Corporate America has become obsessed with company culture but those Friday afternoon
drinks and team building days are papering over a terrible Trend which is making your workplace
miserable installing your career I really mean the entire Apple team I can go out in a retail
store in the retail teams together we can finally put people at the center of our technology in a
clean fast-paced friendly environment a team full of people just like you company culture is one of
the biggest Trends in corporate management small companies with its fewest 20 employees are hiring
culture managers whose full-time job is to promote a collaborative and positive work environment
these are full-time employees that from a bottom line business perspective do nothing but make the
other 19 employees more engaged with their work culture is what keeps people around according
to a survey of job Seekers and hiring managers conducted by Robert Half a Workforce analytics
firm 91 percent of managers said that the candidates fit with the organizational culture was
more important than their skills and experience hilariously a PWC survey on company culture found
that 69 of companies believed that their culture gave them a Competitive Edge presumably the other
31 percent of companies realize that an office didn't need a ping pong table and kombucha on
tap to be a nice place to work managing corporate culture is expensive corporate culture managers
are earning an average salary package of one hundred and ten thousand dollars a year according
to Glassdoor direct salary expenses also don't capture the additional cost of running culture
events and the lost demand hours in the name of team building it's a big investment and one
that is not paying off most workers report only engaging in workplace team activities because
they felt they had to they said that they would rather spend their hours at work focus on their
job tasks and after work hours with family and friends or catching up on personal errands none
of us at work like it when some person in HR comes and says hey guys we're doing this fun activity
from X time to X time and you had no say in the matter but you have to go and I think we can all
agree that this is terrible even when activities were funded by the company most workers said
that they did not enjoy what they called corporate prescribed mandatory fun an article in the Harvard
Business Review found that these types of business environments were one of the main reasons that top
performing employees left the business so why the company still obsessed with their culture if it's
so expensive to maintain and only makes employees want to quit well there are actually Four reasons
and each one is worse than the last the first reason is that companies don't want to create
a company culture they want to create a company cult management at large companies has discovered
that they can build an undue level of control over their employees if they control their thinking and
behavior in the workplace Senior Management will push the narrative that the company
stands for something greater than generating an acceptable rate of return to its shareholders
but that's exactly what it is it's a business of people serving people and it was is and always
will be about the culture of the company startups are prone to do this with overly enthusiastic
Founders that think they are going to change the world but the Harvard Business Review found again
that cult-like behaviors were most common in the largest companies Apple Tesla Nordstrom and
Harley Davidson were the examples the report gave ritualistic behavior is a common characteristic
of Colts and companies that take their culture too far we have a lot of companies that really
brag about their culture it's on their website there's even one company uh in town I won't
mention their name but will pay their employees two thousand dollars if they tattoo sort of the
company culture on their bodies not a joke two thousand bucks it is still mandatory for Walmart
employees to recite the company cheer once a day in all of their stores around the country [Music]
according to the company Sam Walton the company's founder toured a Korean tennis ball Factory in
1975 that started every day with a company chant Walton who was obsessed with Asian business
culture liked the idea so much that he made it mandatory in all of his stores one thing that
attracted Walton to businesses in the East was the utter devotion that employees have for their
company and its Founders employees routinely put in twice their salaried hours to impress
rigid corporate leadership a trend that business owners back in America were Keen to replicate
Sam Walton's daily chant may be a cup full of concentrated cringe but other companies take it a
step further by employing another tactic of Colts language control when employees start working at
Disney theme parks they are given a language guide when you get a job with a Walt Disney Company it's
not just getting a job it's like entering a new community I would have already been fired because
there are no employees at Disney parks there are only cast members and there are no customers only
guests and employees are not at work they are on stage employees are reprimanded from going
off script Disney knows that controlling the language their employees use will get them to
put in extra effort around their parks Disney is not alone Google employees call themselves
googlers unless they have just joined and then they are nooglers Amazon employees are amazonians
and Facebook employees are metamates it sounds harmless and some people might even call it good
management but it's still mental conditioning with an objective what's even scarier is that
it works I'm sure that you can think of a lot of jargon terms and acronyms unique to your company
language and rituals are a big part of any culture but in corporatism their aim is to get employees
to think of the company and their job as something bigger than just a place they go to do tasks to
earn money for folks who want to be part of something bigger than themselves a Workforce
that thinks their company is more important than the compensation that it provides will
accept lower salaries and remain more loyal than they would to a company that doesn't pull the same
tricks Google's corporate culture is legendary for free salad bars and encouraging creativity
but that's only in place to get googlers to stay in the office longer and share their best ideas
with a trillion dollar company Goldman Sachs is culture is to be home of the smartest hardest
working people that want to get paid more than everyone else for being better than everyone
else but that closure lets them work their new analysts 80 hours a week a month straight because
they know the culture they were signing up for if corporate culture is starting to sound less
like an annoying business buzzword and more like a horrifying Trend that was only the first reason
of four so it's time to learn how money Works to find out why Corporate America has become
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the second reason that companies have become so obsessed with their culture is because pushback
over workplace issues has become a lot more serious offices have become a lot more diverse
and inclusive and public opinion has shifted to support groups that previously would have
been marginalized this is positive progress but it's not without challenges when everybody in an
office has a similar background it's easier to avoid faux pas that will get the company
in trouble in a modern office what is just a joke to one person will be an attack to another person
really uncomfortable well Kayla slow down Speedy I can't wait to see us in my bedroom later if you
got time wanting to swing by my bedroom I will see who's you can get done first mine's bigger
mine's bigger you boys are gonna stretch me thin okay this is literally sexual harassment
okay like how are you okay with this Kayla I'm remodeling Rob's bedroom leader when I'm not here
I run a small interior design company the court of public opinion is very unkind to companies no
matter how they handle these situations having a strong cultural framework in place can help
reduce the chances of these events happening stopping bad PR and getting the most work out
of the widest possible pool of talent is all the companies really care about but that sounds too
dehumanizing so they brand it as corporate culture and everybody is happy a company that makes a big
deal about its corporate culture can also use it as a defense when problems do eventually occur
any corporate apology is bound to include a line about how the company takes workplace culture very
seriously and it holds its people to the highest standards of whatever this isn't a bad thing a
workplace should be somewhere everybody feels comfortable even if it's a little more rigid than
the 1950 Style Mad Men ad firm but don't be fooled into thinking it's been done for the right reasons
a culture is only good as how much extra profit it can make for a company every year the third
reason that companies have become so obsessed with corporate culture is because everybody else is
doing it and they've all convinced each other it's important corporate culture has been a concept in
business management since the 1970s but it has only become a buzzword in the last 10 years the
obsession with company culture began when company leaders saw the success of tech startups and they
had a very different way of doing business but were becoming the most valuable businesses in the
world the push for positive company culture really became about chasing what worked for
others the objective of creating the best possible working environment got lost to following Trends
and fads that were implemented poorly and now the new thing in Silicon Valley is they use this a lot
which is I I like to hire people that I want to go have a beer with like well that's a really stupid
reason to hire someone office cubicles were once the definition of a depressing work environment
but now they look like heaven anybody that has worked in a culture-centric collaboration focused
open plan office knows that it really means that you'll be working shoulder to shoulder with your
co-workers on a small desk barely big enough for all of your stuff this is where I work on
my desk is incredibly close to my poor neighbors I always have to wear headphones to concentrate
and nobody ever talks the old office cubicles were better for workers but moving to the conveniently
cheaper option of cramming more staff into the same square footage can be justified
by management with a focus on promoting company Culture open offices are about saving money the
extra space is used for rec rooms that look great on the company's career landing page but workers
will get into trouble for using if they don't meet their performance objectives in the age of culture
Obsession a team isn't a group of overworked people who drink heavily to cope with stress
they just work hard play hard the employees share blame in this Obsession as well one of the most
frequently recommended interview questions for applicants is to ask about company culture 91 of
hiring managers rank a good cultural fit over the applicant with the best skills so this is
good advice but the interviewers then need a good answer if they said that they are a boring company
that sets reasonable expectation for their workers and realizes that their accounting department is
not a fast-paced and dynamic environment it would put off a lot of LinkedIn enthusiasts the best
strategy for both workers and employers is to play along with the game and pretend they care
company culture can be good for everybody but not if it goes too far and it can actually
hurt company and Career Success in three ways the first problem is that it can recreate an
environment where everybody is the same even if individualism is what it was trying to promote
sometimes good ideas are had when not everybody feels 100 comfortable and if everybody is too
in line with the homogeneous culture there won't be anybody to challenge bad ideas companies with
strong cultures can also isolate new employees and make them feel very awkward I am sure you have all
talked to someone that was just a little bit too into their company and just love it just love my
job now imagine working with a whole team of them it is also a lot of pressure most of the stuff
you do at your job does not matter if you file a report late or enter some date wrong it won't be
the end of the world but if you and all the people you work with believe that the company is more
important than just something that pays your bills then every little mistake becomes the end of the
world this is terrible for the mental health of employees but it's also terrible for the company
because it disincentivizes free thinking and controlled risk taking first thing I do is ask for
it I'm just calling you out Corporate America the fourth reason that companies have become obsessed
with corporate culture is because it's one of the last options they have to motivate staff that just
don't care about the 40-year careers anymore to find out why go and watch my video on how
careers have changed forever a special thanks again to incognate for making it possible for
everybody to keep on learning how money works you know my value is if I had a company it'd
be like get this [ __ ] done and I don't care what you do in the meantime just like you know
don't be a dick that's it that's like that's all your company values need to