Chief Culture Officer's Role - Essay Example

Chief Culture Officer Chief Culture Officer Introduction In the past several decades, the American Corporation has had major developments and improvements in the finance, technology, management, and human resources departments. It has, however, become blind and deaf to the world around, creating a dire need for a new profession that will help expand the horizons and business. This is the Chief Culture Officer. The officer in charge will help the corporation understand the deep waves of culture nationally and internationally and follow closely the contemporary cultural trends (McCracken, 2009). Cultural changes, even at the weakest of their signal, should be detected in order to plan for the future of the corporation. The Chief Culture Officer will, therefore, be the eyes and ears of such changes in any organization keeping it on toes with the changing trends. This will help companies steer away from blind side hits and in turn escape major losses that would otherwise hit them hard. Since it is hard to predict what culture might throw into a certain sector of business, it is very important to have someone whose main job is to detect and predict the outcomes of the changes (McCracken, 2009). Culture will always matter in business and without such forecasts, corporations will always experience unexpected changes that they may not be prepared for. For instance if Microsoft had foreseen the importance of social media, they could have owned the technical world’s future. This instead was left for the social media giants Facebook, Apple and Google, who are reaping fortunes from it. Another good example is the Levi-Strauss Company who missed the baggy jeans hip hop trend in their jeans and apparel making (Dubois, 2012). Chief Culture Officer: Information Experts Information Experts is an award winning strategic communications firm. It was founded in 1995 and prides itself in human capital, education and training, strategy, marketing, outreach and interactive technology solutions. They have an outstanding environment with their culture and their employees blend nicely with the spirit of their firm. They are one of the best firms in achieving the training, communications and organizational needs of non-profit organizations, commercial and government entities. Situated in Reston, Information Experts’ 18 years have seen the company hold three multiple award schedules, numerous contract vehicles and have worked with 18 Federal Agencies in their comprehensive solutions deliveries. The firm would not have experienced all these success if it did not have a Chief Cultural Officer (CCO). The officer’s main job is to predict market changes and understand how to change the mechanisms of the company in order to be ready for the changes. The CCO will join almost all team meetings in the office giving them ideas on the prevailing cultural changes and even listening to the brain storming sessions of the employees in order to get anything that could help push the company forward culturally. The officer also has his or her team, known as the Strategic and Development team. This team gives the firm ideas on what changes they forecast, or are happening around the country or globally. The officer, after meeting with the team and getting points to take to the executives will then look out for anything in the firm that will help in its improvement (Manning, Bodine & Forrester, 2012). The officer is also in charge of organizing the firm’s parties. Every January, for instance, Information Experts hold a kick-off party to start the year. This is organized by the Good Times Committee chaired by the CCO. The firm’s culture also involves an annual Information Experts Halloween party and the annual Information Experts Thanksgiving Pot-Luck luncheon and movie, which are all organized by the CCO. They also support a Thanksgiving Basket Drive and a Fall Coat Drive, which are under the Reston Interfaith. It is under the officer’s jurisdiction to see that this gets going in the office, and to remind the administrators to contact the people involved. As another role of the CCO at Information Experts, he is actively involved in planning, implementing and monitoring different projects and their progress. This includes assessing how the teams are getting along, the relationships with the customers, and the outcomes of the projects. The officer is also charged with the role of assessing employees’ attitudes towards the organization and feelings about their working for the firm, as well as range their stresses and happy moments for certain changes in the administration. He also guides interns and seeks their opinion about how the company treats its employees since they have not been there for long. Additionally, CCO holds meetings with executive team members and gives them ideas on what to change while still getting orders on what to look into (Keyton, 2005). Another role of the CCO Information Experts is to help the company take culture as its auto-pilot. By taking care of their people and the environment in the office, the employees will always produce the best and the firm will keep succeeding. These regular checks of the employees by the officer, which includes gauging their happiness, engagement and emotional health, helps the company in managing culture. The fact that the company has a professional whose main accountability is to ensure a thriving culture helps them not bet their brands and business on luck and chance, but on reality. Information Experts, however, should make the CCO’s office a main office with an independent CCO contrary to currently where the CEO takes this role CCO during few days of the week. Having the CEO play both his roles and that of the officer is likely to bring distractions due to conflicting priorities, a factor that may end up damaging the culture rather than strengthening it. Piling the responsibilities of the CEO and CCO on one person will eventually hurt one part of the firm, which will most probably be that of culture. Social HR is the use of online social media to fulfill the HR functions. It is mainly used in recruitment. It can also be used in internal discussions and employee engagements. When social HR was started, it used the common social major giants like twitter, but software vendors have now come up with cloud based suites that can be used internally within a business. This makes all activities simpler and cheaper, and through it, firms could advertise open vacancies to large groups of social network users with much ease and at no cost (Fung, 2012). Information Experts could use the approach in communicating and engaging with their employees. The parties and the charities they are involved in could also be organized more easily by forming social media groups within themselves. There is also the idea of ‘gamification’ where a firm takes the essence of games in the social media and applies them to real world processes around the firm. Attributes like puzzles, transparency, competition and design found in the games, will help in new hire on-boarding, health and wellness as well as learning and development. Learning will then be made social and will happen at any time and anywhere (Fung, 2012). Conclusion Culture is a core competence that a firm requires in order to have a successful progress. This should. Therefore, be put into consideration to enhance employees’ productivity as well as improved business growth. Failure to put this factor into consideration does not only bring out a CCO’s incompetence in undertaking his various assigned roles, but may also adversely affect the operation of a business, as well as result into the lose major volumes and profits. A CCO is charged with the role of ensuring that his company incorporates culture in its undertakings, as well as seek opportunities for a company’s future. References Dubois,S. (2012). The rise of the Chief Culture Officer. Retrieved from http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/30/chief-culture-officers/ Fung, J. (2012). Four ways social HR will transform business in 2013. Retrieved from http://www.boston.com/business/blogs/global-busineshub/2012/12/four_ways_socia.html Keyton, J. (2005). Communication & organizational culture: A key to understanding work experiences. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications. Manning, H., Bodine, K., & Forrester (Firm). (2012). Outside in: The power of putting customers at the center of your business. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. McCracken, G. D. (2009). Chief culture officer: How to create a living, breathing corporation. New York, NY: Basic Books. Read More