Culture Transformation: Why It Matters for Organizations

A cultural shift in the workplace refers to the conscious effort to reshape the values within an organization. It can impact sales, profits, recruiting efforts, and employee morale, whether positively or negatively. Culture is the unique dominant pattern of shared beliefs, assumptions, values, and norms that shape the socialization and practices of a group of people. 

The reputation is your brand, which can be powerful and mysterious. Fostering a culture that aligns with the organization’s goals can sustain success. In this article, let’s explore the cultural transformation in the workplace, its importance, and how organizations can initiate and nurture this transformative process.

Why Is Culture Transformation in the Workplace Important?

A successful culture transformation transforms your culture into one that supports your mission, vision, and organizational goals and empowers your employees. Cultural transformation decides how employees interact with each other within an organization.

The work culture promotes healthy relationships among the employees.  A strong organizational culture provides endless benefits for companies. Not only is it essential for individuals but for the survival of societies.

Culture is a hidden entry barrier, but it can be overcome with cultural sensitivity, hard work & quality. We learn about culture through interaction, observation, and imitation to participate as group members. 

The Key Features of Culture Transformation in the Workplace

• The members of the organization share culture.
• Culture helps members of the organization solve and understand the things that the organization encounters, both internally and externally.
• Because the assumptions, beliefs, and expectations that makeup culture have worked over time, members of the organization believe they are valid. Therefore, they are taught to people who join the organization.
• These assumptions, beliefs, and expectations strongly influence how people perceive, think, feel, and behave within the organization.

Functions of Culture Transformation in the Workplace

Culture performs several functions within an organization. It has a boundary-defining role because it creates a distinction between one organization and others. Cultural Transformation in the Workplace conveys a sense of identity to organization members.

It helps create a commitment to something larger than an individual’s self-interest. It enhances stability; the social glue helps hold the organization together by providing appropriate standards for what employees should say and do.

Need culture to exist in the workplace?

• Values – The basic belief people define what is right and wrong. The vast majority of members of society must share it. It must be passed on from generation to generation.
• Norms – They govern the behaviors of groups of people. Behavior and perceptions must be shaped to attain group goals.

How a Culture Begins in a Workplace?

An organization’s current customs, traditions, and general way of doing things largely owe to what it has done before and how successful those previous endeavors have been. Once a culture is in place, human resource practices within the organization maintain it by giving employees similar experiences.

For example, the selection process, performance evaluation criteria, training and career development activities, and promotion procedures ensure that new employees fit in with the culture. Three forces play an essential part in sustaining a culture:

• Selection practices 

The explicit goal of the selection process is to identify and hire individuals with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform the jobs within the organization successfully.

• Management actions

The actions of top management have a major impact on the organization’s culture. Through what they say and how they behave, senior executives establish norms.

These norms establish whether risk-taking is desirable. How much freedom should managers give their employees, what is an appropriate dress, and what actions will pay off regarding pay raises and promotions?

• Socialization methods

Socialization is how people learn values, norms, behaviors, and social skills. It is how new members are brought into a culture. The organization will, therefore, want to help new employees adapt to its culture. 

Two Dimensions of Organizational Culture.

• Sociability

This is a measure of friendliness. High sociability means people do kind things for one another without expecting something in return, and they relate to each other in a friendly, caring way.

• Solidarity

It considers the strength of the group’s task orientation. High solidarity means people can overlook personal biases and rally behind common interests and goals.

Advantages of Culture Transformation

• Increase the efficiency of the organization as various activities are grouped.
• Furnishes mean tight control at the top.
• Simplifies training.
• It provides for the fixation of standards of performance and ensures effective control.
• Creates opportunities for the departmental heads to take the initiative.

Disadvantages of Culture Transformation

• Reduces coordination between functions as the organization is divided into various parts.
• Responsibilities for profits are at the top only.
• Slow adaptation to change in environment.
• It increases the levels of management, which is expensive and thus increases the gap between the top management and the workers.
• Departmentation creates difficulties in communication among the various departments of the organization.

Wrapping Up

Cultural transformation is a complex process that impacts the organization. Therefore, cultural transformation shouldn’t be the last resort to save your culture when it’s failing. Constantly monitor and manage your culture to strengthen your organization and achieve its strategic objectives.

Inclusive and engaging company culture also positively impacts your organization’s business success—a slow change in basic cultural value orientations & no evidence for convergence. Cultural value orientations reciprocally cause key social structural & political features of society.

Queries and Response

Q. What makes it difficult to change culture?

R. This is because culture lives in people’s unconscious assumptions

Q. What is the purpose of cultural transformation?

R. The reason behind a culture transformation is to achieve corporate objectives.

Q. What happens when cultures change?

R. Society takes on new cultural traits, behavior patterns, and social norms, creating new social structures.

Q. How does culture transform your company into a team?

R. It requires changing the workforce’s hearts, minds, and skills to support the desired culture.