Helping organizations building community: a sense of community at work can make all the difference

Training & Development, Feb, 2002 by Tracy Mauro

September 11 changed how many employees view their jobs and workplace. People may find it difficult to focus on learning. Building a sense of community in Organizations can help refocus people on shared values and create an environment of support in which employees are fully engaged.

I was introducing a group of managers to the concepts in James Autry's book Love and Profit when I heard about the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. The class had started at 8:30 a.m., just before the first plane hit. Managers who came to the session late shared fragmented updates of the situation they'd heard on television. People began talking and asking questions, none of which pertained to Autry's book. As our small, suburban Chicago office was evacuated, a senior manager canceled the session. I realized in that moment that everything would change--not just the onset of war or tightened security but the way people view their workplace, their co-workers, and even the meaning of their work.

Training professionals have a difficult job right now. We're trying to impart knowledge to employees who are at best distracted or apathetic and at worst scared and disillusioned. Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs proposes that people are motivated by unsatisfied needs and that "lower needs" such as safety and security have to be satisfied before attending to "higher needs" such as personal growth and development. How can learning professionals do their jobs and help organizations become successful when employees are wondering whether their mail is laced with anthrax? The answer may lie in helping to create an environment of support and belonging, in which employees have the opportunity to do their best. Economic downturn and massive layoffs make that a challenge, but not impossible. In fact, people might be especially receptive now to opportunities to shape and have more control over their surroundings. One way to encourage that is by building a sense of community.

Powering community in the workplace isn't new. The quality movement in the late 1970s touched on the idea of participative management as a way to bring groups of employees together around common principles, such as quality. In the early 199 Os, Peter Senge and James Autry talked about the necessary elements of a productive community to produce learning organizations and caring leaders. Autry writes: "Community is the new metaphor for organizations," saying that before the industrial age, all values entered society through the church and stare.

People witness healthy and destructive values played out in the workplace. A community teaches values, and those values have the power to strengthen its members or divide them. Like it or not, the pillars of commerce have become a central place where people learn values. Organizations that want to survive cultivate healthy values that bring success to staff and shareholders.

The need to belong and feel supported in the workplace becomes more important as our world becomes more uncertain. Many people spend at least half of their waking hours during the week at work, making the workplace a home away from home. Think for a moment about the home where you live and the reasons you chose to live there. The community and people were probably major factors in your decision. It's no different in the workplace. In community-building exercises I lead, I ask participants to remember a time when they experienced a positive community and to list the characteristics that made it special. Later in the exercise, they usually discover that the characteristics they listed are the same attributes they seek in their workplace now.

Clifton Taulbert, in his book Eight Habits of the Heart: The Timeless Values That Build Community Within Our Homes and Our Lives, writes: "From the classroom to the ... office cubicle, there are people who wait to hear someone say, 'Welcome.' No one really enjoys eating alone or having no one to talk with."

The profound effect of the events of September 11 and since offer organizations a new opportunity to create places of support and acceptance. Organizational leaders can stabilize their workforces by recognizing what Autry calls "the sudden, compulsive search for connection and a sense of community," in which the workplace is the neighborhood and co-workers are extended family.

A home by any other name

Training professionals must first have a clear definition of what community is before they can begin the process of helping an organization build one. Although there is no commonly accepted definition of community, most definitions include similar characteristics. Community seems to be categorized by either sharing a common space or common interests. The definitions in Merriam-Webster's combine both of those aspects: "an interacting population of various kinds of individuals in a common location" or "a body of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered through a larger society." Community researcher Carl Moore provides a simple definition appropriate for the workplace: "[where people] work together to bring the greatest good for the greatest number of people."