Organizational culture issues such as ambiguity, poor communication, and inconsistency can lead to a hostile workplace, harassment, bullying, and high turnover. Companies can use external consultants and employee reviews to identify and address these issues, which may include differences in priorities and bad leadership. Defining the issues and communicating clear goals can help address the situation.
Common organizational culture issues can include ambiguity, poor communication, and inconsistency. These can contribute to a hostile and unpleasant workplace experience, which can make workers less loyal and can contribute to problems such as harassment, bullying and high turnover. Companies that have concerns about their structure and organization can use external consultants to get fresh insight into their culture and may also consider using employee reviews to get feedback from their staff. These tools can help companies identify and address issues with organizational culture.
Ambiguity is a common problem. Employees may not understand what is expected of them or may feel that stated policies conflict with actual practices. For example, workplace policies may state that management supports a healthy work-life balance, but the company may only promote single people who are willing to work long hours without complaints. The stated claim is that the business is family friendly but in reality this is not the case.
Inconsistency can be another contributing factor to organizational culture problems. Employees may feel that policies are not applied consistently and fairly; managers cannot be penalized for activities that employees expect to be punished for, for example. Companies can also be inconsistent across departments, which can contribute to the development of resentment. People in HR, for example, might want to know why the IT department has better offices or always seems to be on vacation.
Poor communication is another common problem with the organizational culture of companies of all sizes. Employees may not communicate well with each other and may feel uncomfortable approaching supervisors with ideas, suggestions, and concerns. From top to bottom, companies may not clearly articulate expectations and goals, which can confuse staff members about what they should be doing.
Other organizational culture issues may include differences in priorities. Employees may feel that a company focuses too much on income and pushes them to work long hours, foregoing entitlements such as breaks and overtime. Some companies have an organizational culture of guilt that forces employees to try too hard to do their job. This can create backlash when resentful employees express anger at each other’s organizational culture or customers.
Bad leadership can be another problem. Employees may have difficulty following up on people they don’t comply with or taking orders from supervisors who don’t seem to know what they’re doing. If leadership is weak, inconsistent, or disreputable, it can contribute to organizational culture problems.
Companies that know they have organizational culture issues can define them, creating lists of examples to understand the specifics of the issues that need to be addressed. With this information at hand, they can begin to address the situation. For example, if a company’s goals are ambiguous, leadership may meet to discuss what the company wants to do and how it wants to achieve it. This information can be communicated to company personnel to make them feel more comfortable.
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