When senior employees seek new jobs and companies, one topic that gains prominence is the issue of a company’s prevalent culture. Aspiring senior employees are always eager to explore more details about the organisational culture because this facilitates them to get the insights whether the company in question would be worth working for or not.

But what precisely constitutes an ‘organizational culture’? In a nutshell, a company’s culture is the ethos of a company and how it wants to achieve its goals. This is defined by the employees working in the organisation; the manner in which they imbibe these values in their day-today operations; the systems, the processes and the level of transparency and ethics, amongst other parameters. All of these put together point towards the culture of a company.

Understanding corporate culture

Consider the power sector, where people have to move to remote areas for project work. Local nuances and cultural sense will define how efficiently the employee performs. The organization’s culture enables the employee to deal with failure or success, which is why knowing the organization’s culture is critical. An employee who joins a private company from an MNC is likely to face different problems from the challenges faced by someone from the public sector joining the same firm, because the cultures they are used to are different.

Each of these companies displays different personality traits. For example, an MNC could be result-oriented, a public sector company would be more process driven, while a private company may believe in ‘results yesterday’.

The mind-set and culture of management gradually percolates to the employees who tend to understand the importance of working as per the company’s culture or yardsticks in order to grow. In other words, it could be said that workplace culture is key to a business’s success.

Creating a company’s culture

Who or what creates a company’s culture? At the outset, a company’s culture is generally defined or created by the management itself. During the formative years, it is the founder’s actions and words that tend to define what culture a company adopts. Once past this phase, there are other personalities and factors that come into play in firming or remoulding the company’s culture. For instance, in some present-day companies, the HR department can play a decisive role in shaping their outlook or culture. This may not hold true, however, in companies where the founder or management plays a dominant role in daily affairs and delegates minimal responsibility to the HR head. In a process-driven company, the HR attains the responsibility of driving cultural changes.

The role of Human Resources in an organization is very critical. A HR head delves into the far reaching impact of a simple decision and then decides the course of action. This course of action is where you find the trace of organizational culture. Every decision that the HR head takes, impacts the organization culture and seldom can they seek umbrage under ‘oh this was one off... this was an exceptional case’. The stronger the organizational culture, the easier is the approach for the HR head. On the other hand, the culture also sets the roadmap for the employees – on not just what to do but also how to do that.

Role of social media

The advent of social media has impacted organisational culture in a big way. Thanks to social media, it has become easier for HR managers to ensure that only those candidates are hired whose profiles are more aligned with the company’s ethos.

It also offers opportunities for leaders to connect with their staff. In the pre-Internet era, a reticent or reclusive leader may have refrained from interacting regularly with the staff, thereby leading to the management and company being perceived as having a stiff upper lip, which may not necessarily go down well with the staff. With the emergence of blogs, Twitter and Facebook, however, the same leader now grabs the opportunity to put down his or her thoughts daily and disseminates this regularly to the staff. Delighted by these regular interactions, the staff would be encouraged to respond to the communiqués and express their point of view. In this case, the emergence and use of social media could help transform the corporate culture of this company from that of a staid organisation to one with more transparency and openness.

Though social media may have its downside for employers (a perception that social networking sites enhance non-productivity at work)) and employees (their activities being tracked by employers), there is no doubt that social media has created a more cohesive corporate culture. Where direct interactions with the seniors may once have been few and far between, regular interactions may now be possible.

The advent of social media has put extra pressure on HR to come up with the right strategy on leadership showcasing. Considering that leaders are available on various social media platform and express their views, the employees are likely to form a certain opinion of the leader. This may not be the actual leader in his or her official capacity. The HR heads in normal course act as mentors to the leaders and guide them on what to do and what not to say.

(The writer is HR Head, Hindustan Powerprojects)

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