SHRM2011: How to Proactively Manage Your Company Culture through Your Values

by Carol Meyers

SHRM in Las Vegas is like no other SHRM event. It seems bigger than life, like just about everything else in Vegas. I enjoyed SHRM this year, though I was mostly kept busy on the expo floor. I made sure to extricate myself to see Tony Hsieh’s presentation on company values and culture – a topic as important to us here at Globoforce as it is to Tony in his company, Zappos.

Culture management through company values – Tony talks about it, he offers tours and training sessions at Zappos on it – but many still don’t believe it’s possible. Yet, proactive management of your company culture is what we enable our clients to do – to set or change their company culture based on the values they know are critical to organization success.

Time and again, we’ve done it. Our client, Symantec, for example, took a “culture of cultures” that had developed after several acquisitions and created one culture of appreciation through strategic employee recognition. (You can watch the webinar on how they did it.) Our CEO, Eric Mosley, and VP of Strategy & Consulting, Derek Irvine, co-wrote the book on how to make it happen – Winning with a Culture of Recognition.

How can companies at any stage (start-up, decades-old institution, during major succession/leadership transition) change or manage their cultures through strategic recognition of company values? Read Derek Irvine’s post on Recognize This! today for an in-depth discussion.

What’s the benefit of using strategic recognition to reinforce your company values and manage your company culture? Our clients regularly experience improved employee retention, performance and employee engagement. In fact, double-digit increases in employee engagement in less than a year are the norm. This was the crux of our message at SHRM 2011 – how to get the 3 Keys to Employee Engagement.

Wouldn’t you rather proactively manage your culture to achieve your strategic business objectives faster, more efficiently and effectively than just “let it happen” around you?


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