Culture and employee engagement is the number one issue for the world’s business and HR leaders! That’s according to the latest Deloitte 2015 Global Capital Human Trends Report.
The research, which involved more than 3300 business and HR leaders from over 100 countries, identifies 10 key trends and the report highlights that culture and engagement is the number one issue. The leaders rated it as 78 out of a 100 possible points for importance, but rated their organisation’s readiness to address the issue as only 47 out of 100!
The report suggests that as the economy gets stronger, we’re in a world of increasing employee expectations and an increasing need to attract top quality people. Organisations need to ensure that their people programmes, policies and procedures need to enhance and reinforce the culture that they want.
How can they (and you?) do that?
I often speak about this ‘culture’ stuff at conferences and events and we define culture as ‘the way we do things around here’. Our research suggests that winning businesses Create An UBER Culture. It’s 3D Characteristic #5 in the 7 Characteristics of 3D Businesses.
The 4 key ingredients of ‘Creating An UBER Culture!’ are…
- Understand…
3D Businesses ensure that everyone Understands what is expected of them when it comes to living ‘the culture they want’ and crucially, the behaviours they should display to live and reinforce that culture. They have a clear picture of what they want their culture to be, and they clearly and consistently ‘spell it out’! They turn it into something ‘tangible’ by spelling out their ‘core values’ – not lots of nice posters on the wall, but turning those ‘values’ into ‘preferred behaviours’ and getting people to understand what this means for them in their day to day activities.
- Build Systems And Processes…
3D Businesses establish and Build systems and processes that help shape and reinforce the culture they want and need. For example, they ensure that their recruitment processes assess people against ‘fit’ for their business and culture, they make sure that their induction process gets people up to speed when it comes to ‘the way we do things around here’ and their reward systems reinforce their ‘preferred behaviours’. They ensure that their systems and processes promote and reinforce the behaviours they want!
- Empower, Engage and Educate …
Having spelt out the ‘preferred behaviours’ they want, 3D Businesses proactively identify the things that are holding people back, hindering them and preventing them from living those behaviours – and eliminate them! This could a training issue, a lack of guidance, support or resources, or it could be an ‘attitude problem’! Crucially, they replace them with things that support and reinforce the culture they want! It’s about establishing clear guidelines, policies and procedures that help people ‘deliver’! It’s also about giving them the knowledge and training to make that happen!
- Reward and Recognise…
3D Businesses Reward And Recognise the behaviours that they WANT! They establish ways of recognising those who demonstrate the behaviours they and spot them doing things right. They proactively ‘Champion their Champions’, encourage and support them, and where appropriate, highlight them to others in the business – it’s about creating ‘role models’! Crucially, they ‘challenge’ those that don’t act in line with their ‘preferred behaviours’ – it’s about making it transparent and consistent!
- Are you happy with your company culture and your people’s behaviours?
- Have you established the preferred behaviours you want from your people?
- Crucially, do you have processes that reinforce those behaviours?
If the answer is ‘no’ to these questions, then there’s a fair chance that you’ve got some work to do! A starting point might be to download our FREE e-book ‘Creating An UBER Culture’.
It’s an 18 page expansion of the key elements highlighted above, and has a simple assessment tool to help you see how you and your business measures up – The answers you get might not be pleasant, but at least you could start doing something about establishing and reinforcing your culture you want!
