Company culture quotes are everywhere in digital media today and no wonder because it is immensely important for any business trying to grow and evolve. We have to constantly change and shift with the times, and technology is our biggest influencer of this. With constant and almost manic-like updates of newer version releases, it’s symbolic of the actual user base and how they are adjusting to everything else going on at work.
HR Leaders Shouldn’t Fight Change, Embrace It
So how do HR leaders facilitate company culture processes that are rapidly happening and increasingly becoming more complex? It all ties back to company culture. Making sure that employees know this is the new norm, the new age, and rapid and constant change in any business environment or industry is an apparent normalcy. Many of us are guilty of instinctually not liking or wanting change with certain regular day to day job functions. Afterall, we are creatures of habit.
But becoming fond of a certain work process, or software that you’ve become proficient in can end in an instant (if its dated tech, or sunsetted). If your company decides to suddenly get rid of that job function or dramatically change the way this particular business process is handled, then you’ll obviously never be tasked with doing it ever again. The point here is we shouldn’t become attached to anything technology/process related, because it could change in an instant.
As an HR leader, this is an important concept that needs to be conveyed, and that it’s also good nowadays to constantly be changing and shuffling different inner working parts of the business.
HR Technology Innovation
True the old saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” applies to many things in life, but in business today, not as much. Company Culture and its importance relating to technological innovation overrule’s this classic old saying.
Companies today should primarily be focusing on the relationship between company culture quotes, leadership, employee commitment, customer satisfaction, and of course their own innovations. Changing the culture in its entirety whether there being an immediate need for it or it being a gradual process is something HR leaders will be playing a massive role in.
4 Ways HR Leaders Can Facilitate Company Culture
Here are the 4 main things an HR leader can do to help business executives execute a large-scale culture change. This goes beyond mere company culture quotes at employee gathering.
1. Facilitating the Planning
To make the actual change from A. (current culture) to B. (desired, future culture), there has to first be a deep understanding of (A), and a breakdown of all the things that need to be changed on all levels. Things like values, behaviors, processes, policies, and core principles. You can’t get to (B) until you first understand (A), before actually changing anything at all. HR is the biggest resource for facilitating this initial process.
2. Convince Owners that the New Culture is Beneficial
Many business owners are initially hesitant and skeptical of initiating a big culture change. And they honestly are entitled to feel this way. Usually, most of us have only seen change when drastic internal or market circumstances have forced it on the organization because it’s become the status quo. Strategizing with the executives, HR can give examples of other organizations (most likely same industry) that have successfully put into practice certain culture changes, and specifying how they could benefit from similar changes.
3. Teach Them How to Influence Change Itself
HR leaders are aware that not all business owners know how to actually start implementing a massive change. HR leaders need to help equip the business owners with the right skills and approaches to forcing these changes. Explaining and then showing them the underlying reasons of if you implement change X, you’ll get outcome Y, and here’s how and why.
4. Have a formal Introduction to the Change
Introducing a big new change should be done formally, and properly. Everyone should be aware that this is not singularly an HR initiative, its everyone’s. HR is here to support, help, and facilitate the change, but they do not solely own responsibility for making these changes in their entirety. Its everyone’s responsibility in the whole business to contribute to initiating the new change.
* As a bonus strategy – Responsibility
No one wants to own up to anything or be held accountable for anything in business these days it seems. Maybe more so with Millennials than anyone else, so it could be a generational problem. Taking responsibility when something was your assigned duty but you made a mistake doesn’t give you an excuse to pawn it off on someone else.
It actually shows good character when someone does come forward and own up to their mistakes, rather than trying to make it look like someone else was involved and should take the partial or even full blame in order to divert the attention away from you. Because let’s face it, if your job was on the line when it came to a particular task that you botched up, if management found out you put blame on someone else, you’d probably be more likely to lose your job anyway.
Conclusion
Business lifecycles in any organization can and should change culture. It’s a modern practice in today’s business world that isn’t brought to light enough. Let’s be honest, companies care about one thing above all, increasing revenue. But a close second is growing the business, which ties into revenue. A big part of company growth is employee retention, and this practice can be best seen by changing company culture when its needed most. And yes those pithy company culture quotes can be a major tool to use.
Business owners today need to lead the charge and reinforce to their workers on why a culture change or shift is needed and important to the growth and success of their organization; while HR can act as the backbone of any new culture change process working collaboratively alongside their respective business leaders.
Corban OneSource specializes in companies with 75-6,000 who need help in the core HR tasks of Payroll, Benefits Administration, and General Administration. Find out more about how Corban can help you strategize HR solutions fast.
