First, read the Remote Work Challenges Company Culture SHRM article linked below for your convenience. Second, consider the various components of organizational culture addressed in Chapter 16 of the text. Then, provide at least two suggested actions to help combat this issue. Be sure to explain your rationale and use resources to support your suggested action.

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE In almost every chapter prior to this point, we have simply given you definitions of important topics. However, there are just about as many definitions of organizational culture as there are people who study it. In fact, research on organizational culture has produced well over 50 different definitions!' It seems that the term "culture" means a great many things to a great many people. Definitions of culture have ranged from as broad as "The way we do things around here"2 to as specific as . . . well, let's just suffice it to say that they can get complicated. Not surprisingly, the various definitions of organizational culture stem from how people have studied it. Sociologists study culture using a broad lens and anthropological research methods, like those applied to study tribes and civilizations. Psychologists tend to study culture and its effects on people using survey methods.' In fact, many psychologists actually prefer the term "climate"; but for our purposes, we'll use the two terms interchangeably. In this chapter, we define organizational culture as the shared social knowledge within an organization regarding the rules, norms, and values that shape the attitudes and behaviors of its employees. This definition helps highlight a number of facets of organizational culture. First, culture is social ganizational knowledge among members of the organization. Employees learn about most important aspects of d what are its culture through other employees. This transfer of knowledge might be through explicit communica- nts? tion, simple observation, or other, less obvious methods. In addition, culture is shared knowledge, which means that members of the organization understand and have a degree of consensus regard- ing what the culture is. Second, culture tells employees what the rules, norms, and values are within the organization. What are the most important work outcomes to focus on? What behaviors are appropriate or inappropriate at work? How should a person act or dress while at work? Indeed, some cultures even go so far as to say how employees should act when they aren't at work. Third, organizational culture shapes and reinforces certain employee attitudes and behaviors by creating a system of control over employees.' There is evidence that your individual goals and values will grow over time to match those of the organization for which you work. This development really isn't that hard to imagine, given how much time employees spend working inside an organization. OM writ eniblinder to eesporq s naped erl 19vo No endhow to 2tooqes supinu ers to sno Vilsohotel millet ton 91wov- WHY DO SOME ORGANIZATIONS HAVE DIFFERENT ven ent pawwollot CULTURES THAN OTHERS? dosm air cows won chota sel nego stom One of the most common questions people ask when you tell them where you are employed is, "So, tell me . . . what's it like there?" The description you use in your response is likely to Brit bebig have a lot to do with what the organization's culture is all about. In calculating your response "blenoCOM 916pivL to the question, you might consider describing the kinds of people who work at your company. laque ,91610q105 More than likely, you'll do your best to describe the work atmosphere on a regular day. Perhaps you'll painstakingly describe the facilities you work in or how you feel the employees are treated. You might even go so far as to describe what it is that defines "success" at your company. All of those answers give clues that help organizational outsiders understand what a company is actually like. To give you a feel for the full range of potential answers to the "what's it like there?" question, 6 ni bise blanisogt it's necessary to review the facets of culture in more detail. and 03) nerW blenoCOM nut leve of esvolqme bewurst testore Wantit yanivil CULTURE COMPONENTS erinisthisrebcosmotai tpilotreBert ixlanisoqmel bris andmom m 9brohake There are three major components to any organization's culture: observable artifacts, espoused values, and basic underlying assumptions. You can understand the differences among these three girlishcorsair components if you view culture like an onion, as in Figure 16-1. Some components of ommitment zation's culture are readily apparent and observable, like the skin of an onion. However, other components are less observable to organizational outsiders or newcomers. Such observe, interpret, and make conclusions based on what they see on the surface, but the inside such outsiders canFIGURE zational Culture on meseatedthat gnher leapels. inall Gigieabo have comflo-hadflighting Espoused Values gnishow to nitions of important nations waslogol quisur Sotvia culture as there are rell over 50 different Basic great many people. around here" to as Underlying Assumptions Jot surprisingly, the lied it. Sociologists bravoFenigreff Ex315he se applied to study holds ThesanbrainbeoNia people using survey but theyssini Pavojobrise t for our purposes, his Hindsoff youroftier onal culture as the d values that shape offto? How Sustheynoob? And It's going Observable rst, culture is social New Aviarue degrillzsEvery year, And it's portant aspects of Macgruberh Sabrinoncisco-based Twitter, th Artifacts plicit communica- shared knowledge, consensus regard- gstovemog values are within hat behaviors are remains a mystery until they can peel back the outside layers to gauge the values and assumptions at work? Indeed, that lie beneath. When asked about his company's success, Walter Robb, former CEO of Whole t at work. Third, Foods, said, "If I could draw back the curtain, what you would see is a very strong culture of iors by creating a empowerment, and that is the secret of Whole Foods." The sections that follow review the culture I values will grow it really isn't that components in more detail. ation. OBSERVABLE ARTIFACTS Observable artifacts are the manifestations of an organization's cul- ture that employees can easily see or talk about. They supply the signals that employees interpret notei to gauge how they should act during the workday. Artifacts supply the primary means of trans- ERENT mitting an organization's culture to its workforce. It's difficult to overestimate the importance of artifacts because they help show not only current employees, but also potential employees, cus- tomers, shareholders, and investors what the organization is all about. There are six major types of artifacts: symbols, physical structures, language, stories, rituals, and ceremonies. are employed Symbols can be found throughout an organization, from its corporate logo to the images it se is likely to places on its website to the uniforms its employees wear. Think about what Nike's "swoosh" your response represents: speed, movement, velocity. What might that symbol convey about Nike's culture? our company. r day. Perhaps Or consider Apple Computer's "apple" logo. That symbol brings to mind Newton's discovery es are treated. of gravity under the apple tree, conveying the importance of innovation within Apple's cul- mpany. All of ture. When you think of the words "dark suit, white shirt, tie," what company do you think of? any is actually For many, the symbol represents IBM because that summarizes the company's long-standing e?" question, dress code. Even though that dress code hasn't been in place at IBM for more than 20 years, it still neriw symbolizes a formal, bureaucratic, and professional culture. testorla Physical structures also say a lot about a culture. Is the workplace open? Does top management work in a separate section of the building? Is the setting devoid of anything unique, or can employ- ces express their personalities? Hilton (a perennial presence on Fortune's "100 Best Companies to ts, espoused Work For" list) just went through a massive upgrade program to its "back of house" areas so that g these three of an organi- w staff works in areas as nice as the customers experience out front. CEO Chris Nassetta said, wever, other "We forgot that we are a business of people serving people, and the corporate environment got utsiders can very disconnected from the front line."? John Childress, founding partner of The Principia Group, tells the story of a Ford ex ord executive he worked with whose entire office had burned down: "He'd been it the inside oblems between departments. There were barriers that meant information wasn't flowing. He had to quickly rent new premises and all he could find was an open-plan building. having terrible problems542 CHAPTER 16 Organizational Culture The culture changed overnight because of the The ability to set up your different ways of work - own work space, as at the ing."10 IDEO, a creative design firm IDEO, is a hall- mark of an open corporate design firm, also has culture. Would this environ- an open-office environ- ment suit your working ment, though IDEO lets style? employees set up their offices however they like. When you walk around their work areas, you'll be walking underneath bicy- cles hanging over your head and crazy objects and toys in every direc- tion." Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, doesn't even have an office! Hastings simply walks Courtesy of IDEO around meeting with people. When he needs a quiet space to think he heads to his "watchtower"-a room-sized glass square on the top of Netflix's main building. 2 That being said, most offices don't look like that. While admitting that spaces across the country are becoming more "open" on average, Jonathan Webb, head of sales and marketing at KI, a Wisconsin-based commercial furniture maker, says that "Not everyplace looks like Google, not everybody has a slide in the lobby."13 Language reflects the jargon, slang, and slogans used within the walls of an organization. Do you know what a CTR, CPC, or Crawler is? Chances are you don't. If you worked for Yahoo!, however, those terms would be second nature to you: "CTR" stands for "click-through rate," "CPC" stands for "cost-per-click," and a Crawler is a computer program that gathers information from other web- sites. If you worked at Microsoft and got an e-mail from a software developer telling you that they were "licking the cookie," what would you think? For Microsoft employees, "licking the cookie" means that a person or group is announcing that they are working on a feature or product and it is now off-limits for others to work on. * Home Depot maintains a "stack it high and watch it fly" slogan, which reflects its approach to sales. Yum! Brands Inc., which owns Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC, and other fast-food restaurants, expects employees to be "customer maniacs"-language that conveys its culture for customer interaction. Some companies even incorporate important words into job titles to send a message, such as "chief flavor officer" (beverage maker Bai Brands), "chief digestive health officer" (Georgia's WellStar Health System), "chief storyteller," and so on.16 Stories consist of anecdotes, accounts, legends, and myths that are passed down from cohort to cohort within an organization. Telling stories can be a major mechanism through which leaders and employees describe what the company values or finds important. For example, Howard Schultz, former CEO of Starbucks, tells the story of how (to improve quality) he forbade the common practice of resteaming milk. What this rule inadvertently created was the loss of millions of dollars of milk, as thousands of gallons of lukewarm liquid were poured down the drain. One of his store managers came up with a simple, brilliant suggestion: Put etched lines inside the steaming pitchers so baristas would know how much milk to pour for the drink size they were making, instead of just guessing."Paul Wiles, former president and CEO of Novant Health in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, believed strongly in the power of storytelling to foster culture; he claimed, "Talk about numbers, and people's eyes glaze over; talk about one child who died unnecessarily, and no one can walk away from that."18 Recent research finds that telling newcomers stories of junior-level employees upholding the values of the firm as opposed to senior- level employees is more effective at transmitting culture and affecting their behavior." Rituals are the daily or weekly planned routines that occur in an organization. Employees at New Belgium Brewing in Colorado, home of Fat Tire Ale, can enjoy a beer in the tasting room after their shift as well as get one free 12-pack a week, conveying the importance of both employ ees and the company's product. At UPS, every driver and package handler attends a mandatoryCHAPTER 16 Organizational Culture changed "three-minute meeting with their managers to help with communication. The 180-second time se of the limit helps enforce the importance of punctuality in the UPS culture. The Men's Wearhouse of work- pays managers quarterly bonuses when theft (referred to as "shrink") is kept low. That ritual creative sends a message that "when workers steal from you, they are stealing from themselves and their Iso has colleagues."?! At Chicago-based Nerdery, a digital consulting company, videos called "Level environ- Ups" are made highlighting the interests of newly promoted individuals inside the company." EO lets At Denver-based Zoom, each location has a "happiness crew" that is in charge of maintaining p their the location's upbeat culture. One of their rituals is to highlight people who make a difference in ey like. their employees' lives-an example of which is "Bring Your Parent To Work Day". Denver Sales around Leader Ben Volkman says, "To meet the parents and family members who motivate our employees ou'll be brings it all full circle."Sisq ati vd nwond gi ,niedo h bicy- Ceremonies are formal events, generally performed in front of an audience of organizational your members. Former CEO Sheila Marcelo at Care.com, would force all workers to move desks every objects year at the same time. Marcelo would assign the seats. She said, "People don't have a choice direc- where they sit. Part of the reason was to embrace change, to remove turfiness so that you're not stings, just chatting with your friends and sitting with your friends. You sit with somebody else from a oesn't different team so you get to know their job. What are they doing? What are they saying on the ffice! phone? How do they tick? And it's getting to know different people so that we build a really big walks team. And we do that every year. And it's now actually become an exciting thing that people with embrace."24 At San Francisco-based Twitter, the entire company is assembled twice a month in glass an area near their cafeteria for "tea time," which is a meeting to update employees on what's going that. on and to answer questions.25 Other types of ceremonies revolve around celebrations for meeting than quality goals, reaching a certain level of profitability, or launching a new product. says ESPOUSED VALUES Espoused values are the beliefs, philosophies, and norms that a company explicitly states. Espoused values can range from published documents, such as a company's you vision or mission statement, to verbal statements made to employees by executives and managers. ver, Examples of some of Whole Foods Market's outward representations of espoused values can be nds found in Table 16-1. What does each of these statements tell you about Whole Foods and what it eb- hey cares about? It's certainly important to draw a distinction between espoused values and enacted values. of beau ie" It's one thing for a company to outwardly say something is important; it's another thing for 'nobasinsgi Lit employees to consistently act in ways that support those espoused values. When a company holds to its espoused values over time and regardless of the situations it operates in, the values become amore believable both to employees and outsiders. However, in times of economic downturns, stay- " true to espoused values isn't always easy. Marriott International struggles during economic lonoff work am The Espoused Values of Whole Foods TABLE 16-1 Below is a list of the six core values that Whole Foods believes lay the foundation for its organizational culture. The company believes that these values set it apart from compet- ing organizations, show others why Whole Foods is a great place to work, and will always be the reasons for the company's existence regardless of how large it grows. More details about each value can be found on the company's website. tog vodi en esquil We sell the highest-quality natural and organic foods. and delight our customers. her growth and happiness. life anied as owlin to Inthe sailsPTER 16 Organizational Culture downturns, like many of its competitors in the lodging/travel business. It has been very tempting for the company to do everything it can to slash expenses, but its espoused value of always treating its people right prevents cuts that would harm employee benefits. If you ask any Marriott employee what the guiding principle of the company is all will say some version of J. W. Marriott's founding philosophy, "Take care of the associates, the associates will take care of the guests, and the guests will come back again and again."26 Similarly, Stripe (the San Francisco-based online payment processing company) has tried to hold its values through rapid growth. CEO John Collison says, "It's easy [ to devise and live by a set of values] when you're starting out. But as an organization grows, you have all these competing priorities. Culture is what happens when the CEO isn't in the room." It is worth noting that not all companies are open in regard to their values. Trader Joe's, the Monrovia, California-based grocery chain, is known by its patrons as perhaps the cool- est local product-seeking, customer-oriented business in America. In opposition to Whole Foods, it is also perhaps one of the most secretive companies in the world when it comes to its business practices. In fact, suppliers have to sign agreements that they won't disclose anything having to do with their business relationship with the store before they are allowed to supply products." BASIC UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS Basic underlying assumptions are the taken-for-granted beliefs and philosophies that are so ingrained that employees simply act on them rather than questioning the validity of their behavior in a given situation. These assumptions represent the deepest and least observable part of a culture and may not be consciously apparent, even to orga nizational veterans. Edgar Schein, one of the preeminent scholars on the topic of organizational culture, uses the example of safety in an engineering firm. He states, "In an occupation such as engineering, it would be inconceivable to deliberately design something that is unsafe; it is a taken for-granted assumption that things should be safe."30 Whatever a company's underlying assump tions are, its hidden beliefs are those that are the most likely to dictate employee behavior and affect employee attitudes. They're also the aspects of an organizational culture that are the most long-lasting and difficult to change.' of sbem amorousta Ischiav of dnomorale noizetin To love ad neo asplay beauoges to anonsinsestgen brewing elsduM eboot slordW to smae to zolman GENERAL CULTURE TYPES nomoisle seerdt To done 2sob isntW Lot oldET al Drug If we can consider the combination of an organization's observable artifacts, espoused ville and underlying assumptions. asiansSIRM Foundation EXECUTIVE CEO ENTERPRISE NETWORK ACADEMY SOLUTIONS SHRMLabs ! Store @ Sign In Region SIRM About Contact Join Today Membership Credentials Topics & Tools . Events & Education Business Solutions Advocacy v Community v Remote Work Challenges Company Culture 2024 CEOs and CHROs agree that when managing a remote workforce, maintaining company culture is the top challenge. Voice of the March 7, 2022 American Share i Reuse Permissions Workplace On-demand video Great expectations: It's been two years since the pandemic began, and I am still bombarded with questions about managing a Aligning on remote workforce-even though 42 percent of workers never had the option to work remotely during the workplace benefits public health crisis, according to a Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Omnibus Survey X from September 2021. Watch now In fact, at a recent conference of corporate real estate professionals where I was a speaker, the CEOs allMembership Credentials v Topics & Tools v had the same question: How do we build a consistent culture across traditional and remote workplaces? While | dislike answering this question, a colleague helped me reframe my thinking on the issue. Drew Jones, CEO of OpenWork Inc., a business consultancy specializing in the co-working industry, posed a different question: \"What is the biggest issue you think organizations are experiencing?\" he asked me. \"Talent challenges,\" | responded almost immediately. Over the next 10 minutes, he helped me see that the best leaders don't focus on the types of workplaces they make, but rather on the types of workplace cultures they build regardless of location. In 2021, SHRM and Chief Executive magazine fielded a joint survey examining the workplace difficulties that were likely to persist into 2022. Using the same framework Drew laid out, | thought about what the survey showed in terms of how CEOs and CHROs are thinking about the biggest talent management challenges ahead. Yes, uncertainties about coronavirus variants are salient, but CEOs and CHROs alike are united about the top challenge in a remote-work environment: maintaining company culture. In fact, many CEOs highlighted their distaste for creating two separate cultures based on work location one for in-person employees and one for remote workers. Events & Education + Business Solutions TOP REMOTE-WORK CHALLENGES and CHROs are in widespread agreement about the biggest talent management challenges posed by remote work. Maintaining culture I G2.1% Enabling collaboration/communication 62.4% LR naging workloads and work/life balance 49.6% R 59.1% Fostering creativity/innovation fet: X0 [ PEEA Employee home-office setups e L ERE People management Advocacy v Community v e 73y FRANKLIN '&4 TEMPLETON Source: Frankiin Templeton-Harris Poll 2024 Frankiin Distributors, LLC. Member FINRA/SIPC. = x5 //% \"'\\\\'\\'7 Artificial Intelligence in the Feedback Workplace An organization run by Al is not a futuristic concept. Such technology is already a part of many workplaces and will continue to shape the labor market and HR. Here's how employers and employees can successfully manage 6 generative Al and other Al-powered systems. Membership Credentials v Topics & Tools v Events & Education v Business Solutions Advocacy v Community v @ In a remote-work environment: maintaining company Employee home-office setups LA L kR culture. In fact, many CEOs highlighted their distaste for creating two separate cultures based on work location one for in-person employees and one for remote workers. People management | have been studying the world of work for more than two v i decades, and | can say one thing with certainty: This is the | kA first time in my career | have seen such alignment between A= Career advancement and recognition CEOs and CHROs. But what does that mean? Eowd [ P Source: Chief Executive and SHRM, 2021 First, these leaders understand that the talent pool is limited while jobs remain abundant. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, labor participation is rising at rates much lower than expected, so open jobs are likely to remain prevalent. This presents a challenge for organizations seeking to add or introduce new talent. Second, talent is the new currency for all organizations. CEOs and CHROs are aligned on the need for effective talent management because talent loss during the pandemic dented the success of many organizations. This is more evident today than ever before because CEOs and CHROs are interested in reducing turnover and maintaining company culture. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, a common enemy aligns organizations. The pandemic frayed workplace cultures; the secrets to success are effective leadership and solid talent management with culture as the outcome in mind. Take this as good newsfor the first time ever, all the soldiers are aligned against the common enemy. Alexander Alonso, SHRM-SCP, is chief knowledge officer for SHRM. employees can successfully manage generative Al and other Al-powered systems. Advertisement 75" ANNIVERSARY S\"{M