Facing increased pressure to deliver more growth and productivity while addressing workforce mobility trends and skills shortages, 87 percent of business leaders cite organizational culture and employee engagement as their top challenge, according to Deloitte’s “Global Human Capital Trends 2015” report.

Responding to this need, Deloitte developed CulturePath^TM, a culture-change solution that enables companies to measure their culture, pinpoint strengths and gaps, and drive behaviours needed to achieve critical business objectives.

“Organizational culture is top-of-mind for the C-suite today because business is changing more rapidly — and is more competitive — than ever before,” says Anthony Abbatiello, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP.

“To thrive in this environment, companies must understand their employees’ beliefs and motivations, and connect those emotionally-influenced decisions and actions to business strategy. Organizations that align people to purpose are more engaged and better able to achieve key business goals.”

Using an analytics-driven diagnostic, CulturePath^TM measures eight specific indices that help the leadership and HR professionals within an organization understand the company’s current culture.

This includes four foundational attributes that are core to achievement of specific business strategies – collective focus, risk and governance, external orientation and change, and innovation. Plus, four differentiating attributes tied directly to behavioural motivations and emotions – courage, commitment, inclusion, and shared beliefs.

See: Creating Growth-Based Culture is the Key to Employee Happiness

To transform corporate culture successfully, Organizations should focus on three critical areas:

1. Align culture with business strategy. Today, culture is an enabler of strategy. This means companies should define the behaviours that align to achieving their business strategy.
2. Make emotional connections with employees. Companies need to take a page from consumer marketing and create emotional connections between the strategy and the workforce to create engaged, productive, and loyal employees. Research has found that “mission-driven” companies have 30 percent higher levels of innovation and 40 percent higher retention.
3. Take your culture off cruise control. A company must actively manage its culture and adjust desired behaviours and processes as business strategies evolve over time to have an enduring effect on business performance and the bottom line.

“To make a significant and lasting impact on culture change, the levers that drive performance and behaviours need to be adjusted over time because the business strategy, work and employees continually change,” says Marc Kaplan, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP, and national leader of the organization transformation and talent service line.

“While culture can sometimes seem amorphous, it is possible to measure and develop required cultural attributes. Still, there needs to be an ongoing commitment to monitoring, measuring and actively shaping the culture that need to drive the organizational strategy.”

The solution is cloud-based and mobile-accessible, enabling business leaders to visualize explore and compare key data using an intuitive dashboard. Coupling this technology with deep experience in consumer behaviour and organizational change, Deloitte delivers a precise plan with actionable insights for cultural transformation.

Also read: 7 Keys on Nurturing an Authentic Company Culture