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I work with teams around establishing culture. A big part of that is elevating employee experience and for every single person that works in the organization to be intentional about, "What does it mean to be here? How do we treat each other?"

Something clear has come to the surface over the last year and a half:
The teams and the organizations that prioritize their culture and elevate employee experience thrived.

And companies that didn't, struggled. Across the board, they had far more challenges and struggled as a whole.

When it comes to how people feel about their jobs and the support they receive, it's the companies who stay committed to being flexible around circumstances like childcare, mental health, and asking their employees what they need, that rise to the top.

(And a lot of that is also financial: Companies forgoing bonuses to executives and opting instead to help employees out.)

And, that doesn't mean that the last 18 months weren’t challenging for organizations across the board. But the companies whose employees felt unsupported on an individual level, who led by making decisions for only themselves, those are the orgs that had a much more challenging time in the end.

Here’s where the rubber meets the road.

The reality about workplace culture is that when everything is going well, a really intentional, highly-engaged culture of people is great. It means high performance, low turnover, benefits to the bottom line.

But times of great change or disruption is when it goes from being great to absolutely necessary.

When things are chaotic or they're challenging, that's when culture matters. When people feel like they belong to something, they feel like both their team and their company have their back. Not only that, but they feel valued and important.

That's when we feel like, “Okay, we can get through this together.”

We believe we're in this together, as opposed to every person for themselves.

The perfect analogy here is that you don’t wait for a fire to break out to consider setting up fire extinguishers around the house. You need those things before a fire happens, and that's the importance of culture.

Culture is the lifeboat in times of chaos.

One element of culture is that it's a lifeboat.

In times of great change or chaos, having that in place already allows companies and teams to move through those areas and people feel supported. They feel like, "We know who we are for a team, we feel together," as opposed to lackluster culture and this feeling of, "Everybody for themselves."

And it's not that companies necessarily intend to make people feel like that, but when you do the work as an organization, as a leadership team to say, "We know who we are, we know how we operate together," and prioritizing employee experience, we make people feel valued and cared for and respected.

From my perspective, the last 18 months just showcased how important culture is. It's something that you need to have in place, because when times are great, having a great culture just makes them more exceptional. But when times are really tough, having a tight, connected, supported crew that are dialed in to one another makes all the difference in the world.

Just another case for why it's important to prioritize strategic conversations around culture and people. If you don't prepare, when you need it the most, you will suffer the most. And that's just the reality of it.

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This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop 

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