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?
Components of corporate culture: examples of outstanding companies
A recent Harvard Business Review article highlighted the fact that 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 each organisation's culture, however, when talking about corporate culture as examples to emulate, there are five common components. They are as follows:
- Vision: the vision statement is a simple but fundamental element of culture. A great culture begins with a vision or mission statement, which sets out the company's principles and gives it a purpose.. That purpose, in turn, guides all decisions made by employees. Oxfam Intermón envisions «a just world without poverty», an inspiring vision that drives the team to keep moving towards its goal.
- Values: a company's values are at the heart of its culture. While a vision articulates a company's purpose, a company's values are at the heart of its culture., The values provide a set of guidelines for 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 company promises to serve clients, treat colleagues and maintain professional standards. Most important of these values is their authenticity.
- Practice: values are of little importance unless they are put into practice in the company. For example, in the case of a start-up, if the organisation values flat hierarchy, it should encourage younger team members to disagree in discussions without fear or negative repercussions.
- People: No company can build a coherent culture without people who share its core values or who are willing and able to embrace those values. That is why the world's best firms also have some of the most stringent recruitment policies and take care to recruit new employees who are willing and able to embrace those values, are not only the most talented but also the best, the most appropriate for the business culture. There are plenty of examples, As Steven Hunt points out in Monster.com that one study found that applicants who were culturally matched would accept a 7% lower salary and the reason is that people stick to the cultures they like. Finding the profiles that best align with the culture manages to maintain and reinforce it.
- Environment: place shapes culture. Open architecture is more conducive to certain office behaviours, such as collaboration. The environment, whether we are talking about geography, architecture or aesthetic design, is a key factor., 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 members of the company meet during the day and interact in an informal and unplanned way; they are representative of the influence of space on the values and attitudes of the people who are part of the company.
When talking about corporate culture and examples of good practice it is inevitable to go deeper and get to the grassroots levels, the components. Analysing each of these separately can help you make your company a more productive place, a magnet for attracting talent, and a better place to work. a project to which all employees feel committed.
