If you’re looking to change your culture but you’re not sure what your current culture is, take a look at our blog called, Do you know what your workplace culture is? You’ll learn that there are almost as many options as there are companies out there. Plus, with the help of the Harvard Business Review, we identify some key categories to help narrow down your current company culture and what you might want it to be.
Link to business goals
Remember to keep your business goals in mind when forming your culture. You can learn more about why that’s important by checking out our recent blog called, How to align corporate culture with your business goals.
Check the vital signs
If you suspect that your current culture is in need of repair, there are signs that things are headed in the wrong direction.
Here are a few glaring symptoms of a culture that’s in need of help:
- Underperformance: If employees aren’t giving their all – they’re either not aligned with the workplace culture, or they don’t feel that the organization cares about or values their work.
- High turnover of employees: You can tell yourself that it’s for other reasons, but if it happens regularly, high turnover is a sign.
- Lack of enthusiasm: If employees are shut down and apathetic they likely receive very little encouragement and appreciation for their work; and/or they’ve learned that their ideas aren’t heard, respected or welcomed by management.
- Excessive mental health or sick leave: A lot of absenteeism from many employees is a sign that the organization isn’t well either.
- Tension in work groups: When a culture is not clearly defined, people create their own, resulting in confusion, cliques, and conflicts within work groups.
Tips for the right culture mix
But there is hope and there are real life success stories that prove that with the right culture, organizations can change the course of their future and achieve huge success!
Chief Executive Officer of Zappos, Tony Hsieh is a case in point. He learned a very valuable lesson in his earlier career when he co-founded a company without a defined culture and it ended in catastrophe.
In this Big Think video called The Importance of a Company’s Culture, Hsieh shares the importance of figuring out Zappos core values first and making sure that they were crystal clear and easy-to-understand.
Hsieh also adds that what helped define the right culture for him was, “Would I want to hang out with these people if we weren’t forced to work together?”
Sounds like Hsieh learned from his mistakes and went on to discover the perfect cultural mix for his workplace that resulted in exceptional employee performance.
In 2017 Zappos sold out to Amazon for $1.2 billion. Now that’s an ”importance of workplace culture” story with a happy ending.
