, both a challenging economy and a buoyant one present their own challenges to such foundations.

Which makes employee cohesion and unity a real challenge. 

I’ve been reading recently about the idea of an organisation’s brand acting as corporate glue, being a cohesive force. There’s much to that, although I’d argue it perhaps works largely to bring employee and customer communities closer together. 

Now glue has many estimable qualities. But its end goal is a static state, in which nothing moves. It does little to encourage flexibility, agility and nimbleness. A modern organisation, on the other hand, is moving and evolving constantly. 

Let’s return then to the diversity of people within your organisation we touched on earlier. How can we create more sense of common ground and common purpose? Amongst all their differences, what do they share? Or what should they share?

It’s about creating communications which serve as a constant and visible reminder of why your people, all your people, work for your organisation. And the set of organisational goals they are aiming to deliver. 

So, instead of organisational glue, we should be looking to create organisational bridges. Bridges that link the disparate parts of your business. We need communications to transcend the differences that inevitably exist. Bridges that bring people closer together, rather than setting them in a fixed state. 

I’d argue that if you have a clearly promoted, widely recognised EVP, you’re doing this right now. Because your EVP has to speak to the whole organisation – regardless of location, of personal characteristics and professional experiences – it has to be the cohesive force that outlines where your business is heading and how the work, input and output of your people can deliver those objectives. 

Your people will have plenty that separates and distances them from their colleagues, but your EVP should be working hard to bridge such differences. 

It can be incredibly easy for your people to lose sight of how the work they do has greater organisational purpose. We can all get stuck in a range of different bubbles. Stuck in the operational now. We stop understanding that what we do is helping drive longer term goals. That what all your people are doing matters. And that potentially matters even more for those working from home, those not in head office, those on client sites. Those who perhaps have greater need of cohesive bridges. 

With the economy anaemic and any number of very real geo-political threats never far from us, it can be easy to sink into negativity and a feeling of pointlessness. Making it very clear that people’s work and commitment will have a direct impact on a more positive future, a more positive organisation and more positive careers is as important today as it has ever been.

If you have an EVP which is front of mind for all your people. One which makes it clear where your organisation is headed and the influence your people have in this direction, then you’ll have more chance of constructing organisational inclusivity, common purpose, shared goals and business success. This is empowerment in action.

Few organisations wouldn’t benefit from greater togetherness and common purpose – think about whether your EVP is working hard enough to create those internal bridges, without gluing up the works.