During periods of significant growth and flux in job roles, your organization's culture will ultimately set it apart. Employee feedback, as well as engagement surveys, can offer insights into how your workforce perceives your culture. To obtain an accurate understanding of these views, however, you must ask the right questions.
Why Do You Need to Measure and Improve Company Culture?
Culture, in its broadest sense, is an idea of what your organization is, and what it represents; it is reflected in how individuals conduct, communicate, develop, honor others, and ultimately accomplish tasks. In the absence of a positive work culture, creativity is frequently suppressed, and employees either are resistant to change or exit the organization.
Every organization’s culture is unique. Some might promote an exceptional level of flexibility, while others pride themselves on the structure and consistent output. Regardless of what your cultural persona might be, it must be based on common beliefs and fueled by employee engagement.
But you can't motivate workers if you are unable to understand what initially engages (or disengages) them. Measuring employee engagement and gathering feedback provides insight into how employees perceive the company's culture and potential improvement areas.
4 Steps to Measure and Improve Culture Through Surveys
Random queries are not permitted in a strategic survey. It is a measurement technique with several key elements that pertain to your organization's culture. This means you need to:
1. Find the cultural outcomes you are aiming to achieve
A cultural outcome is a questionnaire element that reflects an employee's actions or emotions. Typically, these inquiries assess notions of organizational pride, desire to remain, and advocacy. Results aid in revealing the current level of engagement with organizational culture. For example: "I would recommend the company’s culture to others” tells you about a high degree of engagement.
2. Know which tenets of culture are most important to employees
Cultural drivers are survey queries that can be implemented to ascertain the components of engagement. Employees are frequently asked to rate their perceptions of collaboration, leadership, change management, future optimism, and recognition in surveys and feedback. All cultural drivers have an effect on engagement, but some have a greater effect than others.
3. Analyze the relationship between culture and engagement
An analysis of drivers determines which cultural factors have had the greatest influence on your organization. You may find that individuals who rate a particular cultural tenet more positively are more likely to be engaged. The optimum approach is to gauge the factors that contribute to your organization's positive culture, identify areas of vulnerability, and implement programs tailored to improve them.
4. Adopt continuous listening to be able to continuously improve your company culture
A steady survey periodicity is essential for accurate and effective survey results. But how frequently should you conduct employee surveys? Over time, behaviors and preferences evolve. Therefore, organizations might have to carry out surveys more frequently and in a range of approaches in order to gather all employee opinions. Utilize pulse surveys to collect immediate feedback when a cultural shift is happening (such as the transition to hybrid working). Incorporate lifecycle polls to assess cultural perceptions at critical junctures of the employee journey.
Benefits of Measuring and Improving Culture Through Feedback and Surveys
Conducting the right surveys and collecting feedback helps you:
1. Identify strengths and weaknesses in your company culture
Measuring engagement frequently allows you to address challenges before they become issues. You are also able to utilize the data to highlight what is working well and strengthen areas where your culture may be falling behind.
2. Build a culture of trust and transparency
Requesting employee feedback demonstrates concern for their opinions and feelings at work. It demonstrates your willingness to listen and your desire to offer the best possible experience.
3. Empower everyone so they can contribute to your culture
Due to questionnaires and feedback, everyone is aware of the situation. Share the data with all stakeholders, including executives, managers, leaders, and workers on the front lines. This gives everybody the opportunity to contribute to the advancement of culture.
4. Reveal long-term trends in culture and their effects
You are able to comprehend what is going on in your company based on geolocation, group, over the course of time, or in comparison to industry norms. You also have a sense of the direction in which the organization is progressing (or not), and how culture might be correlated to HR and business outcomes.
Next Steps: Ask These Survey Questions to Measure and Improve Culture
With the right survey questions, you can understand how cultural practices impact employees, enabling you to take strategic action and improve company culture. So, make sure to include the following culture-related questions in feedback and engagement surveys:
- The work I do contributes to fulfilling our organization’s mission.
- I see behaviors displayed across our organization that are consistent with our company’s core values.
- I have a good understanding of our organization’s mission, values, and goals.
- Our culture supports employees’ health and well-being.
- My team helps me successfully complete my work.
- I have a good understanding of our informal structures and processes.
- Our organization constantly looks for ways to improve our products and services.
Ask employees to respond on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being strongly disagree and 5 being strongly agree.
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