High Performance Organisational Culture
High performance organisations are characterised by strong organisational cultures. Building a robust and relevant corporate culture is one of the most crucial organisational development interventions.But how do we go about doing it? How do those very successful industry leading companies achieve a strong organisational culture?
Evalex Culture is the solution we offer.
Evalex has done comprehensive research into the organisational values of the top four companies in the world in each of eight industries. We distilled the values that are common to all 32 of the value frameworks into one final, authoritative framework of values.
In this way our research has isolated the key drivers of a winning culture. After an initial assessment, our sophisticated culture survey software is able to track organisational culture automatically in the background on a monthly or quarterly basis. This analysis provides an accurate indication of how your culture is evolving, allowing you to track its progress in relation to where you would like it to be. You can choose between our best-of-breed surveys or we can build your unique values system into the software solution.
The off-the-rack system is more than acceptable for most of our clients. However, our approach and systems are extremely flexible and we have the core competence within our organisation to quickly and effectively distil your organisation’s specific values. Once we have completed this exercise we can translate your values into a culture/values questionnaire that can be built into the Evalex Culture system to measure and monitor your culture and values.
Evalex Culture
Because they are so cumbersome and expensive, most companies do culture surveys either once or very infrequently. The reasons are as follows:
- External consultants are usually contracted to do them, adding huge cost to the project
- Questionnaires used are proprietary to the consultants and difficult to re-use without involving them again
- The data collection process is often a manual questionnaire to fill out or where automated, the system does not integrate with other talent management systems
- The data collection process is followed with the time consuming task of data integration to produce a report
- The report often comments on the culture from an overall point of view, without specific feedback to a manager as to how to develop his/her leadership style
Key issues in a culture survey
The most important issue in a culture survey are the issues to be surveyed. What are the constructs that the questionnaire will enquire about and how is the enquiry done? (These questions are dealt with in the products section.)
The second issue is the technology used to distribute the questionnaire draw conclusions from the data.
The third issue is the whether the data can be rolled up and down – from corporate level through divisions, departments and teams to an individual manager, and the other way round.
The fourth issue is whether the constructs measured and data provided are practical and useful, enabling managers to get a handle on what management practices needs change and how the shift can be achieved.
The Evalex Culture/360 Approach
How does Evalex address these limitations and how does the Evalex methodology work?
The Evalex 360° culture assessment application is one of 11 modules in the Evalex Talent Eco System. Whether you need to do a 360 leadership assessment or a culture survey, this powerful application with sophisticated functionalities will enable and facilitate this process.
In a 360° leadership assessment you gain a panorama of perceptions and views on an individual. For a culture survey, the same software capabilities are required – also a 360° view, but of corporate values rather than leadership competencies. The culture survey is the roll-up of the individual value questionnaire results.
The Evalex Culture/360 module presents you with state-of-the-art questionnaires for both leadership development and culture surveys. See the “products” section for more information on the questionnaires included.
It also allows for an automated approach to managing surveys. A scheduling facility allows you to program assessments to take place at pre-defined date ranges and to collect samples of data rather than surveying everyone in the company.
360 Leadership Assessments
Competencies underscore any HR initiative, including developing a sound corporate culture. One of the ways to develop or nurture a competence or a corporate value is by performing a 360° assessment.
A 360° assessment is a method of systematically collecting opinions about an individual’s performance and behaviour from a wide range of stakeholders. The stakeholders could include their peers or direct reports, their manager, their manager’s peers — along with people outside the organisation, such as customers and suppliers.
The benefit of collecting data of this kind is that an individual gets to see a panorama of perceptions and views from the people they work with, rather than to just have a self-perception.
A 360° assessment therefore affords a more complete picture.
Culture/360 Questionnaire
Culture Questionnaire
Evalex offers a number of pre-formatted questionnaires for culture surveys, as well as the option to build your own according to your own values. All questionnaires are distributed through our sophisticated Evalex Culture/360 software application.
The Evalex Super-Culture questionnaire comes as part of the system. It is the result of a comprehensive study undertaken by Evalex into the value systems of 32 companies. We chose the four best performing brands across eight industries, studied their frameworks and combined the results with our own research into the management practices of high impact corporate leaders. The outcome is a well-researched, comprehensive framework for organisational culture.
The Management Practice Inventory questionnaire focuses more on the assessment of practices used by leaders to manage their operations. Based on interviews with over 200 professionals in 10 organisations we isolated 70 constructs according to which staff evaluate the health of their organisation’s culture. These are the constructs that determine if stay with an organisation or leave for greener pastures. The Management Practices questionnaire can either be used for culture surveys or 360 leadership assessments.
Evalex can also work with your organisation to develop a culture framework and questionnaire based on your organisation’s values and value drivers. The system is highly flexible when it comes to generating company-specific value systems, culture questionnaires or 360 leadership questionnaires.
All three options are distributed online via the Evalex Culture/360 module to be completed by selected people on a 360 basis for each manager in the organisation.
360 Questionnaire
The Evalex Leadership Framework is one of the questionnaires readily available on the system. It is the result of a comprehensive study undertaken by Evalex into the value systems of 32 companies. We chose the four best performing brands across eight industries, studied their frameworks and combined the results with our own research into the management practices of high impact corporate leaders. The outcome is a well-researched, comprehensive framework for organisational leadership.
It is based on 17 specific leadership competencies, which are clustered into five main competence domains:
- How we relate to PEOPLE
- How we lead the SELF
- How we conduct THOUGHT leadership
- How we serve our CUSTOMERS
- How we DELIVER our tasks
The Leadership 360° questionnaire is aligned with the competencies assessed in the Evalex30 and 40 Leadership Assessment Centre, which makes the 360 questionnaire a great tool to stimulate and track development of areas identified in the assessment centre. Development areas may also include behavioural competencies as observed on the job, and through interactions with peers, direct reports, line managers and other key stakeholders.
The outcomes of this process can be used as the basis of a discussion between an employee and his or her line manager to establish which development interventions would be most appropriate for his or her needs.
For more information on the dimensions assessed, please refer to the “framework” section.
The second questionnaire, the Management Practice Inventory focuses more on the assessment of the practices used by leaders to manage their operations. Based on interviews with over 200 staff across ten different organisations, 70 constructs according to which staff evaluate the health of their organisation’s culture and according to which they decide to stay with an organisation or leave for greener pastures have been isolated. These have been translated into the MPE questionnaire. The Management Practices Questionnaire can either be used for culture surveys or 360 leadership assessments.
Alternatively, OMT can work with your organisation to develop a leadership framework and questionnaire based on your organisation’s values and value drivers.