7 Tips for Creating a Strong Corporate Culture

A strong corporate culture leads to lower turnover, which equates to lower hiring and training costs, higher productivity, better customer relationships, greater customer loyalty, lower marketing costs, and higher sales. These were the findings of a study by Harvard Business School professors emeriti James L. Heskett and John P. Kotter, which also stated that up to half of the difference in operating profit between companies is due to their corporate culture. In my last blog post, I discussed the core of what a corporate culture should be built around — your company’s values. Once you are ready to move past defining your company’s values, here are seven tips to get you on your way to building a strong corporate culture.

7 Tips for Creating Corporate Culture

1) Create a Mission Statement

This ties back to your core values, but goes further to convey your company’s goals, philosophy, and unique differentiators in just a few sentences. This will serve as a reference point for further developing and maintaining your corporate culture.

2) Take Responsibility, but Don’t Do It Alone

A strong corporate culture arises consciously and is shaped by the CEO and management team, while weak corporate cultures evolve accidentally. That said, all of your employees should be involved in fine-tuning your mission statement and determining the type of culture they want to be a part of.

3) Keep It Real

Your corporate culture should be a natural extension of your company’s values and mission, your customers, and even your employees’ personalities. It requires work to create and develop it, but don’t try to force a culture that isn’t authentic to you and to the business.

4) Hire for Cultural Fit

This is not to say that everyone should be similar; in fact, diversity is incredibly important to building a successful team! Hiring for cultural fit means each employee needs to be able to understand and truly get behind your company’s values and mission.

5) Create Rituals

Rituals and rites of passage can help to sustain your corporate culture by building morale. It can be difficult to tie these directly back to your mission, but whether it’s hitting a gong after closing a big deal or celebrating customer renewals with pizza, rituals are an opportunity for team bonding and celebrating the successes which turn into business results.

6) Express It

Be proud of your corporate culture and express it in everything you do — from the design of your office, to your marketing collateral and content, to the way you interact with customers. Actively displaying your corporate culture not only helps engrain it into your company’s DNA, it also helps to get the word out about the values and mission your company is built around, which should lead to greater business results and more referrals for your open positions.

7) Check It and Change It

As your company grows, your values and mission may also need to evolve. Continue to check your corporate culture and make changes to improve it. It will never be a finished project — just like your company, itself, you’ll need to continue to innovate in order to achieve long-term success. What factors have played into you developing your own company’s corporate culture?