Frameworks for defining, developing, and sustaining your company culture

Culture can look different for each organization, but there is no question that everyone benefits, from the newest employees to your VPs and C-suite.

James Maiden, senior internal communications specialist at McCownGordon Construction, spoke at Ragan’s Employee Communications and Culture Conference this past April about how to create culture ambassadors across your organization.

Here’s what we learned:

Determining core values and practices can be a challenge for all companies, and especially those with siloed workforces, many teams, or employees in the field. Getting the buy in can be even harder.

Developing an organizational identity is about how your group functions and interacts. Look at employee preferences for interaction and responses to change. Do employees prefer independence or interdependence? Are they flexible to change or prefer the stability of no change?

McCownGordon took data from the firm’s annual diversity, equity and inclusion survey and conducted focus groups to better understand where employees fall on the spectrum illustrated here:

Maiden explained how his organization created a culture card,  an 8.5” x 11” graphic that visualizes the shared values, attitudes and goals that characterize an institution, Maiden shared. McCownGordon’s card consists of:

Values