Infuse Culture in the Employee Life Cycle to Improve Morale
Two-thirds of Americans hate their jobs. That’s a staggering statistic, but there’s a solution.
Culture wins.
With culture at the core and heartbeat of an organization, it must have a solid foundation, it must spread through the organization effectively and it must be guarded. Culture is the element that makes a business stand out as a place where employees love coming to work.
The only way to build an irresistible workplace is with intentionality. Some key elements to a great culture are a culture calendar and a culture budget, but who in the world manages this process? Enter the “culture whip,” a staff member who commits a portion of his job to building and maintaining the organization’s culture.
The culture whip’s job is like a political party’s whip. The job is to “whip” everyone in line around the organization’s culture through team-building events, inspired reading, coordinated employee onboarding and intentional alignment around infusing the company’s values through the daily rhythms of each employee—all designed around the bet that in the end, culture wins.
Culture matters enough to invest significant personnel time and money. That’s a valuable investment - having a culture whip isn’t just a fun add-on, it’s insurance worth buying.
Here are a few practical hats the culture whip wears:
1. The culture whip focuses efforts on tasks that specifically drive culture.
The articles culture whip emails the team for required reading are not random; they're focused on topics pertaining to the company’s specific values that help drive employee ownership of the culture. For example, if a company value is responsiveness, the culture whip might send an article to the team with interesting facts about how getting back to customers in a timely manner helps drive sales and customer satisfaction.
The same is true for culture events. People may think holding employee events are just for fun, but they’re not about the specific event; they’re about the intent. It’s about the value of solution-side living. During events, teams work together to find solutions to problems they’ve never seen before, which makes them better at their jobs. Culture events are about driving values and culture through the organization. Intention is everything.
2. They’re close to the ground.
The ideal culture whip is someone who is a connector at the organization: They get along with staff, they’re excitable and motivational to others, and they’re not the senior leader of the organization. This is key because, often, the CEO or leader of an organization is the last person to hear about issues. It is human nature for employees to gloss over issues or details when communicating with someone in a place of leadership or power, maybe simply because it’s a perception of the value of someone’s time or because employees are scared of giving honest feedback to the CEO.
Having the culture whip close to the ground is essential for this reason. That person needs to be close to what’s going on. Someone who’s in the trenches will have a better sense of what is working and what isn’t working for culture. They are in tune to morale, consider the best times to schedule culture events and can give feedback to senior leadership when culture issues arise. Someone with experience and knowledge about these things, as well as someone who is close to the circumstances of most of the employees at a company, can effectively strategize and plan the culture so it’s something that’s accessible and approachable. This intentionality will help culture stick in the long run.
3. They ensure ownership of the culture is organic, from the ground up.
Culture may start from the top with the senior leader, but organizational culture begins and ends with employee buy-in at every level of the organization. The more drive is working from the ground up, the more people are going to act like owners. It’s worth it: Employees will stay longer than they normally would because they'll love where they work. The organization will have the advantage of being able to recruit more quickly and people will be more productive.
When money, time and people are invested in culture, it will make all the difference for the company’s future—in more ways than just growth or numbers. It will create an irresistible workplace where people thrive and line up to get on board.