What Does A Workplace Culture Consultant Do, And How Can Engaging a Consultant Impact Your Business?

Great company culture can boost productivity, retention, and talent acquisition. However, knowing how to build an effective organizational culture is not always easy. Sometimes, you need to seek the help of a professional.

A workplace culture consultant can help guide organizations through the process of building or reinvigorating their company's culture. These specialists work with management to advise and assist in devising policies, benefits, and other factors that combine to make up an organization's culture.

You should consider hiring corporate culture consultants if you have any of the following issues:

• High staff turnover
• Low morale
• Troubles filling vacant positions
• A lack of employee engagement
• Low productivity
• Poor customer service
• High absenteeism

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How does workplace culture affect company performance?

Workplace culture can mean many different things, depending on who you ask. Essentially, it refers to the shared behaviors, values, attitudes, and goals that are present within an organization. Your corporate culture is demonstrated in how your team interacts with each other, makes decisions, and deals with your customers.

Your organization's workplace culture significantly affects both customer and employee experience^[1]. Here are some of the main areas where culture affects workplace performance.

Employee retention: Holding on to your best staff is a huge priority for modern organizations. A positive culture with lots of encouragement, strong communication, rewards, and career development is crucial to holding on to the best workers.

Talent acquisition: Finding the best talent is a challenge for modern businesses. A great culture is an appealing benefit. A shared vision and purpose with great teammates help attract the best staff to support your objectives.

Productivity: A positive culture encourages collaboration and a sense of community. A workplace environment like this will be far more productive^[2]. Additionally, improving the employee experience boosts engagement. As studies show, highly engaged employees are more productive^[3].

Customer experience: An engaged and satisfied workforce strives to serve your clients. When workers are happy at their job, they’re prepared to go the extra mile^[4]. This situation leads to better customer experiences.

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What is a workplace culture consultant?

Many businesses use consultants to help them achieve a variety of objectives. A workplace culture consultant is a specialist in corporate culture. They review an existing culture and help management plan the transition to a new and better identity.

A workplace culture consultant can help both new and established organizations. If you are a young company, they can help you devise and build your ideal corporate culture. Similarly, if you are an established firm, they can help you change your existing values.

The critical element of a workplace consultant's work is understanding your aims and helping you achieve them. A workplace is nothing without its staff. A consultant will work hard to know how your employees feel about your organization. From there, they can chart a course to achieve the benefits of a great culture.

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Responsibilities of a workplace culture consultant

Each workplace culture consultant works in their own particular way. However, at the most basic level, they work around your business goals and objectives and help you achieve them with their recommendations.

A corporate culture consultant will start by assessing your current situation. They will listen to your current goals or aims. These objectives could be financial, strategic, or organizational. Next, they will draw up a list of what can be improved. A workplace culture consultant will also explore any existing pain points you have, like productivity, retention, low morale, etc.

From here, these consultants will explore company data. This information might be employee turnover, financials, exit interviews, and general operations.

Once they’ve compiled this data, they will move on to employee research. Some consultants will look at employee satisfaction surveys. Others will conduct anonymous interviews, assessments, or focus groups with your team. This process will help them unearth what problems and areas you need to address.

When all this information is gathered, a workplace culture consultant will meet with management and share their recommendations. Buy-in from leadership is crucial at this juncture. Implementing recommendations can take time, so many consultants will stick around for a few months to help your organization transition.

Your culture won’t change overnight. However, your productivity and performance should increase as it slowly shifts into something more positive.

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How Can Engaging a Consultant Impact Your Business

A good corporate consultant will take time to listen to your objectives. Their interactions with management are essential for setting goals for the project. Engaging a consultant means you can directly address any issues you have or discover problems that are contributing to a loss of productivity, high turnover, or underperformance.

Once your organization has communicated what you want from the process, a consultant can help build a road map to get you to your destination. As described above, this involves reviewing data and speaking to your employees.

Understanding the positives and negatives of your business can help you identify areas that you can enhance or improve. Some of the things a workplace culture consultant might recommend are:

• Better tools or workflows
• Changes in management and communication style
• A review of employee benefits
• Making employee health and well-being improvements
• Changes to your recruitment policy

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As you implement the recommended changes, your pain points should reduce. Additionally, you should see changes in productivity, effectiveness, and revenues. A Gallup study^[5] has demonstrated that organizations with positive employee engagement have:

• 20% more sales
• 10% higher customer satisfaction rates
• 21% more profitability

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Key Takeaways

Good company culture can help:

• Reduce turnover
• Boost recruitment
• Drive productivity
• Improve customer service levels
• Enhance the employee experience
• Reduce absenteeism

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Hiring a consultant is a great first step toward better company culture. However, you need buy-in from management to implement the recommendations.

Employee engagement has a huge influence on productivity, innovation, and retention. When you improve your culture, your teams buy into your mission and are prepared to go the extra mile. Additionally, by clearly defining your culture, you can identify the type of employees who will fit your organization.

As recruiting top talent becomes more complex, organizations that retain their best employees will have an advantage. Great company culture is very attractive to new hires too. Within a tight labor market, your business's reputation could be the difference between securing or missing out on the talent you need to drive growth and productivity.

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[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinessdevelopmentcouncil/2021/12/01/the-impact-of-culture-in-the-workplace/?sh=47ff8e1c1285

[2] https://hbr.org/2015/12/proof-that-positive-work-cultures-are-more-productive

[3] https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/fundamentals/relations/engagement/factsheet#gref

[4] https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/new_study_shows/

[5] https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236366/right-culture-not-employee-satisfaction.aspx