About
About Yoel Sullam
What is organizational culture?
Different results achieved by two organizations in the same business environment using identical technology to achieve the same goals is the major motivation for my interest in this area.
Studies examining the secret of success of major companies around the world found that organizational culture played a critical role in the creation of a relative advantage over the competition.
Organizational culture as a concept in and of itself began evolving thirty years ago when it tried linking managerial concepts such as control, profitability and efficacy with social concepts such as values and norms.
A definition of organizational culture would describe it as being a composite of values, beliefs and social agreements that employees of a certain organization share. Organizational culture, then, would be unique to each organization. A more specific definition would include the concept of social glue, which is designed to connect different areas of the organization in order to encourage employees to adopt the correct measures that would facilitate organizational success, even if the required measures are more complex.
What elements comprise organizational culture?
Organizational culture is essentially composed of two layers: one overt and the other latent.
Numerous studies conducted over the past three decades on the influence of organizational culture revealed its decisive impact on work environment, organizational performance, information sharing, encouragement of innovation and creativity as well as improved business results.
In brief, organizational culture generates several benefits, including:
- Explicit definition of the rules of the game for everyone participating in organizational activity
- Providing a sense of purpose to organizational members
- Providing organizational employees with a sense of uniqueness and membership
Organizational culture today is undeniably a core ability that can determine organizational success or failure.
What is employee motivation?
Many studies on organizational behavior indicated that the level of employee motivation can improve and motivate employees to achieve higher goals.
How does employee motivation contribute?
- it facilitates achievement of higher levels of employee satisfaction
- provides employees with stronger motivation
- allows us to prevent employee abandonment
- develops open, improved communication within the organization
- encourages people to join the organization
- develops employees in order to facilitate greater employee output
One of the leading theories in motivation to date is Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Maslow is a prominent social psychologist considered to be one of the fathers of the humanist approach that developed at the end of the 1950s.
Maslow created a hierarchy of needs. Only after the lower level of needs was satisfied could people move up on the scale.
The first level involves physiological needs such as food, drink, etc.
The second level involves safety needs such as job security, housing, etc.
The third level involves the need to belong to a group
The fourth level involves the need for social appreciation, e.g. to be appreciated and respected
The fifth and final level involves the need for self-actualization, which discusses the person's ability to maximize his innate abilities.
Maslow even referred to the needs hierarchy when he stated "If you intend to be less than what you are capable of being, you probably will be miserable for the rest of your life."
The motivation to work evolved over the years from two approaches:
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This approach refers to the financial figure at the core of employee motivation. The premise is that employees calculate the financial reward they receive for the effort and time they invest to perform the job. This approach gave rise to the development of payroll calculation as the single factor in employee motivation.
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Human Relations Approach
The approach states that employee motivation is composed of multiple factors related to work and salary conditions the employee receives in exchange for his work.
The approach places great weight on employee satisfaction as a key factor in motivation.
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Employee motivation is indisputably a critically important issue that managers must address
when formulating organizational culture.
Lee Iacoca, legendary CEO of American car manufacturer Chrysler, addressed this issue by stating "Management is nothing more than motivating other people."
Changes in Organizational Culture
An understanding of organizational culture enables us to conclude that change in well-entrenched habits that have taken root throughout the organization's or company's history is not an easy task. Statistics indicate that only 45% of organizations whose organizational culture has changed experienced any improvement and only 15% of this 45% group reported success.
The processes designed to change organizational culture are complicated and largely long-term. Organizational managers today lack the patience required to effect this type of change since the business environment poses numerous challenges every day that forces us to channel most of our organizational attention to successfully coping with them.
Why develop Wellness kickoff?
In my work with many organizations in various sectors, I began to realize that we live in a world that requires organizations to strive for an excellence and efficiency that is based on a declared vision and goal. Today's business environment is more demanding than ever. Changes imposed by the environment over the past decade have continually eroded the employee's status.
I then realized that development of a tool that would be composed of cultural values that have been proven to generate actual success on the one hand, and values that spur employee motivation on the other, and that would be assimilated in the organization within several months, could provide every organization with a boost that would help them create a work environment with happier employees and that would facilitate organizational success.
In his book The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum dedicated several lines to the importance of achieving happiness: "All the same," said the Scarecrow, "I shall ask for brains instead of a heart; for a fool would not know what to do with a heart if he had one." "I shall take the heart," returned the Tin Woodman; "for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world."
Happiness will be associated with the organizational strategy, which will be deeply bound with the customers' needs, employee identification with the added value of the firm to customers and creation of a sense of value.
Let our experience lead you to the fast track to a happy organization.
Yoel Sullam
Doctoral student, specializing in organizational culture, University of Derby in England.
BA in Social Sciences from The Open University and a MBA in Business Administration from the University of Derby Israel extension.
Senior Organizational Consultant – extensive experience with leading companies in customer service as well as HR management and development, member of The Israeli Association for Management, Development and Research of the Human Resources, as well as developer of the Wellness Kickoff system.
CEO and editor of WBN World Business Network, a network of experts on the Israeli business world.
Served in several managerial positions during his IDF service. Upon his retirement from career service, Yoel joined the Traklin Electricity chain, Israel's oldest and leading chain for electrical appliances, where he filled senior managerial positions for five years, including customer service manager, institution marketing director, etc.
Currently lectures at colleges in northern Israel on management and human resources professions.
