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for organizations that care about their culture |
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ClimateLike a biological culture in a petri dish, developing an effective culture in an organization requires a healthy climate. The conventional qualities of a healthy organizational climate include a high degree of trust in management and employees having a sense of being valued, respected and treated fairly. Common human resource practices for improving climate include generous health coverage, profit sharing, day care, tuition support, employee recognition and job design. The standardized qualities of a healthy climate and the practices used to develop it allow this aspect of an organization's culture to be assessed in comparison to other companies. For example, Fortune business magazine publishes an annual list of the 100 best companies to work for. In comparison to organizations with less healthy climates, the 100 best showed higher degrees of employee satisfaction, lower rates of voluntary turnover and consistently outperformed major stock indices. Notwithstanding the importance of these measurable benefits, the greatest value of a healthy climate is that it's the prerequisite for developing the more difficult to measure benefit of a highly effective culture. The criteria of an effective culture — supportive, integrative and adaptive shared cultural beliefs — are tied directly to the unique mission, vision and strategy of a particular company; so relative comparisons to other companies can't be made. As well, the attributes of a highly effective culture, such as commitment, meaning and cultural vitality, are less quantifiable than those of climate. So it's more difficult to identify those companies that have realized the full value of a healthy climate by using it to develop an effective and unique culture. |
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| Copyright © 2004 | Culture Care Technologies | Updated March 24, 2010 | ||||||||||||