Building Better Business Behaviours

Outgoing LSCA president Vicky Andrew shares her final article as president.

June 2021

On 21st May LSCA held a pilot “Tea and Talk” virtual session with presentations and informal discussion on building better business behaviours. Three panellists representing different generations of Chartered Accountancy shared their personal workplace experiences creating a forum for women to share our own experiences in fellowship with other women.

We would welcome our male allies to future versions of this event, with a view to having more comprehensive conversations.

How individuals interact in the workplace and beyond is fundamental to career success. Providing an engaging and supportive working environment includes the culture and behaviour within that workplace. The behaviours of managers and peers directly impacts the level of psychological safety and ultimately the culture at work.

LSCA Vice President and Diversity Champion Deborah Harris gave an introduction and overview of the topic, highlighting the UN Sustainable Development Goal no. 5 – Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls and defining unconscious bias and microaggressions.

Led by our panel discussion our group divided into breakout rooms where we exchanged our own stories of poor workplace behaviour and discussed possible ways in which poor interpersonal behaviour in business could be addressed. In the final plenary session, the groups presented a summary of their conclusions.

During the event, we also ran polls which showed that our participants were at different career and life stages, and different things had had impact on their career.

Certain common themes emerged from the discussions: the need for good two-way communication; respect for one another – “do as you would be done by;” the facility to challenge poor behaviour, knowing that the person challenging will be supported by the organisation; leaders and managers in an organisation showing a good example – modelling the behaviour the organisation purports to champion.

It was also interesting to see assumptions challenged, as it became clear that this topic ranged far wider than we originally expected. Nor was there a neat progression from poor behaviour in previous decades to good behaviour now.

I believe there is an appetite for a follow up event. If you have any views on this subject which you would like to share, or you would like to attend our next event, please get in touch via: President.london@icaew.com