5 Ways to Improve Your Company Culture with Digital Events

Company culture is deeply rooted in your company’s DNA. Reflecting values, practices, and beliefs internally and externally. We show you how you can use digitalization by managing business events to strengthen your company culture.

How company culture is created

  Creating a strong company culture in fast-growing start-ups is all about strategy and vision with core values being the underlying framework to create it. Company culture is grounded in your organization's values, reflected by the norms and behaviors nurtured by the environment team members work in, and reinforced by your organization's compensation and benefits. But culture is not only felt by your employees it is also reflected externally to clients, customers, and stakeholders.

Why company culture matters

Is company culture important? - Yes it is. The company culture is as important as your business strategy. Strong company culture does more than improve your image, it leads to improved engagement and in turn success. 

1. Josh Bersin knows that "The top 20% of companies with a recognition-rich culture have a 31% lower turnover rate”. 
2. The meaning of culture for an individual employee is called engagement which can be measured.   Engaged businesses benefit from:  
   • 17% higher productivity 
   • 20% higher sales
   • 21% higher profitability   - 41% less absenteeism  -40% fewer quality defects

How digitalization supports your company culture

Living in the digital era, using the right tools will strengthen your company culture. Keeping that in mind when managing digital business events could lead to a significant competitive advantage. The main goal of such events should be that employees feel supported in their daily work and that team-engagement increases. 

 

Managing digital business events to strengthen your company culture

There are a lot of ways to communicate virtually within your company. We at DIMPACT have put together the most effective tools for managing digital business events in your company.

1) Ask engaging questions 

The lack of face-to-face interaction may lead to silence during digital meetings. Having an agenda and prepared content are prerequisites to succeed with your virtual meeting. One strategy is to ask the right questions:  

• What is the one thing that has been working great lately?
• What is the one thing that can be improved?
• What is the one thing that’s been holding on with your employees personally?  You can encourage team engagement by offering time slots for short presentations of your employees.

2) Support critical thinking

Pose a question to the group, give them about 1 minute to think about it, and then share their answers. An example question could be: “If you were alone in a dark cabin, with only one match and a lamp, a fireplace, and a candle to choose from, which would you light first?”. This exercise can also be used to indirectly come up with interesting ideas for your company.

3)Create virtual interest

Content doesn’t have to be directly related to your business. Offering virtual classes such as yoga practice or meditation and mindfulness sessions can support the mental health of your employees. Or how about a quiz night? Tools like Sportle offer free trivia quizzes. The organizer of the quiz can make it more personal and reflect your company's core values and interests. 

4) Virtual Games and interaction

When managing digital business events you can integrate virtual games as an effective way of interaction. The main goal behind virtual games like Pictionary or desert island games is to support engagement and to get to know the participants better.  Therefore, virtual games can be integrated as an icebreaker into internal meetings. A helpful tool would be the personal facts guessing game. Each team member sends a curious personal fact about them to the organizer of the event. The participants have to guess which fact belongs to which colleague.

5) Support daily communication

Encouraging team engagement doesn’t always have to involve planned activities. There are very simple ways to keep teams connected through their daily work. Encouraging the use of chats for non-work-related topics is a way of engaging your employees in daily virtual communication. Chat roulette is a very effective way to connect with individual employees. The idea is that colleagues are randomly paired up and spend 30 minutes getting to know each other over a (virtual) coffee. Donut is a helpful Slack extension that supports this. 

Strengthen your Company Culture through digitalization

The digital revolution has pathed the way for regular virtual events in growing companies. The key to successfully managing digital business events is to build on the company culture. You need to use your company's values as a guide to give your digital business events meaning.  

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