Finding the common ground

Photo / Michael Bradley.

What does a truly flexible workplace mean? It's a place where you can be yourself, you can talk about family and personal issues with your boss and ask for concessions such as going to your child's prize giving, knowing that permission will be given without fuss. You can be creative with your requests for flexibility without fear of censure.

The Warehouse was recently winner of the EEO Trust Work & Life Supreme award for its innovative parenting programme run in its South Auckland distribution centres in conjunction with Skip, a Ministry of Social Development-backed community initiative that provides practical parenting knowledge and skills.

The initiative, seen by Sir Stephen Tindall and Warehouse management as a proactive way to bring the European (English and Pakeha) management and its multinationally diverse team, predominantly Maori and Pacific Island workforce, to a better level of understanding, is now going to be extended to its stores and support office in 2011, according to HR manager Kirsty Wooding. For this kind of initiative to work, the message and support has to come from the company's most senior people.

It was an email from Sir Stephen Tindall to Wooding which started the ball rolling. "Buy-in came right from the top. We had support from Sir Stephen Tindall, CEO, Ian Morrice and Paul Walsh, the HR Director," she says.

It was acknowledged that a gap existed between management and the team at the South Auckland distribution centres, says Wooding. "The gap was a lack of understanding of one another and if we were to have the anatomy of a great workplace, that had clear alignment to vision and values, a sense of community, where we developed our people and a performance culture, first we really needed to know what made one another tick," says Wooding. Then they could support and grow their people and the operation.

Managers and team members all attended parenting workshops together. Staff "left the hierarchy at the door," says Wooding. "The leveller was that they were parents," she adds. Parents and non-parents were invited to attend the sessions as they were grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings or prospective parents. "Their experiences were just as important because they themselves had been parented at some point in their lives."

Team member wellbeing is important to us, if all is well at home, the chances of absence is less likely, meaning a reduction in cost and productivity effects are minimised.The Warehouse HR manager, Kirsty WoodingWorking with Skip was a "new and fresh" way to work with another organisation and focus on our own internal community, says Wooding. "It was an opportunity for our team members and managers to find out about positive parenting in a supportive environment at work - something that they would not normally get a chance to do."

The benefits of the programme to the company, has been a decrease in absenteeism and an increase in loyalty. "Team member wellbeing is important to us, if all is well at home, the chances of absence is less likely, meaning a reduction in cost and productivity effects are minimised," says the HR manager.

Teams must all pull in the same direction to achieve success and concentrating solely on the bottom line is not going do it. "You also must have your team's hearts and minds - the desire, the passion for success. How you capture this is the essential, delicate balance. We believe that the Skip programme is just one of many initiatives we are working on with our team members at the DCs lift engagement which in turn, lifts productivity," says Wooding.

The initiative has improved the level of trust between the management and the team, she says. "If someone says I'm late because of the little one or I need time off, because I've got to do x, y or z with the family, within the bounds of leave, the team managers feel more understanding about it," she says.

After the programme, many Warehouse parents and caregivers talked about how the workshops allowed them to build empathy and connect with each other around their shared parenting experiences. Sharing experiences gave them insight into the lives of others and gave them a space where conversations could start, says Wooding.

"I think it is a worthwhile cause to push to other organisations," commented one worker.

"We all look at one another as another work colleague but [it's good] to know that we're all experiencing the same things, we're not alone," said one team member.

All the participants appreciated the fact that their employer had allowed them to take part in the Skip workshops during working hours. They felt this not only valued them as workers, but also as parents and caregivers.

Besides the connections that they built with workmates around their shared experiences, many talked about how the workshops had made them feel "like a big family".

Chris Johnson, an executive coach at Kerridge & Partners, remembers working in factory as a young graduate in the UK. On Friday afternoons, everyone came together at 3pm for afternoon tea. "It created a family atmosphere," he says. "The 260-year-old company was like a family - it was about a culture of respect."

This feeling of family, felt by the staff will also be conveyed to the customer, adds Johnson. "Who are the people who come into The Warehouse? Families. These initiatives tie in the organisation to the customer business," he says.

Johnson is an advocate of bringing family into work. Bring your daughter or son to work days are worthwhile, he says. "I think it demystifies your workplace, work has a certain mystique," he says.

There are other group initiatives which can help motivate staff, says Johnson, who worked with the supermarket chain, Sainsbury in the UK in its supply chain and distribution side. He found that programmes helping workers with literacy and numeracy took off. For some of these workers, this was the first time anybody had ever invested time in them, he says.

What The Warehouse has succeeded in doing is, in taking everyone's point of view into account and its obligations to staff, it is then creating an environment where people can connect at a human level, says executive coach, Yvonne McLean from Strategic Direction Consulting.

"Some bosses invite the human connection, some don't," she says. McLean remembers having a boss who would tell her off for time wasting when as a manager, she would take time to talk to her staff about what was happening in their lives.

"I would ask about how their children were, whatever was on their mind. I saw that as an investment in my relationship with these people, to really care, not just take from them. The Warehouse initiative is encouraging people to take a genuine interest in each other," she says.

People in management positions should challenge themselves, to find out one thing about their work colleagues every now and then. "It does not have to be prying, but it means that you and they are connecting."

"If you can create a workplace where people feel valued by being allowed to show their real self, what you get is huge loyalty."

If you are not your real self at work, it is stressful and draining, says the former lawyer, who while she found her former legal career intellectually stimulating, she had "a mask fully in place" when she was at work. As an executive coach she is herself. "What I love about it is my heart is involved, when that happens, you stop working."