cjo03 said:
i am one of those "hr people" (yes, i know it is always our fault )
hr consulting days my clients were big (i.e. nestle, coca cola, home depot, aig, etc).. then I spent 7 years in hr risk for a shoe company up in oregon that TA is generally not too fond of.
all of the above state 'culture' as a differentiator but in my experience across the big companies, it is individual people leaders that make or break an employee's experience. people with leaders they enjoy and respect, work hard and enjoy the "culture" people with leaders they dislike and don't trust will not enjoy the "culture" regardless of how many pubs are on campus.
at a smaller company now, still in HR and also trying to figure out this strategy - our people have stated in-person collaboration matters. and have also asked for flexibility in when, how and where work gets done.
I agree with this. I think sometimes people forget that a company's culture is really just the average and aggregate of the many cultures within it. I like to think of this like the culture of countries versus their cities and towns. For example, there is certainly a distinct French culture, but there are also certainly major differences in the cultures of Paris and small French towns and how people in those places experience and interpret "French" culture. There are also plenty of regional differences. Someone's perception of what it is to be French can be very different depending on exactly what part of France they are in in the same way someone's perception of the culture at at XYZ megacorp can be very different depending on their department and local team. Both France and XYZ still have distinct cultures though.
In smaller companies it can be much more uniform, but even small and midsize companies can give employees very different experiences spending on their department and manager.
