A strong organisational culture unites the imperative for organisations to prioritise people development and wellbeing with CSR and the drive for better business outcomes, according to Sky Business Managing Director Stephen Hackley.
Here, he discusses the catalytic role of culture in Sky’s development and provides insights that would benefit all business leaders.
How far is culture the enabler of strategy and operations?
Strategy defines the direction and culture ensures that we get there. Just as business is changing, the culture of the organisation needs to adapt to these realities through looking at what part of our values and cultures need to be amplified at different times to reach our ambitions. Our data-driven approach ensures that decisions are informed by employee insights and aligned with our values. Understanding the cause-and-effect mechanism between cultural touchstones and outcomes helps us embed culture-building processes that deliver tangible results. This ensures that our culture is a cornerstone of our strategic and operational success.
How do you assess the strength of your culture and monitor progress?
We conduct annual people surveys punctuated with intra-year pulse surveys. We ask a variety of questions that allow us to measure various aspects of workplace culture, measure these over time, and analyse the data by segments such as department, gender, ethnicity and level of seniority to understand differences. We use this data to inform business and team action plans and our leader performance ratings incorporate our people scores. This ensures that management is kept accountable.
We are also piloting a new digital approach to getting inputs on specific topics, such as our culture, through a digital tool called Sky Conversations. Scores always vary based on what’s happening in the broader environment so there is always an opportunity to improve. Culture evolves, therefore requires ongoing attention to ensure it’s aligned with our strategic goals and the needs of our people.
How do you align cultural priorities and values with workforce behaviours?
We have several initiatives to support positive workforce behaviours including our Sky Leader Model – a framework of what great leadership looks like – which ladders up to our cultural values. We also have a feedback tool, Leader Lens, which measures the extent to which people leaders are showing up against the Leader Model. By integrating cultural expectations into performance management we ensure values are lived out in everyday actions. It’s also important that our people feel that their work is recognised and appreciated. Sky Stars is our recognition and awards programme, celebrating everybody who brings our values to life. It’s a great tool for people to recognise their colleagues for their contributions. Sky Business also celebrates its people through the Shine a Light initiative, which highlights a colleague who has been nominated by one of their peers for their work.
Understanding the cause-and-effect mechanism between cultural touchstones and outcomes helps us embed culture-building processes that deliver tangible results
When thinking about performance ratings we look holistically at how someone approaches their job. This means we evaluate not just whether they have achieved their objectives, but how they’ve done this and if they have embodied our Sky values and behaviours whilst doing so. We regularly revisit our cultural ambition to help define what we should focus on over the next couple of years to support the delivery of our business priorities.
What are your current focus areas in terms of culture development and investment?
Last year we launched Sky Learn, our learning platform that simplifies and digitises the colleague learning experience. It’s a social learning platform where people can like, share and comment on content, as well as follow other employees, channels and groups. The platform includes a values channel that supports people to live by Sky values. We also invest in leadership development to ensure leaders champion those values.
Can workplace culture be leveraged as a source of competitive advantage?
Within the context of an external skills crisis, colleague development becomes a key lever for achieving competitive advantage. The skills we need to succeed are rapidly changing and their availability is under stress. We’re not alone as 75 per cent of organisations are having difficulty finding the skills they require. So we’ve undertaken a piece of work to help us better understand the skills we have as an organisation, identify gaps and develop more talent internally.
Using external and internal research we have identified seven priority Sky Skills which are transferable and relevant to all roles across the organisation. Each skill has a senior leader sponsor and a learning pathway allowing people to use multi-mode learning to develop this skill.
How are you bringing your cultural values to life?
Mindsets and behaviours are important to a culture, so are the mechanisms, systems and processes that make it a lived reality. This can be seen in our end-of-year processes where we reflect not just on what was achieved, but how it was achieved. Our recognition systems are based on our values and are an important reminder of what good looks like. Our listening strategies through surveys and 360 feedback provide data on what needs to be changed or amplified for our culture and people to thrive.
Leaders share stories through townhalls, newsletters and other channels to ensure they are visible to our people and their behaviour can be modelled at every level of the organisation. We also ensure that there are plenty of opportunities for two-way communication so that our people are able to share their thoughts and feedback through regular feedback surveys and ‘open office’ calls.
How do you weave D&I into culture?
Our leaders have an important role to play in creating an inclusive culture. This needs to be driven from the top. Our leaders all undertake inclusive leadership training that provides them with guidance on how to model inclusive leadership in their teams and business areas. Having a diverse set of inputs, voices and opinions also enables leaders to make much better, more informed decisions. We want people to see, feel and celebrate in an inclusive culture –one where we all play our part. We’re focusing on amplifying voices, building a community of change-makers and raising awareness.
And how can culture embrace Net Zero considerations?
Weaving Net Zero into any organisation’s culture is about building sustainable choices into employees’ everyday habits, making it easy to engage while providing training to increase understanding and awareness. One way we’ve helped to embed sustainability into our culture is by enabling our people to choose more sustainable travel and commuting options, including introducing a new car sharing scheme so that colleagues can travel in together.
By integrating cultural expectations into performance management we ensure values are lived out in everyday actions
Furthermore, in 2023 Sky launched School of Sky Zero, which is a bespoke digital training course that supports Sky employees to create positive climate-related behaviour changes by simplifying the science, educating about the world around us and inspiring employees to play their part.
What’s key to developing a successful culture?
Keep it simple. Maintain a consistent narrative, flow the desired culture through your processes and ensure that leadership behaviour mirrors your values. It’s important to set clear expectations when colleagues join the business through the induction process, and create a network of culture ambassadors that support colleagues to champion the culture at every opportunity. Culture is a journey that requires continuous effort, adaptability and a willingness to listen and evolve. By integrating good process, a little science and managerial will, we can create a culture where both employees and the business thrive.