Why Was SCALA™ Developed?
Miller Consultants saw a need.
World-class companies recognized the benefits of building a sustainable culture within their organization, but they had no valid way to measure their current state or to track their progress. They needed a tool to show where they were.
So, Miller Consultants developed SCALA ™ :
- to help companies assess their cultures for strengths and weaknesses regarding support of their sustainable strategies
- to provide a metric for measuring progress in developing a sustainable culture
- to enable companies to understand how their unique cultures influence engagement with sustainability within their own organizations
In other words, to help companies develop a sustainable culture:
A sustainable culture is one that supports a company’s ability to excel over the long-term by integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into the core of the company’s strategy and operations.
What is SCALA™ ?
SCALA™ (Sustainable Culture And Leadership Assessment) is a one-of-a-kind, comprehensive assessment instrument
SCALA™ measures the dimensions of an organizations’ culture.
These dimensions differentiate the most sustainable companies from the others.
SCALA™ has been validated by research and experience.
It was created with research carried out by a team from Miller Consultants and the Harvard Business School.
This research compared the top 20% of companies to the bottom 20% on the Thomas Reuters Asset 4 database.
SCALA™ has a large amount of data gathered over 12 years. It has analyzed over 5,000+ people representing many industries
This makes SCALA ™ the only cultural assessment instrument that provides benchmarking backed by valid data.
How does SCALA ™ work?
SCALA ™ is administered online and collects data in the following components of sustainable cultures:
- Leadership: How leaders communicate their vision, connect it to a business case and integrate it into decisions; time horizons for decision-making and how they approach risk
- Identity: How the organization views its purpose; emphasis on ethics and values
- Trust: Whether the culture is built on trust; how it is fostered
- Internal Culture/Climate: Internal environment as experienced by its members such as whether organizational purpose and commitments are embedded into systems, degree to which employees can connect their work with purpose, feel valued and rewarded for their contributions
- External Relationships: How company relates to external stakeholders
- Change Readiness: Organization’s ability to implement and sustain change.
How will SCALA ™ help your company?
SCALA ™ will help you:
- benchmark your culture against the best
- identify areas of strength that can help you support your purpose and meet sustainability goals
- detect weaknesses that may prevent success
- assess the understanding and capabilities of various parts of your company; e.g. urban vs. rural, facility location, functions and departments
- identify how to improve your messaging
- assess your organization’s change readiness
- measure agreement vs. variation across your organization
The online data is compiled into a report.
Your SCALA ™ reports can include:
- The “Big Picture” of your organization’s current culture
- Comparisons of groups such as job titles, departments, regions
- How your organizational culture compares with others (benchmarks including companies in the data base, e.g. overall, by industry, by region, size, etc.)
The “Big Picture”
Your SCALA gives you a “big picture” look at your culture. Thus, you can use this report to determine areas of strength and weakness in your organization’s culture. This will help you determine what to work on.
Example: A global chemical company relied on the “big picture” data as they prepared their 15 year sustainability plan. They included strategies for leveraging their cultural strengths and addressing the cultural weaknesses that the SCALA ™ data revealed.
Subcultural Comparisons
SCALA ™ allows you to compare the perceptions of culture among various groups within your organization. For example you might compare functions, regions or levels.
Example: A global consumer products company found large discrepancies in perceptions of culture between executive leadership and employees. Based on the detailed differences provided by their SCALA™ data, they strengthened their messaging and customized it to raise employee awareness of the importance of sustainability to the company’s future. They developed a strategy to engage employees at every level in sustainability-related work.
Company Comparisons
SCALA enables you to compare your organization’s culture to others. For example, you can see how you stack up with the most sustainable organizations in the world. You can look at how you rank compared with others in your region and/or industry.
Example: A large bank in South Africa compared their culture with other banks in South Africa as well as with the most sustainable financial institutions in the world. Based on their SCALA data, they established cultural goals and metrics to track progress in achieving them.
NEW Hybrid Customized for You
Now you can combine the SCALA™ items most relevant to your needs with additional questions concerning other topics you wish to explore.
For example, a company in the financial industry wished to examine their employees’ understanding of the company purpose and how they defined ESG and CSR. They also wanted to know what might increase engagement in their current initiatives as well as prepare for a more strategic approach to ESG/CSR. We combined SCALA questions with additional items to explore their needs.
Another client wanted to combine their employee engagement survey with the SCALA. We customized the assessment so that they learned about each of these areas of concern and how they related to each other.
We design an assessment that meets your company’s unique needs while also offering you the value of some strong benchmark data/
SCALA™ ’S Ultimate Value
SCALA™ :
- is comprehensive
- is based on research and experience
- employs data from over 4,000 people
SCALA™ will help you plan how to create a culture that supports implementation of sustainability strategies and thus achievement of your goals.
SCALA™ : the tool for companies to improve their long-term success by creating a Sustainable Culture.
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