Further Developing the Tradition of a Corporate Culture Based on Partnership

The media group from Gütersloh in North Rhine-Westphalia with more than 76,000 employees worldwide can look back on a long tradition of "corporate culture based on partnership" and company health policy.

It was not the signing of the "Luxembourg Declaration" that prompted the comprehensive Bertelsmann understanding of company health.
Even back in the 50s and 60s a corporate culture grew up at Bertelsmann which was characterised by the qualifications, motivation, identification and responsibility of the employees. They even committed themselves in 1960 in a "company constitution" to a philosophy which also defined a common understanding of "partnership" as a basic value.

Even then the aim was to create a working atmosphere in which the individual identified with his/her work and the company, developed creativity in an environment free of fear and tolerant of mistakes, in which employees could develop as much as possible and achieve a feeling of success for themselves (and the company).

Bertelsmann is convinced that such an environment based on partnership also promotes health in an optimum way since this reduces mental strains, the consequences of which would otherwise have to be eliminated by subsequent "therapeutic treatment".

While in more than 40 years of proven co-operation with the Bertelsmann BKK the company has been offering its employees concrete assistance to achieve a more healthy lifestyle (e.g. various prevention and screening programmes), it has not lost sight of tools which ensure success and the appropriate organisation: In addition to a group steering circle on health, an organisational framework has developed involving a variety of information, talks and feedback instruments which guarantees that the leadership and partnership principles are also experienced in practice.

As one example, great importance is attached at Bertelsmann to the regular staff survey. The fact that the staff survey has been conducted worldwide since 2001 and that it is geared to issues relating to the corporate culture is not only related to the fact that the Bertelsmann group has a decentralised organisation worldwide with a large number of independent companies (profit centres). Bertelsmann is aiming in particular to achieve a pan-group learning culture.

An innovative "learning and reporting system on corporate culture" was established as a self-control system in the Bertelsmann group in order to initiate a process of dialogue and reciprocal learning and to continuously implement and advance the group's corporate culture.

The focal point is the Bertelsmann culture and partnership index, which is surveyed throughout the group and comprises 8 dimensions, e.g. common values and objectives, delegation, leadership, information/communication, participation and staff development. The results indicate in-house good practice examples which, in a targeted global information and know-how transfer, open up the possibility for all company managements to obtain new information on what other Bertelsmann companies are already using with success.

However, it is the connection with the assessment by the employees that provides information on the actual efficiency of the action and tools selected. As part of this control system, the supplementary staff survey on topics such as autonomy at the workplace, health and satisfaction of the employees and questions on work design offers a regular opportunity to detect weaknesses and propose action to eliminate them.

The investments in the "corporate culture based on partnership" are already paying dividends for Bertelsmann:
Recent studies proved there was a relationship between the culture element staff identification and the business results of the Bertelsmann company units. The group companies which have a high level of staff identification are also those with the best economic success.

"Partnership – Identification – Success" forms a well-founded argument for the culture development at Bertelsmann as a win-win situation for the employees and the company.  

 

"Under the aegis of the enterprise culture system the learning opportunities that are now available are put to the best possible use, since by building on the staff’s strong sense of identification, these opportunities enable the principle of delegated responsibility to be realized on a large scale. As a result it is not only the Executive Board that has scope to make decisions but also middle management and staff in general. Problems need to be solved more effectively in all areas of a company or indeed of the state and no form of management is better at this task than enterprise culture."

Reinhard Mohn, Shareholder of the Bertelsmann Verwaltungsgesellschaft and the Honorary Chairman of the Bertelsmann AG Supervisory Board