As an HR professional, measuring your company’s internal success can be one of your most important and difficult tasks. And as any worker will tell you, the culture of a company can make or break a job, regardless of the actual job description. Your ability to correctly and effectively measure workplace culture and then implement improvements will make you a great asset and will be critical to your success as an HR professional.
In this article, we’ll explain exactly how to measure workplace culture and how to improve work culture.
Measuring Workplace Culture
Before you can improve company culture, you need to be able to tell what is working and what isn’t reliably. There are many ways to measure workplace culture and to get a full understanding of employee satisfaction, you’ll need to employ multiple methods.
Surveys
Anonymous surveys can be an easy, tangible way to measure how employees feel about the workplace. Collecting these surveys repeatedly over time can also help you gauge whether your company is improving or not. Because of the broad nature of surveys, there are multiple ways you could employ them.
A non-exhaustive list would be:
- New employee survey
- Leaving employee survey
- Survey about new initiatives
- General survey about employee happiness and motivation
- Pulse surveys
Focus Groups
Although surveys allow you to get a broad idea of some company pain points, conducting small focus groups can help you dive deeper into those areas that you think may need improvement to gather further insights and get to the root of the problem. Observing and facilitating a safe and honest discussion between different employees can help you see patterns of either company success or shortcomings in the anecdotal evidence you gather. These focus groups also offer the opportunity to crowdsource employees’ suggestions for improvements.
Workplace Key Performance Indicators
An easy, but essential, way to measure a company’s workplace culture success is through analyzing metrics you are likely already collecting as an HR representative. This could include employee turnover and retention rates, employee productivity levels, customer satisfaction, and ENPS. If any of these things are suffering, it can often be a symptom of a deeper problem within the workplace atmosphere and culture which can be revealed through your work in surveys, in-person interviews, and focus groups.
Exit Interviews
A common issue with collecting data on workplace culture is that current employees may not be completely honest for fear of negative repercussions. An exit interview often eliminates that fear as an employee has nothing to lose by honestly voicing their concerns or dissatisfaction.
Improving Workplace Culture
One of the best forms of validation an employee can have is the feeling that their concerns, opinions, and suggestions were listened to and respected. Keep your employees’ suggestions in mind as you implement new strategies to improve company culture, as they will be directly affected. Make sure you are recognizing and rewarding employees and providing positive reinforcement within your new improvements as well.
Your work as an HR professional cannot be understated for the success of a company. Your ability to measure, track, analyze, and suggest improvements will increase employee satisfaction and help your overall organization thrive.
Part of making sure you can be an effective HR professional is making sure you are continuing to improve through continued education and keeping up to date on your HR certifications. HREN allows you to do those things at a pace that won’t interfere with your current job. Take the specific courses you want on your own timeline from the comfort of your own home with on-demand courses and prep work.
Learn how you can continue to improve and advance your career with HREN’s convenient and affordable coursework.
