Custodian of Workplace Culture: HR or Business Leaders?
Workplace Culture has been a very important aspect of any organization. It is the workculture that innately exists, can’t be seen, but can be felt. Growing needs to establish the right workculture has been felt during virtual operations. Though every employee is responsible to contribute to the workplace culture, the prime question that often arises is to understand, whom amongst the organization is the custodian? Read the article to know more.
What is Workplace Culture to HR Business Leaders?
The concept of culture in a workplace context was first introduced by Dr Elliot Jaques in his book “The Changing Culture of a Factory” in 1951. Workplace culture simply refers to a set of shared beliefs, rules and behaviours that define the way people relate with each other and the way things are done within an organisation.
Whether formally acknowledged by documentation or not, every organisation has a culture. This culture is generally dictated by leadership. By default, employees replicate behaviours that are exhibited by leadership. Business Leaders, usually do no consider the importance of having an amazing work culture, since they are pressed with work that is time & number crunched. It by having the right workculture in place that builds high-performance teams & super organisations.
Why is Workplace Culture Important?
Workplace culture is unique to each organisation. It is the character and personality of a business and it can be the defining factor in how well a business performs. The personality of the organisation is defined by the work culture the organisation has formed. Celebrating Festivities, and coming together for meetings & conferences to discuss work is not really a part of establishing workplace culture, but understanding the unspoken is what really matters.
More HR and Business Leaders are starting to realise the importance of workplace culture because it is becoming increasingly clear to see that the business objectives can be either strengthened or undermined as a result of the company’s workplace culture. Not only one enhance the employee happiness in the organisation, but soon you will view an embraced openness, higher productivity, reduced burn-out rates, driving sense of purpose, while employees view changes positively even during these times of the Pandemic.
4 Reasons to State the importance of workplace culture
- It affects company performance – companies with a more positive workplace culture outperform their competitors and are generally more successful.
- It attracts the right fit talent – when a company’s culture is well defined, job candidates are better able to evaluate the organisation. A strong and enabling workplace culture attracts the right fit and top talent.
- Happiness guarantee – a Deloitte research has shown that there is a direct link between positive workplace culture and employee satisfaction.
- It drives employee experience and positively impacts employee retention – employees interact with their work better when they have an enabling work environment and they are more likely to stay longer in a company with strong workplace culture.
Enhance Workplace Culture by Using the 12 Steps Module by Remi
Who Protects the Workplace Culture?
In most organisations, when workplace culture is toxic, HR seems to always bear the brunt for it. While HR reinforces the company’s approach to its workplace culture, the responsibility of defining and developing this culture is mostly the business leaders’. Culture is influenced from top to bottom. Business leaders need to define what they want their workplace culture to be and avoid letting it form naturally.
12 Steps How Business Leaders Influence Workplace Culture
- Their management styles
- The degree of interactions between them and the employees
- What they communicate and emphasize
- Their vision for the future
- What they celebrate and recognise
- Their expectations
- The stories they tell
- How they make decisions
- The beliefs and perceptions they reinforce
- The policies and philosophies they allow
- The systems and procedures they approve
- The mission, vision and values of the company
For these reasons, business leaders need to be more deliberate about their contributions to the workplace culture. They should make the workculture as important as their business strategy. It is too significant to ignore and shaping it is one of their most important responsibilities as leaders.
The Inspirit Way
With her Wonderful Insights, Remi has given out the answer strategically through this blog. Business Leaders are the true custodians to build a workplace culture, but it is the responsibility of the HR Managers to improve the same with employee engagement ventures, outbound training programs & Development Initiatives while keeping the spark alive in every employee!
