This report aims to critically analyse and reflect on my experience of cultural differences and transitions from a University setting in Leeds to my inaugural encounter of the professional workplace, in form of a 12-month placement at The Body Shop (TBS) in London. My placement year and resulting cultural adaptations fostered an enlightened understanding of my employability, as well as an awareness of key cultural differences and consequent coping mechanisms I developed for overcoming them – insights which serve as a useful resource for students. My reflective analysis will follow the steps of Gibb’s (1988) reflective learning cycle (Fig. 1), as I feel this imitates my reflective cognitive process and provides a coherent structural foundation for analysis.
Pre-placement: academic culture
The primary reason I chose to complete a placement year was because I believed it would increase my employability. Despite equipping me with valuable technical skills, I felt my chosen course of BA Broadcast Journalism endorsed an industry-specific skillset, thus limiting my career opportunities. I decided to take control of my employability and complete a placement year, hoping to gain transferable, widely-recognised and therefore ‘employable’ skills; a trend amongst students identified by Tomlinson (2007). Prior to my placement, I understood ‘employability’ to be an over-arching, ‘must-have’ skillset employers search for, endorsing to Rees et al’s (1997) concern of a universalised approach to employability, whereby students perceive themselves “as rational investors in education who approach the labour market in uniformed and stereotypical ways” (Tomlinson, 2007: 286). This feeling of competitiveness amongst graduates in the ‘tick-box’ race of employability was in stark contrast to the isolation I felt within the self-directive learning environment at university. My experience of academic culture was hitherto typified by independent learning, a sense of autonomy and a resultant individualised career-trajectory; characteristics also identified by Brick (2011). The university’s cultural values of integrity, professionalism and academic excellence (University of Leeds, 2018a) countersign the dynamics of an independent, self-directive learning culture, albeit bordered by a collaborative campus culture outside the classroom. Read more about the University of Leeds’ values here.
In-placement: Organisational culture
In order to coherently analyse the influences and mediating factors of the culture at TBS, I will consider the levels of culture outlined by Schein (2004, Fig. 2), while consulting the organisational culture dimensions defined by O’Reilly et al (1991, Fig 3) to give these cultural influences some dimension and comparative classifications.
In my experience, TBS’s organizational culture was largely defined by binary influences, its cultural heritage forming the underlying assumptions of the company’s culture and the company takeover by L’Oréal arbitrating the company’s beliefs and values (Schein, 2004); both playing a mediating role towards its exhibiting cultural artifacts.
Fundamentally, TBS’s culture was defined by the morals of its founder, Anita Roddick. Contrary to many profit-driven businesses in the beauty industry, TBS was founded on the belief that business can be a force for good in that notions of ethical business transcend to personal values and motivating factors for stakeholders, employees and customers. Its core values are largely outlined in their Enrich Not ExploitTM strategy (see Appendix 1), which outlines the organisation’s manifesto to sustainability, setting 14 environmental and social targets for the company to achieve by 2020. These strategic activities can be taken as the espoused philosophies from TBS’s underlying beliefs of protecting our planet, animal rights advocacy, enriching communities through fair trade, defending human rights and a focus on social good. Consequently, TBS’s cultural artifacts include passionate, brand-advocating staff, endorsing a strong sense of collegiality and team work, which I felt to be in contrast to the independent nature of work at university. Despite encouraging a relaxed working environment, casual dress code and engaging colleagues, this cultural framework also lead TBS to engage in a somewhat antiquated business practice, illustrated by low levels of innovation, risk aversity, and a long-winded production process. TBS’s heritage culture ranks highly in O’Reilly’s (1991) cultural dimension categories of People Orientation, Team Orientation and Stability, setting it apart from its competitors in the retail industry that are generally typified by high-pressure competitiveness and aggressive profit-maximisation due its fast-paced and cut-throat nature. In this way, Cameron and Quinn (2011) map an overwhelming ‘market’-focus for retail businesses by means of their ‘Competing Values Framework’ for classifying culture (see Fig 4).
Conversely, in recent years TBS was exposed and in part influenced by an archetypal retail organisational culture (Cameron and Quinn, 2011), following its sale to L’Oréal in 2007 in effort to subvert stagnating sales. L’Oréal brought an ‘entrepreneurial orientation’ to the business (Stevenson and Jarillo, 1990), conflicting TBS’s ethical focus on generating profit with conscience. Furthermore, the relative lack of concern for social good or environmental issues (Fayolle et al, 2008), sparked controversy around the authenticity of TBS following the initial acquisition. In terms of typifying this cultural influence, the cultural dimensions of Attention to Detail, Outcome Orientation, Aggressive, Innovation and Risk Taking appear prominent (O’Reilly, 1991). Notably these are mutually exclusive to the dimensions prevalent in the cultural heritage branch of the company’s culture.
This strong ambivalence of the cultural drive of TBS divides the company’s responsibility to its investors to generate profit and to its heritage and ethical manifesto. It remains unclear whether these two responsibilities can co-exist at all. In this way, working at TBS was like following a compass with two ‘north’s.
Pre- to In-placement transition
The cultural framework outlined above had a significant effect on my ability to adapt to the new cultural environment. In reflection, my transition curve more or less followed the ‘culture shock’ model posited by Lysgaard (1955, Fig 5), however, there are certain aspects of the ambivalent culture that mediated the shape and duration of the transitional curve, specific to my circumstances.
Lysgaard’s (1955) U-shaped curve of workplace cultural adaptation posits that “adjustment is felt to be easy and successful to begin with; then follows a “crisis” in which one feels less well-adjusted, somewhat lonely and unhappy; finally, one begins to feel better adjusted again, becoming more integrated into the foreign community” (pg. 50). My transition culminated at the ‘acceptance stage’ around six months into my placement, sequential to several delays in my adaptive progress due to factors such as the sale of TBS from L’Oréal to Brazilian company Natura in September 2017 and alterations to my line of reporting.
My ‘Honeymoon’ stage lasted for the first two weeks of my placement and largely adhered to the experience described by Lysgaard (1955): a heightened sense of curiosity, enthusiasm and interest, based on the inherent novelty of new surroundings and the appreciation and anticipation of new opportunities. An early discovery of the heritage and historical cultural values of the company, which resonated with my own values of ethicality and social good, motivated and reassured me I had chosen a suitable placement employer, thus heightening the ‘honeymoon’. My ‘anxiety’ or ‘culture shock’ stage occupied the following four months of my transition, drawn-out in length by several mitigating factors. Firstly, L’Oréal-rooted cultural aspects of intensive workload, experiential learning and 40-hour weeks in combination with a lack of direction from my superiors made me feel inherently incompetent and exhausted; the importance attributed to company hierarchy boosting a sense of inherent inferiority. On the other hand, I found myself surrounded by a very diverse, generally older mix of people, whose views and timescales were largely at odds with my own, especially through the antiquated approaches of the organisation’s heritage. Retrospectively, my ‘culture shock’ stage was fundamentally convoluted due to the nature of my job role as Internal Communications Intern and its significance on shaping company culture. I was put in charge of project-managing employee engagement initiatives, and so was rather prematurely expected to shape a company culture I was yet to fully grasp myself. This additional dimension to my ‘culture shock’ stage presented little leeway for me to overcome internal conflicts I was experiencing, resulting in a pronounced ‘dip’ in my emotional state. My experience of ‘Adjustment’ and ‘Acceptance’ stage coincided and formed a seamless transition from overcoming internal conflicts to developing a sense of confidence, flexibility and tolerance. I became pro-active and flexible, harnessing a stronger focus on my social life and self-care, as a means to counteract the exhaustion I felt. A key success and useful coping mechanism I discovered during this time involved implementing my autonomous attitude to learning from university into the workplace. Despite building a network of trustworthy colleagues in line with TBS’s spirit of collegiality, I discovered that working at my own merit was the key to gaining recognition in the workplace. I learnt to control my emotions, work with perceived negatives and imposed my own ideas, consequently gaining confidence and interpersonal skills to manage upwards. I grasped the ambivalent influences on TBS’s culture, generating a great sense of achievement as I was able to make assertive decisions to drive the business towards cultural objectives I identified.
In- to post-placement transition
Returning to university in my final year, my self-sufficiency and self-efficacy helped me not only adapt back into the sociological framework of independent learning, but also harness a pro-active approach and desire for excellent results. Adaptability is also recognised as crucial professional skill by Jones (2013). This sense of agility has changed my attitude towards employability, viewing it as inherently linked to my own work-related identity as opposed to a universal skillset. This ties into Holmes (2001) view of employability as a form of identity, “relational emergent and influences largely by graduates ‘lived experience’ of the labour market” (Holmes cited in Tomlinson, 2007: 286). My progressive view of employability aligns with both the independency of academic culture as well as the university’s approach, advising students that “there is no set list of employability skills” on their Library website (University of Leeds, 2018b). This motivates me to make the most of the University’s careers support and online platforms to develop and record my own strengths and work-related identity, providing me with the ideal outlet from which to re-enter into the professional workplace after I graduate.