Author: Mandar

How do you want employees to describe your organisation to the outside world? Because that is most often the best description of company culture whether you want it to be, or not. A culture reflects your organisational values and understanding how to guide it with intentionality can’t be overemphasised; building a culture is no different than meeting a quarterly financial target; you have to know what you plan to achieve and, you need to have a plan for achieving it. Try working backwards and imagine you are working in a successful organisation with a great culture. Write a letter to a friend and describe what it is like to work at your company… that is your target culture.

Because culture is not a poster in the break room, a motto, or a catch phrase under a logo. Culture is easy to forget when the path of least resistance may mean setting a particular value aside in favour of expediency. Repeating the cultural values of your organisation not only reminds your employees, but it reminds leaders as well. As managers talk with employees and manage continual change, they have an opportunity to reinforce a company’s cultural values in conversation after conversation. Words repeated… and actions repeated… anchor the culture you desire.

Veering from the desired culture can be unintentional and very human. In other words, if you want to be deliberate about building a specific culture then you have to create a safe environment, where calling out actions and decisions that run contrary to culture is not only acceptable… it’s encouraged. Is this easy? Absolutely not, and there will be times when you must balance culture with the demands of customers or external factors that are not under your control. The important thing is making sure everyone knows that, while imperfect, there is a genuine effort to strive for fidelity to the values.

These stories tell you how they might describe your culture to others. Culture can’t become an exercise of branding; it has to be the product of authentic words and actions that tell a story. For example, if two intended cultural characteristics are to be customer-centered and employee-enabling, what are employees telling each other — and people outside the company — that reflect that? What does it say about cultural alignment if one employee tells another, “The customer was really upset because they had been put on hold three times and transferred all over. I wanted to apologize, go ahead, and discount their bill, and get some team members to start with a root-cause analysis, but my manager won’t let me do anything until they check with their director first.”? Knowing the lore told by your workforce is important and we should recognize employees may dwell on negative past events and move past it much slower than we would like. How do these stories shape culture and what new stories can be created to counteract negative ones?

Change moves slowly toward the positive and rapidly toward the negative. This bias in favor of the negative is the result of human nature. Psychology experts tell us that people are hardwired to go negative because of our “fight or flight” defense mechanism and because we are hardwired this way, we need to generate at least three positive thoughts to offset one negative one. An organization’s culture is malleable and while often stagnant, managers and leaders have the ability to move it in a positive direction.

As you think about building your culture, make it a priority and not an afterthought. Many organizations spend years recovering from missteps that impacted employee productivity, brand quality, and overall success. Make culture building a deliberate effort that leverages the power of the manager to influence your workforce norms.

There’s always this fundamental issue with how HR should be positioned within organisations. It is an observation that the partnership model that many HR functions deploy doesn’t encourage partnership rather, it encourages subordination. It mostly positions HR as a reactive, operational support function rather that a proactive, strategic ally. HR leaders must start leading by proactively taking charge of the strategic issues. HR leaders need to elevate their market knowledge and need to partner strongly with other functions like IT, sales and finance to have a strong grip of the larger ecosystem. Each function brings strengths and unique insights into rethinking talent strategies that drive business impact and HR as a function need to work in tandem with them.

Finding and retaining top talent will continue to be one of the top CHRO priorities, especially considering the volatile job scenarios in the market. CHROs will have to focus on developing effective recruitment strategies, leveraging technology for candidate screening and selection, and implementing robust onboarding processes to ensure new hires are engaged and remain productive.

Recent research by APA positions ‘employee mental health’ as one of the top priorities at the workplace. Employee wellness and mental health has garnered immense importance of late as the world is grappling with financial stressors, aftermath of pandemic and shifts in workplace culture. Also, mental health issues can have a direct effect on work productivity and the overall well-being of an employee. Some of these effects include – absences from work, diminished work productivity, damage to personal relationship and decline in overall health. Good part is, CHROs are recognizing the importance of employee well-being and prioritizing initiatives that support the mental and physical health of employees. This may include providing access to wellness programs, mental health resources, flexible work arrangements, and creating a positive work culture that promotes work-life balance.

DEI initiatives will remain talk of the town as organizations strive to build diverse and inclusive workforces. HR will need to deepen their efforts to increase representation of underrepresented groups, foster inclusive workplace cultures, implement unbiased hiring practices, and provide training and education to promote diversity awareness.

Mercer’s 2022 Global Talent Trends study highlights that difficulty in hiring the talent with the right skill set, at the right price, remains a top concern in 2022 and will continue to be important in the years to come. With rapid technological advancements and evolving job requirements, CHROs will need to focus on upskilling and reskilling employees. This includes identifying skill gaps, designing skill-based talent processes, fostering a culture of continuous learning, and supporting career development to ensure employees have the right skills needed to thrive in their roles.

Data is the new oil of the digital economy; by leveraging the power of data, deeper analyses can be made at many levels to improve the overall functioning. Using artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) to augment a skills-based approach empowers not only an individual worker with career growth, but also the organisation as a whole For example, organisations can identify the skill gaps between what the current workforce can do vs what’s needed for the project. AI/ML can also throw valuable insights around predicting attrition and ways to arrest it.

A recent Gartner survey of HR leaders, 47% of respondents cited employee experience as a top priority for 2023. Employee experience (EX) refers to all employee interactions with their organisation, from recruitment to retirement. Basis their interactions, employees form their perceptions about organisational culture, leadership and overall work environment. A positive employee experience may boost productivity, engagement, and customer satisfaction or vice versa. CHROs will need to prioritise initiatives to enhance employee experience and performance. This may involve implementing regular feedback mechanisms, fostering a positive work environment, recognising and rewarding achievements, and providing opportunities for career growth and development.

As remote and hybrid work models become more prevalent, CHROs will need to focus on managing and optimizing these arrangements. This includes establishing clear remote work policies, providing necessary technology and infrastructure, fostering effective communication and collaboration among remote teams, and ensuring equitable treatment for all employees, regardless of their work location.

Looking ahead, CHROs must strive to play a more strategic role which is capable of connecting business value and growth to everything related to talent. Being aware of the critical HR priorities will help them drive the business with greater impact.

An organisation’s workforce and its teams can quickly revert to something much more culturally homogenous if diversity isn’t a consideration in the hiring process. Managers with hiring authority can easily erase years of efforts to be more inclusive if they are not factoring the value of how each candidate might benefit their team, with diversity being a factor in their decisions. Of course, diversity is not the only factor; we all want to find the right candidate for the position, but we have to recognise that each hiring decision is comprised of two aspects. First, are the skills of the candidate a good fit for the position, and secondly, is the candidate the right fit for the team?  It is possible to answer in the affirmative to one and not the other; ideally, we want both. Managers can check their own bias by including a diverse set of team members in the interviewing and hiring process.

We all need to learn how to communicate effectively in a culture-rich environment; if we don’t there will continue to be inequities created as different cultures perceive words, tone, and body language in their own unique way. There are things managers can do to improve how they communicate, such as individualising their delivery when possible. For example, learn what communication style and channels work best for different team members. Also avoid idioms, slang, acronyms, and industry jargon when possible because they don’t translate cross-culturally or across age groups. If practical, have important communications translated into languages less dominant, but prevalent in the organisation. Finally, make sure anyone with the responsibility to communicate with team members gets training on how to be more culturally sensitive in their communication.

Leaders must recognise that improving managers’ communication is going to take practice. Communication is a leadership tradecraft and improving it means creating a feedback loop by reflective and active listening, being vulnerable enough to ask for help understanding diversity and various cultures, exhibiting respect — not frustration — in our tone and body language, and finally a genuine determination to learn.

Leaders are not the only ones who stand to gain from a more diverse workforce; so is the entire workforce. We travel to faraway places because learning about diverse cultures broadens our own life experiences, so take advantage of an opportunity to do the same at work by making learning a welcome, not awkward, experience. In some countries, people don’t greet each other by shaking hands, or they might be uncomfortable with direct eye contact. In other cultures, it is important to respect personal space while in others they frequently hug or even kiss on the cheek in the workplace. Managers should let people take turns in meetings telling the team about their culture, including the dos and don’ts. And managers should remember to do the same for the predominant local culture because it is a fun learning opportunity for everyone.

Respecting privacy and cultural norms is important so helping managers find the right balance between emphasising cultural differences, openly inquiring about preferences, and ignoring our unique differences altogether. Transparency that is humble and respectful will earn managers trust and credibility. There is nothing wrong with a manager opening up to an individual by saying, “I am so glad you are part of the organisation and I confess I don’t know much about your culture. Would you share more with me and let me know if there are things, we can do to make sure you feel respected and at home with the team.” Managers that open the door to these conversations benefit by developing a deeper and more meaningful relationship with team members; they are able to expand their own cultural awareness, emotional intelligence, and will likely be respected for their genuine desire to learn.

We all have much to gain by being more inclusive; it is an exciting time to participate in a collective effort to broaden our working communities with people that have perspectives and insights we’ve not heard before. Leaders at all levels and in all types of organisations will need to practice and adjust how they manoeuvre cross-culturally with respect, a desire to understand, and working with the asset of diversity in order to do greater things.

Organisation ABC measures its employee satisfaction and morale annually through its traditional survey which is detailed, lengthy and outdated. After conducting the survey, it takes a couple of months to analyse the feedback and less time to take informed decisions.

Organisation XYZ conducts 3- 4 surveys to measure employee satisfaction and morale regularly. These surveys are focused, short and are reviewed for their relevance before the launch. The responses for all the surveys are collated easily and analysed to take informed decisions quickly.

Have you spotted any of the aforementioned trends in your organisation? According to you, which organisation practices more efficient feedback mechanism that will lead to better employee engagement and satisfaction?

It is a basic human tendency to feel heard and valued. Within the organisational setup, employees feel engaged, motivated and inspired to contribute when their views and opinions are gathered and given due regard. However, when this need is jeopardized, organisations face adverse outcomes like non-performance, low employee motivation and higher attrition rates.  Employee engagement remains a top priority for HR leaders in 2023 across the globe, mainly because of the rising attrition rates and also engagement is largely intangible and difficult to measure. Therefore, organisations often resort to detailed employee engagement surveys to gather insights.

Surveys are safe and an easy way to gather feedback from a large pool of employees at once. Surveys provide a comprehensive platform for employees to share their thoughts, opinions, and experiences. This feedback helps organisations gain valuable insights into employee satisfaction, engagement levels, workplace culture, and other areas of improvement. Surveys also provide the option of giving answers anonymously, making the entire process more inclusive and safer for employees who wish to remain unidentified.

Despite the significance of surveys within the organisational setup, the frequency of conducting these surveys however remain a challenge for many organisations.  Research supports that the insights gathered every two year or annually are not sufficient to present a reliable and holistic picture of the status of employee engagement. Though many organisations are still relying on annual surveys to gather employee perspectives, many smart organisations are replacing traditional, yearly surveys with more frequent, real-time or pulse surveys. Such surveys apart for collecting real time insights, enables an agile and data-driven approach to employee engagement, making it look more lucrative for employees as well as for HR leaders, the real custodian of the process. Real-time surveys further allow you to maintain organisation’s health and happiness with rapid and more frequent check-ins. Let’s take a closer look at some of the benefits of using real-time surveys over annual surveys:

While annual surveys only capture a snapshot from that particular moment in time, frequent pulse surveys offer a more detailed and accurate view of employee engagement and other aspects as it changes and evolves over a period of time.

Since annual surveys are conducted just once, they are mostly long and arduous. But in this process, surveys become lengthy with never-ending questions around various aspects of workplace. Employees do not feel enthused about giving their response and want to get back to work. This may lead to inconsistency in capturing their accurate response, impacting the overall validity of your results. Real time surveys on the other hand are relatively shorter with fresh themes and different set of questions which generate interest among employees and thus response rate gets better. Real time surveys barely impact employee’s commitments as they only take couple of minutes to answer. This improves the validity of results as respondents are more likely to give each question their full attention.

Traditional annual surveys being comprehensive in nature, may ask each employee over 50 questions. Once conducted, it takes good amount of time to gather the responses, review the same and analyse it. This cumbersome approach takes months to plan for some organised plan and action making employees as well as other key stakeholders lose interest in the process.

Annual surveys being a yearly affair, mostly collects data in retrospect while frequent real time surveys, highlight areas of concern before these problems escalate and become widespread issues within the organization. Realtime data about employees will empower HR leaders as well as managers to be proactive and invest time and effort in the areas where it’s most needed.

Pulse surveys because of their higher frequency, naturally creates a culture of feedback and continuous improvement. People feel heard and more valued at work when they have a platform for giving feedback on a constant basis.

Well-made and well-administered surveys will remain an integral part of organizations mainly because of their ability to fetch response from a large sample. Organizations are exploring newer ways to run surveys and relying on HR tech to make the entire process smoother and streamlined. However, HR leaders need to be cautious of that fact that employees shouldn’t feel any ‘survey fatigue’ especially with real-time surveys which may be sent out too often, and/or the same questions being asked repeatedly; employees might get bored and may choose not to respond. Therefore, HR leaders must closely monitor the survey fatigue while conducting pulse surveys. Balancing the right number of questions with the right frequency is one of the most important aspects of conducting effective pulse surveys.

Conclusion

Both tools might prove beneficial when administered efficiently to gather employee feedback and sentiments, however, HR leaders in their pursuit to establish a continuous channel of communication between employees and organizations will rely more on the real-time surveys in the years to come. These surveys can be made more specific to uncover different aspects which may be short-term in nature, for example, a quick pulse survey can be created and run to gauge employees’ reactions about the latest merger and acquisition that happened. This will provide instant feedback from the workforce. HR leaders may also look at the judicious mix of both the tools to derive greater benefits; the annual comprehensive survey juxtaposed with 2-3 pulse surveys will immensely help to present a holistic view of the employee’s perceptions about their workplace.

By aligning L&D programs with the organization’s goals and values, L&D leaders can help promote a culture of accountability and a shared sense of purpose. This alignment can commence as early as the induction process where employees are given good overview of the organization, its values, processes, practices and expectations. L&D leaders must be cognizant of the cultural signals they are sending through a new employee’s early learning experience and ensuring alignment with the core organizational values.

L&D leaders are responsible for developing and implementing training programs and initiatives that are essential for the professional growth and development of the employees. These programs should be crafted in sync with organizational culture, for example, R&D heavy organizations may conduct programs which encourage innovation and experimentation, instilling values such as risk taking, learning from failure and continuous improvement. Similarly, if an organization values diversity and inclusion, L&D leaders can design training programs that focus on those topics, making it clear that these are essential elements of the organizational culture. Effective L&D programs can lead to increased employee engagement, retention and performance. When L&D leaders create a culture of learning, it can impact the overall organizational culture positively. When employees are encouraged to learn and grow, they feel valued and it creates a sense of community within the workplace.

Learning and development leaders can facilitate knowledge sharing by creating opportunities for employees to learn from one another, share best practices, and collaborate on projects. They may set up relevant workshops and open sessions where employees feel free to exchange ideas and suggestions

L&D leaders should lead by example, demonstrating a commitment to their own development and modelling the behaviours they want to see in others. At the same time, L&D leaders need to involve other key stakeholders in their initiatives so that everyone remains on the same page and demonstrate core values and persistent behaviours.

By measuring the impact of L&D initiatives, the leaders can demonstrate the value of continuous learning and development and reinforce its importance to the organization culture.

Organizational culture is the backbone of any successful organization and without it, no organization can survive for long.  L&D leaders can play a significant role in building strong organisational culture by linking and aligning organisation’s vision and values with employee learning programs and practices. A strong and positive culture is directly linked with employee engagement, happiness, productivity, and retention. L&D leaders should direct their every effort toward achieving these outcomes. At the same time, they also need to upskill themselves and grow their own cultural intelligence to come up with the best learning initiatives.

To know more about how our leadership assessment and development platform can help your L&D leaders create a organisational culture that drives sustained business results, click here.