Creative Ways to Strengthen Company Culture

Over the last year and a half, Pact, an international development nonprofit, has encouraged their staff come together to think through work culture. In February of 2020 in Tanzania, a small group of Champions met and decided on the new values of Respect, Integrity, and Inclusion. Since then, the Culture Champions group has grown to over 40 staff members from each region that Pact works in. The Culture Champions meet monthly to update each other on ongoing culture work in each of our offices and brainstorm ideas on how to further socialize these values amongst staff. To learn more about the values and the implementation process check out this story.

Although this work is supported by the Employee Engagement Manager, each of the pieces of training on the core values was created and rolled out by each of the global offices. Each office created its own materials and hosted its own meetings about the culture work. Below are highlights of some creative ways that offices introduced and socialized these values with their teammates.

These highlights are only a fraction of the work going on around the globe at Pact and I share these highlights in hopes that it will inspire you and your colleagues to do the same if you want to strengthen your organizational culture. 

Ukraine

Culture Champions spearheaded a creative project relating to the core values. The Ukraine team broke into groups to address each of the values. The group focused on the value, Integrity, created posters that showed what integrity meant to each of them. The group focused on the value of Inclusion created creative posters that explain what work behaviors exhibit inclusion.  

Zambia

Our Zambian Culture champions led discussions about our values and committed to displaying the values in each of the offices in the country. In their staff meeting, they discussed how staff can uphold these values not only in the office but in their interactions with vendors, partners, beneficiaries, consultants, and in their own homes and communities. They have more activities planned like a one-day workshop for senior managers and team leads about how they can lead by example as well as running a monthly competition where staff writes a short description of how they incorporated the values in their daily work. Each month a winner is selected and they share their example with staff and get a chocolate reward! In addition to the competition, staff in Zambia can also nominate colleagues who they feel are exhibiting and exemplifying the values in their work.

Myanmar

In Myanmar, Culture Champions supported discussions on culture across regional offices. They decided to showcase a series of voices from a range of staff and projects in Myanmar. Staff captured their recordings on smartphones from their homes and in the field where they continue to serve communities. The communications team then produced the video with all the interviews and shared it externally.

Eswatini

The Eswatini team hosted a Pact culture reflection meeting with their office. Due to Covid-19, the team was creative and hosted this meeting outdoors in December with pre-packaged meals. They reviewed the values and allowed time for self-reflection to internalize what the values meant to each person. This time for feedback allowed the conversation to shift from a broad discussion of the values to a discussion on how the values are exhibited in daily behaviors. The culture champions committed to planning quarterly culture activities to work through the feedback. Additionally, they took the time to have some fun in the fresh air and celebrate staff. 

South Africa

In South Africa, Culture Champions led staff through an exercise where they reviewed a video about integrity. Staff engaged and gave their opinion on how they would react to the circumstances presented in the video. The majority of the staff was of the opinion that the situation in the video was forcing an employee to be dishonest and this would go against our value of integrity. Check out the video and if you find it useful have this conversation with your own offices.

These examples from around the globe are just a few of the ways you can engage with your colleagues about organizational culture. I hope it inspires you to start these conversations at your organization!