Co-creating the Cultural Change in Workplace

Abstract

Developing a strong company culture offers many benefits, such as attracting and keeping the most desired employees. Successful change leaders are seeking positive energy from the existing culture and placing efforts on developing it, in order to accelerate the desired change. Culture is becoming a more and more important source of change levers.

This master’s thesis facilitated and documented the co-creation of company level actions that support engagement, inclusion and ownership of the company culture at Digia Plc. The objectives of this study were to 1) diagnose Digia’s culture in the current state: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats; 2) suggest actions that would support further rooting the recently renewed cultural principles (Learning, Sharing, Courage, and Professional pride).

The theoretical framework was mainly based on change management theories. In the transformation of company culture, it is important to diagnose the culture’s strengths and weaknesses. Cultural principles or “critical few” behaviors help clarifying a small number of clear change goals. Finding ways to connect workers to something larger that they can believe in builds employee pride and commitment. As culture is reinforced at every level of organization, informal peer networks and motivators are essential. At companies with strong cultures, there are usually widely known stories that answer “how did we get here”. Storytelling concretizes and personalizes the cultural goals.

The goal of this study was to co-create company level actions that will support the realization of all the above-described culture-oriented change levers. The co-creation work was facilitated in two workshops with a group of Digia’s employees. Also, most of the data for this study was collected in these workshops. The data was analyzed in five analysis workshops by a smaller group. The analytical approach was qualitative. This study forms the second cycle of culture related action research at Digia. The research contains altogether three cycles. In the first cycle (spring 2019), the cultural principles were co-created. In the second cycle (this study, autumn 2019), company level actions were co-created in order to root the culture. In the third cycle (spring 2020 and further), team- and business level actions will be co-created in order to continue rooting the culture at all organizational levels.

The findings suggested that the cultural experience is heterogenous at Digia. Altogether 35 company level actions were co-created in order to root the common company culture. The scope of these actions covers most business operations. Many of the actions are already being executed. The results also indicated that some of the actions that were recognized as necessary, will be complex to execute.

Digia is a growth company where change is constant. As the author of this study, I am satisfied to see that the results of my work genuinely matter: many of the actions are already being executed or are placed in the roadmap for later execution. Some parts of this Thesis are confidential and the published version introduces outcomes and deliverables in the extent that does not reveal confidential information. The comprehensive results and outcomes are introduced in confidential attachments to this report.