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A strong organizational culture enables a company to achieve its goals and to keep in line with its mission. It serves as a guide, referring to all the different characteristics and components of its business. It is intended not only to differentiate it from its competitors but also to improve communication between its members and other stakeholders.
To immerse ourselves in this topic, it is very important to understand the real meaning of the concept of Organizational Culture and the importance of the alignment between Business Process Management (BPM) and corporate culture.
What is Organizational Culture?
Also known as Corporate Culture, Organizational Culture can be understood as a set of norms, laws, values, and beliefs shared by the members of a given organization. It manifests itself in company policies and affects the experience of those who interact with the company, such as a customer’s buying experience or a supplier’s collaboration.
In a way, organizational culture has to do with the overall lifestyle of the corporation. In practice, we can say that it is the way in which the organization’s values are disseminated, absorbed, and propagated by employees to society as a whole.
Every organization develops and maintains a unique culture, which provides guidelines and boundaries for its members’ behavior. This means that two companies can develop the same products or offer the same services and can have the same target audience, but never the same culture.
Organizations that have a strong organizational culture, besides attracting talent, are also capable of having a higher rate of employee retention. A people-oriented culture, for example, helps improve engagement, provides a unique employee experience, and makes employees feel more connected.
To give you a better understanding, some elements of organizational culture include:
- Vision, mission, values, and beliefs;
- Policies, methods, standards, and procedures;
- Incentives and reward systems;
- Risk tolerance (high or low);
- Code of ethics and conduct;
- Work environment.
What is the importance of associating Organizational Culture with Process Management (BPM)?
There are several types of company profiles: conservative, innovative, daring, etc. First of all, paradigms must be broken, because in most cases the characteristics, decisions, requirements, methodologies, etc, are based on the owner’s, director’s, or others’ profiles. This means that for each reality it should be evident with concrete data that it is possible to change the culture, and manage your business processes through management tools, without hurting the pillars and characteristics experienced on a daily basis.
When a process is aligned with the organizational culture, implementation is facilitated and it is very likely that it will have a high success rate compared to processes that conflict with the company’s culture. Moreover, understanding the culture and its relationship with process management helps organizations identify which processes are actually relevant and which can be executed in the future or even discarded.
The way an employee sees his role in a process – and his function in the company as a whole – can be considered a key aspect of organizational culture. In turn, a company’s structure and processes can be shaped by its own culture.
In general, an organizational culture that incorporates process management enables processes to be aligned with corporate strategies, ensuring that business objectives are met. Additionally, when this alignment is there, processes tend to meet customer expectations and stay within budget.
In conclusion
We have to seek a full understanding of the Organizational Culture of the company always aiming to establish the best way to assist and conduct the implementation of a BPM tool that will enhance its results in all aspects, financial, organizational, productive, technical, etc.
To learn more about Process Management, check our article Want to optimize the execution of your company’s activities? Learn about Process Standardization, which describes the management methodology for optimizing processes, and also What is Process Management (BPM) and what are its benefits, which describes several benefits and characteristics of BPM.
