Management culture
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Employee Engagement Enables Improved Customer Experiences

Value propositions are increasingly shifting from traditional product sales to providing relevant services and great experiences. Of course, the technology you use to support that will matter but employees will continue to play the central role in whether that technology works well. Hence, the need for greater employee engagement becomes critical. Why? Because higher employee engagement enables better customer experiences as companies like Nissan have learned. At the same time, in a post-pandemic world, we will see the emergence of an office + anywhere hybrid workforce that can undermine traditional top-down management and the presence-based office culture.

The degree of employee engagement, meanwhile, is affected by the quality and type of corporate culture. Here is why:

Management Culture Shapes Corporate Culture

An innovative management culture provides a strong purpose, creates diverse and cross-functional teams, focuses on the customer as the centre of business activity, and embraces transparent communication with the organisation.

Culture affects the struggle for talent, as well. Encouraging self-initiative, creativity, and passion for one’s work requires a corporate culture that values these characteristics and only leaders who value them as well will do that effectively. In other words, management culture is critical for fresh thinking and breaking with conventional dogmas, driving diversity of thought, the integration of different opinions, and strengthening of cultural intelligence.

Nothing Less Than The Redefinition Of Leadership Is At Stake

Managers will continue to be responsible for planning, organising, staffing, and leading. But managers will also need to communicate clearly why and how transformation is affecting the future of work inside their organisation. They need to infuse more interdisciplinary skill sets into the mix and broaden their hiring and skill-selection horizon beyond traditional management grades and digital skills.

A cross-functional organisation and team-building capabilities are critical aspects of the cultural transformation process. Managers need to deal with different levels of education, expertise, goals, viewpoints, and mindsets — all sources of potential culture clashes. Managers also must learn to give employees more autonomy and to empower them. In leading organisations, the role of the manager is therefore gradually transforming from a classic top-down, instruction-based command-and-control management style to a coaching style.

Join Our Upcoming Webinar On The Future Of Work In Europe

Management culture is an important stake that will define the future of work. There are several other factors, however, all of which we will cover in our upcoming webinar, The Future Workplace: Top Considerations for Technology Leaders in Europe, on April 14, 2021 at 10 a.m. CEST to participate in the panel discussion of Forrester analysts regarding the expected changes to the physical office, the emergence of the hybrid workforce, the evolving work-space regulation in Europe, and the efforts to boost employee experiences in a European context.