Company culture is essentially lived out values that help differentiate a company from its competition and is the glue that bonds employees when clearly defined, relevant, communicated, and true. Recently, I was taking a company’s leadership through one of our communication strategy sessions when I asked them to describe their company values. After a fairly lengthy pause, one of the participants asked, “Do we have company values?” A person across the table pointed to a poster hanging behind them on the conference room wall and said “There they are.” Even if the list of nearly a dozen values had been succinct and well defined, they weren’t effectively communicated. Words on a poster aren’t values if not put into action.
Respect, Integrity and Excellence are all terms companies regularly include among their values. When we work with companies in developing their value messages, we tailor the definitions to what is uniquely relevant to them. For instance, a client of ours works with corporations that often have several levels of employees, from c-suite executives to frontline workers in the field and everything in between. So, considering its customers, the message for how they define their value of Respect focuses on how they regard each member of an organization equally, regardless of title. Their belief in the-work-of-each-individual-contributes-to-the-success-of-the-whole is expressed in a way that builds customer loyalty and long-term relationships. It’s also a company value that, perhaps most importantly, is experienced by their own employees.
It’s important to remember that company culture is highly influenced by how value messages are authentically experienced. In other words, are you who you say you are? If value messaging used to define respect is not something I experience as an employee, and the company’s values are only a long list of words hanging in the corner of a conference room, then you risk a work culture that is negative, sarcastic, even distrustful – and we know from research that losing trust directly impacts your bottom line.
But let’s assume you have a strong, authentic company culture, how’s it being communicated to attract the right people, especially now that hiring is on the rise again?
We recently added a new Digital Communications Strategist to our Newman & Newman team. When we were recruiting, it was as important to us that the new hire have the talent we needed as it was that they be a good fit for our company culture. So. along with a description of job responsibilities, our post included information on who we are, the passion behind why we do what we do, and characteristics we consider important for someone to thrive on our team, including a sense of humor! That’s not something you normally see in a job posting, but enjoying what we do, along with the dedication we have for doing it, is an important characteristic of our company culture. In addition to their work history, we also asked applicants to include a paragraph explaining what they found intriguing about how we describe ourselves and why they considered themselves a good fit. And you know what? She was right! The Digital Communications Strategist we hired is a perfect fit.
Communicating company culture is also an important strategy for engaging and retaining staff. That’s a critical issue right now in healthcare where employee turnover is costing hospitals a lot of money. From recruiter costs, onboarding costs and lost revenue, turn over for a single physician can cost a hospital between $400,000 and $600,000. Fortunately, research has closely linked work satisfaction in healthcare with how an organization’s values are integrated into its culture and how that culture is communicated.
How is your organization’s culture reinforced through communication and experience of your core values? Or are they simply words on an unnoticed poster?
I’m Kelli Newman and this has been a Minute with Messaging™. If you found this podcast helpful, I encourage you to subscribe on your favorite platform so you don’t miss an episode. And to learn how your organization can benefit from Newman & Newman’s communication strategies, visit our website at NEWMANandNEWMANinc.com.
