When Culture Perception Becomes a Business Risk: A Change Management Lesson
One of the first pieces of feedback I received when I joined an organization as Head of HR was blunt:
“The company is racist.”
Hearing that in my first week sent shivers down my spine and made me quite “kancheong”. By the end of that week, it became clear that the issue required immediate attention — not just as an HR concern, but as an organizational culture and business risk issue.
For two reasons.
First, employee experience and workplace fairness are fundamental to building a healthy organizational culture.
Second, the company was entering a period of hyper-expansion. A perception like this could severely disrupt our talent acquisition, retention and employer branding efforts.
Addressing this issue would require more than simply responding to complaints. It required a structured culture intervention.
Step 1: Diagnosing the Culture 🔍
The first step in any change initiative is understanding the current state. Within 14 days we launched an employee engagement survey to capture sentiment across key workplace drivers, including:
- Leadership Effectiveness
- Perceived Fairness & Transparency
- Equality of Opportunity
- Communication
- Rewards & Benefits
- Development Opportunities
Finally – Overall Satisfaction! The objective was simple: identify where the concerns were most acute and understand how widespread they were.
Step 2: Understanding the Narrative 📊
Data provides direction, but culture lives in narratives. To better understand the issue, we conducted a series of focus groups across departments. The message was consistent. Employees believed the organization was racially biased and that some individuals received preferential treatment in promotions and rewards.
At this stage, the perception itself mattered as much as the truth behind it. Because perception shapes culture.
Step 3: Testing the System ⚙️
Before attempting to fix the culture, we needed to examine the systems that shaped employee experience. We reviewed:
- Promotion decisions
- Performance evaluations
- Reward and recognition practices
Interestingly, the decisions themselves were largely performance-based and justified. The issue was not necessarily bias in the outcome. The issue was opacity in the process. When employees do not understand how decisions are made, they often assume the worst.
Step 4: Changing the System 🔄
Culture change rarely happens through messaging alone. It happens through structural changes in how organizations operate. We introduced three key process improvements.
Open Internal Opportunities
All vacancies were publicly announced internally. Employees were encouraged to apply, ensuring that career opportunities were visible and accessible to everyone, rather than decided informally.
Structured Selection Criteria
The selection process became documented and standardized. Employees who were not selected understood:
- Why the decision was made
- What capabilities they needed to develop
- What differentiated the successful candidate
Managers were also required to clearly justify their decisions. This introduced accountability into the system.
🎉Celebrating Promotions🎉
Previously promotions were handled quietly. We changed that. Promotions were publicly announced and celebrated. This helped reinforce two key signals:
- Recognition for the individual
- Confidence in the integrity of the process
The Outcome 🎯
Within four months, the perception of racial bias had significantly reduced. More importantly, team leaders began reporting improvements in cross-team collaboration and trust. Promoted employees were no longer viewed as beneficiaries of favoritism. They were seen as individuals who had earned their roles through a transparent process.
The Leadership Reflection 🎓
Culture problems are not always caused by bad intentions. More often, they are caused by unclear systems. Edgar Schein (2010) explains that culture is most visibly experienced through artifacts — what employees can see, feel, and observe in daily operations. When these signals are inconsistent or unclear, employees start to interpret based on their own perception. Jerald Greenberg (1987) shows that people respond not just to outcomes, but to perceived fairness.
And when fairness is not visible, perception fills the gap > perception becomes narrative > narrative becomes culture.
This is why John Kotter (1996) emphasizes that real change comes from fixing the systems that shape daily behavior — not just communicating intent. If your organization is experiencing similar challenges, the issue may not be culture — but the systems shaping it.
Culture isn’t what you say. It’s what employees experience.
#OrganizationalCulture #ChangeManagement #HRStrategy #EmployeeExperience #Leadership
👉 Real experience, anonymised and adapted. Images used are for illustrative purposes only.
OMNI People Solution (SA0611050-D) Derrick Dass
References
Greenberg, J. (1987). Organizational Justice Theory. Academy of Management Review.
Kotter, J. (1996). Leading Change. Harvard Business School Press.
Schein, E. (2010). Organizational Culture and Leadership. Jossey-Bass.