Growth, performance, and employee retention are driven by a company’s corporate culture. Conversely, toxic work culture can drive away people, partners, and stakeholders, impact growth, and lower profits. Therefore, creating a dynamic, collaborative, and inclusive work culture that promotes employee and business growth is key to ensuring an organization’s success. However, culture is not easy to build; moreover, it is a constantly moving target that must be worked on over time. In this article, InfoCepts Chief People Officer, Smrita Dubey talks about building and managing a workplace culture that maximizes employee engagement, performance, and retention for long-term business success. 
Why Culture Matters
We are in the new normal where it is no longer necessary to have a 40-or 50-hour-a-week corporate job. The new economy has opened up new options, making it difficult to retain talent. In addition, increasing globalization, expansion of technology, and cross-collaboration between teams make building culture one of the most complex domains of organizational development. Today’s workplaces are dealing with different generations of Millennials. Gen X. Boomers. It is essential to get them all working together. Maintaining social and corporate cohesion among these varied groups requires a vital regulating function.
In addition, factors like associate engagement, adaptability, and length of tenure are all influenced by culture. For employees, it is no longer just about the paycheck -it goes much deeper than that.
Developing a Winning Organizational Culture
While there are many different ways to build a corporate culture, in this article, I focus on three aspects that I have leveraged to facilitate and nurture a solid foundation of culture in my professional journey.
Align organization and associate goals
An organization is built on a solid core foundation, an objective, a mission, and an underlying reason to be in business. The purpose of its existence. It is essential that every employee feels connected to the meaning of their work and is aligned with the organization’s common goal. Goal alignment plays a crucial role in business success. Furthermore, every employee has personal goals for growth and well-being. It is also essential to address these goals to foster a strong sense of belonging and working as one team. To align individual goals with corporate goals, connecting with employees through solid communication channels and forums is necessary.
Openness and transparency in communication can be achieved through different channels like team meetings, town halls, and newsletters where the leadership team directly speaks to associates on annual work plans, goals, and future roadmap.
Once employees connect with the “why,” the “how” becomes easier.
For example, at InfoCepts, we have been successful in imparting our joint mission: to help our customers “Stay Modern’.
This philosophy is now deeply embedded in our DNA and aligned with everything we do, from talent acquisition, learning, and development to customer value creation. In addition, we have, in fact, been successful in aligning our different stakeholders, including partners and vendors, with this philosophy through our consistent messaging and reinforcement through open dialogues with our associates.
Our quarterly town halls communicate our strategic goals and roadmaps, where the leadership team talks about the strategic plans and new developments, achievements, customer acquisitions, and more. In addition, we have a dedicated corporate communications team that leverages interactive collaboration tools like Yammer and Teams to keep associates updated with different happenings within the company.
Build Associate Resource Groups to connect outside work
Another effective way of building culture and aligning personal and strategic goals is by forming employee resource groups. Employee resource groups offer a common ground for associates and bind them with shared interests and aspirations. Through these common groups, associates can collaborate, exchange their experiences and seek support for whatever they might need. They are also wonderful ways to build a sense of belonging amongst associates.
For example, at InfoCepts, we have several diverse forum groups for our associates which they can participate and choose from. From a pet lover’s society to a book club to a food club, from serious technical discussions to movie fan clubs and fitness clubs, our associates collaborate on topics different from day-to-day work.
Engage the hearts and minds of Your associates
Energize your teams and drive growth by building powerful and dynamic platforms for associates to come together, like annual awards functions or an annual retreat. These common platforms are opportunities for organizations to acknowledge and cater to associates’ personal goals and needs.
For example, annual company events are an excellent way to bring a diverse group of associates together and plan for the coming year in a casual, fun, and friendly environment. It also offers associates an opportunity to showcase their talents and connect personally with each other, thereby bringing in the sense of belonging and ownership. A well-executed event is refreshing and lifts the spirit of the entire company.
For instance, InfoCepts Annual Retreats are a great example because they bring together our 1500+ associates from across the globe in the most fun and novel way. This mega get-together is a much-awaited event in which every associate participates. Special care is taken with meticulous planning to ensure associates get opportunities to spend quality time together.
Right from the travel of our associates to their complete itinerary, we chart out and execute unique ideas that help our associates connect, collaborate, and celebrate in an entertaining, fun-filled way. This year we had a mega event in the beautiful city of Taj, where our associates spent three days together. During these three days, many platforms were created to help InfoCeptians put across their thoughts, connect with the leadership team, and showcase their talents. Teams were encouraged to participate in various group activities, from discussions around data analytics to health and well-being. This long-standing tradition of having annual retreats at InfoCepts has created a sense of belonging and oneness. It is today an integral part of the InfoCepts culture through which we continue to work together towards our common goal to help our customers to ‘Stay Modern.’
Culture is an ongoing journey
Culture evolves continuously in any organization as new people join and bring in their new ideas. Corporate culture is defined by behavior. It’s how your associates do things. Ideology, vision, mission, and values set the precedence. But culture is really about how associates behave and feel in the company. And while companies may be successful in building a great culture, it is essential always to have an open loop for feedback and improvements.
Work towards creating a culture of trust, respect, and belonging that your associates love and see the magical things you can achieve together.
About the Author
Smrita Dubey is the Chief People Officer at InfoCepts, a global leader of end-to-end data & analytics solutions.
At InfoCepts, Smrita is responsible for developing and executing human resource strategy in support of the overall business plan and strategic direction of the organization. She has rich experience in all facets of HR including leadership development, compensation & benefits, performance & talent management, people analytics, and driving organizational transformation.
Smrita is a seasoned HR leader with a sharp business acumen and rich experience in matured technology organizations like Infosys, Sterlite Technologies, and Hewlett-Packard. She is an alumna of IIM Kozhikode, from where she graduated with a Masters in Business Administration.
She is a foodie and an adventure enthusiast who enjoys reading and traveling. She is married and loves spending her free time with her twins.
