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.

Research spanning twenty-five years has consistently indicated that soft skill competencies such as self-esteem, initiative, good communication, makes a significant difference in the self efficacy of individuals. Such competencies represent what is now commonly referred to emotional intelligence and are predictive of superior performance in work roles. Can emotional intelligence as a competency go beyond an individual’s performance to become something a group or entire organisation can build on and utilize collectively? Social learning is key to migrating the modelling of soft skills across an organisation to become adopted as the cultural norm.

Daniel Goleman authored the internationally best-selling book,  Emotional Intelligence, (1995, Bantam Books),  that spent more than one-and-a-half years on the New York Times Best Seller list. Goleman developed the argument that non-cognitive skills can matter as much as I.Q. for workplace success in “Working with Emotional Intelligence” (1998, Bantam Books), and for leadership effectiveness in “Primal Leadership” (2001, Harvard Business School Press). Goleman’s most recent best-seller is Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships , (2006, Bantam Books).

Daniel Goleman’s interview was recorded on December 10, 2007, at the CASEL Forum, an event in New York City that brought together seventy-five global leaders in education and related fields to raise awareness about social and emotional learning (SEL) and introduce important scientific findings related to SEL.
CASEL is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that works to advance the science and evidence-based practice of social and emotional learning (SEL).

The majority of businesses do not fully realise the potential of their workforce and need to benchmark skills and behaviours organisationally. Codes of conduct are the guiding principles and ethical standards set by the employer. Both the employees and the employer are required to comply with it in all of their actions. Managers can do much to create a productive atmosphere through constructive engagement. People management is a learned skill and managers need to have a framework within they relate to their teams objectively and foster a postive culture organisationally.

Defining the key competencies and behaviours of an effective manager includes the ability to inspire high levels of teamwork, and the qualities that are exemplifed in values, ethics, character, knowledge and demonstrated in superior people skills. Often managers are promoted without sufficient grooming or training to take on the roles that allow them to navigate the complexities of individual, team and hierarchical interactions Competencies are the outcome of being appropriately qualified to perform a task and are observable or measurable skills, knowledge, and abilities.Knowles (1975) uses the following typology for competencies:

• Knowledge
• Understanding
• Skill
• Attitude
• Value

These benchmark the distinguishing standards between superior and other performers and are requisite in managers who are frequently the role models to employees and therefore inform the culture enfranchised organisationally. Time invested in training in soft skills competencies provide tangible bottom line results.

In the new knowledge economy, encouraging initiative is needed throughout the ranks. Involvement in an organization is no longer optional. A manager can work towards engaging personnel to achieve its objectives and increase the triple bottom line. The new ‘knowledge-centric’ enterprises are characterized by flattened hierarchies and multi-tasked workforce. Managers are assuming more leadership and coaching tasks and must work harder to provide employees with resources and working conditions they need to accomplish the goals they are hired to fulfill. Mining the talent by empowering human capital is now the prime focus of organizational success. A critical feature of knowledge-based enterprises is that they are invested with a significant culture of empowerment, or decision-making authority. Communication is vital to stimulate a creative workplace in a mature, seasoned culture and creativity in communication is key to implementing a high performance culture. In brief, managers now work for their staff, and not the reverse. Employee empowerment shifts managers’ mind-set and affording them with more time to engage in implementing agile decisions and keeping their eye on critical issues that require immediate action.