Workers Agree: Company Culture Matters

Workers Agree: Company Culture Matters

WorldatWork Newsline

Workers Agree: Company Culture Matters

Oct. 1, 2010 — As many companies continue to focus on recession management strategies such as cutting costs and increasing operational efficiencies, Randstad's latest Work Watch survey reveals company culture is a critical driver of business success. In fact, two thirds of working adults (66%) believe that company culture is very important to the success of their organizations.
The survey also found that employees believe company culture has the greatest impact on employee morale (35%), followed by employee productivity (22%). 23% of younger workers, ages 18 to 34, say it plays the biggest role in building job satisfaction.

While company culture may be the secret weapon companies need to retain workers and increase productivity and morale, it has suffered during the past two years. According to survey respondents, 59% believe that recent economic events have had a negative impact on company culture. With layoffs, reduced benefits and wages, morale has suffered and many workers are feeling disengaged from their employers.

"Companies that will perform well will nurture the factors that make their employees feel happier and engaged at work, more connected to overall results, and more motivated to make a strong contribution," said Eileen Habelow, PhD., Randstad's senior vice president of organizational developme"Going forward, companies can't ignore culture. Rather, it should be addressed as a critical component of their overall business strategy."

As the economy continues to recover, companies will need to consider how to increase their productivity and drive overall performance improvements. Randstad has found that company culture is often an overlooked place to jump start business improvements. The keys to a better culture begin with benchmarking current culture: how it is defined, what it means to employees and what the organization would like it to be.

Elements of Company Culture
So what, exactly, do workers find to be critical to company culture? The survey revealed that the top two elements critical to company culture are employee attitudes (69%) and effective management (64%). Respondents reported other important elements of culture including:

• Strong trust relationships (57%)
• Customer focus (55%)
• High accountability standards (50%)
• Commitment to training and development (47%)
• Compensation and reward programs (45%)
• Support for innovation and new ideas (42%)
• Useful resources, technology and tools (41%)
• Emphasis on recruiting and retaining outstanding employees (40%)

"The elements that build a culture are unique across each organization, however, there are similar characteristics across strong cultures," said Habelow. "Companies looking to shift their culture should focus on a few key areas - building employee morale through incentive and training programs, clearly defining values through mission and vision statements, putting strong leaders in place that set the tone and empower others and, finally, encouraging better relationships with both employees and customers." Additional findings from the Randstad Work Watch survey include:

• Workers including college graduates (76%), employees at companies with more than 100 employees (72%), and those with a household income of $50,000 or more (69%) find company culture more important than other working adults.
• Fewer workers believe company culture has significant impact on company reputation (13%), employee turnover (7%) or company communication (5%).
• Workers aged 35 and older are more likely than those who are younger to feel that the economic crisis has negatively affected the culture at their company (64% vs. 49%). Majorities of workers across demographic groups – with the one exception of younger workers – believe that the economy has had a negative impact on their working environment.

Survey Methodology For the survey, a national sample of 1,008 adults aged 18 and older who are currently employed from Ipsos’ U.S. online panel were interviewed online. The poll was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs August 16-19, 2010. Weighting was then employed to balance demographics and ensure that the sample's composition reflects that of the U.S. population of working adults according to Census data and to provide results intended to approximate the sample universe. A survey with an unweighted probability sample of this size and a 100% response rate would have an estimated margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points 19 times out of 20 of what the results would have been had the entire population of employed adults aged 18 and older in the United States had been polled.

Contents © 2010 WorldatWork. No part of this article may be reproduced, excerpted or redistributed in any form without express written permission from WorldatWork.

Access Content Source: http://www.worldatwork.org/waw/adimComment?id=43317

********************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.