Transparency in the organization matters from the very second your organization hires employees and impacts long-term relationships as it fosters an organizational culture that is established on honesty, open communications, and trust. Transparent work culture generally translates into effective and extremely productive organizations. Encouraged transparency results in the elimination of confusion, building trust, and boosting employee engagement, as the organization operates a healthy, happy and satisfying work culture.
Transparent work culture is one that shares data and knowledge freely. You enable your employees to work in such a manner that makes it easier for them to notice what is happening in the organization, what is likely to happen, and why. Leaders are honest and open, and everyone in the organization has access to the same relevant information, irrespective of their positions. In such a work culture everyone knows about the organizational objectives, its strategy to attain them, and how well are those strategies going.
A transparent work culture ensures that the employees and teams are well engaged with the organization. It is very important as a disengaged employee is in a way just for the paycheque. Organizations usually have a hard time motivating them to get the work done. Even when they get their tasks done, they put in the least amount of effort possible. On the contrary, engaged employees have utmost care and value for their job and organization. They show up to their workplace every day ready to contribute to their organizational goals and remain invested in their role. Engaged employees are always productive, and happy and build a strong work culture.
1. Educate the employees about business progress
For sure your employees are familiar with their roles, their day-to-day tasks, and the targets they are expected to attain. Even if they wouldn’t, they will probably lose their chance of receiving recognition from the organization. That’s the thing, not attaining a certain target isn’t a bigger deal for an employee than it is for you. For instance, if your sales team gets five closures, your business revenue can boost by 30% for the month. But are your employees even aware of this? You need to educate your organization about the revenue generated by the business, how the boost in revenue influences the business, and how growth in business results in financial gain for every employee.
2. Crystal clear communication
In order to establish clear communication in your organization, you should be focusing on message delivery and put forward constructive questions to establish a clear flow of communication. When establishing a transparent work culture, you have to prioritize encouraging your employees for participating in open communication. To level, the communication for transparent work culture, make sure to deliver the relevant information and prevent using too many details in one message. Encourage your departmental teams to participate in open communication by sharing their challenges and experience.
3. Initiate transparency from the hiring phase
Imagine publishing a job description without adding the salary offered or the roles and responsibilities of that particular role. Would it make any kind of sense? This is why it is said that organizations should prioritize developing a transparent work culture right from the hiring phase of their organization. Your talent acquisition department must work with a transparent hiring and onboarding procedure that comprises communicating with the new hires and informing them about the organization’s work. You can easily do this by making a recruiting video to exhibit your organization’s culture and how the candidate fits in well for the organization. Organizations also use tools such as employee engagement software and PMS to effectively establish transparent work culture.
4. Embrace the ‘ask anything’ culture
Having meetings with your departmental heads or employees weekly or daily is one of the most effective ways to establish transparent work culture and enhance employee engagement. Such meetings help the employees in developing understanding and a bond with each other and make the organization more employee-centric.
Embracing an ask anything culture will help your organization in asking leadership the questions that have been concerning them. You can go for an employee engagement software through which your employees can ask questions anonymously and get them addressed publicly. By this, your employees get the liberty to ask anything without having the fear of being misinterpreted or judged.
5. Prioritize pre and post-event surveys
Events are a great way to spot the disengaged employees of your workforce. You can easily understand this by rolling out an employee engagement survey. Before the event, you can use a pre-survey to ask your employees about their expectations and how in their opinion the event will be valuable on the professional front. While after the event you can ask them questions about how did the event go, what they liked about the event and how they think there can be improvisations for further events. Such a range of questions will give you an idea about the areas your organization lack, and how they feel about the organization, and enhance employee engagement. Having a PMS or employee engagement survey is highly recommended as it enables you to roll out surveys for your teams or the entire organization very easily.
It is no secret that the employees are the drivers of employee engagement in organizations. Therefore, establishing a transparent work culture brings tons of benefits to your organization, amongst which employee engagement is the one that stands out as having an engaged workforce is vital for the organization to attain its objectives and desired success. For more assistance regarding improving employee engagement and experience, reach out to us today!
Gaurav Sabharwal
CEO of JOP
Gaurav is the CEO of JOP (Joy of Performing), an OKR and high-performance enabling platform. With almost two decades of experience in building businesses, he knows what it takes to enable high performance within a team and engage them in the business. He supports organizations globally by becoming their growth partner and helping them build high-performing teams by tackling issues like lack of focus, unclear goals, unaligned teams, lack of funding, no continuous improvement framework, etc. He is a Certified OKR Coach and loves to share helpful resources and address common organizational challenges to help drive team performance. Read More