Culture Measurement – A Recap on Pillars of A Good Culture Survey

Welcome once again to my series on culture measurement. If you’re just tuning into this series, you can find post two and the original article here.

In my last two posts I’ve discussed half of the pillars of a good culture survey. I hope many of you can join me next week for our webcast on creating an open and transparent culture; we’ll discuss data from our World’s Most Ethical Companies process, including how leading companies are measuring culture. Head to our events page to register, and keep an eye out for the infographic we’ll be releasing after.

To recap what we’ve covered thus far, though:

• Demographics matter. Ensure that your survey tool allows you to cut things in a variety of different ways.
• A good culture survey focuses on employee perceptions of your ethics and compliance function. Why? Because you need a sense of how people view the resources available to them (and if they do), so that you can revise them moving forward. Some of the issues we ask employees to grapple with – gifts and entertainment, hiring friends and family, insider trading – don’t have globally intuitive answers, so a key component of your culture is whether people know where to find answers and will use them. That’s part of the reason we see many companies rolling out manager guidance along with their policies; their culture surveys have shown them that employees go to their managers for answers, and the managers don’t always know what those answers are.
• Be certain you are looking carefully at how people raise concerns, and if they’re willing to do so. Do they trust your process?
• Treating everyone equally matters. If your employees believe that complaining about a certain senior vice president is an exercise in futility (or worse, career suicide), that’s a significant risk to your program.

Next week we’ll start looking at the remaining four pillars of a good culture survey. Stay tuned & feel free to send me comments/suggestions (email below).