Changing your company culture is difficult, but not impossible
Fostering a connective culture is a top priority of HR leaders this year. Great leaders recognize the importance of fostering a collaborative, innovative, and inclusive workplace environment. Whether driven by attracting top talent, retaining current employees, or meeting business targets, improving your culture sets up an organization for success. Here’s how to effectively transform your company culture.
Clarify What Company Culture Means
A company’s culture is more than a list of core values on a website. It is embedded in every business decision, meeting, email, and conversation. Words like ‘welcoming,’ ‘cutthroat,’ or ‘formal’ can give a sense of an organization’s culture, but often it’s more of a feeling sensed through daily interactions. Alicia Pittman, the Global People Team Chair at Boston Consulting Group, conveyed to me via email: “Culture should be a foundation, not a formula.” A company culture is noticed by employees, customers, suppliers, and stakeholders.
Before you can improve culture, you must first understand it. Start by conducting a thorough and honest evaluation of the existing culture. Avoid solely relying on executive leadership insights. The workplace culture is experienced at all levels of an organization. Employees who interact across departments and levels can offer a unique perspective on both organizational culture and micro-cultures within teams.
Assess The Current Company Culture
Roll out surveys, focus groups, visioning sessions, and, when needed, external consultants for an unbiased view. Establish metrics to track culture over time, using targeted culture questions to create a reliable baseline. Putting forth Likert survey questions, ‘I statements’ with varying levels of agreement or disagreement, helps individuals analyze how the company culture impacts their work. Sometimes, improving culture is a matter of being better at clearly defining and exemplifying existing company values. Other times, complex misalignments exist and require a more in-depth analysis.
Take the time to identify pain points and root causes. Understand what is contributing to the disconnect between company values and reality. Skipping this foundational step is one of the main reasons why culture change initiatives fail.
Define And Implement Company Culture Changes
Once it is assessed what needs to change and why, start designing the actions and behaviors that align with the ideal company culture. This needs to be a holistic systemic change, and it has lasting results. According to The State of Global Workplace Culture in 2024 report by the Society for Human Resource Management, 83% of those who rate their workplace culture as good or excellent are motivated to produce high-quality work, in comparison to only 45% of workers in poor or terrible cultures. A culture change may include rethinking how meetings are conducted, feedback given and received, and how expectations and boundaries are communicated. Establish a network of change champions across all departments and levels who can model and reinforce the new behaviors. Change champions need support and empowerment from leadership to speak up when old habits resurface.
Flexibility is essential – each employee plays a role in shaping the workplace culture. As Pittman notes, “Empowerment drives engagement. Teams perform best when they have the flexibility to shape their environment while staying aligned with the company’s broader purpose.” Allow individuals to share their opinions and influence positive change.
Evaluate Progress And Embrace Continuous Improvement
Changing company culture is not a one-time initiative – it is a continuous journey. Regularly evaluate progress using the questions and metrics established in your baseline. Consider conducting culture surveys quarterly or annually, and track key indicators like employee satisfaction, burnout, and support. Factor employee feedback and management championship of culture changes into the performance review process. Recruiting strategies should align with the new culture change initiative. Being intentional about hiring new employees that will augment the workplace environment can also drive progress towards an ideal company culture.
Great company cultures take time develop. If progress stalls, reassess your strategy. Engage employees through asking for their ideas and encouraging them to contribute in shaping the culture. Sustainable workplace culture change requires both determination and adaptability. Celebrate incremental small successes in company culture metrics.
At its core, a company is a community of people working toward a shared purpose. Every employee helps shape the company culture, whether consciously or not. Both small and large actions have the potential to transform the workplace environment. Approaching this process with openness and intention enables organizations to build a thriving company culture that motivates teams to deliver their best work.
