One of our international keynote speakers at the L&D + HR Symposium, Michael Henderson (Corporate Anthropologist, Cultures at Work) presented his fantastic keynote on Creating a Culture of Belonging at the L&D + HR Symposium 2022. Here he gives his responses to the top 10 questions asked by the audience at the event.

1. How would you describe the difference between culture and engagement?

I have attached the link to an article on my website and LinkedIn where I discuss this topic;

https://www.culturesatwork.com/news/Why-Engagement-Is-Different-To-Culture
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhendersonnz/details/featured/1590307984505/single-media-viewer/

2. When personal values are understood… what do you recommend doing in sharing these in the organisation?

Personal values need not and perhaps should not be shared in order to have a positive impact in aligning people with their work and the company culture. Personal values are very subjective and are often difficult to explain to others in terms of the energy, meaning and motivation they provide us with. At best we can ask people to explore how their personal values align with the company values to increase the relevance of both sets of values in the workplace.

3. We’re told we need to be back in the workplace to create a sense of culture. What do you say to that?

We only need to be back in the workplace to build culture if we didn’t already have a culture worth belonging to prior to lockdowns and hybrid work options. Culture when done and understood effectively and comprehensively is not dependent on place.

4. With the right practices and changes, how long does a change in culture start to positively impact employee satisfaction?

When done effectively the change and impact on employees’ levels of satisfaction, fulfilment, sense of belonging and pride can be immediate.

5. What’s the best example of widespread culture change you have seen in an organisation, and how did they go about it?

It would take a book length written response to answer this question fully. In summary I can say this; I have never seen an effective culture change occur and stick without the people involved having a comprehensive understanding of culture and its function before the change initiative was begun.

6. Who in the organisation should define what you should care about? It’s not a case of what you should care about. It’s a case of, what do we care about?

Answering this question involves everyone contributing their experience and viewpoints about what people working in the organisation care about and then reviewing which parts of those are aligned with optimum work experience and results and which need addressing and re-aligning.

7. How have you seen companies measure and or connect cultural identity to strategic direction effectively?

All culture identities are demonstrated as a performance. Organisations that understand and deliberately connect their culture’s performance to the strategy intent achieve full alignment and deliver the desired results.

8. In your view are values effective in driving organisational performance if they are an articulation of the culture that already exists?

Yes absolutely. However my experience is that 9 out of 10 organisations do not have a clear or comprehensive understanding of the culture that already exists because they do not understand so much about culture.

9. I’d love to know the key levers organisations can pull to create culture change.

The first lever is significantly increasing the organistation’s culture capability to a level where the company actually understands what culture is, how culture forms, how culture functions, what culture delivers, who leads culture, who owns culture and multiple other aspects of understanding culture in its entirety. Anything less than this level of knowledge leads to average or short terms changes only.

10. Do you have strategies for HR to influence ELTs to start making a real shift to take culture more seriously?

I have attached a link to an article on my website where I address this question.

https://www.culturesatwork.com/files/shares/PDF%20Presentation%20Downloads/Vol1-Six%20Reasons.pdf

The L&D + HR Symposium brings together 150+ enterprise L&D Leaders in the beautiful Hunter Valley