A company’s culture is its lifeblood. It’s what takes a loosely connected group of individuals and motivates them to work towards achieving common goals, living and breathing the organization’s mission and values. It’s easy enough to develop a mission statement; it’s much harder to articulate the mission well enough to bring it to life for your entire organization and to make sure the values you want your company to be known for are clearly reflected in your policies and procedures and visibly demonstrated by your employees. Your internal auditor can help play a significant role in strengthening your company culture.
Company culture is vital to organizational success
Although assessing company culture is no simple task for an internal auditor, it varies little from their main goal of improving processes with objective analysis. Components such as the flow of communication, improved morale, and increased productivity are large contributors to the overall health of the company culture. Internal audit partners can contribute to your company culture by implementing control evaluations for everyday procedures that cannot be completed effectively by those within the company.
Culture is the practical implementation of vision and mission
Culture is not merely a conceptual idea. Rather, when approached thoughtfully and intentionally, it is a practical means of implementing your comprehensive vision and core mission. It is the set of actions you take to accomplish that which you envision for your company. Thus, it should be easy for an internal auditor to identify the core goals of your company, whether those goals are being met, and what obstacles exist, if any.
Insiders are invested too heavily to be objective
There is one fundamental truth that makes working with an internal auditing partner a requirement: All people have blind spots, particularly when we are too close to the area of concern. You and your employees are too invested, professionally and emotionally, to be objective about your company’s shortcomings, especially when discussing something as difficult as measuring the strength of your company culture. In this critical area, it is vital to have a fresh, unbiased perspective when performing the evaluations.
Every policy and procedure can be measured
Ideally, your policies and procedures are the practical implementation of your vision and mission. Everything you do within your organization and everything you convey (including unwritten expectations), can and should be evaluated against the same standard. To make that distinction on an on-going basis, these policies and procedures must be measured, and an internal auditor can do so in different ways.
Interviews, focus groups, and other structured evaluations can measure whether a company meets ethical guidelines and adheres to integrity values. This establishment of company culture is a determinant of conduct within the company, further predicting compliance and efficiency. Lack of compliance could be a lack of buy-in to the company culture. If employees are not invested, it will show in their work.
Furthermore, an internal auditor can identify whether employees are even aware of the desired company culture. In the same way that you ensure understanding of basic policies and procedures, your mission and company values that define your culture should be clearly defined. The values of any company should be demonstrated and adhered to from the top down.
The internal audit is one of the best ways to ensure that your company is establishing and retaining a culture that empowers your people to achieve your vision and remain faithful to your mission. Your internal audit partner can analyze policies and procedures across the board to ensure they are helping you not only meet your objectives but do so while also strengthening your culture. Strengthening your company culture is possible, but it requires a close analysis that has immeasurable benefits.
