CIPD Learner Blog Part 2


Thu 29 Sep 2016

Two people standing and chatting with mugs in their hand

Blog Author
David Hawthorne
CIPD Learner

A topic of HR that I have always been interested in is – What is the culture within the organisation and how it relates to the structure?

In my most recent workshop we covered this and it was a great way to really explore my organisation and what our vision is. We always see companies say one thing in their brand and messaging but taking a deeper look do they really relate this same message to their employees?

My organisation is and has gone through many changes since I started in Feb 2015 and with each major change the culture seems to slightly change. Be it a change of senior management, marketing department or sales team each change has had an impact on the organisations structure and in relation the culture changes also.

For example when my organisation brought in a new sales team there was a lot of talk regarding ‘breath of fresh air’ and energy relating to the enthusiastic PMA that came with them. Another clear example is when the organisation changed its senior management structure and developed a Senior Leadership Team and with that they brought a more informal, open door policy which allowed staff to have more of a say and let the employees feel they have an input in the day to day aspects of the commercial operations.

In the workshop I got a great opportunity to discuss with the group their organisations and the cultures within their organisations. It was interesting to see the range of similarities and differences between the different sectors from public, private or not-for-profit.

I found the theory of Hardy’s Models of Organisation Culture to be very interesting and after doing an analysis on my organisation realised that the company works in a culture I would not have necessarily placed it in.

Having an interest in HR, I found the assignment on the organisation culture/structure very interesting and being able to apply the work learned in the workshop to my organisation really helped me to understand the companies vision deeper than a mission statement and I found motivated me to achieve my career goals and company goals and be able to design my CPD to meet both.

As I work through the material in advance of my next workshop on Managing Change I am gathering more understanding of how HR plays a role in organisations and how much of an impact HR has on every aspect of a company, more so than I realised before.

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