Stories of compelling company identities and innovative brands circulate the internet alongside a swarm of articles stressing the importance of culture. The reality of the matter is not at all embellished, as company culture when well-established, can frame the brand in a multitude of ways.
The current fast-growing workforce is influencing just how important culture is across a variety of industries. The Millennial candidate especially finds this very important when seeking a new position.
It’s an enticing and captivating aspect of the business that when built and leveraged correctly, can attract the best talent for the job, influence employee retention, and even make the company more competitive in its niche.
According to research conducted by Deloitte, 94 per cent of executives and 88 per cent of employees believe a distinct workplace culture is important to business success.
Furthermore, research from CultureIQ displays clearly that employees’ overall ratings of their company’s various qualities such as collaboration, work environment, and mission and value alignment are 20 per cent higher at companies with strong cultures. This is invaluable for the development of a motivated and engaged workforce.
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The vision
Defining the goals to be accomplished within the company early on is the foundation of effective company culture. Your vision for the organisation needs to be captivating and unique to align the workforce.
It’s then vital to outline what needs to be accomplished and how your team can take the company from point A to point B. Identifying this journey is a major component in the creation of a collaborative workforce with a complete understanding of your business goals.
This understanding allows your HR or recruitment team to set specific goals while sourcing talent. It takes the recruitment process from a “minimum requirement” based approach to a more detailed campaign targeting a well-defined candidate profile.
Moreover, a solid company vision is a great way to show potential applicants the opportunities for growth that lie ahead, and the lengths to which the company goes for the employees’ professional growth.
For example, Google’s Tech Talks are one such display of company culture. The very concept is centred around professional growth, employee insights, and engagement beyond the scope of their operations. It plays an informative role, creating a community out of the workforce that collaborates and shares information that’s helpful for everyone’s professional growth.
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What does that say about Google? It says that this is a company where employees are encouraged to innovate, create, and to share without fear of being rejected or silenced. It says, to candidates and professionals in the industry, that Google stands behind employee contribution.
This is what makes the company culture dynamic.
Though employers traditionally prefer that employees behave in the same way set by management and executives, a dynamic business culture dictates the active contribution of each employee. Given the fact that company culture is most important internally, it stands to reason that its very foundation is built by the team.
Define, display and reward cultural values
For company culture to endure, there needs to be an established system that not only defines and displays culture values but also emphasises the elements that best define the brand.
For a dynamic company culture, the employee’s input and contribution are extremely important. Employers need to implement an approach where the workforce can come together and explore each other’s ideas and insights.
Some companies create recurring events in which everyone’s perspective is shared and explored. The most brilliant of companies rely on this input to better orient the company and its strategy.
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But most importantly, it encourages positive behaviour within the organisation and shows potential candidates how your current workforce is given the opportunity to grow. This reinforces the values set in the vision.
Over time, as the culture itself becomes more solid, its nature begins to shape the brand. Google is renowned for how much it values its people, Apple for its appreciation of innovation, Amazon for its “Customers first” mantra, and Netflix for its “excellence, excellence, excellence” model.
These are just a few of the giants whose company culture and brand go hand in hand. For the everyday candidate, these values and goals are a promise of a better position, a better career, and an employer that shares the same values.
The right tech to foster change
At the very core of it, technology fosters the dynamic nature. Collaboration, communication, and efficiency are the hallmarks of a developing culture and significantly accelerate its growth. These aspects can be facilitated by implementing software and HR tech with an impact on all levels of the organisation.
Seeing as there is no single software to meet a company’s every need, a good strategy would be to build an internal ecosystem of interconnected software. Companies with this type of approach to technology are able to grow faster than competitors lacking the tools for digital change.
Not only that, tools that aid and support employees in their roles can save them valuable time and increase efficiency, giving the workforce the bandwidth to focus on innovative input for the next company event.
Also Read: Managing the millennial workforce over coffee and culture
The direct link between people and tech is the essence of the modern dynamic business environment. To that end, it’s a good idea to invest in tech that facilitates collaboration, communication and allows the team to contribute on different levels.
For example, implementing and normalising the use of tools such as Slack and Zoom for company-wide interaction and announcements gives the workforce a platform for open communication. Implementing HRMS software provides Human Resources with a way to navigate employee input.
An applicant tracking system (ATS) is capable of automating such a large portion of the recruitment process and providing a range of features that help apply the dynamic company culture in the hunt for suitable candidates.
Different tools serve different purposes. But one thing is certain, a company’s culture is as dynamic as the ecosystem it creates to simplify internal processes and encourage the characteristics needed to shape the brand.
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