Do you want to discover how to improve your company culture? It certainly wouldn’t hurt. According to a study by Robert Half, over a third of workers in the U.S. (35 percent) pass on a perfect job if the corporate culture isn’t a good fit, which is why it is important to enhance company culture if you want to stay competitive in the job market.
This makes total sense, especially given the importance of candidate experience in recruitment. After all, your company culture says multitudes about your employer brand and values. A winning corporate culture does not only attract the best candidates, but it also helps retain top talent. In the same vein, a weak organizational culture will turn potential employees away from your company, adding to the costs of hiring new people.
If your company culture needs some enhancement, you’ve come to the right place. Read along for some effective tips on how to improve your company culture and make positive, lasting changes to your recruitment process.
How to Improve Your Company Culture: Tips that Actually Work
Before you can make any impactful changes to your company culture, you first have to know its definition. At its core, company culture is the personality of your organization. It refers to the shared set of values, ideas, and beliefs that influence each aspect of your company, from how you recruit candidates to how your colleagues work together.
Contrary to popular belief, corporate culture is not just about the cool office layout, unique employee perks, and lax dress code. They can be key drivers when figuring out ways to improve your company culture, but they’re not the end all and be all.
When you discover how to improve your workplace culture, you will boost employee engagement, leading to increased productivity, better retention, and higher profit margins. Not only that, but an attractive corporate culture is a huge recruiting asset, much like a custom recruitment portal.
Here’s how to improve your company culture depending on your business type and size.
How to Create Positive Workplace Culture in a Small Business
As company culture is a direct reflection of the company and its team members, a small business will have some difficulties pinning it down, especially start-ups. For that reason, the process of improving your company culture as a small business will differ from established businesses.
Use the following four steps to solidify your current culture and make improvements that will ultimately benefit your business in the years to come.
Define your ideal company culture and values
In order to build a successful workplace culture, you have to answer three key questions:
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- Why does our company exist?
- What do we value and believe in?
- What is our main vision for the company?
In the early years of your business, answering these questions and navigating how to improve your company culture will be difficult. What you can do is to keep your long-term business goals in mind and ensure the values you decide on today will still be relevant five years down the line. Additionally, your answers to the questions should serve as the guiding force that helps your organization ultimately define your employer brand and achieve your objectives.
For instance, if you’re an advertising agency, creativity will always be in your list of core values. If you’re a digital marketing start-up, tech-savviness will be a major driving force. So on and so forth. Take a good, long look at the essence of your company to emphasize the truly important principles. If you need some examples to get you started, HubSpot has a comprehensive list of core company values that can help shape your workplace culture and inspire your employees.
Evaluate your current company culture
Once you’ve outlined your core values, the next on how to improve the company culture of your small business is to assess your current one. Take a look at your employees: Are they working and collaborating well together? Is employee engagement evident or do team members seem eager to head home? Are most employees showing up early and staying late?
Determine the type of workplace culture you currently have and compare it with your broader corporate goals. Will the current culture help you achieve success or do you need to remedy serious limitations?
Don’t forget to ask employees for their thoughts. Culture is set by leadership by employees are the main driving force behind it and ultimately influence its evolution. Making sure employees are engaged also drives company leaders to polish their people management skills.
Outline your plans for improvement
Now that you’ve identified the aspects you want to address when navigating on how to improve the company culture of your small business, the next is to create a detailed plan that includes a strategy, budget, and timeline. Additionally, set clear benchmarks so you can easily track your progress.
For instance, if increasing diversity is high up on your list, learn how to build a diverse candidate pool. Make your job postings gender-inclusive, promote inclusive benefits, and use niche job boards. Don’t forget to track your progress. If you fail to meet the initial mark, you can adjust your strategy accordingly.
You may also consider getting your employees’ feedback and using that as a basis for how else you can improve your company culture.
Hire Employees that Meet Your Culture
One way to help establish your company culture is to find people who match your ideal company culture. These individuals bring personalities, attitudes, and behaviors that can either reinforce or contradict your company culture.
Rather than forcing people to change, your job of creating a positive company culture can be easier when you have people working with you.
This process starts with your job description. Consider discussing your company culture and identifying the traits you’re looking for in a candidate. Naturally, you need to follow this through in the interview process. Look beyond the qualifications and gauge the candidates’ personalities and whether they will complement your ideal company culture.
This way, you can nurture people with similar attitudes and goals. They, too, will be happier and more content with your company. When all your employees are happy with your culture, it’s easier to maintain a positive working environment.
Encourage Team Building
One of the most popular ideas to improve workplace culture is team building, which may be challenging for a small start-up with a handful of employees. For small businesses, a simple fun activity outside the office can make a big difference if done right.
Bring employees together after work to provide an opportunity to relax and bond. You don’t need official events. You can simply do a fun activity like bowling or go out for dinner and drinks. Through these activities, you can spark a positive relationship among your employees that is sure to carry over to the workplace.
How to Improve the Company Culture of an Enterprise
Enterprises focus a lot on measurable and attainable goals. Managers always rant about metrics and KPI’s. And it’s definitely true that the biggest indicators of an enterprise’s success are tangible results.
Company culture is one of them, especially when it comes to attracting the best candidates, talent retention, and employee satisfaction. Here are effective ways on how to improve the company culture of an enterprise. These can work for small businesses too!
Be transparent
Employees, especially top-performing ones, don’t work for you solely for the money. They choose to work for you because they trust you as an employer.
Trust is the foundation of excellent company culture. This means not leaving employees in the dark when it comes to the company’s direction and opening communication channels to everyone in the company. A simple and cost-effective way to do this is by investing in collaboration and communication tools as well as sending regular company updates.
Reward in Public, Coach in Private
When you’re learning how to improve your company culture of an enterprise, it’s advisable to recognize and reward your company’s top performers. The rewards don’t have to be extravagant. A simple shoutout during Townhall, spa gift certificates, or a plaque would do.
But if there are overachievers, there are also underperformers. These call for coaching sessions and other supervisor interventions, but make sure these are done discreetly. Nothing kills company culture and employee motivation faster than employees getting embarrassed in front of their colleagues. Getting reprimanded by a manager does nothing but instill fear in the staff, something you want to avoid when you’re trying to figure out how to improve your company culture.
Invest in Some Perks
The office environment also plays a crucial role in employees’ behavior, so it is logical to create an environment that encourages a positive culture. Be intentional about the perks you offer, making sure that they reinforce your ideal company culture.
For example, if you want a collaborative and relaxed work environment, you can choose an open-concept office where people can easily communicate. You can also follow other organizations’ examples of installing recreational areas where employees can unwind together.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be that drastic. You can foster a positive work environment by simply implementing policies that help employees manage stress. For example, allowing flexible working hours or remote work options can help employees maintain work-life balance.
These perks can help boost employee morale and instill a positive work environment. While some perks seem minor, these become part of your company’s daily workflow and, thus, make up a part of your workplace culture.
Support Employees’ Wellness
Employees have become more aware of their mental health and how their work affects it. Conversely, employees’ mental health impacts the company’s culture and productivity directly. Burnt-out employees do not have the energy to collaborate or befriend their colleagues.
If you’re serious about enhancing your company culture, you should offer ways to support employees in managing stress and avoiding burnout. What can you do? You can start with effectively managing tasks and deadlines to avoid overload, providing opportunities to take breaks and recover, offering genuine support, or offering flexible work arrangements.
Often, showing that you genuinely care about your employees and their well-being helps foster a positive culture—it also encourages people to care for their company and colleagues.
Provide Avenues for Growth
People who are encouraged to grow and are given opportunities to advance their careers are more likely to be content with their job and company.
One of the tips for recruiting Gen Z and millennials is to encourage their personal and professional growth. This means encouraging, if not supporting, ways for them to engage in continuous learning such as through training. Similarly, offering opportunities to grow their career and/or compensation is sure to help them be content and happy.
When employees are satisfied, they also radiate positivity in the workplace.
How to Improve Company Culture Through Social Media
Company culture is a popular term amongst millennials, especially those seeking a career change. Fresh graduates entering the workforce also tend to look for a company culture that suits their expectations and desired lifestyle.
Where do most of these millennials spend their free time? That’s right, on social media.
If you want to attract the attention of young job seekers and take social media recruitment to the next level, here are strategies on how to improve company culture through social media.
Make your brand personable
Using social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn to feature your workplace culture helps humanize your employer brand. Posts as simple as exciting recaps of company events, smiling employees, and photos of your office’s warm, inviting interior design are a good start at letting your brand’s personality shine.
While photos are worth a thousand words and can often speak for themselves, it’s still crucial to craft witty and compelling captions. Don’t be afraid to inject a little humor and personality to your posts while keeping captions business appropriate. Remember, you want to appear personable to your clients and potential employees!
Provide a behind the scenes look
There is nothing job seekers love more than getting the inside scoop on a company they have their eyes on. Offering an exclusive peek into the everyday life at your office is a great way to entice both active and passive candidates.
Photo opportunities that showcase company culture include:
- In-house celebrations
- Monthly townhall meetings
- Employee promotions
- Weekly lunches
- Team outings
Highlight Your Employees
Does your organization recognize the Best Employees of the Month? Have any team members won awards or completed big projects? Showcase your staff by celebrating small and big accomplishments on your social media accounts. It will not only make your employees feel appreciated and valued, it will also motivate them to share the post and widen the reach of your employer brand. This will help boost your employee referral program.
This is an important strategy when you’re navigating how to improve company culture through social media. Showcasing your employees won’t only improve workplace culture, but it will also show active and passive job seekers that you make your employees feel important.
Use Employee-Generated Content
You may have seen some brands feature user-generated content, such as allowing someone to take over their account and share whatever they want or simply post about the company in their personal account. This tactic can also be used to promote and strengthen company culture.
Employee-generated content can be a great tool for social media recruiting as it shows outsiders, such as potential applicants, to peek into your workplace culture – the great relationships within teams, perks in your company, etc. Likewise, it can reinforce certain cultures by encouraging other employees to follow suit.
The key to employee-generated content is authenticity. Set parameters for posts but encourage employees to show their authentic experiences of working with you.
Personalized Approach
Advocacy can be a great way to rally your employees together. It can also help strengthen company culture. After all, they are the most tangible proof of your values. And what better way to showcase those than through social media?
If you already support certain advocacies, especially if you engage employees in these advocacies, showing them off online can help strengthen your company culture. By posting about your advocacies, more employees and potential candidates (as well as clients) learn about them, which can help foster a positive impression and relationship.
It can encourage more employees to join your efforts, which can help you integrate advocacy into your culture. Similarly, this can help you attract employees with similar values who can, then, help you create a positive workplace culture for your company.
Knowing that they and their company work toward something positive for society can help younger employees feel content and proud to work with you. Subsequently, job seekers may also find your company an ideal employer when they know that your culture includes certain advocacies.
Gauge Employee Sentiment
Employees’ engagement with your brand in social media is an efficient way to gauge what they truly think of the company. Do they react and interact positively with your posts? Do they post about activities you’ve hosted or perks in a positive light? If so, this may mean that you have a positive company culture. In this case, you may opt to double down on your strategy.
Conversely, if you see negative opinions or no noise about your company from your employees, this is your cue that improvements may be needed. This may mean that your company does not have a well-established culture to speak of or that employees are not proud of this culture.
While online engagement cannot pinpoint what is wrong or missing, it can prompt you to investigate the issue and find out how you can improve company culture. It would be beneficial to start envisioning what type of culture you want for your company and building it with perks, activities, practices, and people.
Why is Culture Important in the Workplace?
Now that you know some expert company culture tips and strategies on how to improve your company culture – why exactly is culture important in the workplace?
Well, the most basic answer is that it helps you attract and keep the best people. People who feel like they’re part of a community, rather than just a cog in a wheel, are more likely to stay at your organization. Reports also show that company culture has a direct impact on the well-being and performance of employees. Having a healthy workplace culture starts a domino effect that transforms your employees into loyal advocates, assists and onboarding, and ultimately transforms your company into a team.
In fact, that’s what candidates want from employers, especially younger individuals. Millennials and Gen Z understand how much their work affects all other aspects of their life, especially their well-being and future. This is why these generations look for employers with company cultures that align with their values as individuals. Unlike older generations, they do not prioritize salary, nor are they willing to sacrifice their personal life and well-being for it.
Millennials and Gen Z choose to work for employers that care about them and share their values. In return, they become loyal advocates of their chosen company. So, companies who want to attract top talent and survive in the current market need to be serious about improving their company culture.
These are just some of the reasons why culture is important in the workplace, but they’re a great starting point to get your gears turning and think about what company culture can bring to your organization’s table.
Power Up Your Recruitment Efforts with Your Company Culture
Regardless of where your business is starting from, it’s crucial to remember that you can always improve your company culture. Once you have the support of the HR department, company executives, and employees, the changes you implement will drive further success for your company. Learning how to create a positive workplace culture starts with small steps such as understanding your company goals and what your team members value. From there, you can move on to engaging with active and passive job seekers on online channels such as social media.
Every company has something unique and cool to offer to candidates, whether it is new technology like an applicant tracking software, a modern office environment, or simply the people who make up the team. It is up to you to bundle all these interesting traits and let the world know how cool your company truly is.
