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O P I N I O N

Developing an open culture If trust is the foundation of success, then it’s imperative that firm leaders establish transparency, and ensure that staff is engaged and informed.

A ccording to Deloitte’s 2015 Global Human Capital Trends report, 87 percent of companies view engagement and culture as two of their greatest challenges. The companies that successfully create a culture defined by meaningful work, deep employee engagement, and transparency, beat out the competition in the race to find talent.

Stephen Lucy

your firm. There are many dimensions to devel- oping an open, trusting culture – transparency of operations and information, an emphasis on building collaborative teams, a deliberate decision to tear down office silos, and even the physical office environment. At the heart of this culture, however, are the mission and values that you and your leadership define as important to the success of your firm. These values are the guiding light and must become embedded within the processes, rewards, and behaviors you establish as a leader. The end goal of developing an open culture is trust – a trust that prevails through the life cycle of every

This finding is further confirmed in Deloitte’s 2016 Global Human Capital Trends report, in which the impact of culture on an organization’s success dominated the more than 7,000 companies that responded. As many as 82 percent of the respondents believed that culture provides a potential competitive advantage. Employee engagement and culture are business topics that have become priorities for every successful organization, and as such, can no longer be relegated solely to the human resources department. And the foundation of this open culture, trust, must start with a firm’s leadership. DEFINE YOUR CULTURE. Before you can have an open culture, you must define what it means to you and

See STEPHEN LUCY, page 12

THE ZWEIG LETTER June 20, 2016, ISSUE 1157

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