Read Our Blog On Culture Change

Have you ever contacted a Customer Service department as a customer of one of the many companies that claim to provide a service? If you have, I’m willing to bet that one of the first messages you received was, “We apologise as we are very busy at the moment?”. “Busy doing what?” But your work is the customer, and your daily duty is only to sort out the problems your company has caused, so you must be able to do that.

Current data from Owl Lab’s ongoing study on working patterns indicates that 25% of workers are still opting for remote work. Hybrid working setups have increased by over 15%. Traditional office work has decreased by almost 25%. When a new employee joins any organisation these variations in working patterns lead to a key question. How can they all be successfully inducted in ways that accommodate these variations?

When a hotel delivers an outstanding guest experience it’s often a measure of how well the best aspects of organisational culture and national culture have been fused. I recently encountered an excellent example of this happening in the new Hyatt Regency in Nairobi’s Westlands district. What sets Hyatt Regency apart is the genuine intent of staff to welcome and care for guests. Staff were happy, solicitous and proactive.

Managers often know when things aren’t going well with their team members. They may encounter expressions of defeat or hopelessness, like "What’s the point?" More often, it’s evident not in what staff say but in what they do. In many well-established cultures that seem okay from the top down, we often encounter a psychological condition known as Learned Helplessness in the middle ranks.

Culture change is mainly about identifying behaviours that positively impact the business and getting more employees to demonstrate them. It can’t be mandated, so it has to be persuaded. Creating a popular movement that is pro-change. In most companies, employees are surprised to be given the chance to contribute in this way. This creates an opening in which the bravest can step forward to make change happen.

When brand values are being set out, so many cliché words tend to be used. Trust, Innovation, Professionalism and Integrity are probably the most frequent ones. But if an organisation isn’t trustworthy, innovative, professional and has integrity, customers and employees should avoid it anyway. Another word which is being increasingly overused is Empathy: ‘the ability to understand and share the feelings of another’.