How to Improve a Failing Corporate Culture

Corporate culture may seem like an afterthought—until you find your employees resigning in droves. Workplace rating site Glassdoor found that corporate culture is the biggest factor that drives employee satisfaction, and can greatly affect the turnover rate of your talents. As such, many companies are finding out that a poor culture isn't sustainable in the long run because it causes a dip in morale and eventually leads to lower workforce performance and retention levels.

Fortunately, you can break the bad cycle of a failing corporate culture. To turn things around, here are some strategies that you’ll need to implement: Start the change at the executive level.

Start the change at the executive level

Your company’s corporate culture encompasses the core values, attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs within your organization. While your culture impacts the entire workforce, it's controlled and influenced by the people in charge of the company: leaders.

So instead of detaching yourself from the workforce, our article on ‘Company Culture, Leading You Wherever You Are’ recommends that leaders learn how to empathize with employees, whether they’re in the office or in a remote setup. To illustrate, leaders can thank employees for their hard work and dedication by giving them a day off, or can even implement a buddy system to stay more in touch with your workforce. Through these interactions, you’ll be able to lead by example and show your employees how they should treat one another.

Enhance and implement your core values

All companies have some form of culture dysfunction, but leaders have the responsibility to set things right for the entire organization.

As such, the next step that leaders must take is to adjust and promote the organization’s core values. Apple’s Tim Cook was cited by LHH as a good example for addressing corporate culture dysfunction because he made sure that the brand would focus on humanity, decency, and values after Steve Jobs’ departure. Likewise, you can change your company culture for the better by encouraging all organizational levels and functions to be involved in operationalizing important corporate values, such as trust, innovation, or accountability. The core values serve as a guiding principle, so their enhancement and promotion will remind all employees how they can do better.

Leverage technologies for a better culture

It’ll definitely be easier to promote and maintain your company’s culture when you have the right tools for it.

If your organization is planning to promote core values like collaboration or teamwork, you can use Asana or Slack to improve communication and connection and work together as a unit. You can also encourage your employees to stay connected with one another by automating employee programs and creating special groups through platforms like Espresa. Finally, you can find out how your organization can improve by conducting quick employee surveys through TINYpulse or Subcurrent’s Polly.

Weed out applicants that aren’t the right fit

After working so hard to improve your corporate culture, you’ll need to make sure that other people won’t try to sabotage your efforts.

Though this may seem like an extreme step, Software Development Times states that you’ll need to find and weed out applicants that don’t fit into your culture. Try to ask about their strengths and weaknesses, and ask direct questions that can help you assess each candidate. Through thorough vetting, you can ensure that you're accepting talents that can honor, contribute, and maintain the healthy corporate culture that you’ve built.

You can stop employees from leaving your company by fostering a healthier corporate culture. Make sure that everyone will be informed and involved in its implementation, and you'll find it much easier to boost the satisfaction of the entire workforce.