A strong corporate culture can have a profound impact on a business organization, affecting everything from employee morale and productivity to customer satisfaction and profitability.
How to create strong corporate culture?
A strong business culture can be shaped by a strong individual leader such as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) who can influence people within an organization to follow his vision.
The strength of any organizational culture typically depends upon the degree of unity of the staff behind. If employees are unified in their values, beliefs and attitudes, then the culture will be stronger. But, if employees do not understand, believe in and support the vision and mission of their organization, then the culture will be weaker.
A strong corporate culture will only endure and continue existing, if it has the backing of those who work for the business.
Importance of strong corporate culture
Here are some key ways a strong corporate culture has:
- Provides sense of identity for employees. Strong corporate culture creates a sense of belonging and security for workers who can now both feel a part of the organization and identify with other workers.
- Reinforces the values of organization and senior management. It promotes cohesiveness, minimizing problems associated with a culture gap. Workers do things as they feel that it is the right thing to do while conflict and misunderstandings between different groups are minimized.
- Allows employees to understand what is going on around them. Strong corporate culture helps with reducing mistakes and misunderstandings because workforce is more familiar with the processes and procedures in the workplace.
- Increases commitment of employees to the company. This will decrease the absenteeism rate and the turnover rate as well as improve employer and employee relations.
- Motivates workers in their jobs. Strong organizational culture tends to help to improve teamwork raising the overall motivation levels in a business organization.
- Acts as a control device for management. A strong culture increases behavioral consistency among workers while it can also act as a substitute for formalization.
Weak corporate culture
Weak corporate culture exists when there is a culture gap and the culture itself is negative. A culture gap exists is when existing organizational values are not aligned with desired corporate culture.
In reality, while one type of culture might dominate in a particular organization, there may be other groups that conform to subcultures with different opinions, beliefs and interests. This difference between subgroups can also cause a culture gap
Culture gaps can lead to internal problems, hence business managers will use different strategies to reduce this gap by imposing values through exercising control stricter control and formal bureaucratic procedures.
A negative culture when there is a lot of suspicion, mistrust and limited growth opportunities. Negative cultures can significantly demotivate employees leading to increased lateness, absenteeism and high labor turnover which can subsequently lead to higher costs.
In summary, the challenge for business leaders is to influence people within the organization to follow a shared corporate culture. A strong culture of all staff sharing the same value will assist a business to cope with the changing needs of the market.
