Hire a Fractional Culture Officer to Keep Culture a Priority at Your Company
At Seroka Industrial Branding, our fundamental mission is to help our clients build and sustain high-performing brands that optimize sales, growth, market share and business performance.
Our belief, based on our many years of experience and research, is that the health of a company’s culture has a direct impact on brand performance and delivery. In other words, brand and culture are one.
While many industrial companies employing more than 2,500 people can financially support and justify a full-time professional to focus on culture, many smaller companies simply cannot. The typical cost of a full-time person devoted to creating a culture strategy and deploying it across an organization would exceed $100,000/year.
Enter our Fractional Culture Officer services (also known as Fractional Chief People Officer).
What is a Fractional Culture Officer (FCO)?
An FCO is an experienced executive skilled in the discipline of culture transformation — rehabilitating, re-energizing and restoring underperforming and toxic company cultures to optimize performance and productivity to in turn optimize brand value. As the fractional title implies, it is a part-time position with a typical engagement ranging from 4 to 12 hours per week.
Why do industrial companies need a Fractional Culture Officer?
In a time of ghosting and quiet quitting, coupled with a low supply and high demand for talent, many industrial companies are taking their company culture much more seriously. Hiring the best of the worst, settling for mediocrity or accepting the fact that the door will always be revolving has become the new standard for too many employers.
A fractional culture officer will put together strategies, processes and programs specifically designed to improve critical internal metrics, such as:
- Attraction and retention of high-value employees
- Engagement
- Productivity
- Quality
- Internal customer relationships (co-workers, management, executive leadership)
- Morale
- Attendance
- Communication
- Innovation
- Honesty
- Safety
- Teamwork and collaboration
- Mindset for growth
- The customer experience
- Many more…
What is a Fractional Culture Officer’s job description?
A Fractional Culture Officer’s duties, tasks and responsibilities include:
- Working alongside company owners, CEOs and presidents to establish culture-based goals and understand the brand
- Measuring and monitoring the health of a company’s culture through semiannual culture assessments
- Conducting one-on-one interviews with employees and managers to dig deep into root causes of culture issues
- Identifying areas of strength within an organization, areas of weakness that need to be addressed, and critical issues requiring immediate attention
- Creating and implementing comprehensive culture improvement strategies to activate the culture healing process. Some of the tactics include:
- Administering re-onboarding programs to bring all employees and managers up to speed on the company brand, performance, mission and vision, brand purpose, goals and objectives, values, the competitive landscape, the company’s brand position, how the company will win, etc.
- Adding brand and culture training to onboarding programs
- Enhancing or building out a robust mentorship program
- Organizing, facilitating and mentoring internal culture steering committees to keep culture a priority and top-of-mind throughout the organization
- Keeping on top of competing employers in select region(s) best practices for attracting and retaining employees
- Developing and delivering training and workshops in disciplines such as:
- Leadership
- Change management
- Mindfulness/mindset
- Working alongside HR to assist in personnel development
- Ensuring the entire organization understands the company brand, purpose, mission and vision
- Aligning the entire organization with the brand to improve performance
What is a typical engagement?
Based on the size of your company and your specific needs, an engagement can be as little as eight hours each month to as many as 40. The average engagement is 16 hours per month, which is enough to make measurable progress. In terms of length, we recommend starting with a three-month commitment and continuing on as long as needed. No long-term contracts are required.
To learn more about our Fractional Culture Officer services and to obtain a quote, contact us today!