Values integration is largely emotional and intuitively felt however there are some gauges/metrics. Done well it will positively impact all performance metrics but here are specifics.
- Employer Branding – Track how your company is perceived as an employer in the market.
- Surveys – the best known engagement survey is https://www.gallup.com/q12/ You will want to build up a picture over time
- Informal internal ‘vibe’ surveys
- Surveys – culture goes deeper and further than engagement. There are specific culture tracking surveys including https://culture15.com/platform/ and https://www.betterworks.com/
- Insight through ongoing 121s inc 360 surveys / career development (instead of annual reviews)
- An effective culture should promote efficiency and cost-consciousness – worth tracking
- Ongoing self-review – I used a simple 1-3 scale, which manager and report tall through and track
- On departure, exit interview
- https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/index.htm gives an overview of sentiment
- Generally gaugeable through retention (average cost of replacing someone – £56k)
These are all people things, however – a huge part of it but this is not just an HR area. Other ways to track culture impact are:
- NPS customer satisfaction surveys
- Include values-related questions in customer surveys.
- Customer Retention and Lifetime Value – Measure how culture correlates with customer loyalty.
- Awards, for example https://businesscultureawards.com/
- Some quality marks will be suitable for your business but analyse their expectations of how you make decisions once you have secured them
- Are company values reflected in your press coverage and industry recognition?
- Peer benchmarking: compare cultural health against industry leaders and competitors.
- Brand value. A good common sense approach here https://sg.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/how-to-measure-brand-value
- Companies with a strong culture deliver 3x higher value to shareholders than without. (McKinsey)
- Compare financial metrics like revenue, profit margins, and shareholder returns before and after cultural initiatives or changes.
- Business Growth Rates – Monitor whether growth correlates with cultural improvements.
- Productivity Metrics – Are teams working more effectively as culture strengthens?
- Consider how other metrics can be attached to values – these can then be benchmarked
- Bring values questions into other surveys
- Collect and share internal and external stories showing how values support decisions and outcomes.
- Strategic reviews include evaluation of performance and progressions in context of values
- External reviews and stakeholder feedback framed in values
Ultimately you will want to create a culture measurement tool that is designed for your own purposes. There are a number of templates online that you can use as a starting point but it’s essential that this is part of your mainstream strategy, planning and measurement rather than allocated to a separate team.