11 June 2018

Corporate culture: examples to emulate

corporate culture

When talking about corporate culture, it may be interesting to look at the organisations at the top of the list of CSR, conscious business, Fortune, Great Place to Work or Glassdoor awards..

The secret of their success, the excellent ratings they achieve and the potential that allows them to stay on top and continue to improve are a source of inspiration for other companies.

But, What makes up the corporate culture and the examples of excellence that everyone wants to emulate?

Table of contents

Components of corporate culture: examples of outstanding companies

A recent Harvard Business Review article highlighted that culture can account for 20-30% of the corporate performance differential compared to culturally common competitors.

Every culture is unique and thousands of factors make up that of every organisation, although, when talking about corporate culture as examples to emulate, there are five common components. They are as follows:

  1. Vision The vision statement is a simple yet fundamental element of culture. A great culture begins with a vision a mission statement, which sets out the company's principles and gives it a purpose. That purpose, in turn, guides all the decisions employees make. Oxfam Intermón visualises «a just world without poverty», an inspiring vision that drives the team to keep moving towards their goal.
  2. Values: a company's values are the core of its culture. Whereas a vision articulates a company's purpose, values offer a set of guidelines on the behaviours and mindsets needed to achieve that vision. McKinsey & Company, for example, has a clearly articulated set of values that are prominently communicated to all employees and involve how the firm promises to serve clients, treat colleagues, and uphold professional standards. Most important of these values is their authenticity.
  3. Practice: Values are of little importance unless they are put into practice within the company. For example, in the case of a startup, if the organisation values a flat hierarchy, it will need to encourage younger team members to dissent in discussions without fear of negative repercussions.
  4. People: No company can build a coherent culture without people who share its core values or who have the willingness and ability to adopt those values. That's why the world's best firms also have some of the most stringent recruitment policies and take care to recruit new employees who, not only are they the most talented but also the best, the most suitable for the company culture. There are plenty of examples, as Steven Hunt points out in Monster.com data that one study found that applicants who had a cultural fit would accept a% 7% lower salary and the reason is that people stick to the cultures that they like. Finding the profiles that best align with the culture gets to keep it and reinforce it.
  5. Environment: place shapes culture. Open architecture is more conducive to certain office behaviours, such as collaboration. The environment, whether we're talking about geography, architecture or aesthetic design, The effects on corporate culture, examples such as Pixar, impact on people's values and behaviour in the workplace. The effects on corporate culture, examples such as Pixar, which has a huge open space where company members meet during the day and interact informally and spontaneously; they are representative of the influence of space on the values and attitudes of the people who make up the company.

When discussing corporate culture and examples of good practices, it is inevitable to go deeper and reach the fundamental levels, the components.. The analysis of each of them separately can help you turn your company into a more productive place, a magnet for attracting talent and a project to which all employees feel committed.

Edenred Spain