Driving wellbeing through organisational change

As an organisation goes through structural change, the wellbeing of staff may not be the top priority for a leader.

However, change can be a stressful time for employees, and business leaders should look to make any transition as stress-free as possible.

Nissan is currently in the process of transitioning from a manufacturing company to a tech company. Tas Papasimeon, global learning and development manager at Nissan, discussed how wellbeing is being looked after through this change.

“It’s about psychological safety and having cultural transformation around it. So, there [are] quite a few factors that fall into that. One of them is around diversity, equity, and inclusion, and being a lot more open and inclusive in the way that we conduct business and understanding what it means to have the power of a diverse workforce,” said Mr Papasimeon.

“This is one of our biggest strengths. I was based in Bangkok, [and] my previous role was head of learning and development for Asia and Oceania. It was amazing just being in the headquarters in Bangkok, seeing the melting pot that we have, of the diversity of cultures working together. Obviously, there [are] challenges that come with that. But I think that’s one of the things that we do well.”

Mr Papasimeon said having a diverse workforce is helping Nissan build trust with employees.

“Where we need to improve further on is continuing to build trust within the organisation. And that varies in degrees around the globe,” he said.

“So, we recognise fully that without trust, you can’t get to innovation. You have your foundation of trust; if you can build trust, and people feel safe in that workplace, they’re more likely to come out and have those healthy conflict conversations.”

Creating a safe space where employees can have healthy debates helps to drive innovation. This can help organisations going through change as different perspectives bring new ideas, which is important during uncertain times.

Mr Papasimeon continued: “If more people are willing to do that, then they’ll lead towards commitment, because once you have that conversation, and people feel safe having that conversation, and they’ve argued and debated the points, they’ll commit to what it is that they’ve agreed to.”

“If they commit, then you’ll get accountability. If you’ve got accountability, then that’s the next step to results. And what we believe is once you’re getting results in the business, and you’ve got all these functions working well, and teams working well together, you start innovating because people bringing things up and talking about them all the time.”

“In terms of psychological safety, building trust within the organisation is huge. Fixing the processes continuing to improve the process and making them more transparent through our organisation is what we’re also looking at and opening up more channels to our senior executive teams.”