Workplace Culture Might Be Low Down the List of Priorities for a Company
When the focus is driving towards sales and profitability, but it really shouldn’t be. A company’s reputation is built on how people both within and external to the organisation perceive the brand, and in a digital world where people talk online about their working experiences, this brand perception is increasingly linked to workplace culture.
Online reputation management can be a difficult and complex task today. Anyone in the recruitment market looking to join a company is likely to check out the company’s reviews (both glowing and scathing) on Glassdoor, and on social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok, people really do spill the beans on everything they have experienced when working for a business.
Amidst the horror stories (BrewDog, we’re looking at you, and don’t even get us started on how toxic work culture led to WeWork’s downfall), there are also plenty of positive work culture examples that show how intrinsic a positive working environment is to the strength of the company’s brand. Even a huge corporate like MasterCard has managed to master the art of a motivational and positive culture (they stand at #2 on Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work list in 2024), meaning that even large companies can make their employees feel seen and supported with the right strategy in place.
People talk, but there’s no reason you can’t promote a culture that will only have them wanting to say good things about your company. In this article we’ll look at the main business culture factors that impact on your corporate reputation, and offer advice for fostering and maintaining a positive working culture, particularly in relation to online reputation management. We’ll cover:
01 - What is Company Culture?
Before we go into the link between reputation and corporate culture, let’s examine exactly what is the meaning of workplace culture.
Company culture is a catch all term for the business’ set of behaviours, values and belief systems that dictate how it operates both externally and internally.
As a result, workplace culture can have a huge impact on:
How customers perceive the organization’s culture, in turn influencing its external reputation.
How employees engage with the company.
How all stakeholders view and interact with the company/brand.
Therefore, a healthy workplace culture is one that accurately reflects and lives the company’s core values, boosting employee happiness, brand reputation and organizational success in the process.
Below, we’ll look at some of the benefits of building a strong work culture, and offer some tips and tools for managing brand reputation, as well as sharing some online reputation examples to learn from.
The benefits of a positive work culture
Whether you’re looking to boost your brand reputation, optimise your recruitment solutions to attract great people to your company, or simply to improve the work culture for existing employees, the benefits of building a positive work culture are invaluable and give back great results in very little time.
The benefits of a positive work culture include:
Improved motivation and mental health of employees, leading to an overall more pleasant and productive environment to work in and improved staff loyalty.
Better channels of communication between leadership and other employees, with a higher level of respect and consideration for everyone’s needs, goals and wellbeing.
Greater retention of employees, and the likelihood that if and when they do leave they’re more likely to have good things to say about the company.
A greater attraction to highly-skilled professionals, who are more likely to aspire to work at the company, and improved recruitment solutions as a result.
How positive culture impacts on company reputation
Why does a positive work culture impact on company reputation? One word—authenticity.
It’s extremely difficult (and unwise!) to fake or embellish a positive workplace culture. At YOONO, we can see through our social media screening tools that the corporate world really has become almost completely transparent. It’s no longer possible to conceal aspects of your workplace culture from the world; whether it’s good or bad it will eventually find its way onto social media!
With this in mind, it’s just good common sense to prioritise positive culture, as it has a direct and instant impact on company reputation.
Let’s say you have an upcoming interview to work at Company Inc. If you have access to the internet (!) and a social media account, what’s the first thing you’re going to do? In the same way we now expect reviews for products we might purchase on Amazon, we also expect the same for brands and companies too. If the reviews online aren’t positive, it’s not a great start, and you might lose that recruit before they even meet your team in person.
How company culture shapes customer perception and drives brand loyalty
It’s not just internal morale and employee recruitment that are likely to be impacted by company culture, the biggest impact can be an external one, on how customers perceive your online reputation and brand.
There are extreme examples of workplace cultures having a detrimental impact on the reputation (and survival) of companies. Abercrombie & Fitch, McDonald’s, Ted Baker and the BBC’s recent Strictly scandal are all haunting reminders of how toxic workplace culture can cause serious consequences for companies and the people who work for them.
But the key takeaway is actually how these stories of poor workplace practice never really go away, in spite of the amount of energy and money brands pour into online reputation management afterwards. Customers don’t simply forget these stories of workplace extremes, and it can take many years, if not decades, for companies to move away from reports of a tainted toxic culture.
If a customer feels that a company neglects or mistreats its employees, this will have a direct impact on whether they feel positively about the brand, and can easily lead to switching brand choice on an ethical basis.
Brand loyalty isn’t just external of course. If your company culture is less than rosy, you can experience a House of Cards effect, in which the employees, stakeholders, sister brands and contractors all share stories of negative experiences, creating a whirlpool of spiralling disloyalty that can be near impossible to reverse.
Building a positive work culture takes time and experience, but you’ll be rewarded with an open world, in which both internal and external parties not only feel positive towards your brand, but seek to actively promote it, establishing a chain of loyalty that only serves to make your brand stronger and more resilient over time.
02 - How to Assess and Foster Company Culture
Before attempting to change a company culture, it’s important to evaluate its current state. Healthy cultures reflect a positive environment where workers feel valued and employee wellbeing is high on the list of priorities.
If you’re not sure whether your employees feel ‘seen’ by leadership, or whether the current state of your company’s culture is largely positive or has room for improvement, then strategic assessment is needed. This can be undertaken through a variety of methods, including (but not limited to) internal surveys, employee interviews, external focus groups with customers, partners and stakeholders, and general feedback.
It can also be a good idea to use specific tools to measure workplace culture, in order to closely identify how it is working with – or clashing with – your company values. Online reputation management tools, HR tech and social media screening can help you to assess if the culture is thriving or flagging, and if the right people are in the right place.
How to get rid of a toxic work culture
One of the main reasons individuals turn to YOONO’s recruitment solutions and online reputation checks is that they have had experience of the fallout of a bad hire, or even numerous bad hires that may have contributed to a wider toxic work culture.
Toxic work cultures are more common than you might think, and can quickly develop, sometimes with the introduction of just one poor hire into your team at a senior level. Of course, there are some stories of toxic work cultures that have had huge consequences for a company, and the people who work for them, with them and buy from them.
Let’s look at the example of BrewDog. The independent brewing brand was one of the fastest-growing and most environmentally friendly FMCG companies, but internal reports of a poor working environment led to a huge backlash for the company in 2021. The company has since spent a reported £9 million on trying to repair its toxic workplace culture, but perhaps it was too little too late, as in 2023 the brand reported a £24 million operating loss.
While BrewDog’s story was initially one of an exciting craft beer brand going global, it soon became a nightmare, for both its employees and its investors.
While BrewDog is an extreme example, it also demonstrates how it can be difficult to eradicate a toxic workplace culture, but the good news is that it’s not impossible. The first and most basic step in getting rid of toxicity is to simply acknowledge it. While it might feel easier to allow things to develop as they are, with the hope that a workplace culture will settle or improve, this can often cause even more damage as employees will feel even more neglected.
First steps you can take in eradicating a toxic environment include:
Listening to employees at all levels, and encouraging honesty and openness on a regular basis.
Promoting values, such as diversity, inclusion, kindness and respect, through highly visible internal communications and through example at leadership level.
Identifying if the people at management level are contributing to the problem, by promoting or disguising toxic patterns of behaviour. You can use reputation reports, social media screening and HR tech tools to learn more about the individuals leading your teams.
How to build a positive company culture
Once you’ve assessed your existing workplace culture, and made some small steps towards eradicating any toxicity if present, you are in a position to start making some larger cultural changes. These can take time to have impact, but they are well worth undertaking if your online reputation is at risk.
Here are some ways to start the process:
Create a positive internal communication strategy that reinforces the company’s brand mission, vision and values, and share this with all leadership and employees openly.
Ensure that the company’s vision and values are properly reflected through policies, practices and processes.
Engage with your employees, partners and customers through face-to-face communication, including periodic reviews, seminars and one-on-one support.
Continue measuring these changes to work culture to understand their real world impact, through surveys and reviews that feel informal, friendly and open.
If it’s not working, don’t be afraid to rethink and adjust your approach. You might want to revise your recruitment solutions and strategies to bring in fresh attitudes.
3 - How to Reinforce your Reputation through Company Culture
How can you reinforce your corporate reputation through improving work culture? A combined strategy of taking a proactive, accountable and transparent approach while always striving to improve workplace culture will go a long way to building trust with employees and customers alike.
If people feel they can always ask questions and speak out, this will lead to a more open culture that is the first step in improving company culture and bolstering your reputation as a result.
How to avoid a reputational crisis caused by work culture
A reputational crisis caused by a negative work culture can be kickstarted by any one or group of internal or external factors, such as:
Ethical breaches.
Negative customer reviews.
Customer complaints.
Negative media coverage.
Lawsuits.
Scandals involving CEOs or senior leadership.
By taking fast action to improve workplace culture, whether that’s implementing training programs, improving policies to better reflect values or by communicating effectively, it’s much easier to swerve the risk of a reputational crisis arising from poor work culture. Prevention is always better than proaction!
Handy tools for online reputation management
Improving workplace culture can seem overwhelming, but you can make use of helpful tools to turn a large undertaking into a more manageable task.
A great preventative step is to use recruitment technology, HR screening and social media screening at the start of the recruitment process, to ensure you bring the best people on board, who will only contribute positively to your workplace culture. YOONO combines some of the best recruitment tools and HR tech with intelligent search to help you find out more about potential recruits or existing employees, keeping you more informed about how someone presents themselves and the places they work for online.
At a later stage, you can also use reputation audit reports and brand surveys to assess how your company’s reputation is developing online.
The best advice for online reputation management? Nip it in the bud with preventative search tools like YOONO, and always aim to foster an open and honest working culture for all employees, at every level of seniority. Believe us, in today’s digital environment, your efforts will be seen by all!
