If you allow your company culture to evolve organically without guidelines from executives, and without input from workers about what's important to them, you could wind up with exactly what you don't want.
This may lead to creating an environment that no longer attracts and retains top talent and has difficulty functioning.
An article in cio.com lists out a few tips that can help you in shape and foster an organisational culture.
* The first step in shaping your organisation’s culture is to codify it in a culture statement -- and own it.
'There's a huge difference between owning your culture and being able to point to it as a recruiting, hiring and retention tool, and having culture be a deterrent to the kind of people you want to hire,' says Donna Levin, co-founder and previously vice president of policy, CSR and workplace solutions at Care.com
'One of the first things we did when starting Care.com was to sit down and describe the kind of workplace we wanted; the kinds of people we wanted to work for and with, and set to translate those into action. Then, we used those traits, those values and qualities to hire,' Levin says.
* When your organisation grows it is also important that the culture should also evolve.
'Not only do we use this clearly defined culture statement when we're recruiting and hiring, we use this as an evaluation tool for our yearly performance assessments,' Levin says.
The major danger in not codifying and regularly evaluating your corporate culture is that you'll make 'bad fit' hires and end up with high turnover, says Levin, but there are other dangers in areas like reputation and recruiting.
Since word-of-mouth is one of a company's best recruiting tools, this factor alone can have a huge impact on business success, says Levin. Without a solid culture, whatever that may be, you may be destined to bad hires and high turnover.
The 'Glassdoor effect' is absolutely real, and it’s a major cultural influence that companies shouldn’t ignore, says Joyce Maroney, senior director of customer marketing and director of The Workforce Institute at Kronos.
* Culture comes in many flavours and the notion of a desirable one will vary with different organisations, says Levin.
'The great thing about establishing and owning your culture is you can guide the conversations and hire the right people for that culture. Some cultures don't work for some people, and that's fine, but you need to be upfront and truthful about who you are as a business so it works for both you and your employees,' she says.
This is an area where many older, larger organisations get into trouble, says Sean Storin, who founded a job search site, One Degree.
'Culture has become such a huge buzzword over the last few years, and some organizations are trying to leverage that to get better, brighter talent to come work for them without understanding what it's really all about,' Storin says.
* Culture can become a four-letter word if toxicity is ignored. Toxic cultures kill more businesses than recessions, says Steven L Blue, president and CEO of Miller Ingenuity and author of 'American Manufacturing 2.0: What Went Wrong and How to Make It Right'.
