Many organizations purport to support the value of balance, but does your culture actually help its employees achieve balance? One of TransPro’s 12 values is “I am responsible for the balance that allows me to achieve both personal and professional goals.” While the individual is indeed responsible for seeking out this balance, as organizational leaders, we have a responsibility to be assertive in making sure the values of our culture prosper.
So how does TransPro’s culture help its team members live this value?
- Modeling the behavior: When it comes to balancing work and personal life, our leaders own it and live the value. We strive to live with balance, take responsibility for it, communicate openly about how we achieve balance, and set goals around personal success.
- Success Plans: Each quarter, our team takes time to review and document its goals within a shared a success plan document. The goals shared in this plan span the personal and the professional — and often, team members’ personal success goals are focused around balance milestones like taking vacations, time with family, fitness, wellness, reading, new skills, languages, and more. By incorporating this goal-setting into our process, TransPro supports and contributes to our members’ personal responsibility for balance.
- Clarity around success: We want our people to be their best selves. So when we see team members straining to achieve balance, we’ll initiate a conversation about it. Our culture’s environment of accountability and open dialogue supports the pursuit of balance with each individual on our team.
- Infrastructure: We’ve built the tools that allow our people to take responsibility for their balance. By installing resources like work planning, weekly client forums, weekly sales forums, communication and coordination about resource utilization, efficient meetings, and purposeful use of time, we’ve given team members a cadence around which to organize their individual work flow — which, in turn creates a safe environment for team members to say, “I can’t right now” or “This other thing is a higher priority.”
- Time Off & Getting Things Done Policy: TransPro doesn’t have PTO or sick time. We trust our professionals to understand what and how it takes for them to fulfill their responsibilities, with strong encouragement to take time and produce in ways that work best for them. Early risers, night owls, weekend warriors, 8 to 5’ers — all have a place in getting results. This also plays out in taking time off and shutting down.
We’re not perfect at these things, but as an organization we try very hard to create frameworks for people to pursue the balance they need to achieve true personal and professional success. How could leadership in your organization take ownership of ensuring that your people seek out balance in their own work and personal lives?
