Best Practice on Building a Great Culture

Culture is possibly one of the most underrated arsenals your organisation has. Culture affects nearly every aspect of your company: from recruiting top talent, to improving employee satisfaction, it’s the backbone of an engaged team. Without a good work culture, employees may struggle to find the real value in their work, and this leads to a variety of negative consequences for your organisation’s bottomline.

‘Culture’ originates from the Latin word ‘colere’ which means to tend or cultivate. Simply put — organisational culture is how leadership tends to, cultivates, or takes care of its business, stakeholders, and employees. Culture is the consistent organisational behaviours of employees and leaders (norms).

The best-known classification of types of organisational culture is arguably the Competing Values Framework. Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn at the University of Michigan identified four distinct types of organisational culture.

Every organisation has its own mix of these four organisational culture types, with one culture typically dominating. The larger your organisation, the greater the chances that there may be more than one culture in your organisation.

The four organisational cultures Cameron and Quinn identified are:

Adhocracy culture — the dynamic, entrepreneurial Create Culture

Clan culture — the people-oriented, friendly Collaborate Culture

Hierarchy culture — the process-oriented, structured Control Culture

Market culture — the results-oriented, competitive Compete Culture

Here are 7 best practices that will give your company character and help you build better engagement with your team.

Vision & Values: Your people have to be aligned with your vision + values. These are the key ingredients for a successful culture. Your people need to understand where your organisation’s heading + what traits your organisations values while building the company.

Identify the following:

Mission — What goal or outcome is your organisation committed to?

Purpose — Why is that goal important to your organisation? Who benefits?

Values — How will your company act or behave to make that goal happen?

Operations: Operations are how things get done. How do you onboard new colleagues, how do you execute client projects, how do you serve your customers/clients, these should all be aligned with your vision + values in order to build a strong + coherent culture. Aligning your operations with your purpose is essential to ensure your organisation is ‘living’ its mission and values.

Communication: How do your teams collaborate? How do they share ideas + work cohesively to attain the organisation’s set mission? Trust is the bedrock of a strong communication culture. When your people trust each other, it’s easier for teams to communicate fluidly + execute better to attain your organisation’s vision.Leadership: Your organisation’s leadership is by default, the role model of your company culture. Senior management lead the way for the rest of the team to follow. If you’re planning on making changes yourself or bringing in consultants — your senior management have to be aligned with the changes taking place and in the best instance — lead the culture transformation.

Learning + Development: Learning + development shouldn’t be a one-size-fits all approach to your organisation. Different functions, face different challenges on a day-to-day. Spend time with your teams and try to understand the different problems they encounter while executing and try to build a learning + development approach that not only up-skills talent, but also improves how they solve these unique problems they encounter on a day-to-day. When you create a great culture for learning, your organisation then has higher levels of productivity, innovation, retention, and ultimately — engaged employees who are passionate about your company and their contributions.

Pay & Benefits: Paying employees better isn’t about buying their happiness. Pay is truly about fairness, yet many organisations struggle to implement a fair and honest pay structure. Believing that pay is private is naive. It’s a great way to show employees you value their contributions to the company, etcetera. Additionally, perks like profit-sharing can also help employees feel included and also showcase an open culture.

Wellbeing: Create a strong wellbeing strategy for your organisation and you’ll see absenteeism significantly reduced, productivity increase, and engagement skyrocket. Inclusive weekend activities, 1-on-1 time with direct reports, half-day off when the team is clearly overstretched + have recently met a key deadline or milestone can help jumpstart your organisation.

Your company has a culture, whether you’ve thought about it or not. It’s important to ensure you’re building the right one that inspires your teams + functions to greater heights. Want to discuss more, email me christian@bluesense.org