Business Assets: Assess your company culture

A. Company culture is perhaps the most difficult success indicator to place a value on; however, it is the most important value to cultivate a thriving business. Most companies neglect the importance of accessing the intangible value of their company culture and fail to identify systems and programs to asses the core elements of company culture, support them and measure them.

Key elements to consider when assessing company culture include: employee satisfaction, overall business environment, staff longevity, staff interaction, staff and management interaction, and employee commitment to the company.

To measure the intangible values of company culture, I would recommend you start first by identifying the elements as mentioned above and identifying perhaps the top five which you think would be key to a positive culture. Once you identify these areas, you can begin assessments through basic communication with staff members and identifying value systems to rate their responses. For example, ask your staff members what they enjoy about working with the company. Their ability to answer this question in a quick and positive fashion would indicate a certain level of overall satisfaction. Additionally, ask them to supply the top five reasons why they enjoy working with your organization. Create a numeric scale to match responses and responsiveness per element investigated. Once you have evaluated and measured the intangible values of your company's culture you can use this information to create an improved environment or maintain the status of our current work culture.

Based on the information received, you should create reporting, data collection and quarterly assessments that focus on your culture and overall happiness.  Just as a good business manger collects financial information every month, a very good business manger would also be collecting information regarding the values of his current company culture. HME

Ryan Ruskin is an independent consultant and attorney. Reach him at ryanm17r@yahoo.com or 772-528-4818.