Corporate culture is an invisible element but plays an extremely important role, a bond that creates a close connection between employees in the enterprise. Furthermore, culture helps businesses make a difference in business operations and personnel recruitment. So to build the most effective corporate culture, what knowledge do leaders need to grasp?  

What is corporate culture?

Corporate culture is an extremely important concept in the modern business environment, it affects the attitude, behavior and work efficiency of each member of an organization. In particular, corporate culture is also the factor that differentiates your business from competitors.

To put it simply, corporate culture is the entire cultural values of an enterprise, built throughout the process of formation and development of the company, thereby creating rules that affect operations. of the business, governs factors such as: thoughts, behavior, attitudes, etc. of each member of the business, creating differences between businesses and is considered the unique tradition of each company.

Each company or organization is composed of individuals with different personalities, lifestyles, social backgrounds and perceptions. But when they work together in a business, they have the same frequency in many aspects related to that business. These commonalities represent corporate culture.

What role does corporate culture play?

According to a study by Deloitte, up to 94% CEOs and 88% employees believe that corporate culture is a decisive factor in the success of a business. Culture actually strongly influences different aspects of operations within an organization. Some roles of corporate culture include:

• Determine the values and goals of the business: Corporate culture helps employees understand core values, what needs to be done and focus on the common goals of the business.
• Reinforce spiritual values for businesses: Employees working in a healthy cultural environment with the attention of management will make employees motivated to devote themselves to their work.
• Build a positive working environment: The quality of life at work is closely linked to employee productivity. A company with a healthy and positive culture will create favorable conditions for employees to feel happy and encourage development.
• Improve competitiveness: According to Gallup, businesses with happy employees have 147% more earnings per share than their competitors. If employees always feel satisfied and happy, they can work enthusiastically, advise customers as dedicated and energetic as the way they are treated at the company. Therefore, corporate culture not only contributes to promoting employee performance but also contributes to improving customer service quality.
• Create a unique look for your business: Building and developing corporate culture will help businesses assert their name and recognize the difference from other businesses.

See more: Why is corporate culture a competitive advantage that is difficult to copy?

The process of building an effective corporate culture

When a business is established, corporate culture can be formed. But through the development process, for corporate culture to have a positive and effective influence, businesses need to have a very professional and thorough construction plan.

The process of building corporate culture goes through 6 steps as follows:

Step 1: Analyze the business

Before building corporate culture, you need to evaluate what the company's current culture is, where it is, and whether it is performing well. When a business shows many negative signs, it is necessary to come up with immediate improvement plans to avoid creating a negative and toxic environment.

Signs of a toxic, negative corporate culture may include:

• There is no internal cohesion: An environment where the working atmosphere is always tense, heavy, everyone does their own thing, does not care about each other, this is considered a non-positive, non-cohesive working environment that cannot be maintained long term. .
• Low awareness: Employees who are not proactive and self-aware at work, are not focused, have slow behavior, often come in late and leave early, and are poorly disciplined will create a culture of inaction and laziness, easily falling into crisis. .
• Continuous recruitment of personnel: Poor human resource management makes employees feel dissatisfied and unmotivated to work and stay long with the company.
• There are many meetings and disciplinary measures when mistakes are made, but there is little recognition and reward.
• People do not speak up to discuss or interact in meetings or with the boss, employees often avoid the boss, do not want to go near or with the boss,...

Step 2: Set goals when building corporate culture

Be sure to have clear goals for the culture you want to build. Make sure that the goals are consistent with the company's strategic direction, avoid providing unclear or ambiguous information.

Step 3: Identify elements that build corporate culture

Core values are determined to build organizational culture, these are really valuable things, valued in businesses. When determining core values, businesses need to answer the question:

• What is the mission, vision, goals, and strategies of the business?
• How is the company's image perceived by people?
• Are the business goals of the enterprise consistent with the personal values of the employees?
• What is the cultural goal that the business is aiming for?

Step 4: Convey messages effectively

Corporate culture is formed when employees agree and clearly understand the benefits it brings. Therefore, when determining the ideal, model culture for your organization, you should convey and explain it thoroughly to all employees so that they can understand and comply.

For new employees, personnel need to do a good job of the onboarding process to ensure they understand the company culture. Next, you can use platforms like learning management systems (LMS) to provide employees with the core values and cultural foundations you set. This helps employees be proactive and flexible in learning about the company's culture and absorbing its meaning better.

Step 5: Proceed to deploy corporate culture

First, you need to establish a unit in charge of corporate culture: The Board of Directors needs to directly direct and monitor the process of implementing culture in their business. People in charge include managers of each department and a number of assistants. In some businesses, the unit in charge of corporate culture is given most of its authority to Human Resources and Internal Communications.

Next is to announce and communicate corporate culture to all employees: After issuing general regulations and regulations, there needs to be a conversation between leaders and employees about the company's cultural values and calling for action from them. Another important thing is to put yourself in the employee's shoes to understand and know the obstacles to change and solve them.

Finally, cultural stability and development: Cultural development needs to be maintained long term and requires persistent accretion. First you need to start with practical activities such as:

• Communicate and emphasize the importance of corporate culture, place culture and core values in the quality of each corporate product, ensure external communication information reflects the same values,...
• Implement specific company cultural activities such as uniforms, rituals, team building, reward system, company travel,...
• Build a reward system suitable to corporate culture.

Step 6: Measure the effectiveness of implementing corporate culture

Corporate culture needs to be carefully evaluated by managers. Regularly measuring the above factors will help you promptly resolve remaining problems and create a stronger cold culture for the organization.

• Survey: The annual survey method will create opportunities for employees to provide feedback and comments on the company's values, assessing their compatibility with daily activities and with employee values. From the survey results, you can research and reshape your culture according to employee satisfaction.
• Measurement by indicators: In the current era of development, all measures and effectiveness of corporate culture are expressed in the form of information and numbers. Here are 3 important KPI indicators to orient, improve and develop a successful company culture: Employee Turnover Rate (ETR) - Employee turnover rate, Employee Net Promoter Scores (eNPS) - Only Employee Satisfaction Index (ESI) - Employee satisfaction index.

Examples of corporate culture of some of the world's leading companies

In today's competitive era to attract candidates, businesses increasingly invest in building culture to attract talent and create company pride for employees.

Here are some examples of corporate culture at some of the world's leading companies with good welfare policies for their employees:

Google's creative culture

Google has gone through many changes in scale, product services, logo, etc., but this company has always focused on building employee happiness because they believe this leads to higher productivity. Google always focuses on creativity, innovation and freedom in work, employees are encouraged to contribute new ideas and create unique products.

Google offers a lot of benefits to employees including meals, free medical examinations, travel allowances, etc. and even allows employees to bring pets to work. What's special is that this "giant" focuses on diversity and fairness with many support policies for female employees and minorities.

Microsoft

Corporate culture of Microsoft Focus on customers and innovation. Like Google, Microsoft also focuses on encouraging new ideas and employee development, creating many unique and impressive products to meet customer needs.

Microsoft not only covers gym & fitness costs for employees, but also provides healthy food at on-site cafes. The company also provides free health check services for employees and their families. Employees will be tested for diseases and receive health care advice from doctors.

Facebook's corporate culture

Facebook Providing food, open working space, face-to-face discussions, etc. helps employees have the opportunity to learn and develop. Besides, Facebook always knows how to help employees feel valuable and trusted. Employees also respect the company's mission and always try their best at work.

Employees at Facebook are assigned tasks based on their strengths, not just their titles. At Facebook, employees are always assigned tasks based on their strengths, not their titles. They are also encouraged to ask questions and give feedback to their managers.

Adobe's corporate culture

This is one of the companies with a culture that challenges employees with difficult projects. Next, the company provides the necessary support to help them complete. Just like the big guys above, Adobe offers big benefits, businesses focus on avoiding small management tactics to help employees believe they will do well.

Adobe's products are about creativity and when the company avoids detailed management and continuously monitors employees with KPIs, they feel free and create perfect products.

The manager's role is to support and enable them to set goals and ensure they are achieved. The company also organizes regular training courses for employees to develop their skills.

Overall, each organization will have a perspective and perspective on corporate culture as well as how to build a sustainable culture. But it is important that each individual in the organization clearly understands the role and importance of corporate culture to build and develop together.

OOS Software has more than 10 years of accompanying many businesses and corporations. Contact now to get advice for your Business.