Niek Klaver

The impact of a corporate culture without psychological safety: causes and consequences

A positive culture can help an organization succeed. However, a poor culture can have the opposite effect and harm the organization. Problems with Boeing's corporate culture led to their recent setbacks. A Boeing-manufactured Alaska Airlines plane door panel blew out midair over Portland, Oregon, on January 5, forcing an emergency landing. Now there are a lot of concerns about safety and quality at the airline, as this was not the first time something went wrong with a Boeing plane. So, what happened and what role did their organizational culture play?

Enhance your organizational culture with best practices from industry leaders: Psychological safety, leadership and DEI

Some of the biggest companies improve their organizational culture through psychological safety, leadership and DEI. Decision-making, values and rituals and traditions also play a role in shaping a successful organization.

Enhance your organizational culture with best practices from industry leaders: Decision-making, values, and rituals and traditions

Best practices from industry leaders show how some of the biggest companies improve their organizational culture through decision-making, organizational values, and rituals and traditions.

Enhance your organizational culture with best practices from industry leaders: feedback, collaboration and learning and development

A strong cultural identity is essential for business success. It helps keep employees happy, encourages new ideas and leads to overall success. But what makes the best companies stand out? The secret lies in how they build and maintain their workplace culture. Some of the successful strategies used by top companies are explored below. These practical tips and examples can be applied to enhance your organization’s culture and achieve excellent results.

Transforming Culture: The Key to Psychological Safety

Have you ever silently questioned your boss's decisions but chosen to keep your thoughts to yourself? In many organizations, people feel unsafe to speak up due to the prevailing culture. Unfortunately, this can lead to serious consequences. What if your input could have prevented a mistake or inspired your boss to find a new solution? When employees do not feel safe to speak up or take risks, it can result in preventable errors, missed opportunities, and a lack of new and innovative ideas. This hesitance to share concerns and ideas often comes from not feeling psychologically safe, which is important for creating a productive and innovative work environment.

Fueling Growth: The Power of a Strong Feedback Culture

Employees truly are the backbone of every company. How successful a company is comes mostly down to how well employees are performing. For employees to perform well, they require feedback. In an organization where giving and receiving feedback is the norm, individual and organizational performance improve as employees feel more engaged and valued when they receive constructive feedback. This helps them identify areas for improvement and grow. As a result, there is greater organizational success.

The importance of the Employer Net Promoter Score (eNPS) in 2024

When your employees are at a party, how enthusiastic will they be about your organization? Are your employees so satisfied with you as an employer that they would recommend the organization to others as a great place to work? That is the question that the eNPS examines.

A fair comparison: measuring pay equity

At first glance, measuring the gender pay gap seems straightforward – just compare the average salaries of men versus women, right? Well, not quite. The reality is far more nuanced and often up for debate. Factors like part-time work and job levels skew these averages, potentially masking underlying issues of inequality. To answer the question: are we paying our employees equally for the same work, an organization must calculate the corrected pay gap. A more comprehensive metric that factors in variables such as job level and experience to reveal the true state of pay equity within an organization. It's not just about identifying a gap but understanding why it exists and what actions can rectify it. Highberg's approach to calculating equal pay for equal work sheds light on the complexities of pay disparity and paves the way for meaningful change.

The culture scan Whitepaper

Welcome to our comprehensive guide on the Culture Scan offered by Highberg. This whitepaper provides detailed insights into how our meticulously developed standard Culture Scan can be tailored to meet your organization's unique needs. We are eager to discuss your specific requirements and explore how our Culture Scan can support your cultural transformation goals.

Case study: How the Highberg Culture Scan supported a government organization in successfully merging three distinct cultures

In the Netherlands, several government security organizations share the same mission but serve different target groups. This overlap often causes confusion among the organizations' audiences. To address this, a decision was made to merge three organizations—each with distinct cultures, sizes, and ministerial oversight—into one integrated entity. This merger presented unique challenges. A large, bureaucratic organization with subcultures and high employee turnover had to integrate with smaller organizations that prioritized autonomy and maintained a flat structure. The absence of a shared culture posed a significant risk to effective collaboration. How do you create a unified organizational culture that harnesses the strengths of all three entities? Highberg was brought in to tackle this challenge by mapping the cultural landscape with the Culture Scan and guiding the subsequent culture change.