September has been designated by the National Day Archives as Global Company Culture Month, celebrated on September 18th as the Global Company Culture Day.
Company culture is “The ideas, customs, and social behavior of a particular people”. This mixture is so complex that culture is built over time, and learnt by example, so the reinforcement of behaviors is key to design it.
Being fast changes the constant, not all company cultures are been able to adapt. Employee’s behavioral changes in younger generations like Millennials and Gen Z or customer desires for innovation may generate friction and frustration on a daily basis. The problem today is that when employees don’t value or respect the culture, they start working against it, maybe not even consciously. They can’t match their goals to company goals so they become disengaged. The lower productivity of actively disengaged workers penalizes U.S. economic performance by about $300 billion.
Companies need to look for ways to promote their culture within the company, build routines and behaviors that sustain it and train leaders to become role models.
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Best practices to promote your company culture
Below are some practices that companies are implementing to share their culture.
- Define clear rules and values: some companies define their values with the employees. Simply ask what they value about the company, and summarize their input in no more than 12 “common ground rules”.
- Communicate ground rules and expected routines to ensure alignment company-wide. You can use banners, intranet, emails, internal contests. Then you can use anonymous surveys to test the effectiveness of the communication.
- Hire and fire for culture. If an employee doesn’t behave in alignment with the core values, he/she usually decides to leave the company in the short term or becomes toxic for the rest of the employees.
- The cost to a company of a highly skilled that leaves could be as high as 213% of the cost of one year’s compensation for that role. The hiring process becomes crucial to avoid false expectations. Some companies have a “culture fit” interview.
- Company-wide training is key to ensure everybody learns the expected behaviors and routines, especially for new hires. People that have been with the company for many years also may need upskilling in case a cultural change is required. Training could be very direct, in the format of a leadership training, or through indirect methods that are aligned with the desired behavior. We use the 5S methodology to train operations on team working, innovation and engagement.
- If a behavior doesn’t stick in a specific group, it is probably a matter of leadership. Design routines like stand-up meetings or standard boards to share information and make sure all leaders across the company are specifically trained to use them.
- Many companies encourage employees to reach out to their network to look for potential hires.
- Tie compensation to behaviors. If your company is looking to promote a team environment, individual bonuses won’t help. Some companies have eliminated individual commissions to salespeople to discourage internal competition. Other organizations are implementing peer-to-peer rewards.
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Celebrate culture
There are many other ways that companies use to promote their culture. Depending on how aligned it is to the current employee behaviors, you may need to do a “big launch” or simply follow a plan that ensures continuous communication and alignment monitoring. Culture exists either you promote it or not, but if you want to change some behaviors or make them more consistent, you need to shift mindsets both on the individual and corporate side to create a cultural change. Start celebrating September Culture month by relaunching your culture!
Lu Paulise
luciana@biztorming.com
@lupaulise
Biztorming Training & Consulting
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