5 Tips for Tackling Organizational Culture

The word ‘culture’ can be a difficult and unwieldy term. As a result, it may often seem easier to dismiss it as something that is difficult to measure, near impossible to change, and outside of day to day concerns of an organization. However, given that correlations can be made between positive organizational culture and employee retention, it’s a concept that’s worth sincere attention and discussion.
There has never been a more important occasion to consider and work on fostering a positive work culture in your organization. Deloitte’s 2015 report on Global Human Capital Trends notes that culture, engagement, and employee retention are now the top talent challenges facing business leaders. More than half of responding business leaders rated the issue of retention as urgent.
There are tangible benefits to be found in building an excellent workplace culture, not limited to attracting top talent, engaging employees, high retention rates, and an improved bottom line.
So what’s the key to creating this sought out positive work culture? Unfortunately, there’s no magical quick fix. Luckily though, the steps to take are painless, positive and very much possible.
Think Long-Term
You can’t change culture in the short term. One fun team outing, night at a game, trust building exercise or pub night will not create lasting change for a company culture. From the start, recognize that effectively changing work culture will require a persistent and ongoing commitment to positive change. I’m not saying it needs to be difficult, but it does need to be a planned, intentional and evolving process.
Open Up Channels of Communication
There is very little to be gained in maintaining a closed and secretive closed door communication policy, and yet so much to gain from an open communication, open door policy. Keeping information hidden can generate suspicion and contribute to speculation that contributes to a negative working environment. This does little to engage employees, and may directly contribute to their desire to work elsewhere.
Alternatively, a culture that embraces open communication implies one where employees are recognized as critical to the organization. Employees are engaged to fully participate in an operation that implicitly trusts them and seeks and values their input. Transparency within organizations can build working relationships, increase team productivity, create faster access to important information and foster engaged employees.
Recognize Success
This is the point that many people assume involves money and bonuses. However, that’s not always the case. While financial incentives are one option for recognizing success, some surveys indicate that the majority of employees feel that meaningful engagement has no dollar value. There are many lists, blogs, and forums with extensive ideas on how to recognize success for free. Some examples of rewards include meaningful and authentic thank you notes, pizza parties, highlighting someone’s work during a team meeting, writing about them in a companywide e-mail, arranging a casual wear work week as recompense, or gifting the person flowers, a book or other small present. Check out this list of 25 ideas by Forbes, or another online list of 101 ideas.
Provide Development Opportunities
No one likes to feel that their job is stagnant. Individuals in stagnate roles turn into disengaged employees. Not everyone needs the same type of development opportunity and it doesn’t always mean expensive professional development budgets or complicated mentorship programs. Development opportunities can include on the job training like leap assignments and one on one mentorship partnering between junior and senior staff. Identifying future development goals and plans to work towards lets your employees see that their organization is investing in them. Seeing a viable future within an organization is engaging and helps promote a hopeful positive work culture.
Identify your Cultural Ambassadors
Take a few minutes and think about which of your employees embodies the cultural atmosphere that you’d like to promote. It probably won’t be too hard and you likely already know who that person or people are. They’re generally cheery, kind and helpful or a mixture of other positive adjectives. They are not always extroverts and it’s not a popularity contest.  However, identifying your cultural ambassadors and providing them with opportunities to spread their influence or recognizing their positive contributions can have ongoing subtle impacts on the mood and morale of teams and organizations. On the other hand, think about the people who always seem to be negative and disruptive. Speak to them one-on-one, offer solutions, suggest changes and recognize that both positive and negative behaviours and emotions are contagious. Sometimes, depending on the context it may be best to part ways. Foster the good, and try and dismantle the bad.

Organizations are built around people, and as we all know, people are complex, dynamic and evolving. As a result, organizational cultures, like the very people who create and experience them, are just as diverse and changing. Happiness is contagious and a positive organizational culture can spread across all levels of an organization and create an engaging workplace. In North America we tend to spend far more time at work than anywhere else in our lives. At the very least we should be working in an environment that is positive, supportive and hopefully enjoyable as well.
Good luck with your own positive cultural endeavours, and if you need a bit of inspiration to get going, check out the following video and start with a smile:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxjjYcS9D0M