Company culture ‘vital to recruiting and retaining staff’

Company culture is increasingly important to staff recruitment and retention and can’t be left to HR departments but “has to come from the top”.

That is according to Jane Sunley, co-founder of consultancy Hendrik & Hyde, who told the Travel Weekly People Summit: “Company culture has to be at the heart of everything.

“We see people all the time trying to fix stuff [by] taking initiatives and training. But if the culture is lousy or you have toxic leadership, you might as well not spend money on those things.”

Sunley argued: “You can have the greatest of everything, but if people in the middle layer are not being supportive and considerate, you’re on a hiding to nothing.

“Unless you are authentically a nice place to work, people aren’t going to want to work for you.”

Henley added: “It has to come from the top. The top people have to be seen to do the things they say they stand for. It should never be an HR thing. There is nothing worse than to think, ‘It’s HR, we don’t really need to do it’.”

Kuoni managing director Mark Duguid, who formerly headed sister brand Carrier, agreed saying: “You can spend a lot of time doing what you think is right. At Carrier we had an issue around employee engagement in a team.

“I could have gone down the pay and benefits routes. But when we asked people what mattered it was flexible working because we had so many working moms and it was career development. It altered the approach we took.”

Henley insisted “it’s possible but not easy” to create a strong company culture in a hybrid or remote=working business. But she said: “So many companies are trying to make it work as it was, rather than asking, ‘What do we need to do differently?’

She added: “You’ve got to recruit to your culture. If high performance is part of your culture, you’ve got to recruit people excited about performing highly.

“Don’t recruit people who want to be comfortable. High performance is not a dirty word. Employees want to be part of something successful.”

Duguid agreed, saying high performance is “often perceived negatively, but why should it be? Giving constructive feedback, clear goals and support mechanisms go hand in hand.”