Because of the culture – creating a positive and productive workplace

CIMSPA CEO Tara Dillon explains why company culture is an essential part of a successful business as well as the key changes CIMSPA has made.

There is an ever-growing spotlight on company culture and the effect it has on public image as well as employee retention and productivity. The positive result of this is that more businesses are reconsidering how much attention they pay to internal culture, realising that it can boost profits as much as any other business-savvy strategy.

As the CEO of a not-for-profit with an award-winning working environment, Tara Dillon reveals the foundations of CIMSPA’s culture and how it has been built into a prominent organisational asset.

“If I can use the experience I’ve got to make a difference to somebody’s career, how they’re feeling, their quality of life and quality of work, why wouldn’t I?

In the past, people’s work and attitude towards it was driven by necessity. You worked to earn a living, and not much else mattered. Now, people are driven by their values. I think people want a social contract with their employer – they are looking for a high quality of life and to enjoy being at work. As the head of an organisation, it’s important that I recognise that and take steps to make sure that we meet people’s standards.

Why? Does it matter that we meet people’s wish lists when we’re paying them anyway?

Well, by making people feel comfortable at work and concentrating on that social contract, you are enabling and empowering your employees to do the very best in their roles, creating a much greater chance of success as an organisation.

1. Treat employees like adults

Let’s look at it on a more practical level.

You want employ a person. There are 52 weeks in the year and you ask them to work for around 48 of them, and 5 days out of each of those weeks. In a 24-hour day, they are asleep for 8 and at work for another 8. They’re a conscientious, hard-working professional, but they don’t want to burn out. People will only dedicate their energy to you for that vast proportion of their time if you make it worth their while. It’s unrealistic to expect otherwise.

Everyone needs to be able to balance their time – we all have a life and do important things outside of work, so we want to finish work feeling good instead of exhausted with no energy for other commitments.

It’s also no good making everything theoretically nice but with so many rules that people are restricted.

Every adult that you employ makes sensible decisions on a daily basis – we pay bills, pay rent or a mortgage, manage time, events and arguments with family and friends. We never received training for any of it, yet we’ve all worked out our own strengths and skills.

So why, when someone enters a workplace, would we say that they aren’t capable of making their own decisions? We tell people what free time they can have, when they should arrive at work and when they can go home. We tell them what to do and chastise them when they’ve got it wrong. It’s belittling, it’s disrespectful, it’s mistrustful and it’s counterproductive.

We used to teach children in schools like that. But sitting children in rows and forcing them to recite lines with no room for creativity or curiosity or even recognition that each child is different meant that many didn’t thrive and left without realising their own potential.

It’s the same in a workplace. If you hire an expert but then give them a precise list of tasks for each day to which they are held minutely accountable, they have no chance of using their expertise to your greatest advantage. By asking an individual how they work best and generally showing an interest in their work for your organisation, you will gain so much more.

Creating an environment where people feel valued and that they’re making a difference, are recognised for their contribution and finish work each day feeling good is a no-brainer if you want to hire and retain the best people for the success of your business.

Which means that organisations need to adapt or they will struggle.

Our job as leaders is to respect our employees’ expertise and create an environment where they can excel and contribute to the success of our business.

2. Embed trust

So how do you create that environment?

We ripped up the rulebook.

Hybrid working

There are a lot of organisations that are now demanding that employees return to the office full time. Before the pandemic that was normal, but the world has changed, and people have realised that they are entirely capable of doing their jobs without five days of commuting.

We operate a hybrid policy now. Being in the office is great for connecting with your team and especially for meeting people from outside of your immediate work bubble, but it can’t be denied that people can work just as efficiently from home and should be trusted to do so. With all the technology at our fingertips now, hybrid working is seamless and allows people to gain back more time to do what’s important to them. Which makes them happier and better able to do their jobs well.

Expense policy

Our expense policy is also about ensuring our people are comfortable.

As adults, we are all capable of budgeting appropriately, so why wouldn’t we trust people to do that with work expenses?

We ask employees to be realistic – to treat our money as their own. We do this because we want to ensure that they are safe and comfortable rather than feeling limited in their spending and suffering as a result. That means that they can buy enough food to function properly or book a hotel that’s near where they need to be and where they will get a good night’s sleep. Anything that means they are able to represent CIMSPA with energy and passion.

Unlimited leave

Lots of my peers thought I was mad when I told them we were introducing unlimited annual leave. Leaders assume that nobody will ever turn up and their company will fail within months.

The reality is that we metaphorically shook hands with our employees, and it just worked.

People know that it’s a deal – if they get the job done, they can have more time off. That means if there’s a big family event someone wants to attend, they can make sure they get everything done in advance and go and enjoy the party. It also means that if someone’s finished a big project that they worked really hard on, they can take a day off to relax.

Nobody is worrying about planning their life and most importantly when they need rest around a set number of days awarded to them. Which means that on the days that they are working, they are well-rested and focused. If anyone ever does take it too far, it’s easy to review their performance and address that individually rather than making a sweeping assumption that nobody will hold up their end of a bargain.

Making mistakes

Speaking of mistakes, it’s important to allow people to make them.

Once you’ve developed a team of highly capable and curious individuals, the best way to encourage more learning and more curiosity is to allow people to skin their knees.

By giving people overly-specific instructions and constant criticism – even with good intentions – you will scare people into losing their confidence, not trying new things and failing to build any resilience.

Instead, it’s important to be approachable.

If an employee made a mistake and told you, then you got extremely cross about it, what would that solve? It would create a horrible place to work for them. When someone makes a mistake and they are immediately made to feel frightened and stressed, they think they are bad at their job and they want to leave.

Having a culture of fear is like a disease in an organisation. It creates knowledge silos where people are paranoid and don’t talk to each other. They don’t do as good a job.

Even the best talent makes mistakes, so to retain good people, you need to enable them to tell their manager about an error without fear. They need to know that they will receive calm, friendly support and have the opportunity to learn so that they don’t repeat the mistake.

When your employees don’t fear failure, they grow and your business grows too.

3. Make it a reality

It took courage to get rid of standard policies and procedures, and some people were quite nervous of the changes. It didn’t take as long as you’d think, though, to put in place this new way of working. Once we’d explained the feeling and environment that we were trying to create – the principle of trust – the logistics were easy.

We’ve had very few issues. Other CEOs have said to me that they’ll never follow suit because they don’t understand how you can operate your organisation without being certain that your employees aren’t in the park or watching TV all day. We said we would review things after a year if we needed to, but we never did because when you stop focusing on the small things and instead look at simply whether people get the job done or not, it just works.

I’m proud of the results.

While senior leadership and our people and culture experts have created this culture and we reinforce it with our own actions, it’s up to the team to respect and uphold it – and they do.

Offering people trust throughout their work empowers them and creates a space in which they can show that they are trustworthy, put trust in their colleagues and put trust in their employer.

4. Accept that there are challenges

It sounds counterintuitive, but there are challenges to having a great culture.

Because people like the culture so much at CIMSPA, senior staff don’t tend to leave. That means there isn’t aways room for people to progress and be promoted within the organisation.

We want people to grow as it helps CIMSPA to grow, so we work hard on allowing people to develop laterally. But it doesn’t solve everything.

That’s why one of the things we’ve built into the culture is supporting people to leave.

If someone has developed to the point where you can’t offer them the role that they have naturally grown into, it’s unfair to fight them and it won’t make them feel valued to insist that they stay.

Everyone wants to attract and retain the best talent, but when talking about retention it’s important that it’s for the right reasons. If somebody is ready to leave, let them go.

It’s a very good barometer of the success of your organisation and its culture if you have nurtured somebody to a point where they feel that they can now move to the next step. It’s to be embraced and encouraged – if you can give them a job and they can support you at a higher level, then that’s fantastic. If you can’t, then help them to get to that level somewhere else.

That’s why at CIMSPA we will help people write their CV or gain all the skills their need to move forward in their career. We invest because it’s part of our role as an employer to help our employees grow, even if it means they might not continue growing within our organisation.

Otherwise, you are creating traps for people and then the wonderful culture you’ve built starts to deteriorate. The trust is gone.

5. See the proof of your success

Recently, CIMSPA underwent a major restructure, which involved making some roles redundant.

It’s the hardest thing I’ve done in my career, but I know it was the right strategy to ensure the organisation can keep moving forwards and be adaptable to change.

There is no world in which redundancy isn’t incredibly tough for everyone involved, especially those losing their jobs. However, the strength of CIMSPA’s culture has been proven and we have been sustained by it throughout.

Everyone has been incredibly supportive and caring towards their colleagues during this difficult process. I’ve spoken to a few people who have left and they’re grateful for how the restructure was handled by both those involved and everyone else who was respectful and kind and understanding.

That display of positive behaviour across the team is born of the culture. If CIMSPA had a toxic environment, we would have seen – like at many other organisations where the decision has been made to make roles redundant – isolation, negativity and resentment.

6. Reflect on how you can maintain the culture

It’s when things are tough like this that you really appreciate that a strong culture can’t simply be decreed. It has to be built and maintained through a continual ethos that, even when well embedded, requires your ongoing attention and adaptability as a leader.

Putting people first has to remain at the heart of it all, because culture is shaped by the people who live it every day. I never underestimate how vital it is to create space for honest conversations and regular feedback and to be prepared to make changes where needed to make sure our culture continues to support our team.

One thing I do think it’s important to recognise is that culture means different things to different people. What feels like belonging or motivation to one team member might not resonate the same way with another. That’s why as leaders we need to listen deeply to maintain a culture that’s inclusive, evolving and respectful of different perspectives.

Striking the right balance between valuing long-standing team members, who carry history and experience of the organisation’s evolution, and welcoming fresh voices who bring new ideas, is key. My belief is that if you can get this balance right, culture becomes not only a reflection of where you’ve been but a driver for where you’re going in the future.

While I love the culture that we have at CIMSPA, it’s important to recognise that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Every organisation must find its own way when it comes to creating, developing and embracing its culture. It must be shaped by the organisations purpose, its people and its ambitions and objectives.

That takes courage.

Being brave enough to question what’s not working, to try new approaches and to lead by example is what sets successful cultures apart. As an employer, I firmly believe that it’s your responsibility to create an environment that nurtures talent, reflects your values and drives collective success. This has to be the case for culture to become more than just a concept, but a driver for great performance and long-term growth.

A thriving culture doesn’t happen by chance, it has to be built with intention, led with purpose and sustained through action. Then culture becomes your greatest business asset. Get it right, and your team will work better; your organisation will fly – because of the culture.