Changing and Improving Company Culture: Here’s How To 

If employee engagement is low or there are high absenteeism or turnover rates, these are indicators that the current company culture needs a shake-up. However, avoiding hammering everyone over the head with new initiatives is important. Changing and improving company culture takes time and patience. Start by reassessing your core values.

Identify Problematic Behavior

When changing company culture, identifying problematic behavior is the first step. Employees who act negatively and create conflict can lead to high absenteeism rates, low productivity and an inability to achieve the business’s goals. People in leadership and management positions greatly impact the overall culture, so the words, actions and policies they implement have lasting effects on the rest of the team.

Additionally, unofficial leaders – such as charismatic and well-liked individuals – significantly influence culture. While transforming your company’s culture, it is important to communicate with employees and include them in the process. 

Group coaching ensures that everyone knows the new cultural expectations and demonstrates that they are crucial to the process. During these discussions, capture the information shared to continue building on this knowledge as you move forward with your plans for change.

Define Your Core Values

Your employees are the fabric of your culture, so collaboration is essential to successfully transforming it. Incorporate employee engagement tactics that allow you to discuss concerns and barriers openly. Ideally, these conversations should take place in one-on-one meetings and group settings.

It would help if you also used these opportunities to capture the ideas and feedback your people share. Once you’ve determined the desired company vision and core values, you should communicate them to everyone.

Encourage your leaders and high performers to act in a way that is consistent with these goals, and welcome suggestions from front-line employees on how to implement them. It’s not uncommon for companies to feature their core values prominently on their websites, on plaques in their headquarters, or printed in employee handbooks.

But identifying and communicating company values is only the beginning of the process; living up to them is where the real work begins. It is the most important part of achieving sustainable cultural change because it determines whether or not your company will withstand future challenges.

Create a Transparent Team

The most effective way to create a transparent culture is to engage teams in co-creating it, rather than a single company-wide email, and schedule meetings and gatherings where everyone can share their thoughts and feelings about the desired culture and how it might work at their level in your practice.

It will engender a sense of ownership and foster greater advocacy for your new culture. A good team also shares the positive results of their efforts and is honest about the challenges they face. By sharing their experience, they become more resilient to these challenges in the future. It is important to make transparency a key attribute in your hiring practices.

It isn’t just about finding the right skills and qualifications; it’s about ensuring they align with your values. It will help you attract and retain high-quality employees and build your team over time. It will lead to greater productivity, increased satisfaction and a more fulfilling workplace culture. It will also allow your team to tackle bigger and more complex challenges – and succeed.

Call It Out

The best way to keep a strong culture is to call out bad behavior. It isn’t as easy as just bringing up the issue in a team meeting, but it requires steps to curb this problem before it escalates. For example, if one employee is bullying another in the office, it’s time to address this behavior head-on.

It means creating an environment of inclusion and belonging where it is not acceptable to bully or harass anyone. It’s also crucial to give employees career paths they can follow so that they feel a sense of purpose in their work. You can do this by providing training or making career development part of an employee’s one-on-one with their manager.

Developing a company culture takes time and effort but is a worthwhile investment. A positive workplace culture boosts employee retention rates, improves morale, and reduces turnover. It’s a must for any business looking to thrive in the modern workforce. So don’t let a poor company culture slow you down – take these steps to change and improve your company’s culture today!

Establish Accountability

If you want employees to behave in a certain way, leaders and high performers must model it. Reward those who “walk the talk,” Don’t be afraid to speak up when someone isn’t meeting your expectations. Welcome suggestions from staff on how to continue to improve culture and show that you value their opinions.

Changing company culture takes time and commitment. But it can also pay off. Research has shown that companies with a strong culture outperform their competitors. You must have a clear vision of the desired culture and choose indisputable principles and values. It will help your team understand and support the changes you’re making.

Changing company culture isn’t just an HR department responsibility; it’s everyone’s. The executive team must lead the way and commit to a new workplace. If they do, you can avoid losing employee engagement and failing to achieve your goals. With the right strategy, you can reshape your culture and create an environment that inspires and rewards employees. Then, you can focus on building a successful business.