Why champions can be a great addition to your workplace

A workplace champion is someone who has the job of improving a certain area of the company.

Jade Green, people and culture expert, discussed the benefits of implementing a workplace champion: “[Champions] have a massive effect because when it’s everybody’s job, it’s nobody’s job. Nobody knows when it’s the right thing to do, or sometimes they get a bit scared, they’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to seem like I’m too big for my boots pushing the envelope.’”

“But when it’s a role that it’s discussed and embraced, it allows people to truly shine. And it allows other team members to come and be a little bit more open and build a connection and ask questions as well.”

Champions can come in many forms, from wellbeing champions to diversity champions, productivity champions, or people and culture champions. Anywhere in the business that needs increased attention, a champion can fill this position.

“I work with one of my clients, and we realised what we really needed was a people and culture person within the team. At first, she had a really fun title, the fun police,” Ms Green explained.

“Her job was to make sure people were having fun, and getting it done. But she was our people and culture champion. We’ve now, as the business has grown and we’ve got more sites and more locations going, it’s just not feasible for her to get around to nine, 10 different places in the time frame that we needed to get to.”

She continued: “We’re looking at how do we create a people and culture person within each satellite site that can live and breathe it, and be the eyes and ears, and when they see that the team is flat, can step up to the plate and take it on board, can be given a little bit more guidance in terms of, ‘Okay, this is what it means to live our virtues.’”

With the rise of hybrid and remote working forcing many businesses to shift their processes, implementing a remote working champion may be a great way to ensure staff are looked after when they aren’t working onsite. It can be easy to fall behind when you aren’t surrounded by colleagues, which is where a champion can act as a voice and a crutch for these workers.

“If you’re a bigger organisation, you’ve got multiple sites, even giving someone the champion over your remote workforce that really loves it, that person that lives and breathes it, and they can bring the energy to it, and they can take responsibility, you’re just going to amplify your message,” Ms Green said.

However, care should be taken to pick the right person for the job. Ms Green said that champions should have a passion for helping people; otherwise, you risk the role becoming redundant.

“If you don’t have someone that’s really loving it and embodying it, it gets diluted. So, everyone’s like, ‘Oh, but then we have to hire.’ No. There are people in your team right now that they love the team environment. They want to be that supporter profile. They’d adore the additional responsibility,” she said.

Ms Green added: “For those people, giving them significance over doing that and the recognition and the challenge, you are more likely to keep them engaged, and not lose them to somewhere else. And they’re not asking for more money. They’re not asking for a new job. It’s just about how can you unlock more of their skills, and use your powers for good, leverage them, that is in a way that they love as well.”

The transcript of this podcast episode, when quoted above, was slightly edited for publishing purposes. The full audio conversation with Jade Green on 18 April is below, and the original podcast article can be found here.