With the continued rise of the use of social media and an increasing number of digital platforms, consumers now have very different expectations about how businesses engage with them.
Your customers expect to be able to interact with you on a more personal level. They expect speedy response times, understanding, positive action and to be left with the feeling that their custom is valued.
The blend of digital and human interaction means that communication cannot be truly standardised – but your customer service must be nothing less than top-notch.
How can you make sure that happens, when you can’t oversee every move?
It’s simple. To make sure you achieve the levels of success set out in your vision and strategy make sure everyone in the business is aligned and you are pulling in the same direction. This is where your company culture becomes vital to success.
Company culture: what is it?
Investopedia defines ‘company culture’ as the beliefs and behaviours that determine how your employees and management interact and how they handle business interactions. A company culture usually evolves over time, and it sets the tone for your everyday working environment.
Obviously, the first step to designing an inspiring company culture is understanding the way your company wishes to engage with your customers and employees. This will be influenced by your brand values, your target market and your overall business objectives.
A few tips for creating the culture you desire are:
● Lead the way for your employees to follow.
● Make your organisation’s priorities and goals clear.
● Encourage open and honest communication at every level.
● Put your people first. To create a positive working ethos, your team needs positive experiences and to feel valued.
The next step is about understanding how your culture influences the kind of people you need in your business.
You need to look at more than just the skills they bring to the table. Creating a culture that inspires people to be engaged, fulfilled and innovative comes from a deeper understanding of their values.
Someone may have the right skills, qualifications, and experience for a particular role, but if your environment, behaviours and attitudes aren’t aligned to their values, their performance, productivity and level of engagement will be affected.
This can seriously impact your bottom line. Studies show that engaged employees are more productive. In fact, Gallup estimates that actively disengaged employees cost the U.S around $500 billion each year.
Understanding your culture and the values of potential employees is a key component to successful recruitment, which is where we come in. We work with scale-up organisations that value their employees and who are creating company cultures that people want to be part of.
We can provide you with practical exercises that will enable you to identify your company culture and your values. Better yet, you’ll be able to communicate this to potential new employees as part of your recruitment process. This is something we have done for a number of our clients.
So don’t delay, if your scale-up is in serious need of an epic work culture evaluation, call us on 0203 034 0420 or email us at nici@talentgateway.net. What’s more, subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything to help boost better talent acquisition in your start-up.