Organizational Culture

3 Steps To Driving Organizational Effectiveness Through Culture

In a recent DeGarmo survey of 341 HR, Talent Acquisition, Management, and Recruitment Professionals it became quite evident that while most respondents know how important culture is to an organization, few are involved in the implementation of solutions to drive organizational culture effectiveness, alignment, and fit.

It was reassuring to see that 67% of respondents indicated culture is driven from the top down, 63% of respondent organizations emphasize culture to their leadership, and an overwhelming 81% found culture fit to be important to their organization. Yet, only 41% of respondents indicated their organization actually measures culture in one way or another, and 43% either do not emphasize culture fit to drive organizational effectiveness, or weren’t sure if they currently do or not! Additionally, 61% of respondents indicated that their organization does not invest substantial time and resources into creating a strong culture.

Clearly there is a break down in the culture fit rubber meeting the road! So, should we all just keep talking about the importance of organizational culture and not actually do anything about it? The effectiveness of your organization depends on you knowing better! Therefore, we have highlighted three critical steps to get you started towards driving organizational effectiveness through culture!

1. Measure culture and culture alignment. Seek out tools to provide a solution for measuring (benchmarking) the culture of your organization and identifying whether or not cultural alignment exists within leadership.  The goal is to provide your organization with a foundation of what the culture looks like, and whether or not leadership agrees as to what your organization’s culture is. Once an agreed upon benchmark is established you will have set the foundation to move forward with culture-focused solutions like culture-fit candidate selection.

2. Select candidates that fit your culture. Many organizations are simply adding culture-fit based questions to their interview process. Unfortunately, it is not always clear what those questions should look like, particularly if leadership has not effectively established a strong culture from the top down. Hiring managers may be interviewing or selecting candidates based on the wrong culture-driven criteria. This is why establishing an organizational culture benchmark first is critical for success. Moreover, web-based assessment solutions focused on culture fit can provide an efficient, objective decision-making aid and provide the benefit of dynamically generated culture fit interview questions so your hiring managers can spend their time probing areas of cultural mismatch!

3. Communicate that culture. A strong organizational culture rests on communication – without it there cannot be true cultural alignment. Everyone in the organization should have exposure to your culture during onboarding. All employees should be reminded of the mission, vision, and values of the organization in an ongoing manner. Updates that effect culture should be addressed directly, and in an organization-wide manner, otherwise people may think they perceive the culture correctly, but their own personal insights, biases, and judgments may misguide those perceptions. Management, supervisors, leadership, and executives should ALL know your organizational culture inside and out, AND be able to articulate to others what that culture is and why it is important to the goals and objectives of the organization and employees.

Your Talent Assessment Team @DeGarmo