Let’s be clear. Transforming a less-than-ideal company culture is a daunting and extremely time-consuming task. Culture isn’t built in a day—and certainly not in a happy hour. But if you do it right, your company culture can be defined by things like increased revenue, increased customer satisfaction and employee retention. Here are some great ways to jump start the process.

Can We Talk?
Start a real conversation. Discuss culture – and what it means to people – at every meeting with employees at all levels. As leaders, be prepared to do a lot of listening at first. Once you start the conversation, you’ll see leaders and emerging leaders start to create plans and gather ideas.

Take the Pulse
You need real data to make real change. Start with a company culture survey and an employee engagement survey. Using the results, you can form a basis of the new culture you want to achieve and identify your company’s strengths and areas that need some help.

Prune the Grapevine

To the extent you can, eliminate gossip and negative water cooler chatter. Get on top of all news and deliver it quickly, candidly and directly. Instill a culture that doesn’t permit speaking about employees without them present. Train leaders and all employees to address each other face-to-face and with respect.

Sell it
Don’t rely on HR to storm the hill alone on culture change. Get your marketing team involved to treat culture change like a campaign. Sell – and educate – employees on your company as if they were prospects or customers.

Kill ‘Em with Kindness
Create a compassion initiative. The largest driver of an employee’s engagement is a positive relationship with their manager; compassionate communication is one way to achieve that ideal dynamic. Conduct training that coaches managers on how to create high quality, compassionate connections with employees. Bonus: Compassion is contagious, so employees are more likely to champion the mentality when they see it in practice.

If you suspect your organizational culture needs a major overhaul, you’ll need some data to back up that hunch. Give Powers Resource Center a call to help with a cultural survey to see where your business stands https://www.powersresourcecenter.com/organizational-culture-survey-tool/