6 Strategies for Culture Change Management That Work

Diverse employees sitting around a desk high-fiving

Aspects of your company’s “personality,” like your company culture, are subject to change.

There are several factors that may contribute to a changing company culture, from a shift in how you do business to a change in the types of workers you need to hire.

Whatever the reason behind it, changing company culture is something you want to stay ahead of and actively manage rather than waiting it out to see where the tide takes you. Read on to learn more about some of the factors behind culture shifts and gain six strategies for effective culture change management.

The Importance of Company Culture

Asking why company culture matters is like asking why an individual’s personality matters; it’s a major defining feature that bleeds through into nearly everything the person–or, in this case, the company–does. Here are a few of the things impacted by company culture.

Employee satisfaction

Company culture, in large part, determines whether employees feel like they belong. A sense of belonging is closely linked with higher job satisfaction, which in turn is tied to more robust employee engagement, higher productivity, and lower turnover.

Retention

Companies with a healthy culture give employees reasons to stay. Higher retention means lower recruitment costs and fewer negative impacts from excessive vacancies. Absenteeism tends to be lower in companies with a strong culture as well.

Recruiting

It’s easier to attract top talent when your organization is known for being a great place to work. A positive employer reputation means more high-quality applicants for each of your openings, making recruiting easier, faster, and less expensive.

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Innovation

When a company has a culture that embraces and promotes creativity, employees feel like they can share ideas freely. This is a strong driver of innovation, which can better position businesses to compete in their respective markets.

Collaboration

Employees don’t always need to agree, but they do need to be able to find common ground. In a healthy culture, teammates can collaborate productively, and channels are available for effective conflict resolution.

Business outcomes

While it’s difficult to quantify culture and definitively tie it to a financial figure, there’s no doubt that the effects of a positive workplace culture–less burnout, higher productivity, happier workers–are better for business than the conditions found in a toxic work environment.

What is Culture Change Management?

Culture change management is a strategic approach to altering a company’s defining characteristics, including its values, mission, and business practices. It’s not as simple as changing the company’s PTO policy or holding more team-building events (although these can certainly be tactics within a broader culture change program). Rather, culture change management is a thoughtful, comprehensive process executed with the goal of driving transformative change within a workplace.

What Motivates a Changing Company Culture?

Sometimes, a culture shift begins to take shape independently, spurred by internal factors or external changes outside of your control. Other times, cultural change is something you need to initiate to remedy an organizational problem, like lagging performance or behavioral issues. Here are a few of the biggest factors that prompt a changing company culture.

Sudden growth

If you undergo a phase of rapid development, you’re probably hiring a large volume of new employees with more diverse skill sets. When your employee base grows and changes, your company culture usually does, too.

Changes to your business model

If you adjust the services you offer, the products you produce, or the clientele you target, you may need to change your culture to better align with your new strategy. Likewise, changing how you work, like moving to a remote work model or changing the structure of your departments, will affect how your employees interact with one another and, in turn, change your culture.

Performance issues

Does your company culture encourage innovation, enthusiasm, and hard work, or does it dampen these things? If it’s the latter, it’s probably time to adopt a culture that better supports your values.

Mergers, acquisitions, crises, market shifts

All of these things can have a very real impact on the way your employees feel about their jobs and the company. Suppose you’re undergoing a merger or are in the wake of a crisis. In that case, it’s important to stay on top of culture change management to avoid collateral damage that will make the situation more challenging to manage.

Successful Culture Change Management Strategies to Implement

Align your culture with your business strategy

If your company culture and business strategy are at odds, you’re setting yourself up for a dysfunctional workplace that can turn into a retention and recruiting nightmare.

What do we mean by culture-strategy alignment? Let’s say your business model requires a lot of collaboration, with projects that require employees to work closely on teams to meet tight deadlines. If you have a culture where competitiveness and office gossip thrive, it will undermine the strong professional relationships needed to get the work done.

Thus, you should clearly map out cultural goals that align with your larger operational strategy. Choose values based not on what sounds pleasant or feels like it would be “nice to have” but on what will actually contribute to achieving your overarching business goals.

Prioritize the most impactful changes

Scientists studying habit formation have found that repetition is key when you’re looking to adopt change. But they also made another stark discovery: it’s almost impossible to change more than one thing at a time when it comes to habits.

Whether it’s a personal habit like unloading the dishwasher every night or an organizational habit like uplifting your employees, your success in making the change will depend upon your singular focus. So, create a priority list of the most important cultural changes you want to make and focus on taking action on just one item at a time. Only once you’ve made progress on one thing (which experts say can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days) should you tackle the next one.

Assign ownership

You wouldn’t plan a major marketing campaign without putting someone in charge or setting up a media interview without designating a spokesperson. For any important initiative, someone needs to be at the helm, and changing company culture is no different.

Assign a point person or team to take ownership of culture change management in your organization. Some companies have a designated role for this duty, like a chief people officer or director of culture, while for others, it falls to the HR department.

Whatever the case may be at your organization, don’t leave cultural change up to chance. Select a people-oriented leader who holds the trust of your employees and the ear of your biggest stakeholders—this is the type of person who will be most effective at driving cultural change.

Keep what’s working

Even when your culture changes, there may be elements of the “old” way of being that are working and worth holding onto. For many employees, your culture will presumably make them want to work for you in the first place, so there’s value in maintaining those positive elements. Remember, any cultural changes you’re making should have a definitive business alignment, not just be a change for its own sake.

Additionally, holding onto the core parts of your culture that make you who you are as a company is a way of preserving your roots, which is especially important for keeping your employees engaged during periods of change or growth. It’s possible to strive for positive cultural change while staying true to the most important vision or values that have been with you from the start.

Involve your employees

We’ve heard it said that you can never expect 100% buy-in from anyone who wasn’t directly involved in making a decision. In our experience, this holds true. Still, employee buy-in is an important factor in ensuring cultural change is implemented and sticks for the long term. So, the more you can involve employees in the process, the better.

First and foremost, don’t let cultural change come as a surprise or be heard through the grapevine. Inform your staff of what’s changing and why clear communication supports all levels of leadership.

Other tools, like surveys and focus groups, can be used to gather employee feedback on the shape and direction of the changing company culture. Employee involvement can make the difference between a ho-hum, just-punching-the-clock workforce and one where employees are excited and passionate about their work.

Monitor your cultural evolution

Though company culture is indeed something that is felt more than seen or heard, there are tangible ways to measure it, and it’s essential to do so. If you don’t, how will you gauge the effectiveness of your culture change management efforts and, more importantly, the resources you’ve invested in them?

Set behavioral KPIs that tie measurable data points to your culture goals. For example, suppose one of your goals is to encourage a culture of leadership. In that case, you might keep tabs on how many employees are promoted from within, how many hold leadership positions in community organizations, and how much of your budget is being allocated to leadership development programs.

You’ll also want to set and track business KPIs to link your cultural changes to their strategic impact. For example, if you want to increase employee engagement because it leads to better customer service, you might use metrics like customer satisfaction ratings or net promoter scores.

Finally, you can track the success of your culture change management through anecdotal evidence shared by employees. Asking staffers to share stories demonstrating what your culture means to them or how it has evolved is a great way to measure change and involve them in the process, as we touched on earlier.

Challenges of Managing Culture Change and How to Handle It

Resistance to change

It’s normal for change to be met with resistance. In the case of a shifting company culture, the changes taking place can feel massive, which can understandably cause uncertainty, fear, and pushback among some team members. Overcome resistance by being transparent and communicating often. Engage employees in the process of making adjustments when possible, like via focus groups and feedback surveys, and model change from the top down.

Misaligned visions

Rarely is there one person steering a company’s cultural ship. Many stakeholders will likely be involved in culture change management, and they may not always agree on the best approach. Avoid conflicting visions by directly defining the outcomes you want to achieve from effecting cultural change (Strengthening morale? Improving talent acquisition? Course-correcting a negative reputation?). Ensure that each part of the culture change strategy maps clearly to these goals.

Lack of consistency

When transforming an organization’s culture, actions speak louder than words. If company leaders don’t fully support or engage in culture change directives, it can cause confusion, distrust, and resentment. Conducting regular monitoring and holding managers accountable for progress in key areas will help keep everyone on the same page and moving steadily toward the same goals.

Translate Culture Fit into Hiring Success with 4 Corner Resources

Making the right hire is about more than just a list of skills on paper. Culture fit is equally important in a new hire’s success on the job and effectiveness in their position.

At 4 Corner Resources, we look beyond the resume to identify candidates with the right blend of technical expertise and personality traits that will enable them to thrive within your organization. We work to understand what makes you tick as a company—where you’ve been, where you’re headed, and your future goals—so we can help you build the team you need to succeed.

We look forward to the opportunity to serve as your trusted staffing partner and invite you to schedule your free consultation today.