The not-so-secret sauce for successful teams (and building them)
Employer brand. Company culture. We hear these buzz words a lot, but what do they really mean? Are they different? Are they important? And if they are, how do you craft a good one? Let’s start simple, and go from there.
At TechGen, we believe that a great company culture is integral to a winning employer brand. We agree with Marie Claire Barker that both are essential to successful talent acquisition, which is in turn paramount to company success (after all, according to Paul English, you should always be recruiting).
So how do you get there? Who is responsible for building and caring for your employer brand and culture? Is it the HR team? The marketing team? With everything on her plate, should the CEO be paying attention to this? The answer is yes, yes, yes — and all the people in between.
Everyone should care because these soft factors underlie the hard metrics of company success. Great culture begets relaxed employees with high performance; a successful, happy workforce builds a strong brand; and a strong brand attracts top hires, who drive meaningful growth and fuel to a winning fire.
So let’s take a look at some simple steps you can take to build your winning employer brand:
- Define it. Start with your purpose and map out core values for what makes the team successful. Have check ins to see if the culture you’ve defined fits and calibrate accordingly. It might take some time — you might need to try it on for a bit — but it is important to make sure you’re creating standards that are realistic and authentic for your team.
- Communicate it. This starts internally, and eventually moves out. Once you’ve settled on the culture you want, live and practice it daily. Lead by example. Make sure things are clearly demonstrated from the top down. If you’ve created an authentic culture, it will result in a brand that is easy to share with others. Your colleagues — your brand ambassadors — will wear it on their sleeve, organically evangelizing what you’ve defined!
- Scale it. So you’ve defined your culture and communicated it to your team, who is beginning to communicate it to the world. With this happy and aligned group clicking, you’re attracting more great people. You need to make sure that culture you’ve worked to hard to build is maintained. Revisiting your purpose and core values when recruiting, interviewing, and selecting new team members is key. (And then revisit them again.) To be truly successful, your culture and brand should become intertwined, and should scale organically alongside your growing company.
Ultimately, your culture hinges on people. While it can be simple to create, you have the control to shape it. And as a key ingredient for success, it’s worth the time and energy to shape and foster a strong, positive culture.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
If you want to read on, here are a few articles we liked:
