The eight drivers of flourishing workplace culture are principles that work anywhere in the world. If you're looking to make a global impact through your mission then listen to this episode with our guest, Victory Mupwaya. Victoria is on the board of Miracle Life Family Church and Rhema Bible Training Center in Lusaka, Zambia. She's also the CEO of VSM People Solutions.
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In this episode:
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Miracle Life Family Church (MLFC), which started in 1998 with 17 people, is now seeing numbers on average 3,700 to 4,000 in attendance every Sunday. (02:50)
- Rhema Bible Training Center, which opened the doors in 2011 and has since had 997 students graduate (03:25)
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"I'm just excited at the growth that happened, even just challenging our systems, be it from a performance-management front, and then just the culture of being able to work away from home, testing our productivity, and just be able to see that we move away from presentism in terms of just the hours on the job to a focus of output." (07:25)
- How commitment to employee engagement has been reflected in the priorities of the board and of the church leadership (09:06)
- Survey findings have revealed problems and perceived problems in the different departments and ministries that MLFC were totally unaware of. These insights are critical for going forward and for managing people (09:53)
- Describing perceived problems (11:41)
- "What I love about the Best Christian Workplace Survey is just that it is anchored on scientifically based culture drivers. It takes away the guessing. It takes away—that clarity is what's required from both the employee and those that are managing the employees." (12:11)
- The benefit of continuing to survey employees (12:39)
- "I definitely can see that the benefits—you get to set a benchmark. What you can't measure, you can't control in management. I think that's the principle that most of us agree to. So what this Survey and the measuring of the Engagement Survey is it gives you the ability to have trend analysis. You will have—for us that have been able to do this for four years, we can actually sit and look at, what was our baseline when we started the Surveys, and where are we now? And so when we measure it and say we are improving, we can actually point to the drivers of it, in which areas, and the quantum." (12:49)
- "What I see as the benefits is a much-needed building of trust, transparency, and just a positive work environment." (13:50)
- Action plans drive the business forward. (21:38)
- Describing some of the differences and similarities for employee engagement in a marketplace setting versus, what most experience in a ministry setting (22:24)
- "That organizations have evolved to the point where they are pursuing having structures, standardizing policies, and to be able to guide them in what they achieve." (22:56)
- The discomfort with dealing with conflict, and this could be even taken to managing underperformance (24:30)
- The differences, the performance management in the marketplace setting will normally incorporate robust reward and compensation policies that will include bonus schemes, share incentives (25:19)
- "We've been very embracing of structure having standard operating procedures. And I think just recognizing that we would have to have order in the way we do things and then a benchmark on the standard." (28:40)
- How the board sets the tone for general human-resource practices with the church and the Training Center (29:57)
- The board sets the tone that every employee in the organization, whether it is the church or the Training Center, they know that everyone is held to the same standard, and the board ensures that is done. (31:20)
- How boards empower a leadership team to carry out their roles in direct management (34:05)
- Some of the common threads across cultures in creating flourishing workplaces (40:15)
Read the Transcript
Read a complete, word-for-word transcript of the episode.
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