Your organization has a unique company culture. And it exists either by design, or by default. But what many employers and managers fail to appreciate is how much culture matters.
Excerpt From: Accuchex Blog
Author: Leslie Ruhland
Assuming that you are one of those business leaders who actually understand and appreciate the value and importance of your company's culture, are you happy with it?
According to eighty percent of respondents in a recent survey, their company cultures must evolve quickly in order to see successful growth and if they hope to retain their quality employees in the process.
What Company Culture?
Because of the subjective and intangible nature of culture, it can be hard to explain and hard to grasp mentally. But culture in an organization is real and it influences everything in that organization.
Entrepreneur.com has defined company culture as “a blend of the values, beliefs, taboos, symbols, rituals and myths all companies develop over time.”
Another way of framing it is: company culture is the personality of a company, particularly from an employee's perspective. To "visualize" culture in a business, it helps to think of its ingredients, which include a company’s mission, values, and work environment. Whether it’s intentionally shaped and fostered or has simply grown organically, the culture determines a company’s personality.
Company Culture and Hiring
Authors James Collins and Jerry Porras analyzed 18 U.S. companies with over 50 years of consistent high performance in their book Built to Last. They found that one of the major common traits these companies shared was an emphasis on hiring, developing and managing employees based on clearly defined values and principles.
According to the CEO of Accountants One,
"A great hire is not just talent that fulfills the job description. A great hire is 75% Culture and 25% technical skills. That’s because hiring a person who mirrors your company’s culture is more apt to be a long-term, happy, and contributing performer. After all, you can train technical skills, but you can’t teach a person to fit into an organization."
And there is plenty of statistical and anecdotal evidence to back this up. The point is that when it comes to hiring - and employee retention - culture matters.
The Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) website states that,
"The central role that HR plays in helping an organization capitalize on its culture is in hiring. HR has the opportunity to select people who fit the way the organization operates. Traditionally, hiring focuses primarily on an applicant's skills, but when a hire's personality also fits with the organization's culture, the employee will be more likely to deliver superior performance. On the other hand, ill-fitting hires and subsequent rapid departures cost approximately 50 percent to 150 percent of the position's annual salary. Unfortunately, nearly one in three newly hired employees' leaves voluntarily or involuntarily within a year of hiring, and this number has been increasing steadily in recent years."
The employment environment is decidedly in the job seeker's favor right now and, although salary and benefits are still significant factors for determining a candidate's decision, a prospective company's culture has become a more important consideration. This is especially true among Millennials.
And this matters since, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Millennials will make up about 75 percent of the workforce by the year 2030.