Are you looking to drive impactful business outcomes – and foster a sense of belonging among your team – but aren’t sure where to start? The answer lies in Commonality, Equality, and Cohesion (CEC). Weaving CEC into the fabric of your company drives a strong sense of belonging and positively impacts four specific business outcomes: team creativity, collaborative culture, alignment of values, and discretionary effort. I know this because we have studied it. At Insperity, we live it by prioritizing a values-based, culture-driven, people-centric approach. And now, I’m sharing how to implement it. Here are actionable steps to implement CEC in your organization and drive results.
Five to Revive
These first steps center around reviving the desires, goals and objectives of the organization – especially among your leadership – to lay the groundwork for a strong sense of belonging.
1. Leadership Commitment: The tone at the top matters. To gain full support from leadership, I recommend a deep dive with your executive team to understand how a focus on CEC can increase success.
2. Task Force Structure: Involve your employees and gain commitment across the company. This group will help determine the framework for weaving CEC into your company.
3. Develop a Baseline Survey: Know where your company is at the start of the process. Then, you can determine benchmarks for CEC measures and share the results with your organization.
4. Get the Best of DEI: Revive the best elements from the history of DEI. Understand where DEI has created awareness and inspired acceptance and where more attention is needed and where it has gone off track.
5. Values Connection to CEC: Look at your organization’s values through the new lens of CEC. Confirm or modify how you explain each value so there is a connection to CEC goals.
Five to Thrive
These next steps help you take full advantage of the CEC approach and may improve your business’ likelihood, speed, and degree of success.
1. Integration into the Employee Life Cycle: Make CEC an institutionalized part of the employee journey. Reinforcing the message through your company’s leadership is key for a culture-driven effect.
2. Commitment to Employees: To be people-centric, you must commit to your employees and their physical, mental, and emotional wellness. Think through your people philosophy and communicate it to employees.
3. Two Sides of the Coin – DEI and CEC: Weave these concepts into your business so much that they affect daily operations. Set expectations and plans to achieve both – because they’re not opposites, they work together.
4. Measurement and Report Card: You can’t change what you don’t measure. Know where you’re hitting the mark and determine the areas that still need some work.
5. Shared Responsibility: This work is not the job of just one person or a small group in the company. People at all levels of your organization must understand that this is a shared responsibility.
Ready to transform your business with CEC? Learn more about these steps in my new book, co-authored with Dr. Eli Jones: Making Differences Work – A New Values Based, Culture Driven, People Centric Approach to Achieving Commonality, Equality, Cohesion, and Business Performance.