Step 3: Decide on an activity to try
The third step to changing your workplace culture is to decide on an activity or initiative that you think will make a difference to the aspects of your workplace culture you’d like to improve.
Answer these central questions:
- Which specific activities or initiatives can we put in place that will improve the aspects of our workplace culture we’ve chosen to work on?
- What should these activities/initiatives look like specifically?
- What our our targets? What results or changes do we expect to see?
- Who should coordinate the activities/initiatives?
- How will be follow up on them?
- What else can we do to ensure the activities/initiatives are as effective as possible?
Examples
You have chosen to work on your meeting culture and have decided to put the following activities/initiatives in place:
- You will develop a code of practice for good meetings (all members of staff will take part in a half-day workshop to draft and write a common code of practice for good communication during meetings)
- Section managers will take part in an internal course that will focus on the manager’s role, chairing meetings, and managing conflicts
- Every two months, staff and managers will briefly evaluate the meeting culture; what is going well? What is still difficult? Is there anything we can/should do to further improve our meeting culture? This evaluation will be shared with the head of department.
You have chosen to work on on-boarding and collegiality in your unit in order to help with the inclusion of international members of staff. You have decided to put the following activities/initiatives in place:
- Buddy scheme for new members of staff
- More social events
- A language policy for the unit
Tip for improving your workplace culture
Don’t be afraid to experiment
Experiment by trying out different initiatives. Follow up on them regularly and adjust them based on the effect they’re having.
This is a way to learn more about the challenge in your workplace culture – what do we know about the problem, what works, what doesn’t work, and what other initiatives do we need to launch/test? By experimenting and following up on your initiatives, you can focus on, make progress with, and learn from the challenge in your workplace culture.
Ownership and managerial responsibility
It’s important that people know who is responsible for doing what. Members of staff, committees and similar groups may have a responsibility and a role to play in relation to a given activity or initiative, but this does not replace your responsibility as a manager to ensure progress and a sustained focus on the issue as a whole.
In order to change cultural patterns in a sustainable way, we also need to look at whether our current roles, routines, frameworks, structures and systems support the culture we’d like to have.
So when you put activities or initiatives in place, it’s important that they don’t only target one ‘level’. For example, that they are not aimed at one employee and his/her ‘understanding’ in the form of courses or codes of practice.
Consider whether you need to change/adjust any of your structures, frameworks or routines in order to promote the culture (and the behaviour) you would like in your unit. For example, incentive structures, meeting structures, collaboration frameworks or onboarding processes.
Ensure that the different initiatives work together and support your overall target so that they don’t become fragmentary.
