Further boosting its consulting capabilities, Weber Shandwick is launching a new offering focused on helping companies build cultures in sync with their larger business goals — in a bid to broaden its offering to include management consulting capabilities.
CultureShift, part of Weber Shandwick’s larger global employee engagement & change management practice, is built around a five-pronged approach to helping organizations manage change and making sure their company cultures are aligned with their business goals —a critical component of them coming to fruition, said Kate Bullinger, executive VP and global head of employee engagement and change management, who is leading the new offering.
Those steps start with using research and analytics to assess the current state of an organization, and then defining where it wants to go, which includes defining purpose and values. After that comes enabling the change, which includes evolving employee processes and procedures; finding means to motivate and reward the individuals undergoing that change; and measuring the result, and refining strategy if need be.
“This is a process for making sure that companies anchor themselves in values and behaviors,” said Sarah Clayton, also a Weber Shandwick executive VP. “In this volatile time, the companies that go unscathed are the ones that have strong sense of identity and purpose.”
Executing that full-scale process involves Weber Shandwick moving into advisory services, such as senior-level management training and strategy development, that typically are handled by business consultancies, not PR agencies.
Bullinger, however, said the firm expanding into those services is critical at a time when businesses need (and are asking for) a comprehensive approach to managing change, and making sure employees are onboard, as they grapple with challenges from M&A activity to political volatility.
“To change behavior, you can’t just focus on communications,” Bullinger said. “You have to look at the front end and how you are going to align not only communications but policies and processes and ways employees experience implementation of business strategy."
CultureShift’s launch is the latest in a series of steps Weber Shandwick has taken to grow its management consulting capabilities, which started with its acquisition of the Swedish business consultancy United Minds in 2014. It is also the first of a suite of new consulting offerings the agency plans to roll out, it said.
Sourced from The Holmes Report