Measuring a company’s culture can be a challenging undertaking. While some parameters are clearly definable, others are more difficult to pin down. However, when your objective is to shift a company’s culture, it’s important to measure progress to determine if your efforts are resulting in your desired outcomes.

When you consider that a company culture is the sum of individual behaviors, it becomes easier to identify measurement techniques. Making the transition from one culture to another requires behavioral change on an individual level, which is more difficult than you might expect. Even after an inspiring training event, it’s easy to slip back into old habits, especially when employees are faced with the daily pressures of their jobs. However, when individuals collectively make changes over time, the cycle is repeated, new norms are created, and the result is a new culture.

Let’s take a look at the seven measurement techniques that can be used throughout a successful culture transformation.

1. Pulse Checks

Before even starting a culture transformation initiative, it’s important to know the current state of the organization. A pulse check is a short questionnaire used to first capture the baseline culture and then measure change over defined periods of time. For example, you might ask employees to do a pulse check once every quarter to measure changes in responses to questions about how well the leadership models behavior that embodies the company culture.

2. Key Milestones

An important component of culture change is clearly articulating the expected standard and identifying what must be done to achieve it. Creating key milestones over a period of 18 to 36 months gives employees and managers benchmarks to work toward. These milestones also help sustain the momentum of culture change over time. Many culture shifts start with a big push but can fizzle after a few months as employees revert to their old habits. Keeping these key milestones at the forefront as a measurement tool can help sustain the energy as people work to incorporate new behaviors into their daily jobs.

3. Knowledge Testing

In the early stages of a culture transformation, it’s important to know if the new information being delivered during training is understood by participants. If the training didn’t resonate, you can’t reasonably expect changes in behavior. Knowledge testing in the days and weeks after training will confirm that employees learned the desired skills or will provide evidence that further training is required.

4. Mobile Boost Learning

After confirmation that the training was effective, fight the effects of learning decay with a tool like mobile boost learning. Meant to reinforce (not reteach) knowledge already acquired, boost learning can help keep new concepts and behaviors top of mind. Mobile tools can deliver short messages to reinforce behaviors that lead to better quality, efficiency, productivity, or whatever your defined culture change goals are.

5. Self-Assessments

As time progresses during a culture change, employees reach a point where they understand what is expected of them, have the tools to make the desired changes, and are making a genuine effort to apply new skills and change their own behavior. During this stage, self-assessments are valuable tools that allow employees to test these new behaviors in a safe environment. Working with a manager who is able to set clear goals for specific tasks ensures that employees are able to try a new behavior, make corrections, and generate feedback that contributes to lasting change.

6. Multi-Rater Assessments

The next stage in a culture transformation is when employees are not just testing new behaviors, but fully deploying them. At this point, multi-rater assessments that gather feedback from managers, customers, and direct reports can help refine these behaviors even further and optimize the culture. This level of measurement is not necessarily appropriate for every organization going through a culture transformation, as it demands more resources and a level of rigor that not every company needs. However, for organizations that want to achieve a certain level of performance, multi-rater assessments can be a valuable tool.

7. Culture Impact Scorecard

All of the results from the above assessment tools can be combined into a culture impact scorecard or digital dashboard that allows you to centrally manage and communicate the importance of the culture in the organization. Having all of the data in a single location enables you to correlate all of the phases in adopting a new company culture.

• Training
• Knowledge
• Application
• Behavior change
• Culture transformation
• Business impact

Can each of these culture transformation tools be used independently? Of course, but if you want to get the most from your training investment and measure how much of an impact your culture transformation program have on organizational goals, it’s important to employ measurement tools during each phase and tie them all together into a snapshot view. Measuring a company culture is not as simple as taking an occasional survey, but with a smart strategy and the right tools, you can measure transformation in action.