ProjectHR

By IRI ConsultantsBusiness Entrepreneurship Management

ProjectHR episodes

December 19, 2023 Change Management In An Era of Mergers & Acquisitions
Sheri Browning and Jay Kuhns discuss change management during a period of mergers and acquisitions. Listen now to their expert insight and strategy!
16 min
November 07, 2023Why Psychological Safety Matters
Workplace safety has been a serious concern since the industrial revolution prompted workers to form unions and demand better and safer working conditions. Because risks to physical safety were typically industry specific, industries developed regulations independent of each other, and unions rose to prominence to focus on enforcing those regulations.
In 1970, the U.S. passed the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Act to pass, regulate, and maintain standards and regulations, so physical safety has been a top priority for organizations for many decades. However, the same can’t be said for psychological safety, which we’re examining today.
Workplace Safety and Wellness
As mentioned above, organizations across the country place a high priority on physical safety as evidenced by regularly scheduled safety meetings and well-defined measurable safety practices. Recently, there has also been a greater emphasis on wellness in terms of how we practice healthy habits to enjoy better physical and mental health.
However, the most significant contributor to workplace safety and wellness—known as psychological safety—has yet to be fully addressed. This is because the concept of psychological safety is too often thought to be some kind of touchy-feely idea that doesn’t contribute to an organization’s bottom line.
Unfortunately, this belief is sadly misguided and is regularly contributing to low employee engagement scores, undesirable turnover, and apathetic workers who turn to unions who they believe will force their employers to make them feel psychologically safe.
What is Psychological Safety
So, what exactly is psychological safety and why does it matter? In its simplest form, psychological safety is what an employee believes is true about their workplace that inspires them to be the best employee they can possibly be—with the best interests of their employer and their employer’s customers in mind.
This belief is established when the day-to-day environment in the workplace reflects the four stages that humans progress through in order to be fully invested. These stages are outlined below.
When an employee, in any job and at any level in any organization, believes they matter and they belong, they feel included and safe to be themselves.
When this employee believes it’s safe to ask questions, give and accept feedback, and make honest mistakes they can learn from, they feel safe to learn.
When this employee believes their skills and abilities matter by the way they receive acknowledgement and recognition, they feel safe as a valuable contributor.
And when this employee believes it’s their responsibility to look for ways to make everything better, they feel safe in speaking up and challenging the status quo with facts and data because they see an opportunity for improvement.
How Managers Can Support A Psychologically Safe Workplace
Effective managers know how to manage and lead. This dual skill set is instrumental in creating a workplace where employees feel psychologically safe and driven to support their organization’s mission and values. These manager-leaders understand that all four phases of psychological safety create an integrated system that inspires and motivates the workforce. They know they must:
Show employees how important they are by responding to what they hear.
Encourage employees to ask questions and provide honest and meaningful responses that make sense to the employees work and life experiences.
Invite and train employees to participate in process improvement activities and encourage them to challenge the status quo.
Creating a culture that emphasizes psychological safety increases employee retention, reduces employee turnover, decreases physical safety incidents, increases employee engagement, strengthens teamwork and innovation, and inspires each employee to be the best contributor they can. That’s why organizations must prioritize psychological safety as much as they do physical safety—and why partners like IRI, who are well-versed in the ins and outs of workplace safety, can be helpful in making this happen.
At IRI, we are experts in leadership development, employee training, organizational communication and organizational development. We use this expertise to regularly help organizations develop and implement engaging and personalized programs to maintain and elevate company performance. If you’re interested in upleveling your organizational development strategies, contact us using the chat on the right to discuss the next steps, or give us a call at (313) 965-0350.
12 min
November 02, 2023 Why Residents and Fellows Have Been Organizing
The Labor Movement resurgence includes medical resident organizing. GME programs urged to engage, respect, and listen strategically.
13 min
August 29, 2023Mastering Leadership Transitions: A Framework for Success in the First Three Months
Whether you’ve just stepped into a recent promotion, received a fresh leadership assignment, or been given the brand new title of CEO, the initial months of your journey are a critical juncture. This is where the foundation of your success is forged, and the trajectory of your leadership path takes its shape. In this blog post, we delve into a comprehensive framework designed to empower you with the strategies and insights necessary for not just surviving, but thriving. The art of mastering leadership transitions is a skill that separates the exceptional from the ordinary, and by grasping the essence of this framework, you’re poised to embark on a journey of accelerated growth and achievement.
Unfortunately, only a few leaders fully grasp the significance of these first three months and how they can ultimately determine their success or failure. All too often, leaders rush to make changes to prove themselves, leading to missteps and failures in their first months on the job. Leaders needing help transitioning to a new role may fail to meet performance expectations. Here are some of the most common leadership derailers:
Common Leadership Derailers
Not adapting to the culture.Leaders who act against the established culture risk isolation and disconnection from critical information, leading to bad decision-making and eventual failure.
Not engaging in social learning.Leaders need to engage with their organization and prioritize meeting and talking with others instead of just reading and thinking, as this can cause them to become isolated and unapproachable. In the early stages, decisions based on intuition and strong feelings may be more important than financial analyses.
Attempting too much.It is common for leaders to attempt to handle numerous responsibilities simultaneously, leading to increased stress levels and a decline in overall productivity.
Framework for an Accelerated Successful Transition
Transitions are periods of opportunity and chance to start afresh and make needed organizational changes. But they are also periods of acute vulnerabilities because you need an established working relationship and a detailed understanding of your new role.
You’ll struggle later if you don’t gain momentum during your transition. Balancing action and learning helps you succeed long-term. Here are the key components of our framework for successful leadership transitions:
Understand your business situation
Diagnose the situation to develop the right strategy.
Avoid the “one-best-way” thinking.
Identify the opportunities and challenges.
Gaining success through negotiation (with your boss, peers, direct reports, etc)
Build relationships
Agree on the diagnosis of the situation
Determine how to work together
Create a plan for action
Create your team
Communicate short and long-term goals.
Gain team member’s feedback.
Create new team processes.
Stay the course
Maintain discipline and focus on your transition daily.
Careful planning is crucial when transitioning your career. Every successful career is a series of successful assignments, and every successful project is launched with a successful transition. The most dangerous transition can be the one you don’t recognize is happening.
At IRI, we know exactly how critical leadership transitions can be for an organization. Through careful consideration and strategic planning, we believe that transitional times can lead to improved employee engagement and productivity. We know that every business is different, and each requires its own holistic and customized approach for their leadership. Contact us today to discuss the next steps, or give us a call at (313) 965-0350.
15 min
August 15, 2023 Managing Yourself In Times of Change
Learn how to manage others by managing yourself first. Navigate emotions, engage your team, and drive successful transformations.
13 min
August 10, 2023How to Navigate This Year’s ‘Hot Union Summer’
“Hot Union Summer” – you may have heard this term on the news or seen it floating around your social media channels, and that’s because it’s been a summer filled with strikes, fights, and wins for labor unions. While summer may be coming to a close, it doesn’t look like this trend is going away anytime soon, so we’re sharing our labor expertise to help you stay informed and understand how you can respond to ongoing union activity at your organization (or avoid it altogether).
What is Hot Union Summer?
Large corporations like Amazon and Starbucks, as well as organizations from a slew of other industries like film and television, hospitality, healthcare, logistics, higher education, automotive, and more are facing increased discontent among their workforces. Union organizers are taking to social media using hashtags like #HotUnionSummer, #RedHotLaborSummer, #OnStrikeSummer, and #SolidaritySummer to draw attention to their cause.
While California is a hot spot, especially with the increased media attention on the Hollywood strikes, this movement is spreading across the country. Regardless of location or industry, discontent among the workforce is a universal issue for employers right now. Issues range from more traditional organizing topics like pay and benefits, to post-COVID problems like return-to-work policies, and newly emerging challenges like how to use (or not use) AI in the workplace.
With all of this in mind, it’s important to be informed, stay alert, and take steps to be proactive.
Prevention Planning for Union Avoidance
Many organizations will wait until they see active union organizing (or have a union petition) to address employee concerns. That’s a mistake, as employers are significantly limited in what they can fix once a petition is filed.
Instead, prioritize a Labor Relations Readiness Assessment now. If implemented correctly, this can provide a strong foundation in employee relations and teach managers how to better engage with their teams on multiple topics, including unionization. Here is how to get started:
Plan – Identify your goals, determine your approach, understand your existing resources and infrastructure, and outline the actions needed to create and sustain a true state of readiness.
Educate – Give your C-suite, board and senior leaders, HR team, operational leaders and employees the tools and materials they need to understand the impact of unionization.
Assess Vulnerabilities – Prioritize vulnerability assessments, Digital Media Intelligence and company-wide, site-specific analysis of data gathered with recommendations for action steps.
Communicate – Build on expected and trusted channels to include a multi-media strategy that reaches every stakeholder where they are.
Develop Leaders – Create an understanding that maintaining a direct connection with employees is part of a leader’s job.
Engage Employees – Establish (or enhance) a clear and consistent feedback loop so employees know exactly where to go with questions/concerns and can feel confident they will hear back.
Remember – even if you’re not concerned about union activity right now, it’s never a bad idea to remind employees of what makes your organization a great place to work.
Rapid Response to Union Activity
On the other hand, maybe you suspect the start of—or currently are being affected by—this summer’s union activity. If you feel in over your head or like you don’t know how to respond, take a deep breath and consider the following action items:
Readiness Response Team (RRT) – Create an RRT that is comprised of a multi-disciplinary group of leaders, trained to serve at the first sign of union activity.
Conduct initial awareness meetings and communications – Schedule meetings with your senior executive and leadership teams to gauge activity and discuss awareness talking points and responsibilities.
Schedule training – Implement training for key internal stakeholders that focuses on understanding the union organizing process, early warning signs, communications rules, and the NLRB.
Conduct a communications audit – Conduct manager interviews and voter assessments and develop communications materials that are responsive to real-time developments.
If you’re even further down the road and are preparing for an election, consider contacting IRI Consultants to help you navigate the process. Having the assistance of a team of experts can help you focus on your employees, ensure they have what they need to make an informed decision, and start to build a stronger organization and culture, regardless of the outcome.
At IRI, we empower organizations to navigate workplace challenges, improve employee engagement and productivity, manage labor relations and implement effective communication strategies to achieve their business and advocacy goals. We believe every business is different, and each requires its own holistic and customized approach to communications. Whether you need an internal communications assessment, guidance in developing your internal communications strategy or social media strategy, digital media intelligence, crisis communications services, media relations, or media training, we have expert communications consultants who can quickly provide a specialized solution. Contact us using the chat on the right to discuss the next steps, or give us a call at (313) 965-0350.
10 min
August 03, 2023Best Practices in Employee Relations – Ulta Beauty
Episode 4.23: Join us for another installment of our “Best Practices in Employee Relations” series. In this episode, we are pleased to be joined by Devon Byrne, Vice President of People Enablement at Ulta Beauty. Ulta Beauty is the largest beauty retailer in the United States, and an award-winning organization, recently recognized by Forbes Magazine as one of the “Best Large Companies”, one of the “Best Employers for Diversity”, and one of the “Best Employers for Women”. Here, she explains:
Why Ulta Beauty has staying power in an ever-changing retail landscape, and how its Employee Relations approach has played a role in that success;
How the diversity of their associates and of their workspaces has allowed them to be more thoughtful about their approach to employee relations;
The value of employee relations teams partnering with DE&I teams; and
Why prioritizing care for associates makes it possible for those associates to show up as their best selves, each and every day!

If you prefer to read along while you listen, we’ve done all the hard work for you! We listened back to this episode and took notes below, and access is free!

Why Ulta Beauty’s Retail Model Has Exceeded Expectations While Other Retail Operations Struggle
Ms. Byrne, the current VP for People Enablement at Ulta Beauty, said many factors are at play as to why Ulta Beauty has staying power in an ever-changing retail landscape.
The first factor has to do with how leadership makes decisions. At Ulta Beauty, leaders contemplate both the guest and retail associate in decision making efforts.
This is done by asking questions like:
How will guests react to this decision?
How will associates react to this decision?
Will an associate be successful in being able to sell this product?
The second factor contributing to Ulta Beauty’s success is allowing guests to utilize them as a one-stop shop. Not only does this beauty product and makeup retailer sell prestige and mass cosmetics, but the organization also provides eyebrow waxes and salon services.
The leadership team came to this one-stop-shop approach by figuring out who the ideal Ulta Beauty guest is, what they want and delivering that to the guest in the best way possible.
By listening to guests and associates, and doing what’s right by both groups, the company’s success happens naturally as a result.
Additionally, Ulta Beauty’s response to COVID-19 allowed the organization to become more successful.
As a result of COVID, Ulta Beauty had to change and become more agile.
COVID-19 has critically changed the way they operate by allowing more remote work. While many other corporate HQs allow for remote work, Ulta Beauty has rolled out remote work opportunities for those in the retail locations and distribution centers.
This helps with feelings of equity across employee groups, no matter their job type.
A challenge of rolling out remote work for some of these locations meant teaching managers how to approach managing in a different way. This yielded questions like:
How do you manage from afar?
How do you manage in a remote environment?
How do you conduct a store visit when you can’t get to the store?
How can you still be connected and engaged with your employees if they’re not in person?

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Reflections On Employee Relations Best Practices At Ulta Beauty
The team at Ulta Beauty makes it their mission to care about the whole individual who comes to work every day, which includes their non-work life.
At every level, the leadership of this organization asks themselves how they can put this principle into action.
A few concrete ways are Ulta Beauty’s Employee Assistance Program, two 24/7 phone lines, and being able to deploy on-site counselors and perform critical incident stress debriefs.
Another way they focus on employee relations best practices is by examining the experience of the job candidate.
Understanding that many guests choose to apply for work at Ulta Beauty, Ms. Byrne considers the onboarding process begins even when someone is a retail guest.
The fact that Ulta Beauty often turns passionate guests into prospective associates is a sign that they have created a positive retail atmosphere.
Often, if an applicant has a negative experience with the employment journey at Ulta Beauty and doesn’t come to work at the organization, the company will try to correct the poor experience that they faced.
Additionally, Ulta Beauty prioritizes taking care of associates by helping them show up as their best selves daily by providing resources.
This can look like offering employees more opportunities to get involved through an employee app called WorkJam or employee recognition practices like sending e-cards that highlight when a team member has exhibited a company value.
Ulta Beauty also creates internal monthly campaigns that hone-in on topics like workplace violence, domestic violence, or mental health awareness.
How Ulta Beauty Utilizes Employee Care Hotlines As An Employee Relations Best Practice
“The whole point of that is that if we care for our associates, and we fix whatever issue or resolve whatever concern they’re having, they will turn around then and be able to better serve our guests.”
Internally, Ms. Byrne’s team changed its name to the Associate Care and Support Group to reflect this level of care, offering two distinct hotlines associates can contact about their issue.
This team is split between two divisions: specialists who handle HR investigations and a human resources service center, which focuses on gathering and working on associate concerns.
Ulta Beauty’s shared services center takes thousands of calls from associates.
Those who are a part of the shared service center utilize the mantra “once and done,” meaning an associate should have a resolution to their employee-relations issue within the span of that phone call.
Ulta uses the data and trends from these calls to get a pulse on the employee experience.
After COVID, these call centers reported an increase in assistance provided to associates for mental health issues, as well as for workplace violence issues.
Using this internal data with data from guest services, social media, annual employee opinion surveys, and loss prevention can offer a complete picture of the associate experience, yielding powerful action planning for the next year.
How DE&I Efforts Relate to Employee Relations Best Practices
Another way Ulta Beauty empowers employees to show up as their best selves is by having a significant intentional push towards DE&I.
The Ulta Beauty DE&I team provides deep training regarding cultural competencies that aims to provide nuance and insight into how people behave and why they do what they do.
Additionally, the DE&I team is staffed by a diverse group of employee relations advisors. This allows for an individual to be able to speak to someone similar in race, culture, or background, giving the associate an outlet who can more empathetically understand what they are going through.
Additionally, the company understands diversity not just to mean the diversity of its employees but also the diversity of work environments and employee groups.
Each employment location can offer different challenges and opportunities.
The types of challenges associates face in the over 1,300 store locations can be different than those challenges hair stylists may face in the same locations, which may greatly differ from those of the company’s the distribution employees, as those centers run 24/7 – and all of those experiences also differ from those officing in the corporate headquarters.
Employer relations best practices at Ulta Beauty mean deploying a personalized strategy in dealing with diverse challenges.
While all employees receive similar resolutions in terms of consistency, timeliness, and equity, managing a situation may look very different depending on where the individual works.
Ulta Beauty faces this type of diversity head-on by equipping employer relations personnel with specialized training and assigning a division of specialists to one specific employee group.
This allows a specialist to focus on one internal market, and employees, in turn, feel more comfortable and more heard in their concerns.
Devon Byrne’s Advice To Other Organizations Defining Their Employee Relations Best Practices
Ms. Byrne is no stranger to working in human relations at large retail establishments, having worked for Gap, Inc. from 1996 until 2006.
After a brief stint at Ulta in 2006, she returned to Gap and stayed until she rejoined the Ulta Beauty team in 2016.
So she first recommends always continuing being a student of the business. You have to know an organization well to support that business effectively and the people who work for you.
Second, use your corporate culture as a guide for employee relations. Since Ulta’s culture prioritizes the associate experience so much, that is used extensively when guiding employee relations best practices.
Third, she recommends becoming a lifelong learner and enjoy your craft enough that you want to keep investing in it and learning how best to do it.
“HR’s job is sometimes the hardest job in the company because not only do you have to be a subject matter expert in HR, you also have to be an expert in the business.”
Devon Byrne Background
Doctorate in Business Management from Argosy University
Certificate in Systems and Processes of Human Resources from Cornell University
Masters of Science, Human Resource Management from Loyola University
Bachelor of Arts, Business, Accounting & Art History from Lake Forest College
Began her career as Faculty in the Fashion Merchandising Department of the Illinois Institute of Art; She’d go on to serve as Faculty with Loyola University, Chicago, and Southern New Hampshire University, as well.
Ms. Byrne was the Director of Global Employee Relations for Gap, Inc.
Currently, she is the Vice President of People Enablement at Ulta Beauty.
Links
Modern Approaches to Connecting with Younger Retail Workers blog by Devon Byrne
Contact
Devon Byrne on LinkedIn
Devon Byrne email: [email protected]
Subscribe & Review The ProjectHR Podcast!
Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of ProjectHR. If the information in our weekly conversations and interviews have helped you in your business journey, please head over to wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to the show. We’d also love it if you left us a five-star review! Your reviews and feedback will not only help us continue to deliver great, helpful content, but it will also help us reach even more amazing professionals just like you!
Managing Yourself In Times of Change
How to Navigate This Year’s ‘Hot Union Summer’
Best Practices in Employee Relations – Ulta Beauty
5 Highly Effective Principles of Companies
Executive Communication Strategies to Make an Impact
Culture Reset: Taking Leadership Back to Basics
35 min
August 01, 2023 5 Highly Effective Principles of Companies
As organizational development (OD) consultants, we are adept at solving clients’ issues by using a host of interventions. Additionally, we help companies prioritize OD principles before a crisis to maintain or elevate their organization’s performance and prevent a crisis.
When using intervention tactics, a good vulnerability assessment holds the key to understanding where to start. But when you’re looking to take it a step further, a vulnerability assessment can help, though what’s often missing is a broader set of principles that explain what companies must do well to become highly effective companies.
Here are five OD principles that can help your company bolster developmental initiatives to enhance performance.
1. Employ Cooperation and Collaboration
Organization development’s central goal is to help organizations become highly effective companies by achieving cooperative order and reversing siloed self-interests. Most managers will never admit to being poor collaborators because they mistake being cooperative as collaborating. Being cooperative means being friendly and willing to share information—akin to wanting to help a friend, not some stranger.
Being collaborative also means working together towards a common goal or purpose. Collaboration as a company-wide practice involves activities that encourage cooperation and collaboration in both formal and informal work settings.
How is your company creating meaningful opportunities for employees and leaders to cooperate and collaborate regularly?
2. Organize for Change.
In highly effective companies, change competency is the presence of a culture that expects change and reacts with the understanding, perspectives, tools, and techniques to make change seamless and effortless.
Is making change a part of your “business as usual”?
3. Remain Flexible.
Flexibility helps companies respond to market changes quickly and effectively. If COVID taught us anything, it’s that highly effective companies must be disciplined AND flexible during turbulent times–meaning disciplined about the outcome AND flexible with its approach the method for achieving what it needs to do.
How well does your company react to the unexpected during turbulent times? Does it flexibly bend when demands are placed on leaders and employees alike?
4. Promote Personal Growth.
Effective talent management programs fill and replenish the talent pool efficiently and provide a wide range of support services to train and develop their leaders and employees. The most notable way companies expect people to improve is in job-related skills, knowledge, and expertise. Just as importantly, highly effective companies encourage employees to grow personally through self-care and well-being. Allowing employees to grow personally and professionally alongside business growth builds confidence, improves productivity and effectiveness, increases employee satisfaction, and reduces turnover.
Do employees know of, and avail themselves of, the career development and growth opportunities provided at all levels of the company?
5. Foster a Leadership Culture.
Most everyone who has worked in a toxic workplace culture knows how poor leadership and management practices can adversely affect employees’ mental and physical health, engagement, job satisfaction, and performance. In highly effective companies, leadership and comprehensive management practices create psychological safety spaces where employees are encouraged to take risks, speak up, and contribute their unique ideas without fear of repercussion.
What does the current level of psychological safety look like in your company?
At IRI, we are experts in leadership development, employee training, organizational communication and development, and skilling, reskilling, cross-skilling, and upskilling strategies. We use this expertise to regularly help organizations develop and implement engaging and personalized organizational development programs to maintain and elevate company performance. If you’re interested in upleveling your organizational development program, contact us using the chat on the right to discuss the next steps, or give us a call at (313) 965-0350.
14 min
July 27, 2023 Executive Communication Strategies to Make an Impact
Learn to improve executive communications by harnessing the power of fairness, transparency, and equity in your message.
16 min
July 19, 2023Culture Reset: Taking Leadership Back to Basics
Episode 4.22: The past year has been a tough one for company culture – between “quiet quitting” causing strife, conflict between employees and leaders on the concept and practice of “work from home”, and rampant layoffs for many companies, morale is on shaky ground. This year, however, hopefully, puts some of that in our collective rear view mirrors, and offers companies a chance to reset, readjust and return to basics, adapting tested strategies to fit our distributed work world. Joining us today is Cris Chouinard, a Lead Consultant with IRI Consultants. Here, she explains:
The value of empathy in the workplace;
Why fostering friendships between co-workers is so important;
How EAG feedback and advice can be a tremendous gift to an organization ; and
How outside consultants can help with post-pandemic workplace culture development!

If you prefer to read along while you listen, we’ve done all the hard work for you! We listened back to this episode and took notes below, and access is free!

Empathy And The Need To Belong In The Workplace
As the most intense and critical parts of the COVID-19 pandemic are largely over, many organizations need to take a moment to reflect and see what they learned. Some of the choices organizations made due to the pandemic were positive.
A core characteristic that arose in post-pandemic workplace culture was the concept of empathy.
Empathy only impacts a workplace’s culture in positive ways. Empathy prevents blaming and helps create a common ground in an organization.
According to researcher Theresa Wiseman, the characteristics of empathy are:
Perspective Taking
Staying Out of Judgment
Recognizing Emotions in Others
Communicating Our Understanding of Other’s Perspectives and Emotions
Empathy and the need for belonging are vital to the human condition. The pandemic only accelerated this with the rise of remote employment opportunities.
Of course, while remote or hybrid work has its upsides, the downside is that it can cause disconnection between people.
For example, if there were hires made during the pandemic, it is possible that these people never met their coworkers until very recently.
Bringing employees that were onboarded virtually together for a face-to-face meeting is a powerful way to build a strong post-pandemic workplace culture.
Assessing how to introduce in-person connection opportunities for a team should be done on a case-by-case basis.
Leaders should poll their teams about their preferences and make a call based on the collected data.
Ms. Chouinard recommends offering occasional in-person connection opportunities on a scheduled basis.
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Fostering Friendships In The Workplace
Fostering friendship between coworkers is a powerful way to encourage positive post-pandemic workplace culture.
“I think those friendships are essential when it comes time to get the work done. […] To have that friendship as the basis of our professional lives can be so very helpful.”
However, leadership or management must understand the boundaries of friendships with subordinates. It’s okay to be friendly and foster the friendships of others, but there is a line that’s critical to maintain.
Leaders having friendships with others in an organization without maintaining good boundaries can be perceived as favoritism.
A good rule of thumb is for leaders to be firm, fair, and consistent regarding workplace friendships.
Additionally, while a leader needs to connect with their team members, they are also responsible for cultivating an environment where friendships can grow.
Steps to help with this include:
Confirming the team’s culture reflects the organization’s values and that these values are healthy.
A leader’s job is to nip unhealthy norms (like cliques) in the bud. Employees working across teams and with different people can help prevent clique formation.
Creating team-building activities.
Having an in-person potluck and inviting virtual employees to attend can help with team building.
Creating And Maintaining Employee Advisory Groups In Post-Pandemic Workplace Cultures
Employee advisory groups (EAG) are about how to get work done while getting authentic buy-in from employees.
A lot of time, effort, and resources go into developing an employee advisory group.
Leaders must set boundaries and communicate the group’s goals before rolling out the option to participate in one.
A good employee advisory group will communicate the wants and needs of employees to leadership. A great employee advisory group will communicate leadership’s vision and ideas for initiatives to EAG team members.
Communicating leadership’s vision to employees while collecting their feedback and advice is a “tremendous gift” to an organization.
Listening to front-line employees’ opinions, even if their opinion doesn’t yield the change they want, empowers them. Employees appreciate being listened to in the workplace.
Nurturing Positive Post-Pandemic Workplace Cultures
Leaders should have conversations that address the culture of a workplace. Sample questions leaders could ask during these discussions include:
How do you define the workplace’s current culture?
How do you define our team’s culture?
Is our team’s culture aligned with the organization?
What are the positive things about our team that we want to nurture?
What parts of our culture should we keep? How will you commit to maintaining those facets of our culture?
What are the things that undermine our ideal culture?
What parts of our culture should we release?
Leaders should communicate the personal impact of cultural changes to employees.
If employees don’t understand the benefits of changing their behavior, they’ll find it difficult to contribute to the change continuously.
Workplace culture changes need to respect and honor former cultures to preserve what is needed and let go of what is not.
Leaders should help people gently let go of the culture that no longer serves the organization.
Developing workplace culture isn’t a top-down process, as team members live it daily. Leaders should empower team members to be a part of workplace culture conversations.
How Outside Consultants Can Help With Post-Pandemic Workplace Culture Development
Consultants, like those at IRI Consultants, will typically assess workplace cultures through the following means:
Asking clients what they perceive to be the workplace culture issue;
Asking clients what they feel they need;
Conducting a diagnostic assessment by involving team members in the discussion.
Diagnostics can look like surveys, focus groups, or other tools.
Many times diagnostics yield different challenges than what leaders perceive.
After the consultant performs a diagnostic assessment, they can take a holistic approach to designing an intervention.
An intervention can look like:
Developing customizable training,
Facilitating team building and retreats,
Coaching executives, managers, or front-line workers.
Organizations shouldn’t be afraid of starting the process of addressing workplace culture. While the prospect of collecting feedback can be intimidating, the end result is worth the investment.
Ms. Chouinard’s Career At IRI Consultants
As the Lead Consultant at IRI Consultants, Ms. Chouinard has worked there for over 24 years. In that time, she’s helped numerous organizations develop and refine their culture.
Now, as post-pandemic workplace culture development is more important than ever before, she encourages organizations to examine their culture so they can receive better engagement, better retention, higher morale, and satisfaction.
I think that the talent at IRI is so tremendous that if you have an issue or a problem that you want to solve, we are likely going to have somebody who’s an expert that can assist.
Links
IRI Consultants
Contact
Cris Chouinard email: [email protected]
Subscribe & Review The ProjectHR Podcast!
Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of ProjectHR. If the information in our weekly conversations and interviews have helped you in your business journey, please head over to wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to the show. We’d also love it if you left us a five-star review! Your reviews and feedback will not only help us continue to deliver great, helpful content, but it will also help us reach even more amazing professionals just like you!
Navigating the 24-Hour News Cycle with Transparent Employee Communications

Shaping Corporate Communications with Digital Media Intelligence

Strategic Communications Regarding Staffing Ratio Legislation

Driving Business Results with Employee Experience Strategy

How To Take Action On Your Employee Engagement Survey

Retention Strategies To “Never Lose An Employee Again”
29 min

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ProjectHR is a podcast dedicated to building better workplaces. ProjectHR is brought to you by IRI Consultants. IRI helps organizations navigate workplace challenges, improve employee engagement and…

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