3 Signs Your Culture is Sinking

Spend enough time on the water and eventually you'll experience sinking. Swimming, boating and rafting, are all activities that by their nature are in a constant state of movement across the water. However, with enough loss of propulsion or buoyancy, eventually you will sink to the bottom. Organizational culture is not overly different. Like a kayak floating down a powerful river, culture is subject to a variety of forces that could impact its structural integrity, leaving your employees drowning.

Spotting a leak in your culture isn't hard. There are 3 easy signs that you have a problem; your ability to keep, attract or receive top talent can be your signal buoys.

You have poor employee retention

Whether they leave on their own or you are consciously turning your business into a revolving door, retention matters. Good talent stays where it's fed. Good cultures know how to help struggling talent find their way.

Things to think about:

• Compare your retention to that of your other departments within the organization, your market and your competitors
• Look at your retention from the eyes of your prospects and top clients: How many new faces have they seen, how many 'Sue is no longer with the company' emails have you sent, consider how the constant change impacts your brand or the perception of you as a leader.
• Inspect your training department, your ramping period, your new employee support system, your tenured employee growth path.

You can't fill positions

The genie is out of the bottle, poor cultures are well-documented. Good talent does good research; if you can't fill your roles, something is keeping them away.

Things to think about:

• Review your reviews: Better yet, have your partner/spouse/board members review your reviews and feed back to you their unbiased assessment.
• Review your competitor's reviews: What's the difference in what their people say compared to yours?
• Inspect your talent acquisition process: Is it too long, too short, would you be able to get the same job today if you were applying (would you want to)?
• Send your compensation and benefits package to a trusted outside source, ask them to be critical in return.
• Think creatively about fringe benefits: Employ a lot of young parents? Include memberships to the zoo, museum or design a monthly date-night/babysitter reimbursement program that encourages parents to get time away for themselves. It doesn't take much effort to think outside the box but the dividends will pay a lot in return.

Your employee referrals are stagnant

Your best employees should be magnets to their most talented network. If your employees aren't continuously feeding your talent pool or you only receive referrals as part of a referral bonus, you have a problem. The best cultures want to be better, often creating new roles off the recommendation of their most talented people who proactively preach the value of their talented network and how they can collaboratively build something even better...together!

Things to think about:

• Problem solve with the outside: When the business is facing challenges, be open to how your top talent has overcome similar hurdles in their previous roles. Don't just ask what they did before, take it one step further and ask them who else was involved, ask for introductions, bring them into your business fold and reward their time and suggestions.
• Invite your people's people into your culture: Family events, gaming nights, conferences, open office hours. Let them see how you work, where you work and why you work together.

Check Your Culture Flow

Organizations assume that once a culture is established, it is a permanent fixture. Yet while company values are the stable bedrock of an organization, company culture is the vessel which is floating on the ever evolving, and sometimes treacherous river above. When there is a shift in that flow, it is often directly related to how leadership chooses to bring the values of the business to life (or not) and the subsequent buy-in or skepticism of employees. Look for the warning signs that your culture has sprung a leak and take evasive action before your team members find themselves drowning at the bottom.

-sam

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