A few of the most commonly overlooked aspects of a company’s corporate culture are its potential use in attracting high quality talent in the hiring process as well as its ability to function as the foundation for many employee retention strategies. As a company’s culture defines who that company is, their goals, ethics, and tone, it plays a widely varying role. But if that culture is well-defined and has demonstrated its ability to drive success, then it is sure to attract and intrigue successful people. Similarly employees who find that they feel comfortable and at home within a company and its culture will be less likely to want to leave it behind and more likely to stay longer. Perhaps if company leaders only understood the great value and importance that their culture plays in so many aspects of their business, they would be more likely to treat it with the care and respect it deserves.
So, to continue on with the goal of showing company leaders how to structure and/or redefine their company’s culture, here are five more executive search firm tips.
4. Rigidity is Death, Flexibility Life
One of the most successful traits of any organization is their ability to change and adapt to the circumstances they find themselves in. To stay ahead in this goal, company leaders will need to set up periodic surveys to monitor the direction and effectiveness of their organization and its culture to ensure that everything is as it should be or to find out if adjustments need to be made.
5. Keep Culture in Your Sights
Company leaders need to make sure that they always keep the monitoring and maintenance a top priority within the organization. All too often employees can have a tendency to lose sight of the company’s culture, its goals and values, as they struggle to keep up with their own work. For this reason it is important that leaders take the time to raise the subject from time to time and make sure that everyone is keeping with cultural requirements and not faltering.
6. Catch Them Early
As was mentioned previously, the company’s culture can play an important role in their executive search and hiring strategies, as well as the criteria by which they assess whether or not a candidate is acceptable. For this purpose candidates should not be interviewed by any single individual, but by a group of their would be peers who, together, can discuss the candidate and come to a calculated decision as to whether or not they have the qualities and values necessary to fit in.
7. Avoid Stagnation
Letting a company’s corporate culture sit by unattended, a fixed set of ideas and goals that are never modified and adjusted, is a sure way to guarantee that before you know it, that culture will have become a defunct idea, no longer in step with changes that have been made. To keep this from happening, company leaders should bring together select individuals from every department to periodically discuss what changes might be made to the culture, and can be done so in a short time. This simple strategy will keep the company and its culture alive and growing.
8. Communication is Key
Finally, the last point is the simplest of all: communicate. As in every other aspect of a successful business, communication is essential to making sure that everyone is staying focused and driven, and that they are keeping up to speed on any modifications that may be made to the company’s culture.
