In the current business environment Workplace culture is not simply a buzzword. It’s the driving element in the achievement of any organization. What exactly is work culture and what is its significance?
Culture in the workplace is not only about superficial benefits or the trendy workplace spaces, it’s the fundamental foundation that defines the way things are done and determines the identity of your company.
How do you gauge the impact and strength of the workplace culture? According to the old saying “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.”
In this post we’ll explore how to measure workplace culture, and discuss the way that having a solid and defined corporate culture can take your company up to the next level.
Table of Contents
Workforce KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
Monitoring HR KPIs is essential for understanding significant cultural shifts (positive as well as negative.) and success rate. There’s a good thing that most of the information can be found from your HRIS (Human Resource Information System.) This includes turnover rates as well as absenteeism rate internally promoted, as well as referrals.
A different important measure is the net promoter score that you could take advantage of through surveys. The analysis of these quantitative indicators with your initiatives in the field of culture can aid in understanding how well your organization is doing. In the majority of cases the data is an illustration of behavioral data that is a summary of the actions that employees take in employees in the workplace. The eNPS data would be classified under the category of employee sentiment.
Flexibility
Flexible work environments aren’t only about when and where the work can be completed; it’s as well what you do with it. If management is trying to build “mini-mes” out of every employee, it’s an indication of rigidity. A manager, for instance, alters the work of their employees and the final product is similar to the way in which the manager did the writing. In other cases, a manager may prescribe a procedure for managing time, but the truth is no one has the exact techniques for working efficiently.
The most crucial thing is to focus on the final goal. What happens to the project (so that it’s moral and not in violation of the company’s policies) will be the sole responsibility of each individual. If you have a flexible workspace, it indicates increased level of success rate.
A Culture of Success
Making a positive work atmosphere requires that leaders have clear expectations, and who make sure that they hold their staff and themselves accountable for exceeding their expectations. While it is the responsibility of managers to establish the expectations, creating an environment that is productive and positive is a responsibility for all employees.
It creates a culture that is internal which affects employees, customers as well as communities, stakeholders and other parties. It’s about establishing a motivating ambition and vision across the company-for common change that is beneficial to individuals as it will benefit the business.
Tracking Behaviors
Though culture in itself can be difficult to gauge, its results and behaviors are easily tracked. Monitoring the frequency of behavior that is based on the values you hold is an indication of the strength of your culture.
By focusing on the values you desire to promote to create the metrics that define your company’s culture. In the case of innovation, for example, if it is one of your core values and sharing your ideas is a corresponding behavior.
You can request the team leaders and managers to keep track of the amount of ideas that are innovative being discussed. In the same way, if accountability has become an important value, one associated behavior could be a commitment to meet deadlines. Ask your bosses to make a statement on how deadlines are generally completed.
When you track your employees’ behaviors it is possible to discover the fact that your values of your organization don’t resonate with the employees. This could be the reason why the culture you have isn’t as you’d like it. The majority of individuals don’t understand their organization’s values, let alone what they mean or how they are applied. When this happens you’re faced with two options: either work to better communicate the values you hold to your employees or re-evaluate your values completely.
Surveys
Surveys are an excellent way to gather real feedback from the entire employees. They are probably something you already conduct regularly. Surveys can help you gauge the general mood of your employees and help you identify trends or problems within your workplace.
However, they shouldn’t be used as the only metric you can use to measure culture and success. There are biases and omissions from surveys, based on an individual’s mindset when they take them.
The best way to monitor information regarding your company’s culture and its employees can be to overlay the survey data with behavioral and relationship information gathered through various methods outlined below. Surveys provide information on the way people feel or think and feel, but they don’t provide any information on how they behave, or what they do.
The Bottom Line
These are some of the ways to use metrics and methods that can aid you in evaluating and improving your work culture. When you collect sentiment, behavior as well as relationship information, you can get valuable information about employee experience as well as the alignment of behavior to your core values, as well as the overall wellbeing of your organization.
Also Read: 4 Tips To Encourage Creative Thinking In Your Employees
