How do I work with the culture?
How do I work with the culture?
How do I work with the culture?
Learning to work within a university, college, institution, or organizational culture can be a tall order. Specifically if you’ve never worked in higher education before or if the institution you’re working for is remarkably different from others that you’ve experienced in the past (i.e. you’ve only worked in community colleges and you’ve made the jump to a large R1 state school).
Working successfully for your organization means learning how its culture influences you, your work, your position, and your office. This article will identify how culture is defined at the highest levels of your organization as well as how implementing and promoting a positive culture matters in the long run. Expectations of cultural considerations; balance in culture; and the administrative take on work culture will be examined. Finally, how culture influences and affects the student experience; addressing culture in the interview; and proactive steps towards implementing your own culture change will be addressed.
Defining culture
Note that there aren’t a specific set of characteristics, guidelines, or outlines that define an organization’s culture. Typically when we refer to the “culture” of an organization it refers to the “work culture.” This usually includes (but isn’t always limited to) unwritten, unspoken, or understood rules of operating within the environment according to established norms.
The main question to consider is if this culture “really matters” for the individual employee? It turns out that it does, because a positive culture can have a positive impact on employee action, agency, and outcomes throughout the office, student affairs division, and institution at large.
This means that the environment that this work culture creates for employees is the environment that they’ll work and operate in. The effect of that culture – and the outcomes it produces – determines its interpretation by employees on a spectrum of positive to negative. This means that established institutional values, principles, beliefs, and enforced behaviors all have a hand in creating this culture at your college or university.
Successful implementation of workplace culture often addresses and supports needs for employees over six basic areas: respect, recognition, belonging, autonomy, personal growth, and meaning.
Why a positive culture matters
Most people want to work in a positive workplace with a positive work culture. But beyond that desire, why does having a positive work culture matter? It matters because positive workplaces attract talent; drives engagement of employees; increases happiness and satisfaction; and ultimately drives individuals’ performance.
Healthy work cultures are also positive work cultures. These are places where individual professionals work with one another in the pursuit and achievement of common goals. As a result, the input, collaboration, and cooperation of many can have a positive impact on the operations and the outcomes of the institution.
Positive workplaces are places where people want to be and want to work at – repeatedly day in and day out. That’s because institutions with positive work cultures make sure that employees are engaged in their work and are fulfilled at both their most basic and highest performing needs.
Meeting these needs for individuals has a cascading effect on the rest of the organization and office. However, this doesn’t mean that all employees will get along with everyone at all times. This means that positive work cultures provide opportunities for individuals to speak openly about issues they are facing as well as provide access to resources that help them overcome challenges that they may embroiled in.
This means that individuals can contribute and reinforce a positive work culture by demonstrating and applauding values embodied by others which fulfill the specific goals of the organization. This is most successfully done at the peer to peer level because signs of favoritism by management to specific individuals can often have the opposite effect. This can often lead to the creation of toxic work places which foment distrust and resentment between individuals.
Expectations in culture
Work culture is often based on expectations of individuals. Those expectations come from each other in a peer based format as well as from management in a hierarchical top-down format.
How those expectations are set are second to what expectations individuals come to the workplace with. Some may come to an institution with an expectation of a traditional 9 to 5 schedule; whereas others may want something more modern, fun, and social.
In either case, it’s important that both peers and management outline tangible outcomes and expectations from each other and how to best achieve them. If the dress code for work is business casual then what does that mean? Should it be prescribed in a handbook? Or should we look towards someone in particular as an exemplar?
Likewise, work life balance is an important aspect for any student affairs position. How is that balance achieved? Is it expected that employees always answer calls and emails at any time of day or night? Can professionals have uninterrupted lunch breaks? Knowing the answers to these help set expectations within the work culture as well as have a positive impact on professionals at the beginning of their careers.
The covid-19 pandemic also made it so that much student affairs work can now be completed remotely and from home. The opportunity to telework provides these professionals with the ability to establish new boundaries. These boundaries are much different than how they were conceived initially. They include expectations for student interaction, support, and advocacy in an online world compared to how they were approached in past positions, internships, and asssitantships.
Balance in culture
Developing a workplace culture also means that balance needs to be taken into consideration along with expectations. Many student affairs professionals entering the field tend to be younger. As a result, many find the need to “prove themselves” to more seasoned professionals and often work longer hours than others. This can often lead to issues in work life balance.
Work life balance is an important aspect of positive workplace culture. As a result, employees who struggle to balance the needs of their professional appointment with their personal responsibilities often result in negative impacts to workplace culture. Without careful consideration, these imbalances between personal and professional responsibilities can often lead to burnout and exit from the field.
One way that balance can be achieved in workplace culture is to set expectations for what can be done and when. This can be as simple as setting a day that is free of meetings so that professionals can focus on getting their own work done and/or working from home.
Administrative take on culture
It’s also important to acknowledge how the administration of the institution addresses workplace culture. What often works for seasoned professionals often does not work for younger processionals. What works for one younger professional may not carry over to all entry level student affairs professionals.
Higher education approaches workplace culture differently than corporations, organizations, and non-profit entities. Especially when it comes to defining this culture, mission, and how specific objectives are planned and achieved.
Many corporate entities are often focused on imminent and near term challenges such as income and cash flow for the end of a quarter or a year. Conversely, higher education intuitions are focused on longer term aspects such as enrollment projections; accreditation; and program development. This change in focus results in how higher education institutions develop their own workplace culture, expectations and values.
As such, colleges and universities create, develop, and adapt their workplace culture in a way that stays true to their overall mission and values through policies that are “tightly coupled” and connected to things that are unlikely to change (such as a focus on enrollment for a specific population of student). Whereas other areas are “loosely coupled” such as how enrollment management professionals find and recruit applicable students.
This structure can be at odds with professionals entering higher education from working in other fields where much speed and onus is placed on individuals to achieve outcomes quickly. This is usually in stark contrast to the pace and cadence at which higher education operates. As a result, friction can develop when initiatives at colleges and universities often take months, years, or decades to complete versus similar projects from a corporate environment which fulfill much more rapidly. As a result, the culture of the institution, moves, shifts, and changes based on the expectations of employees as well as the structure and goals of the institution
Culture and the student experience
Student affairs professionals work with students on a regular in-depth basis. This means that workplace culture as it’s defined by leadership, administration, and the institution at large has an impact on how students perceive and work with student affairs professionals.
Students understand the how the interaction with other student affairs professionals is closely related to how higher education administrators work with one another and in between different departments. This means that the interactions between professionals sheds great insight into how individuals work with one another and how student services may be impacted.
This means that creating and maintaining a positive workplace culture has a lasting and significant impact on the student experience. That experience starts with a unified, systemic, and measureable initiatives by both administration and individuals towards creating a positive and impactful workplace culture.
Addressing institutional culture during the interview
Asking about institutional culture during an interview can be a dicey endeavor. After all, interviewers want to demonstrate their positions and institutions in the best light. However, as the student affairs job seeker you must also determine if the culture at the institution is the right fit for you.
Culture can be evident in the interview process based on the people that you interact with and your experience with them. Likewise you can determine how much autonomy you’ll have with the position by asking higher level questions about acting within the interests of the office and the position when you don’t have access to managerial insight.
Some culture can be revealed when you research a position and its organizational chart. Does it appear flat or tall? A flatter chart means that you’ll have a more direct line to management and executives at the institution. A taller chart means that there are many layers, policies, and individuals that you may have to go through in order to reach a decision maker. This could have a significant impact based on your role and responsibilities for the position.
It also helps to reach out to your network and ask colleagues who may have worked with this institution in the past. It helps to gain their insight so that you can ask more pointed questions during the interview process.
Culture questions can abound during the interview. However, nothing really replaces observing how coworkers and colleagues interact with each other on a regular basis. This may not always be feasible depending on your interview modality. However, asking how day to day responsibilities are handled provides you insight in this area. Likewise, you can also gain an understanding of the institutional culture by how multiple members of the same institution communicate and interact with each other at events away from campus such as conferences and symposiums.
Creating culture
Student affairs professionals may not believe that they can have a role in creating and forming culture at their institution, but in reality they can. Developing and setting the cultural tone of the institution; your office; and your work with your colleagues can have significant positive benefits.
There are many places where culture can be influenced; but none more so than with leadership. Leadership at the very highest university level down to the director of an office has an influence and say over how culture is developed and formed. Student affairs professionals can influence this development through their interactions and discussions with these administrators, faculty, and staff.
These conversations can begin plainly and simply by answering the question “what does an ideal work environment look like?” This could include how interactions with fellow coworkers go to how achievements, disagreements, and conflicts are handled.
No one should expect the culture of an institution, office, or organization to change overnight. Rather, address culture development and change as an ongoing process. This is a process that is rooted in the daily interactions of staff, students, administrators, and faculty. Such interactions form the backbone of both empathy and civility: critical factors towards developing a positive work culture.
Takeaways
This article defined what culture is for an institution, college, university or organization. Reasons for why a positive work culture matters were discussed along with how expectations can and should be set. Balance in workplace culture is important: particularly for new student affair professionals. Administrators’ take on culture was shared as well how institutional culture affects the student experience. Steps for addressing workplace culture during an interview were discussed along with how to influence how culture is formed in your own workplace.
I hope that you found this article useful! If you need some additional help on your student affairs job search, then check out the eBook The Student Affairs Job Search: A Comprehensive Guide available here.
Happy searching,
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Cite this Article
Eng, D. (2021, April 12). How do I work with the culture? Retrieved MONTH DATE, YEAR, from https://www.jobhakr.com/blog-1/2021/4/12/how-do-i-work-with-the-culture
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