How to Achieve a Stronger Company Culture
Organizations that have a strong company culture
have committed, engaged, and high-performing employees. The key to better company culture isn’t as elusive as you may think, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to add bean bags and a free snack bar to your office.
Today’s workforce wants a career, not a job. They also want a coach and not just a boss, and the culture in which they work is important to them.
When an organization has a strong culture, three things happen:
Employees know how top management wants them to respond to any situation
Employees do it in a way that gets results
Employees know that they will be rewarded for demonstrating the organization's values
A significant responsibility of leaders in any organization is to create a culture that compels people to go beyond merely complying and doing their job, to offering up their full commitment and discretionary effort.
Many business leaders lack exposure to the facts that:
Leadership and Management
Structures
Systems and Policies, and
Work Design and Processes
directly affect an organization’s culture.
A strong culture achieves outputs at three levels:
What is the key? Having a performance feedback system that works.
One of the most critical policies impacting culture is and has always been the Performance Feedback System.
Almost every business, regardless of its purpose, depends on its workforce to reach objectives. Successful results happen if the entire team understands what the company is trying to achieve and how their individual goals fit the “big picture.”
Therefore, effectively managing employee performance is critical to organizational success.
Despite the impact performance management can have on individual and business success, effective performance management is difficult to do consistently and well.
Over the years, we have learned that the traditional annual review has not worked.
Traditional once a year performance reviews have several flaws:
Takes way too much time even though there is only one formal review.
Real-time discussions are much more valuable than year-end conversations about performance.
Research now indicates that ratings reveal more about the people who give them because of the inherent biases of the rater.
Our system shifts from the annual review to ongoing feedback throughout the year.
We advocate Coaching discussions (with how-to guidelines for the leader and the employee) with a focus on fueling future performance instead of assessing the past.
What is the alternative?
Contemporary systems have replaced the flawed one-year performance reviews. New systems now address the following four fundamentals that employees expect from a feedback process:
Clarity on job requirements and priorities
Ongoing feedback and communication
Opportunities to learn and grow
Accountability for the job results
Take a look at the Performance Feedback Process Made Simple that we created and use for small business leaders.
How First Line HR Helps
We help businesses improve their company culture by walking them through a process that results in a customized feedback system based on the needs of the business. Also, we offer training to implement the feedback system for both leaders and employees.
So what do you get? Training and coaching for your leaders and employees (which has its own set of benefits), a custom feedback system for your business, and ultimately an improved company culture.
To download a free copy of our Performance Feedback Made Simple system, click the button below.