It is easy to skim past the word “culture” as HR professionals commonly apply it to workplace dynamics in an organization. The term’s versatility and broadness can often seem to say everything and nothing all at once. But cultures are defined by those attributes that make them unique, and, of course, what is unique will always be impossible to replicate. Discovering those distinctive strengths, therefore, will be another way of discovering what will always appear strong in relation to your competition. By emphasizing your employee value proposition, you set your organization in striking relief to other businesses, helping to draw well-fitting employment talent and ensure that your particular culture will never be taken for granted or overlooked.

But it’s not always obvious how to define this culture, even after years of operation. If there are questions among leadership regarding the nature of their organization’s workplace culture, they may be surprised to find rewarding answers from their own employees. Employee engagement surveys provide valuable insight into this process of self-definition. At TGC, we design and use the survey as much more than just a quantifying metric of what works and what doesn’t. Far beyond an opportunity for employees merely to applaud or complain, the engagement survey will aid leadership in understanding and delineating the inimitable strengths that successfully shape and drive organizational practices and future culture initiatives. As a result, leadership’s visionary ideas meet the realities of implementation within the workplace more clearly and effectively – and all employees have an impactful voice in defining, evaluating and evolving their workplace.

By collaborating with leadership in order to customize the engagement survey, TGC attends specifically to the singular character of an organization’s workplace environment. Not all questions are relevant to every workplace, while other lines of inquiry may develop in direct response to unique practices or requirements at a particular organization. TGC avoids the boilerplate and designs the survey to enhance awareness of the workplace culture’s identity, guiding the process so that it becomes more than a measure of engagement: a successful survey is itself an act of engagement.

Written by: Thomas Giles