People First® Cultural Health Assessment
The Integration of the Best Business Systems with the Best Human Systems
The Secret to Strong Business Performance... It’s all about the people!
Leaders of high performing organizations realize the importance of involving and energizing their Purpose Partners®. They see their Purpose Partners® as THE sustainable competitive advantage and know their Purpose Partners® not only affect the bottom line – they are the bottom line! There have been hundreds of studies conducted to better understand the impact Purpose Partners® have on the bottom line and all – unequivocally - state that creating and sustaining a healthy culture is key. In fact, a recent study conducted by The Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement at Northwestern University found that organizational culture is a significant driver of Purpose Partners® engagement. Therefore, cutting-edge leaders know the importance of creating a culture where the human spirit is honored and people are proud, committed, connected, and engaged. It is about the life force within each Purpose Partner®. We agree with these leaders and to that end we developed a validated Internet-based cultural survey called the People First® Cultural Health Assessment (CHA).
The People First® Cultural Health Assessment is appropriately named since it clearly defines the health drivers of an organization’s culture. How do we accomplish this? It is as simple as ABC. Using our validated Internet based cultural survey called the People First® Cultural Health Assessment we focus on: Alignment between the human system and business performance; Balance between the requirements of the Purpose Partners® and those of the business; Clarity of purpose – the Cultural Health Assessment seeks to remove the guesswork around what is expected – behaviors as well as business goals.
Aligning the human system and business systems to support and enhance the achievement of business goals
The Cultural Health Assessment was designed to measure what matters. It solicits Purpose Partners’® opinions about cultural elements that are key drivers in supporting leaders as they strive to meet their strategic business goals. The Cultural Health Assessment produces meaningful data that will support leaders in creating a culture which will attract, energize, and retain talent to improve the bottom line and increase shareholder value.
Our intent in developing this survey is to provide a methodology for honoring the human spirit within businesses while improving ROI. We believe we have achieved this by creating a robust, invasive, validated, and user-friendly Internet-based survey and a holistic, systemic, and comprehensive process for assessing, analyzing and transforming organizational culture.
More specifically the People First® Cultural Health Assessment helps you to
- Ascertain how healthy your organizational culture is by identifying barriers and drivers which affect productivity levels, employee retention/attraction/engagement levels, and customer satisfaction.
- Predict your organization’s capacity for success and competitive advantage.
- Design practical solutions and action plans to support you moving from the assessment phase to the action phase – we have a proven approach for translating the results of the Cultural Health Assessment into meaningful and purposeful business plans that really work.
- Prioritize short-term, mid-term and long-term change initiatives and identify resource requirements.
Features
- Replaces the need to conduct your traditional Purpose Partners® satisfaction survey.
- Is behaviorally based.
- Invasive - goes right to the core and measures the level of trust, fear, and bureaucracy in your organization. Gets at the heart of the issues and points of healthiness – we do an MRI versus X-ray.
- Does not use jargon - we call it what it is.
- Helps you gain insight into the destructive and constructive behaviors within your business.
- Integrates results from the survey into a post-survey action plan that provides you with very specific steps to improve operations.
- Looks at the soft and hard business issues, takes longitudinal data, and creates links.
- Determines alignment. Do you have all the right elements to change your marketing strategy, create teams, etc?
- Identifies where you need to focus your resources and energy.
- Allows you to see specific results that will have an immediate impact on your business, and lead to immediate buy-in to the process.
- Is a different tool, using different measurements, giving you a different diagnosis, which generates a different prescription.
- Is a second level diagnosis that tells you why you have a temperature – unlike a traditional Purpose Partner® satisfaction survey, which just tells you that you have a temperature.
- Helps address the things that keep you awake at night.
Benefits experienced by clients
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Methodology
Using the People First® Cultural Health Assessment, we collect both quantitative and qualitative data. We have come to recognize the importance of both types of data. It is our experience that the numbers support the stories and the stories support the numbers. The People First® Cultural Health Assessment is made up of 88 quantitative statements. We use a traditional Likert scale (1-5 scale) for the collection of the quantitative data. We use a minimum of three open-ended questions to collect the qualitative data, the Purpose Partners’® stories. These Purpose Partner® opinion questions are co-created and are also open for customization. We can add up to three additional questions if there is a specific topic or issue you would like to cull data on.
The CHA also contains a section called Cultural Descriptors. The Cultural Descriptors are a list of values such as: trusting, bureaucratic, respectful, Purpose Partner® involvement. Respondents are asked to select all the words that best describe their current and desired experience with the organization, giving us an immediate gap analysis. We encourage you to add your stated vision, mission, and values to this list.
During the "set up" of the CHA we also work with you to create data sort categories that fit your organization. This gives you the ability to slice the data however you choose, such as location, functional areas, years of service, and levels within the organization. This enables us to run reports and do analysis on these specific data sort categories.
Using this methodology helps you to
- Identify ways to take full advantage of the positive aspects of your organization’s culture to enhance success towards achieving your specific strategic goals.
- Identify unhealthy areas of your culture that are hindering or undermining your ability to achieve your stated goals.
- Design a plan to accentuate the positive and eliminate or minimize the negative aspects of your organization’s culture.
- Create a solid actionable plan that can be measured and benchmarked over time.
The results of the CHA also measure elements that will help you determine: Purpose Partner® engagement, Purpose Partner® satisfaction, internal "customer" satisfaction levels, leadership effectiveness, productivity levels, and clarity of your values, trust levels, and strategic business focus. It also helps you to determine the most efficient and cost-effective approach for utilizing resource for creating a healthy and positive culture.
The survey takes approximately 20 minutes to complete. Our survey has a very high level of anonymity and each Purpose Partner® is given a unique auto-generated password once they sign in to the URL. This password allows them to log off and log back on to the survey if they are unable to complete the CHA in one session, without losing any of data they may have already completed and submitted. This enhanced technology is especially beneficial for organizations such as manufacturing firms, call centers, or health care environments where it may not be possible to dedicate a full 20 minutes to completing the survey in one sitting.
We see conducting a cultural assessment as very inclusive. Therefore, we do not believe in random sampling. Although this is a subtle point, it is absolutely crucial as you begin to define, refine, and craft your culture. To not include everyone in the base line assessment is sending a message that not everyone’s opinion counts and is counter to creating an inclusive culture. It is of great importance that you solicit feedback from everyone – from those who are passionate about the current state of the business to those who are your biggest cynics and sceptics.
Although many consultants utilize one-on-one interviews and focus groups, we have found that these approaches are very labor and time intensive, very expensive, and do not provide clients with the ability to hear from everyone at all levels of the organization. Our approach invites all Purpose Partners® to participate, sending a strong message that their opinion does count. This is where a shift in culture begins to occur.
What Do We Measure?
Cultural Dimensions Examined by the People First® Cultural Health Assessment
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Leadership |
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Relationships |
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Communication |
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Infrastructure |
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| Involvement & Decision Making |
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| Change Management |
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| Finance |
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| Cultural Descriptors |
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| General Climate |
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