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Corporate culture comprises some of the hardest to define aspects of your business: vision, values, philosophies, leadership, language, norms, beliefs, habits, and more. Because defining corporate culture is so challenging, though, many business owners overlook it altogether. Corporate culture exists, however, whether a company’s leadership actively takes a part in creating it or not. Business leaders who do not help shape their organization’s corporate culture run the risk of letting their businesses lose control of such an important facet.
Creating a vibrant, easy-to-understand corporate culture can help organizations attract and keep top talent. It is critical to employee engagement and retention, and it can have an impact their happiness and satisfaction in the workplace. Creating a thriving corporate culture can also affect performance by instilling values relating to work ethic or by the way it shapes management styles. Culture can also influence the way your company is viewed by its competitors and industry.
It’s All About Authenticity: Defining corporate culture is valuable, but the definition must fit your unique company and its values. Don’t base your idea of culture on what competitors are doing, and don’t try to force your company culture to fit within a narrow definition based solely on what you’d like the company to be. Instead, take an honest assessment of your existing corporate culture, and define specific adjustments you’d like to make over time.
Corporate culture is something that permeates every aspect of a business, and changing it means changing employees’ feelings about the business, their understanding of what is expected of them, and a shared sense of the things that matter most to the business. Simply slapping a new label on your corporate culture won’t do much to change those deeply ingrained ideas. Shifting the perception of what your business stands for will take plenty of time, planning, cooperation, communication, and demonstrating that the company’s spoken values are much more than mere words.
Clarify Purpose: Start simply by defining your organization’s purpose. Then, ensure all employees and stakeholders understand that purpose, have bought into it, and are united toward fulfilling it. A clear definition of your corporate culture is pertinent to how effective it is.
Make Culture Part of Your Communications: Build a shared cultural vocabulary by reinforcing company purpose, vision, and values in all weekly and daily communications. Creating corporate culture means keeping it in mind when you set goals, announce achievements, plan events, and celebrate successes. Take advantage of company meetings as opportunities to reiterate core philosophies and unite the team. Weave culture into the visual design and layout of your workspace, as well. Prove your company’s stated values are more than just lip-service. For example, make sure your “green” business offers employees access to plenty of recycling bins, and avoid filling your business that touts “creativity and outside-the-box thinking,” with small cubicles, which literally box employees in.
Lead by Example: Call on your executive team to help define corporate culture. Other members of the organization will look to what the executive team does, not just to what they say, to determine their cultural reality. Setting the right example is critical when it comes to culture, so hold meetings to ensure your highest-ranking leaders are on board and fully committed to doing their parts.
Hire with Culture in Mind: Maintaining a specific corporate culture requires hiring not just quality people, but the right people. Communicate your corporate culture clearly during the interview process, just as you would other company goals, and make sure it fits with prospective employees’ own values and work style.
Grow Your Culture as You Grow Your Organization: When companies grow, culture becomes vulnerable because new employees bring with them new ideas, ingrained values, and past experiences. Set clear guidelines and provide reminders of cultural priorities to help maintain control of company culture during growth periods.
Get Everyone on Board: Make team members accountable for living up to the company’s standards and representing its values. Accepting shared responsibility for creating company culture gives employees a sense of ownership and purpose. Set clear expectations for employee behavior, and encourage managers to label and confront actions that violate company values. Make culture part of performance reviews, and address culture when measuring company progress as well.
Shape the Culture Around Your People, Not the Other Way Around: As company priorities and processes naturally evolve over time, the way you define your corporate culture may no longer fit. If your company’s value statements focus on the importance of in-person, face-to-face meetings, but 80% of your new employees now telecommute, it may be time to rethink whether those values still make sense. Don't try to force your people conform to a cultural definition that is no longer relevant. Instead, adjust your concept of corporate culture to fit your people and what’s important to them.
Corporate cultures are born with companies. They have lives of their own that go on whether business leaders intervene to help shape them or not. Defining and guiding corporate culture is about much more than words. It requires that companies and their leadership commit to a set of values and agree to a clear set of actions to weave those values throughout all of the core business functions. A thriving corporate culture is like a company’s soul: it is present in the way it does business, what it says about itself, who it hires, who it promotes, what it delivers to clients, and so much more. Business owners who understand the importance of corporate culture, can build happier, more engaged, better performing, and united work forces driven by people who understand their shared purpose.
On March 8th, 2017, a team of eight volunteers, including top fundraisers from our network of independent sales offices, as well as a Cydcor team member, returned home from their life-changing medical volunteer trip to Guadalajara, Mexico. There, they worked alongside a dedicated Operation Smile team of volunteers for an adventure they will never forget. While on the mission, volunteers Amanda Tram, Ben Gouwens, David Espinal, Donny Boyer, Melissa White, Mouad Alami, Sandra Tejada, and Yesi Andrade assisted the Operation Smile medical team by attending patient screenings, escorting patients to their surgeries, entertaining children and their families as they wait for their procedures, and reuniting families with their children post-op.
While these much-needed surgeries can transform the lives of children who may not have been able to eat or speak properly prior to having the procedure, or who do not attend school for of fear of being teased, participating in the medical missions and witnessing children’s emotional journeys can often have a profound effect on the volunteers as well.
“There is one moment of the volunteer trip that will be etched in my mind forever. Alejandra, the little girl we fell in love with, had a pretty severe cleft lip and was very aware of how she looked, despite being an extremely happy child. When she came out of surgery, I used my phone to show her what she looked like. She stared at herself for a couple seconds as if she didn’t recognize herself, until she gave the sweetest smile I have ever seen. My heart melted. The trajectory of her life at that moment was changed forever!” said Melissa White.
“I am impressed by the courage and strength these kids have. I was very touched by Paulina, an 11-year-old who traveled with her brother from far away in hopes of getting the surgery that would restore her smile. I can't imagine everything going through Paulina's head; first time out of her village, seeing a big city for the first time, not being able to understand anyone but her brother. The most incredible moment was seeing her look at herself for the first time. She was in shock, almost confused. A few minutes later, you could see tears rolling down her cheeks. I could not stop crying, I will remember that moment forever,” shared Cydcor team member Yesi Andrade.
In addition to our corporate volunteer program, Cydcor has been partnering with Operation Smile on fundraising initiatives since 2010. Cydcor holds an annual Day of Smiles event, along with many other fundraising events throughout the year, to help provide free cleft lip and cleft palate surgeries for children from low and middle income countries. With the support of more than 3,000 dedicated volunteers from our network of more than 375 independent sales offices, we have raised more than $800,000 to date. That’s enough to bring smiles to the faces of nearly 3,500 children.
Operation Smile’s vision of a world where no child suffers from lack of access to safe, well timed, and effective surgery fits well with the values of our business.
“We are a people helping people business, and it is evident from the way Operation Smile treats their patients, the community, and their volunteers that they are as well,” said Donny Boyer.
Cydcor CEO, Gary Polson explains the immense value of lending our support to great causes like Operation Smile. “We can achieve the great lives we aspire to live, by taking actions that improve the lives of others. We must be compassionate and help those in need. We must take initiative to help others beat the odds. We must act with humility and set the example. Our business gives us countless opportunities to help other people. I am so proud of who we are and what we accomplish together. We become great when we do great things, especially when we do them for others."
“What unites us all is the shared belief that we have an obligation to provide people with an opportunity to lead a better life. This extends far beyond the boundaries of our business, to helping people in our communities and in faraway places.” Said Cydcor President, Vera Quinn.
Cydcor continues our commitment to helping Operation Smile change lives through both our corporate volunteer program and fundraising efforts, and we look forward to achieving $1 million dollars raised on the organization’s behalf.
To learn more about Cydcor and our support of Operation Smile, please visit our donation home page.
Operation Smile is an international medical charity that has provided hundreds of thousands of free surgeries for children and young adults in developing countries who are born with cleft lip, cleft palate or other facial deformities. It is one of the oldest and largest volunteer-based organizations dedicated to improving the health and lives of children worldwide through access to surgical care. Since 1982, Operation Smile has developed expertise in mobilizing volunteer medical teams to conduct surgical missions in resource-poor environments while adhering to the highest standards of care and safety. Operation Smile helps to fill the gap in providing access to safe, well-timed surgeries by partnering with hospitals, governments and ministries of health, training local medical personnel, and donating much-needed supplies and equipment to surgical sites around the world. Founded and based in Virginia, U.S., Operation Smile has extended its global reach to more than 60 countries through its network of credentialed surgeons, pediatricians, doctors, nurses, and student volunteers. For more information, visit www.operationsmile.org.
Cydcor is excited to announce our continued relationship with Operation Smile. Operation Smile and Cydcor plan to fund two additional medical missions, providing free surgeries to repair cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial deformities for children in need around the globe.
Cydcor’s relationship with Operation Smile began in 2010, and together we have helped heal nearly 2,100 smiles through fundraisers, donations, and our Week of Smiles fundraiser, to help fund charity medical missions to Guatemala, Mexico and Brazil. Through the dedication and compassion of teams across the nation, Cydcor has raised more than $500,000 to heal the smiles of children in need and help fund missions globally. We simply can’t do it without the support and dedication of our Cydcor employees and the many independently owned sales offices across the U.S.
"We are so proud to have funded three medical missions for Operation Smile, and we are on our way to funding a fourth and fifth," said Cydcor Chief Operating Officer Vera Quinn. "We are honored to be able to support Operation Smile in such a way that we can help make such a difference for so many families around the globe."
At Cydcor’s annual Keys to Success 2015 in Dallas, Texas Operation Smile founders Dr. William P. Magee, Jr., and his wife Kathleen S. Magee were guest speakers where we celebrated the hard working teams across the country. Speaking to an audience of 800, the Magees spoke on the importance of charity and dedication.
To help support Cydcor's fundraising efforts, visit www.operationsmile.org/cydcor. For more information on Operation Smile's global efforts, visit www.operationsmile.org, and follow on Twitter and Facebook.
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About Operation Smile
Operation Smile, headquartered in Virginia Beach, Virginia, is an international medical charity with a presence in more than 60 countries, whose global network of thousands of credentialed medical volunteers from more than 80 countries is dedicated to helping improve the health and lives of children. Since its founding in 1982, Operation Smile has provided more than 220,000 free surgical procedures for children and young adults born with cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial deformities. To build long-term sufficiency in resource poor environments, Operation Smile trains doctors and local medical professionals in its partner countries so they are empowered to treat their local communities. Operation Smile also donates medical equipment, supplies and provides year-round medical treatment through its worldwide centers.