Building Organizational Culture

Author:  Rashmi Singh 

“Culture is a set of values, beliefs, common understanding, thinking and norms for behaviour that are shared by all members of a society.”

HR has always been a key driver and catalyst in building organization’s culture and the role has evolved with time. HR is no more limited to recruiting, inducting new hires, managing leaves, facilitating appraisals, conducting training, designing incentives, intra organizational communication etc. Instead HR today plays a more strategic role by bringing awareness amongst its employees and enabling the organizations to achieve its business goals by forming a distinctive fabric of an organization’s culture. HR focuses in creating an environment that is conducive to organizational effectiveness and improves productivity. HR can stimulate its employees to bring in a positive change in their attitude and attributes that is in sync with the envisioned cultural DNA of the organization. 

All employers come across these questions:

• Do all employees in my organization have a common understanding of our purpose, strategy and goals? 
• What are the core values in our organization and do all have a common understanding of these values?
• Do we have a team spirit in our organization? Is everybody highly involved and committed? 
• How do we define success?  How do we handle agreement and disagreement?
• What behaviours are regarded as deviant in my company? How adaptive and innovative are we as an organization?

The answers are associated to the factors that constitute the organizational culture. So how does one define the Organizational Culture of an organization? The fabric of Organizational Culture is woven with the intangible threads of practices in place, norms, values, Conceptions, assumptions, frameworks and constraints. It is a set of values, principles, beliefs collectively shared by everyone in the organization. It provides distinctive guidance on employee behavior under different circumstances and supports decision making.

The feelings of every member(basic beliefs and assumptions) towards every aspect of corporate life, when counted together, constitutes the organizational culture of a company. By identifying few fundamental traits, it would be possible to consider Organizational Culture from a perspective that is measurable and beneficial to companies. These traits can be classified into:

Involvement: Building employees capability, ownership, and responsibility. The organization’s score on this trait reflects how much the organization focuses on developing, informing, involving the people and getting them engaged

Empowerment:  Empower people with real responsibilities. Create a sense of ownership and initiative.

Team orientation: Value is placed on working cooperatively towards common goals. Encourage team effort to get work done.

Capability development:  Invest continually in the development of employee's skills to stay competitive, meet ongoing business needs, and meet employee's desire to learn and develop.

Consistency:  Building a strong and cohesive internal culture

Core Values: Create a shared set of values that enables a strong sense of identity and a clear set of expectations among organization members 

Agreement:  Create leaders who are skilled enough to achieve high agreement and reconcile different opinions on critical issues

Coordination & Integration:  Ensure different functions and units of the organization work well together and no departmental or group boundaries interfere with cooperation

Adaptability: Focus on an organization’s ability of adapt quickly to the signals from the external environment, including customers and the marketplace.

Creating Change:  Take risks to create changes and keep watch to read the business environment, envision changes in process and procedures, and make timely changes. 

Customer Focus: Adaptable organizations are driven by their customers; understand your customers, satisfy them and anticipate their future needs.

Organizational Learning:  Learn to interpret the signals from the environment into opportunities for encouraging innovation and gaining knowledge

Mission: Successful organizations have a clear sense of purpose that defines long-term directions. The Mission trait is useful in identifying whether you are in danger of shortsightedness or you are equipped with systematically defined strategy and action plans.

Vision:  Have a shared view of a desired future state. Vision should be understood and shared by all in the organization 

Strategic Direction & Intent:  To 'make your mark' in your industry, clear strategic intentions should convey the organization’s purpose and make it clear how everyone can contribute.

Goals & Objectives: Set  clear goals and objectives linked to the mission, vision, and strategy.

There are several ways and methods that can be put into practice to augment organizational effectiveness. These methods may vary industry per say. So will their approach. Some of the contemporary methods that enhance the overall organizational effectiveness are:

• Building and communicating the organization’s goal
• Motivating employees
• Organizing events
• Communicating achievements
• Communicating Values through proper channel- storytellers
• Creating healthy, supportive and fun workplace atmosphere
• Encouraging fresh ideas
• Involving employees in decisions-making
• Creating platform for young talent as future leaders
• Improving discipline and morale
• Providing opportunities for career planning and development
• Regular improvements by employee feedback
• Creating norms for brining constant transformation

Key for building an efficient work culture lies in Effective leadership. It improvises the feeling of trust and belongingness amongst employee and they feel connected to the company. An effective leader has to share the vision and set a clear goal for the organization to achieve. This further is communicated down through different channels. HR helps the company identify the key performers at the top level, who further communicate these goals and missions to its people through various mediums that could be, through  storytelling and sharing past achievements. This enhances employees trust in the organization and they start connecting as they get a clear idea of what they are working for

HR interaction with employees through induction, events and organizing achievement functions could be another way of educating employees in an informal manner. Sharing of short term goals motivates employees to work towards it and gives them a common purpose to achieve. Further on, those achievements can be reinforced by rewards and recognition. For building culture, HR can influence people in a positive way. HR has to identify the gaps and find means to bridge them.  HR has to create a balance between the employees and the organization’s goals as well as create a framework that continuously enhances people performance levels and motivates them. Providing regular feedback, providing career planning, enabling employee participation in decision making, gives them a vision of growth within the organization. Simultaneously, ample opportunities should be provided to fresh talent and fresh ideas. All of this makes HR’s role challenging and contributory to the success of the organization. Right from the beginning of a correct hiring to enabling the hire to utilize his/her talent and work towards the target can be a difficult task. Hence the above mentioned points enables HR to identify the correct path and manage people better 

Any organization shall grow if its employees see their growth in it. There has to be an appropriate understanding between the two. Employee’s skills can be best utilized in a healthy environment or culture. It increases people performances. And a healthy culture doesn’t only help in retention and a low attrition rate, but also brings tremendous achievements to the organization.

Culture as defined-

“The shared assumptions, values and beliefs of a group of people, which result in characteristic behaviours.” (Craig Storti)

is certainly an integral part of any organization, that inspires the employee to perform and excel.