Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER May 2, 2016 FEATURES 15 CORPORATE CULTURE Cracking corporate culture A cultural audit can provide answers – but be sure to act on them By Michael Bach W hen employers ask for a cultural audit, it's usually due to disrup- tive workplace issues that have been making employees tune out and turn off. A cultural audit is for organiza- tions to examine a negative dy- namic that has been identified to be affecting people. Bullying, aggression and other anti-social behaviours are among the issues that damage a workplace and cause employees to withdraw or even leave. When to do a cultural audit e goal of a cultural audit is to identify workplace issues and make recommendations to im- prove employee engagement. Assessing a workplace environ- ment focuses the attention on the culture of the organization, rather than employees. An audit helps an employer understand the issues, their cause and the effects on people and the organization. As they say, culture eats strat- egy for breakfast. Workplace cul- ture affects how people feel about their jobs, whether they're going to contribute or just show up and, ultimately, organizational perfor- mance and customer satisfaction. Employers with great customer satisfaction ratings also rank well for employee happiness, which cascades into multiple points of value for organizations. A cultural audit can identify the character of a workplace to deter- mine if it is less inviting for one group or another; across gender, racial or ethic identity, where peo- ple were born and other personal characteristics. A good cultural audit can support leadership to encourage a culture that's equita- ble, where people can bring their identities to the workplace. What can a cultural audit fix? Leadership and senior manage- ment set the tone for an organi- zation. And though every orga- nization is different, with its own goals, objectives and challenges, there will be similarities of culture across a sector or profession. For instance, an environment driven heavily by sales performance may tend to be more aggressive, which may lead to bullying or other un- welcome aggressive behaviours. But that doesn't mean a work- place driven by sales performance cannot inherently be warm, re- spectful and welcoming. On the contrary, when organizations deal with negative culture issues, sales teams improve their perfor- mance as employee engagement increases. Though leadership sets the tone, it's also true that with all the best intentions and strategies, it's hard to maintain a positive cul- ture. One bad apple can spoil the bunch. Sometimes, size can be a factor, and a leader who touches all parts of an organization with less frequency has fewer oppor- tunities to reinforce culture from the top. Sometimes, what hap- pens when leaders leave the room can be a markedly different ex- perience than the example set by leadership, with damaging effects that extend widely and can affect an organization's reputation. e fact is it's all too easy to negatively impact a workplace culture and harder to fix the dam- age. Middle management has a re- sponsibility to enable the culture set by leadership and when a per- son in a position of power has had a negative influence on workplace culture, the cultural audit needs to ask why her behaviour is accept- able in her mind. e goal is to identify those who are not in line with the work- place culture, to understand why the issue is happening and help them through it. And cultural audits have helped employers re- spond to workplace issues as they arise, so they don't fester until they become toxic. A lot of listening A cultural audit should include one-on-one interviews with lead- ership and management, focus groups and a census or survey of employees, allowing people anonymity and multiple oppor- tunities for input. A good cultural audit should also examine the policies and procedures in place. It's about looking at the data from all these sources to assess the nature of the issue, with rec- ommendations to manage it and mitigate risk, where damage has been done. It takes experience to understand what to look for and see where the weather vane is pointing. Beyond understanding pro- cesses and procedures, establish- ing trust with employees is crucial for a cultural audit to deliver reli- able results. Privacy is employees' top concern when talking about workplace issues. When people don't trust that the information shared will be confidential, the po- tential to deliver an effective audit is severely undermined. is underscores the value of third-party audits. Just as orga- nizations use an external third- party auditor to ensure reliability in financial results, they use third- BE > pg. 16

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