What influences you when it comes to applying for a job?
With an economic crisis underway and job redundancies being made left right and centre these days, thousands of people are out of work and seeking new employment. According to a survey by Acas in 2022, nearly a fifth of employers surveyed were looking to make redundancies over the next year.
Yet, from the Pandemic transforming work to a more hybrid approach, to mental wellbeing support being a priority for many prospective employees. Company culture-and how you feel a business should be run- is becoming more of an influential factor in determining whether or not employees will be applying to work for you, or even stay with you.
So why is company culture so important to a business?
Company culture is a true reflection of your company’s core values and how you envision a business should be run. Put simply, it’s foundational to your brand reputation and how it is to be viewed by others.
Gone are the days when having a bean bag clad office space or organised after-work drinks made an impact on company culture and reputation. Today, with flexible working and mental health support becoming priorities for staff, it’s so much more than that!
Having a strong company culture is integral to a successful business. Not only can it help transform your current employees into advocates when advertising your organisation, but it also helps you to retain those already working there. For an employee, making them feel valued and included means they will likely recommend you as a good employer for future staff.
Having a team that is motivated, supported and collaborative is essential to strong communication and work ethic across a business and having a good company culture and environment contributes significantly to that.
It also can have a substantial impact on employee’s overall performance and well-being, which in turn can lead to greater productivity for your organisation and improve relationships with your clients.
For small agencies and businesses, company culture can be even more impactful!
For small businesses like us, we relied heavily in the start on word of mouth, and this applies not only to our client relationships, but also to employing staff and having strong advocates for the future.
Having a good company culture and strong set of core values can set us in good standing for retaining clients and for us, our freelancers too. Treating our freelancers with respect (i.e., paying them on time and in a prompt manner) and having honest open communication, will ensure that we have a good relationship with our resources, and they will be more likely to fit us in for future work and deliver to a consistent, high standard.
So, what makes a company culture so strong? What do employers look for now when it comes to influencing their application decisions?
A number of different factors can determine the strength of a company culture, but these are just several reasons why people select a company to work for today:
- Flexible working hours and environments: negotiating a balance between work and life, as well as home vs. the office environments.
- Open communication across the team: feeling confident and able to speak up if something is wrong.
- Looking out for the employee’s well-being: People want to work hard, but it’s also important to get to know staff on a personal level and empathise and support when something may be wrong.
- Good leadership and teaching, as well as smooth on-boarding of staff: having that enthusiasm and encouragement to help people learn and progress in their careers is essential to a good business and overall morale.
- Having a collaborative, inclusive approach and allowing everyone to be involved in decision-making processes.
- Having good balance of working together as a team, but also allowing staff to have autonomy over their work and time to work independently.
- Recognising and rewarding hard efforts regularly.
- Having trust and integrity with all staff.
At AmbitionABM, whether a freelancer or full-time employee, we always strive to create a working environment and company culture that is inclusive, supports our staff and encourages them to work hard and deliver results, each and every time. Many of the factors listed above are just some of the reasons why people love working with us and retain their jobs and relationships here.
We hope that we can continue to build on our core values and demonstrate a strong company culture, for both clients and staff.
So, if you’ve been made redundant recently, or if you’re simply seeking a new career path or job role, then let us know what you think makes a company culture stand out (for all the right reasons)!
