ALIGNING CORPORATE CULTURE WITH EMPLOYEE CAPABILITIES INITIATIVES

Posted by: Pooja Arora, Head of Marketing

Corporate culture is a critical factor in enhancing the attainment of organizational goals and objectives. Organizational commitment is defined as the degree to which an employee identifies with the organization and wants to continue actively participating in it; this, in turn, defines organizational behaviour. The stronger an employee’s commitment to the organization, the less likely the person is to quit. A strong commitment is also correlated with organizational citizenship, job satisfaction, and job performance and employee retention.

Corporate culture affects the way in which people behave in an organization. It can be viewed as the unique pattern of shared values, attitudes, rituals, beliefs, norms, expectations, socialization, and assumptions of employees in the organization and is thus equated with the personality of the organization, depicting employee behaviour even when they are not instructed on what to do. It is vehemently believed that corporate culture influences employees’ sense of engagement, identification and belonging to the organization.

A workplace culture consists of unwritten rules about what it really means to be an employee at the company. These are the real core values, and are often not what employees see on posters or employee handbooks. Simply put, workplace cultures tacitly communicate “How things are done around here.” Cultures are embodied and reinforced by leadership styles, procedures and perceptions of what’s valued, rewarded and punished.

Cultures can be changed. And when they are purposefully planned and executed as foundations for successful employee well-being strategies, they can lead to the following:

Higher Participation: A culture of well-being can establish and strengthen employees’ trust and boost their enthusiastic participation. A supportive workplace culture shows employees that the well-being program is in their best interest; not just a tactic to improve the company’s bottom line.

Extensive Peer Support: ‘Alone one can achieve only a little, but together one can get momentous success.’ Supportive culture reinforces healthy lifestyles and leads to teamwork that contributes to better mental/emotional well-being. Co-worker support can overcome inertia or lack of motivation while being engaging and fun.

Become Better Managers: According to the research, managers profoundly impact the well-being of their direct reports. Cultures of well-being motivate and reward managers to prioritize employee well-being as the most effective and way to hit their numbers.

Employees’ involvement in decision making as well as the organization’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances impact positively on employee commitment to the organization. Therefore follows the significance of employee well-being. Employee well-being must become a core element of culture strategy because it is the source of the vitality and capacity employees need to achieve differentiating sustained performance. It is worth remembering that a culture of well-being cannot simply be injected into the organisation. It is the most important thing for an enterprise. To be
most effective in driving organizational performance, employee well-being must rise to the realm of core value status in the mind of the heads of the company, triggering a decision to integrate a strong and sustained focus on employee well-being into the organization’s business strategy.

It can thus be concluded that employee well-being must become a core value that infuses all organizational procedures, policies, leadership traits and even how managers and leaders are evaluated. Inducing changes that show that taking action to improve employee well-being will be recognized and rewarded. Employees are more committed to their organizations when they are involved in decision making. The key success factors for organizations at present are employee empowerment, teamwork, and employee development. These enable managers and employees
more committed to work and feel that they own a piece of the organization. Workplace cultures must be assessed and re-engineered to ensure they support employee well-being. This requires that culture itself must become the primary strategic priority, managed with objectives, timetables and accountabilities. It must be the ulterior motive of every organisation if it aspires to be great, become a core value of the organization much more central than the peripheral culture-building activities. The time has come for employee wellness to up its game by making a strong, actionable
business case that a culture of well-being is a differentiating contributor in achieving greatness.