‘What gets measured gets managed,’ as the adage goes. Yet when it comes to culture change, for some reason there is a belief that it’s hard to measure, and therefore difficult to demonstrate progress.

In this article we’ll look at why it’s critical to measure your company culture on an ongoing basis, what it is you should be measuring, and the tools we recommend to do this. We’ll also share some of the common pitfalls, how to avoid them, and tips for moving from measurement results to culture planning and activation.

Why is it important for leaders to measure their company culture?

1. Understand what’s working and what isn’t

If you’re working on culture change, it’s good practice to measure it to find out:

• Where are we making progress, and how much?
• What are we doing that is working well?
• Where are we not making progress, or going backwards?
• Overall, are our efforts moving us closer to the target culture?

Data will enable you to make informed decisions about what to prioritise and where to course correct.

It will also help create a culture of empowerment, as your employees feel that their opinions matter and contribute to wider change.

2. Return on investment

It’s also important to measure culture because you may have made a big investment in terms of organizational resources (people, time, money) so you want to know whether you’re getting a ROI.. It’s only by measuring that you’ll get any idea of the impact of your change initiatives.  

3. Marathon, not a sprint

Working on your culture is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes time, sometimes years, but if you’re measuring (and seeing) progress regularly it helps to keep leaders and colleagues motivated to keep moving forward. In these situations, when we are able to show clients the results of their efforts it really helps to keep them on track.

4. Content for communications

Results of culture measurement give you content to share with your organization, so you can provide concrete examples and stories of what’s changing as you progress on your journey. This builds belief and credibility.

When measuring company culture, what is a common mistake that we see a lot of leaders making?

The most common ones are:

• Measuring the wrong things. We see organizations measuring tasks and outputs, rather than outcomes and impact. They measure actions completed but not the difference made.
• Conflating employee engagement with culture measurement. Many clients use their employee engagement survey as a proxy for measuring culture.  While culture and engagement are related, they are not the same.  Often employee engagement survey items don’t cover the areas clients are working on to build their target culture.
• Not measuring at all. At the top of this article I wrote that some organizations believe culture is impossible or too hard to measure, and that’s reflected in the fact that they don’t have measures in place.  

Learn more about why culture transformations fail in our short guide.

What tools or methods do we recommend for measuring culture accurately?

At ZRG, we have three main tools we use with clients.

1. Culture Insights Survey (CIS)

This is our main quantitative tool. It’s a comprehensive, organization-wide online survey that will give you a clear picture on a range of behavioral metrics, including a clear picture of the culture you have today, how employees are experiencing your current culture, the extent to which leaders are equipped to drive change.

It is often used as a starting point on which to build culture change work.

2. Discover Culture Diagnostic

Our primary qualitative tool, this is based on a rigorous and proprietary focus group methodology. It combines group and one-to-one interviews, and these discussions are turned into quantitative data and actionable insights. It’s designed to describe your culture in terms of the dominant behaviors and their impact, and the underlying shared beliefs that are driving them. In this way, it complements our CIS tool by going deeper and revealing why your culture is the way it is, which helps you address root causes and create sustainable change. However, the tool can also be used standalone.

3. Pulse Survey

A lighter, shorter online questionnaire than CIS that requires minimal set up. The Culture Pulse is great to use for measuring progress of culture activation.  It gives a sense of how deep into the organisation desired culture has penetrated, which populations have embraced new behaviors, where leaders and managers are role modelling the new culture and where to focus efforts for further acceleration.

How does our online ‘Culture Pulse’ survey differ from a typical culture or employee engagement survey that we’d normally see?

There are a few main differences:

• Culture Pulse measures what is observable, that is what people are seeing around them, in particular behaviors they’re noticing (or not), but also decisions and actions.
• It asks people to self-assess their own behavior considering the desired culture.
• It also asks employees to give a perspective on other’s behavior, including their leaders, manager, and peers.

In our experience employee engagement surveys focus on how people feel about their employer, whereas we are looking to identify observable behaviors in relation to target culture.

How to get useful responses from Culture Surveys

Many leaders find it difficult to get employees to fill in surveys. What can they do to improve their survey response rates?

First things first, people need to know why they are being asked to fill in a survey. Then they need to see the results, and see meaningful action off the back of them. These all sound simple, but when they’re forgotten it can lead to cynicism and people opting out of surveys.

What kind of questions should leaders be including in culture pulse surveys?

The key areas to probe for are:

1. Reach. How far and where in the organisation target culture and key behaviours have been embraced
2. Visibility. How visible the target culture and key behaviours are in the organisation. Extent to which leaders and managers are acting as role models
3. How to accelerate. Specific opportunities embrace and challenges to address to continue driving successful culture change
4. Level of activation. To what extent people are actively living and supporting the target culture and key behaviours

How to take advantage of your survey results

When leaders receive culture survey results, what are the next steps they should take?

As quickly as possible, leaders should:

1. Review the results. Leaders need to set aside time to do a thorough analysis of the results. Do this at the earliest possible opportunity – the quicker you get your arms around them, the quicker you can move to considered action.
2. Look for patterns. Are there clear areas of positive or negative feedback? What trends can you see around issues, levels of the organization, or parts of your business?
3. Get as many cuts as you can. Use all the data cuts you can. By looking vertically, horizontally, side by side etc and heat mapping your company in this way, you will have more insights to draw on.
4. Remember the verbatims. Read the verbatim comments of your employees, because there will often be great ideas in there about what you should stop/start/continue doing.

How do you move from survey results to culture planning?

When you get your results, it can be tempting to run at every issue identified. Don’t. To make progress, it’s critical you don’t try and boil the ocean. Instead, focus in on the two or three aspects that are going to make the biggest difference to accelerating activation of whatever it is you measured. That could be dialling up one strength, and addressing two development areas. Once you’ve identified those priorities, put together an action plan to support it.  

How to deal with negative results

What should leaders do if the results of a culture survey are much more negative than they had anticipated?

What should be their first steps?

Three pieces of advice come to mind here:

• Before you show leaders the results, ask them what they are expecting to see, and ask them on what basis – where is the evidence of what they’ve done that would lead them to predict such results?
• Focus on the positives – do not ignore the negative results, but also look at the higher-scoring areas and ask why that is. What activity has happened in that area that could be replicated elsewhere?
• Manage expectations – give a reminder of timelines for culture change (marathon, not a sprint).

You can learn more about creating a speak up culture where employees are comfortable voicing ideas and concerns in our expert guide.

How can our Culture Pulse Survey make a difference to both company leaders, and employees?

Culture Pulse is a short, sharp, snapshot of precisely where your culture is at an exact moment in time. It can make a huge difference for several reasons, including:

1. Concrete data on where you’re making progress – do not underestimate how motivating it will be for leaders and employees to see the difference their behavior makes.
2. It gives you input for your culture plan. Without data, you have no idea what your plan should focus on, or what initiatives to run.
3. Course correct – if you’re feeling like progress has stalled or is in reverse, Culture Pulse will show you where to course correct and double down.  

Whatever your size of organization, or where you are on your culture journey, you can and should be measuring your progress. Our range of robust, scalable solutions will give you the information you need to hit the ground running in 2025, confident in the knowledge you’re focused on the right areas for aligning your culture and strategy.  

We can now support you in more ways than simply culture transformation – we partner in business transformation, leadership acceleration, assessment & succession planning, executive and leadership coaching, and talent acquisition.

Get in touch to learn more and get started!

Learn more about your role as a leader in culture change in our expert guide.