10 steps for building a great culture
Culture Firm believes the successful development of a great culture, in any organisation, involves all of the following ten steps. If this ten-step process is completed, everyone in the organisation will be aligned and living the values to create an awesome culture. The Culture Firm consultants can help you with each step, or you can download the information from our workshops and library if you prefer to do the steps yourself.
Where is your organisation heading, and how will it achieve its Vision? An important step in determining the values required to achieve your objectives.
It is not uncommon for people to get Vision and Mission mixed up.
Quite simply Vision is about WHERE you are going. It is about the future of the company and why you get up every day and go to work. Mission is about HOW you get there. How your values get you there. How you create your future. Mission is about goals. It also describes what you do and who you do it for and must fit with your values.
A good Mission Statement is a unifying focal point for activity. The mission provides a clear, tangible goal or end point. A Mission is all about doing. The Mission Statement is similar to a vow. In some instances, companies produce a bold mission. A bold mission is called a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG).
This step ensures your values support the reason why customers should choose your organisation over your competitors.
Value proposition is "a clear, simple statement of the benefits, both tangible and intangible, that the company will provide, along with the approximate price it will charge each customer segment for those benefits".
Key points about a Value Proposition
- Creating and delivering value needs to be considered in all planning strategies.
- Value Propositions vary across different market segments within an industry.
- Once defined a Value Proposition should drive all business decisions.
- The value proposition helps organisations understand the customer's needs.
- The value proposition is used to differentiate the brand from competitors.
The Culture Firm Value Proposition definition is - "What is it that your organisation does (or could do) better or different than its competitors, that is valued by your target market"
This step is important to ensure the values are aligned with the reason why the business exists.
We create a Purpose Statement to help attract, engage and retain employees. It will help build teamwork, a great organisational culture, and it will focus employees so they will be more productive. Purpose is central to the culture of the organization. It defines how the organisation fits into society. It unites people and inspires action by employees and stakeholders. An inspiring purpose will unite employees, board members, suppliers and customers in a way that is much more pervasive than one lone leader trying to inspire from the front. It answers the question "Why is this work important?"
Purpose drives the leadership of the organisation, brings life to employees, attracts the right employees and unites them in job satisfying work.
What culture are you trying to build? How does it align with all other business objectives? What values will create the desired culture?
Values are deeply held convictions, priorities and underlying assumptions that influence attitudes and behaviours in your organisation. When values are deeply ingrained and widely shared by people within your organisation, they become a way of life within the organisation. People with like values bond together to create a force that is greater than themselves. Companies that score well in the "great-to-work-for" stakes invariably have a good culture driven by strong, pervasive values.
Values say WHO you are as an organisation.
Do you have the right people on the bus, and in the right seats? Will they live the values on a daily basis.
To quote Jim Collins author of Good to Great, organisations that go from good to great start not with "where" but with "who". They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. And they stick with that discipline—first the people, then the direction—no matter how dire the circumstances.
If your organisation has been around a while it's a good idea to conduct an audit to understand what your culture looks like.
In conducting an audit you need to make sure that the purpose, mission and values are reflected in actions, words, policies and procedures conducted in the organization. It is also important to remember that not so much whether a divergence from culture occurs but how the organization responds once that happens.
Why conduct a Culture Audit? Making a culture audit of an organization it like a doctor monitoring a patient to see if there are any illnesses. It's a health check for organizational culture. It involves asking questions and making observations.
The best way to find out how engaged your people are is to conduct an employee engagement survey. Culture Firm believes these surveys should be conducted monthly to ensure feedback reflects the pulse of the organisation.
It is difficult for any organisation to achieve its goals with disengaged people. Employee engagement is one of the most commonly quoted requirements for a company to succeed. CEB research tells us that 80% of senior leaders believe employee engagement is critical to achieving their business objectives. However, a recent report by Gallup found that only 33% of workers are engaged.
How does your organization rate in the employee engagement stakes? It might be worse than you think. Many organisations ask questions that give answers that are nice to know.
But these questions are no good if you cannot action the answers. In particular, questions that ask for 'yes' or 'no' answers are impossible to act on if you don't ask why people feel that way. Also, never ask a question that you don't know how to fix. When people give answers to questions, they assume you will act on their answers. If you don't act on people's answers, they become dis-spirited and lose confidence in engagement questionnaires and may even lose confidence in senior management itself.
The heart of any organisation wanting to improve their culture is the Culture Firm Unity App. The Culture Firm platform is on everyone's phone or desktop and enables them to nominate culture champs, identify poor behaviour, understand the organisation's culture, receive daily updates etc. At last the CEO or the head of HR has a proven, quantifiable method to monitor and improve their culture.
Culture Firm's Unity is used by all employees in an organisation on their mobile, tablet or desktop.
Rewarding people with great values
The software's uniqueness is its ability to allow all employees to identify and nominate other employees when they witness positive "values-based" behaviour. And for the behaviour to be rewarded and shared with everyone in the organization.
The sharing is done by video, or by posting a nomination on Unity. Until Culture Firm Unity, this was all done "top-down" by a small group of managers so only provided a narrow view of employee behaviour. Now all employees are empowered to drive the culture of their organization.
Identifying people with poor values
The software also enables employees to anonymously report workplace bullying, sexual harassment, inappropriate language and behaviour needs to be reported so that the person can be identified, counselled or exited from the organisation.
An important step in creating a great culture is the introduction of non-monetary benefits such as flexible work hours, training, working from home etc. In the US and Canada, all types of healthcare and retirement-related benefits and are also included.
Organisations that offer these types of work-life perks seek to raise employee satisfaction, corporate loyalty, and worker retention by providing valuable benefits that go beyond a base salary figure.
Reducing stress in the workplace is the new frontier for enlightened employers.
All wellness programs address the health of their employees, many wellness programs now address areas such as emotional well-being, mental health and financial wellness. Some have also extended the programs into the home to also impact the health of spouses and dependents.