HR STRATEGY - EMPLOYEE JOURNEY & CULTURE

Norms are the widely accepted individual and interpersonal behaviors in an organization, which should reflect the values. While values are the foundation of a culture, norms are the embodiment and manifestation of them within the culture.

A new employee views and feels a culture through the norms of how team members treat themselves and each other. The adage "lead by example" is crucial to the norms of an organization. People learn through mimicry, and leaders need to live the values and reinforce the norms of an organization.

Norms permeate through all interactions, including conversations, meetings, emails, communications, Slack, events, projects, and personal and external interactions.

We often overlook the environment as a strategic driver of culture, values, and organizational performance. As a society, we spend so much time, attention, and money on the interior design of our homes. It is the complete opposite for workspaces, where millions spend 40+ hours a week.

Small strategic investments in workspaces can pay large dividends. Think about simple ideas, like putting up posters of the organizational values, employees living those values, recent successes, customer logos, and other messages you want to reinforce. You can name conference rooms after clients or the core values. Or, you can make meaningful investments to transform workspaces to be collaborative, supportive, and engaging spaces of productivity, like Google does (examples below).

The takeaway is to be purposeful in workspace design and decor. Understand what values or cultural elements you want the environment to support, and then build them into the environment.

Much like the customer journey is a core component of corporate strategy, the employee journey is a core component of HR strategy. At a high level, the employee journey includes recruiting, hiring, onboarding, development, evaluation, and advancement. Companies with strong employee journeys help elevate and realize the potential of their team members and utilize the employee journey to reinforce their culture.

To develop a strong employee journey strategy engage team members in diagnosing issues, coming up with goals, ideas initiatives, and executing the initiatives. An employee journey strategy comes down to answering four fundamental questions, which are below.

The output of a culture and employee strategy are goals and initiatives. The challenge comes in figuring out the optimal goals and initiatives that will help elevate and realize the potential of team members. Below are the four steps to a successful employee journey and cultural transformation.

Engage team members throughout the process, especially in diagnosing and ideating. The more team member engagement, the more buy-in and the higher chance of transformational success.

Given the importance of elevating and realizing the potential of the individuals and teams that drive the development and execution of a company's strategies, embarking on developing a strong employee journey strategy is a no-brainer. In every company, there is a lot of upside in strengthening the culture and employee journey. Just be sure to engage the entire organization in generating, prioritizing, and implementing cultural and employee journey initiatives.

If you want to talk about your HR & Org strategy with an experienced strategy coach, set up some time with Joe Newsum, a Mckinsey Alum, and the author of this content and website.

Download the 185-page HR & Org Strategy PowerPoint Presentation . The fully editable and professionally designed deck will give you a jump start on your HR & Org Strategy.