As a business owner or leader, would you ever consider allowing your employees to decide how much they are paid? Our guest for this episode is currently testing that very idea.
On this episode of Test. Learn. Grow., we speak with Josh Berry of Econic, an innovation, transformation and strategy consulting group. We discuss ways firms can build better company cultures.
In this episode you’ll learn about:
- Psychological safety and how to make employees feel so comfortable that they’ll even tell you when they are planning to leave your organization
- The connection between professional growth and personal growth
- How to coach team members to adapt with strategies vs. simply adopting long term plans
Psychological Safety at Work
Psychological safety has been a popular workforce industry buzzword for a few years. Josh explains that there is a difference between knowing what it means and practicing it in the workplace. He defines psychological safety as feeling safe and acting bravely. Since the pandemic brought psychological safety to the forefront of workplace culture, Josh says he is seeing more businesses practicing it instead of just talking about it.
While psychological safety can appear to be an abstract concept, Josh says there are ways to measure it. On the macro level, companies assess it with tools like employee engagement surveys. On a micro level, Josh says you know you are making progress when you see it in employee interactions. He gave an example of one of his own staff members feeling safe enough to be open with him about looking for a new role that was a better fit for her.
Connection Between Professional and Personal Growth
We’re undergoing a workforce transformation. Econic is looking at the future of work: How it’s done, where it’s done, and when it’s being done. Josh believes that employee personal growth is just as important as organizational growth. They are not mutually exclusive. And with the transformation sprints Josh and his company implement with their clients, both are possible and happen simultaneously. As companies embark on these sprints and grow, their employees carve out time to practice new behaviors:
- Curiosity
- Taking small experimental steps
- Creating a psychologically safe space
Adapting With Strategies
Historically, social institutions like churches and civic societies helped people figure out what they wanted to be or do for work. Those are no longer strong centers of gravity in many communities. Now, it’s up to businesses to grow and develop people. Josh sees this as a way to use business for good. As work evolves this way, he hopes to unleash human potential on the world’s biggest problems. It’s less about adhering to some prescribed 5-year plan and more about adapting work to ways in how we want to show up at work. It’s about activating strategies to be sustainable in the face of how business and consumer behaviors are changing.
Change is scary and uncomfortable for people. That’s okay. Josh says it’s important to make space for the dying of old ways. It is okay to grieve what is no longer serving the organization or people. Making this space allows for new changes to flow.
It’s time to honor the discomfort that change brings.
If you want to learn more about what Josh and Econic do, you can connect with him here. And if you want to learn more about what we’ve learned from Econic and how we’ve applied some of their core principles to our workplace culture, please reach out.
