Disagreements lead to growth at Garner Health

They say honesty is the best policy, and at healthcare insights and software development provider Garner Health, that means even top executives can find themselves in some tough conversations with their own employees. 

Eighty-nine percent of employees agree that fostering a work environment where employees and managers can be honest with each other is crucial for a company's success, according to a recent survey between Harris Poll and Express Employment Professionals. Eighty-two percent even say they would be more loyal to a company if they felt they could be candid with their manager. And in Garner Health's chief people officer Valentina Gissin's experience, that has been true for their business. 

"[Honesty] is the very core of who we are as a company," she says. "I'm a big believer in purpose-built cultures that feed a company's mission, and we have this incredibly audacious mission of transforming the healthcare economy. A condition of that is that we have to be honest with each other because it's hard to do anything together if you're not being honest." 

Read more: How Health-E Commerce uses professional development to retain talent

The concept of a candor-driven workplace has to start with a willing leadership team, according to Gissin. At Garner Health, employees are informed about the company's stance having a candid culture and encouraged to provide feedback from the onset — even if it's for an executive. Even Gissin herself has found herself on the receiving end of the company's honesty policy when one of her direct reports came to her with a concern about whether or not the workload Gissin was encouraging and expecting was actually feasible. 

"They said I had been wielding my influence carelessly with some of the junior folks — it was a big awakening," she says. "I had no perspective on how much stronger my influence had gotten over the years and the responsibility that came with that." 

Even though at the time, Gissin wholeheartedly believed that what she was asking of her team was reasonable, the employee expressed that her expectations around projects and the time and effort needed to complete them weren't realistic. Gissin was forced to step back and re-evaluate how she communicated those expectations to her employees. That led to follow-up questions and conversations which provided a sense of clarity for the employees, and a learning moment for Garner Health's leaders and managers, too. 

Read more: How to cultivate psychological safety at your workplace

Setting up an honest culture during on-boarding

On the HR side, the people team spends 90 minutes running case studies for every new hire to help them understand how to deliver feedback that is appropriate and high quality, and what is out of bounds. Gissin also stresses the importance of fielding and publishing company reviews so that everyone can see the company holding itself accountable to truth and honesty as well. 

"People tend to be naturally more conflict averse and want to hold on to any kind of constructive or negative criticism because it is human nature to want to please each other," she says. "But it's important to put company and personal growth goals ahead of what may be most comfortable, which is staying quiet on the bad stuff and being loud on the good stuff." 

Radical honesty doesn't happen overnight, however, and can have repercussions if a leader or a member of the team voices their thoughts aggressively or in a manner that may not be conducive to conversation. This is why it's crucial for HR departments to create a space where the workforce will be comfortable sharing their experiences so that they can formulate feedback together.   

Read more: Why hospital price transparency is essential to improving employee benefits

"We have to create an environment so that people can speak up, and where feelings don't fester," Gissin says. "Anytime there's a big problem, it always starts out as a tiny problem that somebody knew about and could have said something about if they felt like they had the safety and the mandate to do that." 

Despite being years in the making, the investment at Garner Health has yielded good and healthy results — even the most junior employees say they would feel empowered enough to speak up when they don't agree. With the right kind of shift in outlook and policy changes, any organization would be able to see the same kind of engagement in their own workforces. 

"People grow when they are given constant positive and constructive feedback," Gissin says. "Sharing with them their strengths and their opportunity areas, as well as how to develop those strengths and guard rail the opportunity areas. People who have a very clear picture of themselves just grow faster and do better."