How Important Is Company Culture?

By Hannah Perella

Over the years corporate culture has become increasingly important. Employers are starting to reap the benefits of creating an enjoyable work environment which in turn reflects on the company’s growth. With the success of social media, companies are expected to play out their work lives to potential clients, customers and candidates.

After attending a recent recruitment summit we took a closer look at the success of Google’s company culture. Fellow ‘Googlers’ Rachel Burton and Joanne Chin led us through the importance of retaining the ‘Googly’ culture in a rapidly growing company. Google takes pride in retaining a transparent and engaging mind-set. They actively encourage employees to ask questions via weekly meetings and to pursue ideas which will benefit the company. Their offices and cafes are designed to encourage interaction across teams and to spark interesting conversations. Googlers are encouraged to pursue hobbies together such as dancing, playing frisbee and even bee-keeping. With a company of employees who rave about their culture, values and famous perks, it’s no wonder they receive over one million CV’s a year.

How important is your corporate culture in recruitment?

Reflecting your company culture and brand image is a crucial recruiting tool when trying to engage and retain employees. Therefore understanding the target audience that you would like to attract is key. If a candidate has both the skill set suited to the position as well as fitting in with the company culture, this will determine whether or not they thrive at work.

Through social media, companies can now actively promote their culture for the world to see. Whether it’s through Facebook photo albums of the office summer holiday or the interaction on your LinkedIn homepage, it will draw people’s attention and give them a better understanding of how you work. You want applicants who will value and appreciate your company culture. A newly employed person will come with expectations of a certain culture that they learnt about from their interview. Newly employed people who expect a certain culture will want that maintained when they start work. If it isn’t what they expected there is a higher chance they’ll leave.

To attract talent it’s important to build a strong employer brand. Defining the characteristics of your company’s culture should remain constant throughout the recruiting process. So a person hired on their abilities as well as their cultural fit is far more reliable than hiring someone on their skills alone.

Your turn

Projecting your company culture will be the hook to draw prospective employees in. So you need to identify what characteristics your target job seekers are on the lookout for and see how you can incorporate them into your recruitment approaches. Ask yourself what excites people about working for you. Building an excellent careers page should reflect your company's culture as a whole. Include employee testimonials and company benefits to create a true representation of what it’s like to work for you.

It’s important to start getting your vacancies in front of your target audience whether it’s via your career page, social media or job sites. Using talent pools in your recruitment network will help you stay engaged with prospective employees and keep them interested by sending them customised job alerts.

To help boost your company culture you need to start improving your recruiting process. Applicant tracking systems aim to not only improve your recruitment process but to help your company develop a successful and thriving culture by maintaining a good relationship with prospective employees. If a candidate is left fulfilled after their application experience then this will spread across various platforms.