Define the Culture You Want to Attract Talent You Want

You Must Define the Culture You Want to Attract the Talent You Want
Every organization has a culture — whether intentionally designed or not. To win the war for talent, we believe that you must explicitly define the culture you want to attract talent that will thrive.

We define workplace culture as how things actually get accomplished in an organization on a day-to-day basis. We assess organizational culture by measuring the way people think, behave, and work. Culture includes the spoken or unspoken values and assumptions that drive such key employee practices as hiring, firing, and promoting.

The Link Between Culture and People and Performance
“How things get done” matters a lot to people AND to the business.

From a people perspective, your workplace culture matters in terms of being able to attract, develop, engage, and retain top talent that fits and works well together.  A recent Jobvite survey found that:

• 88% of job seekers cite company culture as important when in applying to a company
• 32% list company culture as the reason for leaving within the first three months of starting
• 15% have turned down an offer because they did not like the company culture

From a business perspective:

• A Harvard Business School study reported that an effective culture can account for up to half of the differential in performance between organizations in the same industry.
• Our organizational alignment research shows that cultural factors account for almost 40% of the difference between high- and low-performance in terms of revenue growth, profitability, customer loyalty, and employee engagement.

What Is Your Employee Brand?
Your culture and your talent are so inextricably entwined that it’s a little bit like the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. But the better you define the culture you want to attract talent, the better you will be able to create and live an employee value proposition that gets results.

Here are some examples of corporations (at least at the writing of this article) that have established a culture and employee brand that is immediately recognizable both to current and prospective employees:

• Zappos
  Zappos is known for its so-called “happiness culture” described by founder and CEO Tony Hsieh in his book Delivering Happiness. He believes that happy employees deliver “wow” customer service and beget happy customers. Just looking at Zappos’ success, it is clear that his model aligns their corporate culture to their go-to-market strategy.
• Twitter
  Twitters employees love to come to work because they truly enjoy one another. Their team-oriented culture fosters an environment where employees are really charged up about working with each other and doing something they feel matters in the world.
• REI
  REI is the place for outdoor enthusiasts both as customers and as employees. REI employees completely subscribe to the values of their company as a place where quality outdoor equipment is sold with solid guarantees and where care for the environment is foremost.
• Adobe
  Adobe trusts its employees and this trust is shown in the way it assigns meaningful, challenging projects and then expects employees to handle the projects without over-supervision. Training and support are always available. The transparent culture promotes a positive company culture where employees have a stake in helping the company grow.

The Bottom Line
When you can define and live your unique corporate culture in a way that sets you apart from other companies, you have gone a long way toward winning the war for talent. It enables you to better and more efficiently attract employees who will be highly engaged and who will stick around for the long-term.

To learn more about defining the right culture for your business and people strategies, download The 3 Levels of Culture that you Must Get Right to Win the War for Talent