You Can't "Perk" Your Way Out of Culture Problems

Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash

We’ve all seen it.

The “quick fix” culture efforts.

🍩Free snacks in the lunchroom

🍕Friday pizza party

🏓A brand new ping pong table

And don’t get me wrong, I’m all in for a good slice of pizza and a relaxed vibe. But let’s get one thing straight, that’s not what makes people stay.

People stay where they feel seen.

Where they feel heard.

Where they feel safe to speak up.

Where they feel like their work matters, and their manager actually has their back.

Too many companies are trying to plaster band-aid perks over real, structural problems. But if your people are:

• afraid to speak up,

• constantly overworked,

• unsure of what success actually looks like in their role,

• feel disconnected from each other

Then there is no ping pong table, no gift card, and no Taco Tuesday that is going to save your culture.

Here’s the real question:

What’s the actual day-to-day experience working at your organization?

Do you want the honest truth? Your team doesn’t care about your mission, vision and value statements if it doesn’t show up in their experience, if it doesn’t show up in the 1:1 meetings.

They don’t care about the recognition program if the same people get recognized over and over again. And the absolutely don’t care about the wellness initiatives if they’re still expected to work overtime and no one is talking about stress levels and their burnout.

Culture is not a campaign. It’s how people experience work. Every. Single. Day.

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Team Human Conversation

Fight workplace zombies in your organization and join Team Human! Gather a group of fellow workplace zombie hunters to discuss our most recent blog post. Use the questions below to kick-start your conversation.

1. What’s the real experience people are having here? (Not just the one we tell ourselves)

2. Are we rewarding real performance, or just the people who are the loudest?

3. What unspoken messages are we sending through our silence, our systems, or our priorities?

This week (or month) skip the perks talk. Start the people talk.