🗣️ Audio Blog: The three needs your workplace culture must deliver on

Why does your organisation exist? In fact, why does any organisation exist? 

It really comes down to meeting needs. At a superficial level, it is obvious that we need to meet the needs of the people we serve. But, in reality, for organisations to succeed long term and to be sustainable, they need to meet needs on three different levels. 

When organisations ignore any of the three needs, the culture skews and both morale and results become unsustainable

The first level is the obvious one: meeting the needs of the people your organisation serves – customers, patients, users, whatever they are called in your organisation. Those needs must be effective and at a high standard. If you operate in a competitive environment, you need to meet them better than your competitors do. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Before we get into today's episode, we want to acknowledge the privilege of living and working on Aboriginal land and we pay our respects to the Elders, past, present and emerging. This is an audio version of a blog that originally appeared on our website at reallearningcomau. Forward slash blog. Why does your organisation exist? In fact, why does any organisation exist? It really comes down to meeting needs. At a superficial level, it's obvious that we need to meet the needs of the people we serve, but in reality, for organisations to succeed long-term and to be sustainable, they need to meet needs on three different levels. The first level is the obvious one meeting the needs of the people your organisation serves customers, patients, clients, users, whatever they're called. In your organisation, those needs must be met effectively and at a high standard. If you operate in a competitive environment, you need to meet them better than your competitors do. At a second level, every organisation must also meet the needs of the people who come to work. In the organisation, workplaces are more complex and the needs of workers are more sophisticated than ever before. People don't come to work for money alone. We strongly believe that money only buys you attendance. I've turned up, give me a paycheck, everything after that is optional and there's no correlation between high performance and receiving the money. That high performance is based on other needs being met, things that are predictable but that are not as prevalent in workplaces as they should be. They include being appreciated, the opportunity to do meaningful work and make a difference, receiving feedback and appreciation and being included. We need to meet these needs of the people who come to work and accept it as one of the key responsibilities of an organisation, business or team.

Speaker 1: 2:05

The third level of needs is those of the people responsibilities of an organisation, business or team. The third level of needs is those of the people who fund or regulate or govern the business in some way the people who direct the organisation. In a commercial organisation, that might be the owners. In a not-for-profit, it might be a board. For a government agency, it's obviously the government of the day.

Speaker 1: 2:23

Anytime this third group of needs are not met, the organisation is vulnerable and a change is inevitable. If a commercial organisation doesn't meet its bottom line needs, then the business won't exist for long. If a government agency doesn't meet the needs of the people directing it, then some sort of merger or change is coming. The critical point here is that we can't afford, as leaders, to focus on meeting needs at one level only. We must meet the needs simultaneously at all three levels. The great news is that the best way to meet that third set of needs the needs of the people who own or regulate or direct or govern the organisation is to focus heavily on the other two. When we meet the needs of people both within the organisation and those we serve, we'll be much more successful in delivering sustainably on the bottom line and the key to meeting the needs of people inside and outside the organization Workplace culture.