Your company’s culture is an extremely important aspect of your business, for both your employees and your customers. Your culture extends from how you perceive your business, throughout every interaction you have, whether it’s internal or external.
A lot of companies simply do “business as usual” and don’t leave a lasting impression in the mind of their customers, or create a compelling work environment that attracts new talent to their team.
In this post we highlight the importance of defining your company’s culture, and steps you can take to start building this crucial, yet undervalued, part of your company.
Most innovative and well-known companies have a very strong company culture. Some companies who set the standard in this space include, Apple, Google, Patagonia, and Basecamp. Each company is incredibly unique and clear in consistent in the things they stand for, what it means to work for them, and what customers can expect when working with their company.
Creating a strong company culture begins with an understanding of your core values and the unique offering your company brings to the world. Once you have these defined you can communicate those both internally within the background of your business, and externally through your workplace culture and customer interactions.
Your core values are the beliefs your company was founded upon. Do you believe in minimalism and clear design? Do you believe service to your customers above all else? Is your mission to inject passion back into the workplace?
Whatever you reason for doing business, make sure this is communicated clearly. Take note of your beliefs as a business owner and how those values extend into your company and your contribution to the world.
With more choices than ever consumers are tending to lean towards companies whom they align with on multiple levels.
Internal company culture extends from your company values and into your work processes and methodologies. This includes things like email communication, internal documents, and employee communication. It can be helpful to create a set of guidelines that communicate what your company stands for on all levels and how this shows up in the work place.
External company culture is how those values show up in your products, services, your office space, and customer interactions. For example, if one of your values is transparency you’ll communicate things like company profit, failures and mistakes, as well as success. In the online space you’ll see companies like Smart Passive Income communicating transparency through their blog.
Having a strong company culture goes a long way towards improving your overall customer experience and even increasing the happiness of your employees.
Take a look at a company like Apple. Design and keeping a minimalist aesthetic are at the core of everything they do. This extends across their products, their website, their presentations, their marketing campaigns, and even into their physical storefronts. This creates a swarm of fans who are eager to buy everything they release.
Your culture extends into everything you do and will determine if your customers become fans for life.
Today’s employees demand larger values, such as contribution, meaning, and value from their work. When you align the purpose of your company with something larger, this enables you employees to feel more valued, like their work is contributing to humanity as a whole.
Create strong principles that your company stands on and you’ll see worker satisfaction and productivity start to rise.
When you know your why, it’s much easier to communicate this across existing mediums. Consumers can tell what your company stands for and how you do business. Your culture creates a set of expectations for your customer, and allows you to more easily communicate these expectations, as you’ll have a framework to work from.
Having a strong company culture can help you create a company that lasts. Implement the tips above to lay the foundation for a company culture that improves the bottom-line of your business.
