Is workplace culture important?

• 90% of employees say “yes”
• 79% of employers say “yes”

What is workplace culture?

Most organizations don’t really understand that culture in the workplace represents the deeper values and beliefs of the company. It’s not the stuff on the surface. It’s not the ping pong table, it’s not the margarita party, it’s not the cool benefits employees get. It’s really what is valued and how we behave and treat each other behind closed doors.

What we see most organizations doing is thinking about culture at the perk level. But, it’s really trying to get to the meaningful level of work, and it has a lot to do with how people are treated.

What kind of culture should employers strive for?

The kind where employees know that employers care about them. Organizations have to think about their intention around their culture. What we see is most organizations don’t even know what their own culture is. Employers may say on their website that they want to have a certain kind of culture, but employees may be laughing about that behind closed doors because they know the organization is nowhere close to achieving that idea.

What mistakes do employers make when it comes to workplace culture?

The most important thing to start with is the company understanding what they are aspiring to from a cultural perspective. They need to do the work around figuring out how they need to treat each other within the organization. What do managers need to do? What do leaders need to do? They need to articulate to everybody, so they are 100% clear on the standards and expectations. Most organizations completely skip that step and go right to putting a couple of cute things on their website.

Instead, make it really simple and say, “These are the standards and expectations we have for how we are with each other.” If you want your business to be successful, this is how you connect everybody’s individual behavior to the success of the business.

What specific tactics can employers take to improve workplace culture while also considering their benefit programs?

Be intentional. Think about being an architect of how people are with each other, within the organization.

If organizations had a culture department that had as much funding as a benefits department, where might we be? It’s almost odd that there are organizations that are focused on pet insurance, but they are not focused on being intentional about their culture. People are attracted to an organization, but they stay because of how the organization makes them feel.

Reach out to CorpStrat to learn how we help companies with strategies to attract, reward, and retain their most important assets – their people.