Company culture is defined as the ‘distinctive personality of the organization’.

How individual behaviour impacts the working environment reveals and reflects the accepted culture.  Through attitudes about teamwork, problem solving, customer service, productivity, and quality, what is revealed is the embedded nature of ‘how things get done around here’.  It is a company’s culture that makes it possible for a person, division or the whole company to address concerns, celebrate success and innovate collectively.   A poorly informed culture is often the source of people-related problems such as communication, motivation, morale, absenteeism and, finally, retention. Because the company culture influences everything and everyone in it, a well-developed company culture creates positive changes and improve the triple bottom line.

Most company cultures are poorly cultivated

Gallup provided a glimpse of the national picture of company cultures in a poll of U.S. companies reported in USA Today, 5/20/2001:

26 percent of employees are actively engaged in their jobs.
55 percent of employees have no enthusiasm for their work.
19 percent are so uninterested or negative about their work that they poison the workplace to the point that companies might be better off if they called in sick.

Apparently 74 (55 + 19) percent of employees work in poorly developed company cultures.
A number of studies have found that high-performing companies tend to have high rates of employee engagement.  Work satisfaction plays a big role in organisational cultural development. The two-factor theory (also known as Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory) developed by Frederick Herzberg, a psychologist, found that job satisfaction and job dissatisatifaction are calibrated by a number of clear factors. The top six factors causing dissatisfaction and the top six factors causing satisfaction, are listed here in the order of higher to lower importance:

Leading to satisfaction

Achievement
Recognition
Work itself
Responsibility
Advancement
Growth

Leading to dissatisfaction

Company policy
Supervision
Relationship with boss
Work conditions
Salary
Relationship with peers
Security

The Meridian Group, experts in aiding the maturity of organisational culture, developed an excellent internal survey to get a sense of employee satisfaction:

This is not a test. There are no right or wrong answers. Answer how you personally feel about the statement in your present job, not how you think it “should” be. Circle a number for each question.

1=No, 2=Mostly No, 3=Not Sure or Uncertain, 4=Mostly Yes, 5=Yes.

People

1 2 3 4 5 Do you feel useful and productive?

1 2 3 4 5 Can you be creative?

1 2 3 4 5 Do you see endless opportunities for improvements?

1 2 3 4 5 Do you know how you fit into the big picture?

1 2 3 4 5 Do you feel you belong?

1 2 3 4 5 Are you valued for your work and contributions?

1 2 3 4 5 Do you have fun?

1 2 3 4 5 Are you well managed?

1 2 3 4 5 Are relationships at work mature and non-political?

1 2 3 4 5 Do you have enough information to make good decisions?

Culture

1 2 3 4 5 People bring their full energy and creativity.

1 2 3 4 5 This is a powerful company that engages employee’s hearts and minds.

1 2 3 4 5 Procedures here are designed with real people in mind.

1 2 3 4 5 Relationships and communications are fine.

1 2 3 4 5 Senior managers keep in mind their early work experiences.

1 2 3 4 5 Power and control is widely shared.

1 2 3 4 5 I am involved in decisions that affect me.

1 2 3 4 5 The company is open to challenges, suggestions, and change.

Leadership

1 2 3 4 5 Leaders here put people first.

1 2 3 4 5 Leaders here are good coaches.

1 2 3 4 5 Leaders here ask people how they can help them.

1 2 3 4 5 Leaders here set a clear direction—“This is where we are going.”

1 2 3 4 5 Leaders here celebrate and recognize and reward desired behavior.

1 2 3 4 5 Leaders here give everyone background information, the big picture.

1 2 3 4 5 Leaders here protect people from abuse from the system above them.

1 2 3 4 5 Leaders here make cooperative, team decisions.

Earning the loyalty of your employees is done by making them feel valued.
Could your staff answer these questions positively? Creating a good employment relationship to foster trust and value makes employees feel respected, they perform better and respect their bosses and the company in return. It takes time, investment and effort to build a thriving company where all employees feel engaged in the overall success and the rewards are worth it. The benefits of a cohesive corporate culture are retention and productivity, a stable workforce, improved customer service, and, inevitably, improved bottom line.

Steve Dale is a passionate advocate of the premise that organisations and enterprises can become smarter, faster, more agile and more innovative by recognising the latent creativity and energy locked up in their most precious and valuable resource – their people. This can only be achieved by creating an environment of trust, where conversations can flow and where ideas are encouraged and nurtured without being killed stone dead by process. Steve’s 25 years + background in information and knowledge management, coupled with an intuitive understanding of people and group dynamics has enabled him to blend the disciplines of policy, process and procedure with the human instincts to collaborate and co-create, delivering organisational change and systems where connections and conversations are the key to self-development and the sustainable health of the organisation.

Robb Thompson is the founder and President of Robb Thompson International, an innovative company that focuses on developing leadership skills with integrity. His coaching centres on  personal excellence and character development. Recently he wrote on the necessity of honesty as a core value and respect as a mandatory skill:

Honesty

Webster’s defines honesty as honorable in principles, intentions and actions; sincere; frank; truthful. Honesty is the willingness to reveal your true motives. Honesty is similar to transparency, meaning full disclosure.

Honesty is a responsibility to yourself and to others. The foundation of your character cannot withstand the cracks of dishonesty. Every time you allow yourself to be dishonest, you weaken the strength of your character. Every crack reduces the strength of your foundation. Although a crack may be small today, it will eventually split the entire foundation.

Honesty does not change at home, work, or elsewhere. It is always the same. It is a way of thinking. People of honesty can hardly even imagine telling a lie. It’s just not in them. They have aligned themselves to the True God, and His life in them drives them to tell the truth. These people have a hard time believing that other people lie regularly, but they do!

Perceived Payoff:

Everyone does what they do because there is a perceived pay off. I use the word “perceived” because it is not necessarily true. An individual who is lazy has a perceived payoff. An individual who smokes perceives that the pleasure is worth the pain. Likewise, a dishonest individual lies or withholds truth because of the perceived payoff. In every case the payoff is immediate, but the negative costs are delayed. With a little foresight and wisdom, honesty becomes a much sweeter choice during trying times.

Truth always comes to the surface, if not in this lifetime, then in the next. And even if the truth never surfaces, the conscience is a constant, painful reminder. The murderer whose crime is never discovered may have gotten away from the law, but his memory torments him.

Half Truth – Full Lie:

People often lie to make themselves look better. Isn’t it interesting, though, that anyone we know who lies has a horrible reputation? Now, society doesn’t call this lying-it’s just stretching truth. It’s deceiving people without actually saying anything untrue. Nevertheless, honesty leaves no possibility for deception. Do you stretch the truth or hide revealing facts?

Although honesty may cost you in the beginning, you’ll experience the rewards in the end. The Scriptures tell us that the integrity of the righteous will deliver them.’

The message is in order to grow your reputation, you must be honest and be respectful. Nothing else will authentically draw people to do business with you or accelerate your success as much as these traits.

Tough times bring new skill sets in bartering and negotiation. People with strong relationship capital have already laid the ground for exchange as an economic transaction because they have buiilt trust. You can learn how to do this. The Relationship Management Institute offers online training in high level negotiating delivered by an industry expert. It’s all part of the real ‘Relationship Economy’.

I empathise with those who are finding the pressure to adapt to the digital environs an endless and ever demanding requirement to keep abreast of an accelerating world. Never has there been a time when forging Relationship Capital with peers, colleagues and associates has been more relevant or essential. In the current global climate we all need to understand we have to create a personal brand afforded by digital mediums. Building your relationship capital requires a consistency. Here is a checklist for you:

EARN RELATIONSHIP CAPITAL

* Never overlook an opportunity to make a contact.
* Offer help to everyone even when you’re not asked for it.
* Make sure every contact you make requires a follow-up action.
* Initiate communications. Don’t ask people to call you, be proactive.
* Try to talk about the contact, not about yourself. Learn what he or she wants.
* Always look for interconnections among people in your network.
* Make personal introductions between contacts with a common interest.
* Create Relationship Capital Interactions that benefit everyone involved.
* Always stay in the loop when there are more than two people involved in a networking interaction.
* Help build the Relationship Capital of others.
* Be known as an adherent of Relationship Capital Ethics.
* Grow your network continuously.
* Keep track of your networking activities.
* Network daily until you no longer need help from anyone for anything.
* Build Relationship Capital with every encounter.
* And, above all else, always remain visible to your network.

The world is changing more rapidly than we can accomodate and we have a personal obligation to do all that we can to optimise our professional visibility, whether we are currently employed or seeking work. I encourage everyone to take the following test and ensure you are fully up to speed:

The Path 101 Digital Candidate Quiz

1) Google your full name.  Give yourself 2 points for every link on the front page actually about you.

2) Give yourself 10 points for having a blog that you update regularly with something professional (not just pics of your trip to Cancun).

3) Give yourself 2 points for being on LinkedIn, another 5 points for having a profile over 85% complete.  If you have over 150 contacts, give yourself an additional 5 points, but 10 points if you’re over 500.

4) If you are on Twitter, go to your profile page.  Give yourself a point for every Tweet of any kind of professional value on the first page.  Give yourself another 2 points if you link to your blog or LinkedIn in your bio.

5) Check out your Facebook profile.  Give yourself 5 points if you have filled out your employment history.  Subtract 10 points if your profile picture might be deemed “ridiculous”.  Subtract a point for every incriminating thing a friend of yours writes on your wall.  Subtract 20 points altogether if your Facebook profile is public to people in your city or school network and would be seriously damaging to your chances of getting a job if someone looked at your photos.

6) Give yourself an additional 10 points for every niche professional site that you actively participate on that is relevent to your career (like a social network for graphic designers or a stock trading site for those interested in finance).