World renowned management guru Peter Drucker once said, “Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast”. What he implied is that no matter how good the company’s strategy is, if the culture doesn’t match up, it would be difficult for the company to be successful in the long run. 

What is work culture? 

The key guiding principles for a company to operate efficiently is its vision and mission. A ‘vision’ statement talks about ‘who we are’ as a company and a ‘mission’ statement elicits what the company does to grow sustainably. You might also have seen ‘values’ that a company abides by. The values, beliefs, attitudes and a prescribed way in which a company would operate defines its culture. 

Why is ‘culture’ so critical? Workplace culture influences the type of people who wish to join the company. In order to attract the best candidates into the company, the culture must be conducive for such candidates. Only if such talent comes into the company can it grow as desired and achieve its mission and vision. So, culture is at the focal point of the very existence of the company. 

What’s the role of a future HR leader?

As a future HR leader, you may want to focus on shaping the culture of the company. With the help of the company’s board, CEO, and department heads, you can play a key role in formulating, implementing, and ensuring adherence to a key set of values that eventually shape the culture of the company. 

Can work culture guide employees?

As an employee, you might come from various backgrounds. You may be a fresher or you may have worked in a few companies before joining the current one. Either way, there will be a certain degree of adaptation that you might have to do to acclimatize yourself to the working of the company. By having a clearly defined set of values and ethos, companies can guide their employees on how they must behave, what is expected of them, what kind of values are appreciated and what is not. A work culture is a visible rulebook in action that can help employees to understand what is expected of them not only at their work but also in their conduct while interacting with the customers, peers, vendors, investors, and other stakeholders in the company. 

Why is Work Culture Important?

A great work culture can create excellent employee experience. Employees who are valued, have role clarity, and get a sense of job satisfaction contribute more to the growth of the company.  On the contrary, practices such as workplace politics, favouritism, etc. can drive away great talent. It becomes a double whammy eventually as a bad work culture makes it difficult to attract great talent into the organization. With talent draining out, it is impossible for a company to grow and prosper.

In a survey of job seekers held in 2022, around 23 percent of the respondents said that ‘company culture and values’ are the most critical aspects that they consider before taking up an offer from a company.   

The impact of Culture stretches well beyond the company

Your customers, the current and the potential can rethink the relationship with the company based on the culture. They may make enquiries with current and former employees to understand how the company operates within. It could also form a question in request for proposal (RFP) documents. It’s an integral part of the customer’s decision to work with your company. Hence, culture is highly co-related to the sales growth and bottom-line that your company plans to achieve in the future. 

Key elements of Workplace Culture that HR Leaders must keenly watch and improve

While there are various elements that contribute to a great workplace culture, it is important to narrow down to a few critical ones. An HR leader may be mandated as an owner of a workplace culture but he needs extensive support from senior leaders in the company and their teams to ensure that an employee-friendly and positive workplace culture is created. 

An HR leader must enlist all important aspects of a workplace culture, mark areas of overlap and identify a set of elements that are critical to a great workplace culture. 

Here’s a set of 10 elements that can enable you to create and enhance the workplace culture in your company. 

1. Clarity of Roles and Goals: 

The management team and HR must put in the extra effort to ensure that the employees have clarity of roles, output desired, and key performance indicators. While this is easier said than done, it is important to institutionalize this from a company’s perspective. Once the clarity on roles, and its co-relation with company’s goals and objectives is established, an employee understands how he is contributing to the larger picture and it enables him to quantify and attain a certain level of job satisfaction. The company can also fairly gauge how well an employee performs if such clarity is established from the very beginning. This helps in creating a fair reward and recognition policy and every employee feels valued in such a setup. 

2. Workplace culture must promote inclusivity and diversity: 

A workplace must welcome talent. The selection criteria should be merit and fitment with respect to the role. An HR leader must strive to keep any other biases such as gender, caste, creed, religion, nationality, orientation, etc. out of the hiring process. It would be wise for HR leaders to consider creating a crack team comprising members from all teams to work on the diversity mandate. Companies, today, are working on a diversity ratio to ensure that the mix of employees is not skewed towards male employees. The crack team working on diversity must formulate and implement positive diversity best practices to create a workplace culture that is truly inclusive. 

3. Create a conducive environment at the workplace: 

An HR leader must strive to create a conducive environment at work. People should not be afraid of expressing their opinion. They must feel a sense of security and recognition of their contribution so that they can willingly collaborate towards the growth of the company. Work pressure and deadlines can be intense at times hence a culture where employees are engaged with fun activities so as to create a fun place to work is extremely critical. No employee wants to work for 9-10 hours in a serious place hence HR leaders must pay keen attention to making the workplace an enjoyable experience. 

4. Create a culture where views are valued: 

A workplace should not co-relate experience or seniority with intelligence. Great ideas don’t necessarily come from experience or seniority. From interns to new employees, everyone could bring in fresh ideas and perspectives and it is important to give such ideas their due attention and credit. If people are valued and recognised for their ideas, they won’t shy away from thinking about the company’s operational efficiency and growth. It can subtly, but surely, help to catapult the productivity and growth of the company. An HR leader must ensure that the workplace culture encourages ideas, perspectives, and well-researched opinion and makes all employees, irrespective of their experience or time spent at the company, feel valued for their ideas and efforts. 

5.Establish a strict code of conduct and zero tolerance policy:

It is important to create a great and employee-friendly culture. It is also important to create guardrails within which employees must conduct themselves. An HR leader must ensure that employees can speak freely about their problems and they have access to HR team members for any support or assistance that they may need. There should be clear policies with respect to sexual harassment, code of conduct etc. and HR team members should be available for employees to share their grievances over a personal conversation. It is also important to create a secure and private way wherein employees can talk about grievances, especially in areas such as sexual harassment, while being assured that the conversations would be private and confidential. 

6. Create a fair employee reward and recognition program: 

While remuneration is a key factor in enabling employees to join and stay in a company, it may not be the only reason to retain them. If an employee is not recognized for his efforts, he may feel the need to switch to another company. Talent managers are constantly on the look-out for such employees who can jump ship and take up another assignment with a different company. Hence, a periodic (monthly/quarterly/yearly) reward and recognition program should be one of the top tasks on a HR leader’s agenda. It is not only about announcing the awards though. The way it is given out to the employees also matters. It is advisable to conduct an event where such employees are felicitated on stage with their managers and the senior leadership team of the company being present. Such an initiative can significantly boost the morale of employees and enhance employee retention. 

7.Create a mechanism to capture and utilize employee feedback:

Employees are at the fore-front of everything that an organization does. This includes interacting with customers on a daily basis, interacting with current and prospective employees, pitching the business to new customers, managing new processes, handling customer’s grievances, managing vendors, bankers, suppliers, investors and so on. There’s hardly a facet of business which is not front-ended by a company’s employee. Hence, their feedback is important. If captured and utilized well, it can become a panacea to the company’s challenges, and can provide great ideas for augmenting organizational growth. An HR Leader must try to institutionalize the capturing and utilization of employee feedback. He must leverage the best-of-breed technologies and digital tools to implement this and enable the company to attain the next level of growth. 

8.Empower employees with Flexibility: 

Every employee is at a different stage in their personal lives. Some are single, some are newly married, some are parents to infants and toddlers, some have teenaged children and so on. A company must create policies that enable good employees to circumvent challenges in personal lives and still give their best at work. For example: During COVID-19, if the job required you to work from office, the company could still offer flexible timings to employees with toddlers etc. so that they could manage the professional as well as personal front seamlessly. They could also think of a creche at work so that employees can bring in their toddlers and take care of them while also giving their best at work. An HR leader must be astute enough to ensure that the company’s policy allows a certain degree of flexibility but not at the cost of employee’s productivity. It is an important aspect and the HR leader must draft such policies only after careful consideration and evaluation of its benefits and possibilities of misuse. 

9.Promote Transparency and Open Communication:

An HR leader must create policies that ensure that the requisite transparency with employees is always maintained. Employees must feel engaged and valued at all times. It is important to have open communication and transparency between department heads, management, and team members. This will create a positive work culture and leave no room for misunderstanding, disheartened employees, and lack of productivity. 

10.Planning of Offsites and Social Outings:  

An HR head must ensure that the organization must bond outside of work at a team level, leadership level, and company level. He must create a policy and enable allocation of required budgets to ensure that teams can bond in a social setting. Team games, treks, picnics, etc. can not only bring the teams closer together but also enables them to know each other better. The benefits of such offsites and outings can help the team to not only rejuvenate and recharge themselves but also collaborate better as a team. Hence, it is an important investment and the return on such investments is invaluable. 

If you are gearing up to be an HR leader, the above elements might be helpful. However, companies are very dynamic and evolve as per the macro and micro-economic conditions and business environment. Hence, an HR leader must also keep evolving the workplace culture to ensure that it is most ideally suited to the growth trajectory, mission, and vision of the company. Such HR leaders can retain very happy employees in a positive and growth-oriented workplace and make a priceless contribution to growth and value creation for the company.