Studies have shown that your company's culture has an impact on everything from employee turnover and engagement to productivity and your bottom line. Recent research from Deloitte discovered that 94 percent of executives and 88 percent of employees believe a distinct workplace culture is important to business success. Even TED talks featured a video talking about this exact thing!
In the current job market, with the focus on top talent retention, multi-generational workforces and the awareness of what "great" looks like, employees expect and want so much more than just a paycheck. Creating a rewarding and engaging workplace culture goes a long way toward retaining employees (especially your top talent), improving job performance such as revenue, customer experience and profitability, and ultimately creating an organization better aligned to where the company needs to go.
When looking at what matters to today's workforce, employees want a deep sense of connection to others at work, a sense of meaning and purpose, to know they have an impact on the community and lives of others, and appreciation for the hard work and effort put in each day. When you offer these things across your culture to employees, they are happier, healthier, more productive, and the best brand stewards for other recruits and your customers than one could ever ask for.
On the other hand, a big mistake companies make is not having a clear understanding of what culture is, and more importantly, the executive level not owning and prioritizing culture. Culture also changes over time as your business grows. If leadership doesn't have an intense focus on both building and sustaining the right culture for your business and the people you want to attract, an accidental culture creeps in, one that can be toxic and works against what you have worked hard to create.
This plays out in many ways: lack of collaboration, impacting speed to communication and creative problem solving; surprise resignations of your top talent because they don't stand for bad culture long, and missed sales and service opportunities for your customers.
Culture at every organization is different, but at the end of the day leadership has to make culture a strategic priority they talk about and are actively engaged in. Stepping back and asking yourself what behaviors and values you want to be known for, and which ones will get you to a place of success is how I think about starting culture. What people do you want to attract? What behaviors and mindset will serve your customers the best way?
Once you have this, starting to craft your practices around these things is the next step. If quick communication and transparency is important, your organizational practices should enable those things to happen. If serving others is important, your culture should enable the service to others. Determining the best type of culture starts with the end in mind: your mission, your vision and what success looks like for you, your company, and the people.
If your company is interested in having a culture that thrives, we'd love to come alongside you in your journey, so feel free to Contact Us today!