A recent survey, 2024 Workplace Culture Outlook,from Emtrain, analyzed 100 million microsurvey responses over the past 16 months from over 500 organizations, and two results stood out. There was a decrease of 12% in employees who think their colleagues value creating respectful work relationships. And there was a 20% decrease in employees who agree or strongly agree that their senior leaders lead by example when it comes to making decisions that put the interests of the organization first.
Other highlights from the report are as follows as these categories saw decreases:
- Nurturing Trust (3.5%)
- Advancing Allyship (4.2%)
- Cultivating Authenticity (5.1%)
“2024 is shaping up to be a difficult year for leaders,” said Janine Yancy, CEO and founder of Emtrain, in a statement. “Cutting employee experience budgets risks overlooking a key investment: training and analytics. This empowers teams, leading to lower turnover, fewer claims, and overall cost savings. Invest in your people and data, not just cost control, and emerge stronger than ever."
The report offers four key areas business leaders can focus on to help minimize the decline in workplace culture in 2024.
Shifting from employee experience to employee enablement: Encouraging managers to coach employees to embrace challenges as growth opportunities and to proactively seek help when needed from workplace leaders or other colleagues.
Developing an allyship muscle: Allyship is a skill, which leaders demonstrate when they use their privilege to create an opportunity for someone who likely faces bias and/or has fewer opportunities than the ally. Developing an allyship muscle does not cost any money, and it infuses diversity, ethics, inclusion, and belonging into a workplace culture.
Being intentionally transparent and providing context for clarity: There are no effective shortcuts to communicating with employees and sharing business needs and expectations. Don’t just tell employees “the what”; paint them a picture of “the why”.
Nurturing trust: Trust is the connective tissue between co-workers, employees, managers, and the organization. Trust is earned through people's actions over time. Coaching and reminding people that everyone's actions impact others, and that people in an organization are interconnected and need each other to achieve shared goals, are critical to nurturing trust.