organizational culture

Client Challenge (Organization: 150 staff)

• High turnover.
• Concerns regarding gender inequity (lack of female promotions to leadership positions).
• Low morale.

Approach

• Initiated a Listening Exercise (43 hours of focus groups and 1:1 interviews) with the organization, including those who exited in the past year.
• Report with Findings and four Recommended Focus Areas shared with both the leadership and with the organization.

Solution

• Engagement of the leadership and staff to contribute to creating their culture by identifying and defining their organizational values, creating a department vision and addressing staff’s lingering concerns.
• Micro (leadership-level) and macro (staff) engagements.

Specifically interventions involved:

• Leadership programs to develop effective communicating skills.
• Ensuring leader sponsorship and sustainment of the culture change.
• Team development, coaching, strategic mindset, and staff development.
• Culture work was spear-headed through a strategic visioning process (a declaration of desired culture) with leaders and some staff, and a values creation exercise with staff members’ input – identifying and defining one value each month.
• Culture ambassador grass roots movement.
• Quantitative evaluation at six months.
• Qualitative evaluation (listening exercise) at 12 months.

Results

• Staff empowered and encouraged to voice their concerns.
• Staff felt they were equal contributors to shaping their department culture.
• Improved optimistic view of their future.
• Improved leadership and communication / conflict resolution skills.
• Increased trust.
• Staff’s increased confidence in leadership.
• Greater sense of connection & community.
• Higher team performance.