Does your company say it encourages “work-life balance”, while expecting employees to stay late every night? Does it see itself as a learning organisation that develops people, but then doesn’t give them time to take classes or learn on the job? Maybe your company tells people to tap on collective wisdom in decision-making, but promotes people who are authoritative decision makers who like hearing their own voice most. These may be examples of “the way things are done” at your company - where workplace processes don't reflect what the values profess.
To be successful in changing your workplace culture, these three critical steps must be included in any leader's action plan amongst others:
Step 1: Ensuring people and performance are aligned to behavioural expectations
Step 2: Ensuring that practices support the culture
Step 3: Ensuring that leaders' behaviours explicitly demonstrate desired culture
Gaps between these elements cause inconsistencies between sent messages and actions taken, like in the examples above. You can’t close these gaps solely by getting culture champions or putting together a culture committee. Also, having employees who can quote the company’s core values are great, but these are the outcomes of a great culture, not drivers of them.
How then can you begin to impact and shift your company culture?
Step 1: Ensuring people and performance are aligned to behavioural expectations
Your performance and people systems act as touchpoints. Every touchpoint that your employees or leaders experience will reinforce or dilute your culture.
Recruitment:
Being clear on behavioural expectations allows you to bring much-needed clarity to the hiring process. This means being interested in candidates who share your passion for the values, purpose and direction your company is heading towards, apart from their technical qualifications. This will eventually move your company towards having advocates who complement the current culture and enrich it, rather than go against it.
Performance Management:
Performance management does two things: rally your people around similar goals while also providing guidance on outcomes your employees are expected to produce. Performance management further covers: How do you assess behaviours? How often do you review them? Do you share feedback consistently about behavioural expectations that contribute to performance?
To support culture, some clients we've worked with measure how things are done, rather than just what things are being done.
Rewards and Recognition:
What reward or recognition can employees expect when they’ve demonstrated or supported the organisational culture visibly? For example, when a colleague is publicly praised for being innovative (assuming that’s one of your values); is that consistent for everyone who demonstrates innovation? In some organisations, there’s an “employee of the month” award for those who have visibly upheld tenets of workplace culture. These employees receive a small token along with public recognition of their efforts. Some workplaces we know also make it a point to share the story of how values were lived out at regular meetings, so that it doesn't become an awards race with little meaning.
These are all important expressions that reinforce the desired culture, so don’t perceive them as trivial or minor!
Step 2: Ensuring that work practices support the culture
Practices include everything from your company events, running meetings, feedback processes, to how decisions are made.
What are your decision-making processes like? In one of the focus groups we’ve done for culture solutions, employees commented on how this is a critical process that shows how leaders walk the talk. People on the ground want practical demonstrations and nothing beats showing that in your decisions. Not only that - but explaining the rationale for those decisions and how it supports values.
Employees also expect non-conforming behaviours to be called out regardless of hierarchy. There’s a sense of justice when leaders don’t get away with misbehaving or going against the desired values, because culture is everyone's responsibility.
Your practices need to change as your company changes — as it grows, reorganises, or faces new threats. Once-useful practices can quickly become stale, meaningless, or even counter-productive.
Step 3: Ensuring that leaders' behaviours explicitly demonstrate desired culture
After covering steps 1 and 2, the real test is how you and your fellow leaders behave.
How do you act on the core values? How do you support your employees to live out the desired culture? Your employees will watch your behaviour very closely.
Our gathered experience from the past 20 years of working with organisations shows that employees value clear expectations from leaders.
Given your organisational values, which behaviours do you reward? Which do you punish?
Which behaviours are likely to lead to one’s reward or promotion?
Spend time identifying workplace behaviours that express each of your organisational values. For example: If someone were to exemplify “teamwork,” what would she be doing? What would she not be doing?
Company X might identify teamwork behaviour as “collaborating effectively through helping others.” Company Y might interpret teamwork behaviour as “collaborating effectively through encouraging the co-existence of diverse ideas.” Both can be done, but which behaviours do you expect and encourage in your workplace?
Clarifying expected behaviours from your employees will make you accountable as well, so ensure your own behaviours are aligned with your behavioural expectations. When you establish clear behavioural expectations for yourself and your employees, everyone can focus their time on practicing those behaviours rather than trying to identify them. Accountability becomes easier to measure and success easier to attain.
Changing a company culture, following the three steps above takes time and effort. As a leader, you can make sure that you follow these steps. Including others in the process though is vital for company wide culture change.
Find out more about how we work together with organisations on changing company culture here!