“Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” –Robert Frost

Take a moment to reflect on where you are in your career right now, and think about the path you followed to get there. Why have you chosen this particular career path? Have you made deliberate, strategic choices about your career, or have your choices been reactions to external influences? What has motivated your career choices? Money? Expectations of others? Success? What’s your definition of a successful career?

Now think about your future career path. What would you like it to look like? Would it be similar to the path you’ve followed so far, or would it look completely different? Where would you like to be one year from now? Five years? Ten years? Why would you choose that career path? What about those choices are important to you?

I’ve done a lot of reflecting on my own career path, and how it looks so different than what I thought it would look like when I was younger. By the time I was eight years old, I knew I wanted to be an architect when I grew up. My most prized possession was my dad’s old drafting table, and I would spend hours and hours drawing floor plans of “dream” houses that I would daydream about living in when I grew up. I also really loved math and thought engineering would be a good career choice. So I got my degree in Architectural Engineering and began my career as a structural engineer. I envisioned myself rising up in the ranks of my chosen profession, eventually becoming the president of my own structural engineering firm. I had a well-thought-out plan, and all I had to do was follow that plan to be successful.

But you know what they say about the best-laid plans…

Looking back 20+ years later, to say I’ve followed a nonlinear career path would be an understatement. I imagine my career path might resemble a child’s drawing: a line wandering randomly all over the page, in all directions, not following any particular pattern. I’ve worked in four different professions: structural engineering, management consulting, organization development, and people strategy. I’ve worked in three different industries: construction, technology, and healthcare. Twice in my life I’ve quit my job without another job lined up, because I was feeling discontent and wanted to focus on exploring new career options. I have taken pay cuts twice. I have taken a longer time advancing to more senior roles than most people, and I’ve twice made backwards moves to less senior roles, because it was a way to get my foot in the door of a new profession. I have worked in several cities all over the world. And outside of my “day jobs,” I’ve taken on dozens of various side roles, including board member, leadership coach, writer, speaker, mentor, volunteer, tutor, and committee leader, to name some of them.

Why did I deviate so completely from my original career plan? Why have I made so many changes, and pursued so many outside projects, throughout my career? It’s not about getting bored easily or being unhappy with where I’m at. In fact, with only one exception, I haven’t left any of my jobs because I was unhappy. And it’s not about taking extreme risks. While some of my career choices may have looked risky from the outside, to me, they never felt very risky. That’s because the one common thread for me, throughout my professional life, has been following my passion. All of my career choices have been driven by passion. And I have always believed that if I follow my passion, I will succeed.

When I was a young, enthusiastic twentysomething working in structural engineering, I loved the challenge of designing complicated buildings that were both structurally sound and beautiful. While a lot of structural engineers loved to find ways to say no to architects, I loved finding creative ways to say yes: maintain the architectural vision of a building while still meeting structural codes. I became a licensed structural engineer and got very involved in the professional association for structural engineering. I was well on track to have a very successful career.

But after a few years, the engineering started to feel a bit repetitive. Structural designs were mostly slightly different variations of the same problems I’d encountered before. And the plan check process – dealing with building officials whose mission seemed to be finding fault in my designs – became more and more annoying to me. I started getting more interested in the business side of engineering. I would share frequent suggestions with my division manager on how we could improve operational efficiency, and I wanted to get more involved in strategic planning, budgeting and workforce planning. After hearing dozens of my suggestions, he exasperatedly told me, “I really just need you to be an engineer right now.” Well, that wasn’t what I wanted to hear. So, I decided to quit my job and go to business school.

I loved learning about business, and I soon realized I didn’t want to go back to engineering. I decided to go into consulting, where I’d have the opportunity to work on strategic business problems. After graduating from NYU Stern, I went to work for IBM as a management consultant. I loved the variety of consulting, getting to work on new and different projects, with new problems to solve, every few months. I also loved all of the international travel opportunities that working at IBM gave me. I worked in China for almost a year, and I made several work trips to places throughout Asia, Europe, North and South America.

After several years working as a consultant, I had learned that my favorite consulting projects were people projects – or human capital projects as they were commonly called. I began to realize that I wanted to shift my focus to human resources (HR). I started to explore HR career options in my spare time. But then I got assigned to a consulting project with particularly long hours and a particularly mean client, and I decided to speed up my career change. I quit my job and spent the next several months taking HR classes online, writing, speaking and networking. I started a blog, PeepsFirst.com, about putting people (employees) first. After a few months, one of my former managers from IBM reached out to me and convinced me to come back to IBM, in an organization development role.

So now I was in my 3rd profession, organization development, and I loved it. Although it paid less than consulting, the hours were more reasonable, and the work was incredibly fulfilling. I was essentially getting paid to recruit and hire talented people, and to figure out how to make work better for the employees in my organization. In addition to running some of the existing people programs, I also had the autonomy to propose and develop new people programs. One of the programs I started was a manager development program, to provide support and coaching to new IBM managers. I loved my job and planned to be there for a long time.

But once again, best-laid plans...

My job was in New York City, and I was living in Chicago. I’d alternate between working remotely from Chicago and traveling to New York a couple times a month to work in person with my team. I didn’t have kids, and I loved both cities, so this arrangement suited me perfectly. But after a few years in the job, IBM announced that employees were required to co-locate to where their teams were; no more remote work. So that meant I needed to move back to New York if I wanted to keep my job.

I love New York, and even a year prior it would have been a no-brainer to move back there. But I had recently become engaged to a wonderful man who lived and worked in Chicago. We both loved living in Chicago and didn’t want to leave. I decided I’d look for jobs in Chicago, and if I found the right job, I’d stay.

A few weeks into my job search, at a dinner, I ended up sitting next to an executive who worked at the University of Chicago. I asked him about working for UChicago, and he had very positive things to say about it, so I explored their career site and found a job posting for the Director of People Strategy at UChicago Medicine. People Strategy felt like the perfect fit for me – it would leverage my experience as a strategy and change consultant, and my experience as an HR/organization development professional. Plus, healthcare is an industry that has always excited me. Most people working in healthcare are there because they want to make a difference and help people. It’s an industry where you have all kinds of opportunities to make a positive impact on people. HR + strategy + making a positive impact? Yes, please! UChicago Medicine definitely felt like the right move for my career. I happily accepted the job offer and made the move into healthcare.

One year later, my job at UChicago Medicine has exceeded my already high expectations. I love learning about healthcare, especially being at a place that’s “at the forefront of medicine.” I love coming into work every day and connecting face-to-face with people. I love working with super smart, kind and compassionate colleagues. I love working with our leadership team to solve really interesting people strategy problems. I love that I get paid to focus on things like improving employee engagement. I love that I have more autonomy and influence than I’ve ever had in a job. A few months ago, I led an effort to help strengthen UChicago Medicine’s culture by celebrating our values: Participation, Respect, Integrity, Diversity, and Excellence. I led a team of passionate and dedicated volunteers to plan and implement UChicago Medicine’s first-ever PRIDE Values Week. The employees loved PRIDE Values Week, and it made me so happy to be able to make such a positive impact on people (and get paid for doing it!).

Turns out, this isn’t just the right job – it’s the best job I’ve ever had. One year on, I feel like I’ve already accomplished a lot – and yet I’m just getting started.

So that’s been my convoluted career journey thus far. Have I been successful? Well, that depends on your definition of success. I don’t make as much money as I perhaps could have, had I stayed on a linear career path. I’m in a less senior role as many people my age or younger. I’m also not very well recognized as an expert in my field, because I haven’t been in my current field for very long. But I am one of the happiest people I know. I’m in an industry I love, working for an organization I love, with wonderful people, where I have the opportunity every day to make a positive impact. I also have an incredibly fulfilling personal life: I have a wonderful, supportive partner, and we have a nine-month-old son, who is the most amazing human I’ve ever known. And while work-life balance can sometimes be a challenge, on most days I’m managing to do it pretty well. I would describe my definition of success as “living my most extraordinary life.” So according to my definition of success, yes, I’ve been extremely successful. And I plan to continue living my most extraordinary life for years and years to come.

I would love to hear more about your career path: how you got to where you are now…what has motivated your choices…where you’d like to go in the future. Please comment and share your career story!

“Onboarding starts with satisfying the most basic of Maslow's psychological needs: belonging.” –Jay Samit

Imagine starting your first full-time job out of college: you’re nervous, excited and scared. You want to do well and make a good impression. On your first day, you put on the confidence-boosting new outfit you’ve bought for the occasion. You smile as you walk up to your new office building, wanting to project self-confidence, despite feeling extremely nervous, and perhaps like somewhat of an impostor: what if they find out you’re not the confident superstar you pretended to be during your job interview? Your heart is racing; your palms are sweating. Today is the start of a new chapter in your life. You have high expectations; you want to make a difference…you want to change the world.
 
You check in with security; but they don’t have your name on the list. They ask you to stand to the side and wait while they sort it out. You’re panicking that you might not get into the building. After what feels like an eternity, they tell you they’ve fixed the problem; you can take the elevator up to your new office. You get in a crowded elevator of people saying hello to each other; you’re feeling completely out of place. You walk into your new office space, give your name to the receptionist, and you’re ushered into a large conference room with lots of people, all of whom you’re sure must be feeling a lot more confident than you are right now. You find your nametag at the check-in desk, grab a cup of coffee and find a seat. You force yourself to say hello to the people sitting next to you and make small talk.
 
Then the instructor starts talking: “Welcome to Acme Corporation! Today we’ll walk through the information you need to know to get started in your new job.” For the next several hours, you listen to PowerPoint presentation after PowerPoint presentation, feeling increasingly overwhelmed with each subsequent presentation, and hoping you’re not going to be expected to remember all this information. You meet a lot of people during the day, and you can’t even begin to remember everyone’s names. The instructor occasionally asks if anyone has any questions, but you’re too confused to even know what to ask. By the end of the day, you’re feeling completely mentally exhausted, and even more overwhelmed than you did that morning. You hope the next day will be better.
 
When you arrive on day 2, the receptionist directs you to your new desk, and tells you your new manager will meet with you later that morning. You sit at your desk with your new laptop, wondering what to do. You’ve already read through the three emails in your new inbox. You’re feeling panicked, wanting to look busy but completely unsure what to do. You decide to reread the handouts from yesterday. You read about Acme’s culture and strategy, employee guidelines, and the description of your new job role…which is just as hard to understand after reading it the fifth time. You read some of the content from Acme’s website: their mission statement, their leadership team, their products and services.
 
Finally, your new manager stops by to say hello, apologizing that she couldn’t meet with you sooner. She invites you to come into her office. You smile nervously as you walk down the hall together, trying to make the appropriate response as she makes small talk. You take a seat in her office, and she spends the next 30 minutes or so giving you information on what she would like you to work on. You’re furiously taking notes as she talks. When she asks if you have questions, you manage to think of one or two. Then she smiles and asks you to let her know if you have other questions.
 
You spend most of the rest of the day feeling completely inadequate. You start working on the first assignment your manager gave you, but the further into it you get, the more questions you have. Should you knock on your manager’s door? Should you send her an email? How often is it appropriate for you to bother her? You decide to keep going on the assignment as best you can, making a list of questions to ask your manager later, and hoping and praying that you’re doing it right. By the end of day two, you’re feeling even more overwhelmed and exhausted than the day before. You’re also feeling scared and a bit demoralized: how are you even going to do a good job, let alone change the world, when everything is so confusing?
 
Of course, employee onboarding experiences take all shapes and forms, and not all of them are as bad as this hypothetical scenario. But, this scenario is unfortunately not that uncommon either. Companies put together well-intentioned onboarding programs, packing as much information as they can into a one- or two-day onboarding program, to give employees the information they need to learn about their new company and their new job role. They will likely give new employees some form of onboarding handbook, and they will either have an instructor go through the onboarding material with a group of several new employees (typical for larger companies), or they may have the new employee’s manager (or someone else) go through the material with the employee (more typical for smaller companies). Or worse…some companies just give the onboarding information to new employees for them to go through themselves. Or worst yet…some companies have little or no onboarding information even documented, and it’s up to the new employees to figure it out for themselves. Why do so many companies under-deliver on onboarding?
 
Quite often, the people creating the employee onboarding experience are seasoned employees with several years of experience in the company, and they forget how scary it can be to start a new job, particularly when it’s your first job out of college. Many companies also underestimate the importance of onboarding in shaping the employee experience. They assume that employees will adjust to their new job over time, and that initially feeling overwhelmed is just part of the new employee learning curve.
 
And while some degree of overwhelm and confusion is unavoidable, a good onboarding program can go a long way to minimize those feelings for new employees, and give new employees a much more positive experience. A good onboarding program provides several benefits: a shorter ramp-up time for new employees to be fully productive in their new role, higher employee engagement, improved employee performance, and lower employee attrition within the first year. In fact, research shows that the benefits of onboarding are so significant, it’s hard to understand why more companies don’t invest in more robust onboarding programs.
 
How can companies deliver a better onboarding experience for new employees? While the optimal onboarding program design will vary by company, here are five things all companies should do (if they don’t already) to ensure a great onboarding experience:

1. Begin onboarding well before an employee’s first day, and continue onboarding beyond the initial orientation.
2. Have a group of new employees start on the same day and go through onboarding together.
3. Make the orientation program long enough to get new employees acclimated to the company culture and cover the most important information.
4. Include participation from important stakeholders: managers, organization leaders, team members and recent hires.
5. Gather feedback from new employees at several points in the onboarding process and use it to continuously improve the onboarding experience.

 
1. Begin onboarding well before an employee’s first day, and continue onboarding beyond the initial orientation. Onboarding should begin as soon as a new employee accepts the offer. The time between offer acceptance and start date could range anywhere from several days to, in the case of university students, the better part of a year. When new employees accept their offer, send them a congratulatory email from the company, preferably from their future manager and/or someone who will be the main point of contact throughout onboarding. Let them know how excited you are that they will be joining the company, and invite them to reach out to you if they have questions. It’s important for new employees to feel like they have someone they can go to with questions or concerns.

In my organization, we also assign a buddy to new employees after they accept their offer. We encourage buddies to offer to meet with the new employee in person or by phone prior to their start date, to help answer questions and share their own experience starting at the company. Once new employees start, buddies often take the them out for lunch or coffee, and periodically check in to see how things are going in their first days, weeks and months at the company. Most new employees like having someone besides their manager to go to with questions, and they like being able to build a relationship with someone before they start.
 
Preboarding activities can go a long way in improving the employee experience for new employees, especially when there are several months between offer acceptance and start date. Preboarding activities could include inviting new employees to a social event prior to their start date, to give them a chance to get to know several of their future coworkers in an informal setting. Or preboarding could be as simple as periodic email communications, to share helpful information and remind new employees you’re excited they will soon be joining the company. Even this can go a long way in keeping new employees’ excitement levels high and reassuring them that their future employer hasn’t forgotten about them. In addition to sending periodic emails, we setup a Slack channel where we can share information, moderate discussions and encourage new employees to ask questions.
 
Similarly, onboarding shouldn’t end after the initial orientation. During their first several months on the job, new employees are still getting acclimated to the company and learning the skills and knowledge they need to perform well. While most training beyond orientation will happen on the job, it can still be very helpful to bring new employees back together for regular training and social events. For example, you could plan monthly lunchtime training sessions and/or evening social events for new employees during their first six months. Continued onboarding activities help new employees get up to speed more quickly and improve their employee experience.
 
2. Have a group of new employees start on the same day and go through onboarding together. While it may not be feasible in all situations, particularly in smaller companies, being part of an onboarding “class” is another great way to improve the new employee experience. An employee’s first day can be stressful, and knowing they’re part of a group of people starting on the same day helps to ease the stress level of our new employees. Plus, new employees get a jump on building their network within the company by getting to know the other people in their onboarding class. Most of our new employees say that they remain close with their onboarding classmates after onboarding, and they find it incredibly helpful to have this network of peers within the company.
 
3. Make the orientation program long enough to get new employees acclimated to the company culture and cover the most important information. I use the term “orientation” to refer to the structured part of the onboarding program that begins on an employee’s first day and ends right before employees begin working in their new job role. During orientation, new employees go through training and other activities in a classroom setting. Most orientation programs are one or two days at best. And that’s understandable; it’s a significant investment to implement longer orientation programs. It requires more planning and resources to run the program, and every additional day new employees spend in orientation is a day not spent doing the job they were hired to do. But most companies who make the investment in longer orientation programs report that the benefits far outweigh the costs. Longer orientations help new hires get up to speed in their new job roles more quickly, and they improve engagement levels of new hires, which reduces attrition rates within the first year.
 
How long should an orientation program be? That will vary by company and type of job role, but many companies find that one to two weeks is the right length. The best way to figure out the right length of the program is to agree on what topics should be covered during orientation and map out a sample agenda. My organization has a two-week orientation for new employees, during which we cover the following topics:

• Administrative onboarding (e.g. laptop setup, paperwork, benefits)
• Overview of the company, our organization structure, what we sell, our culture, etc.
• Training workshops on some of the most important topics for our employees to know (in our case this includes topics such as Agile, Design Thinking and how to use common apps and programs)
• Discussions with several of our leaders and managers: what they do, what their teams/organizations do, advice for new employees
• Panel discussions with current employees (usually recent hires): what they do, what it’s like to work here, advice for new employees
• Team projects: new employees work in teams on a consulting-style project and give a final project presentation at the end of orientation. We find this is a great approach to train new employees on teamwork, problem solving and communication skills
• Team-specific orientation: new employees get to know their new teams and learn more about their specific job roles
• Social and networking activities, which give new employees a chance to meet and get to know current employees

 
It’s impossible to cover everything new employees need to know during orientation, and if you try to pack in too much detailed information, they will suffer from information overload and retain very little of the information covered. The orientation should focus only on the most important information for new employees, and it should include as many interactive discussions and activities as possible, while minimizing time spent on passive presentations. More detailed information can be organized and documented so that new employees can access information later, when they need it.
 
4. Include participation from important stakeholders: managers, organization leaders, team members and recent hires. The more you can involve participation from important stakeholders, the more likely you will be to have a successful onboarding program.

• Managers can send a welcome email to their new employees before they start, and arrange to meet one-on-one with their new employees during orientation or immediately after. Managers can also lead a team-specific orientation for their new employees, to introduce them to their team members and teach them about their new job role.

• Organization leaders should be part of the orientation agenda. They can give a welcome address to new employees on their first day, or they can lead a discussion with new employees to talk about what they do, what their teams/organizations do, and any advice they have for new employees.

• Team members can participate in the team-specific orientation to talk with new employees about what the team does and how they will work together. They can also attend social events to welcome the new employees and get to know them.
• Recent hires can be a great resource for helping answer new employees’ questions and sharing their own recent experience of starting with the company. In addition to assigning a recent hire as a buddy for each new employee, you can invite recent hires to social events, and arrange a panel discussion with recent hires to answer questions and share advice with new employees.

 
5. Gather feedback from new employees at several points in the onboarding process and use it to continuously improve the onboarding experience. Feedback can be gathered in a number of ways; some of the most popular methods are surveys, focus groups and individual interviews. I recommend a combination of approaches. Surveys have the advantage of being anonymous (if you set them up that way), which may encourage new employees to be more candid with their feedback, particularly feedback on the parts of the onboarding program they didn’t like. Survey tools also make it easy to aggregate feedback from a large number of people, and it’s easy to report on quantitative onboarding metrics by using surveys. Focus groups and individual interviews are good for gathering more qualitative feedback, at a level of detail that is hard to get through surveys. Focus groups work particularly well for generating ideas about what could be improved, because the focus group participants can build off others’ ideas. I find this often leads to the most (and most creative) ideas for how to improve the onboarding program. Individual interviews are the most time consuming, but they can yield the most detailed and comprehensive set of feedback. The interviews can be short; I generally keep them to 15 minutes each and I cover six or seven questions. It’s helpful if the person doing the interviews already has a good rapport with the new employees, so that they feel comfortable sharing candid feedback. Of course, I always let them know that individual responses will be kept confidential, and only aggregate results will be shared.
 
I recommend gathering feedback at least three times during onboarding: at the end of the initial orientation, then at one month and six months into the job. Each of these time periods yields different feedback, all of which is helpful for different reasons. For example, right after the initial orientation, new employees will have the best feedback on how to improve the preboarding experience and orientation. One month into the job, new employees can share feedback on how their first month has gone and any challenges they are struggling with, which can also allow you to step in and help address significant issues if needed. At six months into the job, employees are in a better position to share feedback on how the ramp-up into their new role has gone and what changes they would suggest to the onboarding program with the benefit of hindsight. I also recommend collecting feedback from the new employees’ managers at this point, to get their feedback on how the new employees are performing, and whether they see any performance issues with their new employees that future onboarding programs might be able to help address.
 
Wrapping it up: what are your suggestions for getting onboarding right?
I’d love to hear from you! Does your company do any of these things as part of onboarding? What other suggestions do you have for getting onboarding right? What do you think are the most important things to include in an onboarding program?

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." –Howard Thurman

When I wrote my first blog post for peepsfirst.com back in March, The Life-changing Magic of Mentoring, I had recently left my job as a management consultant at IBM because I wanted to follow my passion for putting people first. I wrote about how my mentor and leadership coach Christina helped encourage me to take a bold leap and follow my passion. Even though I was taking a risk by walking away from a good job with a steady paycheck, I knew that following my passion was the right thing to do.

I knew that I wanted to focus my energy on helping organizations thrive by putting people first. I wanted to help hire, retain, engage and develop great people. I wanted to help employees feel happier and more engaged with their work, which would in turn help their organization become more successful. I wanted to help drive a people-first culture, where leaders recognize the monumental importance of effective talent management and are strongly committed to putting people first.

But what I didn’t know was where my journey would take me. I considered talent consulting, where I could advise multiple companies on their talent management strategy and approach. I considered joining a startup, where I could do something more entrepreneurial and help a company manage its talent effectively while growing very fast. And I considered taking on a talent role in a larger company (a function that many companies call organization development), where I would have the opportunity to positively impact a lot of people.

After dozens of fascinating conversations with people in all kinds of talent roles, several job interviews and countless hours of researching, writing and soul-searching…I decided to go back to a company that was already very familiar to me…IBM! I decided to join the Organization Development team for IBM’s Performance Marketing organization.

I chose to come back to IBM because:

1. There are a lot of smart, talented, extraordinary IBMers, and I want to work with great people.
2. IBM is going through a mind-boggling amount of change to stay competitive in the technology industry, and I see a lot of signs that IBM’s leaders recognize the importance of talent and are moving towards more of a people-first culture.
3. IBM still has a long way to go, and I see exciting opportunities everywhere to help IBM raise the bar on talent and continue to drive more focus on putting people first.

I have big, hairy, audacious goals for putting people first at IBM (I hate the term BHAG, but I couldn’t think of a better one). I’ll share two of those goals, since sharing them will make me even more committed to trying to achieve them.

1. Help IBM strengthen its employment brand and move waaayyyy up on LinkedIn’s list of The World’s 100 Most InDemand Employers. In 2014, IBM barely made the list, coming in at #100. Within 5 years, I want to see IBM rank within the top 10.
2. IBM didn’t even make the lists of Best Places to Work by Fortune and Glassdoor. I not only want to help get IBM onto these lists, I want to see IBM break into the top 20 within 5 years.
   

Yes, I know, these sound like out-of-my-mind-crazy ambitious goals, and there’s a very good chance that I won’t achieve them, given that I’m only one person. But I’m trying to embrace Google’s (#1 on LinkedIn’s, Fortune’s and Glassdoor’s lists, BTW) moonshot thinking, because even if I shoot for the moon and fall short, I might just achieve something remarkable in the process. And, in the words of Steve Jobs (one of the world’s greatest moonshot thinkers), “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Are you an IBMer (or would like to be an IBMer) who shares my vision for raising the bar on talent and putting people first? If you are, I’d love to hear from you! By sharing our visionary ideas and maybe even collaborating together on some of our goals, who knows what kinds of crazy, world-changing things we can achieve?

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

 “Google operates on the belief that people are fundamentally good.” –Laszlo Bock

I’ve been blogging recently about the evolution of talent management: where it has come from and where it needs to go. There are a number of important changes that define how talent management is evolving, but probably the most important change we are seeing is that organizations are getting better at trusting and empowering their employees to do the right thing. There’s still a long way for many organizations to go, but it’s extremely heartening to see some shining examples of companies that trust their employees and the monumentally positive impact that this has on employee engagement.

Google is one of these shining examples of a company that trusts and empowers its employees. In his book Work Rules!, Laszlo Bock, Google’s SVP of People of Operations, explains that “Google operates on the belief that people are fundamentally good,” and the leaders at Google trust and empower their employees to do the right thing. This sounds so simple, yet many companies seem to operate on the belief that people cannot be trusted to do the right thing, and all sorts of controls are needed to prevent bad behavior. When companies like Google have shown the clear benefits of trusting and empowering employees, why is it still so hard for most companies to do?

The benefits of trust and empowerment in the workplace

There is substantial research linking trust with improved employee engagement and organizational performance. One such study, Trust that Binds: The Impact of Collective Felt Trust on Organizational Performance, showed that employees who felt that their managers trusted them demonstrated better sales and customer service performance.

Similarly, it has been repeatedly shown that empowering employees – giving them the freedom to make decisions and get things done – has all kinds of benefits. Empowered employees are more productive, because they can quickly make decisions themselves instead of spending lots of time seeking approval from others. Empowered employees are more innovative, because they have the freedom to think outside of the box and come up with better ways to do things. And of course, empowered employees are happier: who doesn’t prefer having freedom in their work vs. being micromanaged?

But if the benefits of trusting and empowering your employees are so clear and obvious, why are there still so many organizations where it’s lacking?

Why is there such a lack of trust?

There are countless examples of organizations not trusting their employees. Company leaders not allowing employees to work from home because they don’t think employees will work hard when they can’t be physically seen (even though research shows the opposite). Company policies requiring manager approval for even the smallest business expenses. Managers asking employees for detailed daily progress updates so they can micromanage how employees spend their time. Small business owners not going on vacation because they don’t trust their employees to mind the store while they’re away. And so on, and so on.

Why does lack of trust seem to be the default for so many company leaders? Unfortunately, it seems to be human nature for many people to be distrustful, even when the facts are telling them it’s to their benefit to trust people. That irrational, emotional part of people makes it difficult to trust. Trusting people requires a certain degree of vulnerability, and this is difficult for a lot of people. After all, if I trust you to do the right thing, and you take advantage of that trust by harming me financially or otherwise, my natural reaction might be to stop trusting anyone, for fear of being hurt again. So, because of a few incidents of employees behaving badly, the result is often that no employees are trusted.

And because trust is a necessary prerequisite for empowerment, leaders who don’t trust their employees will give them as little empowerment as possible. They will resort to lots of rules, required approvals, excessive tracking and monitoring, etc. Employees, in turn, knowing their leaders don’t trust them, will likely feel resentful of that mistrust, unhappy at work, less productive, and more likely to behave in a way that is not in the best interests of the company (e.g. taking extra sick days). And so the lack of trust becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What can companies do to break out of this vicious spiral of distrust?

How leaders can build a culture of trust

Companies with a lack of trust need to focus on changing the culture…from a culture of distrust to a culture of trust. Culture change is hard…it will take time…and it absolutely needs to come from the top. If a company wants to successfully build a culture of trust, company leaders must work on setting aside their predisposition to distrust people and demonstrating that they trust people through their words and actions. No easy task, to be sure. But luckily, companies like Google, Zappos, Southwest and 3M have successfully built a culture of trust, and others can learn from their examples.

Give people the benefit of the doubt. As Laszlo Bock puts it, “If you believe human beings are fundamentally good, act like it.” While many companies seem to operate under a “guilty until proven innocent” premise that trust must be earned, companies with a culture of trust take the opposite approach. They assume people are good and can be trusted, and they act accordingly. A culture of trust has to start with the leaders taking the view that people are fundamentally good, and demonstrating this mindset every day through their words and actions.

Occasionally, even good people do bad things, and when that happens, company leaders must address the bad behavior and let the employee know it won’t be tolerated. If the bad behavior continues or if it’s serious enough, the employee may need to be fired. You can’t maintain a culture of trust if people see that bad behavior is allowed to go unchecked.

Hire great people. It will be much easier for a company’s leaders to trust their employees when they have great employees. Of course, talent acquisition is an extensive and complicated topic of its own, but it bears mentioning because hiring great people is a fundamental part of having a culture of trust. The key is to hire people who not only have outstanding skills and experience, but most importantly, people who fit your culture. If your goal is to have a culture of trust, where leaders and employees act in a trusting manner, then it’s important to hire people who are naturally trusting of others.

Similarly, if you have existing employees who are inherently untrusting, and it’s clear they don’t fit well in a culture of trust, then the best course of action may be to let those people go. Keeping untrusting people employed will undermine even the best efforts to build a culture of trust.

Zappos is a company that is well known for its culture of trust, and that starts with hiring great people. Zappos has a unique hiring process that is very heavily focused on cultural fit. What makes it unique? Instead of responding to a job post (there are no job posts), candidates create an online profile and are encouraged to include a video cover letter to “show your true colors.” Then during the interviews, candidates are not only interviewed about their skills and experience, but they are asked several questions to determine whether they fit with Zappos’ core values. Zappos is known for asking off-the-wall interview questions to assess cultural fit, such as “If you could be a super hero, what would you be and why?”

Be transparent. A key part of trusting employees is sharing information with them. A company can demonstrate trust in its employees by sharing sensitive company information with them and keeping them in the loop on important company decisions. Of course, some information can’t be widely shared for legal, ethical or other reasons, but company leaders should continually challenge themselves to share as much information with employees as possible.

Google, for example, shares the results of their employee surveys with all employees. And they don’t just share a high level summary; they allow employees to filter on any view of the employee survey data they want. Google employees – or Googlers, as they are called – not only get a clear view of the employee survey results, but they clearly see how the company leaders are acting on those results. Contrast this with many other companies, where the norm is to guard employee survey data like Fort Knox, and employees rarely if ever see any post-survey communications telling them how their input is being used to drive change. It’s clear to see that by being as transparent as possible and letting employees know they have a real voice in the company, Google is building a whole lot of trust.

Empower your employees to do the right thing…then get out of the way. One of the clearest and best ways to demonstrate trust in your employees is to empower them…give them the freedom to work how/when/where they want, freedom to make important decisions, freedom to try new ideas, even freedom to make mistakes. As long as employees demonstrate strong performance and deliver outstanding results, it shouldn’t matter if they leave early every Monday for a yoga class. It shouldn’t matter if they choose to allocate some of their time to working on a side project. It shouldn’t matter if they want to work remotely. What’s critically important is that employees understand they are accountable for results. As long as they deliver those results, it’s up to them how they want to manage their work.

Southwest Airlines is a great example of a company that empowers its employees to do the right thing for the customer. It’s not just about flight attendants singing and telling jokes during flights. Pilots, flight attendants, gate agents, telephone service representatives...all employees have the authority to make decisions about how to best serve the customer. Endless examples of empowered employees abound, such as the time a flight attendant gave a passenger a bottle of champagne and let him use the intercom so he could propose to his girlfriend during the flight.

3M empowers its employees through its 15 Percent Time Program, where employees are allowed to spend up to 15% of their working time on their own projects. 3M also encourages its employees to take risks by allowing them to make mistakes. In the words of former 3M President William McKnight, “Management that is destructively critical when mistakes are made kills initiative. And it’s essential that we have many people with initiative if we are to continue to grow.” Empowering employees to take risks by allowing them to fail is one of the fundamental drivers of innovation. It’s no coincidence that risk-averse companies that punish employees for failure are generally some of the least innovative companies.

So many companies expend enormous amounts of effort to control employees and limit their freedoms, supposedly in an effort to suppress bad behavior. Back in the days of the Industrial Revolution, where most people worked on a manufacturing line, control-heavy micromanagement may have served companies well. But those days are gone, and in today’s innovation- and service-driven economy, a culture of distrust is extremely harmful. Not only can controls backfire by incenting employees to behave badly in some cases, but implementing organizational controls is very costly. There are the financial costs of the labor and technology for extensive tracking and monitoring. There are the lost productivity costs of reviews and approvals. And worst of all, there are the decreased employee engagement costs of working in a culture of distrust. If only companies would take steps to replace many of these controls with a culture of trust, work would be simpler, faster, less expensive, more meaningful and more fun!

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