Employers can change a company's culture but this usually happens over time. It requires an understanding of the current work culture, a commitment to effecting the right change, time and the right strategic and directional tools to achieve this.
There might be conditions under which change is not possible within an organization. One of the main conditions is employee attitude. If people are resistant to change or simply refuse to accept a change in the work place then it makes change impossible. Especially if employees do not see the necessity for that change or barriers exists that makes communicating that change unclear.
How Can Leaders Leverage Work Culture to Effect Change
Leaders can take the following steps to enrich and more effectively leverage their work culture to affect organizational change:
Executive Support- executives must first display the change that they want to see their employees model. They should also motivate employees to see their vision for this change and how beneficial it can be to their work environment.
Training, Communication and Mentoring- communication and training are highly important to organizational change as employee attitude and behavior forms the basis of this change. Having training sessions about how to effectively work with each other, how to offer constructive criticism etc., can greatly improve how employees relate to each other, and how they handle a task .
Other ways include: reviewing the organizational structure, redesigning the company's approach to rewards recognition (both intrinsic and extrinsic) and by creating a value and belief system that helps employees to see the vision of the company and be motivated by that vision.
Of course, there will always be resistance to change in an organization, even if just by one individual. Engaging employees through meetings, discussions etc., is all apart of the communication process. Communication in an organization is not about an employer dictating to his employees. Communication encompasses meetings, back and forth dialogues, mentoring, private discussions etc. So the word "communication" already considers all of those things without them being said outright. Communication is never a one way street and in cases where it is, it becomes a dictatorship.
Certainly there are employees that are hired strictly for the purpose of transforming an organization. In that case, change does happen quickly, if they do a good job. Looking from a general perspective though, this does not normally happen. I think for any change to occur you must understand the current work culture, irrespective of how young a company is. For change to occur within a company, be it large or small, there are certain internal (employee attitude, systems and processes etc.) and external (economic stimuli, political system etc.) factors that must be considered. How long this takes will depend on those factors .
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