If asked to consider who is most likely to champion business culture and fly the flag for cultural change in an organisation, Chief Financial Officers are not necessarily the first people that would come to mind.
Traditionally, CFOs have been seen as the guardians of an organisation’s financial health and rarely did they get involved with people and human resources teams, beyond compensation and benefits. However, in today’s modern world of work, CFOs can be a surprising ally for CEOs and People teams when it comes to championing workplace culture and driving forward cultural change.
Robert Half Management Resources survey in 2017 showed that 51% of CFOs were involved with shaping their company’s culture. It’s safe to assume that as CFOs have increasingly stepped into more strategic roles, that this number will have risen.
Managing business risk often falls on the shoulders of CFOs and Finance leaders, their success hinges on being able to align finance, strategy and culture without stifling innovation and employee performance. Ultimately, no finance leader wants to see financial losses on their account and therefore should recognise the opportunity they have to help shape a work environment where individuals bring their whole selves to work, are motivated, take responsibility and feel comfortable speaking up – all key elements to a positive workplace culture that creates high performing teams and long-term business success.
Culture impacts financial performance
Gone are the days where finance leaders could ignore the financial impact of workplace culture on performance. Culture plays a huge part in financial success and has a big impact on employees and how they feel at work, from their ability to thrive in their roles all the way through to the reputation of a company and how easy it is to attract and retain the best talent.
When an organisation has a good workplace culture, employees are happy, productive and engaged at work. Research shows that businesses with engaged employees experienced a 23% increase in profitability in comparison to those with disengaged workers.
Employee engagement and productivity are also intrinsically linked, with engaged employees 2.5 times more likely to exceed performance expectations, delivering results above and beyond the targets set which all contribute to financial success.
Strategic CFOs act as a catalyst for change
As a vital part of the senior leadership team, CFOs are often a CEO’s ‘right-hand’, with a role that extends far beyond data and spreadsheets. This shift in role to a more strategic capacity, puts CFOs in a unique position to influence workplace culture.
Forward-thinking CFOs are being brought in to lead business transformation projects and they play a significant role in setting business strategy, looking at all aspects of a business that needs transforming, of which, culture as we’ve established is a key element for business success.
Results often depend on how well you manage culture – do people have what they need to perform their roles effectively? What is the work environment like? Are teams working together and collaborating? Is there any problematic behaviour taking place? If there is, how is problematic behaviour dealt with? When culture is nurtured and measured, the rest falls into place.
With culture driven from the top of an organisation, it means that you as a CFO are one of those responsible for setting the tone. Finance leaders who champion the right cultural values can unlock greater value from employees and improve performance across the workforce. It’s important to keep culture at the forefront of your decision making and always look at the wider picture. For example, when you’re making strategic decisions, consider what the impact may be on employees, and does it align with your organisation’s desired cultural values?
People are your number one business expense – invest in them
For almost every business, people are your greatest asset but also your biggest expense when you factor in wages, benefits, pension contributions, tax, and indirect costs such as recruitment and training.
It’s an organisation’s responsibility to create a positive work environment that fosters employee engagement, productivity and belonging.
The way a business spends money and what it chooses to invest in sends a powerful signal to employees of what an organisation truly values. When employees see stagnant wages and bonus structures, little investment into their training and development, through to the quality of the office environment and equipment they use whilst at work but in comparison, they see C-Suite employees on high salaries and large annual bonuses, it signals to employees that leaders reap the benefits from their hard work and indicates they are not valued in the workplace. This can lead to a disconnect between employees and management, disengagement from work resulting in lower levels of productivity which can cost a business.
On the flipside, when you invest money into your people, whether that’s creating a bonus structure and incentive scheme, investing in ongoing training and development through implementing employee feedback mechanisms, employees feel more valued, and your organisation’s culture is likely to see improvements.
CFOs can align finances, systems and teams
Out of all the C Suite roles, CFOs have the most influence and involvement with other teams – no longer confined to an office in the finance department, CFOs engage with possibly every team in an organisation from agreeing budgets for departments and signing off on and even leading on key projects.
In this unique position you are best placed to lead by example, fostering collaboration between teams and aligning people, including your C-Suite colleagues to the organisation’s desired cultural values. CFOs see how different teams are managed, the processes that everyone across the business uses and therefore are in the best position to align systems, teams and finances whilst ensuring they also align to the business’ desired cultural values.
As we mention above, how organisations spend their money sends a powerful message to employees about what a business truly values. Investing in culture tech, like the platform provided by Culture Shift, is one way to demonstrate your ongoing commitment to employees, whilst aligning systems and processes. Fundamental to shifting your culture is regular employee feedback mechanisms.
Firstly, the Culture Shift platform gives employees a way to speak up and report unwanted behaviour anonymously. You may think there aren’t any issues with your culture and don’t currently receive many reports from traditional HR routes, and therefore there’s no unwanted behaviour happening in your organisation. However, it would be naive to think that just because no one is reporting unwanted behaviour that it’s not occurring. There are many reasons why people don’t report unwanted behaviour, and one of those reasons is commonly that people don’t feel comfortable speaking to HR. When you provide people a way to speak up anonymously, it’s likely you’ll see reports rise and are able to deal with issues more effectively, reducing your risk, whilst also gaining a bigger perspective on your actual workplace culture.
Along with demonstrating your commitment to people, culture reporting platforms also enables your People team to manage cases in a more systematic and proactive way, streamlining the reporting and case management process into one central platform, saving time and money. Our centralised system also allows you to collect data and monitor cultural trends across the business giving you a more effective way to measure culture KPIs and return on investment when it comes to training budgets and intervention methods.
Improve your culture whilst keeping compliant and managing risk
Culture tech platforms can help you comply with your legal requirements such as the Workers Protection Act by offering a robust reporting mechanism for employees. With the shift in legislation from responding to complaints of sexual harassment to active prevention, culture tech software such as Culture Shift can help organisations comply, whilst empowering you to create safer, more inclusive workplace cultures.
The platform can help you establish clear investigation protocols. From the moment you receive a report, your prevention efforts are documented with a digitised paper trail of your response to each report inside the Culture Shift platform. Should you find yourself facing an employment tribunal from an employee who is dissatisfied with the outcome of your HR team’s investigation or response, it’s all documented inside the platform which can be used as evidence should the case escalate, helping you manage your risk.
Additionally, when your HR team receives a report that requires intervention and an employee needs additional, direct support, the Culture Shift case management platform flags cases that are high risk, allowing your team to respond quickly and effectively, therefore helping you to manage risk more successfully.
KPIs and data to drive decisions
Most departments have clear KPIs, for example Sales & Marketing normally have very specific metrics to measure whereas historically KPIs around people and culture have been a bit trickier to measure.
Whilst tracking key metrics around retention, employee turnover and absence rates are all helpful indicators as to the health of your culture, collecting your own data through a culture tech platform can unlock other key cultural metrics to monitor and improve upon.
The data available in the Culture Shift platform allows leaders to understand what types of behaviour are prevalent and impacting people, whether it’s occurring organisation wide or in specific teams, you can even delve deeper into the data to identify if it happens at specific times or locations and with our AI name matching function, it highlights specific names that appear multiple times throughout reports.
Data can be used to drive decision making around culture and identify issues and trends that need to be addressed. When you know the types of behaviours that are prevalent, you can target your training needs and intervention methods properly, ensuring the right people are receiving the right training and support whilst having more confidence in the ROI of your investments.
The more cultural data you have will allow you to measure your culture better and forecast training budgets and investment into cultural initiatives more accurately. When your HR data is pulled into one reporting dashboard, it’s easy to notice changes at-a-glance against your KPIs and track changes using specific metrics to monitor the impact of your training or intervention methods.
Find out how Culture Shift can help CFOs align finance & culture by making culture measurable
Culture builds resilience, loyalty and financial stability and every modern CFO should consider the impact they can have on shaping workplace culture, aligning systems, process and finances.
