Company culture refers to the ‘je ne sais quoi’ of the corporate world.
But how do you define it, describe it and create it?
If you asked 10 different people in your office or workplace what a good company culture looks like, you’d get 10 different answers.
At apple hr support, we define it as a shared set of values, goals, attitudes and practices. In other words, it’s a reason for being. It’s how company leaders and their team members feel about the work they do, where they’re going and their day to day work environment.
According to Harvard Business Review, a recent LinkedIn survey asking about organization culture found that people would rather put up with lower pay (65%) and forego a fancy title (26%) than deal with a bad workplace environment.
Your business culture permeates every single aspect of your organizational structure. A great company culture comes from total commitment from the most senior leaders in the organisation to the most junior to behave and interact in a positive way.
Company culture is not simply the pet project of the human resources team or a high level concept that’s written on a powerpoint slide and presented once a year.
Culture isn’t something you can easily ‘tick off’ your to do list
We’ve pulled together 10 of the best company culture quotes to inspire you when thinking about developing your own strong culture:
- Of the six critical elements of work fit, culture fit is the hardest to grasp. It is largely invisible, unwritten and unspoken, but paradoxically, it causes employees the greatest pain, dissatisfaction, frustration and failure to thrive. Carrick and Dunaway, Authors, Fit Matters
- The number one muscle to flex in hiring is culture. Brian Halligan, CEO, HubSpot
- Determine what behaviours and beliefs you value as a company, and have everyone live true to them. These behaviours and beliefs should be so essential to your core, that you don’t even think of it as culture. Brittany Forsyth, SVP of HR, Shopify
- There’s really no such thing as internal culture any more. Your culture is always public, and it’s your most powerful, public-facing asset or liability. David Mattin, Head of Trends & Insights, TrendWatching
- Corporate culture is the only sustainable competitive advantage that is completely within the control of the entrepreneur. David Cummings, Co-Founder, Pardot
- There’s no magic formula for great company culture. The key is just to treat your staff how you would like to be treated. Richard Branson, Founder, Virgin Group
- Over the years we learned that if we asked people to rely on logic and common sense instead of on formal policies, most of the time we would get better results, and at lower cost. Patty McCord, Chief Talent Officer, Netflix
- Treat employees like they make a difference and they will. Jim Goodnight, American Billionaire & Software Developer
- No company, small or large, can win over the long run without energized employees who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve it. Jack Welch, Formerly Chairman & CEO of General Electric
- You can build a much more wonderful company on love than you can on fear. Kip Tindell, CEO & Author
If you’d like support in 2021 with developing your company culture or help with employee engagement, get in touch with kate@applehr.co.uk for an informal chat about what apple hr support can do.