Where there are people, culture naturally evolves. Whether it is a family or friend environment, or corporate. Corporate culture, often simplified as company culture, occurs in every organization, big or small.
One of the main tasks after employing people and creating your business, is to make sure your employees are working effectively while also feeling comfortable and satisfied. This is just one example of why company culture is important.
To find out more on what company culture is, read this article where we will give some examples and definitions on it.
Definition of company culture
One of the leading experts in organizational research, Edgar Schein, has said that “organizational culture” has a number of features, including a shared “pattern of basic assumptions” which group members have acquired over time as they learn to successfully cope with internal and external organizationally relevant problems.
Meaning that everything going on in the company – whether it be people of processes – creates the culture of the organization.
In more simple terms, company culture is everything that involves people in the corporate setting.
Some examples of what organization culture can mean:
- Setting goals and tasks
- Dresscode
- Communication
- Flexibility of a job
- Work times
- Office setup and design
- Hiring process
- Onboarding and offboarding
- Employee engagement etc.
Company culture: what does it consist of?
To be more clear, company culture consists of many aspects that every organization can define themselves and see what works best for them. However, there are a few basic contents of company culture that, in our opinion, it cannot be complete without.
In this chapter we will discuss the importance of organization culture and the following topics it consist of:
- Communication
- Decision making
- Employee recognition
Communication
Communication and organization culture are interrelated. A more productive and happier workplace results from effective communication methods. How well your teams communicate with one another reflects on the culture of your organization.
For example, a recent Slack research found that efficient communication and workplace collaboration were key components of corganization culture. The way we communicate affects many things in the workplace – how we plan, set goals, talk about issues and conflicts, give feedback and so on.
Decision making
Whether an organization has a strong or weak culture will determine the impact that culture has on decision making. The decision-making process and decision-making speed are both influenced by organization culture. In some cultures, all employees are welcome to take part in decision-making.
Other cultures restrict decision-making to management only. Organizations that encourage employee participation in decision-making may take a long time to make choices as a result of the drawn-out process. Such choices, though, have a good chance of working since they take into account various viewpoints from various individuals.
Employee recognition
All the ways an organization expresses gratitude for the contributions of its personnel are referred to as employee recognition. It may or may not entail monetary compensation and can take many different forms.
Making the decision to create an employee recognition program and incorporate it into your organization culture can be very beneficial. Once employees see that they are cared for, the motivation for doing work only grows.
In conclusion
It is clear that company culture has become a vital part of every successful business out there in the corporate world. If you want your company and your employees to succeed, there needs to be a set of principles to follow.
And the employees who agree and share the same values as your organizational culture presents, most likely will enjoy working with you.
Now that you know what is company culture, it might be time to find out How to improve company culture and Why company culture is important.
