The Culture of an Organisation is it’s Heart.

“The culture of an organisation is its personality and character. Shared values, beliefs and assumptions about how people should behave and interact, how decisions should be made and how work activities should be carried out. An organisation’s culture is shaped by its history and environment as well as the people who lead and work for it. This week at YG we have been exploring our own culture.

“I set up a series of five meetings for staff from across Young Gloucestershire to talk openly about culture. The idea was to explore with the wider team how our culture impacts the way we work, the way we feel and how we do our job. An opportunity to be and reflect rather than always doing and fixing which is what a lot of our work entails. The discussions were frank, open, reflective and educational and have already started seeing a positive impact in the way we feel about the organisation since.

“We took time to remember what is good about the culture in our organisation, what we get right, what we appreciate and the impact this has. We understood that not all things work for all people and there are lots of areas in which we can improve and learn. A clear message for me is the need to educate, share and inform the teams more about how the organisation works. A clear example being that some of the staff hadn’t thought about the impact of the economic climate on YG’s finances, they had just been thinking about their own personal impact. The news that our energy bill has increased £25,000 which is the cost of a staff salary for a year, helped staff to understand some of the difficult decisions we have to make.

“As part of the sessions I shared my own story and journey creating an opportunity to understand who I am, how that influences the decisions I make and why I work for YG and Infobuzz. When decisions are being made in an organisation that you don’t understand and you don’t have a personal relationship with the person who makes them it can be easy to think they don’t care, they don’t understand and they have hidden agendas. The feedback I have received this week has shown that understanding who I am and some of the challenges, difficult decisions and compromises I have to make in my role to ensure that YG can do the best it can for young people has really helped staff understand more. Understand that they are valued even if we can’t always give the team what they want, that things aren’t always as simple as they look.

“I am also hoping it has empowered the teams to be accountable to each other and hold each other to account in creating the culture they want to work in. I can lead and set a direction of travel, but it is the teams who really create the culture, the way they respect each other, the way they respond to each other, the way they appropriately challenge, learn and grow together. I hope that the conversations we have started will continue within teams, in discussions in the pub, in discussions with colleagues and friends and that we can all continue to learn, grow and develop.

“Fundamentally I am trying to create the best environment I can to get the best outcomes for children and young people in our county. I am hoping the conversations this week will help to do that. This is the start not the end of these conversations, mixed in with them will be some education about the ins and outs of how an organisation like YG works too. If you want to reflect more on culture have a listen to this podcast it’s a good reflection of the current work place challenges around culture.”