How to attract and keep good talent

Corporate culture isn’t about the free snacks, unlimited vacation, and team-building lunches. It’s the values and behaviours that encompass your organization. While leadership often defines the vision and mission of an organization, it’s the people who set the culture. Sharing your culture can also help in attracting more of the right people.

As a company is first formed, much thought and strategy is invested into defining the values, products, raising capital. As every company that has a business plan, every company has a culture, either by design or default.

A weak or neglected culture can cause friction, frustration, and, ultimately, turnover in an organization. The cost of a weak, fragmented, and poorly thought out culture can cost a company thousands annually in hiring and onboarding*, and even more in customer retention.

By way of comparison, investing in your culture, strategically planning communications focused on your values, vision, and mission. Investing in management with aligned values, rewarding based on company values, will result in a more positive culture with the by-product of increased productivity due to employees’ sense of inclusion and appreciation. The outcome: happier employees, more loyal employees, more loyalty in customer, and company cost savings in reduction to turn over.

“Customers will never love a company until employees love it first”

– Simon Sinek.

Building an exceptional culture is step one. Sharing the culture with the world can help attract talent whose values align with yours, increase customer loyalty, and attract new customers.

This might sound nice and dandy, but how do you start building culture?

Here are a couple of suggestions for building culture:

• Develop an anonymous recognition system and share out monthly employees who were ‘caught demonstrating the values’

• As a leader, share a weekly (raw) video reiterating the company values, and an update on what’s happening

• As a leader, take time to get to know your employees. Make them feel like they matter, and their work is important.

• Create a standard for communication in the company; make every voice matter.

• Seek advice from your employees, get their feedback at every level

• If you have perks, make them meaningful!
  • Education subsidy
  • Personal development opportunities

• Build trust

Most people spend a large portion of their week at work, as leaders, we do too, shouldn’t it be enjoyable and have meaning? Building trust, recognizing others, showing appreciation, and implementing some of the other suggestions above will enhance your culture along with so many other side benefits.

*Using the following assumption as an average North American company size of 100 employees, with a 10% turnover rate, ~ USD 4,000.00 replacement cost. The cost of retention annually is ~ USD 40,000.00

I pride myself on helping business leaders build strategies around communication, collaboration and authenticity using a variety of technologies and techniques.

Interested in learning how? Let’s chat, email me.