Building a Winning Company Culture

Progressive companies are always in search of ideas that help them create a positive work culture. Because a positive and winning company culture is the key to attracting and retaining talent, which is crucial for business growth.

And, no, it does not have to depend solely on lavish workspaces, backed by big budgets. Even small to medium businesses can create a winning culture by focusing on employee and candidate experience. 

When you keep employees at the focal point of everything you do, you make space for thriving company cultures – ones that employees cherish and customers appreciate. But, like with anything rewarding, building a cohesive and winning culture requires time and effort. 

Let's help you achieve this goal with tips and real-life examples that inspire and catapult you into business success.

What is Company Culture?

It's the practices, the processes, and the philosophies that guide the company. Together, these aspects shape the personality of the company.

How To Create A Winning Company Culture?

Talking about creating a winning, engaging work culture is all good. But real results are driven by real work.

So, how to get started? Let's dive straight into the whats, the hows, and the wows (read: examples):

1. Live By Your Core Values 

When you have a business, you must find out what it stands for and then infuse it into everything you do.

Determine what type of culture you want and then decide on the core values that fit that culture. Next, ensure you hire people who can exercise those core values – the ones who are in sync with them and can not work without them.

Zappos' core values are geared towards nurturing a positive culture. 

To ensure that they "hire for culture", the company conducts a culture fit interview. Once selected, the employees even undergo a four-week training where they are acquainted with the core values. At the end of the training, those who are unhappy are given "The Offer" – a proposal to take a $2,000 bonus and quit the organisation.

But why? To work with those who are genuinely committed to the company's core values and are ready to live by them. 

2. Empower Through Communication

Communication is powerful. You can drive people with words and keep them inspired to achieve more, happily. Which is why, it's crucial to ensure that your organisation thrives on transparent and honest relationships with communication.

Create a place where ideas are welcomed, and people don't hesitate to represent their viewpoints. 

Twitter is one company that encourages open, honest conversations, just like its platform. From enabling people to represent their diverse opinions out loud to initiate crazy conversations, Twitter's company culture gives enough freedom to help people write their success stories without any communication barriers. 

3. Work-Fun Balance

It might seem a little trite, but work without fun is not destined for long-term success. Keeping your employees engaged in fun activities fosters productivity and employee contentment, leading to energetic work culture.  

Make sure work stress doesn't lead to burnout. Enrich your company with new, fun on-site activities and programs that boost employee engagement.

With its happy crew driven by the zeal to make work fun, Zoom indeed makes it into the list of fun and happy workplaces. 

Wellness spaces, game rooms, events, outings, and more – the video communications company offers it all to ensure that nobody runs out of fun even when the work mode is on. 

4. Embrace Cultural Diversity

A winning company culture rests on diverse and inclusive workforces. Only when you value diverse people and embrace their distinct qualities and opinions you can create a healthy work culture

Recognize the importance of differences, eliminate discrimination, and think of people as a team. Begin by removing unconscious bias and take small steps towards building a sense of unity. That's how companies often achieve breakthroughs – by bringing all together. 

Nike is an excellent example of diverse company culture. The brand believes in bringing people together with "sport" as the binding force. By taking the goal of embracing diversity and inclusion to a deeper level, the company focuses on overcoming differences. This is how it drives creativity and innovation. And this is how it has attained a competitive advantage that's worth emulating.

5. OFFER ABOVE-AVERAGE PERKS

Go beyond the ordinary when deciding on the perks and benefits to offer your people. Because a winning company culture requires above-average perks to win the right talent and retain it. 

There's always some scope to level up the perks you offer to your employees without stretching your budget. If you can't afford to provide full-service concierge benefits, consider flexible work hours, family leaves, free desktop music, fresh fruits, kombucha on tap, and the like.

The luring benefits and perks listed above surely act as a source of inspiration, right? But who's behind that inspiration?  It's the software giant, Adobe. 

The company ensures that virtually no part of its employees' lives is devoid of excellent perks. From affordable health insurance options that give them one less thing to worry about to educational reimbursement that helps them hone their skills – Adobe offers all this and much more to establish a positive, growth-oriented company culture. And so can you.

6. Maintain and Evolve the Culture

A winning company culture requires continuous efforts. It's not something you do once and forget about. You need to be consistent while leaving enough room for flexibility and growth. As long as the essence of your company's culture remains intact, you can tweak your policies to maintain and evolve it.

Be on a constant lookout for ways to improve your company culture. Evaluate the people, industry trends, and social changes to adapt your culture accordingly. It requires systematic analysis and strategic decision-making to reinvent the culture as an organisation grows and expands.

Google is the gold standard of incredible company culture. With a mission as fantastic as "organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful", Google knows how to keep employees at the center of everything the company does.

As the company continues to grow by leaps and bounds, it doesn't stray from delivering what its employees seek. With years of refinement into practice, the company regularly invests money, time, and effort into maintaining and evolving its culture. And the results are for all of us to see.

Ready To Create Positive Culture Ambassadors For Your Company? 

Learn from the tips mentioned above and build a company culture that differentiates your organisation from the rest. When you create a positive work culture, you make a happy, satisfied community of employees who become your culture brand ambassadors. And that's a win-win.

But creating such a culture can get a little intimidating, especially when you don't know where to start. If that's the case, we've got your back. 

At Wiggli, we are always there to assist you with valuable insights and information that take you one step closer to winning the company culture. 

Also, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Leave your comments below on the companies that motivate you to do more for your employees and keep the conversation going.

Leveraging Employer Branding for Success

It's the buzzword on the corporate world's lips: employer branding. Everyone is talking about it. But only a few are acing it. What is an employer brand, and how can you capitalize on it to get a winning edge in the war for talent?

Here's a simple definition to pique your interest.

What is an Employer Brand?

Employer brand is the reputation an organisation builds to be the employer of choice. And, it's your roadmap to recruiting and retaining talent. 

It seems easy, right? You promote yourself as a company that everybody wants to work with, and it's done. Well, not really.

A lot goes into building an employer brand. We will get to that later. First, let's dive deeper and understand why the HR world can't underestimate employer branding.

Employer Branding – What Does it do to a Company?

Your brand is more than just superb customer service, product quality, offers, launches, media interactions, or the stunning website you have. You can't overlook the impact you make on your employees – existing and potential. 

When 75% of job seekers consider an employer's brand even before applying for a job, it's no fluff.

If done right, employer branding becomes a crucial part of your employee experience and, ultimately, business productivity. 

This is how employer branding aligns with your company's goals and delivers long-term benefits:

1) It Decreases the Cost Per Hire

50% That's how much you can reduce your cost per hire with a strong employer brand.

When you build your employer brand, you make a long-term investment - no spending money on advertising and marketing campaigns specifically for creating brand awareness to attract future employees. By boosting your social media presence with a strong employer brand, you share your values and culture with the world at large.  

2) It Gives You Access to the Top Talent

Traditionally, companies had to work hard to attract the best talent. But with a strong employer brand, you can turn the tables. When your positive work culture becomes visible online, you can rest assured that the ones you need are keeping an eye on your brand – giving you access to more candidates who are keen on joining your company.

3) Brand Matters More than Money

Every employee seeks some monetary love in their salary account. But, to some, a good brand matters more than money. More and more candidates are accepting lower pay in companies that have a positive reputation. This, ultimately, translates into increased savings. So, create a feel-good company, and you are sure to control your company's HR spending.

4) It Influences Your Corporate Brand

When you invest in employer branding, it creates a ripple effect in improving your reputation and corporate brand, bringing more customers and profits in the long run. 

Strong Employer Brand = Engaged + Enthusiastic Employees

Employer Branding - Best Practices

Ready to turn your employer brand around and improve your reputation, profits, and employee engagement? 

Most HR leaders understand the importance of employer branding. The sad part is: they don't always know what to do about it. 

That's why, when companies reach out to us at Wiggli for their employer branding goals, we guide them from scratch. Because let's be honest here: the idea of investing in promoting your company as a perfect employer can be a bit vague. Apart from focusing on corporate social responsibility (CSR) to improve your brand's perception, there's a lot that needs to be done to create a better social image than your competitors.

To help you get started, here are five remarkable ways to build a positive and influential employer brand, along with some inspo-worthy examples:

1. Create Insightful Video Content

Nothing beats videos in portraying a brand's authenticity. After all, unveiling what goes inside your company before someone even pays a visit says a lot about the level of transparency you are committed to. And that's essential for today's no-artifice-please talent pool. 

Create videos that go beyond cookie-cutter corporate videos, and you'll have the key to grabbing the attention of the top talent out there. 

A perfect example of an employer branding video is the "Google Interns' first-week" video launched in 2013. The video was an excellent portrayal of how it feels to be on Google's Mountain View campus for the first time. And it continues to strike a note with potential applicants even today.

2. Deliver More Through Your Careers Pages

Various touchpoints influence a candidate's decision to apply for a job. While your website's "careers" page is one of them, it's vital to understand that candidates seek more than those stale careers pages when getting to know a business. 

Explain your company's structure and provide clear information about your objectives and values through these pages that form a significant part of the candidates' journey.

Cisco is the best example of careers page employer branding done right. By highlighting their employees' stories and clearly explaining the available benefits and perks along with answering the FAQs, they provide all the career essentials than merely listing the current job opportunities. 

3. Improve Your Employees' Work-Life Balance

By helping its employees leverage extensive flexibility to work from wherever they want, the company has set a benchmark for attracting and retaining talent based on flexibility, autonomy, and work-life balance.

4. Use Feedback To Win Over Top Talent

When aiming to create a fantastic company that looks good from the outside, focus within the organisation too. Pay attention to employee feedback – both offline and online. And always respond without turning on your defensive mode. 

Begin by thanking the reviewer for their feedback and give personalized responses. Above all, be courteous while replying to negative reviews. Plus, think creatively about how best can you maximize your positive reputation. 

5. Utilise Employee-Generated Social Media Content 

It's a no-brainer that social media makes for a great job search platform.

A look at the stats reveals that over 79% of applicants use social media to search for jobs. 

And that's huge.

Social media lets your candidates interact directly with your brand – giving them a window into your organisation. And nothing works better in attracting talent than leveraging existing employees as brand advocates.

Take Microsoft, for example.

In the rapidly growing tech industry, it becomes difficult to win the race for talent – no matter whether you're an industry giant. This was a challenge that Microsoft conquered brilliantly by repositioning its legacy brand with "Microsoft Life".

Next Steps for Succesful Employer Branding

Building a strong employer brand is like foraying into a wild path. With so much to do, you might get lost. Begin right by focusing on what matters the most, and align your business goals with your employee success. 

Involve your CEO along with the HR and marketing teams to shape the right narrative. Because like almost everything else in the world of business, employer branding is a team effort.

And we're here to help you get ahead of the game. At Wiggli, we bring all the insights needed for the HR world to work smarter and better. 

Find out how we can assist you with your employer branding goals and be all set to tap the power of the right talent through a top-tier employer brand.

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