Faced with shaky consumer demand and stubbornly high input costs, employers are driving staff hard to lift revenues and margins. But they are not always going about it the right way.There is an outbreak of fear among employers and workers, says Didier Elzinga, the chief executive of Culture Amp, a corporate culture analytics platform operator. Elzinga has built his business on measuring company culture.
“When under pressure, we go more tactical than adaptive. Tactical means tactics. We plan KPIs, measures, metrics. on results and statistics. We want to make things certain. We want to control as many things as we can,” Crowe says.Crowe says bosses who double down on sales and other targets by emphasising incentive payments are effectively trying to control the uncontrollable.
“We need to become more open-minded. As soon as you tap into curiosity, you turn adversity into possibility,” he says. “I feel like if you’re fixating on the bonus and the performance, you’re actually not spending any time understanding what the market needs or client needs,” she says. Hewett suggests reading widely to field the best ideas from a wide range of sectors. She also starts team meetings by asking them the most interesting thing they learnt that week in the hope of sparking ideas.