CEO of Groundworks, the nation’s largest privately held foundation services company.
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We’ve all done the math when it comes to workplace relationships. From your team’s perspective, in any given week they may spend more time with their co-workers than with their loved ones. Conversely, from a manager’s perspective, employee engagement impacts a wide set of business metrics, including your bottom line.
These two perspectives on co-worker connections can meet in the middle when every employee in your company feels like a member of the family, or as we call it at our company, a member of the tribe.
The family metaphor, of course, has its limitations. There have been plenty of explanations as to why you shouldn’t use a family mentality in the workplace. After all, among your relatives, you can’t fire your kid sister. But in business, managers see employees come and go, and they have the authority to change dynamics by firing or promoting employees.
How can your real estate business benefit from the feelings of being a family without falling into the trap of being shortsighted or unprofessional? Find out how thinking big about company culture can make a stronger workplace, and learn how to build thriving connections between employees at every level.
Building A Better Workplace
Both employees and businesses thrive in a healthy work environment. For managers, there’s a clear business incentive to investing in a positive work environment where employees are connected to one another.
Workplace engagement is supported by employees who feel connected and believe in the company’s vision. When an employee has a personal connection to both co-workers and various levels of management, workplace behavior changes. Teamwork and collaboration thrive, and productivity increases. The tenor of the workplace improves.
That’s not to say that disagreements won’t happen. But when there is a framework of strong connection already in place, it can be easier to hash things out rather than devolving into microaggressions that grow workplace discontent.
Three tenets for creating a better workplace with a family-like feeling include a strong company culture, feelings of being valued and rewarded, and transformational leadership. When these things are in place, they feed each other to create the upward momentum that fuels growth.
Impacts Of Good Work Relationships
The strongest workplaces have bonds between workplace friends, different departments and different levels of management.
It starts with workplace friendships. A survey by Workforce magazine found that, among workers who had six to 25 workplace friends, about two-thirds were deeply connected to the company, and 70% would reject another job opportunity. Both loyalty and connection decrease as the number of friends decreases.
This demonstrates a magnetic company culture where employees want to stay at your company, and you’re able to attract top-level talent.
Work relationships also have a demonstrative impact on business metrics. A Gallup poll shows that companies with a culture of high engagement have higher productivity, better retention, fewer accidents and better customer engagement.
But it’s also good for your bottom line. Companies that score in the top quartile of engagement are 21% more profitable than those in the bottom quartile. That’s a significant amount of money on the table that can be harnessed by the internal relationships among co-workers.
How To Build Meaningful Connections
It’s easy for business communication to stay clustered among employees who regularly work together. However, expanding dialog across departments and all levels of management can exponentially grow feelings of belonging.
As Pixar’s Ed Catmull explains, workplace communication is separate from the decision-making hierarchy. “Everyone must have the freedom to communicate with anyone,” he says. Under these circumstances, managers can build connections with any level of employee, even while they maintain decision-making authority.
The small stuff matters. For example, a new staff member could be more engaged with your company if they’re able to say they had a conversation with the company’s vice president and that they’re both fans of the same sports team.
These three strategies can help you create an environment where co-worker relationships thrive:
1. Make time for bonding
There’s a reason happy-hour style events have been so pervasive. The relaxed interactions can establish and build strong relationships that make job-related tasks easier and improve the quality of the workday. Workplace bonding builds resilience among your team and creates cultural cohesion.
At Groundworks, our team is spread out across different regional hubs throughout the U.S. To help create the feeling of “one tribe,” our annual kickoff event brings hundreds of team members to a central location. With keynote speakers, training, workouts and shared meals, the team participates in an experience that drives friendships with their co-workers.
2. Find commonalities
Creating the time and space for employees to connect with one another allows commonalities among your team will take shape. It’s an organic process that happens peer to peer, even as it’s driven by the spirit of enthusiastic engagement from managers, speakers or trainers. For example, if you have a group of team members who play basketball, they could start a pick-up game or another activity. This could put the CEO on the same footing as a security guard.
This type of relationship-building can happen organically through conversation, and in the era of social distancing, it can also happen online in Zoom or Microsoft Teams chats.
3. Create shared passions
Especially during a pandemic like Covid-19, having a shared passion can rally and unify your employees. Whether it’s finding ways to serve the community or help customers, working to support something bigger than oneself can elevate the company and anyone connected with it.
A McKinsey survey identified how important corporate values are to employees, even while there is a gap in the number of companies that walk the walk. About 82% of workers say that corporate vision is important, but only 42% have felt meaningful intent from their companies.
Researchers caution against inauthentic corporate claims and generic statements of values. Boilerplate statements are never as moving as a truly shared passion that drives decision making and action.
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