A culture of one

If you needed reminding that your workforce is multifaceted just take a look at your staff profile. A typical UK firm today has 45% female employees, 14% of all employees are aged under 25, 27% are aged 50 or over, something under 8% are from black and other ethnic communities and 6% are lesbian or gay and of whom 46% are too concerned to come out at work. This piece is not about the myriad social and cultural toes you can tread on without realising it in a modern organisation, but rather to encourage you to treat your staff as cultures of one [1].

[1] Employment figures taken from Office for National Statistics data end 2007. Figures for the size of the lesbian and gay population in the UK are taken from a DTI meta-study – more here

It used to be simple — but limiting. We grew up, got a job, and laboured in the same place through our working life. Now through Facebook we are connected with like minded people from around the planet who share our interests; through EU expansion, Europeans are more mobile for employment than at any time in history and the rest of the world is getting on a plane and migrating to where the work is too. Given these rapid changes in the way we work, what have you done to make sure your leadership, management and HR practices have moved with the populations?

If you want to recruit, manage and retain the best workforce for your organisation, you need to adapt to meet their needs. What do they want? Who knows — but I suggest you ask them. Do you regularly and meaningfully ask current staff, people who apply for your jobs or employees who leave what the really want out of work? Do you ask them when, how and where they want to work? Do you find out what benefits and recognition they expect? If you don’t ask these questions and respond well and treat each employee as a culture of one, you can bet that an employer around the corner (or around the world) is doing exactly that, and I know where I’d rather work.

This piece is inspired by Hofstede's work.