By Joanna Morley, European FD of O.C. Tanner

What is workplace culture? Employees will know whether their organisation has a good or bad culture but, putting into words what makes a culture positive and negative may prove trickier. This is because the term ‘culture’ can still create a lot of confusion and is often associated with how something ‘feels’. It doesn’t help that when you type ‘culture’ into Google it returns over eight billion results alone. Joanna Morley, European FD of workplace culture specialist, O.C. Tanner, provides her insights on what company culture is, why it’s so important and how banking and finance organisations can design the culture they want.

Defining culture and its crucial role

A workplace culture is the beating heart of an organisation. It’s the shared values, attitudes and beliefs, influencing what is important, how people work, and how the organisation interacts with its customers and extended community. An organisational culture is alive, continually influencing and being influenced by the values and behaviours of its people, benefiting and suffering from both inside and outside forces. Though they are highly complex and changing, strong workplace cultures act and respond in predictable ways.

In fact, great workplace cultures have significant advantages – attracting talent, inspiring innovation, developing strong leaders, improving wellbeing and increasing revenue. And organisations with healthy cultures are 16 times’ more likely to retain their employees. For those organisations that have poor cultures, they will be stagnant and are likely to have high staff turnover, poor employee wellbeing and slow growth.

The six key elements of an irresistible culture

So how can organisations go about improving their corporate cultures? When faced with a culture crisis, the initial response might be to introduce bonuses and rewards, such as by giving employees Friday afternoons off and providing vouchers to high achievers. But cultural issues run deep and so ‘quick fixes’ will only ever paper over the cracks, causing more of a distraction than real solutions.

To improve a poor culture, leaders must address the six building blocks of organisational culture – the ‘talent magnets’ – first uncovered by O.C. Tanner followed extensive global research. These magnets create an irresistible organisational culture, making employees want to stick around.

The first of these talent magnets is purpose. Organisations can no longer get away with paying a competitive salary and providing a pension in return for engagement and loyalty. Employees are attracted to purpose-driven organisations that have a clear and inspiring ‘reason to be’ above and beyond lining shareholders’ pockets. From helping to improve the lives of the impoverished through to cutting their environmental impact, organisations must have an easily understood and communicated purpose that employees can connect with.

As it stands, 79 percent of banking professionals and 85 percent of financial services employees believe that their organisation has a clear purpose, however not as many feel that the purpose motivates them to do their best work (72 percent and 77 percent respectively). This gap highlights the need to revisit purpose to ensure its resonating with employees.

The second ‘talent magnet’ is opportunity. Staff need to be given a range of opportunities so that they are consistently challenged and engaged. This isn’t just about being promoted, it could involve providing individuals with ‘special projects’ to lead, secondment opportunities or giving them the chance to work with people outside of their immediate team. 71 per cent of banking professionals and three-quarters of financial services professionals (75 per cent) currently feel as though their organisation provides adequate opportunities for career advancement, although it’s important to drill down to ensure that opportunities are provided for all. For example, O.C. Tanner’s research has revealed that just 67 per cent of banking professionals believe that all employees at their organisation are given the opportunity to grow, not just the favourites.

Success is also important. It’s not unusual for people to want to work for a high-flying company but of course, not every company can be the leader in its field. Whether the organisation is a small start-up or an established global conglomerate, the key is to ensure your people feel as though they’re playing on a ‘winning team’. This means regularly shouting about successes and demonstrating pride in achievements.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, leadership is key to an attractive organisational culture. Leadership used to be about being authoritative and controlling. Now employees are demanding modern leaders who are collaborative, empower their teams, show appreciation and get to know their people as individuals, looking to connect them to company purpose, their accomplishments and each other. By nurturing modern leadership within an organisation, the impacts are significant with an 81 percent greater chance of increasing revenue, a 40 percent increase in employee engagement and cases of burnout decreasing by 57 percent.

Another important talent magnet is appreciation. Not effectively appreciating staff can have dire consequences as it can create a workforce which feels downtrodden and taken for granted. By recognising staff for ongoing effort, rewarding their results and celebrating their careers in ways that are genuine and meaningful are vital for creating happy and engaging working environments. Unfortunately, not all companies are good at giving recognition, with 48 percent of banking professionals and 47 percent of financial services employees stating that the recognition they receive at work feels like an empty gesture that isn’t meaningful. And so businesses must get better at giving recognition in a sincere and personalised way. Even better is if recognition is integrated into everyday culture, with organisations with integrated recognition four times’ more likely to have highly engaged employees.

Finally, wellbeing is a vital ingredient to an irresistible culture. More than ever, employees want their employers to support their social and emotional needs as well as their physical and financial health, with leaders who get to know their people as individuals better able to understand and support their needs. As hybrid working is more likely to lead to a siloed and fragmented culture, leaders must find ways to improve social connections, with employees who feel connected to one another, 12 times’ more likely to thrive.

Designing for cultural success

Companies are competing for talent more than ever before. Todays employees also have very high expectations of their employer, meaning that cultures simply can’t be left to ‘take their course’ but must be carefully designed and nurtured. Every organisation must take steps to improve their own working environments, with those companies that take the initiative with their cultures more likely to attract top quality recruits that become engaged, loyal and high-performing employees.

* Research insights are from O.C. Tanner’s Global Culture Report