Workplace culture and diversity and inclusion with Dr. Viva Nsair

From your research, what is important to developing a strong, positive workplace culture?

Workplace culture is the framework that establishes how things get done, relationships are developed, successes and failures are addressed—essentially, how to function daily. They are the shared, taken-for-granted and implicit assumptions of the organization. Developing a strong workplace culture requires building community within the organization and having leaders who model the values of the organization. It is like creating a habit on a corporate scale, and just like habits, workplace cultures can be negative or positive. Making it positive means instilling values and practices of trust and psychological safety. In other words, employees are trusted to be competent and not reprimanded for making mistakes or challenging the status quo.  

What role does employee fulfillment play in culture?

When there is a match between what the organization values through its culture and an employee’s values, there is a stronger sense of belonging, engagement and fulfillment for the employee. For example, if the culture of the organization is to value health and well-being, an employee who is more health conscious will feel heard and experience increased job satisfaction.

What role does culture play when job seekers are deciding whether to accept an offer?

When evaluating an offer, job seekers should ask questions about corporate culture and consider what joining a particular workplace culture would mean for their work-life preferences. For example, a family-sacrifice culture where employees are encouraged to prioritize work over family obligations will dictate that employees may stay late in the office instead of being able to pick kids up from school or attend a social non-work function. If the job seeker does not want that work-family dynamic, then they should not accept an offer from that type of organization. Workplace culture strongly influences employee behavior so trying to behave differently than co-workers and established norms is challenging.

How do companies establish and maintain their culture in remote or hybrid settings? Any particular or different challenges or opportunities?

That is an interesting question. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, remote and hybrid work configurations have increased leading to employees potentially feeling more isolated. How companies go about maintaining culture will depend on how many and how often employees work remotely. The main concern with keeping a strong workplace culture is to continue to provide and encourage employees the opportunity to interact with a range of their colleagues from across the organization. Most organizations have put it on the manager to check in with their remote workforce to fight off isolation. Organizations like Cisco have embraced remote work and encouraged their employees to continue to work from home, but have maintained their culture by encouraging and funding social events like weekend camping trips.

What are corporations doing currently to support diversity, equity and inclusion efforts? When a company decides to cultivate or improve their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, how do they ensure any changes implemented are sustained? How would a company effectively measure their efforts?

To start, organizations have created diversity, equity and inclusion director and manager roles where the successful candidates are tasked with reviewing and creating policies, procedures and protocols that encourage more diversity, equity and inclusion. Training against biases, increasing exposure to diversity and encouraging diverse collaborations are some of the outcomes that we are seeing. Directors in these roles will establish targets with senior executives, and the progress made to fulfill these targets is used to measure them. 

Sustaining this progress requires the organization to embed diversity, equity and inclusion in the culture of the organization. To do this, leaders need to gain buy in from others in the organization and teach by example. A strong community that is bought into an idea can perpetuate it and further engrave it into the culture. It is definitely a slow but worthwhile process. 

How do you incorporate current news regarding the labor market into the classroom?

My favorite task when preparing for the classroom is to identify current news that would be relevant to the upcoming topic I plan to discuss. Thanks to social media and resources like YouTube and podcasts, I can bring some really interesting and current information to our classroom conversations. For example, we discussed how Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and his decisions to fire and then rehire many employees have caused an interesting and potentially detrimental impact on the company culture. Though this is upsetting for Twitter and the stakeholders involved, discussing it in the classroom is a wonderful opportunity to spark student interest in these topics and teach them to engage with current news using the tools they learn in the classroom.