For organizations that are trying to recruit and retain top talent in today’s ultra-competitive job market, company culture should be top of mind. A strong company culture is an automatic advantage in the war for talent by fostering a sense of loyalty in your current employees and making your organization more desirable to potential candidates.
A 2019 survey from Glassdoor found that 77% of candidates consider a company’s culture before applying for a job and 56% said a good workplace culture was more important to them than salary. Furthermore, a 2022 Jobvite survey found that 32% of job seekers who had left a job within the first 90 days listed a poor company culture as the reason.
It’s pretty clear to see that company culture can make or break an employer’s recruitment and retention strategy. How can you align your employee communications to ensure that your company culture is consistently and compellingly promoted? Keep reading.
Promoting a positive company culture isn’t always the simplest task, but maximizing your internal communications is the best first step in achieving this goal. Here are a few questions to ask if you’re wondering whether you’re effectively promoting your company culture.
It’s likely that you’re using a multitude of channels to engage your employees and key stakeholders. How are you maximizing them to promote your company culture?
Take your existing employee communications strategy and evaluate each channel to see how you’re promoting your company culture there:
No matter what channels you have available in your organization, your communications have the power to positively impact your culture. So be sure to use them to their fullest! Poll your employees, maybe there is a channel that you don’t utilize that would be a better fit.
We might sound like a bit of a broken record when it comes to this topic, but that’s because consistency is so crucial to any successful strategic communications plan.
When potential or current employees visit the various channels and platforms associated with your organization, are they being met with the same messaging across the board? Or are they dealing with a series of disparate messages written by multiple different department heads?
Appoint one person or team to perform “quality control” on your external and employee communications and task them with taking inventory of the messaging in each one. Are the communications keeping in line with your company values? Do they feature rich, engaging content that shows your company culture instead of just telling everyone about it?
Think about other parameters that are important and assess how each channel is stacking up to your overall communications goals.
Are your company “values” sitting in a document graveyard or living in a dusty, old slide deck that you only break out for the board?
If so, it’s time to give them a good look and decide whether or not you’re upholding these values in your communications. For example:
Reassess what’s really important to your company and ensure you’re promoting exactly that in your messaging. Keep a consistent tone of voice that reminds employees, candidates and key stakeholders that it’s your company communicating at all times. Be familiar but keep your content fresh.
Potential applicants will come to expect information about your company culture. So:
Your company culture is one-of-a-kind in a million different ways.
Use your employee communications to highlight what's important and valuable at your organization and show potential applicants why your organization is such an amazing place to work.