Data plus micro-goals to support organizational change

For newsroom culture to be healthy and sustained over time, it has to become a measurable business objective, which means it has to become a goal everyone works to reach. Yes, right alongside subscriber retention and new audience growth.

In my mind, I see workplace well-being as the macro goal, and my former bosses at the Palm Beach Post always described these bigger goals as “buckets to be filled” by micro-goals, or new sets of behaviors. They explained that everyone’s work should, in some way, be a drop that fills that bucket, but they also explained that some teams in the newsroom were better positioned to fulfill certain goals, such as the sports or breaking news teams being better positioned to meet traffic goals while the features or opinion journalists were better positioned to meet engagement or innovation goals.

This week, workplace well-being is that bucket to be filled in two ways:

1. Organizational change — such as changes to PTO policy, the hours in a work week, or the opportunities for professional development
2. Individual team change — such as a change to the pace and demand of work, the way people are acknowledged or celebrated, and how coaching leads to promotion

There are so many great ways to set goals. You may already be familiar with SMARTIE goals, for example. For today’s exercise, we’ll use a KPI (key performance indicator) equation.

Target + Timeframe + Data Source + Frequency = Measuring Well-being

STEP 1: Assign a data point to reach

To evolve from aspirational to measurable, you need a specific target, one that has a stretch but achievable metric tied to it. This target should be just as memorable as your from/to statement. Goals are really hard to reach when you can’t quickly recall what they even are.

STEP 2: Decide how long it will takeYou need a timeframe for completing the goal. Our default in newsrooms is annually, and depending on the goal, that works. Policy changes can take a year or more to come to fruition, but team changes can happen much faster. Six- to 12-month time frames are ideal here and allow a more proactive response to the trauma-facing nature of our industry.

STEP 3: Choose the data source to trackWhat we found at the API Mental Health Summit is that these were both institutional and created. This means that for some of our goals, we could use the employee navigator system for tracking while for others we would need to create the data source through a survey or some other process.

STEP 4: Set a frequency to monitorYou need a set frequency for monitoring your goal that is different from the timeframe. How often will you collect or pull the data? This is your frequency. A more regularly occurring timeframe would help you catch work style and lifestyle changes that could hinder your team’s relationship with the work, but this timeframe could also be difficult to keep up with. So manage your expectations here and keep the automated or analog nature of your data source in mind.Measuring your newsroom well-being aspirations may look like this:

Objective (future state)	Managers cultivate supportive relationships where they model care and promote benefits that can help journalists
Workplace Essential	Mattering at work
Performance Indicator (key result)	PTO is taken throughout the year, not just around holidays
Target	Timeframe	Data Source	Frequency
50% of newsroom PTO is not holiday-adjacent	6 months	PTO tracking system through HR	Quarterly
Performance Indicator (key result)	Staff protect deep work time, observed by Slack & OOO updates, formalized hand-off process, and traction on passion projects
Target	Timeframe	Data Source	Frequency
75% of team will have weekly “balcony time”	3 months	Google Calendar + Slack	Monthly

 

Objective (future state)	Managers cultivate supportive relationships where they model care and promote benefits that can help journalists
Workplace Essential	Work-life harmony
Performance Indicator (key result)	Staff adheres to a twice-weekly schedule of assigned eight-hour workdays
Target	Timeframe	Data Source	Frequency
100% of editors have at least one, eight-hour workday a week	3 months	ADP time clock or Slack channel	Monthly
Performance Indicator (key result)	Cross-newsroom engagement in our “scorecard for well-being” inspired by the 5 Essentials
Target	Timeframe	Data Source	Frequency
5% increase in baseline scores for flexibility & autonomy	3 months	Scorecard results	Quarterly

 

It’s easy to take a “tag-not-it” approach to this work, putting the burden on the workers — the journalists — to fix the issues in the newsroom. But self-care alone, boundaries alone, won’t change organizational culture. Nor will they change the way we show up in that culture. Next week, as we wrap up this series, we’ll anticipate roadblocks so you can prepare different avenues for reaching your measuring well-being goals.