Paper Example. Importance of a Strong Company Culture

According to Alniacick et al. (2014), company culture refers to a set of shared values, goals, attitudes, and practices that distinguish one organization from another. Some companies have team-based learning characterized by employee involvement and participation in decision-making at all levels as opposed to others that tend to have a more formal and traditional approach. However, company culture remains one of the most critical tools that determine the overall success of an organization in meeting its goals and objectives regardless of the presence of distinct rules and regulations (Mahdiyeh et al., 2016). Current research suggests that there are significant benefits to fostering a healthy company culture because it assists with attracting top talent, increases productivity, and creates loyalty among employees.

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Benefits of Having a Strong Company Culture

According to Pathiranage (2019), fostering an influential company culture has multiple benefits in the achievement of long-term success in an organization. First, a healthy company culture helps an organization attract top talent in its target market. Contemporary organizations operate in a highly competitive marketplace that requires them to have access to highly-talented employees to achieve exemplary performance. Such employees must have the skills, knowledge, and experience needed to execute their tasks exemplarily (Cancialosi, 2014). Highly talented employees are also crucial in ensuring that the organization remains competitive in the long run. Having a strong and healthy company culture can help an organization to attract top talent in different ways. First, culture sets the unique mindset that every employee portrays within the organization before its stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, and the community at large (Shahzad et al., 2012). These stakeholders serve as essential sources of top talent that organizations look to recruit.

Culture also shapes how employees communicate and share information from one source to another, not only within the organization but also in their daily lives (Alniacick et al., 2014). Employees serve as critical sources of advertisement by using the word-of-mouth technique to shape the views and perceptions of potential job candidates about their company. Highly talented job candidates can develop a positive attitude about their targeted organization, depending on the information they receive from existing employees (Shahzad et al., 2012). For instance, employees can help companies attract top talents by ensuring that they bake critical values such as honesty and integrity in everything they do and say. A plethora of successful companies across the world, including Apple, Inc., Walmart, and Google, rely exclusively on their employees as critical agents in sharing out their culture and its associated elements to attract highly talented employees (Tran, 2017). Therefore, shaping the mindset of employees by maintaining healthy company culture is crucial in attracting highly-talented employees.

Cancialosi (2014) ascertained that employees in a plethora of contemporary organizations serve as their brand ambassadors not only in their target markets but also before potential job candidates. The forum for workers to not only rate but also review their employers is increasingly growing. Today, employees can rate their managers using platforms such as LinkedIn, Indeed, and Glassdoor. These platforms also provide essential information about a company's culture to potential employees that, in turn, rely on them to choose the best companies to join (Sappala & Cameron, 2015). These rating platforms are also increasingly exposing companies with poor cultures in the digital age. This exposure plays a vital role in helping top talents to avoid such companies. Therefore, organizations must understand that their existing employees are their direct brand ambassadors because they have access to multiple online networks via social media. Such employees can publicize a company's brand and improve its visibility to attract potential candidates and have access to top talents (Kumar, 2016). Thus, companies must build strong and healthy cultures to benefit from referrals, which leads to the attraction of top talents.

Secondly, culture serves as a unique brand that numerous companies utilize in attracting a plethora of top talents in their target markets. According to Tran (2017), organizations with healthy company cultures work to leave a fingerprint on every aspect of their employee experience. An influential company culture, therefore, not only serves as a branding tool but also as an external marketing campaign technique that helps the organization showcase its operations in the target market. Such companies also tend to make massive investments in highly innovative assets that make a significant impact in their industries and demonstrate to their stakeholders why they are great. As a result, most of the top talents in the industry often get attracted to such organizations due to their outstanding culture (Alniacick et al., 2014). These companies' cultures also allow them to use unique marketing concepts such as the incorporation of videos and online platforms for advertising their products and operations, which, in turn, leave most of the top talents in the industry attracted to their services.

Thirdly, a company culture includes critical elements, such as business goals, ethics, and a compelling business strategy, that is crucial in attracting top talents (Tsai, 2011). A persuasive business strategy is vital because it outlines the specific reasons that, in turn, help in convincing various potential employees to join their predetermined company. The approach is also a significant part of the company culture because it helps potential recruits to identify and have a detailed understanding of the competitive advantages and position of their desired company. The competitive edge of a company originates from its culture and plays a vital role in helping top talents to have valid reasons for choosing it over its rivals. This competitive advantage can also be a result of having an innovative and robust business strategy that aligns with the target candidates' interests (Cancialosi, 2014). Therefore, aligning the culture of an organization with its business strategy is crucial in attracting top talents alongside increasing growth and profitability for the target organization.

Finally, developing an influential company culture entails having clear core values, which are crucial in helping organizations to attract top talents (Maseko, 2017). Most highly-talented and competent job candidates aim at working and gaining inspiration from their companies. Therefore, having a healthy company culture, characterized by strong core values, helps businesses in selecting the right candidates and, in turn, helps them to align with their companies. Organizations with cultures that embrace core concepts, such as corporate social responsibility and the triple bottom line, have a competitive advantage over their rivals when it comes to attracting top talents in the industry. Therefore, organizations should have communicated core values to their employees and other critical stakeholders to ensure continuous attraction and recruitment of high skills in their markets (Alniacick et al., 2014). Failing to share the existing core values with employees can cause disagreements, which may culminate into long-term disputes and failure to attain operational sustainability.

The second benefit associated with having a healthy and robust company culture lies in its ability to increase organizational productivity. Pathiranage (2019) defined productivity as the ability of a company to attain the anticipated outcomes with a minimum expenditure of money, labor, material, and time. Many organizations yearn to achieve increased productivity as a fundamental measure of their improved performance and move towards attaining productivity. However, it is highly critical to understand that having a unique and strong culture is the main element behind the overall success achieved by companies in their operations in terms of improved productivity. First, having a vibrant and healthy company culture is a crucial element in promoting innovation and the invention of new ways of doing things in an organization. Comparative studies indicate that companies with robust and well-built cultures tend to innovate better and more often than those that lack (Craig, 2017). Also, an influential culture helps in ensuring continuous employee empowerment and motivation, which, in turn, leads to improved productivity through a high commitment to job performance.

Secondly, a company's culture increases productivity by emphasizing on the need for employees and other stakeholders, including suppliers and managers, to embrace its shared values and meet its goals. According to Mahdiyeh et al. (2016), a company's culture contains critical elements, such as values, goals, mission, and vision, which employees seek to achieve. The overall commitment of employees to utilize these crucial elements culminates in the realization of improved productivity. Also, having a robust company culture means that all stakeholders must live by its core values alongside its mission and vision statement to attain increased performance. A positive company culture produces employees with a unique sense of direction and, in turn, helps in creating standard definitions of success. This mutual meaning of success helps the entire organization to achieve increased productivity and rapid growth as a team (Tran, 2017). Also, having an influential company culture leads to the long-term commitment of all employees to attaining their goals in the organization, which, in turn, translates into increased productivity.

Craig (2017) averred that investing in a company culture pays dividends for future years. Culture entails having a strong commitment to embracing excellence in a company's daily operations, which, in turn, leads to the creation of a unique brand image admired by numerous customers across the company's target market. These customers usually transform into improved purchases for the organization alongside enhancing the traffic on the company's platform and, in turn, leading to improved productivity. Thirdly, having an influential company culture contributes to improved productivity by increasing the ability of an organization to retain its high-performing employees (Sappala & Cameron, 2015). Building an influential company culture is a crucial strategy for eradicating cases of high employee turnover rates in contemporary businesses. For instance, increased retention capacity helps the organization to avoid costs and expenses incurred while recruiting new employees, training them, and compensating them for salaries above the previous workers (Pathiranage, 2019). High retention rates transform into improved productivity because the existing employees tend to invest their skills, knowledge, and experience in ensuring that their organization reaches its desired goals and objectives in the long run.

Fourthly, having an influential company culture implies that the organization has the right focus on achieving its desired success, which, in turn, leads to increased productivity through greater efficiency (Kumar, 2016). Culture entails the specific elements that a particular organization values. Companies that lack vacation policies, such as Netflix, provide the best example of having a unique focus on the right thing. Lack of a vacation policy implies that employees and Netflix have the right to take time off upon need (Mahdiyeh et al., 2016).