Do CIOs have a responsibility for company culture?

The task of build­ing and rein­forc­ing a company’s cul­ture and val­ues has tra­di­tion­al­ly been the domain of the CEO, who would work with the HR func­tion to ensure that these are embod­ied in the firm’s peo­ple man­age­ment poli­cies, process­es and sys­tems. But the CIO is becom­ing increas­ing­ly impor­tant in this respect too, giv­en the mas­sive cul­tur­al impact of tech-enabled remote work­ing, among oth­er dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions, on the work­force.

With many office work­ers spend­ing less time togeth­er at head office as their com­pa­nies adopt hybrid work­ing pat­terns, tech­nol­o­gy is becom­ing a big­ger part of the employ­ee expe­ri­ence. A dig­i­tal-first cul­ture seems to be emerg­ing in many cas­es. 

Of the 500-plus CIOs polled in an inter­na­tion­al sur­vey by Adobe and For­tune in April last year, 89% saw them­selves as change agents who were help­ing to improve the cul­ture of their organ­i­sa­tion. To what extent are they achiev­ing this? 

Most CIOs have attained their posi­tion because they’ve focused the con­sid­er­able tech­ni­cal exper­tise they’ve accu­mu­lat­ed on strate­gies and sys­tems that sup­port the attain­ment of com­mer­cial, rather than cul­tur­al, goals. So it could be argued that, while CIOs are clear­ly agents of change, the respon­si­bil­i­ty for devel­op­ing a cul­ture that will opti­mise employ­ee engage­ment should fall to a senior exec­u­tive whose sole focus is on peo­ple.

But Hele­na Nim­mo, CIO at soft­ware firm Enda­va, argues that CIOs of firms that have embraced hybrid work­ing are find­ing them­selves increas­ing­ly account­able for main­tain­ing their company’s cul­ture. This is because they are respon­si­ble for the tech that’s enabling employ­ees to work at any loca­tion and remain con­nect­ed with each oth­er, just as if they were all still sit­ting togeth­er in the same build­ing.

“In the new hybrid work­ing era, CIOs must bal­ance the phys­i­cal and the vir­tu­al by imple­ment­ing tech­nol­o­gy that improves employ­ees’ sat­is­fac­tion, as well as enabling their work,” she says. “This is a chance for CIOs to reimag­ine the rela­tion­ship between peo­ple and tech­nol­o­gy by tak­ing a user-cen­tric approach to the tech.” 

Nim­mo adds that they need to con­sid­er cul­tur­al fac­tors across the whole organ­i­sa­tion, as employ­ees in dif­fer­ent func­tions may not nec­es­sar­i­ly view hybrid work­ing in the same way. “To become true lead­ers in the dig­i­tal work­place and meet the diver­si­ty of needs across their organ­i­sa­tions, CIOs need to put them­selves in all of their tech users’ shoes and take on a com­mu­ni­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tive role,” she says.

Ensur­ing that employ­ees feel well aligned with their organisation’s cul­ture is cru­cial in tal­ent reten­tion, accord­ing to a new study pub­lished by OC Tan­ner, a provider of employ­ee recog­ni­tion pro­grammes. Its research has found that, when peo­ple feel dis­con­nect­ed from their work­place, cul­ture and pur­pose, the like­li­hood that they will pro­duce great work falls by 90%. They are 11 times more like­ly than the aver­age employ­ee to suf­fer burnout and six times more like­ly to quit with­in three years. 

The con­cept of hybrid work­ing is noth­ing new, of course. Many com­pa­nies have oper­at­ed suc­cess­ful­ly for years with employ­ees mix­ing home and office work­ing with­out expe­ri­enc­ing unac­cept­able lev­els of cul­tur­al dis­en­gage­ment. But the pan­dem­ic-dri­ven fast-track­ing of some organ­i­sa­tions’ dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions over the past two years has left their employ­ees need­ing more sup­port in adapt­ing to the new tools and sys­tems that have been thrust upon them. 

There can also be a lack of cohe­sion between the HR and IT func­tions. Com­pa­nies are becom­ing increas­ing­ly reliant on the col­lec­tion and analy­sis of real-time data to bet­ter under­stand how their staff are cop­ing with the dig­i­tal tran­si­tion. This trend has brought the con­tri­bu­tions of both HR and IT to the fore. Despite this, a 2021 sur­vey by Nex­think, a spe­cial­ist in dig­i­tal employ­ee engage­ment, found that almost half (48%) of the HR lead­ers it polled admit­ted either that they didn’t work well with their equiv­a­lents in the IT func­tion or that they weren’t sure whether they did or not.

Nexthink’s chief peo­ple offi­cer, Meg Dono­van, believes that CIOs should work more close­ly with HR to col­lect feed­back from staff, along with hard data on the per­for­mance of employ­ees’ devices, appli­ca­tions and net­works to iden­ti­fy any sources of frus­tra­tion.  

“They can then progress towards their dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence goals, from improv­ing employ­ees’ per­cep­tions of the company’s tech­nol­o­gy to shift­ing users to a new ser­vice,” she says.

The CIO has his­tor­i­cal­ly focused on ensur­ing that their organisation’s tech­nol­o­gy remains fit for pur­pose, so that the busi­ness can feel con­fi­dent that its peo­ple will always have the right tools to do their jobs prop­er­ly. But the accel­er­a­tion of the fourth indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion dur­ing the Covid cri­sis is giv­ing CIOs oppor­tu­ni­ties to help encour­age knowl­edge-shar­ing, improve col­lab­o­ra­tion and cul­ti­vate a greater sense of com­mu­ni­ty. They have the chance to become gen­uine agents of pos­i­tive change.

Jonathan Mor­ris, co-founder and man­ag­ing part­ner of exec­u­tive search firm Tri­tonEx­ec, believes that CIOs can go even fur­ther than that. They are well placed to become “evan­ge­lists” in their com­pa­nies, he says, by cul­ti­vat­ing a con­sumer-grade employ­ee expe­ri­ence with the help of new tech that’s aligned with a dig­i­tal-first work­place cul­ture. 

The impact that CIOs can have on employ­ee engage­ment is “tremen­dous, as they can dri­ve pos­i­tive cul­tures by bring­ing in tools, tech­nolo­gies and sys­tems that are foun­da­tion­al in human-cen­tric design”, Mor­ris says. “No employ­ee wants to feel like they exist on an island. The CIO’s role is to shape their expe­ri­ence.”

He also sees CIOs as piv­otal to the suc­cess of com­pa­nies in man­ag­ing tal­ent at senior lev­el. Such employ­ees have “lit­tle to no tol­er­ance for out­dat­ed tech­nol­o­gy, mind­sets and process­es. Attract­ing and retain­ing them means cre­at­ing envi­ron­ments where they can thrive. It’s essen­tial to pro­vide them with effi­cient sys­tems and col­lab­o­ra­tion capa­bil­i­ties that don’t hand­cuff them,” Mor­ris says. “The CIO is there­fore on the hook to, at the very least, enable the kind of cul­ture expect­ed by their company’s top tal­ent.”