Does your company have a company culture that you're proud of and that you believe is working? Having a good company culture can do everything from helping you attract the best talent to your company to decreasing employee turnover. Whether you are trying to develop a company culture from scratch or if you're trying to redo one that you developed years ago, there are a few things to consider in order to create a company culture that not only works for you, but also for the company as a whole.
Stay True To Your Mission and Values
When developing a company culture, the first thing you need to do is to stay true to your company's mission and values. If you don't have a clearly defined idea of what your company values, ask everyone from your executives to your employees what they value and what they think is important. Make sure the culture that you develop fits in with all of these. If one of the company's main values is community outreach, your culture should reflect that in some way.
Hire Employees That Fit
The next step in building and maintaining your company culture is to hire people that fit it. By hiring a good cultural fit, you'll get someone who is able to adapt to your company's core beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. If your company highly values collaboration and open workspaces, hiring someone who values that as well will often have a better outcome than someone who prefers to work alone in an office or cube. Hiring for a cultural fit will not only help grow your culture, but will also lead to less employee turnover and happier employees.
Make Your Values Know
Another important thing to remember is to make your culture and values known to both those within your company and those outside who may be potential employees. By having your culture known, it can help attract potential employees to your company because they value the same things. You can do this in many ways depending on what those values are, from sharing pictures about your office culture on social media to getting out and participating in events in you the community.
Allow It to Evolve
As your company grows many things are going to have to evolve, including you company culture. It's easy to have a large amount of control and influence over it when you have a small number of employees, but not as easy when that number increase. Having an onboarding procedure that introduces and gets new hires involved in the culture will be key. The key to remember is to make sure the culture you develop can still be maintained when your company continues to grow.
Having a good company culture can help draw talent to your company and help you retain the employees you have. How do you want your company’s culture to evolve in the next year?