By Forbes Human Resources Council
Photo Credit: Forbes
Most business leaders make deliberate efforts to create and maintain their company culture, and for good reason: Your company culture shapes how your team members interact with each other and with clients and customers, and it drives the brand your business presents to the world. Most professionals know on an abstract level whether their company culture is positive or negative, but is there a way to measure the real impact of culture on the bottom line?
HR professionals play a large role in helping to establish the culture at their companies and, through their work with both management and team members, have insights into metrics that can paint a real picture of the ROI of company culture. Below, 11 experts from Forbes Human Resources Councilshare ways you can get an accurate, measurable look at the bottom-line impact of your company’s culture.
1. Tap into the insights of newer hires.
Company culture can be measured by combining employee surveys and retention metrics. As your cultural baseline, survey new hires to gauge their view of the culture. Thereafter, conduct quarterly surveys in the first year of the new hires to assess changes in cultural views. Combine this data with retention data of the same new hires to analyze the correlation of turnover to cultural practices. - Bridgette Wilder, Wilder HR Management & EEO Consulting
2. Conduct regular employee-engagement surveys.
Measuring ROI is just as important for company culture as it is in any other field. To assess these attributes, we do a biannual employee engagement survey to understand how our employees feel about their work environment. We have also found that in the spaces in between, we can do quick “pulse” questions that can be targeted to employee groups to measure specific aspects of culture. - Tobin Cookman, ON Semiconductor
3. Ask team members how the culture is influencing their outcomes.
Be direct! Ask team members if they think the culture enables them to be successful—if it helps them sell more, if it drives decisions to stay, if it makes it easier to hire, etc. Measuring how people rate culture against various outcomes and actions in their jobs, careers or even relationships will help measure the ROI. Once you identify the correlation, the next step would be to diagnose what’s working and what isn’t. - Hafiza Gujaran, AlixPartners
4. Look at employees’ satisfaction and productivity.
The ROI of company culture is tangibly measured through employee satisfaction and productivity and the values of the firm. The culture of the firm is the DNA of the firm—its strength lies in the comfort employees find in doing what results in both the company’s and the employees’ growth. -Ruchi Kulhari, NIIT-Technologies
5. Identify behaviors that aren’t supporting growth.
Organizational culture is an intangible with tangible side effects. Culture impacts the employer’s brand as well as candidate, customer and employee experiences. Understand your culture story, and assess external and internal people analytics to measure how culture impacts performance. Identify behaviors that aren’t supporting growth and measure this impact on ROI. - Yvette Kennedy
6. Measure the return on empathy.
As the co-founder and CEO of an empathy-driven organization, I measure return on empathy, which is reflected in reduced turnover, higher retention, better employee engagement and greater job satisfaction. It is important that we measure ROE to create and sustain a culture of inclusion, innovation and collaboration. - Nish Parikh, Rangam Consultants Inc.
7. Leverage social-recognition platforms.
One way to measure the ROI of company culture is through social-recognition platforms where employees recognize and reward each other. Analyzing the data from these programs provides unique visibility into teamwork and cross-functional productivity, including how it is impacting business performance. This insight is invaluable when looking at the ROI of company culture as it demonstrates how work actually gets done in your organization. - Jennifer Reimert, Workhuman
8. Count the number of hires from internal referrals.
There are a few different ways to try to capture the ROI of company culture; company turnover versus the industry norm is one of the more common. A newer focus that I believe is important is asking how many hires come from internal referrals. Happy “A” players will attract other “A” players—and “A” players can and will have a drastic impact on the company. - Justin Martinez, Solomon Page
9. Ensure culture is aligned with company goals.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast. To avoid a negative fate, ensure alignment between organizational goals and culture. The ROI of culture can be quantified through employee engagement and productivity and their impacts on the bottom line. A well-aligned organizational culture will feature easy collaboration, strong employee morale and high retention. - Kumar Abhishek, S&P Global
10. Monitor struggling employees versus thriving employees.
I created a proprietary employee engagement metric for our company to help us monitor employees in crisis versus those who have a stable relationship with our company. It helps us quantify what programs most contribute to employee engagement and success, and it helps us recover employees with performance or attitude issues before the situation gets out of hand. Retention means money saved. - Courtney Pace, Ph.D., FedEx Employees Credit Assoc.
11. Measure how effectively the organization is achieving its purpose.
An organization exists for a purpose, whether it is for-profit or nonprofit. It does not exist solely to have a great culture. The best way of measuring the ROI of culture is to measure how effective the organization is in achieving that purpose. Link that back to how well the people practices are enabling the success of the company. Long-term success has to be built on a great culture. - Ben DeSpain, Velocity, a Managed Services Company
For the original article, visit: Forbes.
