Culture is the Key

At nearly every company I have ever been employed, Human Resources (HR) was considered a four-letter word. Nobody wanted to have any interaction with HR. You didn’t want phone calls from them, you didn’t want any e-mails from them, you just wanted to stay off their radar. Typically, when people were contacted by the HR department they weren’t receiving good news.

I believe that most people view HR as a part of the organization that only looks for personnel that are breaking the rules. We all know that part of their job is to ensure that employees are compliant with the rules and regulations of the organization. However, I think in most companies more emphasis can and needs to be placed on some of the more enriching aspects of human resources.

HR should be the primary entity that focuses on the establishment and cultivation of company culture. This extends far beyond a thorough discussion on values during new employee training and orientation. Culture is ongoing and I believe that the responsibility for building a solid culture is often left up to the employees to execute on their own without much encouragement from anyone. The values of the organization serve as a guide for each individual and determine how they conduct themselves in regard to customers and other employees in the organization. HR executives should create programs that bring the values to life on a daily basis. That first starts with the leadership team, who should be modeling these behaviors each day.

I can’t tell you how many times I went to one boring corporate meeting after another only to watch the big wig executives “grand stand” on a stage about how important company values were. But if you asked any of the employees the majority would say that they didn’t feel valued at all and they didn’t feel like the company was representing its values well either. Most hadn’t received merit increases in over a few years. That wasn’t due to poor performance, it was due to the company’s lofty goals that were unrealistic for the economic environment we were all up against. It was just another meeting where we all pretended that we felt “empowered and valued” or whatever the new catch phrase was, but those qualities rarely described the environment we worked in on a daily basis.

HR should be constantly working to create a company culture that truly embodies the values that the organization seeks to represent. If that isn’t possible then either the leadership or the values themselves need to change. People don’t like working in environments that breed a culture of “say one thing and do another.” It’s dishonest, and I like to believe that most people are honest, they want to do what’s right and they want to work for people that also want to do what’s right.