Why Use the Free Corporate Culture Surveys from Culture Czars®?
When was the last time you asked the stakeholders of your business about the state of your corporate culture? Was it when you first dove into the process of establishing your CoreVals™? Or maybe after a major shakeup? Whether you are in the beginning stages of establishing a cultural definition or you have been investing in it for years, using surveys to poll the state of your culture is a valuable exercise. This tool is an easy, objective way to gather employee feedback and measure if your efforts are working, or if there are improvements needed. Of course if you are just getting started or doing a refresh, there is no better way to start the process. Once you have the survey results, commence with interviewing a sampling of all the stakeholder groups to further add to the sentiments that are being gathered. Keep digging and observing to find those key, unique elements of cultural DNA that are so magical.
In The Culture Fix® I provide a guide for questions that you can use to create your own survey in an online program, email or print. Asking each of your team members the same questions will give you a range of responses, which you can then rank numerically and average. I suggest a core list of evergreen questions plus some relating to the company’s current situation. First, get some baseline information on the respondent’s role, rank within the company, and length of service. Then move on to how they would rate the culture. Or, if you would prefer to use a stan- dard set of questions, use The Culture Fix® Employee Poll below:
1. How would you describe the company’s culture today?
2. If the company was a person, what kind of person would it be?
3. What value or behavior would you like to see more of?
4. Which of the company’s core values can you state from memory?
5. The company’s stated values are __________. Do you feel that these accurately portray the organi- zation and how we work together? Why or why not?
6. Name one or two of your coworkers who best embody those values and why.
You can also simply email me at Will@CultureCzars.com and we will set you up with free custom links specifically for your company.
If you already survey employees on other aspects of your business, add five to ten culture-based questions to ask consistently. Otherwise, institute a culture-only survey to get baseline opinions and see how they change—or remain the same—over time.
With businesses and thus cultures in flux due to the COVID-19 pandemic, surveying your team may be more important now than ever before. Many businesses have taken this time to dive in and work on their culture and CoreVals. We use anonymous surveys to gather key data from the company’s major stakeholders: employees, vendors and customers and then use this data to make careful tweaks and adjustments to the behaviors.
I recently partnered with CEO of Emergent Construction & EO Indiana (Entrepreneurs Organization) President Matt Troyer to work on fulfilling the culture of his business. Though his business was established in 2007, he decided that this was a great opportunity to dig in. Of course, we began with a survey and we use surveygizmo, which collects the responses, reports the results and presents them in a visual manner. Check out some of the results:
What would you say is the legacy of the company’s founder(s)?What would you say is the legacy of the company’s founder(s)?
How would you describe the corporate culture today?
What would you say is the legacy of the company’s founder(s)?
If your company already has core values, how many of the core values can you recite without looking them up?
The data that we collected includes lots of positive feedback as well as some areas of opportunity like increased visibility of their CoreVals. What was also interesting about this specific survey, is that it brought up timely responses about how the team is feeling while working remotely. For example, one response to a question about their corporate culture today read “distant due to covid”. And another “...during this chaotic time - I know it wasn't easy to make the decision to shut down even though we are deemed essential, but I trust that it was the right one”.
Once you have the survey responses in hand, start the interview process. For more on this process and the types of questions to ask, please reach out or pick up a copy of The Culture Fix® on Amazon.
No matter where you are in the stage of core value development and culture fulfillment, breakdowns can occur. If you focus on applying processes consistently and persistently, the culture continues on a positive trend. If not, it will devolve to the default which probably won’t serve your team, your clients or your company.
It is never too late to begin surveying your stakeholders about the state of your corporate culture. Start now! Then, repeat this survey at least once a year to test the health of your business. For more free resources including a robust selection of canned survey options from the Culture Czars library, check out https://www.cultureczars.com/culture-fix-web-tools or simply email me: Will@CultureCzars.com.