Last night on a fun and engaging HR Happy Hour show, Charee Klimek from Vocii, and Meghan M. Biro from TalentCulture joined us to discuss organizational or company culture; what it means, why is it important, and how companies and candidates can better understand and leverage culture.
If you missed the show, I encourage you to listen to the replay here:
The show brought up quite a few interesting topics, and honestly one hour probably was not enough to cover such a wide-ranging, slightly ambiguous, and diverse subject such as company culture.
For me, a few points really resonated:
One - There has never been more of an opportunity for organizations to communicate the message of what they believe in, how they see themselves, and the kinds of attitudes, behaviors, and values that the people that inhabit the organization exhibit, and by extension what types of people would be good candidates in the future. With all the free and low-cost tools and mechanisms available to organizations, if your message is not getting out the way you desire, either you simply don't care, or you are not really trying hard enough.
Two - Culture is not just about having a cool company blog, or a CEO that likes to Tweet. There actually were great company cultures and places to work at before Zappos came along, (I am not sure anyone actually said that in the show, but I think it is true). Culture is woven into the everything the organization does, from what products and services it offers, to the way it deals with its stakeholders, even to the way it is reflected in its physical surroundings, the way it treats the environment, the community, and even the world at large.
Three - And thanks to Mary Ellen Slayter from SmartBrief from the SHRM VIP Tweetup in Washington, we learned that SHRM (at least at this week's Legal-themed event) is doing a solid job promoting fear, restraint, and a firm grip on the status quo with respect to the use of social media. Rather than rehash it all here, go check out Mark Stelzner's blog for his take.
Thanks once again to Charee and Meghan and all who called, listened, and tweeted!