Do You Need an Organizational Climate Assessment?
Let’s face it – the success of any organization depends on how well its employees perform and how motivated they are to sustain good performance. Regardless of the type of organization – how employees feel about their jobs, their supervisors, their peers and the organization itself impacts their productivity and ultimately the ability of the organization to achieve its goals.
Organizational climate is a reflection of employees’ perceptions about their workplace environment and experience including employees’ beliefs and opinions around policies, practices and norms. It is a vital indicator of employee satisfaction and behavior including predicting how employees might react to an upcoming change. Understanding the climate of an organization informs leaders and managers how to identify sources of conflict and maintain positive productivity. You can measure organizational climate with a climate assessment.
What is an Organizational Climate Assessment?
A climate assessment takes the pulse of an organization and provides leadership with feedback by identifying areas of strength and areas in need of improvement. By providing employees an opportunity to safely and openly speak with an experienced, independent, neutral, workplace consultant, employers can gain unique insights into what is contributing to (or detracting from) their employees’ work performance.
Signs That You Need Organizational Climate Assessment
Anticipating a policy or leadership change in an organization, leaders may proactively seek out an organizational climate assessment to understand the best path forward. More often an organization may notice less than optimal work conditions but struggle to find the exact source of the issues. Here are a handful of areas that may highlight a need to check on the organization’s climate:
Workplace conflict: Department and divisions often have different or competing goals and priorities. This can lead to employees wrestling for power and control, which can be a recipe for employee conflicts.
Low employee engagement and declining productivity: Low job satisfaction or lack of trust can cause employees to become disengaged and lead to poor productivity. This is sometimes due to a shift in teams, change in job duties or unclear organizational culture and values.
High turnover rate: High employee turnover can be indicative of leadership challenges or issues with hiring practices.
Lack of communication and collaboration: Poor communication often results in misunderstanding and disharmony in the workplace, especially from leadership. Lack of accurate and timely information can also result in non-productive behaviors such as gossip and speculation.
Lack of clarity. When employees do not clearly understand what is expected of them and how their work performance will be evaluated it can lead to stress, anxiety and a lack of motivation. Also, when lines of authority and boundaries are not clearly defined, it can lead to "turf wars."
Organizational change. Changes happen frequently in the workplace – whether it’s a big change (downsizing to a smaller workforce) or small change (minor shift in job duties) it can have a negative impact on the employee if they are not properly prepared or supported during times of transition.
What Happens During an Organizational Climate Assessment?
We’ll start with meeting with organizational leaders and stakeholders to outline objectives and motives for conducting an assessment. Next, we’ll review the organization’s mission, goals, and values to determine if they are clearly defined. Then, we’ll gauge your team’s buy-in and support of these goals by collecting feedback through a variety of methods:
One-on-one or group interviews
Focus groups
Employee surveys
Analysis of internal documents
Once we collect data and analyze results (making sure to protect employee confidentiality), our team communicates the results with the leadership team. We work closely with the client to develop an action plan to communicate findings and next steps to others within the organization.
Benefits of an Organizational Climate Assessment
Without some type of formal process, it is extremely difficult for managers to find out how their employees are thinking and feeling about their work climate and culture. In our experience, most employees are reluctant to communicate anything but positive information to their supervisors and managers out of fear that their working relationship will be damaged or they will be subjected to some form of retaliation.
An organizational climate assessment is not about determining who is right or wrong – or assigning blame. Even the highest functioning organizations have room to improve. The primary purpose of an assessment is to identify and strengthen existing approaches, which are working well and to recommend appropriate interventions to address areas where improvement could benefit everyone.
TMG’s consultants are all professional mediators and workplace interventionists with many years of experience in assessing organizational climates and helping to facilitate positive change. We assist people at all levels of an organization to examine policies, practices, communication patterns and other key factors to determine what is working well and what might be contributing to a less than optimal work climate.
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When left unaddressed, conflict can escalate and poison a work environment. It can cost organizations dearly in terms of wasted time and resources, lead to employee absenteeism and turnover, and result in expensive lawsuits. TMG can help you and your organization harness the power of organizational climate assessments and transform it into a catalyst for positive change, collaborative problem-solving and creative solutions!
Call TMG at (617) 277-9232 or send us an email for a no obligation consultation.