How to Create a Strong Company Culture: Examples from Successful Businesses

Creating a strong company culture is essential for any successful business. It reflects the shared values, attitudes, and behaviors that define a company and sets the tone for its overall success. A great company culture can improve employee satisfaction, productivity, and loyalty, all while improving its bottom line. In this article, we will explore how some of the most successful businesses have created a strong company culture and the key takeaways that can help any business grow tremendously.

Clarify Your Company Values

The foundation of strong company culture lies in clarifying and communicating company values. These values tell employees what is important for the company and can guide decision-making at all levels. For Airbnb, community is a core value, and their efforts reflect this, including gift cards for employees to experience Airbnb stays in different cities. Their efforts have built a culture that attracts employees who believe in their mission, mission-driven people who feel fulfillment through their work have the potential to feel more engaged and loyal.

Similarly, Zappos has customer service as its core value. Their iconic commitment to the customer is well known and continuously practiced, fed into their culture and led by example by the CEO himself, resulted in consistent positive employee feedback and very high customer satisfaction rates.

Focus On Employee Development

A strong company culture also values employee development. Kin and Carta, a digital transformation agency, consider their ‘career pathways’ framework the key to creating a culture of learning and development. By identifying areas of expertise, potential career paths, and enabling growth, their employees never stop learning. The core for their culture is unbounded learning that mixes the latest trends, productivity, curiosity, and supporting each other to help achieve their larger goals.

Encourage Collaboration and Teamwork

Collaboration and teamwork are critical components of a strong company culture. For example, at World Wildlife Fund, collaboration is essential between different departments, which helps achieve their goal of saving iconic species and fighting climate change. They pride themselves on their high-performing team that works together towards shared goals.

Offer Rewards and Recognition

A strong company culture also acknowledges the contribution of its employees, providing rewards, recognition, and continued motivation for great work. Google, a well-known exemplar company in this facet, consistently ranks as one of the world’s most desired places to work. Google has created a culture of employee recognition, with an extensive rewards system called ‘gThanks’. This rewards and recognition has directly been linked with employee satisfaction, improved performance, and employee retention.

Conclusion

A strong company culture is a significant contributor to a company’s success. Creating and maintaining it requires commitment and a willingness to experiment, evolve and adapt. The examples outlined above only go to illustrate how successful businesses are doing this, and the result is evident in the high levels of employee satisfaction, better employee retention, and consequently impacting their bottom line. Clarifying your company’s values, encouraging employee learning and development, emphasizing teamwork and collaboration, and providing rewards and recognition for excellent work, can go a long way towards building a strong company culture that helps your business thrive.