Ontario Municipal Human Resources Association

Municipalities are challenged by the often-competing demands of service excellence and efficiency, and they must be able to adapt and respond to emerging and changing priorities. This requires that as organizations, municipalities have systems and processes in place to support change. But what municipalities need most is a culture that supports a workforce capable of meeting these demands. Rather than focusing on “culture change”, municipalities can find success in meeting these challenges through transformational culture.

What is Transformational Culture?

Transformational culture is defined in different ways, but it is characterized by common elements. An organization with a transformational culture is comprised of employees and leaders who share a clear sense of purpose and engage in open communication, challenging and supporting one another to drive and support innovation and development. It is also a culture of shared responsibility, accountability, and reward. Transformational culture is founded on systems and processes that integrate key goals and objectives with the purpose and values of the organization. In a transformational culture, the organization’s goals and objectives reflect the input and feedback of employees, not just leaders or stakeholders.

Organizations with a transformational culture rather than a transactional culture or hierarchical culture are more inclusive, sustainable, and high performing because they lead with purpose, emphasize people and values, and algin their processes and systems to people and values rather than trying to align people with processes and systems.

There are common, essential elements required to achieve a transformational culture, including:

• Leadership: Transformational leaders play a crucial role in driving the evolution in culture. They inspire and motivate employees, set a clear vision, make space for open communication and innovation, and lead by example.
• Empowerment: Employees are empowered to make decisions, take ownership, and experiment with new ideas in a culture of innovation and adaptability. Recognition for success is shared.
• Collaboration: Cross-functional collaboration is achieved by creating a supportive work environment that promotes teamwork, creativity, and knowledge sharing.
• Accountability: Individuals and teams are accountable for their actions and outcomes, cultivating a culture of responsibility and continuous improvement.
• Learning and Development: Providing opportunities for continuous learning, skill development, and career advancement demonstrates a commitment to employee growth and success that drives engagement and retention.

How can HR support the organization to adopt transformational culture?

While transformational cultural cannot be achieved without collaboration and support across the organization, HR, through its people and culture function, can play a key role in helping the organization evolve from traditional cultures, that may inhibit progress, to a transformational culture by:

1. Aligning people, purpose, values, and behaviour

• Guide the organization to integrate its purpose and values into its objectives and strategies and enact them through behaviour.
• Embed purpose and values in policies and procedures to align the “climate” and systems of the organization to the desired culture.
• Guide the culture function by driving and embedding elements of transformational culture across the organization.

2. Maintaining the “human” in human resources

• Support a culture of resolution and restoration, not just punitive action, to support a workplace climate of respect and inclusion.
• Champion transformational culture through recruitment, onboarding, and leadership development.
• Support implementation of systems that sustain the desired culture (recruitment and selection, training and development, performance management).

3. Supporting and engaging leaders

• Engage leaders to actively participate in the shift towards transformational culture and finds way to align their goals, objectives, and systems with purpose and values.
• Support leaders to develop and demonstrate key competencies needed to sustain transformation culture:
  • visionary leadership
  • resilience
  • clarity
  • agility
  • compassion

4. Cultivating and supporting cross-functional collaboration

• Bring together people from across the organization to collaborate in developing, implementing, and evaluating the culture.
• Guide the organization to develop and implement a culture strategy.
• Create systems capable of monitoring and analyzing organizational culture.

Adopting and sustaining transformational culture in municipal organizations requires a significant shift away from traditional approaches to leadership and administration but the rewards of a more inclusive, high performing organization, aligned to its purpose and values, will be worth the effort not only for the municipality’s leaders and employees, but also for the residents and stakeholders it serves.

Written by: Joy Hulton, Hulton Workplace Resolutions