Choose People transforms company cultures, in turn increasing employee happiness and boosting the bottom-line, via data derived from administering 360°Company Culture Audits.
Why Culture Matters
If you’ve ever worked at a company with a toxic culture, then you know how draining it can be. A dark force begins to consume the office, energy and morale is low, and complaining and gossiping are commonplace. A toxic culture causes lasting damage and is a common catalyst for turnover of top talent. Once an employment reputation is tarnished, so is the long-term vitality of the business.
No matter how you slice it, we spend a lot of time at work. In fact, the average person spends 90,000 hours at work over the course of an average lifetime. So it’s understandable that we want to spend our time in a healthy, comfortable, and, dare we say… joy-filled environment. But maintaining a positive, efficient, and collaborative atmosphere can be a challenge for any business. If the appropriate efforts and budgets are not dedicated to establishing and sustaining a healthy and authentic culture, then it’s easy for a business to fall victim to low morale and less than optimal production.
For many employees, toxic company cultures have become so common that conversations surrounding work are often soul sucking black hole pits of despair. People dread going to work on Mondays, live for the weekend, or simply try to spend as little time at the office as possible.
But why is that? And does this have to be the case? How did toxic company cultures become the norm in today’s society?
How can we begin to shift the conversation to one that takes culture into serious consideration?
The first step is being able to recognize a toxic culture when we see one.
Alchemer is the way to roll if you want a survey partner you can count on both from a quality product and friendly service standpoint. They’re just good people. – Kris Boesch, CEO and Founder of Choose People
Symptoms of Toxic Company Culture
Below are five of the ten diagnostic symptoms of an unhealthy company culture included in the case study, according to Choose People.
- There’s no smiling, joking, or chit-chat. This can be a tough one to self-diagnose, but someone with fresh eyes and ears stepping into your office will be able to tell immediately that instead of vibrant energy, there’s a stifling, oppressive, tension-filled force-field.
- Employees are too concerned about titles, job descriptions, and levels of hierarchy. Status, visibility, perks, and power are more important to employees than fulfilling the company mission.
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Fear rules the roost. When employees are afraid of getting in trouble, they keep their heads down until they find another opportunity. Unfortunately, those who don’t leave are the ones who are accustomed to leading a fear-filled existence in the workplace. Fear is the quickest way to squelch innovation, loyalty and joy.
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There’s a wall between leadership and frontline staff. When these two groups barely interact – your culture is in serious trouble. If when they do interact, it’s simply leadership telling the employee what to do, that employee will become an uninspired cog.
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A forum to speak candidly and constructively doesn’t exist. It’s far too common for employees to be frustrated and to not have a safe place to speak openly about their concerns.
Choose People Uses Data-Driven Culture Audits
Choose People is a Denver-based company helping organizations measure and ensure the health of their workplace culture. Since 2010, Choose People has helped organizations increase employee happiness and boost the bottom-line by leveraging data derived from 360°Company Culture Audits. Their approach has been so successful that CEO and Founder Kris Boesch has recently published Culture Works: How to Create Happiness in the Workplace, a book that shares the valuable cultural insights and tools she’s yielded through her work with organizations from all different backgrounds.
“We’ve used Alchemer to distribute our 360°Company Culture Audit to our clients for almost eight years now,” says Kris Boesch, CEO and founder of Choose People. “While evaluating survey solutions, we found that Alchemer had the robust reporting capabilities needed to create a custom, automated and detailed report for each of our readers.”
In addition to the company using Alchemer for its 360°Company Culture Audits, Choose People also leveraged Alchemer’s data solution for a special project in relationship to Boesch’s book. Prior to publication, Alchemer programmed a branded online automated report for Boesch’s culture assessment that is included in each copy. This allows readers to complete the assessment and receive a comprehensive report of their results in mere seconds.
By publishing Culture Works: How to Create Happiness in the Workplace along with the accompanying workbook and book club, Choose People has been able to provide their valuable services and insights to countless organizations, regardless of their geographical locations and cultural challenges. The book, workbook. and book club cover everything there is to know about creating a healthy workplace culture, and supports internally led culture learning and transformation for leadership and management teams.
Alchemer has been a vendor partner for over seven years and hasn’t let us down yet.
– Kris Boesch, CEO and Founder of Choose People