Every organization, irrespective of its size and type, has its own set of values and behaviour patterns that the employees of the organization are expected to adhere to. The term for this set of values and shared practices of an organization is corporate culture. It reflects the unique personality of an organization and conveys its core values, ethics, behaviours, and beliefs that set it apart from its competitors. There is a growing significance of corporate culture in modern organizations.
It would not be wrong to state that the corporate culture decides the social and psychological environment within an organization. This is because it provides the employees with the appropriate guidelines about how they should act, feel, and think within the workplace.
A healthy corporate culture motivates the employees to value their co-workers irrespective of their roles and responsibilities and promotes teamwork. Unlike bad corporate culture, where employees act as individuals and perform their duties only for the sake of pay and benefits, a healthy corporate culture is based on collaboration and putting the organizational growth above everything else.
This why a healthy corporate culture proves effective in enhancing business performance and driving engagement.
Corporate culture has come to play an important role in ensuring the growth and success of an organization. This is because modern work culture has become more employee-centric and a healthy corporate culture is a key to attracting and retaining the best employees.
For example, employees today prefer to work for organizations with a culture based on growth and transparency. They avoid being hired by organizations that still follow a traditional management system as it offers little scope for flexibility and equal growth opportunities.
Other important reasons that make a corporate culture so important are discussed as follows:
1. Helps to shape the identity of the organization
An organization’s culture makes it possible for its employees and other people to understand how the business operates internally and externally. It reflects the manner in which the employees interact and behave with one another as well as with their customers, partners, suppliers and even the media.
In fact, the culture of an organization reverberates across all aspects of the business as it defines how the organization is perceived by its own people and its customers.
2. Deeply impacts workforce engagement
It is a well-known fact that engagement is directly correlated with business productivity. A highly engaged workforce tends to be more committed to ensuring organizational success and hence puts in best efforts to ensure the same.
In this context, healthy corporate culture can go a long way in boosting employee engagement levels. For example, a culture that offers a flexible work environment to ensure a better career-life balance for its employees paves the way for creating a highly engaged workforce that is more productive.
3. Boosts the professional development of employees
As mentioned before, healthy work culture is based on a deep sense of teamwork and coordination between coworkers. This, in turn, helps in enhancing the professional development of individual employees through healthy competition.
Employees feel motivated to learn new skills and improve their performance to make a positive contribution to organizational growth. In many cases, the employees are even willing to offer help and support to their co-workers to acquire the requisite skills for successful professional growth.
4. Helps in lowering turnover rates
Good corporate culture leads to happier employees, who in turn, feel reluctant to seek other job opportunities. When organizations value their employees for their contribution and achievements, it boosts employee motivation, morale, and their sense of belonging-ness.
They are thus able to retain valuable employees and cut back the costs associated with hiring and training new ones. A good example of this is that many employees who enjoy the benefits of great work-life balance and freedom of expression in their current organization, turn down even the most lucrative job offers from other organizations with poor corporate culture.
5. Can help transform employees into business advocates
Another major reason that makes corporate culture so significant is that it ensures the promotion of the organization by the employees themselves. When the employees feel happy and satisfied with the corporate culture they are likely to boast about it among family and friends as well as on social media.
Social media is full of examples of people promoting good aspects of their corporate culture and contributing to a positive brand image for their organization.
For most professionals today, there is a growing significance of corporate culture as an important deciding factor for accepting a job opportunity or staying on with an organization.
That is why organizations should work towards building an exceptional corporate culture that sets it apart from its competitors and catapults it to new heights of success.
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