How do company values come into play?

Company values are a key part of fostering a business culture. Create values that encourage the kind of behaviour and atmosphere you want in your company’s culture.

Do you want a high performance team? Create a company value that emphasises the importance of striving for the best outcome. Are you wanting a team environment where everyone supports each other? Create a value that highlights how everyone should work together as a team.

Don’t forget that there’s more to creating company values than just coming up with five or so statements. Embed those values throughout your company through these methods:

Make the values visible

Have each value clearly displayed in your workplace and ensure they’re at the forefront of your mind when deciding on new objectives or goals for the year. Communicate them across the company and make them the centre of your strategy.

Merch it up!

Design some new merchandise with your values printed on it and share it amongst your team members. Everyone loves some new merch (new tee or socks, anyone?), and you’ll be reinforcing those values every time they use it.

Celebrate values in action

Another way to embed the values into your culture is to hold annual awards whereby winners are based on how they’ve lived and breathed your company values. The prize could be a nice dinner, a weekend away, or even an overseas trip!

By recognising and rewarding employees when they go above and beyond, you’re reinforcing a culture of high performance, making your company more productive and profitable.

An example of good company culture we love

When it comes to company culture, some businesses are nailing the assignment. Here’s one of our favourites…

Zoom

Zoom is a video and audio conferencing app, facilitating collaboration, chat, and webinars. They’ve introduced a “happiness crew” which sustains Zoom’s culture across locations through events, celebrations, community involvement, and volunteering. This crew organised things such as team-based volunteering for local causes like the Special Olympics, Denver Food for Thought, and Habitat for Humanity.

New hires also globally participate in a San Jose training session to cultivate relationships, comprehend the company’s culture, and prepare for their roles. Paired with existing team members acting as mentors upon starting, these employees gain insights into company culture and outreach.

What about Employment Hero’s company culture?

At Employment Hero, we’re really proud of our company culture and have worked hard to maintain a fun and happy place to work, even as we’ve scaled dramatically since our inception. Everything we do is based on five values:

• We serve
• We are one team
• We are bold and ambitious
• We invent
• Own it

Everyone is encouraged to be open with each other, supportive and to innovate where we see opportunity. We’re also a remote-first company and recognise that a good work-life balance is really important for all our Heroes. Importantly for a distributed team as well, we also organise local and global gatherings, so we can all meet up in person and celebrate our wins.

We know our product is designed to support businesses in creating great cultures and supporting their employees. That’s why we do our best to walk the walk too.

How can you build a strong company culture?

There are lots of ways to build a strong company culture. We’ve got a few to get you started and inspired…

Define and set a vision for your company’s culture

A vision inspires action, and pulls in ideas, people and other resources. The reason this is important is that a vision helps you capture what the company wants to become and where it wants to go. It enables the organisation to focus on what is important to the business, especially in stressful times and when working on complex projects.

Hire candidates aligned with your company values

Being thorough with your hiring processes is the key to success. Values offer a set of guidelines on the behaviours and mindsets needed to achieve the company’s vision.

If you find employees who are aligned with the company’s values, they’re likely to enjoy their work more. This means organisations save costs on reduced employee turnover and increase in their employee productivity.

Recognise and reward valuable contributions

Employee recognition lets employees know that their hard work is valued. It doesn’t have to cost anything, it can be done in less than five minutes and the results can have a lasting impact. Recognising employees can improve morale, enhance loyalty, and let employees know that their work is valued and appreciated.

Utilise technology to win the day

HR software isn’t just about logging leave and checking employee details – the best HR software comes with employee engagement features, so you can foster a strong culture and great feedback loops.

That includes creating objectives and key results that align with the values you set, shouting out great work across the company and sending out regular surveys to check how your employees are feeling about their roles.

Showcasing your company culture

Now you’ve transformed your company culture into something inspiring – it’s time to show it off. We’ve compiled this list of three simple ways you can showcase your company culture on social media. These tips are easy to execute and will help get your business get started when it comes to sharing your company culture online.

1. Share pictures of your workspace and company culture

Everyone loves a bit of behind-the-scenes footage, from customers to prospective candidates. Taking and sharing a picture of your workspace (with or without humans) is an easy way to give your followers more insight into your company.

2. Promote celebrations and events

We all enjoy celebrating with our teams. Whether it’s a new partnership or a huge win at an awards night, there might just be a celebratory event on your horizon. These moments are perfect for sharing on social media. They show prospective employees that you reward and recognise your staff, plus give you an opportunity to promote whatever it is you are celebrating.

3. Introduce your employees and highlight what makes your company unique

Does your company have a flexible work policy? Do you have a system of pursuing and tracking targets that are a little quirky and different from the norm?

Think about everything that makes your company unique (and beloved by staff) and then communicate this on social media.

How do you measure workplace culture?

The easiest way to measure a healthy culture is to speak to your team. Get their perspective of their life at work and how they find working for the company. Ask them if your company values truly reflect their experience and what you can do to make things even better.

One really easy way to do this is through regular surveys. Not only will your team feel empowered to give their perspective, but you’ll amass data over a time period that allows you to improve company culture over time.

Do you need to invest more in employee development? Do you need to offer better employee benefits? Or do you need to improve your interview process? A survey is where you’ll find the answers to these questions.

Using HR software like Employment Hero can be an effective way to set up recurring surveys, whether it’s our employee happiness survey or a custom survey that includes questions specific to your company. Even better, all the responses will be stored on the Employment Hero platform, so you can ditch those Excel spreadsheets.

The company culture wrap up

Company culture isn’t just a buzzword; it’s about creating a place people actually want to be – and it has a knock on effect throughout your entire company.

Not only does creating a positive company culture boost employee satisfaction, it makes it easier to attract top talent, which we all know is crucial in this market. And if you ignore it…? You risk a toxic workplace culture, sending potential job seekers running.

To improve company culture, leaders need to walk the walk and live the company’s core values through everything they do. If you’re looking for ways to get feedback on how your company culture is going, get your HR team to send out employee surveys to get real feedback.

When you get the key elements right, you’ll have a team of highly engaged employees who generate ideas and innovate in their role, which ultimately helps you shape your own company culture.

Now you’ve got an award-winning culture, it’s time to start telling the world in your employee value proposition (EVP). To get started, take a look at our EVP strategy worksheet or our EVP survey question template. 

Get the blueprints to building a healthy company culture

If you want your business to thrive, you can’t ignore company culture.

If you’re ready to build a great company culture that motivates and inspires their team and customers, we’ve got the resource for you. Download the form on the right to download our guide.