Leading and Engaging on Purpose

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Hi everyone, and welcome to today’s webinar, Leading and Engaging on Purpose, posted by HRDQ-U, and presented by Doctor Minna Allarakhia.

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My name is Sarah, and I will moderate today’s webinar. The webinar will last around one hour. If you have any questions, please type them into the question area on your GoToWebinar control panel, and we’ll answer as many as we can during today’s session.

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Today’s webinar is sponsored by HRDQ-U, Virtual Seminars, HRDQ-U virtual seminars are engaging, soft skills training classes with real-time interaction, and expert trainers.

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Enroll your organization’s learners in HRDQ-U virtual seminars and let them develop performance styles that they need from their home or office. And on any device from desktop to mobile.

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Learn more at www.hrdqu.com/virtualseminars.

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Today’s presenter is Doctor Minna Allarakhia, founder of Engaged Thinking Associates.

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Engaged Thinking Associates is a training and consulting organization focused on human centered leadership and innovation.

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She is faculty at the University of Waterloo Management Sciences Department.

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Doctor Allarakhia has 20 years of experience encompass innovation, strategy development, employee engagement through innovation, designing for the whole consumer, and leading the organization, driven by sustainability. She has written more than 100 articles on the topic of: Open Innovation, Stakeholder Engagement, Knowledge Management, and Intellectual Property Management.

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Thank you for joining us today, Doctor Allarakhia, thank you, Sarah. Welcome.

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Pablo Picasso states that the meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it away.

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In this webinar, we will look closely at how happiness and fulfillment is indeed connected to the human endeavor of creating a sense of purpose in our lives, within our organizations, and ultimately creating a positive impact in our communities.

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In this respect, your role as a leader is paramount, and you’re more than welcome to share your function or title in the questions box, so that I can orient the presentation accordingly.

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We will begin by understanding your personal sense of purpose.

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Studies suggest that our experiences and our day to day lives largely determine our happiness. Happier people tend to want to make others happier.

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Through acts of kindness, their own happiness increases, and, with greater happiness, people tend to become better citizens and engage more with their communities.

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As you make a connection to purpose at a personal level, you will be able to leverage these learnings for your organization and employees. To bring more purpose.

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Into the organization guided by the five P’s framework, I’ll present, empowering employees through meaningful workplace experiences, building a culture of innovation, and even thinking larger creating a positive impact in our communities, through sustainability and the sustainable development goals.

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Evidence suggests that relative to other dimensions of well-being, purpose in life is important in predicting our future health and mortality.

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These studies suggest that by finding purpose in life, individuals can better deal with challenging situations.

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Researchers discussed that purpose driven people may actually have enhanced coping methods following negative experiences.

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Reflect on, for example, your own ability to cope with the challenges of the covert 19 pandemic.

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What strategies did you use, did these challenges in themselves enable you to re-assess your values, beliefs, The larger purpose in life?

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Have new opportunities presented themselves throughout the hardships of this year?

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It’s become even more imperative to motivate your employees meaningful, purpose driven work, essentially, aligning people around work that matters to your organization, two employees to consumers, and even our communities.

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So, let’s try first to connect to your own larger purpose using the science of purpose wheel, and you can read more in the blog that’s posted on HRDQ-U.

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Start by thinking about the deeper sources of happiness in your life.

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Who’s connected to this, these sources of happiness?

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Values and beliefs have always defined you.

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How do these values give you a sense of purpose and direction?

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What social connections are vital to your happiness and well-being? And how do your values and beliefs support these connections?

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Think about your passions and interests.

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Are they also driven by your values and beliefs?

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And more so, what new opportunities for change for purpose or impact, has presented themselves to you over the last 12 months?

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I just purpose change, in meaning across the various stages of our lives.

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As adults with greater responsibilities at work and in our personal lives, we might continue to seek for purpose or find purpose in the activities we engage in on a daily basis, raising our children, managing our relationships, ensuring the financial stability of our families, through our work, and even through our activities, within our communities.

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On the other end, the age of retirement purpose actually becomes paramount to protecting our health, our cognitive well-being, and ensuring that we age well.

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At that time, activities might focus on global citizenship.

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How activity’s participating in activities that serve the greater good and leave an impact on the world. And I’ve been working with older adults through sustainable living and advocacy.

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Older adults even open new doors to second careers.

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Returning back to your role as a leader, in order for you to bring purpose into your organization, and for you to lead and engage on purpose, it is essential to connect with your own personal purpose in life.

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Ask yourself, what is your life’s purpose?

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What thoughts have you had over the last year?

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See yourself as a youth, a college student, young professional, you today, and even yourself, tomorrow.

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What has been the constant driver that has kept you motivated to strive and to achieve?

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How have you persisted and how has your larger purpose, for example, to serve others?

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enabled you to keep moving forward.

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You know, well, we tend to be idealistic issues, having a grand vision for ourselves in our lives is equally important to nurture this vision as we progress through life and in our careers.

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Often use this mind map with clients to help them connect to purpose, and you can certainly do the same exercise, thinking about the deeper sources of happiness, important social connections, connecting to your values and beliefs, and even how you’re driven by your passions and interests. Sometimes it’s a matter of reconnecting to these aspects.

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Bring your purpose into our organization.

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Like you, your employees are driven by their own personal values and vision of purpose for themselves at home and work.

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Why I’ve asked my students at the university, would they be willing to take a pay cut if they were given the opportunity to participate in more meaningful work and even lead innovation? Because I teach innovation.

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Surprisingly, many of my students indicated that they actually would take a pay cut in order for them to be more engaged in meaningful work and to actually engage with leaders.

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Cities have also indicated that happiness and job performance are correlated with enhanced engagement, employee wellness, and organizational productivity. You have the potential to positively impact your employees by actually connecting them to the larger vision of the organization and ensuring that your employees are given the opportunity to participate in realizing this vision. So let’s take to us, starting with the first poem.

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OK, so we have your first poll lashed here. So, if everybody has to take about a minute here to read through this process and then you can submit your answer and we’ll share those results on the screen.

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OK, so think about aside from profitability, do you yourself: know your larger is your organization’s larger purpose, have you articulated it with respect to your consumers, communities, and even the world at large if you’re thinking about climate action, ESG sustainability?

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OK great, we have votes streaming in here.

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So we’ll give you about five more seconds here, if you haven’t submitted your answer to do so now.

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OK, great, and I’ll get those results up on a screen.

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Can you see that on your side?

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Um, so we have 64% saying, I know and can easily articulate our larger purpose.

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We have 32% saying, I generally know it, but we need to make it more tangible. And we have 4% saying I am unsure about our organization’s larger purpose.

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Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate it.

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Let’s take our call, Second Goal, second.

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is engaging employees on organizational purpose?

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Have you engaged your employees on the same larger purpose? Be it with consumers, Community. Are you starting to engage them on climate action?

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Is GA sustainability?

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Right now, again, we’ll give you about 15 more seconds or so here to submit your answer. We have those answers streaming in.

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All right, great.

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Now we will get those results up on the screen, So we have 36% of people saying: All employees are aware of our larger purpose, 59% People are saying: Some people may be aware of our larger purpose, and 5% say: employees may not be aware of our larger purpose.

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That’s excellent, is quite encouraging to see that.

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See, the 36% of employees are aware of our larger purpose. Question is: How might you do to change this so that more of your employees are aware of this larger purpose? What else?

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We’ll present first is the five Ps model.

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So, employees will be looking to you as organizational leaders on how your organization can build back better thinking beyond profitability and assessing how organizational activities can better align with people, its employees, consumers, even your suppliers, enabling prosperity in the communities where your organization’s function.

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So here’s the connection to corporate social responsibility, and planetary health.

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Think about your organizational purpose and determine how well aligned this purpose is with the five Ps of people, planet, profit, prosperity, and partnership. That will make a connection to each of the five P’s in this presentation.

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People includes your consumers and your employees.

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Partnerships extends not only to your shareholders, but to your suppliers.

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Profitability must be connected to designing products and services that holistically engage quality of life for your consumers, and increasingly a connection to ensuring that.

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There isn’t a large footprint associated with these products or services.

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Prosperity means providing meaningful workplace experiences for your employees as they strive to innovate for consumers and engaged communities to corporate social responsibility.

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Profits and planet are increasingly becoming linked to one another, as stakeholders evaluate organizations on the basis of, for example, your efforts to reduce planetary footprint.

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And aligning your organization’s purpose with the five P’s. To reach out to your employees, to listen to the vision for your company, moving forward, and expectations they have for you as a leader.

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So, let’s see if we can actually make a connection between your personal values, and the values that drive your organization.

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Ask yourself first as leader, how does your work matter?

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To whom does it matter? And I think it’s important as leaders, that we do ask these questions to whom does it matter, and what is your impact?

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Consider then, if your employees themselves are aware of the value they bring to the organization and how their work matters, think about the communication strategies that you’ve used to convey the organization’s vision.

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Purpose impact, virtual town halls, digestible and relevant newsletters, even ideation platforms, or programs to engage them on strategy and program development. The goal needs to, it needs to be connecting and engaging employees on purpose.

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Communication: How can the work itself be designed to create impact and purpose for employees? This begins with the onboarding process, but what we did here at MDH thinking is create the full employee framework.

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So, beginning was onboarding, and then extending into how employees have provided the opportunity to engage in meaningful work.

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Your employees can bring the best of themselves to work when they engage holistically, and this means understanding and engaging the phone employee considerably lower than the demographics. What is visible?

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Thinking about their personal goals and expectations, psychological factors.

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What are their motivators, social, cultural drivers, as part of cultural competency development?

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And even their experiences, their past experiences as driving needs and expectations.

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They have some, your organization, you as a leader and from their work.

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We believe that inclusiveness and diversity within organizations necessitates that all of the employees bring the best of themselves to work Compromise in either their personal or professional life. And this means understanding who Understanding the full employed. one opportunity that currently exists is to engage your employees on transitioning back to work better. What does that actually mean to them?

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The browser suggests that employees want to focus on feeling connected to something bigger than themselves, knowing that their work matters, and perhaps more importantly, understanding how their work affects other people, not just the bottom line.

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We’ve learned about the fixed mindset.

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The growth mindset, and here the purpose mindset, specifically considers how personal goals align with professional goals, the closer the alignment, the more fulfilled and likely engage people are in there.

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Daily activities by a purpose and positive impact on others, is more likely to be associated with higher overall well-being at work.

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Higher employee engagement, motivation, and a sense of fulfillment, which affects essentially, the organization’s bottom line.

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So, then, how is it that we can find purpose at work?

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Yeah.

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By building a culture of innovation, by providing employees with the opportunity to participate in, either lead innovation, including co designing with your suppliers, with your consumers, and communities through corporate social responsibility, this essentially allows employees to see the impact of their innovations with the goal of enhancing the quality of life with these stakeholders.

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Engaging employees in innovation provides them with a voice in the implementation of your corporate strategy, increases a sense of connection, and this is important, particularly as we transition towards a more hybrid model of working and motivation.

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But more than asking for ideas. When organizations follow through on ideas and communicate on actions taken, this is important.

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It isn’t just collecting the ideas, but what has been the follow through on potential ideas.

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Employees are more likely to participate in engage more with your organization, increasing their productivity, sense of purpose, personal growth, and emotional connection, as well as well-being at work.

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So, reflect on the opportunities that exist to create a culture of innovation within your organization.

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Consider if these strategies are currently being used or can be leveraged within your organization, and you’re more than welcome to share what at what you may be implementing in the question area, so you may be having internal sharing programs platforms.

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Offering dedicated time for creativity, job rotation, providing opportunities to be exposed to a variety of innovative activities.

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Mentorship, peer-to-peer learning or even assigning assigns, assigning person experienced personnel to mentor younger employees.

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But storytelling is part of the onboarding process.

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Communities of practice, supporting collective and ongoing learning, and even co creation with internal and external stakeholders.

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Not only your consumers, but increasingly as we move into the sustainability paradigm, it will be critical to engage your suppliers as part of the design process.

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Reconnecting to the five Ps model that I presented and extending the notion of innovation is the idea of innovation to do good.

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Studies suggest that when organizations pursue corporate social responsibility related activities, where the motives are transparent, the positive impact is not only felt the target of CSR programs, but also unemployed whose commitment is felt by the organization.

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Job satisfaction, job performance also increases.

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Such activities permit employees to feel connected to a bigger purpose and greater cost and daily activities, and know the organization is also interested in doing good. And I just wanted to ask Sarah if there are any questions that I might answer?

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We actually did have a couple questions coming through. And one question came from William and William asks, how does this fit into a primarily part-time staff, for example, retail stores, or employees who are, quote, only in it for them?

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I would actually make, I still would make the connection, too.

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Sustainability, and I’m just about to approach this, looking at it through the largest lens of the sustainable development goals and sustainability. Made progress through that, and then asked me that question again and see if I’ve given you some food for thought.

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Great. Then, we have another question here from Ghana and Gail said, what three action steps does men I recommend for a leader to engage a team at hybrid meetings with a common purpose?

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Student, just expand. Expand just a bit more than a question in the sense for articulating the purpose was generally when you’re engaging with a hybrid ML team.

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So if you just want to type your comment back to Mina and the Questions box there so we can expand on that a little bit.

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Then while doing that, we could answer, we had one more question come through so far.

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From Thomas Santayana said, our organization has huge world impact, purpose to many employees on waste, either day-to-day hourly chore. How do I help them simply translate? There are loading dock role to the purpose.

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It’s an interesting question. And it’s important.

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I agree that it’s important that we make that connection to all of our employees.

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I would suggest it was starting it at the higher, higher level is the TA, and we saw that 59% indicated that some employees may be aware, start at the higher level. What are the goals, larger goals of the organization and ensure them?

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All of your employees have access to that information, so we ponder.

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It’s not that there’s multiple ways that you can engage employees. What makes sense for those, let’s say on the loading dock? How can you reach them someday right now, we’re all working virtually? So this is where we are limited.

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But sometimes leaders can, even if it’s, depending on the size, more physically present, even virtually more present as a leader, how is it that they can ask you questions themselves with the question and answer at the town hall type meetings, where they themselves can, can express their issues.

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Part of this is active listening, just the idea that you are accessible, and that you’re actively listening, belong with this larger vision.

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And, again, some of the issues with sustainability that I’m about to discuss, with respect to greening the workplace, here is how you can actually engage multiple employees.

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Where do they see your organization moving forward, their own workspace, their own safe working space, where they see your organization moving? Even retailers.

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There’s the opportunity in the store, in terms of their space and how, how do you empower them to engage consumers?

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Ultimately, this is connected not only with respect to employee well-being, but how do you augment your organization’s brand on purpose, as well as sustainability.

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OK, great, and give us the response, facts, all answer, I guess question of are we continue to move on with the remaining of the session today but keep on typing the questions there. Great.

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So Gail said, just to re-iterate, she said, what are three action steps that you recommend for a leader to engage a team at hybrid meetings with a common purpose? And to elaborate on that, Gail said, getting to understand and agreement on the purpose beyond the actual details of the projects that they’re working on.

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Maybe we’ll look at it, suggest the impact.

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This is easier said than done. But I’m, I’m hoping that if he can make connection, in terms of the target stakeholders, that particular initiatives are focusing on equipping. Your, your colleagues, employees can keep an eye on the impact, and not get bogged down. We do with meetings.

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All of us see we get bogged down on the on the finer details, rather than seeing the larger purpose. And maybe if they look at it from the lens of the people, they can make the connection to the higher goals. Short-term, medium-, and long-term goals, and move, to meeting further, along, and even benchmark against that, is, how are we making progress, as I mentioned, with retailers engaging consumers?

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Empowering your employees in terms of their health and safety and well-being. So I don’t know if that that gives you a starting, starting point in terms of: who is your target audience, who is being impacted by this initiative?

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She said, Thank you. That was very helpful, so I can continue our session. I mentioned, keep typing those questions in. As we have some time. We’ll make sure to answer as many of those questions as we can for you today.

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Perfect. Thank you so much for asking. So extending the notion of, so, sorry, we spoke about this. How can we do?

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How can we think beyond philanthropy, have spoken to? Many of my students, and I asked about corporate social responsibility and they often speak about philanthropy, most of what we do is philanthropy. So how is it that we can actually think and engage large? And I hope that the next the following slides will give you more food for thought in terms of connecting to purpose and tangible activities.

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So the sustainable development goals actually provide not only opportunities for engagement through civil society and our governments, but they’re actually a starting point for organizations and entrepreneurs seeking the larger purpose. Several organizations are striving to incorporate the sustainable development goals across their value chain, and how might this materialize for you?

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Responsible production, designing for sustainability.

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Leveraging technology, as we’ve done now to engage your employees, virtually continuing to use technology, to engage employees through a hybrid working model.

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Using technology to connect to isolated people and communities, and we’ve seen with the pandemic consumers providing a living income, ensuring transparency across the supply chain. And we see that engaging suppliers is even more important to maintain the stability of these chains.

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Increasingly, you may actually engage with suppliers, with respect to planetary health, designing for sustainability, as well as addressing inequalities that might exist within your organization. So what we did was create this infographic.

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It’s a very high-level goal.

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What we wanted to do was make them much more tangible for you, as leaders and for your organizations. This is how we’ve made the connections to the more salient goals. A living wage.

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We’ve spoken about corporate social responsibility.

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Thinking about how do you actually engage your whole employee?

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Supporting employee financial wellness, employee health, and well-being, give an employee career and skills development, building a culture that’s supportive of gender equality, inclusive decision making, and then, depending on the size.

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Fundamentally, for every organization, small, medium, large, there are multiple opportunities to engage people with respect to the sustainable development goals.

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And even respect to planetary health, and that’s as simple as greening the workplace, finding ways to reduce your footprint, then promote this as part of your brand development when you’re marketing to consumers.

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It’s a fantastic opportunity in the retail environment, to engage in the store on these parameters.

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Then we can look at water management, energy management, supply chain management, transparency, engagement, just the knowledge sharing that can take place between stakeholders.

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Innovating, focusing on innovation, however, that might materialize.

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Designing for the environment, product stewardship.

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Thinking about greening the workplace and that is it. That is a fantastic starting point moving forward, even the higher societal issues that are important to your employees, human rights management.

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Choose and see, based on your short to medium- and long-term goals, your size. Which of these goals make sense for you?

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As a tangible first step.

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SDGs have, as their objective empowering all those people that need to be empowered in a responsible manner.

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So think about how you as a leader and your organization can better engage those people who have traditionally been excluded.

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So depending on their placement in your organization, think about those employees, and you’ve given me examples, is how can you actually reach out to them. Town halls may be too large, and maybe just to them.

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Well, it’s not always easy for people to engage in those type of situations.

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So how can you engage at us in a more close-knit fashion?

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Do you engage?

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Different groups of people according to their needs?

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one example might be, the idea of gender equality is imperative that organizations should reflect on this and take necessary action in terms of opportunity X’s leadership positions in wages, work-life balance.

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How is it your organization can provide continued training for women as innovators as leaders?

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Simply even with the idea of what human skillsets do people want to augment and what type of training can you provide them?

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How can your organization equally engage diverse employees? Cultural competency is important, and I’ve also spoken to my students.

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And many of them indicate very few organizations engage in this type of training, essentially, the ability to understand, communicate and interact with people from different backgrounds, know, building organizations where people and diversity are appreciated ensures that the employees can be their authentic selves, have their voices heard.

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And see that it is their contributions that are valued where employees are rewarded on the basis of merit. And here’s an example to indirectly.

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Interact with your employees by offering these types of training opportunities, if it’s signals that you value people that you value diversity.

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So, let’s review where we’re what we’ve discussed so far.

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We’ve discussed the idea that personal purpose is important to your health and well-being and it’s important to reflect on this as a leader.

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How do you bring purpose into your organizations?

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Engaging your employees and holistically, seeing them as whole employees? Again, that’s quiet, that is salient as well. As you transitioning back, how can you holistic they meet their needs?

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This then goes to their level of productivity connection to your organization and motivation.

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What’s how can you further or build a culture of innovation and thinking of Arusha now through the Sustainable Development Goals?

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It’s what action can I actually leave you with.

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So let’s ask how is it bent?

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Your employees can return back to work better.

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You may be discussing working models, full-time in person hybrid, permanently being a remote. But even then, you need to ensure that you are still holistically meeting their needs.

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Aside from engaging them on working model, way to engage thinking, believe that one such opportunity that’s presenting itself to organizations is sustainability, but specifically engaging employees on sustainability at a personal level, and then professional level.

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There’s no better opportunity to create a good and meaningful life than by living sustainably.

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Engaging employees on the connection between health and well-being can help organize your organization personalized sustainability for employees. And why does this actually matter?

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Sustainable living can actually have an impact on employee health and well-being and here is the opportunity to make a new and forward-thinking connection to employee health and wellness.

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And I’m sure all of your organizations who have been reflecting on employee health and well-being moving forward, not only as we’ve been working remotely, but through hybrid models.

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In the workspace itself.

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Sustainable living can impact employees, their health and well-being through dietary and product choices. Their emotional well-being as employees seek to manage their physical and mental health.

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Interestingly, even though home, office, and workspace design, that should increasingly connect to nature and on financial well-being through responsible consumption and living for a larger purpose.

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Your organization may be discussing how to embed engaged stakeholders on the principles of ESG. Is a little. Of ESG is social or the connection to people?

34:43

And I see there are a couple more comments. Sarah, do you can’t quite see them, but I think they’re important enough. Do you want to just share with me?

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Yes, we had a question come through from Lawrence, that our staff is spread over a wide geography and working in a variety of different units under different supervisors. Can you suggest some tactics that we can connect our staff with that organizational or best with the work that they do?

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So that’s it?

35:17

Large question?

35:20

I’m wondering, you know, catch, that’s the.

35:26

I’ve seen leaders engage collectively where they bring the employees together, but again, it’s hard for employees to always feel comfortable contributing.

35:35

It’s there isn’t the active learning process, and I’m wondering, because your organization is so large where you, you can actually in empower other leaders at a local level to do this for you, so that there’s that connection with more local leaders to the managers, that they’re interacting with on a day-to-day basis.

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Because of that relationship and social capital, there may be more active listening and comfort level with communicating.

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And then be able to, Too, whatever the data that you collect, to use it to inform at a higher level and then augment that. I guess it back and forth process, that you engage at a higher level.

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But you’re also providing the opportunity, at a more local level, for employees, to share what they want for themselves, what they want, in terms of the day-to-day work, how they wish to be engaged, how they wish to be trained, what skills they might want to develop, what might not be working for them on a day-to-day basis, and how is it that their work can make a better connection to you.

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Consumers, how can they innovate more?

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So, it’s making it, you know, some of these higher-level issues, how is it that they can feel better about their work, and what can local managers do to enable this, with, essentially, your support that helps.

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Then, we have one more commentary for the moment, and that, as for Thomas and Thomas, says, these ideas are great, and loading dock employees, especially don’t have a quote workspace and are in it primarily for the hourly job slash money, what words can I use to help them simply see the impact of purpose on their goals?

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So, maybe it’s a matter of looking at it.

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If you look at even process efficiencies, is other opportunities to even engage them? They may be part-time in it for the money, but maybe you can actually get more from them and commitment.

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You can make a connection here to innovation, to soliciting their ideas to sustainability, how is it that they can see the process itself becoming more efficient?

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Taking those suggestions into mind, communicating on those ideas. What’s possible? What was taken advantage of?

37:52

You can see that these are more tangible opportunities. And I’m wondering.

38:00

You know, if it’s, even if they’re part-time, whether you can actually, as I’ve mentioned, the idea of health and wellness, even for part-time employees, that may be the opportunity there to discuss their health and well-being, particularly because of the physical activity associated with their jobs.

38:20

Asking for ideas, making it safer for them, and even extending this to their personal, personal life.

38:28

The health and well-being of employees at home.

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So I’m wondering if those might make sense? Taking advantages of what I’ve mentioned with respect to the whole employee. How can you better help the full employee?

38:45

So, these are not always easy to implement, but I know that employees, essentially, want to be heard. Asked them for their ideas, follow through on those ideas, make it comfortable for them to communicate, and show them that you’re listening to those ideas. Even if they aren’t, you aren’t able to implement them.

39:04

The idea that you’ve heard the ideas, and this idea was brought up, or X idea was brought up and evaluate them, which is through their immediate supervisors or managers.

39:23

Any other questions here?

39:25

Now, that concludes the questions that we have so far.

39:28

Perfect.

39:30

So, I’ve spoken about the idea of health and wellness, and that connection to sustainability. We look at that in terms of the mindset of what does this mean for your organization.

39:42

It’s essentially moving people from that mindset to innovating to participating in innovation.

39:48

And that will increasingly take the form of sustainable innovation. So, I’ll give you some more suggestions on what you can do, is demonstrate your commitment to people starting first with employees.

40:00

So, ask them, if you’re at that stage in terms of thinking about sustainability.

40:10

Large organizations are looking at their footprint at … events.

40:15

Small and medium organizations have a fantastic opportunity to look for cost savings, there’s a branding opportunity here for you, consumers that then can materialize at the point of sale.

40:26

Consult your employees to assess their understanding of existing sustainability practices, even where they think improvements are necessary in terms of the value chain activity they are participating on. What can change, what do we need to do better.

40:43

This might include greening the workplace, extending corporate social responsibility in the idea of, you can form green teams, but add A More general level.

40:56

Even innovation teams are, is there the opportunity to provide your employees Personal time, to innovate, to be able to generate more ideas, to add to your product or service pipeline. And for you to build on that. So that not only are you developing a culture of innovation, but increasingly becoming much more human centered where people are interacting with one another.

41:22

How that you’ll have to consider how to organize this structurally who would be, who would employees engage on a day-to-day basis?

41:32

This enables you to empower some of your more local managers and even the idea of using.

41:41

No technology, knowledge management systems. There are a number of case studies. And then, by all means, do contact me my it, by e-mail, if you’re interested in how organizations have used various knowledge management, platform systems, ideation platforms, so that they can engage employees. So good for thought, even for those that are in retail, even your dock workers.

42:02

How is it that you can connect through these types of platforms?

42:11

At an organizational level.

42:15

Try to work towards building a human centered organization where employees can identify with the vision and values of the organization. Think of the ways we’ve been increasingly talking about how do you engage your employees, your managers. How is it that you can make yourself more accessible as a leader?

42:32

Again, it depends on the size of your organization, smaller and medium size organizations, who may be able to more readily make yourself accessible, virtually, even physically, particularly as we move back into the workspace. Very large organizations, I anticipate it will have to be a combination.

42:52

Know, the townhall Town Hall kind meetings.

42:56

Will you relay the vision or the pathway forward with the next tier, two years, five years? But also, make sure that your local managers follow up on this and continue to keep the doors open.

43:10

How do you provide those opportunities for ideation, experimentation, time, training ideation platforms, that bring remote employees together? And there are a number of platforms that you can use. There is also peer to peer learning platforms that organizations are increasingly using.

43:28

Rewarding and recognizing employees for their impact. Is that done at a larger level? Is it done at a more local level?

43:36

Then increasingly, signaling, transparency and accountability that integrity and openness about challenges and mistakes are important to your organization.

43:44

And its leadership is the idea of creating a safe working space at a higher level, and even among more local teams, that, if mistakes happen, that there are, there are opportunity for learning.

43:59

You can look by focus area, by geography, by business unit, by product or service line, and ask what’s working well, what’s not working well? What are new opportunities in terms of product or service design, consumer engagement, marketing, knowledge management, knowledge transfer, how do we redesign the processes?

44:22

There are multiple opportunities, depending on the type of activity being performed.

44:31

Bring us back to you.

44:33

Be connecting to you as a leader and building the human centered organization, but just I have discussed the idea of providing the training opportunities, asking your employees with skills they hope to develop.

44:45

Many of my students have mentioned to me that there aren’t enough training opportunities beyond ethical behavior, it on cultural competency development, empowering more women, leadership development.

44:57

Here’s also another opportunity, is what opportunities have you given your employees across the hierarchy to be able to develop the leadership skill sets?

45:10

Equally, judge your own competencies as a leader, including emotional intelligence, empathy, being more accessible, being authentic, and even exhibiting and humility, we need to remember.

45:23

Regardless of the position that we occupy in the organization that will we’re comfortable with ourselves and can take ownership of our strengths, … express herself.

45:33

We can seek new roles and opportunities to share more of ourselves and it’s important to feel secure enough in yourself and your values in order to lead effectively while considering the ideas and feelings of others.

45:47

What skills do you think you need to develop or strengthen in your journey to lead and engage on purpose?

45:53

What skill sets do you think your employees, even your managers, might need to develop?

46:01

You may wish to spend time.

46:04

Leaning into your purpose, in your personal life at work.

46:08

Maybe even take a space or location where you can be at peace with yourself. Connect yourself to map this journey on purpose. Beginning with yourself.

46:18

The goal is to engage in self-reflection and see your employees. Essentially, as a reflection of yourself, who might you actually engage?

46:27

We’ve spoken about consumers and tried to make a connection to even the idea of empowering your employees to be able to better engage consumers.

46:37

Building a stronger value chain and connecting with your suppliers, other partners, thinking ahead towards building stronger communities through the sustainable development goals, and strengthening your own organization’s brand.

46:52

I’ve suggested, even, the idea of creating a purpose bucket list.

46:56

Some of my colleagues, is, think of this, as a source of inspiration in reviewing this list, which is, we have our internal gloss, checkmark the ideas that you’ve achieved.

47:07

Modify the list as your needs and goals change. Returning back to your purpose can enable you to steer back to the paths, to travel be it at a personal professional, or even an organizational level.

47:20

Where do your colleagues, employees, and managers see the organization one year from now, 2 and five years from now?

47:31

I’m sure many of you have heard the word iki guy or the Japanese word, eek loosely translated as happiness in living and what drives people to live and work well.

47:42

Final question, what gives your employees their value and living and working, and how can you actually enable this as a leader?

47:50

Remember, we’ve started at one point or another in our lives in our careers.

47:55

Try and make the tangible connection to your employees, and, yeah, if they’re not readily accessible, empower others that have contact with your employees to empower them across your value chain.

48:13

More than welcome to contact us at engage, thinking.

48:16

I have my e-mail here, and Sarah will share both my e-mail and our URL. You’re more than welcome to reach out to us if you need support in mapping out your strategy for leading, engaging on purpose.

48:30

This can include understanding the whole employee and designing meaningful workplace experiences, extending your organization’s purpose to corporate social responsibility, even connecting to those sustainable development goals.

48:44

Creating your strategy for transitioning back better. and charting the path forward to build your human centered organization Including a culture of innovation. So, if you may be interested in the slides, would have done, instead, is created a free white paper.

49:01

You can access it at the URL, Sarah. Shared. The file is very large, so I can’t share it by e-mail, but if you login, you’ll be able to access it for free.

49:09

And you can see in terms of what’s covered, the idea of engaging your employees and transitioning back to work better.

49:17

What does it mean to engage the whole employee, the idea of purpose, health, and well-being, bringing purpose into the organization, thinking larger through sustainability, fielding your employee mindset on sustainability, and even empowering them for sustainable innovation?

49:34

But now, that might materialize first and foremost in terms of workplace design, how is it that you can create safer, healthier, workspaces, and then transitioning that into crane workspaces.

49:46

I think it’s also very important to engage women.

49:50

More women in this discussion in Greening your workspace is in sustainable innovation.

49:57

There’s also information on our virtual program for leaders, leading and engaging and purpose and our mindset to innovation programs to engage more of your employees on sustainable living and transitioning them into sustainable innovation first, through greening the workspace.

50:14

And then looking across the various value chain activities as to how they can see opportunities to reduce the footprint and then ultimately design products that have less of a footprint.

50:28

So, that’s it on my end. I believe that we have time now for questions and answers, and I know that there are additional comments.

50:36

Thank you very much.

50:38

So if you do have any questions, we had some great questions come through throughout the session. If you have questions, type those into the questions box. We have some time remaining here where we’ll be able to answer those for you. So, just type those into the questions box. That is.

50:57

And now we have a question here from Alex. And Alex says, what skill sets do leaders need first and foremost and developing a human centered organization?

51:09

I would, I mentioned the idea of self-reflection. If you can reflect on your own purpose.

51:14

And see your employees as a reflection of yourself.

51:19

They are a reflection of your organization, give them the ability to take ownership of the activities and the work that’s taking place in your organization.

51:28

So self-reflection, active listening, is that we really need to be able to slow down and listen to our employees and to one another. In terms of what they want from the organization, what they want from the work as I’ve mentioned.

51:42

They, all students have mentioned that they would take a pay cut to be better engaged in the organization, in the work, they have more access to you as leaders, and the idea of humility as well. Mistakes happen.

51:56

If you can demonstrate, by making yourself accessible and signaling that mistakes happen. Even when failures happen, this is an opportunity for learning.

52:08

Capture those lessons, they can be part of your knowledge management repository, your systems, so that employees can learn from them.

52:16

If you make yourself more humble, it will allow employees to feel safer and that might just simply materialize in terms of making yourself more accessible.

52:28

Great. And then we have another question here from Amy and Amy asks, what might you suggest as the best approach to engaging employees right now?

52:39

I think it’s in the discussion on transitioning back.

52:42

I’ve been reading, and I’ve been looking at the different statements by organizations some have said, of offered.

52:51

Permanent remote. Others are mandating that employees return back to work and then there’s the hybrid model. Because the opportunity to mystically engage your employees.

53:01

How did they see themselves working?

53:05

It’s a matter of looking at their productivity and what also works well for them in terms of health and well-being.

53:15

Permanently working remotely can also have health and well-being repercussions in how we continue to engage employees when they continue to work remotely.

53:25

And that can include not only the meetings for the organizational discussions, but even the discussions, too.

53:34

If a person, or team building exercises just to reconnect with one another, how are you, how are you doing? Is there anything that I can do for you? Just even those types of check ins. So it isn’t that remote, is the answer. returning full-time back to work is the answer. We need to look at it holistically unless, for me as a woman is also about gender equity, what works for your parents as well?

53:59

And how can you signal that you’re caring for your employees holistically without compromising productivity?

54:10

Great, and Kevin would like to know, why is it important for employees to be engaged on innovation?

54:18

If we have, if you’ve been following the articles in the news pieces, there’s this idea of the grade turnover, is we have to ask why employees may be leaving their jobs seeking other opportunities. Is it a matter of pay? Is it equity?

54:34

Is the workplace environment? What are they looking for more meaningful work? Making a difference in, how is it that you can actually enable them to do this, and it doesn’t have to be at a grand scale. Can be small changes in the workplace, the design of the workspace innovating. Greening the workspace, changing activities so that they’re more efficient, just listening to the employees, and offering them the opportunity to speak out.

54:59

You have to think, what’s the best way for me to reach them? Depending on the size of the organization, how can they feel that they’re hurt? So then this goes to training your managers, those that they engaged with.

55:11

Its innovation provides a tangible opportunity to make a difference in product, process, and service design.

55:23

Great. And then the final question for today is, how is purpose connected to corporate social responsibility?

55:31

So philanthropy is critical, and many organizations engage in that. How is it that you can make them more visible, engaging connection to people?

55:40

It’s connecting to a variety of people. It: youth through mentorship opportunities. Community members, isolated members of society, struggling socioeconomically.

55:52

Know, if some organizations that I’ve interacted with, they’ve got green rooftops. So they’re engaging their employees on in that way.

56:03

It’s just as simple as that, you know, growing food on the rooftops.

56:07

They feel engaged in this process, they’re sharing sustainability practices, they feel healthy, they feel empowered. But here’s an interesting connection to the local community. Food security is two. This is just one example. Food security is an issue across many communities. How is it that you can engage more communities? Hands on, what are the issues that they might be facing? Organizations have been simply planting trees.

56:36

Can you do this with community members? So, that it’s an opportunity for your employees to physically interact when it’s safe to do so with community members.

56:45

Even dealing with the impact of climate change.

56:49

Discussing these issues internally, so that you’re slowly building this mindset for sustainability.

56:55

And sustainable innovation within your organizations, there are multiple opportunities through corporate social responsibility to build that mindset and purpose.

57:06

Well, thank you. That was great! That will now bring us here to the end of our session today.

57:12

Today’s webinar, sponsored by HRDQ-U Virtual Seminars, be sure to check out our curriculum of more than any virtual instructor led online seminars. Go to www.hrdqu.com/virtualseminars for more information. And make sure to join HRDQ-U on your favorite social media site for quick access to all of our latest webinar events and blog posts. You can find us at HRDQ-U. And that is all the time that we have for today. Thank you, again, for joining us.

57:45

You’re more than welcome, thank you very much, and thank you all for participating in today’s webinar, happy training.

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