Food for thought
The culture at Trader Joe’s is palpable. During a recent visit, it hit me again. Almost every staff member seems to exude appreciation and positive energy. What’s astounding to me is that it affects customers who normally might be less courteous and much less friendly in other stores, especially here in NYC.
Consequently, learning about workplace culture provides essential information that can affect your career.
What you need to know about company culture
The values that drive the way management and employees interact with one another and their behavior is an indicator of how it feels to work in the company. This clearly impacts the company’s reputation it builds with customers, other businesses, and the public. It is the company’s personality.
In many cases, the characteristics of management have the biggest influence on a company’s culture. It’s critically important to figure out if an organization has a culture that suits you before deciding to work there.
Company culture is also called organizational culture, workplace culture, and corporate culture. It’s a major component of the work environment, which refers to the many different conditions that affect operations.
It can be difficult to determine management values which may not be the same way a culture is described in publicity materials. However, you are able to determine the company culture by identifying the following operational items of an enterprise:
- Dress code: A company’s dress code reflects its culture. For example, an organization that insists on formal clothing for all its workers is likely to have a rigid hierarchical structure, provide less employee freedom, have a top-down leadership strategy, and use relatively static processes.
- Hiring decisions: The company culture influences staff behavior, and it also shapes decisions the hiring manager makes during the recruitment process. An organization that values satisfaction of its employees is more likely to hire managers with team-focused leadership styles such as democratic or situational leaders instead of autocratic ones.
- Office setup: The office setup of a company is a powerful indication of its culture. A company that hires both office-based and home-based workers is more likely to have flexible processes, advanced computing technologies, independent workers, and inclusive leaders than a company that hires only on-site employees.
- Business hours: Companies can be operational during the traditional 9-to-5 period, employ workers 24/7, or offer flexible hours, which allows workers to choose their own hours to meet fixed deadlines for job duties. A company that prioritizes innovation is more likely to provide flex time for the staff when compared with other firms that prefer conformity.
- Customer satisfaction: Of course, all companies actively seek to achieve customer satisfaction. However, it’s those with the strongest cultures that develop and maintain large bases of satisfied clients. It is because a culture affects how a company interacts with its customers. Consequently, a culture that values its employees and empowers them to exceed client expectations is apt to have a growing base of loyal consumers.
- Employee satisfaction and motivation: An organization’s culture drives the behavior of managers and subordinates. It significantly affects employee satisfaction and motivation.
- Internal communication: How a company manages internal communication can be a key indicator of its workplace culture. For example, a company who values innovation, employees, and adaptability will usually have a great structure for communication within the organization encouraging feedback from departments, positions, and experience levels.
- Employee benefits: Typically, businesses with strong workplace cultures are more likely to offer substantial, relevant benefits, than those with weaker cultures. This is because a principle of protecting the interests or stakes of employees is at the core of any superior organizational culture. Consequently, the average benefits offered by employers are indicators of their corporate culture.
Characteristics of a strong corporate culture
A high-performance culture is evident if:
- It values its employees and offers great compensation to high performers.
- It invests in team building and works to create and maintain a healthy culture.
- It considers team members during the decision-making process.
- It uses successful problem-solving skills to deal with issues.
- It’s resilient to changes in other elements of the workplace environment.
- It creates a pleasant place to work with cohesive teams and supportive managers.
- There’s camaraderie with managers and direct reports and productivity is high.
- They have reliable HR processes for dealing with interpersonal conflicts.
The organization actively promotes the corporate culture to its workers.
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