Corporate Culture Matters: It Matters a Whole Lot
“I have a dream to work in Google, because they have great corporate culture!” Can someone be certain about the culture of a particular company if they have never worked there? Why strong corporate culture attracts people? And what makes those great cultures the way they are?
I believe the first cornerstone of having great corporate culture is C level management. Sure, CEOs usually have their vision of crafting the corporate culture and they tend to hire other managers with a similar mindset who will become a driving force for the company. But here another question comes to our mind: “How to craft that corporate culture?” Those responsible can be found at once: HR people! They are responsible, for sure! But hold on, can even the best HR representative, the best head of HR create the culture by their own, alone or with the HR team? From my experience I can definitely say: no! Even the best HR managers don’t “walk on water”.
Corporate culture is not something measurable and you can’t provide the statistics and metrics which will show that you, as an HR person, are good at crafting the culture. High turnover rates or talent retention difficulties can be obvious signals that there are corporate culture issues. But there can be other factors in the company as well which can also influence the turnover rate or talent acquisition issues. As for the metrics it’s, in my opinion, better to use exit interview results. But before thinking about corporate culture evaluation and finding out if it is good or bad, let’s go trough some main points which have a big influence on corporate culture.
The first factor is when employees are unaware of the company’s vision and mission. When people are not aware which direction the company heads in and they don’t think that they are part of “something big” then probably it’s too early to speak of or evaluate the corporate culture. If you ask your employees “why do you come to work everyday?” and see confusion in their eyes then, probably, there is something wrong. And the situation is even worse if each member of your team gives totally different answers to your question “what is our vision?”
The second factor lies in the core values of the company. Even if your employees already know the vision of the company and finally found the lost (or never known) purpose for coming to work every day, they may have some issues with corporate values. When I started working at a big company years ago, and they showed me their core values for the first time, frankly speaking, it was not a big deal for me. All those values gain weight and value over the time. For example “Loyalty” is a great value which is just a word at the beginning when you join the company. It starts meaning something to you and for the company after some time when you look back and see that you spent 10 years of your career helping this company achieve its goals. The same is with other core values. Those are just short descriptions of mindset which this or that company wants to see within its walls. Without those guidelines which form one unique mindset for a particular company it will be impossible to talk about setting up the corporate culture.
But the set of values is nothing if people in the company starting from the CEO don’t work and interact guided by those values. If you publish your values on huge wallpaper and post them on the walls in your office and “shout” about “Justice and Equality” and, at the same time, use double standards in your decisions as a manager then, again, there is something wrong. Organizing the work based on values and showing their usage at the workplace by your own example should be performed by all levels in the company and that way you will start crafting the culture.
The next step is motivated employees. Imagine they all have the same purpose of coming to work as they found the vision which is guided by corporate values and they see that it all works in their company. The next is their motivation to become part of it all. All the above mentioned points should be acceptable for the employees so they can all become the driving force. I don’t mean that management should not accept diverse thinking. But the main guide should be acceptable for the majority and those who see some issues in the guidelines should see that their opinion counts as well. Otherwise, you will have an enormous number of unmotivated(even though I don’t like the word “motivation”) people around you who will never be integrated in the culture scheme you want to have.
There are other factors that influence culture as well. For example, you can’t have a great culture if you use box thinking as great cultures are crafted by open minded executives who are not afraid to experiment and find the best working solution for a particular team. Or you can’t create strong corporate culture if you don’t value your company’s achievements and don’t speak about them, when you don’t value the steps you passed on the path to becoming the company you are now.
But these are the first steps which should be considered when thinking about and working on creating the corporate culture which is an ongoing system of checks and balances that needs to be reinforced at all levels of the organizational and employee life cycle.
What do you think enables companies to have great work culture?
