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Creating lasting cultural change: Northumbria University event

Northumbria University
www.northumbria.ac.uk 
LinkedIn: Northumbria University

In today’s evolving employment landscape, organisational culture is an increasingly important driver of long-term success. From fostering trust and ensuring people feel heard, to creating environments where employees feel valued and safe, culture is central to shaping performance. The topic was explored at Northumbria University’s recent Culture in Conversation event, which gathered senior sector leaders to discuss how businesses can create workplaces that deliver sustainable success.

Success is rarely achieved in isolation.

More often than not, it is shaped by the environments and cultures around us.

And in an increasingly complex and high-pressure world, the organisations that actively shape their cultures – rather than leave them to chance – are the ones more likely to succeed.

That ethos sat at the heart of a recent Northumbria University event, which was supported by N magazine publisher NET.

Held at the university’s £100 million City Campus East, the summit – titled Culture in Conversation – gathered senior HR and organisational development leaders to explore what it takes to build fair, high-performing organisations.

Following an introduction from Professor Matthew Brannan, head of Northumbria University’s Newcastle Business School, audience members heard from Matt Beeton, chief executive at Port of Tyne; Joanne Davidson, deputy director of workforce, organisational effectiveness and learning at Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust; and Charlotte Cumiskey, organisational development manager at Northumbria University.

Across the speeches, a clear message emerged: positive organisational cultures are not defined by statements or strategy documents, but rather by everyday behaviours, trust and the ability for people to feel heard, valued and safe.

Matt spoke about leading change at Port of Tyne since becoming chief executive in 2019, starting with a focus on bridging the gap between senior leadership and the wider workforce, and then resetting the organisation’s culture from the ground up.

He said: “We set about levelling the playing field and creating values that related to everyone.

“For 12 months, we had everybody in rooms deciding what that really meant; how they should be spoken to, how respect should be shown and how they should engage with one another.

“They were setting the rules for themselves, and those values became the benchmark of everything we do.”

That cultural reset underpinned the launch of Tyne 2050, a long-term strategy shaped directly by all employees.

Matt said: “We got everybody into smaller groups and said, ‘what do you want this port to be over the next 30 years?’

“They were really ambitious, especially when it came to technology.”

Matt said the impact has been “astonishing”, with the team delivering strong results despite a challenging global backdrop.

He added: “We have created an environment in which our creative people can be creative, our hard workers can work hard and feel valued, and our amazing people can be amazing.

“If you can glue all of that together, and you’ve got people with a passion who want to make it work, you’ve got a business that is going to move forward.”

Joanne spoke about embedding a restorative and “just learning” culture at Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust, centred on continuous reflection, adaptation and openness.

She explained that while the organisation’s Strategy for Perfect Care, introduced in 2013, set out ambitious goals to improve standards, it did not initially achieve the success that had been anticipated.

That realisation, she said, prompted a shift away from traditional and often punitive approaches to managing incidents and mistakes, with a fresh focus on fostering an environment where employees felt supported to speak openly, reflect and learn.

She said: “In a system that’s inherent with risk, things will not always go as expected.

“So we respond with care and emotional support, and then say, ‘what should we do now and what are we learning?’”

Central to this shift was a sustained programme of engagement across the organisation, helping to create a culture of belonging where people felt listened to, valued and part of the change.

Joanne added: “It wouldn’t be me or my colleagues proposing a set of values or behaviours; it was our colleagues saying, ‘we’ve seen this, we’ve lived it, it’s real’.”

That approach has since been embedded across the organisation, from leadership development through to day-to-day practice.

Joanne added: “If you’re a manager in Mersey Care, a restorative and just culture is now blueprinted in your induction; it runs right through everything we do.”

Charlotte focused on how organisations can build a culture of psychological safety, drawing on her experience of supporting leadership development at Northumbria University.

She said: “Psychological safety is a shared belief held by members of the team that it is safe for interpersonal risk taking.

“The highest performing teams often make the most errors because they are in environments where it’s safe to speak up about the errors they are making and to correct them without fear.”

Charlotte stressed this kind of culture does not emerge through top-down initiatives, but rather through consistent behaviours, shaped by everyday actions.

She said: “Cultures don’t shift through grand organisational gestures; it’s the sum of thousands of moments.”

Pointing to Northumbria University’s five-day Leadership Development Programme, Charlotte outlined how it is embedding these principles in practice through an intensive course designed to build trust, openness and reflection.

She said: “We intentionally try and create moments of psychological safety throughout the week before we even talk about it explicitly.”

From 360-degree feedback to peer support and open reflection, the programme encourages leaders to embrace vulnerability and build stronger connections within their teams.

Charlotte added: “You can’t always change organisational culture, but you can change the climate around you.

“You can change the experience of the people that you work with, through the meetings you facilitate, through the interactions you have and through the relationships you build.”

The event additionally featured breakout sessions, led by Joanne, alongside Debra Almond, Daniel Skinner and Matthew Theobald, from Vandewiele UK, who explored growth within a high-performance engineering SME, and Northumbria University’s Professor Gavin Oxburgh, who focused on the principles of effective communication.

For more information about Northumbria University’s leadership and management courses, visit www.northumbria.ac.uk/business-services/education-and-training/leadership-and-management/

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by N Magazine .