Does your organization know where it stands? While senior leaders may have an intuitive sense of where the culture-based problems lie, they may not know the depth of the issue and probably do not know how to begin fixing it.

A formal assessment of the organization’s culture and how the organization’s principles, goals, and standards are aligned can take you a long way toward framing an action plan. 

Skout uses a variety of tools and methods to uncover roadblocks to performance. Among them are the Values Assessment and Focus Groups and Interviews.

Skout’s Assessment process identifies and quantifies the key performance indicators that reveal the drivers of behavior and the gaps in how employees relate to company’s Values, Goals, and expected Standards of Behavior.

The results of the Assessment provides clients with data in the following areas:

Roadblocks in the current culture. Where in the organization are negative perceptions influencing behavior? What is the nature of the negativity? For example, frustrations caused by feelings of disrespect are different from frustrations caused by perceptions of bureaucratic inefficiency.

Personal Values. What motivates employees? Understanding the personal values of employees helps frame effective solutions by understanding what it takes for associates to feel whole at work, and therefore more productive and less frustrated.

Desired Culture. Understanding what employees feel is essential for the organization to be high-performing. Desired culture values create a vocabulary for training and communication. For example, leadership may be seeking more innovation but if employees identify open communication and employee recognition as desired culture values, these issues must be addressed first before innovation can be achieved.

Values Assessment

Skout’s Values Assessment helps organizations understand which unstated values in its current culture are hindering achievement of high performance. The Values Assessment is based on the Culture Transformation Tools developed by Richard Barrett.

The Values Assessment is available to any employee with access to the web. The Values Assessment is an anonymous survey that takes 10-15 minutes to complete.

On each of three screens the participant chooses 10 values from a selection of 90-120 values that reflect who they are as individuals, which values they see in the current culture, and which are essential for the organization to be high performing.

Focus Groups and Interviews

With results of the Values Assessment in hand, Skout will conduct focus groups with groups of employees and interviews with leaders at key locations. The objective of the focus groups and interviews is to provide depth to the data revealed in the web assessment through anecdotal stories and the factual framing of issues and challenges. At each location separate focus groups will be held with various levels of employees as well as by key job functions or departments.