Your company culture is a two-way street

Build a thriving culture, increase happiness, and enhance performance

By Sandra Oliver, Impact Founder

We’re hearing a lot from organizations lately who want to address morale or culture issues within their organizations. They’re looking for ways to evolve their culture, while also fuelling their talent’s personal and career goals, enhancing performance – and happiness levels.

It’s an innovative way to achieve a culture of engagement and fulfilment. Because it requires both sides of the organization to work together. Both leaders and their people contribute to the culture – and both are responsible for the results.

It’s a move away from the traditional, top-down approach to drive culture. In the past, leadership created and communicated the organization’s culture and employees worked within it. The strategy made it easier for leaders to impact and shape culture for the organization’s benefit. It also placed responsibility for any cultural wins or failures squarely on leaders.  

But the approach to culture is changing for the better. We’re seeing more interest from leaders in co-creating it to help drive greater engagement and accountability. Personalizing culture so that everyone feels more connected to the organization – and to its success. Thinking of culture as a two-way street.

Programs and processes don’t create culture – people do

One of the ways organizations around the world have traditionally helped manage culture is by regularly surveying employees. Some surveys are short and targeted, looking at specific aspects of the culture. Others are long and protracted, tracking satisfaction levels across many organizational processes and programs.

Surveys like this don’t really get to the bottom of how our people feel. They don’t measure how engaged, passionate, or fulfilled they are. If people truly enjoy working for our organizations. If they feel seen and heard. If they have a sense of purpose.

Instead, they measure how well our organizational processes and programs work. And the results help us tweak and change the processes and programs. Ensure they reach more people. Are more efficient or timely. Address our organization’s shifting priorities or business strategy.

But programs and processes don’t create culture. People create culture.

From data to open dialogue: Driving culture from the inside out

That’s why we need to be more innovative and bespoke in how we measure culture. By asking our people how happy they are. How motivated and engaged they feel in their work. How much their roles contribute to their sense of wellbeing and fulfilment. And empower our people to use the results to make deliberate, quantifiable changes to enhance the culture and their own growth.

We can create good processes and programs, and people could still be unhappy. The processes and programs are important, and we should still measure them once in a while. But the only way we’re going to build and drive a strong culture is to find out how people truly feel.

Using metrics focused on how our people feel helps them take ownership in building the culture side-by-side with leadership. It helps our people understand that happiness isn’t only leadership’s responsibility. That if we experience unhappiness, it may be related to something outside work. And if it’s work related, the metrics empower us to discover what we can change. It transforms culture into a two-way street.

Once our people and leaders see they each have an integral impact on the culture, we can open up a direct dialogue between the two. So we can listen to each other and create the culture together. So we can be more aware of and align ourselves with the same value-based goals. So work can become part of and add to everyone’s happiness and fulfilment.

Having open dialogue, co-creating culture, and empowering people to become happier in their roles are benefits that Generations Y and Z are looking for. Younger generations are accustomed to having greater agency, and they want to see it in their work environments. They’re inspired by and drawn to organizations where they can be partners in building a strong culture that aligns with their own values.

Building a culture that everyone believes in helps our people feel more connected to our organization. We feel a greater sense of loyalty and dedication to our work. We feel part of something bigger than ourselves. Which contributes to enhanced retention and performance overall.

Impact’s Accelerate Improvement in Morale program can help

At Impact, we’re always looking for ways to help you gain the insights that fuel action and boost engagement among your people.

It’s why we work with innovative technology providers, like Spark’d Engagement, to customize engagement surveys that look deeply at engagement, passion, and purpose.

And it’s why we offer our Accelerate Improvement in Morale (AIM) program, to help you identify key issues impacting morale and work with you to take targeted action.

We begin by looking at what is and isn’t working with your culture as a starting point. We interview you, your leaders, and your people and amass findings into actionable recommendations. We then support you while you deliver the findings back to your teams and develop the language, the skills, and the space to move forward.

Our AIM program helps you and your people work together to create a culture everyone can believe in and buy into. A culture that everyone has a part in building. A culture that can help propel your organization forward with greater purpose, engagement, and success.

Impact can help

If you’d like to find out more about how we can help your organization drive culture and enhance performance, contact us.