What Makes a Great Corporate Culture?

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1. Purpose and Values

The mission, purpose, and values shape the corporate culture identity. Studies show that companies with clear, compelling missions that go beyond the mere goals of making a profit attract and retain talent more efficiently. Individuals need a purpose to be motivated and go the extra mile.

From an organizational point of view, the company must clarify its “why.” Why does the company exist, and what does it want to accomplish in society?

A clear and concrete response to this question guides the company’s decision-making, prioritization, and focus, ultimately aiding employees in fulfilling their purpose individually and as a group.

While the purpose states “why we exist as a group,” the values are the guiding principles of accepted group behaviors and attitudes.

One of the most common mistakes companies make is to define their values only with their customers in mind. Words like innovation, sustainability, community, and passion are overused in corporate websites. But, the core values must also say who you are as a company and what characterizes your way of working together. Building a diverse and inclusive work environment begins by affirming that inclusion is ingrained in your organization’s culture and is a top priority for you to promote actively.

Values, by definition, are things so important to you that you cannot take them for granted.

2. People

Cultural fit is a term even more often used in recruiting. Companies now know that more is needed to hire individuals with the right skills for the job description and bring the expected business results; they need people who can embrace the core values and contribute to building a healthy workplace.

The mission and values will remain words in a well-crafted company’s statement if you don’t have people who embody them and make them visible behaviors in the daily routines. Employee dissatisfaction and disengagement begin when they experience a gap between their leader’s words and behaviors.

You must fill that gap and show integrity to gain your employees’ trust and devotion.

3. Communication

Communication is everything when it comes to shaping corporate culture. It conveys the expected behaviors, skills, and attitudes. So the more and the better you share about the workplace you want to build, the more you get that happens. But it is more than that. Surveys show that employees consider themselves part of the company if they feel heard and considered. Openness and transparency characterize the best workplaces, facilitating relationship building and conflict resolution.

Another aspect of communication is language and narratives. A company’s culture is also shaped by the words its people use and the stories they tell about its history and trajectory.

So, pay attention to what your employees say within and outside the company’s walls and ensure they have good stories to tell.

4. Practices

“Culture is the way we do things around here.” – T. Deal and A. Kennedy.

Here is another powerful definition of corporate culture. Often, a company’s processes, technologies, and organization are built solely to support business needs, neglecting the people who will follow and use them. It might sound unrealistic or irrelevant, but the way people interact, the norms and rituals they follow, and the tools they use are also part of the culture. Those practices must be aligned with the company’s values, of course, and also support workplace development.

You cannot say that trust is a priority, and you must have strict rules to control and micromanage your employees. Similarly, you can only state that diversity and inclusion are core values if your hiring process considers workforce diversity. Or that you care about your people’s development but don’t have a transparent process to assess, evaluate, and recognize their talent. Those are just a few examples of the gaps between what the company claims to achieve and the actual practices contributing to disconnecting the employees from the organization.

5. Environment

There’s been a lot of talk lately about a return to the office and the effectiveness of virtual workplaces. I am not going to enter that debate. From an organizational culture point of view, quality is over quantity. It is not the quantity of time people spend together but the quality of that time. A physical workplace is crucial because it allows people to meet and connect beyond scheduled meetings and formal introductions.

Overall, physical and virtual workplaces should encourage connections and relationship building and improve employees’ perceptions of the “we” as a group or a team.

It has also been demonstrated that office design can effectively communicate your brand and improve corporate culture. Hierarchical cultures tend to have individual offices instead of co-working spaces and use doors or building levels to reinforce the distinction between the different roles and organizational levels: the more you move up the corporate ladder, the higher floor will be your office. On the contrary, work-play cultures, usually meant for the younger generations, typically have spot tables with games, pool tables, and innovation rooms for brainstorming and idea-pitching.

So don’t underestimate how the environment in which your team works daily can be powerful in determining or reinforcing the group culture.

Those are the main elements we consider when supporting companies in their journey to build a strong and positive culture, boasting over 20 years of experience in organizational development.

Book a discovery call to learn more about our people & culture solutions and case studies.

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