Organizational culture is the essence of a company, reflecting its values, mission and attitudes. Values also serve as the cornerstone of shaping the organizational culture that businesses desire, shaping how employees contribute to the workplace environment.
As you might suspect, both concepts play an orchestrated and pivotal role in shaping a workplace into a professional community, and influencing employee behavior. Furthermore, organizational culture is influenced by employee behaviors and ideas and their own values.
In this post, we'll explore the connection between values and organizational culture.
Organizational culture is a set of shared values, beliefs, and behaviors among employees, managers, and executives. These factors are crucial for characterizing a company's distinct culture, which influences how team members interact, make decisions, and conduct their roles.
Companies and HR teams increasingly understand the power that an upbeat and thriving organizational culture has in attracting and retaining the right talent:
In today's highly competitive job market, a robust organizational culture offers a business a competitive advantage in employee attraction and retention. Once a company culture is up, running, and well-tended, it is likely to become a self-sustaining aspect of a business.
Values are a company's guiding principles. Thus, they define what they collectively believe in and stand for and have meaning beyond words laid out in a mission statement. Furthermore, they reflect a company's core beliefs that reflect a company's identity and purpose. Organizational values may include principles such as teamwork, integrity, innovation, customer focus, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
They provide a moral compass. Thus, providing a thoughtful and meaningful direction for considerations, decisions, attitudes, behaviors, and actions of everyone working for a company.
Strong values do the following to shape your business:
With a greater understanding of how these two concepts are connected, it makes sense you want to connect values and company culture for your company.
Here are a few ways to achieve this powerful combination in your company.
Define your values, ensuring they lay out the guiding principles, core beliefs, and essence of your organization to form a distinct culture.
Communicate your company's defined values. Do this via channels such as written materials, training sessions, emails, and company meetings. Ensure that everyone grasps and internalizes your values.
Help your employees and managers understand your values and organizational culture through meaningful training sessions. Use engaging and inspirational in-person team-building events and exercises.
When your employees and leadership work together to achieve common goals and celebrate each other's successes, you are well on your way to creating connections between organizational culture and values.
