Aim for thriving workplace cultures: expert

Aged care workplaces need to be geared toward high performance rather than mere survival in this era of reform, says an international expert in the study of organisational culture.

New Zealand-based anthropologist Michael Henderson, who heads consultancy The Corporate Anthropologist, is presenting at Aged and Community Services Australia National Conference in Adelaide next month.

A corporate anthropologist takes the core skill set and perspective of an anthropologist and applies them to organisations and their cultures, Mr Henderson said.

“Having an adaptive and resilient culture within an organisation is especially critical during times of change, to not just manage but to succeed and thrive,” said Mr Henderson, who is also an author of five books on mastering company culture and human values.

He said there are three fundamental strategies that organisations provide to their market place.

“At the basic level they offer operational excellence; they strive to deliver as well as possible the product or service the market expects.

“At a more sophisticated level, they offer customer intimacy, where it is the provider’s job to learn the nuances and offer an enhanced type of product or service.

“And then there is product leadership, where the organisation ignores the parameters and what the market is asking for and totally reinvents the market, like for instance with Apple’s products,” Mr Henderson said.

While most organisations had a combination of the three, he said there was always a front wheel, and for aged care, that would typically have been operational excellence.

To move from the first level to the second, he said an organisational culture needed to be both aware and continuously adaptive to changes in the market and consumer circumstances.

However, a culture of constant adaptation and change can be very challenging and confronting to some staff, he said. “People will tend to cling to a mindset and resist change but if you don’t adjust, you are gone.”

Individuals, teams and departments instead need to move from a cultural mindset to one of mind-share, he said.

ACSA National conference 2014 is taking place from 7 – 10 September at the Adelaide Convention Centre.