Guide to Improving Workplace Culture in Asia-Pacific
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Company culture has a big impact on all aspects of business, from sales and profits to employee morale and productivity. The right company culture will attract and retain great staff and even new customers and vendors. It can even become a powerful recruitment tool.
In a strong culture, employees feel valued, supported and satisfied. They have autonomy, exciting opportunities to grow, and access to collaboration to achieve common goals. But how can Human Resources build a great company culture in practice?
In an HR Exchange Network State of HR survey, HR professionals in the APAC region identified clear strategies for improving company culture, including improving training and development efforts (51.09%), providing greater flexibility and autonomy (40.98%), and facilitating collaboration (40.44%). In this article, we'll look at several strategies HR can deploy and how companies in the Asia-Pacific region have applied those strategies in practice.
Measure the Most Important Experience Metrics (and Act on Them!)
Australia financial services company ANZ experienced turbulent times in recent years, including a shift to hybrid working. The company realized that it would have to change the way it gathered, used, and captured employee feedback. Today, they not only gather feedback more frequently but look at different metrics.
"At ANZ, the biggest shift has been around listening. We wanted to listen more regularly and holistically to understand more about our teams. This shift is helping us understand what's impacting our people at work, as well as identify the areas and issues having the biggest impact on them," says Sarah Traynor, the Product Owner of Culture and Engagement at ANZ.
ANZ uses the Qualtrics EX25 framework to gather feedback from their employees across 25 important drivers, such as trust in leadership, living company values, trust in management, and work-life balance. These drivers are all tied to the most critical employee experience and cultural KPIs at ANZ, including inclusion, well-being, intent to stay (retention), engagement and experience vs expectations. By simplifying the insights gathered, the company can drive improvements across its most important business metrics.
READ: 8 Unique Benefits Employers Are Offering to Attract Talent in Asia-Pacific
Achieve Mutual Understanding and Buy-In First
Culture is deeply rooted in the beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors of individuals within an organization or society. Cultural change requires a significant shift in these aspects, which can be challenging to accomplish if people are resistant or do not fully understand or support the change. By gaining buy-in, you can address resistance and increase the likelihood of a successful cultural transformation. When employees are engaged and involved in the change process, they are more likely to embrace and support the new culture.
In some APAC countries' cultures, achieving buy-in is not negotiable. "Major decisions in Japan are made through nemawashi, or groundwork, where idea sponsors talk informally with the other decision-makers, harmonizing the idea to get agreement. In the actual meeting, the idea is rubber-stamped," says Greg Story, the President of Dale Carnegie, Tokyo. Greg has said that many foreign CEOs and leaders struggle with the concept of making decisions in a democratic system but that it's important to let go of your own cultural biases if you want to make a change.
Achieving buy-in removes resistance, which speeds up the actual execution of a culture-building project. "To change the workplace culture of organizations in Japan first requires taking a big breath and then gaining a thorough understanding of the existing culture. Once the boundaries are clearer, then better questions can be asked, "Why do we need to keep doing it like this around here?" says Greg.
READ: 4 Technologies That Will Transform the Workforce in Asia-Pacific
Create an Inspiring Place to Work
Godrej in India is known as being an inspiring place to work. The company is more than 115 years old and needed a change to stay relevant. It created a culture centered around "The Godrej Way," a philosophy that embraces diversity, agility, and experimentation.
"As a group, we've evolved over time with the changing environment and consumer. We've had to evolve our cultural code and values to stay relevant. While some of these are non-negotiable, we've also set ourselves some new values, which we intend to live up to over the next few years," said Tanya Dubash, Executive Director & President of Marketing in a 2012 interview.
The "Godrej Way" serves as the cultural cornerstone, guiding choices and actions within the company. Godrej empowers its team members by providing various policies and processes that enhance their capabilities in line with business ambitions. This commitment is reflected in the significant number of training man-hours (7,873) invested in developing employees' skills and competencies.
Godrej also visibly demonstrates a strong commitment to diversity and gender equality. The company has made significant strides in increasing the representation of women in its workforce, with about 26% of employees being women and 19% holding senior leadership roles. Godrej offers policies and initiatives like the Caregiver Travel Policy, Careers 2.0, and equal opportunity and anti-harassment policies to support women's professional growth and work-life balance.
The leaders dedicated themselves to creating an inclusive workplace for LGBTQ+ team members. The company has implemented various measures, such as extending medical benefits to domestic partners, adopting a gender-neutral primary caregiver approach, introducing a Gender Affirmation Policy, reviewing amenities and infrastructure for LGBTQ+ employees, and launching a "Manifesto for Trans Inclusion in the Indian Workplace." These initiatives demonstrate Godrej's commitment to supporting the rights and well-being of LGBTQ+ individuals within the organization.
The company's innovative recruitment approach, Godrej LOUD (Live Out Ur Dream), encourages students to pursue their personal dreams while offering sponsorship and internships with Godrej. This initiative not only demonstrates Godrej's commitment to employee growth but also reflects a forward-thinking and unconventional approach to talent acquisition and company culture.
"If you are passionate about something in life, when you come to work, that passion will translate into how you work," said Vandana Lisa Scolt, the HR manager behind the LOUD initiative years ago.
Keep Communicating
IBM New Zealand and Australia realized that it needed to make changes following large shifts in its operating model. Employees were less enthusiastic and optimistic about the organization and weren't showing up as a united team the way the company would have liked them to. IBMers were disengaged, and engagement scores for the region were the lowest in the world. This had a negative impact on employee performance, which received extremely low customer NPS scores.
The company embarked on a rigorous cultural change program, which included surveys, achieving buy-in, hosting vision sprint sessions, which are designed to help IBMers connect to their larger purpose at the company, and investing in training 27 internal leadership coaches to train their top 150 leaders. However, a true cultural change program can't be a one-off event. Communication must be ongoing.
IBM ANZ continues to connect through regular physical and virtual town hall meetings, "everything culture forums," and manager calls to reinforce the message of commitment, connection, and collaboration set in the early days of the program. The results have been incredible.
"An unexpected benefit from our cultural change work - it has made our organization more resilient. Culture has proven to be an important source of stability when other things have been in flux," says Katrina Troughton, (now former) Managing Director - IBM.
The Hard Work of Transforming Culture
Achieving cultural change isn't easy, but the benefits that even minor improvements can have speak for themselves. Start by measuring the metrics that matter to employees (and to your business). Make sure that HR achieves the buy-in necessary to change by understanding and working within the culture that already exists in the organization.
Then, think about the ways to create a more inspiring place to work through training, support, recognition, and innovation. Once the change program or initiative has launched, don't stop communicating. Keep reinforcing those messages. You'll soon see a change in employee happiness, engagement, and retention, and customers will be grateful.
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