'Some leaders are scared off by what they can perceive to be a really complex area'
Last year, the Experiences of Workplace Bullying and Harassment in Aotearoa New Zealand report by the Human Rights Commission found that more than a third of respondents had experienced some form of harassment in the last five years.
And studies have shown New Zealand is one of the worst in the world for workplace bullying and harassment, according to Marie Webber, co-founder of Culture By Design.
“That's terrible, that's an embarrassment,” she said.
So what’s behind the poor track record? A lack of emphasis on and follow-through from Kiwi businesses when it comes to organisational culture, said Webber.
“Some leaders are scared off by what they can perceive to be a really complex area, an area where business leaders aren’t quite sure where to start,” she said. “It's easy to focus on sales or finance or marketing – those things can be measured easily — but culture is not like that, and I think it can put a lot of senior leaders off.”
But research is showing that culture is just as important, if not more important, than those key elements of your organization “that you resource heavily to manage,” said Webber.
There is also a tendency in Kiwi organisations to only focus on the “attitude and behaviour” side of culture – the company values, the values people hold, and the behaviours that sit under those values – and overlook the infrastructure side of culture, she said.
“Things like ‘Do we understand our purpose and strategy?’ and ‘Are we able to communicate that across the organisation, do our people understand how their roles apply directly into the purpose and strategy?’ because that creates meaningful work and that's massive for people's motivation.”
Tools to build corporate culture
Webber and Culture By Design co-founder Mary Buckley have spoken to many HR, business and recruitment consultants who have been frustrated by the lack of strong cultures among employers, and they didn’t have the tools or skills to delve into that space.
Culture by Design offers a “culture excellence framework” called Acentia that organizations can use to develop their culture in a “much smarter, more proactive, more strategically aligned way,” said Webber.
“There’s so much research out there now that shows the incredible benefit of a strong workplace culture and how much that can add to the bottom line of an organisation. If we treated it in the same way that we treat all of those other key aspects of our organisations, then organisations would be able to unlock so much potential and the ability for them to be successful long term is just so elevated.”
