Culture drives business performance.
Most of us believe this, but we find it difficult to connect the dots between the company culture we experience and the impact on business results we know it delivers.
Leaders outside of HR agree. When HRWins asked thousands of business leaders outside of HR about company culture, 66% agreed that it has a direct financial impact on their business. When we read business books or listen to thought leaders speak, about the secret ingredients to business success, it always comes back to the team and the culture. We’re told to build a culture that engages employees, a culture of success, or a high-performing culture.
We know how a good culture feels, but connecting, even correlating culture and engagement to business results is the Holy Grail of people analytics.
Culture Amp might have been the first HR technology provider to see the need to move culture and engagement measurement out of the hands of consultants and into the hands of business and HR leaders. They were undoubtedly the first to gain meaningful market adoption and success. Having set its foundation early on as the leader in company culture and employee engagement measurement, Culture Amp has been systematically moving its product beyond just measurement, to include the kind of insights that can both reflect and predict the impact of culture and engagement on a customer’s business results.
Culture First Brings It All Together
A few weeks ago, I attended Culture Amp’s annual global customer conference in San Francisco. If the definition of company culture is the beliefs shared within an organization, then the definition of Culture Amp’s customer community is the shared belief that company culture is driving impact on every phase of the employee lifecycle, every aspect of the employee experience, and directly on business results. I can’t overstate the passion that the Culture Amp customer community, self-proclaimed “people geeks,” brought to this event. The creation of the People Geek community extends beyond this one event and can be considered one of Culture Amp’s most valuable assets. (Listen to Culture Amp CEO Didier Elzinga and I discuss the community after their USD $40 million VC raise in 2018)
This year’s Culture First event marked the culmination of the delivery of strategic features in its roadmap, its acquisition of Zugata bringing it squarely into the performance management, and the unveiling of their Foresight Engine. The Foresight Engine leverages machine learning technology to help Culture Amp customers improve outcomes for their people.
Shortening The Distance Between Culture and Business Performance
Listening to, and engaging with, Culture Amp customers shifted my view of Culture Amp from a provider of culture and engagement measurement and reporting to that of an emerging leader in people analytics and modern employee experience. As I work with employers of all sizes, modern HR leaders are looking for data and insights that they can provide to their leadership teams that correlate and connect people practices and programs to business results and the employees’ overall experience. Ultimately making the business case for HR.
Culture First and my update briefing established my view of Culture Amp as a company to watch in people analytics and employee experience for modern HR:
- Culture Amp now has one unified platform including culture and engagement measurement, performance management and feedback, insights and analytics (reporting and predictive), organizational network analysis, and workflow that prompts action from leaders/managers.
- Culture Amp’s machine learning capabilities and its sizeable aggregate customer database allow it to empower customers with signals and forecasts for regrettable employee turnover, predictions for company performance, and more.
- Culture Amp now has a patented Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) capability that can tie to tools like calendars, Slack, etc. that shows business leaders the social capital and knowledge in their teams – identifies the real subject matter experts and those that can benefit from casual or more formal learning. (this is just one of the major promises of ONA. For more insights, look at David Green’s article here.)
- After helping leaders understand the knowledge strengths and gaps in their organization, Culture Amp does offer “light learning management” capabilities, and the ability to integrate with a more robust LMS.
- The ability to correlate performance management data with culture and engagement measurement and other data points from HR and non-HR systems gives leaders a powerful tool for establishing the business case for HR.
Over a few days in San Francisco, I listened to presenters and customers in one-on-one conversations talk about leveraging Culture Amp data and capabilities to impact everything from recruiting and employer brand, to diversity and inclusion, performance management and feedback processes, and to prepare and shepherd their organizations through significant transformations.
If you had Culture Amp pigeon-holed as a survey company take another look. They’ll surprise you.