Definition of a Healthy Corporate Culture
We define a healthy corporate culture as one in which the corporate values and behaviors are consistently lived across an organization. In general, all organizations strive to be healthy, and people want to work in a healthy corporate culture. We believe the health of an organization encompasses your employees’:
Values and a Healthy Corporate Culture
Corporate values represent the core beliefs you stand for collectively. They drive leadership behaviors and act as the bedrock of a high performance culture by serving as a filter for key decisions and as the means to attract, develop, engage and retain top talent.
Minimum Levels of Organizational Health
In terms of a healthy corporate culture, the combination of values and behaviors can be measured on a “good-to-bad” or “healthy-to-unhealthy” scale. And there are absolutely minimum levels of organizational health that must be attained for any company to thrive.
How Would You Characterize Your Business Culture?
What are the norms of behavior and how are things accomplished day-by-day? Do employees feel energized at the thought of going to work or do they feel defeated before they even arrive? If you agree that culture drives a company, it behooves you to create a healthy corporate culture to set the foundation of high performance and growth.
Unhealthy Corporate Cultures
No matter how apparently successful and prestigious a firm, a negative workplace culture will ultimately drag it down. A toxic culture can lack integrity, respect for others, information sharing or all of the above. The end result is an environment where growth is stifled, innovation suffers and results are disappointing.
Eight Attributes of a Healthy Corporate Culture
Instead, imagine a place where employees actually enjoy working together, communicate freely, share the load, love their job and exceed expectations. This is not an impossible dream. These healthy organizational cultures exist in large and small companies and generally have eight characteristics in common:
The Bottom Line
Culture accounts for 40% of the difference between high and low performing companies. Because strategies must go through culture to get executed, smart leaders establish and live team values that support a positive and healthy corporate culture. You and your colleagues and the bottom line will benefit.
To learn more about how a healthy workplace culture fits into high performance, download The 3 Levels of a High Performance Culture
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