Canadian HR Strategy

9 when I walk into the workplace every day? So it's operationalizing those values so people understand what to do." Levitt cites one employer that posts its values everywhere — in emails, on coff ee mugs, on walls, on form letters and contracts — and everything is discussed in the context of those values. " ey make my life really easy… when I have a case because I start off with that letter of employment where they agreed to those values — in the context of a case of cause for discharge where the behaviour's antithetical to those values — and they agree to it there and I get them to admit that they know the values," he said. "Everybody can recite them and if they say they can't, it's not credible be- cause everybody can, all the other witnesses can. And it makes the context of a cause much more egregious than it would be oth- erwise, and the people behave accordingly because they really do live those values. And it's anomalous if they don't." As part of its drive for continued orga- nizational health, Sabic is incorporating the new National Standard of Canada for Psy- chological Health and Safety in the Work- place. It also tries to engage and involve committees, whether it's health and safety or employee advocacy, says Wright. " ere's true ownership and involvement on an ongoing basis to understand the issues and concerns of employees so that you can proactively deal with situations before it gets to a place where you have toxicity, where you have terminations that should not happen, where you might have diff erent incidents or issues on a sliding scale of a violence con- tinuum." e company takes a holistic approach by having programs and services available to employees through its benefi ts programs and EAP services, in addition to its talent management strategy and learning and development culture, says Wright. "( is ensures) that we've got competent supervisors, competent leaders so that we are not in a situation where we could be seen as negligent, in terms of promoting somebody into a position (they) might not understand and have good emotional intelligence as it re- lates to leading people." Show me the data To convince the C-suite of the need for transformation, the data piece is critical, says Klein. And then it's about layering in stories, connecting with people in their network. " rough experience in talking about cul- ture with the very senior leaders, depending on the organization, they just don't under- stand what that is, so talking about 'chang- ing culture' becomes this big fl uff y thing," she says. "So the more tactical you can bring that defi nition down to your senior leaders, that would be great. And sometimes… (they) might actually be part of the problem as well." You have to start with the top, says Klein. at means defi ning the desired behaviours that are essential to leaders. "And then, with that, start to bring that down into the organization — so which lead- ers are demonstrating it, which ones are not, do we have time to build them up, to build their capability up to be the leader that we want them to be or is the time so toxic, we've got to pull them out and put someone else in?" she says. "So it's seek to understand and assessing your leadership, one by one, and starting to embed those into your talent processes, into your performance reviews, into your recruitment strategy, into your assessment tools that assess external talent, so any lead- ers that are coming in… whether they be people leaders or a person who's on your front line operating that equipment, are they demonstrating those leadership values that are so important for us, those behaviours." Too o en, leaders aren't trained properly, they don't gain the skills from the organiza- tion or previous jobs for dealing with issues like this, says Bar-David. Research has shown low-level behaviours such as bullying and in- civility can aff ect productivity and inter-team collaboration, and a lot of these behaviours are demonstrated from the top, she says. ere's also human nature — people are complex and don't always want to see or deal with issues. " e other element is our own inner world and our inner psyche. We humans, whether we're management or not, we try avoiding situations that have to do with con- fl ict, anything that could potentially make us less likeable or enter confl ict in general. In Canada, we have a culture of being nice so anything that goes against that is problem- atic," says Bar-David. "So even if you have built the competence organizationally, we still have all these internal barriers within us, as man- agers and leaders, to actually take the ac- tion that's necessary on the ground — fear of things backfi ring, etcetera — and that I think is the emotional intelligence part that is crucial." PHotoS: LIam SHaRP

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