Emtrain Unveils Findings from 2020 Workplace Culture Report Today at From Day One Los Angeles

Two million data points from 30,000 employees reveal the behaviors that contribute to healthy workplaces, and to crises; pinpoint “tricky culture issues” at play

Today, workplace culture platform Emtrain unveiled early findings of their 2020 Workplace Culture Report at the From Day One corporate values conference in Los Angeles, as part of “Decoding and Curing Tricky Culture Issues,” a session led by Emtrain CEO and Founder Janine Yancey.

For the study, a team of employment lawyers and former government regulators, as well as talent, leadership, learning, and organizational development experts assembled by Emtrain tested the hypothesis that bad outcomes are actually the result of one or more core situational dynamics that - at elevated levels - lead to toxic behaviors like harassment, bias, exclusion, and ethical violations. The team analyzed data points collected from 30,000 respondents across ninety organizations.

Here are the key takeaways from the report:

• Less than 50% of respondents recognize harassment behaviors when they see them.
• Only 13% of employees would report workplace harassment if they saw it (ps, saw 11% elsewhere in the report, if you can confirm the correct #)
• 30% of employees say they are not confident their manager would take them seriously if they reported bad behavior
• Almost 1 in 3 (28%) have left a job because of workplace conflict.
• Many managers are oblivious of the impact that their authority and power over others has on the social dynamic of work relationships.
• 69% of employees said tribalism and power disparity are the greatest sources of workplace conflict
• 1 in 5 respondents say they have had to minimize who they are to fit in

The full report, to be released in January 2020, will dig into initial findings to understand how they vary across companies and employee segments. The report will provide data on issues like employees’ comfort and willingness to speak up, employee confidence in management, how disparity in backgrounds and experience affects employee interactions, the degree to which management gets away with disrespectful behavior due to authority, the varied levels of awareness managers have of the impact of their authority, and the unintended consequences of managers avoiding conflict.

In their analysis, the team particularly noted negative patterns and behaviors resulting from “tricky culture issues” at play in the workplace, how they are differently manifested and defined by various employees, and how the root “issues” can be identified and stopped. Tricky issues include: someone not being sensitive to a co-worker’s gender identity, unintentionally disrespecting someone of a different generation, a manager who doesn’t understand the implications of their power, recruiting people who have similar characteristics as your own, rationalizing a self-serving action that is a conflict of interest, etc.

The report also presents a foundational set of dynamics around respect, inclusion, and ethics that lead to a workplace culture more resistant to bad outcome, and, when issues do arise, enables organizations to address these issues systematically and ‘appropriately.’ 

The opposite of respect, inclusion and ethics are harassment, bias, and ethical mishaps, and the social dynamics that lead to these bad outcomes have historically been opaque to company leaders until they reach crisis level.  Legal concerns have kept companies from quantifying these underlying issues, but with modern technology and a data-driven approach, the Emtrain report makes the opaque visible and reveals the situational dynamics that can undermine the best efforts to build healthy workplace cultures. Providing this information to companies can help them better identify and address problematic behavioral dynamics well before they become bad outcomes that affect society, organizations and employees.

Alongside “Decoding and Curing Tricky Culture Issues,” today’s From Day One Los Angeles conference also features sessions and panels with diversity and inclusion, HR, and talent development leaders from CAA, Netflix, UCLA, USC, Live Nation, Novartis, and more. More information and a complete schedule is here: https://www.fromdayone.co/conferences/losangeles19/ Coverage of the conference will be posted in the coming days.
 

About From Day One

Based in Brooklyn, From Day One is a national conference series and journalism platform focused on innovative ways for companies to forge stronger relationships with their employees, customers, and community. At a time when society holds businesses to a rising level of accountability, From Day One explores how companies can build well-grounded values into their business — diversity, responsibility, transparency — and stick with them in an economy driven by disruption. What's unique about From Day One is its cross-disciplinary approach, bringing together executives from the fields of corporate social responsibility, human resources, marketing, and communications. From Day One was founded by veteran events executive Erin Sauter, digital strategist Nick Baily, and journalist and former TIME and Fortune editor Steve Koepp.

About Emtrain

Emtrain’s workplace culture platform reinvents compliance training with provocative content that sparks dialogue and unique culture analytics that drive individual and organizational behavior change. Emtrain.ai allows you to benchmark your culture against our global community to identify issues before they become toxic problems that become compliance issues and destroy culture. Emtrain partners with industry experts and uses current events to teach on topics such as sexual harassment, unconscious bias, and ethics. Emtrain’s innovative platform is used by more than 800 culture-focused companies, such as Netflix, Yelp, Dolby, LiveNation, and others. Emtrain is a woman-owned and women-led company.