A Guide to Establishing an Amazing Company Culture

As defined by LinkedIn itself, the giant professional employment platform, company culture is the sum of values, behaviours and beliefs that determine in what way the company’s primary operation is done and how the company generally treats its employees as well as customers.

Company culture is a tangible thing that shapes the identity of the company from the inside and the outside and the atmosphere in which employees work and interact with one another. It is the rules that govern everything in the company and what everyone should respect and be alighted with.

When a company has a good culture, it can literally transform its employees’ experience, create a sense of belonging, increase their job satisfaction, engagement and their overall well-being, highly boost and empower its brand, promote itself as an employer of choice, attract top talent and achieve success in the short and long term.

Once this happens, you, as a business owner, can expect great results from your employees. Instead of being just some people doing what is required from them and getting paid for it at the end of every month, they would turn into ambassadors for the company brand and voluntarily start speaking about how amazing it is to work in it. This promotes your company as an employer of choice, which makes it easier to attract top talent.

Great company culture also has an impact on employee retention. If everyone feels special for working in your company, their needs are satisfied, their contributions are considered, and their expectations are met, why would they ever think about leaving the company?

That is all to say that a good culture is a key factor in every company’s success. That is why companies need to invest in establishing their unique culture, which is pretty much what we are demonstrating in this article. So bring a cup of coffee and read on.

Components of company culture

As we mentioned, company culture is the set of rules, behaviours, values and attitudes that govern the company and determine how things are done internally and externally. This is nice and all, but it still seems more like a vague definition.

More elaborately, the following are the four main components of any company culture.

1. Mission

A company mission, or as commonly known, a mission statement, is, yes, a statement that identifies why the company was created in the first place, that is, the company’s core purpose. A mission statement also includes what the company’s focus is and in what way it serves its customers.

In that context, a mission statement should communicate the business philosophies, what the company considers essential, what market it serves and the reason for its creation. Anyone who reads the company mission statement should be able to get an idea of what products or services the company is offering its customers, why it offers those products or services in particular and who those customers actually are.

Even though all of this is summarised in one statement, when done right, the mission statement should actually create a connection between the company and its customers as well as employees. It gives them a reason why this company exists in the first place and therefore provides some meaning to whatever relation they have with it.

When it comes to length, a company statement is usually somewhere between one and three sentences with a maximum of 100 words that, when read out loud, does not take more than 30 seconds.

That said, what is generally recommended is just creating one sentence to make things clear, precise and easy, especially for employees who need to remember their company’s mission statement, apply it and stay aligned with it all the time.

Speaking of remembering the mission statement, a mistake that many companies, unfortunately, make is introducing their mission statements to new employees during onboarding and never bringing them up ever again. Eventually, everyone forgets about their company’s mission, which may lead to disorientation in the long term, causing employees to feel a lack of purpose.

Without learning the mission statement by heart and getting back to it all the time, companies might actually lose track of and eventually stop serving the ultimate purposes for which they were established and do not even get me started on how badly this can affect the company’s operations, how they serve customers, employee engagement and the entire internal atmosphere.

To put it differently, a company’s mission statement should be everywhere. Employees as well as top management and pretty much anyone involved in the company should constantly be reminded of it. It has to be written everywhere in the company, shared on social media and the company’s website, and brought up in meetings and presentations so everyone can stay committed to it.

As we mentioned above, a good mission statement gives employees a sense of belonging to the company. This reflects positively on their day-to-day as well as their entire working experience in this company, highly increasing their engagement and how much they are involved in the operation. It also increases their productivity and allows them to reach their full potential, grow, develop, and achieve better results. This results in increased employee retention and dramatically reduces employee turnover.

Eventually, happy, engaged employees turn into ambassadors and start spreading the word about their astounding work experience, which strengthens their company’s brand and helps it reach a broader audience and attract new customers as well as highly talented employees.

How to establish a great mission statement

A mission statement has to be clear and to the point, still descriptive of what the company’s purpose is and not more than three sentences. To create a good mission statement, you, as a business owner, should answer the following questions:

• What is my company?
• What does it do?
• Why does it do it?
• What market is my company serving?
• What benefits is my company offering employees and customers?

Put differently (and more easily), try giving genuine answers to these questions:

• What do we do?
• How do we do it?
• Whom do we do it for?
• What value are we bringing?

Since your mission statement must be unique, when crafting one, you need to make sure it does not have any of the common business trendy words. These will immediately make it pretty ordinary, ineffective and not understood from the first time. At the same time, avoid very strong words that may make your statement sound unrealistic.

Besides, ensure that your mission statement has no grammatical or punctuation errors, for those can highly scratch your company’s reputation, stop both your employees and customers from buying into it and may even cause them to lose trust in the company—well, that is pretty much why your high school English teacher stressed, over and over, on why you must proofread your essays very closely before you handed them in.

Here are some examples of really good mission statements.

IBM

To lead in the creation, development and manufacture of the industry’s most advanced information technologies, including computer systems, software, networking systems, storage devices and microelectronics.

PepsiCo

Create more smiles with every sip and every bite. By creating joyful moments through our delicious and nourishing products and unique brand experiences. By being the best possible partner, driving game-changing innovation and delivering a level of growth unmatched in our industry.

Coca-Cola

To refresh the world in mind, body, and spirit, to inspire moments of optimism and happiness through our brands and actions, and to create value and make a difference.

Meta

To give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.

2. Vision

A company vision is simply where the company desires to be in the future. It defines the company’s dreams and usually looks at the big picture and where the company is heading in the long term as well as the impact it will leave on employees, customers and the community as a whole.

This way, the vision, which refers to the future, is different from the mission, which is basically the company’s present. And since we are speaking of aspirations and goals here, they have to be clear but also challenging.

A vision statement should be a medium-length paragraph that describes where the company is heading in the next five or 10 years and what high goals it wants to achieve. As the company shows itself as insistent on growing, it gives its employees a feeling of security which encourages them to work hard and reach their full potential to grow with the company too. And do you know what this also leads to? Well, yes, increased employee engagement and retention.

That is why crafting a compelling vision statement, which must be done in accordance with the mission, is so vital for every company and a profound pillar of their culture.

For the most part, top management are the ones who develop the company’s vision. Yet, it would also be a good idea if they included their employees in the process of creating or modifying it. Conducting surveys and asking employees how they want the company to be in the future can give a lot of insights into how they perceive the company now and what potential they think it has and inspire them to develop a compelling vision statement.

When you are creating a vision statement for your company, make sure you include the following qualities:

• Long-term thinking
• Broader view
• Specificity
• Limitation to a specific period of time

Here are some more tips to keep in mind when creating a vision statement:

• Project 10 years in the future.
• Dream big.
• Use precise and straightforward words.
• Make it emotional and passionate.
• Prepare how you will introduce your newly crafted vision statement to your employees.
• Be prepared to invest in your vision.

Here are some examples of the vision statements of some famous companies

Coca-Cola

Our vision is to craft the brands and choice of drinks that people love, to refresh them in body & spirit. And done in ways that create a more sustainable business and better-shared future that makes a difference in people’s lives, communities and our planet.

Apple

To make the best products on earth and to leave the world better than we found it.

Microsoft

To help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.

Nestle

To be a global, competing Nutrition, Healthcare, and Wellness Company producing greater value for shareholders by being a chosen responsible company, chosen employer, preferred partner, and chosen seller of products/ services.

Yosemite Public Park

YExplore is committed to being recognized as a travel industry leader in sustainable business practices that inspire visitors and foster stewardship by protecting the natural environment, promoting rich cultural values, and cultivating economic prosperity in every region we operate.

3. Culture Code

While the culture this whole article is about is basically the umbrella under which all the pillars of the company are and operate in accordance, the culture code is another one of those pillars, but it just happens to go by the same name, so try not to confuse them both.

Anyways.

A culture code is the qualities the company operates with and uses to create a specific environment or, let’s say, the direction that everyone, including top management, in the company should take and consider in whatever they do, whether this happens to be decision making, hiring, retention, promotion, etc.

The culture code is, again, determined by top management, who also must keep the company’s mission and vision when creating it so they can all be relative to one another and result in a homogenous workplace environment.

As we just mentioned, the culture code is a bunch of qualities. Each of these qualities should be represented by one word and described in a medium-sized paragraph. Some high-performing companies were found to include the following qualities in their culture codes.

Innovation

Innovation refers to how much the company is open to new ideas from employees and how easy it is for employees themselves to express and exchange these ideas within the organisation. Innovation usually involves making changes in the processes, behaviours, and products as well.

Communication

This refers to the employees’ ability to communicate their thoughts and suggestions with freedom to the administration and top management and vice versa. When communication is part of the company culture code, there will always be an ongoing dialogue in the workplace.

Agility

To keep up with the new trends and tough competition in the market, companies need to undertake changes every now and then to preserve their positions, move forward, and stand out. In this context, agility describes how easy it is for employees to adapt to the changes inside and outside the company. Conducting surveys and feedback from employees on a regular basis helps assess agility in the company.

Wellness

Wellness describes how “well” and healthy the workplace is for employees. While this definitely includes the treatment they receive from their peers, seniors and top management, as well as how comfortable they are with the way the company is run, it also involves physical wellness. This is why conducting programs that are dedicated to employees’ mental and physical health is highly important to increase their engagement, satisfaction and productivity.

Collaboration

If a company inserts collaboration into its culture code, it states that it is easy for its different departments to connect and work with one another. It is also saying that this quality can be seen on smaller scales as teams, as well as members of the same team, collaborate easily with each other.

Support

A good work environment is one where employees can find support from their peers as well as top management, which is, by the way, a default quality in the culture code of every company that seeks success.

Responsibility

Well, this quality includes the employees’ ability to take responsibility for their actions, stand for their work and make decisions regarding what they believe is the best for them. Though it sounds individual, responsibility should be developed on an organisation-wide level.

4. Values 

The last pillar of company culture is values or core values. Core values are a group of guidelines that basically run the company and shape the way employees and teams interact with one another. They should be set in the light of all the other concepts that make the culture so all of them can work in harmony with one another.

The core values of every company can be small sentences or just single words like the qualities in the culture code. However companies decide to phrase them, core values must be clear and easily understood but also unique and far from cliché.

Here are the core values of some famous international companies.

LinkedIn

• We put members first.
• We trust and care about each other.
• We are open, honest and constructive.
• We act as One LinkedIn.
• We embody diversity, inclusion and belonging.
• We dream big, get things done and know how to have fun.

Adidas

• Courage
• Ownership
• Innovation
• Teamplay
• Integrity
• Respect

BBC

• Audiences are at the heart of everything we do.
• Creativity is the lifeblood of our organisation.
• Trust is the foundation of the BBC – we’re independent, impartial and truthful.
• We respect each other – we’re kind, and we champion inclusivity.
• We are accountable and deliver work of the highest quality.
• We are one BBC – we collaborate, learn and grow together.

Company culture is what makes up the environment and creates the identity of the company. For employees, who are every company’s main asset and most important resource, to feel comfortable and engaged and consequently give their best and innovate, companies must provide them with a sense of purpose, goals to work for, qualities to demonstrate and guidelines to direct them and this can only happen by establishing a solid company culture.