Safety, Trust, and WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?)
By Tim Keck
“I quit.”
“What!? You can’t quit. You’re a senior manager. We need you!”
“I’m sorry. I just can’t work under these circumstances anymore.”
“What circumstances?”
“I love this company, but I am afraid to come to work.”
“Because of the sidewalk gauntlet you have to walk through to get to the door?”
“Yes. My anxiety is through the roof because those people are so unpredictable.”
“I’m sorry we haven’t done more to make you feel safe.”
“Me too.”
(True story.)
Nothing is on the minds of human resource professionals more than creating a great employee experience. Beer on tap, elder care support, paragliding lessons; you name it, companies are trying it. And some of it is working. When employees see their organization trying so hard to show their appreciation, they tend to get more engaged.
But sometimes it doesn’t work.
In our experience, these failures are largely because the company missed the mark in three fundamental areas: safety, trust, and WIIFM.
1. SAFETY
From research by Maslow and others, we know the four things that drive our behavior. The first, and most important, is what we call the bDrive, which refers to biological survival. This foundational element must be present before any of the others can come into play. bDrive elements are simple: Food, Water, Shelter, Safety. Without these things being covered, nothing else really matters.
The television series Naked and Afraid demonstrates this principal in every episode. Contestants don’t spend much time quoting Shakespeare or working on the Pythagorean theorem. No, they mostly try to find potable water, build a makeshift shelter, and scrounge up some grub.
We intuitively know feeling safe is mandatory but tend to take it for granted. And while your employees aren’t likely to be dodging crocodiles in the swamp, they face a variety of stressors that take their mind off their job. Domestic troubles, mental health challenges, work requirements, unhealthy relationships, economic challenges, political division, and mass murder to name a few.
The most basic first step in creating a great employee experience is ensuring that your people both are safe and feel safe. And although it’s a statistical rarity, active shooter incidents are on everyone’s mind. How do we know this? Polling our clients and the fact that our training seminars in this area have exploded in popularity the last two years. In one recent survey, 82% of employees said the possibility of a violent act was regularly on their mind.
The best companies are taking steps to prevent an active shooter event, to mitigate against one should it occur, and to help their people survive in a worst-case scenario. They’re doing that in three ways.
- Providing training for all employees in recognizing warning signs, surviving an event, and how to save a wounded friend’s life. This can be accomplished in as little as 20 minutes, although many clients devote a couple of hours.
- Hosting advanced training on this topic for leaders, safety, security, and human resources. Leaders truly are the key to preventing these incidents, so they should develop a deeper understanding of this phenomenon. This usually takes 2-4 hours.
- Conducting an Active Shooter Vulnerability Assessment to understand just how much risk you face and receive simple recommendations that make everyone safer.
The threat of violence has permeated our atmosphere. Random killings, civil unrest, and a pandemic of the unhoused living on the streets of our cities have combined to create a dangerous circumstance for many workers. As an employer, we cannot afford to ignore these existential threats. Simply acknowledging the elephant in the room and showing employees you’re taking their safety seriously goes a long way toward making their experience a positive one. If we don’t take action on this item, all of our employee experience initiatives will fall flat.
2. TRUST
Workers today want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Part of a team. That feeling of belonging is key to a positive experience. But best-selling author Patrick Lencioni famously asserts that there is no teamwork without trust. If your people don’t feel they can trust their boss, HR, company leadership, and one another, their experience will fall short.
In the field of protection, trust reigns supreme. At the time of this writing, we are actively managing threats against numerous people across the nation. For example:
- A physician threatened by a mentally ill patient who is sending letters by courier to the doctor’s home.
- A controversial, high-profile, political candidate threatened with unspeakable violence by an idealogue.
- A domestic violence victim whose estranged spouse is threatening to murder her at work.
Each of these people, and their organizations, have trusted us with their safety. And we have never let them down. Why would they trust us, quite literally, with their lives?
Because they got to know us.
You see, we don’t trust people we don’t know. It’s the difference between your best friend and a hitch hiker. You know your BFF because you took the time to get to know them. You asked questions. You listened. You shared experiences. You kept confidentialities. You did what you said you would do.
The hitch hiker you see on the side of the road might be the nicest person you’ve ever met. Yet you don’t pick them up. Why? Because you don’t know them.
For most people, relationships at work are closer to hitch hiker than BFF.
To create a great employee experience, you must increase trust. Here’s how:
- Leaders must set the bar high by getting to know their teams. A great boss eats lunch with their people and encourages them to speak about themselves and their personal lives. Then she listens and shows care and concern without judgement.
- Team members should be encouraged to get to know one another at a deeper level than where they interact on an org chart. Rather than just facilitating a bike ride together after work, teams might stop at a coffee shop and try to guess what their coworkers prefer to drink.
- Create initiatives that drive more and deeper interaction between associates from top to bottom. We worked with a large financial group to develop a “What’s your Q?” initiative. Everyone wore a sticker or button or t-shirt with that question on it. The “Q” stood for quirk, and it gave everyone an excuse, that became almost a mandate, to ask and offer details about one of the weird things that made them unique.
Building relationships must be a key component in any employee experience effort. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be costly or time-consuming to accomplish. It does have to be a priority though, modeled by the organization’s leaders to be effective.
3. WIIFM
We tend to be selfish creatures. We want what we want when we want it and how we want it. We want our trendy iced coffee, 12 pumps [sugar-free] vanilla, 12 pumps [sugar-free] hazelnut, 12 pumps [sugar-free] caramel, 5 pumps skinny mocha, a splash of soy, coffee to the star on the siren’s head, ice, double-blended morning cup of joe. (That’s an actual order.)
In a world where your employees are accustomed to getting anything they want, treating them like a generic part of your machine simply won’t work. Your focus should be on discovering their unique talents and how your organization can benefit from them.
For an employee of any age, but especially the newest members of your workforce, a job where they get to do what they do best is a core component of a great employee experience. In fact, any plan that doesn’t answer the question “What’s in It for Me?” (WIIFM) will prove meaningless to your people.
Unfortunately, for a certain percentage of your employees, the thing that must be “in it” for them is support for everything from mental health to domestic violence. The days of cutting an associate loose because they need support for extra-curricular issues are long gone. Referrals, coaching, and caring are all part of the mix in making employees feel like their organization truly cares about them.
As you work toward building a killer employee experience, don’t forget about the foundational need for feeling safe, trusting those around you, and being treated as an individual – especially when you’re battling big problems in your life. Without establishing these three things, your employee experience plans will crumble before your very eyes. And of course, if you need any help making your people feel safe, contact us at SafeHaven Security Group at 844-SAFEGROUP or SafeHavenSecurityGroup.com.
SafeHaven Security Group, LLC provides Threat Assessment and Management Consulting, Active Shooter training programs, and professional uniformed security officers for organizations across the U.S.