What is your company culture?
A company's culture brings together internal and external habits, values and rules of conduct, encompassing its missions, visions and values. Implementing an organizational culture model with employees is difficult, changing one that already exists is even more difficult, but it is not impossible.
Proof of this is the case of the world leader in life insurance, MetLife, which underwent a cultural transformation in parallel with a total change in layout (space) in less than a year. “Resistance to change was our biggest challenge. Leaving the comfort zone is not easy for anyone, it is something that takes a little more time” comments Thais Catucci, specialist in Internal Communications at MetLife.
A group called “Agents of Change” was created by the insurance company, focused exclusively on cultural change and to ensure that the new layout principles were followed (the group remains active to this day). “In the new layout, we adopted concepts from the new culture, for example, before managers and directors had their own rooms and today we have open rooms and collaborative spaces”, reports Catucci. This shows us that the work environment must also be aligned with the organizational culture.
Whether implementing an organizational culture model or readjusting an existing one, the important thing is that the company has a strong organizational culture. And that your internal (employees) and external audiences (customers, suppliers, partners, etc.) can have a good perception of the company.
THE CI AREA AS SUPPORT IN REINFORCEMENT
Internal Communication is essential in the process of reinforcing organizational culture. For the MetLife specialist, it is the CI tools that disseminate the company's culture. That's right, Internal Communication channels and their campaigns can be great allies in this action “During the change process, we developed many pieces of internal communication (both more operational pieces, pieces that guided the new concept, and even what we expected from the employee from then on).” says Thais.
Thais recorded a video briefly explaining more details about the MetLife case. Do you want to get in touch with her? Email tcatucci@metlife.com
