Company Culture from both sides of the coin

Company Culture from both sides of the coin

What do I mean , well there are two view points at least, maybe even four, but I will stick to the two of them today, this will be a short post as it has been a long long day. I have been talking to recruiters on and off every day over the last week or so and part of those discussions are what prompted me to this subject.

So the easy part:

Company Culture for the Boss:

The company culture can either grow your bottom line or hurt your bottom line, and staying level is hurting the bottom line by the way IMHO. What can you do to make sure you have a strong culture look for the signs..positive sub-culture groups, war stories on outstanding performance, strong group bonding outside of work,low staff turn over, if people get on outside work they will generally work together better. I know there will be some folk reading this and saying that's crap, "I pay them to work and that's the end of it", that will give you my friend the performance you deserve, flat line ultimately. I always grow a positive culture whenever I can as this makes my life that much easier and keeps a strong bottom line. There is loads to add to this but I am keeping it brief for today, feel free to engage my services if you want to explore further or have a look at www.companyculture.com.

Company Culture for the Employee or prospective Employee:

Take time and find out as much as you can about a company before you join, you may find the culture not so good, but at least you will know, and this will taylor your first 100 days. You can do this work before you target your job hunt if you have the freedom to choose, but do it anyway before you interview, how I hear you cry, well use the social networks and professional, like LinkedIn , Facebook, Eacademy, Spoke, Twitter, Zing, Zoominfo, get in to the discussion groups targeted at your industry of choice and start digging asking question, use the search function to dig folk out from the company, get busy with Google and get searching, there are many ways to find out what you want to know, and I suggest that you do it. If you know the culture of a company you may join you can work out long term what the prospects are going to be for you before you start, and if you will like working in that culture.



Summary:

Culture is not something that only a few people can develop, it is the corporate body that chooses what culture they will make, I used to run a shift in a semiconductor factory that was staffed by ladies of a certain age, that in its self set the culture, I am not saying that you cannot control and redirect slightly and manage behaviour, be we make the culture we work in. There have been document projects that have tried to change the culture, it takes a while and a lot of face time to make that happen, so Entrepreneur make the culture part of your armoury to win, don't let it pull you down, and don't become distanced from it.