Corporate Culture

Currently, there is a trend among corporations to change corporate culture. They try to make the office more "personal" or "homely" as corporations try to achieve work life balance. Although this is generally a good thing, I think changing corporate culture first lies on the objective of the corporation.

Changing corporate culture is very difficult to do since everyone must buy in to the ideas of top management. Moreover, a change of culture does not necessarily increase in productivity. I believe that corporate culture should first show the change in image the company would like to project towards stakeholders. For example, banks cannot copy the corporate culture of IT companies as bank must show a sense of professionalism and solidarity.

Also, it is diffcult to go against the corporate culture. This is usually frowned upon by top management and colleagues especially if the culture is very much entrenched. For those corporate cultures that are entrenched tend to be static and is the most difficult to change. Personally, I believe that corporate culture make or break the company. It is the company's prerogative on which values and norms to uphold. If the company culture is not competitive in today's work environment, then most likely this company has a greater turnover or has lack in productivity.

Sincerity in Management

Today's work environment demand much from management. Employees are more demanding in the working environment stressing on the work life balance. So to keep employees satisfied, management had to adapt new styles in managing people. Telecommuting, flexible hours, compressed work weeks are just some of the initiatives taken. However, motivating people to work for a company still lies with the work environment, specifically management.

I have been lucky to have worked for a company where politics does not play a major role. In fact, I think the company I used to work for treat all workers fairly. Testament to this is that there were some who have resigned but willingly came back because the working environment was much better. The furniture, the colleagues and the treatment of the bosses are just some reasons given but I think it is the company's culture of treating everyone professionaly while respecting them personally. There are no secretaries, we can address our bosses by their first names and we can openly contradict them, professionally of course. This kind of culture decreases the stress in the work place knowing that there is always an open door for everyone. Although they stress that productivity and profitability is the number one goal, we feel like one big family.

In addition, corporate social responsibility had become a major part of the company. This also helped everyone become more emotionally engaged to the company and to each other since we are now able to do something about work. This gave us a sense of bonding with each other which futher cultivate respect among ourselves.

In this era of 24/7 work, it is imperative for management to realize that it is not enough to maximize the potential of each employee, it is important to acknowledge that employees have pesonal needs also. Addressing this need can mean the competitive edge for the company.