A company’s success goes beyond numbers and goals. In fact, without a strong company culture, your numbers will suffer and the journey toward your goals will become more and more difficult. Company culture has everything to do with the productivity level and happiness of your employees, which is why it is so imperative to all organizations’ success, no matter their industry or size. Here are 4 tips for changing company culture to ensure that your company is healthy, your employees are happy, and your organization’s future is bright.
Evaluate your current culture
Why do you want to change your company culture? Is productivity low or is conflict high? Before strategizing to alter your organization’s culture, it’s essential to understand how your company is currently operating. Look at all aspects of your business from team building to individual behavior. How do people interact with each other? Become an impartial observer as you take notes on employees’ emotions and even the decorations that hang on the wall or the furniture and desk arrangements. Do they represent your ideal culture? As you look at what is present, it’s just as important to recognize what is absent.
Redefine your values
Go back to your mission and vision statements and talk about values and behavior with your employees. Create descriptors and actionable behaviors that can be applicable to all levels of workers, including management and c-suite executives. If you are lacking a strong company culture, you might just need to go back to the drawing board and show your organization how you want them to operate. Ensuring that all employees know and understand new culture expectations does not happen overnight; it will take meetings, training courses, and mentoring opportunities to feel like the change is really settling in.
Dig into processes
If your company culture and company processes are not connected, there will be a misalignment that can cause the organization problems. Consider how company culture is weaved into hiring strategies and how benefits packages demonstrate your ideal organizational culture. Do managers take into account company culture when looking at evaluations and promotions? It’s not as easy as simply asking your employees to behave a certain way; you must intertwine company culture into everything that you do so that it is a natural component of the company rather than a forced objective in group settings.
Create measurable objectives
As you focus on improving company culture, incorporate tools that will measure your progress and keep track of your journey. Take scheduled evaluations of the current culture and document how it’s changing. Ask managers or supervisors for their perspective to get a well-rounded view of successes and failures. Create a way to hear from employees as they are going through the process of a culture shift. A survey is an effective way to receive feedback from employees on how they feel your organization’s culture is changing.
The best company culture isn’t created in days, or even months. Take the time and make the effort to ensure that the change in your organization’s culture is done the right way, the first time. Be patient and diligent to create a strong culture, so that once your company’s culture changes, it is steady enough to stand the test of time.
