By Kelli Newman, APR
Company culture is essentially lived-out values that help differentiate a company from its competition and is the glue that bonds employees when clearly defined, relevant, communicated, and true. Recently, our team took a client’s leadership through a strategy session that included asking them to describe their company values. After a fairly lengthy pause, one of the participants asked, “Do we have company values?” A person across the table pointed to a poster hanging behind them on the conference room wall and said, “There they are.” Even if the overwhelming list of nearly a dozen values had been succinct and well defined, they were clearly not communicated. Words on a poster aren’t values if not put into action.
Respect, Integrity and Excellence are all terms companies regularly include among their values. When we work with companies in developing their value messages, we tailor the definitions to what is uniquely relevant to them. For instance, a client of ours works with corporations that often have several levels of employees, from c-suite executives to frontline workers in the field and everything in between. So, considering its customers, its relevant that our client defines their value of Respect as regarding each member of an organization equally, regardless of title. Their belief in the work of each individual contributes to the success of the whole is expressed in a way that builds customer loyalty and long-term relationships. It is also a company value that, perhaps most importantly, is experienced by their own employees.
Company culture is highly influenced by how value messages are authentically experienced. In other words, are you who you say you are? If value messaging used to define Respect does not align with the experience of your employees, you risk a work culture that is cynical, sarcastic, and even distrustful. We know from research that losing trust will seriously damage your bottom line.
But let’s assume you do have a strong, authentic company culture. How is it being communicated to attract the right people, especially now that hiring is on the rise again? We recently added a new Digital Communications Strategist to our Newman & Newman team. When we were recruiting candidates, it was as important to us that the new hire have the talent we needed as it was that they be a good fit for our company culture. So, along with a description of job responsibilities, our post included information on who we are, the passion behind why we do what we do, and characteristics we consider essential for someone to thrive on our team, including a sense of humor! That is not something you normally see in a job posting, but enjoying what we do, along with the dedication we have for doing it, is an important characteristic of our company culture. In addition to their work history, we asked applicants to explain what they found intriguing about how we describe ourselves and why they considered themselves an ideal fit. The outcome couldn’t have been better. The Digital Communications Strategist we hired is a perfect fit!
Communicating company culture is also an important strategy for engaging and retaining staff. That is a critical issue right now in healthcare, where employee turnover is costing hospitals a lot of money. Between recruiter costs, onboarding costs, and lost revenue, turnover of a single physician can cost a hospital between $400,000 and $600,000. Fortunately, research has closely linked work satisfaction in healthcare with how an organization’s values are integrated into its culture and how that culture is communicated.
When an organization is committed to building its culture on values that are actively communicated, they make a solid commitment to ensuring a loyal and productive workplace. If not, its core values are simply words hanging in an unnoticed poster.
© 2021 Newman & Newman, Inc.
