Your organization knows they want a healthy workplace culture, but how can they be sure they have one? Can you measure your workplace culture? 

Yes – Here’s how, with a breakdown of tools for measuring workplace culture. A combination of these methods can help you get a well-rounded understanding of your company culture. The more utilized these tools are, the more accurate your measure will be for your desired culture.

• Employee Engagement Surveys and Questionnaires: The best source to gain more understanding is with your existing employees by asking them a wide spectrum of questions about their leadership, inclusion within the team dynamics, job satisfaction, and cultural issues. Employees will often feel safe to share their true feelings through anonymous surveys and questionnaires, leading to deeper thoughts revealed about their work environment. Some examples are employee engagement surveys, pulse surveys, Employee Net Promoter Scores (eNPS), focus groups, and exit interviews.
• Focus Groups and One-On-One Interviews: These surveys lead to a broader view of the employee experience. Focus groups can foster an atmosphere of openness to freely discuss and share perceptions and experiences within the group. Leaders are offered the opportunity to hear what the majority of the employees agree on or if there are other opposing views. One-on-one interviews can allow for employees to share personal accounts about the workplace in a more private setting. Both tools can help find some of the current informal norms, and how well those within the organization understand the company value system. 
• Outside Feedback: For an even broader reach, talk to others your company reaches. Survey current customers, job applicants, and research what people are saying online. Current customers will have a unique point of view since they are the recipients of your current culture through your employees. Reaching job applicants and candidates who make it to the final round can bring clarity into how company culture is affecting employer brand and recruiting efforts. Doing a quick research of online platforms such as Glassdoor, can help reveal what current and former employees are saying about your company, and what potential applicants might view. 

There is such a thing as too much data. A good piece of advice is to stick to a few key benchmarks. This is how you will see where your culture is doing right – or wrong. Now that you have a better understanding of your company culture, what’s next? 

• Take action on the findings: Now that you have analyzed key metrics like performance indicators, employee engagement, recruitment and retention, and cultural diversity, you might have found some negative pockets. The continued use and results of these key metric indicators can help leaders identify and articulate areas of excellence as well as find areas for improvement within their culture. It’s now time to take some action. 
• Focus on what matters most: Know and define your desired culture. After reviewing what values matter most to your company, the next step is to communicate these clearly as set guidelines. This widespread culture measure should be across all departments, teams and levels of leadership within the organization. The company as a whole should have a unified understanding of what the main values and culture policies are. Sometimes it helps to know what not to do, so a benchmark of the five most toxic attributes you don’t want in your workplace according to MIT Sloan Research, which have been proven to be the biggest drivers of employee turnover are:
  • Disrespect: lack of consideration, courtesy, and dignity for others
  • Non-Inclusive: of race, age or gender, of LGBT+ people, disabled people, or just generally not inclusive
  • Unethical: behavior, dishonesty, or a lack of regulatory compliance
  • Cutthroat: backstabbing behavior and ruthless competition
  • Abusive: bullying, hostility and harassment

• Be patient: Using the data you’ve collected in qualitative and quantitative forms should help HR teams make a strong case to executives to fix the broken parts in your culture and celebrate the gems in it as well. What’s the action plan?
  • Ensure leadership commitment: Leaders play an active role in demonstrating the culture improvement initiatives from the top of the organization. They need to take on the challenge to help change the cultural mindset so everyone else will take their lead.
  • Keep employees involved in the process: Foster engagement and enrich it with different views. This can be in the form of creating task forces, listening to employee feedback for improvements, or asking for employees to support action planning.
  • Prioritize actionable insights: The most significant findings from the cultural assessment should get the most attention. Form a list of tangible strategies, specifying the short-term and long-term goals to tackle these concerns.
  • Implement sustainable practices: Create mechanisms which include regular feedback loops, constant learning opportunities and ways to encourage desired cultural behaviors to last in the long run. 
  • Measure and adjust: Keep track of your initiatives by using the same benchmarks you set at the beginning of the cultural assessment, and be ready to adapt your tactical plans as the information evolves from live measurements. 

Ready to take the next steps in creating your excellent workplace culture? 

Leading in today’s ever evolving world can be difficult, and you don’t have to do it alone. If you would like to learn more about measuring your culture, leadership development, emotional intelligence training, team building, professional coaching, or strategy planning sessions, let’s talk. Contact us for a free consultation by clicking this link: Innovative Connections or calling us at 970-279-3330.

Our mission is to give voice and action to an emerging future. As a partner in your success, we would love to help you find your voice, see your vision, and imagine what the right action could be for you, your team, and your organization.