In recent years, global companies have placed more emphasis on corporate culture matching in the context of realising the full potential of highly skilled employees. While corporate culture is sometimes used in traditional Japanese companies, the phrase carries a slightly different meaning in global companies.
As a specialist recruitment consultancy working with global businesses, Robert Walters Japan highlights the increasing importance of corporate culture for organisations seeking to hire global talents.
Highly skilled and specialised professionals demonstrate their individual capabilities
In an organisation that emphasises corporate culture, you might imagine that employees will adapt to fit the company. However, global companies seeking top talent prioritise candidates with a high level of expertise in their occupations and positions. The working style is the exact opposite of adapting yourself to whatever position your company wants.
Recruiting specialist professionals in various positions according to the business needs is a prerequisite for acquiring the talent needed to compete globally. It is necessary to have an environment in which specialists are gathered in a wide variety of positions, with each person making the most of his or her own expertise and skills.
What is corporate culture?
Corporate culture is what highly specialised professionals need to move in the same direction as an organisation while maintaining their expertise and individual strengths. Matching corporate culture is as important as matching skills, but Japanese companies have not paid much attention to it until now.
How is corporate culture created?
So how do you create a corporate culture in which professionals under a variety of positions work towards a unified direction? There are several factors.
The first is creating a vision that employees can share and strive towards. What kind of future does the company want to create and does this vision resonate with everyone in the organisation?
Next, how can employees internalise a shared mission of how to provide value to society and clients through their work, and understand what values are required?
In a group, everyone has individual strengths and skills, so it is important to have a culture of respecting each other as individuals.
By balancing such visions, objectives, missions, and values, and accepting each other as individuals, people of different ages, nationalities, genders, and specialties can utilise their strengths to move in the same direction.
Respect for diversity
Corporate culture could be translated as having respect for diversity. Organisations with diverse backgrounds display strengths over homogenous groups. When diversity is truly embraced in a company, the worldview is never to push yourself into one defined corporate culture.
In order to establish a corporate culture where professionals mutually recognise each other and can demonstrate their strengths, it is necessary to create an open environment in which the people who work are highly satisfied. This can include implementing a work style that enables employees to experience challenges and grow daily, adopting technology to improve efficiency, and making a comfortable office environment.
A merit-based system that rewards results achieved and innovative technology that aids in career advancement are also important aspects to creating such an environment.
Why corporate culture is essential
So why are Japanese companies now focusing on corporate culture? Due to the globalisation of the economy, Japanese businesses now must face global competitors both domestically and overseas. In other words, employees are required to have higher professionalism and specialisation.
We are now in an era where companies without diversity lose competitiveness against foreign markets and companies. If a company wishes to gain organisational strength and growth potential as well as maintain a high level of expertise and diversity, developing a corporate culture is necessary.
Corporate culture matching requires deep knowledge of companies and candidates
In order to attract highly skilled professionals who match the corporate culture, it is crucial to fully understand a company’s culture and values as well as the personality and values of a candidate to determine if the two match.
At Robert Walters, our consultants develop trusting relationships with companies to gain a deep understanding of each company’s values and consider each prospective candidate as an individual when working together to explore career paths. This has been our stance since the company was founded in 1985. In an era where corporate culture is prioritised, we believe our approach is even more relevant today.
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