TELEPHONE 01206 625222Brand culture should be visible in everything you do.
A strong brand culture stands businesses in the best possible position in the battle for customers and employees, future-proofs businesses from failures and downturns, and ultimately produces organisations that operate with integrity and authenticity. Brand culture extends to the workplace environment. It has been proven that there are broad associations between good-quality work and productive organisations. A company culture check in the workplace can challenge previously-held assumptions within the business, and highlight elements that may have been taken for granted.
A report by the CIPD suggests that on the whole UK workers tend to believe that their jobs have a positive impact on their physical and mental health; mental health benefits are especially pronounced. Workers also tend to report positive feelings about their job, such as enthusiasm. In addition, a 2018 study on Employee Satisfaction and Corporate Performance in the UK from the UEA's Norwich Business School indicates that employee satisfaction positively impacts business profitability, but this fact is not always recognised by those in senior leadership roles. It turns out that many employees are more driven by a business's culture and values than they are by salary. Whilst salary does form a part of employee satisfaction, there are a variety of other factors that employers should also be keeping tabs on.
Misunderstanding of culture leads to misrepresentation and this can effect performance and productivity. Our company culture checks are the most thorough and all encompassing method of providing you with insight that will assist employee cohesion, increase satisfaction, and improve customer service.
Sometimes organisational culture can be diluted over time due to expansion and miscommunication or misunderstanding. Culture is the most influencing factor on performance, attitude and interaction with other people outside of your organisation, like crucial clients for example. It defines the norms and values of a group and how we are expected to behave within a social or professional setting or space. At Mackman Research we conduct culture health checks using a variety of research and data collection methods. Whilst employee satisfaction is included within our culture health checks, we combine this measurement with stakeholder workshops, in-depth employee interviews, and sometimes even mystery shopping, to establish a overall view of your culture's health status.
"It's having a distinct corporate culture — not a copycat of another firm's culture — that allows these great organisations to produce phenomenal results."
Denise Lee Yohn, Why your company culture should match your brand.
The most established and successful brands are those that have maintained specific internal cultural norms and values. From conception to present day, these brands have a distinct personality and set of behaviours that we expect and accept whenever we engage with that brand. However, sometimes as businesses grow, or simply face day-to-day operational challenges, they loose sight of their original intention and deep-rooted values. Hence, their mission and vision can become distorted, resulting in a need to somehow persuade all employees to adhere to and respect their ethics and ideals.
Culture health checks encourage employers and employees to consider why certain processes are in place, and how practices have been selected. Aiming to assess how much team members understand and buy in to a company's norms and values, company culture checks establish when and where organisational culture has gone awry, and give a clear indication of how to get back on track. Depending on the size of your organisation and number of employees, culture health checks are likely to include employee satisfaction surveys. They combine this data with other insight gathered via in-depth interviews, observations, and various employee workshops.
Whereas general surveys are useful for obtaining data and gauging the opinions of large numbers of employees, culture health checks can function as a method of gaining deeper insight into the workplace environment and individual participants' attitudes. By conducting a culture health check, we assess whether your culture and brand are being combined into a cohesive guiding force for your company, and that they are driven by the same purpose and values.
We measure the key components for a healthy workplace alongside the overarching cultural ethics of the business. Inputting data from numerous sources within your organisation, we compare opinion across your employed community to draw clear conclusions and identify areas in need of realignment. Similarly, we make recommendations for cultural change, for disseminating norms and values, for training and development, for environmental adjustments, and for group socialisation.
A company culture check can be performed for any size of business that has identified that there is something amiss amongst their internal tribe. If your workplace has a slightly frosty vibe, if employees just don't seem to be singing from the same song sheet, or if you are looking to expand but want to ensure that the next generation truly understand who you are and what you stand for, then a culture health check will provide the perfect guide to making changes and aligning all team members.
Want to explore the health of your organisational culture? Talk to a member of our research team.
The importance of brand culture cannot be undervalued. Get it right and you'll inspire your employees, engage your customers, and potentially see a positive impact on your profits. A study in Corporate Culture and Performance revealed that companies with strong cultures saw a 4x increase in revenue growth.
We begin our work with senior leaders, who are often the drivers of company culture. By gaining an understanding of the company's vision and mission and brand values, this enables the entire organisation to work cohesively towards the same set of goals.
Once we have established what your underpinning norms, values, and preferred practices are, we then move on to observe the everyday working life within your settings. Depending on the nature of your business or organisation, this may involve participant observations or mystery shopping. This stage of data collection gives us an unbiased perspective on how individuals and groups interact.
In-depth one-to-one interviews are held with selected staff members. For larger organisations, these conversations can involve heads of departments and team leaders. For smaller businesses, we recommend a random sampling of staff to ensure that we have a broad participant spectrum.
We add all of the above qualitative data to the results of a confidential employee satisfaction survey to give us a 360º view of the current health status of your organisation.
As with all of our projects, we like to work collaboratively so that we can truly understand and represent your organisation. We often work with business owners and CEOs and also welcome input from HR managers. Finally, we work in a transparent and plain speaking way, connecting with your employees to encourage participation and a positive research experience.
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