Creating the Culture
From establishing positive workplace values to providing tailored facilitation and coaching, we work closely with organisations to create respectful working cultures.
The way we work with you is built around our 4 key steps:
Create
Apply
Maintain
We work with you to identify, articulate, and implement the behaviours that will create a positive, respectful, and productive workplace culture.
The approaches we use range from focus groups and one to one discussions to running employee surveys and workplace observation (talk to us about our “purposeful wanders”).
We agree on the outcomes you want to achieve and work closely with you to create a development programme tailored to your organisation and with your workplace values at their heart.
This often includes identifying and managing the “grey” areas around behaviour, which are hard to handle, in order to avoid people crossing the lines into inappropriate workplace behaviour.
Our approaches include:
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- Helping you identify a set of values and the behaviours that demonstrate them – or embed existing ones
- Developing managers and leaders so they have the confidence to lead in an inclusive way
- Running specific workshops to support key areas of change or development – from bringing values and behaviours to life to understanding and mitigating unconscious bias in the workplace
Creating, enhancing, or changing a culture usually needs a mix of approaches over a sustained period of time. The tailored programme we map out with you will be delivered by our highly skilled team of facilitators and consultants
Research tells us that only 15% of learners apply what they have learned, so much of the investment made in culture change programmes can be wasted. To ensure this isn’t the case, we work with our clients long-term to achieve sustained cultural changes.
Our approach is outcome-orientated at every stage, with a huge emphasis on transferring learning, creating new habits, and embedding skills.
Case Studies for Creating the Culture
The senior leadership and HR team at Devon County Council are a shining example of how investing in creating an open, respectful
and collaborative culture can help weather crisis and change, in the form of a global pandemic.
Read more about the programme we designed for them.
We helped create and support the roll out of a set of company values for medac Pharma
Read more about the difference it made.
We created a reciprocal mentoring programme for the Royal Borough of Greenwich.
What our clients say
“We knew that there was a problem to be solved and it really helped to have an objective, outside team to work with us to find a solution. Changing an old-fashioned culture is never easy but is greatly helped by working with a good professional team.”
“This can be a very grey area for managers and can often put them off dealing with situations. Focal Point’s approach helped the managers gain clarity around where the lines and boundaries should be and understand just how vital it is for them to be role models in this area.”
“Having managed teams of staff for 15yrs, I must say that Focal Point are simply the best training resource that I have ever accessed for team building.”
“When we embarked on this project, I was concerned to make it a really positive experience for everyone – Focal Point really understood this… they have taken time to get to know us and helped us address areas which are often not talked about in organisations and that have made a big impact on everyone.”
“This was a really good example of how we can help clients take a preventative approach to issues, rather than reacting when they find themselves with a tricky situation on their hands. We believe it will make a real difference to reducing the number of incidents they have had to deal with.”
When a workplace is based on respectful behaviour, people will feel valued, included and treat each other in a courteous way. Team members will listen to each other, find ways to work together to solve challenges and any disagreements will be discussed in a professional, rather than a personal way.
Managers at every level will be leading by example and building teams where everyone’s voice is heard and people feel able to speak up
A real marker of a respectful workplace culture is that behaviour, banter or comments do not make others feel uncomfortable, undermined or excluded in any way – even under the guise of “having a laugh”. To achieve this, dignity at work training or professional behaviour training can help
The first step is to have clarity around what behaviours are expected at work. Workplaces have evolved and what may have been tolerated ten years ago is unlikely to be acceptable now.
Any concerns should be addressed at an early stage – not ignored. When inappropriate behaviour is nipped in the bud, you prevent it escalating. When workplace behaviour problems occur and are not dealt with, they become normalised and the culture starts to shift from one of respect to something more toxic. It is important to equip managers to handle workplace misconduct in the right way.
When driving any kind of culture change it can be helpful to have an external voice to facilitate discussions and support behaviour change.
A good starting point is to collectively identify the values and behaviours that you want to see demonstrated by everyone in the organisation. These can then act as guiding principles for all interaction and decision making. It is important everyone is involved in this process so there is a sense of ownership around what is agreed. An external facilitator can challenge thinking around this in a way that an internal person may find harder to do
Any training to support the implementation and embedding of behaviours and values and establishing a respectful workplace culture must go beyond simply creating awareness. Respectful behaviour training should give people clarity around how to modify their own behaviour and what to do when it is not being displayed in others. Any workplace conduct training should be interactive and practical so that participants leave with clear actions they can take