Company culture might seem like a buzzword, but it’s actually one of the most important factors in building a successful business. If you want your organization to be healthy, it starts with getting these foundational components right. The question is, where do you start?
What is Company Culture?
Before you can emphasize building and cultivating a strong company culture, you have to understand what it is and why it’s important.
According to entrepreneur Julian Lute, “Company culture is how you do what you do in the workplace. It’s the sum of your formal and informal systems and behaviors and values, all of which create an experience for your employees and customers.”
Your company culture is basically the “how” of your internal workplace. It consists of both the formal systems and informal behaviors that rule your organization. It’s how people talk to one another and how employees feel when they walk into the building.
Company culture is the energy of your workplace. It can be positive or negative, toxic or healthy, frustrating or appealing, etc.
Tips for Strengthening Company Culture
Company culture is dynamic. It evolves over time and molds to fit your priorities and investments. With this in mind, here are several ways you can strengthen your company culture:
1. Establish a Vision
You can’t have an intentional culture if you don’t have a vision for what you want that culture to look like. Thus, it all begins and ends with your vision.
Vision is more than just a mission statement and collection of core values. It’s the DNA of what you want your business to be – it’s your why.
For example, your vision might be generosity and doing “good” in the community. If that’s the case, you may want to develop a corporate giving program to support this aim. Or perhaps your vision is built around sustainability and limiting the amount of resources you use. As a result, you put energy into creating a CSR strategy.
2. Hire the Right People
Your vision might provide direction, but ultimately it’s people who make or break your culture. While you can always shape and mold your employees, you’ll make your life a lot easier if you hire the right people from the start.
You can lower your hiring costs, increase employee retention, and enhance your company culture all in one fell swoop by switching to a culture-driven recruiting strategy that emphasizes hiring on aptitude and attitude – not experience.
It’s better to hire someone who is a good fit and totally buys into what you’re doing than to bring on an expensive hire who’s only interested in the numbers on their paycheck.
3. Treat Employees Well
It’s not what you say, or even how you say it. All employees care about is what you do. You can talk a big game about company culture, but do your actions actually align with it?
In companies with winning cultures, employees are treated well and respected by everyone – including management, peers, and subordinates. Work on establishing a culture where people are treated like, well, people.
Treating people well means more than just offering free croissants in the breakroom on Friday mornings. It’s about acknowledging people, listening, showing empathy, and treating people like they’re your own children.
4. Prioritize Accountability
Companies with a healthy culture understand that talk with no “bark” is dangerous. They actually put their money where their mouth is. In other words, they prioritize accountability.
If you’re going to go on the hook for something and commit to a core value, project, or initiative, you have to back it up. Reward those who are aligned and assign consequences to those who are not. Accountability isn’t always comfortable, but it’s usually needed. Over the long-term, employees learn that they’re expected to perform.
Building Your Company for the Future
It’s easy to get so caught up in the nuts and bolts and dollars and cents of running a business that you forget about the heartbeat of the whole operation: Your people. By prioritizing company culture, you can attract and retain people who are fully bought into your company and everything it stands for. Culture exists whether you focus on it or not – so you might as well make it a priority!
Looking to improve your company culture?
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