Hi Ishita,
You could first go about 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 short-long term business plans of 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 making organisations get the best out of themselves. Even if the culture does not show any direct linkages at a given point of time, logically it makes sense to have a good HR climate for the benefit of the organisation. The culture provides the energy required to function well like proper circulation of blood through all the organs.
The HR culture is one that results from the beliefs of the top management initially and subsequently from the HR systems and practises. Therefore one most be very careful, while evaluating and benchmarking the culture. You could go about in the following manner:
1. Learn the long-term goals, mission of the organisation
2. Study the existing culture of the organisation by taking feedbacks from the employees and management. You could design questionaires and conduct some 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 Experimentstion
g. Level of Trust
h. Team Spirit
i. Rewards and Recognition
j. Career Oppurtunity
k. Confrontation
l. Communication of future plans
3. You will then get clues about the existing culture of the organisation. Then you could do a SWOT analysis of the culture. List down the good and the motivating aspect from the study you have made and the negetive 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 to, then you could put forth your recommendations to the HR dept or to the employees of the company for their feedback.
You could also refer 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