Corporate Culture or Organizational Culture commonly defined as set of values, beliefs, and behaviors embraced, perceived, or established in an organization. Many indicate that strong Corporate Culture is associated with better performance. Research by Kotter shows that a strong Company Culture are associated with strong financial results. More recent research from Akpa, Asikhia, and Nneji (2021) shows that if employee have clear spelt out work ethics, are like-minded and hold similar beliefs and values, guided by values of consistency, adaptability and effective communication system, can give employees a sense of identity which increases their commitment to work and ultimately leads to better performance.
Corporate Culture trickle down from collective values and beliefs into behaviors, day to day work activities, and basically in every aspect experienced by employees working in a company. Hence, Corporate Culture is tightly connected with Employee Experience. Where company that aligns its value to their Employee Experience, they can establish a strong Corporate Culture. But, re-shaping Employee Experience now after the pandemic pose a unique and different challenge. A study by the Society of Human Resources Management shows that one third employers are facing challenges in maintaining company culture. So, what can we do?
Stay Connected
Seeing each other in the office and being in a close proximity with co-workers can make us feel connected. Now, in hybrid set up, the feeling of ‘connected’ must be built in a different way. Tracy Brower in Forbesow important to have a well communicated shared value and ensuring that employee knows their unique contribution to organization’s goal, hence they should be held accountable for their work, to build an effective culture. Second, emphasized on creating both perceived and real proximity in hybrid work setup. She mentioned several aspect team leaders should pay attention to. Here are some of the key takeaways; hd is ensuring transparency, accessibility, and visibility. Working in different places, we might unconsciously miss out or even leave out someone in our team that’s working either from home or on the office. So make sure everyone are shared the same amount of information, and for leaders to be available personally for the team.
Be Intentional
To build our culture, we have to walk the talk. Gartner mentioned that 70% HR leaders know their culture, but only 30% are confident that their culture is evident. In their article they also emphasized leaders to move forward to actually demonstrate values in organization’s culture. For example, if the company values collaboration, then ensuring there are space and activities in doing collaboration is important. For example, a cross-function project or a cross-functional feedback.
Keeping an eye on Employee Engagement
Knowing employee engagement is one of the keys to maintain the connection we need to build a strong culture. From knowing the level of engagement, we can adjust our communication approach or strategy to make sure that our culture is implemented in our organization. To facilitate Engagement monitoring, there are now digital system or platform where they can take employee survey or pulse survey. An article in Lattice also mentioned about the importance of not only monitoring the engagement, but also to communicate the result transparently, and the proactively respond to feedbacks.
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To Sum,
Organizational culture is something that is already rooted and so in order the re-shape, re-create, or re-design culture, we should take a mindful, conscious, and intentional efforts to make it happen. We have to ensure what we do in the organization really reflects and demonstrates our culture. As time pass, and with consistency, we will be able to create strong Organizational Culture from our current conscious efforts.
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