In my current series of blog posts, Workplace Spotlight, I am examining how various companies have created extraordinary organisational cultures. These cultures act to inspire their employees, capture the minds of their customers and set the standard for workplaces across the globe.

But organisational culture, once implemented, can be difficult to measure to determine whether it is affecting real and positive change.

Coined in 1951 by Dr Elliott Jaques, a company’s Organisational Culture encompasses the values, philosophy and behaviours that combine to make up ‘the unique social and psychological environment of an organisation’.

Several factors over the past few years have seen compliance in the recruitment process pushed to the front of the HR agenda.

Not only do poor recruitment practices leave organisations open to potential legal implications, but they also lead to low staff retention, costing time and money.

With the reduced rate of Jobkeeper kicking in from 28 September, it is an added pressure for a large percentage of businesses, many of whom are struggling to manage labour costs in a tough economy.

Restructures and redundancies are common practices for businesses outside of COVID-19 however, now, more than ever, it is important business owners manage redundancies properly and fairly.

In my blog from a few weeks ago, I discussed Simon Sinek’s seminal TED talk How Great Leaders Inspire Action, which focuses on the importance of starting with why. In today’s blog, I will delve into Sinek’s idea of the Golden Circle.

The Golden Circle consists of three sections, the how, the why and the what.

For all organisations, big and small, it is their personnel that lie at the heart of their business success. Managing the core functions of human resources is therefore essential for any company wanting to remain at the top of their game.

For many small to medium businesses, however, they often don’t have the capacity to support a full-scale HR department, leading to HR compliance being overlooked.

Wealth giant AMP has found itself embroiled in its own #metoo moment, shedding light on the mishandling of workplace misconduct allegations.

The case, which involves allegations against AMP Capital chief executive Boe Pahari by former AMP employee Julia Szlakowski was in the news again this week, with AMP refusing to release documents pertaining to the internal investigation to Ms Szlakowski lawyers.

With COVID-19 radically transforming business operations across Australia, HR teams are being faced with a raft of employment-related implications.

From negotiating unavoidable stand downs to managing the Workplace Health and Safety of remote workers, Human Resource leaders have had to adjust rapidly in light of the changing conditions.

With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to change the nature of business operations around the planet, there has never been a more significant time to discover, or re-discover, your organisational ‘why’.

On a fundamental level, all businesses operate on the back of three essential questions: What they do, how they do it and perhaps most importantly, why they do it.

Regardless of how smart an organisation is, business health trumps business intelligence every time. No matter how well a company performs in terms of the fundamentals of business- that is strategy, marketing, finance, and technology- without organisational health, they will fail to excel. It is the health of companies that take them from ‘good to great’.

Patrick Lencioni describes organisational health as the single most significant advantage any company can achieve. Despite this, many leaders seem to ignore its importance, even though it simple, free and available to anyone who wants it.

According to a recent study by KPMG on the Future of HR, where over 1300 HR executives from across the globe participated, 3 in 5 respondents believed that HR is at risk of becoming redundant.

Let’s say you have worked through the first four dysfunctions of a team in a linear, chronological manner, addressing each in turn and achieving a relative level of success.

Your team should now be able to display vulnerability-based trust, to engage in healthy conflict, to commit to team decisions with conviction and to hold their colleagues accountable.

Accountability. It's a term that has been overused, misused and misunderstood in organisations since it came into business parlance. It has gotten a bad rap over time; its association with blame, onus, fault and even guilt, often make it a concept that companies pay lip service to, but never truly embrace.

Once an organisation has mastered vulnerability-based trust and the ability to deal with conflict constructively, the team is then able to overcome the third dysfunction of a team; the lack of commitment.

In my last post, I discussed Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and how leaders can work to turn these weaknesses into potential strengths. I then explored how teams can work to build vulnerability-based trust, which is the base of the pyramid that forms the five essentials of high performing teams. Without trust, there is no way an organisation can move up the pyramid, leveraging this trust to thrive as a team, rather than just a group.

In my last series of blog posts, I discussed the processes I use to help my clients create a strong organisational culture. This starts with a business defining their core values and vision and then ensuring that everyone in their team is on board with these values and rowing in the same direction.

In my last blog post, I focused on how your organisation’s core values should be embedded through your entire team. From hiring to firing and everything in between, your company values should underpin every decision you and your team make.

Your organisation’s core values underpin your company’s identity and should guide your decision making in all areas of operations. This means you must always ‘hire, fire, review, reward and recognise people with your core values at the forefront of your mind’.