Though many firms adopt marketing tactics and make promises of exclusive and exceptional customer services, it is very often alleged that the customers are being taken for a ride. A dissection of such an allegation attributes the causes to lack of healthy bond among organisational culture, customer service and other key organisational goals. The diagnosis also brings forth the fact that business strategy and organisational culture ought to be in sync with each other.
It is high time the corporate captains shed their conventional shells for promoting and instilling a culture of ‘sharing’ and ‘collaboration’ essential for idea generation, idea exchange and innovation. In a bid to improve the organisational culture for better customer services and achievement of the company’s goals, social networking and thought-sharing through collaboration platforms need to be encouraged.
Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs) can be strategically implemented in the enterprises to break organisational silos. To foster a culture of good-will, growth and innovation, the leaders and senior executives can utilise ESNs to communicate the expectations of the company and their plans, and also visibly praise employees for their accomplishments.
It is also believed that such platforms can help unlocking the un-shared knowledge which otherwise remains only with specific individuals. The platforms assist employees by empowering them to share ideas, suggestions and questions within a group or within the enterprise.
Another important factor that influences the productivity of an organisation is shared values. When an individual’s personal values are aligned with the core values of the company, the employees work with more compassion. This collaboration drives innovation, productivity, growth and competitive advantage that leads to ultimate customer experience as it is delivered through satisfied workforce.
Besides this, transparency is something that employees long for. It is essential to create an open and collaborative environment. They also like to know every corner of their enterprise as this makes them feel closely associated with their organisation. The organisational leaders can use collaboration platforms and keep their workforce updated all the time in more interactive way, rather than making them read monotonous newsletters that are collated and sent annually.
Another important feature that can improve the culture of an organisation is strengthening the reward system. In other words, it means to incentivise every accomplishment that is achieved through fruitful collaboration. A study reveals that smaller rewards motivate employees to generate better ideas. Apart from this, the corporates can unknot the creativity to compete and address people’s natural desire to compete and get recognised. Giving the employees a challenging role acts towards motivating them to excel and further boost up their overall performance.
Gratification also boosts employee collaboration. It has the potential to discover wasted talent and boost collaboration. It can be used to motivate employees to make social sharing as a part of their daily workflow with levels, points and rewards. Incentivising high-performing members with recognition and rewards by creating creative groups and competitions promote positive team behaviour and compel fertile action.
last but not the least, every action needs to be precise, corporeal, computable, and viable, and should have set-time frames for deliveries and should undergo regular reviews.
(Dr Rout is a management expert based in Bhubaneswar)