Last week, Limeade sponsored and spoke at TINYcon, TINYpulse’s first ever conference focusing on employee engagement, performance management and building great workplaces.
For the full run-down, be sure to check out a conference overview on the TINYpulse blog. Here we’ve compiled our four favorite learnings from the two-day event.
1. Build your company culture by evaluating your own operating system
Margaret Wheeler, Chief People & Culture Officer, at Stitch Fix started her session by asking everyone to close down all the “windows” that are open in your brain. While we love to think that we are all excellent multitaskers, we’re not. Challenge yourself to only have one “window” open at a time — in your brain AND your web browser.
Wheeler also emphasized that the most effective way to build your culture is to look at your company’s own “OS” or operating system. With all the buzz around culture these days, it’s easy to copy what other companies are doing. But in order to be an effective “Best place to work,” you need to look at what works for your company and be true to yourself.
Changing aspects of your company in order to be true to your OS means you won’t be attractive to everyone. But that’s the point. You want the right people for your company. In the long run, it’s the best thing for your culture and your bottom line.
2. Be transparent with employees to gain trust
How transparent should you be with employees?
Matt Ehrlichman, CEO of Porch, spoke to this by saying he is as transparent as possible to his employee population of 350. He believes in order for employees to trust the leadership team, the company needs to be transparent around goals, finances and future roadmap. This may seem risky to some companies, but Ehrlichman emphasized that if you don’t share all that you can, your employees won’t fully commit to your company and mission.
Henry Albrecht, our Limeade CEO, also spoke to transparency while speaking about the halo effect that happens when companies start winning awards. This halo effect gives off the impression that everything at the company is perfect. To combat this misconception, Henry is adamant about transparency in the interview process. Limeade, like all other companies, will always have flaws and may need to course correct. We don’t try to hide this in the interview process, and instead focus on how we get up and try harder every day.
3. Keep employees engaged with effective coaching
Every company looks for ways to keep top talent happily engaged at work. And this theme came out in all sessions.
Mark Roberge, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, specifically spoke about training and coaching of employees. He first shared his research on the #1 trait to interview for that leads to success as an employee: coachability.
In order to effectively coach someone, he shared that we can’t try to coach employees on an entire laundry list of areas for improvement. It’s important to focus on one or two to start. Even more important, work with employees and ask them self-diagnosis their own areas for improvement. Then be there to guide them and help them improve.
4. Join the employee engagement movement
The biggest takeaway from the conference? We’re at the beginning of a movement. A movement focused employee engagement. Here at Limeade, we’re excited to help shape this wave. We believe more engaged employees = better business results. And we know that when great companies invest in the well-being of their people, employees invest in the well-being of the company.
Huge kudos to our friends at TINYpulse for putting on a great event. We’re excited to see what TINYcon 2017 will bring!