Competitive Corporate Cultures

By R. Bruce Dalglish, CEO of Alliance Hospice

Today’s workforce is picky, in some industries more than others.  Candidates diligently research companies before applying for new jobs – and one of the key components they look for is a positive corporate culture.  Nowadays, many companies feel the need to improve their workplace culture not only to retain current employees and avoid turnover, but as a recruiting method linked to the public perception of their workplace.

If a company is determined to hire new and high quality talent, they need to be prepared to compete for that calibre of a candidate.  For companies to be perceived as desirable places to work, they need to make the cultivation of positive corporate cultures a priority.  Ultimately, this competition among corporate cultures will not only land quality hires, improve employee retention and prevent costly turnover/transition costs – it will help, not hurt, a company’s overall productivity.

Committing time to nurturing a positive work climate is not a waste.  It’s a long term investment that is interlinked with profitability.

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Ask Your Employees…

By R. Bruce Dalglish, CEO of Alliance Hospice

Tapping into your employees’ insight is a productive exercise to explore.   Your employees’ assessment of your company’s current workplace culture is a helpful way to determine the level of your employees’ overall satisfaction with their work conditions and environment.   By discovering what your employees’ likes and dislikes are, you will procure invaluable insider information to help improve and nurture the most positive workplace culture that is best suited to the specific needs of your staff and company.

Your employees can provide feedback about which elements of their job experience they enjoy the most, or offer examples about why your company is a wonderful place to work.  Understanding which elements of your current workplace atmosphere are positive is a way to determine which direction to pursue, focus on and even improve upon.  Likewise, obtaining a clear picture of aspects of the corporate culture that are not resonating with your employees provides a sense of what to eliminate and adjust.

Furthermore, it’s important to expand, strengthen and leverage the pre-existing positive elements of your workplace environment, and make sure to capitalize on external branding of these elements to improve your image in the eyes of potential hires, customers and other businesses.

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Re-evaluate Your Company’s Values

By R. Bruce Dalglish, CEO of Alliance Hospice

Striking the right balance to maintain a positive corporate culture is not always easy or obvious. Often, it requires the need to periodically carve out time to re-valuate your company’s values. If your values feel antiquated, or have not progressed in the same direction as your company’s product or services, then it’s time to update them.

Your employees and customers can only benefit from this type of update. When a consistent culture can be felt throughout all of the different aspects of a company, employees are typically more content and able to fulfil their tasks more readily and easily. At Alliance Hospice, we value equality, fairness, respect, honesty and trust. Patients can sense if there’s a breakdown of any of these values among staff. In our hospice care facilities, we strive to maintain all of these important values at all times, to ensure that our patients receive the best care possible.

A company’s culture and values spills over into all forms of communication, procedures and decision-making. Commitment to these values foments stability and consistency among staff. If your company’s values are outdated and no longer relevant to the services provided, updating them will get your corporate culture back on track.

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Recruit Employees to Match Corporate Culture Tones

By R. Bruce Dalglish, CEO of Alliance Hospice

When hiring new employees, companies tend to focus solely on a candidate’s skills and experience. In addition to finding a qualified employee that meets the skillset and criteria for a particular position, hiring personnel should also recruit candidates that match the tone of their company’s corporate culture. At Alliance Hospice, we seek employees that are not only skilled in the realm of hospice care, but also encompass the type of sincerity, compassion and empathy necessary to fit into our culture.

The hiring process should be fully comprehensive. Finding employees that will have an easy time fitting into the pre-established work culture is a plus. This hiring tactic saves time, facilitates smooth integration into the team, and reinforces the values of a company’s corporate culture. Existing personnel will adapt better to someone with similar workplace values, and the company’s turnover rate will likely be reduced. By planning ahead and making corporate culture an important part of the hiring and screening process, companies and all staff will benefit in the long run.

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