Constructive Cultures and Attracting,Engaging, and Retraining Talent
As demonstrated by different research studies and cases, the types of behaviors supported by an organization’s culture do not affect just one outcome. Rather, these cultural norms affect a wide variety of outcomes both directly and via their impact on problem solving.
Studies shown that the organizations with the most constructive cultures outperformed those with the least constructive cultures along every individual-, group-, and organizational-level outcome.
Given the importance of attracting and retaining talent, more and more organizations regularly use surveys to monitor engagement or satisfaction of their employees. In turn, many of these organizations then use the Organizational Culture Inventory to identify culture obstacles to improve these. Data from such organizations, as well as from organizations participating in research, have generated numerous opportunities to examine the relationship between culture and employee-level outcomes.
Previously published studies showed that the strength of constructive norms is positively associated with employee intentions to stay likelihood of recommending the organization as a good place to work.
Also, studies showed that constructive cultural norms are positively related to employee’s motivation, satisfaction, and role clarity and are negatively related to stress, role conflict, and job insecurity.
A team climate survey measure employees’ emotional exhaustion, role conflict, and depersonalization, characteristics of the teams’ structure, team members’ work attitudes, and perceptions of service quality along items especially developed for these organizations.
Team constructive culture was the most important predictor of work attitudes, service quality, and turnover, and the only variable that predicted all three outcomes. Members of teams with more constructive cultures had more positive work attitudes, perceived the services they provided to be of higher quality, and were less likely to quit their jobs.
Similarly, case studies on change show that strengthening constructive cultural norms results in improvements in employee recruitment and retention, along with a variety of other outcomes.
Case studies evidence also shown that the impact of culture on attraction and retention is pervasive not only across industries but also across countries. Focusing on developing a more constructive culture, lead to among others a drop in voluntary employee turnover, along with significant increases in revenues, improved employee retention, reduced recruitment and selection costs as well as turnover costs, sustainable improvements in customer service as well as successfully adaptation to the various changes in the organization.
Today’s expanding job market combined with social media providing more corporate transparency has served to shift the power from the employer to employee. As a result, competition among organizations to attract and retain talent has never been fiercer. Many organizations have realized that building an appealing corporate culture that stays intact as the organization grows and evolves is essential for good talent retention.
Realizing that corporate culture is important is the easy part, however. Building a strong corporate culture requires commitment and will take time, energy and resources. That said, those organizations that take the time to build a constructive culture are paving the way to dramatically boost employee retention and will thus have a significant advantage over their competitors as we move deeper into the digital age.
Source: ‘Creating Constructive Cultures; Leading People and Organizations to Effectively Solve Problems and achieve Goals, by J. L. Szumal and R.A. Cooke.
Blog written by: Sherwin M. Latina February 9, 2021