Building a solid Company Identity and Culture

If your company is at day 1, a novice start-up or in scale-up phase, it is likely you are wondering how to establish a strong, recognizable company identity to be proud of. You also probably want to convey your corporate identity both internally and externally through employer branding efforts. Similarly, if you are in a large established company, your culture and identity may well need refreshing or revamping. 

No matter what size, shape or form, most companies have caught on to the fact that having a strong and positive company culture is paramount to its long-term success. Why? Because it will help recruiters attract and retain top talent. And it doesn’t finish there; an attractive corporate culture is known to boost engagement among employees as well as improve productivity and performance.

What do we mean by “Company Culture”? 

Company culture is at the foundation of an organization’s identity. The combination of its attitudes, values, beliefs and goals is its make-up. It contains some key tenets that speak to how you operate and do business, in other words, the way you work. 

Let’s look at corporate identity as if it were a human being. Think about someone you know who has a fantastic, captivating personality. That person is great to be around, right? Similarly, companies where people can identify themselves and share the same ideals drive people to want to be there. There is willingness to wear the t-shirt and be proud to say where they work, to friends and family.

The big question: How can we build a super, strong corporate culture?

How can companies build a winning corporate identity, that drives its employees to boast about where they work and have little intent to leave? For the sake of this article, let’s assume you already have some core company values in place. Let’s also assume they are great and they truly reflect who you are as a company. Amazon has 14 of them, called Leadership Principles. They are a key success factor to driving the company forward, as well as building a strong corporate identity. For many companies 14 may be too many. Other companies only have 3. No matter how many, these values should be considered the underlying shades of the company’s personality. 

One of the hardest milestones for organizations to achieve however, is how to get them to “stick”. Getting words like “Customer Passion”, “Trust” and “Integrity” to become real, living values among all employees cannot be accomplished by sticking up posters on the office walls (especially not now!). Nor can it be considered a closed project by building a fancy, featured values page on your corporate web site. Rather-more, the real winning card is to build your company values into everything you do. Take every opportunity to divulge and indulge in them, integrating you company values into:

1. The Recruitment process. Ensure some of the questions you are evaluating candidates against are based on your company values. This allows future employees to get to know the corporate culture even before starting in their roles. It also allows your company to select talents not only for their experience, but also for their culture fit. Add the values as a standard part of your job descriptions, too.
2. Company webinars and events. Your corporate culture and values will start to stick if, like anything, you talk about them a lot. And in a positive way. Company events (eg. Christmas parties) can present opportunities to remind employees about your values, by using them as table names or creating games or quizzes around them. 
3. Team building workshops. Where better to be proactive in divulging knowledge of your Core Values than during team building exercises?! Team building is all about bonding with your colleagues, having fun and identifying common beliefs with each other. It is therefore an excellent playground to learn, understand and embrace your company values.
4. The performance evaluation process. While you may want to keep your traditional measures performance, consider how well people are performing against your values too. Essentially, people want to know how to perform based on what their company considers important. Your organization clearly demonstrates the importance it gives to its corporate culture, by measuring how aligned people are to it. 
5. Growth plans. Similar to the performance evaluation process, encourage teams to recognize and embrace your corporate culture by building the values into employees’ growth plans. See here a related article on building an Extra Mile culture to enable growth.
6. Employer Branding efforts. Many people believe that employer branding has the sole aim to attract external talent. It is in fact also confirmation or a reminder of who you are to your current employee base. When it comes to divulging information about your company culture both internally and externally, make sure you regularly update your social media channels (LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook etc.). Consider different types of updates. Short posts, articles, videos and other, more innovative techniques that all speak to who you are as an organization.
7. Sponsorship. Ask your senior managers and create company ambassadors to support and sponsor HR in their efforts to drive engagement among employees. Tactics such as naturally name dropping the values at the right moment during conversations is very effective.

Final thoughts

Each company culture is different, as it has unique goals and probably has an array of unique personalities too. An important element for creating a positive work culture is to ensure each and every employee is represented and accounted for. This is what your company culture should achieve; bringing your employees together and sharing the same goals. 

In short, quoting back to the “human being theory” above, owning a solid, attractive company identity and culture is like being a people magnet. People will happily stay around that magnet and willingly do as much as they can for them. Not a bad hand for driving a successful, profitable company 😉