This article was originally published in the December 2014 issue of The ESOP Association's newsletter.

It’s easy to get excited about ESOP Communications Committees and their potential for changing your company’s culture. At ESOP Association conferences you see engaging presenters, doing exciting work at their companies. You feel inspired and energized, ready to galvanize your own communications committee to reignite motivation and commitment.

But building culture is not the Communications Committee’s responsibility. That falls to the company’s CEO, senior team, and other leaders. The reason is simple: a company’s culture is built by the actions, words, and values of its leaders. What they do, what they measure, what they pay attention to, how they reward other employees, and how they model behavior --- these set the foundation for the underlying values, assumptions, and behaviors of the workforce (Schein 2010). For example, if you want to foster longterm strategic thinking, you may struggle if senior leaders make last-minute, reactive decisions. If you want to create a respectful workplace where people take a lot of responsibility, then your leaders need to develop and empower their teams, delegate meaningful authority, give constructive feedback (positive and negative), and refrain from micromanaging.

Communications committees can influence culture, but will be limited in their impact unless senior leaders’ fulfill their responsibility to build that culture. Without senior leaders doing their part, you may set up your communications committee for frustration and disengagement. Much has been written about building a successful ESOP communications committee from within, including how to build a team and how to pick members. In this article, I offer ways leaders can build an environment that will encourage a committee’s success.

I have drawn on a variety of employee-owned companies’ approaches to the development of their culture. There is no one-size-fits-all formula, rather, these general principles may be adapted to suit individual situations. I’ll examine the work of: Wiley|Wilson, an engineering and architecture firm, whose leadership gradually began to involve employees more in decision-making; BL Companies, an engineering and architecture firm that started changing its culture after a leadership transition; Golden Artist Colors, a manufacturer of professional quality art materials that had long celebrated a participatory culture even before their ESOP; and Steve Silver Company, a furniture distributor that began to change its culture after its transition to 51% ESOP.

Alignment of Vision and Behaviors

Establishing a strong foundation for committee work requires senior leaders to set the broader vision for the company culture, often in collaboration with the committee or other staff. Culture is reflected in the behaviors of an organization’s members. A vision for culture must define the desired behaviors for all employees. For employee-owned companies, this typically includes taking responsibility for one’s work, modeling transparency, respect, and collaboration with others, and making decisions in the best interests of the company. The vision of the culture is often articulated in the values of the company. Senior leaders then must make sure their own behaviors and those of other leaders align with that vision.

BL Companies began changing their culture by defining a set of competencies and related leadership behaviors. All employees are expected to adopt behaviors consistent with the competencies, and leaders are expected to model and support those behaviors in their team members. To encourage these behaviors, all leaders go through a 360 feedback process, and several different leadership development programs have been designed to improve leaders’ self-awareness and assist them in developing their skills. Leaders are evaluated annually on the firm’s leadership competencies. Many leaders also participate as trainers in a leadership development program for all staff, to demonstrate their commitment and to model desired behaviors for the culture.

At Wiley|Wilson, the Communications Committee led the initiative to develop the company values, gathering extensive input from employees at all levels. With those values established, company leadership actively references them when explaining their decisions for the company, and commits to act consistently with them. Their efforts have elevated the prominence of the company values and reinforced the committee’s efforts to communicate the values to the staff.

Meaningful and Significant Work

Communications committees often get relegated to “party-planning.” While celebrating and spending time together is an important component of culture, members may feel irrelevant if special events are the sum-total of the committee’s work. Research has demonstrated that having a meaningful purpose drives engagement and motivation (Pink, 2011).

Meaningful and significant committee work --- the sort that contributes critically to company success --- generally involves substantive education and communication. That educational role is not limited to the ESOP, but extends to teaching how the business works and planning key communication about company goals and performance. In that context, even “party-planning” may take on greater weight, as celebrations become symbolic events that contribute to company identity.

Many committees have also found meaningful work in becoming a primary conduit for gathering employee input, whether on specific issues such as company values, or on general employee concerns. Committees often do this through surveys, focus groups or simply talking to employees.

Such a substantive role requires that the committee maintain a close relationship with company leadership. This can take many forms. At BL Companies, the ESOP Committee Chair meets periodically with the CEO to discuss the connection between the committee’s work and what is going on in the company. The Communications Committee Chair is also involved in the Employee Survey Committee. That Committee conducts an annual survey which then informs the firm’s annual planning and goal setting meetings. Golden Artist Colors’ CEO and President meet with the committee for a half-day to talk about business goals and discuss how committee initiatives might fit them. This partnership enables the two groups to collaboratively determine committee priorities and how they support the business. At Wiley|Wilson, senior leaders meet with the committee to set goals for the annual all-employee retreat, one of the committee’s most important responsibilities.

Other Opportunities for Involvement

Companies also benefit from providing avenues outside of the communications committee for employee participation. These auxiliary efforts support the committee’s work by demonstrating the commitment to a participatory culture, and provided added channels for participation and feedback. In fact, many of these efforts are led by senior management.

Steve Silver Company develops several major improvement initiatives each year to reduce costs and increase revenue. Employees are encouraged to come up with ideas, which are implemented if viable. The company is planning more improvement initiatives at all levels of the company in the future. Likewise, Golden Artist Colors allows employees to try new methods for production, as long as they are safe. The company has many staff trained in LEAN Manufacturing and have also conducted Kaizen events to get employees involved in rethinking the manufacturing process. BL Companies has multiple committees, such as Quality Assurance, Safety and Project Management, where employees owners gather data, share opinions and make decisions or recommendations on important aspects of the company’s work. Strategic planning also presents a great opportunity to gather staff input on the business. For instance, Wiley|Wilson has recently involved project-manager staff in their strategic planning.

Support of Time and Money

ESOP Committees also need financial support, including funds to plan events, conduct surveys, work with trainers or consultants, and attend conferences. Perhaps more importantly, companies must honor the time that employees dedicate to committee work and the time required for education and communication efforts. For professional service firms, that might mean explicitly reducing expectations for billable hours for committee members. Golden Artist Colors, as a manufacturing company that generally needs an entire team together to complete a process, makes adjustments to its production schedule and teams in order to accommodate committee member meetings, and has frequent “Stop the Shop” meetings, where production is put on hold. Companies that set aside time for all-company meetings or other types of education, see such ‘time off’ as an investment in the future.

Finally, senior leaders can lend credibility and demonstrate support to the committee work by remaining active in what they plan. This can range from simply showing up at social events, to speaking at company updates organized by the communications committee, and/or to actively responding to questions and concerns gathered by the committee at staff meetings. Both Wiley|Wilson and Steve Silver Company have their senior leaders cook and serve food or bartend at company events as way of showing their commitment to employee-owners. Leaders’ financial and time investment sends the message to the rest of the company about the importance of the committee’s work.

Communication committees can make a difference for your culture, but to fully tap their potential, senior leaders need to lead the way. If your committee is struggling, it can be easy to blame the members for not having enough commitment or motivation. That may be true, but senior leaders can motivate and strengthen communication committees by giving them direction, support, and meaningful work. When senior leaders embrace their responsibility to build culture, communications committee can fully play their part in getting employee owners engaged and focused on the right things to help the company and the ESOP thrive.

*Books mentioned in this article include: Edgar Schein’s Organizational Culture and Leadership, 4th edition (2010); Daniel Pink’s Drive (2011)

** Special thanks to Fred Armstrong and Connie Burnette from Wiley|Wilson, Jodi O’Dell from Golden Artist Colors, Dave Corbin from Steve Silver Company and Carolyn Stanworth from BL Companies for taking the time to share their examples for this article.

View this article as a pdf.