Canadian HR Strategy

6 executive Series digest hrreporter.com meeT The paNelliSTS – From Top: Sharone bar-david, president, Bar-David Consulting howard levitt, senior partner, Levitt & Grosman Sandy Fallon, senior vice-president of people, Softchoice Susan wright, HR manager, Sabic Innovative Plastics carmen klein, senior director of organizational development and culture, Cadillac Fairview rouNDTablE T here is no shortage of liability landmines and bot- tom-line sucking HR issues in the workplace — bul- lying, harassment, violence and poor employee en- gagement to name but a few. In nearly every case, the underlying root cause is an unhealthy workplace culture. "A toxic culture is oen characterized by people's inability to speak directly to each other respectfully and assertively, so problems become bigger and big- ger and the toxicity just becomes embedded in the culture," says Sharone Bar-David, president of Bar-David Consulting in Toronto. "It's oen things that could be resolved with a little con- versation early on, either person-to-person or from an alert supervi- sor or manager." e good news is that unhealthy cultures are quite fixable — it's just a matter of a solid commitment from leadership, a little bit of leg- work and ensuring resources are targeted at areas that will truly make a difference. at was one of the conclusions reached at a special roundtable discussion moderated by Canadian HR Reporter manag- ing editor Todd Humber in partnership with Sun Life Financial. An unhealthy workplace is an evolution, brought about through the prevalence of bystanders or an environment where people turn a blind eye to bad behaviour, according to Susan Wright, HR manager at Sabic Innovative Plastics in Cobourg, Ont. "It becomes a creeping culture, then that becomes accepted." Productivity levels, employee engagement levels, injuries — these can all be indicators of an unhealthy culture, says Wright. "We look at our disability data, we look at our absence trends, we look at our employee engagement survey data — which we do on an every couple of years' basis. And we look at ad hoc pulse surveys to understand what people are thinking, feeling because… culture is what people say and do — we want to get a pulse on that on a regular basis. So we use very quantifiable and in some cases qualitative data as well to assess where we are from an organizational health standpoint." Tracking numbers, highlighting problem areas Benefits providers can help organizations by tracking the numbers and highlighting problem areas. "You need to understand your data and your demographics in your organization so that you can truly understand what's working well and what's not, and what do we need to do more of and where can we make the largest investment so we're going to get the ROI,"

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