3 Workplace Realities You Need to Understand for a High-Performance Business

Times are changing, and you may need to rethink everything you learned in the last decade about employer/employee relationships. Here are three modern workplace realities you need to embrace with recommendations to help you grow and build a great place to work.

Reality: Employee loyalty is not dead—it has simply been redefined.

It is a dangerous fallacy to believe the current myth that employee loyalty is dead.  Far from it! Employee loyalty is not dead, but we must realize from where it lives.

Loyalty today is alive and well in great cultures.  Long-time tenure is far more likely within companies with great cultures than with poor cultures.

Reality: Maintaining high employee motivation once focused on pay and perks. Today it is more about purpose and values.

Pay (base, commission, bonus, etc.) and perks (benefits, time off, flexible schedules, etc.) are satisfiers—there has to be “enough” in the system to attract and retain today’s best. But even an employee whose sole motivation is money-money-money will not remain loyal within a workplace that is corrupt, toxic, or immoral.

Today’s most successful firms look beyond pay and perks to build a dynamic workplace where purpose and values are clarified, promoted, and lived.

In fact, today’s top talent are far more willing to give up a little on the pay and perks if they live within a workplace that is filled with opportunity, vitality, freedom, and flexibility.

Reality: People might join a company, but they leave a boss.

One of the most consistent research findings over the past 50 years in business is that the #1 reason people usually leave a company is a lousy supervisor.

Even with a strong set of solid, fair, and profitable operating standards, good employees will not tolerate being forced to work under a dictatorial, untrusting, bloviating tyrant. Would you?

It is essential to embrace that all management—not just senior management—must be on the same bus when it comes to building a high-performance culture.

One bad apple can indeed spoil the whole bunch!

To learn more on how to integrate these strategies with real-world simple best practices, download Culture 24/7: Four Keys to Growing a Great Workplace.