Is your company culture on the right track?

‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’- Peter Drucker

Your organisation’s culture forms the heart of your business and if done right, can take you and your team a long way. This core set of values and beliefs is vital in nurturing loyalty amongst your employees and, thus, their motivation to perform. So how do you know whether the culture you are building within your organisation will have the desired influence and impact on your staff?

What kind culture do you follow?

Global enterprises like Google, Microsoft, Facebookand similar others, take pride in establishing and promoting a company culture that has become the benchmark for the rest of the world to follow. Their culture is so powerful that it influences an employee’s professional personality.

Management theories suggest that the most effective cultures for connecting with the millennial workforce are driven by leaders who set a clear path for strong organisational values.

A study on the various kinds of company culture explains how leaders can drive the values and principles that eventually shape the organisational practices.

Organisational culture, regardless of industry, tend to fall into one of these four categories:

In a liberal company culture, leaders provide employees with ample opportunities to grow and empower them to carry the organisation’s flag forward. With a liberator as a leader, the company culture is more open, with high levels of engagement. Employees feel more connected to management and stand by strong philosophies that allow them to boost the company’s growth along with their own.

A culture of ‘Abdication’, on the other hand, is the extreme opposite of a liberal culture. In such a scenario, the organisation neither pushes for the growth of the employee, nor does it hold high expectations from them; as such they can become apathetic. Staff neither feel supported nor challenged. This results in extremely low levels of employee engagement, leading to detachment from the organisation’s objectives and a subsequent rise in stagnancy.

In the ‘protector’ approach, some organisations build a philosophy of secrecy and non-disclosure to avoid unwarranted conflicts. Such a scenario has the potential to create a culture of entitlement and mistrust. Employees consider everything to be their leader’s prerogative, resulting in detachment and complacency among staff members. Employees are usually involved in situations where they only see their individual benefits. A protective culture drives singularity among employees and not a feeling of a community.

Finally, a dominating culture is still prevalent in many organisations across the world today. The basis of such a culture is fear or apprehension. The anxiety instilled by the leader, might get the work done, but employees subsequently, rarely consider themselves to be a part of the organisation or feel connected on any emotional level.

To uncover what kind of organisation you are building, you need to ask yourself – what kind of leader/s does your company have?

Once you know who you are, as a leader, and what you desire for your organisation, you can

develop the culture around it. And, as proven over time and again, cultures need to, and must, change from time to time, depending on the employees that you hire, the changes in the economy and the socio-cultural shifts that we go through.

The need of the hour

In short, this era of transition and disruption calls for a liberal leader. The millennial workforce needs freedom, empowerment and opportunities to grow, so they can contribute towards pushing an organisation forward and establish strong roots within. As pillars of an organisation, employees need to thrive in a work culture that provides them with a healthy environment, freedom of expression, active involvement, high moral, sense of responsibility, diversity and inclusion, teamwork and trust.

The onus of building the right culture for any company is as much on the HR manager, as it is on its leader/s. At TalentSpa, we help you find the right talent that fits in with your company culture and helps your organisation grow.