Strong company culture isn’t just about equipping the breakroom with fancy coffee makers, crushed-ice machines and theater-worthy TV screens. While it may very well include those, and other things that give your employees the warm fuzzies, it’s bigger than that.
In oversimplified terms, culture is the way your organization behaves – how you treat your employees, how they treat each other and your customers, and the experience that it creates for everyone involved. When you invest the time and energy it takes to cultivate a strong company culture, it can have a profound impact not only on your employees and customers, but also on your business’s bottom line.
Let’s focus on three areas of your business in particular that can benefit from a positive company culture and ultimately help improve your bottom line: recruiting, retention and succession planning.
Recruiting
Your culture is the heart of your employer brand. After all, everyone wants to work for a company with a great culture. And when you have that kind of draw, your business can attract top talent much easier. That means you’ll spend much less time and money on traditional recruiting methods.
But attracting candidates is only the first step. Selecting the right ones for your company can prove to be more difficult.
While resumes help you select candidates based on skill sets, they don’t tell you much about their personalities or how they’ll mesh with your team. A well-thought-out HR strategy can also make it easier to hire the right candidate the first time. When you have a thorough understanding of your company’s core values, it’s easier to eliminate candidates who aren’t aligned with them.
As for highly sought-after candidates with specialized skills, training or experience, it takes more than competitive pay and benefits to win them over. While those aspects of your offering are definitely important, choosy “unicorn” candidates also look for an experience where they can continue to advance their careers and make a difference.
With the right strategy in place, your culture could be the determining factor that sways them to pick your company over the competition.
Retention
Although turnover is inevitable in all businesses, excessive turnover can be a major drain on your budget. Consider all of the ways it impacts your business:
- Lost productivity from being shorthanded
- Advertising open positions
- Time spent screening, interviewing and comparing candidates
- Time, effort and cost associated with conducting background checks
- Time spent onboarding and training new employees
- Lost productivity due to new employees’ inexperience
However, retaining your employees isn’t as difficult as you might think. If your employees are getting what they want from your company, they’ll be less likely to go looking elsewhere for a new job.
What kind of “experience” can you provide that will make them want to stay with your company for the long term? Is it advancement or educational opportunities? What about paid volunteer time?
Talk to your employees. Conduct interviews and discover what will persuade them to stay. Then, tailor your HR strategy to meet the specific wants and needs of your people. It will likely be much cheaper to invest in the talent you already have, versus hiring and training new people.
Succession planning
Like turnover, change within your business is inevitable. What really matters is how your business handles change. Does it come to a dead stop? Or do you have the proper people in place to keep it moving?
An effective HR strategy includes a succession plan that helps you prepare employees to step up when others leave and ensures your company is ready for growth. It serves as the blueprint to guide you in hiring and promoting the right employees for the right positions to support change. So, no matter what comes your way, you’re always prepared for what’s next.
If your HR strategy is truly proactive and goal-oriented, then you’ve thought about your employees’ future at your company long before you hired them. And if you’ve cultivated a culture that promotes growth and personal development, your people will be aligned and motivated to take on new roles and positions. They may not have all the necessary skills or aptitudes yet, but with a little training and mentoring, these employees have the potential to help your business thrive.
An HR strategy that fosters culture
There’s no perfect formula. There isn’t a quick fix. And HR strategies aren’t one-size-fits-all. But one thing rings true: The best HR strategy for your business will be one that’s tailored to your unique needs and fosters the kind of culture that helps you attract and retain top talent. At the end of the day, when you build a better workforce, they’ll help you build a better business and boost your bottom line.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Insperity, a trusted advisor to America’s best businesses since 1986, provides an array of human resources and business solutions designed to help improve business performance. With 2018 revenues of $3.8 billion, Insperity operates in 78 offices throughout the United States. To learn how Insperity can help you, email [email protected] or call 813.556.2010.
Contributed by Kevin Howe from content originally published on Insperity.com.
These are all benefits of a positive company culture. But what do you do to create one? Companies that live their core values tend to have positive behaviors, but this doesn’t happen by accident. Leaders who want to create a less toxic culture need to look within first. What are their core values and do they honor them? What are the core values of the organization? Do people know what they are? Do people know what they mean? Define them in terms of behaviors (as you said, your culture is how you behave) and then share them, constantly and consistently. But it is more than that. Culture s reflected in your structure, systems, processes, physical facilities and this doesn’t happen by accident. Institutionalize them. If you don’t screen for cultural fit, if you don’t ask your job candidates about what the core values mean to them, your hiring practices do not support the culture you want to create. Finally…honor them! They are non-negotiable. If you fail, and you will, make it right. Hold each other accountable.
Check out The Value of Core Values: Five Keys to Success through Values-Centered Leadership.