Assess Your Organization's Culture

Regularly assessing and aligning org culture with stated values through employee engagement is crucial for fostering a healthy environment, attracting tech talent, and promoting continuous growth.

Overview

Organizations should regularly assess and evaluate their own organizational culture to ensure that it consistently aligns with the values and ethics it espouses. Engaging directly with employees for their perceptions of your organization can yield important insight about how they perceive not only their roles, but the organization as a whole.

Assess the Current State of Your Org

There are various approaches to how orgs can begin gathering these insights. Your HR department or Operations team might have a process that you can leverage. Inc.com recommends 15 questions to ask to help determine the current state across three levels, individual, team, and organization. Some of the questions included are:

• Which activities bring you satisfaction regardless of whether you receive rewards and recognition? (individual)

• What part of your role inspires you the most? (individual)

• Do any values have unintended consequences on how employees work together? (team)

• How is success rewarded? (organization)

• How is failure addressed? (organization)

• Do leaders behave in a way that’s consistent with the org values? (organization)

Baselining on organizational culture gives you a deeper understanding of your organization’s current state as well as helps point to a starting point if further actions are required to help bring the org into greater alignment.

Key Considerations for Building a Healthy Org Culture

Building and maintaining a healthy organizational culture is an important task that is essential for all employees regardless of discipline. In the highly competitive environment for attracting and retaining tech talent, it becomes even more imperative for organizations to assess their own value proposition to meet the needs of their employees.

We recommend at a minimum that organizations index on the following as integral components of a healthy organizational culture:

1. Clear vision, values & communication

2. Fostering diversity and an inclusive environment

3. Employee feedback, development, & recognition

4. Performance Management

5. Employee participation in continuous improvement initiatives

Defining organizational vision, values, and communication

Research has widely demonstrated that tech talent in particular are increasingly motivated by what they perceive to be meaningful work. It is crucial that government organizations define and clearly communicate their mission, their guiding principles, and organizational goals to both their internal employee population and externally to prospective hires.

Fostering diversity and an inclusive environment

Tech talent has also consistently pointed to their desire to work in environments that prioritize DEIB as a key driver for their approach to seeking new employment. Integrating DEIB into overall business strategies presents a double bonus for organizations who will find doing so helps attract top tech talent and increases the quality of their output and in many cases their profitability.

Employee feedback, development and recognition

Successful recognition programs have a direct correlation with increased productivity and company loyalty. These can have a significant impact on employee retention efforts and should be considered a necessary part of any organizational talent engagement strategy.

Additionally, employee feedback and development initiatives promote individual growth and enhance the overall employee experience. Tech talent are increasingly challenged to continue learning new skills as the pace of technology continues to rapidly evolve. Providing mechanisms for employees to communicate their needs to the organization, and creating opportunities to acquire and develop new skills are essential must haves.

Performance management

Ensuring that your tech talent workforce has a clear understanding of their roles, responsibilities, and goals, as well as access to coaching and mentoring demonstrates an investment in your employees and their growth. Consider these alternative methods of performance management for a changing workforce as described by Forbes

Establishing a strong and modern performance management strategy will have a direct impact on business outcomes and overall employee engagement.

Employee participation in continuous improvement initiatives

Embracing employee participation in initiatives aimed at organizational improvement is one of the strongest indicators of an inclusive and collaborative culture. This can be a compelling offering to tech talent, many of whom are motivated by problem-solving initiatives.

Employees who are invited to build and refine alongside leadership by contributing their feedback and ideas have a deeper sense of investment and ownership in their organizations. The organizations also benefit from receiving rich insights and honest and open feedback from their employees, creating a dynamic where everyone is operating towards similar goals.

In addition to better productivity and engagement, organizations who consider various strategies to encourage employee participation are also likely to benefit from deeper ties between employees and leadership stemming from a shared sense of purpose.