7 Ways You Should Measure Your Workplace Culture

In today's competitive business landscape, workplace culture is more than just a buzzword—it's a driving force behind organizational success. But what exactly is workplace culture, and why does it matter? In this blog, we'll delve into the intricacies of workplace culture and explore how a strong and well-defined culture can propel your business to new heights.

Workplace culture is not just about the superficial perks or trendy office spaces; it's about the underlying fabric that shapes how things get done and defines your organization's identity. It's the unique way your company lives out its purpose and delivers on its brand promise to customers, as Gallup describes it. Without conscious input and guidance, culture can falter, leading to a lack of direction and cohesion within your organization.

The benefits of cultivating a strong and distinctive culture are far-reaching. From improved people management and more effective hiring to increased employee engagement and better business outcomes, a well-nurtured culture can create a thriving and productive work environment. Moreover, it influences how employees interact with customers, keeps them aligned with your organization's mission, and even guards against unethical behavior.

But how do you measure the strength and impact of your workplace culture? As the saying goes, "you can't manage what you can't measure." In this blog, we will explore practical methods and metrics to help you evaluate and improve your workplace culture. By collecting sentiment, behavior, and relationship data, you can gain valuable insights into employee experiences, the alignment of behaviors with your values, and the overall health of your culture.

So, if you're ready to unlock the full potential of your workplace culture, join us as we dive into seven essential methods and metrics that will revolutionize the way you measure, understand, and enhance your organization's culture.

1. Surveys

Surveys are a great tool to get honest feedback from your entire workforce. You probably already run periodic employee engagement surveys - Inc has rounded up examples of facets indicative of culture you may want to ask about in your next round. Surveys help you understand overall employee sentiment and alert you to any trends or issues within your workforce.

That said, surveys should not be relied upon as your only culture metric. There can be bias and inaccuracies in surveys based on each respondent's frame of mind when taking it. The most effective way to track information about your culture and employees (also known as HR/People Analytics) is to layer survey data, with behavior and relationship data collected using other methods described below. Surveys collect data about what people think or feel, but not about what they do, nor how they interact. There are dozens of great survey tools and resources in the market ranging from Microsoft Forms and Survey Monkey to high-end solutions like Qualtrics and Glint.

2. Program & Event KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

Sometimes what happens outside of employee’s roles and day-to-day tasks can be the most telling. Another way to measure the health of your culture is to track attendance at social events or wellness campaigns over time. While everyone’s reasons for not attending vary, a general lack of involvement could indicate a lack of social cohesion and shared values across employees. As a piece on workplace social functions by SHRM explains, “HR should view employees' reluctance to attend a social function as a window into a potential human-relations or culture issue at the company." This is an example of behavior data as it tracks the actions of employees.

"Sometimes what happens outside of employee’s roles and day-to-day tasks can be the most telling."

3. Anecdotes

Keep track of anecdotal feedback to uncover patterns or common themes. Make a point to review the anecdotes in leadership meetings weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Some examples of places you can collect these include exit interviews, Glassdoor reviews, and social media posts.

One remarkably simple but effective way many of today’s HR professionals are collecting this information is simply by regularly asking employees to complete this sentence: “I don’t know why [your company name] doesn’t just ____.” Anecdotes are another example of employee sentiment data but can often also give great insight into behaviors and relationships.

4. HR/Workforce KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

Tracking HR KPIs is key to understanding important cultural shifts (positive and negative.) The good news is that most of this data is likely readily available in your HRIS (Human Resources Information System.) These KPIs include turnover rate, rates of absenteeism, internal promotions, and referrals.

Another important metric is the eNPS (employee net promoter score), which you can collect through the surveys mentioned above. Tracking these quantitative metrics against your culture initiatives can help you understand how you’re doing. For the most part, this is an example of behavior data as it summarizes actions taken by the workplace. eNPS would fall into the employee sentiment category.

5. Business KPIs

Tracking business KPIs in conjunction with efforts to improve culture can also provide valuable insight. Work with your finance team for data like:

• Customer retention rate
• Customer satisfaction (Net Promoter Scores)
• Revenues
• Sales

While this data doesn't necessarily fall into one of the three categories in our framework, significant changes in business KPIs can indicate positive (or negative) culture changes, especially when layered with any initiatives you're working on to improve your culture.

"In tracking behaviors, you may uncover that your organizational values are not resonating with your workforce, and that might explain why your culture isn’t where you’d like it to be. In fact, most people don’t know their company values, much less how or where they apply."

6. Tracking Behaviors

While culture itself is challenging to measure, its outputs, or behaviors, can be tracked. Tracking the prevalence of the behaviors associated with your values can be a good indicator of your culture’s strength.

Using your desired value-based behaviors, you can create culture metrics for your organization. For example, if innovation is one of your values, and sharing ideas is an associated behavior, you can ask managers and team leads to report on the prevalence of innovative ideas being shared. Similarly, if accountability is a value, an associated behavior might be meeting deadlines. Again, ask your managers to report on whether deadlines are usually met.

In tracking behaviors, you may uncover that your organizational values are not resonating with your workforce, and that might explain why your culture isn’t where you’d like it to be. In fact, most people don’t know their company values, much less how or where they apply. In this case, you have two choices: work on better communicating your values to your team or revisit your values altogether. Evidently, this is an example of behavior data, but it can also provide valuable relationship data.

Tools like Kudos make it easy to reinforce and measure core values and behaviors/qualities, automating the process and housing it all in one place. More on that in the next section!

7. Kudos - Analytics and Insights

With Kudos Analytics, you can automatically measure key components of your culture like the value-based behaviors just discussed, the collaboration between people and departments, and contributions to morale through the recognition and appreciation messages shared on the Kudos platform. Rich and valuable behavioral and relationship data.

Analytics are built into the Kudos employee engagement and recognition platform, a hub for peer-to-peer recognition messages highlighting employee contributions. With Kudos, each recognition message is tied back to organizational values and behaviors.

The great thing about a system like Kudos is that new data is gathered regularly, allowing you to correlate how your team appreciates each other and interacts with one another, allowing you to connect that information to HR and Business KPIs.

With Kudos, you can measure:

Feedback: Kudos can help you gather direct feedback by embedding your current survey tool in Kudos and sharing the results.

Participation: Kudos is key to measuring participation based on activity in the system. Kudos can also be used to promote and appreciate those who participate and manage your culture events.

Anecdotes: Every message in Kudos provides valuable insights on the connections between employees as well as the effort, act, or accomplishments by individuals, groups, and departments. These messages often capture how people have moved the dial on business KPIs.

Behaviors: The often hard to capture details on what behaviors or qualities individuals demonstrate are captured in every Kudos recognition message. This helps you reinforce your core values but also measure how people live them every day.

Beyond the “moment in time” measures, Kudos Analytics also tracks trends over time, allowing you to discover any changes in behaviors or contributions, ranging from one employee going above and beyond regularly to a notable improvement in culture.

These dashboards can help managers understand the culture of their team and leaders as well as the culture of the entire organization. Individuals can see their contributions, too, allowing them to self-correct if they aren't exhibiting enough desired qualities (behaviors.)

Sample from the Kudos Analytics Dashboard:

Looking Ahead

The MIT and Glassdoor survey quoted earlier in this piece found that 90% of CEOs and CFOs who responded believe that improving corporate culture would increase their company’s value, with 80% ranking culture among the five most important factors driving their company’s valuation. Being able to show that you’ve made strides in building up your culture through measurement and metrics will not only help you understand which initiatives are working but also highlight HRs role as a strategic business partner.

Culture is vital to employee engagement and business success - understanding how you’re doing is the first step toward managing and building the culture of your dreams.

Kudos Can Help.

Kudos is an employee engagement, culture, and analytics platform, that harnesses the power of peer-to-peer recognition, values reinforcement, and open communication to help organizations boost employee engagement, reduce turnover, improve culture, and drive productivity and performance. Kudos uses unique proprietary methodologies to deliver essential people analytics on culture, performance, equity, and inclusion, providing organizations with deep insights and a clear understanding of their workforce. Book your demo today!

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