Culture Evaluation

Shawnee Love   •  
October 21, 2016

When was the last time you did an assessment on your culture?

You probably do financial reviews quarterly and certainly at least annually.  Insurance reviews come up on annual renewal or whenever something bad happens. Health & Safety meetings occur monthly if not more and if you aren’t doing an annual safety audit you definitely need to get with the program.  But when do you evaluate your culture and determine whether it is meeting your company’s needs?

Has it even occurred to you that you should do a culture assessment?  Or even that a culture can be molded and nurtured in such a way that it will help your business achieve its goals?  In fact, your culture is:

  • How things get done in your workplaceCore values word cloud with abstract background
  • The environment and spirit within which your strategy exists
  • Creating employee desire and engagement and thus your company’s ability to execute its strategies.

Strategy can be copied, but a dynamic culture can’t and that’s why you want to have one.  But how can you know?

Sure there are markers which indicate the presence of a positive or negative culture.  Systemic problems with turnover, attendance, productivity, grievances, theft, etc. can all be indicators of a diseased culture, but they are also symptoms of other workplace problems, so you can’t know without a thorough culture review.

A culture evaluation well done will create awareness of how your culture is helping your business and hindering it which is information you need if you have a strategic plan you are trying to achieve.

Have you done a culture evaluation?