Organizational culture

Culture can set the tone for an organization. Leaders can set the tone for culture. Questions are for leaders to identify potential risks as well as areas of strength. They can also help with ideas to develop and maintain a psychologically safe organizational culture.

Overview

Organizational culture is described as a pattern of assumptions developed by a given group. These assumptions are a mix of: 

• values
• beliefs
• meanings 
• expectations 

Group members share these assumptions. They use them as behavioral and problem-solving cues.

The main task is to support all leaders in figuring out which assumptions enhance or damage psychological health and safety In fact, researchers Kelloway and Barling (2010) found that outcome variables in occupational health psychology are related to organizational leadership.

When an organization has a psychologically safe culture, employee well-being, job satisfaction, and commitment are all improved. But, if the culture is negative it can undermine the programs or policies meant to be supportive. If an organization has a culture of fear and constant chaotic urgency, it can create an environment in which burnout and low morale are common.

Key questions to ask

These questions can help identify and address areas in your strategy to support a psychologically safe culture. Asking these questions may also identify strengths that already exist in your organization.

• Assess your future goals as well as your current state:
  
  • What do we want our organizational culture to be?
  • Where are we? Where do we need to go?
  • What do we believe in?
  • How do we measure up in terms of inclusivity and equity?
  • How does this fit with our existing organizational purpose and vision?
  • What is the most powerful action we can take right now? How can we work with what is available?
• Review the current efforts to support employee success and well-being with these questions:
  
  • Do we take a program approach or a cultural approach? (i.e. are we implementing stand-alone programs or are we focusing on efforts to improve the culture?)
  • Are most efforts aimed downstream or upstream? (i.e. are we managing crises or are we looking ahead to see why these crises are happening?)
  • Would I characterize our organization as having more conventional or transformational management practices? (i.e. is our senior management able to improve the culture or are they focused on problem solving?)
  • In what ways can/should these efforts be shifted?
• To be sustainable, a psychologically safe organizational culture needs to be supported more broadly by an overall focus on and commitment to psychological health and safety. 20 Questions for leaders about psychological health and safety focuses on both policy and risk management questions.
• Leaders can have the most significant impact on organizational culture. Have you ensured your managers and supervisors have the skills, abilities and resources to:
  
  • Ask what is on someone's mind unobtrusively.
  • Facilitate conversations and remove barriers to communication.
  • Listen carefully to a person in distress.
  • Develop effective plans to support employee success.
  • Link employees to relevant and helpful resources.
  • Follow up and follow through to ensure ongoing success of each employee.
  • If you’re unsure about the answers to these questions, you may want to consider using this  Psychologically safe leader assessment.
• Unaddressed conflict, bullying and harassment can also have a large negative impact. Consider the following:
  
  • We have in place the means to identify:
    
    • Situations of conflict and distress within the workplace.
    • Patterns of negative conduct or ‘poisoned environments,’ including managers or others who: 
      
      • Lose their temper and shout at people
      • Ridicule and humiliate others
      • Use intimidation to enforce their will
      • Exhibit discriminatory attitudes and/or conduct
      • Avoid dealing with conflict or situations that have the potential to create conflict
  • We have in place:
    • A response plan to resolve such situations promptly, effectively, and sustainably, once identified.
• Organizations also need to consider how their relationships with outside service providers and customers might impact their culture.
  
  • Third-party service providers
    • Are aware of our commitment to provide a psychologically safe workplace
    • Have in place the policies and procedures to comply with this requirement
  • Customers/clients/patients
    • Are aware of our commitment to provide a psychologically safe workplace for our employees
    • We have policies and procedures in place to respond when customers/clients/patients don't comply with this requirement.

The information above was adapted from the work of Dr. Martin ShainDr. Martin Shain and Deborah ConnorsDeborah Connors. Dr. Martin Shain is principal of the Neighbour@Work Centre, It provides research, evaluation, policy development and training to improve the employment relationship. Deborah Connors company, Be Positive,focused on teaching leaders how to shift their culture so employees can flourish. Deborah's contribution is adapted from her book A Better Place To Work: Daily Practices That Transform Culture.

See Evidence-based actions for organizational culture for more ideas.

Workshop materials

Putting organizational culture on the agenda: Creating awareness workshop

This workshop engages your team in a discussion about practical ways to create positive organizational culture. These discussions will help cultivate a psychological healthy and safe workplace.

Putting organizational culture on the agenda: Creating change workshop

This session builds on employee ideas developed in the Creating awareness workshop. The next step is to engage decision makers in reviewing employee suggestions against evidence− or practice−based approaches. The objective is to modify or create policies and procedures that improve your organizational culture.

Psychologically safe interactions workshop

Prevent bullying and increase psychological health and safety by improving awareness of how workplace behaviours may be interpreted as harmful, even when that isn’t our intention.

Additional resources

For more information, free tools and resources for assessing and addressing organizational culture see: Guarding Minds at Work.

Depending on the issues that may exist in your workplace, you may also benefit from the following free resources:

• Building stronger teams. A leader's guide and activities for developing resilience for your team.
• Conflict response for leaders. An alternative process to help resolve conflict effectively.
• Harassment and bullying prevention. Creating awareness for prevention.
• Helping employees to manage change. Reducing the stress of organizational change on individual employees.
• Implicit bias. Learn to identify and understand implicit bias, microaggressions and intersectionality. Whether the bias results in poor morale or discrimination, identifying it is the first step to eliminating it.
• Psychologically safe leader assessment. Identify and support leadership strategies that are psychologically safe for you and all leaders in your organization.
• Stigma reduction plan. Outlines the business case and provides strategies for creating awareness and reducing stigma related to mental health issues.
• Team building activities.. Changing culture within teams.