The effects leadership, culture and wellbeing have on success!

The effects leadership, culture and wellbeing have on success!

By Rachel Linstead, Firecracker

It is well documented that well trained leaders/managers can have a positive impact on the success of organisations but what about culture and wellbeing? In my opinion culture and wellbeing are intrinsically linked and to get business success you first need to look at your culture.

What is culture? It is the shared values, behaviours, vision and attitudes of the people within the organisation. These shared attributes are then demonstrated through interactions with colleagues, customers, and suppliers.

The culture then may help to shape strategy, goals, and structure of an organisation. Once you understand what type of culture you have or want in your organisation, you can then see how it can be improved or created.

Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn from University of Michigan developed The Organisational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) which looks at four different types of culture:

Clan, Adhocracy, Market, and Hierarchy.

Clan – this is a collaborative, friendly culture. There are often strong bonds between colleagues who show loyalty to each other. This kind of culture is sometimes compared to a large family.

Adhocracy – coming from the words ad-hoc, this is a very dynamic and fast-paced culture, where innovation, moderate risk taking, and employee autonomy is encouraged, to give the organisation agility and flexibility to respond to the external environment.

Market – this is quite a competitive culture where the name of the game is to get things done, a very results focused organisation where gaining market share and making more profit focus is the sole vision for the organisation.

Hierarchy – Often seen in large organisations which is led by procedures and processes and risk taking is not encouraged. Leaders are tasked with ensuring employees stick to these procedures rigidly to avoid costly mistakes and errors, although this culture is needed in certain organisations such as health care, military, and aviation to ensure people’s safety is maintained, generally these organisations tend to be slower to adapt to the ever changing external environment.

Within most organisations there is a mixture of all the above cultures and the ones that tend to flourish are the ones which put people first regardless of the overall culture! This might seem obvious but all too often the people element of an organisation is forgotten, yes most have a Human Resources (HR) department but very few actually focus on people as people!

Which leads onto wellbeing.

Employee wellbeing is nothing new, in 1893 George Cadbury bought 120 acres of land to build a model village for their employees to help alleviate the evils of modern, cramped living conditions.

Within this model village there were parks and recreation areas, and employees were encouraged to use these spaces to enhance their health and fitness. The Cadburys knew that if they have fit and health employees then this would help them have a thriving business and this is still true today.

Employee wellbeing can seem quite complicated, daunting & costly with a myriad of products, services and consultants offering you their wares to help you improve your employee wellbeing, but it does not have to be any of those things!

You might need some external help to guide and assist you, however, in my experience the organisations who are simply willing to look at their failings when it comes to looking after their employees and make a real heart felt effort to improve culture are the ones who see the greatest benefit and improvement in employee wellbeing and engagement and in turn business success. This means not just doing things that tick boxes in terms of wellbeing and activities that land on HR’s desk and their responsibility but having a wellbeing commitment that flows through everything you do as an organisation, from boardroom discussions to the colour of paint used on workplace walls. Wellbeing is everyone’s responsibility!

Organisations with a transparent and open culture which allows individuals to be their full self at work and nurture individuals talents and strength often can adapt positively when business takes a downturn as they can use their collective strengths for a force for good.

Firecracker’s Wheel of wellbeing, culture and performance is a tool to support organisations to see the links between culture, wellbeing, and performance and how all of these have an impact on success.

Each section can be scored and then given focus. These scores can be used to act a as benchmark to be reviewed after a set time frame and related back to an organisations balance sheet or profit and loss sheet (P&L).

 

Simple measure you can do today to start moving your organisation towards having a wellbeing culture!

– Small things matter – saying hello, asking people how they are and genuinely listening to the answer, when in conversations with colleagues – turn off alerts/notifications on phone/PC so that you don’t get distracted. I often turn off my screen when making calls if I can’t get away from my desk so I focus on the person on the other end of the phone, even though they can’t see you, they know they’ve lost your attention.

– Find out more about each person, what are their hobbies/interests outside of work, often people have so many more skills than we ever give them credit for and maybe some of these might help to enhance the organisations success if they are given the opportunity to demonstrate these skills.

– Allow for creative thinking and expression! We are all equally creative, however as we become adults many of us stop using this skill, creativity or being child-like not only is it stress relieving but can also generate some amazing ideas & solutions to challenges. Set small weekly/monthly challenges to stimulate everyone’s creative muscle.

– Show appreciation daily! Openly celebrate the small wins!

– Lead by example – if you are telling your colleagues to take a lunch break away from their desk, yet every lunch break you sit at your desk!! Guess what, it won’t happen!

And that’s just some ideas, imagine what you could achieve with a full strategy.

Find out more about Rachel and request a FREE one-to-one session by filling out the form here.

Share this news story:

Other News

10-12-2024
Future You Will Thank You: A Sneak Peek at Our 2025 Networking Events

Looking ahead to 2025, you won’t want to miss the exciting networking opportunities we have in store. These events will all...

Read More
09-12-2024
Riseholme College celebrating 75 years of delivering specialist education

Riseholme College is celebrating more than seven decades of providing specialist land-based education in Lincolnshire.

Read More

Join our ever-growing membership base

Become a member
Our Patrons