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Company culture may not spring to mind for a leader as the most important consideration when things like productivity, profitability, and engagement are concerned. However, getting this step right can help boost all functions within a business.
Employers can help engage employees and boost morale through the prioritisation of company culture. In turn, this can help create happier, more productive, and ultimately, more efficient employees.
However, for company culture to be maintained and improved upon, leaders need to keep their ears to the ground and listen to the wants and needs of their workforce.
“Part of being an active manager of your culture, whether you’re a small organisation or a large organisation, is actually understanding how other people are seeing and experiencing it,” said Perkbox Australia country manager Ross McDonald.
“If I speak for my own team here of 20, every month, we have a little online survey. How are you feeling? How engaged do you feel? Do you have the right information? How’s your communication going? So, we gather that information.”
Gathering employee sentiments to gauge how the business is performing culturally is crucial. Employers who decide what’s best for their workforce without engaging with the workers themselves run the risk of missing the mark and appearing inconsiderate.
While gathering the feelings of your workforce is one thing, using it to produce results is another. Those who take the time to listen to their employees need to then act upon the requests; otherwise, what’s the point?
“We actively discuss that as a team. And so, a couple of weeks after the monthly survey has gone in, we get back together again as a group of 20 and say, here’s what we all thought last month,” explained Mr McDonald.
“What’s interesting there is not so much what the answer is, but it’s actually understanding the difference between the answers. And so sometimes that’s compared month on month. Last month, we thought we were really good at that. And this month, we don’t. Why is that? What’s changed about our communication flows that we feel that we’re not as strong on communication?”
He continued: “Or alternately, you might see differences within the group. Last time, eight out of 10 people were really happy with the communication. This time, it’s only three out of 10. So, what changed for those individuals? And it’s something that we actively talk about. And we agree at the end of those meetings about any changes that we need to make, how we can manage ourselves to become the culture that we want to be as an organisation.”
The transcript of this podcast episode was slightly edited for publishing purposes. To listen to the full conversation with Ross McDonald, click below:
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Your organization's culture determines its personality and character. The combination of your formal and informal procedures, attitudes, and beliefs results in the experience that both your workers and consumers have. Company culture is fundamentally the way things are done at work.
Jack Campbell
Jack is the editor at HR Leader.
