What’s Your Employer’s BCD?

Every organization has a culture.  Some manage their culture.  Others let culture manage them.  Culture impacts an organization’s brand, reputation, effectiveness and efficiency.  It also influences many critical things for employees including how - work is conducted; priorities are determined; challenges and problems are solved; and relationships are created and sustained.  It’s the behavioral blueprint for what ultimately is tolerated and reinforced.  Bottom line – research continues to reinforce that business culture:

• Can have a significant impact on performance,
• “Eats strategy for lunch,” and
• Differentiates an organization from other prospective employers
  
  

So, what’s your Employer’s Business Culture Differentiation (BCD)?  Is it sustainable?  Is it balanced?

Today’s competitive, global economy has put extreme pressure on some historical, Employer BCD elements including:

• Wages
• Benefits
• Rewards and Perks
  
  

Many of these BCD elements have had to be reduced and/or severely limited.  It has become financially challenging, if not impossible, to sustain being the #1 or “the best” in these historical BCD elements.  So how do you differentiate yourself in the marketplace and ultimately attract, develop, engage, and retain critical human capital?

One very successful option is to keep historical BCD elements competitive and complement them with non-financial BCD elements including:

• Ethics and Values. A Stanford Graduate School study found “a substantial number of MBAs were willing to forgo some financial benefits to work for an organization with a better reputation for corporate social responsibility and ethics.”  
• D&I. Corporate Leadership Council’s research indicated that “companies high in diversity and inclusion of its people have better results on discretionary efforts (+12%), intent to stay (+19%), team collaboration (+57%) and team commitment (+42%).”
• Leadership. MSW Research reinforced that “a manager’s ability to build strong relationships with employees, build strong team interaction and lead in a ‘person-centered’ way creates an engaging environment in which employees can perform at the highest possible level.”
• Recognition. According to O.C. Tanner research, “more than twice as many employees are highly engaged amongst those who receive performance recognition compared to those that do not.”  

Today, more and more companies offer “competitive” wage and benefit packages.  High performance organizations must continually differentiate and distinguish themselves for current and future employees.  One key way to do this is to evaluate and address your Employer’s BCD.

If you are interested in assessing your business culture and discovering what really makes you different, then let’s chat.