6 Ways HR Defines A Company Culture
Your human resources (HR) department plays a bigger role in your company than you may realize. Two of HR’s main functions are to attract and retain high-quality professionals, and in doing so, they help set the tone for how well a company culture develops over time. This culture can dramatically affect HR’s core functions, so maintaining and encouraging corporate culture is an important task that takes effort and patience. This article will explore a few ways HR helps define a company culture.
Backing Administration
Some may say that Human Resources is not responsible for defining or creating a company culture. Others would say that HR is well known as a cost center for companies that do not directly produce revenue. However, companies rely on HR’s abilities to organize pay structures and employees’ personal profiles. They work to understand operational trends, revenue streams, and pipeline strength to help build a workforce of all-stars. These are some of the key drivers of organizational culture and allows all levels of administration to sync with the right professionals.
Educating The Workforce
For Human Resources reps, one of their main tasks is defining what the organization considers proper workplace mentality and behavior. To impact culture, HR reps must work with company executives to improve performance, both for the organization and for the individual. Training programs can be designed to help employees to think, act and behave a certain way, one that is desired by the corporate culture. For example, an HR rep can promote a culture focused on teamwork and collaboration by establishing team-based reward programs or training programs designed to improve teamwork skills of individual employees. As companies also become more global, HR reps can facilitate education on social technology and collaborative tools to better work across different cultures, geographies and time zones.
Opening Communication
A Human Resources department that promotes itself as being open and easily approachable, allows employees to better trust HR’s ability to work on their behalf. Without regular communication between HR, managers, and employees, companies can be severely affected by things such as decreased productivity and company loyalty. Having in place open lines of communication and effective conflict resolution processes among clear chains of command are some of the ways in which HR can improve the employee-employer relationship and the overall company culture.
Publicizing The Company
Great Human Resources professionals look for more than just the right skills and education in a potential candidate. Company culture becomes more scalable when employees sync to what the culture is and how it changes over time. When HR reps write and publish job descriptions, they carry significant weight on how a potential candidate feels about the company. From how the company is structured to how the culture is organized, any media about the company published by HR can affect the overall public opinion. Crafting publications that are natural and more upbeat can help change employees’ attitudes, and even promote eventual brand champions that are likely to write positive reviews and stay with your company to help it grow.
Protecting Company Changes
Human Resources reps also have a responsibility to guide and facilitate company changes. From top-level executive changes to smaller details within day-to-day operations, HR reps must closely observe if there are any disconnects in messaging that can affect internal and external experiences with the company, especially around leadership. While HR does not always have the power to change the culture outright, it does have the ability to influence leadership and shift the culture towards the proper path and nurture an environment where employees enjoy coming to work.
Managing Performance
Human Resources reps utilize various tools to create, sustain and change corporate culture. Their responsibility and main challenge lie in designing processes and assessments that account for the tools HR departments use to manage employee progress. Performance management programs are one way HR reps greatly impact corporate culture. These allow for clear expectations and feedback mechanisms to be set for employees. They also address employee behaviors and not just work objectives, which helps promote differentiation. This means that those who think, act and behave in accordance with the current culture should be awarded higher ratings, increased wages and/or promotions than those that do not.