Workplace Experience: The holistic Definition Of Workplace Culture In An Organisation

The term workplace culture is pretty much qualitative in nature and to a very large extent based on perception of employees in an organization. The universal definition of workplace culture is 'How work gets done in an organization'. However, is this how workplace culture is perceived in the Indian Startup Ecosystem?

At Culturro, we researched to understand how a qualitative term such as workplace culture can be quantified and the parameters that affect it in an organizational setting. As a part of our research, we connected with organizational psychologists, startup founders, investors, startup employees; and we asked them one simple question, what is their perception of the term workplace culture? Analyzing their responses clearly indicated that the perception of the term workplace culture across the stakeholders in the ecosystem was skewed.  In-fact, the startup founders' perception of workplace culture was worrisome to a large degree.

In India, workplace culture is often perceived as the perks or benefits that an organization gives to its employees. Founders often believe that an organization has a good culture when they provide employees with flexible work timings or fully stocked up pantries or organize frequent office parties and get-together etc. Although these perks are important, they don't guarantee engagement or performance.

Our research led us to conclude that organizations only focus on superficial attributes of culture and there is a huge gap in the perception and the actual definition of workplace culture. So to bridge this gap and create a better understanding, we coined a new term Workplace Experience™ that is a holistic definition of the term workplace culture

What is Workplace Experience? And why is it important?
Workplace Experience in simple terms is the sum total of all experiences an employee goes through in an organization.

These experiences are the base of any company, leading employees to formulate beliefs that eventually culminate into actions yielding results. The term Workplace Experience™ is holistic in nature and a direct result of three important forces in any organization viz. leadership styles of the leaders, workplace environment, and the policies & procedures that govern the organization. To ensure that the right Workplace Experience™ is created for the employees it is important that all the above aspects work in unison.

Companies that focus on creating the right Workplace Experience™ enable their employees to form the right beliefs and take the right actions, which eventually lead to stellar results. Some of the tangible outcomes of good Workplace Experience™ are high performance, engaged and happy employees, low attrition, superior customer experience. However, the intangible outcomes are above and beyond.

After thorough research, we have been able to understand the parameters that affect Workplace Experience in an organization and their connection to employee needs. At Culturro, we have developed a proprietary analytical model to calculate the Workplace Experience™ score of any organization.

To know more about how the concept of Workplace Experience is similar to a symphony orchestra, read our blog Workplace Experience - Symphony of an Organization

To know more about the initiative and how to participate in the Workplace Experience Ranking 2017 click here to visit the website.