Are you engaged at work?  Is your company doing a good job of engaging you and your colleagues?  Some are now calling employee engagement "employee experience" but whichever way you wrap it people need to feel valued.

Below are some areas to rate yourself and/or your company on a scale of 1-10 (1 being low and 10 being high) and then check it against the infographic below, which is based on thousands of organisations internationally, to see where the gaps are.

1.   Recognition
​2.   Feedback 
3.   Happiness
4.   Personal growth
5.   Satisfaction
6.   Wellness
7.   Ambassadorship (do you recognise your organisation as a good place to work?)
8.   Relationship with managers
9.   Relationship with colleagues
10. Alignment

Comparing the two scores, how well do you think your organisation  values people and how do they act on it, whether you are the employer or an employee?  Where could it be improved?  

​Do you think your company, whether you work in it or own it, can face the coming changes?  Does it have a strong, positive culture to take it through the next few years successfully? 

Here’s the stats (from Officevibe) to check against:

Have you ever been excited at the prospect of a new job and when you arrive it’s not what you thought at all?

There are many reasons why this can happen. In this article I’m going to look at a basic checklist that can help to zone in on a potential employer to find out if the business and job are a good match for you.

Vibe
If at all possible try to meet on-site during work hours so that you get a feel for the energy of the place.

Job Description
How well is the job defined? Is it another generic job description asking for a wide variety of attributes, superhuman requirements and backflips too?

Business Culture
What are the types of attitudes, agreed ways of working within the organisation? How does the business take care of its people? What makes it stand out from other options?

Vision
Is there a vision beyond making money and if so what is it?

Barriers to Entry
How strict are the parameters to entry – does the business look beyond qualifications to give equal importance to other factors such as experience and motivation?

Interview Questions
Have you been asked any inappropriate questions? Were you asked questions in such a way that you were able to show your experience and talents or were they generic questions that were only good for ticking boxes?

Process
How well managed was the process? Hiring key talent should be a priority. What's the style of communication and how are you communicated with?


What other questions and criteria are important to you?

It’s now completely normal to talk about company culture but we’re still quite a long way from understanding and harnessing the power of culture when it comes to our careers.

Strange really, because in many ways personal culture is more powerful and more tangible than organisational culture. Unlike corporate cultures, our personal career culture will never be ‘Under New Management’ or subject to hostile takeovers or less-than-credible 180º turns.

Here are 5 simple ways to start exploring and identifying your unique career culture. 5 ways to help you question, then effectively communicate the culture behind who you are and what you do.

1. Re-read Your Job Description

• Remember all those bullet-points you memorised ahead of your interview? Take another look and ask yourself how many of those bullets actually describe what you do?
• If you find any duties or responsibilities that aren’t 100% accurate, write some bullets of your own. Knowing what you do is the first step towards understanding and appreciating your unique career culture

2. Analyse Good Outcomes

• Think about a recent outcome you were pleased with… How did you achieve this result? What pleased you most? How would you describe your working style? (methodical, determined, innovative, collaborative)
• Compare your achievement of this result with your experience of colleagues & friends. Do you work the same way? What do you do differently? Where do your strengths lie? The clues to your career culture are always there in your work. All you have to do is know where to look

3. Identify Your Values

• Think of your values as the collection of principles and beliefs that are most important to you. From treating people with respect, to going the extra mile, to getting the job done (and done well!), your values are the rock-solid foundations for your career culture
• Your values are always there, always positive and they are waiting to be explored. Ask yourself What is important to me? Why are these things important? How do they influence my attitude & the way I behave? Once again the evidence is all there in your experience and the way you like to work

4. Think Differently About Talent

• Let’s not be coy, you are multi, multi-talented and it’s not arrogant to say so. Many of your talents are also unique to you, they are therefore key elements of yourpersonal career culture
• To learn more about your talents, ask yourself… What am I good at? What do other people say I’m good at? What little things do I do without thinking, making them look easy? Chances are they don’t come easy to everyone, they utilise talents you have earned

5. Know What Keeps You Going

• When it’s cold, raining and the last thing you want to do is go to work, what gets you out of bed? In addition to the obvious answers, there’s usually a deep down goal or two that uniquely motivates you
• Goals are central to your career culture. The more you know about the goals that move you, the easier they are to talk about, the easier people find it to understand you and appreciate you for who you are

Next time you read an article about culture. Next time you’re sitting in a meeting, listening to someone talk about the importance of culture. Think about what they are saying and why all the same culture-led advantages, strengths, values, talents and goals also apply to you. No single company, person or country has a monopoly on culture. Culture is there for us all to appreciate, learn from and understand. To put it another way, your career culture is you!