A story often told with company culture at its core.

Leaders, you find yourself in a situation where the demands of running your business are all-consuming and everyone is talking to you about your company culture. 

Whether you experience growth, deal with a challenging client, rebrand, try to improve a process, or go through a digital transformation; these are all imperatives that demand your time and focus.

There are hard deadlines, targets to hit, tangible, measurable items on your to-do list.

Someone brings up culture. They are worried about the employee experience at your company. Are they serious? How on earth can this be a priority right now?

This exact scenario is being played out in thousands of firms around the world.

Company Culture is fluffy.

Company Culture is not revenue, market share or even reported to the shareholders. It doesn’t show up on the balance sheet.

35% of leaders say that focusing on employee engagement is a distraction to getting ‘real work’ done.

Why should we even care?

Wait! Your competitive advantage is hiding in plain sight

The Society of Human Resource Management gives 233 billion reasons why you should care about your company culture.

$233 billion is the estimated negative impact on the US economy in the last 5 years, attributed to toxic workplace culture.

The cost of disengaged employees impacts productivity, growth, turnover which will all impact the bottom line.

Take a pause; ask yourself, what is company culture exactly? It has many definitions, but I see it quite simple.

Company culture is the collective behaviour of your teams and describes, not what they do, but how they do it. It encompasses the engagement levels of your employees, the experience they have at work and critically, how they understand the mission of the company.

If you are looking for a more simple analogy, good company culture can be an amplifier for productivity.

A staggering 87% of employees worldwide are not engaged.

A disengaged employee has a 60% higher error rate.

Organizations in the bottom quartile of engagement scores experience 41% higher turnover.

Companies with highly engaged workforces outperform their peers by 147% in earnings per share.

Engaged companies grow profits as much as 3X faster than their competitors.

Aside from this, there is a strong humanistic case for action. We all spend far too much time at work to be disengaged and unhappy. Isn’t it logical to link an excellent employee experience to better work being done and better results for the company?

What can I do about it? 

You may think that environmental factors, such as salary, workplace environment etc. are the key drivers. The fact is, money doesn’t buy engagement. It may buy short term motivation, but it is very much a sticking plaster in terms of culture.

Here are the key differentiators;

• Your leaders
• Your employees’ connection to your company mission.

70% of the variance in employee engagement is attributed to managers.

Getting the culture right at the leader level is imperative. Invest in your managers’ capabilities to unlock extra productivity.

93% of employees in nonprofit work are engaged.

Think of the global average – just 13% are engaged across all sectors. Nonprofit work is typically closely aligned with a mission and employees in that sector feel a strong sense of contribution to the goals of the organization.

Want to get your teams going?

Make what they do matter.

Conclusion

Company culture is not fluffy. It has to be a priority. It impacts both the success of your business and the wellbeing of your employees.

Help is at hand though. Using a method known as Cultural Forensics we help you to uncover, diagnose and correct employee engagement issues before they become damaging to your business.

• Uncover opportunities to increase lost productivity amongst your teams – the way you ask is critical
• Track your teams’ sentiment in the areas of Engagement, Empowerment and Enlightenment – these are the building blocks of a vibrant company culture
• Make a change – If you’ve ever surveyed your team only to end up with no change in the organization, you already know that inaction causes additional harm to morale. You must take some action and make a dialogue with your employees’ on-going.

We deployed this methodology across some of the world’s biggest and most diverse companies. We have learned many things, but as a guide:

Invest in your leaders’ capabilities, make your teams work meaningful and you will see the benefits in all aspects of your business. 

Have a look at my profile. let me help you increase profits as much as 3X faster than their competitors. You can find me here.