What is company culture and why is it important?

Basically, we can define company culture as the shared values, attributes and characteristics of any organization. It’s referred to the behaviors and attributes of the people within a company, and it makes it self evident when we can observe people interacting with each other, the values they hold and consider important and also the kind of decisions they make.

Your culture impacts everything from performance to how the organization is perceived for the audience, the media or external partners.

The importance of company culture

1 | It defines your company’s internal and external identity

You can make an exercise by writing down on a piece of paper different attributes that best describe the organization’s culture. You might write something like “good work-life balance” or “lots of meetings” or maybe “sharing good moments with team members”.

Now, spend some time thinking about why each of those attributes are important and why is it relevant that your company has a good work-life balance? What makes these culture attributes valuable to your people and customers?

Organizational culture will be present in every aspect of your business because it represents the way you do business. It’s simultaneously your identity and your image, which means it determines how everyone out of the company perceives you.

2 | Organizational culture drives purpose

If organizational culture is defined everything is driven by purpose and clear expectations. This motivates and inspires employees to be more engaged doing all activities and also improves interactions with other people. It also leads to high levels of workforce engagement, which drives productivity. 

3 | Your brand identity communicates power

People make assumptions about businesses based on their interactions within and outside of the company. If we don’t have an organizational culture the image becomes weak, so customers may hesitate to do business with anyone who is associated with the brand. 

There´s something that becomes clear, brands with strong identity attract business opportunities and also job candidates with similar values.

4 | Effective onboarding

Nowadays businesses with an organizational culture are relying on effective onboarding practices to train new hires. Onboarding practices that include orientation, training and good performance management programs help new team members to access the right resources and better transition into their roles. 

5 | Company culture is important for employers too

Company culture is important to employers as well, because workers who fit in with the company culture are likely to not only be happier, but more productive day to day. When an employee fits in with the culture, they are also likely to want to stay with that company more time, it develops fidelity, which reduces turnaround and everything related to the costs of training new people.

Midtown HR is focused on simple solutions for payroll and taxes, propose benefits that really feel like benefits, keep up with employment law and also help protect your team. Let’s talk!