Changing company culture

Blue Chip Technology have been designing and manufacturing embedded and industrial computing solutions for over 30 years. Before embarking on a period of significant growth, the company asked Rubica to help it create a more positive workplace culture. The aim was to improve the health and happiness of its employees which would subsequently support the business in achieving its five-year plan.

The challenge: enabling a plan for growth

Blue Chip Technology (BCT) recognised it was vital to use its culture to positively affect the happiness, health and subsequent motivation of employees. Achieving this would lead to a more productive workforce, improved customer service and the attraction and retention of high performing staff. In combining and achieving these areas, BCT would be well placed to fulfil its ambitious 5-year growth plan.

The solution: shaping a new culture across the business

Rubica was brought on board by Dan Sherwen, the Quality and Organisational Improvement Manager at BCT. The company needed external support to deliver the project and selected Rubica due to our expertise in organisational and culture change, our well-evidenced change methodology, our Culture Change Canvas and our use of performance measures.

The project followed four stages over a three month period:

• Building a project value proposition.
• Conducting an anonymous culture and engagement survey.
• Carrying out a culture inquiry across the business.
• Identifying quick wins and embedding mechanisms to support the change.

A positive process to underpin positive change

The first step involved discussions with the leadership team to understand precisely how the project would add value, support the new strategy and enable the organisation to deliver growth.

“Having established the value of the project, we needed to engage the entire workforce with the change,” says Miranda Wheatley-Price, Rubica’s Director of Organisational Change, who led the programme. “The process is part of the change, so it had to be powerful, positive and inclusive. Mechanisms included employee briefings and Q&A sessions – giving everyone a voice whilst reinforcing the message that company culture belongs to everyone and is something that people create together.”

Shifting the culture, building on strengths

Next, we ran an anonymous culture diagnostic across the organisation to harness opinions about the current culture, and how it supports and detracts from high performance. This was supported by discussions with individuals and small groups from different areas of the business – providing deeper insight, and unearthing the underlying beliefs and assumptions that were shaping the culture.

Our investigations revealed a strong culture of trust, co-operation and belonging, as well as areas to address, including the need for greater fairness and better use of potential to help high performers feel valued for their work. “Using the Rubica Culture Change Canvas, we analysed the beliefs that influenced the existing culture, new behaviours that would make a difference and mechanisms to embed the new culture,” says Miranda.

“We helped the management team to work out pragmatically how to change their behaviour to have a significant impact very quickly, whilst balancing this with longer term initiatives too,” adds Miranda. Simple but effective mechanisms for change included:

• Defining how the company could better reward and recognise staff for continually performing well and taking on additional responsibilities.
• Deploying an employee engagement survey as a ‘temperature check’ every 6 months, to encourage continuous improvement and an ongoing dialogue around BCT’s culture.
• Agreeing a common structure for how the organisation would formally and informally communicate.

A more long-term, but equally important, change was to introduce regular performance reviews. These would enable staff to discuss how to use their potential more effectively as well as offering the opportunity to have difficult conversations about under-performance.

The results: Impressive fast-track culture change

BCT recently conducted its 6-month culture survey, which looks to gauge:

• The happiness and health of the workforce
• How people felt about the workplace
• Opportunities to further improve the business’ culture

Since completing the culture change project, results have demonstrated a significant improvement in BCT’s culture – supporting the fulfilment of its 5-year growth plan:

• 11% increase in people agreeing they can make good use of their skills and abilities at work.
• 14% increase in people agreeing they’re inspired by their team to achieve high standards.
• 33% increase in people believing their opinions count.
• 5% increase in people agreeing they are recognised for the work they do well.
• 13% increase in people agreeing BCT is a good place to work.
• 9% increase in people agreeing they feel motivated to do their work to the highest possible standards.
• 38% of employees believed that changes in culture had had a positive impact on their health
• 69% of employees believed that changes in culture had had a positive impact on their happiness