Keep Your People Safe

It was November 2016, and Kronites were on edge. Following an incredibly divisive U.S. presidential election, our China and Mexico staff feared that the new administration would deal harshly with them. Some employees who voted conservative felt attacked or marginalized by others who didn’t share their beliefs. And Kronites everywhere were concerned about what the future held in store for our company.

I wanted to make sure everyone felt safe, regardless of their beliefs and how they had voted, so I decided to step in. On November 10, two days after the election, I sent an e-mail to Kronites around the world entitled, “Some Thoughts About the U.S. Presidential Election.” I acknowledged that the past few months in the United States had been a “very emotional, historic, and politically charged time,” and then I got down to my real point, which I wanted every Kronite to understand fully: “Regardless of what transpires in regional or global politics, Kronos will always provide a caring environment that is supportive and encouraging. We will always respect, support, embrace, and take care of each other, our families, our customers, our partners, and our communities.” In particular, we would continue to “be fully supportive of our employees of all backgrounds, faiths, and genders, no matter where they live, who they love, or where they worship.”

I went on to call upon Kronites to continue to treat one another respectfully, even in moments of disagreement. And I reached out to Kronites in China and Mexico, telling them that they are “an important part of our organization,” and that “we will continue to invest in our operations in these regions to grow and support our staff, customers, and partners.” Everywhere in the world, we would not let external forces dictate how we behaved. Rather, we would “set our own pace, make our own decisions, and choose the way we do business that creates positivity and unification of spirit and purpose.”

Although I worked with my communications team on this e-mail, I didn’t spend a great deal of time pondering. It felt like the right thing to do—so I sent it, hoping it would make at least a small difference to Kronites reading it.

Judging from the responses I received, my message made more than a small difference. Hundreds of Kronites from around the world responded expressing gratitude and conveying how touched they were to see the leader of their company send such a reassuring message. One employee reported that my note hit him “in my heart, my brain, my soul.” A second said: “This is the absolute BEST ‘work’ e-mail I have ever received.” A number of Kronites who were members of underrepresented or marginalized groups wrote to register the impact my words had. One employee told me that my message, “helps me feel safe and welcomed, and it reassures me that there [are] people [who] care, no matter what.”

If you don’t take bold stands on external situations affecting your team or organization, I strongly suggest you do so. Some leaders and managers fear saying the wrong thing and offending one group or another. Others believe it is not their place to take stands on issues not directly related to the running of the business. I see it differently. As a leader, I am obliged to help employees feel safe. But setting aside the moral dimension, helping people feel safe is strategically important, one of the most basic tasks leaders and managers must accomplish to build an engaged workforce.

The links between safety, engagement, loyalty to the company, and productivity are no mystery. Employees themselves are aware of it, and in fact, many Kronites took the opportunity to make this connection in their responses to my note about the election. “It is messages such as this that drive our inner passion to do what we do,” one Kronite said. Expressing pride in the company, another Kronite pledged to “continue to work hard and help make this company the best it can be for employees and our customers.” A third noted that, “This is the kind of culture and understanding that I constantly rave about to my friends and family when speaking about Kronos.”

Employees want leaders and managers to stand up for them in times of uncertainty. And it’s striking how grateful, loyal, and dedicated they become when you do. If you couple your own communications with organizational policies that set norms of safety and make it an abiding part of the culture, you can bring a whole new level of enthusiasm and inspiration to your workplace.

SPEAKING UP FOR SAFETY

My message responding to the 2016 election wasn’t the first time I ventured into political waters to help Kronites feel safe, nor was it by any means the last. In 2015, the state of Indiana passed a law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, that many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people felt discriminated against them. In the wake of the law’s passage, some businesses in Indiana interpreted the law as allowing businesses they ran to stop serving LGBTQ people on the grounds that doing so would run counter to their religious beliefs.¹

To make sure Kronites knew our company’s stance, I wrote a message to employees expressing our concern about this law and confirming that although we “fully support freedom of religious beliefs,” our company would “always treat every employee and every customer in a welcoming, respectful, and understanding manner, regardless of where they come from, how they worship, or who they love.” I noted that this “has always been, and always will be, the Kronos way, and we will never compromise on these principles.”

Political events aren’t the only opportunities leaders and managers have to help employees feel safe. When natural disasters hit or other tragedies occur, employees also like to know that their employer stands behind them. In 2017, hurricanes Harvey and Irma were devastating. While the storm was still raging, I reached out with words of support. Many of our managers had been in continuous contact with their team members, and I publicly applauded them for this, affirming that this was “the level of care for each other that is at the heart of who we are as a company.” I also let them know that we were hard at work tracking down all Kronites to make sure they were safe and arranging for appropriate care for those whose lives had been disrupted (see Chapter 7). Since we extend our emphasis on caring to customers, I told Kronites that we would be offering our customers free 24-hour support to help them weather the storms.

Beyond responding to major external crises, people managers should address developments inside the company that might cause anxiety or discomfort. Many employees worry about their job security. How well is the company performing? What does the outlook hold? Are any big organizational changes pending? Left unaddressed, these concerns can fester and affect engagement, even if a company is doing perfectly well and no major changes loom.

Mindful of Kronites’ concerns, I provide updates on our performance, communicating financial data and describing opportunities as well as the challenges we face. I do this via e-mail, but also through impromptu aron@work videos I record on an iPad. In 2017, for instance, Kronites were concerned about the relocation of our headquarters to Lowell, Massachusetts, a city near our previous headquarters. Some employees weren’t certain why we were moving, and they worried about what it might mean for their commute. To ease their concerns, I recorded an aron@work video with our chief procurement officer who was overseeing the move.

Occasionally, we have unpleasant company news to deliver, and in these situations, I go before Kronites and try to alleviate their fears as best I can. In 2009, when we were forced to let some Kronites go, those who remained were distraught and worried that they might be next. As I described in Chapter 2, I personally addressed employees, answering difficult questions directly and honestly, and explaining why it was economically necessary to reduce the size of our workforce. It took time for the organization to heal, but Kronites felt more secure knowing that our entire business wasn’t falling apart, that we were responding rationally and thoughtfully to market trends, and that we had proceeded with staff reductions reluctantly, as a last resort.

You might wonder how far to take communication about external events and internal change. How much reassurance is too much? Should leaders and managers reach out in response to every external event or development that employees might find disturbing? Given how many storms, terrorist attacks, political controversies, and other bad news are reported on each week, the communications task would be endless.

I send financial updates about our company on a quarterly basis and sprinkle in additional messages throughout the year to highlight our strategies and major changes. Other senior leaders within Kronos communicate about changes in their respective departments, too. As far as external events are concerned, I am selective about which to respond to. I sent a companywide message of reassurance following the 2016 nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, but I didn’t in response to other terrible terrorist attacks in the United States and other countries in which we operate. I responded to hurricanes Harvey and Irma, but not to hurricane Maria. I spoke up in response to immigration reform in 2017 but stayed silent on other controversial U.S. government policies.

I don’t have a clear-cut rule on when to respond to external events, or when not to. I rely on my gut instinct. All of these tragedies affected me emotionally, but after certain of them I felt moved to say something to help reassure Kronites. Other times, it felt right to keep going with daily work and not intervene. It helps to think about the issues that are likely to concern your workforce, given their geographic location, demographic makeup, and so on. Using tactics described in Chapter 2, stay as close as possible to employees, conversing informally with them so that you can get an intuitive sense of their emotions. That way, when an external issue or development is bothering them, you’ll be among the first to know.

There is no universal template, in my experience, for how best to craft a compelling message when you do choose to speak out. I can only offer advice based on what has worked for me. Speak honestly and authentically. If you work with a communications team like I do, don’t let them script every word for you. It’s your message. Use simple language and keep your message short and clear. At all times, remain mindful of employees and others who might disagree with you. Don’t shrink from taking clear positions on controversial issues, but when you do take such positions, be respectful and civil. Don’t let your own emotions overwhelm the message. The ultimate goal is to make your people feel safe. Finally, electronic communications are great, but there is nothing like face-to-face communication. If you lead a smaller team, and your teammates are all geographically proximate, gather everyone together and deliver your message in person.

BUILDING SAFETY AT THE ORGANIZATIONAL LEVEL

Personal communications from a leader or manager can go a long way to instill a sense of safety, but they aren’t enough. If the organization doesn’t back your words with action, your statements will seem hypocritical or superficial, and your efforts at leadership will backfire.

Diversity and inclusion is a good example. It’s easy for me to circulate a message about Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act because our policies welcome all people. We genuinely want all of our employees to bring their whole selves to work. To that end, we support and celebrate marriage, adoption, and childbirth for all employees. Likewise, while the technology industry has had its challenges welcoming women, we at Kronos fully accept them, not just as employees but as leaders. We support a Women’s Leadership Forum to help women at Kronos network with one another and learn from each other’s experiences. We work with the Society of Women Engineers to provide opportunities for women to advance their careers, and we support International Women’s Day. I have also made a point of personally expressing my appreciation for the women in my life, as well as the valuable contributions made by female Kronites, through my aron@work video blog.

These programs and initiatives make an impact. In our 2017 employee engagement survey, 88 percent of Kronites agreed that we encourage and promote diversity of backgrounds, talents, and perspectives. That was far higher than the norm at technology companies, which stood at 68 percent. “I feel valued and appreciated each day at Kronos,” one female Kronite wrote when responding to my 2017 International Women’s Day video. After my 2016 election e-mail, an African American woman who worked at Kronos reported that she had “never—not one time—been made to feel inadequate or inferior to another individual within Kronos.” In her view, she had been given “a chance to shine within this organization, regardless of my race, gender, or religious beliefs.” That’s exactly the kind of environment we want, a workplace where everyone can feel safe, and where they feel both grateful and inspired to do their very best.

Sometimes employees might feel unwelcome not because of some aspect of their identities but because they or their families might be struggling with difficult personal challenges. Here, too, organizations can take steps to help employees feel safe. In 2016, a Kronite was seeking help dealing with her daughter’s addiction to opioids. The episode led us to create a training program to help other Kronites who have loved ones dealing with addiction. These employees might struggle alone, uncertain about whether to confide in colleagues. Our training program drew them out and established that they could talk about these issues at work and ask for support. As one employee told us, she and other Kronites “were suffering in silence until the program was launched. I had no idea I was working alongside so many people every day who were fighting the same battle.” In Chapter 7, I noted that many Kronites think of our company as a big family. Here’s another reason why: because even in dark times, they can still feel free to be themselves.

When it comes to easing Kronites’ concerns about the health of the company and changes to our business, we find that engaging directly with employees and giving them a voice in the decision-making process goes a long way. It’s one thing for me or another executive to personally assure Kronites that a given change won’t pose a threat and is in everyone’s best long-term interests, quite another for employees to have a hand in the decision-making process, and thus understand the nature of the change firsthand. As we prepared to move to a new headquarters in the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, we created a panel of employees—called our 5HIFT to Lowell Advocates—representing all functional areas within the company and charged the panel with helping leaders make key decisions about our new building. The panel received bimonthly briefings from the team overseeing the move and had a chance to weigh in. The panel offered numerous helpful insights and suggestions, and while many of them didn’t weigh in on issues of physical safety per se, the ability to participate in decision making allowed these Kronites, and by extension the employees with whom they interacted back in their teams and departments, to feel more comfortable. Change was happening, but it wasn’t coming out of nowhere, and it wasn’t simply being imposed from above.

We also pay close attention to Kronites’ need to feel safe and secure in their jobs when it comes to acquiring other companies. After acquiring more than 70 companies, we know that these transactions can trigger extreme anxiety in employees. Will the new company owners make changes to the business, letting employees go (which, unfortunately, we sometimes have to do when acquiring companies)? Will daily experiences at their workplaces be the same? Will the larger acquiring organization swallow up their company, leaving them feeling marginalized and unheard?

With such questions in mind, we take pains to assimilate acquired companies into Kronos with the least possible disruption for employees. A team of Kronites visits the acquired company, enthusiastically introducing employees to our culture. On the day we announce acquisitions, we meet with all new Kronites to explain the impact of the transaction on them and their jobs, having already closely researched the acquired workforce and the roles played by different teams there. We also train managers we’ve acquired in our culture, explaining how we think about managers at Kronos and giving them a wealth of tools and information. Recognizing how overwhelming it can be to receive large amounts of information at once, we conduct this training gradually, giving new managers time to adjust. To help new employees, we ask managers to share information about their team’s integration into Kronos, sustaining the transparency that marks our culture. In the aftermath of the acquisition, we take additional steps to welcome the acquired company. For instance, I might mention it in a speech to hundreds of Kronites or customers. We’ll also extend the same care to new employees that we do to all existing Kronites, offering assistance when a new employee is ill or suffers some other personal setback.

As newly acquired employees and managers tell us, these efforts make a big difference. Greg, whose company PDSI was acquired by Kronos in 2011, remembers how fearful his 65 employees were at first hearing the news. Many of them had heard from friends or relatives that acquisitions didn’t go well, so they worried about their work-life balance, whether they’d be able to perform their jobs in the ways they were accustomed, and an array of other issues. Although some skeptical employees did not want to become Kronites (and wound up leaving Kronos), the vast majority made the transition thanks to our assimilation process. “We were embraced by all the [Kronos] teams we worked with. . . . We were welcomed. I mean, we were absolutely welcomed.”

HUMAN LEADERSHIP

In January 2017, the U.S. presidential administration issued an executive order that prevented citizens of several Middle Eastern and Arab countries from entering the United States for 90 days. Many Kronites were concerned. Some 200 of our employees were in the United States on green cards, and almost half of those were staying on visas we had sponsored. Even if this executive order didn’t affect them directly, would a subsequent order unsettle their lives? How vulnerable were they? Were immigrants from any country still welcome in the United States, and were they welcome at Kronos?

In the days immediately following, our human resources and legal teams helped relevant Kronites check on their immigration status and calm their fears. We also reviewed all employees around the world to see if anyone might be at risk of being denied entry into the United States. That way, we could intervene proactively and counsel employees about what to expect. We provided individual letters from our immigration attorney to Kronites traveling internationally, arming them in case they encountered problems at the border trying to reenter the United States.

Very soon thereafter, I sent a companywide note alerting Kronites to the support we were providing around immigration issues. I mentioned that we would continue to support all of our employees, irrespective of their background, and I asked Kronites to pursue this openness themselves and encourage others to do so. Finally, I reminded Kronites that some of their coworkers might be affected by the immigration issues, and so “may need an extra hug this week.”

This message triggered a flurry of responses from Kronites. I wish I could quote them all because they so memorably evoke the power that leaders can have to help people feel safe and the immense gratitude you engender from employees when you do. A number of longtime Kronites wrote to say that it is messages like this one that help keep them happily employed with our company. As one said, “Having a leader who takes time out of their day to ensure that all employees feel safe, heard, and supported is absolutely amazing.” Another Kronite said, “Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart . . . this really means a lot to me.”

Fostering engagement requires so much more than just making sure employees have the tools they need to succeed, are advancing their careers, and have meaningful work. It requires deep, personal engagement from leaders. And it requires taking care of employees’ needs, even those that seem to extend beyond the confines of the workplace itself. In fact, especially those. Many companies get the “basics” of engagement right these days. But few treat employees as whole people, doing their best to take care of a range of emotional needs that can and do affect workplace performance. As leaders and managers, we have an incredible opportunity to make a difference in our employees’ lives. We can teach them, coach them, and spur them to do great work, but we can also help them feel protected. When the rest of the world seems crazy, we can offer them an oasis of stability.

Be a human leader, one who helps create community. And help your organization be a more humane, protective space—especially in times of crisis, but at all other times, too. Your employees will never forget it.