Describing and Understanding Company Culture: A Practical Guide

Company culture is a critical component of any organization. It encompasses the values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that shape how employees interact, collaborate, and conduct business. Effectively describing and understanding company culture is essential for attracting talent, engaging employees, and achieving business goals. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore practical tips and insights on how to describe and decipher organizational culture.

What Exactly is Company Culture?

Before diving into describing culture it’s important to have a clear definition of what company culture actually means. Simply put company culture refers to the shared assumptions, values, norms, and tangible signs or artifacts that govern how people behave and interact in an organization. It’s the unwritten rules and guidelines that employees follow.

Some key elements that comprise company culture include:

• Values The guiding principles and beliefs that dictate behavior. For example integrity excellence, adaptability.

• Norms The unspoken rules and expectations around how work gets done Such as communication styles, appropriate work attire, workplace etiquette

• Artifacts: The tangible signs of company culture such as office design, company branding, perks and benefits.

• Behaviors: How employees act, collaborate, communicate and make decisions.

Culture manifests through various touchpoints like policies, procedures, physical workspaces, rituals and how leadership behaves. It powerfully shapes employee experience and business performance.

Why is Company Culture Important to Describe?

Taking time to accurately describe company culture provides tremendous value, including:

• Attracting talent: A compelling and authentic culture description helps attract candidates that will thrive in the company’s environment.

• Onboarding: Clearly conveying culture to new hires helps them integrate faster by aligning expectations.

• Engagement: When employees feel aligned with company culture, engagement and retention improves.

• Consistency: Describing expected cultural behaviors and norms maintains consistency as the company grows.

• Benchmarking: Documenting the current state of culture allows you to measure progress and cultural evolution over time.

• Intentionality: The act of describing company culture makes leaders more thoughtful and intentional about shaping it.

How to Effectively Describe Your Company’s Culture

When creating a culture description, there are some best practices to follow:

• Involve employees: Get perspectives from different levels and departments to paint an accurate picture.

• Make it authentic: Culture descriptions shouldn’t be aspirational marketing fluff. Keep it real to build trust.

• Show, don’t just tell: Share stories, quotes, and examples that vividly bring the culture to life.

• Keep it concise: Summarize the culture in a digestible way that gets key points across.

• Define values: Specifically list out the core values underpinning the culture.

• Highlight artifacts: Note any tangible cultural symbols, rituals, designs or policies.

• Mention founders: Founders often instill cultural DNA, so acknowledge their influence.

Let’s look at some stellar examples of company culture descriptions:

“We believe in treating others the way we want to be treated. We trust people to do the right thing – and expect them to. We hire talented individuals with different backgrounds because it makes our company stronger. We value diversity, equity and inclusion in all dimensions.” – LinkedIn

“Our culture is driven by flexibility, autonomy and collaboration. We nurture entrepreneurial spirit and enable our people to chart their own course for personal and professional growth.” – GitLab

“We have a warm, relaxed environment where creative people can do their best work without stuffy formality. We maintain a sense of humor while still being professional and responsible.” – Mailchimp

Key Words That Describe Company Culture

The specific words used to describe company culture send strong signals about expected behaviors and attitudes. Here are some positive words commonly used:

• Collaborative: Teamwork and group effort are valued
• Innovative: Creativity, experimentation and new ideas are encouraged
• Supportive: Helpfulness and care for employees is prioritized
• Customer-centric: Keeping customers happy is the focus
• Fun: Having an enjoyable, lighthearted environment
• Mission-driven: Pursuing a meaningful purpose beyond profits
• Inclusive: Diversity and belonging are fostered

And some words to potentially avoid:

• Cutthroat: Hyper-competitive in a harmful way
• Bureaucratic: Buried in rigid rules and red tape
• Political: Filled with self-interest and power plays
• Old-school: Resistant to change and new ways of thinking
• Homogenous: Lacking diversity and representation

The descriptors used offer clues into day-to-day realities of working at a company. Choose words thoughtfully to convey the right cultural environment.

Questions to Ask When Describing Culture

To get a multi-dimensional view of company culture, here are some questions to ask employees, leaders and other stakeholders:

• How would you describe the values or mission that guide the organization?
• What types of behaviors are rewarded or looked down on here?
• How would you characterize the leadership style and tone set by executives?
• What’s the unwritten rules around how work gets done?
• What makes you excited to come to work each day?
• If you had one word to describe the culture here, what would it be?
• What cultural rituals or symbols best capture the environment here?
• What does career growth look like in this culture?
• How does communication and collaboration typically happen?
• How are decisions made and how transparent is the decision process?
• How is conflict addressed and problems solved here?
• How diverse and inclusive is the culture here?

Getting thorough and honest answers to questions like these will provide the raw material to craft an authentic culture description.

Pitfalls to Avoid When Describing Culture

When creating a company culture description, there are some common mistakes to sidestep:

• Fluff over facts: Flowery aspirational branding that sounds inauthentic.

• Generalities: Vague descriptions that lack specifics and relatable examples.

• Inconsistency: Stated values that don’t match actual behavior and norms.

• Excluding artifacts: Not mentioning any cultural touchpoints or tangible signs.

• Stereotyping: Lean on played out startup cliches around ping pong tables and free lunches.

• Jargon: Culture written in impenetrable corporate-speak doesn’t resonate.

• Blind spots: Only capturing perspectives from certain people or levels in the organization.

• Static vs dynamic: Describing culture as fixed vs continually evolving.

The culture description should ring true for all employees and leave people excited about the environment. Avoid cringey corporate tropes that feel inauthentic.

Tips for Understanding Your Company’s Culture

Beyond describing the current state of your culture, it’s critical that leaders actively work to understand their company’s culture on an ongoing basis. Here are some tips:

• Solicit regular feedback: Check-in with employees through surveys, focus groups and open office hours.

• Observe meetings: Sit in on company all-hands, team meetings, and other events to observe dynamics.

• Analyze attrition: Understand why people are leaving through exit interviews.

• Track engagement: Look at participation levels and enthusiasm around employee resource groups.

• Monitor collaboration: Assess cross-functional cooperation through project debriefs.

• Consider diversity: Look at representation data and inclusion survey scores.

• Talk to customers: Get the outside view of your culture from discussions with customers.

• Study artifacts: Take note of changes in policies, office design, branding and rituals.

• Spot inconsistencies: Compare the stated culture versus actual employee experiences.

• Be self-aware: How do your own behaviors as a leader model the culture?

Proactively seeking to understand your company’s culture will allow you to course correct and regularly re-align the environment.

A thoughtfully crafted, authentic company culture description is invaluable. It attracts people, accelerates onboarding, boosts engagement and retains talent. Avoid generic platitudes that ring hollow. Involve employees, get specific with examples and showcase cultural artifacts. Regularly update the description as the culture evolves. Beyond describing the current state of culture, leaders must dedicate themselves to actively understanding the lived employee experiences versus stated ideals. Describing and continuously deciphering culture is how organizations can build an environment where people thrive and accomplish incredible things together.