The expanded role of culture in organizations may shine the light on healing as employees return to the workplace. Culture building has evolved, particularly in organizations that continue to offer a hybrid or fully remote workforce. We’ve grown as human beings, realizing how precious life is and the value of personal freedoms. Voices are being heard on many sides of today’s issues, and there is no single, correct way to lead or engage with employees. Now we have to listen, gather information, and offer options. The talent market is tight in many industries, so understanding how to describe and maintain an attractive company culture is crucial to recruiting, employee satisfaction, retention, and productivity. To understand how to respond to how culture has evolved in the past year, here are a few new approaches to consider:

Continuous Feedback Loop
Silence is the enemy of a healthy culture, and employers must find ways to engage employees and learn how they are feeling. Topics will cover a wide range, from adjusting to new methods of communicating to voicing concerns about one’s mental health. Since we can’t predict all of the factors that affect this new cultural norm, we must establish a continuous feedback loop with many paths for entry. From traditional employee surveys to the popular slack channels, there can’t be too many access points for employees to voice their ideas, questions, or concerns. As long as the organization has an effective way to collect and analyze the data, the information can be used to inform decisions that affect the workforce and the organizational culture.

Adaptive Information Management
With so much going on inside and outside of the workplace, the time for winging it when it comes to managing data has passed. Now is a good time to take advantage of the plethora of technology and systems available to ensure that a timely flow of information reaches leadership, and a rapid response is returned to employees. While it seems like smaller companies can just talk things out in all-hands meetings, the virtual environment makes group exchanges more complicated and less personal. Even live environments require a variety of information avenues if employees need help with stress management or other personal concerns.

Organizational Roles
Formal responsibilities are important when it comes to culture. HR stills reviews concerns that impact employees and makes recommendations to management about day-to-day issues. Some companies have created more structure around DEIB (diversity-equity-inclusion-belonging) to add expertise and fresh insights into how all employees fit in. The data management may reside in IT, HR, or Operations depending on how the functional org chart reads. Rapid analysis, communication, and decision-making depend on how departments collaborate and share the dissemination of policies and practical information to the staff.

Employees Make the Difference
With skill-building on communication, relationship development, and boundary establishment, our employee base can make all the difference in cultivating a healthy workplace culture. Acknowledging that the environment has changed paired with a willingness to invest in educating and developing the staff can open up a vibrant support system for culture. It doesn’t have to be top-down or bottom-up when every connection is considered important and opportunities for social dialogue are supported with meaningful programming.

At Xavier Creative House, we practice service-centric behaviors that focus on internal as well as external contributors. We know our employees make the magic happen for our clients and value how we make people feel, including our extended talent intelligence network, vendors, suppliers, and social followers. Culture is driven by our core values, vision, and mission that we review regularly with our team members. Our culture is constantly evolving, and we value feedback to promote continuous improvement and the positivity that drives creativity for original thinking.

Reference: https://hbr.org/2021/02/company-culture-is-everyones-responsibility

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