The importance of a strong and healthy organisational culture is undeniable, it can translate into increased productivity, employee retention and attraction to name a few.
As we have explored over the last couple of weeks a healthy organisational culture is formed by shared beliefs, values and assumptions at its core. These work towards achieving the organisations strategic objectives and purpose.
But unlike generating sales or finding new staff, a “healthy culture” isn’t easy to measure.
It’s certainly easy to assume if you have a happy work environment, two-way and lateral communication will just fall into place. But the truth is, it takes planned and consistent work and it’s easy to miss the warning signs of an unhealthy organsiational culture.
Here are some areas to consider when measuring the health of your organisational culture.
No. 1: Reports of bad behaviour have declined
You have identified a significant drop in reports of bad behaviour which on the surface is fantastic. However, it might be that people have lost confidence in reporting it. Consider this if choosing this as a measure and ensure there are ways of reporting confidentially.
No. 2: Confidential channel to communicate concerns
Provide opportunities to employees to provide real time confidential feedback. Make the response from the leadership group public to all employees to give reassurance that the concern has been addressed (obviously taking into account sensitive reports/concerns).
No. 3: Be flexible in the way that culture and values conversations are conducted
Avoid purely having discussions about values and behaviours in training and performance reviews. If this happens you run the risk of values and behaviour discussions becoming sterile corporate policy and not a dynamic, accessible conversation.
No. 4: Referrals from existing staff
An excellent sign that your culture is alive and well is when your existing staff are referring people they know to come and work for the organisation. Do you have a process that encourages this?
No. 5: Staff turnover
Staff turnover is an obvious measure, conducting exit interviews is an ideal way to identify if culture, values and behaviours impacted their decision to leave. Keeping records of this can easily demonstrate trends that can be addressed.
It is a difficult area to measure, however, if you treat your organisational culture, values and behaviours similar to the way you manage financial results you will start to see ways to improve the way your team engage with your culture and values.
