EVERY company has an inherent culture, but only the strongest and most successful ones have a culture that is built on structure, strategy and purpose. At the forefront of that movement of shaping a purpose-led company culture are HR professionals.
Human Resource (HR) managers call the shots in shaping the intended culture. HR leaders are responsible for aligning managers and employees with the desired culture, fostering a sense of ownership for that culture and maintaining accountability at all levels of the company.
What is organisational culture?
The word “culture” has its origins in the Latin word “cultura”, which means to tend or cultivate. Simply put, organisational culture is how leadership tends to, cultivates, or takes care of its business, stakeholders and employees guided by consistent organisational behaviour of employees and its leaders. Organisational culture is generally understood as all of the company’s beliefs, values and attitudes, and how these influence the behaviour of its employees. Organisational culture often mirrors the organisation’s core values and directly reflects the leadership. Culture shapes acceptable or unacceptable behaviour. Culture may help define values and core principles that guide organisational behaviour.
Why is work culture important?
Work culture can have a profound impact on several significant aspects of the employee experience, like individual and team morale, workplace engagement and job satisfaction. Work culture not only guides employees in the workplace, but it also guides customers on whether they want to do business with you. Positive workplace culture attracts talent, drives engagement, impacts happiness and satisfaction, and affects performance. By building a strong culture, businesses can ensure consistency and it is essential for fostering a sense of pride and ownership among employees. When people feel proud to work for their employer, they work hard to create opportunities their organisation can benefit from.
How to create a positive work culture
Improving work culture is not a speedy process. To achieve long-term, sustainable change there needs to be commitment that starts at the top of the organisational structure. It requires leaders who are willing to set an example for consistent communication, accountability and transparency. To start building the company’s work culture of your dreams, first lay out your core values. The human resources team plays an integral role in determining how best to create the right environment for both leadership and employees.
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Creating a positive work culture where everyone feels valued, welcomed and respected is vital to an organisation’s success. Be sure to take your employee’s feedback into account and lean on them to help cultivate a great work experience.
HR role in shaping workplace culture
The culture your company displays will determine whether employees work individually or as a team. A healthy corporate culture, one that fosters positivity, is becoming increasingly important in the modern workplace. A strong, positive workplace culture can affect many aspects of business operations. Human resources departments play a pivotal role in setting the tone of the culture of a company. While corporate culture is influenced by the organisation’s members, HR plays a pivotal role in setting a company’s culture tone. An employee’s first point of contact when brought on board is often the HR department. As a business function, HR shapes and reinforces how employees define corporate culture.
HR supports business advocacy
Key drivers in any business are the attraction and retention of top talent. No business can thrive with a high turnover or a disconnected workforce. HR plays a momentous role in shaping corporate culture so potential candidates are culturally a good fit for the organisation. HR shapes corporate culture through the literature it publishes. Advocacy starts with publications that include job descriptions, performance appraisals, and employee development and training. These publications give potential candidates a glimpse into a company’s structure and workplace culture. HR plays a fundamental role in emphasising company culture both internally and externally. An HR department that empowers workplace culture drives organisational excellence and success.
Strategic recruitment and training
Sometimes, building the right company culture is just a matter of recruiting the right people. This means that HR professionals should be looking into the nuances of their prospective talent’s personalities and traits. More than just being technically brilliant, they must also possess certain traits that allow them to thrive within the framework of a company’s ideal culture if not then they should be trained. Sometimes, acquiring the right talent is not enough. It is also a matter of making sure that onboarding protocols and training programmes are in place to fully orient team members on workplace culture. These training programmes can be technical or non-technical in nature. Whatever the case, they should be designed to fully expose team members to the company’s culture as defined or set by its leadership.
Performance management programmes
Implementing performance management systems is another way that HR can help shape company culture in performance management protocols for its employees. Ultimately, as HR professionals, it is your job to make sure that you place your employees in the best possible position to succeed. It should be common knowledge that a work environment that fails to uphold cohesive and structured standards of performance should expect suboptimal performance from its workers. So, HR professionals can help enforce more purposeful working habits by implementing proper feedback prompts and protocols on employees individual performance. This way, employees always know what they are doing wrong and what they are doing right.
Creating a positive work environment is the basis for every initiative in the workplace, and is crucial for an organisation’s success. A company’s success is heavily tied to its corporate culture. Having a sound corporate culture determines whether your company recruits top talent or not. Culture can determine overall organisational success on a more fundamental and sustainable level by boosting employee productivity and morale.
