Proud of your company culture? Consider re-evaluating to foster an efficient workforce

A good company culture is a badge of pride. However, as much as we’d like to keep wearing this badge, team and company cultures change and thus, needs to be reevaluated. Dynamic factors like, markets, evolving customers, socio-political systems, geopolitical scenarios, new-age leadership, influx of talent from various backgrounds are just some of the reasons why company cultures keep evolving.?

Leaders use cultures to create high-functioning teams and build a high-performance organization. Eventually, as leaders get wrapped up in delivering results, cultures are unmanaged or passed on to the Human Resources department, not making it a part of the core business function. Leaders keep defining detailed strategies for execution but at some point those ideas are derailed, because teams lack an understanding of the core values and culture of the company.

A company’s culture must become important to everyone in the company, no matter where you are in the hierarchy. It is ‘culture’ that blends the intentions of the top leaders with the knowledge, expertise and experiences of frontline employees.

How culture became a priority:

The pandemic changed the way people worked. The need for transparency increased, the skill? to adapt quickly, and stay flexible became a highly valued skill. Thanks to high profile culture crises in some well-known organizations, DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) became a priority and an integral part of company culture. According to the Summit Leadership Partners 2021 CEO study 95% of CEOs said DEI is a focus for their companies over the next few years.?

Company culture is a priority on corporate agendas and delegating its execution or adherence to any single department no longer works. It isn’t just a part of the leadership or the HR but everyone’s responsibility. Everyone’s role in this is not just about influencing or being influenced but also leading certain parts of the culture plan and being accountable for it as well.

In simple words, it’s a shared responsibility.?

With so much change affecting company cultures today, it is important to understand why a culture is changing or better yet - ‘when’ to change it.

Why consider a culture shift?

Without a strong company culture, organizations and teams tend to get disillusioned. After all, it is culture that determines how employees perform together, build products, take feedback, create unique customer experiences, and foster innovation. Thus, as the dynamics in the industry or ecosystem changes, a change in culture becomes a necessity.?

While much has changed since the pandemic, a transformation for many businesses were due. The pandemic only accelerated these changes 2x. A change in the economic environment and markets overall, triggered a need to look at the future from a different perspective. A digital-savvy customer demanded better technology and solutions. This meant reassessing business goals, functions and scope - giving enterprises an opportunity to level up. Thus, triggering a need for companies to reassess their culture, discard redundancies, and make critical changes in culture to facilitate thriving businesses.?

This culture change then paves way for new policies, hierarchies, team structures, technologies, processes, skills, and people. However, as culture transforms living and working within the new culture’s guidelines must be given equal importance too.?

Evolving Culture transforms the way we work?

• An evolving culture can foster a better and more energetic work environment. Work will start streamlining, day to day interactions will become smoother.
• Depending on what the cultural traits are, it could influence employee productivity and performance. For example if upskilling is part of the plan then your teams will grow stronger within the company and result in lesser attrition rates.?
• More individual efficiency and better performance would translate into benefits for the company as a whole.
• Employees will learn to be more agile and soon the company will be accustomed to change as its second nature.

Here are few areas that enterprises can place extra emphasis on, when it comes to a culture shift.

Involve your employees, team leaders and internal stakeholders in the process of culture change and its necessary decisions. We all know change is tough, so ensuring a buy-in into this shift is essential.?

1. Wellness:? People, the crucial element of culture, are who make the culture shift a success. Post pandemic, hygiene, health, wellness and a balanced lifestyle has taken center stage. Companies must go beyond the minimal health insurance to foster wellness in company culture. Which in turn boosts employee morale, as they value it far more.?
2. DEI: Who you hire and how you treat the members of your organization are of utmost importance today. Designing DEI strategies promotes innovation, drives better business results, and increases workplace effectiveness. Though these may be challenging, businesses must make this an important part of company culture change.??
3. Upskilling: One way to build your internal workforce is to empower employees with courses and degrees to help them upskill their way to senior roles. This is not only beneficial for the employee in terms of growth but attracts more performers to your company as well.?
4. Feedback: Creating a feedback loop that is efficient and effective in driving improvement across processes and people is something many organizations are working towards. Feedback without judgment, helps define the current state of the company and builds the basis of your culture. The valuable data that gets collected through these exercises should literally live and breathe through the organization. If you have succeeded at bringing your new found culture to life, you will feel it in your company - in every boardroom, hallway, at the cafeteria, in anyone you talk to in your company.

Leaders - The torchbearers of culture

Both good and bad outcomes are the responsibility of a leader. If a broken culture can be an outcome of poor leadership; it also means that strong leadership can repair and rebuild it. It is a misconception that culture is HR’s responsibility. The fact is, that every leader and employee must be on board for a cohesive and meaningful culture to propagate. Everyone must ensure the success of the company’s culture together by practicing it and leading the next set of leaders to nurture it and grow.

Change is all about challenges. But a strategy that involves continuous improvement can help a great deal along your journey. Make your company culture a part of the lives of everyone who must live by it and watch your organization take wings.