Before Covid-19 hit – along with all its disruption – 60% of organisations saw a positive workplace culture as a “nice-to-have”. A pleasant non-essential.
When the dust settles post-pandemic, we think their outlooks might’ve changed. If this experience has shown us one thing, it’s that collaboration, altruism and sacrifice for a larger cause are to be celebrated – and can define businesses’ success. Those viewing “culture” as another piece of millennial fluff before this crisis will surely think differently once it’s passed.
Readers might readily admit that their culture needs work. Or, more likely, they’ll say theirs is entirely fit-for-purpose. Regardless, as the pandemic continues to weigh on organisations from all sides, now is a good time to reflect on the pitfalls of an unfit workplace culture: low engagement, average productivity and high turnover. These can all leave you poorly positioned for a bounce back when some normality resumes.
Thankfully, now is also the right time to think of ways to improve your culture. Because you never really know the foundations your organisation’s based upon until it experiences hardship. With that in mind, we’ve developed a five-step guide to building a culture that’ll weather the storm, every time.
1. Plan & identify your values
Firstly, your culture needs to go the distance. Chopping and changing will only confuse and undermine your efforts. A long-term strategy is therefore paramount. This means you’ll need to think deeply about the values and purpose you want your people to rally behind, especially when the going gets tough.
A well-documented way to sort wheat from cultural chaff is to brainstorm key values and behaviours, group them together and then select those you feel best encapsulate your mission and will drive employee engagement.
You’ll also need to make sure that you’re not trying to foist values upon your existing workers. Instead, seek alignment with what they believe in. Only then can you ensure they’ll stand by your culture in the difficult times. One way to get your finger on this pulse is to survey your people to get a sense of the workplace behaviours and values that really make them tick. Here’s a great piece on seeking employee feedback from Scott Judd, Facebook’s Head of People Analytics.
2. Shout about it
Culture, at its heart, is a set of shared ideals and behaviours. So you need to be talking to your people about the values that power your business, ensuring they can see the alignment with their own beliefs.
This is especially important in light of Gallup data suggesting that just one in four people actually believe in their employers’ values. While this is obviously another reason for co-creating your culture alongside employees, it also means you always need to be communicating their practical impact on how your organisation runs.
Try this exercise: ask five employees, from different areas of the business, this question:
“What are our values?”
Receive five completely different answers? Consider ways to more effectively communicate your values. This could include an internal blog championing individual stories, or perhaps company-wide stand-ups.
3. Implement in hiring
So often, our team of business psychologists at Arctic Shores work with organisations that think their hiring approach is aligned to their culture and values. Really, many continue to hire based on that gut-feel or “first impression”. Both are really just biases, living by another name.
In light of how few employees believe in their company’s values, there’s a clear disconnect at the hiring stage between value alignment and overall job fit. Belief in what the company is doing is just as important as actually being able to do the job – especially when this sense of purpose has been proven to boost productivity more than salary.
This makes it vital to assess candidates’ authentic behaviours, rather than trying solely to gauge their responses to cookie-cutter questions. Bringing behaviour into your assessment strategy will allow you to reliably identify the characteristics aligning with your culture. This, in turn, will make your hiring more predictive of cultural fit.
4. Embody your culture
As we’ve said, value alignment is key. This extends beyond the company and its employees, but must also include its leaders – now more than ever.
Some of the best-known companies have benefitted from leaders that embody their culture. Steve Jobs’s focus on innovative design is probably the pre-eminent example, but look also at Ed Bastian’s inclusiveness at Delta Airlines, or Elon Musk’s environmentalism at Tesla. They’re experts at projecting company values through themselves – not just through their words, but through their actions too.
By embodying a culture, you lend it authenticity at a time when candidates are increasingly researching brands’ purpose and commitment to their stated values. Authentic leaders can be a beacon to top talent, something to factor into your long-term culture strategy.
5. Be consistent
Covid-19’s exerting pressures that are hard to resist, and culture can easily fall by the wayside when your bottom line’s in jeopardy. But now is the best time to show consistency in your culture.
In one of Simon Sinek’s seminal Ted talks, he tells the story of Bob Chapman, a manufacturing CEO, and his response to the 2008 financial crisis. Having lost 30% of orders overnight, Chapman refused to lay off employees and instead instituted a furlough scheme that both saved every job and actually boosted individual productivity.
This is a clear example of what consistent culture, in good times and bad, can achieve. Teams that are more productive, more loyal, and longer-lasting.
Culture as armour
So, to sum up – now is the time for organisations to recognise the long-term value of a powerful workplace culture. But this can only grow organically, and it starts from the top. Leaders need to invest in defining the right shared values before communicating them effectively, embodying them consistently, and, perhaps most importantly, applying them at the hiring stage.
Re-assessing your culture in the wake of Covid-19? Maybe it’s time to align your talent strategy to your values. Arrange a demo with us here to discover more.
The Business Transformation Network has shared this article in partnership with Arctic Shores.
