Understanding Healthy Organizations

Multiple studies of healthy organizations confirm they are more successful.  Now the increasing importance of worker shortages is an added reason to consider the changes that would attract and help to retain qualfied workers.  The Great Resignation made this a priority.

However, since the argument rides on understanding the many issues that impact how workers view their organization, its useful to assess the words and phrases associated with great work environments –

Words Frequently Heard in Healthy Organization Discussions

Prominent in healthy organizations is the importance of recognizing and rewarding the best performers.  Surveys show Gen Zers – along with workers from other generations – expect recognition for their accomplishments.  Young workers are accustomed to gold stars and trophies.  It reinforces the importance of good performance.

That point was highlighted in a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) that dug into the reasons why the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has had a longstanding disengagement problem. Their analyses found that “employees felt recognition and award programs failed to operate effectively, lacked integrity due to favoritism, and . . . lack of commitment from leaders, managers and supervisors to execute programs with transparency.”  Anecdotal evidence suggests that is all too common.

Pay increases and/or cash incentives get most of the attention, but there are many ways to recognize employees, as discussed in the popular book, 1,001 Ways to Reward Employees. It’s sold over a million copies.  The common focus in government on the few poor performers sends a very different and unfortunate message.

Employee surveys and focus groups are widely used but too often leaders fail to act on what they learn. An alternative, although similar, are Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), meeting regularly to discuss how their workplace can be improved.  They will need the commitment of the leadership team. They may need access to resources to support their efforts.  Direct costs, if any, would be easily offset by savings.  Leaders as well as workers want their organization to succeed.

This is new to many leaders but workers have been paying attention to work environment issues for years.  Websites like Glassdoor routinely report “reviews” of companies based on comments from current and past employees.  This is on a larger scale, and with a different audience – leaders.

The Key Role of Middle Managers

For reasons buried in history, government ignores the role of ‘manager’.  The NAPA report, the OMB release and the OPM playbook each focuses on the use of data by managers but are silent on the central role they play in creating healthy organizations.

That’s also true for college MPA programs where it’s rare to find a course on day-to-day workforce management.  The Georgetown University program, as an example, is “In the shadow of the capitol” but does not list a single course related to managing workers or creating a high performance organization.

Thought leaders in the private sector make a very different argument.  In a new book, Power to the Middle: Why Middle Managers Hold the Key to the Future of Work, three McKinsey consultants highlight research showing,   “ . . .companies able to tap the potential of middle managers deliver three times greater returns to shareholders.

Managers are compared with coaches in sports.  The coaches of the best teams are celebrated, their names make the headlines.  Winning seasons are rewarded with million dollar, multi-year contracts.  Teams do not ‘promote’ coaches to jobs in the executive office.  ‘Coaching’, rather than controlling, is a far more enjoyable and productive role for managers.

The omission in the NAPA and OPM reports is not surprising.  Managers have never been prominent in discussions of agency performance.  Many were promoted because of their technical skills, not their potential to supervise workers. Training is often limited to the basics – organizational goals, employment laws, HR policies, and record keeping.  Workers have been known to turn down promotions to become managers because they would be expected to handle too many problems.  The traditional job of manager is not an enjoyable job.

This Is a Win-Win

The one certainty is that when employers offer a healthy work experience, they are more likely to attract qualfied workers, more likely to retain them, and can expect to perform better.  That’s been shown in research studies going back three decades.  All sectors – except state and local government – post annual lists of the ‘best places to work.’  Those lists make the benefits of more effective management very clear.

Unfortunately, civil service systems are a barrier to rethinking the work experience.  They were created decades ago at the time when control-oriented supervision was common in industry.  Laws and regulations protect worker ‘rights’. Worker control is still reflected in the lengthy, detailed job descriptions.  It’s created a culture that’s resistant to change.

That resistance is reinforced by labor agreements that often make even minor changes negotiable. Human nature also makes workers generally resistant to change.  The barriers to change are legal as well as psychological.

An added problem is that in contrast to business leaders, very few elected officials have experience leading managing large employee groups or change initiatives. One who did, Tennessee’s Governor Haslam, led reform of the state’s civil service system.

Government management is complicated by significant differences in the work issues in the many varied departments.  An effective supervisor in a library might be a failure in a fire station or budget office.

That shifts the focus to agency heads.  They have the best understanding of their agency’s operations and are closer to front-line workers.  They will need a team of employes to champion the benefits of change, ideally at multiple levels, until the new management approach is accepted.  The OPM playbook lists metrics to monitor progress.  It’s possible that the initial shifts in worker-manager relationships can be realized within the civil service framework.  Early successes will build support for change in other agencies.

To borrow an argument from McKinsey, “The leadership team may not understand the full value of investing in organizational health, the right resources may not be allocated to it, or leaders may simply lack the capabilities and experience needed to address it. But when leaders fail to address organizational health, they fail to help their agencies reach their full potential for performance.”