Regardless of if you are moving roles or you are in between jobs, critical for any new role that you might move to is that you "stick" there.

I've seen many a person, move from role to role and after a six months here and six months there your CV starts to look a mess.

Wherever you go and work for an organization the biggest thing for you is to sit well in the culture.  You can, of course check out glassdoor, I know one person who will always use these reviews to ask questions of the interviewer.  Note, they do it in a constructive way, often the people (it's not always the case) that leave reviews on Glassdoor didn't fit the culture.

To quote this HBR article

"A majority of respondents (61%) to a Glassdoor survey said that they found aspects of a new job different than what they had expected based on the interview process. Company culture was cited as one of the factors that differ most."

The other option is to talk to people in the company.  Better still check the people out on social, you will always get a feeling for people's passive and active social presence. 

Back to this HBR article

"As a job applicant, you want to find a culture that aligns with your values, or the ethics that guide you, fulfill you, and make you feel a sense of purpose."

Back to the HBR article

"Pre-Covid, decoding company culture was slightly easier. Just like walking into someone’s apartment and looking at their books and décor, you can gauge a lot of information by walking into a physical office space. You can get a “feel” for the people, the layout, and generally, how things are done.

But now that most workplaces are remote, how can you actively and deliberately figure out whether an environment is right for you?"

How to Find Out if a Company’s Culture is Right for You

Trust

First and foremost business needs to be seen as "trustworthy", to employee, prospects, customers and suppliers.  Customer experience is driven by happy employees.

Trust, while has an element of brand, this is about the people.  Can you trust the CEO, the Board of Directors, the sales people, employees?

With more and more people being active on social media, (see research here) you have to have the CEO, the Board of Directors (the C-Suite) the sales people, in fact the whole of the company on social media.  You take the company culture and you put it on social.  Your customers, your suppliers, your future employees are closer and you have true transparency.

A "social organisation" mentioned above is not a non-for-profit, well it could be, we are talking about a company that uses social media strategically across the business. From sales, across marketing, customer services, human resources (HR), Finance, Procurement, Supply Chain, Manufacturing etc. 

So many companies say to us "our USP (unique selling point) is the culture" or a candidate has to have a "culture fit".  Then put your culture on social, be transparent.  This is the way, you will get the best people, make the most sales and have the most efficient supply chain. More on these in a moment. 

Ethical leadership should be your norm.

This isn't something that "happens" there is a change program driven from the top down, with the leaders leading.  There has to be a methodology that people follow.  Social becomes a strategy, not a tactic.  

Purpose

Trust dovetails into Purpose, with the employees on social, they are empowered to share their experiences, their beliefs, their values.

For example, Human Resources (HR) could share an article about the importance of Diversity within the business or work / life balance.  This is shared through that employee's network.  Remember, this is not a corporate message this is shared by the employee, through a network that knows, likes and trusts that person.  That network will amplify it.  Keep doing this and you will become the employer of choice in your industry.

In Purchasing you could share an article about the importance of sustainability for your suppliers.  Again, this is putting out a message in the market that offers trust and purpose.  Shared through the employees network, people who know, like and trust.  Before you know it, you will have suppliers that meet that sustainability criteria.

In the old days you might have used PR (Public Relations) or adverts to do this, nobody reads press releases and nobody looks at adverts, the modern world is digital.  Let's go where your employees, prospective customers, customers and future employees are ... on social.

Board Skills

Boards still need to have skills such as compliance, regulation, they also need to understand intergenerational differences.

I often ask people if they have ordered a Uber.  Uber is such a great metaphor for the digital experience.  Last year in San Francisco we went everywhere by Uber, it is such a frictionless way to do business.  We travelled to Vancouver.  It was raining, we were told to stand in a taxi queue, there were no taxis.  Really? There is no Uber service in Vancouver.  When you have experienced a frictionless digital experience and suddenly go back to an analog experience you feel there is a massive "experience gap". 

The Board is going to have to get used to "network management" no longer can you open the door of your office and check to see who are at their desks.  If you had 3 offices with 1,000 people in each, now you have 3,000 offices.

This has a massive employee welfare and mental health position.  We know from research that employees feel neglected, so how do management open new lines of communication? How does you get remote workers, infused, engaged and effective?  Through social.

Social will provide the mechanism for communication, connection and collaboration.

Culture

Social media is no longer a destination, it's where we live, this is one of the impacts that covid 19 has made on us.  We are used to living at home and buying "everything" through the internet.

Again, check out this research.

We spend our lives in social, we communicate through social, it's where we are and it's where our customers are.

In fact our employee expect us to have cultural interplay of social.  Sharing, creating, collaborating, sharing with each other.

Here at DLA Ignite we have realised that Zoom and Teams are not fit for purpose for what we want to do in terms of delivering an interactive online experience for clients.  The DLA Ignite team have collaborated across the globe and found meetbutter within a day we are having a meeting with the CEO, Jakob.  This is a team empowered to make a change, empowered to collaborate, Meetbutter might not be the answer, but it's great watching the team come to the decision.

This is empowered decision making.

This HBR article suggests questioning along the lines of

• When someone drops the ball on a project, how does your team handle that?
• What specific efforts have been made to create an inclusive culture for underrepresented employees?
• When there is a conflict cross-functionally, how do folks resolve it?
• How does the company ensure there is a sense of community even when people are working remotely?

Trust in Sales

Gone are the days were sales was about manipulation.

For starters there is legislation, for example the 2018 introduced GDPR replications in Europe, or the technology has put an end to endless cold calls.  I have the Apple iOS 13 functionality installed that drives all cold calls to my voicemail.

But let's take a step back, has an advert, spam email, cold call, brochure ever sold anything?  No.  What sells something is a conversation.

Social allows your salesforce to create conversations.

Not in a way where you spam people with sales pitches on social, that is just a cold call on a social network.  But connecting to people, know me, like me, trust me.

Sales people are about inspiring, educating, sharing their purpose, culture.  We know we have a modern empowered buyer, who is on social media, so let's go out and find them and tell them something they don't know.

Let's start a conversation. 

Where Do We Go From Here?

Just give me, or one of the DLA Ignite team and hour of your time and we can walk you through what we are doing for other companies.  No hard sell, just take you through what other companies are doing to transform.

Please contact me here or one of the DLA Ignite team here, so please pick one of our industry experts or one of our experts in your geographical locality.  Our website is here.