For the past month, I have been studying the O.C. Tanner Institute 2020 Global Culture Report.  It contains valuable insights for leaders everywhere:

Below is a summary of my top takeaways from the report.

1. To create a better overall employee experience, organizations need to focus on high-impact, daily micro-experiences that define an employee’s life at work.
2. Micro-experiences connect employees to purpose, opportunity, success, appreciation, well being, and leadership.
3. If you want to build a thriving workplace culture, create great micro-experiences.
4. Great workplace cultures generate energy that fuels people to innovate, to wow customers, to draw in the best people, and outperform competitors in virtually every aspect of business.
5. Diagnose if burnout is a problem in the organization and then find the cultural issues causing it.
6. The outdated leader-knows-best style and lopsided power structure are not working. Encourage a model of shared leadership with their teams.
7. Build connections by utilizing regular one-to-one conversations between leaders and their team members.
8. Successful teams feel a strong sense of autonomy and psychologically safe.
9. Actively listen to understand your people—don’t ask for feedback just to “check the box.”
10. My biggest takeaway: Extra time spent at work with employees improved company performance, while extra time at work spent with people outside the company didn’t make a difference.  While CEOs are expected to be the public face of their company, the reality is that interacting with and supporting employees is a more effective use of time.

Thanks to Peter Bromberg, Director of the Salt Lake City Public Library for bringing the report to my attention.  Read the full O.C. Tanner Institute 2020 Global Culture Report for free online or in a downloadable pdf version. It is not a long read, but well worth it.