If there ever was a time to raise the question of why company culture matters it would be now.
The last year has shown us that the most resilient companies are those with a strong culture, and a recent survey that looked at defining the new era of work revealed that employees are more likely to stick with companies that are cohesive enough to respond to the pressures of an uncertain economy in a positive way.
In short – asking why company culture matters during times of upheaval is like asking why Jamie Oliver adds butter to everything he cooks, or why Jonathan Van Ness is so very extra all the time. The answer, of course, is it makes everything better.
Here’s how:
It boosts your competitive advantage when times are tough
Right now, businesses have a very simple choice to make – focus on developing a culture of agility so you can bolster your company from within, or leave things up to chance and get ready to fall behind your competitors.
See, cohesive teams stick together in challenging times, and this means that productivity doesn’t necessarily go down the tubes just because the sky happens to be falling. When a group of colleagues have been encouraged to grow alongside each other and work together to promote the interests of the business, this behaviour won’t fall away in times of crisis – it fact, adversity will only serve as inspiration to work together and pull the proverbial wagon out of the scary ditch.
Read more: Your company culture will boost your competitive advantage
It has been established that organisational culture has a direct impact on employee performance, but it’s also important to note that it can have a significant effect on overall employee wellbeing.
When your culture is healthy, it’s fairly unlikely that the focus on performance will be so unbalanced that overwrought team members will work themselves to the point of burnout just to remain relevant.
Here’s the kicker – if you just read that and thought ‘well, maybe everyone should just pour themselves a nice cup of afternoon cement and harden up a bit’, your company culture is not doing all that well. Especially if you find yourself at the helm of a department or fill a managerial role of any kind with that type of attitude.
Being dedicated to a company does not mean working day and night at the expense of a healthy work-life balance.
In fact, studies have shown that employees who are encouraged to pursue a less gruelling schedule and are provided with the right tools and support to manage their time effectively, are far less likely to have high levels of costly absenteeism, tend to work smarter, and show much higher levels of engagement.
To sum it up, these are a few very important reasons why company culture matters.
If you’re keen on giving your culture a boost from the inside sign up for bountiXP, it provides everything you need to bring culture into alignment with your business goals. You can sign up here for a FREE 14-day trial.
It beats strategy every time
The famous saying by Peter Drucker goes that culture eats strategy for breakfast, but at bountiXP we also like to believe that a healthy, happy culture would be savvy enough to take strategy out to lunch, really listen to it, and then be classy enough to pick up the bill.
When strategy, culture and employee capabilities are aligned, true organisational transformation becomes a reality.
This is why the maintenance of cultural coherence should be very important to every C-suite exec. It’s no longer just an ‘HR thing’, it’s an ‘everyone thing’ that has the potential to enable businesses to clearly differentiate themselves from their competitors and keep the boat afloat in unchartered waters.
It bolsters your employer brand
Determining whether your company culture is healthy or not is simple when you think about culture as the stuff that happens when the bosses walk out the door – do co-workers make sound choices that benefit the greater good, or is there a dog-eat-dog mentality that leaves each employee fending for themselves?
In our intensely connected world, company culture is a vital part of your business brand. The words, thoughts and actions of your employees become the collective behaviour by which your company is known. It’s the yardstick prospective clients, as well as sought-after talent, use to measure your core values and business principles.
If you want to attract top talent to your company, a strong employer brand is a non-negotiable necessity.
These days, well-qualified, highly sought-after job seekers are in a prime position to ‘interview’ potential employers even before they choose to submit a CV or agree to a meeting.
Platforms like Glassdoor prove these star players with all the information they need to decide if the work environment described by a company’s ex-employees is somewhere they’d like to ply their trade.
Similarly, a strong, healthy culture makes it a lot simpler to hold on to the talent that you already have at your disposal. Employee churn is an expensive business. Even in times of recession when there are many people on the lookout for a job, the impact of onboarding a new employee, costs your company more than just recruitment expenses.
High employee turnover has so many hidden costs in the form of potential client losses, general customer dissatisfaction, downtime while new recruits settle in, and the time spent training and equipping someone fresh off the proverbial docks.
Culture impacts employee wellbeing
It has been established that organisational culture has a direct impact on employee performance, but it’s also important to note that it can have a significant effect on overall employee wellbeing.
When your culture is healthy, it’s fairly unlikely that the focus on performance will be so unbalanced that overwrought team members will work themselves to the point of burnout just to remain relevant.
Here’s the kicker – if you just read that and thought ‘well, maybe everyone should just pour themselves a nice cup of afternoon cement and harden up a bit’, your company culture is not doing all that well. Especially if you find yourself at the helm of a department or fill a managerial role of any kind with that type of attitude.
In fact, studies have shown that employees who are encouraged to pursue a less gruelling schedule and are provided with the right tools and support to manage their time effectively, are far less likely to have high levels of costly absenteeism, tend to work smarter, and show much higher levels of engagement.
To sum it up, these are a few very important reasons why company culture matters.
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