What is company culture?
Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with a passion.
– Brian Chesky, Co-Founder, CEO, Airbnb
You walk into a company’s office or a brand store, look at the walls, talk to people, and feel a distinct emotion. You may feel fascinated or elated. In another similar situation, you may find yourself unimpressed with the way things are working.
Company culture creates a distinct experience for people inside and outside the organization. A feeling that reflects on the company’s core values.
Let’s learn more about company culture and why it is so vital for your organization.
What is company culture?
Company culture is primarily defined by how the people of an organization conduct themselves. It’s about how a company and its people perceive and make decisions on a day-to-day basis. It’s what governs their general attitude towards each other and those outside the organization.
Your company culture could result from many factors including values, goals, language, belief systems, and industry norms.
- In some organizations, the leadership team actively plans to build a definite company culture.
- While other organizations do not take their company culture very seriously.
A healthy organizational culture is most often the result of senior team members taking it seriously and constantly striving towards creating one.
Why is company culture important?
A company culture slowly becomes an organization’s identity. It’s how people come to recognize a business and its policies. The culture shows how your company interacts with partners, stakeholders, and employees. It’s the mirror of the ecosystem that your business carves over the years.
- Company culture binds the people of an organization and makes them work as a unit. It enables them to take responsibility and ownership of their work.
- A strong company culture ensures that employees feel that they are an integral part of the organization. It’s what motivates them to perform to the best of their abilities.
- Consistency in following a core value set helps a business attract the right people, customers, employees, or other stakeholders like distributors and agencies.
Strong company culture helps all the people associated with your business to feel more connected to your organization. And that, in turn, helps you retain them for longer.
In fact, 47% of active job seekers cite company culture as their driving reason for looking for work.
That’s why company culture lays the foundation for your business’s future growth. The simple truth is that every company comprises people, and if you have people who believe in your values and vision, you’re working towards the same goal.
Isn’t that the most critical success factor for any business?
Let’s now look at how your brand impacts company culture and how business branding and culture are closely interconnected.
How does brand personality define company culture?
Here’s the thing. A company’s overarching culture and its brand personality are two sides of the same coin. They’re intertwined in the same string.
- Company culture isn’t only about ensuring ‘work-life balance’ or ‘happiness’ for your team. Keeping your employees engaged and satisfied may be just the tip of the iceberg.
- The fact is that your brand’s personality, as laid out in its guidelines, becomes a source of competitive advantage for your business. It’s what makes your brand stand out from the competition.
- Building a robust company culture is about internalizing your brand’s core values and making them all the more relevant for your business. It’s about infusing your brand in everything you do, from interacting with employees and stakeholders to writing emails, organizing events, training team members, appraising their performance, and so on.
The golden rule is to weave your brand and your company culture in a single thread. That way, you can align everything through a single set of guiding principles. Values that create a well-knit team working towards holistic brand goals.
Have you ever wondered how brands like Airbnb, Red Bull, and Harley Davidson have translated their brand cultures into company cultures and used them to their advantage? It’s not rocket science! Their leadership team knew, from the start, how beneficial it can be for their business.
By using your brand to develop your company culture:
- You save time and money in attracting the right talent to your organization.
- You invest in a long-term company culture that works towards getting people who work harder and also love working for your company.
- You’re able to effectively communicate and engage with employees, customers, and stakeholders through a single brand voice. This way, you’re able to offer brand experiences that aren’t just delightful but consistent.
Hence, the combination of brand personality and company culture gives way to a realm where you can build trust with customers, employees, partners, and agencies with a lot more ease and simplicity.
How to maintain company culture in a remote setup?
The Covid-19 crisis has paced up the remote work revolution so much that it has almost become a norm for most companies around the globe.
In fact, 62% of employees now expect their employers will allow them to work remotely moving forward.
Studies also show that teams who’re allowed to work from home are happier, more productive.
In short, remote working provides a win-win situation for both employees and employers as:
- It saves time and space for the employer
- Improves the level of employee satisfaction
- There are no break times
- Lesser meetings mean more time for work
- It gives companies access to a broader talent pool
But here is the catch.
Companies often find it hard to build a coherent culture because they deal with people working from many different locations.
- People may interact less because they’re not present in an office where communication is more conducive.
So, how do you ensure that your teams follow your company’s core values and work towards building a culture they call their own?
- First off, it’s critical to have brand guidelines distributed to all team members and stakeholders.
- You can include your company’s vision and mission and define its larger purpose for people to become familiar with the company culture.
- Plus, you can share brand content assets like product images and logo files with teams across functions and departments.
- You should guide and encourage your teams to follow your company’s values while interacting with each other and with customers and company partners.
- Setting clear-cut expectations about the channels and methods of communication is a great way to do away with any confusion whatsoever.
- Make it easy for far-away teams to communicate and share feedback. Talking to your employees and learning about them puts them in a comfortable space. It’s essential to engage with employees and build a relationship that’s based on mutual trust.
The more you communicate with remote teams and invite them to participate in strategic discussions, the easier it will be to recognize your brand and organizational culture. The simpler it will be for you to build and maintain a cultural identity that reaps long-term dividends for your business.
Are you still struggling? Embrace Smint.io brand portals!
I know it is an enormous task to work towards building a brand-driven company culture. For most businesses, it’s nothing more than a far-fetched dream! But don’t worry, most dark clouds have a silver lining.
What you need is a content experience platform that automates the process of building a distinct brand-driven company culture.
The good news is that with Smint.io Portals – an awarded content experience platform, you can make it all a reality—that too without burning a hole in your pocket.
- Our brand portal solution helps you keep all your brand assets accessible to all employees and stakeholders in one resource center.
- A brand portal helps you to align every piece of company communication with your brand voice.
- Smint.io Portals provides you a platform where employees and stakeholders can access your company values and core brand guideline documents. This way, they already have everything they need to know about your brand and its vision.
- Our content experience platform helps teams store and share files and interact with each other with utmost ease and simplicity.
- Plus, you can ensure that all your digital touchpoints offer a consistent brand experience to employees, customers, and other stakeholders.
Does all of this sound like magical realism to you? Like a fantasy world that can’t possibly exist? It’s not, and if you don’t believe me, you can book a demo with our portal solution experts and find out for yourself.
Do you have further questions?
You have the questions – we have the answers.
Don’t hesitate to contact us right now.
