The 5 Worst Influences on Organizational Culture

Organizational culture should be the vision you have for your company, but this is not always the case. Only 12 percent of employees believe their company is effective at driving their desired culture. Another 64 percent feel they do not have a strong work culture. Whether you are aware of it or not, your company has its own culture. Without direction and positive influences, negative factors can take hold, shaping your culture in a way that can become harmful for your business.

These elements can hinder your company’s development of an effective culture:

1. Poor communication.

Companies must ensure leaders at all levels communicate values, vision, norms, goals and major changes effectively and regularly so that employees fully understand the processes taking place. When there is little bottom up communication, employees don’t feel their voice is being heard or feel intimidated to speak up, encouraging fear rather than respect.

A survey by the American Psychological Association found that 1 in 4 employees don’t trust their employers, and a study by Fordham University found that roughly half of managers did not trust company leaders. People will never be happy when jobs are being cut, but taking time to communicate the reasons for downsizing and where the company is going shifts the mood from abandon ship to mutual understanding.

Related: Playing the Blame Game is the Last Thing You Want to do When Addressing a Problem

2. Toxic employees.

Too much competition and a toxic work environment lead to a decrease in knowledge sharing, an increase in company politics and a transfer of destructive norms. A Harvard Business School study found that each toxic worker costs a company $12,000 in turnover costs.

Employees exposed to a toxic worker are 46 percent more likely to be fired for misconduct themselves, resulting in the spread of toxic behaviors to the rest of the team. This is magnified when the individual is in a position of authority, causing a cascade effect from managers to employees. While it may seem common sense to hire the candidate with the best technical skills, hiring for culture fit will help you to maintain the vision you have for your company.

Related: What to do When Your Company is Being Held 'Hostage' by a Toxic Employee

3. Focus on profit.

Deloitte found companies that don’t have a strong sense of purpose tend to focus more on the bottom line (69 percent) and short-term returns (52 percent). A combined Columbia and Duke University study, found that a focus on figures over people can encourage unethical behavior. Shiva Rajgopal of Columbia University explained, “Our research provides systematic evidence -- perhaps for the first time -- that effective cultures are less likely to be associated with short-termism, unethical behavior or earnings management to pad quarterly earnings.”

Several scandals that have appeared in the media lately, including Volkswagen, Toshiba, Zenefits and ANZ Bank, have all been attributed to toxic cultures that encouraged unethical business practices.

4. Resistance to change.

Phrases such as “we always do things this way,” “that won’t work here” and “it’s not my problem” hinder progress. Google’s study on collaboration found that within 258 companies, 73 percent of employees believed their company would be more successful if they were encouraged to work in flexible and collaborative ways. Yet the biggest barriers to creating a culture of collaboration were changing working styles and habits (22 percent), a lack of incentives to work collaboratively (17 percent) and a lack of leadership (14 percent).

Related: Should You Ditch Annual Performance Reviews? It Depends.

5. Performance management.

A company’s performance management system can also have a negative influence on its culture. Though once extremely popular, stack ranking has now been discredited by HR experts, thought leaders and even its founder, General Electric. By ranking employees against each other, the system generates a fear of failure. This leads to low risk-taking and innovation.

Another popular system, once a year performance reviews, hinder modernisation and learning agility by failing to provide coaching and feedback at a pace that matches industry changes.

To keep these negative influences at bay, you need to create a strong organizational culture that reflects the values and purpose of your company. For more information on how you can influence your culture to achieve success, read this white paper.