How To Change Your Organizational Culture

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While in many ways, culture isn’t well defined or even understood, it permeates the workplace. Everyone who works there is aware of it. But something being difficult to quantify doesn’t mean that it can’t be changed. If you look at what you want to shift your priorities to, then you can implement policies that will shift the culture of an organization.

Key Takeaways:

• Organizational culture is how employees go about doing things in an organization. It ranges from procedures to who tends to get promoted or fired to whether or not there are birthday celebrations.

• An organization’s culture is one of the most important factors for talent acquisition. It makes talented people more likely to apply, accept the job, and stay with the organization.

• Changing a company’s culture is a multi-step process. It involves assessing your current culture, knowing what you want to prioritize, getting other members of leadership to help with the changes, and waiting to see the end result.

What Is Organizational Culture?

Organizational culture is nearly synonymous with company culture, but it’s broadened to include other not-for-profit organizations as well as businesses. Therefore, organizational culture is a large part of what defines an organization. It includes an organization’s usual procedures, beliefs, and shared values.

The culture at an organization has gotten more and more attention in recent years as several high-profile company culture failures have come to light. In addition, with a pandemic and following labor shortage, an organization’s culture can be a genuine selling point when competing for talent.

Steps to Change Your Organizational Culture

An organization’s culture can be a difficult thing to pin down. However, the more desirable the culture, the more desirable the organization is to work for. That means that it can be very much in leadership’s best interest to alter a company culture that’s counterproductive, unwelcoming, or stifling.

While culture can be hard to determine through job interviews or other recruitment means, it can greatly aid in talent retention. Once employees become a part of a culture they like, they’re much less willing to look elsewhere.

Here are steps to take to begin changing your organizational culture:

• Look at your current culture. While this step may seem unnecessary, it’s important to look at what your current organizational culture is and what’s wrong with it. If you aren’t sure what your current culture actually is, it can be hard to determine where to put your focus in terms of changes.

  Some organizations never made much effort to create a particular culture, so one formed organically. That can have various problems of its own and can be a bit harder to pin down. However, shifting to prioritize a particular aspect of organizational culture will likely have a large effect in that case.

• Take a hard look at who’s being hired, promoted, and fired. While it may not be immediately obvious, this is where your culture is being reinforced. The people who are hired and promoted are those who are good fits with the current culture and promote it.

  While that doesn’t automatically mean that all of them are gung-ho about it, there will be a number who will resist change. Depending on how entrenched the culture is – and how badly you want to change it – you may be required to shift some of the people in leadership around.

• Determine your desired values. This is important. You need to have a goal, a part of the culture that is important to emphasize. Without that, it’ll be difficult to change the culture, and you’ll be hard-pressed to get your leadership team behind shifting to something amorphous.

  Culture is inherently hard to measure. That means that your goal doesn’t need to be too concrete. However, if you want to shift to prioritize diversity, for instance, you can push hiring in a particular direction, as well as work to make sure those diverse hires are included in discussions.

• Make sure your culture aligns with your operations. Changing a culture isn’t just about making broad, sweeping statements. You’ll need to align it with the way that your organization operates. Otherwise, it won’t take hold. Making operational or procedural changes will also show your commitment to the change.

• Get buy-in from employees. As is the case with most large changes, having approval from leadership is most important – but it helps to have it up and down the line. If your personnel are interested in the culture change and think that you’re serious about it, then they’re much more likely to help in making the shift effective.

  It’s also important to make sure that you make what you’re doing clear. It’s a lot easier to get others on board if they understand what you’re doing and why, as well as how you plan to go about it. Big changes can have an impact on people’s livelihoods, which can make them nerve-wracking. Keep people informed.

• Plan your changes. While culture is, in many ways, a squishy concept, changing organizational culture is still a big, sweeping change. That means that planning it out as best you can is your best bet. As culture can become entrenched, it may take several steps to shift the company in a new direction – especially if your organization is big.

• Implement your plan. Once you’ve got your plan in place and know who you can rely on to help you push the changes forward, it’s time to implement it. Be sure to do your best to follow the steps you laid out, but at the same time, it’s best not to be afraid of having to make changes if something isn’t working.

• Be patient. While you should expect to see some results, don’t hurry the process. Shifting an organization’s culture isn’t a simple task, and it can be difficult to measure. Don’t be too hasty to say that what you’re doing isn’t working or that the organizational culture isn’t changing fast enough.

Organizational Culture Change FAQ

1. How does organizational culture differ from an organization’s mission?

   The difference is that organizational culture is the way that an organization goes about things, while the mission is the main purpose of the business. So, more or less, the organizational culture is the way that an organization goes about achieving its mission.

2. Are the employees the ones who define an organization’s culture?

   In many cases, the organizational culture is defined by the employees. This is especially the case when the culture isn’t well defined. If there’s a strong leadership push towards a certain priority, then that will have an impact on the organization’s culture and operations.

3. Is it a long process to change an organization’s culture?

   How long it takes to change an organization’s culture is variable. That being said, it doesn’t have to be long. If there’s a clear goal for change and a serious implementation, it can be done in a year or so.

4. Can you limit culture change to a single department?

   It’s certainly possible to limit organizational change to a part of an organization. If the different departments are somewhat isolated, then it may not be necessary to alter the culture of the entire organization. In that case, there can be leadership and priority shifts in just that single department.

References:

1. Harvard Business Review – Company Culture Is Everyone’s Responsibility

Author

Di Doherty

Di has been a writer for more than half her life. Most of her writing so far has been fiction, and she’s gotten short stories published in online magazines Kzine and Silver Blade, as well as a flash fiction piece in the Bookends review. Di graduated from Mary Baldwin College (now University) with a degree in Psychology and Sociology.