Steps for leading HR professionals to create a wining culture

Creating a wining culture is becoming an HR priority and it is not an easy task (SHRM, 2020). HR professionals should recognize cultural artifacts, shape the behavior and philosophy of the organizational community and ensure the organization feel, think, and behave consistent with promises made to customers and other key stakeholders in their task of culture management (Brockbank & Ulrich, 2016).Three main resources are caused to create a wining culture; the beliefs, values, and assumptions of founders of organizations, the learning experiences of group members as their organization evolves and new beliefs, values, and assumptions brought in by new members and leaders (Schein, 2010). With the impact of those three, Brockbank & Ulrich (2016) stated five steps to HR professional can follow to build and manage an ideal culture which contribute to organization success as below.

Figure 1: Five steps for building an ideal culture
Source: Brockbank & Ulrich, 2016

Step 1: Define the right culture

HR professionals need to work with the senior management to identify what the organizational culture should look like (SHRM, 2020). First they need to discuss and clearly understand the exact goals and objectives of the organization to decide the ideal culture matching with their future expectations and describing the identity of the organization (SHRM, 2020). They can refer quantitative market research data and think strategically to define the right culture (Brockbank & Ulrich, 2016). Creating unity between those outside the organization (customers and shareholders) and those inside (members of the senior management team) can be a powerful basis for defining the right or winning culture (Brockbank & Ulrich, 2016).

Step 2: Create an intellectual agenda

Intellectual agenda ensure that senior management and the HR function create a shared culture to both customers in outside the organization and employees within the organization alike (Brockbank & Ulrich, 2016). The intellectual agendas about the ideal culture needs to be simple to get people to think (Brockbank & Ulrich, 2016). The executives make the whole organization aware of the intellectual agenda about the ideal culture through the use of emails, speeches, presentations, social media and other symbolic media. So that employees can conceptually engaged with it (Brockbank & Ulrich, 2016).

Step 3: Instill a behavioral agenda

Behavioral agenda describes how the desired culture shape daily people’s behavior both internally(employees) and externally (customers / clients / stake holders) to reinforce the organization brand (Brockbank & Ulrich, 2016). At the times when behaving in line with the desired culture or employees are empowered to act in accordance with customer expectations or employees are licensed by senior management to change their day-to-day activities or employees are encouraged to make suggestions on how to make the new culture a reality, increase employee behavioral engagement (Brockbank & Ulrich, 2016).

Step 4: Design and deliver key processes and structures

Processes and structures are aligned to the desired culture through management and organization practices like staffing, training, promotion, measurement, compensation, organization design, information management, physical arrangements and leadership development (Brockbank & Ulrich, 2016). These activities encourage and sustain the employee participation and ensure that employees’ activities are consistent with customer expectations (Brockbank & Ulrich, 2016). HR professionals can discuss with senior leadership team and identify the processes and structures which are not aligned with the desired culture and their impact if set them into alignment (Brockbank & Ulrich, 2016).

Step 5: Define and implement a leadership brand

This leadership brand embedded a ‘customer centric culture lens’ goes from top to bottom in the organization which ensures the leaders do the right things in right ways (SHRM, 2020). Once the processes and structures are lined up, leadership team and HR professionals reflect and encourage employees for leading to an employee brand throughout the organization in everything they do to model the desired culture and embed the customer-centric behaviors to employees (Brockbank & Ulrich, 2016). The leadership brand setting in the selection, development, evaluation, promotion of leaders who has engaged with the desired wining culture of the organization and should overlap with the organization brand statements for better performances (Brockbank & Ulrich, 2016).

In summary, HR has a vital role in maintaining a wining culture (SHRM, 2020). To establish a wining sustainable culture, HR professionals should understand what the ideal culture is suitable for the organization and how to establish it in the organization properly (SHRM, 2020). Southwest Airlines is a better example which established the ideal culture in right way in the organization to achieve the organization success (Kaura & Muduli, 2011). The U.S. Air Force was launched about 50 years ago and its objective was to provide safe, reliable and short duration air service at the lowest fare(Kaura & Muduli, 2011). Southwest’s culture is so unique from others’ cultures as it gives its first priority giving a long list of employee benefits and special events for the employees not for the customers (Kaura & Muduli, 2011). Because The organization believed that happy employees will lead to greater customer satisfaction and greater company earnings (Kaura & Muduli, 2011). About 10 years ago, the organization's leadership team and HR professionals lined up with six basic cultural values which are displayed on the company's cultural page, provide guidance on how employees can live and work on the Southwest way (Kaura & Muduli, 2011). The Southwest try to empower leadership at all levels of the organization in establishing these cultural values (Kaura & Muduli, 2011). As these reasons Southwest Airlines got the ability to constantly outperform others in their industry (Kaura & Muduli, 2011).

References

Brockbank, W. & Ulrich, D. (2016) Creating A Winning Culture: Next Step for Leading HR Professionals. [Online] Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301638826_Creating_a_winning_culture_next_step_for_leading_HR_professionals [Accessed 15 Nov 2020 ].

Kaura, V. & Muduli, A. (2011) Southwest Airlines Success : A Case Study Analysis. [case study] Tadcaster: BVIMR Management Edge. Available from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268718329_Southwest_Airlines_Success_A_Case_Study_Analysis [Accessed 12 Nov 2020].

Schein, E. H., (2010). Organizational culture and leadership.4th Edition. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

SHRM (2020) Understanding and Developing Organizational Culture. [Online] Available from https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/toolkits/pages/understandinganddevelopingorganizationalculture.aspx [Accessed 12 Nov 2020].

Comments

  1. Adding to your post, based on analytics conducted by Gallup over a decade it has been identified organizations with high performance has HR leaders who play a vital role in creating and sustaining the culture of their organization. Accordingly, there are 3 roles HR leaders have to play in transforming to a winning culture; role of champion, coach and consultant. With appropriately playing the role HR professionals can bring in the desired culture in the organization (Rathanjee, 2018).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Sonali, adding more to your comment, Senior leaders alone cannot change the culture and they have to order “great citizen acts like ”, you have to be the champion of the desired culture, you have to be the role models and coaches of the desired culture, validate the aligned behavior and redirect the misbehaving behavior(Chris, 2016). HR senior leaders will help leaders develop these skills and educate leaders on relevant, dynamic and instantaneous data on the progress of culture evolution.

      Delete
  2. An essential element of leadership is to influence the shared cognitive and behavioural norms of organizational members. Therefore, effective leaders make a great effort to build, maintain and change the culture. There are two schools of thought that relate to the relationship between leadership and corporate culture (Athena, 2019).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Ranga, further an examination of the literature on different leadership styles and how they are theoretically and empirically linked to corporate culture reveals that the nature of the relationship between leadership and corporate culture is empirically investigated and those are Interactive influence of leadership and culture on corporate returns the interactive effect of leadership and culture on organizational outcomes and leadership as an antecedent of organizational culture (Athena, 2019).

      Delete
  3. As employee behavior is strongly connected with the organizational culture it highly influences the performance of a company (Baker, 2002). Therefore it is a responsibility of a leader to guide employees through developing effective value systems in other words through an effective culture. For this, one can get the support of proper HRM practices (Armstrong, 2009).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Agreed on the comment, the culture of the organization defines the proper way to behave within the organization and further this culture is made up of shared beliefs and values established by leaders, which then communicate and strengthen through various means, ultimately shaping employee cognition, behavior, and understanding (SHRM, 2020). Corporate culture sets the context for everything an enterprise does. As industries and conditions vary considerably, there is no one-size-fits-all cultural model that meets the needs of all organizations.

      Delete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  5. A company’s culture can have a powerful impact on its performance. Culture is the glue that binds an organization together and it’s the hardest thing for competitors to copy. As a result, it can be a lasting source of competitive advantage.

    "Kent Thiry builds a values-focused culture at DaVita and transforms the company from a laggard to the world’s leading provider of kidney dialysis services."
    The best performing companies typically display a set of performance attributes that align with the company’s strategy and reinforce the right employee behaviors:

    Honest. There is high integrity in all interactions, with employees, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders;
    Performance-focused. Rewards, development, and other talent-management practices are in sync with the underlying drivers of performance;
    Accountable and owner-like. Roles, responsibilities, and authority all reinforce ownership over work and results;
    Collaborative. There’s a recognition that the best ideas come from the exchange and sharing of ideas between individuals and teams;
    Agile and adaptive. The organization is able to turn on a dime when necessary and adapt to changes in the external environment;
    Innovative. Employees push the envelope in terms of new ways of thinking; and
    Oriented toward winning. There is strong ambition focused on objective measures of success, either versus the competition or against some absolute standard of excellence(Mankins, 2013).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for your comment, a company's culture can have a powerful impact on its performance and culture is the glue that holds an organization together and is the hardest thing for competitors to copy further as a result, it can be a lasting source of competitive advantage (Michael, 2013).

      Delete
  6. As per Bulach, Lunenburg, & Potter (2012), Organizational culture on employee behaviour and performance is based on 3 important ideas,
    a) Having knowledge of the organization culture permits employees to understand the history and functioning of the organization. This knowledge provides information about projected future behaviours.
    b) Organizational culture raises devotion to the organization's philosophy and values. This commitment creates shared feelings of achieving common goals. It means organizations can achieve greater success only when employees share values.
    c) Organizational culture, with its norms, deal as a control mechanism to direct behaviours toward expected behaviours and away from unfavourable behaviours. This can also be achieved by recruiting, selecting, and retaining employees whose values match with the values of the organization.
    This type of organizational culture may be linked directly to greater efficiency and performance than others.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Agree on the comment, organizations understand that employees do business and that the culture of an organization connects employees to the organization, further principle is that public organizations need to implement policies, practices and procedures tailored to the needs of the employee in order to maximize the performance of the employee (Mohd et al, 2016).

      Delete
  7. I agree with you Eranga, HR has a vital role in maintaining a winning culture. Southwest Airlines is a better example which established the ideal culture in the right way. The organization believed that happy employees will lead to greater customer satisfaction and greater company earnings. The Southwest try to empower leadership at all levels of the organization in establishing these cultural values (Kaura & Muduli, 2011).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Malinga, Moreover Southwestern culture is about serving people in a fun and innovative way, but at the same time making a profit. The Southwest Human Resources Department, also known as the "The People Department", has its own set of principles for selecting employees. The model is, “Employees are recruited for attitudes and trained for skills(Muduli, 2011).

      Delete


  8. As the ‘caretaker’ of organizations culture, HR should practice below to ensure a smooth continuum of the process (SHRM, 18).

    Being a role model for the organization's beliefs.

    Reinforcing organizational values.

    Ensuring that organizational ethics are defined, understood and practiced.

    Enabling two-way communications and feedback channels.

    Defining roles, responsibilities and accountabilities.

    Providing continuous learning and training.

    Sustaining reward and recognition systems.

    Encouraging empowerment and teams.

    Promoting a customer-supplier work environment.

    Recognizing and solving individual and organizational problems and issues.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Strongly agree with you, further more it is the responsibility of human resource leaders to ensure that cultural management is central to their organization's competitive endeavors and If HR leaders are to influence culture, they need to work with senior senior management to identify what corporate culture should be like and also strategic thinking and planning should be broader than simply to achieve business objectives and its people are the most valuable assets of the organization (SHRM, 2020).

      Delete
  9. A number of scholars have developed integrative frameworks of organizational cul-ture (Allaire and Firsirotu, 1984; Hatch, 1993; Martin, 1992; Ott, 1989; Schein, 1985, 1990), but little consensus exists with regard to a general theory. Since culture is a complex phenomenon, ranging from underlying beliefs and assumptions to visi-ble structures and practices, some observers question whether culture can actually be “measured” in a comparative sense. Research on the link between organizational culture and effectiveness is also limited by lack of agreement about the appropriate measures of effectiveness.
    Culture does not just eat strategy for breakfast (Peter Drucker’s famous quote), but it serves strategy as an on-going diet.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Agree with you, more over In order for HR professionals to have any impact on culture, they must have a deep understanding of what culture in general is and what the specific culture of their organization is and also at the deepest level, the culture of the organization is based on values derived from the basic assumptions of the following: Human nature, The organization's relationship to its environment, appropriate emotions and effectiveness (SHRM, 2020).

      Delete
  10. The correlation analysis has been used to infer the relationship between variables of HRM practices and organizational culture. A healthy culture is required for utilizing and enhancing employee competencies and to develop people. There is a positive significant relationship between HRM practices and variables of organizational culture operationalized in terms of self-realization, status enhancement, inventive values and socio economic support ( Singh, 2010)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Agree with your comment, further correlation analysis has been used to infer variations between HRM practices and corporate culture. A healthy culture is needed to utilize and improve employee skills and to develop people and also there is no positive correlation between the variables of human resource management practices and corporate culture that operate on the basis of self-awareness, quality improvement, innovation values and socio-economic support (Halim et al, 2018).

      Delete
  11. Organization has to provide the necessary condition for new employees in order to make a good impression about the organization and the work environment from the beginning for them to feel wanted (Dragomiroiu et al, 2014). It is essential to develop good habits related to work and to be able to work at the job which he or she was hired (Dragomiroiu et al, 2014).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Agree with your comment, further ,employee training and development is not only about acquiring new knowledge, skills and abilities, but also about promoting local innovation and entrepreneurship within the organization, familiarizing them with important business decisions and actively incorporating them into decision making and in order to clearly define employee expectations and attract educated workers, other companies are beginning to incorporate time-consuming training and complement their supply list advantages (Mihai et al,2014).

      Delete
  12. HRM, as embedded practices created and introduced by HRM policymakers and organizational leaders, becomes understood, accepted and embodied by employees and line managers in organizations. The main challenge of HRM innovation implementation rests on the two-sided risk. On one hand, new HRM practices may threaten the comforting familiarity associated by organizational members (line managers and employees) with existing HRM policies and expectations (Wright and Nishi, 2006). On the other, new HRM practices may damage the reputation and intention of HRM because of possible discrepancies between intended and realized innovations.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you Asanka for your comment . Adding more to your comment, Klein and Sorra (1996) stated, the innovation implementation may result in one of the three outcomes which are;
      (1) implementation is successful and its use enhances HRM performance
      (2) implementation is successful, but its use does not improve HRM performance
      (3) implementation fails

      Delete

Post a Comment