Focus on Organizational Culture

A great organizational culture is the key to developing the traits necessary for business success. And you’ll see its effects in your bottom line: companies with healthy cultures are 1.5 times more likely to experience revenue growth of 15 percent or more over three years and 2.5 times more likely to experience significant stock growth over the same period. Despite this, only 31 percent of HR leaders believe their organizations have the culture they need to drive future business, and getting there is no easy task — 85 percent of organizations fail in transforming their cultures.

Read on as Kellie Wong from Achievers Solutions explains why transforming organizational culture is critical, and please contact us to create a roadmap with our programs to become an industry winning culture.

What is organizational culture?

Organizational culture is the collection of values, expectations, and practices that guide and inform the actions of all team members. Think of it as the collection of traits that make your company what it is. A great culture exemplifies positive traits that lead to improved performance, while a dysfunctional company culture brings out qualities that can hinder even the most successful organizations.

Don’t confuse culture with organizational goals or a mission statement, although both can help define it. Culture is created through consistent and authentic behaviors, not press releases or policy documents. You can watch company culture in action when you see how a CEO responds to a crisis, how a team adapts to new customer demands, or how a manager corrects an employee who makes a mistake.

The importance of culture to your company

Organizational culture affects all aspects of your business, from punctuality and tone to contract terms and employee benefits. When workplace culture aligns with your employees, they’re more likely to feel more comfortable, supported, and valued. Companies that prioritize culture can also weather difficult times and changes in the business environment and come out stronger.

Culture is a key advantage when it comes to attracting talent and outperforming the competition.

77 percent of workers consider a company’s culture before applying, and almost half of employees would leave their current job for a lower-paying opportunity at an organization with a better culture. The culture of an organization is also one of the top indicators of employee satisfaction and one of the main reasons that almost two-thirds (65%) of employees stay in their job. - Glassdoor

Qualities of a great organizational culture

Every organization’s culture is different, and it’s important to retain what makes your company unique. However, the cultures of high-performing organizations consistently reflect certain qualities that you should seek to cultivate:

• Alignment comes when the company’s objectives and its employees’ motivations are all pulling in the same direction. Exceptional organizations work to build continuous alignment to their vision, purpose, and goals.

• Appreciation can take many forms: a public kudos, a note of thanks, or a promotion. A culture of appreciation is one in which all team members frequently provide recognition and thanks for the contributions of others.

• Trust is vital to an organization. With a culture of trust, team members can express themselves and rely on others to have their back when they try something new.

• Performance is key, as great companies create a culture that means business. In these companies, talented employees motivate each other to excel, and, as shown above, greater profitability and productivity are the results.

• Resilience is a key quality in highly dynamic environments where change is continuous. A resilient culture will teach leaders to watch for and respond to change with ease.

• Teamwork encompasses collaboration, communication, and respect between team members. When everyone on the team supports each other, employees will get more done and feel happier while doing it.

Building a high-performing organizational culture

Creating a great organizational culture requires developing and executing a plan with clear objectives that you can work towards and measure. The steps below provide a start to a roadmap for building a culture of continuity that will deliver long-term benefits across your company.

1. Excel in recognition

Recognizing the contributions of all team members has a far-reaching, positive effect on organizational culture. When everyone on the team recognizes the accomplishments of others, individuals start to see how they’re part of a whole. Even the most jaded employees want to know their work matters, and they notice when they aren’t appreciated — 76 percent of employees don’t feel especially recognized by superiors. Experts agree that when an organization makes appreciating employees part of its culture, important metrics like employee engagement, retention, and productivity improve.

2. Enable employee voice

Creating a culture that values feedback and encourages employee voice is essential, as failing to do so can lead to lost revenue and demotivated employees.

First, you need to collect feedback using the right listening tools that make it easy for employees to express what they’re feeling in the moment, like pulse surveys and workplace chatbots. Then analyze the results to see what’s working and what isn’t in your organization, and act on those findings while they’re still relevant. Not only does this strengthen your culture, it leads to benefits like higher employee fulfillment and greater profitability.

Acording to a Clutch survey, 68 percent of employees who receive regular feedback feel fulfilled in their jobs, and Gallup found that organizations with managers who received feedback on their strengths showed 8.9 percent greater profitability.

3. Make your leaders culture advocates

Your company’s success in building a strong workplace culture rests in the hands of team leaders and managers. For example, if your workplace culture prioritizes certain values and your leadership team doesn’t exemplify them — or even displays behaviors that go against them — it undermines the effort. Team members will recognize the dissonance between stated values and lived behaviors. They may even start to emulate negative behaviors because they believe those behaviors have been rewarded by management.

While 76 percent of executives believe their organization has a well-communicated value system, only 31 percent of employees agree. When employees see leaders living your culture, they’ll follow suit.

4. Live by your company values

Your company’s values are the foundation of its culture. While crafting a mission statement is a great start, living by company values means weaving them into every aspect of your business. This includes support terms, HR policies, benefits programs, and even out-of-office initiatives like volunteering. Your employees, partners, and customers will recognize and appreciate that your organization puts its values into practice every day. You can also recognize employees for actions that exemplify your values to show that they’re more than just words and incentivize employees to build the value-based culture you want to see.

5. Forge connections between team members

Building a workplace culture that can handle adversity requires establishing strong connections between team members, but with increasingly remote and terse communication, creating those bonds can be challenging. Encouraging collaboration and engaging in team building programs — remote or in-office— are effective ways to bring your team together and promote communication.

6. Focus on learning and development

Great workplace cultures are formed by employees who are continually learning and companies that invest in staff development. Training initiatives, coaching, and providing employees with new responsibilities are all great ways to show your team that you’re invested in their success.

Find Courses’ most recent benchmark study found that companies with highly engaged employees were 1.5 times more likely to prioritize soft skills development. It also found that companies that had experienced revenue growth in the previous financial year were twice more likely to use innovative learning technologies and three times more likely to increase their learning and development budgets.

Developing culture made easy

Organizational culture will develop even without your input, but in the absence of that guidance, it may not be healthy or productive. Keep these three basic techniques in mind when developing your company culture: communication, recognition, and action.

We recommend creating a 'People Development Framework' to effectively plan and manage a positive shift to a winning industry culture - Kaleido Academy's workforce transformation consultants will be happy to discuss and support your organization on this important journey