Culture and behaviour
Focusing on culture and behaviour improves results
Regularly, stories appear in the media about misconduct within organizations, varying from bad interaction with employees or customers to fraud. This often leads to questions, such as: Could this also happen to me? How do I prevent fraud or undesirable behaviour? Or even better: How do I create a sustainable culture in which employees flourish and where customers like to do business with me?
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Culture and behaviour are crucial for both organisation and the outside world
Culture and behaviour are crucial success factors for organizations: they contribute to the realization of strategy, determine whether people enjoy going to work, and how they interact with each other, customers and other stakeholders. Culture is essential within the organization, but the outside world also has a growing interest in it. The Dutch Corporate Governance Code explicitly demands attention for this subject, as are several regulators in the financial sector, the food sector and the healthcare sector.
Do desired and actual culture match?
The desired culture, usually laid down in strategic objectives, codes of conduct or other regulations, does not always correspond with the actual culture on the workplace. Think of topics that are considered to be very important, but still fall off the agenda due to lack of time. Opinions such as 'making mistakes is not allowed in our organization' or 'the top executives do not know what is going on' are cultural signals. Misconduct within companies are often a result of a gap between desired and actual culture. The other way around is also true: sustainably successful organizations are characterized by the fact that the desired and actual culture overlap in many areas.
How can we help you?
In every organization, there are ‘buttons’ you can turn in order to reduce the gap between desired and actual culture. We can help you find these buttons through the following instruments:
- Culture assessment: During a culture assessment, we analyse the culture in an organization. We show the gap between the actual and desired culture. The research gives your management, department or internal supervisors, insight into what is actually going on and holds up a mirror where necessary.
- Culture audit: As an internal auditor, risk and compliance employee, or (business) controller, it is your task to provide insight into risks and mitigating factors in your organizational culture. By creating a complete picture of the control environment (both soft and hard controls), you reveal the largest risk areas. This insight is indispensable to be able to drive your strategic and operational objectives.
- Cultural training: By zooming in on individual and group behaviour, we make techniques and skills directly available for you and your employees during our customized training courses. Think, for instance, of interview skills, bad news conversations, verbal and non-verbal communication and ethical dilemmas. Some examples of training sessions include: 'Say what you see', 'Soft controls in audits', 'Steering on culture and behaviour', 'Interview skills' and 'Ethics in a professional environment'.
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