Consultant, Organizational Psychologist, Facilitator, Author, Speaker. President at Michael Couch & Associates Inc.
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The British Standards Institution (BSI) defines organizational resilience as “the ability of an organization to anticipate, prepare for, respond and adapt to incremental change and sudden disruptions in order to survive and prosper.”
As an organizational psychologist, I couldn’t help but wonder what we could learn about organizational agility and adaptability by analyzing different firms’ responses to the pandemic. I wrote about anecdotal evidence I observed in a previous Forbes.com article, “In A Crisis, Organizational Culture Matters,” that suggested that an organization’s culture makes a difference in how it adapts to a crisis. But because I’m also a data nerd, I would have preferred some hard data.
Fortunately, I have since been able to collaborate with colleagues at Denison Consulting, who, it turns out, were also wondering what could be learned from different organizations’ responses to the pandemic. Being survey researchers, they came up with a robust design to get at the facts. They developed a short resilience survey that was designed to gather employees’ perceptions about their company’s response to the crisis and offered the survey to their clients around the globe. I did likewise for several of my clients. Many of the participating companies had also previously completed an organizational culture assessment, so the study would not only delve into companies’ responses to the pandemic, but it would also determine how an organization’s culture influenced their crisis response.
The research is ongoing, but at this writing, we’ve been able to gather data from 36 organizations around the world (from 18 different industries) with over 15,000 respondents, enough for some meaningful insights.
The resilience survey overall results were surprisingly positive, with an average percent favorable score of 84%. Obviously, the companies participating in the survey set a very high benchmark and offer some valuable lessons. In particular, employees felt that they understood their companies’ new policies and practices and felt that goals and priorities for their work were clear. In addition, they felt they had the tools and technology needed to work remotely. Overall, they felt that their organizations were adapting effectively and taking care of them.
On the less favorable side, the survey participants felt that their companies could do a better job of coordinating across different parts of the organization. Employees also felt that they were less aware of what their teammates and colleagues were working on. And while companies received high marks for communicating to employees, scores on “I believe my voice is being heard by leadership” were less favorable.
The resilience survey also included two open-ended questions related to what the employees felt the companies have done well and what they believed their organizations could do better to support them during the crisis. On the “done well” question, employees commented favorably about the safety precautions their employers had taken, the priority given to health and safety, the effectiveness of communications, and allowing work from home. They also commented positively about the effort their supervisors were making to maintain contact with their teams.
What did employees feel organizations could do better? The No. 1 theme was “understanding and supporting work-life balance.” This was related to the lower-rated survey question on “my voice being heard”; employees expressed how different their work and lives are now and wanted to make sure that their leaders realized that. Many expressed how they were struggling to handle the many changes happening in their homes and lives. While employees typically felt that communications had been handled well, they expressed concern about not having more information about what the future may hold. Many also felt that compensation and incentives should change with the work challenges they were now facing, particularly if they felt they were on the front line. Surprisingly, the second-most prevalent theme was “continue doing a great job.”
The second component of the research, related to organizational culture, also provided some very valuable insights. The analysts selected the organizations with the top resilience survey scores and compared their organizational culture assessment results to companies scoring at the bottom on the resilience survey. The conclusion is that in a crisis, culture does matter. On all four factors in the culture assessment (mission, consistency, involvement and adaptability), the top resilience scorers had significantly higher culture scores. Combine this with the research that shows that culture is a leading indicator of organizational performance, and the guidance is clear: If you want to make sure that your organization is ready to effectively and quickly adapt to a future crisis or disruption, make sure that your culture is clear and aligned. Organizations can build resilience by building their cultures.
There are many lessons for leaders from this research, but I think four are vital.
Communicate, communicate, communicate. Early and frequent messaging to all employees and stakeholders makes a difference. As a caveat, also create opportunities to listen to employees and sincerely respond to their concerns during a crisis.
Bounce back and bounce forward. Intentionally and proactively responding to a looming crisis is important. But so is focusing on what’s next and how you will continue to keep your employees and customers engaged following a significant disruption.
Redefine work. Coordination and integration across teams, functions and units can always be challenging. The survey showed that it is even more so in crisis mode. Virtual work is the new norm. What policies, procedures, tools and technology will now be required to enable work? The answer may not be the same for all companies. A number of the firms participating in the study made this their first priority following the analysis.
Culture comes first. If you haven’t already, make sure you understand your current culture strengths and areas where culture could be clearer and more aligned. That effort will pay off not only in operating performance, but also in adaptability and resilience during change. Culture is reflected in the behavior of leaders. Working to intentionally align leadership behavior with new objectives is an important first step.
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