Why corporate culture already has an impact during recruitment: What binds employees to companies in the long term?

Introduction

Employees want to be paid for their work and have job security. For a long time, these were core requirements that employers could concentrate on fulfilling. Admittedly, there is a certain degree of exaggeration involved here, but we want to show how different the situation is today compared to the past. The days when the employee was a supplicant and satisfied with basic requirements are definitely over. A major issue is the fit between values and, more broadly, the corporate culture and the employee's values. It is therefore important for a company to analyse its culture and define it on the basis of fixed criteria. At the same time, it must be ensured during the recruitment process that there is a potential fit between the applicant and the company. At this point, we are therefore far beyond the perspective of a secure job or the fit of requirements with the required tasks.

The cultural analysis

A company should establish its own identity and develop values. There are several aspects that a company should consider. The overarching questions are:

The financial perspective: What financial targets do we want to achieve (also: productivity and growth targets)
Value perspective: What do we stand for in terms of ecological and social requirements? What do we stand for in terms of how we treat our employees? What roles do we expect?
Stakeholder perspective: In which markets do we want to operate? What benefits do we want to offer?
Environmental perspective: How do we influence our ecological and economic behaviour?
Process perspective: How do we need to organise ourselves in terms of processes in order to realise our positioning (values and benefits) effectively and efficiently?
"Enabler": What conditions do we need to create in terms of personnel, organisation, technology and assets in order to achieve the target vision?

(S&P Consulting, 2023)

The aspects mentioned are essential and naturally vary in their focus depending on the company's business activities. The definition of corporate culture is also the basis for being able to evaluate culture in the first place and also to see in the process whether the respective employee fits in with the company's culture.
There are numerous models that focus more on the psychological aspects and motivational factors of the employee, such as the Dension organisational structure model (Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2006).

Analytics and consulting teams help get the most value from your survey results by looking at the data by specific characteristics that have been shown to impact performance - mission, adaptability, engagement and consistency. The data is then broken down by various demographics (e.g. business sector, geographic location and functional role). The insights from these reports help to strategically align your culture change process across the organisation to achieve both short-term success and long-term sustainability and effectiveness.

Software increasingly important

While the requirements and analysis points presented are based on models that were still partly filled out manually in companies, the topic of software support has become a very important aspect of cultural analyses. Software applications from companies such as unlash UG allow questions to be customised to suit the respective company. While the focus here is exclusively on internal processes, where a corporate culture is compared with the feelings and perceptions of employees, the culture of the company can be scrutinised beforehand. As applicants are becoming more demanding and at the same time there is a high level of skills shortage in many industries, it makes sense for a company to pay attention to cultural fit as early as the recruiting stage. In so-called cultural analyses, a software-supported analysis can already be carried out during the introductory process. This involves asking what drives the employee, what their work-life balance is like, what role they can/would like to play in the company, etc. This allows the HR department to anticipate at an early stage whether the candidate is a good fit for the position. Away from purely technical requirements. The prerequisite is that the company in question has invested a lot of time in developing the company's value culture. Only then can the right questions be asked, which in turn have an impact on fit or non-fit.

Conclusion

Addressing corporate culture has become essential for companies. Candidates are increasingly looking for companies that match their values and character. The challenge is for companies to be transparent about their defined culture and to be able to communicate and live it credibly. Software solutions that minimise the risk of a candidate becoming disappointed with the company after a certain period of time because it does not match their values have become increasingly established as a lever for HR departments.

Text written by Kai Wichelmann