In the past two posts, we’ve identified our culture and discussed three opportunities to help create company enthusiasts. Today, we’re going to talk about why it’s important to your bottom line.

Over the past few decades, both academics and practitioners have spent time focusing on the issue of corporate culture and whether a company’s culture does, in fact, impact its overall performance and effectiveness. In 1983, a study of organizational change called The Change Masters, Innovation for Productivity in the American Corporation demonstrated how companies with progressive HR management practices outperformed those with less progressive practices. In 1984, using survey-based measures, another study by the name ofCorporate Culture and Organizational Effectiveness showed that apparent involvement and participation on the part of a company’s employees predicted current and future financialperformance. And then in 2005, a book entitled The Future of Human Resource Managementnoted, based on research, that culture not only drives behavior and unites employees but that 46% of a business’ financial performance results from corporate culture. That’s impressive. Your leadership will think so, too. Show them this isn’t just feel-good stuff. More and more companies are starting to believe it. And why wouldn’t they? Look at this graph from a 2009 Towers Perrin study. It shows clearly that companies that scored high in employee engagement had greater financial success.

In 2011, research out of the UK reported 96% of employers interviewed would hire someone who did not have a complete set of skills but displayed the right attitude over an applicant with the perfect skills but who lacked the right mindset. That’s a corporate attitude I can get behind.

Ron Finklestein is an author and business coach and I recently came across this quote of his that I think sums up this post nicely.

“When you take the time to define and create your corporate culture, you are telling others what kinds of people will flourish in your company; it tells the market the companies you want to do business with, and it defines the behaviors that will be accepted in your organization.”

I’ll go one step further and say it creates enthusiasts, from both within your company and in the marketplace.

And that, my friends, is win-win.

Originally published February 9, 2012, on sicolamartin.com