The Purposeful Workplace: how to create a compelling corporate culture
Record numbers of employees have been moved to, well… move, when it’s come to their careers in recent times. The challenge is written large for employers – offer a clear, compelling purpose and corporate culture or your organisation will suffer.
During the Covid pandemic, employees suffered from what organisational psychologist Adam Grant calls ‘an absence of wellbeing’. This resulted in decreased motivation and watered down the work ethic among some employees – leaving some adrift from their employers and disillusioned.
Since then, the workplace has experienced a high turnover of employees – dubbed the great resignation – which has brought the issue of employee voice, satisfaction, and work purpose to the fore.
A study by Glassdoor found a bad corporate culture to be 10.4 times more likely to send employees packing than the value of their pay packet. And among younger employees particularly, a strong, relatable purpose is a crucial part of their day-to-day engagement.
Employers need to communicate a renewed and authentic purpose, and engage employees in it. Clear, compelling evidence of social purpose, strategic objectives and environmental, social and governance (ESG) commitments – restated often – will inspire better ownership and identity.
An MIT Sloan Survey in 2022 found that 72% of respondents strongly agree that it is ‘very important to them to work for an organisation with a purpose they believe in’.
Another survey found that more than 70% of people want to work for a company that is environmentally responsible.
With this in mind, effective internal communication helps organisations to better articulate direction and strategy when it comes to uniting employees behind a common purpose.
Sequel’s 2022 Trends Report shared top tips on how to give clearer purpose to your business culture while ensuring you reach all your people, wherever they’re working.
Our top 3 tips include:
- Hold focus groups to find out if employees relate and connect to your organisational purpose and strategy. Use this insight to see where communication needs to be improved or where the purpose could be evolved
- Connect the dots between the purposes of individuals, teams and the wider business so people understand where they fit in and the impact they have
- Weave the company purpose into daily comms (subtly) so it becomes part of the culture and business as usual.
Go to Internal communications agency – Sequel Group for more details of how we are helping clients to solve challenges and deliver impact.
