What can organisations learn from a culture audit?

Discover what a culture audit can tell you about levels of engagement and how you can translate that into action.

Culture is becoming increasingly important to employees and therefore organisations too. To give this some context, a Glassdoor survey found 77% of respondents would consider a company’s culture when searching for a new job. If they don’t like what they hear from their network, or if what they experience isn’t what they were promised, they’ll walk.

The growing importance of culture has resulted in me being asked to help organisations learn how theirs is experienced by their people. In order to do this, I’ve developed my own en:Rich Culture Audit, designed to probe and test views on areas such as levels of trust, feelings of connection and whether people are finding the sense of purpose they increasingly need.

I’m often asked questions on culture, both by clients and at my many talks. I hope you’ll find these answers shed a little light on what the process involves, as well as what you could learn through a culture audit in your organisation.

What situations lead to an organisation doing a culture audit?

In my experience there are usually two reasons. They’ve got a problem or an issue that they want to dig a bit deeper into. Or, in line with many organisations, they now realise how important culture is to the bottom line and productivity, and they recognise the value that investing in this area brings. To this end they’ll use a culture audit to understand how their people feel. It can be a checkpoint for where they are, a baseline reading. They’ll then look to me to help them formulate some recommendations. 

They might also have run an engagement survey in the past and, while these can be valuable, they now want to dig a little deeper to understand what's really going on and why certain results have come out of the survey.

Do any areas stand out as culture pressure points?

Hybrid working and the impact it’s having on the culture is increasingly a major issue that organisations are grappling with. Another area might be that a major project has fallen behind schedule and the organisation is suffering from siloed working because they're all working virtually. It could be there's a spike in attrition. I’m also finding that organisations want to give their people a voice and also want to be seen to be listening. A culture audit helps to do that.

What can line managers learn, and how does this translate into actions?

A need to develop people management skills is often the number one finding. Is that relationship good or bad between the employee and the manager? And as we know, the manager has so much influence over somebody's performance, over somebody's motivation, over their productivity. So, what normally comes out is the ‘good and bad’ on that and any inconsistencies. Often the people managers themselves want more support, more guidance, more help on managing their teams. And I think this is probably down to hybrid working or virtual working, because managing people is different in those scenarios. And I don't think companies have done enough to help guide and support people in that. People management is a difficult job when you're in the office and when you're doing things face-to-face, it's even more difficult on a hybrid version.

What are your audits telling you about the state of connection and purpose? 

It’s often that companies are struggling with people feeling disconnected, feeling that they don’t belong. In the last culture audit I did, I had a few people who said they felt isolated, they felt lonely. A lot of that is around how they're connecting with the organisation on a day-to-day basis and with their manager. And also, from an organisational point of view, siloed working, not being aware what other teams are doing, getting a bit lost on projects and who owns what and who's accountable for what. Again, it’s a symptom of hybrid working, I think we've lost our way a little bit on that. And it's simple things like just saying thank you or having a peer-to-peer recognition scheme, just people feeling appreciated and finding value in what they do. With purpose and meaning, the audit can tell an organisation if their purpose resonates. Do people see where their role aligns? There is often a big disconnect there.

Do you ever discover positives?

Absolutely. Plenty of people feedback the positives and there’s a really important lesson to learn from this - don’t lose the focus on what you do well. Many organisations will think they need to address the negatives and a year later all those positives have become the negatives because they ignored them!

What benefits and solutions have your audit recommendations brought?

The exercise in itself shows that the organisation is listening. People will say ”Oh, it's really good the company are doing this. It sends a really positive message that they're investing time and energy in employing you to do this project." Key benefits I'd say are people management skills. A lot of the companies that I've worked with on audits will put in place some form of leadership development or management development to look at that whole area. That then has had a significant impact on high performing teams. And I know that in some companies productivity has increased as a result.

For example, a virtual organisation I work with had a real issue with silos. They're now on a journey addressing that with a project centered on closer working between teams. It’s already making a significant difference on getting projects delivered on time and quality and hitting the deadlines. They're a very client orientated organisation, so they're getting good feedback from clients. So, there's a whole host of different benefits that come out.

I think what the audit does, it focuses the mind and people then put resources, effort, time and energy into it and also thought, which they probably didn't do before, which is then having a significant impact on the business.

What processes do you go through with a culture audit?

Each audit is different, and it depends why it’s being done and where the sensitivities lie. I would typically sit down with the CEO or the senior management team and understand why they're doing this. What are the likely key issues that will come out, what's the aim of the audit? And then most importantly, it's around aspiration and where are they going, what are they trying to achieve from their culture, what do they think it is now and therefore what's the gap? So, the first part is really just setting the scene, understanding the objectives.

The second stage is arguably the most important part - having conversations. I’ll talk to a selection of people on a one-to-one basis at all levels. I like to include all the different cohorts, senior managers, middle managers, employees and have a fair representation in terms of seniority and teams. Typically, I cover about 25%, 30% of the population. And those meetings are all done either face-to-face or virtually and depend on what people want to say - and how much they want to talk.

How do people react to an external consultant such as yourself?

I tend to find that what people say to me is very honest and a very balanced view. I do ask when the initial communication goes out from the company about the project, that everything that is said is confidential. I'm only going to be feeding back themes. And I think that's a really important part of it because people will tell me things that they won't say internally because of maybe the political scenario that's going on. So being external is a huge advantage in these meetings.

Apart from conversations, what other data do you look at?

I’ll do a double check on things like Glassdoor and LinkedIn to see if there's any noise on social media about what people are saying and then feed that in. I’ll also look at any supporting data. If the company has done a survey, I will cross-reference that. If they do exit interviews or any other form of interviews such as recruitment or induction surveys, I will check that too. I’ll also consider other key metrics, the attrition rate, sickness rate, the average length of service. All this data is important to understand as a backdrop in terms of what's going on.

While most of this is done face to face, do you include a survey?

Yes, I can include this if the client wants it. It’s important that everyone feels they have had a chance to take part and not everyone can speak face to face. So, I have a survey that I can use which kind of replicates the questions that I would ask in the one-to-one scenario.

How do you feedback what you’ve discovered?

Feedback is a key part of the process. I look at all the themes, I look at all the data. I would then normally present back the findings to the senior management team and have a discussion around them. And then the second part, which is probably the most important part, is feeding back my recommendations, putting together an action plan. This needs to involve all the senior managers so it's very important that they sign up to it and they feel that they own it. They need to have a part of formulating it but also actually being part of implementing it.

And finally, how do you measure the results, if that’s possible?

One of the key issues is how do you measure culture when there are so many contributory factors. But you can look at things like attrition rates, engagement survey results, improvements in client feedback, reduced sickness and absence. Is recruitment getting easier? - that’s another good measure.  And I know from working with some of my clients that they've seen improvements in all of those.

Find out more about the en:Rich Culture Audit

A positive culture creates happier, healthier and more engaged, motivated and productive employees. But is your culture delivering these benefits? The enRich culture audit will help you identify what’s working well, and what’s not. You’ll get actionable recommendations for what to do next - as well as what to stop.