Aligning Company Culture – Its Necessary!
Just like people, companies have unique personalities. It is the personality of a business that encompasses its values, principles and attitudes, making up the brand. A brand should be reflected in a company’s approach and how they operate. This reflection is the company’s culture.
What is Company Culture?
Company culture defines the environment in which employees work. It is the physical and immaterial elements surrounding the employee’s environment.
For example, it’s understandable to assume that a graphic design company would have a culture which promotes creativity. Tangible elements could include placing abstract art around the offices and intangible elements could simply be rewarding hard work. In contrast, a financial services firm would have a more autocratic culture. This is not to say that every employee in a graphic design company should be creative – it highlights that each employee should understand and support that aspect.
Why define your Company Culture?
In any company, it’s the employees who deliver the work, which then makes up the brand. It is sensible to create an atmosphere for employees to work in that support the brand’s traits. If this environment is inconsistent due to poor company culture, then the brand’s reliability will weaken.
Being clear on what company culture is, allows for a more accurate brand delivery. It provides current employees with the suited atmosphere to work at an optimum as well as portraying the right ideals to potential customers and employees. See the process as – CEO values translate into the brand, the brand is delivered by employees, the employees are supported by company culture. Therefore, the company culture must reflect the brand.
Developing and Implementing Culture
Company Culture can be difficult to enact and maintain, especially for smaller businesses. This is because developing and implementing the right company culture can be costly and time-consuming. Part of culture implementation involves the acquiring and manipulation of tangible assets, it could be the way you design your office or purchasing a brand of IT equipment. It can also involve intangible assets such as leadership style, attitudes, values and the creation of procedures, which are time-consuming to implement and maintain.
Conclusion
To sum up, Company Culture supports employees in optimising their work to best fit the company’s brand. Culture can be made up of tangible and intangible elements such as office arrangements and management style which can be costly and time-consuming, but both enforce the right culture.
Getting the right culture fit, allows for accurate brand portrayal to both potential customers and employees and increases the probability of acquiring these stakeholders. This, in turn, enforces the right culture and repeats, constantly providing the right people for the right job to deliver the right message to the right customers.
Written By Leyla Hussein