Company culture has become one of the most important business topics today. CEO’s and HR leaders now recognise that company culture drives people’s behaviour, innovation, business strategy & customer service.
“In a nutshell, culture is the “heartbeat” of a company. It’s something that lights up the entire system. If a company has great culture, it can be the backbone of their success.” — Claude Silver (Chief Heart Officer, Vayner Media)
The environment and atmosphere in which employees work is your company culture and includes a variety of elements such as employee happiness & engagement, values, ethics, expectations and growth.
Great company culture is incredibly powerful because it not only directly impacts sales, profits & employee morale, but can attract some valuable talent to your company — bringing in new employees whilst inspiring your current team to be more productive.
This may sound like a task for the HR Department, but in fact company culture starts at the C-suite level and must be reinforced, consistently measured and improved upon by your top leader/s to drive company strategy.
In the end, “culture is king” and must be intentionally shaped from the get-go to help companies in gaining an advantage over their competitors.
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” — Peter Drucker (Management consultant & author known as “the father of management thinking”)
Company culture is important to employees because they are more likely to enjoy their time at work when they fit in with the culture.
Company culture is important to employers because employees who fit in with the culture are likely to be happier, more productive & will want to work at the company for longer.
Culture should never be static — it evolves as your employees grow and as the company scales over time.
Simple answer — start measuring it just like you measure the success of all other elements & strategies in your company.
For a long time, measuring company culture was something that was done once or twice a year via an engagement survey, but these surveys are too long and too slow in returning results and accurate feedback.
Measuring company culture should be an ongoing activity that is built into the fabric of how a company is run. The best companies focus on cultural consistency through ongoing feedback and employee engagement.
This means that, in order to grow a great company culture, your organisation should be discussing its people and culture data at least four times a year (on a quarterly cycle) or even more often — as often as your budget and sales strategy sessions.
Not sure how to facilitate feedback in your company? Check out this video of Kim Scott (author of Radical Candor) for tips.
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Looking for an effective and simple way to measure and improve company culture at your company? Try Hi5 (free 14-day trial).
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