By Darren
Perucci•March 11, 2019
Managing culture
change in the workplace can be a daunting task.
This type of change
presents a variety of challenges that must be addressed and overcome.
Learn what challenges
HR experts have identified during this process and their recommendations for
how you can overcome your company’s roadblocks to culture change in the
workplace.
The Importance of Company Culture
The importance of
fostering a great company culture can’t be overemphasized.
Companies that fail to
place any measure of importance on their internal culture, or that allow toxic
culture to grow and spread, are bound to experience a myriad of
difficulties. Employment attorney Richard Celler knows all too
well the cost of toxic company culture: “Harassment, bullying, employee rights
violations, and other abuses flow downhill from a toxic company environment—and
it costs employers millions in legal claims.”
The sad part is that
many of these lawsuits could have been avoided if the need for culture change
in the workplace had been addressed. Thankfully, toxic company culture is
usually visible early on, and if the behaviors and attitudes associated with it
are curbed in a timely manner, you can prevent a lot of problems down the road.
As an employer or HR professional, it’s your responsibility to address these
toxic behaviors.
What Is Cultural Change in an
Organization?
An organization’s
culture, or the beliefs and behaviors that influence how people act within that
organization, is now believed to play a major role in a company’s success or
failure. As such, more and more businesses are paying attention to the impact
of their culture. This provides a unique leadership opportunity for HR professionals
to determine how to implement cultural change in an organization.
Company culture is
something that is felt more than measured. In essence, an organization’s
culture is the shared perception of “how things are done.” This perception may
or may not match stated policy, values, or mandates. Good HR departments have a
pulse on how employees are feeling, and can therefore be on the front line for
managing and influencing culture.
However, as businesses
that struggle with their culture will tell you, organizational cultural
management can be challenging. And it can be especially difficult when there’s
the need for a change. In part, this is because an organization’s culture
encompasses several components that intertwine and impact each other: values,
goals, roles, processes, communications practices, and attitudes.
Changing a culture is
a large-scale undertaking that takes careful strategy and planning. It holds
the unique requirement of both starting at the top and also being an
organization-wide process. But first, you must determine when a cultural change
is necessary. Then you can decide how to influence culture change.
What Motivates a Shift in
Organizations?
Many different circumstances
can prompt organizations to recognize the need for a culture change in the
workplace.
Perhaps your company
has recently undergone significant growth, had changes in leadership, or
wondered why many of your good employees are pursuing careers elsewhere. These
signs (and others) indicate that it may be time to overhaul your company
culture. According to the experts consulted, here are some of the most common
reasons companies need to make a culture change in the workplace.
Employees
One motivation for
culture change in the workplace is having problem employees.
Most employees can be
relied on, but dealing with rebellious employees or employees that improperly
take advantage of company policies may require clarification of regulations and
a cultural shift.
Allowing a few
troublesome employees to keep their bad habits may seem harmless in the
beginning, but their attitude can quickly rub off on other employees and
encourage poor behavior all around.
The right culture can
be a remedy.
Julie from 4Good Consulting believes
that “culture is contagious” and a company culture that fosters a proactive,
optimistic, problem-solving attitude will rub off on employees and create a
positive environment.
Growth
As
companies grow, they often see the need to make cultural changes in
the workplace. For example, flexible work schedules might work for smaller
companies, but as they grow, more structure and procedures may be needed to
help ensure reliable staffing. Also, when companies grow, there’s usually less
visibility of the CEO, which reduces the CEO’s direct impact on the culture of
the company.
Company growth can
also lead to the development of subcultures and more opportunities for toxic
culture to fester unnoticed among a small number of troublesome employees. More
regulations may also apply to your growing company, and your governance model may
need to change to support the growth. However, there are positives as well, as
a growing company brings in new people with different perspectives that can
help your company. New leaders may also recognize a toxic work culture and
launch a critical culture change in the workplace.
Performance
Many companies look to
hire high performers and overlook the fact that they might already have a
willing and ready workforce right in their own office.
Before searching for
outside talent, take a look at your company culture and determine whether it
encourages your employees’ growth, innovation, and enthusiasm for their work.
General marketer Jon, from Authority Hacker, believes that changing your culture
can help you find ways to better train your staff and give them the “tools they
need… to continually grow in the business.”
Loss of Employees
Employees quit from
time to time, but if too many are leaving and you don’t know why you should
re-examine your company culture and see if it is the root of the problem.
Workplace culture
expert Shane Green knows that “younger workers are not
afraid to leave jobs or managers for a better situation. If a company wants to
retain its best and brightest, then they need to deliver a good to great
employee experience.”
Mergers and Acquisitions
When it comes to
causing a culture change in the workplace, Senior Consultant Beth Browde
from Mercer knows
“culture is a huge issue in merger integrations.”
When companies merge
and leadership changes, the company dynamic often changes as well. Successful
mergers and leadership changes rely on the successful integration of company
culture.
Crisis
Sometimes the
motivation for creating a culture change in the workplace isn’t a positive one.
Major problems with
customer complaints, employees, management, etc., can result in legal issues,
company losses, and more. Times like these may cause owners and HR
professionals alike to consider whether a change in company culture is in order
to avoid these problems in the future.
Whatever your
motivation is for making a culture change in the workplace, creating a good
company culture has a myriad of benefits including:
·
Increased job
satisfaction
·
Less stress
·
Better performance
·
Employee retention
·
And more.
Establishing a strong,
successful company culture is vital to the long-term success of any
organization.
How Do You Change Bad Company
Culture?
It should be no
surprise that your culture can either be your greatest strength or your most
damaging weakness. Watch for the warning signs that a company’s culture is
broken. Red flags include:
·
No defined core values
·
Managers don’t follow
the core values
·
A high rate of
turnover
·
A bad company
reputation
·
Employees are often
tardy or absent
·
A large amount of
office gossip
·
Glaring
inconsistencies between what people say and do
·
Unfriendly competition
between employees
·
Employees aren’t
adequately acknowledged or rewarded
·
Employees who don’t
take lunch breaks, or regularly work nights and/or weekends
Once you recognize negative
or toxic culture trends, it’s time to make a change. This does not mean some
group decides what the new culture should be and then simply dictates a list of
values to the company. With this approach, little to nothing changes.
Instead, it’s
important to identify and address the underlying issues so you can correct your
course. These four steps are a good place to start to set your organization
back on the right track:
1.
Foster an environment
of accountability, from managers down to individual employees.
2.
Discuss with teams
what matters most to them.
3.
Institute better
practices based on feedback.
4.
Continue to assess
your culture.
Challenges to Managing Culture Change
in the Workplace
Employers face many
challenges in managing culture change in the workplace. Here, experts weigh in
on what the main challenges are.
1. Resistance to Change
Heidi Lynne Kurter,
founder and CEO of Heidi Lynne Consulting says, “The greatest
challenge I see when attempting to change company culture is the resistance to
change.” Employees don’t like to see changes in the workplace, and some are
more resistant to changes than others.
Employees who sow
negativity at the ground level can be especially damaging to new cultural
initiatives. Matthew Ross, co-owner and COO of RIZKNOWS and The Slumber Yard,
notes that these people “tend to speak out against management and rally other
employees behind certain ideas and concepts.” In these cases, it’s critical to
explain why the changes are important as well as what the benefits are.
Even after changes are
made, Jim Robertson, CEO of The Alternative Board Woodlands observes,
“Employees may revert back to what they’re used to rather than push forward
with the new.”
Resistance to change
doesn’t always look like outright rebellion. HR Manager Alex Robinson at Team Building Hero has
observed, “With the older employees, the challenge is quiet dissent, [and]
drops in productivity and job satisfaction,” which can be just as detrimental
to your business. Successful culture change relies on including your employees
in the transition and getting their feedback.
2. Lack of Motivation to Change
Getting employees and
executives on board for making a culture change in the workplace can be very
challenging.
Alex Robinson, HR
manager at Team Building Hero, says, ”The best way to motivate
employees to accept our culture is first to get their buy-in, and second to
choose principles and values that are indisputable.” You can do this by making
sure the principles on which your organization focuses make sense to your
employees and have their support. However, getting employee buy-in is only part
of the challenge.
Getting the motivation
and buy-in of your executives is also critical and can be even more difficult
than convincing employees if they don’t see the need to spend additional time
and resources on changing the workplace culture. But executive buy-in is
important because culture trickles down from the top. If the executive team
isn’t willing to make changes, your company will struggle.
3. Lack of Ownership
Changing company
culture is the responsibility of everyone, not just the HR department.
Julie from 4Good Consulting knows
that “not everyone feels responsible to change culture or believes they have
the ability to impact it.” Telling people what changes you want to make and
trying out different initiatives with teams allows you to get feedback and lets
employees know they are a vital part of the process.
4. Complacency
People don’t like to
upset the status quo. Joshua M. Evans from Culture Consulting Associates
says, “People have grown so used to ‘the way things are’ that they will fight
anything new, even if it’s better, just to keep what’s familiar.” Setting clear
cultural expectations helps overcome complacency, and Evans believes it’s
important “to communicate and reinforce the new cultural expectations
continually.”
5. Capped Potential
Some companies realize
the need for culture change in the workplace when they face the challenge of
capped employee potential. Allocating your budget and time towards providing
training and resources to upskill your employees and creating a company culture
of learning and growth can help you overcome this challenge.
Solutions for Managing Culture Change
in the Workplace
The challenges of
managing culture change in the workplace may be daunting, but there are
solutions that can make it easier while helping you to keep your sanity during
major changes. Here are the top recommendations from HR experts.
1. Collaborate
Make employees part of
creating the company culture.
Heidi Lynne Kurter,
founder and CEO of Heidi Lynne Consulting, says, “When it comes to culture
change, collaboration is key. Your employees make up your culture, and
neglecting to include them in the process only creates more strain in the
already distant relationship. Culture isn’t a one-sided process. It’s made up
of everyone within the organization.” Listen to and apply the feedback and
ideas your employees give you.
To help ensure
collaboration with your employees, be transparent and authentic from the start.
You should also try to understand the feelings of your employees by holding
one-on-one meetings and group meetings where you can openly discuss concerns
and overcome barriers.
2. Don’t Let Anything Slide
Matthew also
recognizes the importance of staying consistent. “I think it’s important that
once you institute the new policies or rules, you stick by them from day one,”
he says. “Don’t let anything slide, no matter how small or big it is.”
Once you’ve
implemented changes, follow up consistently. Jon from Authority Hacker says,
”I believe consistent and frequent follow-up is one of the most important
things any management team or business can do to help embed new behaviors.”
Most employees will
support a culture change in the workplace, but what if you encounter one who
doesn’t? Matthew also recommends, ”If you see an employee acting in a manner
that goes against the new company culture you’re trying to cultivate, take
action immediately and let it be known that it will not be tolerated. If you
start letting things slide here and there, the employees won’t take the new
changes or policies very seriously.”
3. Communication
Don’t rely on one
company-wide email to give your employees the heads-up on culture changes you
plan to make in the workplace. Alex Robinson from Team Building Hero recommends
you ”plan a meeting or multiple meetings before making any changes where you
can get employee contribution and buy-in.” His company planned scheduled
changes and communicated the entire process to their employees so that “when we
did change the policy, it wasn’t a surprise to anyone.”
The key takeaway here
is that changes shouldn’t come as a surprise. Communicating with your staff
about what values they feel are important, the changes you are planning, and
how you will implement them reduces resistance to change. North America
Managing Director for ThirtyThree Nicole Dorskind asserts, “The
overarching vision for the change should be communicated in a clear and
consistent way on an ongoing basis.”
4. Make Gradual Changes
Culture change in the
workplace should be a gradual process.
Instead of a quick
succession of messages or meetings, give employees time to adjust to the idea
of change.
It might take weeks or
even months to make the changes you want, but it will be easier for your
employees. Managing Director of Healing
Holidays Frances Geoghegan notes that “the last thing you want
to do is scare them away by having them walk into a brand-new workplace the
very next day.”
Adjusting to a new
work environment and culture is hard. Frances also says, “The best advice I can
give to overcome this is to not implement all changes straight away. Begin
phasing in the changes slowly; this will give your team members plenty of time
to adjust and adapt to the new culture comfortably.” Implementing changes
slowly will help you face less resistance and help your employees feel happier
about the change.
5. Gamification
Other companies have
found success in managing culture change in the workplace by implementing
gamification—using fun and games to encourage understanding, participation, and
support.
Cristian Rennella, CEO
and Cofounder of oMelhorTrato.com tried this strategy in his
company with successful results. “To reduce employee resistance to change, we
create games and the winners receive their corresponding prizes. We implement
rules, points, scoreboards, etc. In this way, thanks to gamification, we were
able to improve the adoption speed of our new culture without disrupting
workflow by 26.3 percent.”
6. Make People Happier at Work
Sometimes other
changes, such as a change of location, might prompt the need for a culture
change in the workplace.
Change of any kind is
difficult. HR Manager of Maple Holistics Nate Masterson found that moving
into an unfinished office space with unpainted walls and folding tables for
desks wasn’t doing any favors for employee morale.
Nate says, “In order
to bring back some energy and make people happier at work, we tried to infuse
some pizzazz even as renovations were being completed. We added exercise balls
as alternatives to chairs in order to make work a bit more entertaining.”
Simple changes like this, along with an offering of “daily snacks to perk people up a bit,” helped
employees stay happy and positive during a time of change.
7. Start with a Clear Vision
Before you start
making changes, define what you want to achieve and recognize whether what
you’re saying and doing conflict with one another.
Don’t make changes
just because your competition did.
Assess all the
different ways that planned changes will affect your company. Jim Robertson
from The Alternative Board recommends, “Before any new
cultural structure is implemented, conduct a rigorous assessment of the
financial benefits for your company.”
To help ensure your
culture change in the workplace will succeed, make sure your company goals and
culture are aligned. Reward the values you espouse. If you’re asking for
innovation but you punish failure that typically comes with taking risks,
you’ll have fewer people willing to attempt innovation.
Organizational Culture Change
Examples
It can be instructive
to see how other organizations have focused on certain areas to transform their
culture. Here are a few organizational culture change examples to give you
inspiration:
Salesforce
Salesforce is well
known in sales circles, but it’s also well known for its culture of giving, as
shown by its community giveback program. The company donates 1 percent of its
yearly equity, 1 percent of its products, and 1 percent of employees’ time to community
volunteer projects. Giving back to the community not only helps others, but it
also supports team building, builds brand recognition, and can help attract new
employees.
Other companies like
Atlassian and Google have picked up on the concept for their own community
giveback models.
Zappos
Online shoe company
Zappos has developed a culture others want to mirror. In fact, Zappos has
become such a culture change model that they offer a three-day “culture camp”
to teach HR professionals how to build a culture like theirs. Their secret is
that culture is their number one priority, from the CEO down. They have an
intense focus on customer service and build a culture that fosters that. In
fact, culture is a large part of their interview process.
Warby Parker
Selling prescription
glasses online doesn’t sound like the kind of industry well known for its
culture, but Warby Parker has succeeded in doing just that. They have made
company culture a deliberate focus with a dedicated team that keeps positive
culture front and center. This team sets up fun lunches, events, and programs
to promote community.
Adobe
Adobe is a company
that has built a culture on trust. They go out of their way to give employees
challenging projects, but then they take the next step to provide the trust and
support so employees can succeed. Adobe purposefully built a culture that
avoids micromanaging. Rather, they trust employees to manage and complete their
projects in a way they feel is best. The company’s history of innovative and
successful products shows the fruits of their culture.
Motivating Employees to Accept
Company Culture
While you may not be
able to motivate everyone to accept culture change in the workplace, you can
help shape measurable behaviors and hire new employees who exemplify your
values. According to workplace culture expert Shane
Green, the best ways to align new hires with company culture are to:
·
Define values and
expectations during the job interview.
·
Make sure employees
have a great experience during their first few days on the job and feel
connected to the brand.
·
Provide thorough
onboarding and training to set employees up for success.
·
Reward those who do
well, and hold those that don’t accountable.
·
Communicate
effectively.
·
Make it easy for your
employees to work, access their information, and get paid.
·
Make sure managers are
leaders. Leaders inspire and focus on people; managers focus on processes.
Nicole Dorskind
from ThirtyThree advises
employers to look at their own teams differently. “You should be essentially
‘re-hiring’ your team every day. Your employees need to understand what makes
your business different and special in its current state, as well as its
cultural ambitions. The more consistently and compellingly this is
communicated, the more the right people will stay with your organization,
become advocates, and embrace the journey.”
Successfully managing
culture change in the workplace is challenging, but by following these tips
from the experts you’ll be well on your way to creating a company culture
geared for success.
Darren Perucci
Content Manager
Darren Perucci is a
content manager for BambooHR. He likes to think of himself as a purveyor of all
things content related. While he loves finding new ways of reaching new
audiences he is passionate about delivering the best experience to readers.
