Team cheers

shutterstock_327440975According to LinkedIn’s global survey, a staggering 52% of UK professionals consider a company’s culture and purpose to be a deal-breaker when applying for jobs. And an additional 56% of job seekers aged 16 to 24 felt the same way.

But why is this? What is so important about a company’s culture? Why is it considered such an important factor when attracting talent? How can you use this to your advantage and what are the actual benefits?

  1. Attracting customers

Your company culture, values and mission is what separates you from other businesses in your sector. It’s how outsiders perceive you and gives a positive impression to others that may influence them to work with you. Your culture adds value and character to your business, which may promote customer loyalty – customers are more likely to want to keep buying/using your services if they know that they can trust you to be competent, reliant, honest, caring and completely ethical. At least one of these should be outlined in your values.

  1. Attracting talent to your business

Having a strong set of values demonstrates to others that you are dependable, honest and approachable. If your values are aligned with that of a potential candidate, it instantly makes your business a desirable place to work.

Not only is this a useful tool for candidates to use, it is also useful to you as a business. When recruiting for a role, you can find the right talent for you more easily, simply by matching your values to a candidate’s. Ensuring that a candidate is completely compatible with your company could help to find you some exceptional talent and help you to retain them. It also makes it easier to identify who would be the most reliable within your team and who can contribute to the best of their ability, whilst being able to socially integrate within the team.

Additionally, if your mission includes a focus on training and development, then this will assure candidates that there is always room for growth within your business – which is a top priority for millennials today.

  1. Employee retention

Practicing your mission and culture will create a supportive environment for your employees; reassuring them and making them feel welcomed and relaxed. This kind of atmosphere will be sure to contribute to employee productivity, therefore creating higher quality operations, which in turn, improves the quality of your overall service.

Company values can also increase an employee’s self-awareness; seeing your values can influence them to realise what they believe in and what they want to achieve within your business. Guiding your employees to success can also add emotional value to your business and increase the chance of employee loyalty.

  1. Decision-making made easy!

When making tough decisions, it may be difficult to work out which is the best route to take for your company. However, being aware of your values, culture and mission may help you in this field. How? It’s simple; decision-making should always consider your values, culture and mission and align with them. Not only does this make difficult decisions easier, it also strengthens your values and shows others that you stick to them, making you more reliable, responsible and giving you a high ethical value. This reinforces client/customer attraction, talent attraction and employee retention and will help you to build on your company’s reputation.

So how can you use and develop your values to reap all of these benefits?

Two thirds of employers admitted to not mentioning their organisation’s values and mission when advertising or interviewing for a role (LinkedIn global HR survey). Perhaps this is a good starting point for you…

Ask yourself these questions;

  • Are outsiders easily made aware of your organisation’s values, culture and mission?
  • Is this information available on y­­our website and social media?
  • How accessible is this information to your current employees?

If the answer is no, then this may be a strategy that you can consider. For more hints and tips on company values, culture and missions, keep an eye out on our blog for more!