Organizing for Being More Human

If I had titled this blog post “More Human Employee Manuals” would you have opened it?

Maybe if you are a CFO, business manager or human resources director you might have clicked with gusto, but let’s face it, if you are teacher, division director, or other school leader, the idea of reading about more human manuals sounds a little...dull. Imagine choosing to write about it!

After reading this column, you may never see your employee manual in the same light again. If you haven't taken a look at it lately, go ahead, dust it off. You are looking at an artifact of your school culture.

Implicitly or explicitly, your employee manual sends a message for how your school is organized and what matters. It says something about your school’s values and how the rules and norms of the school protect those values. If an archeologist were to find your employee handbook 100 years from now, what would they learn about your school and what was important to the community? Would they learn anything at all?

Your employee manual showcases how your school is organized, like it or not. Is your organization organized for joy? For compliance? For profit? For health and wellbeing? For diversity and inclusion? For anti-racism? For being right? For being curious? For being more human? Crack open that employee handbook and see what you learn about how your school is organized and what it prioritizes. Is it a long list of rules, obligations and forms to complete or is a guide to understanding and thriving in your school's culture?

Nordstrom is famously known for its one sentence employee handbook: “Use good judgment in all situations.” While I believe that somewhere at Nordy’s there is a longer and legal version of employee expectations and benefits, this story of the Nordstrom manual speaks to the core value of trust. And there is a reason why Nordstrom has often appeared at the top of the list of destination workplaces. Of course, they have traditionally also paid better than other department stores - another artifact. A company like Netflix has an employee handbook that reads more like a manifesto, and while it doesn't leave a lot to the employee's interpretation, there is a lot in there about how to be a successful employee at the company. And if you don't like it, then you shouldn't work there.

MIT Professor and social psychologist, Edgar Schein, whose research defined much of what we know about organizational theory, talked about the three levels of organizational culture. Artifacts, those visible representations of an organization's culture, the espoused values, those stated values and rules, and the underlying assumptions, which include the behaviors and values that are not stated but rather implied and often as undetectable as the air we breathe.

The gap between espoused values and underlying assumptions is often made astonishingly clear in artifacts like employee handbooks, job descriptions, board bylaws. These documents set forth the “rules” of the organization and these rules will dictate how an organization and its members spends its time and financial resources, how people treat one another, and the spirit of the institution. Pay attention to what is there and what is not included. Are there values in your manual that are not lived out in practice? Are there values in your organization that are lived in practice, but never explicitly stated in your employee handbook? If your school is struggling to do what it says it does or be what it claims to be, it might mean that the policies and procedures are in direct conflict with the vision and values. If you ever have played a game, say Farkle, with people who are playing by “special rules” or ordered at In n' Out Burger with friends who know the "special menu" you know how the “gap” can feel.

A more human employee handbook tries to close that gap between the espoused values and underlying assumptions. A more human employee handbook and job description should ultimately answer the question: “How can I be successful in my work at this organization?” and should provide employees with what to expect from the culture as well as the information and resources that will enable them to understand the rules of the game that is being played. It should also help employees build relationships and feel connected to the organization in very intentional ways.It should remind employees that they are part of a group of humans and group life is messy, and that is why we need some container in which to do our collective work. A more human employee manual might even explicitly say, “You can do your job well, but if you aren’t contributing as a human being you won’t be very successful here,” instead of making the assumption that everyone knows that is an expectation.

The opening pages of the L+D Employee Handbook borrow these words from Seth Godin. This blog was published April 23, 2018.

"Missing from your job description

If you're working in an office, here are some of the checklist items that might have been omitted:

• Add energy to every conversation

• Ask why

• Find obsolete things on your task list and remove them

• Treat customers better than they expect

• Offer to help co-workers before they ask

• Feed the plants

• Leave things more organized than you found them

• Invent a moment of silliness

• Highlight good work from your peers

• Find other great employees to join the team

• Cut costs

• Help invent a new product or service that people really want

• Get smarter at your job through training or books

• Encourage curiosity

• Surface and highlight difficult decisions

• Figure out what didn't work

• Organize the bookshelf

• Start a club

• Tell a joke at no one's expense

• Smile a lot.

Now that it's easier than ever to outsource a job to someone cheaper (or a robot) there needs to be a really good reason for someone to be in the office. Here's to finding several.”

I think this says it all.

The gap will never be closed. No handbook, perfectly matches espoused values with underlying assumptions but we can narrow that gap when we choose to organize around humanity.

Special thanks to our Human Resources Consultant, Travis Saville, who helped us to create a more human handbook and stay organized around the things that matter to us as an organization.