Corporate Culture: The future's bright, the future's (obviously) orange
Corporate culture can play a big role in a customer’s buying decision. People want to buy from people they like and from companies they trust, with 60% of respondents in a recent poll by the Fortune Knowledge Group stating that knowing what a company stands for was more than 3 times as important as its market share or its ability to innovate.
Customer-centric practices go a long way in support of this but much of what makes a company great in people’s eyes is rooted in the very way they do business. 81% of the poll’s respondents emphasised that long-term business relationships were borne out of companies being able to make a direct correlation between what they believe in and how they conduct their operations.
Internally, corporate culture it is something that needs to be managed from the top down. Leading by example and yet still having a finger on the pulse of the business at ground level is a juggling act made easier by being actively involved in daily operations. It’s aided by having a balance of long-standing employees that have already signed up to ‘The Eland Way’ and ‘fresh blood’ that bring a new vitality to the office. Corporate culture is one of genuine care – whether that be a commitment to knowledge and training, to technical excellence, to open & fair practices with manufacturing partners, or to implementing eco and ethical solutions wherever possible. Of course, a sense of fun and regular chances for staff to let their hair down don’t go amiss either – the Christmas party of 2015 is still providing tales in September, and there’s a sense of camaraderie in the local on a Friday evening!
But it can be a challenge to maintain that culture when operations are split over more than one location. It’s not just multiple UK sites - the opening of offices in Europe makes it even more important to get across the sense of who we are. Take France for instance – our geographically closest trading partner and third highest in the list of countries the UK exports to by GBP, behind Germany and the US. According to HM Revenue and Customs Overseas Trade Statistics, of the £11.6 billion of EU-bound exports in July 2016, £1.46 billion headed to France. So far this year the total export value to France sits at £10.99 billion, equating to 6.6% share of total values. On-the-ground representation is important and having an office physically located in France helps. People want to know we’re local (even if that only means being in the same country) and that there is natural language support to tap into by telephone and email. Yet it is a digital presence with translated web content that really broadens access to product and service information and helps new customers get a sense of what we stand for.
English may be the lingua-franca of international business, but Spanish and Mandarin are more widely spoken, and up to three-quarters of the internet world are non-native English speakers. Launching further translated sites will continue to be a key marketing goal. Of course, there are elements that, for the sake of technical correctness aren’t translated at the outset, but with multi-lingual staff across all departments it is possible to provide this second line support and deliver on customer service commitments and showcase the corporate culture just as is done for British customers. The hope is regardless of geographic location or language spoken, you’re able to see that the future of cable is definitely orange!
