Is Toxic Work Culture Spreading in your Organization?

Your company culture can either be your greatest strength or your most damaging weakness.

We weigh in on How to Successfully Manage Culture Change in the Workplace, so you’ll be well on your way to creating a culture geared for success.

• The most common reasons companies need to make a culture change
• The warning signs that a company’s culture is broken (including red flags!)
• The 5 main challenges to managing culture change
• 7 solutions that make changes easier while helping you to keep your sanity
• Organizational culture change examples to give you inspiration

Our CONTENT INCLUDSE THE FOLLOWING

1. The Importance of Organizational and Company Culture
2. What Is Cultural Change in an Organization?
3. What Motivates a Shift in Organizations?
4. How to Change Bad Company Culture
5. Challenges to Managing Culture Change in the Workplace
6. Solutions for Managing Organizational Culture
7. Organizational Culture Change Examples
8. Motivating Employees to Accept Company Culture
9. Key Takeaways

Managing organizational culture change can be a daunting task.

This type of change is vital to align employee behaviors with current and future business objectives. But it presents a variety of challenges that must be addressed and overcome.

Learn what challenges HR experts have identified during this process and their recommendations for how you can overcome your company’s roadblocks to culture change in the workplace.

Installment # 1.                The Importance of Organizational and Company Culture

The importance of fostering a great company culture can’t be overemphasized. Companies that fail to manage culture in the workplace, or that allow toxic culture to grow and spread, are bound to experience a myriad of difficulties. Employment attorney Richard Celler knows all too well the cost of toxic company culture: “Harassment, bullying, employee rights violations, and other abuses flow downhill from a toxic company environment—and it costs employers millions in legal claims.”

The sad part is that many of these lawsuits could have been avoided if the need for changing workplace culture had been addressed. Thankfully, toxic company culture is usually visible early on, and if the behaviors and attitudes associated with it are curbed in a timely manner, you can prevent a lot of problems down the road. As an employer or HR professional, it’s your responsibility to address these harmful behaviors.

What Is Cultural Change in an Organization?

Cultural change occurs when an organization sets out to align the internal culture to its vision and core values. This process, also referred to as cultural transformation, helps the business to achieve new objectives.

An organization’s culture, or the beliefs and behaviors that influence how people act within that organization, plays a major role in a company’s success or failure. As such, more and more businesses are paying attention to the impact of their culture. This provides a unique leadership opportunity for HR professionals to determine how to implement organizational culture change.

Company culture is something that is felt more than measured. In essence, an organization’s culture is the shared perception of “how things are done”. This perception may or may not match stated policy, values, or mandates. Good HR departments have a pulse on how employees are feeling, and can therefore be on the front line for managing and influencing culture.

However, as businesses that struggle with their culture will tell you, organizational cultural management can be challenging. And it can be especially difficult when there’s the need for a change. In part, this is because an organization’s culture encompasses several components that intertwine and impact each other: values, goals, roles, processes, communications practices, and attitudes.

Changing organizational culture is a large-scale undertaking that takes careful strategy and planning. It holds the unique requirement of both starting at the top and also being an organization-wide process. But first, you must determine when a cultural change is necessary. Then you can decide how to influence culture change.

Continues next week.