Building a responsive, transformational workplace culture utilising the Evidence-Based Leadership framework

Purpose: The workplace of choice is characterized by motivated employees and built by purposeful leader engagement with employees. This paper will discuss best practices for building cultures of excellence and accountability... [ view full abstract ]

Purpose:

The workplace of choice is characterized by motivated employees and built by purposeful leader engagement with employees. This paper will discuss best practices for building cultures of excellence and accountability within library organisations utilizing the Evidence-Based Leadership framework. As part of the framework, leadership teams define and execute aligned systems and processes to maximise organisational and individual performance. The paper will offer perspectives from a leader newly appointed to head a geographically and organisationally diverse cooperative and from a long-term leader of a university library. They will describe their methods for seeking honest and challenging input by encouraging employees to openly as well as privately comment on employee engagement survey findings and discuss the importance of developing action plans for workplace improvements. They will be supported by an expert who leads a team that works with schools and institutions of higher education to apply the Evidence-Based Leadership framework to create cultures of excellence and accountability. In particular, the team has focused on applying tools and tactics that foster a culture of service with its colleagues and stakeholders. Leaders use improvement data to engage in a dialogue with their teams; they gather input and collectively develop improvement actions to create supportive and engaging workplace environments.

Design, methodology or approach:

Studer Education, a division of Studer Group, is a leading service provider focused on improving education and health care outcomes in organisations throughout the world. Studer Education’s Evidence-Based Leadership model helps leaders achieve results by coaching around a continuous improvement framework centered on best practices to help institutions create cultures of excellence.

The Florida Academic Library Services Cooperative conducted its first employee engagement survey in 2016 just prior to the arrival of its new Executive Director. This survey is especially important in this organisation which was recently created through a merger of four previous organisations with very different cultures. The Executive Director will discuss the importance of obtaining a baseline for culture and performance through a staff survey, analysis and discussion of results, and developing and implementing workplace changes through this process.

The University of West Georgia has conducted annual employee engagement surveys since 2014, with response rates as high as 90%. The university received the 2015 Award for Innovation and Excellence in Leadership Development and Diversity from the American Association of State Colleges and Universities for Engage West, a campus initiative to assess employee engagement and develop accountable leaders supportive of shared governance and co-leadership. The survey solicits employees’ perceptions concerning engagement, leadership, mission and goals, communication, campus climate, pay and benefits, and work/life balance. Supervisors are required to roll out survey findings with employees and to develop action plans to improve the workplace in collaboration with their employees. The Dean of Libraries will discuss the survey rollout process and describe the evolution of methods used to glean honest employee feedback through open discussions, small groups, and methods of providing private input. She will describe how the library staff collaborates to develop action plans and how leaders periodically monitor plans through reality checks conducted through the year.

Findings:

In opening dialogue with employees to transform workplace culture, leaders must explore the organisation’s lowest survey scores or greatest challenges, and work with employees to identify strategies to improve the workplace. They must be willing to engage in difficult conversations and encourage employees to overcome any hesitancy and fear in communicating their concerns and ideas. Leaders must also discern what employees find most positive about the workplace, celebrate successes, and identify ways to build upon successes. These processes allow leaders and employees to engage in ongoing dialogue and planning to create a nimble and responsive workplace culture supportive of transformational change, with assessment of activities and initiatives built into an annual cycle.

Research or Practical Limitations or Implications:

Though survey data provides a useful baseline for establishing a continuous quality improvement loop, library leaders can open dialogue with employees and take steps to improve the workplace absent a formal survey. The authors will describe simple and effective methods for encouraging employee input as a means of improving organisational culture if the library is unable to conduct an anonymous survey.

Conclusions:

Opening dialogue with employees is vital to establishing and maintaining a positive workplace culture. Leaders willing to listen and respond to challenging input and take steps to transform the workplace establish trust and empower their employees through fostering a culture where risk taking is accepted and change is anticipated. As libraries evolve their service and collections models and re-envision their facilities, an atmosphere of openness to ideas is vital to responding to changes in libraries and higher education delivery.

Originality and Value:

Changes in collection management, service provision, and facilities continue to press libraries to evolve to support the needs of teachers and learners. In order to transform their organisations in ways that respond to ongoing and disruptive change, library leaders must systematically engage stakeholders in identifying challenges and finding direction. The authors will describe communication strategies based on transparent and open processes to encourage dialogue and input. These methods can be utilised with or without the results of a formal survey of employee engagement. The paper will offer perspectives from library leaders who are at different junctures in their careers with their organisations. They will be accompanied by a former professor of research and evaluation methods who currently works in leadership development and who trained the library leaders and their managerial colleagues in communication techniques and in utilising a framework developed to support workforce engagement and continuous improvement in business and educational environments. The paper will explore the challenges, successes, and evolution of processes the authors have witnessed in their organisations’ efforts to improve workplace culture.