September 21, 2017 2:00 pm
Every company is unique, and each will go about improving its culture in a very different way. Failure to maintain a high standard of corporate culture could lead to numerous problems, including high staff turnover, poor recruitment and low morale, loss of productivity and loss of profits. Given the competitive nature of the business environment, no company wants to be at the receiving end of a negative reputation propagated by disgruntled employees. Here are the steps that you can take to improve your corporate culture, and see how you can benefit from the improvement.
Different organizations adopt different cultures that align with their goals and visions. You should also know the kind of culture you are looking for based on the vision of your company. To know the qualities of an ideal culture, you may consider the symptoms that constitute a bad organizational culture, in order to find their solutions. Some of the negative symptoms include poor management decisions, inefficient information sharing, failure to reward ethical behavior, and failure to listen to and address issues affecting employees. For a culture to be effective, it should bear some specific values such as:
To identify which areas in your corporate culture require improvement, you should understand what it is. This may entail identifying the values that align with your plans and strategies you wish to employ. Some values may be outdated or inappropriate for the kind of image you want to portray to your employees and external stakeholders. Ensure that your corporate culture stays true to your organizational values. For example, if your business intends to improve its standing in the eyes of the customers, check whether your culture is customer-oriented. This would mean turning your focus from other factors, such as cost effectiveness, and focusing on improving your customer service.
In addition, you should be able to retain the positive aspects of your corporate culture and eliminate any negative parts. A flexible corporate culture gives room for growth and greater profitability since you can rectify problematic areas.
Confirm that your corporate culture clearly defines the direction intended for starting the business. Ensure that the decision originates from the top as its impact trickles down to the lower levels of your labor force.
Many organizations today tend to be flatter, more concept-driven and leaner. These values can help boost employee engagement, collaboration, creativity and stronger retention. Leadership development is in great demand despite calls for less hierarchy. You should endeavor to develop inspirational leaders who can perform in a ROI-driven way and motivate others. You need to inculcate the atmosphere of collegiality to empower employees while ensuring persistent accountability.
When going about this, you should begin at the top. This requires your leadership to be supportive of any initiative. Next, you must put the change into action. Practical leadership can effectively develop a strong corporate culture. Then, you should recognize success and reward exceptional achievement, especially if it embodies your organization’s culture. This will encourage more employees to adopt and infuse the culture into their daily workplace routine, thus boosting their performance.
The adoption of a top down leadership can push your company to greater heights if it had previously remained stagnant for a long time. Inspirational, innovative leadership can help steer the right concepts in the right direction.
To develop the values that would effectively transform your corporate culture, you need to employ specific strategies. These strategies may target the workforce, the leadership, or the entire organization. They might even be effective in bringing on board customers and outside stakeholders.
As a business leader, you might sense that your corporate culture is doing a disservice to your organizational values; thus, you might think of changing the culture. Despite your desire to change it, your organizational culture may be too intangible and subjective to produce an impact that aligns it with business success. The steps provided here can help you get started on overhauling your business culture to produce positive results. You could even go ahead and compare your company with other organizations, which seem to have the culture metrics for which you seek. High-performance companies, too, employ some of the techniques mentioned here to iron out departments that are recording a slump in productivity. However, you may adopt your own strategies of approaching your cultural shortcomings. With these qualities as metrics, you can determine the success of your cultural transformation in achieving corporate success.
This blog post is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is created between the author and reader of this blog post, and its content should not be relied upon as legal advice. Readers are urged to consult legal counsel when seeking legal advice.
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