In brief
- The myth: culture is HR’s job.
- The truth: leaders define the culture, managers deliver it every day, and HR builds the system that carries it.
- When culture gets handed to HR alone, it turns into programs. When leaders own it, it turns into how the company works.
When a company’s culture starts to go wrong, the call usually goes to HR. Turnover is up, engagement is down, people are complaining. Fix it.
So HR does what it can. A new survey. An engagement committee. A recognition program. Maybe some new perks. A few months later, nothing much has changed, and everyone wonders why.
The problem wasn’t the programs. It was the assumption underneath them.
The myth: culture belongs to HR
It’s easy to see where this comes from. HR runs most of the things that touch culture: hiring, onboarding, reviews, training, employee relations. HR writes the handbook and plans the events. So when culture needs attention, HR seems like the obvious owner.
But HR can’t own something it doesn’t control. HR doesn’t decide who gets promoted, which behavior gets tolerated or what leaders do when the pressure is on. Leaders do. And those decisions are the culture.
The truth: everyone has a part, and leaders go first
Culture has four parts, and each one belongs to someone different.
Leaders define it. The CEO and the leadership team decide who the company is: its personality, what it stands for and what it won’t tolerate. They also show it, every time they make a decision and explain why. If you want to know what a culture really runs on, listen to the reasons leaders give.
Managers deliver it. For most employees, the culture is their manager. The way they assign work, give feedback, handle conflict and respond to a mistake is the culture that employee lives in every day. That’s why people quit when no one defines what “good” looks like.
HR builds the system. HR’s job is to take the culture leaders have defined and build it into how the company runs: who gets hired, how new people are brought in, how people are developed, how performance is reviewed and who moves up. HR also keeps it honest, by noticing when what the company does stops matching what it says.
Employees experience it. Culture is how everything the company says is actually experienced. Employees are the ones who experience it, and they’re the first to notice when it changes.
What happens when HR owns it alone
When culture gets handed to HR without leaders behind it, a few things tend to happen.
- Culture turns into programs. Events, perks and recognition campaigns. They’re nice to have, but they’re the icing, not the cake. I wrote about that in The Perk Trap.
- Leaders exempt themselves. The values apply to everyone except the people at the top, and everyone notices.
- HR becomes the culture police. HR is asked to enforce standards that leaders don’t model, which puts HR in an impossible spot and makes the standards look optional.
What leaders should do instead
- Name the culture yourself. Don’t delegate the definition. Decide who the company is, and say it plainly.
- Show it in your decisions. When you make a call, explain why, and tie the reason back to who the company is.
- Hold every leader to it, including the best ones. The person whose behavior gets a pass teaches everyone what the real rules are. That’s why your best manager can be your biggest risk.
- Give HR the mandate to build it in. Ask HR to put the culture into hiring, onboarding, reviews, development and promotions, and back them when it gets hard.
- Let HR ask how decisions get made. Not whether to make them. That’s still yours. But whether the reasoning behind them matches the culture you defined.
Culture isn’t HR’s job, and it isn’t only the CEO’s either. It’s a system. Leaders define it, managers deliver it, HR builds it in and employees experience it. When each part does its job, you get a culture people can actually see. Here’s how to define yours.
Read next: Culture vs. Values vs. Mission: What’s the Difference?
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