Corporate culture that pays off

What makes an organisation truly a great workplace? The obvious answer is not readily available. But it may probably be said that an organisation that operates at its full potential by allowing its people to do their best works will take the organisation to one such great place. There are, of course, many reasons but today, I will choose to deal with just one that is called 'A Strong Positive Corporate Culture' which works as an enabler for Engagement, Retention and Performance. The outcome of this trio is growth, productivity, competitiveness and last but not the least, a healthy bottom-line with long-term sustainability.
Essentially, a company's culture is its personality, and for sure, every organisation has one, good or bad. Even the absence of a visible culture describes a culture of some kind. We all know that corporate culture is about beliefs, values and behaviours that determine how an organisation's employees and management interact and carry out business activities. Generally speaking, corporate culture is implied and not clearly defined, which develops organically over time from deeply ingrained beliefs and practices of the people of the company.
Why is corporate culture so important? And what then is a strong positive corporate culture? One reason HR experts suggest that a company's culture is becoming increasingly important to job-seekers when deciding available options. In addition to the position itself, compensation, and other benefits, job applicants are considering a company's culture as a choice differential before accepting a position. In many cases, applicants want to be sure that the company and its culture is a good fit for their own temperament, personality and work habits. That said, it is important that organisations nourish strong, positive cultures, and even more important that they work to change negative or bad cultures. I have observed job-seekers treat companies with negative culture as a temporary parking place before they get the opportunity to migrate to a good one. Needless to say that a company's employment brand is public knowledge. The job-seekers are fully aware of this and they take a considered decision before they choose to work for those companies. Any career stint in an otherwise infamous company may deduct their value of candidature to a potentially good employer instead of adding anything.
A company's culture is reflected in its dress code (casual or formal), business hours (just 9 to 5 or extended hours), attendance ( zero tolerance for lateness), office setup (clumsy or neat and clean, privacy, convenient), employee benefits (free or subsidised snacks/lunches, subsidised transport, bonuses, hospitalisation, group life insurance, dysfunctional provident fund and gratuity, annual increases and promotion linked to personal liking etc.),accessibility (closed, open door or even no door), communications (body language- reacting or responding, language judgmental or participative), recognition and reward architecture (occasional, merit or metric based), delegation (by chance or choice ), shifts in decisions (unpredictable, sudden, participative),signature rituals - minimum 7 to 8 people signing one document (mass-signing event with no clear responsibility of a specific person), gender bias (no female employee - commitment to my mother or wife), process unfriendly, high incidence of employee turnover (if you can splash money, getting people is not a big deal),training and development (part time or full time, part of a belief in continuous learning or just rituals), performance celebration (any good performance or once a year), promotion (by chance,  choice or personal liking ), biased crony target setting - (your target is less because I like you), authority (all coming from the one person directly or indirectly, job security (not too sure ! depends on luck, conformity or saying yes to anything said or done by the super boss), treatment of sales force and customers (sales, not service focused), hard work not smart work and every other aspect of operations.
The fact is that every company does have cultures of their own, good or bad, but by and large, it is mostly on the negative side. One of my friends jokingly remarked 'what we have in most of our corporate is not culture but agriculture!' Frankly, I will not be far from the truth if I say that our agriculture is, in fact, more modern, organised and productive than our corporate culture. In the corporate world of Bangladesh, culture is the most-talked-about yet least appreciated and practiced thing. With the exception of a rare few, there is hardly any instance of good corporate culture in Bangladeshi business corporations.
Conversely, the multinational companies (MNCs) stand out as organisations with strong positive culture, there by making them as the 'Most In Demand Employers'. However, all is not bad news for Bangladesh - the commercial banks and non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs) have made tremendous progress in building strong positive cultures - thanks to Bangladesh Bank initiatives and the enterprising investors in the sectors of the country.
So if your company is not a great place to work, people find out fast. This shifts power into the hands of job-seekers. In today's context, retention of high- performing employees is a big challenge. Culture can be described as the most critical factor to ensure any contributing performer's long-term continuity. Employee turnover is symptomatic of far deeper issues that have not been addressed in many cases, which may include low employee morale, absence of a clear career path, lack of recognition, poor employee-manager relationships, irregular pay disbursement and a lot other issues.
A lack of clearly defined role expectations, delegation of authority and commitment to the organisation can also cause an employee to gradually withdraw and begin looking for other opportunities. Financial benefit does not always play a major role in instigating turnover as is normally thought.
In a business environment, the goal of employers is usually to decrease employee turnover (not in all cases though), thereby decreasing training and development costs, recruitment costs, loss of talent to competition and organisational knowledge. The sudden discontinuity of an employee's service serves as a disruptive break for the organisation, be it at the top i.e. CEO level or at the bottom i.e. Sales Rep level. This effectively forces the organisation to get locked into a vicious cycle of re-doing everything again and again. When a new CEO joins, he presents a brand-new agenda that requires time and a host of other initiatives to get all on board for alignment and execution. If it is a top leadership position in a start-up business, the consequences could be deadly. By implementing lessons learned from key organisational behaviour concepts, employers can improve retention rates and decrease the associated costs of high turnover. However, this isn't always the case. Employers can seek "positive turnover" whereby they aim to maintain only those employees whom they consider to be value. But, practically, it is not so simple.
Employee engagement and performance both come as two mutually complementary strings of a musical instrument. It virtually precedes employee retention in the sense that unless someone is engaged, it is unlikely that he or she will continue for a long period, let alone putting up performance according to potential. By employee engagement what we mean is organisations should sensitise themselves with the unexpressed desires and likings of the employees and ensure that valued employees are engaged with the organisation. It is rightly said that what customer loyalty is to sales, an engaged employee is same to the HR. It is that mental appeal and attachment that go beyond just satisfaction and ensure the long-term and productive tenure of the employee with the employer.
Employee engagement has turned out a top business priority for the C - Suit executives. In this rapid-cycle economy, business leaders know that having a high-performing workforce is essential for growth and survival. They recognise that a highly engaged workforce can increase innovation, productivity, and bottom-line performance, while reducing costs related to frequent hiring rituals and ensure retention in a highly competitive market.
The writer is currently serving as CEO in Partex Star Group. [email protected]