Onboard Week day 5 – High trust leads to a higher profitability
Today was the closing day of Onboard Week.
And we went out with a bang!
In the studio were Wencke Ester-Lorber of Great Place to Work and Indra Geelen and Susan Auckema, both from the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. The topic for this all ladies line up was reboarding and remote onboarding.
Here are my 11 learnings for you!
Learning 1 Psychological safety should be a top priority in the workplace
Leaders in organizations should recognise the importance of psychological safety. Wencke reported that studies show that trust in organizations pays out. Companies that score high in the trust index have better business results. High trust leads to a more profitable business. Who can be against that!?
Learning 2 Trust should be part of the onboarding experience
Transfer trust in onboarding and your new joiners will feel safe with you. When people feel psychologically safe (trusted) they experience less stress, more pleasure from their work and are more confident. So they will feel at home sooner. And they will start to contribute quicker and stay with you longer.
Learning 3 Be clear about expectations
This is not new as a learning from Onboard Week, but here are some practical pointers to it:
Have candidates join you for a morning or afternoon in the office as part of the selection procedure. They will see what the organization really stands for and vice versa.
Give your people clear guidelines/ guiding principles for behaviour you expect. Not as rules, but for clarity on expectations and direction.
Learning 4 How to build a culture of trust
I would like to refer to @Great place to work for all the ins and outs, but in general it is all about these elements:
Credibility
Respect
Pride
Camaraderie
Fairness
Learning 5 What to do?
Communicate a lot on trust, but more importantly.
Express trust in your behaviour. It is how you treat your people (not about the ping pong tables).
Be open. Match reality. Celebrate success and learn from failure.
Help people to see how they contribute.
Talk about people’s personal purpose and align this with your company goals.
Also take good care of your existing team, besides taking good care for new joiners
Ask for feedback.
Learning 6 Reboarding? Make it safe!
Your most important task in reboarding your people to the workplace is to make it safe. Physically safe of course, meeting all regulations. And also psychologically safe. People might have doubts about their capabilities. Get it right by listening to your people.
Learning 7 Leaders should stand up in these times
Indra explained that the Van Gogh managing director did a great job of informing people that the museum was going to close for a while and at the same time giving them the comfort that everything would be fine again. “Do not worry, we will be back better and stronger.” And that is actually what happened!
Learning 8 A crisis is also an opportunity to learn and grow
When reopening the museum the staff at Van Gogh was asked to take on multiple extra roles (the flex pool was not called to the floor, because of the lower numbers of visitors). This had led to great insights and wonderful learnings for the staff. People very much enjoyed all these different roles. For example the lead curator worked on the museum floor and would meet visitors face to face. Now het got a chance to share his extensive knowledge about Van Gogh and his work and get a direct response. He loved it!
Learning 9 Good things can come from a crisis situation
At Van Gogh they think that job rotation will stay in their policy. It brings new ideas and perspectives and people really enjoy it.
Another great initiative that will stay after Corona is the “Klusjesmarkt”. Departments can file their challenges/ small jobs that they seek help with. And all in the organization can jump in to help. Great idea!
Learning 10 Digital platforms like Appical are a gamechanger in reboarding
Having information in a centralized place and giving that information out to the right people in the right time is a huge factor in the success of the reboarding campaign at the Van Gogh museum.
Learning 11 In the Corona crisis Connection with colleagues is what we struggle with most
From today’s poll we learned that 60% of the attendees filled out this answer. This should be a big concern for us all at the moment. The mental health of our colleagues and employees. Let pay attention to each other in the upcoming months. Stay in touch. Communicate too much better than not enough.
Maybe you can use one of the ideas that the Van Gogh Museum told about:
Call circle. Put the names of your team members in a circle and call each other one after the other. Set a time for the team to finish the round (for instance 1 week).
Display each other’s art. At Van Gogh they made an exposition of the artwork of the employees for the employees. It turned out they are quite artistic themselves.
So that’s it for today… and the week.
Onboard Week was really great and I like to thank @Appical for the great organization and all the speakers for the learnings.
See ya later!
Frank