Creating a nurturing and inspiring workplace.

Great goal to have. And one I believe that starts with understanding your culture. And one great way to understand your culture is to simply ask your employees.

So every single year, Brokers International launches the annual employee survey. Usually comes out around January and February. That survey is meant to capture thoughts, feelings and emotions about working both internally with our internal customers in different departments. But working externally. How’s our functionality, how is the management? How is communication? And if you ask, you often get really good feedback, especially when your employees know that it’s anonymous and they can share whatever they’d like. And I’ll tell you, those employees share it’s a gift and it helps capture exactly certain areas that we need to work on.

So, for example, this year I learned that we had a breakdown in communication between two very important departments. That breakdown, unfortunately, was leading to miscommunication, a lack of trust, a lack of accountability, and ultimately low morale. Low morale is the last thing anybody wants in an organization, and one that should be addressed immediately. So every single year, we gather the results of that survey and we pinpoint three or four hot topics that our employees feel are important for us to address.

So this year, we attacked that lack of communication, lack of trust, lack of accountability, and created a plan to address those specific needs. Not only was that communicated to the employees, but the plan was communicated. And what we believe the outcome of that plan would be because of that step. Just the step of listening, taking notes, creating an action plan was incredibly well received. And in fact, the employees even voiced how much better the interaction is simply for us, acknowledging that we had an issue.

So create a nurturing, inspiring workplace. Starts with asking and then listening. Hopefully, you’ll ask your employees and you’ll listen and put a plan in place.

Thanks.