Culture and Engagement

About Organisational Culture

Organisational Culture is made up of shared values, beliefs and assumptions about how people should behave and interact. It relates to how decisions are made and how work activities are carried out. Culture shapes peoples' behaviour and values at work.

Assess your current culture

Get an initial impression of your organisation’s culture and level of staff engagement by:

reading documents, reports, meeting minutes and survey data
observing the physical and technical environment
reviewing service user feedback

A deeper analysis of your team's beliefs and assumptions should follow, to understand why your team are doing things this way. This is best achieved by talking to people one-to-one and holding focus groups.

Read about conducting a culture assessment in section 3 of the Developing Organisational Culture - A Guide for the Health Service (2023) (PDF, 1 MB, 34 pages)

Desirable workplace culture

A desirable workplace culture in the HSE is described as ‘a culture where staff feel valued and supported to be the best that they can be, where there is a common sense of purpose and pride in the team and all our people are treated with dignity and respect’ (Corporate Plan 2021- 2024 (PDF, 1.7 MB, 30 pages)).

A desirable workplace culture includes:

developing strong work relationships
involving staff in decisions
providing regular staff feedback and actively seeking staff feedback
equipping staff with the tools, skills and resources necessary to do the job effectively
developing, supporting and retaining staff and attracting new staff
providing a healthy work life balance
supporting staff to be resilient

Developing Organisational Culture - A Guide for the Health Service

Managers and staff should use the Developing Organisational Culture - A Guide for the Health Service (2023) (PDF, 1 MB, 34 pages) as a reference for developing a better understanding of organisational culture in the workplace.

The guide helps to:

get an understanding of the factors that influence organisational culture
assess workplace culture and identify strengths and weaknesses
identify the steps to change culture

Support from Engagement and Culture team

The Engagement and Culture team, which incorporates Values in Action, supports individuals, teams and organisations in improving culture. This is achieved through organisational development and behaviour-based practices and methodologies.

The team can help you with:

conducting and analysing culture audits and surveys
team dynamics
large group planning interventions
team, interdisciplinary and interagency working
facilitating group events and focus groups
individual and group coaching
psychometrics
organisation development tools and methodologies

Values in Action

Values in Action (VIA) is about building a culture that makes our health service a better place to be; for staff, patients and service users. It is led by staff in all grades and disciplines, working together to promote the behaviours that demonstrate our values.

VIA promotes our values of care, compassion, trust and learning. It enables our local health services to reflect these values, so they are evident in every workplace.

Organisational Development

We offer consultancy in organisation design and development. We help teams and organisations to learn and develop, working with the technical and behavioural challenges involved.

Taking a whole-system view, we customise our approach to tailor to each teams’ and organisation’s needs. Together, we develop and implement organisational interventions. Our processes include collaborating on change, diagnosis and problem-solving.

We work at different levels often simultaneously within a project:

Organisational level