10 ways to create a strong company culture that improves employee engagement
An intentional organizational culture approaches culture from an architectural model — based on proactive, interventionist activity by leaders — instead of an evolutionary model, which occurs when the culture is allowed to be shaped by random events.
Here’s how to develop organizational culture:
1. Secure ownership from your leadership team
Think about the different personalities in the room: for the “system thinking” leader, show how culture is the backdrop of the entire organizational system. For the “people” leader, show the relationship between climate and culture. And for the “data driven” leader, show how you can articulate and measure culture, as well as show progress over time.
2. Conduct an audit of your company culture and employee engagement support
A culture audit helps you understand how your values are visible through the employee experience. For example, is your organization top-down or participative, hierarchical or flat, secretive or honest? And most importantly, does your culture align with strategy so you can achieve business objectives?
3. Thread your culture through processes, policies and procedures
This means aligning the culture you want with business strategy. It means always asking if what you’re doing reflects the culture — when it comes to policies, procedures, organizational culture tools and systems (especially your people system and organizational structure), communications, interviews, conducting meetings, benefits and more.
4. Help employees see what is expected of them
This doesn’t come from a tagline — it comes from developing clear behavioral expectations and educating employees on expectations.
5. Hire for culture fit
At Limeade, we hire for culture first. It’s easier to hire someone who fits our culture and train them a bit where needed, than to hire someone with a glowing resume and ask them to shift who they are to fit in. Employees are 20% more engaged when they have the right amount of mix between their work and personal life.
6. Hold everyone accountable for living the culture — and measuring progress
Create metrics around how well employees are demonstrating the culture, rewarding those who live it and determining appropriate consequences for those who don’t. Knowing how to measure workplace culture and holding leaders, managers and teammates accountable is crucial for success..
7. Make sure leaders are walking the talk
You can’t build an intentionally open and honest culture if you have a leader who doesn’t communicate critical information to their team. Similarly, you can’t preach work-life balance if you have leaders driving their teams into the ground. Make sure your leaders understand the culture and what’s expected of them, and then evaluate how they’re mapping their management style and behavior to the culture.
8. Empower your culture champions
There are always respected leaders — both formal and informal — who are great ambassadors of your culture. These are the people who serve as role models by “walking the culture walk” every day. Make sure the champion network knows they’re regarded for upholding the culture and give them free reign to align their management or work style with it.
9. Communicate the culture
Keep in mind that your communications must also align with the culture. If things are formal and structured, your communications should follow suit: distributed at regular intervals, using more formal language. If your culture is more innovative and iterative, you might just communicate as needed, using a casual, conversational tone.
10. Test and reiterate
Sometimes throwing spaghetti at the wall is the best approach — especially if you can clean it up quickly when it doesn’t stick. In other words, be willing to fail fast and fix faster. As you take on the role of culture architect, there are a number of ways to know if you’re moving in the right direction — like employee feedback, behavior (is it what you want or not?) and straight-up business results. Test your methods frequently and be willing to reiterate often, as swiftly as you can.
What does it mean to align organizational culture with strategy? It means you thread culture through everything you do — every policy, procedure, system, benefit, perk, even your office setup: all of it should be intentional and consistent with the culture.
References:
https://www.limeade.com/resources/blog/organizational-culture/