Transforming Organizational Culture in a Multinational Corporation

Transforming Organizational Culture in a Multinational Corporation

The Company

A multinational manufacturing company in Korea

The Project

The company had a performance-oriented vertical decision-making culture. This culture has resulted in misuse of authority and persistent bullying of team members. The handling of bully complaints were poor that led to employees losing trust and felt disappointed with the company’s leadership. Direct and indirect victims of the incidents expressed anger and helplessness regarding the management styles. Employees were also experiencing psychological fatigue due to the rumors about the incidents and that had affected their focus at work. The continuous disappointing organizational culture led employees to think about quitting.

A change in management policy becoming heavily performance-oriented and too rigid, moving away from the original culture of the parent company which is open-minded and practiced mutual respect between management and employee led to high turnover among its team members.

The company contacted Human Dynamic. The company expressed a strong will to change the organizational culture and leaders’ attitude. The employees welcomed the change. The company recognized that it needed an internal change as well as coaching from external professional consultants.

Through collaborative efforts with the company’s management, three main objectives were identified; 1)to resolve the psychological grievances among employees to reduce the rumors, 2) to rebuild the communication channel between leadership and employees in order to gain trust and, 3)to identify directions for an organizational culture change as well as to draw up the action plan for the same.

With this in mind, Human Dynamic devised several programs to meet the above objectives. The first program was 1-to-1 coaching offered to employees to help process their experience and rebuild trust. The timely initiation of these coaching sessions helped employees to process their grievances, develop ways to manage different situations at work and in life, and most importantly, it helped them grow in the competencies related to workplace relationships, communication as well as career development. Employees expressed their satisfaction with the coaching sessions resulting in the company entrusting Human Dynamic with a long-term coaching engagement. This also enhanced employees’ confidence in the company’s commitment to drive the cultural change agenda.  

Next, Human Dynamic organized a specific facilitation session for the leaders to identify employees’ needs and the organization’s direction in cultural change, followed by developing action plans to bring the needed change. Through this session, we successfully identified several core themes that became the focus area to drive cultural change. We then worked with individual business leaders in 1-to-1 business coaching sessions to enhance the overall change process. 

Overall, the management and employees felt a sense of accomplishment through the intervention programs. They expressed that the program helped them process their experience, understand different communication styles, work, and leadership attitudes, and make necessary adjustments.

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