Want to change your company’s culture but don’t know how? Start with recruitment
Employee disengagement is at an all time high. Nearly 30% of the workforce is not engaged, with Gen Z being the most disengaged followed by Gen Y, millennials and Baby Boomers. 35% people experience daily anger, 42% experience sadness, and 52% people agreed to actively looking for other opportunities. (Gallup State of the Global Workforce Report 2024)
62% of Indian employees face burnout due to work-related stress and poor work-life balance, which is three times higher than the global average of 20% (2024 report by digital healthcare platform MediBuddy and CII).
The statistics are concerning. These and more such reports released month-after-month. The figures are worsening YoY.
This year was especially crucial in stirring conversations about toxic workplace culture.
The workforce will not sit and watch anymore
In march, the suicide of a McKinsey employee shook the nation. Just by the virtue of being a McKinsey employee, we know for sure that the person was not lazy, unqualified, or incapable in any regard. This is crucial to clarify as the cause for such statistics is pinned to the employees themselves, saying that they are not motivated.
Hence, the employee must be in utter distress, a state of helpness beyond comprehension that he had to take such an extreme step.
Two months ago, a 27-year-old woman died by suicide hours after receiving a termination email. She accused her 6 colleagues, including 2 managers, for harassment and abuse. She had sought psychiatric help for her distress.
A few weeks earlier, the unfortunate suicide of a 26-year-old CA at EY India started the conversation again. It was immediately followed by the demise of an overworked HDFC Bank worker in Lucknow and a Bajaj Finance employee in Jhansi.
It debunks the popular belief —big cities have it worse. The truth is it is bad where you make it. For instance, government institutions are believed to have a more relaxed working culture. However, in early September, SEBI employees held a silent protest due to a ‘toxic work culture.’ A major point of discontent was unrealistic targets set by the regulatory body, resulting extreme work stress.
- 1200+ Samsung employees in Chennai are protesting to increase the minimum wage and demand better working conditions,
- Cognizant offering entry-level jobs at just INR 2.27 lacs, and
- Startups like Ola and Byju’s coming into limelight for their toxic work culture.
These incidents, one after the other, proves that employers can no longer ignore their employees’ needs. Creating a culture that mints money at the stake of employees’ health and life will not sustain a company for long. You may soar, but you will not survive — case in point Byju’s.
Weaponise recruitment to build your company culture
Before this, the first two steps are:
- Recognition that the culture needs to change to accommodate your employees’ personal and professional needs — Use The LHR EVP matrix
- Accepting the reality and communicating it to the top leadership to get them on board.
A classic HR chapter taught in all b-schools is that people resist change — it is hard to get people to let go of the old ways and adopt to the new. Here’s a personal anecdote to put it into perspective.
The LHR Group is recently rebranded from LakshHR, the founding name of the business that was in use for 19+ years. It was not just the name. We crafted an entire set of branding guidelines, to be used henceforth by all. However, despite the email reminders and Gmeets, we couldn’t bring everyone on board immediately. It has now been a month since we officially rebranded, and the people are still getting used to it. We give it another 3 months.
But the one technique that has worked for us superbly is to embed it into our recruitment process.
LakshHR has been replaced by The LHR Group in all onboarding steps. The presentation has our new colours. The joining letters are sent on the new company letterhead.
Our new recruits have never once been confused by it, except the occasional occurrences where their incumbent teammates used LakshHR. They know their company as The LHR Group, and quickly replace any mention of LakshHR with The LHR Group mentally.
In fact, one of them corrected their teammate on a presentation style because it felt unnatural to them to not see the company’s colours. The teammate gently abided.
But, isn’t culture more intimate than this? It cannot be done as easily!
Well yeah. But, we didn’t say it was easy. Out of all the tough ways, this is the easiest way — embedding it into your recruitment process.
Say in your organisation, competition is more prevalent than collaboration, which needs to be reversed —
- Communicate this in bold letters and in every conversation with the candidate until and during onboarding.
- Honestly mention that it is a recent practice, so their teammates may struggle with it.
- Empower them to enforce the practice of collaboration, correcting their seniors too if required.
- Allow them to report the instances where they are refused support of any kind.
It will not be a month long process. If getting people to use the new name and branding elements is taking us a minimum of four months, then changing the culture will take longer, much longer.
Culture is woven into the fabric of your company. Hence, do not bring all the changes at once. It will only overwhelm and confuse everyone with a very possible risk of backfiring. Go slow. One step at a time.
Additional Tip: There will always be a few people who will appreciate the importance of this initiative. Identify them early on and publicly recognise their efforts in accepting the change. It will encourage others to follow suit.
Final words: Change is hard and painful, but these are not good enough reasons to not do it. Reiterating the why — it needs to be done to accommodate the needs of a changing workforce, which is critical for growth and survival of your organisation.
