Let your Employees, your Teams and your Business Grow

No organisation can survive unless it evolves and grows. Whether it is through extending it’s service offering, or finding better ways to deliver it’s current portfolio. When all the competitors are looking to improve and grow, it doesn’t take long for a static business to lose clients and ultimately go out of business. Even the most successful companies need to grow to survive.

To achieve growth, the whole organisation should be set up to be innovative. To achieve this, the working environment needs to be right. Change will not be received well if the employees feel that they are not valued and part of the bigger picture. The sense of belonging and common purpose is the foundation of a psychosocially safe workplace, and when this is in place, the culture supports innovation and growth.

I recently heard a quote by Gary Ridge, the CEO of WD40, that equated the Culture of an Organisation to be the sum of Values and Behaviour, and then adding consistency to these things. Getting these things right will enable growth through a positive and safe culture.

At the fundamental level, when the workplace is safe for everyone to share ideas and opinions, report incidents and near misses and suggest improvements, individuals grow, teams develop and the business thrives.

Where there is openness and trust, the workplace can be a place where people can respectfully disagree, discuss improvements and be innovative. When something goes wrong, or there is an incident or near miss, the first question is not about “who is to blame?” but is “Are you ok?, How do we improve the workplace and learn from the event?”. Learning from incidents, both good and bad, means that the organisation grows.

When a leader supports and encourages this innovation, through being vulnerable and authentic themselves, the staff become a team, and are committed and focused on the common objectives and see how their roles contribute to the business objectives and mission.

The team also becomes a group of “internal consultants” with ideas and suggestions on doing things better. Rather than having to pay external consultants to provide business improvements, where they usually discuss the work with the very same staff, and charge a great amount for the service, your teams can provide the same advice if you have a psychosocially safe workplace.

Hence, getting psychosocial safety right is more than creating wellbeing for the worker. It’s a great business strategy where absenteeism, presenteeism and attrition are reduced and innovation, growth and productivity increase.