Ways to Shape Your Culture

Reprinted, by Amy Dufrane, Ed.D., SPHR, CAE – HRCI CEO
We have all seen how workplace culture evolves, sometimes in ways we neither expected or wanted. HR plays a pivotal role in designing culture that improves performance and employee experience to drive business results.An effective culture is vital to developing and sustaining a healthy, high-performance organization — especially moving forward in today’s volatile climate. And executives agree, ranking building organizational culture as their top imperative for transforming work in Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends survey. Culture happens, whether we design it or not. Here are some actions you can take this week to take control of your organizational culture.

Reflect on your current culture. Culture becomes concrete when manifested as behaviors. Observe and reflect on the norms in your team and department. Do people feel empowered to speak up ad hoc in meetings? Or does your culture value more formal presentations? 

Identify elements of high-performance culture. Identify the highest-performing teams at your organization. Observe their behavioral norms. Does the team leader’s behavior signal certain attitudes or values to the rest of the group? Pinpoint those to determine what makes their culture high-performance. 

Reinforce culture through operations. As you identify high-performance values and behaviors, find ways to reinforce them through systems like performance management, rewards and leadership training. Over time, this will operationalize your most desirable cultural norms.
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