Evaluating Company Culture: How Do You Capture Its Unique Nuances in Practice?

Hey guys,

How do you evaluate the culture of a company? Just wondering... If you are asked to make a report on the unique nuances of a company's culture, how do you go about doing it? I read the theory from the 'BOSS OF OB BOOKS' by Stephen Robbins, but it only provides theory. Any practical insights?

Thank you.

Hi Ishita,

You could start by auditing the culture of that company. The HR audit is a comprehensive evaluation of the current HR activities, processes, procedures, system, structure, and styles in the context of the short-long term business plans of the company. It attempts to find the future HR needs of the company after evaluating the current HR activities and inputs.

HR audit is a vast topic, and you could choose to audit the culture alone. The culture also plays a significant role in helping organizations get the best out of themselves. Even if the culture does not show any direct linkages at a given point in time, logically, it makes sense to have a good HR climate for the benefit of the organization. The culture provides the energy required to function well, like proper circulation of blood through all the organs.

The HR culture results from the beliefs of the top management initially and subsequently from the HR systems and practices. Therefore, one must be very careful while evaluating and benchmarking the culture. You could proceed in the following manner:

1. Learn the long-term goals and mission of the organization.

2. Study the existing culture of the organization by taking feedback from the employees and management. You could design questionnaires and conduct interviews to learn more. You could have questions on:
a. Concern of Top Management
b. Concern to Subordinates
c. Co-operation to Peers
d. Promotion Decisions
e. Level of Helpfulness
f. Level of Experimentation
g. Level of Trust
h. Team Spirit
i. Rewards and Recognition
j. Career Opportunity
k. Confrontation
l. Communication of future plans

3. You will then get clues about the existing culture of the organization. Then you could do a SWOT analysis of the culture. List down the good and motivating aspects from the study you have made and the negative aspects. List down the scope for improvement and the future threats it could face if not changed.

4. Do a general study of other companies engaged in a similar business. Understand the positive aspects of those companies and benchmark the culture.

5. If you are permitted, you could put forth your recommendations to the HR department or the employees of the company for their feedback.

You could also refer to the book on HR Audit by T.V Rao for more information. Let me know if this was of some help to you.

Regards,

Soumya Shankar

Hi Ishita,

The first thing is that you just observe your company and think and analyze it. Why am I saying this? Because if you want to arrive at a good conclusion, then you must not wholly depend on theory. Interact with people as much as possible.

Thank you. :)

Hi,

Dear Soms,

Excellent inputs. I don't think I have anything to offer beyond a comprehensive HRD audit. However, one can see it from a different perspective (in case it needs no comprehensive analysis as HRD Audit).

1. You may wish to find out the immediate issues of concern that the organization is having right now. Enlist them.

2. Try to find out the hypothesis in the cause-effect relationship (HR problem: caused by Factor A + Factor B + ... + Culture).

3. Enlist the factors, e.g., Communication Barriers, Decision Making (Quality/Turnaround time...) it could be any possible cause!

4. Try studying Culture as suggested by Soumya. Compliment this with any specific probe on the factors that you consider important.

5. Work on improvement action.

6. Keep documentation so that you can learn.

This will be essentially an Action Research Initiative in OD. It would be a nice idea to use the Culture Evaluation as a probe for your HR problem.

Regards,

Thesysthink

Hi!

We did it in our company through a few exercises like Fish Bowl, Brainstorming, etc.

Regards

An interesting thread!! I am wandering now.. What actually does it mean to "evaluate a culture"? Do we mean to evaluate several cultures, compare them and decide which one is worth more? And what does it mean for a culture to "be worth more"? Before we go suggesting tools to use, we need to be clear about what we are measuring and why, so that we choose the right tool and measurement units.

Kind regards,

Martin

Just gather the most respectful guys from different departments and let them share their ideas about culture. Another approach is hiring some experts who will work in your company for a week or two and then consider writing a short and informative review of the key principles of your company culture. Personally, I like the consulting idea because it allows me to learn from expert viewpoints that often differ significantly from what I and my co-workers initially thought.

Hi,

I thought I could add something to this. The replies you have received are very good, especially the HR audit part. A culture evaluation could also be undertaken on the 5 dimensions introduced and developed by Hofstede. Hofstede conducted an international study using IBM business units in 64 countries to identify national cultures. You could try this and see whether your organization has the appropriate dimensions according to the national culture. I do have the original hard document, so it would be difficult to send to you. Search for Hofstede's culture to get interesting insights. Alternatively, you can use the culture typology model to identify the existing culture and determine whether it's appropriate for the members and the organization itself.

Regards,
Shamil