7 Pillars of Positive Culture to Drive Positive Change

The seven pillars of a positive culture

YOUR BUSINESS CULTURE READY FOR THE NEXT DECADE?

Contents

Introduction Executive summary

Workplace trends and culture

The 7 pillars of a positive culture

Leadership and culture

The great resignation and culture

Future capabilities and culture

Cost of poor culture

A way forward

About Peoplewise

References

Introduction

The combination of the impact of the global pandemic on working patterns, alongside the resulting economic downturn and serious threats to many industry sectors has underlined the need for organisations to focus on building out positive organisational cultures to positively adapt to change. Positive cultures provide businesses with the capacity to be forward looking, reinventive with their business strategies and models, and remain highly adaptive to deliver the positive change that will inevitably be needed over the next decade.

Identifying how to successfully build positive cultures that allow organisation to thrive in our volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world is more necessary than ever before.

Use this paper as a practical guide to getting culture ready for the next decade.

Executive Summary

Organisationswith theforesightto investinbuildinga PositiveCulture gainhuge opportunityto realisesustained performanceand long-term competitive advantagewhatever adversities, challenges,and setbacksarise.

This report focuses on how businesses across the globe can deliver positive change achieved through developing a positive culture.

It aims to help employers deepen their understanding of why a positive organisational culture is imperative, what it comprises of and how they can develop it.

This report should inform the creation of business culture strategies that will enable an organisation to be more future focused with a shared vision, take a broader and more optimistic perspective, have more thoughtful reactions to setbacks, and stronger relationships to leverage both within and outside the organisation, seize growth opportunities, foster optimal performance and maintain a strong focus on the wellbeing of its people and community.

Bringing all these elements together results in a positive culture that delivers long term financial viability, high performance, growth and employee engagement and satisfaction.

Workplace trends and culture

LEADERSHIP

Leaders continue to have a significant impact on the cultural landscape of an organisation. The last few years have had a profound impact on ways of working and therefore ways of leading and managing organisations. Leaders have had to quickly adapt and we have seen incredible innovation, creativity, resilience and support from leaders as they have positively changed to deliver business activities, services and products.

Future ways of working will be no different, requiring business leaders to sustain these ways of working and more importantly foster positive cultures that enable workforces to operate and thrive in times like this.

Therefore leaders must understand, embrace and role model the critical behaviours that underpin a positive culture and embed these across the organisation.

THE GREAT RESIGNATION

In recent years we have seen a significant increase in movement in the job market, which has tended to be more with the Millennial and Gen Z population. In light of this ‘great resignation era’, it has been found that organisational culture is a powerful dynamic that either does or does not cement employees’ confidence and commitment to their organisation.

More important than remuneration packages, employees want to work for an organisation whose values and culture align with their own and offer growth, connection and meaningful work.

Now more than ever before, creating a culture where there is a strong sense of engagement and purposeful commitment to one’s work and the organisation is crucial. That is what a positive culture offers employees something your people want to be part of.

FUTURE CAPABILITIES

More and more we are seeing organisations focusing on the next decade 2025 2035 and the capabilities that will be required to drive long term business success. They are using the 2022 – 2025 runway to understand what those capabilities are and get their talent and business in a ready state.

Hand in hand with this is investing in developing a positive culture and organisations that do will fair well. There are two good reasons for this. Firstly, it will help them build a flexible workforce ready to pivot to meet any new future needs and challenges. Secondly, it has always been more costly to hire new people hiring new employees can be twice as expensive than retaining and upskilling existing ones, a commercial consideration we do not foresee changing in the future.

Given the very real threat of skills gaps over the next decade, organisations that commit to building a positive culture that naturally facilitates adaptiveness and change will be ahead of the curve.

ARE YOU CULTURE READY FOR THE 2025

2035 DECADE?

The 7 pillars of a positive culture

If you want to effect positive change in your business in the upcoming decade you have got to have a positive culture that enables change in individuals, teams and the organisation, from the inside out.

Peoplewise have developed a distinctive methodology that is transforming cultures for the long term. We work with organisations to build adaptive, high performing positive cultures by focusing on 7 key enablers. Theses enablers, the 7 Pillars of Positive Resilience™ , produce high and sustainable levels of business performance. Our approach creates a culture where the business and all employees embody the principles of collective Positive Resilience, and in turn deliver positive change.

The 7 pillars of a positive culture

1. Purposefulness

The cornerstone pillar of a positive culture, delivered through a shared vision and fully aligned goals at all levels of the organisation. Purpose is at the core of everything, serving as the compass to guide decision making and deliver wide stakeholder value.

2. Perspective

The perspective pillar of a positive culture encourages critical thinking, debate, and new ideas from everyone, enabling the organisation to quickly pivot to meet new challenges.

3. Control

This pillar develops the organisation’s ability to effectively respond and recover from unexpected setbacks, risk of illconsidered, knee-jerk business decisions.

4. Connectedness

Psychological safety, belonging, cohesion, cooperation and coordination, all hallmarks of the Connectedness pillar, are achieved through a focus on high quality connections between people throughout the organisation and beyond.

5. Growth

The Growth pillar embraces learning experimentation and questioning based on a deliberate intent to understand other perspectives and ideas, in addition to implementing formal post-event reviews and selfreflective practices aimed specifically at learning from experience.

6. Coping

Supporting people’s ability to cope by maintaining a good balance of pressure and performance, where people are challenged and stretched but also supported with adequate resources and safeguards against burnout are vital for sustained high performing organisations.

7. Wellbeing

This pillar nurtures a culture of selfcare, where everyone is encouraged to engage in healthy habits and coping strategies and look after their physical and psychological wellbeing.

LEADERSHIP AND CULTURE

To realise positive change, leaders from the top down must model and embed the pillars of a positive culture.

CLIENT INSIGHT

Leadership and culture

Every employee contributes to company culture, but leadership by far has the greatest and most direct effect on how positive that culture is. And therefore, the most responsibility to be intentional about how they are shaping it.

Our research in the positive culture arena, indicates certain mindsets, behaviours and strategies of leaders who are expert at cultivating the foundation of positive cultures that allow people and the business to thrive.

These individuals embody purpose-led leadership empowering employees to achieve by helping them realise how vital their contributions are to furthering meaningful organisational goals.

These leaders remain calm and optimistic when experiencing challenges and are great at coaching the team not to get discouraged by setbacks, instead helping us to put things into perspective and identify the learning opportunities.

By heavily focusing on building the conditions for trust they actively encourage critical thinking, debate as well as new and diverse ideas from everyone in the team, creating a natural atmosphere for connectedness, collaboration and creativity aligned with performance. They also drive a thirst for continuous learning and growth because their teams feel safe to take on more challenging tasks, and they take the time to give constructive developmental feedback on an ongoing basis.

Leaders who effectively drive positive cultures are champions of creating the optimal conditions for all their team members to cope and remain engaged. They understand that this looks different from one individual to the next, regularly checkin and take action to ensure workload is manageable and remains motivating.

Our research has also found that these leaders deeply care about employee wellbeing. They don’t just say they do – this is tested and supported by the personal accounts of their team members who attest to genuinely believing that their manager cares about and successfully supports their wellbeing as well as role models a healthy work life balance.

So the question is, how successful are your leaders in cultivating positive cultures that enable positive change?

“The participation in the project has exceeded my expectations and the data gathered from employees alongside ideas from the leadership team will help us roll out a number of targeted initiatives to increase well being and performance across the account.”

Paul Taylor Client Account Director CBRE GWS

THE GREAT RESIGNATION AND CULTURE

of employees say their personal sense of purpose is defined by work, and when work feels meaningful, they perform better, are much more committed, and are less likely to seek a new job

The great resignation and culture

For example, fostering a culture were employee’s are not only deriving meaning from a shared business vision, but from the work itself. Work that provides both stretch and adequate resources to support employees’ Coping by maintaining an optimal balance of pressure and performance will keep your talent engaged.

In the midst of the Great Resignation and talent scarcity, a positive organisational culture with purpose as the bedrock is essential to having a magnetic employee value proposition that draws top talent in and reduces turnover.

This does not mean having a surface-level defined purpose statement and company socials. It means having an actionable strategy fully aligned to an inspiring, yet practical purpose driving visible shifts in the way the business operates, how decisions are made, what's rewarded, with business impact measured in a meaningful waytangibly demonstrating your purpose in action.

According to research by EY Lane4, 74% of Gen Z, 72% of Millennials and 62% of Gen X are ‘very likely’ or ‘likely’ to leave their current employer for an organisation whose reason to exist has more meaning to them. Therefore, building a purpose led culture is vital to standing out amongst the churn.

Beyond a compelling sense of Purposefulness, the other pillars of a positive culture are just as critical for holding on to your people.

Additionally, attractive cultures promote being curious and adopting of an experimental mindsets. Experiential learning boosts retention scores by 90% and a culture that embodies the concept that mistakes provide opportunities for education and innovation inspires employees to develop. These quality development and Growth opportunities to continuously improve, fulfilling one's talents and potentialities is inherently motivating to us as human beings and continues to be a major cultural factor that employees consider when deciding to stay or go.

There is no doubt that investing in building a positive culture will positively impact your ability to retain and attract high value talent moving forward.

CLIENT INSIGHT

“The in-depth individualised reports helped employees to crystalise areas they would benefit from support on to build their positive resilience, and provided opportunity reflect on their response to the past two years’ challenges. It’s been used as a tool for team conversation, engagement and retention. It has helped teams understand the broader team dynamics and appreciating how the pillars of positive resilience play out across each individual team member. In addition, we also saw participants reaching out to the HR team to report an increase in their sense of wellbeing and an appreciation for being invested in and supported”

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Group

FUTURE CAPABILITIES AND CULTURE

High performing organisational culture and business capability coherence are the decisive factors for the success of strategy execution ~ Pearl Zhu

CLIENT INSIGHT

Future capabilities and culture

Without a positive organisational culture businesses will inevitably struggle to effectively build, attract and retain the future capabilities they need to fair well in the decade to come. As organisations look to utilise the runway they have now to build out critical future capabilities they should equally be focused on the fundamental role culture plays in enabling this.

This is clear to see if we consider what we know about the key characteristics of a positive culture. Firstly, a shared vision and purpose with fully aligned goals at all levels of the organisation, will bring real clarity to current and future capability gaps.

Secondly, positive cultures promote a long-term, strategic Perspective with objective, rational approach to determining where to best invest and deploy resources and anticipate more accurately what puts the business in the best position to tackle future uncertainties and challenges, informing what and how the business builds future capabilities.

Thirdly, the culture needs to fosters an openness to experiment and learn to achieve growth and agility to changing markets, changing skillsets and changing workforces. Without this businesses will not be able to build future capabilities as well as the required level of flexibility within its workforce, ready to pivot and meet future business needs.

Fourthly, positive cultures nurture connectedness, strong vertical and lateral interconnections across the business, eliminating siloed working. It is only in these conditions that mutually beneficial relationships, knowledge sharing, crossfunctional thinking, capabilities and support can form. Essential building blocks for cultivating new and relevant capabilities.

Lastly, other hallmarks of a positive culture, such as employees’ ability to cope optimally, with a sense of holistic wellbeing, propagate talent readiness to grow and thrive in response to the desired business direction.

“I am using this to grow a positive culture in which my team feel safe and open to explore and learn the skills of perspective and the value of connectedness. We are targeting these for now as they are most relevant to our critical work where there is immediate consequences for a wrong decision. This is helping us forge a new way of thinking and working and sharing with our wider stakeholder groups.

Insurance Firm

Cost of poor culture

Productivity driving down business performance

Engagement and wellbeing driving down employee experience

Employee net promoter score and talent attraction

Ability to cope with adversity and change driving down organisational resilience

Capacity for learning and innovation driving down organisational growth

Intention to leave driving high turnover

A way forward

Creating a positive culture that provides a work environment where all people can thrive and not just survive is a strategic priority for all successful businesses today. Positive Resilience™ , the science and practice of developing mastery over our ability to not just cope with disruption and challenges but to thrive and reach our full potential, offers the gold-standard framework for building sustainable positive cultures that deliver success.

Our offering includes a suite of solutions for assessing, developing and sustaining a positive work culture.

We conduct cultural audits to understand current culture, providing organisations with a baseline understanding of their unique cultural enablers and blockers to delivering positive change.

Our diagnostics and comprehensive reports culminate in expert recommendations for building the 7 pillars of a positive culture in your organisation and sparking collective change.

We partner with our clients to engage people at all levels, enabling organisations to dynamically cascade tailored positive culture programmes.

Programmes can be structured to incorporate our Positive Resilience™ training and development workshops providing highly engaging, interactive evidence-based approaches that help individuals understand and develop their personal Positive Resilience™ and support leaders to effectively shape the positive cultural conditions within their teams.

Finally, track and sustain a positive culture over time with our behavioural pulsing functionality, allowing organisations to get real-time data on behavioural change at individual and aggregate level, with ongoing targeted development suggestions. Our data dashboards allow organisations to monitor cultural blockers and enablers, and to demonstrate tangible ROI.

About Peoplewise

Peoplewise,

have been researching positive resilience of individuals and organisations for over a decade and have found that to thrive in a VUCA world, organisations need to foster positive cultures.

research has identified 7 pillars of a positive culture that enable organisations and individuals in them to thrive rather than just survive.

unique model and methodology for transforming cultures, comprising these 7 pillars, is a key enabler to achieving an adaptive, high performing business that delivers positive change despite challenge and adversity your business is faced with.

Let us help your business today

References

Board, B., Adcock, N., & Hancock, R. (2021). 7 Pillars of Positive Resilience: Realising happiness and success. Whitepaper.

Degbey, W. Y., & Einola, K. (2020). Resilience in Virtual Teams: Developing the Capacity to Bounce Back. Applied Psychology, 69(4), 1301–1337.

EY lane4 (2022). From ambition to action: how to attain purpose led transformation. https://www.ey.com/en_uk/workforce/how to attain purpose led business transformation

Morgan, P. (2022). Understanding the importance of corporate culture after the great resignation. https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulamorgan/2022/08/19/understa nding-the-importance-of-corporate-culture-after-the-greatresignation/?sh=1950f7718cd8

Morgan, K. (2022). The search for 'meaning' at work. BBC Worklife. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220902-the-search-formeaning-at-work

Sharma, S., & Sharma, S. K. (2020). Probing the Links Between Team

Resilience, Competitive Advantage, and Organizational Effectiveness: Evidence from Information Technology Industry. Business Perspectives and Research, 8(2), 289 307.