Deciphering Workplace Culture: The Role of Culture Assessment

A culture assessment for organizations is a systematic and comprehensive evaluation of the beliefs, values, behaviors, and norms that shape the work environment within a company. It involves analyzing the shared attitudes, practices, and interpersonal dynamics that define the organization's culture.

The primary purpose of a culture assessment is to gain insights into the existing organizational culture, identify areas of strength and areas for improvement, and inform strategic initiatives aimed at enhancing the overall workplace environment.

Culture assessments, at their best, uncover gaps between the aspirational culture and the literal culture. The word gaps can be misleading. Some gaps may be that the people-powered organization or team is outperforming the expectations in culture. Either discovery is an invitation to investigate, innovate and reimagine. For example, a gap analysis may reveal a higher tolerance for calculated risk than current policy or culture has communicated. Leaders can begin to ask their teams some really good questions to discover if there is an opportunity to reinvent the company's risk tolerance and whether or not that would create growth or improvement opportunities within the marketplace and ecosystem the company exists in. If the gaps are, in fact, not favorable, be encouraged because the greatest strengths are discovered when we are aware and accepting of our weaknesses. Remember to hire a cultural assessment professional with a fresh perspective to further enhance the objectivity of the assessment process.