Saracens FC has been the most successful club in English Rugby over the last decade. With four premiership titles, the most recent last year, and two Heineken Cups the team has proved that it can perform at the highest level.
Saracens is also one of the few clubs to measure the impact of culture on performance levels. A key metric at the heart of their measurement of culture is social capital. This is a measurement of the strength of team relationships and the alignment between the management, support staff and players. The club feels that this measurement underpins team performance and creates a stable and secure platform for players to perform on match day. Perhaps, more importantly, Saracens has seen how fluctuations in social capital scores correlate strongly with performance outcomes.
[dt_quote type=”pullquote” layout=”left” font_size=”h5″ animation=”none” size=”2″]What can social capital tell you about your organisation?[/dt_quote]
When social capital is measured correctly, it can show you how invested individuals are in your organisation. It also shows how invested they are in their colleagues, managers and leaders.
Research from MyPeople’s work with Saracens suggests that the stronger the relationships are within the group, then the more sustained the organisational performance levels are likely to be over time. In one sense this is obvious. If you think of any relationship you have, how much you like that person, respect them and feel invested in their well-being, directly impacts on how much you are likely to give or do for them over time. Perhaps what is significant here though is the consistency of test results which apply to organisations of every size.
Yet, social capital is something that is very rarely measured (if at all) outside of elite sports. So how does social capital apply to business? Through its work with Saracens, MyPeople has translated social capital into a cultural measurement approach for business. The MyPeople cloud engagement platform measures the level of investment that employees feel for their peers, their managers and the organisation as a whole. Critically, it also measures how supported individuals feel in their role by their peers, managers and leaders. We call this a psychological contract. This two-way measurement approach creates a cultural strength score which empowers organisations to start measuring the culture of their business regularly and quickly in a tangible way.
[dt_quote type=”pullquote” layout=”right” font_size=”h5″ animation=”none” size=”2″]Benchmark cultural strength against performance[/dt_quote]
The MyPeople platform also enables organisations to benchmark their cultural strength against performance management data. This provides insight into overall organisational effectiveness and generates profiles of successful team dynamics. Linking culture and performance enables their impact to be quantified rather than remaining an intangible concept. What is more, MyPeople captures industry data to provide amalgamated benchmark information on how competitors are scoring to contextualise cultural scores.
For more information on MyPeople’s cultural research or for a free trial of the MyPeople engagement platform, please click here
