Whether you know it or not, your organization has an active company culture. If that's not something your leadership is carefully cultivating and monitoring, then it's likely that you have a stagnant or even negative culture amongst your employees.
Changing organizational culture isn't a process you can achieve overnight, but it's one that will have a crucial long-term impact on the engagement, productivity, and wellbeing of your employees, as well as the development of your talent pipeline.
Nurturing desirable behaviors in the workplace is worth the investment.
What Are the Long-Term Benefits of Changing Organizational Culture?
Before we get into the details, you might be wondering how exactly changing the organizational culture will bring long-term benefits and a competitive advantage to your organization.
Improve Employee Engagement
First of all, companies with strong cultures enjoy better employee engagement. We've shared before that "More than half of employees were willing to go to a competing firm in search of a better culture, and 48% said they'd consider working a 60 hour week in exchange for a better culture."
When employees enjoy a developed and considerate corporate culture in their work environment, they will become more invested and engaged in their work.
Develop Your Talent Pipeline
If you want the best people to work in your organization, you need to provide them with the best cultural alignment.
The latest talent in the workforce is looking for organizations with a strong culture and strong values. You'll get a competitive advantage to hire the best in the industry at the beginning of their careers.
Increase Profits Over Time
The benefits of changing your organizational culture for the better don't stop at employee wellness— that increased engagement and a healthy talent pipeline translate to profits.
The BDC Network reported that "A strong positive culture can enhance employee engagement by 30%, resulting in up to a 19% increase in operating income, and a 28% increase in earnings growth."
Are those numbers you can afford to ignore?
Changing Organizational Culture With Assessments
While there are many ways and methods to start changing organizational culture, we're going to focus on the specific effects of using behavioral assessments.
Here are a few of the ways assessments can help your company culture.
Create a Shared Language
Assessments are a way to understand human behavior through specific lenses with specific sciences. The language used in assessments helps name elements of emotional intelligence, motivation, and behavior, and more that you might not have been able to describe before.
This new vocabulary will help your team communicate in new and effective ways with your team members. One example is the Clear Glass concept. This concept names states of emotion that might normally be difficult to communicate, especially in a professional setting.
Better communication means better culture and more desirable behaviors, from entry-level team members to senior executives.
Define & Live Out Values
Most companies have a defined set of values, but those usually just live in the organization's handbook. How often are you revisiting and refining these values?
It's important to ask the question, "How does management change an organization's culture?" It's certainly a question that your team is going to want to know the answer to.
You can find this answer by using assessments tailored to measure and explain motivation. By finding out the priorities and corresponding actions of your senior leaders, your organization will be able to make sure those align with the company's and their teams.
Once you have a solid understanding of what everyone needs in your organization to feel satisfied in their roles, you need to make sure that leaders are displaying tangible proof of that understanding through value-led action.
Is your organization involved in charity efforts in your industry? Are your senior leaders demonstrating a growth mindset? Do your executives take an approach that emphasizes servant leadership? Get the answers to these questions with value-led leadership.
Focus on Strengths Within Your Team
Innovation is important, but one of the best ways forward is to focus on strengths in your team. The specific behaviors that help individuals in your organization excel will be your greatest asset in improving your organizational culture for the better.
It can be hard to pinpoint exactly what those strengths are; the good news is that assessments will unlock the insights you need. By articulating the needs of your team through behavioral assessments, you can create that shared language and specific, actionable metrics to measure your team around.
Focus on skill-building as well. Develop the competencies of your team to show them that you're invested in the success of their long-term careers by identifying their top personal skills, based on how they score on 25 research-based skills required by any job.
Inspire Your Team to Succeed
Changing organizational culture is a long-term process and long-term investment in the productivity, progress, and engagement of your team. Focusing on company culture is a factor within your control that will, without a doubt, benefit your employees.
Focusing on company culture will improve your talent pipeline, employee engagement, and profits over time. Ensure your employees have the support and preparation they need to succeed; that will become a positive feedback loop and contribute positively to your company culture over time.
The fastest way to get started is to harness the power of behavioral assessments. If you're interested in working with TTI SI, our tools can help transform your organization. Get the information you need to move forward here.
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