TWENTY TWENTY, commonly known as the year of COVID19 or "the Pandemic", was a seminal year for individuals and organizations. How we work and live together changed dramatically.
With the vaccines already in the arms of millions, we have partially emerged from the socially distanced relationships with our customers, team members, business partners, and communities. Among the more forward-thinking organizations, now fully cognizant of the cost of a reactive stance, there is an active evaluation of the pros and cons of their pre-pandemic practices and rituals, including remote work policies, decision making processes, recruitment and hiring practices, the voice of the customer programs, community participation, social impact participations and so forth…in other words, anything and everything that has a material impact on their relationship with their ecosystem, and consequently, organization's performance.
Because of the pandemic or adjacent to it, 2020 also became another historic year where numerous social issues were put on full display, questioned, and examined globally. These issues have had significant reverberations into the everyday functioning of organizations. The Me Too, trans rights, and Black Lives Matter movements demanded meaningful organizational responses to gender and racial injustices. Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) has become a top priority for many C-suites. The pandemic, which left many without jobs, healthcare, and social safety nets or caused the departure of millions of women from the labor market, raised questions about our workforce management policies and practices.
The reality is that in a diverse society and workforce, linked digitally to a global community, priorities similar to BLM, trans rights and Me Too will continue to surface in other aspects of life where we may have neglected to take impactful action. Hence, organizations need tools and methods that can create sustainable solutions that can perform for the long term and foresee the new challenges before they become too complex and costly to address.
Tangerine Lab’s clients were no exception in being affected by these new realities and we had to respond with solutions and support. With a backdrop of a burgeoning remote work culture we tackled questions like:
How might we build and nurture a collaborative and innovative culture remotely or bottom-up?
How might we build and nurture ANY culture at all when we are not physically collocated?
How might we build and nurture a customer/employee-empathic culture?
How might we integrate the priorities and objectives of various current and future social movements similar to BLM, Me Too with how we operate day today?
The premise of this offering is that success in meeting all the current and future challenges is built upon the organization’s mindsets where mindsets are a set of ethos that guides the organization in its decisions and executions. Mindsets are how you naturally work, collaborate, interact and solve problems.
In an Empathic Organization, the natural state of the organization is to perform its functions by placing the perspective of the impacted stakeholders at the center of the innovation and problem-solving processes.
The epicenters of influence for The Empathic Organization are:
The human resources departments and their policies, practices, rituals, and systems that recruit, hire, develop, lead and manage the performance of the organization’s most precious asset, its employees.
The leadership suite or the c-suite with its shared understanding of values, philosophy, mission, vision, objectives, and behavior modeling.
As such, Tangerine Lab’s offering for The Empathic Organization is concentrated in these focal areas:
I. Human Resource Management Transformation
Building and nurturing an empathic organization begins with the recruitment process and continues throughout every stage of an employee’s journey with the organization. Tangerine Lab’s offering leads and supports our clients in the assessment, optimization, if necessary, the redesign of the following areas:
Talent acquisition strategies that look above and beyond education, years of experience, and job titles in order to attract the type of candidates that will build and enrich the empathic organization. Proven records in collaboration, creative confidence, embrace of ambiguity, optimism in design, trying, learning, a bias for action, and comfort in constructively failing and sharing experiences are more important than the conventional metrics.
Onboarding practices that value the diversity of the new hires and their contributions, and strive to deeply understand their needs, motivations, and barriers in order to ensure they are equipped with the tools and capabilities they need to be effective.
Career development plans that support the objectives of the empathic organization by continually developing the required mindsets, as well as the fulfillment and growth of the employees and leaders.
Performance measurement practices that evaluate employees’ manifestations of the empathic mindsets, such as, reframe and even rewards for failure in the performance management framework as a necessary component of growth, innovation and progress.
Reward and recognition programs that elevate empathic mindsets.
Employee experience and retention evaluations regimens that gauge employee experience against the objectives of an empathic organization.
II. Executive Alignment And Human-Centered Leadership
Leadership alignment on outcomes, expectations, execution, and performance measurements of an empathic culture.
Empathic leadership decision-making processes that are centered around impacted stakeholders’ (e.g., customers, employees, board, community, investors) needs, wants, challenges, and motivations.
Systems thinking to ensure all intended and unintended consequences are empathically considered in the organization’s decisions and strategies.
Impactful Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) efforts that go beyond press releases, symbolic appointments, and focus on the integration of DEI in everyday functions and activities of the organization.
For more information please contact Tangerine Lab here.