EP Insights & Action

A sense of community
Stephanie Hamilton, Director of People and Culture UK and Ireland -
ISS UK explains how a strong workplace culture can make all the difference.
A diverse, exciting community is difficult to achieve in a virtual world.
These days of IT-led communicating,
shopping, interacting, sharing
memories and creating virtual
families all seem so impersonal
to me. I cannot grasp the idea that I live in a
‘virtual’ community, I like to chat things over
a coffee, not read or speak to it on my screen.
The trouble with this type of virtual reality
is it takes a few moments to even speak to
a ‘real person’. Take the voice activated
telephone management systems, so broadly
used now and I am sure for most, a very
efficient system. For those who don’t know
me, I have a Northern accent. Talking to an
automated system, in my experience, with
any type of accent is both annoying and also
hilarious, it is often the most ridiculous one
sided conversation to have!
I live in a Close, with the name Brook in
it – now, I pronounce ‘Brooooook’ rather
than ‘Brock’ and for the life of me, I don’t
understand how I can say Close any other
way than the way that I do, but, the computer
most definitely says NO! I often quickly get to
the point of being cut off on many automated
telephone calls – I am the disaffected
community, by the fact that I am actively
pushing back on the virtual community –
‘they’ don’t understand me, my northern
accent and I prefer the personal touch!
A strong sense of real community or
culture is a feature in the work place that
we should not overlook. I don’t feel that a
virtual community is something that people
can have a strong sense of belonging to, not
when we all have to have the same accent and
inflection of voice. In my opinion, a feeling of
belonging and sense of being oneself at work
is critical to success and an ability to really
achieve great things in our workspace. This is
a sense of true community.
Driving culture can come from key
points in the employee journey. At ISS we
call them Touchpoints, the key moments
in an employee’s day that really makes the
difference to them and their productivity as
well as providing a sense of belonging and
wellbeing. Just identifying and managing
these moments says a lot about our culture.
After all, if we spend time, money and
resources on making these Touchpoints
positive employee experiences, this in its self
lets people know how critical we see the team
and how they feel about working for us.
We have recently published a whitepaper
on the direct link between employee
engagement and positive service experiences,
the premise of which is that better engaged
employees provide better service – that
sounds easy when written in a sentence! The
implementation of employee engagement
strategies, on a workforce that spans cultures,
16 | Insights & Action | July 2017